brightlady_lise | Recent Entries

Rusty Quill Gaming's podcast did an entire episode about sensitivity in ttrpgs (link) and one thing that sticks with me is the "main" DM Jonathan Sims talking about how if you want to include things like racism, slavery, rape, etc... you should maybe take a moment and have a think about why it's important that your fictional setting has to have those elements. It's so easy, esp. when you're going through the layers of abstraction of both fictionalizing and secondary worlds, to just blindly grab tropes, elements, and real world things without thinking about where those things come from and what they imply.

For example, the Drow having dark skin being a sign of their corruption by Lloth. Sure it looks harmless, just some fun windowdressing for a fantasy world. Then you look at IRL things like... Mormonism which teaches that dark skin tones are "the Mark of Cain" and how that teaching was used to justify genocide against Native Americans... or how much really racist writings about African Americans emphasized that their skin is "black"... or present-day colorism in Asia. The drow being dark skinned because they're evil takes on a far, far uglier set of implications including implications about the views their creators hold about race and skin color.

Current Mood: nauseated

Live Service and MMORPGs are different genres of online game. This is just a fast run down to get my thoughts in order while I'm still thinking them. Worth noting is that the only "live service" games I've played are Destiny 2, TF2, and Warframe. The others I primarily know by reputation

Live Services

Only focuses on a single core loop, usually combat (destiny 1&2, Marvel's Avengers, fortnite) with very little other activities. The other activities tend to be scavenger hunts across combat areas (Destiny 2's collectibles for lorebook pages. Fortnite's secrets) or variant types of combat missions.
Light narrative presence. Story campaigns, if they exist tend to make only a small portion of the playtime. Destiny 2's expac campaigns for instance can be completed within 6-8 hours. Given that players on average put 100+ hours into the game, most of that playtime isn't spent following the story
Convoluted releases. Destiny once again. It has the expacs like a classical MMO, but it also has a season pass with its own narrative which is purchased separately from the expac or with the deluxe editions. Fortnite's world events which seem to have a narrative, but also the battle pass system.
Little player customization that's not monetized. All of Fortnite's emotes are either purchased from the shop or earned via the paid battle pass. Skins as well. Destiny 2 doesn't let players change hairstyles after the initial character creation. Only a handful of the game's ghost shells, sparrows, and jumpships are earnable via gameplay- they drop from engrams earned by leveling the battle pass or from bright dust earned from weekly bounties from a rotating selection
Inter-player communication is inconvenient. Destiny does auto-matchmaking and has clans, but there's little to no way in game to make meaningful interactions in game besides emoting at each other. The chat is limited in radius. There aren't really social spaces people feel inclined to actually spend time socializing
Convoluted level-up systems. Light-level and season pass level are completely different. Constantly grinding for perks.
Pathological fear of players not being the endgame. (i.e. short campaigns so with a few hours investment all players are in the same area of the game, grinding light level or battle pass level)
Content doesn't stick around. Much of Destiny 2's big story moments were in the season passes and didn't stick around for future players to experience
Players identified by their gametag (i.e. steam name) rather than name their character
No player-run in game economy or no inter-player trading.

MMORPGS

Story tends to be front and center. Most playtime in an MMO is following the main storyline
Character customization available whenever to players from armor glamor systems to in-game hairstylists
Content tends to stick around.
Lots of RPG elements
Non-combat activities. FFXIV and LOTRO for instance have in-depth crafting systems which have nothing to do with combat. FFXIV's crafting and gathering even have their own storylines.
Player to player communication easily done. Chat has a variety of different ranges from the whole map to a wider area.

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Finding Paradise: The sequel/next chapter of To the Moon. A very simple RPG/visual novel with light puzzle elements and no combat. It hits very, very close to home, esp. if you've lost a loved one to a neurodgenerative disease. Concerned with themes of a good, but unfulfilling life and the things we leave unsaid and undone when we die.
Firewatch: A middle-aged man takes a job as a firewatch in a national park to evade interpersonal problems at home before finding himself at the center of a missing person's case and a budding friendship with another firewatch. The ending might be considered a cop out or disappointing, but the dialogue writing is extremely strong. It's gorgeous to look at and the park is well worth exploring.
The Flame in the Flood: Rouge-Lite survival game about a girl in the post-apocalypse trying to follow a radio signal down a flooding river in the hopes of safety. Unforgivably hard with a lot of things the player needs to learn from trial and error. Not finished yet and given the rougelike elements not one I'm going to revisit in the immediate future.
Flower: The first game by ThatGameCompany. Guide a breeze filled with flower petals to restore landscapes. Top notch sound design and beautiful visuals. Camera can be nausea inducing in later levels which involve tight, constant movement changes.
Flower Design: Make bouquets. Feels like a student project, worth checking out if you just like fiddling with things.
GRIS: Atmospheric arty platformer about grief. Can come across as very ham-fisted with its metaphors, but the music is good and the art direction is excellent. It's worth a play, if you're not burned out on arty indie games about grief/mental illness.
Hades: As of this review, still in early access. Rogue-like/visual novel hybrid by Supergiant Games. One of the only roguelikes which works as death gives the player opportunities to deepen their relationship with the characters and their understanding of the world. Death advances the plot instead of being a slap on the wrist for failing a challenge. Worth checking out
Heaven Will Be Mine: Visual novel. Gundam, but with Evangelion's surreal bent. Has messy lesbians and the ability to make truly horrible mistakes. Worth checking out, but the plot lost me halfway through the first playthrough. Honestly you're not here for coherency, you're hear for interpersonal drama and mechs.
Heaven's Vault: Decipher a dead language in a unique science-fiction setting. Graphics/animations can feel stiff, but the story is a beautiful blend of past, future, and how the two affect the present. Pick up if at all interested in fictional lanauges/archeology.
Hiveswap: Act 1: A homestuck game. The reviewer knows virtually nothing about homestuck, but found the game hilarious and charming at the same time. Act 2 needs to come out soon.
Hollow Knight: 2D soulslike metroidvania about the downfall of an insect kingdom. Brutal difficulty, but gorgeous and foreboding art. It controls very well even if you use a keyboard/mouse instead of a controller.
Hyper Light Difter: Another 2D soulslike, but more science fiction weird apocalypse. Beautiful pixel art and sound design, but its maps are a bit frustrating to get around. The designers really like the original Zelda games and it shows.
Islands: Non-Places: 3D artist art gallery. Worth a look if you like virtual museums and the surreal.
Jotun: Valhalla Edition: 2D brawler about a viking warrior striving to enter Valhalla after her untimely death. It's the studio's first game and it shows with small maps, lots of unused space, and a couple progress breaking bugs.
Journey: The game which put "are games art" into the public discourse. The 3rd game by ThatGameCompany. It puts you in the shoes of a red-robed pilgrim striving across a desert towards a light in a mountain. Play it for the historical context and for the gorgeous score/visuals. Movement is a delight as the pilgrim skims across dunes and hops up towers.
Kentucky Route Zero: Another "are games art" game. Released in episodes from 2014-2019. Begins with a delivery man named Conway attempted to finish his last job before his employer shuts down. Spirals into magical realism and a meditation on the destruction capitalism wrought on Appalachia. 100% worth playing just for the weird ideas about how gaming storytelling synthesizing with older modes of storytelling. Meant to be played in short sessions and savored.
Left 4 Dead 2: Valve's zombie co-op game. Stay for the mods and the fantastic level design along with some of the funniest environmental storytelling around.
Life is Strange: Episodic adventure game/visual novel about Max, a photography student returning to the small town in the PNWS where she grew up. Heavy fantastic elements including the ability to rewind time, a looming apocalypse, and disappearing students. It's Twin Peaks with a slightly more coherent plot. The interpersonal and slice of life sections completely outshine the overall mystery of the plot, but it's worth a play at least.
Life is Strange: Before the Storm: Prequel to Life is Strange which fills out the background of one of the major characters. It's beautiful and heart-wrenching, but the larger overall intrigue of the plot is completely at odds with the slice of life/interpersonal conversations that make up most of the game.
Limbo: Haven't played, but given a copy for free during a promotion.
Lord of the Rings Online: A book accurate retelling of LOTR from the perspective of a random ordinary civilian pulled in over their heads into the War of the Ring. Fleshes out missing aspects of the canon as well as tells new stories. Some of the finest foreshadowing ever done in a game and very strong writing despite being an MMO. It came out in 2007. It really shows with some graphical elements, but it has aged well overall. Worth a look if you're an LOTR fan.

Current Mood: blah

Part 1

Abzu: Journey but underwater. Short but well worth replaying even just to swim around each area hanging on the side of the largest organism in the place.
Adventure Quest 3D: Scratches the nostalgia itch for Adventure Quest Worlds, the browser based MMO. Really, really a rough work in progress. Camera controls are kinda nauseating.
Among Ripples: Papercraft art environment simulator. Add organisms to a pond and change things like time of year and oxygen content. Good if you need a slightly interactive thing to fiddle with for five minutes.
The Banner Saga: Haven't started it or downloaded it since purchase. Heard it's good. Art is gorgeous. Apparently has 2 sequels out now.
Bastion: First of Supergiant's games. Has a story that will stick around in the head for a long time which fits seamlessly into gameplay. Combat is equally up to snuff. Just very good all around.
The Beginner's Guide: A story about the invasion of someone's privacy as you root around their unfinished games folder. Couldn't finish because the first person camera made me incredibly nauseated.
A Bird Story: The prequel to Finding Paradise. Short, sad, and very much an RPG maker game. It is free.
Blasphemous: Dark Souls 2D themed around old world Spain's catholic guilt. Will hit really hard for people raised on that particular brand of hellfire and suffering Catholicism .
Borderlands 2: The only good Borderlands game apart from Tales of the Borderlands. Probably one of the last AAA games that did DLC right- lots of it, lots of it free, paid DLC being entire extra story campaigns.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: Haven't played it yet. Borderlands 2 scratches the itch for Borderlands enough that I don't feel like downloading it yet.
Botanicula: Point and Click adventure got at a steam summer sale for under $5. Cute art style. Haven't played it yet.
Celeste: Brutally difficult platformer about mountaineering and mental illness. Difficulty mitigated by a variety of helpful settings from no damage to extra dash moves. Set your own difficulty and finish the game at your own pace. Both extremely chill and extremely nail-bitingly difficult at the same time
Cultist Simulator: Card game rougelike about founding a cult and summoning eldritch beings in an alternate 1920s setting. Found it obtuse and hard to get deeper into the story thanks to some unexplained mechanics which kept killing me.
Dark Souls III: One of the best games of the 2010s, barring the original. A masterclass in seamlessly blending setting, music, story, and gameplay to build a compelling world. Monstrously difficult, but well worth the time.
Darkwood: Eastern European mythology inspired survival horror about people struggling to survive in a hostile, inescapable forest. Genuinely disturbing despite low-res top down graphics.
Deponia: Point and Click adventure game bought for $1.99 during a steam sale. It looks funny, but have yet to download and play the thing
Destiny 2: Cosmic Horror story wrapped up in a colorful live-service shooter game. Fascinating setting and characters, but lots of grind. An experiment in how to combine an MMO with an FPS with an evolving world. Worth at least following via the news as it develops.
Disco Elysium: Diesel-punk detective story about an ambiguously Eastern European City burdened by the failures of the previous regime and the failures of late capitalism. An RPG with little to no combat and no giant save the world plot. Worth checking out for strong writing alone.
Doki Doki Literature Club: Probably hits home more for people into highschool dating sim visual novels. Honestly would've been more horror without the 4th wall breaking.
Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A free, short, and completely silly heist game. To say anything more would spoil it. Narrated by the dude from the Stanley Parable if that sweetens the pot.
Dragon Age Origins: First in the series and arguably the best in the series. Play it. Avoid the fandom. Not as good as Mass Effect, but miles better than Divinity Original Sin 1&2.
Dreamfall Chapters: Adventure game about two intertwined people: one from a cyberpunk dystopian future and one from a fantasy world being invaded by a genocidal empire. Third in a series, but stands well enough on its own.
Eastshade: Wander a picturesque island of animal people painting the scenery and looking into local affairs. Very relaxing and very beautiful.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Despite being an MMO it has some of the best writing and characters in the Elder Scrolls Series as it's not shackled to the design philosophy of complete player choice. Gameplay translated very well from the singleplayer campaign. Sizeable RP community if you're into that.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The latest elder scrolls game. Mod it as you wait for the next installment or just play ESO. It's fun to explore but does not have a particularly deep story or characters. Vanilla aged as well as a herring in a sock under a floorboard in terms of visuals.

Current Mood: lethargic

In fall 2016, I was diagnosed with Major Depression co-morbid with an anxiety disorder. I'd started university in the fall of 2014 as a civil engineering major. The 1st semester went well... then spring 2015, everything fell apart. While I was attending class everyday that semester, I wasn't passing most of my courses. Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 went in a similar manner, only with me not attending most classes. I nearly dropped out of university. One change of major and several years of medication and therapy later, and I'm slowly back on the road to earning a bachelor of science in Psychology.

I've always been a massive fan of the video game medium. Pokemon on a friend's DS console is one of the highlight memories of pre-school and grade school. I've played thousands of hours of video games through my life, watched interviews with Devs, watched almost every E3 since 2012 at least, and even tried my hand at short projects with software like Twine and RPG maker. I'm active in multiple video gaming communities to this day and made a lot of IRL and online friends through the medium. Video games may have kept me from becoming truly suicidal, but here's where the tone of this essay changes. Video games are a powerful force for good, but there's also a far darker side to the medium.

In the fall of 2015, I picked up GW2 to play with a friend, who I'm no longer in contact with for various reasons. It's a fun game, it's got an interesting world and a whole lot of neat concepts in terms of story and gameplay. I enjoyed playing it once per day for several hours in tandem with homework and other living tasks. Spring 2016 is where things started to really go downhill. I barely left my dorm room except to grab food, go to one or two of the classes I'd signed up for, or to shower. I barely did my laundry. I barely cleaned. I missed most of my assignments. My diet went to absolute shit while I let perfectly good ingredients go bad in the dorm fridge. What was I doing instead of taking care of myself? Pretty much playing GW2 (and some other games) until my roommate got back and I'd go to bed to not be an asshole.

This is not a dig at GW2, but rather GW2 is the game that took up most of my time. Therefore, a lot of my perception of Gaming Disorder is viewed through the lens of GW2. In addition to pouring my time away, I poured hundreds of dollars into the game in pursuit of cosmetic items or even just to convert the premium currency into in-game gold to buy items off the trading post. I've got over 20 alternate characters I've all leveled to 80. That's 15+ the original 5 slots the game gives you to start with. I nearly emptied my bank account twice, though to be fair I wasn't working at the time so it was more like $300 of gift money each time- nowhere near the insane thousands I know people have poured into "microtransactions". In the spring of 2018, I mostly stopped playing GW2.

This spring (I think) the WHO added Gaming Disorder to their dictionary of behavioral disorders. It's in the same category as gambling disorders. The gaming community's response to the whole thing was... disturbing to say the least. The classification was treated as an attack on gamers and an attack on the medium. It was in some corners of the comments to articles on the subject like watching the subject of an intervention fly into a rage because how dare someone suggest they have a problem with their favorite activity. I think my response would've been much the same if I hadn't been in a better headspace.

Personally, I think the classification is right and also that a good portion of the gaming community has known or has suspected that something like Gaming Disorder exists. There's been stories for years about people in Southeast Asia dropping dead at computers because they'd been gaming for several days non-stop. There were stories about university students who blew full ride scholarships because all they did was stay in their dorms and play WoW. As freemium games took over the storefronts of smartphones, there were stories about people blowing out their life-savings on things like Candy Crush or the people who scheduled their entire day around the timers for Clash of Clans. There's even subreddits like /r/neckbeard nests which poke fun at horrifically messy rooms with a perfectly clean high end PC in the middle of piles of garbage.

If not the community, the gaming companies certainly knew it was a thing, with lootboxes in games and microtransactions for $20 or more for a single digital item via in-game purchased currency to obfuscate the actual amount of money being spent. In the future it's going to be interesting how this classification changes the dialogue around the gaming industry's utter failure to self-regulate and around how the gaming community as a whole talks about mental illness.

The website that once was worth 1.1 billion USD is now worth only about 3 million USD. It's cost verizon 1 billion dollars to attempt to turn the website into some run away success on the order of Facebook and Instagram. Well... the problem isn't just mismanagement from Yahoo, it's also the nature of the tumblr beast.

Tumblr's core userbase back in the 2010-2012 era when it started to pick up a lot wasn't really hip young people, it was people leaving LiveJournal after it was snapped up by a Russian company which started to put heavy content restrictions in place or people leaving DeviantArt thanks to site redesigns and policy changes. Many members of the old guard on LiveJournal/DeviantArt either were present for the loss of geocities or knew about the loss of geocities' community (ironically caused by Yahoo as well). These people are completely fine with hopping platforms at the slightest hint of possible trouble. A lot of the same users maintain social media presences elsewhere. Mastodon, Blogger, Dreamwidth, Wordpress, and even Archive of Our Own are used alongside Tumblr. Unlike facebook, Tumblr is not usually its users primary social media outlet.
The NSFW ban in late 2018 was a complete shitshow. The bot failed, for the most part, to identify actual pornographic content tagging everything from classical art to swatches of vaguely flesh-toned color gradients. Blogs flagged NSFW could no longer be accessed unless you were logged into the site in addition to many of the marked blogs not actually being themed around porn. LGBT resource blogs were flagged at unusually high rates, but actual blogs filled to the brim with porn were not. The final cherry atop the shitshow was the appeal process. It was arcane, understaffed, and generally slow to respond, especially with the looming threat of all flagged blogs being deleted. A substantial number of users left, but the same problems with NSFW content still remain to this day (8/13/2019).
Tumblr users' personal info in terms of content on their blogs isn't very personally identifiable. The site still operates on pre-Facebook boom internet rules in that people aren't using their real names to sign up for the service. Sure the email addresses might be tied to a real professional or personal email inbox, but what's on the site is only the information with which the users are comfortable with sharing. If you're a serious creep, you might be able to target ads based on hints in posts.
Tumblr's advantage over other social media sites is how easy it is to personalize your experience with the site. What shows up on your dashboard is predominantly posts from blogs you choose to follow. People reacted to tumblr putting recommended posts, promoted posts, and ads (which is standard on sites like facebook/instagram) by installing adblock or using a tumblr extension like Xkit. Tumblr's userbase based on this is sort of small and fragmented, there's no one big commonality between all Tumblr users.
Tumblr's big advantage over other blog platforms, even livejournal and dreamwidth which are more social platforms than blogger/wordpress is instant feedback- likes and reblogs. This is hardly a new feature for a social media site. Facebook lets you reshare things. Twitter lets you retweet content. Google+ had "share with your circle". Livejournal and geocities pages had little hit counters added to their code sometimes. Tumblr allowed people to interact with fandom on a level besides lurking, commenting, or creating with instant likes the ability to display said likes on their own blog. A tumblr blog is less a blog per say but a combination of a microblogging platform and a display case. The place is ideal for fandoms and other communities which live or die on high interpersonal interaction.
Tumblr has a very low barrier to entry compared to other microblogging platforms thanks to the aforementioned like and reblog system. You don't have to make content for something or comment on things to be part of a community. You can be part of one just by reblogging things you like.
Flexibility. Tumblr's themes are very customizable, even just using the defaults presented to you. Dreamwidth and Livejournal, to the best of my knowledge, kept all blogs more or less looking the same except for minor cosmetic differences. Tumblr lets you write CSS for the whole blog and has a thriving community of people who make entirely free and professionally designed themes. This means for advertisers, it's almost impossible to weasel out adspace on people's tumblrs as it would probably break many themes and earn the ire of users even further shrinking their ability to target people. Tumblr briefly experimented with putting ads on the blogs of people using their in-house themes. Additionally, Tumblr was unclear on how monetized blogs would be paid or how much.
The reputation of Tumblr across the wider swath of internet culture was no longer marketable by the time Yahoo purchased the site. Tumblr was associated with the ability to find very specific kinds of pornography. However the site is still primarily known as being full of the worst sides of fandoms, fandoms in general as opposed to "serious" blogging, "SJWS" (social justice blogging is a big part of Tumblr, and one impossible to monetize considering how much of it is critical of advertising), LGBT blogs (this has a reek of homophobia in that it's supposed to be a bad thing), anonymous hatemail, harassment campaigns (everything from doxxing to run of the mill "go kill yourself"), and a population of neo-nazis/white supremacists the site refuses to deal with to this day. It's seen primarily as a website used by young, white, suburban women who are some levels of out of touch with reality. The site is not "Hip".
Tumblr, for all its functionality is not a well-designed website. It's easy to use, but lacking a lot of quality of life features such as an outbox, mass post editiors, and one-click reblogging. These are features that users have to install an extension for (e.g. XKit and formerly Missing e). The site is also prone to breaking and glitching during updates. It had no PM system that wasn't more or less a rudimentary back and forth via the inbox. The current PM system launched by "spreading" from user to user instead of a blanket update (like a normal website). It had such absurdly low limits on the number of PMs per day and per hour it might have as well been completely useless. Blacklisting, a feature requested from the start, was only added in the latter half of 2018.

TL;DR: Tumblr's combination of community demographics, user behaviors, and general mismanagement make it virtually impossible to turn into a massively marketable site in the eyes of advertisers. Part of Tumblr's appeal may even lie in the fact that it is a social media site completely incomprehensible to most standard social media monetization procedures.

Current Mood: jubilant
Current Music: "Anthem" -Leonard Cohen

Figure I better use this page for something else and won't put it out into the wilds of the Tumblr tags, but here's games I played 2018-Present that I played and a really brief review of each. Reviews will be their own posts. None of this list is ranked.

Online Multiplayer:

Lord of the Rings Online
Elder Scrolls Online
Guild Wars 2
Destiny 2

Single Player:

Night in the Woods
GRIS
Hyperlight Drifter
Dark Souls III
Okami
Wandersong
Unavowed
Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire
Firewatch
Breath of the Wild
Voez
Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom
What Remains of Edith Finch
Hiveswap: Act I
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Transistor
Divinity Original Sin II
Cultist Simulator
My Time at Portia
Stardew Valley
Fallout: New Vegas
Submerged
Ori and the Blind Forest
Darkwoods
Oxenfree
Borderlands 2
Subnautica
Rauken
Finding Paradise
Tacoma
Tales from the Borderlands

Current Mood: contemplative

Your rainbow is intensely shaded blue, white, and indigo.

What is says about you: You are a proud person. You appreciate quiet moments. People depend on you to make them feel secure. You share hobbies with friends and like trying to fit into their routines.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

Ok look I love RPGs and old school isometric CRPGS. I love that the genre's got a resurgence, but there's one cRPG that came out last year that I just can't get into and it's Divinity: Original Sin II. I've got more than 8 hours logged into it and mechanically, it clicks and it's fun- but I really, really just can't get into the core of the RPG, which is the story.

It's just... grimdark with the stakes being the fate of the entire world almost right off the bat. Of course the monolithic organized religion is corrupt and unethical with basements full of torture chambers and unethical experiments. Of course the gods aren't actually gods. Of course most of your party is a group of morally ambiguous people with dark secrets in their past. You've seen this all before across mediums in the fantasy genre. It's not really bringing anything new to the table really. It's not a world which asks you to empathize with the setting or the characters, despite the horrors you witness or the people you talk to.

Current Mood: blah

First interaction with fandom was in 2005-2008-ish. Sometime between when Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Fanfiction.net turned up as a link while googling Tolkien stuff.
Might have been a link to a fanfic in a comment on DeviantArt on a piece by Jenny Dolfen
Mostly read Tolkien Fanfic.
Also was publishing original fiction on Google+ and sort of interacting with the mainstream "geek" and "nerdy" culture
Joined Tumblr in June 2012
primarily involved in the "main" fandoms: Marvel, Sherlock, and definitely Tolkien
Also was publishing original fiction on Google+, ostensibly created a Tumblr to apparently get a wider audience.
Joined AO3 in... 2014 (??), it was the year Words of Radiance came out
Withdrew from other fandoms, except for Tolkien, as GamerGate broke out. Tumblr blog became primarily aesthetic blog

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Paladin/Ranger (1st/1st Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-9

Dexterity-13

Constitution-10

Intelligence-15

Wisdom-12

Charisma-11

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Paladins take their adventures seriously, and even a mundane mission is, in the heart of the paladin, a personal test an opportunity to demonstrate bravery, to learn tactics, and to find ways to do good. Divine power protects these warriors of virtue, warding off harm, protecting from disease, healing, and guarding against fear. The paladin can also direct this power to help others, healing wounds or curing diseases, and also use it to destroy evil. Experienced paladins can smite evil foes and turn away undead. A paladin's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast. Many of the paladin's special abilities also benefit from a high Charisma score.

Secondary Class:
Rangers are skilled stalkers and hunters who make their home in the woods. Their martial skill is nearly the equal of the fighter, but they lack the latter's dedication to the craft of fighting. Instead, the ranger focuses his skills and training on a specific enemy a type of creature he bears a vengeful grudge against and hunts above all others. Rangers often accept the role of protector, aiding those who live in or travel through the woods. His skills allow him to move quietly and stick to the shadows, especially in natural settings, and he also has special knowledge of certain types of creatures. Finally, an experienced ranger has such a tie to nature that he can actually draw on natural power to cast divine spells, much as a druid does, and like a druid he is often accompanied by animal companions. A ranger's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Lord of the Rings Online + Regions:

Angmar
~~~~~~~~~

“Angmar is known as the cold and evil lands, north of the Ettenmoors and far to the northeast of the North Downs. They are most known as the heartland for the Kingdom of Angmar, which was ruled by the Witch King from 1300 TA - 1975 TA, until it was destroyed.”

Lord of the Rings Online + Non-Player Characters:

Gothmog

~~~~~~~~~

”Many days have passed since I last saw you. Many leagues have you travelled.Once I was Mordirith, Steward of Angmar, but I was undone by trickery. The Dark Lord has given me a new form… a stronger form…I am Gothmog, the Dread Terror, and Minas Tirith shall crumble before me!”

Current Mood: creative

If you're in the Marvel fandom on Tumblr, you've probably seen all kinds of fanwank about Marvel casting Tilda Swinton, a white woman, to play the Ancient One, a Tibetan who is the most powerful sorcerer on Earth. Yes, it is a horrible, horrible casting decision and quite possibly racist, but it is an example of Marvel covering their metaphorical asses.

Right now, the biggest market for movies isn't necessarily the United States. For example, the film Warcraft which only made $47.2 million in the United States and $433 million outside the US (source). Yet another example is Marvel's own film, Age of Ultron, which made $459 million in the United States and $946 million dollars outside the US (source). In the case of Warcraft, the foreign market made about nine times the domestic box office and in the case of Age of Ultron, a little over twice as much. While the site does not disclose precisely which countries made which percentage of the foreign box office earnings, it is worth noting that China has become a very large and profitable market for filmakers.

China is not the US in any sense of that word, particularly when it comes to the film industry. It still has a film censorship board which determines which films can and cannot be shown in the country. For example, the recent Ghostbusters reboot was banned in China for depicting the supernatural and paranormal (sources: 1, 2). The film Seven Years in Tibet which tells the story of a group of Germans who lived in the nation during the Chinese takeover is likewise banned (sources: 1, 2) as China refuses to acknowledge Tibetan sovereignty and censors any and all discussion of the subject within Chinese borders and approved sites. Remember the Free Tibet movement a few years ago?

This brings us back to Doctor Strange and The Strange Case of the White Ancient One. Marvel or more precisely its studio executives want to continue releasing films in China and in order for a film to release in China, the need to avoid any sort of controversy with the Chinese censors. If Marvel cast the Ancient One as a Tibetan, the film would be unlikely to fit the strange standards for the Chinese screening process and thus deprive Marvel and by extension, Disney all the potential box office takings.

TL;DR: The Ancient one is White because Marvel Studios wants to avoid controversy in a lucrative overseas market.

Note: I personally dislike the casting as it makes zero sense for the setting unless the Ancient One appears to people in a form they think fits someone with the title (e.g. Someone who expects a Tibetan mystic will see a Tibetan mystic. Doctor Strange sees a white person because that's what he expects). It is in fact more than a little racist, but YMMV and it's a little too soon to be passing out judgement on a film that hasn't even been released yet.

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Connect ~Claris

Lord of the Rings Online + Non-Player Characters:

Eärnur’s Knights: Orolang, Macilnis, Silmahtar, and Calatúr
~~~~~~~~~
"These names are not familiar to me, but I do have a dim recollection that a man named Orolang may have commited some heroic deed at the Battle of Fornost. It is the barest hint of a memory, but I have not even that for these others. Macilnis is a common name among the women of Gondor; none of the histories I have seen include any women in the retinue of Eärnur's knights. Some of Eärnur's knights have returned to trouble Middle-earth as Cargûl, but the power he wielded as Mordirith seems more deadly than theirs."

Current Mood: artistic

This is the side blog for my Tumblr, a move spurred by Tumblr's frankly terrible move of putting ads on people's personal blogs and making it an opt out rather than opt in service. This is the blog made out of pure annoyance and the frankly appalling task of looking for meta and fanfic on Tumblr.

I like it here so far, to be honest.