Geist

I had Geist in the morning, and perhaps I should start posting about those, to reminisce. We had Part 2 of a Nature Reserve mission in Romania that dealt with weresharks and an incompetent American trying to build a Welcome Center on their land. Everyone but Void attended, including two who didn't make it last session, which threw a wrench into the deal we made with the weresharks last session to bring the incompetent American (Robert Harrington) to them—likely so they could kill him. The two characters who weren't here last week kept glaring at Zane whenever "someone lying" was mentioned, despite Zane not truly lying (he did from ommission, but Cordula was truly lying, darn it, glare at her!). Zane despises lying, so he didn't appreciate the accusations, but shrugged them off as them not knowing what they were talking about, because he didn't lie!

Things overall went smoothly, getting Harrington to stop the construction, while also not bringing him to the weresharks to slaughter him. Despite this being the most peaceful solution, Zane wasn't pleased with it, because it meant he didn't get to keep his promise to the weresharks, and after they granted the party powers the previous session! That made him feel like a liar, reneging on a promise. He might be Evil, but he's very Lawful, and even hours later, he was grumbling about it.

Easter

We left for my sister's a little after 11:30. We arrived around 1 and had linner around 2. My sister's husband made this good curry with rice, carrots, tomatoes, and potatoes. Nice and spicy; I'm not someone who's had a lot of curry, but it might be my favorite—either that or the stuff I got at that Thai place we went to a year or two ago (only twice in my life).

Overall, I kept to myself, spending the latter half of the visit upstairs in the left room, with Maui. We shared a bed, and I tried to brainstorm ideas for Art Fight. Without my phone or laptop (only a sketchpad), I couldn't think up too much, but at least I did something. I really need to force myself to prep harder. I need plenty of ideas ahead of time, darn it!

I've been overall unmotivated in general to draw or be creative, I think mostly because for the past year or so, I haven't had anyone to really interact with about characters, and most of my ideas and motivation comes from discussions with others. Therefore, my ideas and creations have been a lot more limited. It's a shame, but I have nobody to blame but myself; nobody is obligated to talk characters with me. Still, it has made my brainstorming tougher too, at least when it comes to thinking up ideas for friends.

At least I have one months' old idea for Void that I simply wasn't motivated enough to draw earlier. That was one of my many super rough sketches of this day.

New Art Fight Feature: Connections

Speaking of Art Fight, later that night, they released a new "Connections" feature, which I'm overly excited for. I doubt it'll actually mean much in the grand scheme of things (at least for what people draw for me), but as someone with a heavy preference for drawing character interaction, having easy to access links and blurbs for tied characters is super nice, and I hope a lot of people utilize it. Hopefully it helps make coming up with interaction pieces a little easier. As for if I'll get more interaction pieces for my own characters? One can hope, but I doubt much will change. But I shouldn't complain; while the bulk of the stuff I get isn't interaction, I do tend to get a few really thoughtful things, which I'm super grateful for. I loved Shy Friend's piece of Absit and Idunn last year; I'd share here if they weren't shy, haha.

Art Fight Top 3!

I got an email today about the Banner Submission Form, which means I got to learn the Top 3 themes. I was confused, since in November, they mentioned they weren't going to have a theme poll because, and I quote:

We want this anniversary to be truly special, and we have several surprises in store that we can't wait to share. Holding another poll would risk revealing too much and interfering with those plans.

But the three themes I got weren't anything special as far as I can tell. They're just three themes that were in the running before—albeit, at least one wasn't in the running last year (and I'm glad it's back).

Of these three, I have a minor theory that Heroes/Villains wins, due to a slip up when they first sent it out:

Initially, on the first choice (Comedy/Tragedy), the below team preference instead asked for Heroes/Villains. There's a chance they just randomly started with Heroes/Villains, but I feel there's a decent chance that they did the winner first, then based the rest off of that.

I'm not confident, since for all I know, they did the winning team last instead, or copy-pasted the second team into the third; there are many possibilities for how this error came to be, but I like theorizing the winner in advance, and this is the only discepency I have to work with.

Regardless, I'll be happy so long as Heart/Soul doesn't win. I've been rooting for Comedy/Tragedy since it came out, given I LOVE both of those things. I'd be Team Comedy, given I focus on the goofy side of stuff for my characters/Attacks, but I prefer even my goofy guys having hidden tragedy underneath their silliness.

Tomodachi Life

I saw a few posts floating around about a new Tomodachi Life, but while interesting, I wasn't invested enough to go through the hassle of trying it out, until Nanda made a post in my server about Teo being in her game. With someone else playing, I decided I might as well try it. It's been fun. I added 13 characters to my island, all but Tilly being my own. I'm pretty happy with these 13 (I don't want TOO many people), though adding Marius, Rolf, and/or Lydia could be nice... Or Ignace. I added The Traitor (September's Geist form) solely because there was a "floating" walking option and a graveyard room theme, but thought about removing her early; then she grew on me too much.

I'm pleasantly surprised that there seems to be no filter on the game; it'd be a lot less fun if you couldn't be naughty/use curse words.

Tomodachi Game

After watching Liar Game's first episode two weeks ago, I read comments about how it's similar to High School of the Elite, Trillion Dollar Game, and Tomodachi Game.

I tried Trillion Dollar Game and was mega unimpressed, dropping it by the end of episode 2. Then I tried High School of the Elite, and watched until maybe episode 11 or so, then dropped it. At least it had a few hooks about the two main characters, but overall, it was still so bland and hardly psychological.

I had already watched the 12 episode Tomodachi Game years ago, when it first came out, as well as read what was written of the manga, but I dropped it after I caught up, not impressed enough to keep up with it month by month. But now that it was finished, I decided to rewatch/reread, this time to completion.

My verdict? Still unimpressed.

The games themselves are fun and the solutions are sometimes interesting, but it has one fatal flaw: the main character is always two steps ahead, and once you realize it, all tension fades. The main character often has big reactions to things—oh no, his plan failed; he's lost! But it's almost always an act, and when it's not an act, he gets around things easily. Sure, it's intense the first few times, when you assume his reactions are real, but after the facade fades, everything becomes tedious. I found myself skimming through pages of gloating and smirks by his enemies, because there's an 85% chance the main character is just pretending to lose to them.

And in the end, even the games themselves become predictable. Before, even if I knew Main Character would somehow get out of every situation, at least I couldn't often guess how. But in the last game, it was so obvious. Main Character begged for Passwords? It was obviously a ruse by him, and he gave them fakes. And the lady being "murdered/suiciding" at the very beginning? Obviously, that's the person he gave his password to. Come on; why else would she "die" so early?

It also is just too "cliche anime" in the worst ways. You have the classic "other people watching the game are giving commentary," just like in so many Shounens. You have the "Eheheh, I'm so evil" inner monologues, only for them to end up joining the protagonist(s) later. And of course, you have the fanservice.

So it's good at one thing, but kind of fails everywhere else. It's fine. I'd probably give it a biased 7/10 and an unbiased 6/10. It's average (and average is bad) everywhere except in the games, but that is the main draw; but even the games have flaws due to a lack of tension.

Liar Game

But what of Liar Game, then? As of now, only two episodes have been released (they come out every Tuesday), but I've sadly been unimpressed with the anime adaptation. The style/animation is much worse than Tomodachi Game, and style isn't everything, but you need something else to cover for it, and I don't find anything standing out. But I'm a big Liar Game fan (I watched both the Japanese and Korean Live Action dramas of it), so I will be watching until the end. The games should make it still good, but games like this need good direction to build the right atmosphere and tension, and so far, I don't think they've done a good job.

At the very least, Liar Game should be less annoyingly tropey than Tomodachi Game. Less "side character mid-game commentary," less fanservice. They'll still have over-the-top reactions, but I think they'll be a little less edgy? ...Instead more goofy, for better or for worse.

Movie Trivia

As per usual, I researched just a little in advance, and this time, it helped us with two! I'm surprised so few knew the answer for what pill Neo took (Red or Blue), but I guess if I didn't see this trivia in advance, I'd be unsure too, but with an educated guess, with "redpill" being a term now, one would assume that'd be the answer. I also knew Luke's home planet had two suns due to research in advance (though Aaron might've known that too).

I was surprised with—without research—I was the only one on our team to know what food Shrek compared ogres to (onions), so for once, even without research, I was useful. That was nice.

But most surprisingly of all was that my mom won us the game. We were losing 34-35 against the Librarians; we risked 33, they risked it all, and the last team (a fourth had to leave early) risked enough they'd have a few points left. The question was what was the first movie that showed a flushing toilet. We were all stumped, but my mom was leaning over trying to think really hard, and she actually got it in time: Psycho, a movie she never even saw, but read about that fact recently, by chance. We were the only team who answered that, so we won!

And as usual, the Librarians were amusing. Two times ago, during February-related trivia, it was "Rhoda Kill" as an answer for the groundhogs' child, last month, during Sports trivia, it was calling themselves the "Battered Women" (by accident until they realized it), and this time, it was calling my dad a Sinophile and then treating it like it was as bad as a similar word. They're fun.