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teacup-of-creativity · 10 months

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Reconnecting to my Inspiration

Lately something I’ve been trying to do as I delve deeper into these revisions for my novel is reconnect with the things that inspired me at first.

Listen, I started this novel seven years ago, back in 2016, so as I’m sure you can imagine there’s a lot about my original vision that I’ve forgotten over the years. Between the simple passage of time, and the continuous voice in my head telling my that my story wasn’t “professional” enough, or “real literature”, the course of the book shifted considerably. I tried to change it so much to fit these lofty ideas of what a book by me should be, that I forgot what it was that I WANTED to write.

And what I want to write is GOOD, but SILLY! Silly at least to the great thinkers of this world who sit in their ivory towers and declare that “The red curtains in that short story must have symbolized something!” (I’m sure you know the kind.) But when I remembered FINALLY or maybe, more like realized for the first time, that I wasn’t writing for them, I was writing for myself and the people who enjoy what I do, a massive weight was lifted from my shoulders and a freedom and excitement to rediscover my story began to set in. But after so long, I was a little lost. I couldn’t remember all the things which had given me my catalyzing thoughts back in high school, or worse, I couldn’t remember the thoughts!

So!

I recently started going back through all the media I could recall influenced or inspired Project Seer (that’s what we’re calling it for now), and dipping my toes back into the world and mind of 16 year old Rachel.

A brief list of said materials I have recently rewatched (or something similar) for this very purpose is as follows:

Yona of the Dawn

The Last Kingdom,

Any lecture on feudalism I can get my hands on,

Miraculous Ladybug (just the new movie for now, we’ll see if I still have the stomach for the show later I suppose),

I JUST started rewatching Kuro Mukuro, which! Let me tell you-- is not at all something I thought I would need to help me write my medieval fantasy novel. It’s a modern mecha anime! With... Aliens?! It’s a little unclear! But the point is, it wasn’t until I actually clicked on that first episode and let it play for a minute that I remembered:

This is the show with a samurai from the sengokujidai as a main character! Feudalism is baked into the essence of the show, as this samurai character lives by his codes and morals, protecting the girl he perceives to be his princess. Another thing! A blue haired girl a little clueless to the absolute danger she has found herself mixed up in, having to constantly be guarded by a boy honoring an oath! Sound familiar?? (Probably not because I haven’t really talked about that aspect of my book yet, but I promise you, it’s in there!) How about inexplicable attraction and helping someone even if you don’t have a good reason why? A strong pining slow burn? Okay, I think you get the picture.

Basically, all that to say-- There is so much to be gained by remembering where your ideas have come from, and by remembering to engage with the things that breed creativity in your soul. For me, the things that do that don’t always come from the most likely of places, clearly, as detailed above. But I’m learning all over not to judge a book by its cover. You never know where inspiration will strike, or what one random line from a book will spark a thought in your head that will fix an entire plot hole! (Thanks, Destroyer by Meg Smitherman!) And finding those things that will continuously inspire you, that lead you in the directions or vibes you want to go is so so SO important.

Don’t lose sight of who you are. Don’t lose sight of what you love. Otherwise you may end up doing a deep dive and reliving your teenage years, (watching a show with a MASSIVE cliff hanger ending but no season three!) like me.

But in all seriousness, this last almost year of my publishing journey has been so inundated with self reflection and discovery, it has been painful. But this is part of it that is actually helping me feel alive again, like myself again. And I’m really, really, REALLY, enjoying it.

It’s making writing fun again.

#blog posts by me #WUHU FOR INSPIRATION AND ACTUALLY HAVING FUN AGAIN #writing #project seer #my writing journey #gosh dang tiktok messing with how I do tags #inpsiration #akatsuki no yona #kuro mukuro #miraculous ladybug #the last kingdom #history #GUYS ITS BEEN SO NICE TO JUST GET INTO RESEARCH AGAIN #that's gonna be a diffrent post i can tell #rambling?#rambling

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shortfeedshq · 1 year

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Unleashing Pure Magic in Hyrule! Epic Adventure, Stunning Graphics, Engaging Gameplay, Nintendo Switch Exclusive

The Legend of Zelda franchise has always captivated players with its immersive gameplay, compelling storylines, and breathtaking adventures. In the latest installment, "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom," players are once again transported to the mystical realm of Hyrule, where they embark on a magical journey filled with wonder, danger, and discovery. Introduction to "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" is an action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the highly anticipated Nintendo Switch console. Released on , this game has taken the gaming community by storm, receiving rave reviews and immense popularity among both casual players and hardcore fans of the franchise. The Storyline and Gameplay At the heart of "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" lies a captivating storyline. Players assume the role of Link, the courageous hero destined to save the kingdom from an ancient evil that threatens to engulf Hyrule in darkness. As Link, players navigate a vast open world, unraveling the mysteries behind the Tears of the Kingdom, powerful artifacts that hold the key to restoring balance and harmony. The gameplay offers a seamless blend of exploration, combat, and puzzle-solving. Players can roam freely through Hyrule, encountering diverse landscapes, encountering vibrant characters, and delving into challenging dungeons. With a wide array of weapons, tools, and abilities at their disposal, players must utilize strategy and wit to overcome enemies, defeat formidable bosses, and progress through the gripping narrative. Graphics and Visuals "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" boasts stunning graphics and visuals that bring the world of Hyrule to life. From lush forests and sprawling meadows to treacherous mountains and ancient ruins, each location is meticulously crafted with attention to detail. The game's art style combines vibrant colors with a touch of cel-shading, creating a visually striking and enchanting experience. Music and Sound Design The game's music and sound design contribute to its immersive atmosphere. The score, composed by the renowned Koji Kondo, seamlessly blends familiar melodies with new compositions, invoking a sense of nostalgia while also evoking emotions that resonate with the game's events. Sound effects, from the clash of swords to the ambient sounds of nature, enhance the player's engagement and further immerse them in the world of Hyrule. Characters and Character Development "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" introduces a cast of memorable characters that players encounter throughout their journey. From familiar faces like Princess Zelda and Ganon to new allies and villains, each character is well-developed and plays a crucial role in the unfolding story. The game's writing and voice acting bring these characters to life, adding depth and emotional resonance to their interactions with the player. Exploring the Kingdom of Hyrule Hyrule, the fictional kingdom in which the game is set, is an expansive and diverse world that begs to be explored. From bustling towns and serene villages to vast fields and treacherous mountains, each region in Hyrule offers a unique experience. Players can traverse these landscapes on foot, on horseback, or even by paragliding, uncovering hidden secrets, encountering interesting NPCs, and stumbling upon unexpected surprises. Quests and Side Missions "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" is filled with an abundance of quests and side missions that enrich the gameplay experience. From epic main story quests that drive the narrative forward to smaller side missions that offer valuable rewards and insights into the game world, there is always something to do in Hyrule. These quests often require players to solve puzzles, defeat challenging enemies, or navigate treacherous terrain, ensuring that players are constantly engaged and rewarded for their efforts. Combat Mechanics and Weapons Engaging in combat is a key aspect of the game, and "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" delivers satisfying and dynamic combat mechanics. Players can wield a variety of weapons, ranging from swords and bows to magical spells and enchanted artifacts. The combat system allows for strategic approaches, encouraging players to exploit enemy weaknesses, parry attacks, and perform devastating combos. With each encounter, players are tested in skillful combat, rewarding those who master the art of swordplay. Puzzles and Dungeons Puzzles and dungeons are an integral part of the Zelda experience, and "Tears of the Kingdom" offers a wide range of brain-teasing challenges. These puzzles require players to utilize their creativity, logical thinking, and sometimes even the game's physics to overcome obstacles and progress. Whether it's manipulating switches, deciphering ancient scripts, or navigating intricate mazes, players will find themselves immersed in a world where every step brings them closer to unraveling the secrets of Hyrule. Game Controls and User Interface Nintendo has always excelled in creating intuitive and accessible controls for their games, and "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" is no exception. The controls are designed to be smooth and responsive, allowing players to easily execute actions and seamlessly switch between weapons and tools. The user interface is clean and informative, providing players with all the necessary information without overwhelming the screen, ensuring a streamlined and immersive gameplay experience. Multiplayer and Online Features While "The Legend of Zelda" series has traditionally focused on single-player adventures, "Tears of the Kingdom" introduces exciting multiplayer and online features. Players can team up with friends in cooperative multiplayer modes, embarking on quests and tackling challenges together. Additionally, the game offers online features such as leaderboards, allowing players to compete with others globally and showcase their skills. Downloadable Content and Expansions To further enhance the game's longevity, "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" provides downloadable content (DLC) and expansions. These additional content packs introduce new storylines, quests, items, and areas to explore, offering players extended hours of gameplay and fresh experiences. With the promise of future updates and expansions, the game ensures that players will continue to find new adventures in the ever-evolving world of Hyrule. Critical Reception and Player Feedback Since its release, "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" has garnered widespread critical acclaim and positive player feedback. Critics have praised its captivating story, immersive world, refined gameplay mechanics, and stunning visuals. Players have lauded the game's attention to detail, the depth of its characters, and the seamless integration of exploration, combat, and puzzle-solving. The game has been hailed as a true masterpiece that exemplifies the best of the action-adventure genre. Conclusion "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" is a true testament to the creativity and artistry of the Zelda franchise. It offers an unforgettable gaming experience that captivates players from start to finish. With its immersive world, engaging storyline, dynamic gameplay, and meticulous attention to detail, this game is a must-play for both fans of the series and newcomers alike. Whether you're a seasoned adventurer or new to the world of Hyrule, "Tears of the Kingdom" promises hours of pure magic and excitement. FAQs - Can I play "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" on platforms other than Nintendo Switch? Unfortunately, "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch console and cannot be played on other platforms. - Do I need to play the previous Zelda games to understand the story in "Tears of the Kingdom"? While "Tears of the Kingdom" is part of the Zelda series, it features a standalone story that can be enjoyed independently. Previous knowledge of the series is not required to understand and appreciate the game. - Are there any additional content or expansions planned for "Tears of the Kingdom"? Yes, Nintendo has announced plans for downloadable content and expansions for "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom." These will provide new adventures, quests, and experiences for players to enjoy. - Can I play "Tears of the Kingdom" with my friends in multiplayer mode? Yes, "Tears of the Kingdom" offers cooperative multiplayer modes, allowing you to team up with friends and embark on quests together for an enhanced gaming experience. - Is there a difficulty setting in the game? "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" offers a balanced difficulty curve, ensuring that both experienced players and newcomers can enjoy the game. However, there is no specific difficulty setting to adjust the overall challenge. With its immersive world, captivating story, and engaging gameplay mechanics, "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" has truly captured the hearts of gamers worldwide. Embark on a magical journey through the kingdom of Hyrule, and experience the pure magic and excitement that this extraordinary game has to offer. Get ready to wield your sword, solve intricate puzzles, and save the kingdom from impending darkness. The legend awaits you! Read the full article

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yamayuandadu · 4 years

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300 followers special: debunking Arahabaki

Arahabaki is a mythical figure with a relatively large popculture footprint, mostly thanks to Shin Megami Tensei, but little to no source material to go with it. For this reason, especially in english-speaking spheres, many claims rooted in pseudohistory and hoaxes, such as the image above, circulate uninterrupted. Under the cut, I will attempt to debunk their source. If stories about dogu, piss bottles and improbable journeys to Ecuador interest you, you found the right place.

The claims of Arahabaki's antiquity and in particular associating this obscure deity with dogu – specifically the shakoki dogu - all go back to Tsugaru Soto Sangunshi (I will refer to it as TSS in the rest of this article) and other associated writings, so called ”Wada family documents,” all of them written by a certain Kihachiro Wada. It's a series of forgeries created in the 1970s (with additional works produced through the rest of Wada's life – he passed away in 1999), which in addition to presenting a fictional history of the Tohoku region, centered around a fictional local kingdom, also mention Mayan prophecies, Nostradamus, Mu, and various scientific concepts, usually misunderstood by the author. To my knowledge, TSS is only covered in one english language source, which is horrid and basically unusable - The Sacred Science of Ancient Japan: Lost Chronicles of the Age of the Gods by Avery Morrow, which does present the truth - eg. that it's a forgery - but then the author gets caught up in some sort of Evola-influenced spiritual doctrine which makes him claim that perhaps it's an echo of some "spiritual truth" or something along these lines, which is obviously not a sound argument from the perspective of anyone with even just a passing interest in history. Social sciences are still sciences, not religions. TSS claims shakoki dogu represent an “outlawed” god formerly worshiped by people inhabiting Tohoku, whose name was also their endonym. It doesn't delve deeper into the history of Jomon art, and doesn't acknowledge dogu other than shakoki – considering not all dogu found in the Tohoku region (or even further north) belong to this category, it potentially makes it possible Wada was simply familiar with von Daniken’s confabulations and had no other exposure to jomon art; I have not seen this possibility in any japanese debunking articles, though. It's additionally worth noting here that while the exact purpose of dogu remains unknown up to this day, they're neither a taboo (indeed, many towns use peculiar locally excavated dogu as mascots nowadays, like Ravi from Minami Alps), nor particularly rare – estimatesof the number known today vary between 15000 (National Museum of Japanese History estimate) - 18000 (estimate from this article). The majority are of course not shakoki dogu; the difference between various estimates likely comes from different approach to counting figures only known from fragments.

Wada claimed that he merely discovered TSS, rather than wrote it – according to his account, a case of old documents fell from the ceiling while his house was being renovated in 1948. Supposedly, the discovery – so called “Kansei original” - was compiled between 1789 to 1822, and then copied between 1870 and 1910. Wada later claimed he lost the original, but based on gathered evidence it seems obvious it never existed. Various pages known to researchers, purported to come from the original, the Taisho copy, and writing Wada confirmed to be his own, are written in the same style, and with the same mistakes. Additionally, as a visit made in the house by a debunker at the request of Wada's cousin, who appears to be its owner currently, confirmed it's virtually impossible that a large number of documents could have been stored above the ceiling; it has also been called into question if the house existed before 1950. What the visit did reveal was a large number of plastic bottles containing human urine, left undistrubed since the 1990s. A relatively unsophisticated way to make paper appear older than it is requires soaking it in urine, and this rather offputting find has proven that this was Wada's preferred method of making his writing appear older than it is to onlookers, especially these lacking formal experience with antiquities.

Truth to be told, even without the grand urine discovery, TSS was not difficult to discard as a forgery. As I mentioned above, its particular weakness are bizarre references to scientific concepts and discoveries, revealing a low level of historical awareness of the author – for example, references are made to quasars, continental drift theory and Pluto – discoveries not yet made in the suggested eras; to make it more embarrassing, TSS claims it was based on foreign sources which weren't yet published at the listed dates. It also references natural disasters which never happened, and urban legends and folklore which only developed recently, like the claims about Jesus' grave being located in Aomori prefecture, which only date back to the 1930s (Wada's documents claimed it was a story already known in the Kansei period, in the 1790s...). On top of all of this, a number of purported authentic illustrations were simply traced from contemporary sources:

It's worth noting that TSS wasn't the only fraud Wada was involved in, as we can learn from his wikipedia biography he fraudulently claimed to be a former Imperial Palace escort officer before embarking on his adventure with crafting false chronicles soaked in urine. Tragically, TSS found supporters not only among the expected crowd of various wannabe occultists, frauds and naive teenagers, but also among a number of genuine historians, most notably Takehiko Furuta. It would appear that he became interested in it in hopes of finding support for his theories about Japan originally having more than one ruling family, but with time he fully embraced it, and actively advocated the bizarre visions it contained. A particularly outlandish claim of his was insisting that Meiji era educator and political activist Fukuzawa Yukichi quoted TSS in his work (the quote in mention appears to be a paraphrase from american declaration of independence). It's worth noting that while Furuta seemingly was a genuinely accomplished scholar of Shinran doctrine, supporting TSS was far from his only adventure with pseudohistory. He was also a staunch believer in the long discredited claims about links between japanese Jomon culture and the Valvidia culture of Ecuador, claiming that various references to fantastical lands lying between China and Japan or beyond Japan prove that the Japanese reached America in ancient times (you can torment yourself with one of such articles here). This theory was briefly advocated by a number of American scholars before him, but obviously has no support today. It's nothing but a new take on XVIIIth century French claims about present day British Columbia being the Fusang described in some Chinese texts. Sometimes strange lands and creatures at the edge of the map are nothing more but fantasy. Furuta's particularly shameful contribution to TSS discourse was declaring that undermining its authenticity is rooted in historical prejudice against the inhabitants of Tohoku and Hokkaido. Personally I'm under the impression that discarding an entire region's real, very complex history in favor of fanciful hoaxes is much more likely to be rooted in such prejudice. The claim Arahabaki was an Ainu kamuy, common online, appears to come from a similar place – I will not examine it here, but I find attempts to shield forgeries from criticism by attaching them to poorly documented and historically suppressed beliefs of historically persecuted groups to be even more disgusting than regular fraud of this sort. What Arahabaki actually is? This is difficult for me to tell for sure, but certainly nothing out of ordinary - not a dogu, and not the main figure of some lost fabulous country. There is a number of mundane temples enshrining Arahabaki, for example here. This article also mentions a number of mundane locations enshrining Arahabaki today; curiously, many of them are located outside Tohoku. A number of theories exist, linking Arahabaki to the usual suspects: religious beliefs of the Emishi people, who originally inhabited Tohoku, and may or may not be one and the same as ancestors of present day Ainu; snake worship; ironworking traditions; marebito beliefs; gods enshrined in freshly established fortresses... Whatever the truth is, it will inevitably turn out to be more interesting than hoaxes, as study of history generally proves.

#arahabaki #dogu #smt #japanese history #pseudohistory

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braindeacl · 3 years

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So a Zombie and a Mara Walk Into a Bar | Eilidh & Marley

SETTING: The Perfect Pint. TIMING: Before Marley went into the portal. PARTIES: @detectivedreameater & @braindeacl SUMMARY: Marley and Eilidh discuss the strangeness of the town over a stiff drink. WARNINGS: N/A

The Perfect Pint, a wonderful instance of wandering turned discovery. Eilidh found herself drawn to the place at infrequent times, a feeling of longing compelling her forward. It wasn’t the same as she remembered. It never would be again. But, confusingly, the compulsion still remained, despite the sting. On this instance, the place was sprinkled with what looked like a few frequent patrons, and a dash of new, but overall, the crowd was sparse. She looked up to the screens decorating the walls from every angle. Each displayed a different game, and none seemed to be live. Slow night. Perfect. While a pub of drunk, passionate men was fun and brought a sense of nostalgia that both filled and ate at her chest, it was a dreadful setting for storytelling. And even better, the low occupancy made her easy to spot. The lone woman at the bar. The woman’s attention turned elsewhere, the first thing Eilidh noticed were long locks of black hair. It reminded her of the sea during a storm. Then, the dark waves receded as she turned closer, revealing a face. Revealing sunglasses.

“Feasgar math!” She called over to Shane, the owner, who returned with a cheerful, “Dia duit! The usual?” With her nod, he began his work. Black pudding was pulled from the fridge and dropped into hot oil. As they cooked, he prepared a glass of whiskey. The empty barstool next to Marley became quite familiar with Eilidh, then. Her eyes briefly glanced at the edges of scars that peaked beyond the surface of the glasses. A flash of curiosity struck her eyes, but then calmed. “Marley Stryder? Pick your poison.”

Marley wasn’t sure going out for drinks was really the best idea, but she was back at work and she’d been feeling much better lately. She still didn’t understand what exactly had happened after her accident, but one day she’d just woken up feeling refreshed and fine. Well, mostly fine. Her ner normal fine, at least. She’d settled the sunglasses on her face, and thrown on her favorite leather jacket, before heading out to the bar they’d agreed to meet up at. The Perfect Pint. It was neither perfect, nor pint, but they served up a good one, and, really, that was all that mattered to Marley. She didn’t even mind getting to the bar early, taking a seat by herself and glancing around the joint to see if there was anyone there she recognized. Even in this small town, in this small bar, there wasn’t. Most of the other cops hung out at Al’s or Shannahan’s, close by bars in case they got a call. She was just getting ready to flag down a bartender to order a drink when a voice interrupted her and she looked up to meet tender, brown eyes and a smiling face. Something about them seemed...off, but Marley wasn’t about to delve into that. Not when she didn’t really care.

“You must be Macleod, then, “she said, turning to face her. She could see eyes tracing over her scars. “Whiskey works for me.” She looked over at the bartender and nodded. “Double. Neat.” Facing the other woman again, she watched curiously herself as she settled. “So, you come here often? I know that sounds like a cheesy opener, but, well--” she motioned to the bartender, working away at their drinks, “you seem pretty familiar.”

At the mention of her name, Eilidh nodded to confirm. Smile curled higher at the observation. “Only sometimes.” And it was true. She probably would be a regular if she could experience all of alcohol’s benefits. “Ol’ Shane took a shine to me ‘cause he knows if he’s mean I’ll tell everyone what he’s actually muttering about.” Shane yelled something across the bar in Irish Gaelic, causing Eilidh to chuckle. Done with her food, he placed it on a plate and slid it to her. Two glasses of whiskey were placed in front of them. Upholding the deal, she set a bundle of cash on the bar, which contained a generous tip. Probably another reason why they liked her. Securing her glass, she motioned it to Marley, then to the few behind the bar. “Sláinte.” Slightly tipped back, she took a sip, letting it swirl around in her mouth. Simply enjoying the texture and smallest hint of taste. The only things she could enjoy. Placing it back on the bar with a clink, she beheld her food. Blood pudding, with extra spices added. A lot of extra spices. Before taking a bite, she turned her attention back to Marley. “What about you?”

Marley was intrigued. She raised a brow, though it was hidden behind aviators that fit perfectly to her face, hiding the red glow behind them. “You speak Gaelic?” there weren’t many people that still did, though she supposed the language was more common here, considering the fae population. Was Macleod fae, perhaps? Marley’s thoughts went temporarily to Lydia and she felt her stomach churn. She shoved the thought down by lifting her whiskey glass and taking a hearty sip. “Not really. Not here, at least,” she said, “I got my favorites, not that I mind this one.” She observed the other woman’s food, not unaware of what black pudding was, curiouser with each passing moment. She didn’t often indulge in human foods, though she had been more lately, since she’d been living with Erin. “You been in town long?”

Eilidh nodded. “Aye, I do. Not the same as he does. But I know enough.” It was one of the few languages she was able to hold onto after… the incident. Which she refused to consciously make that connection. Instead, she took a testing bite of her food. The level of spices allowed enough of a tingling on her tongue to register as something good. It reminded her of the food she would prepare in times of old–when they actually took the time instead of eating the flesh raw. A habit which has still stuck with her. She took another bite, and before it was fully consumed, she continued. “Not too long. Lots of things are still a mystery to me.” Which was true, but she wouldn’t reveal the full extent to what she knows. The food was briefly ignored as her full attention rested on Marley. “Maybe you’ll shed a light? Rumor has it you’ve been here long enough for some interesting stories.” That spark of curiosity filled her eyes again as she playfully referenced their previous correspondence.

“Still something, right?” Marley said, raising her glass to take another sip. The alcohol burned but it felt good. Being here and in her mind felt good. She watched curiously as the other woman bit into her food. She could smell it, the spices, but she didn’t know what it was or what they were. Human food was...such a mystery to her still. The most adventurous thing she’d tried was peanut butter and pickles on a dare as a teenager. She could still remember the horrid taste decades later. “A fan favorite?” she asked, nodding at the plate, as she swirled her drink. Let out a chuckle. “I’ve been here long enough for plenty of those, yeah,” she answered, crossing her legs as she leaned back in her chair, facing Macleod fully. “What do you wanna hear about first? The case of all the missing heads or the flayed bodies? Or maybe something less exciting to start, like how Dark Score lake turned to glass. You hear about that one, yet?” Whatever story she wanted to hear, Marley was willing to share. She had an inkling Macleod had more to herself than she was letting on, but everything would come in due time. Until then, Marley wanted to enjoy the challenge, and the company, and the whiskey.

“Oh, yes. They know how I like it.” With the main components of blood and fat, it was one of the few plates Eilidh bothered ordering. Others had too much filler—carbs on carbs with maybe a touch of foliage. But being completely carnivorous, those foods were pointless, sometimes downright sickening to her. She took another bite, letting it sit on her tongue, the spices penetrating and offering a hint of flavor. She eyed the matching space on the bar in front of Marley, noting it was sparse. “Just a liquid diet for you, then?” Upon Marley’s next words, those eyes snapped back to her face, flashing with that same intrigue as before. Missing heads. Flayed bodies. Such words could surely be applied to multiple cases, based on what she knows of this place. But the lake. She remembered that. When first encountered, she thought it was just ice. It had been winter, after all. But the more she had looked, the more the details weren’t right. Ice had imperfections—a sign that indicated it was there. But none could be found. Just a solid, almost invisible barrier. With malicious intent seeping into the air. “I saw it, actually. You ever figured out what caused it?” Her line of work would surely increase the chances of that locked wisdom. The real question is if she would share even a crumb with Eilidh.

“Not much for bar food,” Marley answered, shaking her glass and making sure the bartender saw how nearly empty her glass was. He nodded and pulled out a glass for another one. “Besides, my--” she paused, feeling the word already trying to slip out as she swallowed the first half of it, “--friend is obsessed with making home cooked meals so she’s always bringing me leftovers and shit.” And neither statement was a lie, not technically. Marley didn’t like bar food, and Erin was often bringing her food even if she didn’t really eat it. She smiled, clicked her fingers against her glass, eyeing the difference between the ice inside and the smooth crystal exterior it sat in. She remembered looking at the lake and seeing the smooth surface of it, only to come back a bit later and see that it had shattered into millions of tiny pieces. Clean up was a bitch. They had to bring in outside volunteers from the forest service and even recruit town members who were eager to volunteer. Now it sat as an empty crater, with chunks of glass still reminding those who visited what had happened. “Would you believe me if I said it was magic?” More specifically, magic that had encapsulated Bloody Mary and the Sandman. Best to test the waters first.

Eilidh slipped over another bill across the bar. But her charity wouldn’t last forever—watching someone get drunk was only amusing when other matters weren’t at hand—and she made a mental note not to pay for the next. Unless Marley began to offer something juicy. “Ah. That’s sweet.” She detected the awkward pause in the statement. A secret not wanting to be revealed. Which was understandable, she was a stranger after all. Still, a part of her wanted to know, as she did with all things. But something much more intriguing presented itself. Despite their online discussion hinting to Marley’s knowledge of those things left unsaid, she hadn’t expected magic to come out of her lips. She seemed so pragmatic. And those like that were usually so tough to crack. But this town would make a believer out of anyone. Unless Marley had been connected to magic all along. “Yes.” She leaned in closer, eyes searching. A crumb finally offered, and she intended to bite off more. “What kind?” She had suspected, practically knew, such a source when first discovered, though she lacked the knowledge to decipher more. Magic kissed the world in many ways, but how certain people utilized and manipulated such energies was mostly lost to her.

“Sweet, yeah,” Marley mumbled, tapping her fingers on the side of her glass. She noted the slight look of annoyance and wondered why it might’ve been so easy to feel that way after only buying a stranger their second drink. Marley could remember all the multitude of drinks she’d bought other women she wanted to take home from the bar, but, then again, it seemed like Eilidh’s reasoning was different from those. Eilidh’s admission to magic came as a slight surprise. Usually people tried to bargain it away, to explain that it probably wasn’t real, or magic was just something else, they didn’t understand, yadda yadda. Eilidh just said yes. Marley shuffled. “Real powerful kind,” she said, “I wasn’t there when it happened, but there’s no way it wasn’t. There were, uh-- some bigger issues in the town at the time. The glass lake supposedly subdued them. But all magic comes with a price, right?” She sipped her new drink. “Or so I’ve been told.”

Made sense. Despite her lack of knowledge, except for the practices she learned in her youth, Eilidh had felt power sizzling in the air. And when the next she visited what remained, as if the lake had been scooped up by a giant spoon, and then whacked, she knew something must’ve happened. Other mysteries had stolen her attention, as it often did in such a town, but she lapped up anything she could learn now, interest grown anew. “Bigger issues?” Bigger issues. Bigger issues. She thought back to that time, many months ago. Was there anything of note? She was fairly certain that had been around the same time that entity in the mirror yelled at her. Something, something, repent for your sins, something, something. And that might’ve been the month she saw a kelpie again for the first time in years. Both intriguing, and the later additionally exciting, but neither screamed bigger issue to her. “A price. Like how it’s a crater now?” Eyes still focused on Marley, eagerly hoping for more answers. Her fingertip pressed against the rim of her drink, tracing that thin path, counter-clockwise. When the circle was complete, she secured the full glass in her hand, and took another sip.

Marley scratched at her cup, a long nail tapping against the glass. She’d wondered what the glass lake had sounded like, when tapped on. Did it make crackling noises as the ground beneath it shifted to support the weight of the new matter? Whatever had shattered it had been loud. So loud, some of the alarms in town had gone off. Windows had shattered. She only knew of a few species that could make noise like that. “Something like that,” she answered. Eilidh was growing more curious, the less and the more Marley gave her. Her answers were short but informative. She knew how to hook someone in. “I more think the crater was...simply an after effect of whatever happened there. It’s still quite a mystery. I don’t know of anyone who has the full story, start to finish. But I’ve been piecing things together myself. Who knows if I'm right. But,” she lowered her voice, as if this next part were a secret, “I think the lake was used to imprison something or someone.”

An entire lake as a prison. Creative. Though not creative enough, as evident by the resulting crater. Eilidh’s mind wondered as to who or what could’ve caused such a massive display of power. And what they did to warrant the need to place them there—if it were justified or caused by fear or both. The two thoughts congealing into an impressive figure. “Makes sense. Nothing likes to be kept in a cage.” She would know; more than most. Small wrinkles adorned her forehead as eyebrows pressed close, close like those walls had been for all those centuries. The expression lasted a moment before flattening. Wonderous twinkle in her eyes returned. “Guess whoever it was is out and about then? Wonder what they’re up to.” That air seemed angry that fateful day. An anger that wouldn’t simply go away overnight. “Or if they’re back.”

Marley wondered if Macleod might be talking about herself. But, then again, Marley hated being caged, as a child. Strapped to a bed while she screamed and cried and begged for food. They hadn’t known, it wasn’t their fault, not really. She still blamed them. She flicked at the bartop. “Suppose not,” she agreed, watching her closely. The crowd, though small, seemed to be getting rowdier. Men were shouting at each other just down the bar and Marley’s eyes drew to them like magnets. No fear yet, but chaos. And chaos inspired fear. She ran her tongue over her lips before her attention drew back to her companion. “Could be,” she answered, blinking, drawing herself back to the current conversation. “Not really sure. Maybe they died being trapped in there. Or shattered with it.” She didn’t honestly care. As long as it wasn’t fucking with the town or Erin, she just didn’t care. “But really, that’s not even the strangest--” She had started to pull up the memory of another strange occurrence in White Cres, when someone was shoved against her and her chest thumped against the bar, her drink spilling. It was the two men who had been yelling at each other earlier, and now their anger was in Marley, too. She shoved back on him. “Hey!” she growled, fingers twisting into the fabric of his shirt. “Watch it.” The man tried to yank away, grinding his teeth at her. “Or what?” he chided.

Eilidh had been so enthralled at the story slowly being weaved, she hadn’t noticed the steady increase of the crowd. It might as well have just been her, Marley, and their dwindling whiskeys. She had half a mind to preemptively order Marley another, more gifts for her continued answers. But then a man brushed against her extended elbow, jolting her back into her surroundings. Eyes snapped in his direction, a mixture of startle and anger. When their eyes met, his own widened and the patron simply took a step back, the brief touch merely accidental. It calmed her nerves. A second was taken to regain her attention. It shifted back to Marley, electrifying at the hintings of another tale. But then another man interrupted. And this one was less forgiving. As Marley’s body thwapped against the table, a growl rattled in her throat. It only got louder when she made eye contact with the aggressor. “Piss off.” She splashed the remainder of her drink onto the man’s face. As alcohol entered his eyes, he let out a shriek. His friend immediately went into action, tight grip securing her braid. He gave it a hard tug, trying to pull her off the chair. So she sent her nails, her claws, digging into his hand. Her legs kicked widely, most landing on his calves and thigh. And then one finally met the target: his groin. Jackpot!

All it took was one man grabbing one woman-- her companion for the night, none the less-- and Marley was set off. She could punch him, easily. She wanted to punch him. Her fist flew out and connected with his jaw, just as Macleod’s foot came up into another man’s crotch. Marley snorted, but the few seconds were enough for the man who she’d punched to wind his own fist back and swing for her. Sunglasses cracked and flew from her face and she grit her teeth, whipping her head to look back at him. Red eyes glared him down until he suddenly wilted, screaming under her gaze. And, for good measure, she swung her foot up into his crotch as well and pushed him over with the heel of her boot. Wiping her hands on her jacket, she leaned down to pick up her bent glasses. “Don’t touch the glasses,” she snarled at him before depositing them back on her face. Frowned, because they were crooked. Frowned even more because now the rest of the bar was rowdy, too.

Eilidh was not expecting the sound of a secondary impact. Almost as if it was planned, the man suffered a double tap in one go. A laugh blurted out of her. But when the man returned the favor, striking Marley across the face, that laughter died and she was growling again. Her body wanted to jump into action and was cocked to do so. Red eyes froze her onto the barstool—sent a chill down her spine, sent dread into her mind. Whoa. Was she a Mare? The reaction of the man—who suffered under the full weight of that crimson gaze, who crumbled into himself as if it would get him further away, who screamed because that’s all he could really do—confirmed suspicions. Despite the eruption of unease at the sight, wonder still tingled in her eyes. She tore her eyes away, blinking as the forced fear subsided into her true emotions, and was instantly greeted by the first man, having regained himself. Who eyes too were red: from the burn of alcohol and of rage. Her teeth snapped shut with a harsh click. “My turn.” Launching herself onto the man, she used the momentum to send him tumbling onto the ground. Before he could compose himself, she struck him across the cheek. As she revved up another attack, a random patron knocked her down, disrupting the motion. Before becoming engulfed by that sea of passion and fury, she hopped back up onto the barstool. Left the man to fend for himself. “This place got lively!”

Marley stood by as Macleod threw herself at the other man, who was soaked from the drink that had previously been thrown on him. She couldn’t help but smile at the sight. She was too preoccupied with watching that she didn’t notice the others approaching them, or the bartender, rushing around the side of the counter, grabbing his baseball bat, and waving it at some of the other men who were rushing over to the commotion. She almost forgot, too, that she was a police officer. She wasn’t supposed to incite violence like this, rather she was the one called to stop it. Someone else bumped into her from behind and she swerved to glare at them, too, watching them shrink away, as red eyes pierced them ever from behind the glasses. She didn’t much care anymore. The bartender grabbed at her and then Macleod next as Marley laughed at her statement. “Sure did!” she was being shoved towards the door, but she didn’t much care. “Can’t say I’m complainin’!”

Eilidh’s eyes locked onto the baseball bat and an amused breath escaped her. “So dramatic! Like this’s anything new.” The bartender paid her comment no mind, only focusing on what needed to be done. When their hands seized her arm, Eilidh snapped her teeth threateningly. Those canines that had met flesh time and time again bared themselves to naïve and apathetic eyes. Ensnared arm jerked, straining against the hold, on the edge of freeing herself. But her eyes locked onto Shane, who simply shook his head in disapproval. Fucking hell. Those blood puddings were on the line. Her arm relaxed, but a tension still riddled her body. She allowed the bartender to drag her away, back to the door where this all began. The sound of laughter brought up her mood, and she joined in her own. Mirth and hostility danced in her voice. “Too bad we can’t finish the job!” And with that they were shoved out the door.

#so a zombie and a mara walk into a bar #chatzy #;— interactions #ft. marley s.#this was fun!

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gamesception · 3 years

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After replaying the original metroid & nes zelda, and thinking more about what I like in metroidvania and metroidvania-adjacent games (zelda, dark souls, etc), ie anything with an interconnected map, an ability based lock-and-key system, and an emphasis on exploration, I think something essential to the experience is a willingness on the dev's part to include content that not every player will see on their own. Entirely optional hidden upgrades, abilities, even entire regions - the more significant the content and the more obscure its hiding place, the better.....

The original metroid had high value upgrades that were entirely optional like the screw attack and the well-hidden varia suit. Many of the original Zelda's items were entirely optional, and several were quite well hidden far away from obligatory dungeon delving. Later Zelda and Metroid games moved away from this - They still had hidden optional upgrades, missile and energy tanks for metroid, heart pieces for zelda. But the later Metroid games, while they allow for sequence breaking if you're highly familiar with the map and mechanics, have relatively easy to follow intended paths that will show you all of the game's main content and give you all of the major upgrades and abilities. Diverting from this path might let you /skip/ content, or get abilities out of order, but you'll never /discover/ new or unexpected content by doing so. Likewise, the later Zelda games require you to find each dungeon's item to finish that dungeon & access the next, and seem to include progressively less content outside of the expected progression for players who step off the path to discover.

That's not at all to say that later zelda and metroid games are bad, they're all pretty great actually. But this one thing, this sense of exploration and discovery that comes with finding content that was truly off the beaten trail, got kind of lost along the way. And, I mean, fair enough. Why spend a lot of time and money on content only to hide it away where most players won't see it? And since that sense of discovery can really only be experienced the first time around, doesn't it make more sense to put effort into experiences that will be equally enjoyable or even more enjoyable on subsequent runs to increase replayability?

Where later zelda (not counting BotW) and 2d metroid games kind of moved away from this, other games have picked up the torch. Dark Souls notably had a number of obscure secrets and legit hidden content to discover, including the entire painted world. Later Souls Games got more Linear overall but still kept this up - Bloodborne has three entirely optional hidden areas of the main game without even counting the Chalice Dungeons, while Dark Souls 3 has Archdragon Peak. Hollow Knight had the Hive, another entire region with a distinct aesthetic and unique enemies hidden behind an unmarked wall. Open World Games, at least the handful I've played, tend to have a lot of content that isn't part of their main progression path, including entire regions of their map with their own characters, items, enemies, and side quests.

This kind of thing can backfire, though. While Fallout 3 was well received on its release, it seems to be poorly remembered today, in large part because it's main quest line is pretty lackluster. There are tons of fantastic bits to that game, little vignettes & characters & cool locations just waiting to be discovered by anyone who steps away from that main path & ignores their quest markers to explore the Wasteland, but since the primary content you'll experience if you just follow your quest markers down the main story path is lackluster (to put it kindly), a lot of players won't enjoy the game enough to want to spend extra time searching out optional content.

I kind of don't know where I'm going with this, just sort of rambling. Basically I'm trying to say that if a game wants to evoke a feeling of exploration & discovery, then it needs to be willing to hide significant content where players will only experience it if they actually go exploring and discover it for themselves. Anything you tell the player to do, or require them to do, or put directly in their path, or point them to with objective markers - that stuff can be good content for other reasons, but I don't feel like I'm "discovering" something if in the moment I can feel the devs showing it to me. Like, yeah, if its in the game than the dev's put it there, the experience of discovery is false either way. Maybe it's a level of immersion / suspension of disbelief thing, where it's easier to make myself believe the game world exists outside of my experience of it through my character when I walk away from the main path and instead of a wall, invisible or otherwise, I find some thing or some place new and unexpected.

#rambling #long post #importance of optional content

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thethistlegirlwrites · 4 years

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OC Enneagram types!

@nade2308 I haven't been able to stop thinking about doing this since the Enneagram conversation came up in the Discord, so here it is! My seven main characters (sorry, Rowan, I'm not confident enough to type a tree just yet) and their Enneagram types, plus a short explanation and some quotes about their basic type and wing!

Robin - 4w3 As a basic type of a 4, Robin sees himself as fundamentally different from other people. He isn't sure how to fit into the world, since his dual fae-human nature leaves him feeling on the outside of all of it. He feels broken and incomplete, and keeps trying to create a place that he fits. The 4 tendency to imagine a world where they can belong led him to idealize the hunter world and want to join it like his father, despite his grandfather's warnings against it. The 3 side of his personality is also involved in the effort to fit in, to make himself into an acceptable version that people will like. “Fours feel that they are unlike other human beings, and consequently, that no one can understand them or love them adequately. They often see themselves as uniquely talented, possessing special, one-of-a-kind gifts, but also as uniquely disadvantaged or flawed. More than any other type, Fours are acutely aware of and focused on their personal differences and deficiencies...Healthy Fours are willing to reveal highly personal and potentially shameful things about themselves because they are determined to understand the truth of their experience—so that they can discover who they are and come to terms with their emotional history. This ability also enables Fours to endure suffering with a quiet strength. Their familiarity with their own darker nature makes it easier for them to process painful experiences that might overwhelm other types.” “Threes learn to perform in ways that will garner them praise and positive attention.” John - 6w5 John is deeply tied to his roots, following the family tradition of becoming a hunter with no question of whether or not that was what he wanted to do. To him, duty is the highest thing to seek after, and individual personal goals must always be secondary to what has to be done. the 5 side of his identity comes into play in his work; John feels a sense of pride in working from the shadows, knowing about vampires but hiding that secret from the larger world for its own protection. Like his great-grandfather, he's the sort of person who seeks out a person to be devoted to. Until his brother died, Gabe was the tethering force in John's life. After his death, John drifted away from his home, searching for a new connection, but struggling to find it. “Sixes are the most loyal to their friends and to their beliefs. They will “go down with the ship” and hang on to relationships of all kinds far longer than most other types.”Wanting to feel that there is something solid and clear-cut in their lives, they can become attached to explanations or positions that seem to explain their situation. Once they establish a trustworthy belief, they do not easily question it, nor do they want others to do so. The same is true for individuals in a Six’s life: once Sixes feel they can trust someone, they go to great lengths to maintain connections with the person who acts as a sounding board, a mentor, or a regulator for the Six’s emotional reactions and behavior.” “Investigating "unknown territory"—knowing something that others do not know, or creating something that no one has ever experienced—allows Fives to have a niche for themselves that no one else occupies.” Kira - 5w4 Knowing she would struggle to fit into normal society because of her deafness, Kira seeks to make herself important to others by making discoveries and creating new things. She often called on the 5 tendency to rely on their knowledge and curiosity in her classes, and made a name for herself as the smart girl, not just the Deaf girl. Her passion for strange and new fields of study allowed her to keep an open mind when she first learned of the existence of vampires, and also helped her delve deeply into the lore surrounding them when she became a vigilante hunter. As she's grown, Kira has become more in touch with the 4 side of herself as well, accepting her uniqueness and seeing that as a gift. “Behind Fives’ relentless pursuit of knowledge are deep insecurities about their ability to function successfully in the world. Fives “take a step back” into their minds where they feel more capable. Their belief is that from the safety of their minds they will eventually figure out how to do things—and one day rejoin the world. Fives are not interested in exploring what is already familiar and well-established; rather, their attention is drawn to the unusual, the overlooked, the secret, the occult, the bizarre, the fantastic, the “unthinkable.” ” “Fours maintain their identity by seeing themselves as fundamentally different from others.” Cody - 2w3 Cody is at heart a giver. He grew up being the friend Robin needed, and that was such a formative part of his identity that when Robin left Rowan House to become a hunter, Cody felt adrift. As the youngest child of his family, he'd relied on his friendship with Robin as an outlet for his need to be useful and needed, since his siblings didn't seem to want the nurturing. Since then, he's channeled that into his work, where he enjoys helping people find the information or books or other help that they need at the library. While he's very selfless, Cody is also ambitious, deeply driven to create stories that he can share with the world. His drive to become a published, successful author is the main evidence of his 3 wing. "Being generous and going out of their way for others makes Twos feel that theirs is the richest, most meaningful way to live. The love and concern they feel—and the genuine good they do—warms their hearts and makes them feel worthwhile. Twos are most interested in what they feel to be the “really, really good” things in life—love, closeness, sharing, family, and friendship. Healthy Twos are the embodiment of “the good parent”: someone who sees [people] as they are, understands them with immense compassion, helps and encourages with infinite patience, and is always willing to lend a hand—while knowing precisely how and when to let go." "Threes are often successful and well liked because, of all the types, they most believe in themselves and in developing their talents and capacities. Threes want to make sure their lives are a success, however that is defined by their family, their culture, and their social sphere. No matter how success is defined, Threes will try to become somebody noteworthy in their family and their community." Maira - 9w8 Maira's basic 9 type has allowed her to navigate her world by finding the paths of lesser resistance. She's wise enough to know when to back down and seek another route to her goal, and this has gotten her far in her world. People respect her shrewd 'chess match' movements, but also like her as a person since she has managed to maintain a reputation of being even-handed, understanding, and willing to seek negotiated solutions. But making the mistake of thinking Maira is a pushover is a dangerous one. Her 8 side is strongest when she encounters an injustice or cruelty. Maira has her breaking point, and woe to the person who pushes her over it. "Peacemakers are the skilled mediators and counsellors in a group of friends or coworkers. They work hard behind the scenes in order to keep the group harmony steady and flowing. As children, they knew how to get along with each classmate, making them a great addition to any group project. They can easily see the many different sides to an issue and tend not to jump to conclusions quickly, if at all. Complacent and humble, Peacemakers are stable and gentle, willing to go the extra mile to avoid rocking the boat. Soft-spoken yet firm in their personal stances, they make an effort to neutralize tension and restore group harmony." "Eights have enormous willpower and vitality, and they feel most alive when they are exercising these capacities in the world. They use their abundant energy to effect changes in their environment—to “leave their mark" on it—but also to keep the environment, and especially other people, from hurting them and those they care about. At an early age, Eights understand that this requires strength, will, persistence, and endurance—qualities that they develop in themselves and which they look for in others." Emma - 5w6 Emma's 5 tendency to acquire esoteric knowledge is one of the reasons she's risen so rapidly in vampire society since her turning. She's learned a great deal about herself and her fellow vampires, and she uses that knowledge to her advantage. She's well known for being not only on the cutting edge of knowing what's happening in the city, but for being able to analyze that information and interpret what it will mean for the vampire community and the wider city population. Her 6 side is evident in her formation of a coven that accepts vampires who were not turned by its own members, giving outcasts or vampires who broke free from their sires like her a place of safety. "Fives think, “I am going to find something that I can do really well, and then I will be able to meet the challenges of life.” They therefore develop an intense focus on whatever they can master and feel secure about. Depending on their intelligence and the resources available to them, they focus intensely on mastering something that has captured their interest. Much of their time gets spent "collecting" and developing ideas and skills they believe will make them feel confident and prepared. They want to retain everything that they have learned and “carry it around in their heads.” " "Sixes rely on structures, allies, beliefs, and supports outside themselves for guidance to survive. If suitable structures do not exist, they will help create and maintain them." Arion - 7w8 Arion is perhaps the poster child of the dangerous side of the 7 type. A hedonistic pleasure seeker, he's driven by filling his life with whatever he enjoys. He has acquired a wide range of talents and interests. But his vampire bloodthirst is his most intense drive. Unlike some vampires who control and manage their impulses, Arion embraces them. He revels in the pleasure of drinking real blood, and sees nothing wrong with seeking it out. His 8 side makes him truly dangerous, because in addition to his craving for a life of comfort and ease, he has a powerful drive to do whatever it takes to attain that goal. While he is fully capable of luxuriating in his pleasures, he is also willing to temporarily put them aside in pursuit of one he believes will be even greater." "Sevens are enthusiastic about almost everything that catches their attention. They approach life with curiosity, optimism, and a sense of adventure, like “kids in a candy store” who look at the world in wide-eyed, rapt anticipation of all the good things they are about to experience. They are bold and vivacious, pursuing what they want in life with a cheerful determination. Sevens are compelled to stay on the go, moving from one experience to the next, searching for more stimulation." "Eights do not want to be controlled or to allow others to have power over them. Much of their behavior is involved with making sure that they retain and increase whatever power they have for as long as possible. They often refuse to “give in” to social convention, and they can defy fear, shame, and concern about the consequences of their actions. Although they are usually aware of what people think of them, they do not let the opinions of others sway them. They go about their business with a steely determination that can be awe inspiring, even intimidating to others."

Taglist: @nade2308 @cmvorra @bands-space-and-monsters-oh-my @catwingsathena @asloudasalone @anguishmacgyver @flowing-river24 @myhusbandsasemni @floh673 @teddythecat1234 @bkworm4life4 @viawrites-andacts @amarilloskies

If you want to be added to or removed from my taglist for Magic & Silver stuff, just let me know! (Type description references taken from https://www.enneagraminstitute.com and https://www.truity.com/enneagram/9-types-enneagram)

#magic & silver #my ocs #robin #angus robinson #john stoker #kira burke #maira lawson #cody dayton #emma cole #arion #enneagram

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thespaceace124 · 3 years

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Tv shows I watched this year, my favorite character from each, and why I like each character.

Since my past few posts about Fandom/TV shows have been kinda negative/ criticism, to end off the year, I wanted to make a few posts about things that I like in media. So today we’ll be taking a look at all the shows I watched/finished this year and my favorite characters from each.

Space Force: Captain Angela Ali. Its been a hot minute since I watched Space force, but iirc she’s just… done like 99% of the time with all of her superiors, but in the ten episodes we get, we see some fun little character moments from her. Like in the war games episode where she has to grapple with being an amazing book student, but has a hard time applying some of the stuff she learned at the military academy in a “combat” situation and has to sort of learn and take the lead from one of her “underlings” who is better in that sort of situation. Also, the bonding moments she has with Chan, like when they’re on the road trip, and when she asks him for help learning some science stuff so she can be more useful on missions and stuff. (again, its been a while since I’ve watched this one so my memory of it is a little foggy)

Stargate SG-1: Colonel Jack O’Neill. I like the tope he falls into of the very surface level sort of gruff military man, doesn’t like talking about his feelings, makes smart ass remarks, asks people who talk to much to get to the point, he’s a very fun character, and adds a lot of fun lightheartedness to the show and is generally enjoyable to have on screen. Also tends to get the most character development, at least regarding his past and sort of why the way that he is. (I would say Teal’c gets the second most), also the reason I got into stargate, as my dad showed me a compilation of him being a smart ass and I was like “oh ho ho, I gotta see more of this guy”

Doctor Who (specifically seasons 11 and 12): The Doctor. I like this version of the Doctor, I like that she a little more lighthearted chaotic as opposed to the previous Doctor, who I would describe as dark chaotic, (at least in s11) and just very fun to be around and watch on screen. Also, I think that the rest of the fam is a little bit underdeveloped? Like, we got a lot of fun stuff for Ryan and Graham in the premier with them being a part of a family unit and then at the end of the season we got a nice little scene of them bonding and Ryan calling him grandad and then in s12 there’s like none of that??? And with Yaz we get that she’s kinda got the usual female companion backstory (not a big fan of her job, not happy living with her family, wants *More* out of life) and then we learn that she got bullied as a kid, and at one point she tried to run away, but a kindhearted cop and her sister??? Managed to keep her in Sheffield. So, I feel a little bit like the doctor is my favorite as a default just because we already know the doctors story, so we’ve just pasted a new personality onto a familiar character.

Deep Space Nine (started 2019): Major Kira Nerys. Straight up the reason this character is my favorite is because my dad said I remind him of her and that makes me feel nice. Also, Nana Visitor is very pretty. Also I like that she takes 0 shit from anyone, including Sisko, but we also get to see her learn and grow from “I will always voice my disagreement no matter what” to “There is a time and a place to object” and also a little bit of learning that sometimes you have to work with people who’ve hurt you and sometimes that sucks. Anyway, she’s a grade A badass and I love her.

Voyager (started 2019): Captain Kathryn Janeway. Like my reasons for Kira, I think Janeway is a badass, and that Kate Mulgrew is very pretty. But also, I think Janeway is a badass in a different way than Kira is, simply because their characters are in very different situations. But I think Janeway is portrayed to be handling things extremely well, and doing what needs be done, obviously that wasn’t super looked at as they did want to keep the tone of voyager relatively light, but anyway, I like Janeway because she’s someone to look up to, to want to incorporate traits of into your own behavior.

Picard: Rafaella “Raffi” Musiker. I like Raffi because she is one of the most consistent characters in Picard. See imo Picard suffers from having too much on its plate, and also it drops/ abandons too many characters. With a show that has only 10 episodes, especially in a first season, you can’t do that. So, with Raffi being in the majority of the episodes, with consistent characterization that makes sense, and working as someone who can actually keep Picard in check? That’s the best character in the show. Also, I think of actors not seen in Star Trek before, she’s one of the better ones and that makes her better.

Lower Decks: Ensign Beckett Mariner. I love a chaotic smartass. Also, for as much as I love LD being a relatively slice of life comedy, I love that Mariner got a ton of characterization in the last few episodes, especially exploring her relationship with her mom, and people who knew her at the academy. She’s super fun, I love how she’s almost always dunking on Boimler, but also really cares for him and doesn’t want to see him hurt. Again, she’s just super fun to see on screen, I love that she doesn’t really like authority figures, and is content to figure herself out while being a relatively low-ranking officer. I like Mariner because she is both sure of herself, but not totally sure what she wants to do with her career, which is something that Star Trek has never explored before, and I think its super interesting.

Discovery: Commander Michael Burnham. I think a trend with a lot of the characters on this list is that I personally find them cool and/or pretty, and once again that also applies to Michael here, but also, I like her because Michael as a concept is fascinating. Like the idea of being a child who goes through a trauma and then is immediately whisked away to a place where she can’t actually process it? And then as a result grows up emotionally constipated and only in her 30s, is sort of finally able to shed that and actually learn how to be healthy with her emotions? Absolutely fascinating, I love that. I also love that we can kind of see that her upbringing and the suppression of emotions as a child still effects the choices that she’s made to this day. Its super cool, and I think one of the best parts of discovery.

Ratched: Nurse Mildred Ratched. I don’t have anything really important to say here, I just tend to like the main characters of tv shows because by default they get the most development/ back story or whatever, and honestly this is one of those shows that I enjoyed enough to watch all ten episodes, and then never picked it up again, so. Ehhh

Dexter: Dexter Morgan. I like Dexter Morgan because he’s a man who has always been told he doesn’t have emotions, but as the show goes on you can totally see that he does have emotions, he just doesn’t know how to handle them, and that they don’t present themselves in the same way that “normal” people’s do. Like, I fully believe that Dexter did actually love Rita, Harry jr., Deb, and Hannah. But I also believe he didn’t fully know how to cope with those emotions, because instead of getting his son help Harry Morgan decided to turn his son into a killing machine, which was a Choice.

Hannibal: Will Graham. I liked watching him kinda fall into Hannibal’s co-dependency trap. Character regression baybee. But like, that’s what happens, I’m pretty sure at one point they both admit that they aren’t healthy for each other, but they also cant live w/o each other. Which is not a dynamic I personally had seen delved into in media before I watched this show. I just think he’s neat.

ATLA: Toph Beifong. I like Toph because I think she provides a nice foil to Aang, whilst also not going too far into the opposite direction. She’s decisive, she knows for the most part what she wants from this adventure, and mostly how to go about getting it, while also discovering a new family along the way. I also just like the way that she can and will throw a boulder at you if she thinks you deserve it.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Sabrina Spellman. Again, sort of falling into the “I tend to like the main character by default folder” It’s also been a hot minute since I watched this show, so I’m just gonna say that I like Sabrina because she is always the one getting her own self into trouble by being Different. And while I’m not saying that it is always good to conform and do what is expected of you, all of the issues in the show are caused by Sabrina (for the most part). Season one is all about shit falling apart if she doesn’t sign the book, season two is her shaking things up at the witch academy and also not wanting to be the princess of hell (understandable, but again, still her fault) and the whole plot of season 3 is the fallout of her imprisoning the devil and then also being too cocky with the guy made of clay. She’s far too cocky, and I think that’s super funny in regards to how it gets her into situations she’s not really prepared for.

The Coroner (BBC): Beth Kennedy. I watched this show with my stepmom, and in this show, Beth tends to be the one who lightens the mood a lot, so she’s my favorite character b/c of that.

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bakechochin · 5 years

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The Book Ramblings of January 2019

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related this year. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

Wise Blood - Flannery O’Connor I haven’t read much American literature, but far be it from me to state that the sole reason for this is my position as a staunch Englishman. In truth, I genuinely just don’t have much of an interest for the great American texts; the enforced reading of such literature during GCSEs and A-Level taught me that even the American texts with the best prose were not on the most interesting of subject matters, concerned with social progress or supposedly deserving of merit because of relevant historical context, as opposed to actually just being, well, enjoyable. Yes, I am obviously over-simplifying to a ludicrous extent, but these were the thoughts that I had way back in the halcyon days of school, and subsequently these are the thoughts that I’ve carried with me since, simply because I haven’t been arsed to actively try to challenge them. However, my infatuation with the grotesque was bound to bring me to the realms of American literature at some point, and so asking my American friend to procure me a copy of this book with a decent cover, I started on this Southern Gothic classic. I love the idea of transposing the gothic genre to a setting different than one would conjure up from the word ‘gothic’, and the fictional deep South town of Taulkinham does a bloody good job at capturing what I want; there’s madness and isolation and a sense of oddity in the air, and the town is populated by a gallery of fantastic and memorable grotesques. The fantastic and evocative prose, almost comical at points, belies how fucking odd the story’s events are, and breathes life into this setting in a similar way to Hammett’s Red Harvest; this is perhaps one of my favourite techniques in literature, simply because I’ve never thought of envisioning America in this fantastical way. The story is rather fragmented, with many of its major scenes basically being some of O’Connor’s short stories stitched together (and the Frankensteined nature of the story does result in a few chapters having noticeably different writing styles to the rest, or some characters’ decisions that would develop into these slotted-in short stories seeming odd and poorly explained). With this awareness, I remain unconvinced with critics’ dogmatic statements along the lines of ‘O’Connor evokes an individual voice/style, unburdened by the rules or conventions of story writing’; if she had that in mind, as a deliberate means of creating a fragmentary narrative in the name of the genre or in reflection of the characters or what have you, she came up with that shit after she started writing. It is a view that I could subscribe to, on account of the fact that this is not a stereotypical narrative. Characters don’t do much or evolve much, with the decisions made by the characters seemingly motivated more by manic episodes than actual rational thought; Hazel, for instance, is depicted as basically coming up with the teachings and philosophies of his Church without Christ as he goes along, repeating his new discoveries to himself and to anyone who will listen as soon as he formulates them, and it is this improvisational drifting (motivated by his own warped thinking) that defines his story’s progression. What separates gothic stories set in recognisably recent times to gothic stories set in the distant histories of castles and deep dark woods, is the changed understanding of madness, and I’ve talked about this a lot in my rambles on Le Fanu but I’ll delve into this book’s treatment of it. In the words of Bakhtin, ‘in Romantic grotesque, … madness acquires a somber, tragic aspect of individual isolation’, but before the advancement of scientific knowledge as to what actually constituted ‘madness’, it often took the form of histrionics and melodrama. This is all fine and dandy when you’re writing a story about tormented murderers hearing hearts beating under the floorboards, or masked men with skeletal faces scuttling around opera houses, but when you’ve got to transpose this madness to a recent-ish society, with said madness being expressed or brought out via recognisable themes such as religion, you’ve got to tone it down a bit. As such, Hazel and Enoch are manic, not mad, and this is excellently conveyed through their individual speech styles and the ways that other characters interact or interpret the two; my favourite example of this is Enoch running down his day’s activities to himself as a strict and sacrosanct ritual of undeniable importance, swiftly followed by the reveal of the actions’ trivial nature (and his co-workers negative opinions of him as a result). WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YES

The Crock of Gold - James Stephens Trying to ascertain the seriousness of this text boggles my brain. Let it first be said that I rather like this book, despite the shoddy John Murray publication that I have it in; I was prompted to purchase it on account of its place in the great ‘Irish comic tradition’, basically expecting something along the lines of The Unfortunate Fursey, but I instead was greeted with a much more thoughtful and interesting read that I advise everyone to pick up at some point, with the caveat that you have to be in a very specific mindset to read it. It’s a funny story, but it is quietly funny; the humour comes from little quirks in the writing, in the speech and actions of its characters, in the ultimate charm of the story. The dialogue is deliberately circumlocutive and often rather meaningless, pondering incessantly on philosophical matters big and small, and ofttimes the narrative itself reflects these rambling trains of thought, most notably a long aimless pilgrimage wherein the Philosopher stumbles across snippets of other peoples’ lives, experiencing quibbles and learning folk wisdom and ruminating on the head and heart. The book’s world is charming, all made up of storybook character archetypes and Irish folklore (described matter-of-factly and easily accepted as truth); ofttimes, the information that we are given is ultimately unimportant and has no bearing on the overall story, and this is a statement that can, truthfully, be applied to much of the text, but it is all the same delicately written and rather pleasant. The book does perhaps toe the line on this point with its rambling philosophical paragraphs from the Gods, with its grand allegories and metaphysical nonsense getting a tad wanky and mind-numbing, but it’s not the most egregious thing in the world. In any case, the philosophising of the Philosopher is entertaining enough to make up for the rather more dense philosophising of the Gods, being much more like the aforementioned circumlocution, going off on unrelating tangents and eventually bringing the rambling back around to the initial point that catalysed said rambling. I bring this up not only as a point of comparison, but because it ties in nicely with the commonly-utilised storytelling method of basically going off on a tangent, following one person off on their quest before jumping back to where the narrative left off to see how things are doing then. This can perhaps be attributed to this book’s lack of urgency or real danger, and thus lack of a need for hastiness and rapid jumping from one person’s story to another. This extends even to the final resolution of the humans’ storyline, which basically amounts to one sentence saying that what they set out to do was done and dusted; there isn’t even a scene to show everyone happy again, because it is simply implied that things will go back to the jolly equilibrium. Hell, when the book incorporates wistful or thoughtful or even flat-out sad tales, no resolution is offered for them. The story just goes on, and we are presumably meant to just assume that all will end up alright in the end, or at the very least, all will just end, and then it’s not worth worrying about any more. Reading what I thought would just be another fucking The Unfortunate Fursey type of fantasy book has really evoked some unexpected feelings in me. So that’s nice. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: YES, IF YOU’RE IN THE RIGHT MOOD

Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift I’ll level, I went into this book expecting a low-brow adventure story about little dudes and fucking massive units. It is, in fact, a tad more complex than this. This book is a lot of things; it can be read as a storybook adventure novel, but it is also a satirical piece, both of Swift’s society in general and of the travel writings form, and it is this satire that I am not too fond of. But we’ll get to that. The main technique utilised in this novel (yeah I’m just going to call it a novel for simplicity's sake) is optical conceit, and the idea of viewing familiar things from different perspectives or in different ways, presenting them in a new light as ridiculous or laughable and perhaps to make us reevaluate the workings of society so farcically presented. This technique is noticeable mainly in the first and second travels, coincidentally the two travels that are most widely known, and this optical conceit is a concept that I like a lot more in theory than in practise. The first travel takes us to Lilliput, the island of the small blokes, and here the small size of the people links in with their small-mindedness and melodramatic quibbling over minor matters, but in the second travel to Brobdingnag, land of the big dudes, the size of the folk is seemingly unrelated from the satire. With the possible exception of the pompous Prince, none of the natives have any sort of comical largesse or egotism that might have related to the satire. And then when I had this in my mind, I began scrabbling around to try and find some other snippets of how the native people tie in with the satire, to little to no avail. The Lilliputians put great faith in long and formal written legislations and diatribes (related in full in Gulliver’s account), suggestive of shrewd ink-nosed clerks hiding behind their papers, and much of the Brobdingnagian report is one long rambling philosophical back-and-forth between Gulliver and the Prince, suggesting these large people have large mouths and loud opinions, but the satire, in my opinion, is a) tenuous and b) not what I’d consider engaging reading. And that’s not even considering the specific basis of the satire: contemporary politics! This book is striking an interesting balance between being entertaining in its own right, and ostensibly being entertaining because of its significance as satire, that every character or event in the story is comically reflecting some real-life event in English politics. To this, I have to compare it to Calvino’s story Invisible Cities, and it’s varying depictions of Venice through different disguises; it doesn’t matter how you tart up your source material, or how colourful your new layer of paint is, because if I’m not interested in the original source material then I probably won’t give too much of a toss about how it is newly presented. And contemporary English politics really could not appeal to me less, even if Swift does dress them up as Lilliputian acrobatic displays or thinly veiled warring kingdom allegories. That’s not to say that there is nothing funny to be found in this text; the details in the stories that are not intended to serve any satirical purpose, and instead merely to emphasise the differences between worlds, are always great fun. My favourites are the Lilliputian’s alien descriptions of the gigantic contents of Gulliver’s pockets, and two great instances of humungous monstrosities in Brobdingnag, namely the huge lice on the giant beggars and the scene of a Brobdingnagian mother breastfeeding; the sheer revulsion that Gulliver has to this spectacle is fucking hysterical. The travel to Laputa has got a good grasp on linking the fun content with the satirical aspect (not only is the flying island a great pisstake of science-minded learned folk, but is also like something out of a fucking Lem story), but the overall story is generally rather boring and without much in the way of obstacle or threat. The Land of the Houyhnhnms doesn’t really have the optical conceit, being more of an abstract switcharoo of horses and people, with not much relationship between the two races and a lot of obvious satire about man’s bestial nature. There are occasions of overt physical comedy, again tied in with these changes in size; Gulliver is in one story dousing great fires with his almighty piss stream, and in another being dressed up like a doll or dunked in a bowl of cream by a mendacious dwarf (or rather, a dwarf by Brobdingnagian standards). I am fully in accord with the former sort of comedy, not only because such imagery of dousing fires with a slash puts me in mind of Gargantua and Pantagruel, but because it reflects this book’s fun indulgence in crude toilet humour. Crude toilet humour is fun to begin with, but Swift uses scatalogical humour to demean the noble form of travel writings, taking a moment from seriously discussing the learned folk and their cultures and customs to describe his shitting habits. The latter sort of comedy, however, that serves to emasculate Gulliver by having him toyed with by giant folk or entrapped by tiny folk, only highlights to me the lack of character that Gulliver has, beyond being our narrator. I’m sure that critics will argue for his supposed egotism or pomposity or whatnot, but such details in the text are thin on the ground, and if Gulliver is not characterised as being a dick, why should the reader find it entertaining or cathartic when he gets his shit handed to him? These problems perhaps originate with Swift’s worries of the character of Gulliver being a reflection of himself; he is willing to put the character through light slapstick shenanigans, but he hasn’t got the balls to go too far lest it tarnish his own reputation. Apparently in one early publication of this text, Gulliver partakes in the custom of eating shit with the ape people, but oh no no, Swift couldn’t possibly have something that funny in the story in case anyone thought that he himself might truly be a coprophagous ninny! There is a strange bequeathment of snooty scholarly worth unto this book, considering that it does have talking horses and ape men who shit everywhere, as illustrated by the study done around this book (handily referenced in the editor’s annotations). Let me briefly give some examples. This book uses a lot of nonsense ‘little language’ for its place names and whatnot, and as you can tell by the fact that I’ve taken every opportunity to use the word ‘Brobdingnagian’ in this ramble, I’m rather fond of it all. However, amidst all the daft place names (all bizarre anagrams of existing places), the editor makes sure to highlight some as being ‘obvious, and therefore uncharacteristic’, as though there is a scholarly level of obfuscation or stupidity to adhere to in order to be respectable. This sense of superiority continues to the demeaning of one particularly transparent and obvious satirical paragraph, which is described as being ‘artistically weaker’ than the rest of the text; not that I’m defending the aforementioned insulted paragraph, because it isn’t that good, but the implication that the text deserves artistic merit because of the obfuscation of its satire rubs me up the wrong way a bit. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: PROBABLY NOT

The Nightwatches of Bonaventura - Bonaventura The new introduction to this text, written by the uppity translator Gerald Gillespie, is rather dogmatic in its excessive insistences of all of the things that this text is, or takes inspiration from. As much as I like to portray myself as a learned man and top-quality dude, I’m not so invested in contextualising this book’s composition that I’m willing to engross myself in Napoleonic war history or the works of Kant. What I am interested in, however, is the Romantic grotesque, for whilst Bakhtin’s infatuation with Rabelais’ grotesque completes eclipses any appreciation he might have of any writer who deviates from Rabelais, Bakhtin manages to spare a brief word of praise for this text amidst all the wanking over Rabelais, so I was intrigued enough to get myself a copy. This a book densely populated with great grotesque imagery and content, and as such it is a book that probably warrants re-reading with a certain subject in mind so as to allow for further unpacking, but within the framework of the grotesque, Bakhtin was right to say that this book basically epitomises the Romantic grotesque, because it’s all here in amazing detail. The story is a rambling introspective on dark topics, either prompted by the morbid and corrupt sights of the world around our narrator or plucked from the memories of our narrator’s own dark past. Said narrator, Kruezgang, brilliantly speaks on such subjects with amazing and colourful prose, with literary allusions and warped rumination galore. The other characters in the watches seem more like marionettes or shadow puppets, necessary to tell separate stories or fill a hole where there should be an aspect of Kruezgang’s past, but their purpose as such is fascinating enough and so excellently done that it doesn’t warrant criticism. The world is grim and grotesque, but depicted out as a joke via Kruezgang’s own view of it, described with poetical allegories and bitterly laughing at awful events by portraying them as black comedy farces. This book’s infatuation and idolisation of the mad and the strange and the grim is something fantastic, it really is. Now, having prefaced this ramble with such positivity, I can delve into a truth that looms over this text like a storm cloud; it is so incredibly fucking dense that I could not imagine rereading this book for any reason other than literary analysis. There is so much content, rich bloody content, in this book that it is easy to equate the feeling of numbness in one’s mind with an overload of such fantastic stuff, from the prose to the ideas to the fascinating storytelling, but this process of thought precludes the very important contributing factor to said mind-numbness, which is that the book seemingly just rambles about nothing at all! Am I to assume that such rich prose in the name of maddening circumlocutive (is that a word?) nothingness actually does have a purpose, and my mind just slides over it because it can’t comprehend the information, or perhaps just can’t contain so much information? Am I an uncomprehending fool for glossing over chunks of text, or am I just inadequately prepared to cram so much prose into my bonce at any one time? Such thoughts bounced around in my head as I was reading, and the only conclusion that I could come to was that I would be hard-pressed to recommend this book to anyone, for what if they encountered the same problems, and asked me to elucidate on such matters, when I have no answers to give them? Wouldn’t I look a fool then! But I digress. The introduction snootily says that to break down the narrative’s events chronologically would only ‘contravene the spirit… of the work’, which I believe insofar as a fragmented narrative obviously reflects the fragmented mind of the narrator (real in-depth analysis going on here), but that doesn’t mean that I won’t say that the narrative isn’t all over the shop, generally rather confusing, and interspersed with fragments of other stories of seeming tangential relation to Kruezgang’s storyline, all described with Bonaventura's same grandiose verbosity but often nowhere near as interesting as Kruezgang. Sure, I could have read into the exact (and no doubt important) purpose(s) of these segments, but a) just reading this book and revelling in its dark prose is an enriching enough experience without having to learn all the context clues that contributed to such nonsense being formulated, and b) most of the research writing about this book by Gillespie is just trying to figure out who Bonaventura is, a mystery to which I honestly could not give any semblance of a fuck about. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: NO, UNLESS YOU WANT TO READ IT FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES

Shit I read this month that I couldn’t be arsed to ramble about: Shakespeare and Co. by Stanley Wells (absolutely amazing, incredibly informative, would absolutely recommend if it’s your thing), and City of Sin by Catharine Arnold (generally fun and informative, Arnold’s voice can get annoying at times, overall would recommend just for the chapters about sex in the medieval/early modern period and the chapter on Victorian pornography).

#book reviews #book ramblings #book rambles #wise blood #flannery o'connor #the crock of gold #james stephens #gulliver's travels #jonathan swift #the nightwatches of bonaventura #bonaventura #golly didnt i look a fool when i mistook bonaventure the italian philosopher with bonaventura the german writer in one of me seminars #what an absolute goof!#that one's gonna sting for a while!#honestly all that bonaventura has done for me is give me a shit load of german authors and playwrights that i now need to read up on #if anyone's got any english translations of tieck's comedies then please gimme a shout #sorry all these tags are about bonaventura #it's the one i finished most recently so it's on my mind

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belovedblossoms-m · 1 year

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More tags to add on to

#( crossover. )┊new navigations to follow great minds.#( main. )┊something familiar to delve into new discoveries.#( thread. )┊sharing a brand new story.#( character study. )┊observations to improve & master the skills.#( roleplay. )┊fantasies transform.#( au. )┊traverse amongst new dimensions.

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level99games · 5 years

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Player Archetypes - Deques, Shur, Cardine, and Morrey

Many of us are familiar with the classic Johnny/Timmy/Spike archetypes shared by Mark Rosewater in his now-famous article for Wizards of the Coast. While these archetypes work great for Magic, every company is a bit different. One of the exciting truths about being game designers is that we get to choose who we serve and who we build our games to attract.

Most of Level 99 Games’ fans fall into one of these archetypes, or are split across two of them. Aside from the three main archetypes, there is one additional meta-archetype, for a total of four. To describe them, I’ve used familiar characters from Millennium Blades, who were designed with these motivations in mind. Unlike the Rosewater archetypes, our archetypes are less about what players engage with in the games, and instead focus on why they engage with the games in the first place. And of course, we have a bit more ground to cover, since we’re designing entire game experiences and not just cards and expansions.

Our three major archetypes are based around our three-part philosophy of Design, Development, and Discovery. The fourth archetype is based on Community, which ties all the others together.

All of our archetypes have a few things in common. They’re all creative gamers who don’t want to just have a game, but to really own it and make it a part of their lifestyles. A game isn’t complete for them until they engage with it ‘off the table’. We’ve tailored our games specifically to be what they’re looking for–games with replayability, variety, and deep lore.

Take a look, and see where you fall on the spectrum!

Deques - Designer

Deques plays a game to make something. He plays to win, but winning isn’t the end goal. Instead, building a deck, piloting a character, or executing a combo that expresses his personality is his main goal.

Deques channels his creativity to extend a game. Being able to build a scenario or a fighter to show friends is Deques’s favorite aspect of a game. He’s most at home in games where he can control the entire experience, and invite his friends to play in his “custom setup” or “homebrew mode.” These situations, where he can play the host and guide his friends through a ‘design’ of his own making stimulate his creativity and invite him to play the designer with a custom toolset. He may even create custom expansions or extra content for his favorite games and share them on the web for others to download and try for themselves.

To appeal to Deques, a game needs to have a wide variety of viable, playable options or setups. There need to be multiple ways to win, or at least, the possibility to go in heavily on some strategies and neglect others. Asymmetric sides, and especially modular parts to a game’s setup and rules, appeal to Deques’s aesthetics.

Within our line, Deques’s favorite games would be Millennium Blades and Argent. He’s the kind of player who might design his own BattleCON fighter or Argent scenario. He loves the extra modes in BattleCON (though not as much the core gameplay), and enjoys setting up the timeline in Temporal Odyssey, or building a cube in Pixel Tactics.

Shur - Developer

As a competitive player, Shur plays games to win, but winning isn’t her ultimate goal. For Shur, winning is the proof that she’s achieved her actual goal: Mastery. The developer player wants to dig into the systems and understand them completely in order to experience high-level competition. This competition isn’t a struggle for supremacy–it’s a testing of theory, understanding, and tactical skills.

Shur considers the game’s balance as a code to unravel, and she leverages her creativity to crack that code. She is the kind of player who prints her own reference cards for game content, writes long strategy articles, or analyzes matchups and card relationships. She may even create a database or spreadsheet to analyze cards statistically and study optimal plays. She isn’t afraid of sharing these things with others who seek mastery–she welcomes the challenge and hopes that more people will embrace the search.

To appeal to Shur, a game needs strong balance and a variety of viable play strategies. If mastery is achieved too easily, the game will bore her. If it is gated by random elements or other factors beyond her control, the game will lose her interest. A game needs simple systems that are easy to see and latch on to in order to pique her initial interest. It needs to keep revealing more depth under extended scrutiny to hold it. A game needs to continuously present content or challenges to test and expand her skills. Luckily in competitive games, the supply of challenges comes in the form of new rivals, which are effectively endless as long as the game boasts a strong community. However, Shur doesn’t really care if a game is competitive or cooperative as long as it challenges her to master and exploit its systems.

Within our line, Shur’s favorite games would be Exceed, BattleCON, Pixel Tactics, and Temporal Odyssey. In these games, players start with ‘fair’ fixed resources, and it is the choices they make, their skills, which determine the course of the game. It is possible to ‘get good’ at all of these games, and it requires her to acquire and improve her skills, not acquire more cards.

Cardine - Discoverer

Cardine is fascinated to discover the worlds within games and unravel the secret stories that are contained in these worlds. Winning or losing is less important to Cardine than the other two types, because she plays a game to experience the world. When two fighters clash, she wants to know what circumstances must have brought them together.

Cardine channels her creativity to dig deeper into the world. She speculates on lore, draws fan art, writes fiction, and delves into the scenarios and situations hinted at in the game’s lore. She wants to know about the world and its little details because the story draws her in and she wants to become even more immersed in that fantasy. That’s not to say that she isn’t interested in the games themselves–the gameplay is the original window to explore the world, and she keeps returning to it for inspiration.

To appeal to Cardine, a game needs to have a deep lore, but one that is not revealed too explicitly, and which includes room for interpretation and speculation. The game needs to give her the tools to play out that lore. It has to then support that journey with flavor text, art, and flexibility of choice and strategy. Ideally, playing through the game in this way should create for her a unique experience, and should reveal to her something new about the game’s world.

Being able to get into the character of the game when playing is important to Cardine. When she plays an aggressive faction in a game, she feels a need to play them aggressively–even when it’s not the smartest move. Conversely, she’ll be upset if the ‘right’ way to play a particular fighter, card, or faction is out of step with its expressed lore.

Cardine doesn’t have favorite games, but instead, favorite worlds. In our lineup, the World of Indines and its persistent story excites her. The expanding, whimsical world of Millennium Blades engages her. The prospect of a new, deep world in Seventh Cross fills her with anticipation.

Morrey - Organizer

Morrey is a little different than the other archetypes in the way he interacts with games. As someone who is an experienced hand at games he has–in a sense–completed his own journey. Now, he is more concerned with bringing people together and enjoying their company and patronage. He enjoys watching other players improve their skills, explore their creativity, and delve into the lore of games. His passion is to bring a community together and enable others.

Morrey’s creativity is expressed in how he brings friends together. He may be the host of a game night, the owner of a store, the organizer of an event, or the judge of a tournament. In any case, he likes to see players come together and play. He experiences their triumphs, growth, and discovery vicariously. He’s excited to provide special rewards to those who participate, and endeavors to make each experience unique and rewarding. He may undertake it as his own task to create reference sheets for players, custom box inserts, player dashboards, or game organizers to enable easier play and better presentation.

To appeal to Morrey, a game needs to have qualities that inspire his players. When he organizes an event, players need to get interested in the game that they’re going to play. For this reason, the game needs to be exciting in its box, and inviting when set up on the table. It needs to be ergonomic–with clear, teachable rules and a simple setup and breakdown. A special promo or a new expansion are useful insofar as they excite his guests, but he would rather have organizer trays and a great unboxing experience than more content. And of course, anything that’s custom-made by the game’s creators for his event is a big win.

Morrey’s favorite games in our line are Millennium Blades and Argent, because he can turn these into a real event for his home game night. I suspect that he’s going to really enjoy Empyreal: Spells & Steam and Seventh Cross as well.

From a business side, he appreciates Exceed, BattleCON, Pixel Tactics, and Temporal Odyssey because he can bring the competitive players in his circles together in his shop and get extra content from the organized play program. Exceed is especially nice, since he can give out free demo decks to invite new players directly into the event.

Missing Archetypes

There are plenty of ‘whys’ that aren’t expressed here. There are players that really play just to win. There are players that play to learn new skills or trivia. Some play just to meet people and engage in social activity. Some buy games more like art collectors than players. These motivations certainly exist–but they aren’t our targets.

Our focus is on making games and creating a welcoming experience for the creative gamer, as expressed in these four archetypes. There are a lot of game publishers out there serving other archetypes, and it’s not necessary for us to be all things to all players.

Likewise, many players outside of our four target archetypes will appreciate our games–when you design good games and good products, people will gravitate to them for a variety of reasons. This list just serves to give us a sense of direction when we need to make choices between two features or two products.

In Conclusion

In creating and sharing these personas, I hope to give our team better guidance to understand who they’re making games for, how to speak to these fans, and how to anticipate reactions to the decisions we make in design, development, content creation, and marketing. Hopefully they’ve also resonated with you to some degree. Who do you see yourself as when you sit down to the table?

#archetype #Deques #Cardine #Shur #Morrey #Millennium Blades #Game Design #Product Design

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booksbookandmorebooks · 6 years

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Quick Top Reads Of The Year.

Hello my lovelies,

As a follow on from what I said in my last post I want to try bringing you guys a little something different, something a little more fun and far less structured. So, without further ado I want to start with my top reads of 2018 this year so far. (Now this is going to be a quick post so I will only be talking about three specific books)

So, this was pretty hard to narrow down due to the amount of books I have managed to read this year which yes, I am super proud of. Especially compared to my painful attempt last year.

When compiling this list, I wanted to pick books that were from different genres just to give you more of a variety in my recommendations. So here we will be looking at one autobiography, one middle grade fantasy and one old children’s classic. All of which I have fallen head over heels for.

We will start with ‘Dodie Clark: Secrets For The mad.’

This is a book about and created by English vlogger, musician and social media influencer known as Dodie or most commonly dogglevloggle. This book is all about her experiences with the struggles of mental health and the stigma/ hardships she’s faced growing up. She provides an insight into her most private and inner thoughts and what she does to keep herself from drowning when it all gets a little much.

The main reason I enjoyed this book was because of how unusual it is. Most books refuse and straight up avoid talking about such sensitive topics, never mind delve into and explore it as deeply as Dodie. The fact that she bridges the distance between reader and writer in the most honest and open way to me is something so beautiful. It gives a reader a chance to really connect and empathise with her, especially reading about the mistakes she made and obstacles she has overcome. Something that anyone struggling with mental health can relate to. None of the sections in her book are sugar coated either, she doesn’t idolise any type of mental health and definitely does not show it in a positive way, but she doesn’t discourage it or shame it. Which again, is a balance that I find a lot of authors when talking about this struggle to maintain.

When you add some beautiful lyrics, personalised pictures and sketches to this book, this just becomes a very personal and familiar conversation with your older sister just put into book form and honestly not only did almost every story and feeling resonate with me on some level It also provided me with a bigger insight into the minds and struggles of others. I just adored this book when I read it.

-Next up on the list has to be one of my favourite middle grades reads this year and that is ‘nevermoor’ The trials of Morrigan Crow’. Even the title gets me all excited and hyped to talk about it! So, for those of you that don’t know or know much about this story,

Morrigan crow is the next in a long line of cursed children who have spent years being blamed for her town’s misfortune and bad luck, but all of that will be over as soon as she turns 11. Sadly, she is to die at midnight on her next birthday or so says the curse. So as her birthday lingers Morrigan is found counting down the hours, minutes and seconds but Jupiter North has different ideas. An eccentric mad man who has been plotting her escape for who knows how long! When the odd and mysterious man whisks her away to a safe place Morrigan thinks this nightmare is finally over. Only to discover that now, she must compete in a collection of trials to earn her place in the wundros society, a place of opportunity’s and wonder. A place any child should feel blessed to even see never mind live in. Not only that, but Morrigan is not the only one gunning for acceptance. As one of hundreds of exceptionally talented children Morrigan must find her talent, win her place in this world and conquer the dangerous and looming monsters she has been plagued with her whole life.

This was such an unexpected read. I loved the dark opening and setting. Something that took me by surprise when reading a middle grade novel as most tend to stick to the fluffier and easy-going styles. Not only that but the magical element is simply over flowing with fun mystery and imagination. No wonder if is compared to Harry potter, an easy and all-consuming read.

The characters were also a big plus for me, I often find in middle grades because of the audiences age authors don’t tend to spend time over explaining and layering their characters, they seem to give you the basic information that is deemed necessary and never over load you with characteristics, but yet this was a completely different story. A main character on a path of self-discovery, a guardian who while on the surface seems distant and aloof turns out to be one of the most caring and protective characters I’ve ever come across in middle grade and so many other dynamic layered and vivid characters. The scenes and the writing style are beautifully captivating and cinematic. I couldn’t recommend a more fun and enthralling book this year, I could honestly go on and on about this book.

Now onto my last book of this year.

The one and only ‘secret Garden’

The secret garden follows the two main protagonists, Mary Lennox and Colin Craven. two very spoilt neglected young children. Mary who is relocated from her uncle’s mansion in India after losing her parents, struggles to find peace in the dull dreary Moore of her new home. until she discovers that this large and lonely house may have a lot more to offer. After making friends with Robins animal charmers and a mysterious child hidden away from everyone and everything Mary begins to see the world through a new perspective, gaining a new lease on life and a new love for gardening.

throughout this book we see so many changes, from seasonal and physical effects, to character changes and developments. the interactions between each individual character becomes warmer and kinder with each passing season which is something i didn’t pick up on until reviewing the book, a subtle and beautiful way to tie in the characters and the main subject of the garden.

honestly i was unsure if i would be captured by this book and that was very nerve wracking for me, as i grew up with the movie as a child. it was your typical heart-warming Sunday dinner movie. Yet this book could not be further from a disappointment. I haven’t read a book this refreshing in so long, it sounds a little cliché but sitting in my garden with my feet up and the sun on my back while reading this gave me such a refreshed feel. It is such an easy read I can’t stress that enough, and despite its flowery appearance and title this book is aimed no specific gender.

The condensed reviews from this post have been copied or summed up from the more in-depth reviews on my page. If you want to read more about my thoughts of these specific books go and visit it. Also the images used above are all thanks to google. i take no credit for these. but I hope you enjoyed this and have a great day!

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timsim26 · 7 years

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Mass Effect Andromeda Review

The Mass Effect series is one of the most revered and respected gaming brands ever released. The world building, strong characters, paralysing loss of loved characters and story moments that are iconic left a real imprint on the gaming industry. Unfortunately many people choose to remember the ending of the third game, which marred the franchise. Bioware went away for 5 years to deliver a new beginning, loosely linked with the trilogy and set in the Andromeda galaxy.

You play as Sara or Scott Ryder, brother and sister, who are part of the human ark. This ark has been sent on the 600 year journey to the Andromeda universe in search of a new world. The humans are not alone in their journey, as the Turians, Asari and Salarians have also sent arks into Andromeda. Krogans have also made the trip as well as dozens of individuals who went earlier to establish a home base known as the Nexus (think Citdadel). Of course, when you awake as either Sara or Scott, shit has definitely hit the fan, as a giant space phenomenon has crashed through the ark, causing malfunction and your sibling to be put into a long coma. Your job as the Pathfinder’s daughter or son is to check out the first potential home world known as Habitat 7.

While this all sounds very safe and very familiar, it does establish Sara (I played as Sara and haven’t as Scott) as an interesting character that has a variation of approaches. Removed is the renegade and paragon options. This allows much more freedom, rather than committing to one approach, even though you may not agree with all the actions. You are free to make decisions as your character based on how you want them to react to that particular situation. After a terrible incident on Habitat 7, which sees your father killed saving your life, you inherit the prestigious role as the Pathfinder, in charge of finding a new world for the human race to live. This is a huge job and involves difficult choices, putting up with the new galaxy’s politics and also fighting the new enemy and new alien race, the Kett.

As the story continues, there are a number of interesting twists and turns, that introduces new characters to join your squad and offer loyalty missions, similar to Mass Effect 2. While the loyalty missions hold the same purpose, there is no real consequence to not following them through like in the second game, where you would see characters die as a result. The loyalty missions were the best part of the second game, as they gave you a reason to delve deep into your squads history and personal lives. While there are some examples of this in Andromeda, I found the loyalty missions to be very, very, very long and drawn out. They are designed to continue over the course of the entire game. This time around, Andromeda is a 50-70 hour game. I spent 57 hours in the game before I reached the ending credits, still giving 3-4 major side quests unfinished. That was main story, exploration and loyalty missions padding that time out (also a good 3-4 hours of loading I presume). The loyalty missions in Andromeda do boil down again to doing a specific tasks that links and helps a certain character. They can get very fetch quests heavy and in some stages of a few loyalty missions it becomes a planet hopping slog, that got very old and tedious. It still pushes you through as some of the story moments that occur are fantastic.

Your squad again consists of a range of characters with unique outlooks and motivations. Drack, an, old battle scarred Krogan that has fought in many wars and is here in support of his daughter Kesh. Cora, a human who is obsessed (it is unhealthy) with the Asari and saving the Asari Ark. Liam, another human who is in support of the Andromeda initiative and colonising the many planets around Andromeda. Vetra, A turian try hard female Garrus who simply is not as good at calibrating things. Peebee, a quirky Asari, with a big personality who is keen to research and learn about the ancient technology of the Remnant that becomes a big part of the story and why the planets and galaxy are the way they are. Lastly is Jaal, who is a mix of Thane and Garrus from the original trilogy. Jaal is the 1 major new species introduced in the game, other than the kett. The Kadara are a large, unique looking alien that are very spiritual and present the most interesting moments in the game. Jaal is a warrior, who sticks to his beliefs and is interested in learning more about the Milky Way galaxy and why we have come to Andromeda. The cast of characters, are strong, however nothing will compare to the original trilogy’s squad. It puts Andromeda on the back foot straight away.

One major positive of the Andromeda is how open to exploration and discovery the universe is. There are 7 major planets that can be explored and made a viable living space. Every action completed on a planet increases the percentage that the planet is viable. Side quests, clearing hostile wild life, helping the locals with collecting materials and discovery special locations known as Remnant vaults lead to setting up an outposts, which again leads to even more activities and quests. The Remnant vaults are the key to making each planet liveable. This is presented early in the game and completing the Dungeons (vaults) allow the planet to remove the factor that is currently making them uninhabitable. This is explained throughout the story as your progress. Planets that are too hot, too cold, covered in radiation, have electrified water and so on can be repaired by completing the dungeon like vaults. Inside each vault are a number of puzzles that can be solved with the game’s new movement system allowing dashing, jumping and side stepping with a booster pack or simple logic and combat puzzles. The Vaults never out stay their welcome and always offer an interesting and unique gameplay experience that then make life on each of the planets much easier.

As you are working your way through the planets you are going to be engaging in a lot of combat. Way more than the original trilogy. The combat though is very tight and responsive. It may be the best part of the game as every combat scenario is a good mix of challenging and satisfying. The Kett are a pretty standard enemy and will attack you in traditional Mass Effect nature. Hiding behind cover, making use of the environment, flanking and firing off a number of powers challenges you to think quickly, bring the right squad mates and also be mindful when picking your loadouts. The system has changed in Andromeda in which you are no longer locked to choosing and upgrading skills that link to a specific class type. In previous games you were stuck upgrading skills that linked to a soldier, vanguard, sentinel etc. However Andromeda allows you to pick and choose your skills, upgrade them how you see fit and swap them on the fly. If you are struggling in the middle of a challenging fight against a bunch of enemies that have armour, you can upgrade something like incinerate that destroys armour. Struggling against shielded enemies, then upgraded overload or singularity. It really allows a great diversity in every combat situation and ensures that everyone playing the game is going to have a different approach to enemy encounters. As you put upgrade points into your preferred skills you will unlock class types that have particular buffs and skill enhancements based on the upgrades you are using. The more points, the better the class types become. These can also be changed at will from the menus.

Weapons are also very come and go in Andromeda. Mass Effect 3 really slowed down the customisation of weapons and armour, however the huge and expansive crafting system in Andromeda allows a large range of weapons to be crafted and customised to your liking. First you will have to find the resources by planet scanning or mining using the Nomad (yay it’s back) when you are on the many planet’s surface. After which, you can return to your crafting bay on your new ship the Tempest. There are so many variations of weapons that can be built and as you acquire mods and other upgrades weapons can be adapted to buff whatever suits your playing style. The game gives you a lot to play with and tinker with as you advance. Not only can you tinker with all of your skills, classes and weapons, but you can customise your rewards, strike teams and more. These strike teams link to the multiplayer, which returns in similar fashion from the third game. Wave based combat in a group against enemy AI is a fun side challenge and again very rewarding when playing with a group of friends. The strike teams can earn rewards in the single player which unlock minerals for crafting and even weapon modes. These can be completed by your strike teams, which Ryder can organise from her main hub. AVP missions are unlocked as you advance the plot and can impact experience boosts or delivery of goods and rewards.

Andromeda is a deep game with a lot of systems. While they don’t always present themselves in a way that makes sense, it does give you a lot of variation with how the game plays. Unfortunately combat is the primary way most situations are solved. There doesn’t really ever feel like there is a viable workaround in challenging situations where Ryder must make a choice that doesn’t result in violence. Often Ryder will shoot first and ask questions later. There are also not as many memorable choices throughout the game. There are a number of interesting options that at the time seem like they will impact something later on, however most never eventuate. This makes me wonder whether they were intended to be answered or featured in a sequel, a sequel we may never get after negative reviews, bugs, glitches and general negative word of mouth.

Despite the gifs, news stories etc. surfacing about the game’s buggy and glitchy nature. I didn’t really encounter any problems. Considering this is a 70 hour, open world RPG, people have seemingly forgotten how hard it is to bug test games of this nature. We gave Fallout 4 a pass remmeber. The dialogue, facial animation and character issues have been resolved with the many post release patches and as a result give the game a much more polished feel. Clearly EA needed this game out and didn’t feel like delaying it until May. If they did, the game may have been much more successful away from Horizon, the release of the Switch and Zelda. A more rounded, polished experience in a quieter month, may have been what this game needed.

I loved playing Mass Effect Andromeda. The game presented so many fantastic combat scenarios, plenty of laughs from the engaging cast of characters and plenty of surprises when exploring the massive plants. While the story was familiar, safe and often nonsensical, I enjoyed the ride that it presented. The game leaves a lot of questions unanswered and is clearly meant to be the start of a new franchise and I really hope we see the second game at some stage.

8.5/10

Reviewed on Xbox One.

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idkjustastesgood · 7 years

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My Chinese buffet apologism and a brief tangent on “authenticity”

White “foodie” types look for authenticity in our dining experiences. Of course, authenticity is a tricky concept, because at no point does the “authentic” food of a culture remain static. When technology changes, when certain crops wither or flourish, when trade and importation patterns shift, the food of a region changes more or less organically.

When people emigrate to a new society, this process - the evolution of a culture’s “authentic” cuisine - occurs even more dramatically. For instance, the reason for the rich, sweet, heavy sauces you can find in most Chinese-American restaurants isn’t pandering to American tastebuds - or at least, not just pandering to American tastebuds. When Chinese immigrants found themselves cooking in a country where ingredients like sugar were cheap and readily available, they eagerly integrated those foods into their recipes, as well as creating new dishes to showcase them.

Some forces do legitimately threaten a culture’s cuisine. One that springs to mind would be colonialism, which can easily impact what food people eat. During the Spanish occupation of the Taínos, indigenous crops like maize became known as inferior to European foods such as wheat. In addition, land and resources for farming were quickly taken up by the colonists’ crops, leaving nothing left for native seeds. These days, we worry more about cultural colonialism: the exporting of American tastes and food products around the world with every new McDonalds that opens overseas.

Another threat to authentic regional cuisine is the increasing crop monoculture that has resulted from American quantity-over-quality and consistency-valuing farming practices. I believe problems like these do negatively affect the development of a culture’s food.

However, that food also does evolve on its own, and that process is to some degree natural and unavoidable. If “authenticity” means rejecting technological or ingredient changes, then how far back must we look to find the truly “authentic” dishes? Is the discovery of fire far enough, or was roasting or boiling meat and other local ingredients a perversion of the original dish’s purity?

Like most social constructs, “[cultural] authenticity” is fascinating to ponder, and it could (and does) literally have books written about it and, probably, courses taught deconstructing it. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today.

For me, flippancy and irreverence over the concept of “authenticity” in cuisine is, today, just an excuse that allows me to love the Chinese American buffet.

If I had to describe a Chinese buffet - at least, the ones I grew up with and the one that I regularly visit with my friend today - to an alien or a European, I would probably say, “Imagine if someone decided to set up a restaurant where you could get takeout food, along with some of the worst American foods, and all the diners could eat as much as they wanted.” Chinese buffets are such a wonderful expression of the “ugly American eater” stereotype that for me, they’re almost like a meme - or more accurately, when you post a meme and the butt of the joke, ideally some corporation or public authority figure, tries to either respond or use the meme themselves. The result is just such a spectacle of beautiful irony and uncoolness that you want to frame it on your wall, or at least cut it out and stick it on your refrigerator along with that one particularly surreal old Far Side cartoon.

But I realize that with this introduction to Chinese buffets, I’m suggesting that my love for them is also detached and ironic. I cannot tell a lie - that is not the case. I love Chinese buffets, partly because I love “Americanized” Chinese food; partly because for all my foodiness, I love food that is familiar to me; and partly because, candidly, I love buffets, and any social context that allows me to eat without judgment.

What you should understand about me, without wanting to spoil anyone’s mood, is this: I’m a survivor of many medical situations in which I had to fast, or was on a restricted diet for blood glucose or liver-related reasons. I was a teenage type 1 diabetic whose endocrinologist believed that weight loss (in the midst of adolescence and all its body changes?) was somehow key to my health (it wasn’t, and actually had consequences for my mental health). Maybe this is why my shameful food secret has arisen: I love places where I can just eat - whatever food combinations I want, as much as I want - free of judgment or scrutiny. This is a quintessential American desire, I think, starting in the 1950’s but ultimately passed down from the days of the Great Depression, and then the rationing of World War II: white and/or bourgeois America’s desire to drown our sorrows and traumas in excess.

When you go into a Chinese buffet, you know what to expect. The food is the kind of food you order, not to be “adventurous,” but because you are hungry or tired or drunk or stoned, and you just want to eat. Dumplings, egg rolls, noodles, and pieces of chicken, pork, beef, and sometimes shrimp in sweet sauces over rice. White rice or fried rice, that is (I’ve never seen brown).

But as you progress down the buffet, you may also find food that seems to fit less and less into its surroundings, like popcorn shrimp, chicken fingers breaded in a thin, smooth, tempura-like thin skin (both are good with the red sweet and sour sauce that’s usually provided); conventional fried chicken on the bone, and French fries. This is another fun thing about the Chinese buffet: if your friends want Chinese food, but you’re abruptly in a fried food mood, or if your tastes change between leaving for the buffet and arriving at the restaurant, you can have what you want.

Dessert is an interesting affair. If you’ve ever been to a Chinese bakery (and I recommend going if you can), you know that Chinese pastries tend not to be overly sweet by American standards, and to take their sweetness from unusual (to most white Americans) ingredients. Egg tarts and sesame seed covered- or sweet bean paste-filled cakes are delicious, but their relative unfamiliarity to, say, the people in my upstate and suburban hometown, means that they defy the purpose of the Chinese buffet.

As a result, the dessert table of the Chinese buffet - and there will usually be a dessert table - is, well...interesting. There is typically cut fruit and Jell-O cubes, which I appreciate since that’s usually the type of sweet flavor I crave after most of the Chinese, Korean, or Japanese dishes I’ve had, as opposed to anything heavier or richer. But there is also often a very syrupy flan, maybe a bowl or two of pudding, some miniature cream puffs and eclairs, a soft-serve ice cream machine humming off to one side, almond cookies, and for some reason, clean but unshelled raw shrimp on ice. This isn’t even mentioning other sweets that you might find placed alongside the entrees - at the buffet where I go, there are lightly sugared donuts in a warming pan on the main buffet, typically close to something else fried like egg rolls or crab rangoons.

I was too lazy when I wrote this post to delve more deeply into the history of the Chinese American buffet, but I may post about that another time, when I have the spoons to actually plan out posts instead of just letting myself loose on a Google Doc between phone calls at work. If my tone or my take on this was racist, and you have the emotional energy available to educate me, that would be great. Otherwise, my advice is to try a Chinese buffet, and if you’re visiting the US from outside it, definitely go to one. It’s a fascinating fusion of food desires and cultures to me.

#chinese buffet #chinese american food #chinese food #food review #food blog #original #writing #food politics

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spirit-science-blog · 3 years

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If you’re a fan of any kind of Fantasy, you undoubtedly know about Lord of the Rings, with its beautiful story, complex characters, and its imaginative and colorful world. The significance of Lord of The Rings for the fantasy and sci-fi genres as a whole cannot be understated. If you were to ask any Fantasy writer, chances are most today would cite Tolkein as an influence in some way. His worldbuilding, personalities, and character archetypes have influenced nearly every corner of literature profoundly.

To be honest, when sitting down to write this episode, it was a DAUNTING task. There’s so much in the lore of Middle Earth, including its expanded universe, where do you even start? In case you didn’t already know, not only was Tolkein influenced by many religious, spiritual, philosophical, and even metaphysical sources, but there are also numerous underlying spiritual messages in his works that hold great wisdom if you know where to look and how to apply it. So let's dive into the Hidden Spirituality of Lord of the Rings!

Intro

To start with, since there’s so much to cover, we should point out that we’re going to be doing it on a movie/book by book basis, starting with this episode on the Fellowship and ending with Return of the King to wrap it up. Hey, we might even include the Silmarillion for all of the nerds out there who want to explore Numenor and Eru Illuvatar!

Now, at its heart, the central theme of LoTR is the quest. On its surface, we see a kind of normal fantasy thing. In essence, the heroes have to overcome the Dark Lord by going on this great journey of self-discovery to conquer the darkness both in the world and within themselves. With Lord of the Rings, it is depicted through the temptation of the One Ring, and the journey to save Middle Earth from its destruction.

But where LoTR begins to get interesting is when you look at the actual pacing of it. The story is completely flipped on its head compared to your average story trope. See, the heroes are not seeking a “treasure,” but are questions to destroy one instead. If we were to look at this same story from Sauron's point of view, the tale is a quest, with Sauron trying to get the treasure back, with the evil Black Riders replacing the traditional "errant knights seeking the holy of holies." The movie begins with a bit of backstory, giving us an awareness of the rings, and the races. We learn about the villain, Sauron, who forged the rings of power and delivered them to the leaders of the tracks who could be controlled, humans, elves, and dwarves. These rings, bestowing power to the bearers, also binds them to the dark lord, which sets the spiritual tone of the story - the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the deception that evil will use to trap others. In giving these rings to the leaders of the three races, Sauron essentially puts his hold on the world.

But as Sauron's power grows, some fight back, and we see the fall of Sauron at the hands of Isildur, but who is unable to destroy it - another powerful lesson for us still, the temptation that power has over us. What could this ring represent? The story says that into the ring, Sauron poured his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life. And so the ring ultimately comes to represent these qualities in the form of greed. This can be reflected in our daily lives as any kind of temptation, such as money, fame, sex, all of which can be used to subjugate or manipulate others into doing what you want. In addition to this, the ring bestows the wearer with invisibility, providing a false sense of security, which we can also see in this idea of greed - for as you generate more money or fame or what have you, it gives you this sense of security, but real security - as the story also teaches us, comes from the connections that we have with our friends and family.

One of the things that Sauron creates is feelings of absolute despair through facilitating the creation of evil forces, such as manipulating Saruman, to do his bidding in creating an army of orcs and uru-kai. Gandalf, on the other hand, has the reverse power, supporting others to resist the temptation of despair, and rekindling hope and courage wherever he goes. That Tolkien was conceiving these works during England’s darkest days during World War II, gives a unique context to this power to resist fear and despair.

It would also seem that Tolkein uses this narrative, especially the easily swayed humans, to describe the over-inflated ego and the dangers of what can happen when your desire and ambition are left unchecked. From this viewpoint, it appears that the Fellowship is on a quest to destroy the ego and ultimately free the world from the dark influence of desire and temptation. Tolkien had lived through two world wars, including the "routine bombardment" of civilians, the use of famine for political gain, concentration camps, and genocide, and the development and use of chemical and nuclear weapons, and so much of this story, although based in a different world than ours, is very much rooted emotionally and contextually in severe and real events in history.

The story raises the question of whether, if the ability of humans to produce that kind of evil could somehow be destroyed, even at the cost of sacrificing something, would it be worth doing.

Now, if any of this talk of desire, temptation and evil sound familiar, that’s because Tolkein was devoutly Catholic, a trait which he admitted to having been a profound influence on his writings. While it is interesting that he never included a direct form of religion in his main body of work, the themes, moral philosophy, and cosmology of The Lord of the Rings reflect his Catholic worldview. Christian items are ever-present in much of his work, more so in the later books -especially return of the king, which we will cover when we get there, many of the ideas focus around death, resurrection, forgiveness, grace, repentance and of course, free will.

Even Tolkien himself said, "Of course God is in The Lord of the Rings. The period was pre-Christian, but it was a monotheistic world," and when questioned who was the One God of Middle-earth, Tolkien replied, "The ONE, of course! The book is about the world that God created – the actual world of this planet." Delving a bit deeper into the language of Middle Earth, even the name itself comes from the Norse Midgard - which was the name for our earth.

The influence of Norse Mythology for Tolkein was HUGE. There are some excellent videos out here on YT that talk about the Mythology of LoTR, so if you want to go deeper, we recommend looking this up. Everything from the characters to the environments is rich in symbolic meaning.

Let’s take Gandalf, for instance. Speaking purely from Tolkein’s point of view, Gandalf was mostly based off of the Norse God Odin Who is a bit different from the Marvel version you’re probably familiar with. Odin, in Norse Mythology, is described as "The Wanderer," an old man with one eye, a long white beard, a wide-brimmed hat, and a staff. Tolkien, in a 1946 letter, nearly a decade after the character was invented, wrote that he thought of Gandalf as an "Odinic wanderer." Much like Odin, Gandalf promotes justice, knowledge, truth, and insight. His battle with the Balrog in the Mines of Moria was meant to mirror that of the fight with Surtr spiritually, the Fire Giant in Norse Mythology, with the ensuing collapse of the Bridge of Khazad Dum mirroring the prophesied destruction of the Bifrost during Ragnarok.

Interestingly though, it should be said that Ragnarok was not seen as the end of the world as it is often thought, but rather the beginning of a new cycle, and this is essentially what happens in the Fellowship, with the fall of the Balrog and the collapse of the bridge, it gives way for the journey to unfold. Gandalf had to fall to be reborn as a higher, more ascended, and powerful being than he was before.

As we looked at, there are several key races in the story, which seem to spiral around the elements. This is not spelled out directly by Tolkien. Still, it would appear as though the humans reflect the element of Fire, showing their passionate ways, leadership qualities, and also a bit of their destructive power, and even in Return of the King we see that it is time for humans to take the throne as the new world leaders, further reflecting the fire being the closest to the Godhead in the alchemical systems. The Dwarves are Earth for probably obvious reasons, the Elves are Air with their both living in the trees, their precision, their mental acuity and awareness of the world, and Hobbits as Water - being natural, flowing, and most importantly, nurturing qualities, a trait that is often described as the highest form of the divine feminine, manifested through the alchemical element of water, or the emotional body. If we were to count wizards and orcs, we would see angels and demons join the fray with the aspects of Aether and Voidness, the latter of which stands for lack of substance.

Now speaking of Hobbits - the Shire itself represents an idyllic haven, where the hobbits live in harmony with nature and each other, creating an environment of peace, love, and pleasure. Even though not all hobbits get along and are mainly stuck in their ways, their ways are that of connection with the spirit of the earth. In many ways, living in the shire might be what we would think would be the end goal for many characters, a peaceful haven where evil doesn’t exist, reminiscent of the English Countryside.

We also see some new numerology here. As the story opens, we see Bilbo celebrating his eleventy-first birthday, which in the book just so happens to be on the same day as Frodo celebrating his coming of age birthday, as he turns 33. In Sacred Numerology, 111 signifies manifestation and prosperity. This number's central symbolism is manifesting thoughts into reality and is also said to symbolize awareness, uniqueness, motivation, and spiritual awakening. This makes sense as shortly after Bilbo’s celebrations; he slips away to go on a new journey in his life.

Frodo’s age is also hugely significant, as 33 in Christian numerology is the age Jesus was when he was crucified in the year 33AD. We might even go as far as to say that no number holds more esoteric significance than “33.” The number three is significant in all major religions, with there being a Trinity for Christians and even a trinity of Goddesses or Deities in many ancient cultures. The number 33 was also crucial to secret societies and is often concealed within significant literary works. There are even 33 degrees in modern Freemasonry. At the Vatican, there are 32 archways on each side of the courtyard with a giant obelisk in the middle, and the Pope’s cassock has 32 buttons with his head representing the 33rd.

Furthermore, the first Temple of Solomon stood for 33 years before being pillaged. Alexander the Great also died at 33, and Pope John Paul I was murdered after being in power for only 33 days. And if that wasn’t interesting enough, in the movie we see all of this happen on the 22nd of September! So all together, we have 111, 22, and a hidden 33.

When we first meet Bilbo and Gandalf, Bilbo is unwilling to give up a ring, a sign of being unable to let go of his worldly attachments and temptations. Eventually, after much persuasion from the Wizard, he gives it up and is relieved of a considerable burden, symbolic of him reducing his ego of its duty. When Gandalf returns later on to visit Frodo, he casts the ring into the fireplace, revealing the engraved Elvish Script. Isn’t it remarkable how the Black Speech of Mordor can be so beautiful and yet so evil at the same time? It's a scenario reminiscent of Lucifer, who was said to be the most beautiful of God’s angels, don’t you think?

Along with the strength of will, the value of wisdom is also integral to the underlying spirituality of The Lord of the Rings. Although I’m sure Tolkien never intended it this way, we find the elves to be the embodiment of and reminiscent of Taoist wisdom. Like the Taoist sage, the elves, for the most part, are free of the discontent that so affects humans. They love the natural world and govern their lives in harmony with it. They dedicate their creative powers to fashioning things of beauty that enhance the natural world without damaging it. Their dwellings bring to mind the houses in the tremendous Taoist landscapes — habitations in harmony with their environment. All of this, like the ideal government of the Tao Te Ching, is so at odds with our actual world that “fantasy” is an apt term for it. But it does bring to mind the kind of world, beings who were born with inner contentment might create. And in doing so reminds us of the degree that the world we have created is carried of our discontentment.

Leading up to their meeting in Rivendell, Frodo is stabbed by a Nazgul blade that begins to slowly infect him, which Aragorn says can only be healed by Elven Magic. If we look at it from a higher perspective, the Nazgul are creatures of Necromancy, fueled by dark magic and hatred. By being stabbed, perhaps that hatred and despair begin to enter Frodo slowly, but given that Elven magic is born solely out of love and compassion, it is the only thing that can heal a wound of fear and hatred. Much like our current situation, love is the sole real remedy for anxiety. It is no coincidence that Frodo meets Bilbo here again, as the environment itself is one of healing and repentance.

Now the first book and movie are called the Fellowship of the ring, and on a base level, it arguably represents the bonds of brotherhood and family and this idea that no one race is better than another. In this, we find that even once enemies can become friends, such as Legolas and Gimli. Although the fellowship was not meant to last, the establishing of this shared intention between all of them is ultimately what allows the entire story to transpire once they reach Rivendell.

During the council of Elrond, we see that the presence of the ring and the conversation stirs everyone to arms with each other. And honestly, if each of them tried to destroy the ring on their own, they would all fail and ultimately become corrupted by it. The only one who can do it is Frodo because he represents the purity and innocence of the natural soul, and even then, the ring still gets to him slowly but surely by the end. Nevertheless, only by having a united Fellowship made up of each of the world’s races can they hope to succeed. There is undeniably a lesson is cooperation here, only by working together and lifting each other when we can accomplish something seemingly impossible, and this is an excellent lesson for us to recognize in the world today. There is more power in unity than in separation. From a spiritual perspective, perhaps the experience here is that by creating and maintaining an environment of mutual trust and harmony and working together and creating a space for that kind of movement and growth to occur can we too “do the impossible” and curb our desires and egos, allowing us to exist in harmony with our world, collectively.

Also, it is impressive that the Fellowship numbers nine people (2 humans, an elf, a dwarf, four hobbits, and a wizard), along with their being 9 Nazgul. There's probably some strong numerology in there somewhere, as 9 is a very significant number numerologically. But for now, let's just say the two “groups” create a sense of balance, one for one.

Throughout the story, we also see the theme of personal sacrifice, over and over. I wonder if this was inspired by Tolkiens own spirituality, reflecting Jesus - who gave his own life because it was what must be done. Frodo went on the journey to take the Ring to Rivendell, and then to Mount Doom, sacrificing his old life, his old way of being, and things would never be the same again for him.

Further, Gandalf decided to allow Frodo the choice to take either the Mines or Mountains after leaving Rivendell, a decision which ultimately led to Gandalf’s death and Christ-like resurrection. While the majority of these scenes take place in the next film, it is significant that Gandalf dies his purpose, protecting and guiding the others. In doing so, he is allowed to return by the One as a much more leveled up Gandalf the White, taking the place of Saruman as the benevolent white wizard. The color symbolism here cannot go unmentioned, as his transition from Grey to White is arguably symbolic of him “shedding the veil of the night” (to quote our good friend Thoth in the Emerald Tablets) and becoming a real ascended being. This transition into ascension is also present with Galadriel in Lothlorien towards the very end of the film. For people who have only seen the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, we see a little context for Galadriel’s actions and words after she resists taking the ring. Even the book version does not provide the full context. But in the appendices at the end of The Return of the King and in The Silmarillion, we learn that Galadriel’s character flaw is the desire for power. This flaw she shares with her ancestors, who were exiled from the Far West due mainly to their pride and aggression. Through sharing in this exile, Galadriel was always torn by her love of the world and its beauty and her desire for power. Through the ages of Middle Earth, she steadfastly pitted her will against the will of Sauron, and in doing so, served in the protection of beauty and harmony against chaos and destruction. With this background, we can better understand the scene where Galadriel is finally offered the ring of power by Frodo. A part of her had long desired such an opportunity, yet she can resist this temptation, and in doing so, she finally can relinquish her desire for power. Having done so, she knows that the condition of her exile has been lifted and that she can return to the Far West, symbolic of her ascension and moving into a new life for herself.

Even the gifts of Lothlorien themselves have spiritual meaning. Frodo’s “Light of Earendil” that illuminates the darkness seems to signify light as purifying energy that provides hope, warmth, and shows the way. Interestingly there is a slight difference in the gifts that Sam gets from Galadriel. In the movie, he receives an Elven rope that can be easily anchored up by a simple tug, but in the book he receives soil from Galadriel’s garden and a seed, which he uses to replant the trees in the Shire after it is destroyed, signifying a spiritual rebirth and ultimately resurrection of the Earth. It makes sense that this item was changed for the movie because the destruction of the shire was cut from the film adaption.

The movie ends with Frodo disbanding the fellowship under the premise that the ring holds too much temptation to be able to keep the group together. Once again, he makes a substantial sacrifice for what he sees as the highest good. But like always, love is the answer. Sam, knowing Frodo as a friend, immediately guesses where he is going and follows him into what is quite literally the mouth of hell, signifying the bonds of brotherhood and family transcend even the darkest of darkness.

On that note, let’s bring this to a close. There is so much more that we could have spoken about here, and believe me, it was tough to condense this into just one video, but hey, at least we have two more to go! We will expand on each of these themes and delve more into them as we make our journey to Mt Doom by working through the story.

#spirituality #science #ascension #mystery school #spirit science

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