#i have all the necessary games and i STILL have the occasional missing texture | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs | Tumgik (2025)

i still find it absolutely crazy that you have to pay for Garry's mod. Like, to make that game work and not a hodgepodge of missing textures and errors you need to buy AT LEAST 3 other games! the only upside is that tf2 is free

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What on earth about the game looks cheap besides maybe the attack animation we've seen from scorbunny? The full environments look beautiful, I'm loving the new pokemon, and we still don't know what probably 70% of the game is like outside the usual pokemon mechanics. Plus we're likely to get most of the pokemon from the past. We've already seen a number of pokemon from other gens that will be in the galarian dex so tbh I could care less if some are missing, as long as it serves this gen

gonna rant about video games in a readmore

Most of the issues are with animations, although the textures in the Wild Area leave a lot to be desired. This is a 2019 Switch game.

But the main issue is that they play up the “oh we’re limiting the number of Pokemon so we can make the ones that are in the game extra expressive” but they’re really not. Pokemon in the Wild Area don’t interact with each other or their environment in any meaningful way, they just stand there and walk around occasionally (Wingull doesn’t even flap its wings so it looks like it’s t-posing around the environment). All of the existing Pokemon models and animations were made literal years ago, as they made the XY models to higher specs than necessary for the 3DS with the intent of being able to reuse them moving forward - implementing them into Sword and Shield was a matter of updating the textures at most.

Pretty much all the Pokemon battle animations conform to a specific pool - idle stance, physical attack, special attack, getting hit, fainting, Pokemon Amie/Refresh/camping animations, and it doesn’t seem like these games are attempting to add more variety to that pool or give the new Pokemon any more than that. Physical attacks are never shown connecting, we just get the attacker playing a stock physical attack animation while a texture or effect shows up in front of the defender - keep in mind that Pokemon Battle Revolution, a Wii game from more than a decade ago, had that. Hell, the Pokemon console games from the N64 and GameCube eras are still a lot more lively and animated than what we’ve seen of Sword and Shield (probably because they were developed by Nintendo EAD, HAL Laboratory, and Genius Sonority rather than Game Freak).

To sum it up, they lack polish. Compare them to, say, Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade 2. It really gives off the vibe that they’re doing the bare minimum to make these games functional, and it just doesn’t feel like there’s any passion. It’s more like they’re just copying-and-pasting what they can, filling in the gaps, and pushing it out the door on an annual cycle because it’s Pokemon and everyone’s gonna buy it anyway. And then they have the audacity to not even bother copy-pasting half the Pokemon in (again, all the models and animations already exist) because it’s too much work for the core games of the highest-grossing media franchise of all time. Game Freak isn’t some tiny indie dev struggling to make ends meet. They have all the resources they could possibly need to bring on more manpower, delay releases, or even have the big N hook them up with some additional studios to outsource to (BotW had help from MonolithSoft, for instance). They just choose not to because it sells anyway.

I love Pokemon. I don’t think I can state that enough. It’s been with me for over 20 years now, and I can’t think of a game series that’s anywhere near as dear to me. So that’s why it really sucks to see its developers give so few fucks.

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An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Six

Wherein we get out into space and explore a bit, and complete our crew.

And post a lot of gifs, because screenshots were lost.

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

So I use the NVidia Control Panel app to take screenshots and videos. Since it’s already running and it takes good shots it seems dumb to not use it.

I ended up being super busy this week and didn’t play much, just got through like, talking to Kaidan after the big speech on the bridge more or less for the entire week, and through Therum. I updated my drivers a day or two ago. And then I didn’t notice that for whatever reason, yesterday when I went to play for a few hours, NVidia decided to record videos just fine, but not take screenshots. I probably actually mashed the button several hundred times.... but all I got were videos.

Most of it wasn’t a great loss, it was a lot of talking to the crew, and a few planetary missions which... so I’m going to have to go back and redo some of it later for screenshots.

But I thought... hey, for posting on tumblr, I’ll just make it a shorter update and make a few gifs and most this a mostly-gif post! That’ll be fun!

...and then I spent several hours making almost 80 gifs, including a lot of what I also had screenshots for but thought making gifs would be more fun.

I mean I was watching the last few eps of the newest season of Great British Bake Off on Netflix, and a few other shows this morning so it wasn’t just gif time... but yeah I made a lot. So I might split this into two posts now because... that’s a lot of gifs. This post will still have a lot of screenshots, too. So here we go!

There are so many things to love about this moment. It’s such a great like, re-launch of the game... Bioware telling us“Okay, now you know the plot, you know all the major players, you know a lot about our world (galaxy) and how it works and who lives here, now, it’s time for you to go out on your own.”

First, it starts with being able to vent a little to Joker, which is a nice touch. Shepard might feel guilty about taking the ship over from Anderson, but Joker also assures us here, a great preview of the way he’s tasked with helping Shepard keep it together in ME3.

I love seeing Shepard’s words affect the crew. The swelling music, the same as the“you’re a Spectre now!!” music just underscores the journey, and what’s to come.

I used to always miss this scene by not picking the right speech option, and would be mad Kaidan was left out of this montage. My fault!

This moment is so beautiful and epic.

...and here we go.

ALOT, btw, makes the galaxy map so pretty. Sharper and clearer and more colorful.

We all usually just head to Liara’s Dig Site first, right? Unless you’re doing one of those“Pick up Liara last just to see what happens” playthroughs? I did that once. It felt weird. And sad, when you tell her“oops I killed your mom and I’m not sorry.” Seems like she shouldn’t have gotten over that so quickly, but well, that’s game design. The entire plot just doesn’t feel the same and more flimsy without Liara around from the start.

I usually do Therum --> Feros --> Noveria --> Virmire.

Well okay, first a stop at Edolus, since, you know, it’s on the way.

What a LOVELY day, nothing could possibly go wrong on this barren world. I feel like they gave us a pretty easy-to-get-around-on world to start out with.

I honestly love driving around in the mako 90% of the time? Once you’re used to the controls, it’s not that hard to get most places you want to go. Though I admit the Nomad in Andromeda is a big upgrade. I kinda miss it in ME2 and ME3, though I only do what driving is necessary in Overlord and skip Firewalker like, half the time.

First, let’s check out the map...

I’m pretty sure I didn’t realize you could mark your destination on the map and it’d put a handy arrow on your radar until I started playing on PC. Before then I was checking the map every 5 seconds making SURE I was going the right way. *facepalm*

Generally my scanning strategy on the planet is... just go to the things on the map, but do go to ALL the things on the map. If I see something along the way, stop and get it. I don’t go way out of my way to look for unmarked stuff. Usually the UNC missions can be completed doing that + complete planet / asteroid scanning.

Oh hey here’s a guy, let’s just grab what we can off him...

UGH. MINIGAMES.

Like I get that the minigame is a stand in for“looking for clues, are you successful in finding anything useful?” or whatever but it’s still just the worst. A minigame is fun occasionally, making it as a gate to something like looting a body is stupid. I guess I have to forgo actually putting points into things that keep Kaidan alive at the early levels so he can help me... loot bodies. Cool. Great.

Since I’m cheating in credits, all weapons and armor get medigelled almost immediately so that I don’t have to do the minigame later on when they get harder, like, ever.

The ME2 minigames at least make a little more sense than this moving puzzler thing. That’s at least an attempt to look like some kind of code hacking or rewiring/reprogramming. This thing is just... silly.

ME2 has a disable minigames mod... so there will be no talk of minigames from here on out. They don’t exist after the easy minigames early on in ME1.

So I ... somehow managed to not get video or screenshots of you know the ICONIC THRESHER MAW attack on Edolus? So please enjoy this gif I made of it back in 2013 instead.

It’s such a great fakeout and moment. Like“Oh man how easy my goal is like right in front of me! That’s great, so easy!” then OH HELL NO, FUCK YOU, GIANT WORM!!

These gifs are from another planet later on, but they’ll do.

My normal MO with Maws is to get out of the way, far enough that they can’t appear too close to or especially under me, but close enough that they do still show up, then stay stationary and jump over the goo while shooting at it.

YOU’RE FACING THE OTHER WAY HOW DID YOU SPIT AT ME?!

This is fine. EVERYTHING IS FINE. We’re just A LITTLE ON FIRE. Our shields are at full...

Oh hell, Kaidan slap some medigel on it, please.

Even though we don’t know who Cerberus is yet, FUCK YOU CERBERUS. I always bring the VS to any Cerberus mission because THEY WERE RIGHT NOT TO JOIN YOU IN CERBERUS. Let’s keep a FUCK YOU CERBERUS count going to remember all the horrible shit we SAW Cerberus do in ME1 to remind ourselves why Ashley or Kaidan is the only SANE ONE for going“No, sorry, I’m not joining you in Cerberus.”

Deep breath

OK, let’s go get Liara.

Wrex comes with us to Therum.

Dear Lord, Therum is gorgeous.

This is real nice just a pleasant day on this thresher maw-less planet and great scenery, we’ll find that asari scientist in no ti--- WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

Have I mentioned how everything is fine lately?

Well it’s time for how I deal with most of the geth while in the Mako...

Armatures are worth five points each!

Rocket troopers are only two points, but I got a lot of them!

Stopping and fighting in the Mako takes way too long. Push on through all the way til we’re stopped.

Hm, this is the one I should push, right?

*crickets*

Fine.

Just... real pretty.

I love this part of Therum right here. A really great, scary fight that feels so dangerous, but winnable. Great level design, too.

Then this happens.

Does everyone’s hair do that in this cutscene, or just mine, or this hairstyle?

Also, ME3 has a mod now that lets chracters use their correct weapons in cutscenes, my eternal devotion to the modder who could do that in ME1. None of these characters use assault rifles in-game!!

I’m fairly certain I have played and replayed this fight more than any other in ME1. AKA RUN FOR COVER OH SHIT AVOID THE BOMBS AND LASERS FLYING AT YOU AT ONCE PLEASE DON’T DIE COMPANIONS PLEASE KILL SOMETHING I CAN’T DO THIS ON MY OWN AHHHHH!!!

This time around, I died my first time, actually did really well the second time, and decided to go back and record the fight for gifs and... won, barely. The gifs would not be good. Wrex and Kaidan didn’t last long.

Anyway, It’s a great cutscene, but hoo boy I wish it were skippable.

Okay but what were these ruins *for*. Also, real lucky that they had the boss fight way up here instead of down where Liara was.

Speaking of Liara...

Hello Doctor T’soni!

I have a lot of questions like... how long have you been in that bubble? How are you sustaining it that long? How long has it been since you’ve eaten? If I didn’t come get you until after Virmire, would you have been holding that bubble up for the weeks in between then and now?

Ah well, you’re here now, and I suppose I’m going to owe you my life later so... welcome to the team.

You gotta admit that’s one badass entrance, though uh, if the forcefield is still up, where did he come from? Doesn’t matter. Wrex, let’s kill us one of your brethren (sorry.)

I’ll just *assume* that Liara is too tired from holding up her stasis bubble she was in to actually be USEFUL.

I love the chaos of running the fuck out of there.

Texture popping is still an issue even with a decent computer and texture packs, but at least it’s quick now.

Also I really feel the loss of this conference room in the future games. The awkward oval table never quite feels the same. But also, uh, this is a lot of room taken up in this small ship for eight chairs and a holoprojector. You gotta think there’s more uses for this space than just that.

But yeah, I love these check-ins, it’s a chance for everyone to get together and really hash out what’s going on, as well as reinforcing the plot to the players in a more natural way. Having Liara this early will let us understand the Protheans better at an earlier stage, even if it turns out she’s wrong about some stuff (though at the time this was written, she was right for all everyone knew.)

Wrex and Garrus don’t talk much here, probably because you can make it through the game without one of them. I did a“didn’t recruit Garrus” playthrough in ME2 once. They change like one or two lines then Garrus goes back to talking about Old Times. So like you CAN, but you really shouldn’t not recruit Garrus, because Bioware didn’t do a great job changing anything aside from your initial greeting during the Omega Archangel mission.

Not recruiting Wrex, though. Wow that’ll have consequences later on.

OK! So the gang’s all here, and this post is already very long. Next time: Let’s go talk to everyone for awhile, and do a few more sidequests because we can’t go back to the Citadel til our persuasion is high enough to grind Mikhailovich’s arguments into the dust!

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[Review] Chrono Cross (PSX)

My experience with this was a long time coming; in fact, it was a long time going, as I took more than one long hiatus during my 50-hour playthrough. But it’s done now, and has a special place in my heart. This review is spoiler-light FYI!

Chrono Cross might not be what players expected out of a follow-up to seminal SNES RPG Chrono Trigger, but the overworked development team wanted to do something different, and their dreams were fulfilled with quite a unique product. It’s quite frankly a mess, but a beautiful one overflowing, pooling, congealing, with ideas and style.

CC has all the excesses of PS1-era JRPGs: grainy CG FMV, esoteric pre-rendered backgrounds, a cinematic battle camera over long animations, an incredibly convoluted story. But it’s got high ambitions too; its own innovative battle system which seems daunting at first but refreshing when you get a handle on it (although I still had a fundamental misunderstanding of it almost to the very end of my time with the game, not knowing you could select lower-level Elements than your current tier). A game world that spans two parallel dimensions, which rewards close attention to the differences. And of course, the whopping 45-character roster of available party members.

These ambitions end up becoming handicaps as they’re not realised to the full extent of their intention. There’s no traditional leveling, so fights can be pointless, and unbalanced; most fights can be won by mashing through them, facilitated by an end-of-battle auto-heal system. It’s easy to lose track of which world is which, which feeds into the confusing plot. Having such a gigantic range of characters means that almost all of them have very little development.

Part of the intent with CC was to play the game through multiple times, to experience different branches and find things you missed. In my estimation, these branches don’t seem to change much beyond locking you out of a few characters for that run, and I wasn’t interested in playing through the game again just because there’s a ton of easily missable optional content. It’s long enough as it is, even despite seemingly being truncated somewhat in development as evidenced by the incredible pile-up of plot revelations, twists, and last-second villain rug-pulls in the closing hours (not to mention sacrificed concepts like Guile’s connection to Magus). Also, the appeal of bringing new characters into scenes to see their reactions is undercut by the script, which essentially has different characters saying the same thing with a different accent, necessary for localisation text file size reasons at least but leaving the interactions feeling shallow if you do catch on to this.

A New Game + also unlocks features that absolutely should have been available by default: letting you swap out main character Serge to let another of the huge roster fill the precious third slot in battles, and an in-game fast forward button. Personally, I played this through emulation, as Square/Square-Enix has never been interested in my territory purchasing the game either at the time or through re-release. This let me abuse savestates and my own blessed fast-forward function to get through those long fights. I also closely followed a guide (the excellent RPG Classics shrine) so as not to miss anything or get caught out by a moment of choice. That’s just how I play RPGs these days, shrug.

Now I sound down on CC from all this, but I actually found the game an enchanting experience. As a fan of CT, and with my Radical Dreamers experience in mind, I got a lot out of the connections and retakes respectively. CC has a light touch with calling back to CT, until late in the game with a few of the exposition dumps hammering that legacy down. But to be honest it really didn’t need this, as what it had built for itself up to that point was very compelling.

The El Nido archipelago is a lovely place to visit, with a variety of locations that look fantastic for a PSX game, getting around the limitations of early 3D with neat trickery, pre-rendering, nice textures, and excellent use of colour. The characters that do get enough focus are fun, and uncovering their web of connections and their occasional side-plots can add depth to this microcosm. Of course, the soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda is atmospheric and studded with absolute bangers; long before I played this game I knew some of the more transcendent tracks through the local Eminence Orchestra’s covers in their Passion concert series, to which Mitsuda himself contributed. And the parts of Masato Kato’s plot that I understood were fascinating!

Seriously though, of all the parts of the game that seem to have got away from them, the story may be the biggest barrier to entry. It basically boils down to cliches of a lad from a small village setting out with his female childhood friend, discovering he’s the chosen one, and eventually killing God. But there’s a lot of twists and turns along the way. So many characters have hidden agendas, and there are plot devices and machinations that are never adequately explained, or worse exposited at you later in a text dump. After beating CC I had to consult reams of wiki articles and theory debates to try and understand concepts that remained vague or outright unresolved. But somehow for me this baffling heap of enigmas was attractive, and even though realistically it’s a sloppily told story on one level, by spurring me to research and ponder, and wonder what they were thinking or what might have been if the team had had more time, it had created an exciting level of meta-game engagement.

Chrono Cross is a product of its time, but its ambitions make it (ironically) timeless. There’s imagery here and gameplay concepts too that will stick with me for a long time, and I was left with a powerful sense of longing by the end. I haven’t even talked about the excellent mid-game twist, the self-contained scope of the game world, or the odd touches of humour, all of which I appreciated as well. But more importantly, when I think back on the game I see Lynx turning, or Kid smiling, or the ominous moons, and I know Chrono Cross has touched me deeply.

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Point(s) of No Return

I finally got real internet in France, so the first thing I did was purchaseFinal Fantasy VII Remake.

A few days and 10 million Cura spells later, I finished it. (Term used loosely. I got to the credits.)

It’s fantastic in many ways: gorgeous, obviously (I didn’t experience any of the texture issues (beyond some occasional pop-in) that others have complained of); charming and funny; deeply stylish.

I never knew how much I needed more Moulin Rouge in my FFVII.

I’m perfectly comfortable with what the ending did, though I’m not wildly impressed by the execution. And I’m excited for what comes next while holding considerable reservations about how it’ll be handled.

I also found it an incredibly frustrating game in a lot of ways: every time FFVIIR surrenders camera control to the player, for example, you can feel the game’s resentment; there’s a fair amount of repetition of spaces that doesn’t serve the action; while a lot of people seem to like the combat, I found it pretty messy, inconsistent, and frustrating (though loads improved from FFXV), to the point that I turned down the difficulty towards the end just to spend less time fighting battles.

But none of that’s what I’m here to talk about today. I instead want to discuss a suite of specific design decisions that, in my opinion, really hampered the narrative flow of the ending of the game.

SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS under the cut.

Many games, especially RPGs or other games with open worlds, display a confirmation UI or impress upon the player through dialog (or both!) that the player has reached what we’ll be calling a Point of No Return.

Though sometimes awkward to experience, this is a Very Good Thing (tm): it lets the player know that they’re about to depart the meat of the game for its conclusion and that if there’s anything they’d backburnered and want to take care of, now’s the time to do it.

Theoretically, this also allows the developers to pace the ending of their story in a way that builds towards a climax, something that’s otherwise difficult to do in an open world game due to the player’s nigh-complete control over the pace of play.

And while FFVII:R is by no means open world, it has some open world elements, especially towards the end of its second act. It’s no surprise that it fires the expected Point of No Return bulletin.

But later it does so again.

And again.

And again.

The first of these is frustrating for a number of reasons, not least of all its dubious accuracy.

When the characters decide they’ll go after Aerith at the beginning of Chapter 14 (IIRC), the game suggests that doing so will instigate the endgame. This is not true.

What this moment actually serves to highlight are a bevy of new sidequests. Thing is, there should almost certainly NOT be a bunch of new side content dropped on the player at this point. Not because that content is bad (some of it is quite nice), but because the game has just significantly increased the stakes and the pace of its main narrative, and taking time to futz around the slums looking for things to dodramatically undermines that pacing.

I’m not suggestingthat this content shouldn’t be there at all - if the player takes time to explore and find sidequests, it’s nice if there’s something there to reward them; otherwise the world might feel empty and unreactive (to the massive tragedy that just occurred). Alternatively, this content could have been placed between (or before) saving Wedge and deciding to go after Aerith (in the period of the game that’s actually focused on the fallout (no pun intended) of the Sector VII Plate).

But having the game beat the player over the head with it right after saying“we’re gonna go storm Shinra now!” (and using Tifa, a character almost as invested in saving Aerith as Cloud, as the mouthpiece to do so) strains character verisimilitude and kicks the legs out from under the story.

But I suppose that’s kinda her bag.

The second Point of No Return comes after returning from, er, the return to the sewers.

This is the actual Point of No Return from the open(ish) world, and the game does a very good job of stating both explicitly through UI and dialog that that’s the case (while going so far as to justify it in the fiction). Had it not been for what came before or after, I’d’ve said“well done” and been on my way.

(I could be wrong here - it may be that some of the Chapter 14 sidequests close off after the return to the Sewers, but if that’s so, it doesn’t seem necessary. Certainly one of those sidequests requiresthe player to do the return to the sewers, making that initial Point of No Return warning misleading.)

The game then progresses into its Final Dungeon, a sequence at turns confounding and at others fun and impressive. A few hours (and sixty flights of stairs) later, Hojo traps you in his lab and makes you jump through hoops to get out. I have a lot of issues with this section in general, the one most germane to this conversation being the obliteration of the pacing. The game has quite literally told the player to“get to the choppa,” but instead throws them through a pretty low-stakes series of trials without much sense of pressure from time.

Like this, but forever.

Still, the designers manage a couple of tricks towards the end of this sequence to ramp the energy back up (Red XIII’s fall, the big fight with the blade fish).

Then you hop in the elevator, realize that Jenova’s missing, find a trail of alien goop to follow, and make your way to the exit...

Only to hit Point of No Return #3: This Time, For Reals Though.

I like this one as a teaching example, because it’s very clear what the intention is and how it might tweaked to flow a bit better:

What the devs needed to accomplish, in no particular order:

Let the player know that they’re leaving the more open area of the Shinra Building. (Or possibly just Hojo’s lab... you might not be able to backtrack to the lower floors. If that’s the case, I’d argue for cutting this Point of No Return entirely.)

Set up the encounter with Jenova in the next space.

Raise the tension and the stakes. Jenova is clearly an entity of horror. Horror is about tension.

How FFVIIR approached this in the shipping game:

The player finishes the lab area’s final fight, the two parties are reunited, and they take an elevator to Jenova’s tube in the central lab.

Player finds Jenova missing.

Player locates elevator to Shinra’s office.

Game produces a“Point of No Return,” explicitly telling the player that if there’s anything left to do below, they should go do it.

Player may go looking for new stuff to do (or stuff they left undone), ballooning the time between step 2 and its pay off while dramatically undermining tension.

I’d argue that this flow could have been madedramaticallybetter by setting the point of no returnpriorto returning to Jenova’s tube.

Like so:

The player finishes the lab area’s final fight, the two parties are reunited, and they find the elevator that will take them up.

The game fires the Point of No Return. This makes a lot of sense narratively, too, because last time the party was up there,Sephiroth was up there, too. (This elevator also goes up ordown from this floor - the only elevator in the lab that does so - making it a perfect place in the level to put this kind of choice.)

Player can put off the return upstairs for a time if they want.

Player takes elevator up and finds Jenova missing.

Player takes elevator up to Shinra’s office and 4 pays off without the loss of tension.

BAM!

Anyhoo...

We can play backseat developer all day. I’m sure there were reasons this choice was made the way it was, and I’d be surprised if this exact conversation didn’t happen in someone’s office at some point.

I don’t know what the various moving pieces were that led to the choice that shipped. It’s just not the choice I’d’ve made in a vacuum, because I’m confident in saying that - whatever the decision was made in service to - it harmed the narrative’s pacing.

And that’s something that happens. Development is give and take, and sometimes (often) narrative hangs lower on the priority pole than other things.

The last Point of No Return occurs right before the final boss.

Like the first, I’d argue that this one’s unnecessary. The player’s forced by the level design to pass immediately by the very vending machine the Point of No Return suggests that they use, and there’s nothing else for the player to do in that map prior to confronting the Big Bad. The narrative has made it plenty clear that there’s no telling what’s on the other side of that light.

(I actually thought it was a portal to the ending cinematic and credits prior to seeing the Point of No Return text, and would have been very pleasantly surprised by the twist of facing another challenge. Albeit frustrated said challenge was yet another combat in a system I was entirely over by then.)

An autosave at that point would have protected the player’s experience without interrupting flow.

Like whatever hidden trickery moves Cloud from that hole to the top of the slide.

So to bring this to its conclusion:

Points of No Return, while wildly useful, can dramatically interrupt the player experience and undermine narrative tension. They probably shouldn’t be viewed as an opportunity to unlock a bunch of side content, and they should definitely be placed priorto a series of interconnected events rather than in the midst of them.

Until next time, <3 <3 <#

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currently playing: Charade Maniacs

quite possibly the most mysterious otome game I’ve played yet. and again, I’m having quite a hard time to follow the story. it’s as bad as Tengai ni Mau, but at least this one I can understand at most 30% of what’s happening. Tengai ni Mau I just don’t know what actual fuck was happening all through out the entire game.

the concept is in future Japan, our MC, Hiyori and her overprotective osananajimi suddenly found themselves in another world where the “people” there doesn’t seem like normal human being. it’s like they’re robots, or something that not used to be a human. along with them are 8 other guys and a mysterious masked person - the Director - who said all 10 of them are to be there, Arcadia, and to occasionally play a short skit or drama to gain points. the points can be used to‘purchase’ anything they want, but if their points to reach zero, they will be erased for existence. finishing their forced job as an actor would grant them a wish to be fulfilled.

unfortunately, among 10 of them, one of them is the person who led them to be chosen to Arcadia; the Producer. who is the traitor?

part1: Kyouya, Tomose & Mamoru routes

though honestly, I don’t think I would continue clear other routes. maybe. my Japanese is way too low to understand the details of this fucking gamee

if anyone can explain to me the game plot, also the spoiler of who is the Producer and why the heck he’s doing all of these, that’ll be great.

my first impression of this game was; “HOLY SHIT 9 CAPTURE TARGETS?!!” but then I found out “thERE’S A HIDDEN CHARACTER AS WELL???” I just know I’m gonna be a mess for this game. I expect it to be kinda dark of a theme but not entirely? I think most of the creepy vibes were taken off to some degree by the awesome BGM. still, I don’t really get some details of the entire plot, shameful to admit. no. correction; I understand exactly nothing from the plot so..

all I know that aside from the Producer hiding among them, there’s also a Sponsor who had been possibly working together to keep them all there. a

Kyouya

he is the genki guy of the 10 of them, and despite being kidnapped to another world, he's the most optimistic and motivated that they all will be out of this psychopath of a forced imprisonment. he sees himself as a superhero that will protect and help everyone. he even said, when knowing there’s at least 2 traitors (the Producer and the Sponsor) among them, that doesn’t mean that they should all start to doubt everybody and distrust them.

turns out the Sponsor among them is Kyouya’s parents. they were one of the main contributor (or supporter) of this whole‘kidnapping people into forced reality tv to act in skits for the sake of amusement’. kinda. I’m pretty hazy about that... anyway. but Kyouya is there to stop the psychopathic project. he actually had two little sisters, both was also been made the Cast of the project but they failed to meet the necessary points needed and was deleted out of existence, and that includes from the Kyouya’s memory. it was said because being no longer remember what you lost is much easier. he was very devastated when he began to remember them, and felt so bad how he could ever forget about his two sisters.

Kyouya managed to gained enough points to have his wish, but there was a catch that asshole Director just suddenly announced; he could only wish one person to return to the real world, or but one to remain. he chose the latter, and Hiyori was mega sad. he stayed and he promised to continue to stop Arcadia, and retrieve his two sisters.

Tomose

dude is younger than Hiyori, and used to be the target of bullies. Hiyori, with her strong oneechan power, took the role of his protector. he came to secretly fallen in love with her as the years gone by, and he swore he would do anything to protect her in return. despite his near-obsession towards Hiyori, she never agreed nor encouraged this behavior. she simply said she saw him as just the osananajimi, and nothing else.

with the little that I can understand from his route, there’s not really any new revelation aside that Hiyori suspected Tomose to be the Sponsor because he kept saying he didn’t mind staying there in Arcadia so long he could play the role of her boyfriend. you’re twisted, my dude.I might missed a lot of the stories in Tomose’s route, because, fuck, a lot of the‘explanation’ was left to Hiyori. which means no narration, and fucking shit my reading skill is lower than an elementary kid so... oh. Hiyori got her‘emotions’ yanked out of her when she refused to do the play and kept on telling Tomose how he was wrong, and that he was acting like not the Tomose she knew.

in the end, after a thrilling (/sarcasm) game of charades with the resident of Arcadia, Tomose was about to wish for all of them to return before the Producer dropped his asshole of a new rule. Tomose wanted to say that he would remain while everyone was to sent home, but Shouta stepped in saying he volunteered to stay instead. dude said he liked playing games so he didn’t mind staying in Arcadia. I suspect he might be the Director....?

after getting back home, Tomose and Hiyori decided to start all over again with their relationship.

Mamoru

a soft spoken and overall very tender guy, Mamoru didn’t stand out that much among the 10. he gave Hiyori a teddy bear to cheer her up when he think she was not feeling too good after the whole thing of them trying to find a loophole of Arcadia as an existence while they were doing a maintenance. they were supposed to stay at the house they’re staying but he and Hiyori went to another place. in result they saw the real form of the people in Arcadia. they were slimy alien looking creatures.

for some time, Hiyori was terribly traumatized by what she discovered and could no longer see the Another Worlders in the eye. then later Mamoru refused to act in a skit where he would have to stab the co-star. he begged to the Director that he could take anything of his, just not his right hand. so Mamoru got his leg paralyzed and had to walk with a cane afterwards.

Mamoru’s personality changed since then, and the other kids started to think it’s proof enough he’s not the Producer who was supposed to be hiding within them. Hiyori caught him went out late at night and asked him where he gone, but he never answered and continued being cold and distant. then later there was a skit asking for Hiyori and Mamoru that involved a kissing scene. before it could start, Mamoru called the Director that he didn’t want to do it and would accept another penalty. he lost his sight this time, and as he was hurrying on his way away, Hiyori caught his right hand that he treasured more than his life and felt the slimy unholy texture of the alien she had seen before.

Mamoru closed himself in his room for days until Hiyori managed to talk to him. he admitted to be the Sponsor and also the person responsible for taking them all to Arcadia. he also admitted to be one of the Arcadian people through his dad and his mom was one of the past Cast. every other explanation he gave I didn’t quite get like why he became a Sponsor? also how could a child could be made from one of those emotionless alien who’s barely human and an actual human? from Kyouya’s end, Hiyori woke up on a bed connected to an IV, meaning she went to Arcadia only in her conscious so...??? well. anyway. because he is part Arcadian part Human, he never belonged to neither of them. the Arcadian makes fun of him and gave him less points for his acts, while at the same time he knew he is less than a human to familiarize with another human.

I actually didn’t manage to see to his route to the end because... the lack of my understanding of the plot really made the climax so boring.

and that’s it. I prolly won’t be able to go through other routes. I took a peek at each of them’s walkthrough and saw either Mei or Takumi being the Producer since theirs has multiple endings. I’m betting on Takumi because if any character’s gonna be shady, might as well be the most innocent looking one.

I might clear Mizuki’s though because, let’s face it, they’re the most interesting person of all.

so in conclusion: I really need someone to explain to me this game’s story. I’m way underqualified for it.

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“Send Me a Headcanon and I’ll Tell What OC I Associate it With - Part 2″ NaNoWriMo Prep

Original post credited to @the-moon-dust-writings

And also thanks to my boy @boundtoanandroid​ for sending me this because I love bringing up the morally gray trash creatures I call my NaNoWriMo OCs.

Now let’s do some gotdamn headcanons.

Likes their music loud: The captain, Marcelle O’Bithel, without a doubt. As far as she’s concerned, she’s over the hill and thus ready to party as much as she can before dying. She’d stoke the fires of any tavern band any day, so long as no one truly respectable objected to it.

Would poison someone if given the chance: If Kaia sincerely saw Agnetha one day as a threat to Marcelle’s safety, she’d cunningly off the old crone with decisive action, but considerable sadness.

Always happy: As long as Gideon’s got a body to live in and the charm necessary to make friends on the go, he’s got a song in his heart, a skip in his step, and a silver lining to fall back on wherever he looks.

Afraid of spiders: Just as an elephant fears a mouse, Svorlen despises the little things as if they personally hanged his mother. However, Rostov is always the first to squash them out of their sense of duty, despite the masses of remorse they feel for doing so.

Would jump out of a plane: Svorlen would present the crew with the idea, to which the captain and in turn Mirabel would readily agree. Kaia would need some convincing, before shrugging it off and going down with the ship. Dune would thoroughly oppose it, but eventually cave, while Rostov and Gideon would stick to the sidelines out of their similar fear of heights and physical exertion.

Calls people ‘Dude’: Kaia and Svorlen are both guilty parties, though the former is significantly more so.

Wants to just lay down and not move: Rostov would love nothing more. Of course, the captain would allow them their wish to a reasonable extent if they only just asked, but Rostov is too loyal to their duties to willingly take it easy.

Has the perfect come backs: Kaia and Gideon generally have a mutual respect for each other’s abilities, though this is especially the case when it comes to tearing down catcallers in the local taverns.

Can punch someone and the person they punched would thank them: A punch from Kaia, or rather, the fabled “Papillon-Rouge,” would earn someone free drinks for a year in return for a glimpse of the scar.

Listens to everything but common sense: Marcelle’s always a willing ear, unless someone’s telling her anything that’s for her own good.

Gives nicknames to others: Mirabel’s woodcarving talents ensure that everyone’s bunks feature some of her abundant, occasionally nonsensical nicknames.

Likes to talk to code: Again, the winsome nature of Mirabel would find great joy in the concept of a code language.

Doesn’t open up to others very easily: It isn’t even Rostov’s lack of a tongue that makes them hardly inclined to talk about their self.

Is painfully obvious on who they like: Though Rostov tries to be an altruist in love and distance their self from the subject of their affections, the majority of the crew has them figured out in a split second.

Would get a tattoo on a whim: Svorlen would ink up in a heartbeat. Probably even faster if it were for the purpose of a dare.

Has a strong eyebrow game: Rostov’s bushier brows frankly suit them, even if they refuse to belief it could ever be so.

Would jump off a building: In a crime of passion, Captain Marcelle just might.

Likes to travel: Marcelle makes it clear that even a pirate captain can appreciate the scenery, though Mirabel is open to stow away on any promising adventure just as well.

Likes roses: Both the supple beauty of rose petals and the brutal sting of the thorns are well appreciated by Mirabel.

Talks in song lyrics: If it were for the purpose of entertaining Kaia, Marcelle would recite an entire musical ballad on the first of her whims.

Is tol: Svorlen, and he ensures that it’s hard to miss.

Is smol: Rostov is second in smolness only next to Marcelle, though the captain makes up for it and more in personality.

Would murder someone if given the opportunity: Mirabel is a sincerely deadly force when she acts upon her philosophy of judgement. If her“one bullet” rule did someone in, then she’d say so be it.

Had a sad childhood: Though Rostov, Gideon, and Svorlen all had it bad to varying degrees, Dune’s was the most severe.

Loves their parents: Rostov loved their mother as much as Mirabel loved her father, but it’s Kaia who still maintains the strongest relationship with her parents.

Hates fish: Svorlen can’t stand the taste, texture, sight, or smell of the things.

Questions everything: Rostov can never seem to keep their rampant thoughts from turning to contemplation.

Would keep up with celebrity gossip: He wouldn’t be proud to admit it, but Gideon would most likely be in the know on the juiciest, most slanderous filth. Marcelle could easily harbor a guilty pleasure for it, too.

Would make it rain in the club: Dune would absolutely kill the mood just by looking at the dance floor the wrong way.

Likes hugs: There are few things that Gideon loves more than the sheer comfort of a loving, expressly consensual hug.

Kisses their partner good night: Giving his wife a peck on the forehead is as crucial in Gideon’s routine as shedding his foppish attire in favor of bedclothes.

Likes to give piggybacks: Svorlen is a self-declared madman when it comes to piggyback rides, ready to take two, maybe even three willing victims onto his broad back at once. Dune secretly aspires to be half as good as him at it someday.

Likes to sing in the vehicle: Marcelle is quick to rouse a song, while Mirabel and Svorlen are always the first to join the round. So long as she’s alone, Kaia gives new meaning to her role in the crow’s nest by belting like a songbird.

Would join the circus: Svorlen would risk life and limb as an acrobat if it meant he could have an audience, though Dune would likely be the most qualified for a role.

Could be a stand up comedian: Rostov’s self-deprecating nature might just be able to make itself useful for once in the world of stand up if it weren’t for anxiety.

Has bad luck: If Dune ever got married, there would probably be a tornado on his wedding day.

Likes pretzels: If she ever heard the rumor that pretzels were stylized to look like children in prayer, Mirabel would revere them for everything they stood for

Loves the rain: If he could get away with it, Svorlen would strip naked and run barefoot through a field at every first sign of a storm.

Can knock out someone’s tooth in one punch: As a proud pugilist, Dune might not even be lying when he claims that he’s done it before.

Will kiss someone to steal their wallet: Kaia would do all that and spit at their feet if she thought it were well-deserved.

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The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is a (fun) shallow novelty

In a recent Time interview, Sony Europe Exec Jim Ryan argued against the concept of backwards compatibility à la Xbox as a viable business plan, positing that for as many people that ask for it, very few actually take advantage of it. “That,” he said, “and I was at a Gran Turismo event recently where they had PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 games, and the PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?” His statements may reflect the actual opinions of a certain segment of the gaming community, but they also come off as shortsighted and just kinda...dumb. He’s (first of all) bashing products once made by his own company, which for pure business reasons sounds some alarms. But more than that, he’s making an argument against the durability of games, asserting that unlike other forms of art, they have an expiration date, largely connected to the visual style allowed by the hardware limitations of the time they were made in.

While the Activision-produced Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is removed from Sony’s legal grasp, to a degree, this ground-up remake of the classic O.G. Playstation platformer series is in line with Ryan’s realm of thinking. This isn’t a “remaster” in the way that most games that bear that designation are, no mere cleaning-up and up-resing to make those chunky 90’s polygons tolerable on modern TVs, though perhaps it should have been. Rather, this is more a Gus Van Sant’s-Psycho-kind of shot-for-shot recreation of the original games in a brand new engine, and the good news for the Jim Ryans of the world is that it looks great. Fans of the original trilogy such as myself, whose ravenous nostalgia for all things pre-aughts knows no bounds, will undoubtedly spend the first few minutes of this game in slack-jawed awe at their childhood game rendered in all its colorful, rounded, shiny 2017 glory.

Some of that awe may go away, however, once those players get to, say, the second level of any one of the three games packaged, and start dying. Players at this point might have one of two reactions - “Shit, I forgot how hard this game was,” or “Shit, I don’t remember this game being so hard.” Both of these reactions are valid. The original Crash Bandicoot games, once you got past the rollicking soundtrack and vaguely-creepy but mostly-cute anthropomorphisms, were occasionally grueling obstacle courses fraught with trial-and-error frustrations. They were awkward 3D platformers that had trouble grappling with the idea of what a 3D platformer could even be, requiring the precision controls of 2D genre classics like Mario but in practice, controlling in the stiff, wonky way many games of the 32-bit era did. Even if this was a straight remaster of the original games, many players may have found themselves running sideways off a straight platform because of the bafflingly 3D controls in ostensibly 2D sections only so many times before they became a little disillusioned at how unflatteringly these games have aged. Naughty Dog may have gone on to be one of video game’s greatest and most celebrated developers, but it took a while to reach that peak.

But there’s more to it than that. Sure, on the surface level, everything pretty much looks the same - Crash (or, in a welcome addition to these versions, his sister Coco) jumps, spins, slides and bodyslams his way through the same exact levels with the same exact enemy and box locations that he always has. But upon mere days of the N. Sane Trilogy’s release, many articles and blogs ran about the ways the new game’s engine failed to fully replicate the physics and mechanics of the originals. Now the developers at Vicarious Visions themselves have confirmed these departures, the two most egregious of which are faster falling animations and pill-shaped collision boxes - meaning that many would-be close-call landings of the original games are now perplexing misses of the new games. As someone with the physics of the original games ingrained into my muscle memory, this deviation was particularly hard to accept for me; it wasn’t until probably ⅔ of the way through Cortex Strikes Back that I felt I may have finally mastered these new mechanics, just in time for the most hand-wringingly, hair-pullingly stressful levels of the game.

One can only wrestle with this kind of no-cigar approximation for so long before one starts questioning what the point is. Why remake these games in this way? Most players of the original games will be put off by the subtle-but-ever-present gameplay changes, while newcomers will likely be nonplussed by games that, graphical overhauls and Unity-based physics changes aside, still feel stuck in gaming’s awkward pre-teen phase. The answer, unfortunately, is probably financial. An HD remake of a nostalgic favorite among a certain generation of gamer is an easy cash-grab - $40 seems like a reasonable enough price for three whole games that have been completely made over from scratch, and even if the details of the way the games play start to grate on players, most will presumably still get what they wanted from the experience, a quick and shallow indulgence in nostalgia with little critical considerations. Truly replicating the original in every way likely would have been a costlier endeavor than deemed necessary for the kind of experience this was meant to be. The apparent success of this release has even sparked conversations about giving other PS1 classics, such as Spyro the Dragon, a similar treatment.

All of this complicates the question set out at the beginning of this review, about the aging process of video games, graphically, mechanically, or otherwise. I will always assert that no such expiration date exists. Developers of console generations long past were limited by the technology they were working with, but that doesn’t mean the art they made wasn’t intentional and worth celebrating. The early 3D era, both in play and look, may have not aged as gracefully as the late 2D era that preceded it, but the blocky, fuzzy-textured art of Crash Bandicoot and other games of its era will always hold a strange sort of appeal to me, and not entirely for nostalgic reasons. This was an era of radical, thorny change, full of potential both realized and missed by developers who had no clue what they were doing, but did it anyway, in a brand new dimension. Exploring the games of this time can be both exhilarating and slightly embarrassing, but rarely boring.

That’s all to say that the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy really never had to happen. A remaster would have been nice, and I will never argue for anything less than the total preservation and accessibility of video game history, but to gloss over the style seems to me the creation of a wholly different thing, just as it would if one were to modernize the English in an old piece of literature. This kind of remake feels like little more than a shallow novelty. It’s a fun shallow novelty, for sure. Despite whatever complaints I maintain about its mechanics, I still played it enough to 100% Cortex Strikes Back and enjoy a considerable amount of the other two games. In returning to them, I still felt the same itch to smash every box, collect every gem, and even give those speed runs a shot. Pulling off a difficult clusterfuck of obstacles unscathed in the later levels is still as exhilarating as ever, and breezing through the early ones is still as satisfying. I expect that others will appreciate it equally. But a shallow novelty it remains. Thankfully, though, the game prepared me to expect little more, so at least it’s not a disappointing shallow novelty.

6.3/10

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New Chapter 1

The other chapter I posted will most likely become the second chapter now.

1.

The dusty trail to town was coming to an end. Civilization was in view, after nearly two months of nothing but the farm, Ondette finally had a chance to escape to normalcy, or as near as she could come as a one tailed slave.

She was a Halen, a feline species, and the only intelligent species of her world. Standing upright on two legs, with two arms ending in five fingers. Beyond those basics, the species could vary greatly, short fur, long fur, or no fur, long faces, short faces, or flat faces, tall or short, bulky or lithe. Even their numbers of tails varied from person to person. Anywhere between one and eight, depending on their past life, and the moral purity of their soul.

Ondette was of average stature and build. Her fur was short, not quite hugging her skin, but not long enough to sag except at its longest points, such as the fluff on her cheeks, and the top of her head between her two pointed ears. Her coloring was ash grey around most of her body, with aa lighter patch trailing down from her chin to between her legs, trailing out to the inside of her arms as well. The texture of her fur was coarse and dry, serving as a testament to her lifestyle, sleeping on old sheets, bathing once a year, and spending nine hours each day in the sun, working. Her palms were calloused, the thin layer of fur typical to Halen having been rubbed off from handling rakes, hoes, scythes, shovels, and anything else her master deemed necessary work. Her muscles were well defined, her legs substantial from walking all across the massive farm, her arms firm from lifting, pulling, pushing, and anything else required of her.

Her clothes were ragged. The faded brown shirt was tight around her shoulders and stomach; it hadn’t been replaced in years, since before she was fully grown. Even before she had received it, it had gone through the hands of two other owners. The cloth was rough, and rubbed against her fur when she moved, causing some thinning around her joints underneath. Her pants in comparison seemed like silk to her, though they were only black cotton. Her single tail poked through a slit in the back, long and thin, hanging low to the ground as she slowly made her way towards town. Around her neck and over her shoulder hung a small sack, a few coins jingling inside. A makeshift pendant hung from her neck, falling midway down her torso, a simple chip of wood with a barely recognizable letter “M” carved into it, indicating her master had allowed her to leave the farm to go to the market, and nothing else.

Along both sides of the dirt path there were two massive fields of grain. To the right, far behind her a mill’s blades spun, only one of the four blades was intact, the bare skeleton of the three others allowing it to keep balanced, while all force came from the one. Somewhere along her left she knew one of the large rivers in the area ran, cutting a swathe through the fields, carrying water down south to the delta of Godoy Bay. The river would run past town, and meet with another, the one her farm stood on, four kilometers to the west.

The fences that bound her to the path were old and rotten. As far as Ondette knew they could have been there since the dawn of time. Occasionally there were gaps, leading into the vast fields. The thought crossed her mind of slipping into the field, straying from her path, but it was quickly crushed. The plants stood too tall, well above her head, and would obscure her sight, and would cause her to lose all sense of direction and be lost forever. Or at least that’s what the old man, Haplos had told her.

Haplos had been on the farm all his life, and had given up on becoming free. The former owner of the farm, who had died before Ondette could remember, was even worse than his son, Felle, but had developed a soft spot for Haplos. The crafty and double-dealing slave had demonstrated a proficiency in scams and “gambling”, if the setups he constructed could be called that. When the old owner discovered his abilities, he gifted the slave free reign over town, as long as the profits were split between them. The deal continued with Felle after his father’s passing, but with a forty-sixty split. The scams however prevented Haplos from ever developing himself enough to be freed from slavery in his lifetime. His exploits left him just shy of the four tail mark, the requirement for a slave to be freed.

As she passed by a wooden sign leading into town, she read the faded words, old as the barriers on the road, “Welcome to Lagdelte, national agricultural center.” Underneath, in much smaller text she also read, “All one and two tails must report to guard post outside of town, and provide proof of permission or proof of liberation.”

Groaning in annoyance, she strayed from the path, and approached a small building to the right. A single male Halen sat, dozing. Above his head hung a board with several columns of sheets, each with a bright red caption scrawled at the top. “Wanted”, “Missing”, and “Escaped”. The escaped section, which was also the largest, caught her attention, and as she skimmed through the sheets she recognized a total of six names. Five women, and a man. The hopefully former slaves were each described in great detail, listing tail number, height, coloration, and any other distinguishing features. She noted they each had the same description for anything not physical, “Extremely dangerous”. Scoffing at the description, she turned her attention back to the guard.

“Excuse me,” Ondette mewed, attempting to gain his attention.

The guard continued to doze.

“Excuse me, I need to provide proof of permission,” this time louder.

Seeing her words still had no effect, she raised her voice, “HEY, WAKE UP.”

The guard immediately jumped up, and put his hand on the crossbow leaning to the wall behind her, and aimed at her. “State your purpose, one tail.”

Ondette, who immediately regretted waking the guard, put both hands in the air, “I just needed to provide proof of permission like the sign said,” she squeaked.

“Well, hand it over,” the guard kept the crossbow aimed.

Ondette lowered her hand to the wood chip hanging from her neck, the guard shifted the crossbow in his hands as she did so, as if to tell her not to make any sudden movements. The young woman carefully lifted it from her neck, and held it out to the man, who gestured towards the ground with the weapon.

Sighing in annoyance and understanding, she backed up several feet and sat down, and then tossed the amulet to the ground in front of the guard. The guard carefully lowered down, and examined the “M”, and then tossed it back to her.

“To the market and back, don’t let me hear you went anywhere else.”

Ondette nodded at the usual warning, and replaced the amulet. She slowly stood herself back up, and backed away from the guard. Once she was back on the path and continued to walk towards town the guard finally lowered his weapon.

__

The market was in the center of the town, supposedly bandits used to be a larger problem in the past, and the town had needed to protect its valuables. After the market, there was a ring of shops and businesses, and after that came the homes of the wealthy, and then the middle class, and finally the poor. Because the market, businesses, wealthy, and middle class were encapsulated in center there was no room for the groups to grow. Buildings came and went, but it was one in, one out. None dared expand into the ring surrounding them, lest their building be surrounded by someone from the other group. Only the poor on the outskirts had room, slowly expanding into the fields around the town.

The wailing of the beggars quieted as she passed. She noticed their tails flicking to and fro as they eyed her. They knew that they would get nothing from a slave, and they feared what she may do if they heckle her for coin. A small girl approached her, five tailed and tan with dark splotches around her arms and face. Ondette wasn’t sure if the secondary colors were a natural part of her fur, or grime.

“A bronse for two flowers, ma’am?” the naïve child offered, holding out a basket of wilted flowers.

Ondette smiled and opened her mouth to explain she didn’t have specific change for that, but two hands grasped her shoulders and pulled her back, and pushed her away. “Stay away from my daughter, I know your game, one tail,” the mother snarled, her three tails whipping back and forth. “You were a child molester, weren’t you? It will always be in your nature! You stay away!”

Barely registering the hostility, having become accustomed to the treatment, Ondette stumbled away, and continued through to the center of the city. The transition from the poor area to the next was abrupt. Houses increased in size and quality instantly from one to the next, parallel on both sides. Dirt and filth had been pushed off the street, and left in one long pile, drawing a line through the street between the two areas. Small streaks breached through, dragging into the clean streets where carts had rolled through. The slave stepped over the line after pausing for a moment, and continued towards her destination.

The middle-class ring was mostly empty, as the majority of its residents would be at work this time of day. Several wives were out weeping doorsteps, they glanced at her with concern, but didn’t bother her at all. Two children, a light grey four tail, and a white and brown calico five tail, tossed a sack of beans back and forth from opposite sides of the cobblestone street. Ondette stopped when she came across them, waiting to see if they would pause for a moment to allow her to pass. They continued, despite her presence. After waiting for a good opportunity to slip through she quickly ducked through without being hit, and trotted along the street with a few quick steps to make up for lost time. She smiled at the innocence of the children, wishing her life had taken a similar route, until the sack of beans struck the back of her head, and the sounds of giggling came from behind her.

The two children laughed out loud when she turned around and scowled at them. Her anger began to boil over as she bent down to grab the sack laying limp at her feet, and pulled back her arm, aiming to put the sack on the roof. She heard the gasps of the children, and their faces turned fearful, reaching their arms out in futility at the woman.

Ondette stopped herself before she did anything she would regret. She turned and instead of throwing it on the roof as she had planned, threw it down the street, past the boys and down the street. The boys promptly followed in pursuit. She stood in place and watched them chase the ball, as it bounced and slid several times, and fell into a drain. Her hand collided with the side of her face, “even when I try” she muttered under her breath.

She evacuated the area quickly, before the children could tell their parents, and get her into trouble. She would have to take a different route out of town.

The passage to the upper-class ring was less abrupt. The street was equally clean on both sides, although the houses increased in size and ornateness. They were nothing compared to paintings she had seen in the marketplace of grand mansions in the capital, Godoy, but compared to the shack she slept in they may as well be a palace.

Each house, unlike the houses in the previous rings, had a small fenced off area between the street and the building, filled with grass or other plants. Ondette eyed the gardens in confusion, why in the name of Niende would someone farm for fun? She would never do anything with plants if she had any choice in the matter. It was back breaking work, and always left her tired, filthy, and sick from the strong scent of the soil, if she didn’t do it she would be refused her daily portions and starve, and here these rich Halen did it to make their yards “pretty”, or smell “nice”.

As she shook her head at the gardens and continued forward through the relatively thin ring, a small white furry animal jumped up on top of the fence, and fixed its yellow eyes on her. Its head, tail, and fur were very similar to her own, but that was where the similarities ended. It stood on four legs, instead of two, and instead of feet and hands the stubby limbs ended in small round paws.

Ondette was surprised at the cat, they were uncommon pets. Most Halen preferred dogs as companions, some breeds were utilitarian, while others were more decorative, but the largest reason cats were rare as a house pet was their uncomfortable similarity to Halen. Ondette assumed whatever snotty aristocrat was particularly eccentric to have something like this. The cat leaned out over the fence and gave Ondette a sniff, flicking its single tail behind it. Ondette tentatively ran her fingers through its fur, allowing the tail to slide through her fingers at the end. “I guess we aren’t so different, are we?” she thought out loud to the animal.

A figure came out from behind the house, “Get away from my cat!” the woman screeched, and rushed to the two felines, scooping up the smaller of the two, and throwing a dirty look at the larger. “She didn’t hurt you, did she? If only one tailed Halens were as sweet and nice as you, Snuffles” she comforted, as the cat struggled against her, digging its claws into her garden apron.

Her treatment as she passed through the business ring was reminiscent of the poor ring. Shopkeepers simply ignored her as she passed, not willing to waste the energy on her. This ring had the most bustle, as customers wandered between buildings, and apprentices carried deliveries between locations. She apologized to the first few people she bumped into, but after her words were not reciprocated she gave up and pushed through to the end, finally reaching the large square in the center, where hundreds of stalls were set up by wandering traders, farmers from the surrounding area, and aspiring business owners who could not yet afford a building in the business ring.

The cobblestone was both the cleanest, and the dirtiest of anywhere in the city. At one stall the dirty may be clean enough to eat from, and its neighbor scummy, dirty, or even covered in dung, since fertilizer was sold in some stalls.

“Hey! Ondette!” A familiar voice called. The subject’s head spun around, trying to locate the source of the sound in the din of the crowd. “Over here!” this time she was able to zero in on the voice, and rushed over to the speaker, jumping on him in a bear-hug.

“Flukt!” she cried as she squeezed the short, silver tabby male. “You got a job!?”

“That’s the thing you’re noticing?” He smirked, “not my iron medallion?” he lifted up the roughly circular piece of grey metal from his chest, with five long lines carved into it, representing his new spiritual tail number, differentiating from his two birth tails.

“Well I assumed you had passed after you never came back to the farm,” Ondette blushed slightly. “Either that or made a dash for the border, but if that was the case you wouldn’t be able to show your face here.”

“I was bound to pass anyway, even old Haplos admitted it,” Flukt rubbed his fist against the medallion and grinned.

“He still denies that he ever said that,” Ondette crossed her arms, “and to be honest I don’t believe it either.”

“Believe what you want, but you knew I would get out,” the former slave shrugged, “I just didn’t expect to get an iron medallion instead of bronze.”

“Bronze is spiritually four tail, right?” Ondette questions, “I can never keep them straight.”

“Yup, copper is three, bronze is four, iron is five, steel is six, silver is seven, and gold is eight,” he counted off on his fingers.

“I only needed to know bronze, you didn’t have to list them all,” the woman rolled her eyes. “So, what have you been doing for work? I thought it was hard for former slaves to find anything.”

Flukt gestured to the stall behind him. “I joined this caravan of traders. Their leader grew up in Ny-Ide so he’s a bit more open minded. We started in Godoy, crossed over to Osthavn, and then continued up along the coast until Norhavn, and came down here to Lagdelte. The whole journey took about a year.”

“You were in Godoy for five months?” Ondette’s eyes widened in worry, “What did you do then?”

The man shrugged, “I mostly floated between shelters, did a few odd delivery jobs, stuff like that. Some of the other former slaves I met there had resorted to stealing to get by, but I didn’t want to get caught in that trap, if you know what I mean.”

She nodded somberly, and leaned against his stall, “Yeah, I’ll get worried I won’t pass since I still have a lot of problems with my anger, but I’m just as worried I will pass. I always hear about how few opportunities there are for us out there.”

“Ah”, Flukt mumbled in acknowledgement, unsure of how to comfort the woman. A moment passed, as neither knew quite what to say. “So, uh, does Skaper still do his wood carvings? That’s something he could probably do to get by after he’s released.” He took a moment to dig through a bag on the inside of the stall, before pulling out a small knife. “I got this baby when we were passing through the mountains and ran into another caravan at the area my boss wanted us to camp in.” He showed it to her, “The handle was carved out of a Vakten lizard’s tooth, must have been a big one. I didn’t think they made it past ten feet long. It made me think of Skaper, so I got it for him. I knew his next test chance at his twenty fifth birthday wasn’t for another two years so I’d be able to give it to him when I passed through.”

“It’s, beautiful,” Ondette reached out her hand, before pulling back. “I’m. afraid he isn’t at the farm now. He made a run for the border about a month ago, with all of the other adult girls.”

Flukt’s hand dropped, as his eyes widened, “You can’t be serious. That wimp actually ran away. He’s crossing the desert?”

“That was the plan I think,” Ondette nodded, “They invited me to come as well, but I just couldn’t get behind it, especially when my twentieth birthday was only months away. I didn’t want to risk my life.”

The trader took a moment to examine the knife, “Yeah. I wish him the best.” He gripped the knife tightly for a moment, before pressing it into Ondette’s hand. “Just hang onto it I guess. If he comes back, give it to him. If not, it’s yours.”

The slave’s eyes widened, as she tried to give it back, “No! No! I can’t take this! Felle would have my tail if he knew I took anything that could be used as a weapon.”

“It’s not a weapon, it’s a tool,” he comforted her, and refused to take it back. “And he doesn’t have to know. It’s not like he does regular strip searches of cabins.”

“Are you sure?” Ondette eyed him, “This must be worth a month of your pay…”

“Two actually,” he grinned, “And it’s not like I can just take it back. So just take it.”

Hesitantly, the woman lowered the folded knife into her sack. “I should probably go. Felle just sent me to get corn for planting, he had to sell our usual replanting stock to pay off a debt in the short run. He’ll be suspicious if I take too long, especially considering six of his slaves just ran off.”

Flukt nodded in understanding, “By all means. It was great seeing you, Ondette; I wish you the best of luck in your test.”

The woman bit her lip for a moment, as her blue eyes teared up some, before pulling her old friend into a hug, and continuing further into the market.

After the interaction, she quickly found the stall selling seeds and produce, and spent what little coin Felle had given her to buy the seeds. She realized after she had two bronse left over which she could use to buy flowers with from the girl, before remembering the attitude of the mother. She instead bought a small sack, which she filled with some of the corn she had bought. On the way out of the city she placed it on the side of the street where she saw the two children playing. Once she was far enough down the street she heard a door open, turning around she caught one of the children reaching out to grab the sack, before running back into his home, without acknowledging her.

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Column: Favorite Rap Mixtapes of July2017

With a cascade of releases spewing from the likes of DatPiff, LiveMixtapes, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud, it can be difficult to keep up with the overbearing yet increasingly vital mixtape game. In this column, we aim to immerse ourselves in this hyper-prolific world and share our favorite releases each month. The focus will primarily be on rap mixtapes — loosely defined here as free (or sometimes free-to-stream) digital releases — but we’ll keep things loose enough to branch out if/when we feel it necessary. (Check out last month’s installment here.) --- VIK - Facts of Life [stream/download] There are a thousand Soundcloud users out there who want to be the next All These Fingers, YungMorgpheus, or Theravada, but like the Highlander, there can be only one. Anybody can fuck up a beat, you see? But it takes a measure of ingenuity to fuck up, in, out, on, and off that beat simultaneously. VIK does these things, and he raps under the name Comfy God. Look, I’m just telling you facts here. Facts of Life is everyman rap as a mostly wordless psychogeography, an anti-happening happening to occur on tape, that type of spontaneity so dope it makes you believe in destiny… and rewind. –SamuelDiamond --- Jonatan Leandoer127 - Katla [stream] Looks like someone’s been hitting the books lately. Ditching the Yung Lean moniker for his government name, Jonatan Leandoer127 opens his sophomore effort with an excerpt from Milton’s Paradise Lost. “Immediate are the acts of God, more swift Than time or motion,” he recites, stumbling over a few words. Producer Palmistry washes the missteps with swells muted strings — no drums needed. Save for the occasional flourish of cyborgian autotune, Katla bears little resemblance to Yung Lean’s back catalogue. You’d have better luck shelving tracks like “Hell Rain” and “Cathedral” in a playlist alongside Julee Cruise and Lust For Youth than you would next to cuts from Unknown Death or Warlord. Leandoer’s Swedish spoken-word poems are chanted with liturgical weight atop misty ambience, then strained through a compression filter as tinny as a Nokia Tracfone’s speaker. Imagine This Mortal Coil remixed by Moby or Oneohtrix Point Never grabbing hold of some Sinead O’Connor stems. File this one under “Future Folk.” –JudeNoel --- Truman Snow - TRUIYASHA [stream/download] I don’t know why Truman Snow isn’t Tiny Mix Tapes’ favorite rapper, but I can only assume it’s because I’m the one championing him thus far. Sorry, Tru. Let me put it like this, though: If you like Young Thug and Future, you should love Truman Snow. If you love Young Thug and Future, you should move to Norfolk, Connecticut, find Truman Snow and volunteer to mule drugs for him or something. He probably doesn’t even need that service, but it’s the thought that counts. And the drugs count too, so buy Truman Snow ALL the drugs, mule them to him, then buy them back from him. Don’t lend him your ears. Give them to him, like Van Gogh. He may have only released two mixtapes so far this year, but he deserves 10 spots on all our lists. –SamuelDiamond --- Godbody Jones - IN GOD WE TRUST [stream] Godbody Jones is an MC/photographer, from Memphis, Tennessee, but his art contains little of the grim aesthetic that have brought horrorcore rappers like Tommy Wright’s 10 Wanted Men and Geto Boys back into the underground spotlight. His lyrics may be typically nihilistic, the product of young frustration directed a crippled nation, but they soar over uniquely melodic beats on “Intro” and “Face It.” Jones has a confident, expressive voice with good range, which is practically a requirement for a successful 2017-era MC. On “Brightness Down,” he puts it all on display, gliding effortlessly between deadpan drawl and slurring vocoder runs. When Jones sings, “Are you down for a ride, or you down for a roll?,” dragging out the “roll” like a he’s skating a steezy rock to fakie, the head instinctually bobs along with him. “Coraline” is a standout — evidence that the Godbody has hitmaker potential alongside being a harbinger of doom. –alghul --- Scallops Hotel - Over the Carnage Rose a Voice Prophetic [stream/download] If DJ Escrow’s Universal Soulja is the logical extreme of noise rap, a kind of “Coke La Rock meets Merzbow” alpha-omega point, then Scallops Hotel’s Over the Carnage Rose a Voice Prophetic could be described as alt rap on a similar trajectory; however, the tape’s loose assemblage of experimental one-offs, classic remixes, obscure collabos, and instrumental interludes has such a kid-in-a-sandbox vibe that such microgenre descriptors miss the point. If you want to hear a young mastermind at work, you listen to Milo, but if you want to hear that mastermind at play, working things out and having what sounds like an awesome time doing it, you listen to Milo’s side project Scallops Hotel. This is what a mixtape is supposed to be, but better. –SamuelDiamond --- DJ Escrow - Universal Soulja Vol. 1 [stream] “Lifted up.” Overdrive, reverb, and more overdrive, in layers like the roll of tinfoil I accidentally peeled unevenly and fucked up even worse trying to fix. Adlibs hollered as if over a heavy wind. A steady, violent burn. “Dipping T-shirts in blood and that.” The “fucking exclusive” WeTransfer link already expired; “you’ve got to get a new connect, find a new plug.” A PROLIFIC DEAMON with nothing to prove, Escrow lacks the easygoing temperament of a Blue Iverson, though I think some of the latter’s cheaply synthesized strings are hiding somewhere, flayed beyond recognition, in his jagged brush. Clearly the spark to balance the cool of right-hand-man Babyfather, his gift to the melting world this July was a mixtape with texture to match the brain-baking heat. The long, empty days of summer can grow around you like a husk; stay alert. “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.” –WillNeibergall [pagebreak] --- Knxwledge - HEX.10.8_ [stream] The L.A. producer Knxwledge slips a new set of beats onto his bandcamp page on a rigorous schedule (just in time for our Monthly Mixtape Roundup, it would seem). Each of these tapes — about 15-20 minutes in length — sells for $10.88, so artists claiming there’s no money in purchasing music should hit this dude up for some tips, because his beats are hotter and come in more flavors than LaCroix nice-smelling carbonated water. They are not, however, simply nice-smelling water. There’s a delightful crate-digging, compilation quality to them. Knxwledge sorts his beats into different series, the names of which often change (HEX used to be “Hexual_Sealing”). Some songs on HEX.10.8_ end abruptly, others, like “dordie_” and “issaparty_,” are simply heavily side-chained early Millennium R&B. It’s usual Knxwledge fair, the sort that has made him a superstar in the lofi beats scene. When Soundcloud goes to the great silicon server in the sky, taking all its 2-cent producers running circles around “Blue in Green,” at least we can safely hold onto the knowledge that this Stones Throw schxlar will keep us supplied with the essentials. –alghul --- MIKE - May God Bless Your Hustle [stream/download] I hesitate to even include May God Bless Your Hustle in this column, because although we should be well beyond that whole album vs. mixtape / high vs. low art bullshit, I fear it remains embedded in the back of our minds, but since I’m going in hard this month anyway, let’s get it. MIKE’s is a young voice and an old soul helping each other make the most of each day and night. May God Bless Your Hustle, easily his most complete, cohesive, coalescing project to date by my summation, might well be called a new kind of hustle altogether if it didn’t feel so damn familiar. Not derivative nor redundant, but well-informed and engaged, it’s like natural syndicalism. It just makes sense. –SamuelDiamond --- Ski Mask the Slump God - YouWillRegret [stream] “I’m not lyrical, but I’m lyrical,” said Ski Mask the Slump God in an interview with Power 105.1’s DJ Self. “I just like saying stuff to make people say ‘wow.’” You’d be hard pressed to find a better quote that could serve as the Broward County emcee’s artist’s statement — like Lil Uzi Vert admitted to his fellow XXL Freshman Class panelists in 2016, he eschews narrative to focus entirely on “getting in the booth and making it sound good.” On his official debut LP, Ski Mask trades in his usual samples of cartoon theme songs for gothic compositions trimmed with church organ and detuned synths. Despite sharing a blown-out bass tone with fellow members of Florida’s Soundcloud scene, he bears more of a resemblance to early-80s minimal wave acts like Oppenheimer Analysis and Solid Space than his geographical neighbors. The drastic timbral shift pays off: with more room to breathe, Ski Mask’s zig-zagging, triple-knotted flows are clearly on display from all angles. The long-awaited “Bird Is The Word” is queasily dissonant, pairing a heaved delivery with creeping chords. “Gone” is ethereal enough to fit next to BeeDeeGee and Holly Herndon on a 4AD compilation. “Adventure Time” still sounds as ahead of its time as it did when dropped on Boxing Day, seven months ago. Even at his least gimmicky, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who sounds as fresh as Ski Mask the Slump God does on YouWillRegret. Don’t sleep. –JudeNoel --- Dizzy SenZe - Hueman Vertigo [stream] The problem with nostalgia and novelties is that they can get old quick. I’m not naming names, but maybe, just maybe, there are more than a few throwback rappers du jure who wouldn’t have been given the time du jure when their style was actually hot. Plus, this being New York, I could literally walk down the street, point to a person, and get a verse doper than most of what’s sent my way by the PR goons who flood my inbox daily, but I digress. To America, Dizzy SenZe may be New York to a fault, but it’s no fault of her own. When you’re this good at what you do, it’d be foolish to do otherwise. Dizzy does the Bronx justice simply by doing herself. This is how it’s done. –SamuelDiamond --- Trouble - 16 [stream/download] Like a thief in the night, Trouble has seized the next spot in line. Finally. Since 2011, he’s been perpetually on the verge of a breakthrough, a walking renegade whose show-stealing features simply couldn’t translate to sustained popularity when it came time to drop his own shit. Starting with last year’s Skoobzilla, that might finally be changing. Trouble’s greatest strength is his versatility, and he’s wasted no time adapting his style to the ever-evolving rap zeitgeist. Remarkably, 16 is just a teaser, collecting a handful of tracks that evidently won’t make Trouble’s forthcoming album EdgeWood. Given the quality of 16, that’s a very good sign. EdgeWood will be entirely produced by Mike WiLL Made-It, with Drake and The Weeknd headlining an already impressive list of features. Fool me once, etc., but if 16 is any indication, then Trouble’s coming for real this time. –CorriganB --- Warhol.SS - 3200 [stream] Warhol.SS arrived at his namesake through Basquiat, the genius artist/celebrity who practically invented the nature of hype, rising in the public eye at a Migos pace, before dying from a heroin overdose with Cobain expediency. His paintings now sell for eye-watering suitcases of money. We’re talking over 550 lbs in $100 bills. Basquiat was admittedly with Andy, or maybe, like many of the King of Pop-Art’s hangers on, he sees the association as a conduit to success. 3200 is compiled of Soundcloud tracks (probably a smart move, considering the platform’s uncertain future). Warhol’s flow is amusing off-kilter on “Mac Up” and “In The Field,” as if the dude is jumping around in the booth while he records. He sounds like a less nihilistic Chief Keef, riding explosive sub bass like he held the engineer at gun point and made him turn it the fuck up, levels be damned. “Bag it 2” pairs this King Kong kick to some bouncy 8-bit synths — it’s by far the standout on a tape that shows progress. –alghul --- Secret Museum of Mankind - The Masculine Dignity of Mountain Tribesmen [stream/download] Das Racist was a delusion of grandeur turned actually grandiose. Kool AD’s solo work, on the other hand, is more like a grand delusion. Dude is rapping so much and recording so many of those raps, his catalog basically amounts to a transient’s travelogue, if that travelogue was the direct transcript of an inner-monologue. Long story short, the man is logging some serious time in booths. Secret Museum of Mankind finds that wanderer work ethic in a kind of supergroup setting, with freestyles so hifalutin they ought to be engraved in metal slabs and stuck on walls for future passersby. Kool AD + Quelle Chris + these other dudes x Steel Tipped Dove = historic bruh. –SamuelDiamond http://j.mp/2h9ujGs

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The Joy of Watching Sports Alone

As a minimum in The USA, consuming sports activities is inextricably social. We’re nearly anticipated to consume sports in the presence of others, whether that’s in a bar with TVs on each wall or at a chum of a chum’s Joyregion for the Exceptional Bowl. They’re a way to bring collectively disparate elements, a commonality that hundreds of thousands can agree on—despite the fact that it’s Alone regularly agreeing to disagree. And the triumph of take-pushed

culture has verified that considering sports activities most effective matters if you can inform a person else they’re incorrect. however for a number of us, looking sports is a solitary pursuit. And at the same time as It may be anti-social, it also has its perks. On the maximum primary level, other humans are a distraction. In case you want to pay near attention to a recreation, sitting in a dark room by means of your self On the sofa is empirically the fine manner to miss nothing and absolutely lose yourself inside the motion. Solipsism is a hellish disorder, different brains can beautify your angle, and fun is commonly greater a laugh while it’s now not just you worried. but this situation isn’t as simple as regulating enter and output. These days, watching sports activities places you on the spot irrespective of who you’re around. As with every matter, everybody’s an expert, which means that that you’re expected to recognize your shit, or As a minimum now not embarrass yourself. It’s easy to end up with a case of imposter syndrome, irrespective of who you’re around. I know that I’m (rightfully) predicted to be some sort of authority At the NBA, and that frequently keeps me from being capable of kickback or relax—or even remember that I enjoy the game inside the first region. Occasionally the strain is so horrific that I want to run and cover. Shielding yourself from the outdoor international so that you can revel in video games in monastic stillness isn’t just about strict avoidance. In As a minimum one manner, it’s a heightened version of one in all fandom’s most basic truths. As a good deal as we talk in phrases of data, science, and other meant absolutes, a large a part of the fan revel in is interpretation. whilst a sport is on, we give you all sorts of yarns to make it greater exciting for us—now not as it’s boring, but due to the fact, we can. We create storylines that won’t be actual or hone in on info that doesn’t rely upon to supply color and texture. video games are not often so thrilling that you can move three hours without exercise a bit creativeness. whether or not it’s refining our mediocre takes or paying close attention to hairstyles or celebrations, we see matters that might not honestly be there but, in that moment, are especially true to us. Positive, to some degree you may do all this around other humans. however they’re a consistent reality test, or As a minimum—insofar as sports are a factor you objectively discuss with other human beings—get in the way of the full-on reverse. “I’m able to even offer shade commentary to a 5-year-vintage.” however watching on my own an excessive amount of can end up a liability. As an example, I am madly in love with someone who has never had any interest in sports activities, however, is now honestly curious about the NBA—in an element as it’s essential to me, but additionally as it’s sincerely one of the best matters ever. Once I turn on a game, she wants me to help her understand matters, even supposing most effective from my skewed angle. There couldn’t be a state of affairs in which I need extra too, um, use my powers for appropriate; there’s also 0 pressure to stay up to expectations. but After I try, I’m genuinely at a loss. I’m so used to either striking out in my own head or typing away on Twitter that speaking like a normal individual during a recreation can experience decidedly overseas. The identical thing takes place with my child, too, and the bar is even lower there. I’m able to even offer coloration observation to a five-12 months-antique. It’s almost like I’ve doomed myself to solitude, even in those moments After I’d want to discover my way again to civilization. Thank God for Twitter, which maintains me At the least marginally human. On the other hand, perhaps it’s simply heightening my isolation. Twitter is the exquisite middle floor here, the manner to acquire the advantages of accurate agency (elite, even) whilst being capable of preserving it at bay and manage your surroundings. You get the fast-fireplace commentary and scraps of information to hold things thrilling—particularly vital given how vulnerable most on-air expertise is—without the stress to reply or volley backward and forward. In case you want to have a communication, you can pick out one up at will and abandon it just as easily. We’re given thoughts you may preserve to yourself? go in advance, fire them available. Worst case, no one reads them or cares. but At the least, you’ve added them to fruition and gotten them off of your chest. In terms of the social nature of sports activities, Twitter is a classic case of half-complete, 1/2-empty. It’s better than not anything, but it additionally might be preserving us again. And there’s something appreciably 1/2-assed approximately it like sooner or later you ought to be able to take away the want for network altogether or suck it up and pass join up with a few pals. None of this is to mention that everybody must revel in sports on this manner or that those folks who do in any other case are morally superior. It’s a quite obvious blind spot, definitely. I’m Sure there are a few folks who would argue that I don’t even like sports within the first location. but At the least for me, it’s no longer how I think matters need to be—it’s a sincere assessment of what I’m able to. I realize that human beings don’t just sense obligated to devour sports inside the business enterprise of others—they sincerely enjoy it. They may be doing a higher activity than I’m. however, there has to be room for options. In the long run, sports activities aren’t a social settlement, they’re a form of amusement. Or even if there’s a proper way to do them, the ones of us who aren’t up to the assignment still deserve to have our fun.

5 Common Sports Injuries: Their Prevention and Treatment

Sports injuries are the most common type of hurts that occur when one indulges in vigorous exercises or athletic activities. They are primarily caused due to poor methods of training, weaknesses, and abnormalities in the structural frame as well as risky workout environments. Although many of these injuries are harmless and could be treated through rest and home remedies; some of them are severe and need professional help. In the following discussion, we would explore more about the types of sports injuries and how could they be prevented as well as cured.

More about the Sports Injuries

1. Knee injuries are the most common for sports persons. A variety of pains and aches of the kneecap could be together called runner’s knee. Individuals, who take part in activities such as, cycling, swimming, and aerobics or in sports such as, basketball, football, and volleyball primarily, suffer from these complicated issues. The athletes must change their shoes and insoles often. They should not workout on hard surfaces and take rest between the exercise sessions. Apply ice and use anti-inflammatory ointments for treating these kinds of hurts.

2. Dislocations along with sprains and strains on shoulders are common with athletes, who take part in basketball, volleyball, tennis, swimming and weightlifting. These issues occur when the rotator cuff or groups of tendons and muscles around shoulders slacken giving rise to stiffness, pain, slipping and weakness of shoulders. Strengthening the muscles in between workout sessions is necessary. The RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) treatment could be given at home. If this does not work, the patients should consult any of the efficient sports orthopedic specialists.5. Lack of flexibility and fatigue could lead to pulled muscles in the athletes. Hamstrings and calves are the most common type of muscle pulls. They could be extremely painful and could lead to bruising. The ideal way of preventing this condition is by stretching before exercises. RICE treatment and anti-inflammatory medicines are helpful in cases of muscle pulls. In severe cases, the patients could be taken to sports orthopedic specialists.

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