ur post abt the green lantern’s political leanings was so interesting!! can you do one for the bat family? (but only if u wanna!!)

Honestly, I can't, because their politics are so incoherent.

Like, take Bruce. (And again, like with the Lanterns, I'm talking about canon here, not how I wish things were.) On the one hand, you would imagine he's pretty progressive, right? He's almost certainly a single issue voter and that single issue is gun control. He believes in rehabilitating criminals and in fact a lot of Wayne Enterprises hires are formerly incarcerated people. He is an active philanthropist who pours money into schools, orphanages, hospitals, public spaces, and the arts. These are all leftist values!

And yet the modern Batman is also a completely unrestrained violent anarchic-libertarian power fantasy. Bruce has invented his own law, which he enacts and enforces completely arbitrarily, however he feels like doing so. He obeys the laws he wants to obey and ignores the ones he doesn't care about, while insisting he is law-abiding. He tortures people literally constantly and considers it righteous. He uses the profits from his publicly traded company to become a one-man military industrial complex. (The emissions from the fucking Batmobile alone...!) He illegally surveils the entire city and sometimes the entire planet (Brother Eye, anyone?) because he has decided that his moral authority overrides literally anyone's right to privacy, anywhere. He allows his defeated foes to be locked up indefinitely regardless of their mental state in an institution that would make any qualified mental health professional run screaming in the opposite direction. He's sexist. All of these things sit on the right of the political spectrum, but imagine me pointing to the right like Charlie from It's Always Sunny pointing to his murder board.

And none of the Batfamily is any better. Some of them are honestly worse in certain aspects. Dick was a cop. Jason loves guns. Babs and Tim are even more in love with surveillance than Bruce is. Remember when Tim wanted to replace the police with, like, a Bat-army??? BECAUSE I DO.

It's not really "their fault," as much as anything can be a fictional character's fault. It's the result of being written by writers who are, for the most part, consciously trying to write the Bats as good Samaritans, but are also living in a world where we have had our brains warped by all of our blockbusters being funded by the US military, in a medium where badassery is prized above everything else, and so all this really problematic shit spills out onto the comics page without being questioned. It's also kind of a boiling frog situation: i.e. Batman has always had a cool car, so as he got tougher and tougher, of course that car would eventually become a tank, and no one stopped to go "Wait, what the fuck? What the fuck? How is this billionaire driving a tank around helping anyone???" I guess god bless Zack Snyder for inadvertently highlighting how fucking stupid and counterproductive a Batman taken to his worst extremes is.

To be clear, I don't think this is what most writers are trying to do with Batman (some of them are, but fuck those guys). But it's what happens when all you care about is rule of cool, and the more I think about it the more I'm like...shit, maybe Alan Moore was right and superheroes are just stupid.

Anyway in conclusion, comic book writers should consider the ramifications of what they're writing occasionally. But Bruce Wayne probably still votes blue, at least.

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TAKEN CHARACTER: BUTTERS STOTCH!!

Howdy, partner! Welcome to SOUTHPARKRPG. Please find the accepted application for LEOPOLD “BUTTERS” STOTCH below:

OUT OF CHARACTER:

Name/alias: Emma ( admin )

Age: 24

Pronouns: She/her

Triggers: ( removed )

IN CHARACTER (TRIGGER WARNING: PARENTAL ABUSE THROUGHOUT):

Name: Leopold “Butters” Stotch

Age: 19 (September 11, 2000)

Gender ( pronouns ): Male (he/him). Butters has a very fluid view of gender but isn’t educated on the terminology, nor confident enough to explore it whilst under Linda and Stephen’s roof.

Living situation:  Living with parents. Butters isn’t just trapped in South Park, he’s trapped in adolescence. As assumedly the last ‘kid’ left with a bedtime, Butters still suffers with parental restrictions on his web-access, daily chores, and regular groundings for evading any of prior mentioned limitations to growing up.

Occupation: Mailman! What better job for a growing boy than one that gets him up at sunrise, guarantees exercise, and allows his parents to snoop for town gossip. Outside of this, Butters is allowed to study for a degree part-time (completing three-years later than his friends) if he continues to work, abides by his parents’ regime, and doesn’t get any “funny, liberal ideas” whilst on campus. He’s majoring in Music and Drama, and was thoroughly shocked when his parents approved an arts course instead of something more practical. In truth, his parents have an ulterior motive because, “honey, no-one’s going to hire someone with a Music and Drama degree. Butters will stay right here.”

Sexuality: Pansexual. Butters has gone from confused to confident in his sexuality – it’s one of few things he feels comfortable asserting (whether that be to authority or his friends). He don’t see nothing wrong with someone loving whoever the fudge they want. 

PERSONALITY:

Self-critical: it’s no wonder that, after years of being told he’s not good enough, Butters believes it. He often whispers insults to himself as he works, affirming the notion that he’s a “no good lazybones who ain’t getting nowhere in life.” This constant self-deprecation means that Butters is incredibly studious, always volunteering for extra credit projects: one, because it ain’t right to say no when someone asks for help and, two, because he needs to be at the top of the class or face the consequences at home.   Naïve: whilst academically intelligent because of his work-ethic, and surprisingly wise beyond his years, Butters’ stubborn optimism and good-heart mean that he is easily manipulated into helping with malicious schemes or baited into danger. He’s programmed to believe the best in people, despite years of evidence to the contrary, and is always disappointed (but ever-forgiving) when he’s proven wrong.   Caring: the world should have hardened Butters, but instead if made him kind blah, blah, blah. Sometimes his kindness is aggressive, shouting at unjust nastiness. Most of the time it’s in the little gestures; a blanket around your shoulder, a cup of soup in your hands, and a happy tune to cheer you up.   Innocent: Butters has seen some shit. He’s been a pimp, a pirate, (tw: eye trauma) maimed by a shuriken and wondered through post-apocalyptic Earth. Despite this, innocence still sticks to him like a band-aid over immoral wounds. He knows a fair amount of curse words but will rarely say ‘em, preferring a “heck” or a hamburgers” unless the moment really calls for it. He’s seen porn, he’s seen war, but he remains altogether kinda clueless to how the world works.   Assertive: whist Butters’ other traits suggest a complete walkover, this isn’t the case. Once he’s got a (usually wrong) opinion in mind, it’ll take a lot for Butters to cool his righteous fury. As a kid, this frequently made him the antagonist in South Park’s many moral conundrums, i.e. Chaos. He’s better now – more aware of the evils of the world– but he’s still easily swayed into stupid beliefs and unwilling to let them go without a fight.

BIO:

Butters had tough time growing up, but his sunny disposition might trick you into thinking otherwise. Fuelled by naïve optimism and a stubborn trust in the well-meaning of those around him, he frequently found himself suffering at the hands of his friends’ money-making schemes, his parents’ manipulative whims, and a pawn to the powers-that-be. This has left him physically and mentally scarred, (tw: eye trauma) the most prominent being a slice down his left eye. Despite this, Butters can’t hold a grudge for very long – even when viciously empowered to a cause. Forgiving, forgetting and then being fooled again is his daily routine, particularly with his parents, Linda and Stephen Stotch. Linda and Stephen are not good people, though they – and consequently Butters – believe their actions justified by love. Unjust groundings, suffocating rules and curfews, as well as an actual bonified murder attempt have left Butters with a rotting self-esteem, immature world-view and corruptible innocence.

Nowadays, Butters is a little older, a little wiser, and a lot more whimsical about the world outside his bedroom window. He still has a curfew (10pm on weekdays, 12am weekends) which, if he breaks, means sleeping in the back garden. He has a strict study schedule designed around doing the dishes, washing the car and shining his dad’s shoes. Worst, his internet and phone are heavily restricted and constantly monitored. Still, his morning mailman duties – singing with the birds, saying howdy to his neighbours and getting to stretch his legs in the rising sun – keep his spirits lifted and his tushy firm! Being able to study music and drama, as well as engaging with his other creative hobbies, distract Butters from his crippling self-doubt and life-long barriers. Just like Rapunzel, he knows escape is on the horizon: he just needs to get the god-damn balls to do somethin’ bout it.

 HEADCANONS:

Butters loves mom memes (and I mean really awful mom memes). He will absolutely overshare minion, impact-font, family-humour photos online to the point where it’s lost all possible irony.

He also loves to bake! His dream is to open his own bakery in South Park one day, filled with personalised cupcakes, ice cream cakes, and hot cocoa towers. 

Butters is a man of many talents! He’s sworn off tap-dance for good, but he’s big into musical theatre, writing, drawing, baking, gardening - anything creative to improve himself and the world around him.

He definitely still makes up his own lil tunes and hums them as he goes about his mailman duties. 

In short: I love Butters Stotch.

I agree with your Sora rant. It's like they were so busy shoving SoKai down our throats (not that I'm against Kairi but it seriously effected her character too) that the Sora we know got lost.

           You’re right, but there’s actually more to it than that. You know what? I’m gonna spell out my Sora rant here and give it the proper tags so I can get this opinion out there.

           The forced romance is perhaps the most offensive of the missteps, and I love both Sora and Kairi so much that it hurts to see how they got wrecked by it. I’ll touch upon how that affected Sora here, but trust me, its effect on Kairi was horrible in a completely different way. I think we all know how well that went. The thing is, I’m basically a SoRiku or bust type of person, but I’m also a ship-and-let-ship sort. Up until now, the KH series did a good job at building great friendships that had subtext all over, and people were allowed to choose without much argument. Did you want to ship SoKai? SoRiku? RokuShi? RokuNami? NamiShi? TerrAqua? Nothing’s stopping you! I just…don’t believe canon shipping belongs in Kingdom Hearts when it comes to characters who aren’t on the Disney side of the spectrum (obviously I wouldn’t want to remove the Aladdin/Jasmine or Ariel/Eric plots, which are not only important to the films’ integrity but also time-tested successes that mean things to those who grew up with those films).

           But let’s talk about Sora first and foremost, and I’m actually going to save the SoKai for last. Because there’s more to talk about here. I went back over cutscene comps from both III and DDD for a little experiment. I’m just going to describe things in text here, but trust me, the images speak for themselves if you want to look them up. I used DDD as my “control” for Sora as it was, before III, the latest Sora in time – the one who had developed most as a character. I have yet to test 1, CoM, or II against III, but they shouldn’t matter as much as DDD, as DDD features a Sora who’s grown through the characterization in all of those games. III should have built on DDD.

           Let’s go.

THE THEME OF FRIENDSHIP AND KINDNESS

           Sora in DDD is a firm believer in the power of friendship. No, seriously, he mentions it every five minutes to the point where it’s easily parodied. And, in fact, canon does so in an important way. The scene that stands out to me is his arrival in Traverse Town, where he meets Neku Sakuraba and immediately decides they’re friends. Neku scoffs, saying it’s impossible for them to be friends after a short time and telling Sora that he can’t trust every stranger he meets.

           Why this stands out to me is because it actually turns out to be a mistake on Neku’s part rather than a pointing out of a legitimate criticism of Sora. And given exactly what this criticism was about – namely, forming positive bonds and devoting yourself to caring about another person, with your best foot forward – I think this was actually a great little arc for Sora and Neku to go through. Neku turns out to be after his own agenda, willing to trick Sora in order to get it, though he regrets he has to do so. Sora forgives him once he knows that Neku just wanted to reunite with Shiki. After all, people do crazy things for their friends, and that’s okay. When Sora collides with Neku, he brings with him a concept Neku is unfamiliar with. Knowing Neku from original TWEWY canon, Neku’s core is about learning to come out of his shell of negativity and see the value in others and the world around him. Sora is hitting him with the extreme of this result – an ideal where every stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet, and kindness always pays off. This seems impossible for Neku, but by the end of that first Traverse Town visit, he learns that Sora was right to bring him this message. Neku is better off now for knowing someone who was willing to put that much trust in him and help him out with a seemingly impossible task, and now he can pass a little piece of that on to someone else.

           I think that’s a cool message for us to take into real life. It’s obviously not applicable in the literal sense. Not everyone’s gonna get along, and there are people out there who will have ethical divides we can’t bridge. But for that reason, it’s wonderful to have an escapist fantasy where every new person you meet brings new value to your life, and it’s nice to take just a little bit of that attitude into your life – why not think the best of new people?

           This theme continues throughout DDD. Sora declares himself friends with most of the people he meets, and Mickey is even the first to bring this up in Symphony of Sorcery, already feeling that they have a connection that will go places. Beyond that, Sora is always volunteering to assist. When Neku mentions he’s having trouble with the Reaper’s Game, Sora admits he doesn’t have any idea what Neku’s talking about, but he sees a problem and asks if he can help. This is how he approaches pretty much everyone in DDD. He sees people in trouble or people struggling emotionally and he offers a hand or a listening ear.

           Contrast his actions in Corona and you’ll find a stark difference. He barely invests in introducing himself to Rapunzel or Eugene, regarding them pleasantly enough but not really inviting them into his circle. It’s in fact Eugene that breaks the ice here, deciding the SDG trio is now his “sidekicks.”

           Where this feels offensive is when Sora contests this label on multiple occasions. I might be all right with this if it were a playful competition for who is labeled the brains of the operation, the way that II Sora would declare himself good enough to be king or decide he’s cut out for pirate life. However, it seems more like Sora is legitimately angry that Eugene decided not only to rope Sora into an unknown mission but also set him as the second banana. This couldn’t be more different from the Neku interaction in such a bizarre way. DDD Sora would protest a little at being sidekick, but say he’s happy to help anyway and that he’s glad to have met “Flynn.” (Sidenote: Eugene himself is wonderful during this scene, and Zachary Levi kills the delivery in such a way that you really do know he was hyped to be involved with this franchise. I think that kind of distracted me from seeing these problems at first.)

           Eugene goes on to explain that he’s bringing Rapunzel to see the floating lights because she really, really wants it to the point of it being her “dream.” He then says that he can be the guide through the forest if Sora, Donald, and Goofy take care of the Heartless. To this, Donald says that they are heroes, and Goofy backs them up that they’re Heartless experts. Sora offers nothing but a “Leave it to us.”

           There’s no mention of helping Rapunzel achieve her dream, or knowing what it’s like to have one. They’re not doing this out of kindness. They’re doing this because “We’re heroes.” Because it’s an obligation. Because it’s the “right thing” to do, and that’s what they always do. There’s no passion behind this commitment at all. Now, for Donald, I buy it. Donald has always been a Jerk With a Heart of Gold. It’s his charm. Goofy? A little more suspect. Goofy is all heart and sympathy with a clumsy exterior, but then again, there’s a lot of room for interpretation with him. Sora, though? Think back to Neku or later Rhyme. Sora should be jumping at the opportunity to help Rapunzel achieve her dream.

           Which brings us to the next and larger flaw…

INTERNAL VS. EXTERNAL FOCUS

           Sora’s character in DDD is almost fully focused on what’s going on around him. He arrives in Traverse Town to find the TWEWY cast there and suffering their own problems. So he jumps right into the fray to help out. Every move he makes is directed by what he needs to do in order to help them: find Rhyme, chase the black-coated man, trust Neku. He came here in the first place to unlock a Sleeping World, but that seems to Sora to be a secondary agenda to what’s going on with that world’s denizens.

           This keeps true with the other worlds he visits. Every time, he has a job: unlock the Keyhole. But he doesn’t gun right for that Keyhole. He instead immerses into what’s going on around him. Quasimodo was frightened away from the Feast of Fools, so let’s deal with that. Mickey is hypnotized in a dream, so let’s get a Sound Idea to defeat the Spellican and wake him up. Why are we after a Spellican, anyway? Because the people in a world we already visited need to beat it in order to complete the Reaper’s Game, which has ZERO to do with our quest. Sora almost never focuses on himself, but instead on the others around him.

           This is seen from the very beginning. When he and Riku meet with Yen Sid, Yen Sid points out that they need to earn Mastery. Two important things happen here. First of all, Sora does stick up for himself and claim he’s good enough – very confidently and sincerely. He knows he’s good enough for Mastery and has no question about it. Save this for later. Second, when it becomes clear that Riku has doubts, Sora’s focus shifts immediately. It’s no longer about “Why test me?” but about “My friend thinks he can’t pass, but I know he can, so I need to help both him and our teacher realize that.” And even though he immerses himself in the problems of so many others throughout DDD, not a single world passes without him bringing up how much he couldn’t do this without Riku and he believes in Riku. Sora’s heart encompasses everyone, but if you’re his friend, you get a SPECIAL place and you don’t get lost in the shuffle (and this game is actually what really put me on the SoRiku ship so hard).

           Now, let’s look at III. Sora’s quest begins because he has been stripped of his abilities, which is a must-have for any new game starring him so the player can level up in the process. It’s game design. But this has happened to Sora in three other games: CoM, II, and DDD. In all of those, not much focus is given to this device, and he just goes about learning his abilities as they come. However, this time, where it’s never happened before, Sora is suddenly fixated on how “weak” he is without his powers. His quest begins because he seeks to get stronger and achieve the Power of Waking. The story structure is awkward overall regarding the Power of Waking, as every interlude features Yen Sid reminding Sora of its importance and Sora acknowledging it without any real progress being made toward his learning it.

           When Sora arrives on Olympus with this in mind, the difference is horribly stark from the way he approaches Traverse Town in DDD. When he reunites with Hercules (which has considerably less sentiment than the similar scene in II), he doesn’t really talk about being gung-ho about saving Thebes from destruction. He kinda just points out that this is Hades’ doing and gets to work. With Neku, he talked sincerely about how he wanted to help. Here, again, it seems out of obligation: I’m a hero. It’s what I do.

           Moreover, there’s now so much focus on his lost power. He fixates on it. Asking Hercules about it in the middle of Thebes’ collapse is…not the worst of sins, but a little odd. The rest of this world, however, is scene after scene of Sora reacting to his loss of power rather than the destruction around him and the connections he can forge. A particularly telling scene is when Pete teases him about his lost power, and Sora is hurt. Another is where an original NPC is saved by Sora and taunts him about not being as good as Hercules, and Sora is offended. While this is relatable to the player audience, it doesn’t quite jive with the Sora who proclaimed he didn’t need Mastery because he knew he was good enough and who started three other games at square one without being bothered. This is also the first time since DDD we’ve had a plot where Sora’s conflict revolves around what’s going on inside himself rather than integrating into the environment around him.

           It’s not a bad thing to put characters through the paces with self-examination. However, Sora was fully self-actualized as of DDD. The writers actively and consciously set him a step back for III and undid his own development. This is potentially to make him seem more “dynamic” and “three-dimensional” when it really just doesn’t feel like Sora.

           This gets incredibly insulting when over the course of that one world alone, Sora learns pretty much every new ability needed for this game except the Power of Waking. So Pete’s insult really only stung for about an hour and then became moot.

           Corona also stands out to me because there, Sora doesn’t interact much with Rapunzel upon meeting her. What he does do is hang back with Donald and Goofy and talk about how he knows how she feels, being scared of the world…which he transitions into talking about how Donald and Goofy really helped him during his scary time. Notice what’s missing here? Any engagement of Rapunzel in this conversation and an attempt to bridge their gap by connecting over this shared experience. Sora has taken Rapunzel’s problem and used it to talk about his own instead. Why is this especially odd? Because the factor here being sympathized over is “fear of the outside world” and being confined until you get thrust into a bigger adventure. In DDD, Quasimodo embodied the same concept. Instead of making Quasimodo’s problem about himself, Sora took it upon himself to use his experience to inspire Quasimodo, encouraging him to step outside the cathedral walls and not give up on his dreams.

           As for his close friends, you will every now and then get a scene that compares something he sees to a memory of a friend – Elsa and Anna remind him of both Riku and Kairi. But he doesn’t talk about how they affect him at all. And in a game that both follows up on the Riku worship of DDD and is determined to shoehorn a Kairi romance into the ending sequence, both of these characters should be coming to Sora’s lips a lot more. He should be talking about how “You remind me of someone I know – I should introduce you!” or “You know you can count on your canon friend because Riku and Kairi helped me through these hard times.” Even using Donald and Goofy in that role would make more sense, but they seem more tacked on than anything.

SORA’S ENTHUSIASM

           Sora in DDD is awed by every new experience. Look no further than the first Traverse Town visit, yet again, where he first sees the new districts and cries out “Never been this way before! Ooh, what’s that?”. This is a town he spent a long time in over the course of KH1, and the prospect of finding a new street in a familiar place is magical to him.

           Compare Corona again. When he comes upon Rapunzel’s tower, he does remark, “Wow, a tower!”, but in a very deflated tone compared to his excitement over Traverse Town. And if Quinton Flynn’s delivery is anything to go by, this was the one game in years where the voice actors could finally have free reign without having to struggle to match lip movements. (Seriously, track Quinton’s voice acting performance over the course of the series. It’s a hilarious fluctuation between flawlessness in II and III and utter crashing and burning in every interquel.)

           More condemning, however, is his reaction to the kingdom of Corona itself. This comes from a personal place. Corona is one of my favorite Disney environments. I’ve always wished I could visit it because it’s designed so beautifully. When Sora beholds the island from afar, he says…nothing. It’s Rapunzel who remarks how she’s finally close to her dream, and she thanks Sora for getting her here. He still says nothing. This experience suddenly isn’t interesting to him at all.

           Sora’s silence is an interesting phenomenon. During DDD, he’s constantly self-narrating. He chats with other characters a lot. He even says some lines that are a little superfluous, indicating where he wants to go next and basically spelling out where the player should turn their attention by talking about what in the area is interesting. But that fits with his enthusiastic character.

           In III, he’s quieter. Obviously, giving him party members Donald and Goofy back means he has to divide his dialogue, but there’s a lot of space where they get more to say than he does. (Possibly a disagreement between Disney and Square over whose characters should have more screen time? Please take this theory with a grain of salt.) And then you have scenes like approaching Corona, where he just doesn’t say a word to Rapunzel. Not a “You’re welcome” or an “I’m glad we got you to your dream” or ANYTHING. It’s like he not only doesn’t care about seeing a new place, but doesn’t care about how much it means to his new friend. Which is heartbreaking compared to his previous behavior.

           Also, his smiles are less often and less sincere. A nervous smile he gives Frollo when trying not to get in trouble is happier and brighter than a legitimate smile he gives Eugene when promising to guide Rapunzel to Corona, and when Eugene says he “couldn’t have done it without my sidekicks,” Sora doesn’t even smile at him.

           One other thing to note – I actually did catch this as a little odd on my first III playthrough, but compounded with this, it now seems very suspect. The Monstropolis transformation is the first time Sora has found one of his own transformations ugly/frightening. In the past, he’s barely minded becoming a merman, a lion, a digital program…and, in the case of Halloween Town, which he visited twice, a literal monster. There’s no reason he should be more frightened of himself in Monstropolis than Halloween Town. Moreover, it implies he finds the monsters of Monstropolis creepier than anyone else he’s met – including the talking lions, the living skeleton, the Beast, the Disney anthros, the animate puppet, the merpeople, and the card soldiers. (You seriously think we’re not keeping track?)

THE FORCED ROMANCE PLOT

           Now, however, it’s time to talk about the largest nail in the Sora coffin: the last-minute SoKai plot.

           Like I said earlier, I wouldn’t have wanted any shipping plot here whatsoever. But let’s say it absolutely had to get done. Think back to KH1 or even II. In the first game, Kairi manifests as hallucinations for Sora, indicating that he thinks of her often. In II, he has flashbacks to her that are a little more involved and creative than just “Eugene hugging Rapunzel makes me think of Kairi’s face.” His reunion scenes with her in both feature actual conversations. And there’s also plenty of focus on Riku. Sora has two hands and two friends. Even if Kairi must be the love interest, Riku never gets the short end because of it. Sora will still cross the abyss to find him, sending Kairi home safe to the Destiny Islands so he can keep looking for a way to free Riku of his dark prison.

           In III, we’re strangely devoid of any reference to either of them besides short flashbacks. And since we’re focusing on Kairi, we’ll talk about her. Sora doesn’t even meet up with her between training sessions. She writes him letters she doesn’t send. They don’t even communicate until endgame triggers. Then, all of a sudden, she initiates the paopu. This is after having no communication for a LONG time, and we have no indication Sora had thought about her on his journey despite a few flashbacks. The paopu is supposed to unite your fates for life, and Sora just rushes right into it.

           This is where it should’ve really started to sink in that the SoKai romance was just a series of rushed death flags to get you sad when Kairi finally got slashed. Why they went with the Kairi “death” still escapes me, but if I had to guess, I’d say that ever since Aerith Gainsborough’s death made everyone flabbergasted, Square Enix has been trying to pull the same gambit in order to capture that lightning in a bottle. Take a look at Lunafreya Nox Fleuret for evidence that supports this theory.

           Every interaction Sora has with her from that point onward is far too hamfisted. When he tries to shield her from an incoming attack, it’s by hugging her. When in any and all other instances in the past, Sora would at least be savvy enough to leap in front of a person with Keyblade braced. (You can’t count on Goofy to do that for you all the time, bro.) When he flies with her through a void of little importance to get back to the Keyblade Graveyard, he tells her “I feel strong with you” even though they’ve fought together a total of once, and they both literally died in the attempt. Not even together. There is no reason for him to say he feels strong with her; we’ve never seen her make him strong. We’ve seen her appeal to his heart, listen to him, vow to protect him and be strong when he can’t, work to reunite him with Riku, sympathize with his goals, chat and laugh with him. There are so many other themes you could pick here and they went right for the one that makes the least sense but the most automatic association with romance in a “tell-don’t-show” space. Kairi “holding him together” in the Final World is a completely skippable fact for some reason, and also is not anything any mortal should be able to do by KH logic as of yet.

           Then, finally, he watches Kairi die, and it breaks him. And it sure broke the audience and got them talking, all right, but not about how great Aerith 3.0 was. (Note: still unconfirmed on that theory.) Sora’s a big old mess of angry tears, all right. And this directly leads to him exiting stage left at the end of the story because he has to find Kairi alone.

           So the romance was forced rather than fleshed in order to build up to a shocking scene, relying upon keywords to initiate clichés rather than showing any actual buildup of communication, teamwork, or trust. We can all see how this negatively affected Kairi; essays have already been composed. But how does this turn SORA for the worse?

           Well, for one, his sudden laser focus on Kairi makes him unable to really care for anyone else. Riku gets the worst of it. I absolutely hated how, after the first mass murder via Demon Tornado, Sora cried to Riku that “all” of his friends had died and he had no one left. We all know that scene was playing up Kairi. He was crying over Kairi. And in doing so, he happened to imply to Riku that Riku wasn’t valuable enough to be as missed as those lost. Sora lost them “all.” The fact that Riku is there doesn’t mean anything. He has no one left. He has Riku. Riku is no one. Later, when Kairi is lost out there, Sora eschews Riku’s help completely, which is probably to set the stage for whatever installment comes next. However, like the rest of the SoKai scenes, this is rushed, so much so that it sounds like Sora is just disregarding Riku’s counsel entirely and has decided to abandon him in favor of seeking Kairi. Not to mention everyone else in that scene.

           Then the fact that Sora gives in to proclaiming it’s love so fast gives me some bad vibes. Kairi hasn’t done much to engage with him on an emotional level as of recently. It almost seems shallow for him to accept the paopu under those circumstances – like he’s a teenage boy chasing a pretty girl rather than a friend acknowledging a friend as more than a friend. And that’s how it looks to me through the rest of the ending sequence. (If you know who my favorite DanganRonpa character is, you can see how I might be used to looking for the signs of this phenomenon.) Think of this in conjunction for how Sora has failed to be other-focused and instead looking to increase his own strength and confidence. Is he ready to give everything up to Kairi? Is he the kind of person who she could count on? He would’ve been in DDD. He also would’ve been the sort of person to balance this out with his friendship with Riku.

           The Sora I knew had some growing up to do, but by DDD, he’s self-actualized. He’s confident in his own abilities, even if he has to start from square one. Now his primary motivation is to help others with their problems, especially if those people are his close friends, for whom he is ride or die. Every new experience is magic to him. As of III, Sora now seems insecure, focused on himself, and distant from his friends, including the one he actually does “die” for. The worlds he visits and the friends he makes are means to an end, and hold less magic to him than before, even standing out as negatively bizarre in some cases. III’s Sora does not feel like the same person at all, and this groundwork was laid ingame long before he accepted Kairi’s paopu.

Murray, I have asked you repeatedly not to call me "woman".

A NOTE FROM ADMIN R: Oh, oh, oh ! Y’all don’t know how happy I am to be accepting this application. Dylan is truly one of my CHW faves and to have her taken up by you, Cailin... that’s just an honor. I can not wait to see what you do with her, but I know one thing... this dash ain’t ready fro the looks Dylan is about to serve us. Thank you so much for applying and welcome back, love !

OOC NAME/ALIAS, PREFERRED PRONOUNS, AGE & TIMEZONE:

cailin, (she/her), 25, est

DESIRED CHARACTER:

queen mother, dylan davenport

HOW ACTIVE WILL YOU BE?

8-10

SECONDARY CHOICE:

taylor flick

DESCRIBE THE CHARACTER:

Dylan is shrouded in beauty, bold fashion choices, witty comebacks, and her daddy’s debit card. But the woman wearing the Amina Muaddi heels to 7/11 is much more interesting than her out of this world clothes. If Chanel’s head is in the clouds, Dylan’s feet are planted on the ground. She’s the fuel to the fire, the one who gets shit done. Things don’t move without her — and that includes the fashion scene in Rosewood. Dylan could’ve been a surgeon, she has the brains and attention to detail for it, but, you see, what Dylan says or doesn’t say goes. She predicted high waist jeans making a comeback before Vogue did, telling the girls one day during first period. So she’s a bit of a culture oracle. It’s why people care about what she’s thinking, who she’s endorsing, what designers she’s buying. They even want to know what she’s watching on a monday night. Her confidence and sincerity is inspiring. When she’s not taste making though, she’s the loyalest, most straightforward friend you can find in her tax bracket. Balancing the thin line between being no-nonsense and fun to be around. She does it well, though. In fact, she does most things well (driving not included.)‌ Her peers boast about her style and charisma, her professors brag about her work ethic and creativity, her boyfriend….well, her love life is a tumultuous roller coaster but every icon needs a fixer upper. Plus she gets diamonds every time he fumbles.

SAMPLE WRITING:

( Alexa, play Daddy )

The day Dylan was born she became a daddy’s girl. Stevie Wonder could see it. Dada was her first word much to her mother’s chagrin. He never raised his voice at her, never got impatient with her when she spilled her juice or threw her food. He got up in the middle of the night so his wife wouldn’t have to even though he had meetings at 7 in the morning. It didn’t stop there, though. Mr. Davenport didn’t put her down at parties. He carried her around on his hip as he mingled and held court, demanding on no one use baby talk for his brilliant baby girl. “She’s smart like her mom.” He would say to his captivated audience. For her third birthday he rented out an entire amusement park. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t yet tall enough to ride the rides, she had asked for it so he made it happen. He was a doer and a fixer, but he wasn’t perfect. Mr. Davenport had always been a better father and provider than a husband.

So, when she was five, her parents went through a nasty divorce. The papers their lawyers drew up cited irreconcilable differences but she’d come to realize, many years later, that was just how rich people skirted around the truth in hopes of keeping people out of their business. In truth, Mr. Davenport had spent the better part of his career sleeping with secretaries, temps, and clients. Basically anything that was of age and not nailed down. Mrs. Davenport had only grown tired of it after watching Halle Berry cry over Eric Benet  on Oprah. But like she’d taught  Dylan, Mrs. Davenport thought three steps ahead, and had arranged to have a cheating clause in their prenup. She saw the board before she’d even stepped foot on it. And, Sure, they’d been in love when they got married at twenty three, but a cheater never changed its spots, just his lies. In an instant, she got half of everything. Twenty percent of his future earnings, and 360 lipo for a girls trip to Maui to celebrate her emancipation.

All Dylan got out of the deal was two houses, two birthdays, two Christmases, two cars she still couldn’t drive when she turned sixteen. The court awarded them joint custody, ruling they both had enough sense to figure out the schedule on their own. But since that was the year her mom went back to school for her PhD, Dylan spent the majority of her time with her dad and a nanny. Those double holidays also served as a good distraction from the heartbreak she couldn’t explain. Though she was sharp as a whip and actually funny, not laugh because it’s a kid funny, but really funny, she still couldn’t wrap her little mind around why her parents drove to separate houses at the end of the night now. At all those parties, what stuck out the most was everyone saying what a handsome couple they were, how lucky they were to have another. They danced and laughed. They seemed so happy. But looks are deceiving and lucky for her, the loneliest year of her young life was also the year she met her best friend.

( Alexa, play Wannabe )

Dylan and Chanel became an instant package deal, and she thanked her father for not being able to keep his dick out of seedy holes because she wouldn’t have went to school in another district if her mom hadn’t won the house in the divorce, and she wouldn’t have sat down next to Chanel at show and tell, and they wouldn’t have bonded over their pretty dresses, or shared their organic apple juice. God worked in mysterious ways like that. She had a partner for life, and nothing came between them. Not even boys. And, despite having the power to date any eligible bachelor in her grade, she really liked one in particular.

The day she brought Paxton home her took one look at him and chuckled. Dylan figured it was because of the grill he hadn’t learned to talk without slurring with yet, but her mother had other ideas. “He reminds me of your father.” She said, long after he’d gone home, but not before Dylan spent fifteen minutes walking him to his car. The driveway was super long but her lipstick was nonexistent when she returned. That didn’t matter though, because Dylan knew what that meant. Her mom thought Paxton was charming, likable, handsome — but she also knew he was a liar and a dog. They argued for well over an hour, and she said some things she regretted but that’s what teenage girls did, they rebelled against becoming their mother all while doing so. She didn’t realize just how much he was like her father until she caught him DMing other girls on instagram and got a diamond necklace out of the deal. Still, it was clear that he could shoot a man in broad daylight and she would always be daddy’s little girl, nothing could change that.

“Daddy!” Dylan whined, clinging to her dad’s arm as they traipsed through another commercial property with their real estate agent. Today was the day she was finally going to buck up and switch locations from her dad’s pool house to an office space in scenic, downtown Rosewood. Being interviewed by magazines had been life changing, sitting front row of the hottest runways next to A-listers had its perks, doing a skincare routine video for vogue was dope, but expanding her business because the calls wouldn’t stop coming in to be styled be Dylan and her associates? That was something she’d done herself from the ground up. She’d started with styling her friends and now she was going to style the world.

( Alexa, play Successful )

Her heels were tall enough to greet God but she still only reached his shoulder. “I hope this one has vaulted ceilings.” Her tone was way past passive aggressive. She would’ve dialed it back had their agent not been set to make serious bank off of this, but had only been showing them office spaces with disgusting lighting and rude doormen. For all of their sakes, she hoped this one was better. “I need two sessions of hot yoga after the last mess you showed us, at least. My chakras are all out of wack now. Thanks a lot, A.” She was being dramatic but her dad didn’t stop her. He just smiled that infamous smile at the agent and excused himself to the back of the elevator to take a call. Dylan rolled her eyes when she caught their real estate agent, Angela, fawning. She was a slender woman with the proportion of a fashion model who only modeled in theory, never practice. With cropped hair and full lips. She’d been their families real estate agent for decades, found the house her mom had one in the divorce, but Dylan couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d slept with her dad while he was married to her mom, and for that she hated her.

The light dinged to signal they were at their floor, and the elevator doors slid open. When she bothered lifting them from a lengthy text she was typing to her beau, her eyes lit up like when her dad gifted her a patek for her eighteenth, or the G-Wagon that was still collecting dust in the garage for her sixteenth. Whatever the occasion was, she was aglow just like then. The floors were European oak, all the walls were white sans a charcoal accent wall that would be the space of her future desk, and yes, the ceilings were vaulted with windows to match. It was beyond.

“Daddy!” She squealed, running around the space and dreaming up renovation ideas. “This is the one. It’s, like, perfect.” Dylan ignored the real estate agent when she repeated the price tag. 1.2 million may have been a lot for some people, but some people weren’t his little girl and Angela should have known that by now. “Wait. I need to call Chanel!”‌ Dylan could bet she’d be calling Chanel the day Play got down on one knee ( What?‌ A girl could dream ) before she even said yes. She was greeted with a selfie when she unlocked her phone, tapping her chanel platform sneaker clad foot against the wood while the facetime call connected, “What do you think about staining the floor another color?” She asked before absolutely beaming when Chanel’s face appeared on the screen.

“I found it! I found the perfect space.”‌ Without another word, she flipped the camera and did a little dance when Chanel’s excitement nearly exceeded hers. She knew a squeal of absolute glee when she heard one, “I know! Ok, so Just imagine a chaise here, we can install some shelves here. Do you think we can get a Prosecco fountain?…” She walked her through the office like Angela had done moments before, moving out of earshot so her dad could handle business, while they discussed all the possibilities. “Today an office with a view, tomorrow Dylan Davenport’s Fashion Academy,” she beamed.

All her daddy had to do was sign on the dotted line, and she knew he would. He was, after all, her doer. He wouldn’t dare break that illusion…right? The journey from the bathroom back to the main area of the office space was a short one, and she was all smiles until she rounded the corner only for her dream to turn into a nightmare. Her face cracked along with the screen of her phone as it hit the ground and shattered, “DADDY!” She screamed. The sight of her dad and Angela kissing over paperwork causing her to gag instantly.

“Honey, let me explain…..”

There was nothing to explain. Horrible step parents was Jasper’s lane, not hers.

( Alexa, play Ring Off )

ANYTHING ELSE?

1985.

How to make games: Hero Shooters

So, class, today I posit this little question to you all: Do you want to be the next Blizzard? Fuck no, you don't want to be "Don't you guys have phones?" Blizzard; you wanna be Blizzard from 5-10 years ago when they were at the height of their popularity. But that's not what I'm shooting for here. Do you want a fount of endless revenue? Do you want to do the absolute baseline minimum in terms of engine and game design to actually create a game but aren't creatively and ethically bankrupt enough to make a gacha game? Do you want to build a game whose rules, designs, and themes were just stolen from the effort of others? Do you really like Rule 34? Then it sounds to me like you want to make a Hero Shooter game! Hero shooters are easy to make on account they fundamentally have only three gameplay modes: push a payload, kill the other team, and kill the other team while standing on top of a glowing circular thing. They're also equally easy to design as they require no thematic consistency whatsoever and what little writing you'll be expected to bother with will simply be character bios, which you can keep so vague as to be virtually meaningless. There's never a 'story' in a hero shooter game and what semblance of one does exist is pretense for the non-canon aforementioned three game modes you'll be forced to build around. Best of all, the individual mechanics of each hero are easy to design - just steal them from whatever games came before. Now create about three or four maps with some different sorts of themes, but don't make them in any way mechanically varied - the most complex obstacles on any given map should be walls and maybe elevators that move at a very low speed. We're making a hero shooter, not Mario Party, dammit. If anyone asks why you are essentially just reskinning the same maps you can explain that it's to ensure that the game remains a "test of the players's skills" even though that's a bold-faced lie for the same reasons people who play Super Smash Bros as "tests of skill" are full of shit. Meta-gaming retards make games algebra homework instead of fun, but that's precisely what you'll be banking on in this genre. Once you have that, we need to get into the most important thing about hero shooters: the Heroes. Heroes in these games take one of three major roles: 1) The retard scrub DPS heroes - who will be played by the vast majority of your one-trick glory-chasing mentally-stunted community under the pretenses of being 'the most fun' and will be where the better part of your "cool" themes and motifs will be dedicated toward. These work under the key principle of "Shoot everything until it stops moving" and requires zero brainpower whatsoever. 2) The under-estimated doggedly persistent Tank heroes, played by those with either the willingness to learn something other than "Shoot bad guy with gun" or those who find pressing and holding a single button for the duration of the 10 minute match time to be the highlight of their bleak office-job lives. Though, on the other hand, some of the really cool designs will ultimately end up in this family. 3) The unsung gods among men known as the Support heroes, AKA: the ones no one will actually play. These characters will never be given cool or interesting mechanics or designs, but you'll be at liberty to make as many sexy nurse outfits as you can come up with and no one will be able to tell you otherwise. Like an ungodly amalgamation of tanks and DPS, your gameplay experience will boil down to pointing at your target and holding down the button the entire match - except unlike DPS heroes, you'll be shooting at the blue team and not the red team. Now, some might argue that there are technically other families of heroes, like flankers, zone controllers, pseudo-supports who can debuff enemies, but remember that the key to any good hero shooter is keeping everything rock-stupid. Every hero should have only enough abilities to fill a role for the left and right mouse buttons and the Q and E keys. F or R can be for reloading where applicable, but if you demand anything more of your players, you're going to lose their interest because Hero Shooters are hugboxes for sociopaths who care for nothing more than getting that sweet, sweet 5-second long "Play of the Game" replay at the match's end. This is why the character who invariably rips off Team Fortress 2's Demo Man and can kill people he doesn't have direct line of sight with will always be the most popular, without exception. I mean, sure, you can have 30 or 40 heroes, each with incredibly detailed outfits, backstories, kits, and personalities but everyone will just play the Not-Demo Man so you might as well accept that your userbase is going to be the only thing more toxic than a puffer-fish or a modern-day feminist. But I repeat myself. I don't have the time nor particular inclination to tell you exactly what you need to make but I can give you some character types that are obligatory by law to be in any hero shooter game. This will at least give you a start before you realize that being creative is hard and just steal kits from better games than your own. Call of Duty Man - The main DPS hero and usually the face of your game. Typically a grizzled war veteran man and almost exclusively an American if your game is set in the real world - remember, creativity is hard! He'll have a medium-ranged assault rifle and precisely one movement skill and one healing skill in his kit making him a jack-of-all-trades. Will either be loved or hated by your community with no room for in-betweens. Sexy Healer Lady - The main support hero who is literally just TF2's Medic reskinned and with tits. You really don't need to do anything more with her, as the fanbase will handle the rest. And the less said of that, the better. Big Knightly Dude - The main tank hero who has a big shield that, regardless of origin, will be transparent so Call of Duty Man and Not-Demo Man can fire through it while guarded. Probably wields a melee-ranged weapon even if in a modern warfare setting. By law, they can never be shorter than 6'6" (or 7200 cm. Pretty sure I did my conversion right on that). Flamethrower Guy - Literally just TF2's Pyro. Mechanic - Literally just TF2's Engineer. Sniper - Literally just TF2's Sniper. Probably also a voluptuous woman in a tight suit because creativity is fuckin' hard, man. Not-Demo Man - The cancer in your fanbase you will never nerf. Doesn't matter that he can party-wipe the enemy team single-handedly without being anywhere near them because Hero Shooter maps are literally just a set of narrow corridors so his kit is extremely OP. No, better just nerf Sexy Healer Lady again, since your DPS fanbase is pissing and moaning about her again and, this time, not in the same way a cat in heat does. Next, just make characters around elemental themes. Once you have 30 or so, you can get around to actually doing really mechanically interesting and varied heroes, since there's really only like 10-15 good FPS character ideas to begin with. So don't be surprised if you have some overlap. But by then we should hopefully have completed the next major step after the game is made: alienating your fanbase! This step is easy and requires no particular skill or coordination on your part. First, make some events seasonal, such that you have at least a major event every other month. Any more than that and your fans might actually think you're trying to be anything but another generic Korean eSport event, so be sure to space them out and have at least half of them be terrible. Valentine's Day is a good excuse to dress your female heroes sexily, summer games are a fun and not-at-all tired motif, and of course you need some kind of Christmas event. Just make sure these events only run maybe 2 weeks out of the year, have lots of stuff that you can only get during those times and, as said, that most of them are terrible and not fun at all to play. And don't -EVER- make any of them PvE, as that requires coding AI characters and effort and shit - what do you think think this is? Warframe? No, terrible gimmicky PvP events will be a good start because there is no frustration quite as severe as being told you didn't grind hard enough for: Loot boxes! Shit yeah, your hero shooter's gonna have loot boxes in them! Remember, we want maximum money for minimum effort and there's nothing like a Skinner Box within the hugbox that is the sweet dopamine high of popping a loot box open only to get common drops every time! If MMORPGs have taught us anything it's that Sub-1% drops are TOTALLY good game design and aren't at all unethical and an artificial, cheap tactic to keep people hooked on your game. This is why, in addition to the e-peen bolster that is your arbitrary profile ranking also drip-feeding a loot box upon level up that you have "Weekly Resets" for additional loot boxes. This runs on essentially the same principle as a cell phone games making you wait for additional tries to make it more a habit than a game - but that's okay! You can just rationalize it away as "it was the player's CHOICE to buy 300 loot boxes for the low, low price of 799.99 USD!" and not at all a psychological compunction found in human psychology! You're not an unethical douchebag in the slightest! And speaking of douchebags, it's time for the third and most important step in alienating your fanbase: Balancing the Game! What do I mean by that? You might think it's something like "Oh, this one character has an attack that is way too powerful and so it should be retooled in such a way that it either isn't available as-often, or maybe make its hitbox narrower to make the game more skill-based" but you're dead wrong. That requires actual effort and we all know how we feel about that. So, instead, just start an eSports team. Why? So you can listen only to the DPS players from each team and only implement THOSE changes. That way, only tanks and supports get nerfed into irrelevance and since no one in eSports is ever going to play those roles anyway, who cares? Who needs healers when you respawn to 100% after 7 seconds of dying?! Who cares if the majority of your fans hate these changes and that you end up completely destroying the kits and frameworks of their favorite heroes with needless, superfluous, unwelcomed tweaks? God-damn it, the Not-Demo Man needs to be able to wipe out an enemy team with a 3-second Time to Kill! No questions! I have a very specific vision!! Once your fanbase has been alienated - congrats! You're no longer obliged to release new heroes and levels! The responsibility of server upkeep and releasing new content twice a year are lifted! Now, just reskin the entire game top-down and release a new, better hero shooter founded on the same grounds to re-capture your fleeing audience and fleece them all over again! Now repeat ad infinitum and gain unlimited money. Congrats, you're now another Chinese game manufacturer that shits out products with no care for their fans or reputation but you get to go whaling every single day and fill your bathtub with money. You're ready to work for actual Blizzard now! You're welcome.

Want to Write Better Books? Stop Watching Television

When it comes to storytelling, most of us grow up immersed in visual language. Television and movies and Youtube series can be extremely potent, and tell inspiring stories - but when it comes to translating that storytelling method to the page, they can be a writer's worst enemy.

I can always tell when people have been watching more TV than reading books because there's a similar pattern of errors. Drawing from my own screw-ups and experiences and combining them with things I've learned from reading hundreds of books, I've compiled a useful list intended for newer writers with an eye on publishing.

At the risk of bowing to clickbait with my title, I'd like to make a case for aspiring writers to scale back their television-watching time and spend that on short and long-form fiction. Even fanfiction inspired by TV can help exercise that writing muscle more than watching stories alone, and I've made the reasons why into an easy-to-read list.

1) TV writing is often bad and illogical 

There's no good way to put this - the behaviour of characters on Lifetime made-for-TV movies, criminal dramas, and night-time dramas or medical shows is often exaggerated and vastly distant from reality. The best TV shows and movies do have good writing - but let's be honest; we don't always watch the best of the best. That's not a bad thing, but when it comes to writing, 'you are what you eat' is very much an applicable idiom.

It's hard to write emotionally authentic decisions and ethical debates when paranormal teenagers are fighting in the most dramatic ways possible. Because of the narrative constraints of episodic storytelling, which is the norm for continuing TV shows, antagonists are often thinly written and illogical, and characters who conflict with the main cast tend to be cruel, rude, or selfish in ways that an actual human person would not dare to be when confronted or opposed. Villains and antagonists are an important part of every story, and they're usually the biggest letdown, because their actions are often dictated by whatever inflicts the most suffering on main characters. Shows have to compress as much interest in the problem-of-the-week as possible, while still adhering to the (usually more complex) long-term plot.

The thing is, these are really bad habits for writers to pick up. It's taken me a lot of work to unlearn the villain-of-convenience habit. Antagonists and villains need to have strong motivations - even stronger than the protagonist(s)', at times. Otherwise, their actions make no sense on a fundamental level, and the narrative thread of the story will completely unravel. This is not to say that antagonists and villains have to be "evil" per se - in fact, evil is usually a matter of perspective. However, stories are driven by what people want and the people who want things. If they don't have a thing they want that remains somewhat consistent, or has a reason for changing, the story will sputter and its engine will stop turning over.

2) Visual storytelling and literary storytelling are different mediums

This sounds obvious, but hear me out. In working on a recent project, a character went up the stairs after a party, took off her jewelry, texted her friend - and suddenly, her abusive alcoholic father appeared in her room and started threatening her. The scene was clearly patterned after the classic "jump scare" style.

The problem is that jump scares don't work in written fiction. In order to mimic the effect created by a jump scare, we have to break down the scene and the rising tension created by it. A camera panning around and showing the scene, the slow shot of a character walking up the stairs, and the subtle tension created by having a character do ordinary things without realising that they are in danger may not be conveyed by simply saying that character walks up the stairs, takes off their jewelry, and prepares to use the bathroom. Those words don't express the information conveyed by the same camera shots and edits, or by the creeping shriek of violins or synth music in a score. Words can express that tension - but not if writers take what they see on TV (or computer) screens at face value.

Mimicry is not enough. We have to understand why things happen and why we are shown or given certain pieces of information, and why things are portrayed in certain ways. We must learn to see the framing devices used in fiction of all kinds, not accept them as the way the world works.

3) Hide things from the reader

As the audience, we may not realise that storytelling techniques are being used to convey a story, because we're busy reacting to it. That's okay! It's good to watch or read something and just experience the emotions intended, and enjoy the ride of the story. However, if a book has a deep impact on you, and you admire it, it's worth reading the book at least one more time to try and see the places where it was most effective.

For example, in a tense scene, a character might scan a room, looking for a weapon, and the author or narrator may describe the contents of said room.

In a dingy hotel, a bed covered in rumpled sheets, the bolted-down lamps and furniture and a clunky television may not offer much. As the character looks around, they might notice there are some glasses on the bureau or in the bathroom, and pick those up, hoping to throw them at the assailant pounding on their door.

In this vignette, the words 'pounding', 'dingy', and 'rumpled' offer the most descriptive power. However, we don't know what the antagonist on the other side of the door looks like, what kind of weapons they have, if any, or even what their name is. While there might be a little more context in a book, the very limited scope of this one scene shows that using immediacy and restricting the view and information available to the reader can create more tension.

I often see this problem in longer-form works as well - and I've certainly made the mistake myself: the error of trying to cram in too much exposition in the first few chapters. It's hard not to worry that an audience will get lost or miss something, but audiences just don't need as much information to enjoy a story as authors do to write it.

4) All books are not created equal

Some books are designed to convey a story as efficiently as possible, often to meet the reader's emotional needs - this is the case for most commercial fiction. Some books are intended to please the reader's intellect or evoke more complex emotions, and often take their time in the storytelling or break rules - this is often the case for literary fiction. Upmarket fiction combines both of these needs. That's not to say that commercial fiction can't have moments of beauty, or that literary fiction can't be fun to read, but it's important to know that these two broad types of fiction have different goals - and that both have their advantages and disadvantages.

It's important to know which markets your book is destined for, and to be honest about it with yourself. Do you write weird fiction that kind of straddles genres and has little philosophical narrative kicks? Do you secretly just want to write fun books about sex and guns? Do you like writing about kissing and emotional drama, but crave a good plot to complicate things? There are readers who want books like each of these, and looking for similar books to yours can help you figure out who will want to read it.

It's vitally important not to confuse the people you want to impress with the people who will probably read your book. I've made this mistake. It's hard not to want to change the world with a book, but you're more likely to achieve that goal if you get the book into the hands of people who will like it in the first place - enthusiastic readers will share what they like, and word of mouth is still the oldest and strongest form of marketing.

5) If you're working in a medium, engage with it 

Having a good vocabulary is essential. This seems like a daunting task - how do we learn more words? Where do we even get the words? How do we know which words are better to use? However, it's not as bad as it sounds. Reading non-fiction news articles in one's Facebook feed can help; honestly, just snatching everything with written words in it and picking it up to read it, even warning signs in bathroom stalls or advertisements at bus stops, can make a difference.

Of course, books and short stories are an ideal place to start. Short stories and short story collections can be a great way to work more fiction into your diet. Ideally, it's best to read a wide variety of books. Having favorite authors is fine, and having favorite genres is fine, but both a) reading widely within your genre and b) reading widely in general will help you try new things and expose you to different ideas and inspirations. Have you ever read a western? An old Harlequin bodice-ripper? A modern romance novel? Women's fiction? A techno-thriller? African-American literary fiction? A gay coming-of-age tale? Grab something off the shelf with your eyes closed and start reading - you don't even have to start from the beginning, if you really don't want to, but try to give the strange new book a chance.

The more you read, the more comfortable your brain will become with the storytelling methods, conventions, and styles that authors use. It's not about copying people or being 'unoriginal', although those are okay for practice techniques - it's about fluency. Writing well is very difficult if you don't read!

6) Emotions are important

Just putting in a description of a character's actions doesn't convey their mood, emotions, or what's going on inside their heads. It can - but it's essential to think about why a character is doing something, and which life experiences have contributed to the decision they're undertaking in that moment. People never just do things - and stopping to consider why a character grabs a wire hanger to fight back, whether they'd cower or flee, and whether they'd be able to speak their thoughts honestly are all vital to communication.

In daily life, we may hesitate to speak or act frankly, and that's not always a bad thing. There's something to be said for honesty, but there's also something to be said for respecting the feelings and desires or needs of others. For example, if Manpreet and Cynthia are friends, and Cynthia is wearing a new sweater she just finished knitting, Manpreet may want to tell her the sweater is ugly. But then Manpreet's desire for validation of her opinion will conflict with Cynthia's need for validation of her efforts. There's nothing wrong with these conflicts, nor with learning when to hold one's tongue or put something carefully, and expressing that characters are going through those steps is a great way to show conflict and emotion in a work of fiction.

7) Traditional literature may not be for you 

Frankly, I think more authors should try different storytelling formats just to see if they find one that's a better fit. Books tend to be the default for creative storytelling, but honestly, they're just not for everyone because they don't always skew to people's internal storytelling style. Sometimes books just don't play to people's strengths. People who are dialogue-oriented may find that plays do the trick. People who like visuals that are continuous may want to try out writing screenplays of various kinds. Still others may want to try writing graphic novels, and either hiring illustrators or illustrating work themselves. The trick is to figure out how you think - in pictures? In moments? In words? - and find the medium that expresses your feelings and thoughts most adequately.

Telling a story is an act of communication, and to communicate well requires a lot of effort, practice, and study. New authors should consider this before rushing to publish their first work, because the enthusiasm and fire of the story experience inside an author's head may be different from the experience of the reader from going through content on the page.

Ultimately, writing is hard. There's a reason that career authors, amateurs, and aspiring writers often despair over it. And honestly, that's okay. There's a joy to the process of learning techniques, to finding the right word. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, because it's easier to get appreciation from others if your work is careful and shows skill.

8) Writing a good book means creating a book to be read

This is always the hardest part of storytelling. Do we, as writers, craft stories we want to read and tell, or for our audience? Sometimes a weird cross-genre story works, and sometimes a story pulls from so many different genres and influences and goes in so many directions that it's hard to see who will pick up on it. Many of us may dream of adulation or praise from masses of readers, but putting faces on those masses is the important part. It's okay to want that - but wanting it alone is not enough to grant it, and merely creating something is not enough to deserve fame and praise.

It's not about 'that mediocre book that's doing so well! I could write better!' - it's about writing better than yourself. It's hard, during the honeymoon phase of completing a project, not to feel like it's the apex of creative works in one's native language. If I sound sarcastic, it's because I know this euphoric high, and I know the unfortunate consequences of trusting it too blithely. Simply put, the problem is not even bad reviews - it's crickets. Unless a book is waterproofed beyond the 'good enough' state, it may not be worth reading.

All creative works are risks, and to attain the prizes of money and positive attention, it's worth making sure a book makes sense from an external perspective, and is a satisfying read. Of course, not every friend or person you know will be an ideal member of your reading audience, so finding anonymous or professional beta readers can be very helpful - even if just for the sake of seeing how a book comes across to someone who knows very little about it. You may find that your book is very appealing for a reason you totally did not anticipate.

Above all, writing the book isn't about you. It's about the audience, the characters, or the story itself.

9) Publishing is scary and hard 

It's okay to be overwhelmed from time to time. It's not even that I'm trying to discourage people from putting their books out for mass consumption - it's that I want to help people make sure the books they put out are as good as possible. There's no such thing as a bad book, just an imperfect book; 99.99% of books that have issues can be saved with a good editor or editors, multiple sets of eyes, and a willingness to tweak and revise.

Drafting books is a process. It took me years to get over the idea that one draft was enough, and that I'd get every idea and nuance down in one go-through. That isn't the case, and it rarely is for many authors! Eventually, realising that I just had to get down a skeleton, and that I could modify and elaborate on things when I had the patience for them, was tremendously freeing. Not only have I stopped hating revisions, I look forward to them. When you know in your bones that the scene and the story feels right, few experiences compare to that.

Publishing, however, is a lot of work - getting used to learning about advertising, knowing where to find information about advertising, buying a cover, researching genres, writing a good blurb, finding people to hire for these various services - it can really add up to an ordeal. Still, doing all that work is a little easier and a lot more rewarding if you feel a rock-hard certainty about the quality of the book in the first place - and it can even make the other stuff easier, because you know what to draw from and what to look at.

10) If all else fails, Google is your friend

Just going for a Google safari or searching around on Amazon isn't something most of us do anymore - our 'wasted time' on the internet usually involves going to a website we already know or frequent regularly, clicking through content, and scrolling through various newsfeeds. However, these habitual paths may not yield as much information when preparing to publish. Simply going to Amazon or Google as if you were looking for a new book and entering various keywords in the search bar - things associated with your book or genre, like 'science', 'scientist', 'adventure', 'comet', 'asteroid', 'crash', 'aliens', or other pertinent terms - can be surprisingly fruitful.

You can also look up books (or shows) you admire and see what people read after reading or watching them. The more books you have to compare to, the more readers will understand your book's place in the market or library. Referencing shows and movies in a blurb is not ideal.

At he end of the day, I'm glad so many people take the leap into trying to write, and finishing projects, but actually trying to sell a book to readers isn't the same thing as merely writing for the satisfaction of it. And writing privately for satisfaction is fine! It's just that when a book hits either an editor's desk or the market, it should be as ready for readers' eyes as possible, and thoroughly vetted - even if it's been self-published.

***  Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Catch up with Michelle's news on the mailing list. Her books are available on Amazon, and she is also active on Medium, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog. 

Mastery Journal - Professional Practice Reflection (Media Design M.F.A. Review)

1. Discuss how each course in your degree program contributed to your personal and professional development as a media designer. 

1. Mastery: Personal Development and Leadership – Going back to school wasn’t an easy decision. I can honestly say, never in my life did I expect that one day I’d be earning a graduate degree; certainly not at 42 years old, while working full time, and taking care of a family. If you were to tell me before I enrolled that I’d be finishing my degree with a 4.0 GPA, I’d say you were insane, yet here we are. A lot of my perspective changed while taking the Mastery course. Researching about individuals who had attained mastery in their field was intriguing and inspiring. The question gradually changed from “Could I do it?” to “What’s stopping me from doing it?” Most significantly, it solidified why finding my life’s task was so important. Without that, the path towards becoming a media designer might have been a lot tougher.

2. Defining Client Needs – In the Defining Client Needs course, I begrudgingly gained appreciation for the importance of self-teaching and personal research.  We explored the benefits of using Mind Maps and how research data can be synthesized to explore and develop new and interesting ideas. Having to sketch a multitude of logo concepts for our first chosen city was ample proof that the best results often come only after an extensive iteration process has been completed.

3. Brand Development – The Brand Development course continued to reinforce the principles of effective logo design and introduced the powerful effect that colors and typography choices can have on a brand. Creating 3 unique Brand Toolboxes for our chosen city was the first step towards understanding how to develop a brand strategy and began the process of learning how to communicate a brand’s visual identity using logos, color palettes, fonts, images, and textures. This was the first time I had ever learned how to do anything with Adobe InDesign. As a media designer there will probably be many more opportunities to use InDesign in the future.

4. Effective Copy Writing – The Effective Copy Writing course served as a reminder that even though I thought I could write well, there is always going to be room for improvement. Creating testimonial ads for a non-profit organization provided valuable opportunities to practice identifying a design problem, conducting necessary research, and developing effective solutions based on that research. Developing target personas proved to be essential, as each of the revised ads was heavily influenced by the personal detailed backstories of the personas. I have always enjoyed writing and I have always been good at problem solving. For me, learning how to combine the two was truly a eureka moment.

5. Design Research – As exciting as it was to combine writing with problem solving in Effective Copy Writing, in Design Research it was equally as exciting to discover that developing a narrative and brand design also went hand-in-hand. The more I found out about the similarities between graphic design and storytelling, the more I became hooked. Establishing voice and tone for a brand is not that different from creating character profiles for a story. In both cases they define personality and are critical for maintaining consistency throughout their development. On the flipside of the coin though, I learned in this course that I would require much more practice and experience with grid layouts, text handling, and visual hierarchy before I would ever feel completely confident designing layouts.

6. Organizational Structures – Organizational Structures was a pivotal course for me. Ten years ago, I received my undergraduate degree in Media Arts & Animation from the Art Institute of Las Vegas. Since then I’ve developed quite a bit of experience working with motion graphics. This was the first course in the Media Design program where it became apparent that the world of graphic design and the world of animation were not mutually exclusive. This course required us to combine visuals, motion, and sound with our established city brand narrative and as a result, profoundly enhanced my professional presentation skills. It opened my eyes to all sorts of possibilities available to me as a media designer.

7. Design Strategies and Motivation - Sometimes in order to grow you need to be pushed outside of your comfort zone. For the last three years or so I’ve been working from home and most weeks have not required me to travel beyond driving to the kids’ schools or down the street to the grocery store. Most of my face-to-face communication has been limited to my wife, the kids, and a few of their friends. It’s not that I was enjoying being anti-social, but the introvert inside of me had gotten quite comfortable with the status quo. When we were told in Design Strategies and Motivation that we’d need to go out and interview five strangers, what could be described as a feeling of panic flooded every one of my senses. Nevertheless, I accepted the task at hand. After struggling to approach people at first, I eventually found a groove. The people that I interviewed ended up providing new insight and perspective about what was needed in the community. This stimulated new ideas that would help to elevate my brand. The experience taught me that there can be unexpected benefits when you push yourself to do things you otherwise wouldn’t do. I have always struggled with networking and striking up random conversations with strangers. However, now I can look back at my month 7 experience as a reminder that unless I push myself to engage, I’ll never know what kinds of opportunities I’m missing out on.

8. Design Integration – The Design Integration course provided the first opportunity to utilize many of the tools, principles, and techniques we had been acquiring thus far in a practical way that seemed applicable to solving a real-world problem. I felt articulating potential solutions played well to my strengths as a problem solver, developing the brand’s voice & tone was something I was relatively proficient at, and creating the dynamic vision board allowed me to tap into my motion graphics experience. Developing media plans and putting together design briefs seemed very complicated at first. However now, if I’m ever asked to develop a media plan or put together a design brief for a client, I’ll be better equipped to take those on.

9. Multi-Platform Delivery – There were actually a couple of important lessons that I learned in the Multi-Platform Delivery course. By the end of week one we needed to define a production timeline which would be used to complete each of the media assets for our city brand. Admittedly, I have never been one for a lot pre-planning, however, with the amount of work to be done in such a relatively short period of time, I learned to appreciate the value of sticking to a fixed production schedule. In this course I also needed to be painfully reminded that just because I may think a concept or design is perfect, doesn’t necessarily mean that others will appreciate it in the same way. In a lot of ways, this was one of the toughest months for me to get through, but the lessons it provided will continue to stick with me as I grow as a media designer.

10. Measuring Design Effectiveness – Measuring Design Effectiveness introduced me to the research advantages of sending out surveys to quickly collect qualitative and quantitative feedback. Having more than 100 strangers review my designs though, felt like I was Cersei from HBO’s Game of Thrones when she was stripped of all her dignity and forced to walk naked through a condemnatory crowd. Of course most of the responses that came back from my survey were positive and even the majority that weren’t, still provided some insight on how the designs could be improved. Overall though, I probably learned much more about what kinds of survey questions to ask next time, which will be especially handy if and when I need to do it again.

11. Presentation of Design Solution – The Presentation of Design Solution course provided an additional much-needed opportunity to work with layout design, text handling, and visual hierarchy. It also challenged me to develop logical and persuasive arguments for mastery across each DLO. Learning about the Wix.com website builder will likely help me in the future if I ever need to put together a quick website. It may prove to be a convenient way to construct a personal portfolio site. Understanding how to create clean and professional presentations will no doubt benefit me as I advance in my career as a media designer.

12. Professional Practice – The Professional Practice course capped off a year of learning with a thought-provoking examination of the ethical and moral challenges media designers must contend with. The course included a review of AIGA’s Design Business and Ethics document which stimulated worthwhile discussions about copyright issues, the social and environmental responsibilities of designers, and many helpful guidelines media designers can use in their personal and professional development (AIGA, 2009). We learned how to create an Experience Map which is one more tool designers can use to help companies identify ways to enhance the experience of their customers. We also researched various professional design organizations that designers can join to gain access to networking, professional development opportunities, industry resources, and in some cases even health insurance. We updated our resumes and practiced writing professional cover letters using the most up-to-date strategies.

Describe how the techniques in each course helped you complete your thesis project (do not include month 12: Professional Practice) and describe your most outstanding personal triumph in each course.

1. Mastery: Personal Development and Leadership – Mastery put me on the right track to succeed. It helped me reignite my ambitions and gave me the confidence to go forward and be creative in all of my future courses, which undoubtedly had a significant impact on my overall thesis project.

2. Defining Client Needs – The most significant technique that came out of this course was learning how to synthesize research. This course also introduced David Airey’s seven elements of iconic design and established that effective design is most often simple, relevant, distinct, memorable, adaptable, focused, and incorporates tradition (Airey, 2014, pg.39). These guidelines became central when creating virtually every project that went into the final thesis presentation. There was also a greater stress on learning how to use proper APA format in this course.

3. Brand Development – The most valuable concept learned in the Brand Development course was the importance of establishing and communicating a brand’s visual identity. Without that concept, most of the projects in my thesis presentation may have appeared far less cohesive.

4. Effective Copy Writing – The greatest takeaway from this course was learning that developing a design strategy is as important, if not more important, than the ability to write well. Understanding that concept had an immense impact on the rationales of my thesis project. Before any copy was written, a design strategy was established first. Also, the multiple approaches that led to the creation of my revised testimonial ads provided a persuasive and compelling demonstration of my ability to solve problems.

5. Design Research - The greatest personal triumph in Design Research happened when the narrative for the Kyoto city-branding project began to take shape. Once that narrative was established, every other design decision fell right into place. Defining the brand’s narrative made it much easier to develop the persuasive arguments necessary on the Connecting, Synthesizing, Transforming page of my thesis project. I could logically rationalize why various imagery was selected and explain how the fonts and color choices tied directly back to the theme and the personality of the brand.

6. Organizational Structures – The most outstanding personal triumph in the Organizational Structures course was the cinemagraph created in week 4. To me it symbolized the culmination of months of research and brand development. I appreciated how the subtle movement of the geisha was completely juxtaposed with the static imagery that surrounded her on the modern-day Kyoto train. It communicated the message of my brand in a way that was both elegant and poignant. Out of all the pieces in my thesis project, the Kyoto cinemagraph may have been the most successful at communicating its intended message.

7. Design Strategies and Motivation – If I hadn’t overcome my social insecurities during the interview assignment, my community rebranding project would have ended up looking much different and it probably would have been far less effective at addressing the needs of the Allen Park community. Conducting a SWOT analysis and creating an empathy map using all the information gathered from my research, helped me to define the real problem that needed to be solved.

8. Design Integration – I can point to the Design Integration course as the underlying reason my Allen Park rebranding project was used to demonstrate Innovative Thinking in my thesis project. I was proud of the final solution I came up with. While I hadn’t yet made a strong case as to how my solution was especially unique, the techniques developed in this course provided the building blocks that would eventually be used to claim innovation. Also, it is important to acknowledge just how much Professor Baldowski may have improved the strength of my writing. Looking back, he was by far the toughest grader of the entire program and because of that, really pushed me to go deeper into my research and get better at developing my ideas into solid rationales.

9. Multi-Platform Delivery - I don’t tend to look back on this course very fondly. I resented that we were unnecessarily covering the same exact logo design and brand development techniques from month 3. I was also greatly offended when the instructor disclosed that her colleagues had openly mocked my designs over her shoulder while she was grading them. I know I give a lot of credit to Design Integration as the course when all the tools, principles, and techniques started to finally come together, but in hindsight, if it wasn’t for that “unnecessary” review of effective logo design and brand development techniques, the Allen Park rebranding designs in my thesis project would have never been as successful as they were. Even though I defiantly pushed back against the instructor’s feedback in week 3, I am so very grateful that she challenged me to design something better. She was gracious enough to remind me that sometimes when we challenge our own ideas, it often results in new heights. That lesson was unquestionably, one of the most important things I’ll be taking with me from this entire program. She may never actually see this post, but if she does,… thank you again Professor Kratz.

10. Measuring Design Effectiveness – The Measuring Design Effectiveness course provided an opportunity to obtain feedback from a target audience as a way of determining how successful our brand designs might be. Watching the responses come in over a three-day period was an exceptionally gratifying and fascinating experience. The majority of responses that came back from the survey provided enough validation that the new Allen Park brand direction could be an effective way of bringing the community together. This reassurance allowed me to move forward with the designs and include them as part of my thesis project. Learning how easy it was to create and publish online surveys added an additional research technique to the growing list of competencies I could talk about in my presentation.

11. Presentation of Design Solution – In the first week of the Presentation of Design Solution course we developed thesis abstracts. These abstracts provided a written foundation that the entire thesis presentation could be built around. The process of sketching out different layout options for the presentation site was useful, but what was even more beneficial was being the only person to attend the live session in which the instructor reviewed everyone else’s layouts. This helped me gain a more in-depth and personalized understanding of why certain layout techniques were more effective than others. After reviewing the first draft of my website, the instructor’s feedback challenged me to establish stronger connections by using more cited references throughout the presentation, especially on my Connecting, Synthesizing, & Transforming page. On my Problem Solving page, I needed to do a more effective job at defining the problem. My Innovative Thinking page required a stronger argument for innovation by showing how my solution was unique compared to the competition. I’m especially proud of the revisions I made to my thesis presentation which addressed all of the above issues and included a complete overhaul of my layout design based on the techniques discussed in the sketch review session we had earlier in the month.

Final Experience Map

The final Experience Map attempted to represent my Full Sail journey in a way that was creative, fun, and reflective of my personality. As a pixelated character, I am shown traversing an old school video game level. The twelve coins spread out across the map represent each course in the program. The mountainous shapes in the background represent all of the emotional highs and lows I experienced throughout the year. Each of the items and bad guys I encounter along the way have very specific and symbolic meanings. The column on the right provides extra fun details about each one. The little backstory that I had a lot of fun inventing takes place in the hero’s homeland; the Nation of Determi. Everything is perfect there until one day, the evil Spiderlord Antithesis and his minions show up from the Nation of Procrasti.  Determi-Nation vs. Procrasti-Nation, Get it?  Ok, fine. I never promised that the reflection of my personality was ever going to be funny.

References

AIGA. (2009). Design business ethics. Retrieved from https://www.aiga.org/design-business-and-ethics

Airey, D. (2014). “Logo Design Love, Annotated and Expanded Edition, Second Edition” (2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/branding/9780133812589

The war between Marley and Middle East Union (AoT) part 3

5. Applied framework:  actual analysis

 5.1 My belief

This applied framework is more likely an attempt to understand what is going on. I personally believe that one can only understand the present situation and predict the future, if one understands and learns the past. This brings a significant problem, but that’s for next paragraph.

 5.2 Important notice: problem.

Ultimately problematic is that there has been a time skip. It is said that both parties have been at war with each other for 4 years. So: a lot has happened and we don’t know what. It is all guessing! Therefore it is incredibly hard to understand the present happenings and the future.

 5.3 What we know for sure + important notice

1) There are many WW1 and WW2 parallels.

2) Marley is weaker: It is literally said that due to the loss of the female and colossal titan, and the resources, Marley isn’t as strong as before. Middle East Union (from now on shortened as MEU) saw their chance and attacked while Marley was weaker.

Therefore I conclude this: 1, MEU first wasn’t as strong as Marley to dare to attack. 2, MEU knows about Paradis and what is going on, or else they wouldn’t know about Marleys weakness.

3) Middle Eastern Union and Marley are enemies. Obvious, but there is an important notice. A proverb that is often true is: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So would the Paradis Eldians and the MEU be friends? No. There doesn’t seem to be a distinction between Paradis Eldians and Marleyan Eldians. It is just a big fighting pit. No friends allowed.

EXTRA NOTICE: unless the MEU doesn’t know about Paradis of course, but as I concluded above, I think it is quite likely they do very well know about Paradis 

6.4 Why are they enemies?

Why are they enemies? Why is there war? What is their reason, or justification?There are different reasons for both parties to be enemies.

Marley:

Can have an aggressive imperialistic     expansion policy.

War is seen as provider of solutions:

Incapability     of integrating technology in society;*

Desperate attempt to maintain inequality/inferiority     structure;*

Attempt to economic gain

Internal reasons: religion; nationalism;     revenge

Defensive (although I see Marley more as an     aggressive state)

MEU:

1)      Can also have an aggressive imperialistic expansion policy

2)      Incapability of integrating technology in society (although I believe MEU is technologically further developed it is still possible that they aren’t mature to cope with modern technology either)

3)      Revenge (I totally see this as a very possible reason for them to strike: they tactically waited until Marley was weaker).

4)      “Ethical” motives: wanting to help other nations getting rid of the superiority complex of Marley. **

*For elaborate explanation, go back to theoretical framework: Benjamin.              **In fact, all reasons for war may be applicable to the two nations, but I chose the reasons most likely for that nation as I interpret the situation. I do not claim to choose sides when I include “ethical” reasons for MEU, but not for Marley.

 5.5 Notion of inequality on both sides

Marley has a hierarchical structure in which true Marleyans are superior to the M.E. Also the M.E appear to be ‘less inferior’ than the ‘demon’ P.E. I do want to note that hierarchical structures may be necessary to get ‘things done’: see theoretical framework Benjamin. This form of authority makes it possible to make people murder because of the feeling of duty, which is essential in war: see theoretical framework Milgram.

Now MEU. I’m keeping this one short. There is a mention of slavery on their side. The fortress is called the slavery fortress.

Do note that what is said does not always equal truth: see theoretical framework Important notice.

5.6 Notion of power relations: law code?

Who’s in power? MEU seems to have a strong military fortress that protects the military port. The M.E characters are pretty desperate as they realize Marley is not at all on the winning hand. MEU seems to have good technology, also their trenches are called flawless (right?), look at their military port: looks well prepared.

Marley has titans, but lost two of them and have few resources. Gabi did something tactically good to give Marley an extra chance to get the fortress down. I still think MEU has the upper hand.

P.E, Eren still has the coordinate that controls the titans, but if the status quo is maintained, and he still doesn’t exactly know how to use it, Paradis is going to get crushed.

 But there is one more powerful force: THE LAW. It is mentioned that there is a law code on war: Gabi couldn’t be killed in the first place because she was dressed as an innocent civilian.

This International Law code is something we have in our world too. It describes what is acceptable to be justified in war and what not. But here is the thing. It is INTERNATIONAL. This means that there are MANY MORE parties in the AoT world that together created a coherent whole of laws concerning war. Individual parties are scared of breaking these rules probably because the institution that made these laws is WAY MORE POWERFUL THAN ANY OTHER PARTY. Why else would one be concerned with laws?

So power relations as far as I can see it:

1. International institutions (that designed laws on war)

2. MEU (at this moment)

3. Marley

4. P.E

5.7 Tactics

Tactics guys! I’m not Erwin so I’m not going to be miss Know-it-all, but what is the best tactic?

Allies: some friends to jump     in, double the force and attack from the back would be helpful.

For the MEU: by means of power     they seem to have the upper hand so be quick with it because now they are     weak, or at least, weaker than before.

For Marley: it is shown that     they have flying machines. Yet they are talking about either taking the     fortress to take the port, and the port to possibly win the war. WHERE IS     YOUR AIR FORCE? You guys have flying machines? With those you can take the     fortress AND the port in just a matter of hours. I’m not a genius but come     on, an Air Force would do better than trenches?

Super tactic: make love, not     war.

I know it is super long but I couldn’t stop myself. It took hours to write this so please be considerate. 

END OF FULL POST

@kyojinofbraveos @momtaku

How ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Primes Students for Interdisciplinary Learning, Including STEM

A group of Grade 9 students in Texas who substantially outperformed their district on a statewide standardized test all had one surprising thing in common: they all were members of the school’s Dungeons & Dragons club.

A coincidence? Otherwise, how does a fantasy role-playing game produce improved test scores? The obvious explanation is that the club draws the bright kids who are already academically inclined. But many of the kids in the club at the Title I school had histories of struggling with academics.

For Kade Wells, the teacher who runs the club at Davis Ninth Grade School outside Houston, the answer is simple: “Playing Dungeons & Dragons makes you smarter.”

The declaration is bold, but the scholarly support and anecdotal evidence is compelling. Studies have shown that the highly social and collaborative nature of the popular fantasy role-playing game cultivates a range of social-emotional skills, which can lay the foundation for improved learning. In addition to these crucial soft skills, teachers and professors who have used the game also claim it directly benefits core academic competencies.

David Simkins, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, is an expert on games and learning. His research indicates that role-playing games (RPGs) can boost learning and stimulate intellectual curiosity and growth.

“Dungeons & Dragons, and other narrative role playing games of its kind, provide many opportunities for learning,” said Simkins. “Participation in narrative role play can open up interests in topics such as mathematics, science, history, culture, ethics, critical reading, and media production. When D&D and its cousins are played in an inviting, encouraging, compassionate, and intellectually engaged environment, play opens the door to truly amazing possibilities for learning.”

A Multidisciplinary Dungeon Crawl

Countless video games inspired by Dungeons & Dragons are rendered with immersive, graphic rich environments, but the tabletop original demands that players conjure the three-dimensional world in their mind’s eye. Books, maps and many-sided dice govern the rules of these kingdoms of the imagination, and the players are guided by a Dungeon Master, or DM, who is the narrative architect and referee of the emerging campaigns. The open-ended game can last for months, or even years.

It’s not difficult to see how collaborative world-building involving storytelling, decision making, invention, research, calculations, negotiation, role-play, and active spatial visualization can stimulate a developing intellect. And, despite the burnish of fantasy, invented realms are derivative, and thus applicable, to the real world.

“Geography from maps, recursive math from die rolling and adding/subtracting modifiers, philosophy, logic from the ever-present need for decision making, science in regards to the ecology of an environment, the weather, the climate of different terrains, as well as many scientific details learned from monsters, which were almost all taken from mythology or reality in one way or another,” said Wells, cataloging what his kids learn from the game.

Dungeons & Dragons is an innately multidisciplinary and multimodal experience, which is why scholars and educators like Wells tend to describe its learning benefits in terms of lists and inventories. Its implementation as an instructional tool, then, is not only fun, but also becomes a sort of curricular node with the capacity to engage students in a wide array of skills and subjects.

In one striking example, educational researcher and teacher Alexandra Carter used a student-modified version of Dungeons & Dragons as the centerpiece of a yearlong program with a Grade 3 class that combined math, reading, writing, and social studies. Many students in the class struggled with academic and behavioral challenges, but rooting their core subjects in the game produced remarkable results.

In a paper she authored recounting the experience, Carter describes a wealth of student success stories, both behavioral and academic. “I was able to see progress in all of the students,” summarizes Carter, “and was especially impressed with the work that those who struggled the most produced.”

Carter observes that a great deal of the project’s success hinged on students being motivated to learn and practice skills that applied to the game. Students often have trouble appreciating the value of what they learn in school when it is abstracted from its real-world purpose. In this case, learning was meaningful for the students because it had traction in a fantasy world that stood in as a facsimile for the real one, the central dynamic of play and a key feature of its value for development and learning.

Sorcery for STEM

Although Dungeons & Dragons seems better suited to teach humanities, every shield block and fireball relies on a little bit of science and lots of math.

“It may seem odd, but in a fantasy game with magic, players often have to learn about basic physics and chemistry to determine what to do,” said Ian Slater who teaches at York University and runs Black Dragon Games. “Not to determine how a magic-user can shoot a lightning bolt from their fingers, but rather to determine, for example, if a suit of plate mail would be magnetized by the strike of a lightning bolt.”

Incorporating games of any sort into the curriculum generally requires that teachers create context to direct play towards the learning objectives. RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons are pliable systems that lend themselves to be creatively modified, which makes them ideal to serve diverse curricular purposes. UK educator Chris Leach, for example, reworked the game and leveraged the fantasy motif to instruct Grade 6 students on the basics of algorithms and binary, the foundation of computational thinking.

“If you are at all ‘science enabled’ as a DM there are ample opportunities to discuss scientific topics, even if magic bends reality in ways that science would not allow,” said Slater. “Even examples of scientifically impossible magic can be used as tools to discuss what science actually does say about a subject.”

With a little ingenuity, chemistry can be applied to the existing alchemy scheme; physics operates in every projectile, fall, and collision; biology lurks in the countless flora and fauna that populate the world, and the game’s engineer class is an open invitation to justify contraptions with hard science. And math is the low hanging fruit.

“Math is constant, and completely necessary to play the game,” said Wells.

D&D is fundamentally a numbers game, and players must consult charts and tables to modify their rolls of dice, and calculate everything from currency exchanges to their projected experience points. Those who want to be masters of their destiny can leverage math, especially probability and calculus, to bend the numbers in their favor.

“D&D is full of this sort of basic mathematical stuff, and players soak it up as they play,” said Slater. “Indeed, since knowing how these mechanics work has direct implications for the survival of their character, players tend to learn the mathematics pretty quickly.”

There are numerous websites, forums and online calculators to assist players with mathematical assistance to further their progress. With no coaxing from parents and teachers, players are motivated to research and access these resources to optimize their play, an inevitable boon to their numeracy skills. Carter observed many of her previously demoralized students become invested in math due to the game.

“One student, who frequently demonstrated an apprehension towards math that translated into poor performance in class, on assignments, and during assessments, made significant progress as we worked through the project,” wrote Carter. The student offered answers to questions, she writes, “and slowly transferred this confidence in math as it applied to the project into a confidence in regular math.”

The Benevolent Subversions of the Chaotic Good

These intriguing case studies point to what a comprehensive learning program might look like if subjects and skills were not taught in isolation from each other, but integrated into a single cohesive system where students are intrinsically motivated to participate. It combines project-based learning, game-based learning, social-emotional learning and any number of other hyphenated initiatives that aim to invigorate an education system that is too-often out of step with the world it hopes to service.

The teachers and professors who have experimented with D&D in their practice are also players who have experienced the force of shaping and reshaping stories. Whether deliberately or inadvertently, they use the power learned in the realms of fantasy to hack an all too real educational narrative. In Dungeons & Dragons parlance, their race is Human, their class is Pedagog, and their moral alignment is clearly Chaotic Good, whose description in the Player’s Handbook is eerily suitable:

A chaotic good character does what is necessary to bring about change for the better, disdains bureaucratic organizations that get in the way of social improvement, and places a high value on personal freedom, not only for oneself, but for others as well.

Dungeons & Dragons is a salient example of an imaginative and timely intervention, but sword-and-sorcery is not for everybody. The plasticity of RPG systems allows for the implementation of any theme or setting, and students can be enlisted to help design the games around a specific topic. Also, teachers like Kade Wells are not only using RPGs in their classes, but turning their classes into role-playing games which further restructures the operations of a traditional education system.

Ultimately, whether using games, RPGs, or any other initiatives, teachers have an unprecedented opportunity to exercise and model creativity, passion, problem-solving, and courage to re-author their personal and institutional narratives. With these mildly subversive but benevolent grassroots interventions they can rewrite the story of student, teacher and school into a legendary epic for the ages, and perhaps save the world along the way.

How ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Primes Students for Interdisciplinary Learning, Including STEM published first on https://greatpricecourse.tumblr.com/

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