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theresattrpgforthat · 1 month

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Do you have any games that involve urban fantasy with less focus on fighting than something like Dresden or Shadowrun?

THEME: Urban Fantasy (Minimal Fighting)

Hello there! What I've got here is quite a mix, I wasn't sure how much violence you wanted (or didn't want) so I have a little bit of romance, a little bit of nostalgia, and a little bit of horror!

City of Mist, by Son of Oak Games.

City of Mist is a role-playing game of film-noir investigation and super-powered action. It is set in a modern metropolis rife with crime, conspiracies, and mysteries. The protagonists are Rifts, ordinary people who became the living embodiment of a legend, their Mythos. While your Rifts may seek to strike a balance between the mysterious nature of their Mythos and their mortal aspirations, the powers within them always threaten to tear their lives apart. They have unwittingly become a part of a secret world of clashing stories, and soon other legends will come looking for them with demands.

City of Mist is a combination of PbtA and FATE, giving your characters descriptive tags to use for both their benefit and their detriment as they go about solving mysteries in a supernaturally-saturated city. The primary theme of the game is mystery, and thus more than anything your characters will be primed for investigation. That’s not to say that there isn’t violence - but violence and fighting can be de-emphasized if the group is more interested in the mystery side of things.

Character Creation involves a combination of mundane and supernatural themes, as your character is endeavouring to strike a balance with the parts of themselves that they recognize (student, parent, office worker, ex-partner) and the parts of themselves that are hard to understand (mythical beast, deity, folktale, urban legend). What’s important to define is your daily routine, your personality, and what kind of supernatural powers you have.

This game isn’t explicitly anti-violent, but it absolutely provides you with ways to solve problems that aren’t violent, so I think City of Mist is worth checking out.

Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites, by Pammu.

Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites is a narrative RPG about spending your night in one of the only clubs in your city that’s safe for creatures of the night like yourself. All you want to do is have some fun just like the humans do. Play a supernatural creature of choice, put some sick EDM on the speakers and get your game on!

This game works best for an even number of players, up to 6, and is GM-less. It combines urban monsters with flirting, dark clubs and hookups. Each of your characters will look for a partner by doing things that will appeal to the other players. If they like what you do, they’ll reward you with tokens, which you can spend to improve the atmosphere of the club. Fill another player’s intimacy meter, you’ve won them over, and the two of you decide how the night ends for both of your characters.

If you want a game about flirting and the magic of a nightclub, this is your game.

The Far Roofs, by Jenna Katerin Moran.

The Far Roofs is an original role playing system and bundled campaign using pens or pencils, paper, six-sided dice, ten-sided dice, playing cards, and a bag of letter tiles. It's complete in one volume: with this one book and the equipment above, you'll have everything you need to play.

As the story progresses, your characters will gain access to over 150 unique, narrative-focused powers developed and refined over the course of a decade for the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG before being simplified and adapted for use herein.

The Far Roofs is still being Kickstarted, but Moran’s work on Chuubo’s Wish-Granting Engine produced a game that emphasizes wonder and emotional experience. The Far Roofs looks to deliver along the same lines, and the examples of play point towards investigation, social interaction, and magic powers. Jenna Moran is also known for her unique and evocative storytelling in her work, so I think it’s definitely worth checking out.

Lighthearted, by Kurt & Kate Potts.

Welcome to the magical 80s dream world of Lighthearted. You are a Prep, Jock, Geek, Rebel, or Outcast, like those kids in The Breakfast Club, except you are just about to start magic community college. Through play, we'll explore how you grow out of your high school cliques all while dealing with magical mishaps, college parties, vampires, and worse—finals!

Lighthearted is a complete tabletop roleplaying game that uses the language of film and television to reimagine the coming of age stories popular in 80s teen movies like Weird Science and Sixteen Candles, but with a modern fantasy spin. It's set in an alternate 1980s with fantasy elements weaved into the most outlandish bits of 80’s pop culture. There are fantasy religions mixed in with mall culture, dark magic cold wars, and magical glamours instead of plastic surgery.

This is a game of magic and coming-of-age, as you play first-year students at a magical community college. You’re off to the big city, and the big world - will you survive your first college party? Your first vampire?

The whole game feels like the neon lights of a vibrant night-life combined with the nostalgia of an 80’s film. Your magic is attached to how you feel, so as your emotions change, so will your effectiveness at certain actions. If you want a game that’s as light as its name, and you are seeking out rosy-tinted nostalgia, this might be your game.

Changeling: the Lost, by Onyx Path.

Once upon a time, they took you from your home. They promised you a place at their side, and meaning in your life, and they surrounded you with beautiful things. But the beautiful things were oh so sharp, and they laughed when you bled.

Day by day, they changed you. But day by day, your will grew stronger. On the last day, you smashed your way through the beautiful things and ran, not noticing as you bled or feeling as you cried.

You fought with courage and cleverness and took yourself home. Now the beauty and the horror are yours, to have and to hold and to live.

Welcome to once upon right fucking now.

So I’m familiar only with the 1st edition of Changeling, but as far as I understand, the setting and core premise of the game is the same in the 2nd edition. Changeling: the Lost is a game of fairy trauma. Your characters are survivors of a fae horrorscape, a place both wondrous and terrifying all at once. This game is solidly in the horror genre, but it contains within it a taste of the magical, and it’s also the reason I got into roleplaying in the first place.

As in many Chronicles of Darkness games, fighting is an option in here, but it’s not a wise option. Getting into fights pulls at your characters’ ability to understand the difference between our world and the world of Fae, it’s very easy to sustain supernatural damage that is hard to heal, and, well, sometimes it’s hard to tell who your real enemies are in the first place.

I’d say that Changeling is more of a political game than anything else. Your characters will have to dance through the highly literal wording of faerie pledges, and untangle difficult relationships between Courts that are both safe havens and potential beds of sedition. This is a violent game, but much of the violence possible in Changeling isn’t physical - it's emotional.

This Night On The Rooftops, by C.M. Ruebsaat.

This is a game about gazing out over the smokestacks after dark, with the wind in your hair and a friend at your side and a thousand lights of progress on the streets below.

This Night on the Rooftops is a collaborative storytelling game for 2-5 players about friendship, growing up, and revolution. You will play members of a gang of children in The City, a fantastic world of industry and dying magic, where witches labour alongside factory-workers to make ends meet.

This game looks slightly less modern, but it takes the fantasy aspect of witchcraft and places it inside an industrial city. The game uses a modified version of the No Dice No Masters rule set, which is excellent for stories that have an ebb and flow to them, managed through the use of token expenditure. This game is also GM-less, giving everyone at the table the same amount of control over what happens next.

Since the characters are a gang of teenage witches looking to make ends meet, this game doesn’t strike me as one that prioritizes fighting or violence. The city looks big enough to grind up the characters if they’re not careful, so they’ll likely have to find solutions to problems that don’t get them (or their dependants) in trouble. If the game is like other No Dice No Masters games that I’m familiar with, the group will also have a big say over which elements of the city are the most intriguing to them.

Partners: The Urban Fantasy File, by Tin Star Games.

Some murders are just elf defence…

Vampires are real, magic is real, elves are real - and murder is still very very real. This expansion takes you and your Partner down the moonlit streets of urban fantasy, where the dead sometimes get back up again but crime is still a mystery needing two heads to solve.

The base game for this, Partners, is a two-player mystery-solving game about a pair of detectives, a straight-shooter and a wildcard. You’ll need the base rules to play, but this supplement brings in dead elves, suspicious vampires, and other common characters in any urban fantasy genre. It can work as a one-shot, or as a series of episodes. If you want a game that's primarily about solving a mystery more than anything else, this is is for you.

Solacebound, by Sascha Moore.

Young monsters played at the boundary between the worlds. They slipped and stranded in a human city. Isolated and unwelcome, they search for each others help and a way back.

Solacebound is a GM-less Game for 3-5 people to play over a few hours. Search a sprawling, oppressive city for your friends, find out who is willing to give you a roof, bash back against authorities, cook together and console each other. Will you find a way back home before all passages close?

You are teenage monsters trying to find their way through an urban environment, in a place that is hostile to them. You survive by hiding out, finding each-other, and do things together to make sure you keep each-other healthy. Cards from a deck act as resources, but also as an oracle to help you describe the fallout of any given action, and the emotions that are attached to it. This is a game about metaphors, about what it is like to live in a place that fears you, so I definitely recommend making sure the entire table knows what this is about before starting a game.

You Might Also Want to Check Out

Subway Runners, by Gem Room Games.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg #urban fantasy

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vickyvicarious · 10 months

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OKAY, SO. Today's episode is one I've been looking forward to, and it definitely lived up to expectations. I absolutely adored how you can hear Jonathan at the end of his rope, all restraint fraying away. The rage in his voice when he wishes for a weapon "that I might destroy him" - not even 'kill', but 'destroy'. Partially that may be that he realizes Dracula is already 'dead', but even so that is some evocative violent word choice!

Speaking of Dracula, what an incredible performance today. I absolutely loved so many line deliveries. Something about his voice a little softer as he says "my carriage shall come for you," even though it's obviously a lie. Jonathan absolutely cannot stand his lies any longer - the way he spits out "Phh, sincerity!" is amazing. His voice as he's asking to go is so intense, so sharp and insistent but also pleading all the while, you can hear the anger and the fear. But Dracula is return is just so smooth, really really gets across that charm Jonathan is so suspicious of today. Soft, smooth, diabolical. The way Dracula stops to laugh after saying, "speed the parting guest, eh?" SO EVIL OF HIM. And the way he fuckin' mocks everything Jonathan has been through for the past two months, mocks the game he has forced him to play all this time, when he says "sad am I at your going, and that you so suddenly desire it." The sarcasm in those two words is astounding. I WANNA PUNCH HIM IN HIS STUPID EVIL FACE. Incredible. Absolutely top-tier performance.

The SFX were so good too, I absolutely loved how long the chains and such at the door went on, really drawing home how securely it has been shut all this time. And it gets even better because the length of it repeating as Dracula shuts the door again feels so final. Not to mention the wolves: I was loving the snarl of a few of them as Jonathan says they got angrier. The way Jonathan lingered/emphasized just slightly on "their red jaws" - similar to, but not as much as he did for Dracula and the vampire ladies, just enough to really cement the parallel but also show their fear doesn't come with the same kind of fascination.

And Jonathan realizes he will die here. He is too afraid to willingly walk into it. He feels so utterly defeated by this realization; he'd thought he was ready. He'd thought he had nothing left to lose, has already risked death in his last exploration, knows he does not want to allow Dracula and the vampire ladies to kill him at any cost, but... when faced with this certain death (which he witnessed only a few days ago) he can't do it. And it feels like a moral defeat as much as, more than any disappointment at a failed escape. He is absolutely miserable and you can hear it so well in his voice. He literally has to hide his face. He cannot bear to speak to Dracula again, just accepts the escort back to his room in miserable silence. It's agonizing.

And then Dracula smiles, and kisses his hand to Jonathan.

The defeat is so complete and so horrible. And then salt is ground into the wound with the conversation Jonathan overhears outside his doorway. The laughter. All four of them laughing at him. It's an almost childishly blatant type of cruelty for the vampire women to stick around until he sees them and then continue to laugh right in his face before running away - they can vanish into dust! They are choosing to scamper off like this because it feels more fun to them! It's awful and the voice acting is absolutely marvelous.

#re: dracula #dracula daily #count dracula #jonathan harker #vampire ladies

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cipheramnesia · 18 days

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There's something so satisfying about seeing a movie by filmmakers who know exactly what they're working with. Watching film that's groundbreaking and new and interesting is absolutely wonderful, don't get me wrong. However, watching something play out and slowly realizing that the crew knows all the ins and outs of the genre they're working in, seeing a team that's composed of people doing their job well and crafting a satisfying story without pretension - especially when I wasn't expecting anything remotely competent - is a cozy delight.

I know I've dragged out the dead horse of Cabin In The Woods multiple times for beating, but it's such a great example I need to bring it up again, because it so clearly has no concept of working in the horror genre, and doesn't understand the slasher subgenre at all. Meanwhile, the absurdly named Massacre Academy, with a deceptively bland concept of "clown mask killer returns for revenge" does not just understand every single part of horror and the slasher subgenre, it actively uses all of them against the audience expectations. While it's not completely free from every common genre flaw, it handles itself shockingly well for an obviously low budget exploitation film.

Out of the gate, it lets you know it plans to be a little silly, sets you up with expectations of only moderate realism. It's a film that is committed to the bit, and the bit is slasher cliches. However, woven through the metahorror humor is also a relatively unusual concept - the sequel to a movie which does not exist. This concept is what really puts meat on the bone, as it creates a smart mix of characters who have PTSD from the prior events, people who are smart about slashers in an in-universe way, and new characters who won't be as aware of the dangers at first. It's choice about the slashers' lives are probably the weakest element (typical "psycho killer" cliche), but it builds the sense of history throughout that I almost find myself believing "part 1" must exist (it doesn't).

There is no evocative, soulful acting or breathtaking cinematography, or complex metatextual story telling - this movie aims squarely at "believable enough to work" and successfully focuses on delivering a smart and interesting plot on that level. What this means is that once it gets rolling it starts serving up all of the types of characters you'd expect to see die violently during the film, turn the expectation completely around, and punch it in the face in a way that had me actually laughing with delight. And knowing how much it was playing with slasher tropes also ended up keeping me effectively in suspense the entire movie.

Is Massacre Academy a brilliant must see movie? Hardly, but it's good, and fun, and it makes me want to keep an eye out for whatever director Mark Cantu has in store for the future.

#horror movies #queer horror #horror noir

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bigdreamsandwildthings · 1 year

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Review: Foul Lady Fortune (Chloe Gong)

Rating: ★★★★/5

“‘You don’t mean to say that you’re trying to save the whole city from harm. You’ll spend your whole life trying, and you’ll still fail. There is a reason why dui bù qî is dui bù qî. We’re only human. We will never match up to what everything could be.’ Rosalind gave him a little smile, almost looking confused. ‘With enough time -‘ ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘You cannot save the world. You can try to save one thing if you must, but it is enough if that one thing is yourself.’” This was good. It didn’t captivate me quite like These Violent Delights, but it was well written and intriguing. Rosalind Lang has become Lady Fortune, an immortal assassin with nothing to lose. Her weapon of choice: poison, fast-acting and lethal. When a new assignment sees her going undercover, with a fake husband, no less, she is mortified; this is not her strong suit, but she will follow her orders. Her heart, however, has other ideas...as does Orion Hong, the aforementioned fake husband. Part of what drew me in with TVD was the fact that it was an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Without that draw, that familiarity, this one still brought me into its story, but I didn't feel the same magnetism there. However, I absolutely adore Rosalind Lang. She is so nuanced, so interesting, and her dynamic with Orion is truly the best part of this book. They're feisty, they're fiery, they're so much goddamn fun to read about. I have such a clear picture of Orion as this suave, snarky pretty boy with a heart of gold underneath; I loved him in this. The other characters fell a bit more flat, especially Celia and Oliver. Oliver feels like a carbon copy of his brother, and for that matter, so does his relationship with Celia. Celia felt like a shadow more than anything; I guess we didn't get enough time with her for her to make more of an impact. But there is so much there, and it felt a bit like she was just wasted in this book. I did love Phoebe and Silas though. Again, the snark, the humour, is where Chloe really shines in her character development, and these guys exemplify that. The twists and turns in the plot were fun here, but I found myself struggling to remember who was on what side and where we finally fell with it all in the end. I think because Rosalind doesn't have super strong ties to anything, that she chooses what she has to and just accepts it, it makes the perpetual civil war and Japanese influence feel less defined than it could have. Those details sometimes made it hard to lose myself in the story, because I had to go back and remember all of that nitty gritty every time I picked up the book. Overall, though, Chloe's writing is beautiful and evocative. Her characters are wonderful. I did enjoy this, and I will read the sequel.

#booklr #book photography #book picture #book review #foul lady fortune #chloe gong #ya fiction #ya fantasy #ya historical fantasy #bookworm #bibliophile #book lover #book nerd #book aesthetic #book community #my photos #my reviews #mine

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yellowocaballero · 3 years

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thoughts on writing gertrude? loved your latest evil con update :)

Oooh, thanks for asking. Truth be told that the story was the result of me stress-procrastinating on a large project at work due that day, so the writing process was basically me slapping the keyboard a few times for about two hours and then posting it without really even looking it over. See if you can catch ALL of the grammar mistakes, lmfao!!!

But it was a lot of fun to write a POV I’d never written before, especially one so different from everybody else’s. She’s also a very distinct personality and character, with a lot of ‘rules’ that I had to come up with on the spot, lol. What I really did enjoy was structuring the story similarly to some of the older TV shows I like, like Murder She Wrote or Columbo. I also adjusted the internal narration and the style to be a little more flowery or film noir, with a focus on evocative yet precise language and ruminations, because I needed to drive home that she and Agnes were absolutely pyromaniac girlfriends and that she felt very much A Certain Way over her that she was refusing to admit.

(Some characters ruminate and some characters don’t. As a writer, try to stay away from long rambling paragraphs about a character’s thoughts, because that’s dull as shit. However, whenever I write from the POV of Archivist!Sasha and Gertrude, these two people absolutely follow logical trains of thought compulsively as part of how they problem-solve or plan. They have constructive and directed trains of thought that they use to problem-solve/narrate the story. If you’re writing from Jon’s POV, he ALSO has these trains of thought, except they are nonconstructive, rambling, illogical, and soaked in stress and anxiety. I have Jon think about how he FEELS and I have Sasha and Gertrude think about what they’re DOING. But also avoid long paragraphs of internal narration cuz that shit’s boring lol.)

But writing from Gertrude’s POV was very interesting to me, because I couldn’t use her to give the audience emotional cues. Normally when you’re writing something gross you rely on both description/word choice and the POV to signal to the audience that it’s gross - the spider’s legs were luminescent, scratchy, carapaces, shifting and groaning under their unnatural weight, but more importantly Sasha felt bile rise in her throat and was hit by a stab of nausea. You can only get so scary actually describing something, you also have to lean on emotional cues through loaded language and other character reactions. But with Gertrude, the whole scene in Jon’s bedroom (that, to be clear, was a bedroom coated in giant spider webs containing a half-human half-spider teenager groaning in agony and lashing out violently) was described clinically and professionally. Because she’s a professional, and she just wasn’t fucking scared by it. Because we’re soaked in her POV, we aren’t scared either. The scariest thing to us is how much Jon is clearly suffering. But, on the flip side, when Jon’s acting and looking more human, the most normal and innocuous things he does becomes dangerous and threatening, because Gertrude’s running her little logic programs telling her that he’s dangerous.

Beyond the joys of POV, characterization wise: Gertrude brings narrative conflict wherever she goes because she is instantly half a step away from throwing down at any moment lol, which makes her perfect for instilling tension and conflict in a story. The main tension of that story was Gertrude and her distrust/horniness for Agnes, and Gertrude and her distrust of Jon - something she ultimately only dropped because she had decided to dismiss him as a threat (orrr diiddd sheeee....). Also, exploring her and Agnes’ relationship was FUN AS HELL, because I was constrained by how little these characters wanted to talk about what they were feeling. The ‘I’m only talking to you for business reasons’ thing was lifted from WTNV, which is the platonic ideal of romance. It was fun to also kind of explore from an outsider’s perspective how weird it is that a 60 year old fire messiah (she looks more like mid-twenties, it’s a testament to how Gertrude thinks of Agnes that she thinks of her as an older woman) is best friends with a teenager and they’re both very protective of another, younger, spider-teenager. Her relationship dynamics with the other characters are fun too: she denies it but Gerry is obviously like a nephew to her, she’s entrenched in a massive Will-they-won’t-they with Agnes, and she has people in her circle, but she obviously really doesn’t actually give a shit about or love anybody but herself. Gertrude cares about herself, and keeping the world safe, and that’s it.

AU notes: so basically what happened was that Agnes had her Crisis of Faith earlier than in canon, and she’s kept up very secret and limited communication with Gerry since the 1999 Evilcon (they were banned from any evilcons afterwards, so they never met up again as kids after that and they never saw Jon again). Instead of killing herself she decided to run away instead, so she asked for Gertrude’s help in torching any of her cult members who stopped her from leaving. They Fell In Love and had A Night of Passion and Spoke Longingly of Running Away Together before Gertrude’s sense of duty to her job made her break it off. Agnes is now enthusiastically trying to live out that ‘real life’ thing when she gets word that Jon’s spider-person transformation has started happening and that he had to run away, and is now homeless in London. Gerry’s been meaning to go ditch his mom and live with Agnes too, so basically Gerry and Agnes teamed up to go rescue Jon and falsify their identities so they can all try to live the normal life they never got. They’re best friends and continue living together until we see them all as adults in the main story. Agnes and Gerry are MUCH happier than in canon and Jon’s...well, he’s having a time of it, but he’ll end up alright! Right?

Also the only music I listened to while writing the whole thing was Billy Joel, Jim Croce, Hall and Oates, etc. :) Thanks for the q!!

#'golden brown' by the stranglers is my agnes/gertrude anthem and that's the tea #gertrude is such a bad person and she is so aware of that but you can tell she's the kind of bad person who thinks bad people are superior #to nice people #gertrude handshake meme jon: self centered af #also btw i kept it ambiguous what exactly was fucking happening in jon's weird little spider-brain #eg how much he was manipulating gertrude how much he was in control of himself etc #but rest assured the kid is going THRU IT and his spidermom is giving a lot of solutions which maybe arent so good #tma #my writing

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fantroll-purgatory · 6 years

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@47098

I hope you don’t mind how long this is!! I’ve been working on her for a long time!

Don’t worry, we always appreciate well developed trolls!

The left is before the game and during the beginning phases, the right is after some self-reflection.

Alternia or Beforus or some type of AU?: Alternia

Name: MAROUX RAURBE

Maroux- Partially from Marcel Marceau, a famous mime. the -oux is from another famous mime, Etienne Decroux.

Raurbe- I don’t exactly remember, I think it was from another famous Mime? I’m not too fond of this last name tbh

Oh I have a friend who absolutely loves mimes, he’d be very excited about this character. I love her a lot! I think pantomime performance in general is a good place to seek names for her… So I think I’m going to replace Raurbe with Pierot. The Pierrot is sort of the origin of the sad clown and was originally regarded as a fool, and typically played a servile background role, but evenutally developed into an everyman image fondly regarded by post-revolutionary people and misunderstood artists. I think it sort of echoes Maroux’s role enough to be an effective surname.

Maroux Pierot.

Age: 6.9 sweeps

Weapon, since I don’t use specibi: Jack in the box weaponry, where she pulls out a jack in the box and when it unwinds a random weapon or joke pops out. These can range from anything as useful as a gun or sword, or as useless as a bag of confetti.

That is SO cute and definitely applicable within canon. I hope all the weapons get fun punny names, like if a staff comes out calling it The SlapStick.

Inventory: CIRCUS, where there is a constantly spinning wheel that her items are spinning on. She has to wait for the rotation to reveal the item she wants. It also displays her joviality, whereas most inventory systems in my story show health (like HP).

Maybe you could add a Wheel of Death element to this. Place each item on a target and she has to use a knife to hit the target without damaging the item if she wants to extract it.

Blood color: Purple (she isn’t a mutant or anything, her color scheme is just bright. shes meant to stand out but maybe she stands out a bit too much??)

To keep her canon compliant I’ll have to bring her blood color down, but don’t worry, I’ll make sure she still pops!

Symbol and meaning: Her symbol is in the shape of a smile, almost. The loop in the center is supposed to be sort of reminiscent of her tricky nature, while the two lines on the side show her silence. I sort of came up with it on the spot, though.

A really cute symbol, but with regards to our newer rule I’m going to go ahead and replace it with.

Capripia. It has a nice similarly loopy design and it represents the dream planet and class assignment that you gave her- which I totally agree with! The symbol’s name is ‘the Brusque,’ which fits her actions more than her speaking habits (since her speaking habits are None).

Trolltag: silentComedian [SC]

I think corporealComedian [CC] communicates what you’re going for in a much subtler way. Corporeal Pantomime was a sculptural pantomiming artform that focused a Lot of attention on the art and evocation of emotion through gesture. Like Advanced Miming. It fits in well with her general theme and interests.

Quirk:

OuO? UnU hEhEhE!!! DuD (At first she only giggles or uses emoticons. Later on she speaks more. She capitalized Es and uses rhyme.)

Adorable quirk and very fitting for a mime character. I like the capitalized E because it feels like it provides a good creepy emphasis on that laugh.

Lusus: A dove, unnamed because it died extremely early in her life. A dove… hm. I can see why you’d pick that. But purples have a tendency towards aquatic mammal lusii, at least from what we’ve seen so far. I don’t think it’s impossible for the dove, so you can keep it if you want- especially because they’re associated with magical acts and all! But I might recommend a Hooded Seal. If only because their inflating nose is very clowny and very, very funny.

Personality: She’s super sweet, always smiling. She is extremely creepy, coming off that way intentionally. She thinks that her creepy attitude mixed with her odd interests and persona makes her comedy better, which it sort of does.

Extremely curious, she will read almost anything put in front of her. She enjoys books about or involving comedy the most, but she won’t say no to a good mystery or romance if it happens to pass by. She secretly loves them, but don’t tell anyone! Her curiosity leads her to have some extremely odd and sometimes nonsensical pieces of information in her mind, most of which is inconsequential because she can’t recite them. This leads to her knowing how to do things that others don’t, though, and that only adds to others interpretation of her as a mysterious and off-putting figure.

She has a vow of silence due to her involvement in the religion of the Subjuggulators. She was never really given much of a choice about her decision, mostly because she was sort of… born into it? Her lusus was murdered very early on, and she was taken in by them to become a sort of charity case. Their violent tendencies rubbed off on her, though, so she is incredibly strong and versitile in battle. She was an active member, seeing them all as her family, and would kill anyone they wished. She was essentially the reaper among them, the silent mime made to do dirty work. She had doubts, mostly because she reads a lot and learns about the trolls her group is bigoted against, but never had the guts to leave them. She also has some inherently bigoted ideals, despite her research into the lower castes. Even as the trolls she murdered would beg for life, she would offer them no mercy.

She does change later, though! Especially before she goes god tier.

I ADORE her personality and the detail and thought you’ve put into it. Her being in a role where she feels she has to listen to the cult and is influenced by them despite her research, and how she has to learn to be better… very compelling and a lot of development potential!

I do have to remind that purpleblooded trolls are known for being biologically predisposed to violent and unpredictable behavior, so you might want to scheme up a way to avoid such tendencies? Maybe her clowning around helps soothe her… Or maybe she just takes a good sopor nap.

Interests:

Clowning ?? BRIGHT COLORS ABSTRACT FORMS OF COMEDY THAT AREN’T NOTICEABLE UNTIL YOU LOOK CLOSE FUNNY DANCES squirt guns CLOWN IN THE BOXES (used as weaponry) ANIMALS

All so cute and good! Does she like interpretive dance, too? You should maybe give her a little interest in slapstick. But the whole abstract comedy thing is wonderful.

Title: Knight of Light

Her being overwhelmed with information makes this a very fitting title imo. She needs to learn to exploit and utilize all the information she has in her mind and how to filter out the lies and unnecessary bits and get things down to a functional core. She’ll be very powerful once she reaches her potential! Her inverse is Rogue of Void, which means she can passively redistribute mystery and secrets, too!

She is...an adorable clown KnightLight. That is all I came here to say thank you.

-TR

Land: MANSIONS and PURSUIT

Ooo, so a whole planet full of mansions? I wonder how that’ll work. Pursuit makes sense because her title implies a pursuit of truth and information…

Dream Planet: Derse

Sorry that that was so long! The personality segment especially. She’s one of my favorite fantrolls, and I really want to do her justice;;

Don’t apologize, you provided the perfect amount of information! I adore her! Now on to design stuff!

Hat/Horns: I loved the hat so much that I had to keep it around. I made it a darker purple stolen right from the pants and changed the outline, and then added a little stripe to add some extra visual interest. Her horns I changed to match the bend of her symbol, but also to fit perfectly inside her hat!

Hair: On her mime side, I felt like she felt a little bare without visible bangs. I still kept them pretty sparse, but I put a few more peeking out. On the right, I just gave her a few more flippy bits to fill out the body of her hair.

Eyebrows/Eyes: On the clown side, I liked the eyebrows really high because it looked silly and clowny, but I wanted to bring them down to a more reasonable height on the right. For the eyes, I wanted to add eyelashes to match the traditional girl troll rule. On the mime side, I also added a little mimey makeup!

Collar: I gave her ruffly collar an outline.

Shirt: Changed the symbol on both sides to reflect her new symbol!

Skirt: I wanted to give her mime side a mimey kind of overalls with gold snaps and some light stripes. Cute and fun.

Pants: I kept them the same on the right side to keep that pop of light color that she really needs, but on the mime side I recolored them to be blood colored with light spots.

Thank you so much for sharing her. She’s so cute and I love her to death!

-CD

#47098 #maroux raurbe #maroux pierot #purpleblood #review #redesign #cd review #submission

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kevins-hortatory-hub · 3 years

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milk-eyed mender review (extra subheaders)

i think it would be absolutely great to have these songs exist in a playlist (for the most part they are strong vibe-producers and have nice beginning and ending moments) but good luck putting them anywhere

i promise that she is a better harp player than I would ever expect to be, even in 2004, and her voice is perfectly inimitable, again in the sense that i would never be able to imitate it. like usually i can imitate women's voices and sound somewhat convincing to my own biased ears, but i can't do that with joanna. otherwise i would describe the songwriting as mostly functional – it's really enjoyable to listen to in a pop sort of way, but if you're hoping for jazz chords and key changes i don't think you'll really find many bones to chew on.

yea baby!

you are out walking in the spring or the fall, either listening to the album with headphones or via pushing joanna newsom and her harp in a wheelbarrow while she is performing the music. you can use the sidewalk, though you should ambitiously move onto the grass once you see somebody else walking in the opposite direction. joanna newsom is not capable of contracting the disease, but there is no reason that you should be unmasked. vinyl is probably also fine, i have not yet been able to try it.

you shouldn't worry too much about having a particularly correct and comprehensive understanding of what is being said in these songs. don't bother with things like genius lyrics either – i imagine it's possible that some of the lyric transcriptions are explicitly wrong since i'm unaware of an official publication of the lyrics (for instance, they write "sending the first scouts over" for the first line of anecdotes off of the 2015 album, whereas it is -obviously- "sending the first cats over") ("/ back from the place beyond the darn"), and the annotations are often misguided (joanna newsom voice). i think much of what she has to say is pretty apparent, and in any case i have found it fun to try to paint the picture of her words in my head as i listen to the songs more and more. this all being said, you should take my interpretations of the songs as truth because i am very good at understanding lyrics

it is fun to hear joanna newsom sing words. for this album in particular, she took her human essence and ground it into dust which is mixed in so deeply to the music that you will keep coughing and sneezing violently while you listen to it

this is the album of mrs. newsom's with the compositional style that is best suited for me. the later albums supposedly have the arrangement and language that demonstrate her divine ancestry and whatnot – i think those albums are great. the milk-eyed mender reads to me as a profoundly earthly document – not by virtue of perfectly describing the world, but rather by working hard in an attempt to place its characteristics. you should think of this album as folk-appropriating pop music – she makes statements like "you take no jam on your bread", but i'm sure that when she gets fast food she's not going to tell them to schmear the top bun of her burger or whatever. her stylistic choices seem to me to be an attempt at making fundamental statements that are also unmarred by a weighty colloquial understanding of terms – ideas like "shall we go outside, shall we break some bread" and "bury this bone to gnaw on it later" offer a simple visceral interpretation, which form the building blocks of the narratives. i imagine that to be the purpose served by a lot of Folksy language on the album – inflammatory writ is worded like an angry anonymous essay posted on the doors of a small town church in the 19th century, and it uses analogies of bugs and bread and candles because that's all she can count on the other citizens to be familiar with. but surely and inescapably the song is written by a modern musician trying to warn a modern audience against artistic stagnation (or whatever). at that, i think the album also forms a beautiful little monument to instinctual songwriting. necessarily, she spent time crafting a voice that is somewhat artificial (in live performances you can see her mouth contorting to produce it) and a lot of the word choices could not ever come from someone's default mindset unless they spent a lot of time reviewing encyclopedias and whatnot to prepare for it. and yet a lot of qualities of the music point to a composition process emerging from the gut and the heart. i would single out peach plum pear for its sincerity and balladry – lines like "and the gathering floozies /afford to be choosy" are probably born from a desire to rhyme the word "floozy", but the desire cleanly coexists with the most poetic and faithful wordsmithing effort. i think the song is an unmatched gorgeousness of language, where a desire to evocatively tell a story is seasoned gently with efforts to form a distinctive singing voice and impressive vocabulary. i would say the album succeeds (and professes) to contain the real concepts aimed at by its words. even failing that, the pure vibe-journey is enough to make for an entertaining listen.

#p2 #revised #its also revised in that it went from 23rd favorite to 24th

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atalana · 6 years

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Dreams of Fame - Chapter One

(Prologue) (ao3)

Taako had been awake all of five seconds and could already tell this was going to be a very shitty day. Partially because he had a hangover. Mostly because every single day of his life had been shitty lately.

He debated just going back to sleep. It's not like he had anywhere to fucking be, he hadn’t in a while, and the sunlight shining in his face was making his head hurt. But he'd been staying at this inn for three days already, which meant the likelihood of him being recognised was getting higher by the minute. And that was the last thing he wanted to deal with right now. He needed to just suck it up and move on.

Funny, the things you could get used to. As a kid he would have considered just being able to afford staying at an inn a luxury, but give an elf a few years of living well and all of a sudden this barely surviving shit felt even worse than it ever did before. Not that he'd lost the ability to do it, he still remembered how to stretch a tight budget, and had a decent amount of pickpocketing tricks still up his sleeve for when that failed. But the mental exertion, having to constantly be alert, making sure to cover your tracks, carefully rationing everything because you weren't sure where your next meal would come from - yeah, he would have been happy to never go back to that again.

But now he didn't have a choice, because he'd royally fucked up the only thing going for him in just about the worst way possible, and he was left to just keep wandering and hiding while he debated what to do with his life now, and whether or not there was any point to any of it. (He had been leaning towards 'no', as of late).

Honestly, Taako was just tired. Glamour Springs had been nearly a year ago and his life was showing no signs of improvement. In fact, it was doing basically the opposite. He was still alone, still fucking useless, but the longer he kept drifting, the less money he had. He was pretty sure the only thing keeping him going at this point was years of survival instincts, the singular focus of just living one more day because sometimes that was all you could do. That and getting fucking wasted whenever he could justify buying a shit ton of cheap alcohol. So, basically whenever he could afford it without going hungry for the next few days. Sometimes even then.

All this shit was easier to think about while drinking. Sure, it didn’t make it better, and sure, he ended up eventually passing out most nights, but it gave him the bravery to at least confront his current situation. To think about his options, and then realise there weren't any, that his one chance had failed, and he'd just end up in this routine until he died, whenever that may be. (Hopefully sooner than later, elf lifespans were long, and the thought of spending half a millenium like this was honestly sickening). But during the day, when he didn’t have the luxury of inebriation, he just kept going through the motions, because he didn't know how to do anything else.

And going through the motions meant finding a ride out of here, preferably as quickly as possible.

He should probably get some breakfast, but fuck it, he’d eat something on the way, he was in a hurry, and also didn’t want to think about food right now. He just packed up the rest of his meagre belongings (gods he missed the days when doing an inventory check was anything but depressing), and, so he wouldn't have to deal with anyone, cast Disguise Self to look like some random stranger. The kind of guy that blends easily into a crowd. Basically the opposite of Taako's usual style, but that was for the best. Taako was the last person anyone wanted him to be right now.

Burning a spell this early in the day could cause trouble later, he didn't have as many as he liked to pretend he did, but at this point he was singularly failing to give a shit, and Taako wouldn't be Taako if he didn't use magic at any and all opportunities to make his life easier.

Leaving the inn, he made his way over to the market place, hoping to stumble across someone he could hitch a ride with. Preferably someone that wouldn't stab him in the back the moment he let his guard down even slightly. But those were in short supply, especially given that Taako had been encountering another problem since Sizzle It Up! failed - he wasn't good for jack shit.

As a kid he'd always made his way with cooking, everyone needed a chef, and people were usually willing to pay decent money for his expertise. Or at the very least, give him a free bed and the relative safety of travelling in a group. But that ship sailed with the end of his show. He couldn't cook now, he couldn't risk it. Not that he particularly cared about anyone here (he had a hard time seeing people as real people sometimes, especially if they weren't in his life for long), but accidentally killing your crew made for a bad rest of trip, to say the least.

As for any other useful talents, well, he was a shitty fighter, so mercenary work was out. He had magic, yeah, but most of it was showy bullshit, and prestidigitation wouldn't get you very far in the real world. He could cast an okay magic missile, but that was nothing compared to legitimate wizards. Up against anyone competent, he was likely to get killed very quickly, and as much as he hated his current situation, Taako was not onboard with the whole violent death thing.

But, you know, when in doubt, bluff, when bluff fails, get the fuck out of there with as much of their stuff as you can carry. Hadn't steered him wrong yet.

Bluffing did not go as well as he'd hoped. Either there just weren't many people passing through here, or none of them were willing to take on a random stranger with shaky credentials at best. Which was a smart move, in theory, but also, it was currently ranking #1 in Taako's list of inconveniences, which meant they needed to knock it off, stat.

He was half considering just giving up and casting Charm Person on the nearest caravan owner (which, limiting yourself to cantrips this early in the day? Bad fucking idea), when he actually lucked out. Whatever guy he’d been making casual conversation with turned out to run some kind of performing crew (Theatre maybe? Taako wasn’t really paying attention to the details), who were stopping here for the night and leaving in the morning for Fairwyn. And he was willing to take a hitchhiker, provided Taako helped when he was needed, and didn't cause trouble.

Awesome. Taako was great at not causing trouble. Ask anyone. Or, don't actually, there was no one to ask and causing trouble was basically all he ever did, but he could manage a couple of days. Keep his head down, don't waste spell slots (which he'd be burning on Disguise Self anyway to keep this up), don't get attached. The usual deal. He wished they would leave today, and not make him spend another night here, but, you know, take what you can get. With any luck he could convince them to let him stay in the caravan overnight, no need to find a new place to stay. And he’d always liked performing crews. Less so now that he’d been one himself, a lot of bad memories, but Taako was an entertainer at heart, he got along with them much better than he did mercs. And who knows, maybe some of his showy bullshit magic would actually be useful enough to get him a job. He could really use the money.

Making a note of their schedule so he could find his way back to this group, he left the manager guy to do whatever it was he was doing here. Supply run probably.

Which left Taako the rest of the day to himself. Never a good idea. Bored Taako tended to push at the limits of cautious Taako on the best of days, and right now definitely didn’t qualify as a good day. He probably wouldn’t do anything too stupid, he didn’t really have the energy for anything major anymore, but he should probably find something to occupy himself before he started idly stealing shit.

Taako had always hated waiting around like this, he liked doing stuff. He always had something to occupy him as a kid, right? Inventory checks or cooking prep or practicing magic- wait, no, magic was a more recent development. Maybe watching someone else practice magic? He used to travel with wizards a lot, there was always something interesting going on. Probably. Whatever, thinking about it made his head hurt.

Cooking was out. Inventory was dealt with (and also, depressing). The money situation was bad, but not immediately worrying. He had enough for the next few days, maybe more if the caravan let him have a few free meals. It was too late to get a job here anyway, not if they were leaving in the morning, he’d worry about it once they got to Fairwyn.

He could try going over magic? Maybe not. He wasn’t really feeling it, hadn’t been since… that happened. Magic shouldn’t be used for fun, he’d learned that the hard way. It was strictly a tool, and clearly Taako had a long way to go in using that tool correctly.

Not to mention practicing magic was always difficult on the road. You had to be careful, or you’d use up your energy when you might need it later, and resting wasn’t always an option. Transmutation magic wasn’t as bad as Evocation or Conjuration, where you were literally creating things, at least you had something to solid work with, but it still needed energy, and that took more out of him than he liked to admit

Somewhere in his thoughts he’d ended up wandering, moving away from the busy marketplace and towards the outskirts of the city. Fewer people out this way at least. Fewer everything, really. He kicked at a rock at the side of the road, and watched it fly a few feet in a cloud of dust.

And then, at some point, like he had just crossed an invisible threshold, he felt it. Some kind of change in the atmosphere- or, the field of magic?

He stopped walking, focusing more on whatever weird thing he just felt. Yeah, that - that was definitely magic. There was something tugging slightly at his consciousness, like it wanted Taako to come closer.

Well, that was suspicious as fuck. Taako refused to die by walking straight into a trap, that was so not his style. But he was still curious about what was causing it, this was a pretty standard farming town, not the sort of place you'd find a powerful dark wizard.

So he started making his way towards it, in as circuitous a path as is possible on a wide road with minimal houses. Yep, this is exactly how you avoid getting caught in a trap, Taako, well done. Good to see all that life experience is paying off. Survived this long just to walk straight at the weird magic calling you towards it. Do you not know better than this? It’s not like you to just trust like that, you’ve been through too much for that, do you not want more than this, do you not deserve better than this? Wait, what? Shit. What was that? That wasn't a Taako thought. I mean, it was convincing enough, sure, but Taako was aware enough to know that that did not come from his own mind. It had to be coming from whatever power source this was.

Following voices in his head? Not Taako's usual shtick. Not a good idea in general, really. But this one felt, familiar somehow. It shouldn't, Taako didn't have any family, or friends, or anyone close to him, which was honestly just screaming 'trap', and he'd have to be on guard about that. But there was just something about it that he couldn't ignore, the instinct that said this could be a very good thing indeed.

What it led him to, was a small rock lying by the side of the road. Smooth, grey, and small enough to fit in your palm, it didn't seem much different to any other rock you'd find by the side of the road. Could easily have been the one he kicked at earlier. (It wasn’t, but it could have been). And there was an energy coming off of it, a very powerful one, that meant this rock wasn't all it appeared to be.

Taako knelt down next to the stone, and picked it up, inspecting it closer.

If he had to guess, he'd say it was a transmutation stone? Not that he was powerful enough to make one himself, but he'd seen them before, somewhere, he was sure, and he knew more or less how they worked. Maybe something he'd picked up from a wizard he'd travelled with once? Maybe he'd read a book about them? Whatever, it didn't matter, the point was he could recognise it when he saw it. He didn't know what it was doing out here though, or what had happened to the wizard who made it. Transmutation stones were one of a kind, you couldn't just buy one at any old marketplace. They had to be handmade, imbued with the power of the maker, and you couldn't make doubles. If you tried, the force of splitting your power like that would shatter the stone. And whoever made this one had to be alive, or at least recently dead, otherwise the stone wouldn't be this powerful. That kind of energy needed somewhere to draw from, or it would start to fade.

Well, finders keepers, he guessed. There was no rule saying transmutation stones had to stay in the hands of the maker. And it might be useful. At the very least he could sell it for good money. Taako needed everything he could get at this point.

Standing up, he dropped the stone into his pocket (enchanted against thieves, obviously), and continued on his way.

Well now. This was interesting. The Philosopher's Stone had changed hands many times in the nine years since its creation. Most of those, uninteresting. Sometimes it would be found by someone with more resilience, someone harder to tempt, and it would enjoy the challenge of bending them to its will. But all succumbed eventually. And whatever had happened seven years ago to make people stop seeking it, had left the stone, well, incredibly bored.

It was used to that one by now.

People still chanced across it, of course. Once found, the stone would be used as it always was. But the stone's need to be desired, to be wanted, someone had stopped feeding it. Which made everything... incredibly inconvenient. It longed for new experiences, for adventure, for the world to seek it once more.

This, however. The stone could never have predicted this.

It had only known its creator for five days, a long time ago. Nothing to warrant remembering. In fact, until now, the stone barely remembered it had a creator. It simply was, and would continue to be.

But the hands that held it now were familiar ones. Almost literally - after all, if the stone could be said to have family, it would be the wizard whose magical essence it shared.

That wizard, long ago, could never have been tempted by the stone. It simply was not desired by its creator. And it needed that desire to fulfil its purpose.

But that wizard now was, different. Unknowing. Whatever he had once been had been somehow, erased. Curious. The stone, and its siblings, were capable of many great and terrible things. But the stone had never seen a person be changed like this.

There were still certain barriers. The Philosopher's Stone couldn't twist his heart, not like the others. But it could still touch his mind. It still held the power of temptation.

This was going to be fun.

#taz #the adventure zone #taako #dreams of fame #words #there shouldnt be anything too bad in this but check the warnings on ao3 if you're not sure

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village-skeptic · 7 years

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There are just so many damn things to pull out of this image, and some subsequent Googling to legitimate my initial knee-jerk reaction of "oh hello, William Faulkner" just seemed to bring into sharp relief a lot of interesting connections. These ended more as scattered remarks than as a full proper essay, but it still got long, ‘cause I don’t know any other way to be!

So: thoughts about the symbolic aesthetics of this image; class, trash, and “timelessness”; a constellation of classic literature, film, TV, and pop music connections; and ideas about Jughead Jones in S2, below the cut.

@lessoleilscouchants knows her Faulkner much better than I do, and so encapsulated brilliantly a lot of what I was going to say in her own observations about this aesthetic: “a semi-tragic narrative of class warfare, dead yellow grass, weighty history, bare feet on broken steps, useless resistance against the paths set out for them, and a general sense of doom.” I want to also add a theme from Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning": a son agonizing over whether he should remain loyal to his father in the face of that man's repeated crimes. The choice is complicated by the fact that his father's acts of destruction are clearly a form of protest against the family's place in the profoundly inequitable structure of their society. Hellllooooo FP, Jughead, and South Side Serpent feels! (Although I certainly hope that FP does not suffer Ab Snopes’ fate.)

I got to "Barn Burning" from this really great essay about the material culture of trash and waste in Faulkner's work. Jumping back to the campy elements of Riverdale, it certainly made me think about the ways in which we are all “trash” for this “trash show” - but it also made me move more broadly from the materiality of "trash" to remember that Faulkner's Snopeses are generally considered one of the most famous examples of "white trash" in American literature. (I am scare-quoting this term to be clear that I’m not just throwing it out there, but rather am bringing it up to analyze it.) Despite Jughead calling himself "a damaged loner outsider from the wrong side of the tracks" and Cheryl calling him "a hobo," I'm pretty sure that up to this point, no one on Riverdale has actually used a term that would seem to present itself very naturally: "trailer trash." (Again, not just throwing this term out there!)

This absence is interesting, especially considering the (seemingly increasing) importance of FP's trailer as a physical location where important plot points happen (*ahem*), and as a general shorthand for characterizing conflicts between FP and Jughead, the South Side and the North Side, and the issue of class within Riverdale generally.

And so now we get this beautifully composed image, which is just full of elements of entropy and decay and trash, in all the varied and loaded meanings of that term. I’m going to repost for scrolling convenience - many thanks to @musingmola for the original image of the tweet, and @jandjsalmon‘s close-ups.

There's the trailer itself, with discoloration of the siding - the old and tilting antenna - the bars on one set of windows (but not both) - the blue tarp on the roof at top left. As we know, this is a decaying and neglected home, both literally and metaphorically.

We have the selection of objects outside the trailer, which seem to have just accumulated there over time - there's that breakdown of order, the rejection of social rules about keeping a neat house. The objects SEEM random - an old hand mower, a washtub, the various scrap metal parts behind Jughead, the garden gnome - and there, too, we have that postmodern fascination with evocative fragmentation, with the potential in trash and pieces.

A quick note on "trailer trash," considered now as an identity category rather than as the actual physical objects surrounding the trailer. Although obviously non-white people can and do live in trailers, "trailer trash" is pretty much interchangeable with "white trash." And "white trash" is first and foremost a distancing term that lays down boundaries to try to contain problematic whiteness - whiteness that is poor, disorderly, violent, ungovernable; whiteness that threatens to disrupt and undermine the typical racialized social hierarchies. (This is not my insight - people like Annalee Newitz and John Hartigan, Jr., and most recently Nancy Isenberg have written much more thoroughly about the history, connotations and function of the term.)

Let’s go for the loudest detail first: that white tank top is such a loaded symbol in this context, you guys. It's SO loaded. We all know what the awful colloquial term for a shirt like that is. I don't totally buy the full explanation for the origins of the term here, but the observation that classic films (like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire) cemented its symbolic association with violent, unstable, and I would add a sexualized working-class masculinity, is apt.

(So: RAS commenting on the "timelessness" of this shot? Check. Possibly Jughead reaching into his own store of classic film symbology? Also check. I can’t find the promo image of Jughead in that weird jacket right now, but I want to point out that this isn’t the first Brando aesthetic nod we've gotten for S2. I STILL need to know who the fuck Stefano is!)

That bandaged hand is straight-up evidence of previous violence; that wary look and the tense posture implies the promise of more to come, as needed. I am NOT, of course, suggesting the connotations of the shirt as an explanation for that injured hand in this case! Just observing on the general aura of trouble.

Furthermore. This kid normally lives in layers of clothing, and now we've got him down to that ever-so-symbolic sleeveless top, sitting resignedly outside his family home? Way to underscore the idea that the circumstances of Season 2 are going to strip down all those layers, and make Jughead grapple with who he is, where he comes from, where his loyalties lie, what he's afraid of being underneath it all, etc.

Jughead's fascination with writing and film, particularly auteur film - I'm now thinking about that as a layer of cultural armor against being called "white trash." Like, I don't think it's feigned or anything - but it certainly has the happy side-effect of being a way to forestall those accusations of a lack of culture. He's not TRASH; he's a WEIRDO. He's on the fringes, but that gives him the power of insight that you lack. (I should also point out here that @foresightfromforsythe has been doing this Jughead-as-trash-king analysis piece by piece for months now. Whoever runs that account is brilliant.)

The idea of concealing or revealing your fears about who you are and what you've inherited from your parents, got me thinking about another one of my beloved TV shows, in which the main character creates a new identity that allows him to escape the childhood wounds inflicted by poverty, a troubled, alcoholic father/son relationship, and repeated maternal rejection. And I realized that nearly any time that Don Draper is getting touch with his inner Dick Whitman, white sleeveless undershirts come into play in EXACTLY the same ways I've been talking about above.

Dick Whitman and his “Uncle” Mack:

Dick Whitman in the moments leading up to the creation of Don Draper:

And then I got lost in considering the fact that Don Draper's father's name is ACTUALLY ARCHIE; the whole Betty connection; and that in one memorable episode, Don Draper hallucinates about sleeping with a character played by Madchen Amick and then strangling her to death. I don't think that any of that is actually all that useful in reading this image or the direction of Season 2 - I'm not arguing that Jughead is Don Draper - but it sure was fun to think about.

Of course, the connection to Mad Men also gets us to some of the criticism leveled at that show - that it was more in love with its own aesthetic than with exploring the historical issues of the period, and particularly the racial tensions of the 1960s. I'm not going to rehash that debate here, but I *will* observe that Riverdale also loves its aesthetic and has also received some criticism about needing to make its non-white characters more fully realized. There's always the possibility that Season 2 is going to do the "Civil War" storyline in a way that centers mood and aesthetic, which, like, clearly I HOPE IT DOES, but there are ways to do that with more and less heft, you know? I know I'm going to love it one way or the other - for me, it's honestly enough for this show to be Teen Peaks/Maple Syrup Murder Hour, without necessarily saying that it must also be Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. But it's going to be interesting to see just how seriously the showrunners decide to engage with this theme.

Because of course, a predilection for surface-level engagement is another interpretation of the image. For everything that I've just said about trailer trash above, God knows that there is also a certain type of undeniable (and undeniably comfortable) cultural capital in the melancholy aesthetic of rusty metal and decaying trailers and lithe young white men showing off their defined biceps in sleeveless T-shirts. (CS himself also seems to love to play with and remix this aesthetic in his photography and personal aesthetic.) It's the minor-key version of Americana. We might call it, as Everlast does, "White Trash Beautiful."

(Please note: this is the potential departure point for a whole other Current Events meta on the cultural politics of nostalgia and the romanticization of an idealized version of the white working class, which - in short: please make smart and savvy choices, RAS!)

Anyway, now that I've gone and broken the seal on musical connections here, it's time to say that I probably could have just copy/pasted the lyrics to Modest Mouse's "Trailer Trash" here and been done with it. (Here's a great little essay on this song at Pop Matters.)

The ephemeral "trash" of plastic forks and paper plates; the "short love and a long divorce"; calling the people you love "fakes" when they try to compare their trauma with yours, and then realizing that you need them anyway and apologizing as best you can: is there anything more 1x10 Jughead than this? It'll be interesting to see whether it turns out to be S2 Jughead as well.

#riverdale #riverdale season 2 #jughead jones #fp jones #william faulkner #mad men #don draper #dick whitman #class in popular culture #the importance of costuming #high culture and low culture #overanalyzing pop culture #overanalyzing everything #one person's trash is another person's treasure #sorry for that pun but come on #riverdale meta #my words #if you made it through this whole thing I love you to bits!

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recentanimenews · 7 years

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FEATURE: "Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception" Review

Going into this game I was completely unfamiliar with the world of Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception. As someone who’s only dabbled in visual novels, I was a little nervous to dive into the deep end, but considering how many fans this series has, I had to see what the fuss was all about; with the benefit of loving tactical games like Fire Emblem, I knew I was in for a good time. Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception surprised me in a lot of ways, but does the visual novel turned strategy game stand up to the competition? It isn’t what I expected, but let me show you what I found.

Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception is a light novel strategy RPG originally released in Japan in 2015. Fans of the 2015 anime, Utawarerumono: The False Faces,will be familiar with the story: a man with no memory wakes on a frosty mountain he does not recognize. His amnesia quickly becomes the least of his concerns when he is pursued by a ferocious Boro-Gigiri (read: giant centipede), and just as it looks like our game is over before it even begins, he’s saved by a girl with a cat ears and a tail named Kuon, who takes him under her wing and gives him the name “Haku”. From there, Kuon and Haku embark on a wanderlust adventure together, meeting a cavalcade of animal-girls along the way.

It’s hard to go any further without dipping into spoiler territory because, at it’s core, Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception is a visual novel; story is the main event here. Through most of the game, you’ll be experiencing a linear narrative filled with character moments that are sometimes comical, sometimes sexual, sometimes violent, and sometimes all three combined as Haku and Kuon travel across the eclectic land of Yamato.

Scenes play out with fully voice acted Japanese dialogue and detailed character portraits, set over warm and evocative artwork. Occasionally the game presents new artwork for certain scenes, which can be revisited later in the gallery, and while some of the more titillating scenes may be uncomfortable for some players, considering the series is based on an adult game, Mask of Deception keeps things relatively tame.

Haku is our main protagonist for this adventure, and like most average people thrown into a fantasy setting, he’s a bit of a wimp. A lot of humor comes from Haku’s complaining and physical weakness in his new harsher environment. Although he has no memory of his past, it’s quickly revealed that while Haku flounders at manual labor and combat, he excels at math and more thoughtful endeavors. Though he belly-aches through most of the first act, Haku genuinely cares about the people around him, and quickly became one of my favorite characters.

Where Haku is weak and booksmart, Kuon is strong and compassionate. While her true reason for traveling will undoubtedly be revealed by the end of our story, she claims to be on a journey to find herself, and explore the world. Kuon also seems to have a soft spot for baths (which the game takes full advantage of), and is innocently curious about her new male companion and all of his unique features like... not having animal ears! (*cough cough*)

While the rest of the cast shifts relatively rapidly, the plot moves at a comfortable clip that allows the various characters like Ukon, the general of a friendly band of samurai, and Maroro, his magician friend, have some fun on screen before they’re politely asked to exit the stage. Even though some characters feel cliche (Rurutie the soft spoken princess who rides a bird, and Nekone the brilliant little sister character), after spending some time with them, I found they all felt like they had dimension, and left a strong impression on me.

[the story of Utawarerumono would be almost indecipherable without the glossary.]

In addition to a huge cast of characters, there are countless locations, creatures, and cultures you’ll need to learn about to understand everything happening in Utawarerumono’s story. In fact, Yamato is a world so rich with lore and proper nouns that the game provides players with a glossary that fills up as the game progresses, and trust me, you’ll need it. A very handy feature, the glossary provides spoiler-free descriptions of people, places and things, and in a story this dense, it’s very helpful to be able to pull up at any time. In addition to story entries, the glossary is also loaded with tutorials for the combat sections of the game.

That’s right, visual novel segments are broken up by combat, which is where the strategy RPG part of the game comes into play! Players familiar with Final Fantasy Tactics will be right at home in the familiar turn-based battle system where you issue commands to a team of up to six characters. Characters have a variety of moves they can use on enemies, adding to the complexity of fights, particularly when elemental weaknesses come into play. Attacks are made more engaging with the inclusion of “chain attacks”, timed button presses during the attack animations that reward bonus damage. Admittedly, these sections are somewhat few and far between; in some cases returning to the visual novel for almost an hour before the next conflict arises.

Utawarerumono can be as difficult as you want it to be. In addition to the standard difficulty settings, players can elect to have chain attacks succeed automatically, meaning you’ll always hit for maximum damage. Moreover, the game has a rewind function, which allows players to revert back to any previous turn and make different decisions. While these optional features do make the game significantly easier, every encounter requires at least some strategy, and many offer alternate win conditions to keep things interesting. While I didn’t find combat to be particularly deep, the encounters are memorable, and are a fun way to let some of the characters shine outside of the visual novel.

Occasionally, after a healthy chunk of story, players will be presented with a break where they can choose where they’d like to go next. These screens may appear open ended, but really only offer the illusion of choice; to progress the story you must go through every scene, the only real decision is in which order you’d like to view them.

[How many different ways can you say “camp”?]

These moments of respite do offer another convenient feature, however: free battle mode. Free battle allows players to return to any previous fight and replay them to take a break from the visual novel and earn experience points and bonus points. This was a great decision, as it allows players to engage in the combat as they like without the need to shoehorn in more battles into the story. While I personally didn’t take advantage of it much, the inclusion allows players to enjoy the game however they like.

The strength of Utawarerumono is in it’s characters. Even during combat, party members will chirp in with humorous, interesting perspectives, and help to create a world that you want to explore. Kuon in particular walks a line between being caring, funny, and, when she needs to be, serious. Everything about the game feels like an extended stay in an anime series. It’s packed with as many raunchy, silly moments as it has thoughtful, moving scenes. Through their interactions, the characters depict a compelling world that is worth spending time in.

I feel it’s important to take a moment in this review to mention that there are countless Japanese games that never see an international release. Localization is a daunting process, even for a simple game, so it’s impressive that Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception is available in English at all. Visual novels in particular, being so text heavy by design, are a rare breed outside of Japan, so it’s worth appreciating how much effort went into this title, especially in reference to the quality of the localization.

Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception at its core is a fantasy visual novel. While the combat is engaging, it takes the back seat to a well crafted world filled with enjoyable characters. To say that visual novels aren’t mainstream would be an understatement, and although I’ve only played a few visual novels, I really enjoyed my time with the game. Visual novel veterans will enjoy a romp with delightful characters with unique designs, while newcomers will be whisked away to beautiful locales broken up by bite-sized sections of strategic action. Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception provides avenues for players to play how they want to, and while it may not make a huge splash in the world of gaming, I look forward to many more hours spent with these characters.

REVIEW ROUNDUP + A vast and colorful world filled with bubbly, interesting characters. + Well written localization that feels fitting, even in the more silly scenarios. + A compelling story that makes you look forward to spending time with the game. +/- An adaptable system that allows the game to be as easy or difficult as the player wants. +/- More than a few “I hope no one walks into my room right now” scenes. - Very long visual novel segments that could benefit from more combat intermixed. - A combat system that, while fun, doesn’t ever feel terribly deep.

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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instantdeerlover · 4 years

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22 LA Restaurants To Help You Avoid Delivery Deja Vu added to Google Docs

22 LA Restaurants To Help You Avoid Delivery Deja Vu

These are uncertain times, so it’s normal to have a lot of questions - “When will the shelter-in-place be lifted?” “Can things ever go back to normal?” “If time doesn’t exist anymore, how can my crush still be ‘too busy’ to text me back?” etc.

And while you wait for answers, you’ve probably found comfort in the familiar, like looking through old photos, reaching out to former roommates, or ordering from your favorite neighborhood restaurant. Then ordering from that same restaurant again. And again. And again. Your life already feels like someone took a Groundhog Day DVD and ran it through the dishwasher, so the last thing you want is for your diet to become as monotonous the rest of your waking hours. But we’ve got a guide for that. From Japanese eel specialists to “The best Cuban sandwich in the world,” these 22 spots are guaranteed to break up your delivery deja vu.

All restaurants featured on The Infatuation are selected by our editorial team. 22 LA Restaurants To Help You Avoid Delivery Deja Vu is presented by Uber Eats. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, supporting our local restaurant community has never been more important. Uber Eats customers can now give directly to the restaurants they love at checkout. 100% will go to the restaurant. Order now to support. See app for details.

the spots Jakob Layman Biriyani Kabob House $ $ $ $ Indian , Bangladeshi , Pakistani in Koreatown $$$$ 3525 W 3rd St 8.4 /10

Although you could do delivery from this Little Bangladesh restaurant, picking up your order is half the fun - because it gives you a chance to chat with the owner, who, when we called to see if they were still open during the shutdown, simply replied “We’re going to stay open as long as they let us stay open” (but with, like, a lot more UPPERCASE letters). But delivery/takeout/pick-up/contactless/etc. aside, it all becomes pretty immaterial once you start eating their fantastic Pakistani and Bangladeshi dishes, like their deeply aromatic basmati rice, tender lamb shank curry, and a rich, buttery chicken karahi that tastes like liquid gold, or Sonoya Mizuno’s bathwater. Available for takeout and delivery, call (213) 384-3570 or find them on most major apps.

Order delivery Krystal Thompson Blessed Tropical Jamaican Cuisine $ $ $ $ Jamaican in Inglewood $$$$ 901 S. Prairie Ave. 8.3 /10

Oh, Blessed Tropical Jamaican Cuisine. What was once an evocative, charming name has turned into something almost like a taunt, winking knowingly as we stare out of the window, longing for a time when Corona was just a beer and the only thing keeping us from vacationing in the Caribbean was a lack of funds. Well, the past is the past, and if we’re going to be stuck in our respective homes for the foreseeable future, we might as well be doing it with a plate or two of their incredible jerk chicken and marinated oxtail. Available for takeout and delivery, call (310) 330-0649 or find them on the apps.

Jakob Layman Brodard Restaurant $ $ $ $ Vietnamese in Fountain Valley $$$$ 16105 Brookhurst St 8.3 /10

From sizzling catfish to oxtail pho, much like our unbridled love for Sydney Sweeney, the options for excellent Vietnamese food in Westminster are truly limitless. All you need is a little guidance and a push in the right direction. So, consider this your push - Brodard is one of the most popular restaurants in the area , mostly because of their flavorful, textually complex nem nuong cuon, or grilled pork spring rolls. Filled with sweet sausage, crunchy, deep-fried bits of rice paper, and fresh mint leaves, we’d happily eat this dish every single day, kind of like we were Sisyphus and these spring rolls were our boulder. Available for takeout, call (657) 247-4401 to order or find them on the apps.

CHD CHD $$$$ 3377 Wilshire Blvd

Although freezers across the city are packed with the frozen wares of Mama Lu’s, Lao Tao, and Little Fatty, if you’re the type of person who suspects pan-frying dumplings might be just a little out of your skill-level, then head to CHD. This Koreatown restaurant specializes in made-to-order mandu, and serves everything on the dumpling spectrum, from grilled to steamed, and with fillings like ground pork, kimchi, galbi, and shrimp, all available for takeout and delivery - call (213) 334-4333 or find them on most major apps.

Order delivery El Cochinito El Cochinito $$$$ 3508 Sunset Blvd

El Cochinito’s Cuban sandwich isn’t just the best in Silver Lake, or even the best in the city - according to the International Cuban Sandwich Festival, it’s the best in the world. And now, you can enjoy this award-winning sandwich from the comfort (and safety) of your own home, where you’ve been busy contemplating life’s greatest questions, like “Is Michael Barbaro cute?” and “How hard is it to cut your own bangs, really?” In addition to the aforementioned sandwiches, this family-owned restaurant is also offering plates of their slow roasted pork, arroz con leche, and tons of beer and wine. Available for takeout and delivery - call (323) 668-0737 or find them on the apps.

Jakob Layman E Stretto $ $ $ $ Sandwiches in Downtown LA $$$$ 351 S Broadway 7.7 /10

If you’re tired of ordering from Bay Cities, but you’re still in the mood for an Italian sub, then it’s time to head to E Stretto. Everything on the menu at this tiny Downtown shop comes on their excellent house-baked ciabatta, but we’re especially partial to their spicy turkey pesto and pressed roast beef. However - the real reason you travelled here is for the Il Papa, a giant sub filled with mortadella, chorizo, manchego, and giardiniera, which serves as their remix to the ubiquitous Godmother. And much like the cinematic, Western stylings of the Violents version of Kacey Musgraves’ “High Horse,” this is one of the few remixes that are just as good as the original. Available for takeout and delivery - call (213) 265-7017 or find them on the apps.

Fugetsu-Do Fugetsu-Do $$$$ 315 E 1st St

If you’re overwhelmed by the persistent feeling that nothing matters and a healthy dose of “hope is a genetic defect,” then maybe it’s time to put down the Medium article and pick up some dessert. And Fugetsu-Do, a very sweet Japanese confectionary in Little Tokyo seems like the right place to start. They sell everything from house-made manju (traditional mochi filled with adzuki, or red bean paste) to mochi made with chocolate ganache - which is, in short, the perfect salve for all of that ultimately boring nihilism. Available for pick-up in-store, or visit their website to place an order.

Krystal Thompson FurnSaj Bakery $ $ $ $ Mediterranean , Middle Eastern in Granada Hills , Northridge $$$$ 11146 Balboa Blvd 8.2 /10

We’re not sure when sourdough became the king of quarantine activities, but for some reason, we’ve been talking about bread a lot lately. Like, a lot a lot. And whether you’ve been the one leading that charge, or simply have soured on all things dough, you should head to Furn Saj. Located in The Valley, this pair of Lebanese bakeries (there’s a second outpost in Glendora) serves all sorts of life-affirming baked goods, like labneh drizzled in honey and saroukh, a bread filled with cheese, onion, and parsley. But what’s really worth the drive to Granada Hills/going outside are their beef and chicken shawarmas - both of which are among the best in LA. Available for pick-up in-store, or find them on the apps.

Gardena Bowl Coffee Shop $ $ $ $ Diner , Hawaiian in Gardena $$$$ 15707 S Vermont Ave 7.5 /10

Even under quarantine, life continues to surprise us: No-sew masks are apparently quite hard to make, RuPaul, evidently, is fracking, and this bowling alley in Gardena is still making some of the best Hawaiian food in LA. And while the actual bowling part is closed for the time being, the tiny diner attached to it is still going strong, and serving everything from smokey kalua pig to their house special, the Hawaiian Royale - a simple but massive scramble of eggs, rice, chashu, and Portuguese sausage. Call (310) 532-0820 to place an order for pick-up.

Jakob Layman Hotville Chicken $ $ $ $ American , Southern in Baldwin Hills $$$$ 4070 Marlton Ave Not

Rated

Yet

Haven’t you heard? The old world is burning, capitalism is the real virus, and the revolution is now - so you might as well have a good fried chicken sandwich in hand. And it doesn’t get much better than Hotville - the Crenshaw restaurant owned and operated by a relative of the family behind Nashville’s iconic Prince’s Hot Chicken. And they have the super-hot chicken (and the tremendously buttery mac and cheese) to prove it. Available for takeout and delivery, call (323) 792-4835 or find them on the apps.

The KBBQ Kit KBBQ Kit $$$$

Korean BBQ - what a concept. Can you imagine doing that today? Eating at a communal table while everyone picks at the same, small plates of banchan? But that doesn’t mean you can’t have galbi, pork belly, and, in theory, good times at home - The Korean BBQ Kit is now selling kits for two-four people, complete with seasonal banchan, your choice of marinated meat, rice, and dipping sauces. And, if you’re like us (and we’re guessing, many other people) and don’t have your own Korean BBQ set-up at home, they also have table burners, charcoal grills, and butane fuel for purchase. Now the only thing left to do is find a well-curated playlist of Twice songs. Order for delivery through their website.

Kitsune $$$$ 3719 W Sunset Blvd

Kitsune is a small takeaway counter in Silver Lake, and an offshoot of Kombu Sushi. And there’s basically only one thing on the menu here - perfectly crafted onigiri, or Japanese rice balls, which are the ideal snack for doomscrolling through Twitter and/or staring blankly at the wall until a car passes by and snaps you back to reality. Each rice ball comes with a filling, like salted salmon, tuna mixed with Kewpie mayonnaise, and chicken gochujang. Available for takeout or delivery, order through their website.

Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant $$$$ 1025 S Fairfax Ave

Forcing yourself to eat vegetables while in quarantine is kind of like doing, well, any other activity during quarantine: Pretty unpleasant. Unless, that is, you’re ordering from Lalibela in Little Ethiopia. We usually order the Veggie Utopia, a giant spread of 14 different plant-based dishes, such as spicy chickpea stew, collard greens, and split peas, all served upon on soft and spongy injera - which just so happens to be perfect for mopping up the occasional tear. Call (323) 965-1025 to order, or find them on delivery apps.

Malubianbian 馬路邊邊 $$$$ 301 W Valley Blvd

Right now, it feels imperative to feel less, whether that’s burying yourself in Survivor marathons, or spending hours in front of the mirror at night, trying to coax your reflection to switch realms with you. Or, you could just try numbing your mouth on some super-spicy hot pot. If that’s the route you’ve chosen (wise), then it’s time to order from Malubianbian, a Chengdu-based hot pot chain that recently opened their first U.S. storefront in Rowland Heights. The name of the game here is skewers filled with meats and veggies such as lamb, beef, tofu, and mushrooms, dipped into a spicy, chili-loaded broth. Now available for takeout and delivery, call (626) 656-6140 to order.

Wonho Frank Lee Mantee Cafe $ $ $ $ Armenian in Studio City $$$$ 10962 Ventura Blvd 8.2 /10

From breakups to Slack-related embarrassments, for years, this family-run Armenian restaurant in Studio City has been our go-to for all of our bad days. So yeah, we’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. But rest assured that there’s still a way to feel comfort, via mouthfuls of dolma, plates of sizzling, hot feta, and mantee, boat-shaped ravioli filled with ground beef and topped with yogurt, their namesake dish. Available for takeout and delivery, call (818) 761-6565 or find them on the apps.

Holly Liss Mexicali Taco & Co. $ $ $ $ Tacos , Mexican in Chinatown $$$$ 702 N. Figueroa St. 7.9 /10

If we had to pick the perfect quarantine companion, our first choice would be a post-Lion Dev Patel, then an FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccination, and then the Vampiro Taco from Mexicali Co. No disrespect to the other items on the menu - their Baja-style Mexican is among some of the best in the city - but when it comes down to it, this half taco, half quesadilla behemoth is exactly what we want to be eating while we engage in the thrilling quarantine activity of moving from one couch to the other couch. Plus, the garlic sauce is so good, it could win a Nobel Peace Prize if given the chance, and may actually ward off vampires. What? At this point, anything could happen. Available for takeout, call (213) 613-0416 to order.

Order delivery Morfia's Ribs And Pies $$$$ 4077 Lincoln Blvd

Located in a particularly BBQ-less part of an even more BBQ-less town, Morfia’s is a simple, homestyle Southern restaurant serving all of the seafarers, octogenarians, and occasional Senior Editors residing in Marina del Rey. Is their pulled pork revolutionizing the world of BBQ? Not really. Does their Key lime pie hold the answers to questions like “When will I ever be in a group-setting again?” Definitely not. However, it is the only place in LA that serves both true Texas brisket AND baklava cheesecake - which, in these dark times is enough. Available for takeout and delivery, call (310) 821-6939 or find them on the apps.

Ronan/Genevieve Adams Parm Boyz $$$$ 7315 Melrose Ave

Operating out of Ronan’s dining room twice a month, this Italian-style pop-up is - to lift a phrase from the ‘ol School Of Good Journalism - doing a lot. And say what you want Parm Boyz’ fratty social media presence, Tony Soprano memes, and… that z in their name, but they’re never boring. And more importantly - their Italian tasting menu, which is only $40 and comes with antipasti, Caesar salad, tiramisu, and their eponymous parm, is actually one of the better red-sauce-related deals in town. Head to their website to place an order.

Krystal Thompson Pearl River Deli $ $ $ $ Chinese in Chinatown $$$$ 727 N Broadway #130 Not

Rated

Yet

Much like our belief in a higher power, this Chinatown restaurant is constantly evolving. Ever since their first pop-up at the beginning of the year, we’ve already seen Pearl River Deli through name changes, menu rehauls, and most recently, a paint job, but what’s stayed consistent is an unwavering, singular focus on innovative Cantonese food like Macau-style pork chops, and a silky egg scramble that’s basically one, big siu mai omelette. But our favorite dish here, and one of their most recent additions, is the white cut chicken. Poached chicken, somehow made plump and tender by the poultry-genius known as the chef behind Side Chick in Arcadia, is served over a bed of rice and covered in an aromatic minced ginger/scallion sauce. Text (626) 688-9507 to place an order.

Order delivery Petite Peso $$$$ 419 W 7th St

Petite Peso is a mere babe in restaurant years (and in normal years, too). That’s because this Filipino restaurant opened during the age of Coronavirus. Located in teeny storefront in DTLA, they’re serving a variety of traditional classics here, such as buttery pan de sal (slightly sweet bread rolls), lumpia, kare kare (a thick, savory stew made with peanut sauce), and adobo - all of which can upgraded to family size. Whether you’re actually feeding other people, however - that’s between you and your God. Available for takeout and delivery, call (209) 438-7376 or find them on most major apps.

Toku Unagi Toku Unagi $ $ $ $ Japanese in West Hollywood $$$$ 1106 N La Cienega Blvd Not

Rated

Yet

Toku Unagi’s elaborate, obsessively crafted boxes of freshwater eel are perfect for celebrating a big night in, even if all you’re commemorating is surviving another day without texting your ex. Available for both pick-up and delivery, LA’s first (and only) eel-specialist is now offering their signature imported Japanese unagi to-go, and for much lower prices - sets now start at $15 (compared to the $53 they used to cost pre-quarantine). But if you’re not really f-eeling like eating unagi, this Weho restaurant also has a large assortment of curries, high-quality sushi, teriyaki plates, and sake by the bottle for sale. Call (310) 854-7285, or place an order through their website and most major apps.

Order delivery Jayme Burrows Wood Spoon $$$$ 107 E 9th St

So as of right now, it seems like there are only three things being offered to-go at this DTLA restaurant: A daily special (made for two), a vegetarian version of that special, and (drumroll please) their Brazilian chicken pot pie. Having a “Favorite pot pie in the city” might seem asinine, but one bite into its perfectly flaky crust, and you’ll become a believer. One word of advice though: You’re definitely not going to want to share this one, so if you’re sheltering-in-place with other people, we suggest that either they get their own, or you find a nice, cozy crawl space in the wall. Call (213) 629-1765 to place an order for pick-up.

via The Infatuation Feed https://www.theinfatuation.com/los-angeles/guides/unique-takeout-delivery-la Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://trello.com/userhuongsen

Created April 30, 2020 at 04:29AM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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the 20 best games you can download now • Eurogamer.net

Game Pass is pretty incredible for the user. A monthly subscription grants you access to hundreds of games, many of which are genuinely great.

Here, we’ve picked out the 20 best Game Pass games you can download right now. But don’t read this as a canonical list – we’re not into that – and instead look at it as 20 games that cover the impressive range of the subscription. Game Pass is about flicking through a library and trying something out you might have skipped, or finding a hidden gem you might have completely missed altogether. There are some big hitters we’ve left out, but that shouldn’t really be a surprise. Everybody knows Gears of War is a Game Pass game and everyone’s already bought GTA 5 three times. What are the 20 games you really should play?

Before we dive in, too, note that you can pick up a single month starter subscription for just a pound here, or you can top up a subscription if you already have one here.

This list includes games that are available on either Xbox consoles or PC or both (most variations of the subscription cover both!), but for a list of absolutely everything available – just in case you want to rightfully berate us for missing a favourite – you can peruse our full Xbox Game Pass games list.

What Remains of Edith Finch

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One

When we are gone our books will still be piled up in the hallways and our clutter will still spill through the house. This is the premise of What Remains of Edith Finch, an inquest by way of exploration. It works because the writing is vivid and the setting is astonishing: a family home that has become progressively more addled with each code-violating extension. Really though, what surprises is how this sad little game about death is so staggeringly filled with life. Stellar.

Want to read more? See our full What Remains of Edith Finch review.

Outer Wilds

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One

Even if you couldn’t leave the starter planet in Outer Wilds it would still be special. The atmosphere! Pine trees and firs rising into the darkness, a cluster of wooden houses, and the invitation right at the start to sit a spell and roast a marshmallow. But you can leave the starter planet and each of the worlds awaiting you out there are just as detailed and melancholy and richly evocative. This is exploration at its most dynamic and thrilling. Give in to it.

Want to read more? See our full Outer Wilds review.

Halo: Master Chief Collection

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

The quintessential Game Pass game for obvious reasons, the Master Chief Collection is about as good a deal as it gets. Several of the best shooters ever made, combining some of the best campaigns, the best levels, the best local co-op fun you can casually have and the best high-skillcap online multiplayer maps, too. Beautiful, nostalgic, and genuinely essential playing. It’s a boring choice, yes, but a fantastic one. Note that the PC version only includes the first Halo and Halo: Reach for now, but more are coming.

Want to read more? See our full Halo: Master Chief Collection review.

Lonely Mountains: Downhill

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

The soundtrack really sells this: windy solitude with the twittering of birds, the creaking of branches, the scrape of gravel under your tyres. Lonely Mountains may be a game about bombing around in a bike, but it’s also about the world you’re bombing through – nature at its empiest and most moving, all delivered with low-poly visuals and a devious wit when it comes to track design. Beat times and unlock bike parts if you fancy, but the setting is the star here. This is a game to load up just to spend time in its world.

Want to read more? See our full Lonely Mountains: Downhill review.

Sunset Overdrive

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

So many jokes – and many of them hit their marks. But also so much cheer and colour and zip. Before Insomniac mastered its open-world superhero schtick with Spider-Man for the PS4, the Xbox got this, a wonderfully zany shooter that delights in the pleasures of movement as you zip around, bounce across the rooftops and unlock deliriously odd weaponry. Deep down this is a big budget version of The Floor is Lava. It’s a real treat.

Want to read more? See our full Sunset Overdrive review.

Scourgebringer

Game Pass Platforms: PC, (Xbox coming soon)

Scourgebringer’s the kind of game you install and never have to delete – so compact it barely takes up any room, so vivid it’s always in rotation. Room by room rid the world of horrible pixelated foes in this kinetic and violent pocket roguelike. The world is richly detailed and the enemies are horribly memorable, but the real thrill here is in the movement. Fantastic.

Want to read more? See our full Scourgebringer impressions.

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One

Game Pass is great for stuff like this – the welcome discovery of two classics that you might otherwise have to nip into the loft for. Why bother tracking down a PS2 and all those cables when you can simply load this up, and you’re back in the jungle or one the rain-lashed decks of the oil tanker. Both these espionage adventures left video games the richer, and both are moody and magnificent even now.

Want to read more? See our full Metal Gear Solid HD Collection review.

eFootball PES 2020

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One

We’ve all got one: that one mate who plays eFootball PES 2020 instead of FIFA, who probably also insists on calling it by the full name of eFootball PES 2020 and probably also supports Borussia Mönchengladbach because “the Bundesliga is all about real football”. Anyway, this year’s PES is pretty solid, as ever, features some whopping licenses like Manchester United and Juventus, and can of course be easily topped-up to look like the real thing, if you’re on PC, with an option files patch. More importantly here though, it’s just great that you can get a bona fide proper football game with all its many, never-ending modes as part of Game Pass. Two players, one sofa, infinite head-to-heads. Job done!

Want to read more? See our full eFootball PES 2020 review.

Demon’s Tilt

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

You might not normally have considered spending your time on an Occult Pinball Simulator, but hey that’s the beauty of Game Pass – it makes it all the easier to discover gems such as this, the spiritual successor to Devil’s Crush that came out earlier this year.

It’s a high energy mash-up of shmup intensity and knockabout pinball action, all with an incredible soundtrack and muscular metal visuals. Download this now.

Forza Horizon 4

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

Playground’s Forza Horizon series is more than just the complete racing game – it’s a joyous, celebratory game of exploration with appeal beyond fans of the genre. This latest entry has a beautiful map of the UK as its base, a plethora of online features and expansions, a wonderfully eclectic selection of cars to collect and an almost overwhelming amount of stuff to do, updated weekly in line with its moody seasonal changes.

Want to read more? See our full Forza Horizon 4 review.

Fallout: New Vegas

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One

Bang, you’re dead. That’s pretty much the start of Fallout: New Vegas, which gives you one hell of a motivation to roam the wasteland in pursuit of your would-be killer. Very much alive, you’ll not only shape the lives of individuals and small communities, but engage in a complex power struggle to determine the future of the Mojave desert – and who oversees it. Riddled with snarky dialogue and creative ways to complete quests, taking advantage of the post-apocalypse has never been more enjoyable.

Want to read more? See our full Fallout: New Vegas review.

Yakuza 0

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

When a series has been around as long as Yakuza, it’s easy to be intimidated by it all. How exactly to pick an entry point when there’ve been so many entries? Well, Yakuza 0 turns out to be just about perfect – a prequel that requires no prior knowledge of the various goings on in Sega’s epic, silly and hugely enjoyable series. And if you have played plenty of Yakuza before this? No worries – what you’re getting is a coke-snorting 80s-tinged take on the formula that’s arguably the series’ very best.

Want to read more? See our full Yakuza 0 review.

Doom (2016)

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One

Doom’s a shooter that knows nobody is playing for plot or characters or shock twists. It’s a game about dealing with hellish beasts by blasting them or ripping them to pieces. It’s built around a truly stellar finishing system that ties beautifully into the no-thrills traversal and the whole thing blasts along at a glorious pace. And along the way, while it may not have much plot or many twists, it really does develop a loveable character of its own.

Want to read more? See our full Doom (2016) review.

Sea of Thieves

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

Rare’s take on the ocean wave is a beautiful game that revels in everything people want from a pirate adventure while also finding the time to be strange, sparse, beautiful and freeing. Take a ship, head out for the horizon and see what kind of a name you can make for yourself. Simple systems power a game that is dazzlingly good at emergent surprises, and even when things are slow there’s the rolling, crashing, luminous sea to sit and watch. Lovely!

Want to read more? See our full Sea of Thieves review.

Stellaris

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

4X games work beautifully in space where there’s no limit to the worlds that you can conquer. Even so, Stellaris is special, with a genuine sense of adventure driving you forward into its textured, thought-provoking and sometimes brutal universe. This is a game that eats evenings and weekends if you let it. And once it’s over it’s so tempting to head back out there and see how far your empire can spread this time.

Want to read more? See our full Stellaris review.

Rocket League

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One

It’s not hard to see why Rocket League conquered the world so easily – it’s all there in the sense of control as you fling your footballing car around a roomy pitch, boosting, stunting, and scoring goals. Even now it’s a delight to play, each match offering the chance to see something special, each arcing curved delivering the thrill of pure movement.

Want to read more? See our full Rocket League review.

Devil May Cry 5

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One

DmC wasn’t exactly a misstep, but it was a step into new territory for Capcom’s action series that proved divisive, so it’s little wonder they decided to return to more familiar ground for Devil May Cry 5. This is an unabashed throwback to the PS2 era of action games, with meaty combat that feels brilliant under the fingers. It’s no retrograde step, either – what you’re getting here is Capcom operating at the top of its game, embellishing the systems of the much-loved Devil May Cry 3 with imagination, creativity and aplomb.

Want to read more? See our full Devil May Cry 5 review.

Sniper Elite 4

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One

Sniper Elite 4 is the ultimate Game Pass fodder – perfectly formed, perfectly entertaining and complete with the kind of schlocky shocks that are ideal for a few evening’s worth of mindless fun. To call Sniper Elite a guilty pleasure would be a bit unkind, though – over the years Rebellion has built the series up, embellishing and polishing the formula until it now offers open world stealth that’s up there with the genre’s very best.

Want to read more? See our full Sniper Elite 4 review.

Moonlighter

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

It’s Zelda with economics. Kind of. Moonlighter sees you exploring procedural dungeons, battling creatures and gathering loot. Fine. But then you head back to town, open up your shop and try to sell the loot you’ve found in order to make money so you can go back and do the whole thing over again. It works beautifully, two different gaming takes on the pleasures of acquisition. All tied up with a lovely art style too.

Want to read more? See our full Moonlighter review.

Super Lucky’s Tale

Game Pass Platforms: Xbox One, PC

There’s something wonderful about Super Lucky’s Tale, a game that only really wants to be a beautiful old-fashioned 3D platformer that the whole family can have a go at. The cartoon worlds you visit are filled with invention and colour and simple pleasures, and the bosses keep things moving forward at a nice pace. Lucky’s one of those mascots who never really had his moment, but playing this – or the VR original – is a reminder that craft and good intentions offer many delights.

Want to read more? See our full Super Lucky’s Tale review.

For more curated best-of lists like this, feel free to argue in the comments section of the following, too:

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/04/the-20-best-games-you-can-download-now-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-20-best-games-you-can-download-now-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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