My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
​

• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
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• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
​

• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
​

• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
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• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.

As discussed in the first post, this is my ongoing compilation of the remaining questions Christopher has answered online between August 1st 2023 and April 30th 2024 which I've not already covered in other compilations.
As always, questions are sorted by topic, and each Q&A is annotated with a bracketed source number. Links to every source used and to the other parts of this compilation will be provided in a comment below.
The previous post focused specifically on inspirations and other media. This installment will focus on Worldbuilding and Touring, how Christopher constructs his worlds, and how he goes about promoting them on tours. The topics aren't actually linked, but they both fill up around half a post and so are being joined here. The next and final post will focus on miscellaneous questions about the real world.

Worldbuilding

Creating Magic Systems

Did you have a research process when you were writing the Inheritance Cycle? I put a fair bit of thought into the story itself of the Inheritance Cycle, and then some general stuff as to the society and just kind of where things were in the world before writing it. I put a medium amount of thought into the magic system before I started writing, and then as I wrote the implications of it became much more apparent to me, and I really sort of dove deep into it. In retrospect, were I to create a fantasy world from scratch now, I would really put a lot of attention into that magic system and the society beforehand, just to have a good feel for that before I even start chapter one. I would put more restrictions on the magic too. I think the more restrictions, the more interesting, even the more realistic in some ways. [3]
If I were designing a magic system from scratch nowadays I would put way more restrictions on it because I find that the limitations are useful, I don't want the characters getting overpowered, but also just from a storytelling standpoint, incantations, rituals, spells, prayers, potions, all of those mechanical things are just kind of interesting and of course they give lots of opportunities for things to go wrong if you don't follow the correct steps. So I think if I were designing magic from scratch right now I'd put a lot of restrictions and rituals associated with it. So costs, more costs. [25]
What kind of hacks do you have to developing a magic system? Once I have a general idea of the setting, whether science fiction or fantasy, the first question I ask myself is how does it diverge from physics as we know it? Because that is a fundamental question that's going to determine what is possible in this world. It might determine what's possible with warfare, with politics, with industry, manufacturing, travel times, it could affect everything depending on what type of divergence you have. In the World of Eragon, the divergence is that living creatures have the ability to directly manipulate energy using their minds. The reason for that is kind of handwavy, although I have an explanation for it, but that is the divergence and then I tried to be as consistent and physically possible with it at every step of the way past that. When people play games you always get people who are looking how to exploit it. "What's the most I can get out of this game? What's the most I can do?" That's basic human nature. Science is a speedrunning nature I think. So the same sort of thing. You assume that if magic existed there's going to be someone sitting in their basement who's absolutely obsessive about it and is going to figure out every single advantage that that divergence gives them. And you have to be realistic and work that into your world and say "Well people aren't stupid. They are going to figure this out and use it in this way, and what are the implications, socially, physically, and everything else?" Once I have that then you can think about society and culture and everything else, but that basic physical difference from our reality is just to me fundamentally important to understand before I even begin to write. [25]
With standalones you're not dealing with continuity or what rule did you break or things like that. That's interesting, because I would say that writing a sequel for me is faster than writing a standalone. At least for me, the more I know the characters and the world, the faster, like I don't have to do the groundwork of creating a magic system, creating a society, creating the gods and the history. All that's done for me, so I can just slip into it like slipping on an old glove. [33]

Creating Religions

A socio-political religion in your world helps drive characters or stories or die-hard fanatic characters forward. How do you go about developing those? Have the courage to let your characters actually believe the things that they are supposed to believe. If you look back historically people really did truly believe these different religions and different systems. Too often I think with modern stories we have people only giving lip service to the supposed belief and instead having very modern attitudes toward it which perhaps doesn't always work. That's understandable if you want a character to be relatable to a modern reader, but there are so many examples of interesting belief systems throughout the world. To me that's something fascinating to write about. But the main thing is just accept that when people truly believe something they're genuine about it and then you can follow that from a logical and storytelling standpoint. What I'd also say is, if you're writing about something that is very different from your own belief system, assuming it's not like completely evil, to try to approach it with a sense of charity. With the understanding that everyone is searching for meaning and understanding. I've always had a soft spot for the old television show Babylon 5, because although I don't believe that the creator J. Michael Straczynski is religious, he writes all of his characters with great sympathy and understanding, he's never cynical about it, and he's not putting up straw man arguments or criticizing any of the characters. He's like "They're searching for meaning. They're struggling with the great questions as we all do, and each one is trying to solve those questions in their own way." And I always really appreciated that he wasn't being cynical about it or really shallow. [25]

Creating Languages

Did you think of the ancient language, not just as a mechanic, but also as a parable of our own language? I was thinking about how language itself feels like magic to me. You can write a story, you can convey information. Language in many ways is our greatest tool and makes us human along with, I would argue, our hands, our ability to manipulate objects and use actual tools. But one without the other wouldn't really work and wouldn't allow us to be a technological species. We could have language with no ability to handle tools, and then we wouldn't be what we are now. But I find language fascinating and I find the function of language incredibly interesting. And there is this idea in the real world going back to the beginning of time, that to name something is to understand it, and gives you a certain amount of power over it, whether that's a person or a physical object. And the ancient language is just taking that idea seriously. And I'm not the first author or tradition to do that, but is it a parallel? Is it a metaphor? I don't know if I'd go that far, but it definitely ties into the use of language and my ideas about it. What's crazy to me is there is a theoretical arrangement of words right now that would give us a massive breakthrough in science and physics. There's a theoretical arrangement of words that were I to write it or anyone else would influence how people think about the next presidential election to such a degree that it might actually changed the election. These are all theoretically possible and you can think of many many other things that you could do with language. We just lack the knowledge of what those arrangement of words are, and so we're constantly clawing our way toward new knowledge and new uses of language. [19]
The languages that you were playing around with in The Inheritance cycle, they were Germanic, Anglo Saxon based? The ancient language, the magical language, is based very strongly on Old Norse, which of course is Germanic or related to Old High German. The Dwarven language was invented pretty much from scratch although it is an agglutinative language like German is. And then the other languages have not appeared very much in the series. They're just little scraps here and there. To be clear, I am not a linguist, and I have not devoted the time and energy to developing these in a formal or rigorous way, the way that Tolkien did. Tolken was a linguist and that was his forte. I got far enough down that path while working on the Inheritance Cycle that I really began to appreciate how every word has a history and that history is inexorably tied to the history of the land. It's often said that Tolkien created Middle-earth just to explain his languages, as a setting for the languages. Which isn't entirely true, but there is truth to that. That's what I was encountering and I was realizing that I could spend 20 years, 10 years, just working on the languages and building this out. It might have been a worthwhile venture, but the tradeoff would have been no more books published during that time. I want to tell a story. [28]
What I would do these days, or what I did with other languages, is come up with a couple of words that sort of had a general feel that I liked and then extrapolating from those invented words, figuring out what consonants and vowels and clusters thereof that I wanted. Come up with some more sample words based off that and then start working out some grammar. Grammar is probably my weakest spot since at the time I wasn't really aware of non-English grammar systems and I've put some more attention in that since then. [34]
The language and culture that you describe in the books seem very real. How do you start inventing a language? You shamelessly steal from Germanic mythology and Scandinavian mythology, just like Tolkien did. But I'm no linguist, I did my best, I have a copy of the Nibelungen up on my shelf along with the Eddas, and I based one of my languages on Old Norse, which gave it a nice sound and feel. So the main thing is picking things that make sense for your world and then trying to be internally consistent. [2]

Creating Maps

At what point in your writing process do you start creating the map? I've created the maps at different times in different books. At first I thought I didn't need a map because I thought that a good book should be perfectly understandable without a map. You shouldn't need to rely on anything outside of the text in order to enjoy it. And I still think that's generally true, but a map can add a lot. So for Eragon, I did it partway through the book. If I were to do a stand-alone fantasy novel, I would definitely want to work out the maps and stuff before writing it. [12]
The map for Eragon, the original black and white map, I did about halfway or a third of the way into Eragon. My idea was, and I still kind of believe this, that a well-written book shouldn't need a map in order to understand the story. You should be able to keep your bearings just based off the text. What I ran into though was that I was getting lost in the world myself with the amount of places and things after a certain point. And so I drew a map. [34]
For me I think if you're creating something in the real world obviously that gives you certain constraints and certain advantages but if you're starting with something from scratch, I find creating a map right up front is really helpful because your story is not going to visit every square inch on your map so by filling in those other details on the map you're going to get more story ideas and also ideas for potential conflicts, travel distances. It all feeds into the realism of the story as well as potentially future stories. It's fun stuff. The downside is you could spend your whole life worldbuilding. There's a there's a book from World War Two called Islandia, and the guy just spent his whole life creating this island and its culture to the point of working out the actual layers of geography of stone in the island. I've never actually read the book, I don't know if it's any good, but I know it was fairly popular when it came out. [25]
What hacks do you have for for creating geography and points of interest within your world? When I was creating the map for Alagaësia I actually used a old National Geographic Atlas and traced over various coastlines and then distorted them and pasted on top of each other in order to get sort of a natural feeling coastline. Please don't compare the island of Vroengard to the outline of Greece. Please don't do that. And then you have Robin Hobb who just turned Alaska upside down for her map which I always love because I've lived in Alaska twice. I think she told me that she never actually expected the book to get published, but then she got stuck with that because everything was tied to the geography that she started with. [25]
I think that a good map ought to have lots of points of interest, and the tricky bit is, without getting so detailed that it becomes cluttered. You see that sometimes with real world maps, like atlases and stuff, where there's a ton of place names, city names, river names, road names. All of which are useful and necessary, but it can actually visually get in the way of the art, perhaps the artistic effect that you would want a fantasy map to have in a book or a movie or even a game. [12]
There are world generators that you can just click through. It's really easy nowadays with technology to build worlds just by snapping your fingers. Even with those tools, if you have the time and inclination, I think there is some benefit to redrawing or painting the maps in your own style. I don't know about you, I love seeing when the maps are from the author themselves. I remember Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams. Tad did all the maps himself, and I love that. Even if it's imperfect or a little amateurish it just gives it a really nice feel. I love Tolkien's original art for the same reason. [25]

Creating Dragons

You are the creator of your own world. Do you feel that you have follow certain canons of fantasy worlds, for example, dragons have four legs and wyverns have two? Or do you feel that you can practically do whatever you want because it's fantasy and you create everything? Yes and no. No because I have already established rules and traditions and precedence in The World of Eragon, so I have to be consistent with that. But if I were writing a new fantasy, I would not feel beholden to any tradition. If I wanted to write a world where the dragons have three legs or feathers or something like that then I would feel free to do that. That's the great thing about speculative fiction is it gives you the freedom to write and create whatever you want to. The thing is when you have a genre where anything is possible it actually reveals the limitations of your imagination. And there are very few authors, myself included, who really make full use of that. But at the same time, limitations can make your fiction more interesting. I think it's important to pick some limitations and that will help actually improve the quality of your work. [7]
Why did you decide to have your dragons have a saddle? I was around horses growing up. And the thought of actually physically being on a creature with very hard scales was rather terrifying if thought about in a practical sense. And so it just seemed to me that there had to be some protection. [33]
When you're writing fantasy and you include dragons, especially a dragon rider fantasy, depending on how many there are there, it's actually quite a difficult thing to not solve all your problems with dragons. I think the solution to that is you focus on the problems that dragons present, which balances out the advantages. And of course people are smart, whether we're talking about humans or elves or dwarves or any other invented species. If dragons were real, you'd come up with counters to them, whether it's a bunch of giant ballistae on your walls, or building domed fortresses, or building underground. You would come up with solutions and it would negate those advantages. And that's always my issue with writing fiction with dragons in the real world. If it's a slightly more modern, then you have to ask, well, why isn't everything different in history? Like if dragons were a constant part of our world, architecture would be different, warfare would be different, politics would be different. Well, no, politics would be the same. What am I saying? [30]
I'm sure all of us have seen the fantasy paintings of like a knight in armor with a lance on a horse facing off against a dragon. Now, to be fair, a lance moving at a decent speed at a horse galloping will have enough kinetic energy behind it to punch through just about anything. It could do a lot of damage. But any decent sized dragon would move so fast and be so strong, you wouldn't have a chance with a lance. You'd need a giant crossbow. That'd be your only choice. The size of a dragon, intelligence of a dragon. Until you get to projectile weapons, you have no chance. [30]
We all know what any creature gets when they bond with a dragon. They get a dragon. But why would a dragon create that bond? Why would they do it? Is it the bond, is it their nature? I think for me, having other species bond with the dragons was essentially a way to keep the dragons from getting wiped out. Because dragons are such a huge threat. If you imagine in the real world, we don't suffer giant predators to be constantly predating and disrupting our world. We remove that threat. Especially if there's magic involved, the ability to remove that threat gets even bigger. So in a way I viewed the bond between rider and dragon as essentially self preservation for the dragons, if not the other species as well. Without some sort of symbiotic relationship, coexistence becomes very, very difficult. That, or the dragons have to be smart enough to just essentially remove themselves from the world and live off in the far off places. But that gets really difficult when you start considering how much they need to eat. I remember reading the Live Ship Trader series and I remember the end of that spoiler alert where it's become clear that true dragons have returned now. And it really was kind of an oh crap moment because you start thinking about what that actually means for there to be dragons in the world again. It's kind of like Reign of Fire. [30]

Promoting The Books

Touring Hazards

How did you do on your book tour? It was a lot. It was a lot. I did 50 days of touring last year between Fractal Noise and Murtagh. Obviously the majority of that was for Murtagh. And of course I had a couple other trips in there as well. I went to New York Comic Con. I had one or two personal trips. So there was a lot of travel last year. My goal is to not have as much travel this year. In general, the book tours were awesome, great crowds for the Fractalverse, enormous crowds for World of Eragon/Murtagh. I don't normally talk about this stuff, but since we're past it, it doesn't matter. I started touring for Murtagh November 6th and then got home for good on December 16th. But there's always a risk of getting sick while you're traveling. And I did pretty well in the US leg of things. And then over in Europe between the jet lag and not sleeping- I had a really amazing dinner, one of my publishers took me out to a three star Michelin restaurant. The problem was the dinner started at 8pm and didn't finish till midnight. And there were two or three desserts, and the last dessert was full of coffee, and I didn't realize it. Absolutely full of coffee. And I did not get to sleep until like four in the morning. And I only had three hours of sleep that night. So I think I got sick the day after as a result. I got so sick on the European tour that at one of my stops I had to call paramedics to my hotel room at 2 a.m. because I couldn't breathe. Ended up with bronchitis for the first time in my life. But I'll have you know, I did every event. I didn't miss a single event. I managed to do all my presentations and made it through in one piece. I've never, never backed down from doing an event, even while bleeding. Can you tell us a little bit about the time that you were bleeding in an event? Well, I was in Europe. I was touring for Inheritance, I'd already toured North America, and then I started in Europe, went to UK, and then I went to Australia and New Zealand. But first country was Germany, and I think I did Munich and Cologne, and then I ended in Berlin. And in Berlin, they had me in this wonderful theater that's like over 100 years old, which is very rare in the city, considering all the bombing during the war. And I'm backstage, which meant down in the basement of this theater. And there's like 500 people out waiting for me to make an appearance and there's someone introducing me and they say my name and everyone starts clapping. And of course you want to get on stage before the applause dies down. And the way you got onto stage in this theater was through a set of stairs. And it really wasn't even steps. It was almost like a ladder and it was wood. And the steps were so old that they were basically hollowed out from all the people that have gone up and down it over the years. So I'm scrambling up this and about halfway up, my right foot slipped off the edge of one of the steps because it was hollowed out and full speed, full strength, full weight, I slammed my shin into the edge of one of the steps, stumbled forward two more steps and did it a second time. But momentum, adrenaline, I keep going, I get up on stage, I waved to everyone. And fortunately for me, because I was speaking to a foreign audience, they had me sitting at a table with a translator and a presenter. So I got to sit down and the table kind of hit everything from view. And I start the presentation, start the event. And after about, I don't know, five minutes, I'm thinking to myself, okay, I've banged my shin before. We've all banged our shins before, but this really bleepin' hurt. So I looked under the table and the whole front of my jean leg on my shin is soaked with blood. There is blood dripping onto the floor and my sock is soaked with blood. So I poked my translator, the presenter next to me that I was doing a couple of events with, and I said, "Hey, look at this". And he glances under and his face just goes white. And I'm colorblind and I saw his face go white. And he said, "Do we need to call an ambulance?" And I'm like, "No, no, we're going to do this." So I did an hour-long presentation. And then I got up and managed to quickly limp over to a signing table. And no one really noticed that I wasn't feeling so hot. And I got behind the signing table, and I signed books for 400 or 500 people. And the funny thing is, I was traveling with this foreign rights agent publicist for Random House named Jocelyn, who was just an absolute beast of a woman. I love her to death. You have to understand, she did a European book tour with me while eight months pregnant. The woman was and is just very impressive. But she grew up on a farm. German family in the US, grew up on a farm. So I showed her my leg when I was sitting down to sign and she just looked at me and she said, "You need to go to the hospital?" I said, "Nope". She said, "I knew you were country. Good man." Slapped me on the back. So I finished signing and then I went back to the hotel and I had to get into a tub of water to soak my jeans off because the blood had dried and glued them to my shin. And the problem was I had a dent all the way down to the bone. And I really should have gone to a hospital because, sorry for the gory details, but what happens is when you get a dent like that, you lose the fat under the skin between the skin and the bone and it doesn't come back unless you get an injection to help it puff out and heal. And I didn't do that because I was on tour, there was no time. So the next day I had to fly to pretty sure it was Barcelona for the St. George Book Festival, which is a walking festival. So you have to walk from bookstore to bookstore in the city and do signings. But that was a bit rough. That actually took over a year to heal properly. I still have that dent. Stuff happens. I've heard some crazy stories with other authors. I'd rather it's my blood, not the fan's blood. [32]

Touring Difficulties

We've got blood and sweat, any tears from tour? On occasion. The biggest one is just being away from home. And if anything is a bit off for whatever reason, you can't just pop home and hold someone or do this or do that. It's just difficult to be that far away from home for so long. [32]
If you're not familiar with book tours, the way it often works is that you fly to a city, you get to your hotel room, you have a little bit of time to freshen up, maybe get some food and then you go to the bookstore and you do your event. And it has to be after people get off from work, so it tends to be a later evening event. If you have a large number of people show up, that means that that time spent talking and signing pushes fairly late in the evening. You go back, you get dinner, and if you're a semi-introvert like so many authors tend to be, you need some time to decompress, which means you probably stay up a little too late reading or writing. And then in the morning, you got to go get another airplane flight and go to the new city. All of which is fine, but going to the airport, doing those flights, with the time it takes to go through an airport these days, it means that the schedule has very little time in it. When I toured for Fractal Noise, the publisher one of the days had me fly from Tampa to Portland and I still had to do an event that day. Which I agreed to. It was my own fault because they had everything on the East Coast and I said, "Well, what about the West Coast? You know, I have readers on the West Coast. They need to get a chance to get a signed book." It was my own fault. But that can get rough when you're doing it for weeks on end at a certain point. You just can't recover. A day off? What's that? But it's a good problem to have. That people want to see you and want to read your books. It's an awesome career to have. [1]
I'm also a big fan of coffee naps. So I will drink a cup of coffee, usually my second cup of coffee, and then I'll go take a nap, and I will nap for about 30 minutes, because after 30 minutes the coffee wakes me up. And I find that 15 to 30 minutes is the perfect length of a nap for me, and if I go past that, I need to sleep for about three hours, because otherwise I get into the middle of a REM cycle, and if I wake up in the middle of a REM cycle, I'm just like groggy and drugged, and I feel worse than if I hadn't napped at all. And then of course, if you're on book tour, the way I have been for a while, you gain the ability to just close your eyes at any point and take a 10 minute nap 15 minute nap anywhere, and it at least helps you stay upright. [19]

Meeting Fans around the World

You just got back from the U.S. leg of your book tour — who’s making up the crowd? The readership is broad and probably older than it was back in the day. There are still a lot of 8-year-olds, but now there are grandparents, too. I’ve even met some kids who’ve been named after the characters, which is pretty amazing. Because people have been reading the series for so long, I tend to get a mix of incredibly detailed, hyper-focused, deep-dive questions about some of the lore, but also some more general ones about Eragon’s name. [16]
I'm sure you hear personal stories all the time especially at your readings and your your appearances. It must be lovely, and I guess overwhelming to connect with your fans. That's a good way of putting it: lovely and overwhelming. Everyone has their own personal history with these books. I have people showing up who named their children after the characters, or who've gotten tattoos. Oh my goodness, what's the one you get? Multiple Saphiras, Aryas, Rorans, a couple of Eragons. As a writer, you want people to read your stories, enjoy them, be affected by them. If they're affected so strongly they name their children after your characters, you feel pretty good about it. [28]
Are your European fans different from your American fans? I actually haven't met any children here who are named after characters from my books. That seems to be an American phenomenon. The language barrier sometimes makes it a little more difficult to talk to European fans. But the love for Eragon is just as strong in Europe as it is in the US. This is not your first time on tour in Europe. Is there something you're missing here? I actually noticed that hotels in Europe usually don't have ironing boards or irons. This is standard equipment in America. [24]
My great-grandmother was from Sicily and then my grandfather was from Bologna. I just found out recently that my grandfather as a child was tutored by Fellini's wife. [7]
My grandfather was the stereotype of an elderly Italian gentleman. He had a mustache, he cooked spaghetti and he made the most amazing red sauce for the spaghetti. He used too much profanity. He was quite the character. [35]
Amsterdam is a beautiful city, but if I had grown up here I would probably still have written fantasy, but it would probably have influenced the type of fantasy I write. [23]
I was just in Stockholm on book tour for my latest book. And I've sold a really large number of books, proportionally in Sweden, and I'd never been there before. And I was kind of curious what their thoughts and feelings were on it, given the fact that I have shamelessly pillaged, Anglo-Saxon Scandinavian mythology for my own work. And they said native Swedish authors don't write using their own mythology, they go into the more literary veins and they import and translate other authors who are writing about Scandinavian mythology and they enjoy it immensely, but it doesn't seem to be a homegrown thing for them, which is rather odd, I think. [30]
Old Norse is not so far from German, do you speak a little bit of German? I understand a fair bit. When I've done presentations in Germany, I've had children ask me questions in German, and I can sometimes understand the entire question without translation, but I only speak a few words. [Host 2]: Let's try it. Can you ask the next question in German? Of course. Oh dear. [speaking quickly] Herr Paolini, wie viel von ihrer Vision für die ganze Serie hat sich mit der Zeit verändert? Hat es sich überhaupt verändert? Denn wenn man sich die frühen Werke anguckt, erkennt man, dass sehr viele Sachen aus den frühen Werken in den späteren wieder auftauchen. So dass es eigentlich unmöglich sein kann, dass sie das nicht von Anfang an komplett geplant haben? Translation please. That was not fair. But funny. Yeah, I was just asking, when you started writing the book, and it became not just one book, it became a whole world, it became a series, and I don't want to spoil anything, but if you read the first books and you read the later books, stuff comes up again, and it seems like you actually knew where it was going when you started writing, which is again insane because you were 15. Is that something you just got lucky, or did you really plan for a whole series when you started writing the first one? I planned because I tried writing some stories before Eragon, and I never got past the first five or ten pages because I didn't have a story. I would only have an inciting incident, like a young man finds a dragon egg in the forest. Well, fun, awesome, but that's not a story. So Eragon and the series as it was, was a writing exercise for myself to see if I could outline, plot, and then write at least the first book of a series. So yes, if you read the first book, Eragon, there's actually a scene, a dream sequence in the first book. And it is the very last scene of the last book. And I did that specifically so that I could point to it and say to my readers, "See, I knew what I was doing." But of course, it isn't the last book now. [2]
Before he finished signing them all he asked if I read Fractal Noise, I said yes. He then asked how I liked it. I said I liked To Sleep far more. And to be fair I did. But I could've been a little more less brunt about it. All in all I'm sorry Paolini. I hope you see this. Dude -- No need to apologize! I was the one who put you on the spot. I was just curious about Fractal Noise as it's pretty different from what I normally write. That said, I'm a big boy, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest if someone prefers one book over another. [R]
Have you been on TikTok? How do you find it? I have an account that my assistants post content on for me because I don't have the time and I don't want it on my phone, but it has been a really useful way to connect with readers, and I had a lot of people who came up during my book tour end of last year, who said that they found out about the events I was doing from the posts on TikTok. [33]
Outside of the tour, did you do anything to personally celebrate the release of Murtagh? No. Not to sound blase, but this isn't my first book I've released. Going on the tour is the celebration. Getting to meet the fans. It's an enormous expenditure of energy, time, effort, and it's very joyous and touching and meaningful for me. And I think for a lot of the readers. So that's the celebration. My team and I, we all kind of take a moment to pat ourselves on the back every time a book comes out and then it's back to the grind a bit. Also, I got to celebrate my 40th birthday while on book tour, and I got to celebrate it with my editor, my publicist, my former publicist who's been with me since the beginning. So that was really nice. [32]

Appearance

Being an author is like the best kind of semi-celebrity, because nine times out of ten, no one knows who you are, you can live a nice quiet life, and then you get to go out and meet people who like your work. And that's a real treat. I grew the beard partly to keep people from recognizing me. But then I've had it for so long that it doesn't work anymore. And I got tired of shaving. But the problem is the beard takes so much time and effort to take care of it, it doesn't save me any time. [1]
Did your hat end up getting fixed post-tour? Yup. Fixed it myself with a rivet. [T]
Any advice on how to wear a pirate's hat without it being weird? It's very simple. There's one ingredient. You wear it with confidence. That's all. [36]

Signing Books

People people don't maybe don't realize what an endurance race it is, especially when when books are this big and successful. Like the amount. I once did 9,280 books in an afternoon and a half at a warehouse. I had nine people helping. I stood. I find that if I stand, I don't use my wrist. I can isolate the arm. And I just had someone shove it under me, someone pull it out for me, and everyone else was boxing, unboxing and flapping. But it hurt. It really hurt. I dropped my first name this past year. For the first time in a 20 year career, I finally dropped my first name. Did you feel defeated? Yes. But I have kids now and I just could not afford the time and the strain on my body. I actually got two typewriters. I got really bad inflammation in my right thumb from all the signing and I find that typewriters alleviated that. Also heavier like mechanical keyboards seem to help. So I know like Robin Hobb has suffered some severe problems with her hands with the amount of typing she's done over the years. So yeah, it is an occupational hazard. [33]
I have to say, signing 30,000 sheets is SIGNIFICANTLY harder than mining or placing 30k blocks in #Minecraft. Lol. [T]
Do you have a PO Box or something? I’d pay shipping both ways to have you sign my books. P.O. box is listed on paolini.net. Just include return shipping, please. :D Alternatively, you can arrange signed copies through Conley's Books & Music in Livingston, MT. [R]
If I send a book to a P.O. Box and pay for shipping there and back, would you sign it? Yup. Address is on paolini.net [T]

I was thinking about a potential CHERUB TV Series and how it would be structured. I believe the best way to do it would be 2 books per season. This would mean that the original 12 book would cover 6 seasons. I also decided to include Dante Scots origin story as a series of post credit scenes between seasons 2-5, rather than just introducing a brand new character at the start of season 6.
I've done an outline for what the 1st 2 seasons would look like, might do the rest later if I have time.
Season 1: The Recruit + Class A Episode 1: The Recruit: Chapter 1-11. Basic Plot Points: James mum dies, goes to the childrens home and meets Kyle. Gets caught trying to steal beer. Wakes up at CERUB and completes the recruitment tests. The Episode ends with James and Kyle leaving the childrens home.
Episode 2: The Recruit: Chapter 12-18. Basic Plot Points: James learning to swim and running laps to increase his fitness. Getting drunk at Amys birthday. Goes into town with Kyle and Bruce to meet Lauren. Gets caught participating in a mission he shouldn't have. Starts basic training. Episode ends with James and Kerry sharing dinner at the end of the 1st day of basic training.
Episode 3: The Recruit Chapter 19-27 Basic Plot Points: Basic Training, Large punishing James and Kerry at Christmas. Trekking through Malaysia to complete basic training. James reuniting with Lauren. James getting into the routine of life at CHERUB. Episode ends with James, Kyle and the rest of the gang going out to the cinema.
Episode 4: The Recruit: Chapter 28-Chapter 34 (Could probably include Kerry's 1st mission aswell Basic Plot Points: Its 2 months later and James is unhappy that he hasn't had gone on a mission yet. Amy gives him his briefing for his 1st mission. James meeting Ewart and going to Fort Harmony with Ewart and Amy. James gets in to a fight at school and meets Joanna.
Episode 5: The Recruit: Chapter 35-41 Basic Plot Points: James might have Anthrax. Everyone getting kicked out of Fort Harmony. Saying good by to Joanna. James talking to Mack and being unsure if he did the right thing. Difference from the book, James does not get his Navy shirt here, he will get it later on. End with the characters being excited about going to the summer hostel
Episode 6: Class A: Chapter 1- 7 Basic Plot Points: Mission at the summer hostel. Kerry and Bruce get into a fight and they all get sent back to CHERUB and get punished. Lauren being worried about basic training. Difference from the book rather than James getting Kyle to get Nicole on the mission because she's hot. Have James ask Kyle to get Kerry on the mission, when Kyle asks why have james admit to him that he has a crush on her. Have the episode end with everyone moving to Luton.
Episode 7: Class A: Chapter 8-14 Basic Plot Points: First Day at new school, befriending Junior and shoplifting. James joining the boxing club and starts dealing. Lauren's Birthday. Breaking in to Thunderfoods warehouse. Episode ends with Lauren leaving to start basic training
Episode 8: Class A: Chapter 15-20 Basic Plot Points: James and Kerry being robbed. Stealing Crazy Joe's car. James Birthday. Nicole and Junior doing drugs. Ends with Nicole going to hospital.
Episode 9: Class A: Chapter 21-24 Basic Plot Points: Mr Singh being arrested. James being drug tested. Nicole being kicked out. Computer training with Amy.
Episode 10: Class A: Chapter 25-32 Basic Plot Points: episode starts with Lauren tell James about hitting Mr Large with the Shovel. Lauren being punish by MAC. James tells Kerry he likes her. James going to Florida with Keith and Junior. Getting Attacked by the Lambayeke Cartel. James killing the cartel member. Keith Moore gets arrested. Change from book, James gets his navy shirt.
Season 2: Maximum Security & The Killing
Episode 1: Maximum Security: Chapter 1-8 Basic Plot Points: Lauren completing basic training. James Kyle and the gang get into trouble at the bowling ally. James get the mission briefing. Episode ends with James telling Lauren About the mission.
Episode 2: Maximum Security: Chapter 9-16 Basic Plot Points: going to America, James crashing the car. James and Dave getting sentanced, then going to prison. James nearly getting killed because Dave fell asleep. Episode ends with Dave getting thrown in the hole.
Episode 3: Maximum Security: Chapter 17-22 Basic Plot Points: James get protection from Elwood and befriends curtis. James tells curtis about the escape plan. Episode ends with James and curtis getting out of prison.
Episode 4: Maximum Security: Chapter 23-25 Basic Plot Point: Lauren picking up James and curtis. Confrontation with the cops. Getting Paula to drive them to California. Episode ends with Curtis telling them he's going to contact his dad.
Episode 5: Maximum Security: Chapter 26-33 Main Plot Points: Getting picked up in the limo. Getting taken to the country. Lauren getting the tracking devices. James and Becky. Eugene tries to kill Lauren. Jane and Curtis get caught. Heading back to campus. Reuniting with Kerry.
Episode 6: The Killing: Chapter 1-9 Basic Plot Points: James and Shak mission at the school. Training mission with the eggs. Mr Large bullying Lauren. Breaking up with Kerry. Episode ends with James being punished for beating up Andy.
Episode 7: The Killing: Chapter 10-18 (Episode could start with the books prologue) Basic Plot Points: James completing his punishments. James and Dave going on the mission. James getting into a fight with the thugs. James getting arrested, then bailed out by John. Befriending Leon Tarasov.
Episode 8: The Killing: Chapter 19-24 Basic Plot Points: James and Dave working for Tasarov. James working on his assignments. James and Hannah. Hannah giving James the computer. James and Dave finding the bag in the back of the computer. Episode ends with Dave and James and Dave checking what's on the CD.
Episode 9: The Killing: Chapter 25-28 Basic Plot Points: Hannah telling James about Will's death, James telling Dave what he's learned. Lauren and Kerry breaking into Patels house. Episode ends with everyone meeting up with John at the hotel to go over everything and discuss plans.
Episode 10: The Killing: Chapter 29-36 Basic Plot Points: Setting up surveillance. James kissing Kerry. Waiting in the surveillance van. Breaking into the patels house. Patrl and Taserov fighting. Patel gets arrested. James heads back to CHERUB and texts Kerry.
Post Credits Scene: Brigandes MC Chapter 1-2 Basic Plot Points: Dante beats up Joe at the club house. The Furher tries to get Scotty to sell the clubhouse. Ends with Scotty stabbing Felicity.

Skyrim SSE v1.6.1170 CrashLoggerSSE v1-14-1-0 May 18 2024 23:00:58
Unhandled exception "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION" at 0x7FF7D2444EFE SkyrimSE.exe+0294EFE mov rax, [rax+0x48]
SYSTEM SPECS: OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Home v10.0.22631 CPU: AuthenticAMD AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core Processor GPU #1: Nvidia NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER GPU #2: AMD Raphael GPU #3: Microsoft Basic Render Driver PHYSICAL MEMORY: 14.34 GB/31.15 GB GPU MEMORY: 5.01/14.92 GB Detected Virtual Machine: Microsoft Virtual PC/Hyper-V (100%)
PROBABLE CALL STACK: [ 0] 0x7FF7D2444EFE SkyrimSE.exe+0294EFE -> 18365+0x3E mov rax, [rax+0x48] [ 1] 0x7FF7D24E403B SkyrimSE.exe+033403B -> 21654+0x5B test al, al [ 2] 0x7FF7D2650C9C SkyrimSE.exe+04A0C9C -> 29924+0x6BC test al, al [ 3] 0x7FF7D264FB54 SkyrimSE.exe+049FB54 -> 29895+0xE4 test byte ptr [rsi+0x30], 0x01 [ 4] 0x7FF7D2587ACD SkyrimSE.exe+03D7ACD -> 25160+0x9D test al, al [ 5] 0x7FF7D2584A8B SkyrimSE.exe+03D4A8B -> 25112+0x3B cmp eax, 0x01 [ 6] 0x7FF7D2585187 SkyrimSE.exe+03D5187 -> 25116+0x137 mov ebx, eax [ 7] 0x7FF7D258043B SkyrimSE.exe+03D043B -> 25063+0x160B jmp 0x00007FF7D2580444 [ 8] 0x7FF7D257CDFD SkyrimSE.exe+03CCDFD -> 25048+0x1AD mov ecx, [rax] [ 9] 0x7FF7D26DF53C SkyrimSE.exe+052F53C -> 32430+0xAC test al, al [10] 0x7FF7D26DEB83 SkyrimSE.exe+052EB83 -> 32429+0xC3 mov r14d, eax [11] 0x7FF7D26DE896 SkyrimSE.exe+052E896 -> 32428+0x56 mov esi, eax [12] 0x7FF7D26DE896 SkyrimSE.exe+052E896 -> 32428+0x56 mov esi, eax [13] 0x7FF7D26DC6F1 SkyrimSE.exe+052C6F1 -> 32372+0x2D1 cmp eax, 0x01 [14] 0x7FF7D26E29C0 SkyrimSE.exe+05329C0 -> 32483+0x380 xor sil, sil [15] 0x7FF7D26E2625 SkyrimSE.exe+0532625 -> 32482+0x15 mov rdx, rbx [16] 0x7FF7D2882856 SkyrimSE.exe+06D2856 -> 39060+0x36 nop [17] 0x7FF7D2EA7888 SkyrimSE.exe+0CF7888 -> 69378+0xD8 mov ecx, [rbx+0x0C] [18] 0x7FF7D2EA7E51 SkyrimSE.exe+0CF7E51 -> 69380+0x361 mov r15d, eax [19] 0x7FF7D2EA61DA SkyrimSE.exe+0CF61DA -> 69344+0x8A movzx eax, byte ptr [rbx+0xA74] [20] 0x7FF7D2E80DBD SkyrimSE.exe+0CD0DBD -> 68445+0x3D mov rcx, [0x00007FF7D537C318] [21] 0x7FF9293B257D KERNEL32.DLL+001257D [22] 0x7FF92A64AA48 ntdll.dll+005AA48
REGISTERS: RAX 0x18A49 (size_t) [100937] RCX 0x29DA8FCB770 (void) RDX 0x10 (size_t) [16] RBX 0xFFA93FE000 (void) RSP 0xFFA93FDF70 (void) RBP 0xFFA93FE099 (void) RSI 0x29E068F1490 (Character*) File: "3DNPC.esp" Flags: 0x00000409 Name: "Henrietta Entius" FormID: 0x0901B291 FormType: ActorCharacter (62) Object Reference: File: "3DNPC.esp" Flags: 0x00040009 kDestructible kInitialized Name: "Henrietta Entius" FormID: 0x0901B28F FormType: NPC (43) ParentCell: --- File: "Nature of the Wild Lands.esp" Modified by: Skyrim.esm -> Update.esm -> Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch.esp -> Water for ENB.esm -> Ulvenwald.esp -> Enhanced Landscapes.esp -> ELFX - Exteriors.esp -> Forest Fragments.esp -> Folkvangr - Grass and Landscape Overhaul.esp -> AI Overhaul.esp -> Nature of the Wild Lands.esp
MODULES: XINPUT1_3.dll 0x000000400000 X3DAudio1_7.dll 0x00006FE60000 mdnsNSP.dll 0x00006FE90000 d3d11.dll 0x000180000000 CraftingCategories.dll 0x029E7FF80000 wintrust.dll 0x029EF1A50000 SkyrimSE.exe 0x7FF7D21B0000 ResampleDmo.DLL 0x7FF889A20000 d3dcompiler_46e.dll 0x7FF8D0D10000 XAudio2_7.dll 0x7FF8D13F0000 DSOUND.DLL 0x7FF8D19C0000 gameoverlayrenderer64.dll 0x7FF8D1AD0000 trainwreck.dll 0x7FF8D1C70000 SurvivalModeImproved.dll 0x7FF8D1D80000 SSEDisplayTweaks.dll 0x7FF8D1E40000 skee64.dll 0x7FF8D1EE0000 ShowPlayerInMenus.dll 0x7FF8D2150000 ScrambledBugs.dll 0x7FF8D21C0000 RememberLockpickAngle.dll 0x7FF8D2260000 po3_Tweaks.dll 0x7FF8D22D0000 po3_SpellPerkItemDistributor.dll 0x7FF8D23D0000 po3_ReadOrTakeBooks.dll 0x7FF8D2590000 OpenAnimationReplacer.dll 0x7FF8D2670000 po3_MagicSneakAttacks.dll 0x7FF8D2B40000 po3_KeywordItemDistributor.dll 0x7FF8D2DF0000 po3_BaseObjectSwapper.dll 0x7FF8D2F90000 po3_LockVariations.dll 0x7FF8D3200000 PairedAnimationImprovements.dll 0x7FF8D32B0000 mfgfix.dll 0x7FF8D3320000 MCMHelper.dll 0x7FF8D3390000 KiENBExtender.dll 0x7FF8D3470000 KiLoader.dll 0x7FF8D3540000 KiLoaderSatelliteSKSE.dll 0x7FF8D35E0000 Journeyman.dll 0x7FF8D3650000 InventoryInjector.dll 0x7FF8D37B0000 ImprovedCameraSE.dll 0x7FF8D3860000 HandToHand.dll 0x7FF8D39D0000 CrashLogger.dll 0x7FF8D3A80000 steamclient64.dll 0x7FF8D3D50000 ENBHelperSE.dll 0x7FF8D6CA0000 CustomSkills.dll 0x7FF8D6D40000 AnimationMotionRevolution.dll 0x7FF8D6E00000 D3DCOMPILER_43.dll 0x7FF8D6F70000 d3dx9_42.dll 0x7FF8D71E0000 BladeAndBlunt.dll 0x7FF8DA470000 FaceGenFixes.dll 0x7FF8DA5D0000 tier0_s64.dll 0x7FF8DA640000 skse64_1_6_1170.dll 0x7FF8DA9E0000 KiLoaderSatelliteENB.dllplugin 0x7FF8DAC70000 BackportedESLSupport.dll 0x7FF8DACC0000 ncryptsslp.dll 0x7FF8DC980000 AutoParallax.dll 0x7FF8F6450000 AnimationQueueFix.dll 0x7FF8F65B0000 VCRUNTIME140.dll 0x7FF8FE270000 MSVCP140.dll 0x7FF8FE290000 winmmbase.dll 0x7FF8FE4C0000 VCRUNTIME140_1.dll 0x7FF901C30000 BetterJumpingSE.dll 0x7FF904650000 vstdlib_s64.dll 0x7FF9051B0000 d3dx11_43.dll 0x7FF905270000 bink2w64.dll 0x7FF9052C0000 DINPUT8.dll 0x7FF905480000 PriorityMod.dll 0x7FF906400000 textinputframework.dll 0x7FF907D50000 steam_api64.dll 0x7FF90C4E0000 msdmo.dll 0x7FF90C630000 inputhost.dll 0x7FF90C840000 Windows.UI.dll 0x7FF90E8C0000 EVLaS.dll 0x7FF910F10000 OneCoreCommonProxyStub.dll 0x7FF911080000 MMDevApi.dll 0x7FF911730000 MPR.dll 0x7FF911B30000 nvwgf2umx.dll 0x7FF912500000 rasadhlp.dll 0x7FF916C00000 webio.dll 0x7FF916C60000 AUDIOSES.DLL 0x7FF917D80000 xinput1_4.dll 0x7FF9185D0000 nvgpucomp64.dll 0x7FF918FD0000 NvMessageBus.dll 0x7FF91C7C0000 WINMM.dll 0x7FF91D350000 drvstore.dll 0x7FF91DEA0000 cryptnet.dll 0x7FF91E000000 VERSION.dll 0x7FF91E040000 nvldumdx.dll 0x7FF91E050000 OneCoreUAPCommonProxyStub.dll 0x7FF91E200000 CoreUIComponents.dll 0x7FF9204C0000 fwpuclnt.dll 0x7FF9208F0000 avrt.dll 0x7FF920CA0000 directxdatabasehelper.dll 0x7FF920DF0000 WINHTTP.dll 0x7FF921590000 dbghelp.dll 0x7FF921D50000 D3DCOMPILER_47.dll 0x7FF922E80000 WindowsCodecs.dll 0x7FF923270000 d3d11.dll 0x7FF923F10000 dcomp.dll 0x7FF924170000 MSVCP140_ATOMIC_WAIT.dll 0x7FF924810000 CoreMessaging.dll 0x7FF924840000 KiHalloc.dll 0x7FF924980000 apphelp.dll 0x7FF924C60000 uxtheme.dll 0x7FF924DA0000 WINNSI.DLL 0x7FF924EC0000 dxcore.dll 0x7FF924F10000 dxgi.dll 0x7FF924F50000 dwmapi.dll 0x7FF925080000 resourcepolicyclient.dll 0x7FF9253D0000 wintypes.dll 0x7FF9256E0000 windows.storage.dll 0x7FF925820000 HID.DLL 0x7FF926120000 IPHLPAPI.DLL 0x7FF9263C0000 DNSAPI.dll 0x7FF9263F0000 Secur32.dll 0x7FF926760000 schannel.DLL 0x7FF9267E0000 rsaenh.dll 0x7FF9268E0000 kernel.appcore.dll 0x7FF926990000 UMPDC.dll 0x7FF926AF0000 powrprof.dll 0x7FF926C20000 SSPICLI.DLL 0x7FF926C70000 MSWSOCK.dll 0x7FF926E70000 CRYPTBASE.DLL 0x7FF9270F0000 CRYPTSP.dll 0x7FF927100000 msasn1.dll 0x7FF927150000 wldp.dll 0x7FF9271E0000 NTASN1.dll 0x7FF927290000 ncrypt.dll 0x7FF9272D0000 devobj.dll 0x7FF9275D0000 CFGMGR32.dll 0x7FF927600000 DPAPI.DLL 0x7FF927670000 profapi.dll 0x7FF927850000 ucrtbase.dll 0x7FF927920000 bcryptPrimitives.dll 0x7FF927A40000 msvcp_win.dll 0x7FF927B30000 bcrypt.dll 0x7FF927C90000 KERNELBASE.dll 0x7FF927CC0000 CRYPT32.dll 0x7FF928070000 gdi32full.dll 0x7FF9281E0000 win32u.dll 0x7FF928300000 SHCORE.dll 0x7FF928330000 NSI.dll 0x7FF928430000 PSAPI.DLL 0x7FF928440000 USER32.dll 0x7FF928450000 msvcrt.dll 0x7FF928700000 ADVAPI32.dll 0x7FF9287B0000 combase.dll 0x7FF928870000 clbcatq.dll 0x7FF928C00000 RPCRT4.dll 0x7FF928CB0000 SETUPAPI.dll 0x7FF928DD0000 GDI32.dll 0x7FF929250000 IMM32.DLL 0x7FF929280000 OLEAUT32.dll 0x7FF9292C0000 KERNEL32.DLL 0x7FF9293A0000 sechost.dll 0x7FF929470000 MSCTF.dll 0x7FF929610000 imagehlp.dll 0x7FF9297D0000 SHELL32.dll 0x7FF9298E0000 ole32.dll 0x7FF92A140000 shlwapi.dll 0x7FF92A4D0000 WS2_32.dll 0x7FF92A530000 ntdll.dll 0x7FF92A5F0000
SKSE PLUGINS: AnimationMotionRevolution.dll AnimationQueueFix.dll v1.0.1 AutoParallax.dll v1.0.7 BackportedESLSupport.dll BetterJumpingSE.dll BladeAndBlunt.dll v3.5 CraftingCategories.dll v1.1.1 CrashLogger.dll v1.14.1 CustomSkills.dll v3.1 ENBHelperSE.dll v2.2 EVLaS.dll v1.3.1 FaceGenFixes.dll v1.0.3 HandToHand.dll v1 ImprovedCameraSE.dll InventoryInjector.dll v1.1 Journeyman.dll v0.0.1 KiLoaderSatelliteSKSE.dll v1.2.1 MCMHelper.dll v1.5 mfgfix.dll v1.6.1 OpenAnimationReplacer.dll v2.3.4 PairedAnimationImprovements.dll v1.0.2 po3_BaseObjectSwapper.dll v3.0.3.1 po3_KeywordItemDistributor.dll v3.4.0.1 po3_LockVariations.dll v3.1.0.1 po3_MagicSneakAttacks.dll v1.3.0.1 po3_ReadOrTakeBooks.dll v1.4.0.1 po3_SpellPerkItemDistributor.dll v7.1.3.1 po3_Tweaks.dll v1.9.2.1 PriorityMod.dll RememberLockpickAngle.dll ScrambledBugs.dll ShowPlayerInMenus.dll v2.0.2 skee64.dll SSEDisplayTweaks.dll v0.5.16 SurvivalModeImproved.dll v1.5.2 trainwreck.dll
PLUGINS: Light: 140 Regular: 74 Total: 214 [ 0] Skyrim.esm [ 1] Update.esm [ 2] Dawnguard.esm [ 3] HearthFires.esm [ 4] Dragonborn.esm [ 5] ccBGSSSE001-Fish.esm [ 6] ccBGSSSE025-AdvDSGS.esm [ 7] Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch.esp [ 8] MajesticMountains_Landscape.esm [ 9] 3DNPC.esp [ A] Obsidian Mountain Fogs.esm [ B] Water for ENB.esm [ C] Campfire.esm [ D] Overwrite.esm [ E] OverwriteRNAM.esm [ F] TKChildren.esm [10] High Poly Head.esm [11] Lux Via.esp [12] AnimatedCarriage.esm [13] Environs Master Plugin.esp [14] SkyUI_SE.esp [15] SMIM-SE-Merged-All.esp [16] EnhancedLightsandFX.esp [17] Ulvenwald.esp [18] Enhanced Landscapes.esp [19] ELFX - Exteriors.esp [1A] Forest Fragments.esp [1B] Folkvangr - Grass and Landscape Overhaul.esp [1C] Relationship Dialogue Overhaul.esp [1D] AI Overhaul.esp [1E] Thaumaturgy.esp [1F] MysticismMagic.esp [20] NAT-ENB.esp [21] XPMSE.esp [22] FNIS.esp [23] Customizable Camera.esp [24] Embers XD.esp [25] Nature of the Wild Lands.esp [26] High Poly NPCs VHR_BOP.esp [27] Immersive Weapons.esp [28] Adamant.esp [29] ELFX - Weathers.esp [2A] Apothecary.esp [2B] Pilgrim.esp [2C] man_DaedricShrines.esp [2D] Inigo.esp [2E] Immersive Patrols II.esp [2F] Sorcerer.esp [30] MaximumCarnage.esp [31] QwibLantern.esp [32] Paragliding.esp [33] Nature of the Wild Lands - 3D NPC.esp [34] Wildcat - Combat of Skyrim.esp [35] Overwrite.esp [36] OverwriteRNAM.esp [37] HandtoHand.esp [38] Veydosebrom Regions.esp [39] Cathedral - 3D Pine Grass.esp [3A] noCamColl_2_SE.esp [3B] TKChildren.esp [3C] BlendedRoads.esp [3D] PumpingIron.esp [3E] HandtoHandJump.esp [3F] HandToHandLocksmith.esp [40] BBStaminaPatch.esp [41] AdamantSmithing.esp [42] HPP - FirewoodSnow.esp [43] TKDodge.esp [44] Lucien.esp [45] Origins Of Forest - 3D Forest Grass.esp [46] Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp [47] Water for ENB (Shades of Skyrim).esp [48] Lux.esp [49] ELFXEnhancer.esp [FE: 0] ccQDRSSE001-SurvivalMode.esl [FE: 1] ccBGSSSE037-Curios.esl [FE: 2] _ResourcePack.esl [FE: 3] Cathedral - 3D Mountain Flowers.esp [FE: 4] MajesticMountains_Moss.esp [FE: 5] Lux - Master plugin.esm [FE: 6] AnimatedShips.esl [FE: 7] NoBrokenWhiterunTower.esp [FE: 8] 11Debaser.esl [FE: 9] Overwrite.esl [FE: A] OverwriteRNAM.esl [FE: B] SimpleChildren.esp [FE: C] Expressive Facegen Morphs.esl [FE: D] Lux - Resources.esp [FE: E] EVGAnimatedTraversal.esl [FE: F] SurvivalModeImproved.esp [FE: 10] TESL-LoadingScreens.esp [FE: 11] Lux Via - plugin.esp [FE: 12] Locked Chests Have Keys.esp [FE: 13] Gourmet.esp [FE: 14] HeelsFix.esp [FE: 15] Environs - Abandoned Abodes.esp [FE: 16] Beards of Power.esp [FE: 17] Stormcrown.esp [FE: 18] Skyrim On Skooma.esp [FE: 19] MajesticMountains.esp [FE: 1A] Environs - Kolskeggr.esp [FE: 1B] Environs - Shrines of Talos.esp [FE: 1C] WiZkiD Hunter's Camp Overhaul.esp [FE: 1D] Innocence Lost - Quest Expansion.esp [FE: 1E] Infiltration - Quest Expansion.esp [FE: 1F] The Heart Of Dibella - Quest Expansion.esp [FE: 20] TheOnlyCureQuestExpansion.esp [FE: 21] Candlehearth.esp [FE: 22] GourmetTables.esp [FE: 23] Destroy the Dark Brotherhood - Quest Expansion.esp [FE: 24] Headhunter - Bounties Redone.esp [FE: 25] Ivy Replacer BOS.esp [FE: 26] QwibLanternsLLists.esp [FE: 27] Environs - Greenwood Shack.esp [FE: 28] Environs - Whiterun Watchtower.esp [FE: 29] PaarthurnaxQuestExpansion.esp [FE: 2A] College Of Winterhold - Quest Expansion.esp [FE: 2B] LeapsOfFaith.esp [FE: 2C] Environs - Tundra Farmhouse.esp [FE: 2D] Nilheim_MiscQuestExpansion.esp [FE: 2E] Caught Red Handed - Quest Expansion.esp [FE: 2F] Embers XD - Patch - Lux Via.esp [FE: 30] Environs - Hroggars House.esp [FE: 31] Environs - Riften Warehouse.esp [FE: 32] ACLine_Whiterun.esp [FE: 33] Nature of the Wild Lands - Autumn Birches.esp [FE: 34] Dynamic Impact - Slash Effects X.esp [FE: 35] Skyrim Remastered - Ice Caves Fix.esp [FE: 36] Imperial Armors and Weapons Retexture SE - Penitus Pants.esp [FE: 37] Starfrost.esp [FE: 38] BladeAndBlunt.esp [FE: 39] Scion.esp [FE: 3A] Manbeast.esp [FE: 3B] JS Unique Utopia SE - Rings - Johnskyrim.esp [FE: 3C] BeastHHBB.esp [FE: 3D] Echolocating Falmer.esp [FE: 3E] Embers XD - Patch - ELFX Exteriors.esp [FE: 3F] WiZkiD Signs - Interesting NPC patch.esp [FE: 40] Lux Via - Blended Roads Bridges Texture sets.esp [FE: 41] DVLaSS Skyrim Underside.esp [FE: 42] Embers XD - Fire Magick Add-On.esp [FE: 43] The Whispering Door - Quest Expansion.esp [FE: 44] Embers XD - Patch - ELFX.esp [FE: 45] 3DNPC0.esp [FE: 46] 3DNPC1.esp [FE: 47] Additional Dremora Faces.esp [FE: 48] Stay In Shape - A Pumping Iron Addon.esp [FE: 49] NPCs Take Cover.esp [FE: 4A] DVA - Dynamic Vampire Appearance.esp [FE: 4B] SunAffectsNPCVampires.esp [FE: 4C] SunAffectsNPCVampires - ExcludeFriendlies.esp [FE: 4D] NPCsReactToFrenzy.esp [FE: 4E] Dynamic Activation Key.esp [FE: 4F] Press E To Heal Followers.esp [FE: 50] DynamicMercenaryFees.esp [FE: 51] InterestingFollowerRequirements_3DNPC.esp [FE: 52] PetTheDog.esp [FE: 53] Dremora Lines Expansion.esp [FE: 54] VampireFeedingTweaks.esp [FE: 55] Brawl Lines Expansion.esp [FE: 56] JustBlood.esp [FE: 57] Immersive Death Cycle.esp [FE: 58] Use Those Blankets.esp [FE: 59] Dirt and Blood - Dynamic Visuals.esp [FE: 5A] WindhelmDialogueExpansion.esp [FE: 5B] H2HBooksandTrainers.esp [FE: 5C] Apothecary - Saints & Seducers Patch.esp [FE: 5D] ThaumaturgyJumpBoots.esp [FE: 5E] Apothecary - Rare Curios Patch.esp [FE: 5F] Mundus.esp [FE: 60] MysticismJumpSpells.esp [FE: 61] AdamantBard.esp [FE: 62] SimonrmSaintsSeducersSmithing.esp [FE: 63] SimonrimAttackSpeedFix.esp [FE: 64] StarfrostInjuries.esp [FE: 65] StarfrostSpells.esp [FE: 66] AdamantBard - Pilgrim Patch.esp [FE: 67] Headhunter - Leveled Rewards.esp [FE: 68] Bandit Lines Expansion.esp [FE: 69] NPCs React To Necromancy.esp [FE: 6A] Civil War Lines Expansion.esp [FE: 6B] CarriageAndStableDialogues.esp [FE: 6C] HouseOfHorrorsQuestExpansion.esp [FE: 6D] NPCs React To Invisibility.esp [FE: 6E] Sleeping Expanded.esp [FE: 6F] Conditional Expressions.esp [FE: 70] Vampire Lines Expansion.esp [FE: 71] SensibleBribes.esp [FE: 72] Forsworn and Thalmor Lines Expansion.esp [FE: 73] HPP - Vaermina's Torpor.esp [FE: 74] SRP Additional Landscape Parallax.esp [FE: 75] Animals Swim.esp [FE: 76] NPCs_Wear_Amulets_Of_Mara.esp [FE: 77] Immersive Rejections.esp [FE: 78] MCMHelper.esp [FE: 79] ArrowsIgnite.esp [FE: 7A] JS Rumpled Rugs Redux SE.esp [FE: 7B] Apothecary - Fishing Patch.esp [FE: 7C] Journeyman.esp [FE: 7D] GourmetUSSEP.esp [FE: 7E] GourmetFishing.esp [FE: 7F] GourmetSurvival.esp [FE: 80] I4IconAddon.esp [FE: 81] GourmetAdamantBard.esp [FE: 82] GourmetHandtoHand.esp [FE: 83] GourmetMysticism.esp [FE: 84] Static Objects Swap - Unique Wooden Bridges.esp [FE: 85] ShowPlayerInMenus.esp [FE: 86] Aetherius.esp [FE: 87] AetheriusSpells.esp [FE: 88] Nature of the Wild Lands - Alternate start.esp [FE: 89] Lux - USSEP patch.esp [FE: 8A] Lux - CC Fish patch.esp [FE: 8B] Lux - Saints and Seducers patch.esp

Right folks, please help. I need to find the name of this movie i watched recently, here's what I've got so far. It starts of with a man hanging him, he somehow escapes and kills the man, there's another man there who he's gonna kill but decides not to. Then he's in america living in a motorhome with a girlfriend who has a kid. The other man that he escaped with is in prison and phones him to say he thinks people are onto him. He then has to do this job for some boss. He goes and picks up the cash but gets double crossed and shot but he gets away and hides the cash in an old abandoned car. He then goes to the warehouse with the big security guard, the security guard pretends to help him but really is trying to get the cash. The security guard is massive and a bit simple, he collects toy action figures. The security guard also has another girl locked in the factory who he tries to sell to a woman in a truck, but the main character helps her escape.The main boss is actually trying to find an old vhs tape that isn't ever supposed to have existed. Sinbad. Shazam. This would prove the Mandela effect and he thinks it would make him very powerful.Please help.

Thus, wounded, and less victorious than they might have preferred, but victorious nonetheless, the royal three returned to the Macedonian capital. The army returned to Philopolis in triumph, the trio at their head. Leonidas on a replacement for his slain mare, Cassandra astride a titanic black stallion which was exclusively used for parades, and Seramis in her full diluvian glory. Cassandra might have been disappointed that the battle hadn’t been as decisive as she preferred, but she wasn’t about to miss an opportunity for propaganda.
So the group returned to the cheers of their people, the cavalry shining in the summer sun, and the army marching in strict formation. Trumpets heralded their return. Banners flew from the corners of houses. The men sang bawdy songs, as is the tradition of soldiers. Not a spec of blood or rust nor dust was allowed, presenting the image of a spotless, unconquered army. It was all a magnificent production. It was all a lovely welcome home.
When Seramis had first seen Philopolis and Macedon, it had been a very different place. The realm had struck her as grey, very grey, and a place without much beauty. Then, under the rule of the wicked regent Tyndareus, it was a place of iron and blood, a totalitarian state dedicated primarily to a massive conscript army. The hills had been torn open by great pit mines for iron and copper. The forests had been cut down to fuel the fires of industry. The fields were endless, uniform masses of oats, grain, and hay, worked by uncounted slaves, or landless peasants just a bit better than slaves. Over it all, the ancient fortress of the Alexandrian dynasty had loomed as a great edifice; a leviathan of hewn stone and barred windows representing the absolute military power that held all of it in place.
Now, two years hence, it was more alike to how she had first found it than she would have preferred. But transforming a society was hardly a swift process, and the work done was already substantial. Once the place had been a land of iron and blood, and though industry remained, now the smell of olive oil, the sound of potters wheels, and the hawking of merchants filled the air. The monolithic collective farms had shattered into a patchwork quilt of small holdings. The men working them might still have brands, but they and the lands were their own.
Of course, there were still some great expanses of oats and wheat. Those were Cassandra’s lands. She’d been generous with the lands she’d confiscated from the nobility, and in turn with their wealth which now filled her treasury. But she hadn’t given up any of her own family’s territory, and had expanded them substantially. Something like a quarter of the land in the country was the Queen’s personal fief, and she managed it very carefully. The economies of scale she alone had access to provided much needed stability for staple food prices during the transition from a slave-based command economy to a citizen market economy. Beyond that, the lands also provided a substantial portion of government income.
Said income was further complimented by a wide-scale reform to the tax structure. Rather than outsourcing the work to tax farmers, or to any nobility, as that had been liquidated, taxes were collected from a variety of small, but inescapable requirements. The primary tax was simply the surplus tax, an in-kind tax taken from all production. Farmers gave a share of their produce, potters a certain number of pots for each produced, blacksmiths a certain number of finished goods, and so on and so forth. Only the merchants would return hard currency from the surplus tax, the rest a great cross-section of produced goods. These in turn went into great warehouses, which the government might release from to control prices, or sell abroad to bring in further profits. The majority of currency entering the coffers either came from selling such produce, Cassandra’s personal lands, or a variety of import and consumption taxes. No less than a tenth of the entire bureaucracy was funded by the consumption taxes on oil and salt.
Of course managing all this was a good lead more complicated, not least of which because Cassandra had liquidated the aristocracy. This required a rather extensive increase in the bureaucracy, which brought in quite the expense of its own. Overall revenue was vastly increased from the reign of Tyndareus, and indeed all former kings of Macedon. The problem was that expenses had increased in turn. Macdeon was a military stratocracy, and Cassandra was in the process of trying to reform that into a sort of enlightened bureaucratic autocracy. The amount spent on papyrus alone nearly rivaled the payments to the many new government servants, which were not cheap. Educated men and women, able to read, understand the laws, and understand mathematics were not common, and commanded higher prices.
Cassandra had responded both by working to increase the supply of educated citizens, and cut costs in other areas. Firstly, she enacted a massive increase in education, beginning with the orphans of Macedon’s many wars and educating them. Secondly, she had begun offering to pay for the education of the children of public servants as part of their compensation. This allowed her to cut down on salaries and ensure a future educated workforce. Third and finally, she had begun to subsidize educators throughout the kingdom, and begun work to gather and copy many books and tomes to further improve the kingdom’s educational outcomes. Unfortunately, this was work that would take years to bear fruit.
The second arm of this had been to cut costs in other areas, most notably the military. Under Tyndareus, the Macedonian army had grown to a terrifying, if bloated, leviathan. Between the use of conscription, and counting reserves, the former army could have raised nearly thirty thousand men under arms. Cassandra had slashed that, and abolished conscription for the regular army. After intensive cuts, purging Tyndareus’s loyalists, and serious reforms including the near complete reconstruction of the Macedonian Cavalry Corps, the Macedonian Army now numbered a mere nine thousand, with the ability to call upon a further ten thousand former soldiers, now spread out to create a variety of local militias.
Leonidas had taken charge of many of these reforms, bringing in military advisors from Marathon and Achaea. The young prince, in his role as Minister of War, set to work with vigor to refine the Macedonian army down to its purest and strongest form. His high standards might have earned him ire, if not for the personal virtue and discipline he showed to meet those standards. He demanded the best not only from himself and his soldiers, but even from his suppliers and quartermasters. Most of the Macedonian military exports were those arms and armor he found below standard, though many less discerning customers would gladly accept them.
More than simply focusing on the logistics, Leonidas sought to infuse in his army a certain esprit de corps and moral focus. He drew heavily on the legendary philosopher Aristotle, particularly regarding that philosopher’s education of Iskandar, the famed conqueror king who had defined Macedon for the past two centuries. Outside the direct military applications, the young prince kept an eye on the future, sponsoring the growth of sports leagues throughout the kingdom, particularly a great hunting association. The Hunter’s Guild was a particular passion project of his, and he worked tirelessly not only to cultivate skilled hunters to recruit for his scouts, but also to preserve what remained of Macedon’s wild lands, ensuring game populations remained stable, and dangerous animals were quickly eliminated. The prince’s skill at the hunt had even earned him the right to attend the games at Olympus, though it was his mastery of wrestling that had seen him returned crowned with the ultimate honor of the laurels.
Such participation with the rest of the Hellene world had been part of Sera’s work. The young dragonness had held no official position at first, as Cassandra worked to develop her talents. Seramis had loathed etiquette as taught as a set of rules to be followed, but Cassandra revealed their nature as tools and tricks as part of the great game of politics. Allowed to treat the illusion of statecraft as just that, Seramis thrived. Soon appointed as Minister of State, her talent for gathering information, forming schemes, and comprehending languages saw her unleashed as Macedon’s greatest diplomat. All the while, her true title was one that delighted her greatly. Master of Shadows, she wielded the diplomatic corps and her own personal stable of agents like a scythe, harvesting a hoard of secrets she feasted upon. They became as arrows in her quiver, aiding her as she stood alongside Cassandra to carefully guide the ship of state.
On a much less sinister note, Seramis had engaged in quite public work to revitalize Macedon’s stagnating cultural sphere. The dragoness was chiefly known not even as a diplomat, let alone a spymaster, but rather as a patron of the arts. She courted and drew playwrights, actors, bards, conductors, and composers from across the world, placing a great deal of personal effort into producing a cosmopolitan cultural sphere. Though diplomacy, culture, and her eternal scheming, she worked to put the sword of Iskandar in a flowered sheath, in hopes it would never need to be drawn.
The peak of her work in that regard was a mere week away, a grand festival of the arts such as had not been seen in Macedon before. It would be a great festival as if that of the Athenians, now long brought to ruin. For the first time since the wars of the Diadochi, Hellas would come together to celebrate the arts. Naturally, Macedon would be participating, represented by Sera’s own personal theater company: The Mount Ararat Company.
Seramis quickly moved through her remaining business for the day. She met with the Master of Investigations and also her deputy, who had been working to manage her department while she had departed on campaign. Pleasantries were exchanged, and reports given. There was little new, but there was confirmation that the Latins, a curious people from across the western sea, would come to attend the festival. This would have been of little concern, if not for how they were coming.
A long-standing problem of the western coast had been the pirates of Illyria. These seafaring brigands proved a routine nuisance for not only Hellene trade, but all throughout the seas. Achaea and Macedon had both extended offer to the king of Illyria to come and help remove the pirates, but had been rejected. However when the Latins offered, the king accepted. So, the Latins came in force, bringing with them a four mighty legions of men, and crushed the pirate havens by attacking from the land. The problem was, they didn’t leave. While three of the legions returned to Italia, the fourth remained to protect against the return of the pirates, and to protect their Illyrian allies from Achaean or Macedonian aggression.
This was already a provocative move, as the barbarian army now sat on Hellene soil, diplomatically shielded by the cowardly Illyrian king. However, now the Latins made a further move. They had informed the court at Macedon previously that they wished to send a delegation to observe the festival and improve relations. All this was well and good, and naturally they did request to send bodyguards to protect the delegates. This was agreed, but the unscrupulous Latins had interpreted the mention of bodyguards broadly, and deployed a third of the legion infantry as “bodyguards”. Seramis’s reports indicated that these were in fact the Triarii, the third and strongest line, composed of veterans. The remainder of the legion remained encamped alongside the Ilyrian-Macedonian border.
The presence of the legion was concerning, to say the least. It numbered some four thousand five hundred men, about the size of a Macedonian army. The Macedonians held a local advantage, as they maintained two armies. One was directed northwards, towards the barbarians, and the other towards the east, to ward off their Selucid rivals. So they outnumbered the legion present two to one. However, the problem arose with the Latin’s ability to deploy a further three legions, which would reverse that advantage. With aid from Marathon, the Hellenes could match the Latin’s numbers, and with Achaean aid, they would outnumber them. Unfortunately, the Latins had spent much of their recent war with the Phoenicians of Carthage demonstrating an ability to raise new forces frighteningly quickly. Sera’s analysis suggested that if they wished to, they might be able to triple the might of their armies to twelve legions. The sheer military mass of the Latins would be enough to equal all Hellas, but Hellas was still divided, and some, such as the Illyrians, preferred them as allies to their fellow Hellenes.
The simple arithmetic of war indicated that if the Latins wished to conquer Hellas, they probably could. The simple arithmetic of war neglected to account for the power of dragons. But, Sera had observed, it was rare to lose money betting on the arrogance and avarice of humans. The fortunate side of dealing with the Latins was that for all their military might, they had a peculiar custom. They were permitted by ancient law and religious principle from launching a war of aggression, and so only declared war when they or their allies were threatened. This iron law of ancient Roman kings aught to have kept their swords sheathed, but in practice it often meant that an ambitious man of that city would seek to provoke an attack or aggression, that they might have reason for war. This incident with the “bodyguards” was likely such an attempt at provocation by a glory hound.
So, the trio met, and considered how to deal with this. It was decided that they would monitor the Latins closely, and place forces in such a way that they could not be aggressive, but would certainly be ready. The Army of the North was still recuperating from their recent battle with the Scythians, and would remain on standby in the capital to respond to any moves from the Latins or Scythians. At the same time, the northern militias would be stood up, and reinforced by militias from the south. These southern reinforcements would travel along the roads that would place them directly between the two parts of the Roman Legion, ensuring that if hostilities began, the separated legion would be able to be dealt with in parts. Unfortunately, Leon was unable to deploy as many of his scouts to that region as he would prefer, and Sera’s own intelligence assets were likewise pointed northwards. Better to deal with the actively aggressive barbarians, and then the imminently aggressive ones.
So, it was with great care, and no small amount of tension, that the Latin delegates arrived, joined by some three hundred of their Triarii. This was the first that Sera had seen of the Latins, and her initial impressions were somewhat mixed. They moved with distinct discipline, and were in all senses quite well ordered. The Triarii were older, veteran soldiers, generally more in their thirties. As such, they were somewhat more moderate, and avoided the wicked behavior common to many young soldiers. However, this rendered them with an increased air of unmistakable danger. Be wary of old men, even relatively old ones, in professions where men die young, and particularly of a soldier without an obvious vice.
The leader of the Latin delegation introduced himself to the court with a somewhat imperious nature. It likely would have been more imperious had Seramis not taken on her true form. It is difficult, even for a roman, to remain arrogant when there is a fourteen-foot-tall (measured at the shoulder) dragoness looking down at you. He declared himself as Military Tribune Gaius Mummius, representing the Praetor Lucius Cornelius in command of the IV Legion. Though the head of the delegation, he was simply that by right of his military rank. The actual diplomacy was handled by diplomats, not soldiers, though by their attitudes, Seramis might have taken them for sergeants in fancy togas. However, one who did catch her interest was distinct among the delegation, an old man, and truly old, dressed as a seer. He remained close by the ear of Gaius, and the tribune heeded him. Sera watched him warily, for she smelled magic on him, an old magician, and that would be trouble.
Despite her concerns, the Latins did not cause trouble, not even their old magician. They established a small camp for themselves outside the walls of the city, and largely kept to themselves. They came into the city only in small groups based around some member of their number who spoke Greek. They paid with honest coin, and seemed intrigued by the preparations for the festival. They seemed unusually preoccupied with finding barbers, as they were each clean-shaven, in contrast to the bearded Hellenes. Leonidas found this utterly hilarious, as he had spent more time than he would ever admit trying to find ways of improving his own facial hair. Now that it had finally come in, he spent more time managing his admittedly impressive beard than he ever had dealing with his actual hair. Sera, lacking any hair whatsoever, found the human preoccupation with it utterly confusing.
Bearded or otherwise, Hellene, Latin, and miscellaneous others soon came to attend the great drama festival. The idea of cancelling was briefly considered, and summarily rejected. Continuing to have a great celebration in the face of Latin provocation and Scythian Assault showed not only the power of the kingdom, that its people could act without concern, but also its prestige through mastery of the arts. The fact that many of the participants in the festival were from elsewhere in Hellas was politely overlooked. After all, Macedon had gathered them, and thus got credit.
The festival went on for three days, and proved to be a generally joyous, if somewhat chaotic time. Even the dour Latins eventually became swept up in the atmosphere. While this wasn’t technically a Bacchanalian festival, mostly due to the fact that Bacchus was very dead, it certainly carried some of that legacy. Of course the highlight, at least for men who considered them cultured, was the great drama productions. All manner of productions were put on display, from great recreations of the Athenian classics, to new twists, foreign productions, historical plays, retellings of myths, and of course many a comedic tragedy and initially tragic comedy.
Seramis’s own company had three productions, set into place over three days. The first two were well known, and practiced. Sera’s company had begun expediting the revitalization of the cultural scene with regular performances. Some of these had been well-worn classics, but the Mount Ararat Company would bring none of these to this stage. Instead, they brought two original, but already tested plays, and one of excellent ambition.
The first was a Satire, in the style of The Clouds which Sera had dubbed Tartarus. This piece was set in the depths of the underworld, that darkest pit where wicked men and monsters alike were tormented. These tormented souls took on the role of the choir, being intensely irritated by the antics of the four main players. Those four were of course the three great Greek philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and their own tormentor; Diogenes. The play largely consisted of the main three wandering through Tartarus, further tormenting the tormented souls with long winded and pedantic arguments about the torments they witnessed. All the while, Diogenes routinely appeared to torment them in turn. The play as a whole made light of philosophies, and generally teased out the problems with focusing overmuch on the world of the mind while actual suffering could be addressed.
This play was well received, for it was humorous and mocked philosophers, which few people cared for. The humor wavered between high and low brow, with both clever jokes sprinkled in amongst the arguments of the philosophers, and cruder humor delivered by the tormented souls and Diogenes. A certain degree of slapstick was involved as well, often involving a great paper-Mache boulder being rolled by Sisyphus.
The second of Sera’s plays was a somewhat grander production, though was likewise satirical. It turned the classic play Oedipus Rex somewhat on its head with The Choir’s Apologia. The original play was an archetypical tragedy, following the story of Oedipus, son of the King of Thebes. Due to a prophecy, his father cast him out to be slain, but he would live, and later unknowingly slay his father, and wed his mother. The play detailed how the gods smote the city with a plague as a result of this kinslaying and incest. Oedipus sought the answer to this, and in doing so discovered the terrible truth, and blinded himself for shame.
The Choir’s Apologia put a twist on this, as the Choir itself determines to get involved. This broke their usual role as mere background singers, and saw them take the stage to try and prevent the tragedy. The play played out as usual, but regularly, the mortal actors would freeze in place before a great event. The Choir would then step to center stage, and petition the gods for redress. First they asked Apollo, bidding him not deliver the ruinous prophecy, for without it nothing would come, but he rejected them. Next they implored Hermes to warn Oedipus against his folly, but Hermes declared he was helpless before Zeus. Finally, the Choir dared to approach Zeus himself, demanding that he cease to punish all Thebes for Oedipus’s mistake.
This proved a failure in the end, as Zeus rebuked them and struck the choir down one by one. The message was clear, that the gods were cruel and arbitrary, delivering unjust judgements. They did what they would, for they were strong, and the choir suffered what it must, for it was weak. At last only Oedipus remained, able now to see Zeus and his murder of the choir. Oedipus and Zeus contested one another in song, and while Zeus struck down the king, it was not before the hero doomed by prophecy delivered a defense and a prophecy of his own. Oedipus defended his record as king of Thebes, how he had overthrown a tyrant, protected his people, improved their lives, and sought their good even at terrible cost to himself. He, the one the gods judged, had been a better ruler than the gods. If indeed the gods would persist in their arbitrary wickedness, then one day this would be their doom, for the world would not abide such tyrants. Zeus struck him down, but went in dread because of the prophecy.
This production produced some degree of controversy. It always had, and such was the intent. It was well understood that the gods were dead, and Olympus was silent, but this play indicated such was not a bad thing. Given it was written by a dragoness, a natural enemy of the gods, the take was not unexpected. Beyond this, its use of another play as a framing device gave it a rather meta feel, and some found it pretentious. Others, by contrast, found the reframing of a classic play refreshing, and enjoyed the novelty of the choir acting as a major character.
The third play was a new production, and meant to be the one to blow the sandals off the audience. It was a bigger, grander, and of much more spectacular production values. All of this was in theory. In practice, it was put on at the end of three days of performances and partying, and became more of a farce than an epic. The Davidiad told the story of the legendary Hebrew king David, of both his rise to power and fall from grace. It was told in three acts, and all three had some manner of disaster.
The first act told of the heroic youth of David before he was king, and how he defeated the giant Goliath. Goliath himself was a complicated costume made by having three already tall men standing on one another’s shoulders. When struck by a sling, he was to topple over onto his army, which would catch the performers and prevent any harm. Unfortunately, due to an earlier scene involving David being anointed with oil, there was a slick patch on stage. Goliath’s lower third slipped, and the towering giant fell flat on his face and collapsed into himself in the middle of a monologue. This was considered absolutely hilarious by the audience, and Seramis, upon seeing this, physically shrank from embarrassment.
The second act saw the conflict between the good future king David and the wicked king Saul. Saul was meant to begin more coherent, but gradually jealousy and fear would twist him into wickedness. Unfortunately, Saul’s actor had been out late, and showed up to the production very hung over. This made Saul’s descent far more predictable and robbed the second act of much of its drama. Unfortunately, the actor in question attempted to remedy this by using a hangover cure involving undiluted wine. This made him less hungover, and more drunk, so Saul went from being scowling and sickly to very obviously drunk. This became a minor peril during a later scene where Saul threw his spear at David. Not only did Saul miss, as intended, but he proceeded to hurl the (thankfully fake) spear into the audience, where it proceeded to hit a man in the chest. He was unharmed, but believed he had been slain and fainted, causing a minor panic.
The third act was nearly canceled, but went ahead anyways. The cursed production continued to be cursed, as a major set piece exploded earlier. The third act was meant to show how the throne gradually corrupted David, and led him to murder a man to cover up an affair with his wife Bethsheba. This would climax with the death of a son produced from that affair, and the collapse of a great temple edifice David had been constructing. The play would end with David weeping, but repentant, and turning to begin rebuilding the ruined temple, representing his disgraced morality. Instead of this, the temple collapsed immediately the moment David and Bethsheba locked eyes, which somewhat gave the game away.
Sera did not bother to see the audience’s reaction when the curtain closed. She’d already left from sheer embarrassment. She was helping the troupe pack up, so the lot of them could scatter to cope with this catastrophe in their own way. Once the curtain closed and the actors departed the stage, she handed Saul his last payment, a polite, if curt, farewell, and departed. She avoided the rest of the festival, marinating in her disappointment at the bottom of a nearby lake.
Eventually, evening did come, and Sera slunk her way back into the city. She spoke briefly with her troupe, congratulating them on the work they did, and laboring to encourage their spirits. The production of the Davidiad had gone horribly wrong, but these were technical and production errors, not fundamental flaws. They would try again, after taking time to rest, recover, and focus on building back up to such a grand production with greater skill and experience. Their reach had, quite simply, exceeded their grasp, and ruin had come because of hubris. They would recover from this, and move forwards.
Much as she managed the speech, she felt like she was having to put on her own performance to manage that. Privately, the failure on such a massive stage hung over the young dragoness. She quietly made her way into the palace, and made her way to where Leon and Cassandra were. Unfortunately for her, the pair were currently in the process of discussing the festival. Glumly, she sat silently, nursing a large bowl of wine as Casandra and Leon deliberated a victor.
“The first step is that we can scratch off any troupes that simply re-enacted an existing play. Those were simply derivative, and giving a victory to that in our first festival sets an unfortunate precedent.” Cassandra remarked, working off a clay tablet listing the various performances. Lines went through about a third of the participants. “We can also do away with anything that tried to relate to Iskandar or my own dynasty, and especially that gods-awful recreation of our little scheme to destroy Tyndareus.”
“I personally found that one funny.” Sera piped up, remembering the comically inaccurate play. “Though they did manage quite the trick with their costume for me, I’ll need to get in touch with their costume department to see how the internals worked.”
“It was funny, mostly because it was inaccurate enough we could probably bring a suit for slander, libel, and slanderous libel against them.” Leon grumbled with arms folded. He had been made the butt of many a joke in that production, with the comedy of the valiant warrior being utterly surpassed by two women being a common refrain. “Beyond that, we don’t want to give the wrong impression about what exactly is acceptable to say about a queen.”
“The Corinthians have something of an irreverent streak, that much is for certain. Unfortunately we can only bring slander, libel, and slanderous libel and not treason, as they are presently foreigners.” Cassandra demurred. “Still, delivering sanctions on the Ember Island Company could be an effective way to get the message across to Corinth that a more peaceful Macedon is not a pushover.”
“With regard to the reproductions, what about The Choir’s Apologia?” Leon asked, throwing Sera a metaphorical bone. She ate literal bones as well, but if Leon threw her one he’d soon find out what it was like to skydive before the invention of a parachute.
“Disqualified as well. It deviates from the standard formula, but relies on you already understanding it. Really, if you didn’t know much about theatre to begin with, at lot of it would be lost on you. It ultimately came off as pretentious, and despite its inherently kind of ridiculous premise, was more depressing than anything. This sort of meta-commentary might work better for the sake of humor rather than trying for serious drama. Trying it here simply made the play exhausting and the sort of thing Tartarus really felt like it was mocking. That said, its pretention and grim character could give a good impression that the Macedonian theatre scene is serious and educated, but then I’d have to watch so many more like it. I don’t have enough absinthe to get through more than about one of those in a single festival.” Cassandra replied to that, and drew a second line through Apologia to emphasize her point. Seramis shrank into her cushions.
“Ah, so you enjoyed Tartarus then?” Leonidas asked in turn, trying to navigate the conversation to something less liable to torment the dragoness.
“Oh I most certainly did, but we can’t give it the win. As amusing as it is, it’s ultimately a very limited production. I like it, but giving it the victory would indicate a degree of “small scale” theatre in Macedon. I don’t want to give anyone else opportunity to degrade the work that’s been done here by suggesting that the Macedonian theatre lacks ambition.” Cassandra said with a sigh, and began crossing out any plays of similar scale.
“Which would be possessed by the Davidiad, but we all know how catastrophically wrong that went, so pray spare me whatever salt you were going to pour into that wound. I know that with all the bacchanalian delights available, you probably have managed to find someone who enjoys being tormented, but I am not that someone. So please, if you’re going to continue trying to murder me with words, use the ones that summon that lightning ball that nearly splattered me across the wall. It was a gentler execution.” Seramis grumbled, finally speaking up for herself.
Cassandra realized she’d gone to far, and put down the tablet. “I’m sorry Sera, I meant to tease, but not be cruel. I actually would agree that the Davidiad’s ambition was most impressive, and if not for some production hiccups, I think it might have had a chance at winning. I do tease, but I really do appreciate all the work you’ve put in to this, not just your company, but allowing this whole festival to go off. So, please forgive me if I’ve stepped too far from jest into mockery.”
“It’s fine, simply a very fresh disappointment. I’m afraid I missed most of the festival as I was busy running things or, well, pouting in a lake.” Seramis replied, waving away the problem with her tail. “So aside from everything you’ve disqualified, what do you think actually won?”
“I do have a personal preference.” Cass admitted, though she seemed a touch embarrassed by it. “The Court of Autumn.” The other two looked at her carefully with that. The Court of Autumn had been a much more romantic retelling of the story of Hades and Persephone, focused on the courtship of the pair, and the conflict that arose from a disapproving and overbearing Demeter. Neither of the pair had expected Cass to favor a romance, and their expressions showed it plainly. Cassandra merely shrugged. “We all desire what we cannot have, and it comes to a question of character whether we become envious of those lucky enough to have it, or delight sorrowfully that another is so blessed, even if they might not realize it.”
“I mean, I can’t deny that it was very well done. If I didn’t know better then I’d say that the two leads actually were a couple.” Leon replied with a nod. “It certainly doesn’t lack for ambition either, nor courage to speak the names of the Dread Queen and Lord With Many Guests so commonly.”
Cass smiled at that. “The fact that they do so is also part of why I like it. Persephone and Hades are dead, all the Olympians are. The reverence shown to corpses is illogical.”
Seramis processed this information, and considered her memory banks. “The company behind it, they’re one of the Theban companies, the Men of the Muses, correct?” She asked, and Cass checked, then nodded. “Ah, then yes, the two leads are actually husband and wife, they’ve got something of a specialty for romances as a result.”
“Write, or as the case may be, act, what you know.” Cassandra said with a shrug. “So we concur, The Court of Autumn is the victor?”
“I can’t argue against it.” Leon replied.
“Nor can I, but that’s more due to the aforementioned lack of context. One can make arguments without information, but I have a bit too much respect for the pair of you to engage in full sophistry.” Seramis admitted begrudgingly.
“Well, that absence may actually work to our advantage, returning from these pleasant distractions to the business of rule.” Cassandra said with a smile. “The Latins were particularly delighted with Tartarus, and actually wished to see the director. Said director was currently indisposed, but they have extended something of an open invitation. I think that accepting would provide quite the opportunity. It isn’t often one has a chance to walk right into the midst of a potentially hostile camp and see what they’re up to under guest-right.”
Seramis rose in interest at the idea, and cracked her neck. Cracking such a long neck was a process, creating a rippling crackling sound as vertebrae popped along the serpentine trunk. She grinned in anticipation. “I’ll melt myself a new dress.”

My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
​

• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
​

• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
​

• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
​

• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
​

• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.

Request and Resources List Opening - 6/8/2024

Link to last request list opening

THE REQUEST LIST IS NOW CLOSED. BOOSTS MAY BE ADDED TO NEW AND OLD REQUESTS HERE.

REQUEST LIMIT - 60 / 60

This is a temporary post where you may add new requests while the list is open, and will be locked when the limit is hit.
If you do not or cannot make a Respect Thread for a certain character, post a request here and they'll be added to the list. On the other hand, if you have something that could be used for a Respect Thread (such as feats), and you do not wish to create it yourself, you may post them here to be added to the resources list for whoever wants them.

Archived Requests, Completed Requests, and Priority List

Rules

• All requests must contain at least the name of the characteteam/item you're requesting, and the series which it comes from. Please note that 'Cast of...' and 'X Universe' requests are no longer allowed.
  • 'Medium' is for what the character appears in and should be included in the RT (eg. manga or anime, or if you want both manga and anime). If left blank, I will assume that any of the mediums will satisfy the request
  • 'Notes' are clarifications that you deem necessary, such as a specific continuity of character (such as Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, or New 52 for DC characters)
• Requests for composite threads require moderator approval, as well as reasoning as to why the thread has a reason to be posted as a composite.
• Any request marked [Update] already has a Respect Thread, but the requester feels like it could be improved. This does not equal consent to remake the Respect Thread. You still need to contact the original creator to gain permission to remake it.
  • Update requests must include a reason as to why they need to be updated.
• If you wish to make one of these Respect Threads and don't want anyone to do it before you, post your reservation on the reservation thread, not here.
• The list in this thread will be kept to 30 requests. All other requests are still active, and can be found in the 'Archived Requests' link below.
• There is a 2 new request per post limit (requests not presently on the request list), as well as a 10 total requests per comment limit. Please use your common sense in terms of spacing your requests out (e.g. not making 10 requests every day, not immediately following 10 requests with another request)
• If you request a character that is already in the request archive, once they have been pushed off of the list below they won't be added to the bottom of the request archive, but instead your name would be added to the 'requester' section of that character. If you've already requested the character on the same request thread, it won't be added.
• You may be questioned if your requested character would pass rule 1 (5 combat related feats). If asked, please provide one or two feats, preferably in a confirmable manner (e.g. a gif, or an episode number and rough time). If you can't do so, your character likely won't be put on the list.
• You may put up to four requests onto the Priority List: Two short, one medium, and one long to complete. Please specify what length the request is in the comment.

New Requests

Character	Series	Medium	Requester	Notes
N	Pokemon	Anime	XXBEERUSXX, kalebsantos, CoolandAverageGuy, & NuzlockeMaster
Yakub	Nation of Islam	Literature	XXBEERUSXX
The Golem of Prague	Jewish Folklore	Literature	kalebsantos, CoolandAverageGuy, NuzlockeMaster, Proletlariet, & TheMightyBox72
Zé do Caixão	Coffin Joe	Movie	kalebsantos, CoolandAverageGuy, NuzlockeMaster, & Proletlariet	Can be found here
Videodrome	Videodrome	Movie	kalebsantos, CoolandAverageGuy, NuzlockeMaster, & Proletlariet
Superman	My Adventures with Superman	Cartoon	kalebsantos, CoolandAverageGuy, NuzlockeMaster, Proletlariet, & TheMightyBox72
Joseph Smith	Mormonism	Literature	CoolandAverageGuy
The Permian Basin Superorganism	Mystery Flesh Pit Natural Park	Webseries	Proletlariet & kalebsantos
The Cannibals	Ravenous	Movie	Proletlariet & kalebsantos
[Update] Van Helsing	Van Helsing	Movie and Comic	NuzlockeMaster, kalebsantos, & TheMightyBox72	Include feats from The London Assignment and From Beneath the Rue Morgue.
Poliwrath	Pokemon	Anime	NuzlockeMaster & kalebsantos
Bastion	X-Men '97	Cartoon	BorBurison, kalebsantos, & Ultim8_Lifeform
Hercule Satan	Dragon Ball Z	Anime	BorBurison, kalebsantos, & Ultim8_Lifeform
Godzilla/Triangle	Blunt Brothers Productions	Webseries	Kiryu2012
King Kong/Monkey	Blunt Brothers Productions	Webseries	Kiryu2012
Caius Ballad	Final Fantasy XIII-2	Game	PlayerPin
Wilfre	Drawn to Life	Game	PlayerPin
Daemon Targaryan and Caraxes	House of the Dragon	Live Action Show	Artemisia846
Teysa Karlov	Magic: The Gathering	Literature	Artemisia846
The Library	The Librarian	Movie, Live Action Show, Literature, and Comic	NegativeGamer	Include feats for the Librarians, the Library itself, and the relics it contains
Warehouse 13	Warehouse 13	Live Action Show, Literature, and Comic	NegativeGamer	Include feats for its agents, the Warehouse itself, and the artifacts it contains
[Update] Frieren	Frieren: Beyond Journey's End	Manga	Mattdoss	New chapters
[Update] Rob Lucci	One Piece	Manga	Mattdoss	New chapters
Jindiao	Kung Fu Panda	Cartoon	Outrageous-Farmer-42
Ariel	Disney's The Little Mermaid	Movie and Cartoon	Outrageous-Farmer-42
Tevi	Tevi	Game	That_guy_why
Mashiba Ryo	Hajime no Ippo	Manga	That_guy_why
Abigail Lazar	Abigail	Movie	TheMightyBox72 & kalebsantos
Nemona	Pokemon Horizons	Anime	TheMightyBox72 & kalebsantos
Ai Ohto	Wonder Egg Priority	Anime	TheBaronOfBenefit
The Lich	Dead by Daylight	Game	BlazeRaiden
The Chroma Conclave	The Legend of Vox Machina	Cartoon	BlazeRaiden
The Unknown	Dead by Daylight	Game	Miserable-Ad-5573
The Knight	Dead by Daylight	Game	Miserable-Ad-5573
Jormungander	Norse Mythology	Literature	seoila
[Update] King Bradley	Fullmetal Alchemist	Manga and Anime	Ultim8_Lifeform	Dead links, Brotherhood
[Update] Zagreus	Hades	Game	Ultim8_Lifeform	Dead links
The Ventriloquist	DC Comics	Comic	GodofYawn	Any mainline continuity
The Crypt Keeper	Tales from the Crypt	Live Action Show and Movie	GodofYawn
The Starlings	Broadside Beach ARG	Webseries	PlayerPin
Samara Morgan	The Ring	Movie	ya-boi-benny
Jeff the Land Shark	Marvel Comics	Comic	ya-boi-benny & GodofYawn	Earth 616
The Infinity Gems	Marvel Comics	Comic	rangernumberx, kalebsantos, & CoolandAverageGuy	Earth 616
AiAi	Super Monkey Ball	Game	rangernumberx, GodofYawn, PlayerPin, & CoolandAverageGuy
Isaac Lightbrad	LostMagic	Game	LambentEnigma
Prishe	Final Fantasy XI	Game	LambentEnigma	Optionally include Dissidia
Superman	DC Comics	Comic	infinitefrontier23	Infinite Frontier
Makoto Musumi	Tsukimichi Moonlit Fantasy	Manga & Anime	thereal1994
Sung Ji Woo	Solo Leveling	Literature, Manga, and/or Anime	TrickTemporary9201
Professor Hubert Farnsworth	Futurama	Cartoon	LambentEnigma & Proletlariet	Include all inventions
Union Jack (Joseph Chapman)	Marvel Comics	Comic	AzureBeast	Earth 616
Spitfire	Marvel Comics	Comic	AzureBeast	Earth 616
Wang Ye	Hitori no Shita: The Outcast	Anime & Manga	thereal1994
Yi	Nine Souls	Game	mtglozwof
Getter Team	Getter Robo	Anime	tonipelimies	Toei Anime
Daryl the Wendigo	B.P.R.D.	Comic	yolo_zombie
Orgazmo	Orgazmo	Movie	yolo_zombie	1997 movie
Alice Kuonji	TYPE-MOON	Visual Novel, Manga and Game	InverseFlash
Genichi Sojo	Kagurabachi	Manga	InverseFlash
The Really Rottens	Laff-a-lympics	Cartoon	LapisLazuliisthebest
The Ant-hill Mob	The Perils of Penelope Pitstop	Cartoon	LapisLazuliisthebest
Ultraman Tregear	Ultraman	Live Action Show	Kaju_researcher	Include feats from Grimdo, his Parallel Isotope Self, and Kaiju Ring Monsters. Include manga, novel, magazine feats, and author statements if possible.
Ultraman Belial	Ultraman	Live Action Show	Kaju_researcher	Include feats from his Parallel Isotope Self, Devil Splinters and Belial Fusion Monsters. Include manga, novel, magazine feats, and author statements if possible.
Cha Hae-In	Solo Leveling	Literature, Manga, and/or Anime	TheAsianIsGamin
Gale Dekarios	Baldur's Gate 3	Game	TheAsianIsGamin​

This Table Only Lists New Requests. For the Unabridged List, Click Here

Request Competition Rules and Leaderboard

Missions

Resources List

The defunct warehouse of Valdemar Machinery has slowly been sinking into the earth for decades, twisting and descending like a soaking, porous cork languidly driving itself down into a puddle of muck, its facades all twisted askew, the walls leaning, the roof caving, sinking, down, down... and the panoramic maw like choking despair having already brought it within sight of its own digestion. Many of the walls had split from their foundations, some lay utterly crumbled, piled upon the ancient and indecorous ruins of industry.
Like a putrid caldera broken free from the deep internal pressure of earth, a swampy marshland now surrounds the place like a dank and fetid moat that floats rather than flows. Broken sticks, blades of old mown grass, leeches, and bellied-up lifeless amphibians swirl in slow, still circles like dead stars hovering around an opaque and monochrome event horizon. The malodorous ichor creeps unseen into the senses a fair distance removed from the broken and tattered gates, themselves enmeshed in defunct wires around the entrance that once served to flood the property with harsh electric beams so bright as to shun the scrap vestiges of moon in the sky.
As it was, by sheer impulse, I indeed pursued my curiosity, not once thinking or comptehending, not once reasoning or stopping to rest or to ask myself, "Why?" Indeed, the buried enterprise had stood loftily before me in a single unbroken framework, an insular, ironwrought image of harsh and lurid darkness. There, it stood in my thoughts, abrupt and martial, intimidating, hostile, before I had even hit the freeway.
'Bloody Mary', say the myth makers, resides within the very walls of Valdemar Incorporated - the cursed reflection appearing at will, never in the same place, not even from mirrors, from that which reflects- the walls peal back of their own will, the scattered remnants of light fall back as into a precipice. Otherwise, all reality vaporizes in an instant, and she shudders forth like thunder and lightning, jumps out at the unsuspecting victim without warning, and so it is paramount - proceed slowly. Take comfort in your fears and appropriate them as a scrap of hellfire - make fear friend.
I cannot but admit a sense of the carnal attached to the thought, seductive to my own sensual eccentricities as often as vile to the vulgar, that I derive a certain untamed passion at being scared out of my wits - that the inevitable confrontation with the fantastic might not stir up something ravenous or self-destructive.
I digress.
Easing alongside an old rotting security shack, after having followed the driveway without lights, I shut off the engine. Berenice was already awaiting my arrival, but when I approached her car, I found it empty and dark, like a tomb untenanted.
I called her repeatedly, but the rings rang hollow. In this place, at this time of night, empty, still, vacant, and removed ten miles from our neighborhood, an anxious sensation gripped my heart.
I circled the building, calling after her, ringing her phone, the calls moving in intervals to an empty voice at the end of many abrupt processions. Nothing stirred, no phone shouted back.
I was at a loss and could scarcely imagine, considering with what ease she could be frightened, how in any conceivable way she could have entered that shadowy warehouse alone, such was the undeviating nature of her timid character. She could never do this, never have entered on her own, *not without force*.
Now I was bound. My own morbid passions notwithstanding, an urgency arose, an indistinct, but perhaps unusually distinct, voice called out in my mind. I proceeded, step-by-step, to breach that shuddering miasma that surrounded the building like a disease, a plague, soaking warm as blood into my shoes, into my socks, curdling the soles of my feet white.
The only visible point of entry that I could find after numerous passages around the premises was a tear in the crumpled door above the loading dock. But this couldn't be - a broken sledgehammer lay in two halves on the ground, and the sliver through which a chilly interior breeze filtered (the night was humid and airless) could not have given way to a human body (without shedding a few drops of blood). I fixed my eyes on the uneven shards of hammerfall. "But why would she have...?"
Again, I raised a soaring, searching cry, which merely bounded back at me like a manic resignation.
I routed the breezy sarcophagus again at close range, indifferent to the mess of muck it made of my shoes and pants, and inspected closely, and but for a broken window that could never have admitted a body without a life's worth of bloodshed, there was nothing, nothing but the loading dock entry door. I scrounged a crowbar out of a pile of mesh and mold and wedged and wracked it with all my might when abruptly an icy blast fired out like a putrid and moldering backdraft I ducked and forced myself in and found myself in the mouth of utter darkness. Despite my impulse to scream her name, some untenable asseveration impelled me to silence, and then to deliberation. Then, it encumbered me, the death-anxiety I had been enduring over my mother, slaving under, servicing, and dying along with. The shaft of nacreous skylight cutting across the scum-ridden floor was behind me. I had already begun to walk and hadn't even suspected my own movements, lost in the reveries of dearer fears.
Like darkness pervading darkness, poured forth like oil; that my will carried me so far that I at last could not figure exactly where I was standing, or near what - was I about to make a fatal misstep and plunge fifty feet? how had I gotten here? wherefore and from whence had my body carried me? where went the light? the light!- I was lost in and penetrating deeper into the perforations of a corporeal void, an endlessly ceasing abyss. I was free, and therefore enslaved - enslaved by the very exercise of freedom.
I could not see, was blind, choking down motes and tasting swoons of dust, coughing it out of my lungs, but standing still. I dropped to my knees. I felt the floor, the metal edges, and the musty concrete, and began to crawl.
I crawled a long, long time, stretching my arms as far as i could on every side looking for vats to fall in, or shards pf metal to be pierced by, clambering, clawing. Far off, the world continued to exist: a church bell struck once, shouting out of phantom lungs to remind me of existence existing - I had been ninety minutes already, had but once cried Berenice's name, and all the while remained- restrained, buried alive some place far away.
Though the building maintained its opacity and rigid dimensionality, though clusters of dust gagged me, though that chilly and paradoxical blast of air-
Alas... My finger brushed a cold dab of warm flesh. No way it could not have been flesh because I felt the bones, too. I smelled the malodor of roses and geraniums and formaldehyde (I worked for a family friend once who embalmed and knew the scent intimately).
My head began spinning; I felt as- no, believed that, I had been lying in bed in my childhood home, in the childhood dark, snuffing the childhood scent, shrouded in the childhood blankie, and thus did my mind revolve....it was as if I was drunk on the most intoxicating, most powerfully pure grade of Deja Vu along which no sentient animal had ever ridden, and I momentarily lost all sense of reference, of reality. It was as if I was on the verge of a seizure - the nerve signals firing pell-mell in all the wrong directions, firing like tank cannons, destroying one another, and my body...for Christ sake, my bones, it's as if they were streaked with razors, that in my tremulous shuddering I had been sawing myself put of my own natural jacket....I could taste all the blood, I was rolling in it, slipping in it like oil- and then-
The walls were no more. I reached out and felt nothing but that drafty chill, that dank and tepid river of stench, and I could hear, perceive, my own dead mother's voice as she screamed my name - *Berenice!*
Two feeble beams, arms, something indescribable and yet ineluctable had raised me to my feet, raised me, and, face to face with the oval mirror, I gazed within, and saw the terrible face, the affrighted countenance of my own self, pale as a sheet, looking in at the consumptive curse that really is my ownself, only the face in the mirror stood with her chin tucked into her breast, eyes closed, mouthing words which I could not make out, could not comprehend, and then she opened her eyes, raised them to me, and screamed... .....and the glass shattered, and my mother whispered, again and again, as she had since time immemorial, the name, the curse- Bloody Mary

Respect Spider-Girl!

In an alternative timeline where Norman Osborn never killed Peter Parker and Mary Jane's baby, May "Mayday" Parker inherited her father's amazing powers. Possessing the proportionate strength, speed and agility of a spider, as well as the ability to cling to walls, she now follows in his web-lines. For years, they chose to keep their past from Mayday and hoped that she wouldn't develop powers of her own like her father. Despite her parents' hopes, May began developing versions of her father's Spider-powers when she was fifteen.
Spider-Girl possesses the proportionate powers of a spider she inherited from her father, granting her superhuman strength, speed, durability, and numerous ""arachnid-like"" abilities. She is physically weaker than her father, but she also possesses more agility than him and a developed Spider-Sense. Spider-Girl possesses superhuman strength enabling her to lift five tons, half that of her father, and she reacts and moves 40 times faster than a person.
MC2 is intended to be an offshoot/continuation of 616, however if you care, essentially every character listed here is the MC2 version. Venom generally refers to Normie Osborn with the symbiote, not Eddie. Similar applies to Carnage, Ock, etc.

Spider-Man Feats and Ability Comparison

• Spider-Girl Short Story
  
• Guidebook Page
  
  • Mayday is 119 lbs and 5'7

Table of Contents

• Strength
  • Striking/Lifting/Grip
• Speed
  • Reaction/Combat/Travel
• Agility
  • Jumping
• Durability
  • Blunt/Esoteric/Piercing
• Spider-Sense
• Spider-Crawling
  • Attracting/Repelling
• Webbing
  • Uses/Speed/Toughness
• Misc

Strength

Striking

• Punches someone into a chimney
• Shatters a chimney top
• Punches Arana hard enough to break a wall
• Slingshots hard enough to break a chimney
• Destroying a chimney
• [Hits Normie through a chimney]( "Spider-Girl (1998) #20")
• [Manages to briefly concuss Hobgoblin while breaking a chimney while he is moving forward with the force of her webbing]()
• [Ragdolls 7 people]()
• Sends Wild Thing flying through a window multiple meters with a punch
• Hits Nanite-Boy a far distance
• Shatters a sonic emitter capable of outputting massive vibrations
• Kicks a door off its hingers
• Punches a door off the hinges
• [Cratering wooden warehouse walls]()
• Kicks a gun and breaks it
• [Destroys a small amount of rock]( )

Lifting

• Overpowers a winch strong enough to lift armored vehicles (5-8 tons) and rips apart a solid steel net
• Can pick up and lift 5 tons overhead
• [Flexes out of an anchor without leverage]()
• Picks up a chimney
• [Breaks a glass dome]()
• Rips off a car door with one arm
• Rips off a car door with one arm, but this time her outfit sucks
• Breaks free from chains
• Cracks a wall flipping Vultress
• Throw hard enough to shatter a door
• [Flexes out of hoops]()
• [Catches a car with an injured ankle]()

Grip

• [Crushes a gun in her hand]("Spider-Girl #89")
• Gun crush
• Rips apart Lady Ock's suit
• Breaks a gun apart
• Crunches metal with his grip

Scaling

• [Gets out of Black Tarantula's grip]()
• Kicks Spider-venom and sends him flying
• [Beats the Goblin Queen with a flesh wound]( )
• [Makes Seth cry out with a hit]( )
• [Hurting Seth with her bio magnetism hits]()
  • Seth is severely stronger than Mayday
• [Beats Man-Wolf]()

Speed

Reactions

• Reflexes enable her to move about 40 times faster than the average teen
• Reflexes 40x faster than any olympian
• About 40 times faster than a human
• 100x average reflexes is "nearly twice as fast as your's"
• Inherited the reflexes of Spider-Man
• Dodges Nova flying at her
• Dodges a bullet at close range
• Better reflexes than an alternate Spider-Man (Earth-9907)
  • Fearsome Four vs MC2 Peter counterpart

Combat/Evasion

• Saves someone being shot by an SMG
• Able to hit someone with nearly 100x faster reactions than average
• Jumps out of a building in under two seconds
• Arana in Mayday's body gets hit by Black Tarantula's ricocheting/homing lasers, [but Mayday after being randomly put back into her body in this scenario avoids him, and hits him with his own laser]()
  • Black Tarantula has beaten someone with x100 human reactions twice
• While suffering from injuries with her fight with Mayhem, moves faster than Parker can
• [Avoids all of Stinger's shots, even while midair]( "Spider-Island")
• Dodging gunfire midair
• Stupid gun
• Dodging bullets
• Dodging electricity
• [Fighting on pure instinct, The Avengers can't touch her]()
• [Dodging Venom while her reflexes are slowed]()
• Dodging things that hit AU spider-people
• Lady Ock can't touch her
• Hits Bluestreak with someone else
  • Bluestreak is a speedster who can be interpreted at different speeds
• [Stealing from a Skrull, faster than Franklin]()
• Tying not!Reed into knots
• [Beats Green Goblin without getting hit]()
• [Stalemates Spider-Venom without getting hit]()
• [Doesn't get hit by Nova or Darkdevil]()

Vs People

• Goons can't touch her
• [Two fighters can't touch her]()
• Moves like an aark
• [Absolutely clowns on gadgets]()
• Takes out a peak human with a shitty hold
• Fighting two people
• Blitzes Mr. Nobody
• Catching and reflecting projectiles

Travel

• 3 blocks in a few moments, or about 180 mph
• [Catches a projectile, outraces Claw, pulls him midair]( )
• [Blitzes Vultress]()
• [Baby save]()
• Runs on a ceiling as fast as SHIELD agents on the ground

Accuracy

• Lands 20 shots in a row with a basket ball
• Disarms someone with a snowball
• Eventually lands a shot on Stinger while she's insect-sized
• Hits darts with stingers

Agility

General

• Recovers from being flung into the air by Nucleus
  • [Mayday is the only one to have ever gotten past her forcefields]()
• [Dodges ice crystals while moving through the air]( "Spectacular Spider-Girl #4")
• She can basically airstrafe
• Jumps around with Stinger
• Glides through a huge amount of jacks in the air in very close vicinity
• Weaves between bullets
• Dodges almost all attacks from Carnage (MC2)
• More agile than Spider-Man (Earth-9907)
• Never trips
• Tumble
• Dodges multiple attacks without ever touching the ground

Jumping

Height

• Jumps over buildings
• Big jump next to a building
• Big jump, gigantic arc
• Tall buildings in a single bound
• Great distances in a single bound
• [Big jump playing basketball]()
• 8 foot+ vertical
• Jumps up to a roof
• Jumps on to a building

Distance

• 30 foot horizontal
• 30 foot horizontals
• Bounces around on walls and ceiling
• Somersaults several meters
• Several meter long leap attack
• Bouncy
• Airstrafe
• Big jump over a fence
• Bouncy
• Clears an obstacle course without hands

Durability

Mayday displays a general resistance to most types of conventional damage, however she has never fully resisted any kind of piercing attack.

Blunt

• Slammed into a girder hard enough to bend it and continues to fight
• Still moving after being hit hard enough to crater solid metal
• Gets thrown into a car door
• Thrown through machinery
• [Slammed into a wall hard enough to make a very slight crater]( ("Spider-Girl 1998 #74")
• Thrown through a door
• Slammed into metal hard enough to break it
• [Taking a beating from Normie!Venom and Goblin Queen]()
• [Gets ragdolled by Tombstone and suffers a concussion]()

Heat/Electricity/Misc

• Tanks a massive attack from Aftershock
  • She is strong enough to bring a man to the brink of death on touch
• Tanks a blast from Electro
• [Not affected by super cold powers]()
• Punches fire
• Punches fire
• [Tanks webbing burning fire]()
• Takes hits from Nucleus who could destroy a wall and is still in the fight
• Survives (but is in a very poor shape being in the center of this giant explosion

Piercing

• [Struck by blades multiple times with only minor cuts]()
• Being slashed by lil carnage doesn't do any real harm
  • Slashed again

Spider-Sense

Mayday has a more developed and sensitive spider-sense than her father.
General Danger Sense

• [Ultra Instinct]()
• Dodges a teleporter
• Tells her of "dangers" to her friends in close vicinity as well
• Warns her someone is coming so that she can hide her secret identity
• Tells her she's being followed
• Tells her that she's in an hallucination
• Detects a dimensional rift
• Very useful in sports
• Senses that the Green Goblin is outside the window
• Uses it to hit a teleporter as soon as he materializes
• [Detects Loki in his astral form]()
• Detects people in disguise
• Uses it to "see through" illusions
• Navigates through an asteroid field
• Dodges a teleporting strike
• Can tell if someone's up to no good
• Has a different feel for different people
• Dodges Darkdevil's surge

Anti-Stealth

• [Can't sneak up on her]()
• Avoids a sneak attack from a mind controlled ally
• Can't sneak up on spider-sense
• Impossible to sneak up on
• Stealth
• Sneak attack
• Can sense lies
• Presence in the room
• Detects lies

Fighting Blind

• Dodging blind
• Fighting invisible enemy without ever getting touched
• Hits Deadspot
• Fighting in the dark is ez
• Defeats an invisible foe
• Can use it to aim at invisible opponents
• Dodges tons of ping-pong balls while blind-folded
• [Dodges Elektra thrown razors blindfolded]()

Evasion

• Dodging heat seeking bats
• [Beats a security system that beat her in the past]()
• [Dodging a sniper-shot]()
• Real Skill
• Can warn her not to do things
• can dodge cameras
• Dodges automatic rifle shots from behind
• Warns her of a pumpkin bomb thrown at her

Readiness/Preparation/Senses

• Spider-sense strength/weakness
• Spider-sense - weakness
• Closing eyes
• [Detects loki]()
• [Finds a medallion]()
• Timing with man-wolf
• One threat from another
• [Finds a nuke]()

Wall Crawling

Mayday has an enhanced bio-magnetism in addition to her normal wall crawling.
Bio-Magnetism

• Brief explanation on her having a bio magnetic power
• Grabs someone by their weapon
• [Sticks Peter to the wall and hits him with webbing]()
  • She can repel objects she is attached to
• Freezes Quickwire
• Sticks everyone to the floor
• Uses it to disarm American Dream
  • American Dream has peak human speed
• Makes other objects adhesive
• Restrains Spider-Man (Earth-9907)
• Stops Araña dead in her tracks and make her trip
• Roots a bunch of people and robots to the floor
• Freezes Spiders

Wall Crawling

• Walls break before she does
• The floor breaks before her she does
• Holds on to a train
• Stops her momentum

Repelling

One of Mayday's unique powers is the ability to repel objects and people.

• Launches a giant golem and craters a wall
• Hits someone with a shield
• Repels hard enough to send Goblin Queen flying through metal
• Repels herself and takes out Franklin
• Launches herself of a wall
• Repelling junk
• Repels a tire hard enough to knock out two persons
• Hits a goon with a projectile, webs up people

Webbing

Mayday has Peter's webshooters, as well as impact webbing.
Usage

• Web-Shield
  • Shields against explosions
  • [Blocks a blast that knocks out J2]()
  • She can create it in front of other people
  • Blocks a bolt of electricity from Aftershock (Electro's daughter)
  • Blocks pumpkin bombs
• Quickly makes a human-sized Web-Construct
• Web-Cocoon
• Web-Slingshot
• Parachute
• Launches herself up higher than a very tall building
• Can make a sphere of her webbing
• Her webbing floats

Velocity

• [Hits Mayhem, her clone]()
• Hitting Arana, who has 'spider-like' speed
• Catches Bluestreak
• Stops a Goblin Blaster faster than Hobgoblin can react
• [Fast enough to stop a superhuman with a sword to someone's throat]( )
• Catches shurikens
• Catches a bloodlusted Nanite-Boy
• [Swings back and forth comparably to Nanite-Boy (James Rhodes)]()
• Disables guns

Production Speed

• Quick RoF
• Gigantic ball of webbing
• Goop

Webbing Toughness

• Elastic enough to repel a bank vault door
• Strong enough to contain her identical clone
• Truck feat webbing
• Wall breaks
• Elastic webbing
• [Webbing five tons]()
• Tears metal
• Rips an electrical box
• [Restrains kaine]()
• Contains an explosion
• Holds up a lot of debris
• Blocks a Goblin finger blaster
• [Staunching fire]()
• Arana can't break out
• Catches a falling guy

Impact Webbing

• [Sends Mayhem flying out of a building]()
• Sends midair Black Tarantula flying
• Sends someone flying
• Impact webbing
• Impact webbing
• Impact webbing

Stingers

• [Uses stingers]()
• Uses stingers on spiders
• Uses stingers

Misc

• Has polarized lenses
• Only needs 5 hours of sleep to recover all her energy, because of the "proportionate strength and stamina of a spider"
• Has a cellphone
  • Her web shooters are a cellphone
  • Uses google
  • Uses wikipedia
• Has a pokemon collection
• Knows CPR

Greetings Survivors We are super happy to let you know that a new Major Update is available on the Default branch of the game! At first, our initial focus after the launch was to solve as many bugs and stability issues as possible. After a few updates, we reached a point where the number of stability and bug reports decreased by 90%. Instead, numerous requests for new functionalities and content began to appear.
In this Major Update, we want to meet those expectations. We are adding several new systems and hope that they improve your overall experience with Infection Free Zone. Have fun!
New Features and Content

• Gear System has been added to the game, including Sport Protector, Riot Gear and Plate Armor. Those will allow extra protection for your squad members.
• Two new types of POI have been added - Museums and Sports Shops where you can find the Gear.
• Emblem customization has been added. Now you can both change your zone's name and its emblem. It's also possible to upload custom images to the Infection Free Zone_Data\StreamingAssets\Emblem\Logo folder and use them as emblems in the game.
• A tree regrowth system has been added. The trees will grow back by themself now.
• Greenhouses have been added to the game. They cost 4 wood, 8 metal, and 1 tool to build, but are immune to negative modifiers from the weather.
• The Citizen Reproduction System has been added. When specific conditions are met (enough food, available housing, proper mood level), children will appear in the Zone. Children consume 50% as much as adults, use the house/shelter living slots, and take 12 in-game days to grow up.
• A resource discard feature has been added (right-click on the resource in your storage to discard the resources).
• Additional entrances have been added to the buildings to improve the overall scavenging experience.
• A new Megastorm and Supermoon music themes have been added.
• The Citizen Housing logic has been reworked. The citizens will now get back to sleep at the closest sheltehouse, which should help with running outposts.
• The Building System has been improved to allow structures to be placed on gatherable objects. The workers will remove the gatherable object first and then proceed with the original task.
• POI Filters have been added to the View Layers section. Players can now look for specific POIs like guns or gear on the map.
• Heavy Rain animation for the Megastorm event has been added.
• New shrub models have been added to the game.
• Damaged structure models have been added to the game,
• Snow particles and snow animation have been updated.
• Beijing Map has been updated.
• Mast visuals have been updated.
• It is now possible to select an empty production cycle in the Medbay building to keep on attending to the wounded in the beds but refrain from manufacturing unwanted first aid kits. The UI of this solution will receive an update in the future.

Balance changes

• The day/night length has been increased by 20%.
• Default Warehouse capacity has been increased by 20%.
• The number of potential immigrants wandering around our Zone has been slightly increased.
• The Globetrotter achievement logic has been updated.
• Hordes will now attack the encountered farm crops. Farms won't get destroyed, but the production progress will go down.
• Biome regions have been updated to fix issues with excessively low temperatures in some areas.
• The Assault Rifle base damage has been decreased by around 50%, but the attack speed has been vastly increased. This should result in the weapon being very strong, but consuming significant amounts of ammo.
• The Shotgun base damage has been increased by around 25%. The attack speed has been slightly decreased.
• The Shotguns have been added to the pool of scavengable items in the game.
• The maximum available angle when placing walls has been increased.
• The maximum available camera zoom-in has been increased.
• The camera angle change during zoom-in and zoom-out has been readjusted.
• The density of trees has been increased.

Bug Fixes

• An issue with tooltips displaying incorrect information for buildings that are unlocked by multiple technologies has been fixed.
• An issue with hordes attacking structures resetting their position upon death of one of the infected has been fixed.
• An issue with the military medbay storyline causing errors has been fixed.
• An issue with non-infected NPC groups attacking Infected who were buried down has been fixed.
• An issue that caused the Research Tree to not properly refresh all the available researches has been fixed.
• An issue with errors happening with partially adapted buildings getting fully adapted has been fixed.
• Issues that were caused by the Zone name not having a character limit have been fixed. Now the maximum character limit for the Zone name is 32 characters.
• A number of other minor issues have been fixed.

We hope that you will enjoy all the recent changes. Have fun and let us know about your feedback in the comments! Would you like us to work further on the current systems? Or should we prioritize completely new functionalities? We're all ears!
Thank you for playing Infection Free Zone.
Best regards, Jutsu Games Team

I originally planned to write a comment in u/Mindless-Base8597’s current thread about our thoughts on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, just a handful of bullet points, but I am legitimately insane and I could not stop. And I have a major league passion for this IP, so I figured I would dump all my thoughts in here on the off-chance that some of you solid choombattas would give it a skim and share your opinions. There’s probably going to be overlap with a lot of thoughts others have introduced, but maybe there will be some ideas that challenge them too. There's also going to be alot of tabletoppish stuff as well, which I hope resonates with some people but I know it's not for everyone. I also understand that alot of these ideas may not even be plausible considering the work it'd take to implement them, however this game is going to be baking in the oven of development for several years and technology is advancing faster and faster day by day, so who knows. Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to click on my big ol wall of text and I hope my ideas can provoke some thought-bounceage, simultaneous dreaming or at least some mild entertainment.
THINGS I THINK THE SEQUEL MUST HAVE:
Crew building: The tabletop Cyberpunk is designed for a group of players that work together to do stuff, therefore the player should be involved in these kinds of team-oriented jobs in which they carry out their role. The concept of crews is well-established in the lore and game world, and would be a very welcome addition as a gameplay mechanic, especially given the focus on the crew in Edgerunners. It can be managed with slots via a “Crew” tab in the menu and your Street Cred could be the metric by which it expands. In 2077, Street Cred was bound to unlocking gear for some reason, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, because which Night City vendor is going to turn away eddies just because they think the customer doesn’t have enough street cred? Pretty asinine when you think about it. Maybe you start off with just one friend in your crew and as you gain Street Cred, you unlock more slots until you can have 5 or 6 other chooms you can be tight with and carry out jobs together. They could be fleshed out characters you can get attached to, and/or disposable replaceable gonks given how easy it is to die for nothing in Night City. A crew hangout or hideout where you get together and plan operations would also be fuckin nova.
Character networking: We see V making friends and contacts in 2077, and in Phantom Liberty we see V contacting them for help. It would be very cool to see more of this implemented in a broader scope. If we've got a job to do from a fixer or a task we have to accomplish in the story, but we're not equipped to storm in and handle it ourselves, maybe we call some buddies or hire someone from.. I don't know, Afterlife (you know, the mercenary bar full of mercenaries that are looking for work). We need some recon done, call up your crew’s netrunner and pay them for a quick rundown. We need information, we call up the fixer in whatever district we need the info for, and they have us do a task for them, pay them, or direct us to someone else to get the info. Networking can obviously also factor into crew building as well.
Player agency: I’ve only played a little handful of Phantom Liberty so far, but wow, they’re firing on all cylinders with this. Three moments stick out to me so far where I had the option to talk it out and make decisions, but was still allowed to bring my weapon up, and was able to just waste the threat on the spot mid-sentence. Now that’s what I call agency. I don’t think this simply just a want or an idea, I think it’s a given that more of this approach will be taken in the sequel if the way they handled it in Phantom Liberty tells us anything. More ways for us to really decide what we do.
A humanity system: Another cue from Edgerunners, where humanity was a big deal. If we're not playing as V, we don't have the Relic in our head, and that's something that has to be considered. They kinda put it in 2077 in part with the rage state mechanic but that's all the way at the top of a skill tree, and doesn't put you on MaxTac's radar or have any consequences. If modders can implement it into 2077 in their free time, CDPR can do it too.
Cosmetic and visual cybernetics: Come on choom, speaks for itself. Needs to happen. The Arasaka Cyberarms mod shouldn’t have to exist in a world where there’s droves of cyberarms just hanging around and laying in boxes. Give us subdermal LEDs (which are just junk for some reason). Neck/throat cyberware, ear cyberware, chest cyberware, lip cyberware, we want all of that. Such a standard thing for this world and adheres firmly to the rule of cool. Also when we chrome up, whether it’s functional or cosmetic, what cyberware we choose should appear on our person when appropriate. I wanna see that sandevistan protruding from my back. I wanna see that frontal cortex implant that gets me mad crit chance on my temples. And so on and so forth.
Separate tattoo locations: What if I just want one tattoo on my only 'ganic bicep? What if I like one part of a face tattoo but don't like the other stuff it comes with? Shouldn't have to use a mod for that. A tattoo artist isn't ever going to tell you "yeah, I can do that one on your arm, but I also have to put a snake on your whole torso" no matter how gonked off of secondhand drugs he is.
Regarding the story: We at least need a player character that isn't bound by the ludonarrative dissonance of impending death on a timer. If we've got a chip in our head that's gonna kill us in an urgent time frame, we shouldn't want to be hustling around the city buying luxury cars, participating in boxing matches and doing work for the police. Other than that, I don't care. CDPR are master storytellers, they'll make it and I'll like it. No good endings though, not in Night City.
Common sense fixers: Why on earth would a fixer hire a loud merc to do a quiet job? If you haven't spent any points in stealth skills, if you don’t have silencers in your stash, if you don’t have optical camo, etc., then fixers should not obligate you to carry out solo infiltration jobs where discretion is key. It just sets the player up to be chastised and paid less. They should simply not consider you for the job, but instead give you a different way you can contribute to the job. More on this later.
More functional optics cyberware: There’s no reason our Kiroshi optics shouldn’t be able to flick into thermal infrared or night vision mode if we buy a model with that feature. Why we weren’t available to buy optics with these features in 2077 is beyond me. A corp like Kiroshi has definitely entered this market.
Weapon customization: This is another no-brainer. Your weapons are an extension of yourself. You should get a say in what they look like. If I use Fenrir in 2077, why do I have to have that god awful Maelstrom logo on it when spraypaint clearly exists? At the very least, they should be fully cosmetically customizable. If you’re a techie, you should have the ability to tinker on them and fine tune them how you like, too. If you’re not a techie, there's good incentive to go make friends with one or have one in your crew. Might have a think about having your character just choose one or two weapons in the beginning and then you have to stick with them for the whole game as a component of your character, and those will be your special guns and your special guns alone. We pretty much do this anyway if we make a character build in 2077. Just like any characters we meet that carry and use their own iconic weapons, your one or two weapons will be YOUR special iconics and you can modify/have them modified to your tastes with progressively better stats, custom tuning, appearance customization and weapon effects of your choice. Jackie had two pistols and a machete that were definitively HIS hallmark weapons and components of HIS character and personality. Obviously you can use other iconics too, but they will never be YOURS. Yeah it does kind of cripple the freedom, but in a sensible way because it forces you stick to your role, make your character truly important and unique like they should be in an RPG. Plus it's kind of gonk for a corpo counterintel character to be using a sniper rifle all game and then decide they want to start using a katana without having spec'd into reflexes. What would you even do with a katana if your job has always been quickhacking and shooting from a city block away? An illusory freedom that wouldn't be missed for long, imo.
Meaningful vendors: I can play a whole character start to finish in 2077 without buying anything from a point of sale except for the odd trip into a clothing store. Even then, there’s clothes laying around for free all over the place. All of these gun shops, eateries, netrunner supply jams, junk shops, are pretty much useless. Find a way to involve them in the gameplay. Maybe some biz owners have work for you and unlock the real preem shit after you’ve increased your rep with them? Maybe you did a job that inadvertently allowed a proprietor to get a hold of some unique cyberware in their stock. Maybe you buy enough junk from a guy and he decides to sign an exclusive deal with you where he regularly sends junk shipments to your techie, who is in turn able to craft more things for you. Set up a gun dealer with a line on cost-effective components, I reckon they might be elated with the profit that they're gonna turn and maybe they've got something special for you in the back. I also noticed a vendor in Dogtown that asked if we're shopping for a Christmas present or to equip a small army. A merchant like that would be pretty valuable for someone who runs a crew that needs equipment.
Attention to economy balance: 2077 gets to a point really fast where eddies don’t mean a thing. One, because there’s not much to buy after you chrome up to whatever build you’re going for and you have all the cars and apartments you want. Furthermore, you can make more money in 10 minutes of murdering unmarked gangbangers on the map and selling their guns than you do in an actual gig. Make the Eurodollar important. Make it scarce. Think about introducing a technological macguffin that locks weapons to their owners like MGS4, not preventing you from taking them for disassembly but preventing you from selling them for easy money. You’re in a bleak, gnarly trash-ridden, sex-crazed psychotic neon dystopia where humans kidnap other humans to chop them up for XBD sales and cyberware/organ harvesting, people are enslaved in broad daylight and resigned to truly fucking heinous existences as sex and torture objects, and lives are routinely brutally ended over paltry sums of eddies. Only corpos live that high life, and even then, they're never truly safe. Make the eurodollar live up to the lore.
Trauma Team: Kind of speaks for itself but if we're neck deep in eddies, we aughta be able to invest in a Trauma Team coverage package. Instead of a game over screen and a reload from a checkpoint, why don't we implement this chef kiss worldbuilding into the actual gameplay? Don't let it go to waste.
THINGS I THINK WOULD BE INTERESTING:
Meaningful lifepaths/tabletop roles and gameplay implications: In 2077, we get the choice between three lifepaths: Nomad, Streetkid or Corpo. The tabletop roles include Rocker, Solo, Media, Nomad, Netrunner, Techie (can be combined with MedTech), and Corpo (I excluded Fixer and Lawman excluded for gameplay and narrative reasons). Gigs should be predominantly focused around these roles, allowing for some extreme diversity. The gigs that fixers give you should be the same for every character, but what you are doing in them will be different depending on your role. For instance, you're a rocker (rocker could mean rappeDJ/whatever too at this point), your role in the gig might be running interference or causing a diversion so the solos can make a hit. You're a netrunner, you're disabling security systems and providing recon for the rest of the crew. You're a media, you've gotta interrogate the miniboss at the end or slide your friend a story to air that will get the opposing faction's attention. You’re a nomad, you’re cutting off enemy reinforcements with your cool vehicle before they get to the gig site. Bang, now you've got ridiculous degrees of replayability, and not only do you have gigs that are far deeper than sneaking in/killing everyone and taking something after a quick one-sided phone call, your lifepath is meaningful and you don’t even have to live out a short intro for it. Maybe this is an implausible pipe dream because it might mean CDPR has to design every gig like 9 times though. But I'm sure many players would agree, less gigs is a totally acceptable tradeoff for higher quality. There are 81 gigs in Cyberpunk 2077 (I think). I would easily agree to chop that number down to 20 or 25 if they could implement this degree of depth, and encourage replayability so you get to experience these gigs from multiple angles.
In any case, this is going to limit players severely in what they can and can't do as far as their abilities go, but in a good way. It's going to up the RPG factor big time and make the player commit to the role they've chosen. Sure, now you can't do everything, you have a skill set limited to your chosen expertise, and it might be narrow, but.. good thing you'll have a crew that makes up for it! Need to craft stuff but you're not a techie? Get one in your crew. You a netrunner that can't handle the heat of firefights? You need a solo or two. Are you an ugly dirty nomad who hasn't had a hot shower for a few months and nobody wants to get near you? Get a hot, cool rocker to handle your social situations for you. So on and so forth.
Thoughts on tabletop attributes: I think they did a preem job adapting Cyberpunk 2020's tabletop attributes to 2077. It doesn’t need to be changed, really, but there are little ways they could make it evolve a bit so it’s not the exact same. The tabletop attributes are Intelligence, Reflexes, Tech, Cool, Attractiveness, Luck, Body and Empathy (excluded Movement Ability for obvious reasons). CDPR could think about how to implement the attributes they didn’t in 2077. Like Cool or Attractiveness functioning like Charisma in other RPGs, or being somehow related to your clothing. Hard to think about because clothing is so subjective, but it's the rule in Cyberpunk that you have to look as cool as possible and even if you fuck up, you have to make it look like you meant to fuck up. Empathy could be a stat that determines how well your can read people, tell if they're lying to you or not. Maybe the player can have one of those clothing store workers or a Mox contact appraise their Attractiveness and have them assign some kind of tasks to increase it? It's good the way it is now but just something to think about.
Vehicle customization: It’d be cool to have access to this via a garage or chain of garage businesses to trick out our vehicles cosmetically and functionally. Better yet, if you have a nomad in your crew/are a nomad, that you’d have access to exclusive modifications that will be available to utilize for gigs or just for aesthetics.
Gig preparation: Gotta intercept a convoy? Good idea to hit up your nomad choom first if you have one, and get him to install a custom EMP switcheroo in your offroad rig, or pay his buddies to set up spike strips lest you have to figure out a way to bring it to a halt the hard way. Pulling off a gig where you know there will be a big NCPD response? Best get equipped with an advanced area radio scrambler. This can kind of tie into your role-specific gig executions too. For instance, a rocker might have to go acquire some glitter and figure out a way to distribute it to the enemies on the site before the job so they’re all twacked out when the rest of the crew comes. This should also tie into the networking, more of utilizing your friends and acquaintances. Friends with the codefreak watching the Maelstrom warehouse? Give em a call, pay them/trick them/otherwise convince them to take the day off.
Role-specific activities: Just simple radiant quest-ish things that pertain to your lifepath that don't infringe on the story. Jobs that don't need to be facilitated by a fixer, jobs you get via phone or a job site on the Net. Solos could have radiants where they pick up a quick huscle job to provide overwatch for a deal, or go repo something. Rockers need to slap up gig posters and get secure lines on designer drugs for the clubs they play. Medias need to get requested footage or conduct a short interview. Netrunners doing security audits or subnet infiltrations. Stuff like that. In addition to eddies, players would also be gaining XP for their role that unlocks lifepath-specific bonuses that make you better at your role in gigs. Maybe an experienced team member can have access to different approaches in them, or get better rewards.
Tabletop skills: In the final version of 2077, we’ve got skills such as Headhunter, Shinobi, Netrunner, Solo, Engineer. The tabletop skills relevant to gameplay could be Authority, Awareness (or Perception), Athletics, General Knowledge, Interrogation or Streetwise. Perhaps some of these could be implemented, as Netrunner, Solo and Tech are already roles. Roles could give accelerated XP gain to these if they pertain. For instance, a corpo is going to eventually be really good with Authority, a solo is going to be really streetwise, etc.
Tabletop motivations: This might be a VA budget nightmare depending on how they'd run it, but when you create a character in the tabletop, there's criteria such as the thing your character values the most (money, honor, power, etc), your personality traits, how you feel about people, your upbringing, etc. CDPR is smart. If anyone can find a way to cleverly implement even light aspects of this, it would be them. You could be given small drip feed rewards for adhering to your character’s standards. Maybe your character is “stable and serious” which allows you to start with a bonus to Cool. Maybe they’re “friendly and outgoing” which would open speech checks with likeminded NPCs as a way to possibly advance in a mission or establish a contact. Maybe they’re “rebellious, antisocial, violent” so they get a slight damage bonus.
Gang/Corp relations: Doing a lot of work for a specific gang or corp? They should like you better and show it because it’s in their best interest that you are succeeding. Maybe they send some money shards or weapons from time to time, maybe they give you specific rewards, maybe they lend you someone you can add to your crew, maybe you can call some of them for backup in a fight or a deal or a gig. But if they don’t like you, you might want to rethink passing through their territory, have a plan or expect them to send someone to take you out. Or if you’re cool with them, maybe you can call on them to offload stolen goods you "found". Also note that all of the gangs in Night City in 2077 are completely fucking abhorrent except for one. Maybe they can create some new gangs or resurrect some left out gangs from prior lore. Incorporate some gangs that aren’t inherently nefarious, it'd be a good way to pick up some work for a new merc with no rep.
Neighborhood notoriety: If you're running around helping people all day in an community, guarantee they're all talking to eachother about it. Same if you're running around killing people all day. You could be respected as a protector of the district, or feared as a specter that will flatline whoever for being in the way. Westbrook vendors might give you discounts for breaking them free from Tyger Claw protection. Watson clubs might refuse to let you in if you zeroed some of their talent, or they might call the cops on you in SanDom just because they saw you wipe 6th Street party and they're scared. Maybe you'll get free synth noodles from a certain stand simply because the owner is scared to charge you anything. Maybe people should notice what you do and act accordingly, if your character's goals are anything like V's and every other aspiring merc in Night City. Maybe try to put your gun away before you talk to someone, lest they see a gun in their face and consider disliking you.
Think about stashing your money: If I'm a criminal in Night City where the cops don't do shit and I just watched you dump 30 legendary weapons into an automated sale box in Northside at night and it spit out a quarter million eddies, I'm going to flatline you instantly when you're not looking and electric slide over to the nearest dollhouse and live there for the next year. If I'm a netrunner and I scan you sitting in a booth at a club and see how loaded you are, I'm going to tell my crew and they're going to show up behind you next time you have to take a piss. If I watch you give Garry the Prophet 40 thousand eds, I'm following you down the stairs to Vik's but you're not gonna make it there. Maybe don't run around with millions of eddies on your cred chip. Keep your scratch safe at a safe in your crew's hangout and they can use it when they need it to upgrade their gear, acquire intel, hire huscle, upgrade your digs, whatever. It's Cyberpunk 2077, there's a whole ass net and you can buy your neon windbreakers and tight leather pants online from the safety of wherever is safe for you.
THINGS I THINK WE COULD DO WITHOUT:
NCPD scanner nonsense: Bounties for higher profile criminals would be fine, as the NCPD is generally really down bad on their budget and manpower, and can hardly control anything as it is. They could be accessed via the net. But just running around taking care of all of their business for them? No, choom, don’t be doing their job for them when they’d just as soon lock you up, zero you, or get you entangled in some corruption fiasco where you’re a loose end. No way. Don’t work for the badges unless it's in a gig facilitated by a fixer, it’s never worth it. Wipe these encounters entirely and put that energy and labor into something else.
Carry weight issues: Alright if we're chromed to the gills it makes sense that we can carry alot, but even so, who carries around 20 guns and 8 melee weapons on their person when you can only have 3 equipped? I think it should be toned down, and that would also benefit the economic immersion aspect of the sequel. If we run into a Tyger Claws hangout and massacre everyone, how about we call our crew to come pick through the shit off the ground instead of picking it all up ourselves and lugging it to a sale box? Also..
Effortless disassembly anywhere: If we're a techie, we're likely breaking things down into components all the time if we don't need them, putting them into the crew's pool. But why are we doing that in the middle of a Tyger Claws basketball court that we just slaughtered in broad daylight? At least take them to the trunk of your car, or better yet, your workbench back at HQ. If we're not a techie, well what are we doing trying to tinker with stuff? Go bring it to your hangout so your techie or nomad can take a look at it. Makes your lifepath and your crew choice matter more.
Regarding acting talent budget: Keanu and Idris knocked it out of the park, they are incredibly good at what they do, but CDPR should consider reallocating that Hollywood budget into other things. If they have to get celebrities, they don’t have to go all the way to Hollywood. There's a giant pool of very charismatic entertainers they could pick up, but the IP is ubiquitous enough at this point that they simply don't need the marketing boost from Hollywood star power. There are plenty of huge, well-known well-loved faces out there in the world of entertainment (music, youtube, comedy, athletics, journalism) that are avid gamers themselves would likely be thrilled to participate in the game that wouldn’t require a Hollywood paycheck. I could write more all day on tons of excellent looks for these roles, but I’ll save it for another time.
Regarding romance options: Might get heat for this one because romance options are nigh required in open-world RPGs, but I want a setting or at least a dialogue option to friendzone romance options right off the bat without losing story outcomes. Romance IS a possible factor in tabletop character creation but some people just aren't into it. Some people just want to be friends, too, and that's also very valid. Nudity and mature content is a given, obviously Cyberpunk is not a family friendly world and there's a modern understanding that games with adult content and gratuitous violence are going to be graphic. All I'm saying is it's fucking weird when I'm playing this game and my wife walks by and sees POV footage of my character splacking with moaning and gyrating tits. Makes me uncomfortable. Maybe just a problem for me, whatever. Simple options about it would be nice, something better than just slapping underwear on the models. Fade to black is such an easy solution.
Flying cars: Probably going to catch more heat for this too, because this is something everyone raves over, but I don’t find it necessary at all. Most AVs are generally autopiloted anyway and most Night City airspace is reserved for corporations, and introducing manual flying vehicles would a) totally undermine the existence of ground vehicles and b) result in a colossal psychocyberlibertarian airborne clusterfuck without an entire extensively supported NCPD air traffic control division, and from a lore standpoint, they just don’t have that kind of juice. And there’d have to be landing pads and AV parking all over the place, unless for some reason we are the only person in Night City that has a flying car; in which case, that just makes no sense. We'd be on the radar of every other freak that wants a flying car and they'd be itching to kill us and take it. Not to mention how many gangs and psychopaths would shoot it out of the sky for fun. Might as well just fast travel at that point, chooms. I’ll say it’d be a good idea for your crew to somehow acquire an AV for use in jobs, but just to fly around in a car? And do what? Look at shit from far away? Unnecessary.
Consumables: We don’t really need to be carrying around 47 cans of NiCola, 91 burritos, 20 containers of RAM Jolt, 75 slices of locust pizza, etc. in our pockets/invisible backpack/up our asses. Eliminate them entirely, instead replacing the whole concept with food stalls and eateries where you can order and immediately take a seat to consume an appropriate selection of a menu item that grants you a temp buff depending on what you order. Vending machines are strewn about all over the place and most players buy something once just to see what happens. Give those places a reason to exist.
Map marked collectibles: Collectibles are great but when you just scatter them on the map with map markers like the tarot graffiti, it just feels like a chore. It's the first thing I do after Konpeki, just driving around getting all the tarot spots just to get them out of the way. Consider erasing those map markers and making hidden collectibles much more valuable. Night City is an amazing world space, incentivize it's exploration.
Multiplayer: There should be no multiplayer BS involved if it’s going to take away from the singleplayer experience in any way, especially if CDPR has to piss swaths of their budget away for it. At the very most, make some kind of PvE jam accessed as side content. There are many players in the world with subpar internet connections, including myself, and they should not have to deal with connection issues for a singleplayer game. Having players roving the map at the same time as yourself is just going to turn it into GTA5 with griefing and other such bullshit, and make it so the game is unable to be paused, and I do not want to be bogged down dealing with other people’s children or hackers (players, not in-world adversaries) dicking with my shit. Also consider that an anti-cheat would have to be utilized and I don’t want CDPR to have to redirect any budget to be maintaining it to defend the game from people who just want to fuck it up. Lastly, keep singleplayer gaming alive. Look at all this fucking shit I wrote. Do you think I have friends? Not all of us have or even want a gang of friends/online strangers to be involved when we game. Play multiplayer games if you like multiplayer games, no need to make this singleplayer masterpiece into an online fuckfest when there's a hundred other popular online fuckfests going on.
IN CONCLUSION Thanks so much for reading or even skimming through this mess, chooms. Whether you like my ideas or hate them, I live in a world where not alot of people listen to me when I talk, so it actually does mean alot to me that you bothered to even click on this, for what it's worth. Even if you see something in that clusterfuck that made you go "no way, get real." Anyway, hope you’re having an awesome day, and if you’re not, I hope it gets better posthaste because you are, in fact, important. Also if anyone from CDPR sees this, feel free to steal all of my ideas for free.

The objective of this article is to explain, from a corporate point of view, the current situation of the Nijisanji company, as well as its evolution in the immediate future. This is strictly from a business, stock market and personnel management approach.

The business model.
Many identify that the company's success was due to the incorporation of facial tracking to incorporate it into a 2D avatar, much cheaper than a 3D model. Now a large investment was not needed to have a talent streaming. So, by being one of the first to apply it, it naturally became the leader. Then it became a talent management agency that revolutionized the world of entertainment... but is this so?
Yes and no.
The use of facial tracking, a central key to its success, has also enabled more than 16,000 vtubers to emerge by 2023. And the Japanese market, where it is most widespread, is already saturated.
This is something to think about.
The key to the company's success is the same technology that has enabled thousands of competitors. So, to stay on top, you must keep innovating constantly.
But, Nijisanji has not innovated on the technology front in years, nor does he have any plans to do so. In his reports he only focuses on what he already is and the diversity of his talents. Dozens of them to see which is the next successful one. 177 by some numbers. It is not a leading company; it is just the largest. In the last report it mentions a studio, but does not indicate any capacity and advertises an ASMR microphone as something extraordinary. It is a common thing in Nijisanji, it does not mention details when it is not convenient or simply lies, as in the retention rate of its employees.
There is also a marked difference in the management of the company. The time before the company's shares were listed on the stock market and the time after. In the previous era, there was more sustainable development, ideas were allowed. However, by allowing in huge amounts of capital they also acquired new responsibilities towards investors, leaving everything else aside.
On the other hand, it is a company that rents franchises. It is incorrect to classify it as a talent agency. The talents (which I refer to by the personal qualities of each of them, not by the business model) are provided with the logo, the space under the company name and the 2D model, of which they never have the rights. They do not receive a salary, they only earn a percentage of the profits generated, the rest goes to rent for everything else that is provided to them. The talents are forced to follow the strict orders and whims of the corporate. That the talents themselves must worry about their taxes is a clear example of this model.
So why is it so Big?
Very simple. They were pioneers, and lucky, very lucky.
It was a company that innovated with the use of technology and knew how to capitalize on it. And let's not forget that an immense growth was thanks to a worldwide phenomenon such as quarantine. In addition, we should mention that its competitors suffered quite a lot of controversy.
In this respect, we must imagine a scenario: If the competing companies had not had these controversies, would Nijisanji be in the position it is in now?
But this clear path is also the key to their woes. It allowed them to grow so fast that in the boom of their early years there was no restructuring, no organic growth within the company. Nor was there any necessary adaptation of procedures.
They stagnated in that first phase, both structurally and in the management of their personnel. Their quarterly reports also show this. It is a limited number of personnel for the responsibility that is handled. The total number of personnel that attends to the talents, also called managers, are even derisory for the number of people that make up the company. And the amount of monetary resources allocated to the personnel management part is worrisome. Let's remember that these managers monitor talent. If a manager is overworked with more talent than he can monitor and attend to their requests, then we fall into poor quality control.
And the worst thing is that the right people were not hired at that time of accelerated growth. And we cannot blame them. Years ago, when all this was going on, there were not as many people who had worked with Vtubers.
In fact, the strict control structure over talent is more akin to that of Idol agency managers, with the evils that are attributed to this industry, such as favoritism, strict control and stress. So, it would not be wrong to assume that they hired people from that part of the industry (plus a few others who surely came from situations completely unrelated to the training world) who imposed the only kind of management they knew. And they have not learned any new tricks since that time.
They currently have, or still appear to have, a talent academy, which is necessary for their business model, which is saturation. The more talent, the more revenue. Let's remember that they are franchises, so no matter how small the amount that franchise provides, it is profit.
But, since then, what have they done?
Well, the successful VirtuaReal branch in the Chinese market, with the same approach of saturating the market with diverse talents at a low cost, however, this branch has its own administration and even its own studio with 3D technology. But we must consider that this is a joint project with Bilibili, headquartered in China and run with its own management. The operations are so separate that in recent weeks some Nijisanji talents have tried their luck broadcasting at Bilibili. Had they been considered sister branches, then some of VirtuaReal's many talents would have been present to boost those efforts. However, the Nijisanji talents were on their own.
If Nijisanji absorbs some of the profits from this business, which is very likely, it would explain the solvency within the company. But because they are so far apart there is a constant risk of that branch becoming independent. Does VirtuaReal really need Nijisanji? Apparently not.
But Nijisanji has done things on its own... unsuccessfully.
In the local market its strategy has been, as I have already mentioned, that of saturation. Remember, franchise business. Having 127 talents saturating the local market without any innovation still represents profits for the company. But this scheme will always have constraints. The fragile ecosystem of supply and demand will sooner or later collapse, as every local market has its own limitations. But again, we see the contradiction, since in its latest quarterly results report it indicates that the oldest talents are the ones who earn the most, while entire generations of the most recent talents do not give a large percentage of the earnings. At the time of publishing the quarterly report, it states that out of 156 Vtubers, only 26 to 30 are the ones who give 50% of the total accumulated income. Of the remaining 70 give the next 30%, and the other 56 give the missing 20%. Curious detail, the graph does not show the remaining 56, as if they wanted to hide these numbers.
Individually, their expansion efforts have been a failure, either by demonstrating a lack of knowledge of both the foreign market or of managing personnel outside your borders. You cannot impose the same work culture on people who have never had contact with anything similar and expect the best results. In some leaked cases it has even been reported that contacts and managers did not speak the local language of the market where they were seeking to expand.
This is revealing as it shows a pattern of behavior. As long as the expanding branches have their own control, they stay afloat and show growth. But as soon as the central corporate takes over, they slowly disappear.
If you look at it closely, Nijisanji in its expansion policy has been cutting costs permanently for years. Always.
Now we also know that they cut costs by hiring personnel with little experience and the minimum wage allowed. They give pittance commissions to their talents for the various revenues, be it advertising, merchandise and so on. This cost cutting has resulted in the absorption of expanding branches and a decline in quality control, both externally and internally.
First, they absorbed IN. Then it was KR's turn. Even after it went on the stock market and thanks to the price the shares obtained, causing the company's CEO Riku Tazumi to be named as Japan's youngest billionaire and an example of entrepreneurship, they dissolved the ID branch. And the absorption of these talents is almost a sentence for the development of these franchises. As an example, are the absorbed talents of the KR branch, which have no support whatsoever.
And the EN branch will apparently follow the same fate. The actions they have taken with this branch are more like those of a chain that knows it is going to close that store and is finishing off the inventory in the warehouse before transferring the remaining inventory to another store. The fact that they are releasing projects that had been on hold, but with deplorable quality, is only to justify what they have invested in them. Clearance sale, to put it another way.
The company has no strategy to attract new fans. Nor of recovering the ones it has lost. So, it is better to disappear the EN branch and absorb the talents in the JP branch, because it will look better to say to say that it is a company with an international presence with more than 177 talents and present reports as a whole of everything, than to give the miserable results they have obtained in the EN branch and show that as a company all expansion efforts alone have resulted in failure.
And, in fact, cost reduction has also affected the main source of income, which is the sale of merchandise. Numerous cases of defective or even poor-quality merchandise have been reported. This is important. It is reducing the amount of resources assigned to the area, which lowers the quality of its main source of income, and consequently, the income received will also decrease, as has also been demonstrated in the EN branch.

The personnel management model
First, the talents are under a very extensive bureaucratic scheme and strict control of the worker. Not only that, but because of the leaks that the talents and ex-talents have given, it is a scheme of oppression and demoralization with clear favoritism.
The model of oppression, micromanagement and demoralization of workers has existed for a long time. There are books, methodologies, conferences and others with the aim of perfecting this type of model and how to implement it. Because it must be implemented by people with experience, so that it is a model with monitoring, parameters and corrections to improve productivity and costs. If it is just by a horde of people with delusions of power, this becomes meaningless and directionless abuse because of how poorly it is executed.
Unethical? Definitely. Success for the company? Absolutely. Is it kept within the limits of legality? Therein lies the fine art of managing black companies.
But not every company can implement it. Not all environments are the conducive environment.
Make no mistake. This scheme is very successful for several franchises... if you are in the business of selling hamburgers.
But there is a big difference:
A Vtuber, they are mostly creative talents. And creative talent seriously succumbs to a stressful environment. You can call them idols, singers, players. But they are creative talents.
There is no way to manage workers whose success depends on their creativity in this scheme. Chronic stress is one of the biggest enemies of this type of employee. However, this method of personnel management has remained within the company.
Additionally, the contract clauses are some of the worst I have seen in many years of advising companies. That, in the opinion of a company manager, half of the worker's profits can be taken away from the worker does not make sense. Lifetime clauses? It is like a slavery contract that would definitely not pass legal scrutiny as demonstrated by the videos that a certain mind produced.
The artists and commissions handled by the company are high cost and limited resources, without taking into consideration that, if external artists from the same company are used, this huge conglomerate will take a long time to pay, if at all.
This results in talents living under constant pressure. Even if they were workers in another industry, this would be a very bad thing for any type of production, manufacturing, development, etc. But for workers whose creativity is at the center of their success, it is unthinkable. It's something this company exudes. A complete lack of knowledge of both the people they work with and the market in which they operate.
Let's put it with an example; Let's imagine a talent who despite everything has a good idea. He/she must fund that idea and promote it on his/her own. By not having a salary, the talent can incur some debts and owe favors. The idea turns out to be very good and the stream is a success. But in the midst of the euphoria and everything else, he/she receives a notification from upper management where they believe that he/she has broken a rule and that for this reason he/she will only receive a fraction of the reward that he/she has worked for weeks, months or years. They have killed the initiative and creativity of that talent. He/she will never try it again. And the projects will disappear, and those that arise will be simple and risk-free.
What if the talent also finds itself in the situation of not receiving adequate support?
Because that's right, there are talents that receive preferential treatment. They are not all, they are a minority. Others are barely supported, if at all.
This is not bad in the first instance; it is a corporate development strategy. Not all products will have the same boost. Even more so if within the company there is bureaucratic hell and cost and budget cutting. It is unethical if your products are people with extraordinary talents.
What are the criteria for a talent to access this select group? Is it because he or she had a previous friendship? Is it because he or she became someone's lover? Is it because he or she is related to an executive? Each person's assumption is as right or wrong as anyone else's. But generally speaking, the principle of Ockham's razor is always correct.
The fact is that this preferential treatment exists and affects everyone. Both those who receive it and those who do not.
Those who receive it become arrogant and lose quality. There is no need to make an effort. They will make worse and worse mistakes as they do not receive correction.
Those who do not receive it will go into depression and other dangerous states affecting their mental health and performance. No matter what their initiative, they will not be supported. They become vulnerable.
But then why does Nijisanji keep recruiting in the JP and EN branches if it is not going to support the new talents?
Again, the answer is simple.
Let's remember that Nijisanji has auditions where the best among all the candidates are selected. Full of skills, full of illusions, without legal knowledge and exploitable. Any of these talents could go far with the right support. I repeat; Any of the talents that are selected could go far with the right support. They are the best among hundreds or thousands, depending on the call. And in the hands of competition that is dangerous. So, it is better to recruit them. Hopefully that talent will lose their love for being a Vtuber and by the time they graduate some potential competitor will have been eliminated. Remember that the contracts offered by Nijisanji are for long periods and contrary to what one of the talents in the black screen video says, they cannot graduate early. They will forget that they were selected because they were the best. That is why many of the talents and graduates share this type of thinking. It is imposed on them.
In the meantime, of the little or much revenue it may have generated, a substantial part goes to the company. The cost of the 2D model is recovered and any additional profit is completely acceptable.
This is common in any industry with a highly competitive environment. The search for and acquisition of bright workers who could pose a danger to the growth of our business. It is better to have them under our shadow than to see them shine for someone else, corporately speaking.
In the EN branch this is painfully obvious, as there are talents who have never received support.
And on JP's part, the million talents is the best example. She took the world by surprise. Media outside of Vtuber referred to her. If she had received the right support, she would have undoubtedly become the most popular Vtuber in the world. Perhaps because two-thirds of their income comes from the female audience, they did not want to give her a boost. But the reality is that they missed a great opportunity. As always in Nijisanji, something happened. Groups or people in key positions were not satisfied. She has support, but not enough. But not at the level it should have been. And this is money the company does not make every quarter.

The graduation/dismissal situation
This has been discussed and analyzed by many people. We can talk about unprofessionalism and lack of knowledge of the people who make up their target market, as well as the fact that there are poorly trained staff at key points within the company.
However, there is one very important situation to highlight, and that is the company's lack of apprenticeship.
Throughout 2023 we witnessed a series of similar layoffs that literally wiped out the business of the Vtuber companies that carried them out. They should have learned from those situations and be grateful that they did not have the same results on March 10, 2023 when they carried out the first dismissal with the same characteristics. They didn't learn. They did the same.
The company has been characterized by doing things in a hidden way. We know of suspensions disguised as vacations, of disciplinary measures that are not communicated to the media, of coercion to companies and organizations for the non-inclusion of people adverse to the company and we do not even know what has been happening with some of their talent JP for months or years.
Corporate point of view; This was because it was a personnel management tactic.
This was a message to all talents, not just those affected.
With the dismissal on March 10, 2023, they did incredibly well. Let's analyze. This talent grew excessively, but it did not submit to the power structure within the company. It turns out that the reasons given as faults have also been done by other talents. So those statements only listed the excuses. Not only were they trying to end the career of one of their now-former female talent, but in the eyes of the company they had to end that former talent's career to send a loud and clear warning to everyone else. This could happen to them.
It is also part of the manipulation that has been done to talents. In addition to destroying their self-esteem through repression and creating the illusion that they are nothing without the company, they were now also shown what would happen if they left the company the hard way.
It is no coincidence that specific flaws are mentioned that are also applicable to his other most popular talents. Clear and forceful message. You are still here because the company allows it. You are still here because the higher-ups want you to be. If you don't comply with the whims, your career is ruined.
Evidently, the dismissal of the second former talent on February 5, 2024 backfired.
Furthermore, we must show the irony of the situation. A multi-national, multi-million dollar company, the largest in its field, plus the anonymous hordes of social media attacked with the intention of destroying the careers and perhaps even the lives of two of its once most successful talents. We must remember that the former talents were going through very delicate situations regarding their mental health, and yet this conglomerate did everything possible to bring them down. With a completely adverse result. Those talents faced the thousand-headed monster and survived.
And all of this could have been avoided. If the pride of those power groups or executives in key positions had been less. If they had not been evil and arrogant, this mistake that cost hundreds of millions of dollars could have been avoided.

The response
One of the most deplorable aspects of the situation was what followed. This company's response has been a series of errors that have demonstrated both a lack of foresight and a lack of learning. And the inability of its administrative part in the face of adversity.
In what kind of mind is it a good idea to expose your most popular talents to make the black screen video? This could have been done by other talents. There is a video on Youtube where a chair does what I thought was a great analysis of the intent behind this video, but it makes no business sense. That this has been authorized at different levels speaks of total incompetence. Either because no one had the idea that this could go wrong, or because someone raised the fear that it could happen and higher-ups simply dismissed the idea.
They could have used other talents. Talents with a smaller audience and measure the effect. And once they have tested the reaction, reinforce the narrative with some other talent. Protect the business. Protect the investment. Protect the millions that investors have trusted in the company. But with this measure the only thing that can be seen is that incompetent people were protecting themselves by doing everything possible. Let the company burn, but they will be protected. This type of behavior is very common within Nijisanji.
Additionally, there were several attempts to change the narrative by different characters. Whether these characters acted independently or were paid by the company, we will not know. But they did not realize it was too soon. The public was angry and overwhelmed. The only thing it achieved was that the problem was publicized outside the scope of Vtuber. And this would affect the attraction of new fans. Fans interested in Vtuber would have this bad perception of the company. And the Vtuber market is based on empathy for talent.
And here we come to the most obvious situation of all:
The negligible.
Many people have made fun of this situation, but they have not really seen in detail the true intention of this action. However, if we read the times and put them together with the movement of the stock market shares, everything becomes clearer.
Why was this?
Time. Valuable time for a very small number of people with a specific purpose.
On Monday, February 5, 2024, the dismissal of the now former talent was announced at 7:57 p.m. Tokyo time. The Tokyo Stock Exchange had already closed and Nijisanji had reached 3,820 yen per share. A day of rising value, since the previous day, Friday, February 2, they had closed at 3,750 yen per unit. They obviously expected things to remain the same as a year ago, on March 10, 2023, when they made a similar maneuver. With a little luck, maybe even the stock would rise like it did that time.
However, things were not the same. There were people defending the now former talent. The accusations were proven false. They were not prepared for this.
On February 6, the stock was at 3,615 yen per unit. It has lost 5.37% of its value. The projections do not look good. This is going to affect the money of people who should not be affected. We are not talking about those who have bought 1000 or 10000 shares. We are talking about the heavyweights, the big investors. Those who have such a large amount of shares that it is not possible to move them in one day. They are informed that the projections are pessimistic. They demand time. These people are the ones who do corporate favors, the ones who maintain the information siege in Japan. If they ask for time, it is an obligation to get it.
Thus, on February 7, with the share price at 3,380 per unit, that is, 6.15% less than the previous day, the answer comes. The 'Negligible' statement. An English-language statement with little explanation and a rarely used word aimed at a majority of Japanese-speaking investors. Remember, this statement is designed for large investors to mobilize their shares. Let the cost of losses be focused on the common investor.
And works. From Wednesday, February 7 to Friday, February 9, it only dropped from 3,380 yen to 3,330 yen per unit. It only lost 1.31% of its original value. But it was the precious time required. Big investors were safe. Favors are repaid with favors.
February 12 was a public holiday in Japan, so shares were not trading, but that did not stop CEO Riku from issuing a statement apologizing for the misunderstandings. Not because of losses. Not because of poor personnel management. Misunderstandings. On February 15, the shares reached 3,082 yen per unit, a drop of 19.32%. No problem. Large investors are protected. It is very likely that the CEO himself sold a large portion of his shares before the losses and then bought them back at a lower price to force the share price up after the chaos.
Many have seen it as an apology to investors, but nothing like that. Once again, the statement is spoken in English and without Japanese subtitles, and on the Nijisanji EN channel. This was a desperate attempt to appease the masses by trying to control the narrative with misunderstandings while the CEO tried to wash his hands of it.
And it should be noted, the improvement actions indicated by the CEO in the video have not been officially announced until the date of this report. And the support it promises does not exist either. Only so far do we know that two months after this announcement, starting on April 12, a 'Whistblowers' committee was formed... however, the purpose of this is unclear as it was leaked in a document. It could well be to denounce injustices within the company, or it could be for talents to snitch on each other.
The normal investor has lost 19.32% of his money. And we are talking about a multi-million dollar company that translates into a total loss of hundreds of millions of dollars lost. Where is the announcement of the dismissal of the person responsible? Who was the head of HR and PR that allowed this to happen and is now out of the company? When were the managers who allowed this to get this far fired?
So, to summarize. The company makes a media circus listing the errors when an employee violates its internal rules, but there is nothing similar against the responsible administrative staff who made hundreds of millions of dollars disappear?
It is obvious that in this scenario a conscientious investor should think twice before risking his money in this company.

Post-crisis actions
The company has sacrificed its most popular talents in a senseless action. Other talents have taken pride in breaking the rules that Nijisanji mentions in his communications without consequences, confirming favoritism. Furthermore, the company has demonstrated that the company's values ​​and rules are applicable at will, causing fear in investors. Nijisanji has proven the allegations of workplace harassment to be true with every step. In the dismissal statement, the company practically confessed its sins twice.
So, what happened?
Nothing. No contingency plan. It is like all the senior managers are terrified of doing anything. Or groups with favoritism are afraid of losing their position and do not allow these plans. Whether by mistake or by whim, both causes are very serious and involve million-dollar losses.
Here it once again demonstrates a terrible cancer in the internal structure of the company. Nobody did anything, as if the EN branch did not matter anymore. Many people may have had good ideas, but the bureaucracy ruled and no one did anything.
Talent unrelated to the controversy could have been encouraged. Mega collaborations could have been created with the talents that were perceived as the “good” ones. At least a dozen talents were unrelated to the situation. Unleash those talents and when it is all over, you will not only have the usual favorites, but you will probably have six or seven other "greats".
Nijisanji has two new generations of excellent talents in EN. Almost criminally abandoned. The almost is mentioned because it must be considered that these talents do not receive a salary and their income is based on the success of their streams. But just because it's not criminal doesn't mean it's not cruel.
To give another example, YouTube subscriber celebration badges. As soon as the rumor spread that the talents did not have the badges, it was not because of the importance of the badges, but because it supported the idea of ​​an abusive work environment. A simple response was to send the badges via express mail to the respective talents and, in less than three days, have a massive barrage of Twittex messages with images showing the badges in their possession. It could even have been an excellent advertising campaign by infusing the photographs with humor. The talents displaying them competed to come up with the most ingenious, while “debunking” the accusations.
Instead, weeks later only a, and I quote, ‘we could just fucking ask’ from a talent who no doubt tried to do his part, but without proper advice it only resulted in words that were again belied by the facts. There must have been an attentive manager monitoring his stream to stop this. But that is not all. That talent has now been rewarded with a merchandise collaboration. So, it is not bad when you put the company in danger, when you make a dangerous PR move that could have cost millions again. It only matters that you have pleased the right group. In the meantime, let the investors live in fear. By the way, the VOD of that stream has been made private and unavailable to the general public.
There is also the issue of concerts involving the EN branch. These were great opportunities to improve the company's shattered image. And in a simple way. Extremely affordable ticket prices, with the intention that the venues would be full. Then fill the networks with posts of these packed halls. Meet and greet with free costs. Hundreds of videos of fans hanging out and laughing with their favorite talents. Maybe there would be monetary losses, but it would be great publicity. But paying for advertising and public relations seems to be a concept that Nijisanji is not familiar with.
However, the cost of concert tickets was almost prohibitive and the quality was deplorable. The result? That its failure was even shown on social networks in Japan, affecting its main branch.
And these are not unique examples. There have been several. Too many.

Future
Here the actions the company is taking are very clear. Trying to control the narrative. Both what happened and what is going to happen.
Information control and legal punishments have increased both externally and internally.
The executives must have created an environment of terror with extreme control over talent. They are afraid of talent, especially those who are outside the group with favoritism, since they know they have reasons and now the power to make the company lose another hundreds of millions of dollars. Even among the group with favoritism they should view each other with suspicion. They should know that only the first to jump ship will have the best chance of regenerating their careers.
But let's remember the main objective; to build confidence in the Japanese market ahead of the release of the next quarterly report.
The image of the company is deplorable in different countries, the scandal has gone beyond the scope and usual audience of VTuber.
But in Japan the situation is different. They have used a very effective strategy in the past and plan to do so again.
They had a setback when they released their March quarterly report on the 14th and 15th with a loss in value per share from 3,140 yen to 2,451 yen. A loss of 21.94%. It was not higher because Japanese investment regulations do not allow a company to lose more than a certain amount of value per day before triggering a hedge that prevents the stock from moving.
But we must also analyze this with a more experienced analysis of the stock market. More specifically, from 10 days before the disaster.
On March 5, the stock price was 3,095 yen per unit. The company knows the quarterly report will be disastrous, but hopes that Japanese stock market regulation will stop what could be huge losses. Large investors are warned that they must put a contingency plan in place. They start buying shares to inflate the price. Throughout this week, from March 5 to 12, this massive purchase is made, managing to increase the price to 3,345 yen per unit. An increase of 8.08%.
But they cannot do it alone. For weeks now, information has been manipulated to the extent possible by the digital media associated with Nijisanji. They say everything is fine. That the company is growing. Which is a good investment. Furthermore, different reporters from different financial platforms are paid to publish good articles about Nijisanji. News websites that have an interest in Nijisanji do as well. If that wasn't enough, trading platforms are paid to have Nijisanji stock appear as opportunities on home screens. Nobody can be classified as a liar, there is the stock rising in price.
And on March 13, the massive sale of shares by large investors begins. There are already people willing to buy it. It is ordinary investors who have trusted the reviews. They are the investors who saw the opportunity in their stock market application. They are the occasional investors who do not study it in depth. The shares put up for sale by large investors are not only those acquired since March 5, but also a large part of their usual percentages, which causes the shares to fall by 6.13 between March 13 and 14 % up to 3,140 yen per unit. It doesn't matter, big investors bought them 2% cheaper.
And March 15 arrives. It is Friday. The quarterly report is out. It's not what the analysts said. It is not promoted by the forums. It is not the company that so many people had sold as a great opportunity. Regulation of the Japanese stock market is activated, preventing the stock from falling into the abyss. On the morning of Monday, March 18, the stock had lost 21.94% of its value, reaching 2,451 yen per unit. This is 26.73% less than March 12. For the average investor this is a terrible thing. They have spent the entire weekend watching their money disappear without being able to do anything about it. Ordinary people have absorbed losses of hundreds of millions of dollars and are desperate. But this is what the CEO and big investors expect. Now that the stock is cheaper, in fact, they can buy 26.73% more than they initially sold.
The strategy is a success. Thanks to the massive purchase, they manage to raise the cost of the shares by 10.16%, reaching a price of 2,700 yen per unit in just three days, from March 18 to 21. March 20 was a holiday.
Many may argue that inside trading is illegal. Without a doubt, but it is increasingly difficult to prove it. Furthermore, when it comes to pull and dump, few markets consider it illegal.
And for the future report it will be the same. They are reinforcing the walls of information. They must do it. They should minimize capital outflows and continue to pretend that everything is fine, especially in the JP area. Let us remember that these losses of hundreds of millions of dollars are not absorbed by large investors, but by ordinary investors. Some within Nijisanji, as well as some digital media in Japan, are trying to control information to the best of their ability. Take legal action against those you consider to be against you. They pay for advertisements indicating that the company is the best option. Minimize the inevitable again.
It is illogical that there are articles and recommendations that ANYCOLOR is a good investment. Even an economics student could say that the price of their shares has not fallen only because of the economic crisis in Japan, but because of two specific moments. The controversy over layoffs and the results shown in the previous quarter. So, applying a little logic; What will be the performance of the next quarterly report if because of these two situations it will show the loss of 40% of the company's value?
And it should not surprise us. The way they treat their talent is the same way they treat their investors. With favoritism for some specific groups. But the company cannot exist because of the favors received. And paying for these favors is increasingly costly, whether monetarily or due to other darker circumstances. Sooner or later, they won't be able to ask for more.
They will soon have to learn to behave as competitors of other companies, since no one will take them for the leaders they think they are. It will be difficult to regain the trust of both the public and investors. Many of these preferred investors will withdraw their money, as it is not worth investing in a company that is in decline. This Black Company reputation will be very difficult for them to eradicate, even becoming a commercial danger for any level of association.
If the company does not change its strategies, it will be remembered along with Blockbuster and Kodak. Huge companies whose lack of vision and adaptability condemned them to ruin and subsequent oblivion.


Additional information.
This report has not used any rumors for its preparation. All data presented are fully verifiable.
This document was translated into two different languages ​​before being returned to English with the intention of making the writing style unrecognizable. If there are grammatical errors, I apologize for them.

My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
​

• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
​

• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
​

• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
​

• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
​

• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.

The Tale of Chihiro and No-Face

"Spirited Away" rewrote Japanese cinematic history, earning a staggering 30.8 billion yen at the box office. Needless to say, this record remains unbroken to this day. (Note: "Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train", released in 2020, surpassed "Spirited Away" to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese box office history).
Mamoru Oshii: What struck me the most while watching the movie was the opening scene. It starts with a reluctant Chihiro in the backseat of a moving car, right? This is almost identical to the opening scene Miyazaki envisioned for "The Story of Yanagawa's Canals." If I remember correctly, it was a boy in that story, but otherwise, almost the same. Miyazaki initially intended to make "The Story of Yanagawa's Canals" into a live-action film. The opening he described during a planning meeting ended up becoming the beginning of "Spirited Away". What I mean to say is that while I might be a man of fixations, Miyazaki is even more so. Coming back to "Spirited Away," it's, as always, a film where scenes he wanted to create are strung together.
I rewatched it, and the story does feel somewhat disjointed. Why was it necessary to turn Chihiro's parents into pigs in the first place? And the way those pigs gorged themselves was so realistically depicted, it was like a horror movie.
Mamoru Oshii: That scene baffled me too. I thought, "Miyazaki loves pigs so much, why aren't the pigs here cute at all?" They were portrayed only in a negative light, a stark contrast from the adorable pigs in his previous works. Even the food in that scene didn't look appetizing.
The specific reason isn't clear, but turning the parents into pigs probably served as a convenient plot device to send Chihiro to work at the bathhouse. The parents barely appear in the middle of the story, right?
There's a part where Chihiro tries to find her pig-ified parents, but at least in the latter half, restoring them to their original forms doesn't seem like her primary goal anymore.
Mamoru Oshii: Miyazaki's primary concern was how to make the city-bred Chihiro engage in manual labor and, through that labor, experience personal growth and become independent. Turning her parents into pigs was an easy way to achieve that, without the need for further exploration. The parents' role was essentially fulfilled at the beginning. You could call it "convenience over coherence."
That's quite a harsh assessment!
Mamoru Oshii: Well, it is a Miyazaki film, so it comes with the territory. The plot threads are unclear, and the protagonist's internal journey is somewhat unconvincing.
I cried when Chihiro ate the rice ball Haku gave her, while crying herself.
Mamoru Oshii: That's just a detail, a single moment within the film. I've said it many times, Miyazaki is incredibly skilled at making details convincing. But judging a film is a different matter. I, for one, wouldn't watch a movie just for the details. While they're important, details alone don't make a film. I have to ask, where should a director's talent be directed? It should be in giving the film a backbone, a core, a structure - these are the director's responsibilities. I see that Miyazaki is also credited with the screenplay, but he probably didn't actually write anything down.
Not writing a script is somewhat reminiscent of Hong Kong films from a certain era. Speaking of which, Hong Kong films back then didn't even have shot lists.
Mamoru Oshii: That approach works for Jackie Chan's action films because the audience is there to see Jackie Chan's death-defying stunts. However, Studio Ghibli's works always present grand themes. Generally, you can't be so haphazard with that. So, it's just a tactic employed by Suzuki Toshio. He promotes these grand themes as a marketing strategy, not because the work inherently possesses them.
This time, the tagline was "On the other side of the tunnel, there is a wondrous town."
Mamoru Oshii: That was just the initial version; it changed later. Toshio must have been working behind the scenes, pushing for a change in the tagline. He shifted the focus to No-Face. Toshio's logic dictates that this is a story about No-Face and Chihiro.
The tagline was changed to "Everyone has a No-Face within them" midway through.
Mamoru Oshii: Exactly. "Spirited Away" is essentially a film about No-Face. Toshio apparently counted the number of shots each character appeared in, and surprisingly, No-Face had the most screen time among the supporting characters. He does frequently appear in the corner of the frame.
I don't think Mr. Miyazaki intended for him to appear so often.
Mamoru Oshii: You could call it the director's unconscious at play. Miyazaki never intended for this to be a film about No-Face. It was Suzuki Toshio who unearthed this crucial character from Miyazaki's subconscious. That's why he's so good at publicity (laughs).
Doesn't No-Face resemble the "monster from the Id" in "Forbidden Planet"?
Mamoru Oshii: No-Face symbolizes the desires of those living in modern society. No matter how much he consumes, how much he acquires, he can never find true fulfillment. He is desire itself, which is why he has no face and is called "No-Face." That's one interpretation. "Spirited Away" is about how Chihiro confronts him. In other words, it's a story about Chihiro, a girl who, after going through hardship, learns to empathize with others, and how she tames No-Face. So, it's accurate to say that this is a story about Chihiro and No-Face. Haku? Who knows where he wandered off to. Where did that pretty boy go?
I was actually thinking about him all this time.
Mamoru Oshii: Come on, Haku is just a flimsy supporting character.
True, that's rather cruel. Initially, his presence was quite significant, but it seems the director got tired of him midway through... They really did him dirty.
Mamoru Oshii: Anyone who watches this movie initially assumes it's a story about Chihiro and Haku. However, as it progresses, the strange, almost monstrous, old man, No-Face, who only appeared occasionally at first, starts to occupy more and more screen time, leaving viewers wondering where the story is headed. That's very much Miya-san's style; he creates films unconsciously. It's not wrong to say that this film embodies the essence of Miya-san more than any other.

Starting with the "Troubled Child" Trope

Rewatching the film, the character of Chihiro intrigued me. Her personality eludes me. It's understandable that she'd be sad about moving from her familiar life in Tokyo to the countryside, but isn't her demeanor a result of the situation, rather than her inherent personality? Why is it portrayed as if it's her usual self?
Mamoru Oshii: Exactly. It shows that Miyazaki wasn't particularly interested in portraying this girl as a fully-fleshed person. He draws a scene, adds a touch of discontent, and considers it done.
However, don't you find it recurring in Ghibli films that urban children with flaws or issues undergo self-improvement and self-discovery in the countryside? "Kiki's Delivery Service" reverses this by moving from the countryside to the city, but "Spirited Away", "My Neighbor Totoro", and "When Marnie Was There" all follow this pattern. Why repeat this formula? I don't see any connection to Miyazaki's essence here. This points to distribution-related reasons, which means Suzuki Toshio created this formula. It has to resonate with the contemporary Japanese audience, has to have a marketable theme. Otherwise, as the producer in charge of publicity, I'd never get my moment in the spotlight – I imagine Toshio thinking something along these lines.
The whole point of publicity is to grab the public's attention. What are the people living in Japan worried about these days? Distill those concerns into a universally understandable form, find the greatest common denominator, and you get the theme of "a troubled child living in the city discovers themselves in the countryside." People readily understand and are drawn to this theme. To put it bluntly, that's what it boils down to. That's precisely why Ghibli films almost always start with a troubled child. The only exception might be "Porco Rosso," though, strictly speaking, even "Castle in the Sky" follows this pattern.
So, even Mr. Miyazaki is being manipulated by Mr. Suzuki?
Mamoru Oshii: During the making of "Kiki's Delivery Service," Toshio insisted on a story about an indecisive young girl, and this somehow became a "fixed pattern" in Ghibli films.
In "Spirited Away," Chihiro is initially hesitant, but she quickly pulls herself together and transforms into a hardworking, well-behaved child, doesn't she? I felt that the transition was too abrupt.
Mamoru Oshii: Like I've said many times, Miyazaki dislikes wishy-washy kids who whine about disliking work, so he completely skips over that process. He instantly transforms Chihiro into a hardworking child who enjoys her work. Since he's the one drawing, he wouldn't want to spend time drawing a character he finds unpleasant.
Is that the only reason? Generally speaking, the process of growth is crucial, isn't it?
Mamoru Oshii: Generally, yes, but this is Miyazaki, so naturally, it's different. This film is constructed according to the "Miyazaki grammar," so to speak. It's a different kind of personal expression compared to "Porco Rosso." You could say it's Miyazaki's masterpiece.
By "masterpiece", do you mean including its box office success? Speaking of which, why did it become such a huge hit? It's true that many charming characters appear in the film. Is that the sole reason for its popularity?
Mamoru Oshii: There's a simple explanation for why a flawed film like this could become a box office smash hit: "Because Ghibli films always succeed commercially." That's just how Japanese people are; they won't criticize something that has achieved significant success. The same goes for Akira Kurosawa.
Shinji(Shinji Higuchi) once said, according to his "chair theory," the answer to the question, "Who can sit on Akira Kurosawa's chair?" is "Hayao Miyazaki." No one can criticize the person sitting on that chair because the occupant is a master. That's predetermined. In Japan, masters are exempt from criticism.
That's certainly an easy explanation to understand.
Mamoru Oshii: Let me share another of Shinji's theories, the "underwear theory": "A director's worth is determined by how they take off their underwear." Surprisingly, this applies to almost every director. According to this theory, Miyazaki is "a genius who pretends to take off his underwear but never actually does." That's precisely why he's such a successful entertainer. As for Anno, he'd probably take his underwear off immediately in most situations. The problem is, "what's underneath is quite strange."
Those are amusing analogies. What about you, Oshii-san?
Mamoru Oshii: Shinji says I'm the type who "acts like I'm taking it off, but underneath, it's all fake."
Well said! What about Higuchi-san himself?
Mamoru Oshii: It's hard to be objective when evaluating oneself. But if I were to use the chair theory we just discussed, the chair that corresponds to me would be "Junya Sato's chair," I suppose. Everyone around Shinji loved Sato's "The Bullet Train," and Shinji himself aspires to occupy the position of "a director who consistently delivers genuine blockbuster films."
But getting back to the topic, the film director everyone in Japan, young and old, knows used to be Akira Kurosawa. Now it's Hayao Miyazaki. From grandparents to kindergarteners, everyone knows him. Once you reach that level, it no longer matters who evaluates you. There's nothing but praise, at least in Japan.

Visual Quality and Maturity

A film that grossed 30 billion yen at the box office is bound to receive high praise. Moreover, it even won an Academy Award! The flooded bathhouse scene was truly beautiful, reminiscent of Kutani ware.
Mamoru Oshii: No, even from a visual quality standpoint, it's not that great. The colors are somewhat muddy, especially in the bathhouse scenes.
Really? The colorful konpeito candy that the soot sprites eat was quite beautiful. It felt like the color contrast was carefully considered.
Mamoru Oshii: That's what I've been saying – it's the power of details. I've said it so many times. When discussing Miyazaki's films, the usual phrases are "that scene was amazing," "that child was so cute," "that character was the best." They only focus on specific moments and rarely offer any evaluation of the work as a whole.
What struck me the most in this film was the layout. The quality of the layouts has clearly declined. The spatial inconsistencies within the boiler room and the bathhouse are a recurring issue, so let's set those aside. Even so, the dynamism in the layouts is gone. They created such a grand, three-dimensional bathhouse, yet there's hardly any verticality in the layouts. The camera moves only horizontally, and vertical movement is achieved through an elevator, believe it or not. I was astounded. The Miyazaki from the past would never have resorted to such shortcuts. He would have created elaborate staircases and expansive settings. The idea of using an elevator is just unbelievable.
Perhaps he started with the intention of creating something truly grand, but his energy waned. This decline was already noticeable during "Princess Mononoke." He gradually started relying on other key animators to share the workload. On an animation production, the visuals are always a hot topic. During the making of "Spirited Away," I often heard comments like, "Even Miyazaki..." It's the reality of aging, I suppose. Animation is largely a hand-crafted art form, so such changes can't be completely concealed.
Rewatching Miyazaki's works with this perspective, I believe that the visual quality peaked with "Kiki's Delivery Service." After that, the peak of his personal work, in terms of maturity, was around the time of "Spirited Away." It's interesting, isn't it? The peak of his work and the peak of his visual quality don't coincide. This phenomenon isn't limited to Miyazaki. It happens to others as well. It's ironic, in a way, that "Kiki's Delivery Service" is probably the film Miyazaki wants to revisit the least.
What about you, Oshii-san?
Mamoru Oshii: My visual peak was "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence", and the peak of my work was "Patlabor 2: The Movie." I'm confident in that assessment. I have a firm grasp of myself, but it's hard to say whether Miyazaki has the same grasp on himself.
On a different note, there's also the "spring roll legend," right? The story goes that Mr. Miyazaki kept having the animators redraw the scene where the parents eat spring rolls because he insisted they weren't eating them correctly. It's become a famous anecdote.
Mamoru Oshii: I think that story originated from an NHK documentary. But to me, it felt like a broken record.
He's been saying things like that ever since I met him, complaining about how "animators these days are becoming increasingly detached from the real world." We've even argued about it.
You argued again? (laughs)
Mamoru Oshii: While I was working on "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence", Miyazaki was working on "Howl's Moving Castle", and I often visited Ghibli. Once, we were having a casual conversation, but Miyazaki's mood gradually soured. He started grumbling about "animators these days..." and "the mentality of artists..." I gradually lost my patience and retorted, "Why are you still harping on about that? Nothing has changed about that for the past 10 or 20 years!" Our voices echoed through the studio as we argued. That was probably the last time I saw Miyazaki. I haven't seen him since.
Wow, you two are close. (laughs)
Mamoru Oshii: What? We're not close at all!
Come on, now. So, what are your thoughts on the "spring roll" issue?
Mamoru Oshii: Actually, Miyazaki isn't entirely wrong. Young animators these days have no real-world experience outside of their desks. They've grown up watching nothing but anime, often just robot anime. Human beings eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. These animators work in a place far removed from the realities of being alive, which is not how it should be. Their job is to depict the real world. So I agree with Miyazaki when he says, "There's no need to strive for perfect accuracy. Recreating the feeling of life, that's the ultimate goal for an animator." He said, "Start by observing things." That's because exceptional animators are all geniuses at observation. And it goes without saying that Miyazaki is a genius in this regard.

The Best Scene in Cinematic History

That's why the eating scenes in Miyazaki's films always look so delicious. It was the first time I saw rice balls that looked so appetizing.
Mamoru Oshii: Mm. The eating scenes are classic. As far as I know, no one can top Miyazaki when it comes to depicting food.
I incorporate eating scenes in my own work because I resonate with Miyazaki's approach. His depiction of food has been outstanding since "Future Boy Conan." I always include eating scenes in my work, both in live-action and animation, but it's no easy feat. The difficulty increases exponentially with animation, often ending in failure. Come to think of it, my friendship with Miyazaki actually blossomed over our shared appreciation for food scenes. For Miyazaki, eating scenes are just as important as running or flying scenes. The scene where Chihiro eats the rice ball while crying is the ultimate expression of savoring delicious food.
That scene moved many people to tears, myself included. I believe there was a limited-edition DVD release that came with a replica of Haku's rice ball. Mr. Suzuki really knows how to capitalize on these things.
Mamoru Oshii: These are the dilemmas that plague Miyazaki. "A rice ball is only a rice ball if it's hand-rolled and warm. Those plastic-wrapped things from convenience stores aren't fit for human consumption!" I'm sure he wants to say things like that. But he has to swallow those words. The more successful he becomes, the more he's exploited by the very world he despises. But that's the reality of working within a commercial system.
I've spoken at length about the contradictions within Miyazaki, and this is perhaps the greatest one: achieving tremendous success and reaping the benefits within a world he loathes. In a way, it's as if he's being pummeled by his idealized self. But he refuses to acknowledge this, which is why he constantly expresses his dissatisfaction.
He even felt uncomfortable about making all that money himself, so he once took me on a scouting trip to Europe. I'm sure there were other "adult world" reasons for that, though. (laughs). I think that was also Miyazaki's way of atoning in his own way.
That's a bit sad.
Mamoru Oshii: But one thing remains unchanged: the sheer power of his scene composition, especially the scene where Chihiro and No-Face ride the train to Zeniba's house. It's clearly a depiction of the Sanzu River, and I'm sure Miyazaki himself was aware of it. The railroad tracks submerged in shallow water, Chihiro and No-Face boarding the train and embarking on their journey together—that Sanzu River imagery is the most remarkable cinematic scene I've ever witnessed.
In Miyazaki's filmography?
Mamoru Oshii: In all of cinema.
Really?
Mamoru Oshii: Seijun Suzuki has directed similar scenes, many directors have attempted it, but Miyazaki's execution is unparalleled.
You consider it superior to the train scene in "Grave of the Fireflies"?
Mamoru Oshii: Of course. That scene is dark and melancholic. But Miyazaki's Sanzu River possesses a remarkable transparency, a certain serenity. The surrounding silence is profound. It's truly exceptional. The passengers are depicted as blurry shadows, which is a difficult technique to pull off effectively. In other words, he poured his heart and soul into crafting that scene.
You could say it's a scene that encapsulates Miyazaki's view on life and death. Compared to Takahata-san's perspective on life and death as depicted in "Grave of the Fireflies," Miyazaki's is demonstrably more profound. Takahata Isao is, at his core, a disagreeable intellectual. That train scene is probably what the Sanzu River looks like in the imagination of an intellectual.
But you've praised that particular scene in "Grave of the Fireflies" before.
Mamoru Oshii: I praised it because that's the only scene from "Grave of the Fireflies" that left a lasting impression. Of course, I had to acknowledge it. There are very few films that achieve that level of emotional resonance. However, compared to Miyazaki's Sanzu River, it pales in comparison. The persuasive power, the understanding of human mortality and the cycle of life and death, the depth of their respective insights—the difference is stark. That's something I want to emphasize. That Sanzu River scene is just brilliant!
The problem arises with the scene after they cross over.
Chihiro has tea at Zeniba's house, right?
Mamoru Oshii: Everything leading up to that point was exceptional. But upon arriving, it leaves you with a sense of "is that all there is?" That's a realm best left unexplored.
Having said that, no director could truly depict what lies beyond. Even if they could depict the journey to the other side, they couldn't portray what awaits there. Attempting to do so would result in something akin to Tetsuro Tanba's "The Great Spirit World"—it would become cartoonish.
Why is it impossible to depict the afterlife? Because none of us have experienced it. To borrow from Miyazaki's logic, "Animators can't draw what they haven't seen."
So why did he draw it?
Mamoru Oshii: He could have ended the scene with Chihiro and No-Face on the train, suddenly opening her eyes as if awakening from a dream. But why didn't he? Perhaps Miyazaki overthought it, feeling that "it wouldn't be right to end it there." But I wanted to tell him, this is a story that defies logic, so why be so fixated on making that particular part coherent?
In the end, Haku comes to get Chihiro. Was that scene necessary to clarify the relationship between Haku and Chihiro?
Mamoru Oshii: Like I said, the relationship between Haku and Chihiro was an afterthought. Miyazaki wasn't particularly invested in it. He kept adding unnecessary elements that only served to expose his true intentions.
Personally, I'm most curious about where Miyazaki drew inspiration for No-Face. Even if you consider him an unconscious genius, don't you find the originality of No-Face quite remarkable? The fact that he can be perceived as originating from the other side, from the afterlife, is why the Sanzu River scene appears. But the origin of his design, that's something I'm still incredibly curious about.
_________
The content is from a Japanese book 誰も語らなかったジブリを語ろう (Let's talk about Ghibli that no one has talked about).
Interviewer: Maki Watanabe
Shinji refers to Shinji Higuchi
Anno refers to Hideaki Anno
The Sanzu River is a river in Japanese mythology that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. It is said to be a river of blood, pus, and tears, and that the souls of the dead must cross it before they can reach the afterlife. The river is also said to be guarded by a ferryman, who charges a fee for passage.
There are three bridges across the river, each of which corresponds to a different level of virtue in the deceased:
The Bridge of Causality: For those who have lived a virtuous life. The Bridge of Justice: For those who have lived a life of justice. The Bridge of Aspiration: For those who have lived a life of aspiration.
The river and its bridges are often depicted in Japanese art and literature. It is a symbol of the passage from life to death, and the judgment that awaits the soul in the afterlife.

A relentless drumbeat filled the silence of the night as rain pelted the windshield of a dark Toyota Tocama truck. The vehicle sat idling in the shadows of a deserted alley in the heart of New Orleans, and its occupants huddled inside, seeking shelter from the storm that raged outside.
In the driver's seat, a bald, dark-skinned African American man with a baseball hat pulled low over his eyes, DeAndre, also known as just D, stared out into the darkness. His hands rested on the lower part of the steering wheel while he leaned back in his chair with a bored look. He was dressed in a hoodie, the fabric damp from the rain that had lightly dampened it during his brief time outside.
"More of those damn monsters popped up just outside the city near Lexington," D suddenly spoke up, trying to dispel the awkward silence. "They're all over the place now."
His partner, a pale-skinned man named Mason with dark brown hair, shifted in his seat beside him. He was wearing a North Face jacket, the material glistening with raindrops in the dim light of the street lamps. He tapped his hand against the car door, one of the few nervous tics he indulged in before getting into a big operation.
"Yeah, I know," Mason replied in an equally derisive voice. "DHS thinks they're reproducing like crazy because they don't got any natural predators on the East Coast."
D let out a humorless sound that echoed in the confines of the truck. "No shit," he said, shaking his head. "All the nasty shit that'll kill you is either down south or on the West Coast. What do we got up here? Fuckin' black bears?"
A chuckle left Mason’s mouth as he adjusted the ballistic vest that spelled the words U.S. MARSHALL in big, bold yellow letters. "Maybe we should import some of those West Coast mountain lions," he suggested, only half-joking. "Let them loose in the countryside and see how long these monsters last."
“I actually remember hearing a story about some crazy fucker down in Texas using a mountain lion to hunt hogs,” D said as the rain continued to patter against the windshield. “Dude would just let it loose, and it’d just drag a full-grown hog back for him.”
Mason raised an eyebrow, a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Damn, that's wild," he said, shaking his head. "But I guess when you're dealing with a hog infestation, you gotta get creative."
"Creative is one word for it. Insane is another." D snorted as his eyes remained fixed on the road ahead
They lapsed into silence once more, the gravity of their situation settling over them like a heavy blanket. They were waiting for their mark, a nondescript white van belonging to the local mob and a solitary dark gray luxury sedan carrying a lieutenant. Other units were on standby, ready to swoop in at a moment's notice, but for now, it was just the two of them sitting in a truck on a rainy night, watching and waiting.
"You know what really gets me, though?" Mason said, breaking the silence. "It's not just these monsters we gotta worry about. It's all the other shit that's been popping up lately. Elves, goblins, orcs... even magic humans or whatever."
D sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Tell me about it. It's like something out of that one movie with Will Smith in it. Except all the magic can level an entire block, and it isn’t rare."
"You talking about bright?" Mason asked, huffed in amusement when D snapped his finger and pointed at him in affirmation. "But ya, you right. They're popping up all over the place. Every agency and their mom from Fed to county are trying to round ‘em up. But it's like playing whack-a-mole. You snag one and find out there’s five more bolting around the corner."
D nodded, his expression grim. "Doesn't help that the organized crime and fuck, even gangs are in on it.” He growled in annoyance. “Absolutely hilarious that we might have to start worrying about fireball-slinging gangbangers and mobsters.”
Neither of them, in fact, found it humorous in any way as Mason facepalmed and dragged his hand down his face. The idea of magic-infused crime was a nightmare scenario that law enforcement organizations across the country were scrambling to contain. Intelligence reports revealed a disturbing trend: magical beings from the other side of the rift were harbored by criminal elements in exchange for their services and knowledge. These otherworldly entities would work for the criminal underworld, using their arcane abilities to further illegal activities or, even worse, teach their arts to Earth-native criminals.
It was a development that sent shockwaves through the law enforcement community. The prospect of facing off against criminals wielding supernatural powers was alarming, to say the least. Fireball-slinging gangbangers and mobsters with the ability to level city blocks were no longer the stuff of fantasy - they were becoming a terrifying reality.
The president didn’t even have to issue an executive order, or was one resisted by any level of government when one came. Every agency, from the federal level down to the smallest county sheriff's office, had mobilized to get a lid on the situation. Task forces were formed, special units were trained, and new protocols were implemented to deal with the unique challenges of magical crime.
But it was proving to be a far more difficult task than anyone had anticipated. The magical beings were elusive, able to blend in with human society in ways that made them nearly impossible to detect. They could alter their appearance, change into animals, and in rare cases, some were even able to simply vanish when cornered.
Even more concerning was the fact that these beings were sharing their knowledge with human criminals. The idea of street gangs and organized crime syndicates having access to arcane abilities was a chilling prospect. It threatened to tip the balance of power in the criminal underworld, giving rise to a new breed of superpowered outlaws.
D and Mason sat in their truck, the weight of back-to-back raids, shootouts, and arrests over the past 6 months were taking its toll. They had seen firsthand the devastation that could be wrought by just one rogue magic user from a few weeks ago. A bolt of strange energies ripped through a police cruiser, killing both officers in the blink of an eye. The thought of facing an entire criminal network infused with such powers was almost too much to bear.
"You know, I signed up to take down gangbangers, drug dealers, and mafiosos," Mike started in a low voice that said he didn’t quite believe what he was about to say next. "I never thought I'd be going up against fucking… wizards and shit."
A dark and depreciating laugh left D’s mouth as his hand rubbed his smooth head under his hat. The world had truly made a deranged turn somewhere. He was already under the impression they were living in an unhinged clown world after 2020, but it appeared the universe decided to drive the clown car off the cliff entirely.
"I don’t anyone expected some knife-eared shitter straight out of Lord of the Rings to walk up and point his finger at something and zap it." D continued, rubbing his eyes trying to dispel the headache that was forming. “But we gotta deal with, because if we don't…”
He trailed off, the implication clear. If they failed, the consequences would be catastrophic if the criminal underworld gained a foothold in the arcane arts. The very fabric of society could unravel, plunging the world into a chaos the likes of which had never been seen.
The radio suddenly crackled to life, the helicopter that has been trailing the target vehicles gave situation report. "All units, target vehicles spotted at the intersection of Jefferson and 5th. White utility van and gray luxury sedan, matching the BOLO. They're heading southbound on Jefferson, moving fast. Over."
D and Mason immediately snapped to attention, their postures shifting from relaxed to high alert in a split second. This was the moment they had been waiting for, the culmination of months of hard work and sleepless nights.
"This is Unit 3, roger that on the target vehicles. We're moving to tail. Over." D's voice was calm and controlled as he relayed the information, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed his heightened state of readiness.
Mason was already in motion, reaching into the back of the truck to retrieve their tactical gear. He grabbed two short-barreled AR-15s, specially modified for close-quarters engagements, and began the process of prepping them for action.
As he worked, Mason couldn't help but shake his head at the surreal nature of their situation. "This is some bullshit…" he said, his voice tinged with irritation. "I never imagined I'd be gearing up to take down a bunch of literal sorcerers aided and abetted by fuckin’ mobsters."
A snort left D’s mouth as his eyes fixed on the road ahead as the engine roared to life. "Welcome to New Orleans, brother. Weird shit always happens in New Orleans."
Mason barked out a laugh, the sound harsh and bitter in the confines of the truck. "Yeah, what are they gonna have me saving next? A princess in a castle? What other goddamn fairy tale fucks is gonna pop up in this hell hole and turn it into their own personal magic kingdom?"
The radio crackled again, the voice of dispatch filtering through the static. "Unit 3, be advised. ICE teams and SWAT are in position at the target warehouse. They're ready to breach when you initiate the arrest."
D keyed the mic and responded immediately. "Roger that. We're tailing the target vehicles now, about two blocks behind. Looks like they're heading towards the warehouse. We'll box them in on your signal. Over."
As they navigated the rain-slicked streets, Mason couldn't help but appreciate the irony of the situation. Here they were, U.S. Marshals, the nation's oldest federal law enforcement agency, teaming up with ICE, an organization tasked with border security and immigration control, to take down a bunch of magical illegals and mobsters. It was like a bad joke with a punchline that nobody wanted to hear.
But there was no time for philosophical musings. The target vehicles were in sight, the white utility van and gray luxury sedan moving through traffic rather quickly.
Maintaining a discreet distance, D’s eyes never leave the vehicles ahead. Mason, meanwhile, finished prepping the rifles before the helicopter orchestrating the entire operation came back over the radio. "All units, target vehicles are approaching the warehouse. It looks like they're slowing down and preparing to pull in. Get ready to intercept. Over."
Mason sucked in a deep breath to ready himself while D's grip tightened on the steering wheel as he watched the target vehicles slow down, their turn signals blinking in the rain-soaked night. "This is Unit 3, copy that. We're moving into position for the intercept. Over." D responded in a calm voice that betrayed the tension he felt.
The radio crackled again, the voice of the helicopter operator filling the truck. "All units, SWAT, and the ICE teams are ready to breach. Box those vehicles in and give the signal. Over."
As if orchestrated by a brilliant conductor, multiple unmarked trucks and SUVs converged on two vehicles in different directions. When the target vehicles made the turn into the warehouse compound, D and the other Marshals seemingly made eye contact and gunned their engines. All of the vehicles surged forward with a roar.
"All units, this is Unit 3. We're initiating the stop. ICE teams, breach now! Over." D's voice was loud and clear over the radio, the signal for the carefully orchestrated danc to begin.
Tires squealed as D angled the truck directly at the luxury sedan and slammed into its front. Simultaneously, 4 other Marshals' units converged from the sides, their vehicles screeching to a halt mere inches from the target vehicles or slamming into them directly.
Then, chaos erupted.
"U.S. Marshal Service!! Exit the vehicles with your hands up!" D's voice boomed across the compound as he and Mason leaped from the truck, rifles pointing at the figures in the sedan as they rushed it.
As soon as D's voice echoed across the compound, the luxury sedan's engine roared to life, its tires screeching against the wet pavement as it suddenly threw itself into reverse. The driver was clearly not ready to surrender as he slammed on the gas and sent the vehicle careening backwards, smashing into the white van behind it with a deafening crunch.
The impact caused the white van to rock on its suspension as its occupants were thrown about inside. The side door of the van flew open, and a group of disoriented people tumbled out, their bodies hitting the ground hard as they scrambled to regain their footing.
"Hands!! Show me your fuckin’ hands!!" Another marshal from a different unit rushed forward. His rifle raised as he sprinted towards the driver's side of the sedan, and in an act of pure aggression, the marshal smashed the barrel of his weapon against the window, causing the glass to shatter.
But the sedan's occupants were not going down without a fight. The driver and passenger quickly drew their weapons, but D and Mason were faster. A staccato of harsh cracks left their short-barreled rifles and split the night. Giant fireballs from the muzzle flashes illuminated the rain-soaked darkness as the marshals and the suspects exchanged a furious volley of lead.
Suddenly, the rear door on the sedan's driver's side flew open. A figure then flew out, moving with a speed and grace that seemed almost inhuman. In a blur of motion, the individual closed the distance between himself and another marshal as his hand flashed out to reveal the glint of a long, wicked-looking blade.
But before anyone could react, the blade found its mark, piercing through the marshal's ballistic vest as if it were nothing more than tissue. The marshal screamed in agony, his voice rising above the cacophony of gunfire and shouting as the blade sank deep into his flesh.
A multitude of weapon-mounted flashlights snapped to the two wrestling on the ground, illuminated by harsh, strobing glares. It was then that the marshals found the one wielding the blade was no ordinary person but one of those pointy-eared Elves from Ohio.
The marshals were not about to let this act of brutality go unanswered. As the elf tried to withdraw his blade from the skewered marshal, he was met with a hail of gunfire. Bullets tore through his flesh, sending him stumbling backward and thrashing about as his blood mingled with the rain.
The scene was one of utter pandemonium, the air filled with the sounds of yelling and gunfire from both the vehicles and the warehouses. Using the mayhem that erupted around the sedan and the wounded marshal, the group that had tumbled out of the white van took the opportunity to make their getaway. Desperate to escape the clutches of the law, they scrambled to their feet and made a frantic dash away from the scene.
"STOP!! U.S. MARSHALS!" Mason’s voice boomed over the cacophony of gunfire and the pounding of the rain. But his words were lost in the wind as the suspects fled, their feet pounding against the wet pavement.
Other marshals and D were already in motion as they all took off into a dead sprint with their rifles tucked tight. "STOP, YOU STUPID BITCH!!" D yelled.
Mason joined the pursuit and passed a marshal who had caught one of the slower suspects and started wrestling with them on the ground. Taking a quick look over his shoulder, Mason couldn’t help but still be shocked to see something straight out of a video game: a small 4-foot-tall Goblin wriggling around and trashing as the larger marshal tried to control it.
While 5 marshals broke off from the main assault group to chase the desperately fleeing suspects behind them, the rest of the marshals descended upon them quickly and violently. Commands were yelled out, and weapons were pointed as the doors of both the Sedan and van yanked open the doors. The remaining occupants, who hadn't been riddled by bullets by the initial volley of gunfire, were dragged out and forced to the ground with their faces pressing into the cold, wet asphalt.
D, Mason, and the other marshals continued to chase the fleeing suspects. With the sound of their steady and trained breathing techniques and the clinking of their equipment, they pushed their bodies to the limit as they jumped fences and turned sharp corners.
In the background, the sound of police sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder with each passing second as backup forces swarmed the area. It was the sign that the operation had gone to hell in a handbasket. The carefully orchestrated plan unraveled in the face of otherworldly abilities and magic. It became increasingly clear that they needed to transition to Plan B and use overwhelming force.
As the chasing marshals sprinted through the maze of warehouses and buildings, D caught a glimpse of the suspects darting into an alley. "There!" he shouted, adjusting his course to follow.
The narrow alley was poorly lit, the shadows seeming to reach out and grab at them as they ran. The suspects were just ahead, their forms barely visible in the gloom as they wove between the buildings with desperate speed.
Suddenly, D saw the suspects they were chasing burst through the door of a single-story office building. The sound of splintering wood and shattering glass echoed through the alley as they piled through the small opening.
D and another marshal slowed to a jog, and their weapons snapped up to take aim at the empty doorway in case any dipshit thought to be cute and shove a gun through it or… fling a spell. While the marshals moved cautiously, they couldn’t help but think that notion to be completely absurd, but here they were. With their hearts pounding in their chests, they moved quickly to make entry.
The first marshal took point, his rifle leading the way as he crossed the threshold. But as soon as his weapon breached the entrance, a massive hand belonging to some big fuckin’ dude shot out from the darkness, gripping the barrel with inhuman strength.
Before the marshal could react, a startled cry was let out as the Marshal was yanked violently inside.
***
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Find out how to watch Killers of the Flower Moon full movie free online? Now here's options to streaming or downloading Killers of the Flower Moon movie online for free on reddit and 123movies, hbo max.
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Hello! Hope you're having a good day.
So I just recently started playing with a coworker and their friends, had our first in-person session last night. So far expectation is playing mostly online to roleplay character interactions, with meeting up in person when able and likely doing combat sessions irl. Only been a handful of interactions but I like the group already.
The campaign is taking place in a One Piece-esque homebrewed seemingly-sandbox campaign. The DM is chill and doesn't try to railroad from first impressions. The only issue is they're wanting limited magic, but I created an Artificer and they loved the idea of my 'magic' being inventions through use of tools, and it's allowing me to improve my RP skills to think of things.
We rolled for stats and I rolled pretty damn good, 1st level (including race bonuses) 20, 18, 16, 14, 11, 10 (Int, Dex, Con, Wis, Cha, Str respectively), and started the campaign at level 3. For Race I went with a Simic Hybrid (I was debating this or Vedalken, and for my backstory decided that I 'was' a Vedalken, but became a Simic after being experimented on. Race feats are solely that of Simic Hybrid, appearance is Vedalken with gill-modifications). I was originally debating Alchemist, but changed to Armorer with the idea that he would experiment with components/traits of sea creatures. His armor is mechanically studded leather, but visually the exoskeleton of a crab/lobster mix, the thunder gauntlets a pair of pincers, etc. Currently using an armor of magical strength infusion to band-aid fix the low STR score.
This is the point of my post:
My personal 'red flag' is that I've never played a campaign past like, 8th or 9th level. Friends had to go out of state for school/job, relationships got in the way, family/personal problems, my job is exhausting, etc. So despite playing off and on for literally a decade and a half (I began playing with 4e) my experience with higher-level campaigns, playing or DM'ing, is extremely limited. This is part of why I over-fixate on planning character progression, looking at every possibility and not knowing how to make my mind up on what I want. I also like receiving attention from strangers on the internet to validate my opinions so that's a bonus (jk but not really).
My current 'ideas' are: Artificer 14/Necro 6 (again, I'm level 3 right now..): Saw a post about an artificenecro and was like "that sounds pretty fun", not for the purpose of power-gaming and having an army to drag down combat, just the idea of bag-of-holding skelly bois I can deploy to guard the ship or something at will. The problem with this is not knowing when to take levels of what. Everything for Artificer seems really good until level 14, and the capstone ability is amazing. Also the DM wanting low-magic, but I have run this by them and they were on board with the idea.
Crabbler: Going for the Simic Hybrid extra appendages (I know mechanically they aren't great, but I'm okay with that) and gunning for a Belt of Hill Giant strength infusion, could keep armor of strength too, take grapple-assisting feats and utilize the flash of genius to grapple basically anything that isn't the size of a warehouse. This could go alongside the arti/necro as it's not exactly feat-heavy.
Literally anything: Again I'm only level 3, I like the idea of Mobile, Shield Master, and the capstone ability for Artificer, so any other thoughts I'd love to discuss/hear from those with more experience at higher level gameplay. Do I expect to play for so long I get to level 20? No. But am I the type of person that likes to have 'some' idea of what I want to play if/when I get there? Yes.
If you want to know more, ask but for those who want to read less.. TL:DR: I'm a blue man on a boat with gills and a crab suit who doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up. Help me brainstorm. (Also the character's personality is surfer-dude, named Breaux)

cw: implied s*icidal ideation
Hello rantdotmkv, I'm back once again. Before I regale you with this update on my life, I wanted to address a few things related to my last post. To those of you who saw the warning signs in that post and reached out with concerns, THANK YOU SO MUCH. I was headed down a very dark path, and if it hadn't been for the timely advice and intervention of the good people of this subreddit, I might not have been able to claw my way back to the light. To those of you who sent support in the form of handwritten letters, monetary gifts, and nudes, GOD BLESS YOU ALL. In particular, I want to shout out u/poopwario for their excellent counsel and for the five thousand bucks to help me get back on my feet again. I'll pay you back dude, I haven't forgotten!
Also, I received some pushback on the positive tone of my last post in what is meant to be a rant subreddit. I am here today to say, never fear, that will not happen again. I have learned my lesson the hard way; I stand before you a man broken and then stapled back together, but these trials have taught me the most valuable lesson of my life: maedotmkv will ruin your life!
So to pick up where the last post left off, yes: I was addicted to Genshin Impact. As embarrassed as I am to admit it, I fell hard for that money pit, and it has cost me my house, my family, and my dignity. I barricaded myself in my home office, playing day and night and spending every last cent on in-game currencies and characters i was never even going to use. After the first week, my now ex-wife took our child and went to stay at her sister's place. I'm so ashamed to say I didn't even notice when they left. Rachel, if you're reading this, I'm so fucking sorry. I realize I have nothing to offer you anymore, but I miss you so damn much. I just want things to go back to normal, when we could hold each other at the end of the day and nothing else mattered. Ditto left a few of their toys behind, I can bring those to you if you want, or you can come to me - if you haven't already heard, I'm currently staying with your mother. She has very graciously offered me a place to crash and some financial assistance in return for helping her with some things. I know you're mad at me, but please don't take it out on her, you know she's been lonely ever since your dad went to Michigan, and having a man in the house again has been really beneficial for her. I'm just trying to get my accounts out of the red so I can rent a place and get you and Ditto back. I've been working at the video games warehouse and I'm picking up some extra hours this week, so things are looking up!
Getting back to the story, they shut off the power to my house and I had to leave my computer and face the stark reality of how I'd just pissed my life away. And as I realized how much I'd given that stupid game, and how I had nothing left, I cried. Alone in that dark, stuffy house, I cried for the family I no longer had, for the life I would probably never get back. I laid there on the floor for 3 days, not eating, not bathing, not sleeping. I was in a dark place, literally because the house didn't have power, but also emotionally. Who was I, I asked, without the family Rachel and I had made? What was the point, after fucking up every good thing I'd ever done in this world? I was at the bottom of a bottomless pit, and it was only after those 3 days that I thought to look up to the top and ask, how I did I fall so far, so fast? And guess who I saw at the top, with her tangled web of red hair, her unfeeling smile, her eyes that (when they're visible at all) project hatred and contempt for everyone that crosses her path?
And it hit me: this is all mae's fault. I'm a reasonable person; I would never just throw my life away unprompted like this. I was duped, sold a bill of goods and then had the rug pulled out from under me. The game I started playing, in good faith to support a creator I thought deserved it, turned predatory and took me for everything that I had. mae carelessly fed me and countless others to the monster called "gacha" and for what? So she could finance her Florida vacation? And possibly other activities?
Now I know the ranters have heard all this before, but I want to appeal to the unironic maeheads out there. I KNOW there are at least a few of you reading this. "Not mae!" you cry. "Not our sweet scarlet angel! She would never do anything that wasn't in our best interest!" I already categorically disproved this a few posts back; I'm not going to re-litigate it here. tldr; mae hates every last one of you and you should save your Prime subs and your channel points for someone else who won't take them and go on a road trip while she makes her sister stream in her place. (Not that hazel isn't also problematic/abusive towards chat; where do think mae learned it? This post is long enough already though...)
This is only the latest example of mae's casual cruelty, and it nearly did me in. I beg any of you still inside the cultdotmkv to get out while you still can. Don't end up like I did, destitute and massaging my MIL's feet in exchange for a place to sleep. (Just kidding Mona, you're an amazing woman and if it wasn't for your generosity I'd be sleeping in a dumpster tonight.)
I love you all, be safe out there!

Platform(s): Unknown
Genre: Arcade Shooter
Estimated year of release: Unknown, likely to be after 2009.
Graphics/art style: Background was video of a model (see details)
Notable characters: Spaceship?
Notable gameplay mechanics: Unknown, had an arcade shooter perspective, like Xevious or something
Other details: I remember seeing a YouTube video about the development of an arcade-like shooting game, where the scrolling background was actually a video of a physical miniature scifi city, that was actually constructed. It was something like 28 or 28 feet long, and barely fit in the warehouse from memory. The devs built it, then recorded a video from above it to create a scrolling background for the game's levels. They simply played the video and put the game play over the top of the footage.
From an artistic viewpoint, it was super innovative, and gave such a unique aesthetic. I'm planning on joining a photography club in a few months to start collecting backgrounds for a VN or something (inspired by the backgrounds from Katawa Shoujo), and this random arcade shooter memory popped into my head as something similar. Any help is greatly appreciated!