I think about the ending of Imscared workshop edition to such an ungodly extent

You're traversing through the foggy apartments, the screen changes occasionally to show Her approaching, everything is sideways and it sounds like she is crying.

You collect a key, but it's not even called a key by the game and is instead refered to as "a glimpse of that room"

What is "that room" what did they meant by that

This Week in BL

May 2021 Wk 3

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs.

It’s a cray cray Friday when Vietnam gets its eng subs up before GMMTV Thailand. What alter-reality are we in? Well, the Vietnamese offerings are better right now anyway. (Oooo, feel that burn.) 

Ongoing Series - Thai

Top Secret Together Ep 2 - pulping it up in the best possible way. Sure sound and production values are pants, and in classic Thai fashion the editing in post is exacerbating (rather than fixing) pacing issues, but it’s still CUTE AF. I don’t even mind the added university storyline, because they’ve got good chemistry (and a confident gay fresher after a panicked gay hazer is an old favorite... what can I say, SOTUS was my first love). We aren’t spending too much time with any one couple, so it’s weighted a lot better than Brothers was, but also character development is slow. 

Siew Sum Noi Ep 2 - Unfortunately, it’s just too hard to find, plus no subs. I’m dropping it in the hopes it comes back on my radar some day. 

Y-Destiny Ep 8 - (Thurs) It’s rough having a ghost boyfriend, half your friends are scared, the other half think you’re crazy, and kissing shortens your lifespan. This was a cute couple even if I wasn’t wild about the surrounding story. 

Close Friend Ep 5: (Dear My Star/JimmyTommy) - about high school penpals. It had to rely entirely on voice over work as the actors only meet face to face at the end. It’s a good thing they are appealing screen presences on their own, with good vocal control. It’s hard to imagine any other BL pair carrying this kinda plot. It’s by far my favorite of the series so far, and I’m not even a big JimmyTommy fan. 

Fish Upon The Sky Ep 7 - no subs. Do we care? Not really. Because we have... 

Nitiman Ep 3 - currently my favorite out of Thailand. It’s the university Thai BL i’ve been waiting for since... when was the last good one? My Engineer? Yowza. Anyway we got: head on my shoulder, baby is a floppy drunk (but still wants to be in control), proximity alert, boyfriend’s closet, seme gets seriously jelly, and a cute twist on feeding him. There’s something fun and complex about Jin’s character. He’s not a panicked bi. He knows exactly what’s going on, he just hasn’t decided if he wants Bb or not. He clearly enjoys being looked after, the compliments, and the attention, but he’s not sure if he’s going to like what happens if he gives in. I like that twist on the usual tsundere uke archetype a lot, cautious rather than willfully obtuse or freaked out. We can see Jin realizing in stages: I like this person, I like that they like me, I like the romantic attentiveness. But in the background is... do I actually want to f*k him? It’s a dynamic we don’t often see on BL. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

HIStory 4: Close To You (Taiwan) Ep 10 fin - the most ridiculous show using BLs worst tropes in a sort of weird smoothie of bitter greens and too ripe banana. The ending was the sappiest cheesiest thing ever, like cheese syrup tapped from the cheese tree. So of course I loved it, but I’m pretty sure I giggled through all the bits meant to be profound. Because, in the end, to tolerate this show at all, you just can’t take ANY of it seriously. RECOMMENDED (with some SERIOUS reservations and trigger warnings.) Full review here. 

Be Loved in House: I Do (Taiwan) Ep 1-2 - I don’t mind a damaged seme character but this one is a bit weird for me. Like creepy Cheese in the Trap level weird. On the bright side, the story has given our tsundere uke good motivation for his angst and great existing friendships, loyalty, and likability. Plus I’m invested in the cafe owner/innocent puppy side dishes. So if it’s only the seme character I’m not jiving with, and he’s the most established actor, it should all turn out fine. I believe in you, Taiwanese BL. 

Papa & Daddy (Taiwan) Ep 6 fin - speaking of belief. This such a good show but they gave us a cliffhanger ending. Now we must hope against hope for season two. That’s never guaranteed with Taiwan tho. So, I’m docking a few points and saying, RECOMMENDED so long as you realize it’s a cliffhanger. 

Love is Science? (Taiwan) Ep 1-9 (BL subplot) - this is a good het romance, but the fact that the BL subplot is a beautifully acted disaster bi + confident gay means you’re hearing about it whether you want to or not. Plus they just added in some GL! Come on! I gotta support Taiwan normalizing queer to this extent. They are fighting the good fight and if I also have to watch a career lady and her much younger softest straight boi get it on, too? Twist my arm with that service sub subtext. Go on Taiwan, TWIST IT. It’s on Viki. Join the revolution.   * Incidentally if you actually like the D/s het dynamic of this show, I highly recommend Japanese Kimi wa Petto - career woman keeps a hot young dancer boy as a pet. Oh yes, an actual pet, that IS the pitch. Never doubt Japan when kink is on the line. It’s also on Viki. Go get your kink on, thank me later. (If it helps: That was not a request.)  

Most Peaceful Place 2 (Vietnam) Ep 2 (AKA 5) - love triangles aren’t my thing, but if you’re gonna do it short form, by all means bring in the lead’s other BL pairing so the chemistry is on point. Now I've no idea who I want him to end up with. Can’t they just be in a poly triad? 

My Lascivious Boss (Vietnam) Ep 7 - I’m still enjoying it a lot. It’s still unabashedly queer and the tension is ramping up. We now have secret identity, blackmail, femme fatale, faen fatale, and incoming seme confrontation. Best of all, the series is still airing, which makes it longer than any other Vietnamese BL I’ve seen (aside from Tein Bromance - which is just too weird to count). 

Gossip - Thai BL 

SEVEN PROJECT TEASERS

No one is entirely sure what Studio Wabi Sabi’s Seven Project/7Project will entail. 

It might be like Close Friend (1 episode per couple, no linking), 

or Y-Destiny (2 episodes per couple, loosely linked), 

or The En of Love (4 episodes per couple, linked but independent consecutive stories). 

They’re giving the couple’s arcs separate titles. So each one would be what? Seven Project: Once Upon a Time or the like? We’re in Taiwanese title territory people and NO ONE WANTS TO GO THERE. Anygay... 

Once Upon a Time is the BounPrem (og UWMA) anchor story, and seems to be the most dramatic and likely saddest. These two can handle most of what’s thrown at them at this juncture, so it should be good. 

Vs Love is a BoomPeak (og Make it Right) university vehicle. Since I thought Boom was done with our nonsense, I couldn’t be more thrilled and surprised this pair is doing another show together. I don’t think either of them are the greatest actors but I find Peak very endearing and Boom charismatic on screen, so I’ll watch. 

Would You be My Love is the hotly anticipated SantaEarth launch. They’re a (cultivated) IRL ship and Earth is an established BL actor. They have great chemistry and high energy so this could be lots of fun. 

We are also getting a GL from this series from established BL actresses Samantha and Pineare. Nothing teased yet on that, but I’m looking forward to this installment the most. Also curious to see how the ladies handle the branding and promo side, not to mention the culture. (Thailand variety shows gonna force *girls* to play the Pepero game?) 

Secret Crush on You upcoming Thai BL with no release date, co-produced by and featuring (but NOT staring) Saint and directed by Cheewin (sigh) with all fresh faces. (Previously known as Stalker the series.) It looks like pure pulp and I’m not wild about the plot but could be better than expected as it’s adapted from a novel. Cheewin is an okay director when he has an actual story to follow. 

Don’t Say No the series. Coming from the producers of TharnType this is the JaFirst vehicle many have been waiting for. Friends to lovers + a good boy/bad boy pairing on a sports romance foundation. It’s basketball so they tapped Meen as well (he’s semi-pro). The bad news? You get one guess as to who is writing the darn thing? Yep it’s MAME. So, ya know, expect some slam dunk kidnapping, a light dribbling of rape, and me turning into a basketcase. AKA... 

Will I have to live blog this series in order to survive it? That seems to be the only way I can. So probably. Which means the bad sports puns will continue. Look, if I’m suffering, SO ARE YOU! 

Rumors of a new YinWar vehicle The Best Story (mini series) coming in July. Also rumors that their previously announced Love Mechanics (full length series) has either been delayed, is facing money issues, or is moving studios, or all three. 

Breaking News 

DELAYED (I’m talking these three off the watch list until we get new airing dates) 

Love Area’s release was pushed out but it got a trailer. 

Golden Blood was supposed to drop Weds but comments in MDL report that it is delayed due to C19.  

Love’s Outlet (Taiwan) is supposed to have started a 50 episode run (only 3-5 min each, what utter nonsense). Sadly, this delay is due to a surge in cases in Taiwan which was doing so well, but also doesn’t have many inoculations. 

Bad Buddy has started workshopping at GMMTV actual. 

Kang Insoo’s BTS for Nobleman Ryu’s Wedding is SO FLIPPING CUTE. You have to watch it. Trust me, I don’t rec behind the scenes stuff often. 

Next Week Looks Like This: 

Some shows may be listed later than actual air date for International accessibility reasons.

Upcoming 2021 BL master post here.

Links to watch are provided when possible, ask in a comment if I missed something.

This is the 2nd part of the "Riddle of the Spinx" interview with Death on the Nile cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos for British Cinematographer November 2020 issue (part 1 transcribed here). The full interview has now been released on the British Cinematographer website. I've included some of the text below!

In Part 2 Zambarloukos talks about shooting with the cast on location in Egypt and doing a particularly complex single shot of them on set, how they did the opening b&w sequence of young Poirot as a soldier, and built sets of Abu Simbel and the pyramids, the use of realtime footage projected on LED screens to make the studio sets look more realistic, what part of the Murder on the Orient Express set they recycled for Nile, etc.

Q: This was shot like Murder on the Orient Express at Longcross Studios with plates filmed on location in Egypt. Was it ever a possibility to shoot entirely on location?

Haris Zambarloukos: The issue is that 1934 Egypt barely exists today. For example, in the 1960s they moved the Abu Simbel temple 300 metres away so that the Aswan Dam wouldn't flood it. So, we built the entire four-storey high Abu Simbel at Longcross, complete with banks of water. The same with Giza and the Sphinx. In the 1930s the Nile went up to the feet of the Sphinx. Now all you see is the concrete expanse of Cairo.

Secondly, it's difficult to shoot complex shoots on a river while floating, taking all the cast down there and scheduling them, on top of ensuring everyone's safety on such a high-profile project.

Our whole design and research went into creating a set. We wanted to build a life-size boat inside and out; not to break it down into small sets but to shoot it as if we were on a boat. That’s a huge undertaking. Jim Clay built an amazing set to scale for the Karnak. It was so big we needed to build a temporary sound stage around it. We also wanted to use some real daylight when we got great sunlight in Longcross and use a little bit of water to basically film the boats carrying guests to the Karnak.

We recycled the railway from Orient and built the boat on that so we could wheel it in from outdoors to indoors. We built a very elaborate lighting rig that you could pull back and see the entire boat in one shot. You could step onto the boat and walk through all the rooms which were all lit for an analogue film f-stop. It was complicated and took most of our planning but I personally don't think you can tell the difference when we cut - even from a shot filmed outside in real sunlight juxtaposed with one in apparent sunlight on our sound stage. It's seamless because we took such great care and a detailed approach to our rig and construction.

In Orient you created some stylish direct overheads of the train carriage. You've told us of the Steadicam dance sequence in Nile. Were there other stylistic flourishes?

Inside the sound stage we went twice round the Karnak with the entire cast all choreographed for this one great reveal of a murder. It was really hard work to do. I understand why it was cut in the edit although they have kept a lot of other single long takes and there are lots of places where you see the whole cast in a single shot.

However difficult you might think setting up a long single is in terms of lighting and operating, it is equally, if not more difficult, to block a scene with multiple actors, keep the audience engaged and choreograph it in a way that is exciting and at the same time reveals things gradually. There's a lot of pressure on a lot of people in shots like that. Everyone's got to be on top of their game. Because we're all so interdependent, it's a domino effect in that the further you go in the take, the bigger the responsibility is for not getting it wrong whether that's the operator, focus puller, the actor saying the final line, the gaffer lighting a corner at just the right time. We always get excited about those shots but also very nervous.

You augmented the studio work with plates photographed on location in Egypt. Tell us about that.

We filmed on the Nile from a boat with a 14 8K Red camera array. We had a 360-degree bubble on top of the boat and two three-camera arrays pointing forwards and backwards as we travelled up and down. We specifically chose areas where modernity wasn’t present (or where it was, we removed it in post) and we also shot plates from the point of view of passengers onboard the Karnak.

VFX supervisor George Murphy edited the footage and stitched the plates together into an essentially very, very advanced virtual reality rig in which I could pan my camera. We did that before principal photography, so we never had to guess a month or so later what to put there. That’s a big help. Most shoots do their plate photography afterwards. It meant I could pretty much place the camera on any deck of the Karnak for any scene and know what the background would be.

As with Orient, did you play back footage realtime on LED screens outside the boat set?

I'd love to have done it live but on Orient we were only dealing with one wagon's windows at a time. It was still the biggest LED set-up ever done to that point, but the Karnak set is 20 time bigger than that. There aren't enough LED screens available – plus it would have been prohibitively expensive.

Instead, I went for a much larger version of a technique I'd used on Mamma Mia which was to hang back projection screens all around the boat – 200m in circumference, 15m high. We used Arri SkyPanels at a distance to create a sky or a part of the background. It could also be converted into a blue screen when we needed to. It meant that if I had a shot looking above the horizon line into the sky then it could be done in camera.

How confident were you of retaining colour and contrast from set to post?

I took stills on the recce and we used those to the create colours with this back projection for our skies. I take prints (not digital stills) so there is no misinterpretation. A still is a piece of paper that you can see. Once something is emailed across and seen by someone watching on another screen the information can get lost.

At the same time there were a lot more checks and balances put in place. We had a projector at Longcross and I watched dailies with (dailies colourist) Sam Spurgeon every lunchtime. With Kodak and Digital Orchard we have a very quick process to convert analogue filmmaking into digital by the next morning. Film is processed at night, they scan at 4am and by mid-morning those digital images are transferred to our dailies suite at Longcross. At lunch we’d watch it digitally projected, having been processed, scanned and graded at 2K.

I check that first and give notes to Sam and those get transferred onto our dailies which is what Ken, the editorial team, VFX and studio team sees. That's a major check. It's me with someone in a room, rather than me talking over the phone which is a big difference. I have a very good relationship with Goldcrest and (DI colourist) Rob Pizzey who also sees things along the way. I supervise the grade at the end. So, there's no need for anyone to interpret anything. It’s a collaboration in which we all look at the same images.

Did you shoot black and white for the opening scene or convert?

We shot colour for a couple of reasons. Although Kodak could manufacture BW 65, there is no lab in the world to processes it. Plus, there’s a certain skill to grading BW using colour negative and the added benefits are that that you can place a grey tone to a colour. For example, you could take red and decide it will look a very dark grey or a light grey, so you get very detailed tones. Ultimately, I get much more control in the DI this way. They were very monochromatic battlefield sets and costumes so it was quite limited in this case. The Germans wore grey and the Belgians wore dark blue and it’s a dark sooty gas-filled battlefield but you could manipulate the blue in the sky a little bit more and certainly manipulate the intensity of people’s eyes - especially if they had blue eyes (which Branagh does).

How did you handle sound sync?

To do sound sync work on Orient we used sound cameras that are twice as heavy as high-speed cameras, so I wanted to develop soundproof housing (blimp) for our camera on Nile. I took the problem to Stuart Heath at BGI Supplies at Longcross. They've made all sorts of props for us before, from Cinderella’s carriage to the furniture on Nile. I told him that I needed it really quickly. All my other attempts had failed. Stuart suggested using a material that they soundproof the interior of helicopters with. He brought a draper in who basically measured the camera as if making a dinner suit for it and quickly made a couple of versions for us. It was very effective and really opened up the Steadicam possibility for us. All from just wandering onto a workshop on the lot and asking a friend if he had any ideas about how to achieve something. In the old days that’s what everyone did – the answer was somewhere on the lot.

Finally, after six films and 14 years working with Ken Branagh, could you tell us what makes your relationship tick?

It is a fantastic friendship. To begin with you must be able to maintain a professional friendship with any cast and crew which is all about doing your very best and understanding where you have common aesthetics and shared thoughts about humanity. Ask what kind of world you want this to be, because that will come through in your filmmaking.

As you say, I've spent years working in close proximity to Ken and we have a mutual affection and admiration for each other otherwise we wouldn't be doing it for so long. He is relentless in pursuit of perfection and in his advancement of storytelling and is inspiring to work with. It means you have to be as relentless in your area of craft.

I think we both like making the same kinds of films. I'm a Greek Cypriot who grew up with Greek myth and tragedy. Ken's love of Shakespeare is legendary. You can easily see the lineage between Aeschylus (the ancient Greek creator of tragedy) that goes all the way to Shakespeare. Perhaps that appreciation for the human condition in its best and worst forms is the tie that binds.

Photo credit: Rob Youngson

Source: britishcinematographer.co.uk - February 4 2021

happy merry holidaymas! in the spirit of it all how about fallout 4 companions reacting to a sole who doesnt cry much and hasnt cried in front of them breaking down into the happiest of happy sobbing tears over the gift the companions gave them. even if the gift is just something as simple as "here ammo for you.. cause you need it.. merry christmas" they are over the MOON for it cause they never actually gotten a thoughtful gift before even prewar and it MEANS A LOT.

Ada: Ada treaded over to Sole; who was hunched over a worktable, with a small basket in hand. “Merry Christmas Sole.” Sole turned to her to see a basket full of components and tools. “Is that… for me?” they asked, their hands reaching out towards the basket. “Yes, it is the 25th of December, if I’m not mistaken.” Ada was responded with a tearful Sole wrapping their arms around her. “Thank you…” Sole sniffled, taking the basket in hand with a soft grin. Ada was a bit taken a back. She had thought gift giving on this day was normal. Wasn’t Sole from before the war? She’d thought they would have been used to this. But nevertheless, the hug was very nice; and she was glad Sole seemed to like her gift so much.

Cait: When Cait handed Sole that bat they had been eyeing at Moe’s, she was at least expecting a “Merry Christmas” back or a thanks. She didn’t expect to be pulled in a very tight hug; or the very emotional Sole crying into her shoulder. “You got this… for me?” Sole said between sniffles. Cait rolled her eyes but hugged them back anyways. “Yeah, you big baby.” She gave Sole a pat on the back and pulled away, letting them wipe their face. “Now let’s see this thing in action. A few raiders down South we can test it on.” Cait watched as Sole hurriedly packed up to go out. She couldn’t help but smile at them.

Codsworth: Codsworth peered into Sole’s workshop, little faded red and green paper bag in hand. He waited a moment before hovering in. “Merry Christmas Sole!” Codsworth cheered gesturing the bag towards them. “Oh, what’s this?” Sole opened the bag and froze. “Is this?” Sole took out a worn photo, their eyes tearing up as they brought it closer. “I was able to find a few after the blast; I’m sorry it’s a little roughed up- “. Codsworth was interrupted by Sole pulling him into their arms. “Thank you…” “Oh sir/mum…” Codsworth was nearly speechless. Sole had rarely ever cried, so this was a bit surprising to him; but Codsworth let Sole hug him as long as they liked.

Curie: Curie happily walked over to Sole’s house, a small potted plant in hand. She knocked on their door. Sole answered it a moment later. “Hey Curie.”, said Sole as they cracked open the door. “Merry Christmas Sole!” She handed them the potted plant, which Sole met with a blank stare. Curie was confused by the strange reaction. Did she get the date wrong? Was Christmas actually the 26th? Or did Sole not like the gift? Did Sole even mentioning celebrating Christmas??? Her mind stopped rambling when Sole took the plant gently. “Wow… for me?” they asked softly, tears starting to form in their eyes. “Yes! Do like it?” Curie was answered with a tight knit hug from a very tearful Sole. “I love it. Thank you…”

Danse: Even though it was a little tacky to Danse to be giving out gifts, he thought Sole deserved one anyway, seeing as how gift giving was a common practice in prewar America. So Danse settled on a small holotape, filled with a few songs that Danse had enjoyed back when he lived in Rivet City. The radio could definitely use more variety out here. He opened up the door to their home in Sanctuary, stepping in to find them at their dining room. “Merry Christmas Sole.” “Oh, you shouldn’t have! What’s on it?” “Give it a listen.” He handed it Sole, who untied the ribbon and popped it into their Pip-Boy. When the first few notes played, a weepy Sole leaped over to Danse and hugged him. “I haven’t heard this song in years! Thank you!” Danse was a little perplexed by the sudden emotional Sole, but he was overjoyed to see that they loved his gift so much.

Deacon:  Deacon crept up behind Sole while they were messing with their Pip-Boy. He then popped up next to them, “Merry Christmas, boss!” “Jesus Chri-! Oh, it’s you.” Sole jumped in shock, only to see Deacon standing there; with what seemed to be a wrapped gift in his hand. “What’s that?” they asked. “A present, duh.” “For me?” Deacon nodded, gesturing it towards them. “Open it up, the longer you look at it the more you realize how much I suck at wrapping things.” Sole hesitantly started to open it, voice shaking with a tear in their eye. “Wow Deacon, I haven’t gotten a present in ye-.“ Sole stopped when they saw the gift. “Oh my god, Deacon.” They lifted the large green party gag sunglasses to his face. Deacon started laughing uncontrollably, almost falling to ground. “Where did you get these?! A behemoth could wear these!” “Oh, if only you could see your face!” Deacon burst laughing again as Sole rubbed their eyes. “The one time I thought you were being serious…” “Oh, don’t be hurt boss. Those came out of personal collection. So, you’re welcome.” Sole rolled their eyes, trying to hide their smile. “Thanks. I’m getting you back, though.”

Gage: Gift giving wasn’t exactly Gage’s forte, but he did try his best for Sole. Not much you can really work with at Nuka World, unless he got Sole some cheesy, beat up tent-game prize. So, he settled on a neat bracelet he found while scavenging. Wasn’t the nicest, but it certainly better than nothing. He was shocked when Sole opened the gift, he tried his best to wrap it. They immediately squeezed him a tight hug, tears streaming down their face. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” “Aw, boss. No need to cry.” He smiled and hugged them back. He didn’t expect something that small and insignificant to make them so happy.

Hancock: Hancock had recently picked up a little kitten off one of the caravan traders when they visited Goodneighbor. It was an adorable calico, and he knew he had to buy it. But it wasn’t for him. Sole had always mentioned wanting a cat, so Hancock knew it would be the perfect gift. He could barely contain his excitement for himself when he walked up to Sole’s house in Sanctuary. It was almost perfect, despite the fact that the kitten wanted to eat the ribbon he had tied around its neck. When Sole opened their front door, he stretched out his arms towards them, kitten in hand. “Merry-.” Sole burst into tears on the spot, which made Hancock freeze. “Is that…for me?” “It sure is!” Hancock handed them the kitten, which they took into their arms, scratching its chin softly. “Thank you… I’ve haven’t gotten a gift like this in years…” They invited Hancock inside of their house, and they spent the rest of that day playing with the kitten and deciding a name for it.

Longfellow: He was pretty clueless as what to give Sole, so he settled on an old fishing hat that was collecting dust in one of his drawers. It was a little beat up, but so was everything he owned around here. He half expected Sole to throw it back at him when they opened the gift, but their eyes swelled up with tears once they tore open the packaging. “This looks just like the one my grandfather wore…” Sole said sadly. “Is that so?” Longfellow chuckled and plopped the hat onto their head, which in return Sole hugged him. “Looks good on ya.” Sole thanked Longfellow between sniffles.

Maccready: If Maccready knew anything about Sole, it was that they loved comics. So, when Maccready was scrounging around and found an edition of a Grognak comic he’d never seen, he knew that it’d be the perfect gift for Sole. He was at least expecting a happy Sole that morning when they opened the bag but was instead given a tearful one. “Where did you find this?!” they asked excitedly, their arms squeezing around Maccready torso. “I was just in the right place at the right time.” Maccready managed to breathe out within Sole’s tight grasp. Jeez, Maccready has gotten pretty excited over new comics, but he’s never cried over one. He wasn’t judging though. It was a sweet find.

Nick Valentine: Nick knew about Sole’s love to read and decided to gift them a novel he’d picked up during one of his investigations. He had read himself a few times, so he knew Sole would enjoy it. With a little bit of help from Ellie he neatly wrapped the book with a worn, but nice red paper. When he handed to Sole that Christmas morning, they gently unwrapped the paper. “Oh Nick, you shouldn’t have…” Their eyes were as wide as saucers when they read the title. “Is this…?!” Sole looked back and forth between Nick and the book, their eyes watering. “You alright?” Nick was starting to get concerned. “No, I’m fine!”, Sole assured him. “It’s just… I never got to finish this one before the bombs fell…” Sole wiped away their tears and smiled up at Nick. “Thank you…” “My pleasure.”

Piper: Piper had poured hours of hard work into this cake. She almost gave up halfway since she kept messing up the batter, but she adamant about giving Sole a hand-made gift. Even if it was slightly chewy or an off-putting color (she could fix that with some icing). When she finally got it out of the oven and fully decorated, she stored it away and walked out of her to get Sole. Piper led them into her living room, the widest grin on her face. “What’s that I smell?” Sole asked, sitting down on the couch. Piper quickly removed the cake from it’s hiding place and set it down in front of Sole. “Surprise! Merry Christmas, Blue!” she beamed. Sole was speechless as they began crying. Piper was taken a back and started to worry. “Blue?! What’s wrong?” she questioned them as she rushed over to Sole’s side. “I’m sorry, I just… nobody has ever given me anything on Christmas…” Piper solemnly stared at them as they wiped their eyes. Taking a plate and knife, she quickly cut a piece for both of them and handed a slice to Sole, who’s eyes perked up. “Why don’t you have a taste? Just… don’t look too hard at the frosting… I tried…” Sole chuckled and happily took a few bites. “Thanks, Piper.” “Don’t worry about it, Blue.”

Preston: Preston timidly walked up to Sole with a small scarf behind his back. When Sole noticed he was standing in their office doorway, they called him in. “Whatcha got there?” they asked. Preston draped the scarf across their shoulders with a smile beaming on his face. “Merry Christmas, General!” He was expecting a response from Sole, but they just stood there silently for a moment. “You… bought me a present…?” Preston sheepishly looked down at his feet. “Well, I actually made it…” Sole‘s eyes started to tear up, their face flushed red. They pulled Preston into a hug, their face pressed into his shoulder. “Thank you.” He chuckled as he gave them a couple of pats on their back. “You’re welcome, Sole.” Preston’s smile brightened when Sole pulled away to admire the scarf. He was glad they loved it; cause it was really hard to find nice yarn in that bright blue.

Strong: The mutant didn’t even know it was Christmas when he handed that bobblehead to Sole, so he was very perplexed to have them crying into his shoulder. They kept going on about the bobblehead and how they never got gifts on “Chris-must”. “Merry Christmas Strong, I’ll find you something really quick to make up for it!” Strong nodded along and followed behind Sole before asking “Who’s Mary Chris-must?” Sole stopped in their tracks before bursting into laughter. They explained the human holiday and he was more intrigued about it the more Sole talked. Strong asked more and more questions. This human holiday didn’t seem half bad.

X6-88: Gift giving wasn’t exactly the norm in the Institute; that was usually reserved for birthdays and it was never a celebration for synths (not publicly anyway). But X6 wanted to make Sole happy since they seemed so invested in the holiday. They went on and on about it the closer it got; and they seemed so disappointed when Father told them they don’t celebrate it. X6 didn’t dare waste his time to find something above ground for them, Sole deserved better than rubbage. With a little bit of convincing at the commissary, X6 managed to get a new prototype laser rifle the researchers in the A.S. department had just released. A fitting weapon for a person such as Sole. When he handed it to Sole, they leaped at him and gave him a hug as they sobbed softly into shoulder. “Thank you! You’re the best, X6!” X6 loved the praise from Sole, but this was in the hallway near the cafeteria and everyone there had their eyes on them; including a couple of coursers. He would never hear the end of it; but for Sole, it was worth it.

Thank you for the prompt @darktownflorist! I believe this came in when I had just picked up a job so the while the time it took to answer this is inexcusable, I got it done! I had so much fun with this one. Merry VERY Late Christmas!!!

Whizzer’s Got A Type

ohhhhhhhh my god you guys so basically when i started this side blog i did not think i was going to be writing any full-length fics. this all changed when i started rewatching the show Smash and came up with might be my favorite headcanons i’ve ever had??? but anyway, after like 10 days of writing, editing,  and countless conversations about these characters, i have about 3200 words of a fic i genuinely enjoy, and i hope yall do too!! also, huge huge thank you to @browniemixinawaffleiron, @sandfordsmostwanted, and @cookies-for-all for helping me with this!!!

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After Marvin had gotten back from work today, he and Whizzer had fought for hours. Whizzer was late to making dinner and Marvin had been livid. The younger man had enough of his boyfriend’s screams and decided he was done playing housewife for the day. He grabbed his jacket and walked around for a while before eventually finding the closest bar, knowing he needed a drink or two. As Whizzer approached the bar, he saw the back of a man’s head that he knew he could recognize anywhere. His face flushed with anger and he began yelling insults at his boyfriend while hitting his shoulder. How dare he come here? Whizzer was the one who needed this bar, not Marvin who had booze at his place. As he began to say something particularly cruel, a man with a soft confused expression turned around. This man, who looked exactly like Marvin, glanced up at Whizzer and said “Well, I’m certainly happy I’m not actually the guy you’re so pissed at. Care to explain?” and Whizzer sat down next to his boyfriends' doppelganger, got them both a drink and explained his situation. He spared no detail and ended the story with him walking out mere hours ago. The man, who had introduced himself as Tom Levitt, was interested in every word Whizzer had to say. Whizzer was certainly not used to the look on Tom’s face, one of sincerity. He hadn’t seen that since he started sleeping with Marvin. When Whizzer finished up his tale, Tom shook his head before raising his hand to get the bartender’s attention. “You are definitely in need of another drink,” he said before ordering another round for the two of them. They talked for a few more hours at the barstools until their conversation moved to a taxi, and then Toms’ apartment, and the conversation seemed to cease once they reached Tom’s bed.

The next morning, Tom rolled over to find a handsome man in his bed and he smirked to himself. He carefully got up, not wanting to wake the man sleeping peacefully, and got up to make them both some tea. As he was taking the kettle off the stove, he felt strong arms wrap around his waist from behind him. He smiled a bit when a kiss was pressed to his cheek before he felt Whizzer’s head rest on his shoulder for a second before he walked over and sat on Tom’s couch. They drank their tea in comfortable silence before Whizzer finally spoke up. “Well, I should probably get back to the war zone… try and smooth things over.”

Tom felt his heart pang but he pushed it down, offering a smile and a kiss on the cheek instead. “I wish you all my luck, but do call me again if he ever acts as dumb as he did last night.”

And call him again he did. Sooner than Tom expected, if he was honest. They had little fights here and there for about a week but things got back to normal. Well, normal for them. But after a little while, they had another big fight and Toms’ phone buzzed during a late night writing session with Julia. Tom sheepishly explained his plight to his best friend who promptly rolled her eyes while telling him this affair was an awful idea. “Tom, sweetheart, sleeping with this guy just because you look like his boyfriend is a terrible idea. This is just gonna end up hurting you in the end.” Tom just shook his head and began grabbing his coat before saying, “Well Jules, not all of us have men falling at our feet. This is what I have. Plus, he’s great in bed and shares my taste in tea. So I like it, no matter how it ends.”

After about a month of this went on, Whizzer going behind Marvin’s back far more frequently than he originally intended to. Eventually, this all had to come to a stop. One morning, Whizzer had forgotten to cover up the hickeys on his neck and Marvin took notice. Marvin questioned him and Whizzer revealed what had been happening, making jokes about Marv’s cute little doppelganger and calling him Marvin’s “better half.” Marvin hid his heartbreak behind more arguments and after two full days of screaming matches, their 9 month (10 month) relationship ended after a game of chess. Whizzer called Tom, trying to hide the shakiness in his voice as he walked out of Marvin’s place with his bag. Tom was actually in the middle of a workshop for he and Julia’s musical but as soon as he heard the other man’s tone, he called out for the rest of the day and met him at his own apartment. He made Whizzer tea and sat on the couch with him, rubbing his arms every once in a while. Whizzer got tired and laid his head on Tom’s lap, prompting him to play with his hair. Whizzer fell asleep and Tom smiled contently. He took this as a good sign. The sleeping man was now single and still chose to spend his time with Tom, that had to mean something. Tom had thought before that he was getting too attached to Whizzer, but when he looked down and saw him all curled up, Tom decided he got attached just the right amount.

A few months went by and the two men grew closer, all while not getting too serious. Whizzer spent almost all of his at Tom’s apartment, content to spend his time listening to Tom and sometimes Julia work on the Marilyn Monroe musical that he was about 90% sure they were calling Bombshell. Tom even got Whizzer to sing a few times, which Whizzer was sure wasn’t beneficial to anyone unless Tom was curious if his songs could still sound decent if someone tone deaf sang them. When Tom wasn’t working, he and Whizzer would go out to various bars together. It was a happy blur for six months.  Life was much calmer for Whizzer like this; no bickering, no insults, just kisses and affection. And although it was nice, something still felt off. Whizzer liked Tom, he really did. Not only was he sweet and funny, he just so happened to look exactly like the man he had loved. It was the perfect scenario, Marvin’s looks but a kind personality. He should have been head over heels for Tom, but he wasn’t. Tom wasn't Marvin and Whizzer needed to find a way out before he hurt Tom, more than he probably already was going to.

Tom had been in rehearsals all day, Bombshell was two weeks away from going to Boston and everyone was on high alert. At least when night fell, Tom went home to find Whizzer at his apartment most days. Nothing made him happier, his work life was starting to come together (even though it was beyond stressful) and his home life felt happier than it ever had before. He came home to something that shook his world that day though, Whizzer packing a bag. He coughed a bit to let his presence be known and Whizzer looked at him with a pained expression. “I hoped I had finished packing before you got back, but we need to talk.”

Tom bit his lip but nodded, sitting down on the couch and patting the spot next to him. Whizzer sat down next to him and put a hand on Toms' leg. Whizzer attempted to explain how he was feeling carefully, the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Tom but he knew that was unavoidable. He did the best he could to soften the blow. Tom was holding up okay, all things considered. Hiding his emotions when he needed to was one of his best talents. That all went out the window when he tried to mumble out, “Are you… are you going back to him?” And all of a sudden, Tom was a puddle of tears and Whizzer didn’t know what to do. He wrapped his arms around him and rubbed his back.

“No.. Not yet at least. He’s just on my mind still, I don’t think he’s leaving it any time soon. And it’s not fair to you that I keep this going, as much as I want to. Because I really like you, Tom, you’re such a great guy. It’s just not fair to you. I’m so sorry, Tom,” he whispered and continued to rub his back. Tom quickly forced himself to calm down and he wiped his eyes, looking at Whizzer before kissing his cheek.

“You’re a great guy too Whizz, if you do go back to him, make sure he deserves you. You deserve to be treated so much better than what you got before, if you do ever go back to him make sure you’re treated with respect.” He said and got up slowly, wiping his eyes again. Whizzer got up as well and kissed his cheek. “Take care of yourself Tom,” he said before quickly grabbing the rest of his stuff and walking out, leaving Tom alone, completely heartbroken.

Tom sat for a while on the couch, drinking scotch and trying not to cry again. He eventually called Julia, not trusting his voice but knowing she would understand him. She picked up and immediately heard his shaky breath. “Tom, what happened?”

He sniffled a bit and mumbled out a quiet “He left… he... He said he still loved his ex and that it wasn’t fair to me or something…?” and Julia grabbed her coat and began to walk over to his apartment. Tom sighed and said “You were right, I guess. Don’t tell me you told me so though.” Julia chuckled sadly “Of course I’m not gonna tell you I told you so, at least not for a few days.” They stayed up a few hours drinking and talking about the men in their lives, eventually passing out on Toms’ couch.

Almost a year and a half after that night, things were looking up for both Tom and Whizzer. Whizzer and Marvin were back together, much happier than they ever had been before. Marvin had grown a lot over the course of their breakup and treated Whizzer with respect, something the younger man didn’t think Marvin was capable of the last time around. Bombshell had finally made it to Broadway and things were going really well for Tom, he was even nominated for a Tony for Best Director. With the two of them so busy, they rarely thought of each other. This changed the night of the Tony Awards while Whizzer was sick in bed.

After a day of being pampered by Marvin, Whizzer was curled up in his boyfriend’s arms in bed. Whizzer was very whiny when he was sick, even though all he had was a common cold. Marvin made sure each of Whizzers’ requests were met, even the ridiculous ones like having his bath at exactly 107 degrees. The day was finally winding down and the two had the Tonys on as background noise. Everything was quiet in a comfortable way until a certain someone's name was called out on the TV for Best Original Score. Although Whizzer had complained of a sore throat all day, he screamed. That was Tom, his Tom, on his TV screen accepting an award. After his general excitement died down, he explained to Marvin who that was. Marvins face paled a bit when he realized this was his so-called “better half” doppelganger that Whizzer had been with all those months ago. Whizzer was too caught up in his excitement to notice, already grabbing his laptop to look for tickets. “Marv, we have to see it. We have to go see Tom’s show, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.” The older man just sighed, knowing there was no way around this, and took out his credit card.

The soonest the two men could get tickets was two weeks away and Whizzer was both counting down the days and incredibly anxious all at once. On the one hand, he was so excited to see this show. He remembered the days he spent watching Tom and Julia write songs, the times he would stop into the workshop to see Tom at work, and of course all the times Tom would sing various Bombshell songs to him. On the other hand, seeing this show meant seeing Tom again. After leaving Tom’s apartment that night, Whizzer hadn’t seen the man. As much as he wanted to see Tom, he was scared that Tom didn’t want to see him.

The day finally came and Marvin and Whizzer arrived to the theatre, dressed to the nines. They had relatively close seats and Whizzer was so excited. The second the curtain opened, he was in a trance. The show was fantastic and he felt an overwhelming sense of pride for Tom. By the act one closer, Whizzer had already cried twice. The first time was during “Never Give All The Heart” because he could just hear Tom’s struggles with love in there. Even though Marilyn (or more accurately Ivy) was singing, he knew that this song was personal to his ex. He cried once more at the act one finale, holding Marvin’s hand so tight the older man thought he was losing circulation. During intermission, the two stood in the lobby discussing the plot and how much Whizzer adored it. Marvin did as well, but with his underlying anxieties about Tom, he didn’t want to admit how fantastic it really was.

In the middle of their conversation, a staff member came walking up to the pair. “Mr. Brown? Tom Levitt has asked that you and your guest come to the stage door after the show so he can give you a tour.” Whizzer smiled excitedly and nodded his head, thanking them as they walked off. It was really happening, after all this time he really was going to see Tom again. Just as he was about to talk with Marvin about it, the lights flashed as a signal that intermission was about to end. They quickly found their seats again and the curtain rose again for the second act. This act also made Whizzer emotional but nothing could have prepared him for the death grip on his hand during “Hang the Moon.” He glanced over at Marvin to see what was wrong and he saw him desperately trying to hold back tears. Whizzer rubbed his arm gently and leaned over to whisper to him, “Love it’s okay to cry, no one’s gonna see you.” And that was all Marvin needed to let his tears flow. When the lights came on after curtain call, Marvin was still desperately wiping at his cheeks to get rid of the evidence of his emotions. Whizzer gently wiped them away while softly telling him that it was normal for him to be crying. “Whizz it’s stupid, I shouldn’t be crying over a- I’m a grown man.”

“Marvin. It’s okay, you’re allowed to cry whenever you’d like. There’s nothing not normal about crying. You’ve seen me cry a bunch of times, is that not normal?”

“No, but that’s differ-“

“No it’s not babe, we’re both grown men. We both have emotions. It’s perfectly alright to let them show.”

Marvin stayed quiet for a second and wrapped his arms around Whizzer, thankful he had someone like him in his life. “Thank you, Whizz. I needed that.” The younger man gave his boyfriend a soft but sweet kiss before taking his hand and beginning to make their way to the stage door.

Once they reached the door, Whizzer pressed the buzzer and waited for the stage manager to open the door for them. He smiled and thanked the woman who led them back to Tom. It was now Whizzer’s turn to have a death grip on his boyfriend's hand. He released it the second Tom saw the two of them and was walking over with open arms. Whizzer quickly hugged him with a smile, Marvin standing back slightly to let the two have their moment. They exchanged pleasantries before Whizzer began to praise Bombshell. “Tom it's magical, really. I haven’t enjoyed a show this much in a long time. I just can’t believe those songs you’d sing to me have turned into this.”

Tom smiled sheepishly and shook his head. “Well it wasn’t just me, it was Julia, and Derek, and Eileen, and-”

“Tom stop, give yourself some credit. You’re so unbelievably talented, I’m so happy I get to see you shine like this.”

Tom blushed a bit and touched his shoulder. “Thank you, really Whizz. I’m so happy you got to see this show outside of me drunkenly singing to you.” When Marvin saw the blush creep onto Tom’s face, he walked up and put his arm around his boyfriend’s waist. Tom looked over at him and his eyes got wide for a second before going back to his signature smile. “Ah, you must be the famous Marvin. So happy to meet you.” They shook hands, Marvin making sure he had a firm handshake. Tom tensed a bit when he felt his hand crushed by Marvin’s but he just continued to smile.

Marvin would eventually walk off to let them talk once he was sure Tom wasn’t a threat. He walked over to Leigh Conroy, looking particularly starstruck. Whizzer looked over at him and saw his boyfriends eyes light up. He laughed slightly and looked back at Tom with a smile. “So… you and Marvin seem to have worked out, I’m really happy for you. He’s treating you better, right?”

“Yeah, so much better. It’s like night and day honestly, he’s wonderful,” he said as he glanced over at Marvin again, sighing happily. “So, enough about my relationship. Have you found anyone?” Whizzer asked him, hoping he found someone that gave him the love he gave others.

“I did, he sits on my desk all day and spins, his name is Tony.”

“...Tom”

“No, I did.. One of them left and one… well, one died.” He said and looked down and Whizzer put his hand on his arm.

“Tom I’m so sorry.”

Tom nodded and smiled sadly. “Me too.” The two talked for a while, happy to catch up with each other. Their conversation eventually died down when Ivy walked up to Tom and cuddled up to his arm, knowing exactly who Whizzer was and how badly he had hurt Tom.

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met,” She said with a smile while giving him a slight side eye. Ignoring the side eye, Whizzer smiled.

“Oh my god, you’re Ivy Lynn. You were absolutely amazing in the show. I’m Whizzer, an old friend of Tom’s.” She smiled politely and thanked him before reminding Tom of plans they had for that night. Whizzer smiled softly. “We should probably get going anyway. It was great seeing you again Tom, really. Don’t be a stranger,” he said before giving him a quick hug and walking off to find Marvin.

“So that’s Whizzer, huh? Seems cute enough, but you really still think he was worth the heartache?” Ivy asked and looked up at Tom.

“Yeah... Yeah, I think he was.”

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is great because of the multiplayer.

Originally posted  4/25/18 on Kotaku’s community blog “TAY”. Posting it here because of TAY’s uncertain future as a way of preserving some of the stuff I wrote there.

https://tay.kinja.com/neverwinter-nights-enhanced-edition-is-a-great-remaste-1825288724

These days we so often see remasters or other ports of games that people can sometimes question the necessity of releasing them at all. Other than for the cash. At first glance developer Beamdog’s Enhanced Edition of Neverwinter Nights doesn’t really seem that spectacular compared to the cheaper old version available at certain digital stores. Just a few months ago I replayed Neverwinter Nights single player campaign after I got a free copy on GOG, and it worked fine playing on a modern PC. Even if it has always been a unpleasant game to look at.

The Enhanced Edition does little to improve the games graphics other than making it possible to play in higher resolutions. But beyond than that it’s hard to find any differences that stand out. I know I read somewhere the lightning and shadows are much better this time around. But I can’t say I notice this while playing. So if you already have a working copy of the old game I would seriously question why you would need this version.

That’s it, of course, if you are only interested in playing it single player.

What made me instantly buy the new version of the game was the news that the multiplayer will once again fully work and with it any mods and player made levels from the old game. (I suspect this is a big reason why improved graphics are so limited) That means any server still running Neverwinter Nights can become available instantly in this new version.

When the original game came out in 2002, it was originally developed as a toolkit for anyone to create and host their own D&D adventures and then make them available for people to join online, or to write your own single player adventure. The toolkit was rather easy to learn but complex enough that you could recreate Baldur’s gate completely if you wanted to. This spawned a large community of different servers with their own lore, rules and settings. Many of them felt like their own MMORPG where the players base controlled what happened in the world. A large part of these communities were also strict on roleplay, meaning that you have to act your character. While Neverwinter Nights is far from the only game that players have roleplayed in, few other games have successfully grown such a large community around it. Rather, in many games offering the possibility of roleplaying it feels like a minor part of the online community. In Neverwinter Nights it is a huge part of the game’s overall design.

One of the types of servers I enjoyed playing on was Zombie Survival. It turned the D&D-based game into a zombie survival simulator. Deaths were often a permanent affair, meaning that your character, which you might have spent plenty of time creating could disappear instantly. The highest level you could achieve on these servers was often around 5. By D&D standards this meant you would always be a scrub. Besides, reaching the highest level wasn’t an easy task because you could only gather significant experience points by exploring the world and gaining certain items. This was extremely risky, because there were few areas that were safe from the undead and healing yourself was always limited. In many regards these servers were unbalanced and could be extremely hard for new players, but once you learned where to find certain items you could become hard to kill. This also lead to interesting scenarios where players were roleplaying desperate characters of whom a great many died, but a few grew into veteran survivors.

Although as the years went by and the multiplayer communities decreased in player numbers, NWN always managed to keep a dedicated player base and a few strong servers running. Eventually Gamespy, which hosted NWN’s server list, closed down. After that you could only join a server by typing the IP address yourself. Which to many felt like the death of the multiplayer. This is because the lack of a server list made it almost impossible for any new server to make themselves known and even if the game was still being sold, very few of those new players would go through the effort required to find a single active server.

So for me, the old version of Neverwinter Nights being sold today is half a game. Even if you technically could play the online multiplayer, it was so inaccessible it was probably completely unknown to most people.

Which brings me back to me buying the Enhanced edition the day it launched: Even if the game is now 16 years old and considered dead by most, a few servers have stayed alive for all this time. Most of them were instantly accessible to log into from the Enhanced edition’s new server list, though many of them required mods. This was not much of a problem though, as the Developer had made many of those mods easily available with the addition of Steam workshop support. Small things like installing these various mods and packs could be a hassle even at Neverwinter nights’ prime time and doing so has never been as easy as it is now. This has made a lot of old players and servers return to the game, and to my pleasant surprise, among the servers was Zombie survival.

It’s hard to describe how nostalgic all of this has made me feel. Imagine if a game you loved that has been completely unavailable to you for 12 years suddenly came back. When I saw that a Zombie Survival server was available to play I was so excited to experience it again that I instantly gifted a copy of the game to an old friend to join me. A friend I met online 15 years ago in the very same game on a similar server. Once we logged onto the server, we had a discussion about if we should roleplay at all or just try and avoid other players and stick to ourselves. As soon as we were there though, we had automatically slipped into our old comfortable roleplaying habits. One of our first meetings with other players was running into two self appointed “knights” who were a bit too nice. They started by offering us some aid in finding food and asking if we would like to go exploring with them.

“So you guys are friends, huh?” My character asked them.

“We are comrades in arms” One of them replied. We quickly started to suspect they were more than just comrades though, as they kept flattering each other constantly.

Afterwards we met a party consisting of an female Druid, a rogue and a paladin so full of himself that we all secretly hoped the zombies would get him. Together as a big group we came to a particularly dangerous cave unavailable to players most of time as accessing it required a certain rare item. Once inside though, we knew we had a higher chance of grabbing some better items. If we could survive the zombie hordes filled in the tiny hallways of the cave. After we finished looting and were about to get back to a safe location the following discussion broke out:

The Druid started the conversation: “I hope we can get out of here.”

“As long as I am here we’ll be fine.” Harold the paladin answered confidently.

“If you fight like that, you’ll die sooner or later. Probably sooner.” I replied.

Larry the rogue was not having it: “Don’t be so pessimistic lass”

“I’m a realist.” I responded.

Unfortunately for all of us my character’s instincts were right and several of our group died on this adventure.

As I kept playing, I realized how long it has been since I was able to engage in this sort of immersive, in character communication with other random players. For me, it’s less about acting the role of a character and more of a chance to be creative with your writing among other people. While I recognize that this kind of exercise can often end up being silly or immature, few games that I have played make something like this work so well between random players. That was a large part of why I spent so much time playing the original Neverwinter nights, and it is something that I’m so happy to be able to experience once more.

None of that would be possible if Beamdog hadn’t put their effort into creating a new version of the game, complete with a fully functioning multiplayer mode that supports old content from the community. To be honest, I think they could have probably gotten away with not touching the multiplayer at all, and focused solely on providing access to the single player campaigns on modern PCs. Playing this new enhanced edition I realized that the remakes or other forms of rereleasing old games that I feel are the most important, are those of games that isn’t available anymore. Even if Neverwinter Nights has, in some form, been available to play this whole time, it is only now that you can experience the actual full game again.

Thank you for reading! I’m a swedish dude by the name of Joakim Jonsson who enjoy playing and analyzing all sorts of games, but perhaps the most with RPGs. If you wanna read more stuff by me I have an article about Witcher 3, and every Tuesday I host TAY’s Open Forum. If you wanna send me an email go ahead at: [email protected]

Also a large thanks to Jussi liimatainen who spellchecked and edited this.

The screenshots in this article are slightly modified to make the chat between players more visible.

Awesome Tarot Books & Resources for Beginners & Beyond

I’m often asked what resources I’d recommend to people keen to learn more about tarot. We’re so blessed at this point in tarot history to have such an abundance of books, blogs, podcasts, courses, and conversations, both online and off, to nurture our understanding of this rich and complex art form.

When you’re starting out, though, that abundance can be pretty overwhelming. Who’s got the time or the cash to try courses that don’t resonate, or read books that barely skim the surface? Sometimes, we need a little help sorting the signal from the noise.

To that end, here is a list of books and other resources that have boosted my tarot game and enriched my understanding of the cards. Of course, I can’t claim to have tried everything that’s out there, but I do have a stable of recommendations I can wholeheartedly hand over to tarot beginners, and also some juicy gems for more advanced readers to sink their teeth into.

I intend for this list to be a rolling resource, so I’ll update it from time to time as new and worthy things cross my path.

Books

My Ultimate Go-Tos

This is a pair of books I always recommend in tandem, because I read them both when I was first learning, and together they helped me to deepen my understanding of both the philosophy and the practical applications of the Rider-Waite-Smith system.

Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack is hands down, my go-to for learning the Rider-Waite-Smith system. It gives some history, and looks at individual card meanings with a lot of focus and depth, particularly for the Major Arcana. The real gold in this book is the way it describes the underlying philosophical structure of the deck, with attention to its historical origins in the Western esoteric tradition. I’d say this is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand what this branch of tarot is, in the deepest sense.

If that all sounds quite theoretical, fear not! Rachel Pollack’s masterpiece is well paired with a more accessible and practical tarot handbook, Tarot: Plain and Simple by Anthony Louis. Louis’ book is also based on the Rider-Waite-Smith system, and it goes through card by card with key words and phrases, as well as situations and types of advice that might be represented by each card.

The approach is immensely practical, so I often recommend this guide as an on the go reference, when you need some clues about how a card might relate practically to a particular query. It also arranges the Minors by number rather than by suit, so you see all the Aces side by side, and so on. This gives the reader excellent grounding in how the numerology of the tarot functions, and how readers use the structure of the deck, rather than just individual cards, to make meaning.

New Favourites

My go-tos, dating back to my beginner days, might be some of the most well-thumbed books in my collection, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t found other new favourites over the years. Here are some other tarot books I’d recommend:

The Creative Tarot by Jessa Crispin is one of only two tarot books I’ve sat down and read cover to cover, like a novel. That’s how juicy and compelling it is! The Creative Tarot is exactly what it sounds like - a method of reading tarot for creative questioning, especially as it relates to art practice and other creative work. There are many things to love about this book, but one of my favourites is that Jessa gives recommended media - books, poems, songs, films - for each card, so you can dive deep into the archetypes. You can find tons more detail about this book in my full review here.

Tarot for Life by Paul Quinn isn’t a new book, but is a new favourite here at Two Sides Tarot. I love the anecdotes that Quinn includes to demonstrate how each card might play out in real life, but what really captured my attention is the table he lays out for each card, which includes Keywords, then suggestions for each card as Being, Doing, Shadow, Reversed, and Possible Advice. I like thinking of card meanings as different parts of grammar - like, what is the Nine of Swords as a verb? A noun? Thinking about cards in this way gives them flexible applications, and Quinn’s handy dandy tables have plenty of accessible inspiration for that way of thinking.

I picked up Michelle Tea’s Modern Tarot mostly because I love Michelle Tea. I wouldn’t say that Modern Tarot is a perfect resource for the beginner, because it doesn’t include what I would consider essential learning tools, like a history of tarot, and chapters on how tarot spreads work, how to shuffle, how to read for others, and so on. What does make it great, though, is that it includes extensive anecdotes from the author’s own experience to illustrate how each card might appear in the world, and it includes a spell or ritual for working with every single card of the deck. LOVE!

Finally, an honourable mention goes to a funny little book called The Tarot Masters, edited by Kim Arnold. This isn’t really a reference book, but when I was getting more seriously immersed in my tarot studies, it proved to be a rich treasure trove of stories that inspired me to go deeper with the cards. Editor Kim Arnold has assembled a true dream team of tarot masters, and each one writes about a card from the Major Arcana, as well as a memory or story from their own tarot history. It’s like eavesdropping on the ultimate tarot celebrity dinner party. There is tea!

Advanced Books

Some of the books mentioned in this post (especially the ones in the next category) do deal with more advanced level tarot practices, so in terms of books that stand alone for more advanced readers, I’ve just got one that I love.

Tarot Interactions by Deborah Lipp doesn’t include card meanings, instead, it gets straight into how cards interact in a reading, and how readers can use the structure of the deck - the suits, the numbers, the elements - to inform the way they read multiple cards at a time. My favourite part of this book is the table where Lipp uses some basic maths to help readers determine what is statistically significant in a reading (what counts, mathematically, as “a lot” of Pentacles, or a lot of Majors, in a reading with six cards, or ten cards, for example). I’ve never come across that in a tarot book before, but it seems like pretty important knowledge to have! This is particularly useful intel if you read with reversals.

Books That Are Kinda Like Courses

Rather than sitting down and reading a book cover to cover, many of us would prefer something that feels a little bit more like a course or a workshop, with a bit of reading, a few worksheets, and maybe some homework if we’re feeling super motivated (and who isn’t feeling super motivated to learn tarot? Come on!).

Tarot for Yourself by Mary K. Greer is stuffed full of exercises you can undertake to really go deep with the cards. Its focus is on using tarot for self-inquiry, and it contains a ton of practical ideas from figuring out your soul card, to doing meditative pathworking with the cards, and so much more. You’ll learn plenty about the cards, of course, but this book is really focused on putting the deck to work so you can learn about you.

Tarot 101 by Kim Huggens is not numbered like a college course for nothing! This book is best treated like a term of study, and worked through in order. Huggens weaves her lessons in interesting ways, arranging archetypes thematically, and interspersing the study of individual cards with exercises on designing spreads, doing readings, and using the cards for self-reflection.

If you’ve not seen Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen in the flesh, you’ll have to trust me when I say it is A Tome. This brick of a book from one of the most knowledgeable and prolific esoteric scholars working today will see anyone go from stumbling beginner to sage expert, because there is just SO much in here to learn. This book is technical, academic in its approach, so if you’re an absolute beginner I’d say you could start here (and certainly, the earlier part of the book is aimed at beginners), but if you’re easily intimidated by vast swathes of occult knowledge and you’ve never read so much as a blog post about tarot before, well, maybe proceed with caution! When you’re ready to dive in, you may want to supplement your reading with the Holist Tarot resources on Benebell’s website.

Courses

I’ve taken an online course in tarot here and there over the years, most of which don’t seem to exist anymore, but I’m thrilled to find that one of my favourites, Little Red Tarot’s Alternative Tarot Course, is still very much alive and kicking. This self-paced, delivered-by-email course is a really great way to dive into the cards. I especially love that it reflects Little Red Tarot’s ethical, inclusive approach to, well, everything! So many tarot decks and resources fail to grapple with problematic and exclusionary power structures and gender roles that exist in traditional tarot, but you can be sure that this course isn’t afraid to challenge that status quo and make tarot available to all of us.

If you’d rather take things card by card, Little Red Tarot also offers a Card A Day course. I haven’t tried this one myself but I think I’d happily vouch for the quality of anything that Beth makes.

For those of us with a passion for the Tarot de Marseille, or perhaps just for a different approach to the heavily metaphorical way many of us read in the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, Camelia Elias’s courses are fantastic. Who wouldn’t want to read like the devil?

Other Resources

This part of the list is a grab bag of things I’ve found helpful and interesting, across different media. No doubt there’ll be updates to come!

First, if you’re looking to deepen your relationship with the archetypes of the Major Arcana, you might enjoy a free resource I created for journaling with each of the tarot trumps. This guide will encourage you to dig into your own experiences and make connections with the cards.

If you enjoy doing some tarot study on the go, try Lindsay Mack’s podcast, Tarot for the Wild Soul. Lindsay shares deep dives into individual cards and themes, as well as some really amazing interviews with luminaries in the worlds of tarot and other spiritual crafts.

I mentioned above that Little Red Tarot has some great courses, but if you’re not ready to commit to a course (and even if you are), don’t miss the incredible blog. It’s an overflowing wellspring of tarot knowledge and exploration, and captures so many marginal, magical, and necessary voices.

And of course, you can find lots of deck reviews, tarot spreads, and card analysis right here on the Two Sides Tarot blog. Perhaps start with this one, or this one. Enjoy!

What are your favourite tarot resources? Give your beloved books, blogs, and podcasts a shoutout in the comments!

Want more tarot goodness, delivered right to you? Subscribe to my monthly newsletter for more deep dives into the cards.

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Toby Hadoke’s adaptation of Nigel Kneale’s The Road aired on October 27 to great acclaim. Here, Hadoke talks about the necessary alterations for the story, as well as its tributes to the first production…NB This portion of the interview contains major spoilers for The Road. If you’ve not heard it yet, do so now!

Do we know if Nigel Kneale ever considered The Road as a radio script? It’s clear that what Brian Hodgson and the Radiophonic Workshop did back in 1963 was what he was after from the start – it was never going to be a big visual thing.

One of the big comments I got back from [Radio 4 Commissioning Editor] Jeremy Howe when we first pitched it was: “How is this going to work with the climax relying on a juxtaposition of the sound that we can hear and the visuals of the characters in the time period they are in, and the incongruity of hearing those sounds laid over the image of the people in that period clothing?”

He was quite right about that. Charlotte Riches who’s produced it has been a great advocate of mine and done pretty much everything I’ve done for radio; she’s an extremely experienced producer, and is brilliant and very hot on scripts. She said that the edit on the final five minutes of the play was the biggest and hardest job she’d had, and she’d produced hundreds of hours of radio drama. She gave herself a five-day edit on this because she knew this was going to be a biggie.

When you can see the pictures, you know where you’re supposed to be looking; when you’re listening on radio you have to create the points of view and it’s difficult to go, “Are we now with the haunting, or are we still in the woods, and those in the woods can hear the haunting?” On telly, we can see the people who can hear the haunting listening, so we have an anchor. On the radio, you go, “Why are we suddenly with the haunting?” It was really confusing to work out where the listener’s point of view was.

They say the pictures are better on radio – but when you need to create a very specific one, it has to be much harder. I think it works – there’s a lot of very clear audio cues placing us in the period before we get the stuff that’s out of place. Therefore we know the juxtaposition has to be doing something. In the radio version you’re giving us all their reactions through the haunting…

We had to keep cutting back to them. In the original, the haunting is just a series of fractured sounds, whereas in ours, it was Charlotte’s idea that we needed a narrative in the haunting to follow. We have a mother and a lost daughter character in the haunting who are entirely our invention, so we have a little mini story to follow within the haunting itself, otherwise we weren’t quite sure if it wasn’t going to be too fragmented and too confusing to follow.

All the dialogue in the haunting is entirely new, and we planned that quite hard… apart from the object that you can hear that is taken from the original BBC tapes. Although the play doesn’t exist, I had a bit of a brainwave. I dropped Mark Ayres an email and said, “I don’t suppose in your hall of records for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop the sound effects for The Road exist?” and he said, “I’ve got a tape here that says The Road.” He’s a superstar and sent me what was there, and we seeded a couple of bits in just because it’s a play about sound travelling through time, so why not have sound from the original play travelling through time to us? I thought that was nicely appropriate and a nice nod to the great people who went before us.

The original version was post-Cuba with the threat of nuclear holocaust very present – did you consider changing what the tragedy was that caused the haunting or did you want to keep it as close to the original as possible?

Unfortunately Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un came along and Putin as well in a sense – so I think a nuclear holocaust is something that’s still possible, and I didn’t think there was anything else it could be. It needed to be the present day, sure, but although we’ve got them listening to the news on the car radio, I didn’t want it to be too specific. Although it’s intended very much that the day of the haunting is the day that we’re listening to it – it’s happening to us – I thought it would sound a bit hokey if I embedded it too much in the very present in terms of our immediate references.

I think it would have worked in the 1980s when the BBC very kindly did a nuclear holocaust season and they showed The War Game, and Threads was on. I remember it was the first nightmare I ever had – I slept in my sister’s room because I watched The War Game and it scared the shit out of me. It was a real threat – I lived in the countryside, and my mum still lives there; there was a radar dome on the hill and we’d always talk about that if there was a nuclear attack, they’d take out that radar dome so we’d be in the fallout anyway. We wouldn’t escape by being in the country.

It definitely was a present and terrifying threat and I just think there’s nothing else that would quite match it. The world could be wiped out by flood or famine, but I don’t think that gives you as visceral a kick.

The big difficulty we had was with one of the sounds: I thought we should have one of those nuclear sirens going off, but I made some enquires. I asked a couple of MPs and Andrew Smith (who wrote Full Circle for Doctor Who and is a former police officer), as well as Tom Harris, the former MP, about what would happen in the event of a nuclear holocaust, and the consensus was that sound is now outmoded. That alarm wouldn’t happen.

The argument, though, was people still associate it with a nuclear attack, and we should use it but in the end Charlotte made the decision not to. I would have been comfortable using it, because it’s a really useful shorthand. We didn’t, and I think that helped to divorce ourselves from the 1960s setting, but it did mean we did not have available to an aural shorthand that says immediately, “There’s a nuclear bomb!”

So you have to find a way of doing it in the dialogue without having someone say, “I always thought I’d die in a nuclear war!” Or, “Look Jane, here’s a warhead!”

The mother and daughter bit sells that – as they’re describing the cloud. The bit that’s haunted me [and still gives me goosebumps when I transcribe this a few weeks later] is the mother saying, “Close your eyes and make a wish.”

That’s the bit that Charlotte really loved; she said when she read it she got chills down her spine. That’s nice because I wrote that bit!

The actors in the haunting include some quite well known actors, and the girl is the daughter of the producer. Nigel Kneale’s biographer, Andy Murray, is in there somewhere – he lives round the corner from me.

How much of the 40 minutes up to the haunting did you have to rework for radio, and how much could you keep scenes intact?

Unlike [Matthew Graham’s radio play of] The Stone Tape – which I thought was very good, but was a very different retelling of the story with new characters etc. – I felt we had a slight responsibility to present the play that we cannot experience because the tape was destroyed. In the shadow of Nigel Kneale I am humbly shrouded – I had no desire to go, “And what is Hadoke’s take on Kneale’s work?” This is very much my attempt to bring the brilliance of Nigel Kneale to a current and wide audience.

There are some brilliant lines in there, but by the very nature of radio, there are changes. On telly, if you have someone talking to somebody else for two pages, you can keep cutting back to the other person for their reactions to remind you they’re in the scene. You can’t do that on radio. Some of Charlotte’s notes would be – “Jethro speaks here, he hasn’t spoken since page 32, we need to bring him in beforehand, even if it’s to drop off a drink or cough, or something.”

There were various practical things: when we get to the woods, the cart gets stuck on a knot, and that’s just to bring us into the scene. A lot of that is Charlotte’s producing experience, creating the picture for the listener.

The big thing that we brought in to it was because the scenes were quite long – which they can be on television, and certainly could be on television in 1963. For this we needed all the stuff in the woods between Big Jeff and Lukey. In the teleplay it starts off with them setting up and then they bugger off pretty quickly. In this, the stuff with Big Jeff and Lukey and Tetsy that we keep cutting back to is largely mine, setting up the ghost story and having more of the history of the haunting cut with the philosophical discourse. It was felt that we needed to have a bit more toing and froing and to get in the wood location, where the climax takes place, quite a lot earlier. Most of the stuff between those characters, and the stuff about the bones, was all new just to have a bit of a mystery around the haunting.

I had fewer characters at my disposal so I had to roll a couple into one. In the original there’s a character called Sam, played by Rodney Bewes, who is Tetsy’s sweetheart and they’re in the woods. I think it was Charlotte’s idea we roll them into one, and Sam’s the dog now!  And it gives Tetsy a bigger role now.

There was a whole big team of guys helping the Squire and in my first draft I’d written lots of grunts, and cries of “You up there!” We just pared that down to Big Jeff and Lukey who do all the factotuming, because a big load of extras grunting is great on television to fill the picture but on radio it’s not particularly helpful.

In terms of the characters and the main thrusts of their arguments, the dialogue has been tweaked here and there, but large chunks are 100% Kneale. It was already great, so why mess with it?

How involved with the casting were you?

This is the great relationship I have with Charlotte – she knows I’m an acting geek. I didn’t know you could do this until we first did a play together; she said, “Who do you think?” and I suggested a few names… and they were all in it!

We were originally going to do this in Manchester and we were going to use all local actors for the supporting parts, which I’m passionate about because I think the BBC should use more local actors when they’re recording in a place. But because we’d got Mark Gatiss it looked like we’d have to do it in London, and if we were going to be in London, and it’s only a day [recording], we decided to aim high!

We batted a few ideas back and forth. I suggested Hattie Morahan straightaway just because 1) she’s a brilliant radio actress and 2) her dad directed the original which again I thought was a beautiful tie in to the past. Charlotte knew Hattie because she’d done loads of radio. I hadn’t known their connection. Hattie was a yes pretty quickly.

Mark I mentioned was a fan in the pitch – but I didn’t ask him if he’d be in it until we got the go ahead. He was definitely the first person to be contacted, before I’d written the script but after the commission. It then depended on his availability. We were on standby for quite a while – you can’t cast until you’ve got a date – but then we got a date finally from Mark and we moved pretty quickly.

Knowing we had Mark early on we knew would bring people to it – audience-wise and cast-wise. Actors know they’re going to be in a production that people are going to want to take some notice of and if it’s got the nod from somebody who can pick and choose their work, that helps.

I wasn’t 100% certain Mark would want to do it, because he tried to remake it and wasn’t successful so I thought he might be pissed off that somebody else had. He’d also done a readthrough of it on stage a few years ago, so maybe he’d played the part and got it out of his system. He’s always been very nice to me when I met him, so the approach wasn’t totally out of the blue and I thought he wouldn’t tell me to piss off, he would let me down gently. That’s the fear when you get in touch [with actors] out of the blue: you don’t want them to be rude to you, but I knew from my limited experience that Mark wouldn’t be mean, so I went for it.

Francis Magee is a brilliant actor and an old mate of mine and I wanted to give him a job – not that he needs one! He never stops working! I love him to death and I could just imagine him as Lukey so I suggested him.

I worked with Colin McFarlane years and years ago; he’s got a brilliant voice. I suggested him.

We had a few names in the frame for Big Jeff and then Emily, the production assistant, suggested Ralph Ineson because she always wanted to work with him. I said, “Go on offer it to him. It’s a little role at the bottom of the credits, he’s not going to go for it…” and he said yes. I wasn’t going to argue with that – he’s got the perfect voice for a tall Northern man.

Tetsy was quite hard to cast – Susan Wokoma was the only part I didn’t cast. I’d not worked with her before but she’s very much of the moment and brought a very different energy to it. She was Charlotte’s suggestion.

Then Adrian Scarborough – we had loads of ideas for Sir Timothy and there was an actor in the frame who couldn’t do it. It’s a potentially very boring part because he’s slightly stiff and credulous. I needed somebody who was able to bring a slightly different energy to it. I thought of Adrian whose work I’d always liked – I’ve seen him on stage a lot. He’s an interesting left field idea so I suggested him and Charlotte went, “ooh let’s try him”. I thought he’d be good but he’s even better than I thought. It’s a tricky part and he’s made it really sing. I’m  really happy with what he did with it.

Has this whetted your appetite for more Kneale adaptations?

It’s really helped me with my Quatermass book because [Nigel Kneale’s widow] Judith Kerr came to the recording. I’d been trying to get in touch with her to talk about the Quatermass book, but I’d never been able to get past the agent. She came to the recording of The Road, she was delightful, I chanced my arm and said I’m doing a book on Quatermass. I took her for dinner, and she took me round to the house. She’s got the Thing from The Quatermass Experiment out of a plastic bag in the corner of the office; she took me up to Nigel’s office where there’s a Martian sitting in the corner and gave me access to stuff I had no idea existed.

[Added October 29] Have you been pleased with the play’s reception?

I’m staggered – the response had been amazing. I mean, I knew there’d be a small coterie of people like me who would be keen on it (but then they might have hated it because it’s not 100% the original, so even they were a worry!) but the response has been huge. We trended on Twitter! And loads of people who knew nothing about the play before have got in touch to say how great it was an how floored they were by the ending. Someone even Tweeted to say it’s got his 11 year old son into radio drama which has made me overjoyed!

And then last night I got an email from Judith Kerr saying how much she enjoyed it and that “Tom would have loved it.” I’m not afraid to say that got me a bit emotional. So job done. It’s been a totally thrilling experience from start to finish and I’m very lucky to have had this opportunity.

The Road is available to listen on iPlayer. Read our review here

The first, spoiler-free, part of this interview explains how Toby came to adapt The Road

Photos from the recording (c) Toby Hadoke and used with kind permission.

OK.

Performance Studies. This whole thing is called, "a personal prehistory of pre-performance studies." Performance Studies. What's amazing is not its appearance but what took it so long to appear, given "all the world's a stage," the "theatrum mundi," and the maya-lila concept. This is not an occasion for a disquisition or even a modestly scholarly lecture about performance studies. Tonight, for me especially, is personal. And from that perspective, I want to ask, and partly answer, the question: How did performance studies start, not institutionally, but in me from way back? Not exactly my childhood, though that would be relevant, stories for another occasion, but from my undergraduate years at Cornell, 1952 to ’56, through to my time in Provincetown, Massachusetts, my two years in the army, my time in New Orleans from 1958 [should be 1960] to ’67, my first years at NYU, 1967 to ’70. And then my journey, my first journey outside of the Euro-American sphere, to India and many other places in Asia, but India especially.

In New Delhi, shortly after arriving, this is in October 1971—my first steps outside the Euro-American ken, Ramdev, a waiter in the Ashoka hotel, told me, quote: "One is born just to die—so one should not think of danger" unquote. "One is born just to die—so one should not think of danger." This is not just physical danger, this is spiritual danger, emotional danger, intellectual danger. Danger is all around us—and it can be very productive. [laughter and affirmations]

What was "performance" to me before PS had its name?

In 1953, while working on the Cornell Daily Sun, I decided to write several in-depth articles on the Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court challenging the segregation doctrine of "separate but equal." To understand the case, I wrote to the lead lawyer for the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall. He responded that if I wanted to learn about it, I should visit him in his Harlem law office. Which I did. Marshall, a big man, easy in his mind and body, threw his legs up on the desk, the pullout shelf of his desk, and explained the Brown case to me. A drama, a performance before the Court, something theatrical that would change American history—and my life.

Flash forward three years later to September 1957. I was on my way to Little Rock Arkansas bearing a letter from Thurgood Marshall to Daisy May Bates, head of the local NAACP chapter. Thanks to that letter, I was the only white in the basement across the street from Central High School. I watched as the Little Rock Nine, protected by troops of the 101st Airborne Division, crossed that street, mounted the stairs, and entered high school. I knew— even if I couldn't articulate—that something momentous and theatrical was happening. I knew that the word "demonstration," which we called these things, meant to show something. I didn't, I hadn't read Brecht, but there was street theatre, there was all of that presenting itself to me.

I was accepted then into Paul Engle's Iowa Writers Workshop and there I wrote a play for my master’s degree. I was also part of the regular English Department too, and I taught freshmen, quote, "communication skills." [laughter] Mutual bullshitting. [louder laughter]

There was plenty of experimental theatre too. During the summer of 1958 and again 1960 [should be 1961] (before and after the army which I will talk about in a bit) I created and led the East End Players of Provincetown. There I experimented with what would become environmental theatre. I did Sophocles's “Philoctetes” on the North Truro beach with Odysseus and Neoptolemus arriving by boat as Philoctetes, his wounded leg wrapped in fish blood soaked rags, fought off fierce flies. I did Ibsen's “Master Builder” in the Provincetown Town Hall with Solness's crowning structure rising to the beams of the Hall's steeple. I also experienced Provincetown as a place performing itself in one way in the summer, another in the winter. In 1958, I stayed till November, then joined the army. I lived on Commercial Street in a room rented to me by Mary Heaton Vorse, on whose wharf the first Provincetown Players presented their productions. She knew them all; she was a member of them. I savored Mary's clam chowder as I soaked up her tales of the Players and Provincetown.

Then, I did something surprising, I volunteered for the draft in 1958. Volunteering for the draft is a little different than being drafted. What happens, if you are drafted, your number comes up and you're drafted. Volunteering—the draft boards had to deliver a certain number of recruits—you go to your draft board and say, "Make me number 1." Which means they've satisfied some of their requirement. In exchange for that, you got a few privileges of, you know, maybe what you would like to specialize in. Of course it was lies. [laughter] But I volunteered for the draft and that day that I volunteered, I left. I served until August 1960.

Why sign up though? I turned down an offer of an officer's commission in order to be with people as unlike me as I could possibly imagine. People not of my class, background, race, religion, or education. I really wanted to experience the world as I could not experience it voluntarily—except by volunteering for the draft. I said I wouldn't be an officer. Because if I had just went on with my life, I would hang out, you know, mainly with people like you, and, uh, which is fine [laughter], you're my milieu, but there's a lot out there that's not my milieu and how could I learn about that first hand? Forced to, as it were. So, uh. At first, I was assigned to Fort Polk in Leesville, Louisiana. Don't go there. [laughter] And then Fort Hood, Texas. Probably don't go there either. [laughter] From Fort Polk, I made my first trip to New Orleans -- more on the Crescent City later. But it was through the army that I went to New Orleans and immediately fell in love with it—because there's nothing as different from an army barracks, than, you know, the French Quarter.

The army was uniforms, drills, inspections, and full-scale war games. And my ploys to subvert and avoid these. Performative dodges for sure, though I didn't have that word— "performative"—yet. My main job in the army was to write the weekly lessons on world events that later would be taught to all the troops stationed in the continental United States. I had to follow the army's guidelines. Given this, once in a lecture to the instructors I was instructing, I had a large map projected showing Western Europe ending at the Iron Curtain, and then a vast white space, and then the island of Taiwan. [laughter] "Gentlemen, gentlemen"—because they were all men—"Gentlemen," I said, pointing to the map, "We all know that China is a small island lying directly off the coast of...West Germany." [laughter] Only a few of them laughed. [laughter] Most took that message forward. [laughter] That was one of the reasons why later on I was investigated by the army. Because each week I inserted something a little bit subversive but within the boundaries of what they were asking for.

During the quote "Big Thrust" quote war game whose newspaper I was editing, “The Big Thrust Bugle,” [laughter]. It wasn't phallic, I don't know what's the interest in that. I went to Austin for two days, reporting in this newspaper—and Carol can attest to this, she's seen the newspaper itself, it's in my files at Princeton—quote "Big Thrust Bugle Editor Vanishes" unquote. [laughter] In other words, like many before me, I saw the military not only as something grim and death-dealing, but as absurd. Another performative.

In the army, I also had plenty of time to read. I read the whole Greek tragic canon (in the Grene and Lattimore edition) and fell in love with Euripides's “The Bacchae.” While in the army, I wrote my first published scholarly essay—about “The Bacchae”—published in the Tulane Drama Review. [laughter] Ten years later, with The Performance Group, I devised Dionysus in 69. [applause] Bill Finley also thanks you. Bill Finley was often Dionysus.

I don't remember precisely when I read Erving Goffman's “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”—while in the army or shortly thereafter. Goffman's ideas perfectly fit the crazy onstage/ offstage life of the army. His theory also helped explain my experience in Little Rock. But he did not elaborate his theory to include popular entertainments, play, games, and ceremonial ritual, of the large scale—because he was dealing with everyday life.

My army stationing in Louisiana brought me to New Orleans, which I immediately loved for its variegated people, street life, music, and food. So after discharge, I decided to get my PhD at Tulane, and I did it rather rapidly, less than two years, from entry to having a degree. I wasn't interested in remaining a student for long and I recommend that you tell your students the quicker that they finish the happier they will be. [laughter and scattered applause] Tulane hired me to replace Robert W. Corrigan, as you heard, TDR's founding editor, and Corrigan went to Carnegie Mellon and then on to NYU. And shortly thereafter, Corrigan became the first Dean of the Arts of what is now our school, the Tisch School, and he brought me to NYU.

He also brought Monroe Lippman, who was the chair of the department at Tulane, to chair—because Corrigan asked me to be chair, which I wouldn't. And shortly thereafter, Brooks McNamara, who was one of my first students. When I was a young PhD, he and I were about the same age, but I had the degree and he didn't yet. And Brook's specialty, as some of you know, is popular entertainments, the Shubert Archives, a whole vast range of performance stuff prior to performance studies that was performance studies.

Also while at Tulane, I was one of three producing directors of The Free Southern Theater, founded at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, in 1963. The other producing directors were John O’Neal and Gilbert Moses. In 1964, Freedom Summer, as it was called, we toured with—and get this repertory—Martin Duberman's “In White America,” Samuel Beckett's “Waiting for Godot,” and Ossie Davis's “Purlie Victorious.” Now which one of those did I direct? [silence] Give it a chance, which one? [various responses, not clear, then someone shouts Godot] I directed “Purlie Victorious”—the only black play [in the FST repertory that summer]—authored by Ossie Davis, an African American.

The FST was a completely different kind of theatre, for me and for many people. We performed more often in churches and farmyards than in regular theatres. In fact, I don't remember every performing in a regular theatre. The spectators often interacted with us, with the performers, as they would in church—they would shout back, they would ask questions. And yet, they really got it, they got the idea of waiting, they got the parody of course of “Purlie Victorious,” and “In White America” is a documentary about, basically, black experience in white

America. The FST's model, motto, was quote "a theatre for those who have no theatre." But they had a theatre, I realized, permeating rural Mississippi and Louisiana; it was a particular theatre rooted in black culture, vibrantly participatory, performative. And I began to sense this. Now remember this is the pre-history, so I didn't have full theory for it. But I knew that something was going on beyond what was on the stage, etc.

Also, while in New Orleans, I participated in both the civil rights movement and the anti- Vietnam War movement. I was one of the first two whites arrested for sitting in at the Maison Blanche department store soda fountain. What a name, "Maison Blanche," and again it was a time when we really—it was a demonstration—we were not there to get, you know, a black-and-white soda which is what we were ordering, of course. But we were there because they would either serve us, and would make the point of integrating it, or arrest us. I do remember a little anecdote. On the way, the other person, the other white person, was Cynthia Adams, the wife of a painter, Franklin Adams. On the way, we're in the paddy wagon, she leans over to me, she was true-and-true from New Orleans, [in New Orleans accent] "Richid, I'm sorry but, and I just remembered, in my purse I have a tiny little bit of weed." [laughter] I said, "Cynthia, if they find that on you, you're up to Angola [Louisiana maximum security penitentiary], and me too, for a long time. How can you do that?" "I jist forgot. What should I do?" I said, "Well you're a good Southern white girl, play it to the hilt. Say that you didn't know what you were getting into. That you didn't want to have anything to do with these radicals, these commies, ah, you know, these N people -- just play it to the hilt so that they would accept you as one of them and just let you go. Without ever searching you." Which she did. So that was very lucky. [laughter] But it was also a performance, you see. First, her demonstration and then of course her performing what she appeared to be, but which she was not.

[At Tulane] I was also part of the first teach-in against the Vietnam War ever taught in the south. Also I found real use for my Army training because I would go to the ROTC training ground and when their instructors would say, "To the left, harch!!" I would say even louder, "To the right, harch!!!" [laughter and applause] and I would totally disrupt the ROTC. For this, the campus police guy, Colonel Scruton, [loud laughter] and you can imagine what we could do with that, came to tell me, "Why were you, you're a professor, what're you doin'?" I'd say, "Well Colonel Scrutum, Scrotum, I mean ..." etc. and so forth. All these experiences... "To the right, harch" was an early form of guerilla theatre, of course.

All these experiences—I could elaborate on them greatly—demonstrated how orthodox "theatre" was very limited in relation to the much broader category of "performance." I also saw how human performances were of a piece with animal performances; that ritual and play were the opposite sides of the same coin. I theorized this synthesis—which I later dubbed the "broad spectrum approach"—in two essays, "Approaches to Theory/Criticism," which was in TDR in 1966 and "Actuals," which was published in a festschrift to Francis Fergusson in 1970.

Ok.

And then came India. In October 1971. India deeply put me to the test, even as I was introduced to the broadest possible range of performances, from the streets of Calcutta to Ramlila. My first days in India were not pleasant, they were transformative. Take this excerpt from my notebook 42 [really notebook 41]. I have been keeping notebooks since the mid-1950s so by 1972 [actually 1971] I had 42 [should be 41] 500-page notebooks filled. Sooner or later those notebooks will go to my archive at Princeton—they're interesting reading, some of it, and there's a lot of it. So here's from notebook, October 1971, quote:

“In the streets every kind of living and dying is going on. There are the beggars. But more pathetic by far are those who sleep in a daze, barely living, wrapped in heat, rags, hunger, and disease. One Indian hostess confessed that it does not take long to shut these people out. [...] Thus one goes down the street not seeing—stepping over the dying in fact as one does in consciousness: assigning these people to empty spaces where they perish in the void. If there is a solution to this problem—and Imust use "if"—then it is in total revolution. And whether it is possible to support such a revolution and also satisfy basic human needs for expression, I do not know.”

Unquote. I need to stop here. I still believe in total revolution, even as I fear it. Thank you. [applause and cheers]

-Richard Schechner

Scribble Shoot - Development

Hello! It has been a while! As I am finishing up my new game Scribble Shoot, I thought I would tell you a bit about the development process it took to get the final result. This game was to be inspired by the arcade game Asteroids. Before brainstorming any ideas of how to approach the game, I researched a little bit about the games objectives and main functions. So the idea is, your ship has to shoot all of the flying asteroids to gain points. To shoot your player aims with their mouse. And you must avoid the asteroids from touching you, otherwise you will loose lives. I began thinking about ways I could put my own spin onto the game, whether that be changing an element or adding an element. In the mean time, I wanted to get the basic functions of Asteroids made in my game, which didn’t take too long as we had been given an in depth guide to create this. 

For the make of my game, I really wanted to focus more on the mechanics and learning new skills of gdevelop rather than the presentation of the game. Some of these skills learnt were: object, scene, and global variables, modifying text, deleting/spawning certain objects at intervals, adding and subtracting from different variables depending on actions, etc. So the first thing I wanted to incorporate was a mechanic where the ship (player) was able to move around on the screen. My personal preference for movement mechanics are the WASD keys so I decided to use those. I also wanted to add a speed boost to the movement as an excitement feature, using Lshift to drive that. 

When designing what game I would make, I read chapter 10 where Fullerton says, “Sometimes a combination of rules creates an imbalance. Sometimes it is a combination of objects, or even a “super” object that unbalances play. Other times it can be a combination of actions that provide an optimal strategy for players who know the trick. Whatever it is, these types of imbalances can ruin gameplay. You will need to identify them and either fix the rules that create the problem, change the values of the objects, or create new rules that mitigate the optimal strategies.” I had to make sure to consider what elements I would add that would not take away from the gameplay. 

Idea 1: At this stage I had thought about an idea in which would give a certain objective to the player, besides the ‘get the most points you can’. I had thought about having an object that moved slowly up a straight course and your objective was to protect it. So you would have to move alongside it protecting both yourself and the object from getting hit by asteroids(enemy). These asteroids would come at an angle that would directly hit the object, so the player would have to shoot it before it reached as the object made its way through the course. I believe that these changes to the classic game asteroids would not take away from the gameplay itself but enhance the already existing game, applying what Fullerton had previously mentioned.

Idea 2: Another idea I had was to have the objective of collecting and delivering an item. They would spawn at a timed rate and your job was to pick it up and return it to its designated spot. Perhaps there could be different objects and they all had their specific home. Whilst out trying to complete the objective, asteroids would spawn and you would have to avoid them by shooting them, gaining additional points. But if you shoot and hit an asteroid, or an object, or yourself, you would lose lives. Similar to idea number 1, I think this version of asteriods would not overwhelm or unbalance the gameplay but would become more entertaining with the unique take on a classic, supporting Fullertons text.

I decided to got with this second idea as it would include the most ‘coding’ out of the two. 

I knew a lot of different variables would have to be included in my game so it would be playable in the way i envisioned, so I started making my way through the trial and error phase of getting everything to work. I had to create a few scene variables -  coincollected (boolean to record whether player had object), and coincount (total number of coins to collect). I also had a friend show me how to use object variables, so i incorporated a lives variable in the text to display how many lives left. For the points system, I wanted to be able to display the total points at the end of game (in a different scene) with the potential of adding more points throughout different levels. For that reason i created a global variable to control that. From there I had to link up all the variables to different actions that would occur throughout the game, such as: collisions with bullet, asteroid, coin, container, and movement and spawn rate coin, deleting coins etc. This process took a long time as it was something I didn’t have much knowledge on, but in the end i did have a functional game. Though the difficulty of the game was coming from the asteroids, I wanted to push it a bit further by adding walls around the border of the screen. This was so that everything would now bounce off the walls rather than slip off screen after they spawned. This meant that players would have to be extra cautious of where they shot as it could rebound and hit something you were avoiding.

I then had to create different scenes such as the start screen, if you lost all your lives, or if you passed the game. This was pretty straight forward and was able to complete that pretty quickly. As this first level objective was to only collect one type of coin, I wanted to create a new level where players had to collect 3 different objects and return them to their designated containers. Most was pretty much copy and paste from level one however I struggled with understand how to spawn different objects depending on whether their containers were already full and to stop spawning once they were full. I ended up having a friend walk me through it before completed the core mechanics of my game. 

Once I had finished my two levels, varying in objectives, I play-tested them making slight adjustments like fire rate of bullet, and spawn rate of asteroids, etc. I was very happy with my game concept and execution, and was now ready to start adding the aesthetics (my favourite part). Because this game is light heart and almost childlike in terms of having a straightforward task, I wanted to stick with that vibe by having the art style very loose and a bit messy looking. I thought having sketches with a crumbled lined paper background was very fitting, with mobile game ‘Doodle Jump’ in mind when visualising it. I replaced all objects, like the coin in the first level, with different coloured shapes and drew containers with that shape and colour on the front. 

Shapes art style:

Container:

I wanted something comedic with my player, continuing with the theme, so I decided to have my stick figure man hold a bazooka. 

I did have to adjust all of the hitboxes as they varied in shapes and sizes. The player needed its edit points adjusted as the controls weren't functioning correctly with the shape of my character. 

Upcoming post with final results and feedback from players.

Gdev Code:

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop : A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Fourth Edition, CRC Press LLC, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/detail.action?docID=5477698.

For the OC question thing: 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 18, 27, 32, D, E, H, and I

Yessssss questions about my ocs!! I’m going with the Percy Jackson fanfic ocs because you mentioned them and you know those guys. So I’ll pick from that lot. We’ll do Ivan, Drew, Marcy, Jamie, Todd, and then the Lake twins. Just a random five with Ari and Kit at your request. (listen I’m taking advantage of this situation and doing multiple characters)

1. What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?

They’re all a bit fidgety, but I’d say that Ivan and Drew could probably last about ten-fifteen minutes, Todd might last ten minutes. Jamie would get bored after five, and Marcy wouldn’t last two minutes. Ari and Kit are probably never able to sit still without starting to scheme something.

3. How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?)

All of them think too much for their own good. Ivan would probably enjoy reading more once he finds books he can read easier. Drew would be the type to wear earbuds to bed and fall asleep to his music, though more often than not he’s thinking way too much and just not sleeping. Todd is probably reading or thinking about a project in his head, while Marcy probably falls asleep building things. Jamie thinks too much and probably falls asleep doing that. Ari and Kit I figure would fall asleep either talking to one another or Ari would be scheming while Kit would fall asleep drawing.

6. Do they consider laws flexible, or immovable?

Ivan considers laws immovable and will feel horrible breaking any law. Todd and Drew sort of lie in between the two they don’t always break rules, but they will if it’s needed. Jamie considers things pretty flexible, and Marcy will happily break into locks if it means showing off her skills to break into places. She at least has a reason. Normally. Ari and Kit have little to no morals and therefore laws do not exist in their mind. They can’t break any rules if they didn’t exist in the first place. Or in their case they rewrite the rules to suit their needs.

8. What were they told to stop/start doing most often as a child

Ivan was told to stop “playing in the dirt” and to “be more normal” as a child. Drew was told to “start shaping up” by his Grandfather a lot since his Grandfather thought he was a delinquent. Jamie was told to stop doing a lot of things, but mostly it boils down to his parents asking him to “stop dressing like a boy and listen to your parents because they know best”. Todd was told to “start being a real man”. Those four don’t have the greatest guardians. Then Marcy was told to “hurry up” a lot when she was talking since she has a very bad stutter. Ari and Kit were almost always in trouble. So they were usually told to stop doing numerous pranks on their classmates. This is only by their teachers though, their Mom thought them perfect children (most the time).

9. Do they swear? Do they remember their first swear word?

Most of these characters are pretty young sooo…Ivan doesn’t swear much, if he does it’s usually if he’s scared he’ll say shit or something. Drew will say hell and shit, and his first swear was probably hell. Todd doesn’t swear. He’d have to be very upset to swear and even then it’d only be hell or shit out of his mouth. Jamie only swears when talking about his parents. His first swear was shit because he said his parents had “shit for brains”. Marcy doesn’t swear. Maybe when she’s a little older, but if she’s angry she’ll usually be too angry to get out any words. Ari and Kit don’t swear too much. However, when they get to be older teenagers I have no doubt that they will cuss a lot. I believe the first swear word they probably say though is fuck. Just because if they were going to do anything it’s go big or go home.

10. What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them?

Ivan I don’t think has any lie that haunts him. He’s a pretty honest and straight-forward person. Though his truths are sometimes taken as lies. Drew doesn’t lie, but he usually omits the truth, and that can haunt him. The lie he gives his friends about him not being sure what killed his dog or his Mom usually haunts him. He does come clean about that eventually. Later on there’s a couple bigger lies he tells and those haunt him too. Jamie lies about information regarding a dead camper and it weighs pretty heavy on him until he’s forced to tell the truth. I can’t think of lies that would haunt Marcy or Todd. They’re in a situation similar to Ivan, but they’re not at all as honest as him. Ari and Kit basically exist through lies. Their most frequent lie is probably that Chiron approved their book of “rules” that they made up. No lie will ever haunt them. They have no conscious when it comes to those things.

18. What embarrasses them?

Ivan is embarrassed by a lot. He was put down a lot as a kid so he feels bad about most of his hobbies including gardening and gets pretty embarrassed about how desperate he is for friends at times. Drew is embarrassed by his powers, his bad social skills, and his bad mental health. He get down on himself a lot. Todd is embarrassed by any sort of admissions of what he’s actually feeling since he tends to put forth a very confident persona. Marcy is embarrassed by her stutter at first. Later on she’s more embarrassed for things such as setting people on fire on accident or the incredible amount of felonies that her and Glen seem to wrack up on their adventures. Jamie doesn’t get embarrassed easily. Only if he messes up and upsets a friend with something that he has done. Ari and Kit don’t get embarrassed. That requires them to actually feel bad about something. Though they do have a softer side that if people mention it they’ll probably respond in embarrassed anger. Also they’re embarrassed by their full names and will get very angry at anyone who mentions those.

27. What causes them to feel dread?

All of them are scared to lose their friends and lose the people that like and understand them for who they are. Though Drew, Jamie, and Todd also dread ever facing family members since they didn’t live in the safest environment when they were with their families.Ari and Kit also dread ever having to tell people their actual full names, like middle names included. This is both a fearful and very embarrassing experience for them, to the point where both of them would rather face a life and death situation than deal with people knowing this information.

32. Do they have a go-to story in conversation? Or a joke?

Ivan likes to tell stories that involve friendly teasing of his friends in some manner. Especially Drew. The same goes for Todd, but he usually teases Marcy or Glen. Todd will also go into elaborate stories about whatever his latest design is when given the chance. Drew usually doesn’t talk a lot in group conversations, but when he’s in a good mood, he’ll tell stories about how Ivan sucks at video games. Jamie likes to tell stories about the things he and Finn used to do when they were younger. Marcy likes to talk about working with her Mom at her Mom’s workshop when she was younger. Ari and Kit will probably share their “triumphs” which would involve pranks they played on other campers or old schoolmates. Either that or they’ll talk about the trouble they got into with their younger sister while they weren’t in camp. All of them are usually around one another so they’ve heard one anothers stories over and over and over again.

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?

No, I’ve been adding more to their appearance for a while. Ari and Kit haven’t changed obviously since I didn’t create them, but the others have changed quite a bit since I pulled them over from a very old PJ fanfic and switched their names and appearances. I mostly mess with their hair and clothing styles. Todd is constantly changing because I have no clue about anything with fashion so as I learn things I usually add to him. Jamie also used to be cis, but that changed rather early on.

E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?

I’m not sure. I mean I feel like I would probably get along with most of them, but Ari and Kit as fun as they would be to hang around I feel like I would feel too guilty hanging around them and their antics. I feel like I’d get along with Ivan pretty well. He would probably be fine hanging around me too since he’s overall just a nice guy who sees the best in everybody.

H) What trait do you admire most?

I would say for Ivan, Drew, Todd, Marcy, and Jamie I admire that they’re just very resilient. They can have some awful shit thrown their way and even if they’re terrified they will force themselves to keep getting back up. For Ari and Kit, I admire all the boundaries they lack and their incredible ability to not give a fuck.

I) Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe?

Yeah, I usually don’t move these guys around since their canon universe is an important part of who they are. Wow this was long, but thanks!!

As the year comes to an end here at Screaming Frog we thought we would add to the inevitable roundups posts with our own. But instead of just bragging about the work we do or making pointless ‘SEO predictions for 2019’, we also want to celebrate the people that make the company what is it (we are also bragging, but we’re not just bragging). So take a look at what your favourite frogs (sorry Kermit) have been up to this year! Conferences & Community With so many fantastic conferences available to us in digital marketing, we’re spoiled for choice to choose which one to have some time off work learn from the industry’s best and brightest. BrightonSEO For the first time ever Screaming Frog had a stall this year, helping the community at our crawl clinic with Spider conundrums. We had a great time so expect to see us with a stall at more BrightonSEOs in the near future, now we’ve mastered SEO (Stall Engineering Optimisation)! Reminder to self – bring more swag. We also like to get involved in other ways – our resident Strategist Charlie has also been running the Crawling and Indexation Indexing sessions at BrightonSEO (shameless plug – we’re running a similar SEO Spider training workshop in January!), and be sure to check out Oliver Brett’s talk next April! Not to be missed! SearchLeeds SearchLeeds was where Oliver, rumoured to be the mastermind behind Twitter’s favourite SEO meme account Lord of the SERPs, made his speaking debut this year and a fantastic conference held in a great city. How he managed to keep the topic of “Why SEOs are weirdos” down to just a few slides is testament to his speaking prowess. HeroConf Determined to show the SEO team they do more than just “set it and forget it”, the PPC team headed up to London for HeroConf. Despite rave reviews about the conference, the SEO team remain unconvinced by the PPC team. Information Is Beautiful Workshop Being the creative force behind almost everything we produce, and after seeing the SEO team heading out for ANOTHER conference, the design team headed up to London for an inspirational masterclass from the man behind some of the best content on the web – Information Is Beautiful. They brought their knowledge back to share with the SEO team, which resulted a creative boost that can only be compared to a strong coffee on a Monday morning. OutREACH Having launched a couple of years ago OutREACH conference has fast become one of the must-attend conferences at Screaming Frog. The team returned with fresh ideas for the ever more difficult task of outreaching, from quality speakers and we’re looking forward to seeing what next year has to offer! SearchLove Another conference held in very high esteem around the Screaming Frog office is Distilled’s SearchLove. A couple of our team headed up to London (we’ll hit the US iteration one of these days!) and were once again blown away by the expertise on offer. Search Elite During June we ventured into London for the popular Search Elite conference, which fully delivered on its promise of in depth presentations from expert speakers hailing from both sides of the Atlantic. Look out for the 2019 edition which has been rebranded to Digital Elite Day, combining the best from the worlds of search and CRO. Nudgestock Perhaps a little less SEO focussed, but no less interesting was Nudgestock. Full of behavioural ideas that can be applied to a whole range of settings, a highlight was the behavioural nudges that can be used to increase conversion rates. BrightonSEO/Deepcrawl 5-a-side And how could we forget the 5 a side tournament hosted by BrightonSEO and Deepcrawl. The game on everyone’s lips was “El Crawlico” as we took on Deepcrawl to determine once and for all the superior crawler result which has no further implications on the quality of each respective tool. Without wanting to dwell on the matter 9-2 much, Screaming Frog came away victorious! Looking forward to the battle next year! UK Search Awards One of the big events at the end of the year is of course, the UK Search Awards, celebrating the great work that’s been done by our industry. With only 35 awards up for grabs in a hugely competitive industry we had the honour to be shortlisted in 3 categories… …And took home the prestigious award of “Best SEO Campaign” for our client Spotahome, a testament to the fantastic work put in by everyone at the company. A fantastic evening to round off a brilliant year. Giving Back We’re always looking to support charities that mean a lot to the people that work at Screaming Frog and if they involve eating copious amount of cakes, muffins, and brownies then that’s just what we’ll have to do! Macmillan Coffee Morning Over £200 raised toward a great cause, but some tell-tale signs that not everybody was upfront about what they made themselves…! Cakes, cakes and more cakes A further £250 was raised from another cake sale earlier in the year, with Aaron insisting he hasn’t been part-timing as a baker whilst taking the title for the best bake. Henley Toad Patrol Despite what our our robots.txt might suggest we care about all animals in the Anura order! Which is why we helped to support a local team protecting toads from local traffic. First Aid Training To make sure we’re safe both in and out of the office, a number of the team received First Aid training. So, if you spot us at a conference you know you’re in safe hands… despite what the below might suggest! Sports Throughout the year many of the team have taken part in sports events, particularly of the endurance running kind. A better person would ignore the tempting comparison between a grueling slog with the end never quite coming into sight as your endurance ever more depletes, and that of running a marathon. I am apparently not that person. Run-Club Takes on Reading (Nearly) The Screaming Frog team took to the pavements en-masse as a weekly Run Club was set up to train for Reading Half Marathon. Under the expert guidance of Coach Euan Brock the team was fit and raring to go. Unfortunately, the weather was not. With heavy snow the night before the race, the event was cancelled and Run Club never got to put training into action. Some were more savvy about this than others… Expecting a late race cancellation tomorrow pic.twitter.com/v8u4aT6iuB — Matt Hopson (@matthopson) March 17, 2018 Running on Home Turf And how could we show our faces in our town of residence, Henley-on-Thames, unless a member of the team also took on the hilly half-marathon here! Our Office Manager Ewa took up the mantle and smashed the course with such running prowess that she has become the official new coach of Run-Club. Paris Marathon Undeterred by the Reading setback Coach Brock and I set our sights to warmer months and a longer distance, running the Paris Marathon in April beside a strong support team from a cohort of Screaming Frog employees past and present. The pictures below represent the reality of the event  versus how we describe it to other people. Taking things a step further – Endure24 As if a marathon wasn’t enough, Matt Hopson, our Senior SEM Manager took things one step further (pun certainly intended), running in a team 24 hour ultra-endurance race for the second year running. In the Octagon Most people would run for the hills if asked to step into the octagon for an MMA fight, but our Digital Designer Mike is not one of them. He stepped up for 3 months intensive MMA training culminating in a fight night to raise money for charity. He insists this wasn’t just a way to take out his frustrations about the SEO team asking yet again for “just a few more changes”. Making Sweet Music We don’t just play to Google’s tune. Among our search specialists, we also have a variety of talented musicians that this year took to the stage. Our Head of SEO Pat Langridge, guitarist for Reading-based Las Nova caught here performing Ricky Gervais’ Free Love Freeway, was so accomplished that they even caught the attention of the man himself on Twitter. Not to be outdone, James McCrea, formerly touring worldwide on a cruise-ship before switching to the rockstyle lifestyle at Screaming Frog, hit up Oakford Social Club as the guitarist of Nobodies Birthday. Austrian Techno But we don’t just limit ourselves to the more traditional instruments. Faisal headed over to Austria to perform his own brand of electronic music which he describes as: “One Hand Clap, a part generative performance piece that analysed player controller data and the spectromorphology of acousmatic soundtracks to generate it’s own soundscape.” An impressive feat, but we’ll stick with techno… Podcast You don’t need an instrument to hit the airwaves. Sam, one of the dev superstars working on the SEO Spider, has been working on Spinnerproof – a podcast dedicated to Robot Wars coverage among other things. If his robot making skills half as good as his dev skills, we’re all in serious trouble! Heading out as an Army A group of frogs is known as an army, which feels rather appropriate for when the team step out into the wider world on a company social. Henley Royal Regatta The normally sleepy, quaint town of Henley-on-Thames in which we are based becomes a bustling hive of boats, visitors, and 7 ft rowers during the regatta season. Never wanting to be left out, our summer social now happily coincides with the regatta. This year was beautifully sunny and hot, so we headed down to the river armed en-masse with suncream and shades.   Oktoberfest We embrace all cultures at Screaming Frog, so felt it our duty to support the German tradition of Oktoberfest, which has become a yearly occurrence. Although Bavaria is admittedly a long way from our meeting point in nearby Reading, a great stein was had by all that attended. Enjoying Henley Whilst being outside of London has made us very familiar with the Henley train branch line and the Twyford to Paddington route, which stops at every conceivable location South of London, it also offer some lovely views and friendly faces, which we like to take advantage of. This year we’ve hit the town to enjoy some wine and cheese, and quenched our thirst riverside in the Summer evenings for work socials. Christmas Party Would any workplace be complete without an office Christmas party? We maintained the yearly tradition of heading into town for some pool, darts and fun, before the office Secret Santa and heading to the local pub for a 3 course dinner – Merry Christmas!   Working hard or hardly working? If you read this far, you may be wondering how we fit in being a pioneering SEO crawler and award winning SEO team (told you the bragging would be in here). Well we couldn’t have beers and bakeoffs without our bread and butter of SEO. We’re proud of the work we do with our clients, (including the piece that won a UK Search Award, have we mentioned that?). Come and work for us! We’ve welcomed a whole host of new team members to Screaming Frog this year and we’re still on the look out for more. This post wasn’t a thinly veiled attempt at convincing you to join (promise), but if you like what you see, check out what we’ve got to offer! Roll on 2019…! The post Screaming Frog 2018 – A Year In Review appeared first on Screaming Frog.

14 Books Every Writer Needs on Their Shelf 

Here is a list of fourteen books on writing every writer needs on their shelf.

I was going to say you should have. But the only thing I would “should” you about is not a book, but a verb. You should write.

(And you should have a cat, or two. I have six, and seven litter boxes.)

These books are the actual books I have on my shelf. I didn’t go buy new books to make myself look smart.

Some of these books could be used as a reference to solve a specific problem, like “Form the possessive singular of nouns with ‘s.” That answer is on page one of The Elements of Style.

Or maybe you have a dragon called Resistance every time you try and sit down to write and you need to read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Or maybe you need to figure out how to make the reader care about your villain, and you need to read Save The Cat by Blake Snyder.

If you are a writer, you write. Right?

Writers should be writing, but sometimes you need to read and learn from other writers.

14 Books Every Writer Needs on Their Shelf

There are all kinds of books on writing out there, each covering some different aspect of the craft. I’ve listed fourteen of my favorites below. I’ve categorized them based on which aspect of writing they deal with so that you can easily find the ones that will be helpful to you.

Here are fourteen books every writer needs on their shelf:

1. For Fiction

The Modern Library’s Writers Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction by Stephen Koch

Joe Bunting suggested I read this book. A good suggestion, Joe. The book is full of wisdom from Koch as he shares insight and techniques from several great writers. Stephen Koch used to chair Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program.

(What a funny way to say someone was in charge of something. I am the chair of my cats.)

Art is long and life is short. Except for the miraculous times when it doesn’t, everything you write will take longer than you think it should. —Stephen Koch

2. For Formatting

The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers from the University of Chicago Press

All the rules you will ever need if you are a writer, editor, or publisher. And in this world of self-publishing, you could be all three.

This book’s shipping weight is 3.2 pounds. I can’t find my scale to weigh my copy. If this book were a steak you wouldn’t be able to eat it in one sitting.

In the absence of electronic files, the author should provide the publisher with two identical paper copies of the manuscript; one may be a photocopy. —The University of Chicago Press

3. For Fun

Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss

Words are fun. Life is fun. This book reminds me language is beautiful and words are fun. They rhyme, they dance, and Mr. Brown is out of town.

Leave room in your day for laughter and play.

PAT CAT Pat sat on cat. PAT BAT Pat sat on bat.

—Dr. Seuss

4. For Goal Setting

The Freedom Journal by John Lee Dumas

This will give you a detailed plan to get your book finished. It is one thing to say, “My book will be written at the end of the summer.” But what are you going to do every day to get it finished? Dumas gives you daily action steps to actually finish.

Actually is such a great word. Goals and actually, they need to go together. The word “goal” is on page 564 in my dictionary, and “actually” is on page 14.

Now, I actually need to use this book, or I will never get my book finished.

“If you don’t put time constraints on your goal, the time to accomplish it will expand indefinitely. —John Lee Dumas

5. For Grammar

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

A small little book with rules to help writers with their craft. I carry this book in my messenger bag (I don’t carry a purse) to read while I am waiting in line to buy cat litter, or when I am waiting at the veterinarian’s office. It’s a quick read to help you write better.

Or is that write well?

I suggest you read the whole book and not just use it for rule reference.

“Omit needless words. —William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

6. For Memoir

The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith

If you want to write about your life, read this book. Hmmm, now I am sounding bossy. I have read this book three times, not because I didn’t understand it the first time, but because it is so full of good information and fun stories. I read it for pleasure and to learn.

We all have stories to tell. This book will help you write your story so someone will want to read it.

In any decent game of chance, you must be present to win. That’s also true with writing what you know, where paying attention is the skill you need to succeed. —Marion Roach Smith

7. For Resistance

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

Here is one battle writers need to win: the inner creative battle. The War of Art will give you the weapons to fight and win the battle to create. Don’t waste your life doubting your ability.

If you only have one book on your bookshelf, make it this one. Read the rest of the books at the library and buy this one.

The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got. —Steven Pressfield

8. For Screenwriting

Save The Cat by Blake Snyder

This book is about screenwriting. However, no matter what you write, you have to be able to tell me what it is about. This book helps you answer two essential story questions.

First, what is the logline for your story?

Second, why do you need to save the cat?  

If you can’t tell me about it in one quick line, well, buddy I’m on to something else. Until you have your pitch, and it grabs me, don’t bother with the story. —Blake Snyder

9. For Self-Doubt

You Are a Badass: How To Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero

This book talks truth with a few cuss words. I almost didn’t buy the book because Sincero said “badass” in the title. However, being a badass means loving yourself and not listening to lies other people tell you about who you are.

Seriously, don’t doubt your greatness. Live an awesome life.

You are perfect. To think anything less is as pointless as a river thinking that it’s got too many curves or that it moves too slowly or that its rapids are too rapid. ―Jen Sincero

10. For Self-Publishing

APE: How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawaski and Shawn Welch

You don’t need permission from anyone to self-publish a book. However, you do need to know how. This book is a complete guide to self-publishing. I have not only read the book, but studied it. We can have total control over what our books look like.

Whitman, for example, self-published (and typeset!) Leaves of Grass. Self-publishing could change from stigma to bragging point—maybe we could change the term to “artisanal publishing” and foster the image of authors lovingly crafting their books with total control over the process. —Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch

11. For Self-Editing

The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know by Shawn Coyne

When you write, it is important to be able to self-edit. Shawn Coyne, an editor for over twenty-five years, tells you everything he knows in this book and on his podcast, The Story Grid Podcast.

Without an Inciting Incident, nothing meaningful can happen. And when nothing meaningful happens, it’s not a story. —Shawn Coyne

“When nothing meaningful happens, it’s not a story. —Shawn Coyne

12. For Story

Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee

Robert McKee’s book Story is about the principles of screenwriting; however, he explains clearly what makes a good story.

Some people have a long bucket list. The only thing on my bucket list, besides driving to Canada to see my mom, is to attend one of Robert McKee’s Story seminars.

A story is a series of acts that build to a last act climax or story climax which brings about absolute and irreversible change. —Robert McKee

13. For Submitting

The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of The Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman

Lukeman gives very specific information about story submission, from point size to margin width. Don’t give an editor an excuse not to read your story because you didn’t know how to properly submit.

“Your creativity should be expressed through your writing, not your font. —Noah Lukeman

14. For Words

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language edited by William Morris

Words are beautiful, and you can discover their origin and meaning. I know you can find definitions online; however, on a screen you cannot see the words that come before and after the one you are looking up. A dictionary is like a family reunion: the words are all related.

By knowledgeable use of the dictionary we should learn where a word has come from, precisely what its various shades of meaning are today, and its social status. —William Morris

Stop Reading and Write

Reading books on writing can help you write. But no matter how many books you have on your shelf, the only way to get better at writing is to write.

Write is a verb. Go do it.

What book or books would you add to my list? Let me know in the comments section. I would love to know what books you recommend.

PRACTICE

Write for fifteen minutes about a writer who keeps buying books on writing and never writes. Or just share what book you think every writer must have. I gave a list of fourteen books. If you could have only one book on writing, which one would you pick? No, wait, your top three. Or your top fourteen. It wouldn’t be fair if I got to list fourteen and I only let you list one. Now would it?

Source: The Write Practice

Where to Find Fallout 76

The dynamic mission generation created by having a workshop is an excellent step, too. Upon logging back, should there be an additional base placed exactly in the exact same spot, it is going to be possible to recreate the base by means of a blueprint anywhere else on the map at no price. As the mobile platform component of the name implies, your CAMP can likewise be picked up and relocated, permitting you to move your base anywhere on the planet. You have to know the Serial Number before downloading an ideal edition. Each pack consists of 4 cards, a few of which could be level locked. Locate the subcategory titled Notes and you need to have the ability to locate the recipes you have picked up. The Advantages of Fallout 76 Speaking of fighting, prepare for that to used in conjunction with an unholy blend of fascination and abhorrence the moment it regards the new Fallout 76 monsters. The Cult of the Mothman faction provides unique faction-specific apparel it is possible to unlock, in addition to other bonuses. If you've already grabbed yourself a duplicate of the game, you can take a look at our assortment of ideas and tricks, recommended perks, and the way to unlock a number of the game's finest quests. It's only a gamejust a game. There are not many solo-player Charisma cards, since the majority are intended for team play. It isn't a good game full stop. The very good news for Bethesda is that superior multiplayer games don't have to have great stories to develop evocative, interesting worlds that folks wish to inhabit. Fallout has ever been a survival-lite game to some degree, flirting with character maintenance mechanics which make it seem just like you're attempting to survive in a nuclear wasteland. It will focus on survival, but it will not be as hardcore as other survival games. Particularly, folks feel that Bethesda has taken the incorrect approach of creating the online Fallout experience. According to the reports received at an interview Bethesda had clarified almost all of the question concerning the fallout 76. Fallout 76 isn't great for much, but it's giving gamers one more opportunity to learn a valuable lesson. If you play through the very first few questions that you are going to be able to acquire the fundamentals of the game down pat. Instead, the organization will use targeted timeframes so it can become as many people as possible playing at the exact same time. There are respective countermeasures we're implementing to stop different players to do such things. Naturally, there's a process involved with getting past the velvet beta rope. The brief version is that you will need to first preorder the game, and locate the redemption code on your receipt or email confirmation. The seven-minute video goes through different items within the room, and a few of the suits you're able to view. Ideas, Formulas and Shortcuts for Fallout 76 Then you'll get a beta code which you may use in October. Firstly, the only means to get access to the beta is to pre-order the game. The only means to access the beta is by way of pre-ordering the game. PS4 and Xbox One players will receive the exact same patch on Monday, January 14, which ought to contain exactly the same fixes. Further, the organization says players should not be surprised should they see things go awry, since it is only the beta version. The game isn't releasing on Steam currently, therefore it'll be playable via Bethesda's own launcher. The Fight Against Fallout 76 Head inside, and you will need to battle with loads of Scorched, but they ought to be low-level. Taking these guys down as you're at a very low level is tough, particularly if you don't have a superior stock ammo, so be certain you've got decent melee weapon and a few explosives handy in the event you run out of bullets. Now all you have to be concerned about is finding sweet power armor and avoiding different players. How to Get Started with Fallout 76? If you keep in that world, you can set your CAMP back down at no cost. Early on I managed to drop a house base virtually anywhere so long as the build area did not infringe on any current solid structures. There are balloons and confetti all around the vault's primary place. You know there's going to be some great loot back there, which usually means you will want to work out a means to open them. If any individual kills you and also you didn't desire to participate in that combat, they will find no praise. It is possible to play alone or with a little group of friends, but there is going to be a lot of individuals playing in the exact same world as you. Let's look at every one of the game's major difficulties. Regardless, the simple fact that Bethesda is banning people for actions linked to Fallout 76's developer room usually means that we're not likely to share how to go into the room or encourage everyone to seek out that information out unless they are well prepared to address the consequences. Turns out that there's a very good reason for it. In contrast to other on-line games, you will not ever observe any game servers while playing Fallout 76. So, you can most likely expect to see tons of humanoid NPCs inStarfieldand beyond. On Fallout 76's sprawling map, it feels just like you aren't going to be working into various gamers each and every single time you flip round. You will explore six unique areas of Fallout 76. It might be a multiplayer game, however that's still a Fallout RPG. Fallout 4 was, since I wrote nearly 3 years past, An excellent game but a terrible RPG. As stated previously ought to find some Black Titanium as a way to craft the Excavator Power Armor. Employed as a team has an impact on how you get around too. Players that are near the very same level will inflict complete damage with no restrictions.

The Quintessential Handbook to Fallout 76

The Fallout 76 Game You will also have to do a little micromanaging when your workshop becomes attacked periodically. however, it is a remarkable means to find some fast quick event XP and find some plans at exactly the same moment. The odds are good that you aren't a specialist in neurology, and seeing a player being awkward in an interview isn't sufficient that you diagnose them. Nothing concerning this game is logical. There were still quite a few things that Bethesda had promised that it wasn't likely to deliver. The truly sad part about it's that story is the main thing Bethesda is notorious for executing successfully on. If you don't like playing with different people, you may also go through the title by yourself. One other great facet is the way multicultural Melbourne is. A sign states that the occasion is known as Reclamation Day. Now you have to search for some notes around Bolton Greens. Fallout 76 Can Be Fun for Everyone At any rate, because you can likely guess, a reasonable bit of controversy has erupted over the topic. Rather than being strange bedfellows, you'll now be given the opportunity to move everything to a totally new location at no cost. Unfortunately, all great things must come to a conclusion. Players can go through the complete game with the beta. Since you may see, the game isn't really well-defined. When you die within this game, you will drop all your loot, but you won't lose your weapons or currently equipped armor. The exact same thing goes for each enemy in the game. There's an opportunity you'll spawn in the center of the ocean. The world might never know. As you arrive you must look after some monsters and finish the objective. Launch codes are available scattered throughout the Earth, which unleash widespread havoc if activated. Players can use nuclear weapons to temporarily alter the regions of game world. The Fallout 76 Game Each pack has 4 cards, a few of which might be level locked. It's obvious which properties are receiving sequels, but it's hard to predict which dormant franchise could earn a return. Instead of simply choosing perks, you've got a number of different perk cards to select from. The New Fuss About Fallout 76 The development team has chosen to release patches first on the PC platform as it's much simpler to launch new patches on their very own platform. If you've got the original bodily media, then you own a license for the game. To access the beta, it's necessary for you to pre-order the game. Also, it's packed with many features and effective editing choices. Playing with others online involves a great deal of bandwidth. Xbox One owners are likewise being promised early accessibility to the test. The New Angle On Fallout 76 Just Released It is possible to also take a look at the full collection of every mutation we've found thus far. Nowadays you know how about how to acquire the mutations, it's far better know everything about the mutations that it is possible to obtain in the game. Our favourite mutation needs to be Marsupial, because the greater jump height means it's possible to actually access regions of the map you wouldn't otherwise be in a position to. Some radiation protection gear may also lower the possibility of a mutation. In addition, by opting to adhere to a diet that is absent of foods which might be vulnerable to radiation may also help. If you wear whatever provides you with radiation damage protection (for instance, a Hazmat suit) you will reduce the possibility of gaining a mutation too. The Pain of Fallout 76 When the market was identified, that product needs to be tailored to fulfill that industry demand. Then, you'll be asked to pay the balance of your order at the shop. Given the size and assortment of the levels, it is a difficult call. Attempting to recoup a part of the net profits would have been even harder. There's also an enormous array of special, common and craftable weaponry, which only increases the addictive reward loop. The skill to recognize any ripe market is the main skill worth developing. Using Fallout 76 In a post on Twitter, the organization confirmed that fans would have the ability to pre-order the game so as to access the beta. There's no need to submit an application for the completely free games, either. Details abound and it's wearable, so it's phenomenal for both display and cosplay. Locate the subcategory titled Notes and you ought to have the ability to locate the recipes you have picked up. In the games industry there are many examples. Be certain to have a look at the complete story at their Tumblr page. Particularly, folks believe that Bethesda has taken the incorrect approach of creating the online Fallout experience. Some players wouldn't such as these changes obviously, and that's the reason why it's critical that Bethesda gives players the option to decide on which gameplay experience they prefer. Bethesda has said again and again that they were planning to provide private servers post-launch. In Arena mode you'll be in a position to resist against other players additionally you'll be in a position to go to the towns of your buddies. Most of all, Vault 76 was among the acontrol vaults. If Fallout 76 adds anything in the close future to produce the game feel as a community, it needs more quests similar to this. Warning Signs on Fallout 76 You Need to Be Aware Of

via Screaming Frog

As the year comes to an end here at Screaming Frog we thought we would add to the inevitable roundups posts with our own. But instead of just bragging about the work we do or making pointless ‘SEO predictions for 2019’, we also want to celebrate the people that make the company what is it (we are also bragging, but we’re not just bragging). So take a look at what your favourite frogs (sorry Kermit) have been up to this year!

Conferences & Community

With so many fantastic conferences available to us in digital marketing, we’re spoiled for choice to choose which one to have some time off work learn from the industry’s best and brightest.

BrightonSEO

For the first time ever Screaming Frog had a stall this year, helping the community at our crawl clinic with Spider conundrums. We had a great time so expect to see us with a stall at more BrightonSEOs in the near future, now we’ve mastered SEO (Stall Engineering Optimisation)! Reminder to self – bring more swag.

We also like to get involved in other ways – our resident Strategist Charlie has also been running the Crawling and Indexation Indexing sessions at BrightonSEO (shameless plug – we’re running a similar SEO Spider training workshop in January!), and be sure to check out Oliver Brett’s talk next April! Not to be missed!

SearchLeeds

SearchLeeds was where Oliver, rumoured to be the mastermind behind Twitter’s favourite SEO meme account Lord of the SERPs, made his speaking debut this year and a fantastic conference held in a great city. How he managed to keep the topic of “Why SEOs are weirdos” down to just a few slides is testament to his speaking prowess.

HeroConf

Determined to show the SEO team they do more than just “set it and forget it”, the PPC team headed up to London for HeroConf. Despite rave reviews about the conference, the SEO team remain unconvinced by the PPC team.

Information Is Beautiful Workshop

Being the creative force behind almost everything we produce, and after seeing the SEO team heading out for ANOTHER conference, the design team headed up to London for an inspirational masterclass from the man behind some of the best content on the web – Information Is Beautiful. They brought their knowledge back to share with the SEO team, which resulted a creative boost that can only be compared to a strong coffee on a Monday morning.

OutREACH

Having launched a couple of years ago OutREACH conference has fast become one of the must-attend conferences at Screaming Frog. The team returned with fresh ideas for the ever more difficult task of outreaching, from quality speakers and we’re looking forward to seeing what next year has to offer!

SearchLove

Another conference held in very high esteem around the Screaming Frog office is Distilled’s SearchLove. A couple of our team headed up to London (we’ll hit the US iteration one of these days!) and were once again blown away by the expertise on offer.

Search Elite

During June we ventured into London for the popular Search Elite conference, which fully delivered on its promise of in depth presentations from expert speakers hailing from both sides of the Atlantic. Look out for the 2019 edition which has been rebranded to Digital Elite Day, combining the best from the worlds of search and CRO.

Nudgestock

Perhaps a little less SEO focussed, but no less interesting was Nudgestock. Full of behavioural ideas that can be applied to a whole range of settings, a highlight was the behavioural nudges that can be used to increase conversion rates.

BrightonSEO/Deepcrawl 5-a-side

And last but certainly not least was the 5 a side tournament hosted by BrightonSEO and Deepcrawl. The game on everyone’s lips was “El Crawlico” as we took on Deepcrawl to determine once and for all the superior crawler result which has no further implications on the quality of each respective tool.

Without wanted to dwell on the matter 9-2 much, Screaming Frog came away victorious! Looking forward to the battle next year!

UK Search Awards

One of the big events at the end of the year is of course, the UK Search Awards, celebrating the great work that’s been done by our industry. With only 35 awards up for grabs in a hugely competitive industry we had the honour to be shortlisted in 3 categories…

…And took home the prestigious award of “Best SEO Campaign” for our client Spotahome, a testament to the fantastic work put in by everyone at the company.

A fantastic evening to round off a brilliant year.

Giving Back

We’re always looking to support charities that mean a lot to the people that work at Screaming Frog and if they involve eating copious amount of cakes, muffins, and brownies then that’s just what we’ll have to do!

MacMillan Coffee Morning

Over £200 raised toward a great cause, but some tell-tale signs that not everybody was upfront about what the made themselves…!

Cakes, cakes and more cakes

Another £250 was raised from another cake sale earlier in the year, with Aaron insisting he hasn’t been part-timing as a baker whilst taking the title for the best bake.

Henley Toad Patrol

Despite what our our robots.txt might suggest we care about all animals in the Anura order! Which is why we helped to support a local team protecting toads from local traffic.

First Aid Training

To make sure we’re safe both in and out of the office, a number of the team received First Aid training. So, if you spot us at a conference you know you’re in safe hands… despite what the below might suggest!

Sports

Throughout the year many of the team have taken part in sports events, particularly of the endurance running kind. A better person would ignore the tempting comparison between a gruelling slog with the end never quite coming into sight as your endurance ever more depletes, and that of running a marathon. I am apparently not that person.

Run-Club Takes on Reading (Nearly)

The Screaming Frog team took to the pavements en-masse as a weekly Run Club was set up to train for Reading Half Marathon. Under the expert guidance of Coach Euan Brock the team was fit and raring to go. Unfortunately, the weather was no. With heavy snow the night before the race, the event was cancelled and Run Club never got to put training into action. Some were more savvy about this than others…

Expecting a late race cancellation tomorrow pic.twitter.com/v8u4aT6iuB

— Matt Hopson (@matthopson) March 17, 2018

Running on Home Turf

And how could we show our faces in our town of residence, Henley-on-Thames, unless a member of the team also took on the hilly half-marathon here! Our Office Manager Ewa took up the mantle and smashed the course with such running prowess that she has become the official new coach of Run-Club.

Paris Marathon

Undeterred by the Reading setback Coach Brock and I set our sights to warmer months and a longer distance, running the Paris Marathon in April beside a strong support team from a cohort of Screaming Frog employees past and present. The pictures below represent the reality of the event  versus how we describe it to other people.

Taking things a step further – Endure24

As if a marathon wasn’t enough, Matt Hopson, our SEM Senior SEM Manager took things one step further (pun certainly intended), running in a team 24 hour ultra-endurance race for the second year running.

In the Octagon

Most people would run for the hills if asked to step into the octagon for an MMA fight, but our Digital Designer Mike is not one of them. He stepped up for 3 months intensive MMA training culminating in a fight night to raise money for charity. He insists this wasn’t just a way to take out his frustrations about the SEO team asking yet again for “just a few more changes”.

Making Sweet Music

We don’t just play to Google’s tune. Among our search specialists, we also have a variety of talented musicians that this year took to the stage. Our Head of SEO Pat Langridge, guitarist for Reading-based Las Nova caught here performing Ricky Gervais’ Free Love Freeway, was so accomplished that they even caught the attention of the man himself on Twitter.

Not to be outdone, James McCrea, formerly touring worldwide on a cruise-ship before switching to the rockstyle lifestyle at Screaming Frog, hit up Oakford Social Club as the guitarist of Nobodies Birthday.

Austrian Techno

But we don’t just limit ourselves to the more traditional instruments. Faisal headed over to Austria to perform his own brand of electronic music which he describes as:

“One Hand Clap, a part generative performance piece that analysed player controller data and the spectromorphology of acousmatic soundtracks to generate it’s own soundscape.”

An impressive feat, but we’ll stick with techno…

Podcast

You don’t need an instrument to hit the airwaves. Sam, one of the dev superstars working on the SEO Spider, has been working on Spinnerproof – a podcast dedicated to Robot Wars coverage among other things. If his robot making skills half as good as his dev skills, we’re all in serious trouble!

Heading out as an Army

A group of frogs is known as an army, which feels rather appropriate for when the team step out into the wider world on a company social.

Henley Royal Regatta

The normally sleepy, quaint town of Henley-on-Thames in which we are based becomes a bustling hive of boats, visitors, and 7 ft rowers during the regatta season. Never wanting to be left out, our summer social now happily coincides with the regatta. This year was beautifully sunny and hot, so we headed down to the river armed en-masse with suncream and shades.  

Oktoberfest

We embrace all cultures at Screaming Frog, so felt it our duty to support the German tradition of Oktoberfest, which has become a yearly occurrence. Although Bavaria is admittedly a long way from our meeting point in nearby Reading, a great stein was had by all that attended.

Enjoying Henley

Whilst being outside of London has made us very familiar with the Henley train branch line and the Twyford to Paddington route, which stops at every conceivable location South of London, it also offer some lovely views and friendly faces, which we like to take advantage of.

This year we’ve hit the town to enjoy some wine and cheese, and quenched our thirst riverside in the Summer evenings for work socials.

Christmas Party

Would any workplace be complete without an office Christmas party? We maintained the yearly tradition of heading into town for some pool, darts and fun, before the office Secret Santa and heading to the local pub for a 3 course dinner – Merry Christmas!

  Working hard or hardly working?

If you read this far, you may be wondering how we fit in being a pioneering SEO crawler and award winning SEO team (told you the bragging would be in here).

Well we couldn’t have beers and bakeoffs without our bread and butter of SEO. We’re proud of the work we do with our clients, (including the piece that won a UK Search Award, have we mentioned that?).

Come and work for us!

We’ve welcomed a whole host of new team members to Screaming Frog this year and we’re still on the look out for more.

This post wasn’t a thinly veiled attempt at convincing you to join (promise), but if you like what you see, check out what we’ve got to offer!

Roll on 2019…!

The post Screaming Frog 2018 – A Year In Review appeared first on Screaming Frog.