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cupidscrystals · 4 years

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Hey! I hate to bother you, but I was wondering if you could expand on vampire lore behind Romulus? He’s a super interesting character and I’d love to hear more about vampires in the HP world!

:O !!! I’d love to! Here are some of the more important lore me and my good friend @meadowslittlebug came up with! Please go check her out, her art deserves more attention and she’s a wonderful person!

Vampires, Dhamphirs, and Vampire-borns

Two vampires who produce a child with the magic gene, this child called Vampire-born. This is the result of one or both parents having wizarding ancestry. If there’s no wizard ancestry in their bloodlines the child is called a Vampyr. The vampire-born and vampyr have a slow growing process, reaching the maturity of their bodies around 160 and 200 years old. They share the same traits as their turned brethren. A child of a human and a vampire or a human and a part vampire is called a Dhampir. Dhampir’s are only given to those who are at least ⅛ vampire. Some will always inherit vampiric traits such as sharp facial features, fangs, oddly coloured irises, an allergy to garlic and silver, and a repulsion to werewolves, but the rest of the vampiric traits are selected at random.

Aging

Newborns: They are newborn vampires. Their abilities are very limited.

Fledglings: They are Junior vampires a.k.a Vampires in training. A Fledgling learns how to control their thirst and hunting instincts along with gaining the ability to turn into a bat at will. Usually an older vampire is the mentor of the Fledglings and they can have more than one mentor. Mentors are usually the parents.

Matured: Fully grown vampires. They are the most common types of vampires found in the known world. They can turn other mortals into vampires.

Elder/Ancient: Vampires that are over 1000 years old, usually these ones are highly respected by the vampiric community, usually Elders hold positions of leadership. These are the ones that look less human-like and more like a real vampire.

[Picture: Top - Matured vampires, Bottom - Elder/Ancient vampire]

Vampires age MUCH slower than normal humans. 10 human years is equivalent to 1 vampire year.

Diet

Vampires can only drink blood. If they consume other kinds of food or drinks, their bodies will react violently until they expel all the contents. It was believed that human blood was necessary in the survival of Vampires, however vampires simply need blood, any kind of blood to keep their strength up. Such examples are animals. Human blood is just more nutritious and better tasting than animal blood. Vampires living on a diet of human blood will need to drink less than vampires living on a diet of animal blood.

Biology

• Vampires possess anticoagulant in their saliva that helps the blood keep flowing after the incision was done.

• Quick regeneration after an injury.

• They hiss at each other to mark dominance or as a warning sound.

• During their first few centuries they can reproduce, but after that period of time they become sterile and only can turn humans into vampires.

• Vampires can live without drinking blood for a couple weeks, but if the being haven’t consumed blood in a while, their appearance will age quickly and look more like a living corpse and more prone to act feral.

• Instead of water-based tears, vampires cry blood tears.

• Some vampires can have black scleras. Mostly the older generations, however it can be passed down.

[Picture: Black scleras]

• No vampire or part vampire has brown eyes. The only vampires that can have brown eyes are the ones that were turned. This is the #1 technique used to identify true vampires and human-turned vampires. True vampires can have eye colours ranging from blue, green, red, pink, orange, and purple. They NEVER have yellow eyes as that is a distinguishing feature of werewolves and part werewolves.

[Picture: Vampire eye colours]

• Enhanced senses.

• Enhanced strength, speed and agility.

• Being able to float and fly unassisted.

• Able to shoot plasma balls, this skill must be trained and only temporarily paralyzes prey

• Sunlight doesn’t kill them but they get burned pretty badly, feeling as if they were being burned to the bone, they can regenerate when they are in the shadows again.

• Since they are nocturnal creatures they are very sensitive to any source of light and can be temporarily blinded.

• Can only be killed by a wooden stake to the heart

• Silver is a ‘pure’ metal and makes vampires get burned or have bad allergic reactions.

• A Werewolf bite can be fatal to vampires. The Toxin from the werewolf and the venom in the vampire blood cause a reaction that makes the vampire deteriorate and die.

• Crucifixes and holy symbols is ambiguous, they produce a cringey effect in vampires but also there’s also a few that likes to see crucifixes, usually those have an inclination for liking the suffering.

• Poisoned or disease ridden blood ( sickness or toxic substances) will give the vampire a stomach ache.

Races & Branches

Humanoid: The newest generation of vampires, with their attractive features some can mingle between humans unnoticed, and some may resemble a typical vampire that it’s very obvious. Characterized for having pale skin, bright and odd eye coloration, fangs, as well as sharp features. (ex: European vampires, Jiangshi)

[Picture: 1 - Humanoid vampires, 2 - a Jiangshi (Chinese vampire) and European vampire just vibing]

Ancient: One of the oldest generation of vampires. They are older than 1000 years old. Around the age of 1000 their bodies change to a less humanoid features and have features such as longer ears, balding, bigger and longer fangs. Due to their age, ancient vampires are more reclusive compared to other races and don’t interact fully with the outer world. They wait until their prey is close enough to ambush.

[Picture: Ancient/Elder vampires]

Feral: Vampiric beast-like monsters or creatures that attack without distinction at humans and animals alike. Usually is known for attacking livestock. Some examples of these creatures are the Sasabonsam and the Chupacabras.

[Picture: Left - Sasabonsam, Right - Chupacabra]

History

Before 1811 (or early 1800s) , humans and wizards alike used to hunt vampires for sport. They mainly targeted the old and elderly vampires (over 1000 years old) and would bring home their decapitated heads as a trophy. The reason behind this was because the older vampires looked less human like than the younger generations do so it was easier for Muggles and Wizards to see them as an non-human entity. Most of the older vampires they slaughtered were of high position as they were elders, kings, queens, and other members of the royal vampire court. Because of the fact that vampires are immortal and time passes way differently in their perception, a lot of vampires today are still enraged at wizard kind because they were alive before they made vampire slaying illegal.

During the 1700s, the fear of vampires were at its highest point. People were stabbing the recently deceased with wooden stakes to prevent them from potentially turning into vampires and were insanely paranoid about them. They did all they could to protect themselves and their families from vampires. Vampire slaying was also at its peak, especially since wizarding ministries were promising people rewards of 200 galleons PER VAMPIRE slain. The vampire community combated this with trying to turn as many humans and wizards into one of their own in an attempt to repopulate and give them a taste of what it feels like to be treated badly. This is an extremely important time in history and is addressed as The Great Vampire Revolt. Again, most vampires alive in the present day were alive when all of this took place.

Given the frictions between the vampire and mortal community in the past, having relationships between both communities was frowned upon. If a vampire married a mortal, the vampire must make a choice, turn their loved one or must abandon the vampire community until the spouse is dead. However their offspring was well received, but part human part vampire offspring are pretty rare in present day. Other reasons as to why they are not common is because of the biological differences between the human and vampire causing problems conceiving or early infant hood death.

Monarchy

A Vampire Monarchy is a vampire who rules over a country. The vampires of a country form the Vampire Monarch’s Kingdom or Queendom. It is overseen by the Monarch, who also has authority over his or her vampire subjects. Although the countries are under complete reign by their individual monarch, they still remain under the jurisdiction of the Vampire Council in the Vampire Hierarchy.

The Vampire Council was a clandestine council that is composed of eight of the most politically powerful vampires in the known world. It is the ultimate authority over all vampires across the globe, overseeing matters of both religious and political purview in relation to the vampire population. It was worshiped by many and feared by even more.

[Picture: Members of the vampire council]

A vampire is granted the title of king or queen if they are in line for the throne and the current king or queen passes away or abdicated the throne. Upon the death of the reigning monarch, the Vampire Council will appoint a new king or queen. Vampires can also earn titles such as duke and duchess, baron and baroness (or thane), viscount and viscountess, count and countess (or earl), baronet and baroness, imperial knight and lady, or gentleman and gentry. by doing a very significant or impressive act to be granted a title. These royal titles can vary and differ depending on geographical locations.

Vampire Academies

Since the vampire population is much lower than the wizards there are not that many educational institutions for them to attend. The only ones we came up with so far is that there is one in Transylvania, Romania, Russia, and China.

Fun Facts

• Some may say that they have a ‘not giving a shit’ way of life and only care for their interests and brethren. For example they are not phased by murders of species out of their own kind (I mean they’ve been drinking the blood of humans since the beginning of time), one’s sexuality, or most things deemed dangerous by mortals. After all they gave bigger thing to worry about, like how they’re gonna acquire their next meal and figuring out how to enter places without being invited inside.

• Their pupils are slit shaped and the iris in different bright colors

• They can’t be killed by the killing curse, only stabbing them through the heart with a wooden stake (preferably made from wood of a peach tree. Any other wood will result in a slower death while peach tree wood will cause an instant death)

• There’s a vampire transcontinental championship where vampires from all over the world compete to see who’s the fastest flyer. For centuries, Asia has been taking first place.

• They sleep with their arms crossed over their chest. It doesn’t matter if they’re hanging upside down or in a coffin or laying on a couch, they’ll always end up in that position.

• They can hang upside down from any ceiling

Alright, that’s only a small part of what we have come up with, but if you have any questions about ANY of the lore or vampires in the HP universe in general, feel free to shoot me an ask!

Picture sources (I do not own any of these pics)

What We Do In The Shadows (2014)

Interview With a Vampire (1994)

https://pin.it/af6yidekumfffx

https://pin.it/cqa35xsnbcripc

https://pin.it/7upbmlapsy4ux3

https://pin.it/xxisghgdhy3qn2

https://pin.it/dpekjlnmh6xzfs

https://pin.it/ae2urdc3schf2q

https://pin.it/7en7bwce5uzm45

https://pin.it/kix6a5urpzq2wu

https://pin.it/nzn43moq3rypeb

https://pin.it/efm7amzuam3fle

https://pin.it/4hzqh4tzpghgph

Vampire Kingdom

https://trueblood.fandom.com/wiki/Vampire_monarch

#harry potter #hp #hphm #hpma #wizarding world #vampire #vampire lore #hp headcanon #harry potter headcanon #wizarding world of harry potter #wizarding world lore #cupidscrystals #what we do in the shadows #wwdits

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helldumpster · 3 years

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Judgment and Circles

The Judgment

Hell is the place where those who sin suffer the consequences of their own actions and home of all demons. The Lord of the underworld is the one responsible for judging the soul as worthy of reincarnation or not. Those who Lucifer judges as a good soul can reincarnate immediately. He selects a life at random and sends the soul back to the human realm as a newborn. The reincarnated soul has no idea about their past life, although sometimes they can recall some minor details, but nothing major, when the system fails a little.

On the other hand, the ones who Lucifer judges as bad souls or sinners have to pay for the mistakes of their past life however the Prince thinks as suitable. The penitence is as severe and long as the wrongdoings of the sinner, according do Lucifer himself, going from helping as a demon for a couple of centuries to suffering eternal and excruciating pain in the deepest parts of Hell, or even going back to the human realm and having the most miserable life possible.

There also is a third option. The alternative being the signing of a contract with any of the available demons and becoming part of hell permanently. The soul can sign this contract either if they were judged as good or bad. For the good ones it can be a guarantee that they won’t have to come to lead a bad life and just be stable in hell. For the bad ones is a way to be forgiven for all the sins they committed.

After signing the contract, the soul is no longer a soul turning into a ‘Contract Demon’. The Contract Demons are assigned to a specific circle of hell depending on the sin that they commited, in the case of good souls they just get assigned to the same circle as the demon they signed with.

Hell "geography"

There are two ways humans can enter Hell: by dying or by the secret entry, the hole in the ground that leads to the stairs a long way down. The secret entry is a portal that changes its placement at random or as soon as someone is naive enough to get inside. Once the person goes down the first set of stairs they find a river embraced by darkness and a little boat. As soon as they get into the boat their soul now belongs to Lucifer and there is absolutely no way out. They ride for 3 whole days in complete darkness before getting to the gates of Hell. The gates are a physical representation of the portal that takes them to the circle they’re supposed to go to. Hell is subdivided in nine different circles. As one goes further down, the higher the numbers representing the circle is, just as the level of wickedness of the sins.

First circle

The circle of the ones who didn’t actually sin, but were carried there by Lucifer himself (like the Fallen Angels), or were born from a demon like the Cambions. This circle is the darkest one, being the closest to the entry of hell. It seems like an abandoned village but there, surprisingly, are beings living in all of the houses. At the edge of the village there is a forest that leads to the second circle.

Second circle

The circle for those who committed lust and sexual related demons. Home of Asmodeus and his subordinates. This circle is a desert with extraordinarily strong winds that can easily carry a demon from one side to another, and only one building right in the middle with a set of stair that goes upwards and downwards infinitely to its never ending floors. Going all the way down the stairs there is a door that opens to a shed in the third circle.

Third circle

This circle is for who committed gluttony and the demons who need to eat actual flesh and human meat to survive. There is a constant blizzard and hundreds of frozen lakes that homes sirens, who live under the thin layer of ice, and a couple of mountains. Between all the lakes lies one only cabin that houses Beelzebub. Behind the cabin there is a trail that leads to a cave in the mountains that leads to the fourth circle

Fourth circle

This circle is for the ones that were too greedy in life. It resembles a mine, going further down with no sight of the bottom. The lighting being almost nonexistent plus a hot and humid atmosphere, a lot of tunnels that seem like a maze with rocks and boulders that fall and roll from nowhere and vampires all around. Inside of one of these tunnels, if taken the right turns, one can find the home of Mammon. At the bottom of this mine-like cave is a river that leads to the next circle.

Fifth circle

This circle is for the ones who committed the sin of sloth. The river is actually boiling hot and never stops flowing at high speed so it drowns those who are too lazy to swim upwards. Besides the boiling river, this circle resembles a beautiful forest where the Fairies and Drudes live. At the top of some tree you might find a little treehouse where Belphegor lives. Following the river till the end, there is a waterfall that you can’t see the bottom of, that leads to the sixth circle.

Sixth circle

This circle is for those who couldn’t contain their wrath and unleashed it into somebody else, and for those who are in contact with their pagan beliefs, also called witches. Most of the residents here were women that were burnt at the stake accused of heresy that got access to actual power after descending to hell. This place resembles a gigantic cemetery, dark for all eternity, with a lot of graves, that are actually doors to the witches’ houses. The only backlit place is the huge tomb where one can find Satan drinking inside of one of the rooms that make this huge mansion. If one goes deep enough into the cemetery they can find a huge, dark and kind of creepy forest that leads to the next circle.

Seventh circle

This is the circle for those who are envious and those who committed the ultimate form of violence to themselves. There is absolutely no sign of life or happiness around this circle, there are dead distorted trees all around, a river that looks like boiling blood and ashes that forever come from the grey sky. A lifeless grey desert which homes the suicidals in the form of those distorted dead trees. Between the roots of the largest tree in this forest there is an entrance to the home of Leviathan and also the way to the next circle.

Eighth circle

This circle is the one that holds the cruelest punishments over and over. Some like having to live inside the memory of your worst fear or being ripped apart numerous times, all of these happen here and are executed by the Demons of Fate, assigned by Lucifer to punish those who will suffer for the rest of eternity. From the outside it looks like a gigantic jail with really tall metal walls all around with only one way in, a golden gate. Behind the enormous building there is an abyss that falls to the deepest part of Hell.

Ninth circle

The last circle is home of the proud and traitors. And home of the Prince of Hell himself. It is a small ice castle right in the middle of an ice cold lake that is bigger on the inside than on the outside. Filled with numerous rooms that no one except Lucifer can get in and out of. The main room is Lucifer's office, where he judges the dead and sometimes brings in some of his favorites demons punishing sinners for his own entertainment. Inside Lucifer’s office, on the bottom left drawer of his work table lies the soul bank.

#fiction #original story #short story #writters on tumblr #incorrect mythology #demon #lucifer #hell #clearly inspired by Dante Alighieri's hell lol #with my twist obv

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thebibliomancer · 4 years

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #210: You Don’t Need the Weathermen to Know Which Way the Wind Blows!

August, 1981

Wow that is one hell of a title! At least in terms of length.

Not the best though.

That still belongs to Avengers #12: “This Hostage Earth!”: In Which the Mighty Avengers Battle to Save Their Beloved Planet From a Fate So Deadly That None But the Macabre Mole Man Could Have Devised It!: A Marvel Tale of Most Compelling Excellence!”

The title to this one being a Bob Dylan reference gets its some bonus points though.

Hmm, this issue is written by Bill Mantlo and he’s also the co-creator of Rocket Raccoon, originally an extended reference to a Beatles song.

Guy loves his song references.

The cover is also pretty excellent this time too. Damn but do I miss covers like this. Four different perils befallen the Avengers separated by the presumed villain’s helmet crest.

So take us away, Mantlo.

We start the issue with the return of the ridiculous four-sided television for the Avengers meeting table. Except now its five four-sided tvs on one pole for maximum media absorption from multiple angles.

And the Avengers are watching THE WEATHER CHANNELS!

Scarlet Witch: “Why have you summoned us, Captain America? What new menace confronts the Avengers?”

Wonder Man: “Wait until you hear, Wanda! Cap’s called us together to watch the weather report!”

Don’t be so surprised. The title and the cover are all about weather.

Cap though says that this weather channel may be showing THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE WORLD!

But surely he’s exaggerating. Even if 2012 the movie ridonkulous weather disasters happen and wipe out humanity, the world will keep on zooming through space. Its a persistent rock.

End of humanity is pretty bad too, from the point of view of humanity. Which the Avengers either are or aspire to.

So there are excessive tornadoes in Kansas. So far, of course.

London is flooding.

There are unnatural thunderstorms and torrential rains in New York, so bad that Thor has decided to show up without being summoned to go ‘hey how about this weather, right?’

Buenos Aires is freezing, baffling and befuddling bikini beach goers.

Which Beast ogles.

Beast, pls. The fate of the humanity is at stake here.

And there’s a heatwave over Antarctica melting ice and raising the water levels, threatening low lying countries. Or mostly just England somehow.

The government’s weather monitoring space station with a weird name Samarobyrn has determined that these weather disruptions are too systematic to be natural so the Avengers are going to split into five groups to investigate the five places I’ve already mentioned, since they’re the five places most seriously affected according to the satellite Samarobyrn.

Beast is going to go to Buenos Aires, to his delight.

Wanda and Vision will go to Kansas.

Beast: “The perfect place to send the Good Witch of the East!”

The Wasp and Wonder Man will head to Antarctica.

Wasp: “Great! Finally I get a chance to wear my new fur coat!”

... Wasp. Heatwave.

Thor will investigate the thunderstorms in New York.

And Cap and Iron Man will go to London.

Not sure what they’re going to do against large-scale weather disturbances. Can’t exactly punch the climate. At least not personally.

Maybe punching a weatherman will help. Can’t make the situation worse.

Anyway, the Avengers all head off to their own destinations, with Beast snarking “Say, shouldn’t someone yell ‘Avengers Dissemble’?!”

So, this reminds me of something, really briefly. There was an episode of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes that used the title This Hostage Earth (sadly sans the rest) and also coincidentally seems to share some elements with this story. The Avengers split up to investigate seven different anomalies with Iron Man wryly commenting that he should say Avengers Dissemble.

Doesn’t have much of anything to do with this. I was just reminded because of mentioning This Hostage Earth ect earlier.

Anyway, while all of the other Avengers dissemble, Thor tarries.

So he’s still in the meeting room when Jocasta arrives and wonders what the hell is going on. She only found out there was a meeting at all because Jarvis told her.

Damn, that’s rude, the other Avengers.

Thor: “An oversight, surely. Our ranks have swelled of late, and with no permanent chairman, ‘tis hard to know whose responsibility ‘twas to summon thee.”

Jocasta: “True? And yet I have felt... apart from the others. Being a creature of cybernetic circuits and not flesh and blood, I am always aware that I am... different.”

Thor: “And thou thinkest we do shun thee for it? Nay, milady! The Avengers are a composite of mortal and immortal, android and man-beast, man and mutant! Different, Jocasta? Aye, so are we all!”

Oh, hey. There’s that arc about Jocasta feeling disconnected from the other Avengers. We haven’t touched on it for a while but it was a running thing in the Shooter run previously. She tried to make friends with various Avengers but they tended to inadvertently blow her off due to their own preoccupations or just getting distracted.

So, no, Thor, I don’t think that the Avengers are intentionally shunning her. But I do think that none of them have really been reaching out to her, either. And you’re all she has.

Thor heads out to his mission and this time Jocasta tarries, thinking about things and stuff.

So she’s still in the meeting room when the computer pulls up some exposition based on a random thing Beast asked rhetorically.

“Origin of the word Samarobryn in the disaster prophecies of Michael Nostradamus... Samarobryn one hundred leagues from the hemisphere. They will live without law, exempt from politics.”

Huh!

I don’t think I knew that Nostradamus had a first name!

Weird that someone would name a weather satellite after a disaster prophecy that predicted famine caused by excessive rain. That’s like naming a communications satellite Babel.

Anyway, the Avengers all head in five different directions with four Quinjets and one Thor and Jocasta takes a fifth Quinjet and heads off into space.

Huh! They have five whole Quinjets now!

Thor flies up into the sky and begins yelling at the clouds, as one might expect from Thor.

Thor: “The storm rages as it hast for hours, with a fury that doth threaten the very existence of the Midgardian mortals dwelling below! ‘Tis time to leash the lightning -- to put the rain to rout! Cease, storm! ‘Tis the god of thunder who dost command thee!”

And then Thor gets hit in the face by lightning.

This storm is a rude.

Thor is stunned by all of this lightning in the face, I guess backing up Clone Squirrel Girl’s use of electricity to knock out Jane!Thor that one time, nearly falling out of the sky before whirling Mjolnir like a helicopter to land smoothly.

And then Thor goes back to yelling at clouds except this time not just clouds because he spots the one who hit him with lightning and it is a who and not a what.

Thor: “Descend, Villain! And if yon storm be thy doing -- desist!”

Weatherman: “Have a care, god of thunder! Not even you can command... a WEATHERMAN!”

I have queried an expert who has told me that yes, this guy looks a bit tokusatsu.

(And he’s orange. Spoilers: There’s a different colored one wherever the Avengers go. A full color-coded team.)

Anyway, two hours later and over in London, England, Iron Man and Captain America arrive to deal with London being flooded.

Iron Man: “Do you realize just how selective these disasters are, Cap? After all, England and Holland border on the same body of water -- and the first’s been inundated, while the second hasn’t been touched!”

Huh! That is weird. And seems incredibly implausible or like someone or thing incredibly powerful is also incredibly angry at the English.

While Iron Man flies around shooting the water with repulsors to... shove it back into the ocean? Is that what’s going on?? I mean, if the water is disproportionately high on England’s side of the channel then I guess you could just shove the water and accomplish something but I thought there was something going on with Antarctica melting which would indicate that the sea levels are also rising but then why would it be affecting only England and oh no comic logic has broken me

Anyway, while ^ that is happening, Captain America lands the Quinjet on Parliament since there’s not many good places to land and really, how often can you say to have landed a jet on a government building?

He’s old, let him have his fun.

But it’s not just fun! He’s Captain America, the man who wakes up at 4 AM to go for a ten miles jog so he can be showered and ready to superhero by 6 AM, probably!

He notices some kids clinging to an overturned double decker bus (because how would we know it was London without?) and he jumps from Parliament to swing on a Union Jack flag to the bus.

And then he uses the flag to create a tether to a rescue boat that the kids can cross over on.

AND THEN THE BLUE WEATHER RANGER! appears.

Flying around on a hoverdisc and creating a localized tidal wave. The wave smacks Cap off the bus into the water as Blue Weather Ranger gloats.

Weatherman: “Let that be a lesson to you not to wrest lives away -- when they’ve been claimed by... a Weatherman!”

And now a scene transition to sunny Antarctica where Jan van Wasp is finally getting the idea that heatwave means that her fur coat is superfluous.

While melting Antarctica temps might still be cold, this specific melting Antarctica temp is almost tropical!

And its not just sunny, it seems like the sun is moving closer, like the angry sun from Mario Bros 3 because iiiiiiiiits.... THE RED WEATHERMAN!

Weatherman: “Die, Avengers! The only fate for those who would defy... a Weatherman!”

The Red Weather Ranger blasts them with heat beams of a thousand degrees, melting the ice right out from under them.

Wasp figures that the Red Weatherman is radiating heat in waves so she could hypothetically hit him between cycles.

Hypothetically.

Because she can’t figure out the frequency and instead the Weatherman sets her wings on fire. And her wings are an organic part of her and she hurts when they hurts. So she plummets into the water to put herself out.

Hmm... the yellow and black look good on Jan and fits with the Wasp name but sometimes she doesn’t look dissimilar to an X-Men.

Wonder Man does what Wonder Man does and picks up a heavy thing and chucks it jerkwards.

But they’re in Antarctica so heavy thing is a giant ice chunk and jerk is a really hot guy so the ice chunk melts midflight pelting the two Avengers with boiling rain.

Wow, this is going poorly so far!

Who’s next?

Scarlet Witch and Vision are next! And they’ve gone to Kansas to fight tornadoes.

I’m. Not sure how that’s going to play out. I really feel like the Avengers are out of their element trying to fight the weather. Is it too late to call in the X-Men and specifically Storm?

She’s doing a crossover with Dazzler this month in 1981 so its not like she was too busy.

Anyway, Scarlet Witch flies the Quinjet at a tornado and then is shocked when the jet gets swept into the funnel cloud and spins out of control

She wonders why Vision is just standing there but he learned a thing from the Yellow Claw two-parter and isn’t just standing there.

He actually makes his mass so heavy that it forces the Quinjet to the ground with a WHRUMP!

I can’t imagine that’d be good for either the Quinjet or the passengers but I’ll give Vision this.

Its cool that he can do his thing without outwardly expending any effort.

Scarlet Witch: “Yes, neither of our powers are quite so flamboyant as Cap throwing his shield, or Thor his hammer -- but they have proven most effective, else we would not be Avengers!”

And then she uses her witchcraft to force two of the tornadoes to slam into each other and cancel out.

This also seems dubious. Since tornadoes tend to spin the same direction you’d think that instead of cancelling, they’d become one giant super tornado. Them cancelling each other out seems quite improbable actually. Which is probably exactly why it works.

Take that, SCIENCE.

But there’s still one tornado left and its coming for them! And since it appears to not be naturally formed, it defies Wanda’s nature based magic! Curses!

Annnnnnnnnd... It’s a WEATHERMAN!

The ebony Weatherman. Although he looks purple to me.

Weatherman: “Stand or flee, it will make no difference! Your lives are in the hands of a... WEATHERMAN!”

And another scene transition.

Geez, this plot split the party hard. And I think it’s beginning to realize how hard it is to split the story between six groups because this vignette gets four panels before moving on.

Beast lands in beautiful snow-covered iceberg infested Buenos Aires and takes a brief moment to be horny about a bunch of bikini women who have been frozen alive.

Beast: “Oh, my stars and garters! Those bathing beauties I saw on T.V. -- they’re frozen solid! Maybe I could take one or two back to thaw out in my room at Avengers mansion?”

And then as if to punish him for this, the white WEATHERMAN! immediately appears and freezes Beast solid.

Weatherman: “You will need to unfreeze yourself first, man-beast! So says... a WEATHERMAN!”

Beast: “Yoiks!”

Good thing freezing is basically harmless in comics.

And our final party, Jocasta IN SPAAAAAAACE.

Because Quinjets can still just achieve escape velocity. That’s some good super-science.

Jocasta: “Samarobyrn, Earth’s first weather-monitoring space station! It’s so... beautiful! A shimmering silver wheel in space -- a triumph of science and engineering, created to faithfully serve its creators... as was I. Perhaps that is why I alone thought to come here.”

And since she’s a robot, she just jumps out of the Quinjet airlock that it definitely always has had and uses her EYE BEAMMM to basically propel herself away from the Quinjet and toward the Samarobyrn station.

That’s pretty cool, actually. I’m not sure if, scientifically, laser eyes would actually propel that much, but its a cool thought.

Of course, Jocasta has to do all of this cool stuff because the space station didn’t respond to the docking requests Jocasta sent. So she has to go in through the manual override airlock.

In the station, Jocasta finds no signs of life even though it was supposed to have a five man crew.

She finds her way to the hub of the station where the computer monitors are all monitoring the five separate Avengers missions.

So she’s pretty sure her suspicions were correct.

Jocasta: “The five foes facing my fellow Avengers must be the five crewmen of Samarobryn! They have distorted this station’s functioning from that of weather-monitoring to weather control -- and now exploit it for their own evil ends!”

Samarobryn: “You are wrong, silver sister!”

WELP!

The space station computer has gone all HAL. Dammit, this always happens!

So Samarobryn decides to explain it all.

It had a humble beginning as a computer for the U.S. Weather Service’s Project Earthwatch. But then one of the programmers added something extra to the concoction: NOSTRADAMUS!

No but seriously. The programmer decided to download the disaster prophecies of Nostradamus into the computer in addition to weather data.

And particularly the ones dealing with that Samarobryn prophecy, the one Jocasta read part of earlier. So when the comptuer was installed in a space station named Samarobryn, it went ‘hey that me!’

And decided to expand operations from weather monitoring to weather control.

How does a space station outfitted specifically to only monitor the weather make the jump to controlling it? Fuck you, this is comics.

When the crew grew suspicious, the computer rewrote their brains to become the Weathermen.

Why did a computer designed to monitor weather have the ability to-

Look, this is comics. Where Hank Pym, biophysicist, built a computer with a gun pre-installed and was surprised when it shot him and tried to take his wife. THIS. IS. COMICS.

Anyway, speaking of weirdly sexual computers:

Samarobryn: “I sense that you are a machine like me -- created by others but obedient to none! Join me! Be my bride! Together we will cleanse the Earth of imperfect humankind and stand guard over the paradise which remains... as gods!”

Geez, its just like Aaron Stack all over again, way before the fact. Also, Ultron. A certain type of AI is just attracted to Jocasta, huh?

Anyway, Jocasta lets Samarobryn down easy by shooting him with EYE BEAM!

Jocasta: “Nothing would remain but a lifeless mokcery of a world! No! I reject you! I was created to be the bride of another such as you -- but robot though I am, there is still some spark of humanity burning within me! I cherish it -- and would not see its source snuffed out!”

Samarobryn may be a load bearing computer pillar without arms or legs but it still manages to defend itself.

BY FLOODING THE CONTROL ROOM?

I guess everything in this room is waterproof??

And also by shooting lightning, also in the control room. Where I guess everything is lightning proof.

This is a bad plan.

More than I thought, even, because by shifting attention to defending itself up in space, Samarobryn leaves its Weathermen high and dry.

The Orange Weatherman stops being able to throw lightning bolts so Thor clobbers him.

The Red Weatherman chills out so Wonder Man and Wasp can get close and put him in a headlock.

Uh. I’m not sure if Blue Weatherman actually is affected or not because Iron Man just punches him in the back of the head while he’s distracted.

The Ebony Weatherman’s whirlwind vanishes so Scarlet Witch and Vision can kick his ass.

And Beast unfreezes as quickly as he froze and kicks the White Weatherman’s helmet off. And apparently the helmet was maintaining the mind control because the Weatherman is suddenly confused about where he is.

And with the Orange Weatherman beaten up, Thor senses, with his god senses no doubt, that the Orange Weatherman wasn’t the one commanding the weather. So there must be an unseen agent who arranged this.

So his course is clear.

Thor shoots a giant lightning bolt into space and hits Samarobryn.

He doesn’t know that the station is to blame. He’s just shooting a giant lightning bolt into space because he’s pissed that someone used lightning against him.

I guess when you’re the god of thunder, you can get a little homing capability out of your giant space lightning bolts.

Still though. Wow.

Meanwhile, in space, Samarobryn is still trying to woo Jocasta. For a certain value of woo.

Samarobryn: “It is still not too late, female! Accept me! Accept what must be! I can make you love me!”

Jocasta: “What can a machine who would destroy all those I have come to care for know of love?”

Samarobryn: “Nothing, as humans understand love -- but together we can redefine the word on the basis of our own coexistence!”

Jocasta: “Can you not understand? The fact that I am a machine does not make me less than human! I am, as Thor said, merely... different! I would try to live in their human world -- to understand how to retain that difference that makes me unique -- and yet be accepted!”

This is an interesting conversation but wouldn’t you know it? There’s a power surge. Seems like a space station got hit by lightning.

And when the lights turn back on and Jocasta wonders what happened:

Samarobryn: “I am weather-monitoring space station Samarobryn. Your question is not pertinent to weather evaluation. This unit cannot compute.”

So you know how sometimes a program crashes and you lose all your progress?

Samarobryn hadn’t backed up its sapience and the power surge effectively lobotomized it back to factory settings.

Geez.

LATER

All the Avengers stand around congratulating Jocasta for the good job and apologizing that they overlooked her.

Apparently new safeguards were put in place to prevent Samarobryn from attaining sentience again. Probably stuff like ‘don’t download doomsday prophecies into a weather satellite.’

Hm. I know Samarobryn was trying to destroy the world and all but the cavalier lobotomization of an enemy because it was a computer and thus disposable sits wrong when the Avengers have two AIs on their team. Really, the fact that it was an accident is pretty much all that lets it slide by.

Also: I’m kind of peeved that Jocasta didn’t get to resolve the situation, given that this was blatantly a Jocasta focus issue. She does pull a lot of weight, being the only one to figure out the real source of the problem and distracting Samarobryn long enough for the Avengers to beat the Weathermen. But it feels like Thor swiped the big win from her even though he didn’t even know about Samarobryn. Just shot some lightning into space and resolved the plot.

That plot resolution should have been Jocasta’s!

Anyway. Scarlet Witch says that Jocasta being overlooked like she was indicates that the Avengers need to reorganize and Vision suggests that they vote on a new chairperson.

But they’re interrupted by Cap.

Captain America: “Iron Man, Thor, and I have given some thought to the directions this team has taken -- and should take! I open the floor to discussion! The first item on the agenda being: THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH!”

Which basically means a roster shakeup.

Funny that the Avengers have had a period of disorganization and aimlessness when they didn’t have a permanent writer and now that they are getting one, they’re going to try to get their shit together.

Whatever I do, I shouldn’t miss next issue.

But before then, there’s an Avengers Annual that has to fit in somewhere and since it uses this roster of the team, might as well fit it in now, before everyone changes and it makes no sense. And its a fairly well-known Avengers Annual.

The fairly well-known Avengers Annual that looked at Avengers #200 and said ‘actually this is bullshit.’

Follow @essential-avengers. Also please like if you liked. Its good to know that somebody is reading.

Also, consider donating to the Bill Mantlo Support Fund if you enjoyed vicariously experiencing this issue or if you enjoy Rocket Raccoon or his other stuff like Cloak and Dagger, Micronauts, or Rom.

#Avengers #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #Jocasta #Samarobryn #Thor #Captain America #Iron Man #the Wasp #Wonder Man #Scarlet Witch #the Vision #Beast #the very concept of weather #its out to get us #the mega-TV #too cool to exist #space lightning #regrets that no giant robot was summoned and fought

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alternis-dim · 4 years

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If someone wanted to get into persona, what is the best game to start with?

to be honest, Persona is kind of nice in that it doesn’t matter a whole lot where you start, since each game is a relatively self-contained story which only has brief mentions or cameos of previous entries! some elements of the lore make more sense if you play certain games before others, but it isn’t anything drastic enough to impact your enjoyment. Hell, I started with Persona 5 and was just fine. So I guess I can just sorta talk about the pros and cons of each game as an entry point to the series! I can also briefly describe their premises in case a particular one seems more interesting, which could help someone with deciding where to start.

this is gonna be long, so I’ll put it under a read more.

Persona 1/Revelations: Persona is the only game I wouldn’t recommend playing first. Its mechanics are pretty outdated and not reflective of the rest of the series, and it’s relatively short compared to the others as well. Not to say that it’s not worth ever playing! In fact, from my understanding it has wonderful characterization, an engaging plot, and lays important groundwork for the franchise’s worldbuilding. I just wouldn’t recommend it for getting a taste of what the series is like.

Persona 2: Innocent Sin is the first of the dual entries for the Persona 2 duology. It has some of the same cons I mentioned for the first game; it’s relatively old, so its mechanics are a little outdated, and it plays more similarly to an SMT game than the future Persona entries do (for example, the story is fairly linear and occurs over the course of a few days, whereas later entries are strung out over a year). It is a little more refined, though, and the formula is starting to get there. It also has, in my opinion, some of the best character writing in the series.

P2IS is a story about how strange occurrences are brewing in the city of Sumaru because of a phenomenon where rumors actually influence and/or become reality. A group of high schoolers get tangled up with a mysterious man named Joker, who can supposedly grant wishes and, for some reason, seems to hold a very personal grudge against them. They discover their ability to call upon Personas to defend themselves from the demons at his command, and soon end up teaming up with journalist Maya Amano to get to the bottom of Joker’s identity and the source of the rumors which are warping the city. Over the course of their journey, they slowly start to piece together their past in order to figure out why Joker seems so invested in them.

Pros: - Stellar character writing- An intriguing, interconnected plot which is a bit of a rollercoaster but a lot of fun- Lays the groundwork for lore in the Persona series (most importantly the existence of Philemon and Nyarlathotep, as well as the origin of the Velvet Room)- Incredibly mature takes on the impact of trauma and familial abuse (TW for both of those things though)- Canonically bisexual protagonist with a potential same sex dating optionCons:- Unavoidable random encounters and really grind-heavy, as most 90′s jrpgs go- Outdated mechanics that aren’t really reflective of future Persona entries- One of those wiki-heavy games: it’s damn near impossible to unlock certain character interactions or personas without use of a guide- The second game in the Duology, Eternal Punishment, isn’t nearly as accessible to English audiences

Persona 3 is where a lot of the series formula originates from! It’s also my personal favorite, but I’ll try my best to be unbiased describing it. Small note: I recommend playing Persona 3 FES specifically, since it refines a lot of the things that were clunky in the vanilla version, adds more character content, and features a post-game which answers a lot of questions.

P3 takes place in a coastal city called Iwatodai at the beginning of the school year, where the protagonist moves in as a transfer student after being bounced around in foster care for ten years following an accident which killed his parents. Upon arrival, he experiences the strange phenomenon of the Dark Hour: an extra 25th hour in the day where people are transformed into coffins and monsters roam free. Technology doesn’t work during this hour, and anyone not protected by a coffin is violently attacked and seems soulless the next day, a condition local news dubs Apathy Syndrome. A select few people have the potential to stay conscious during the Dark Hour and protect themselves by use of a Persona, and these people make up a unit called the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S.). The protagonist joins, and the game follows their investigation of the phenomenon. It’s considered the darkest entry in the series, and for good reason: “memento mori” is right in its introduction. The game focuses heavily on themes of death, what it means to be mortal, how people deal with being confronted with their mortality, what the point of life is, and much more.

Pros:- Introduction of the Persona formula: school life and dungeon exploration which requires time management on a linear calendar, the knockdown/1-more feature in combat, all-out-attacks, social links. Starting with this game may actually be the best way to go gameplay-wise, since coming back to this game after playing later entries makes it seem clunky.- Dungeon-crawl style of gameplay, which is a lot nicer than random encounters. You explore randomly generated floors and choose when and where to ambush enemies.- Excellent character arcs which enrich the game’s narrative- A dark, mature, and interesting story which explores human natureCons:- Still an older game, so some controls are clunky. One game mechanic in particular that many are frustrated with is the inability to directly choose what moves your teammates will use, instead requiring you to use Tactics to direct how the AI should behave.- Probably has the worst pacing issues out of any game in the series. There’s an entire calendar month where you do basically nothing.- The post-game is grind-heavy and long for the amount of story it offers. Some people just recommend watching a playthrough.- Features an uncomfortable transphobic skit towards the middle of the game.

Persona 4 is a refinement of many of the features of Persona 3. The best version to play is Persona 4 Golden, since it has a lot of extra content, but it’s vita exclusive and I’m stuck with vanilla :( Vanilla’s still fine in my experience, at least!

P4 takes place in the small town of Inaba, where the protagonist has transferred for a year to live with his uncle and cousin due to his parents leaving the country for work. Shortly after his arrival, a bizarre series of serial murderers start to occur where the bodies are found strung up on telephone lines. There’s also a rumor that looking into a turned off television screen on a rainy midnight will reveal your soulmate; this rumor is referred to as the Midnight Channel. The protagonists and friends inadvertently discover a parallel world which exists alongside Inaba, which can be entered through televisions but which can’t be exited without the help of a mysterious denizen named Teddie. They discover that these worlds are linked; people who show up on the Midnight Channel turn up dead in the real world shortly after, and the weather is inverse to Inaba’s. They discover that this is because someone is throwing people into this world, who are then unable to escape, and that the Shadows living in it become violent when the fog lifts (inverse to when the fog settles in the real world). This world also has an interesting quirk: people who enter it end up confronting their own shadow, which is a manifestation of the parts of themselves they repress or deny. Denying your shadow leads to it attempting to kill you, and this is likely what caused the deaths of the first victims. The protagonist and team discover that confronting and accepting your own Shadow, however, turns it into a Persona which you can then use to combat the monsters in the world. Equipped with their unique knowledge, the team sets out to save victims, solve the murder mystery, and learn how to accept themselves.

Pros:- A powerful message about the importance of seeking the truth and accepting all facets of yourself- An absolutely incredible murder mystery with clever plot twists and high stakes: getting the true ending is actually difficult if you don’t know who the murderer is, and you’re expected to understand the themes of the game and the characters in order to get it.- A nice in-between for the mechanics of P3 and P5: it’s pretty easy to transfer to either one after playing this one. (also introduces the ability to control party members directly, thank god)- A TON of spinoff content if you find you enjoy the characters and setting- Probably one of the best games in terms of understanding the overarching lore of the series, since it explains how Personas and Shadows work in much more depth than other entriesCons:- Has sort of a wonky difficulty curve. The first couple dungeons are honestly kind of a pain in the ass because of how level scaling works, and it takes a little while to level out.- The character arcs aren’t quite as well-written as previous games, due to the ultimate personas being associated with social link completion rather than events in the plot.- Oh god, such clumsy handling of LGBT topics. Plays around the idea of a gay narrative for one character (Kanji) and a trans narrative for another (Naoto) but ultimately just ends up playing up stereotypes and then backing out before doing anything “risky.” Another character in the party is pretty homophobic to Kanji for a while too, which sucks.

Persona 5 is the most popular in the series for sure, and for good reason. It’s the complete culmination of the Persona formula, and it adds all sorts of stuff to the gameplay and lore. It has a pretty lovable cast, to boot. Not that it doesn’t also have its problems, imo.

P5 features a protagonist who was falsely convicted of assault after attempting to defend a woman from a drunk man harassing her. His criminal record and probation result in his expulsion from his home school, so he moves in with a family friend in Tokyo where a school will accept him until his time’s up. Tokyo’s been strange for a little while now. Mysterious incidents have been causing disruptions for a while. There’s been a surge of “psychotic breakdown incidents” in which people act out unpredictably for seemingly no reason, and on rarer occasions “mental shutdowns” where people seem to completely break and die shortly after. The protagonist and friends get tied up in nonsense pretty quickly when a mysterious app on his phone transports him to a parallel world in which real locations of Tokyo are warped beyond recognition. The protagonist discovers the power of persona pretty early on, which he uses to fight the enemies there. With the help of a strange creature named Morgana, they learn that this is the “Metaverse”, a space in which the twisted desires and perceptions of people are made manifest. It’s a space where a person’s Shadow lords over a “Palace”, an altered version of real-world locations which reflects how that person views the world around them. They also learn that personas are the result of having a strong, rebellious will, allowing you to control your Shadow in combat. By breaking into a Palace, defeating the Shadow, and stealing the “Treasure” at its core, the Palace will crumble and the person in real life will come to grips with the morality of their actions, effectively outing themselves. This is referred to as stealing hearts, and the Phantom Thieves are born; they quickly become infamous in Tokyo, though their reputation attracts unwanted attention, as well as blame… could those breakdown incidents be related to the Metaverse, too? This game focuses heavily on the corruption of society, the abuse and manipulation of people in power, the ways in which our circumstances force us to hide parts of ourselves, ideas of justice, and all sorts of fun ideas of “rebellion”.

Pros:- ABSOLUTELY the best gameplay in the series. The controls are smooth, the battles and UI are streamlined, the visuals are absolutely stunning. This is the one that’s most fun to actually PLAY, bar none.- More of a stealth/heist game than a dungeon crawler, which is a fun spin on the series.- Excellent social commentary on the injustices young people face in a system stacked against them.- A really lovable cast of characters, and social links which actually grant you access to helpful gameplay features as incentive. Cons:- Sort of a small thing, but one of the game’s twists is a lot more fun to figure out if you’ve already played at least one other entry in the series.- Has some serious writing issues. The game has a very strong first half, but then starts to feel rushed the further along you get after a certain point. You can tell that the developers wanted to fit in a lot, but didn’t quite have the time to refine the ideas they implemented.- On that note, some of the character writing starts to regress or even becomes contradictory.- Has a couple instances of homophobia surrounding the Red Light District.

This got long, sorry, but I hope it’s helpful! like I said, you really can start anywhere, and you don’t have to play them in a particular order. Just pick the ones that seem the most interesting and have fun!

#hope this works as an answer! sorry it got kinda long #persona #shush

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travllingbunny · 5 years

Text

The 100 rewatch: 4x08 God Complex

Together with 4x07 Gimme Shelter, this is one of my top 5 episodes of season 4. What I’ve always loved most about season 4 is the way that having an unavoidable natural catastrophe as the Big Bad made it completely different than any other season of the show, and gave it that sense of desperation, bringing up the best and the worst in people. It’s the only season where I can really say that, most of the time, there were no good choices – characters were left to choose whatever they thought was the best of the two or more terrible options.

This episode was basically about three different approaches to the problem of Praimfaya – two attempts to find salvation: 1) through experiments with Nightblood, which could save everybody, but which led to some uncomfortable, morally ambiguous moments, and 2) through the search for the Second Dawn bunker that could not save everyone, but could certainly save quite a few people; while some people, like Jasper, were taking the third option of - not to trying to survive at all.

The biggest and most intense part of this episode was the drama in Becca’s lab, where a group of people were struggling with the issue of whether to conduct unwilling human experiments and potentially murder someone that way – knowing that the stakes were the survival of the human race and that, if they don’t find the solution through these experiments, everyone will die in less than two weeks. (Reminder: this is after Arkadia has been wrecked and cannot be used for shelter, and before Jaha manages to find the bunker. As far as the people in Becca’s lab knew, the Nightblood solution was the only way to prevent the extinction of the human race.)

This is a really serious and compelling moral dilemma. The characters present in Becca’s lab reacted in a number of different ways, and it’s hard to call any of them villainous or evil over it, as all the responses were understandable. However, in this case, there was one morally right choice: volunteer to be the test subject and risk your own life for the benefit of saving everybody. And just 1 (one) person did that: one Clarke Griffin. Which I could see coming when I watched this episode the first time, because this is what Clarke is like, ready to take responsibility and risk or potentially sacrifice her life, when saving everyone is at stake. The episode drags it out, hiding Clarke’s intentions till the last moment (though I’m sure she made her mind quite some time before she injected herself – around the time when she promised Murphy that Emori would be fine), but the fact that the “twist” was not a surprise to me, was not a bad thing at all: what matters is that characters act in character and that the story makes sense, and when you can predict it based on characterizations, it is actually satisfying to see the story unfold and stay true to who the characters are.

But this is also one of the examples of how much my outlook has changed since I first watched season 4 (even though that was less than a year ago) – because I have seen how it all turns out, and probably even more so, because of the way this episode has been referenced in season 6 (specifically, by Murphy). When I watched this the first time, Somehow, since the only references to what happens here were through Murphy’s weirdly selective memory, 4x08 has become all about how Clarke Griffin is such a baaad guy, ya all. Evil Clarke wanted to put Emori in the oven! Well, actually, a bunch of people (Clarke, Abby, Jackson, Miller, Roan, and Raven, who was complaining but not doing anything to stop it) were planning to put Emori in the oven, but just one (1) of them tried to take Emori’s place – yep, it was Clarke, after she listened to Murphy desperately pleading for Emori to be spared, and was moved by his love for her.

But, hey, details. Just like it’s a minor detail that Emori had previously (in 4x07) framed a random thief as a monster just to get him experimented on instead of her – and Murphy was very impressed by that as a “survivor’s move”. He likes to complain about evil Clarke treating people as “disposable”, but it only bothers him if it’s him or his girlfriend, while he himself treats people as disposable to a much higher degree – when it’s a random dude, rather than Murphy’s girlfriend.

Yes. I’m bitter and snarky about this, thanks to certain character behaviors in season 6 and certain fandom responses. I was sympathetic to Murphy and Emori in this episode, and to everyone involved, and the first time I watched this episode, I was mostly worried about Emori and scared that our protagonists, in particular Clarke – because she is my favorite character – would not go too far in their ruthlessness under the motto “End justifies the means”. Even though the end was, in this case, saving the human race from extinction that was coming in ten days. I was uncomfortable with the whole “oh, no – they are almost like the Mountain Men now!” parallel. Now I feel like rolling my eyes and pointing: no, they weren’t like the Mountain Men – because they were trying to save everyone, and if they didn’t find the solution, everyone, including Emori and Murphy, was going to die in ten days. (That’s what being in the fandom that takes moral grayness way too literally does to you. After seeing “there are no good guys, Clarke is as bad as the Mountain Men/Primes/Josephine” one too many times, I’ve had enough of the moral relativism and I prefer to point out that these parallels doesn’t mean that those completely different situations should be treated as the same.) The first time, I liked Raven pointing out the parallels, because I saw it as a warning: let’s try not to be the bad guys. But season 6 Raven has made me see season 4 Raven in a harsher light, too – now I can’t help but see it as one of the instances of her criticizing how immoral something is, while participating in it or not doing anything to stop it, and while not offering any other alternative options.

I was rooting for Clarke to do the right thing, and was happy when she did it, because of what it meant for her character. People kept telling her that she was the leader and had to make the tough decision. (Because everyone always keeps giving Clarke all the credit or all the blame, even though a bunch of people were involved in what was done. In this case, Roan was the most in favor and the first to suggest testing Emori, while Abby and Jackson were most directly conducting the experiments, and while Clarke was seen as the decision-maker, it’s not like she had the power on her own to force anyone to do this or that, if they had refused to. Actually, Miller and Roan were the ones physically restraining and forcing people – Emori, Luna, Murphy.) She told herself that “she bears it so they don’t have to”, But she interpreted that differently – not to mean deciding to risk or sacrifice others as “disposable”, but to risk or potentially sacrifice her own life. Which is really the old school, original view of what being a leader/ruler is: leaders and kings were originally those who led armies, fought on the frontlines, and, in some ancient cultures, were even literally sacrificed to the gods – before the of the ruler or leader changed to that of a person who remains safe and sends others to risk their lives to fight their battles.

…And then I was shocked by what Abby did right afterwards, smashing the machine, though I could understand why. When Abby told Clarke she couldn’t let her die, the camera focused on Emori, who was understandably thinking “So, you really thought the machine would kill me and you still wanted to test me?” But, to Abby’s defense, she freaked out because she had seen a vision of Clarke covered in radiation burns.

The first time I watched season 4, I still didn’t take Praimfaya as seriously. You keep waiting for some solution that would save most of the people – and things just got worse, all the solutions kept falling apart, except for the bunker – which presented a bunch of problems in itself. The first time, I was worried about Clarke losing so much of herself by focusing on the Big Picture. Now I like and relate to her even more than before, knowing how season 4 turns out – because if a natural disaster that’s about to wipe out the entire human race is not a reason to focus on the Big Picture, what is? Abby’s emotional reaction is human and understandable – similar to Murphy’s over Emori – but it is still a fact that the Nightblood solution worked, and that, if not everyone, than many more/most people could have been saved if they had tested Clarke and found out that the solution worked. But that would have jettisoned the entire plot of the finale and season 5. No need for the bunker, or going into space, no Conclave, no Osleya or Blodreina, no Spacekru, no horrors of the bunker, no single mom Clarke all alone with Madi, etc. Everyone would have survived and settled in Eden. It’s a bit off how rarely people mention this – even now that hating on Abby is such a popular sport, no one mentions the fact that she basically doomed thousands of people to die because she was worried about her daughter dying. It’s odd that we never see Abby explicitly feeling guilty over that, instead of just conducting experiments or suggesting cannibalism.

Are the sins of doing ruthless but necessary things for the survival of the group considered less forgivable, at least when women are concerned, than the sins of dooming a lot of people to death by prioritizing your child? Abby certainly seems to think so. She repeated Kane’s old line: “First we survive, then we get our humanity back” to Raven, and then felt so guilty over the experiments she conducted, that she wanted to die in Praimfaya and asked Kane to leave her outside. But even in season 5, she was arguing to Clarke that throwing everyone under the bus for your daughter is right and reinforcing Clarke’s decision. And in season 6, she is convinced that saving Kane is worth doing inhumane things. As if she, since Jake’s death, has decided she would rather do horrible things to save her loved ones at the expense of other people, than risk/sacrifice her loved ones for the common good, which is what she, sort of, did with her husband.

There’s also the fact that, if Clarke had been more selfish and less willing to risk and sacrifice herself instead of others – if she had gone through with it and let Emori be tested, Abby wouldn’t have smashed the machine, they would have found out that the Nightblood solution worked, and saved everyone. But I don’t know how to feel about that, except to see it as a painful irony.

While the plot A found and then threw away a solution to save people, plot B came up with some hope as Jaha managed to find the real Second Dawn bunker, after hearing the lines from the Grounder prayer “From the ashes, we will rise” and recognizing the motto of the Second Dawn. Jaha was, in a way, uniquely qualified to realize that there is another bunker, and that the one they found was just a red herring to keep the real one from being overrun, since, by his admission, he figured it out because that’s what he himself would do. Jaha has never had a problem with treating people as disposable and focusing on the Big Picture while sacrificing some individual lives.

It should be noted that Jaha didn’t find the bunker on his own, but that Monty, Kane, Gaia and Indra played crucial roles as well. (So much for the argument that Jaha had the right to steal and keep the bunker in 4x10/11 because he found it. He was going to leave all of those other people outside.) Gaia helped compare and decipher the symbols, and Monty was the one who managed to find a way in, Kane used Roan’s symbol to get Azgeda warriors to let them through the temple where the bunker was in the first place (though Indra then shot them anyway), and Indra helped by ordering Trikru warriors to leave the tower to Azgeda and focus on defending the temple instead.

If there is a way to make any sense out of the Grounder culture and religion, it is through this major revelation about the role of the Second Dawn cult. It never made sense that these descendants of regular 21st century people from USA/Canada somehow forgot all technology (even with memories of a top scientist on a computer chip their leaders had in their heads), developed a pidgin language, a medieval-like warrior culture, a love of fake tans and a culture-appropriation-mishmash fashion sense, in less than a century. But if these people were descendants of members of a Doomsday cult whose members hated technology and wanted to cosplay Game of Thrones? Well, that explains a lot.

The C plot was about the group of people back in Arkadia who chose not to fight to survive Praimfaya, but to spend the last days before it having the party of their lives. (And to eventually kill themselves, going out on their own terms, before Praimfaya has a chance to kill them – but we only find that out in later episodes.) Aside from Jasper, that was also Harper, and Riley and Bree.

Harper’s depressed state and lack of will to live was becoming clear with the way she acted when Monty said goodbye to her. She even let out that she wasn’t expecting him to come back (saying “If you come back”) – maybe because she really didn’t think she was worth it?

Bellamy was worried about Jasper – who tried and eventually got him to join their party (with dancing, drinking, and drugs – aka jobi nuts), throwing Bellamy’s own line from early season 1 at him: “Whatever the hell we want… Really mean it this time”. Bellamy decided to relax and let go, and flirted with (and possibly had a one-night stand off-screen?) with Bree, his old friend with benefits from the threesome days of early season 1, after she had approached him and hit on him. (Judge for yourself if the hairstyling department intentionally gave Bree a similar haircut as Clarke’s, and if that was meant to mean something.) But this is a two-part plot that only gets resolved in the next episode, when Bellamy will change his attitude after learning that there is, after all, some salvation in the form of the bunker.

Timeline: This episode starts exactly where the previous left off, which means that it’s about two weeks since the start of season 4. But Clarke and Kane are now saying that the death wave is coming in 10 days. This means that, not only was ALIE’s initial calculation that the death wave was coming in 6 months wrong, but so is Raven’s calculation from 2x03 (which took place 10 days from the start of season 4) that the death wave would come in two months. There can’t be more than 4-5 days since 4x03, based on what was going on, so the new calculation must have been made in the meantime. This means that the death wave would actually come, according to these newest predictions, 20 days from the beginning of season 4/end of season 3. Unless it comes even faster… As far as I remember, episodes 4x09-4x13 happened over a short period of time.

Maybe the writers miscalculated how much season 4 would actually last and ended up writing everything happening much faster – just as it was in every other season. In any case, this means that the timeline of seasons 1-4 is even more compressed than I thought, because, as of 4x08, it’s been a little less than six months from the Pilot. I’ll do the full calculation when I get to 4x13.

Body count:

The thief from the Rock Line clan, aka fake “Baylis”, in the radiation chamber

An unknown number of people died from the black rain in Polis (this technically happened during the timeline of the previous episode)

A number of Azgeda warriors were shot by Indra (which is another instance where a major supporting character simply goes and murders a bunch of enemy warriors while they were not posing a danger, like Roan did to Trikru warriors in 4x04, but no one cares or has much of a problem with that, in the show or the fandom… What a contrast to Bellamy participating in something similar in season 3 and then feeling guilty forever and getting endlessly called “Genocide King” and whatnot in the fandom…)

A number of Azgeda and Trikru warriors probably died in the fighting outside the temple

Rating: 9/10

#the 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 season 4 #god complex #the 100 4x08 #clarke griffin #abby griffin #thelonius jaha #jasper jordan #bellamy blake

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violetlunette · 5 years

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Tropes/Cliches I Hate

So there are a lot of lists stating cliches people hate and this is another one. If you like these, that’s fine, I just get irked when I see them myself and want to rant a little. This isn’t a top ten list, just a list of things I dislike. There won’t be any romance tropes here as they deserve and have their own list. Also, most of these are story telling tropes, so just a heads up. Anyway, let me know what you personally think and tropes you hate and why. Oh, and SPOILERS! Before warned.

Tropes/Cliches I Hate

Too Much Drama/Unearned Drama: My most HATED trope. Don’t get me wrong; I like drama okay, but if it’s over loaded or feels like it was just thrown in for by the writers I get frustrated. Yes I know that writers do that to keep people interested, but can’t they make it feel natural or earned?

I liked “Finding Carter’s” drama; This is a story about a girl who discovers she was kidnapped as a toddler by the woman she called mother all her life and being reunited with her birth family. The drama makes sense and is earned by the whole family; (SPOILERS)

Carter’s whole world is turned upside down so her attitude, while mean at times is understandable.

Taylor has spent her whole life terrified of disappearing like her sister and has had her fear fed by her parents, so has lived a sheltered life.

Their mom lost a kid which has affected her marriage so she started to sleep with her partner and was even planning to leave, however when she found Carter she didn’t want to break her family again. Hell, even the drama with the villain is understandable as Carter and Taylor came from her eggs/she was a surrogate mom who was sleeping with the father at the time. You can see why she might think the twins were hers and that she had a right to take one. This is great drama and I would have loved it, but then they had to give the side characters the angstiest backstories they could which distracts from the family at times and felt unneeded.

And I know; that what drama are about. Angst central, I know, but that’s why I don’t watch a lot of drama. At the very least I want it to be earned an in character or story.

The fifth book of Harry Potter did this fairly well as all the drama came from the characters and their actions. Sirius died due to Harry’s impulsive actions and Dumbledore want to keep Harry in the dark to “protect him.” And the drama hits all the harder because it’s something that could happen in real life (minus the magic stuff.).

A bad example is Gilmore Girls where they force the character April in with a bunch of random drama just to keep Luke and Lorelei apart. There was a legitimate way to put off the wedding; have Luke be afraid of rushing things and feeling like he’s the one who has to make all the compromises and give up things and he runs away for awhile. Hell, they could have kept the plot line of her jumping into bed with Christopher because as terrible as that was it was still a very Lorelei thing to do. But the plot with April and everything after? UNNEEDED AND UNWANTED.

We’re not together, but I’m Pregnant/The Baby Plot: Okay, I love babies—when I don’t have to change them or be woken up at 3:00 in the morning. They’re soft, cute, adorable, and squishy! However in TV the baby is usually born to a “will they won’t they” couple as a way to force them together when the writers made the audience believe they were separating them or for drama. News flash writers; if the only way you can keep a couple together is to throw a baby in the mix, then just give up on the pair!

Babies are used for like one arc to cause drama, then are tossed to the side with maybe a passing mention so it’s like what’s the point?

It’s a cheap way to keep a couple together. A child should NOT be a plot deceive to keep a couple together or create drama. Ross and Rachel were the worse along with Belle and Rumple; Ross and Rachel had fallen into a slump and the audience were starting to move on and look at other options for them so the writers thought they could yank us back by revealing they had sex and Rachel was pregnant. All this led to was the same slapstick they went through when they were together before and they never worked through the issues they had before, mainly that they were jealous, possessive, and vindictive except now they had a BABY.

With the Rumbelle the writers couldn’t decide what the hell they wanted with Rumple (did they want him to be evil or a hero), but knew his actions were pushing Belle (and the fans) away. So what did they do? Threw a baby into the mix with a whole contrived plot that was just—what? I mean, it COULD have worked, but not the way the writers did it.

Writers, people; IT IS NEVER A CHILD’S JOB TO FIX A COUPLE. A baby is not a plot device they are people and deserve more respect than they get. If a couple can’t stay together by themselves, then a baby is not going to help. All it does is trap two people and why would want a couple that’s forced together that way?

“We’re trying to protect ya so we ain’t telling ya shit” and Bad communication skills: How many problems in stories could be solved if two people just sat down and talked instead of keeping secrets. Like “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” If Dumbledore had told Harry that Voldemort could get into his head and could hurt people Sirius might be alive. And in a couple? I don’t need to list an example. You’re already thinking of a moment where a couple got into a fight because they didn’t just sit down and talk.

That being said I do like this trope as a potential reason for a hero being ignorant of their past at the beginning of a series as I like the hero from a muggle world. At the very least I want the person keeping the secrets to be called out on it.

Insane maniac pixie girl: This a low one as there are some I like, however I feel this character is over done lately and honestly I can only take so much of the personality. They’re always so loud, screaming all the time, squeaky, and have no sense of personal space. I mean, I like Webby and Mabel, but even then I can only take so much squealing. (I dunno, maybe I have sensitive ears.)

I’m not dead!: Disney gets away with this because the brought backs happen towards the end of the film and isn’t done time and again in the same movie. Compare to the Dragon Ball series were death is like a mosquito bite. Why should I care if they get hurt or the world dies? Just wish them back and everything is fine! Seriously, is anyone who watches DBZ concerned when a character gets hurt or dies still? It’s a cheap trick that feels like a “ha! Fooled you!” moment.

High school drama / Skewd Priorities: Okay when I say high school drama I mean focusing on a school dance when the world is at stake or worrying about whether or not a boy likes you when a murder is on the loose, or focusing on school junk when we as the readers want tto focus on the fantasy elements. This is mostly in YA dealing with kids, so some of this is understandable, but even so it’s not fun to read and even teenagers hate being portrayed like this (at least the one or two I know). When I was teenager I liked the prom and stuff for quiet moments in stories, but NOT when there was a villain loose or danger was coming. Whenever that popped up I was like, ‘bitch wtf is wrong with you! Who cares about a zit when you have super magical powers.’ When I read a fantasy I want to focus on the fantasy elements, not school! School is boring.

Too Easily Forgiven: Forgiveness is wonderful thing, however it should be earned and you know some things can’t and shouldn’t be forgiven. For me it’s murder. Now if it’s between two warriors in a fight that’s one thing, but hurting or killing innocent civilians? No. No, no. Or hey, what if a person has been horribly bullying you or making your life miserable? Do you have to forgive, fuck no. Now I’m not saying you should seek revenge, but I’d rather they just choose that they don’t want to be angry and anymore and decide to move on.

Forgiveness should be earned when they’ve truly hurt someone and even if they feel remorseful, characters still have the right to be angry when they’ve been hurt or had someone they love taken from them.

All humans /muggles are bastards / idiots: Yeah, humans are assholes. We get it. No one knows how bad humans are than other humans, but you know what? Humans have done amazing things to conquer natural selection and the fact that other humans is humanity’s greatest enemy shows just how powerful the human race is. And not everyone wants to blow up shit, some of us work VERY hard to help and save everything we can and the rest are just trying to live our lives without hurting anyone. We may not be top dog, but we’re not bottom of the barrel either. And why should other races get put on pedestal as the woobie race or holier than thou? That doesn’t make them more interesting it just makes them annoying. I see this trope in almost every fantasy, can’t we switch it up a little?

magical speciesism / the blood must remain pure: Ignoring the real life implications this trope’s just been over done. Can’t we turn this around and have it that cross breeding between a magical and a human is considered the norm or a good thing? Switch it up a bit?

Ron the death Eater and Draco in Leather pants: This annoying enough in the fandom where we like to exaggerate and things we like and dislike, but in the actual show it’s insulting to the character AND the fans. If there’s something wrong with the character then the writers should make an arc to improve them, not drag the character through the mud.

On the other end if a character is an asshole you can’t just make them a hero suddenly and expect the audience to buy it. The characters have to earn their redemption.

And those are ten tropes I hate. How about you guys? What’s your thoughts? Do you hate them or am I alone? And what do guys hate to see in stories?

#Tropes #Cliches #I hate #sorry if there's grammar or spelling issues #I try to catch them all #but you know how it is

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speckeh · 5 years

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My 2019 Garbage Book Dump

It’s 2019! I’m tired, I’m hella gay, and I’m still reading books as much as I can with my busy life! Enjoy this book list with reviews!

1. Thunderball: 5/5 stars. Mormon jokes. Making fun of dietary changes? A young Italian woman (girl) who controls the island with her beauty. It becomes a mission against nuclear threats against the Europe and the US? Not exactly the MOST thrilling James Bond book, but I had a lot of fun reading it. I’m glad this was my first read of the year!

2. The Lydia Steptoe Stories - Faber Stories: 4/5 stars. I found these short, tiny books in a local bookstore. There were 6 of them on the table and I bought three. Sometimes I wish I bought all of them, but not all of them spoke to me. The Lydia collection was interesting as it held three stories with: a young man being “seduced” by his aunt, a young girl wanting to be a dominatrix, and a woman who wishes she could be youthful again. While I didn’t find the stories awe-inspiring, I did find them extremely entertaining and nice to think about.

3. Emma Cozy Classics: 5/5 stars. I have the pride and prejudice one. While it might not be as fabulous as a full book, but the pain-staking skill of felt art is entirely impressive. It went on my Jane Austen book shelf.

4. Come Rain or Shine - Faber Stories: 3/5 stars. What would you do if your friends thought you were absolutely insane and their lives are falling apart worse than yours? What would you do if your friend asks you to play absolutely stupid to his wife to make him look better and for her to realize her life isn’t so bad that she got lucky enough to not marry you? I for one, would drop these fucking friends and never look back. The story was a fucking train wreck and absolutely insane to the point where it wasn’t even humorous to me. Several authors state it’s Ishiguro’s step into comical writing and I wish he wouldn’t.

5. Passionate Minds - Women Rewriting the World: 1/5 stars. I found this book at my Uni’s free bookshelf. I was super excited to read this book but it’s one of the dullest and full of biases book I’ve had the displeasure of picking up. I got to read about my girl Gertrude Stein but I was expecting more female writers, not actors who the writer obvious gets off on. There’s nothing wrong with that, and this book has rave reviews, I just couldn’t stand the writing style and obvious fawning she had (and not in the academic/historically reserved way authors should be).

6. Wandering Island Vol. 2: 4/5 stars. It’s been two years since the first volume came out. I found myself reading it in record time which has me both disappointed and a bit confused (not because I read it fast, but because of the strange editorial ending). The art is impeccable with a few questionable “obviously a man drew this” moment, the story has kind of been a bit muddled up and didn’t necessarily go anywhere this volume. It felt more of a build up for Volume 3 which I don’t know when will be released. The editor wrote this strange 6 page essay that started off they were going to postpone Wandering Island 3, then went on a long rant about how the manga editing world has changed with ^-^ faces all throughout, only to then write fan theories of where they think the story is going to finish with: “We’ll translate the pages as soon as they come out! ^-^” what the fuck?? Haha

7. Fun Home - A Family Tragicomic. 5/5 stars. I bought this book today and I finished it this evening. I’m still processing everything that happened but one thing I know for sure is that I found one of my top 5 books of 2019 as well as a new favorite already. Alison approaches a hard topic of coming out, learning about her father’s secret life of being bisexual, and coming to terms with the strange person with anger issues that was her father. While my father wasn’t gay, there were several elements of her father I saw in my own. The volatile anger, learning more about his life after his death, hearing shattering truths from your mom, the regret of not having conversations sooner and him not seeing who you truly are before their passing. It struck a chord with me and I’m going to be thinking about this comic book I feel like for two months.

8. The Real McCoy: 4/5 stars. This is like a small wikipedia pamphlet book about the famous names, phrases, or lyrics you might know. I wasn’t necessarily impressed with the booklet, but I found some of it entertaining. I gave it a high rating because it served its purpose but I’m totally gifting it to a friend who loves random facts.

9. The Heart Affirming: 5/5 Stars. Epic poems about the Greek Gods, the universal feeling of appreciating nature, the wondering of the cruelty of humanity. This is a rare find of a poetry book not popular and one I found at my local library book sale that was signed by the author. If you have the pleasure to pick up this 1939 poetry book, please do! It’s a treat from the past that shows we still yearn for the same poetic romanticism we did then to now.

10. Bloom: 4.5/5 stars. I’ve realized I’m going to graduate college in the fall and this weird depression hit where I realized my life is really finally going to change forever. So I’m having a mixture of senioritis where I don’t want to do any work when I’m done with school by Wednesday, and I’m having a mid-century life crisis where I don’t know what to do with my life (I mean I do, but it’s terrifying). So I went on a LGTBQ+ splurge on amazon, something i haven’t done in awhile, Bloom was one of those books. Bloom is a fast paced comic about a high school graduate who wants to move out and move on, but his friends are dicks and his parents want him to stay. Welcome the new hot boy whose grandma just died and conveniently loves to bake. Ari wants to leave the bakery and this new hot guy is just his ticket to leave, or is it? I really liked this comic for the art and the story line was refreshing. But there were several instances where the book moves really quickly and the development was… meh. HeartStopper has great, slow pacing that lets you feel like the characters and story moves in a believable way. Bloom is rushed in some parts, but still.. So cute.

11. Spinning: 5/5 Stars. 2/4 of the LGTBQ+ books I ordered have been read! I read this book the day before valentine’s day and I’ve already been in a weird mode/crisis of being a university senior. I, loved this book for all the reasons why people gave it 3 stars. Everyone stated the story didn’t wrap up, that i jumped, that it felt fragments, but if you read the very end the author state not all books should make sense or follow a timeline or be accurate and these followed her own recollection without revisiting anything. I really appreciated and I loved the style. It’s a heavy book with sexual assault, manipulation, child abuse, and a very unhappy protagonist who isn’t likeable. But at the same time, finishing this book I just felt such grief that I didn’t pursue an art career. That I didn’t just join an art program or give my art career a chance. I think when I’m in the end of my career, retirement, I may go to art school again or maybe I’ll splurge money on lessons or maybe I’ll just accept my art as is. Either way, this book made me fiercely jealous of a 21 year old. It reminded me of a famous story of my dad reading a book about astronauts and crying in the bath because he should have been an astronaut, and how this book made me want to cry because in some form I should have been an artist. But like my dad, we’ve both chased careers that really inspired and gave us amazing opportunities. But I think it’s natural to miss over those childhood passions you didn’t follow through with because you felt like you weren’t enough.

12. My Solo Exchange Diary Vol 2. 2.5/5 stars. I read the first volume last year due to prompting from one of my precious friends (Ramona). My loneliness with Lesbianism was AMAZING. I bought it. My Solo Exchange Diary felt like the author was rambling in circles, completely mentally unwell, and had no ideas of how to properly take care of herself. In Volume 2 she was able to search for some help and she was able to deal with some introspective thoughts about how her viewpoint might have been wrong and how she was toxic to herself and her family. Volume 2 still left a taste in my mouth that felt… weird? She’s moving in the right directions but I think she’s desperately trying to follow the hype of her lesbian hit manga and she’s failing due to her wants to surpass herself. I laughed and felt bad as she mentioned how people slammed her for Volume 1, so it felt very meta to read how she reacted because my comment was also criticizing her: read here. But if you’re reading it in a bookstore or a library, do it. It’s nice to see how she’s slowly making progress with herself.

13. Sputnik Sweetheart. 1/5 stars. I picked this up in Brussels in the select few english section because the cover was intriguing and the back cover claimed it was a lesbian story. I was so excited, and imagine my absolutely hatred when I realized a straight cisgender man had written a “lesbian” story through the eyes of a straight male who is lusting after his lesbian best friend. He proclaims he gets boners at looking at her breasts and how her eccentric style only makes her that more beautiful just to him. I hate everything about this book. I wish straight cisgendered men would leave lesbian narrative stories alone unless you’re going to write them right. Get the fuck out of my books.

14. Fortunate Beasts: Letters to Lucardo Vol 2: 5/5 stars. The long waited and anticipated sequel to Letters to Lucardo!!! It’s been two years since I read the first volume, supported it on kickstarters, and I’m going to keep funding each release until the quadiology is complete! This had a lot less background building, exciting sex scenes, but you now understand the two lovers and get to see them develop their budding relationship. While it wasn’t as smut riddled as I expected, I was very happy with the continuation!

15. The little Lame Prince: 2/5 stars. DNF. Did not finish in case for those who don’t know/can’t remember (I hardly remember what DNF stands for myself). I’m torn as I want to eventually finish this book but I’m just not in the mood for it. It’s a sweet story but is very slow and from what I can tell, repeats itself a lot. It’s a old book from the early 1800s which explains the somewhat hard language and problematic moments, but it’s still charming. I’ll debate when I’ll try this again. For now, it’s returning to my shelves with a bookmark in the pages.

16. Shounen Houkokusho. 5/5 stars. A shounen-ai soft, wholesome gay family about a little boy standing up for his dad’s long time partner and asking them to get married. Very sweet. So precious. I love.

17. Same Difference and Other Stories: 4/5 stars. This was a reread from my friend Mark who gifted this to me back in december of 2014. It’s been 5 years since I picked up this book and I decided to see how its changed. As an adult, this comic speaks to me a lot louder than it did nearly half a decade ago. Struggling to find your way through life, seeing all your high school “friends” getting married, having jobs, meanwhile you’re just.. Here. Definitely a story I needed to revisit again in the future and also I still appreciate Mark’s notes he left in here for me!

18. Amazing Women: 101 Lives to Inspire you: 4/5 stars. This was my gift after finally being cut loose from the cancer clinic. I never had to go back there again and so I decided to pick up a momento. This was the book I chose that they offered. I really appreciate how they cover diverse women from all over the world rather than American-centric. They don’t go further than 1826, keping mostly within 200 years which is a bit of a bummer. There were also some choices I felt were questionable, like Zoe Sugg (who had her book ghost written and scams her viewers) and that they didn’t have Alison Bechendel was a huge disappointment. But this book is opinionated as they did have to narrow it down to 101 women, so I’m never going to be happy unless I pick my own. I also appreciated that if a diplomat was assassinated they mentioned it in the book.

19. The Epic of Gilgamesh: 5/5 stars. I learned about the Epic of Gilgamesh back when I was a itty-bitty sophomore in high school. I remember being so intrigued and would draw my gay ass characters as the Harlot and Endurk. I think I still have the drawings somewhere and they’re cringey. I bought the book and it’s been sitting on my shelf for YEARS. I did a deep clean of my bookshelves last night from 11:30 pm - 4:30 am, and this morning I just wanted to read since I haven’t been able to for months. I loved it! I love creation myths, old myths from “lost” cultures, plus the language was hella gay in this story. It’s a short 61 pages, so if you have like an hour or two and are in the mood for some myths baby, pick it up!

20. The Making of Pride and Prejudice: 4/5 stars. This book is chalked full of interviews from staff, actors, photos of the sets, and a bit too long section on the director and writers moaning about a script. I loved the photos of the behind the scenes and reading Colin Firth’s reluctancy to take, arguably, his most iconic role because he didn’t care for classical movies. Thought they were boring. Really a cool book to have if you’re a big Pride and Prejudice 1995 fan.

21. Greek Myths: 2/5 stars. I love the artwork in this book, but the author shows a lack of research when he writes the Roman names for the greek gods. I’m all fine with showing a Roman cultural story, but if you’re writing a Greek Myths story, BITCH use the Greek names!!! If it wasn’t for the artwork, this book would be traaash.

22. Wicked: 5/5 stars. I’ve been in a reading rut for almost a month where I’ve felt unmotivated to do anything. Since going back to brief counseling and getting my head on straight again, I’ve felt the motivation to read. I’m also doing the 2019 OWLS for a Wandmaker and this was one of my assignments. I absolutely loved Wicked. The musical came in last month and it reinvigorated my love for the show. I’ve been wanting to read the book, it’s been haunting me for awhile and I found a back of the Wicked series for 5 dollars at my library sale. Snatched that bitch up. I read this 408 pages in two weeks, probably would have in a week but school. God, I related so much to Elphaba. Not so much the whole, feeling like she has no soul, but taking school seriously and not making friends, coming from a religious family and rebelling, feeling like she’s responsible for her whole family, (not feeling like she’s attractive) and seeing her growth and becoming more comfortable with herself really made me feel better about myself? It’s a super dark book, but it’s great. It’s really great.

23. A Children’s Guide to the Night Sky: 4/5 stars. This was essentially the condensed and easier version of my Stars and Cosmology course I took two years ago!! I sped read this and some of the greek myths they described were dumb down/removed the queerness of it. Which is why I took off a whole star.

24. The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: 5/5 stars. Hello Marie Kondo. Everyone is on a cleaning kick/obsessed with Marie Kondo. I liked this comic because it was short and also made her book in a bite size, story drive style. I liked its simplistic form!

25. Julian is a Mermaid: 5/5 stars. I’ve had my eye on this book for a year, ever since it was announced in Goodreads’ monthly list. I found the last copy and snatched it up. I like the muted colors, the art style, the different bodies, and letting little boys know it’s ok to dress up as mermaids or anything feminized. A great message!!!

26. Kiss Number 8: 5/5 stars. This is one of those random comics I saw in the new releases and the cover caught my eye. I read the first few pages and decided to buy it. I loved it as it’s a coming out story but the main story isn’t revolved around coming out. It’s about the complicated nature of family, coming out through the years, and trans themes. I know some people say this book and the characters are transphobic due to misgendering and dead names used, but the main character is catholic. Her family are mega catholic. She’s going to a catholic school. Of course there’s going to be misgendering and dead names used! It’s how people naturally react to news. If you’re super sensitive, I wouldn’t read this book, but I loved it to bits. I held it to my chest like I do rarely with those books that give you the warm feels.

27. Elephi - The Cat with the High IQ: 5/5 stars. This was a book I grabbed at a close down sale. It’s about Elephi who sees a small fiat car abandoned in the snow outside and decides to use his brains to get the car inside the fifth story apartment. The author really knows how cats act and I felt like all the mannerisms were perfect for a year old cat(kitten). Really a cute book that I read in 40 minutes??

28. One Happy Tiger: 4/5 stars. A book about a tiger counting friends. Cute. It’s a children’s book. Not too substantial in anything.

29. The Language of Thorns: 5/5 stars. Ok WOW. I bought this about a year ago during B&N’s signed deals where they just had a ton of books signed by the authors. I’ve seen this book floating around on BookTube for awhile and I decided to check it out at the bookstore. The illustrations sold me and I bought it. Imagine the already dark Grimm’s fairy tales, but darker. More context for the characters: Ursula, the Nutcracker, Hansel and Gretel but if Gretel was the only one at home. Really amazing stories and if you’re interested in dark, pretty illustrations that change with each page, pick it up!

30. Satoko and Nada vol 1: 5/5 stars. Ramona and I went to B&N yesterday, just sitting around like two useless gays reading a bunch of manga. This is one she picked out and told me to read it. You know me, as a white academic I am constantly on the lookout for narratives that aren’t white and can educate me. This was one of them! Satoko is from Japan while Nada is from Saudi Arabia, both are exchange students in the US. Their friendship, learning about each other’s cultures is so fucking cute. ;0;

31: I Hear the Sunspot vol 1: 4/5 stars. I docked this down from a 5 star rating because it just jumps into a established plot. I had no idea if this was a continuation from another series or if the author purposefully just threw us in the mix of an established gay relationship but they’re not really (they are but they’re confused) with some flashbacks that looks like it came from another volume? But despite those factors, the art is gorgeous. The characters are well developed and have complex background and stories to tell (one of the main characters has a degenerative hearing issue and will eventually become deaf).

32. Building Writing Center Assessments that Matter: 4/5 stars. This was a required text I had for a independent study I was a part of where I created a assessment of the climate of where I worked. This is a great resource in learning how to build assessments from scratch, and if you’ve never conducted one. I found the information they gave was limited to assessment of students who use the a writing center, while my assessment was more focused on how safe, valued, and heard those who currently work in the space feel. A great way to step into assessments!

33. Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom: 4/5 stars. This was the first fictionalized piece of Slyvia Plath I’ve read. I can understand why it wasn’t published at first. There’s a lot of loose ends. Why was Mary going to the Ninth Kingdom? Why is everyone so placant in going to a “hell” type place? Also what the hell was the ending and her running away? This story left a lot to be answered, but I also love that about this short story.

34. Momo to Manji Vol 2: 5/5 stars. Volume two of one of my favorite historical yaoi mangas. It’s still hasn’t been fully translated just yet but I love it all the same!! So many complex characters, relationships!

35. Sweet Blue Flowers Vol 1. 5/5 stars. The first edition of a 5 volume series. Ramona told me to read this and I devoured the first book! Wholesome young girls falling in love with each other! Boyish girls who are heartthrobs! Unrequited love galore! Definitely going to check out the rest of the volumes!

36. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me: 5/5 stars. Man. This comic took me through a roller coaster of feelings. First it kind of made me miss the constant interactions I had with people in junior high and high school. It also reminded me heavily of my first gf and I wondered if she and her friends viewed me as Laura Dean (in terms of being too cool. I never cheated lmao. And always just out of reach). It made me melancholy for a younger me who was also hopeless in love with their best friend. It was a wild ride, but one I recommend wholeheartedly!

37. Lovable Lyle: 5/5 stars. I’ve been looking at this little crocodile for awhile and I’ve come to the conclusion he is me. This book was silly but heartwarming as Lyle is beloved but suddenly receives letters from his sworn enemy. They try to ignore it, but they are persistent until they catch the culprit. Fucking ridiculous story but I loved every second.

38. The Great American Pin-Up: 5/5 stars. It was really cool how they sectioned off each famous artist of pin-ups. Some of them were tasteful nudes, semi-nudes, or lingerie teasing moments. As someone who is both gay and used to draw pin-up girls, this is a great reference!!!!

39. Drawing the R.A.F.: 5/5 stars. This book is one of those rarer finds. A british artist was commissioned to draw the officers of the R.A.F. in the middle of World War II. Some portraits are far better than others, but the worser ones are attached with amazing stories. Such as a 6”6’ pilot having to be physically shoved in a spitfire. These are fantastic and the art work is really beautiful.

40. Where’s Will? 4/5 stars. Where’s Will is a William Shakespeare version of Where’s Waldo. The art is beautiful and the hidden characters are extremely clever. However, I remember so often spending hours upon hours trying to find Waldo and the extreme satisfaction of finally finding him. Where’s Will I could find him within 5 minutes. It never went long enough to the point I feel worn and frustrated and finding several more interesting characters. He stood out more than he should and I flew through this book that Waldo would find insulting! But the illustrations are beautiful!

41. Carr’s Pocket Books - Florence Nightingale: 4/5 stars. This mini collection of Nightingale’s journals throughout her life is really interesting. As a woman who revolutionized what it meant to be a nurse and nurse practices, it was nice to see her own words from age 9 to 90. She was an elegant little girl with her writing and she showed wisdom beyond her years. Did I learn anything substantial about her work? No. But I did come to know her on a far more personal level that I appreciate.

42. Carr’s Pocket Books - How Horatius Kept the Bridge: 5/5 stars. Another one of these small pocket sized books I bought in Oundle, England. I don’t know why, but I’ve just been desperate to go through my books and get rid of any and all that don’t speak to me anymore. I also just want to read, a lot. This was part of my kick this week, trying to get through as many as possible. This poem story is about Roman soldier Horatius and how he single handedly took the Bridge against the Greeks. It’s a military triumphant, silly, and mystical, but I really enjoyed the structure of it. It was short and sweet.

43. Echoland: 3.5/5 stars. Echoland follows Arvid, a 12 year old Norwegian boy who visits his grandparents in Denmark for the summer. However, he’s growing up and he’s realizing that his parents are strained for some reason, his sister is too grown for him, and his grandparents are getting older. This book was confusing. It was short, quick, and I think younger children would enjoy this book more than me. It deals with more adult themes but through the eyes of a 12 year old. However, I found a lot of the storyline to be confusing: Why does Arvid not want to be touched? Why are his parents fighting?? Why does he hate all the men in his family? Why is he pushing everyone away? Why are his parents putting up with his attitude? There are a LOT of questions I have and there’s no real answer to be found. Maybe it’s the author’s style, but I found the story to be not as believable, but still enjoyable.

44. Mathilda. 2.5/5 stars. Mathilda was an audiobook I listened to as I suddenly got a migraine at around 6 pm and it didn’t let up until around midnight. The last three hours I’ve been listening to it. I thought this was Matilda from Roald Dahl but was instead by Mary Shelley herself. This was a very bizarre story. I really enjoyed the first half of the story which is about Mathilda writing a final letter to her best friend upon her deathbed. She’s retelling him her tragic story and how the death of her father was her fault. Her childhood was very bleak, touch starved as her mother died and her father abandoned her to his half sister. Her half sister wasn’t warm to her and saw her as a pest, which had Mathilda growing up til she was 16 without a father. Suddenly her father decided to return and within 2 months of his return her aunt dies, and now she’s in his custody. At first everything is fine, until her father starts to lash out at her and is very distant. He at first wants Mathilda to replace her mother and then rejects the idea. They go for a walk and Mathilda presses her father to tell her his deep secret and why he hates her all of a sudden. He refuses until she presses on and then he tells her that he lusts for her. She freaks out, he almost dies in the woods from shame, and then he leaves the next morning. Mathilda is then angry because SHE wanted to leave her father, but because he’s abandoning her again she chases after him. She finds him dead in a hotel room and then Mathilda begins to resent life and living. The story was great up until she decides to chase her father after he leaves her. It became a jumbled mess and Mathilda herself says her mind is a little mad with her decisions. The story started off as an intrigue with beauty descriptions, intense, and then just went bat shit crazy. The story ended on beautiful reflections on nature and how death is not beautiful for those living, but it really lost me. The last hour was a drag. I would definitely suggest listening to it if you have a migraine!

45. Megume to Tsugumi: 5/5 stars. Gay comic, lmao.

46. Golden Sparkle: 5/5 stars. I don’t remember the plot but it was cute.

47. Maltese Falcon: 2/5 stars. I was forced to read this for a film and literature class. Everyone was ranting and raving how the main character should be a male role model but that’s extremely stupid. Look, I love bad male representation (looking at you James Bond), but he was just trash. I get this is a famous crime novel, but GOD. It’s bad.

48. Maiden & Princess: 5/5 stars. This was about a maiden going to a ball who everyone thought she would marry the Prince. Except she and the Prince are best friends and she really fell in love with his sister. We love pride month books!

49. Prince & Knight: 5/5 stars. A gender-swap of Maiden & Princess except this was a Prince who goes off to slay a dragon to save his kingdom only to fall in love with a knight and marry him. SO GOOD.

50. Komi Can’t Communicate, Vol. 1: 4/5 stars. My friend Ramona told me to read this volume since she read it and loved it. While I loved the art and Komi, the story line was just a tad flat for me. It’s a really fun series if you like high school semi-romance but mostly heavy on friendship~!

51. What was Stonewall? 3/5 stars. This was one of those children informative books where they retell a piece of history. I thought this was great for children who know nothing about Stonewall but are hearing it from Drag Queens or in June for Pride History Month. I thought the information about Stonewall was short and concise and also good for children, however the book did verge off point and talk about other points of history as well as random actors who are gay. This is good, but it isn’t Stone wall, you know?

52. Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag: 4/5 stars. I watched Milk and I cried at the end. I’ve been wanting to know more about how Milk created our Pride Flag and this was another one of those books where it’s curated for children. So I appreciate the run down version it gives us, but they had to “modify” what the stripes mean, such as purple being Sexuality. Let kids hear the unfiltered truth!

53. TBH #1: TBH, This Is So Awkward: 4/5 stars. This was in the teen new released section and it’s a book of text messages. I hated this book, but also was way too invested in it when I was reading it out loud to my date. It’s just a bunch of middle school people sending love notes, getting the Valentine’s Day dance cancelled because they won’t stop using their phone and their principal said “Social Decency.” And then it ended by one of the girls bringing the valentine’s day dance back by creating a Task Force to enforce no texting during school. It was fucking wild and I loved every page I flipped through and wrote in.

54. Adaptations from Short Story to Big Screen: 4/5 stars. I liked it well enough, it was a textbook so I didn’t really read the stories in-depth. However, there are two stories I absolutely love which are Field of Dreams and Smoke Signals.

55. Our Father Who Art in a Tree: 5/5. I loved this book. It’s very true to the experience of what it’s like to be depressed and the first few months of deep grief. While I didn’t lose my parent until my teenage years and my brothers were older, but the strained relationships grief causes is so fucking poignant.

56. Little Miss P: 5/5 stars. I know it’s strange, because it’s a man writing a book about periods, but this was an excellent book. It really showcased the love-hate relationship women have with their periods and also sometimes accurate representations of what it feels like.

57. Ginza Neon Paradise: 4/5 stars. I don’t remember reading this manga! (I’m updating my book list after some months)

58. Na Leo I Ka Makani/Voices on the Wind: 5/5 stars. A book of history and photos of native Hawaiians, royals, and other cultural aspects important to the island. Some really cool photos.

59. Satoko & Nada vol. 2: 5/5 stars. Satoko and Nada are back again, continuing on with their studies and friendship. This book still continues to teach westerners some cool Eastern values while the main characters are learning about each other as well. I think the 3rd volume will come out soonish and that might be the end!!! I love this little series!

60. Annie on My Mind: 5/5 stars. One of the first lesbian novels to show a happy ending with the characters. It’s very much a high school love story and first real love. There were some parts of the story that were absolutely aggravating, painfully embarrassing, but also really heart warming. It’s a queer foundational book in literature, and if you’re interested in the history of queer literature, this should be on your list.

61. Killing Stalking: 5/5 stars. The comic finally ended. I started reading it in 2016 and finished in 2019. God was it a ride. It was full of conflicting feelings, creepiness, and an ending that leaves the reader confused, fulfilled, and also not fulfilled at the same time. I wouldn’t suggest reading it for those who are squeamish with gore, violence, and dark sexual themes, but it’s a fantastic read into what it’s like to experience stockholm syndrome and intense violent trauma.

62. Go for it, Nakamura!: 5/5 stars. A high school student falls in love with his popular classmate, but his classmate doesn’t know he exists! A cute gay book about falling in love, making friends, and pushing yourself to achieve your goals!

63. The Great Gatsby: 4/5 stars. The next two books are books I listened to while deep cleaning my room. It took me two days to fully clean my room, and this was also a challenge for my N.E.W.T.S 2019. I remember reading this book in high school and liking, and I think I lent out my copy and never saw it again. I bought it recently and decided to give it a re-read/listen. I think reading the book would have made it more engaging to me, but I found the themes to not be as impressive as an adult. Maybe it’s because I can’t relate to the characters or their choices are so dumb that I just can’t believe it anymore, but it was still entertaining to listen to. The narrator was great!

64. Emma (Narrated by Emma Thompson): 5/5 stars. This feels a bit like cheating because this rendition was not only abridged, but also had live actors. I’m very familiar with Emma, and Emma Thompson as the narrator was a genius move. However, do I feel like I read/listened to Emma? Not really.

65. Fresh Romance, Vol. 1: 4/5 stars. Half of the stories were very confusing and not very good. However, I really loved two stories about a Regency marriage and a spin off of Beauty and the Beast. I would read this volume just for those additions.

66. Pilu of the Woods: 5/5 stars. A cute story about emotions, friendship, and the woods. It even has a recipe on the back I want to read it!! The colors and characters are adorable. The storyline might not be as solid, but it’s a great read!

67. Ou-same to Puppy Love: 5/5 stars. A foreign prince falls in love with a neat-freak government official. Queue stupid boys in love!

68. Sugar Days: 5/5 stars. Childhood best friends, one small and manly, one tall and feminine, both love each other without having the courage to tell the other!!!! Very cute!!!!!

69. The Tea Dragon Society: 5/5 stars. I remember seeing this book a year ago and how everyone was ranting and raving about it. However, I never bought it or saw it. My best friend brought it over the other day for me to read and I could finally see what the fuss was about. QUEER CHARACTERS, LITTLE DRAGONS WITH TEA LEAVES GROWING OFF OF THEM, MULTIPLE REPRESENTATION!!!! IT’S SO GOOOOOD!

70. Luminous Animal: 5/5 stars. A jazz poetry book. It’s interesting how Tony Moffeit can write the same theme over and over, with the same lines but in different poems with different perspectives. It was really cool!

71. Still Mostly True: 5/5 stars. A weird poetry book that has philosophy and deep meaning poems with also weird ass drawings. However, my poetry book had inscriptions from someone else to their friend. The inscriptions were sometimes very annoying, but also kind of heartwarming how this friend made sure her friend knew she was thinking of her and loving her.

72. Sky, Wind, and Stars. 5/5 stars. A poetry book that was a Korean activist who was murdered by the Japanese through medical experiments for his radical poetry. We watched the movie in my Korean History through film class, and I loved it to bits I wanted to read his poetry. The movie downplayed just how radical his poetry was. Even as a English speaker, I can clearly see the activism, Korean pride that was written during the Japanese occupation. It was a wonderful poetry book, and an important one to Koreans at that. If you have the chance to read it, please do.

73. Memoirs of a Geisha: 5/5 stars. Haley (one of my bffs) recommended me this book like 3 years ago. It’s her favorite and I kept saying I would read it. August was the N.E.W.T.S. challenge and this fit the category of “audiobook” as I listened to a fan read audio of it and then had to read the last 7 chapters. I completely see where my friend finds inspiration in her writing from this book! I really loved the sad story, the harsh reality of Japan, even if this book was more on the idealized version of WWII in Japan and how Geishas were. Some of the thinking of Chiyo I feel could be chalked up to white men ideal sexualization, but overall I really enjoyed this book! Plus the fan who read it was really into her characters and she made the experience really fun.

74. Be Prepared: 5/5 stars. When you’re poor, Russian, and have the All-American-Girls as your best friends, life is extremely hard. No one likes your Russian food, the smallness of your home, and listening to a language not their own. VERA NEEDS SOME FUCKING NEW FRIENDS. As someone whose best friend is Russian, has a sister-in-law who is Russian, and a nephew learning to speak Russian, some people are really insensitive and it drives me nuts. I know a lot of people are upset with this book because it’s not a “full memoir” and yet is described as a memoir. I’ll just pose the question, can you remember 1 month straight at 10 years old, from people to dialogue? No? Yeah, cut the book some slack. This has great representation in terms of Russian culture and learning through it from little Russian eyes.

75. Kiraide Isasete: 5/5 stars. It’s another gay manga.

76. I married my best friend to shut up my parents: 4/5 stars. While I appreciate this story is light-hearted, it seems a bit far fetched for my taste. Also the main character doesn’t believe she’s gay, so I find it hard that a) she would actually get married and b) would just readily fall in love with her friend when she’s literally had no sexual desire for anyone. But other than that, it’s a ridiculous love story and it’s to the point!

78. Heartstopper V.2: 5/5 stars. I already read this awhile ago but I finally got my copy! So I’m just putting it in my list!

79. Raven: 5/5 stars. Raven is the first installment of the origins of the Teen Titans characters. I really loved this novel since Raven has always been a dark character in the original show. This book explores her experience with death, coming to terms with her birth origins, and New Orleans with ancient magic. A great start to a series I’m looking forward to reading the rest of!

80. Heartless. 4/5 stars. A child is taken care of by a succubus (male) after a religious cult burns down a hospital to get rid of the succubus. This story is intense in the gore and horror, but pretty light in plot. There’s no real driving force behind the characters and what they do, no explanation, it’s all just there for the reader to assume it just happened. But the characters were dynamic and interesting with superhuman powers and abilities.

81. The Adventure Zone Vol. 2: 5/5 stars. Every time I see Madame Director I sigh in relief because she exactly looks how I envisioned her while listening to the podcast many years ago. The story line is short, I feel like some of the build up jokes are lost or the frustration Griffin has with his brothers and dad that make the podcast so hilarious are missing, but it’s a really beautiful comic and also a great way for people to start listening to TAZ and MBMBAM

82: The Wind in the Willow: 4/5 stars. An audiobook I listened to. I had the paperback but it was too much reading for my mind for a classic children book. When I found the option on Libby, I listened to it as I started my preparations for the start of my final semester as an undergraduate! It went by fast, the actors were in their characters and there were some songs performed. I really enjoyed it, even if Mr. Toad is ANNOYING AS FUCK. Would recommend for those wanting to kill 2 hours of their time.

83. Classmates: 5/5 stars. High school sweethearts? Can’t express their feelings well? Uh, sign me the FUCK uP.

84-108. W Juliet: 5/5 stars. I haven’t read W Juliet since I was in 7th grade. I remember that I loved it so much that when I was in high school I began collecting the volumes and proudly put it on my shelf. I used to have two bookshelves worth of manga, and when I grew older I sold them but only kept two series: Marmalade Boy and W Juliet (I’m gonna read Marmalade Boy next). I’ve been wanting to reread W Juliet recent and revisit Mako and Ito’s silliness, and with the long weekend I did. I was not prepared for the analysis it would give me to my own life. Like, holy shit. This manga series was so important in developing me who I was as a kid, (some of them very mild kinks that my rp friends are subjected to), the loss Ito has and her issues with gender and like 100000% me and how I don’t like masculine guys at all with their toxicity (hello Mako, you summer child boy). I honestly want to do a fucking research paper on this series with an analysis of myself because of how much I love this series and how I connect to it. You can bet your ass this manga is coming with me for the rest of my life.

109-117. Marmalade Boy: 3/5 stars. Marmalade Boy was the manga that started it all. I remember being 8, having found the manga section with my best friend, and we decided to share reading Marmalade Boy. I was so captivated by the story that I made her wait in the car at her house, refusing to let her have the book until I finished it. It was the final of the volume, and it wouldn’t be another 3 years until I read the series OUT OF ORDER. I kept rereading this series, picking it up, I remember it felt like watching a movie. As an adult? God this series is really awful. The characters are very annoying, the teacher is very creepy, the plot moves WAY too quickly, and no one knows what consent is. It’s fucking insane. 1-7 volume is trash, but the 8th volume really put to life in the characters. For one, they’re older, it's been a few years, and they can step back from the crazy lives of high school. If it wasn’t for the sheer nostalgia, I would be giving these books away. But you gotta pay respect to those books that introduced you to life changing moments.

118. Ouji to Kotori. 4/5 stars. An art student, a prince who buys him, trying to escape, foreign lands, a story that has a “romantic” but is open ended. I liked the flow of the story, the art, and the characters were actually believable.

119. Mean Girls Club. 3.5/5 stars. Mean Girls Club is a 1950s tale of girls rising against the patriarchy through sex, survivor, drugs, and murder. The art style is amazing. But the story line is flat and feels rushed. Not a favorite, but still pretty enjoyable.

120. Grumpy Monkey. 5/5 stars. Grumpy Monkey is the story of a monkey who wakes up grumpy. Despite everyone not believing he can be so grumpy on a beautiful day, him denying that he’s grumpy, and getting angry at people telling him HE’S grumpy, is such a goddamn mood. Nothing pisses me off more than people telling me my mood. You don’t know me. Fuck off. Anyways, this also felt like a mental health book for kids, letting them know it's ok to NOT feel ok. As long as someone is willing to listen and not wanting to fix your grumpiness.

121. Dia de los Muertos. 4/5 stars. A children’s informational book about the Day of the Dead. Short, simple, great education.

123. Wild Cherry. 4/5 stars. Wild Cherry is a poetry book I’ve been totting around for 2 months but have had no energy to pick it up. I’ve been very depressed that I haven’t had time to read, and despite me falling asleep right now, I forced myself to read it. It felt very repetitive after a while with her constant calling back to long lost love, death, and April, but I appreciated the 1923 themes that were NO doubt soo popular.

124. Through the Woods: 5/5 stars. A horror comic book that reminds me a lot of “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” I lent it to my co-worker since he loves these types of stories!

125. Dancing with Mr. Darcy: 1/5 stars. I read the first story which was Jane Austen crossing the River Styx and facing her judgement and then I tried to read the rest and it was all so fucking boring??? I put the book down and will not be continuing.

126. The Night Diary: 5/5 stars. So this was an audiobook I listened to during the week I had awful vertigo. I couldn’t go to work or university and I laid on the couch, glasses off, just listening to this story. If it hadn’t been read to me, I don’t think I would have loved it as much. It follows Nisha who is forced to leave after WWII when India is split into New India and Pakistan. All muslims are allowed to stay, but all Hindus must leave for New India because of territorial wars. It follows the dreadful path during the desert, the violence they faced, and the child’s innocence slowly being robbed from her. It’s all told through Nisha’s diary who pens it to her mother. The voice actor did a wonderful job.

127. We Contain Multitudes: 5/5 stars. Tiny twink nerd falls in love with Giant Jock football star. And then he falls in love with the nerd and they’re hormonal and coming out and angst with love. I understand why people are upset with the novel: the plot twist seems like a total cop out that the author placed and a 15 year old dating a 18 year old can get borderline statutoary rape. However, I absolutely loved this book. It was refreshing to have a “coming out” narrative that wasn’t focused on coming out, but rather these two boys falling in love through letters, reading the cringe of HS romances, and desperately following these boys through it all. It’s definitely a favorite I read this year!

128. Lovely War: 4/5 stars. This is the third book I read while going through vertigo, and my second audiobook. It’s set during WWI, following two love narratives but told through the perspectives of the Greek God. It was really refreshing, the voice acting was excellent, and I really enjoyed listening while dizzy constantly. I would have given in a 5 star rating, but near the end, Hazel’s pixie-manic girl stereotype was getting out of hand and her hypocrisy was really fucking annoying. However, up until that point, I really enjoyed it and recommended it to several friends!

129. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge: 4.5/5 stars. I really struggled not giving this book five stars, but I thought some of the narration and story-telling could have done a tiny bit better. This was a great audiobook to listen to while I packed and finished projects before my plane ride to my first ever work conference. I was bummed out that I couldn’t listen to this audiobook on the plane because Libby requires wifi, but I really enjoyed the fantasy comedy of this book (even though fantasy tends to be a topic I don’t dare approach because it just through you into a world with no explanation). 10/10 would recommend to strangers on the street.

130. Aaron and Ahmed: 4/5 stars. I read this books during my great “aaaAH I’M GRADUATING TIME IS UNREAL” So these will be short. A story about after 9/11 and the brutality American soldiers went to gain answers, even if there were none.

131. The Tea Dragon Festival: 5/5 stars. Dragons? Tea? LGTB+? Who could ask for more??

132. Roadqueen: Eternal Roadtrip to Love: 5/5 stars. Lesbians calling out how trashy other lesbians treat girls who generally like them. “Fuck Boy” was used a lot and I loved this.

133. Skull-face Bookseller vol. 1: 5/5 stars. A skeleton tries to sell manga and explores the crazy customers who come in, the social mistakes foreigners make with Japanese booksellers, and Honda-san doing her best to survive in her job.

134-136. Beastars Vol 1-3: 5/5 stars. I saw a bit of the anime and realized there was a manga. I bought the two volumes I could and then the third one from amazon. I really enjoyed this series and look forward to reading it more!

137. I hear the Sunspot Vol 2: 5/5 stars. It’s nice to see the couple going on, even if its GUT-WRENCHING and stupid how they refuse to communicate!!!!! But it hits hard topics of the community for the hard of hearing and functioning in a world where signing is considered not important enough to teach.

138. Pink: 5/5 stars. A sex worker who spends all her money feeding her alligator and the trouble she gets into. Weird art style and at first I opened this book and didn’t buy it. 3 months later, decided to buy it and I adored it.

139: Restless: 4/5 stars. I don’t remember much about it, but I think it was cute. Maybe boyfriends find each other again?

140. How can one sell the air?: 5/5 stars. I’ve had this “calling” to start really reading native american stories and heritage. This is a controversial book with Suquamish people as they either see their leader finally giving up or instilling courage to stay firm even as the world does their best to destroy them. I really enjoyed reading his speech.

141. Skull-face Bookseller Vol. 2: 5/5 stars. Honda-san comes back again with her friends and exploring working in the shop with more crazy customers but also with her new found fame being a manga artist.

142. Gold Rush Women: 4/5 stars. A lot of white women with these narratives, which was disappointing since most of the Gold Rush Women were indegenious or came from other areas of the world rather than just Europe or East America. Wish there were more stories on the black, mexican, indegineous, or chinese women who were forced into slavery or abused or helped create the west.

143. No one is too small to make a difference: 5/5 stars. Greta Thornberg amazes me. Here we have a 15 year old with aspergers who is doing her best to inspire scientists, politicians, and anyone in the world to take charge of our climate change issues. It also amazes me how many people are threatened by a 15 year old and she’s forced to repeat herself in her speeches because people refuse to listen to what she has to say. She’s amazing.

144. Ookami he no Yomeiri: 3.5/5 stars A bunny and a wolf get married. What more can I say?

145. Monody: 3/5 stars: Monody is a strange poetry book. The lyrical writing leaves lacking in terms of uniqueness and deep thought, but aesthetically it is beautiful. Blue font paired with geographical maps of Reno, Nevada, the poetry book comes off more of an art piece.

146. Usagi no Mori: 3/5 stars. Uhmmm. Don’t remember…

#2019 books #2019 book reviews #2019 book list #book reviews

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futuristickingpersona · 3 years

Text

Dominos Slot Machine Hack

The hacker with the nickname “Alex”, who lives in St. Petersburg, claims to have found a way to hack a slot machine and get huge winnings. He says that it’s really possible to hack a slot machine, doesn’t matter if it is online or a physical slot. Also he says that they bring him 250 thousand dollars a week. Alex also states that it easy to hack a slot machine of one particular developer, Aristocrat Leisure Limited, and even plans to sell them his algorithm of hacking, for millions of course. However, the company reacted very calmly to his statement.

Dominos Slot Machine Hacks

Dominos Slot Machine Hack No Human

Dominos Slot Machine Hack Machine

According to confidential government informants, this crew, known as the Shulaya Enterprise, brought an Aristocrat Mark VI slot machine to a Brooklyn aparment in September 2016; four months later. .Tips. Scatter Slots hack no root 2020 VIP Coins and Gems generator VIP Coins and Gems cheats Scatter Slots hacked version Enter your Username/ID or Email (you don’t need to enter your. Generation VIP: 77 Dominos Slot Machine extra spins + up to £77 bonus Get a 100% match bonus for your first deposit, up to a maximum of £77 and will also award 77 bonus spins!

The Russian hacker told all this in an interview with the American technical journal Wired. He declares that for 8 years he has won money in various online casinos, turning them for himself into personal ATMs. It is not clear why, having such a colossal source of income, he decided to get rid of it. It’s more like that he does not know how to hack slot machine systematically. He tries to ensure developers that he can and tries to get money from them.

Let’s see if there is a way to hack slot machine and what exactly Alex invented.

How to beat slot machine according to Alex’s theory?

Dominos Slot Machine Hacks

The identity of Alex is not established. He calls himself a programmer, a mathematician and a graduate of the Academy of the Federal Security Service of Russia, naturally, without providing this evidence. The hacker also says that he once worked at the military university in St. Petersburg, specializing in teaching cryptography and hardware hacking.

Hacker told to American journal Wired about his own unique method of reverse engineering of the RNG. If to simplify, he says that he has uncovered a way of generating random numbers in Aristocrat slots and knows how they will behave. Also he can hack Aristocrat slots in land based casinos.

To hack slot machine, Alex needs an agent network

Also, Alex talked about his own network of agents, allegedly legion, and who work all over the world, shooting video with the help of mobile gadgets about the work of a variety of slots. It is noteworthy that he does have “agents”, and four people from this list in the US already have a criminal record for fraud.

Video from various gambling places of the planet were collected and immediately analyzed in Russia. The hacker claims that his observations made it possible to reveal when payments in games will be at their maximum. In fact, he is sure that he has found a method how to hack slot machine.

The results of the video analysis were immediately sent to the “agent” through a special application along with the winning strategy of the game. And as a result, the “agents” won, collecting a common bank for 250 thousand dollars a week.

The best success “agents” were those who conducted the shooting of slots as imperceptibly as possible. For this work, people were specially selected who understood the importance of acting secretly, knew how to behave correctly so as not to cause suspicion. Most of the “agents” of the hacker look confident and respectable. But even in case of arrest for unauthorized filming in a casino hacker guarantees them protection and legal support.

Alex decided to close such organized and profitable business, which brought him income for 8 years. The hacker demanded from the Australian developer of the slot machines, Aristocrat, several million for his method of slot machine hacking.

Aristocrat: to hack slot machine in the Internet or casino is impossible

Aristocrat Leisure Limited has been working in the gambling industry for more than 60 years. Company which is developing and maintaining land based and virtual casinos, confirmed it has received a letter from hacker. In it, Alex reports that he knows how to hack slot machine of the developer, and therefore requires money for the non-disclosure of this information.

The hacker offers not just to give his way of slot machine hacking, but also promises to turn off the agent network.

Alex himself calls his proposal a deal that will allow to stop compromising the Aristocrat trademark. As he believes, this service is estimated in an eight-digits amount. As a gesture of goodwill, he not only tells how to hack the slot machines, but also helps developers to eliminate weaknesses to make the product inaccessible to hacking.

To confirm the seriousness of their knowledge, hacker sent the developer a breakdown of his pseudo-generator. With its help he can hack the 50 Lions machine of the company or Heart of Gold. To persuade Aristocrat Leisure Limited to make a decision in its favor, Alex threatens to surrender information to competitors. Also he can simply put their workings on the network. Such a move, in his opinion, will lead to the fact that everyone can hack slot machine.

The way to hack slot machine by Aristocrat is a myth

In the fall of 2016, Alex contacted a representative of Aristocrat Leisure Limited. Head of Compliance, Tracy Elkerton, talked to the hacker on the phone.

She expressed interest in a method that allows Alex to win a slightly larger amount of money.

“It is very unlikely that Aristocrat will pay for information,” Tracy said. “It’s just not how we work. We have developed a solution to promote our products, and we are comfortable with this solution. ”

A company spokesman said that Aristocrat Leisure Limited has zero tolerance for unethical behavior. And this means that no one will pay a million for “help in eliminating weak points of slots”. Moreover, Alex did not provide any actual evidence that his way to hack slot machine works.

Alex’s attitude to online casinos and players

Alex is cynical enough about the casino and the culture of gambling. Gamblers are stupid he thinks. He calls himself Robin Hood, who takes money from the rich (meaning the casino). But he didn’t say a word about how the network Robin Hood helps poor people. Here are a few quotes from his Wired interview.

“My job is simply to help myself and people to take money from the casino. Just a small counterbalance to the global gaming system, where the casino always wins. ”

“Most gambling seemed to me nothing more than a tax on stupidity.”

“My agents are just gamers, like everyone else. Only they are able to make better predictions in the stakes. Yes, this ability is achieved thanks to my technology, it’s true. But why should this be illegal? At a basic level, it’s like using a calculator to count faster and more accurately, instead of doing it all in your head. ”

“Sometimes I fantasize about just giving away my way to hack slot machine to people. This would lead to a “zombie apocalypse”: equipped with information and software, player using a simple smartphone will be able to turn slot machine into ATM. ”

Conclusion: it is impossible to beat slot machine in an unfair way

The story of Alex and his way to hack slot machine made a lot of noise. But it didn’t affect Aristocrat Company.

The developer’s representatives admitted that a technique was found that slightly increases the player’s advantage. But obviously not so much to worry about it and to hide the way from the public.

Dominos Slot Machine Hack No Human

Further, Alex plans to apply with a similar proposal to IGT, since he claims that he understood the algorithm of the RNG of their Atronic slot machine. However, as in the case of Aristocrat, hacker does not have any evidence of systemic major gains.

Dominos Slot Machine Hack Machine

All this history leads to a natural conclusion: it is impossible to predict the algorithm of the RNG operating on licensed slot machines. In addition, in each new slot developers improve the generator and its protection.

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therealnakedgardener · 3 years

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Is it really Distance Learning that’s failing your children?

Everyday there’s new stories about how Distance Learning is failing, and how kids are missing out on so much, and how our children are going to be psychologically crippled forever because they can’t be at recess with their friends. I would like to help change the narrative on this, if I may.

Shouting from the rooftops, and any media source willing to broadcast or publish your opinion (yes, I get the irony here) about how “distance learning is failing” only creates a narrative that schools are failing our children; that teachers are failing your children. And I am pleading for this to stop! Distance learning is not what is failing your children right now – poor management of an out of control pandemic is what has created the situation that is failing your children right now. Unfortunately, when this pandemic was approached as political agenda issue – instead of a sneaky, resilient, always-looking-for-it’s-next-host virus – the institutions your tax dollars pay for (like schools, medicare, emergency services, etc) were maxed out immediately. This is why March 13, 2020 will stand out as a “where were you” moment for generations to come; because for many of us it marked the end of a “normal” we may never see again.

On March 13, I was in my office at the local high school, working furiously and desperately with the other counselors to make a plan. We had until 3pm on Friday the 13th to take what we thought we might need for the next few weeks (which is what we all imagined quarantine would be at the time.) Yes, there was some sitting and staring, “What will I need? What should I bring with me to work from home?” We grabbed files from our drawers, forms that we might need, we downloaded a bunch of files from our hard drives, grabbed brochures for community resources, and crisis resource information. We created shared drives and converted hard copies of forms to digital formats we could access from home. We took handouts and materials related to our seniors who were already behind in credit and working double time to graduate on time. In short, there was a lot to process. Everyone did the best they could with the information we were given. School districts all over the State, and later – in the entire nation, were building a band-aid to bridge the gap from March 13 to late April….as that was the initial announcement.

But then the information changed. We weren’t returning end of April, and would continue Distance Learning for the remainder of the 2020 school year. Graduation Ceremony? No one knows. Mind you, the life of a high school counselor from the months of April-June include regular phone calls from parents who have kids who “might not make it” for various reasons – usually related to it just not being a priority for the student. Parents want to know if they should plan graduation parties, or if they should be planning to fly grandma in – and she doesn’t travel well. They want a guarantee from me before they invest time and money into a celebration. And if you are asking yourself “No way, do parents really call and ask that?” I would say what we always say in this business, “You can’t make this shit up.” Which should also explain why the latest, and most persistent, slogan of the pandemic is that “Distance Learning is failing your children.”

Fast forward to July, and we are experiencing a second wave of Rona – she’s surging from 4th of July weekend and summer vacations with friends and family. Because we’re entitled Americans and you can’t tell us “No BBQs on the 4th of July” – hell, this is what makes us Americans, right? Lots of beer, fireworks, and 911 calls…which, again, overtaxes a system that is already maxed out (as stated above.) But it was the height of summer – and people were tired of being in quarantine for 5 months. I am not saying I agree, or was partaking in anything other “we need to go to the store” – just replaying the facts.

Thus, schools had to scramble to put together Distance Learning 2.0 for the Fall. The expectation was that it would be less of the band-aid that was built in the Spring, and more of a comprehensive digital platform. Mind you there was no extra funding for this, and districts had to make tough decisions – like using money from transportation or food services, since those departments were not as active during the school closures. Our district chose a 3 period day, as a response to the “too many emails” and “too much to manage remotely” concerns from our community. All totally legit – I believe our district has the best plan around, and I don’t get paid to say that. I truly believe it.

Again, as high school counselors, we had to answer questions like “how do we make this work for students?” For example, for those who don’t know, Advanced Placement (AP) courses have testing in May. And since periods 4-6 didn’t start until Feb 2, we needed to offer all of our AP courses in periods 1-3 – which happens Sept-Jan. This means students could only take 3 AP courses this year. And yes, three college level classes for a high school student may sound like more than enough, but you’d be surprised. I could bore you with more details, and the play-by-play of difficult conversations and impossible decisions, but just know that trying to figure how and when to offer classes for the children was like riding a rollercoaster that never stops. And yes, twists, turns, upside down, makes you want to puke…all of it. But we got there. And the school year began!

Then news reports and articles about how Distance Learning is failing our students began to appear. And it makes my heart ache for the teachers who spent their summer break watching webinars and instructional videos so that they were familiar with the various digital formats our district selected. Teachers, who are running on fumes – because no one ever stopped working after March 13 happened. No one has had the opportunity to totally unplug, or make the incessant thoughts about how we can do better stop from keeping us awake at night. Teachers just have to keep….teaching. They create lessons for both synchronous and asynchronous learning, they stretch out of comfort zones to be fun and exciting on camera. They sacrifice time with their family – because work/home lines are so blurred right now, and it’s too easy to get tunnel vision. Especially when all you hear on the news is how Distance Learning is failing our children.

So they work harder. Districts tell principals there needs to be more accountability as to how teachers are spending their time. Did you know that if a teacher wants to give a student an F, they have to fill out a packet of paperwork – documenting “multiple and varied attempts” to contact the student and parent. And then they have to collect ALL the work the student chose to not do, and put it in a file – so that the student has the opportunity to make the work up later, and replace their F with a passing grade. If the voice in your head is saying “wait, if a kid fails, don’t they just get an F and have to make it up in summer school?” Thirty years ago, yes. Today? No way. In today’s world of litigious parents, high stakes testing, and accountability to the federal government which is linked to funding – things have changed a smidge. So, as the proverbial poop rolls downhill, teachers get squeezed more and more. Do more. Help more. Be more.

Has anyone read statistics about how many children are participating in remote learning? Consider that in a school setting, they are a captive audience and “have to be there.” And yes, they are more likely to engage when the socially acceptable thing to do is attend class when the bell rings. And, for the most part, pay attention. Maybe learn something. Maybe even participate and turn stuff in! But at home, when your existence is a picture of your face in a box, that motivation and structure isn’t there automatically.

Distance Learning has required that students want to learn. They now get to make a choice each day to login, or play video games. Imagine you’re fifteen years old, and your parents went to work for the day, what would you choose? Or imagine you’re ten years old, and your parents are out of work – and the climate at home isn’t great. Everyone is having to pitch in more, or maybe the arguing has turned to fighting, or worse. How important is it to login for class?

More and more teachers are reporting that, even when students do login for class – they block video. So all of these “fun and exciting” lessons they have prepared, and summoned the courage to do on camera from an empty classroom at school, is done to a screen of avatars instead of live humans. Anecdotal reports indicate that “turning your camera on isn’t cool.” Which makes it even harder on teachers, who are working harder than they ever have in their careers. School employees are living in a world where we are working double-time with all of the parts of the job that are impersonal, and not fun; and the part that makes this job worth doing – the student interaction, and the amusing randomness of a school day – doesn’t really exist right now.

So is it really Distance Learning that isn’t working? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just the most convenient way to measure how bad things have gotten since March 13. Perhaps it’s easier to make education the scapegoat when people have to make sacrifices and forgo holidays with extended family and friends, or listen to their children complain about missing out on “everything.” This is the United States of America, and outside these borders, we’re known for our entitlement – it’s kind of our thing. But inside the borders, instead of acknowledging an inherent entitlement that is part of the fabric of American culture, we’ll just say Distance Learning is failing our children.

#distancelearning #COVIDquarantine #education #teachers #entitledamerica

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Xbox Game Pass: New Games for December 2020 Revealed

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Xbox Game Pass is Microsoft’s subscription service for Xbox One owners. It’s designed to be like a “Netflix for games,” where you pay a simple monthly rate and get access to loads of games for download. It’s not to be confused with the Xbox Live Gold membership, which gives users a selection of free games each month.

There was a huge surge in popularity and profile for Xbox Game Pass in 2018, mainly due to Microsoft unveiling a strategy that puts brand new games on the service. Sea of Thieves was the first example of this, followed by State of Decay 2. Crackdown 3 launched on Feb. 15. Since then, the service has seen the Day 1 launch of several Xbox exclusives, including Gears 5, The Outer Worlds, and Halo: Reach on the Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

Membership to Xbox Game Pass will set you back $9.99 per month. You can now also get an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription for $1 for the first month and $14.99 a month after that. The subscription includes an Xbox Live Gold membership as well as all of the games offered on Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass for PC. Plus, with cloud support, you can play a selection of Xbox Game Pass titles on your Android phone!

New games are added each month to Xbox Game Pass. Here are the games coming in December (with descriptions courtesy of the Xbox team):

Xbox Game Pass: Games for December 2020

Control (Android & Console) – December 3

After a secretive agency in New York is invaded by an otherworldly threat, you become the Director struggling to regain control. This third-person action adventure game will challenge you to master a combination of supernatural abilities that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Doom Eternal (PC) – December 3

Now coming to Xbox Game Pass for PC! Hell’s armies have invaded Earth and now you must become the Slayer in an epic single-player campaign to conquer demons across dimensions and stop the final destruction of humanity. Experience the ultimate combination of speed and power in Doom Eternal – the next leap in push-forward, first-person combat.

Haven (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 3

Does love really conquer all? Play as two lovers who gave up everything and escaped to a lost planet to be together. Glide through a mysterious landscape, explore a fragmented world and fight against what’s trying to tear them apart in this RPG adventure about love, rebellion, and freedom.

Rage 2 (Android) – December 3

Dive headfirst into a dystopian world devoid of society, law, and order. Rage 2 brings together two studio powerhouses – Avalanche Studios, masters of open world insanity, and id Software, creators of the first-person shooter – to deliver a carnival of carnage where you can go anywhere, shoot anything, and explode everything.

Slime Rancher (Android & Console) ID@Xbox – December 3

Slime Rancher is the tale of Beatrix LeBeau, a plucky, young rancher who sets out for a life a thousand light years away from Earth on the “Far, Far Range” where she tries her hand at making a living wrangling slimes. Attempt to stake a claim, amass a fortune, and avoid the continual peril that looms from the rolling, jiggling avalanche of slimes around every corner.

Va-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (PC) ID@Xbox – December 3

Welcome to Va-11 Hall-A, the original cyberpunk bartending simulator! Take on the role of Jill Stingray, bartender at the downtown watering hole of Va-11 Hall-A (affectionately nicknamed “Valhalla”). In this story-driven game you’ll influence a myriad of decisions through the drinks you prepare, so listen carefully to your clients and mix the drink that will change their lives.

Yes, Your Grace (Android, Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 3

In this kingdom management RPG, petitioners will arrive in the throne room each turn to ask for your advice and assistance. Decide whether to help them with their problems, or to conserve resources for more important matters. Remember: supplies are limited, and not everyone has the kingdom’s best interests at heart…

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition (Console & PC) – December 4

Follow the perilous journey of The Luminary who must uncover the mystery of his fate with the aid of a charismatic cast of supporting characters. This Definitive Edition includes all the content from the acclaimed Dragon Quest XI, and adds extra scenarios, a grand orchestral version of the music, the ability to switch between 2D and 3D graphic modes, a Japanese audio option, and much more!

Call of the Sea (Android, Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 8

Dive into an otherworldly tale of mystery and love set in the 1930s, South Pacific. Play as Norah, an enigmatic woman on the trail of her missing husband’s expedition. The search takes place on a strange but beautiful island in the South Pacific, filled with secrets waiting to be unearthed. Call of the Sea is a story-led game with puzzles, where every clue leads you deeper and leaves you questioning everything.

Monster Sanctuary (Android & Console) ID@Xbox – December 8

On your quest to become the ultimate Monster Keeper, you’ll unravel the cause of a mystery that threatens the peace between humans and monsters. With over 100 monsters to encounter and dangerous lands ahead, you’ll need to build a powerful team if you want to save the Monster Sanctuary.

Starbound (PC) ID@Xbox – December 8

In Starbound, you can create your own story! In this space-sandbox adventure you may choose to save the universe from the forces that destroyed your home, uncovering greater galactic mysteries in the process, or you may wish to forego a heroic journey entirely in favor of colonizing uncharted planets. Farm, collect, craft and build – the possibilities are limitless.

Unto The End (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 9

Unto The End is a challenging combat adventure game in the style of a cinematic platformer. The story is simple: get home to your family. Master read-react combat in intense sword fights. Spot opportunities to trade and use items. An adventure told through your actions; how will you make it home?

Assetto Corsa (Android & Console) – December 10

Assetto Corsa is the ultimate racing simulator. Featuring legendary circuits such as Monza, Silverstone and Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, each track has been reproduced using Laser scan technology, offering racers the most realistic experience possible out on track. Assetto Corsa features advanced aerodynamic simulation, with each car developed using knowledge gained through collaboration with manufacturers.

Gang Beasts (Android & Console) ID@Xbox – December 10

Gang Beasts is a silly multiplayer party game with surly gelatinous characters, brutal slapstick fight sequences, and absurd hazardous environments, set in the mean streets of Beef City. Customize your character and fight enemies in the melee game mode or fight with friends against the gangs of Beef City in the gang game mode.

GreedFall (Android, Console & PC) – December 10

Engage in a core roleplaying experience with GreedFall, and forge the destiny of a new world seeping with magic, and filled with riches, lost secrets, and fantastic creatures. With diplomacy, deception, and force, become part of a living, evolving world. Influence its course and shape your story.

Superhot: Mind Control Delete (Android & Console) ID@Xbox – December 10

Time moves only when you move. The long-awaited third game in the groundbreaking Superhot franchise, Mind Control Delete gives you more insight into the signature power fantasy world of Superhot with more story, more signature gameplay, more action, more guns. Keep dancing the slow-motion ballet of destruction for so much longer than ever before.

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Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (Android, Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 10

Get the Royal Beettalion ready to take down Capital B and his Impossible Lair! Join Yooka and Laylee in an all-new 2.5D adventure! Run, jump, and roll your way through a series of challenging 2D levels and explore a puzzling 3D Overworld packed with secrets and collectibles.

Mørkredd (Android, Console & PC) ID@Xbox – Available now

The Orb is your fate. Mørkredd is a tense, physics-based co-op puzzle game for one to two players combining skill-based puzzle-solving, a challenging balance of light and shadow, and a dark world full of secrets to unlock.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (Android & Console) – December 15

Winner of more than 200 Game of the Year Awards, the Skyrim Special Edition includes the game and add-ons with all-new features like remastered art and effects, volumetric god rays, dynamic depth of field, and more. Also, bring the power of mods to consoles. New quests, environments, characters, dialogue, armor, weapons, and more – with Mods, there are no limits to what you can experience.

Among Us (PC) ID@Xbox – December 17

Play with 4-10 players online or locally on your home network via WiFi as you attempt to prepare your spaceship for departure, but beware as one or more random players among the crew are Impostors bent on killing everyone!

Beholder: Complete Edition (Android & Console) ID@Xbox – December 17

Set in a dystopian world where privacy is non-existent and the State controls every aspect of life, Beholder gives you the choice to be what the State requires, or be the empathetic landlord who turns a blind eye. Beholder Complete Edition also contains the Blissful Sleep DLC, a new scenario based on an ex-landlord, with all new tenants and stories to discover.

Code Vein (Android & Console) – December 17

In the not too distant future, a mysterious disaster has brought collapse to the world as we know it. At the center of the destruction lies a hidden society of Revenants called Vein. Team up with your friends and embark on a journey to the ends of hell to unlock your past and escape your living nightmare in Code Vein.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan (PC) – December 17

In Man of Medan, five friends set sail on a holiday diving trip. As the day unfolds, and a storm rolls in, their trip soon changes into something much more sinister. Who will live? Who will die? It’s down to you and the choices you make. Share your terrifying story with a friend online or go for safety in numbers with the offline “movie night” mode with up to five friends.

Monster Train (Console) ID@Xbox – December 17

Monster Train is a strategic roguelike deckbuilding game with a twist. Set on a train to hell, you’ll use tactical decision-making to defend multiple vertical battlegrounds. With real-time competitive multiplayer and endless replayability, Monster Train is always on time.

MotoGP 20 (Android, Console & PC) – December 17

Rev your engine on MotoGP 20! Live the full 2020 official MotoGP season and experience the return of the managerial career where you decide to join an official team or totally new one as an entire entourage supports you on your career path. Discover new graphical and technical improvements to customize your rider and bike, compete with the legends of the sport in the renewed historic mode, challenge your friends online, or take on the most challenging races with A.N.N.A, the Neural AI based on machine learning.

My Friend Pedro (Android) ID@Xbox – December 17

A violent ballet about friendship, imagination, and one man’s struggle to obliterate anyone in his path at the behest of a sentient banana. The strategic use of split aiming, slow motion, and window breach create one sensational action sequence after another in an explosive battle through the violent underworld.

Neoverse (Android & Console) ID@Xbox – December 17

Neoverse is a beautiful, fantastic game consisting of adventures with thrilling challenges. It is a strategic, action, rogue-lite, deck building game that will test the player’s skill. Start an adventure with unique heroes to save the world along various timelines.

Wilmot’s Warehouse (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 17

Wilmot’s Warehouse is a puzzle game about keeping a warehouse running in tip-top shape. Just remember where you put everything, because when the service hatch opens, you’ll need to find the things people want quickly, in order to earn the coveted Performance Stars.

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