u/TenPointsforListenin

I loved it the first time! There's not a character that's uninteresting, and it's built around these seemingly undefeatable villains that give scenes a sense of constant tension.

Rewatching without that tension though, and I think the line pacing might be a bit strange. It's very "Let me tell you what's going on, now I'll SING ABOUT IT". Cinderella in particular tends to just start rocking out of nowhere.

Some songs matter a great deal, such as the goddess's song and the ballroom scene, but... it honestly feels like the singing was an afterthought to the acting, for better or worse. I think for the songs to matter, something needs to happen in the songs. Nerdy Prudes Must Die has the majority of its major story beats happen mid-song, which gives them weight. I think Cinderella's Castle probably needed a bit more of that.

The incredible puppet work (and having actors dressed as the human versions of their puppets) and solid acting across the board kept it together for me, but I think it would have been about as good sans songs.

Sometimes it seems like Breath, sometimes more like a ghost

For example,

Psalm 119:28: My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word. (seems like a body here)

Psalm 42:11 Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? (seems like a thing in him, like it's an entity)

Micah 6:7 Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? (soul and body clearly separate here)

Matthew 10: 28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. (clearly distinct here)

I saw some people saying that soul in the bible is breath. Adam was given a soul when his first breath entered him, but... there's a lot of verses that seem to treat it more as an invisible thing that exists within people.

Unsure which one's accurate.

I was on some long flights.

Twelve Angry Men

An old good movie. Small set, strong actors, long takes, tight script. My only complaint is... I don't know what the casting was like for that guy who's supposed to be young and inexperienced, but dude's lines were writing checks his hairline couldn't cash.

Wicked

Beautiful special effects, solid acting, fun music. It is half of the stage play, and honestly, it's the stronger half since it's not so locked down by the three sources it's trying to be based on at once (novel, 1930's movie, grimdark 90's novel) without truly taking on the tone of any of them.

Wicked: For Good

Source material came calling. Casting decisions that made sense in the original (like casting an actually disabled person to play a disabled character) now don't make as much sense, sets are less good, and the main relationship of the play between the two leads takes a backseat to a previously only kinda there romance that probably shouldn't be the centerpiece of the second film.

If you watched the first, you probably need to watch the second, but... there are better ways to watch the second act of this play.

Good Fortune

Fun, casual watch. Not in a "go out of your way to watch this" way, but in a "weather's bad, it's my day off, I have nothing to do and it's on a streaming service I have anyways" way. Cheap but heartfelt effects and a surprisingly expensive cast. Feels like watching the Good Place in a certain way. Would watch again once it's out on one streaming service or another.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

Carried by its casting and ridiculous premise. The writing feels very... old person afraid of cell phones but also they like AI images of Charlie Brown characters, but it was made with passion for the ludicrous plotline, and there's not a bad performance in there. Cinematography is solid.

There are some little ones out there that I haven't played, but here are the big 3.

The Sims 4

EA was purchased by an investment firm in Saudi Arabia, to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil. Difficult to say that they have any personal investment in most of the products- if they did, we'd get way more hijab options and a high tech desert city. As it stands, probably more focus on profits and less on the only functional part of the Sims 4 development team- the art and design. Unclear if Sims 4 is going to be able to continue as is or not, but... it was already bleeding well before its purchase.

Paralives

It's still teething. Reading patch notes is unintentionally funny. Some highlights from the most recent patch:

"Paras should no longer continue conversation while sleeping."

"Ending a relationship in a brutal manner will also end any ongoing conversation and group interaction to give you both time to cool off."

"Babies should no longer spawn on the pavement on birth (except for twins or triplets, in which case one will spawn in your arms and the others on the floor)."

"As much as we loved our biblically accurate babies, we have seen the feedback and have decided to update their look to make them cuter and less Bobby Hill coded."

InZoi

Chugging along in random directions with intense effort. Dev videos swing between "here are the fundamentals of the game" and "we coded a way to throw your meal at a stranger". Paralives feels like it's building the baseline for order, InZoi is building a baseline for raw unhinged chaos.

Where I sit with all of them

Sims 4 has the best townies. Paralives and InZoi don't have much personality behind preexisting characters yet.

InZoi has the best live mode and it's not close. So much to do, and so much of it is just randomly out there.

Paralives has the best build mode, even this early in development.

You aren't wrong to pick one or multiple of these. Currently, (because I'm trash at build mode), InZoi is my favorite but it's not wrong to try multiple by any means. The competition nowadays is healthy.

CSU-2

Up until very recently, this was a group that only contained Mint, and Mint is the best thing about this organization. She goes out of her way to monitor the mental health of her fellow members. Any other workplace would center around Mint, but her coworkers are so toxic they just bully her instead.

Iroi is sardonic and mean, calling people stupid to their face, and it's hard to stop her because she's basically immortal. Shinku is quiet and reserved, but occasionally explodes into fits of rage.

Seems like they're pretty decent to newcomers, but very mean to Mint.

6/10, was a 10/10 when it was just Mint.

ETD-6

We don't know very much about this one yet, but we do know about Chaos and Linko, who seem like they do their job and leave. No mocking or jeering, just do work, go home. Seems pretty professional and distant so far.

8/10 so far.

ETD-4

This group orbits around the combined leadership of Baicang and Skia, who form the same dynamic as Shawn and Gus from Psyche. Fadia and Lacrimosa seem to orbit the group, more or less just doing jobs and whatever they want in their free time. This is fine for Lacrimosa, who just naps and eats in her free time. Fadia is an ex-con though so... probably needs a bit more oversight, something Baicang won't provide but Skia might.

9/10.

Eibon

Poorly run and managed and the benefits are way too good- free room and board upon hiring. It isn't profitable, and the leader, Hotori, ensures it won't be profitable by being ludicrously bad with money and hiring... a lot of minors. Of the Eibon cast, Hotori notwithstanding, the only people with an adult level of life experience are Adler and Daffodill. Coco might be an amnesiac adult, or might have literally been created when the game starts, we do not know.

8/10. Good housing, bad workplace security, and Hotori being probably the strongest of them but not actually doing much doesn't help the bottom line.

I tried watching through it and it felt less genuine than the others. There were a few issues for me.

The humor didn't work in-universe

In Twisted, when they make jokes about Disney buying Pixar, they do it in-universe. "The magic kingdom and the kingdom of Pi-xar fit the world they had it in. Achmed's woody doll getting its arm messed up also fit into the scene. Palpetine preparing a lego set featuring Vader's children feels... less sincere, as do a lot of the Star Wars jokes Aniken peppers into his speech.

The music didn't have personality

Giving music responsibility to a backing band did guarantee quality, but having it be them made it lose the personality of individual characters singing.

The characterization is inconsistent

Is Ani a viable threat (choking several death star leaders) or weak (only won one fight, against a bunch of kids, and it was close)? Both are fine as characterizations but if it bounces between the two, it feels like the character writing was sidelined for a punchline.

Honestly, it's just not the best Starkid have done, and that's fine. Trail to Oregon came out around the same time, and it's fantastic, so... it's fine to have one that doesn't appeal to me personally.

Having waited for Liino for a while, here's where I'm at with her.

The good

Some of the best healing in the game, possibly the best (main competition being Ardelia and Ember. Ardelia's heals have to be picked up, Ember's is a reaction trigger. Liino just keeps on healing through everything).

Strong sustained buffs for electric and nature units. Your Arcanes and ESPECIALLY your Fangyi's look really nice under Liino's buffs.

Animations are fun for everything. No corners cut, she has a ton of props, and she's so fidgety- she sits down and her real personality pops up before the facade comes out and she does some cutesy pose. She also has a different animation for ending her attack combo (which you almost never use) on every single attack. Even in her kit selection, she's playing music on her DJ table rather than standing still and posing. Honestly all the details are great.

Voice lines and attack sounds are shockingly unintrusive. I was expecting to be a bit annoyed but honestly Arcane's cat and Gilberta's shush are more annoying than anything Liino has to work with. Her voice lines are shockingly succinct.

Strong niche use case in that one fight where you can only hurt enemies by ground pounding. Her ground pound shoots out little stars that can result in a two hit attack instead of a one hit.

The bad

Her second dash is barely better than Gilberta's. Fangyi and Arcane both get major boosts from dashing, Liino just looks cool from dashing.

Inconsistent lore with her character mission. In her voice lines, she talks about inadvertently reading minds, despite being demonstrably unable to read Endmin's mind properly.

Her very cool attack combo animation is borderline useless because she should basically never be attacking.

She was more successful posting songs online than she was as a performer because she overpays for the special effects to a ludicrous degree. Has to hire herself out as a member of Endfield to pay the bills.

She has such a strong smell that you can identify her from several hundred meters away. Endmin smells her before she sees her. It’s a certain type of perfume but daang.

Difficult to say

Her spear is really, really good, to the point where she's significantly worse without it. I can't think of another weapon that's so ludicrously powerful in the game, to be honest. If you have Liino, you have two more passes to get the spear, but you absolutely need that spear, even though she's literally never going to use it in battle if you're playing her correctly.

Her character tutorial is about switching to Fangyi which... is accurate, but still.

Like Gilberta before her, there's like no chance we'll see Liino in the story even as she's personally responsible for the deaths of thousands.

I don't know enough Djall lore to understand her whole deal completely. My understanding is that they're cutesy mindflayers. She is sufficiently purple.

1. Theodora. She's a part of a fringe religion that's persecuted in the country she's visiting. Very valid for her to demand religious freedom as a condition for winning. In terms of lives saved, it's probably within the hundreds if she wins (assuming she's not worshipping some evil muder god or something, who's to say at this point.)

2. Cai. Wants to save his dad from imprisonment. This could also be achieved by a jailbreak, but his little town is within the borders of the larger nation of Dagda, so if his dad isn't freed legally, he can be re-arrested at any time. There's hope for a "you saved the world" pass, but narrow hope since it's unclear what the imprisonment time is. Would save one life total.

3. Leda. She just wants to kill a dude. Just the one dude. Winning the heroic games wouldn't really assist her very much in that unless she can personally wish for that guy to be executed. I don't see her as a finalist, so much as off in her own corner doing her own thing by the end.

4. Dietrich. He just wants to fight strong opponents. I see why he joined the games, and it's definitely not for the wish at the end. I could also see him wandering off to fight some other dangerous threat and being equally happy. Probably has more fun 5 years later than during the games (though his bio mentions a little sister, if she's sick or something he's got a valid reason to join).

For my personal playthrough, I want to go through their stories in order of military might, so the protagonist doesn't have a valid reason to just jump in and save the future without the others.

I'll go Leda, then Cai/Dietrich, then Theodora.

With Liino, there are now two(2) six star electric operators! This is still below every other element, but it's a start! As an electric enjoyer, here are what I hope the next two are for my team to be complete.

What we already have:

Fangyi- SP and infliction hungry, massive AOE damage over a duration.

Liino- healing and buffing over a duration, long uptime.

What I'd like next

Combined infliction and sp regen- Right now, half of any electric team's slots need to be dedicated to Perlica (the only reliable infliction dealer) and Arclite (the only reliable SP regen). Neither of these are ideal. Perlica can't maintain enough infliction for Fangyi to consistently have someone to shoot swords at. I'd like a character who builds SP a different way than eating electric infliction but can apply electric infliction.

A face tank- My glass cannon team will benefit from adding a JPop idol to it (healing is nice) but could also benefit from someone who can take a hit and actually benefits from doing so. Right now, I start boss fights as someone besides Fangyi, because once she's gone my DPS goes from good to mediocre. It's always Arclite or fourth party member, because sans Perlica and Fangyi, the team is doomed. I beat the Greek statue boss playing the first half as Arcane, until she wiped, then I switched to Arclite. It would be nice if there was a character for this purpose, and I'm a little hopeful that blonde horse guy fits that purpose.

u/PristinePangolin2732 mentioned ult charge, since Fangyi can only really maintain nine swords on bosses, which is a really valid point. Fangyi, against regular mobs, isn't able to build up swords before the mobs themselves die, which limits her usefulness against squishy enemies. Someone who can build up ult charge for her would be great.

I have never actually played this game, because... I've been really saddled in the GM role. I was given a PDF of the Dungeons and Dragons 5e handbook, and because of my possession of that cursed tome a decade ago, I was forever sealed into the GM seat.

That being said, this is one of my favorite systems. The combat isn't my favorite, but the roleplay is fantastic and the dice rolls are easy enough for anyone to play.

The playbooks I like to see as a GM

The Razor- the implication of the Razor is that there is an entire bad guy group to draw from that I can cooperate with the player on. I finished a campaign with a Razor player, and found the worldbuilding exceptionally easy to write even in a homebrew setting, because her character informed what the evil group had to be.

The Guardian- Needs two players to have connected backstories, which means you can start the campaign in very different ways than the players meeting for the first time. Depending on how many players you have (I had 4-5), this is a game changer. That being said, if either of the two drop out, the character no longer makes sense. In my case, the guardian's ward dropped out, and the guardian then wanted a new character and dropped out later.

The Destined- Pure, unfiltered GM foreshadowing. I absolutely screwed with my party for an entire campaign using vague wording on a prophecy from a destined player. "You will fight with the avatar" was great. "You will fight with (alongside) the avatar (a past avatar your character individually grew up with rather than the current one, using the avatar state)"- I threw them for a loop for a whole campaign as the prophecy kept not being fulfilled despite seeming to be. Fun, fun stuff. A player legitimately cried when the reveal finally came through.

The Hammer- More of a theoretical fantasy for me, I've never had a hammer player but it seems like it would be a fun choice.

Others can be good, but when a player picks one of those three, they can expect many, many DMs from me as we hash out what the deal is with their character.

If I was playing though, I'd go with the rogue or the guardian. I like how interaction-focused their playbooks are.

China is a large country. Many provinces reflect wildly different cultures and traditions, some have specific holidays not celebrated anywhere else in the country. For example, Yunnan province in the far south has a summer holiday very similar to Thai Songkran festival where people take a day off and douse each other with water in the streets. This is a large diverse country.

Hypergryph is located in Shanghai, China, and it shows. Shanghai is not technically a part of Zhejiang province, being under a local administration largely due to how large it is (you see similar systems for Beijing and Chongqing since they, likewise, are too crowded for someone to reasonably manage along with an entire province), but it has a lot of commonalities with Zhejiang culture. Traditional ink block painting, misty lakes and tall imitation Tang Dynasty temples are significant aspects of that area of China's aesthetics. Seeing scrolls unfolding all over the place and every magical object looks like the three pools reflecting the moon in Hangzhou's West Lake is very... that area of China (Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu) and international cultures see that as functionally China.

But that's... a very narrow view of what China is.

I think, right now, video games are the main source of Chinese soft power, and they're kind of blowing it by convincing international audiences that Zhejiang is all their is. Go to Shanghai. Look at a temple. Leave. It's narrow compared to the broad opportunities to express Chinese culture.

Here are some examples of traditional Chinese clothing on women who obviously match modern Chinese beauty standards over the ancient women who actually wore these, but hey.

https://preview.redd.it/7em3k3kc4sgh1.png?width=399&format=png&auto=webp&s=4dd98aea29ec91ae8f8d9732f504c81d8f1bb00f

Yunnan province, in the far south. This is related heavily to the Hmong (or Miao if you speak Mandarin) people.

https://preview.redd.it/22j9vp6g4sgh1.png?width=678&format=png&auto=webp&s=6db23df4fb515d4a4b59e57c1cd9d00d25610511

A Cantonese opera performer in Hong Kong

https://preview.redd.it/fb2mhbnj4sgh1.png?width=360&format=png&auto=webp&s=1c625263cdd68db4ee0cfb64ae72518ad2b0dfaf

Inner Mongolia

https://preview.redd.it/15p84lko4sgh1.png?width=678&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a70256bf44e21ee07d7f2c4e112078b0a9d4f2f

Hebei

https://preview.redd.it/o60nmvy05sgh1.png?width=493&format=png&auto=webp&s=1cd51e2a59279f85c2a849e8d2f7f1a0de261db2

Tianjin

That's just costumes. Talking about traditional architecture styles and location appearances is way more exciting.

I'm not saying it's bad to make a Zhejiang game, but when everyone looks Zhejiang and speak Mandarin in a Zhejiang accent... it's a bit stifling on a game that's meant to have a very diverse cast. Sure- make the game Chinese, but take the dang high speed rail somewhere and use that place as inspiration. Make something fun- a place where the light pollution once "stole the stars out of the sky" but the increasing number of returning stars fills the place with dread, an upside down city on the underside of a giant cliff where people wear special shoes and the local birds learn to fly by finally letting go, a floating city divided into districts with an unhappy poor class planning to bring it to the ground to finally be free from their lots in life... something fun, but take a culture and roll with it.

This will not be seen by the devs. Reddit is banned in China. This is for me, who wants to gush about Chinese cultures and wishes that Chinese video games actually engaged with the cultures of their nation.

So... Harry Potter wasn't distinct in its field. There were several other British magical school stories that came out before Harry Potter with limited success. Jill Murphy's "the worst witch", Diana Wynne Jones's "witch week", and most similar, Anthony Horowitz's Groosham Grange. Ursula K Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea" also had a magical school setting back in 1968, but... Harry Potter is huge.

I took a trip to South Korea some time ago, and found two Harry Potter branded shops, a shop featuring Arsene Lupin branding, and little else. Even British literature juggernauts like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde were not present, but Harry Potter was.

So, in coming to terms with why Harry Potter got so big, here's where my conclusions lie.

A very compelling hook

The first few chapters of Harry Potter do very little to build the overarching narrative. They gently hint at the existence of Voldemort. Instead, you spend the opening chapters watching the Diggorys' increasingly futile efforts to hide magic from Harry, and as their mundane world collapses before their eyes, it becomes very clear that Harry is unusual. This is a very fun opening to a book that gets the reader invested in the existence of magic as an escape from mundanity.

A rapid sequel publishing schedule

The entire series of seven books, increasing in size each time, was published within a decade, from 1997 to 2007. The first four books came out annually, the rest coming out every 2-3 years, and they grew larger and larger each iteration. This was a very strong publishing schedule, and it showed.

A very quick movie tie-in

The first novel was published in 1997, film rights sold off in 1999, shooting began in the fall of 2000. By this point, JK Rowling had published four books and was going on a hiatus to write longer novels. The movies bridged the gap, coming out in 2001 and 2002, but taking a gap year in 2003 (when JK Rowling published a new book).

Any year there wasn't a book, there was a movie with the exception of 2006, and films were released annually or bi-annually until 2011.

Basically, from 1997 until 2011, one could expect to see Harry Potter in bookstores or theaters. Every release reinforced the existence of the series and drew in new viewers, and the growing heft of the books and darker tones that they began to explore kept them relevant with children growing up with the characters.

Do I think this is all due to JK Rowling's stellar writing?

No but yes. JK Rowling is excellent at roping an invested audience along, but has trouble building an audience that isn't invested. The huge investment poured into Harry Potter by film studios and merchandising turned it into a juggernaut as much as anything else.

Anyone read A Casual Vacancy? JK Rowling is shackled to her biggest hit. She makes a book titled "compendium of insects in Hogwarts Gardening"- top seller. She makes a novel without those characters... no interest, because nobody's pouring marketing and attention into them. Without attention, her desire to write shrivels up and there's no sequel, because she's not getting the acclaim she once did. Time for a compendium of wizarding toilets, or a twitter battle, because that attention isn't forthcoming from a book that doesn't feature wizard children.

So back during the pandemic, Genshin reached a market of players really into Breath of the Wild who wanted more content, and adding a constant trickle of new characters and new areas gave them a solid reason to keep logging in. Combine that with being stuck inside and you have a game that took a broad base and brought it into a market.

Simple then the requirements to stand out for one of these games has increased, as have player expectations. It costs more money to make a successful gacha game than it used to and, with a saturated market, your cut of the pie is smaller.

Studios sometimes try to branch out and grab new demographics (there’s an upcoming mecha game that seems to be aiming for that fairly untapped demo) but in general, the top few are going to compete for a narrower slice of the pie, and a player base that’s increasingly aware of predatory tactics- minimizing those IS an appeal at this point.

This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily. It means that studios are subject to the whims of the players, and more competition breeds more incentive to deliver desirable content and to innovate beyond the same old formula, but I still think this genre is not as invincible as it was half a decade ago.

I preferred the first half to the second. If I was naming songs that stood out to me, it was all the first half- The Wizard and I, Popular, Dancing Through Life, and Defying Gravity were very good but… I don’t know that the second half was as strong.

The relationship between Elfaba and Fiyero isn’t as explored as her relationship with Galinda, so making that the key emotional core of a huge part of the story felt like rebuilding the wheel. Second movie Fiyero also did this weird thing where he opens his eyes way too wide. Don’t know who told him to do that but it makes him look like a confused baby animal instead of an adult man, and it’s only around Elfaba, he’s fine otherwise.

It also implies the plot of Wizard of Oz… but with massive glossed over changes and a lot of arbitrary angst. Boq is not the tin man from the wizard of Oz, and the cowardly lion’s motivation is exceptionally weak. No closure for either of them, either.

I also think casting an actual disabled person in the role of Nessarose made her scene with Boq… weird. “Look, someone made me float around” doesn’t have the same impact as “look, I can walk now so we can dance together”. It also makes her feet feeling like they’re on fire feel unnecessary.

I also love Michelle Yeoh, but I think she was miscast here. The sinister undertones of a character who seems whimsical and supportive at first are lost on her, and she treats the saccharine dialogue of the character like she’s saying serious lines in an action movie. I think there was probably a better casting for that role.

Visual effects were very good. I do feel like Boq’s actor aged 15 years between films, but… with what was going on in his personal life, I would too.

No complaints about the leads. Both Elfaba and Galinda were consistently in character and fun to watch. I like the little Galinda slapstick moments. Bringing back the original actresses in the early part of the first film was great too.

Might watch the first movie again, don’t know about the second. It’s better than reading the books but I think some choices were strange.

1. Juror 11. They really brush over the super damning point he brought up where... the supposed murderer would have cleaned the knife of fingerprints WHILE it was in his father, and then left it in his father, ran off, then come back 3 hours later to get it, but... he's swayed by reason and has zero emotional investment in this case, he switches on a dime when he has a reasonable doubt. Takes notes, listens carefully, doesn't put up a stink.

2. Juror 8. Does his homework, finds problems, then brings them up one by one. Willing to take a strong stance first. Solid dude.

3. Juror 6. Not much in terms of ideas and suggestions, but he's honestly the one keeping people in line and keeping people talking. Can't say he came up with a ton, but he was able to judge distances when prompted, and I respect it.

4. Juror 4. He's holding out until he finds a reason to doubt the key witness (her glasses left marks on her face OVER a face caked in makeup. Those are some thick lenses) and then folds when he's convinced. He willingly secedes points, and has no loyalty to others just because he agrees with them on the cause. Solid antagonist, and the only late movie antagonist that isn't the worst.

5. Juror 9. He's a nice old guy who wants attention and gets upset when he doesn't get it, but that need for attention and absolute silence when speaking echoes a witness, which helps give a possible motive for the witness overstating what he saw.

6. Juror 5. He's emotional but he does have slum experience. Gets bullied into switching sides, which isn't the best motivation but isn't the worst we have here.

7. Juror 2. Doesn't contribute much but he's willing to reconsider ideas, and figures out how to stand up for himself. Simultaneously looks very young and very old.

8. Juror 1. His ego is a problem. Wants authority but doesn't know what to do with it and gets sulky and weird if the authority he took and then halfheartedly used gets questioned. Ego very on the line here, thinks being the first juror on an arbitrary list grants him some sort of authority. Generally reasonable aside from his ego though.

9. Juror 3. Controversial take, but at least he's bringing up counter points to the not guilty verdict that border on rational, which is more than I can say for anyone below him on this list.

10. Juror 12. Doesn't contribute much and folds under pressure. Best he does is lighten the tension, in general he's there to distract others who aren't talking at that moment because he can't hold still and needs social validation. In any other situation he'd honestly be fun to hang out with though.

11. Juror 7. At his best, he fixes the windows and the fan. At his worst, he has no opinions and derails as much as he can.

12. Juror 10. So awful that even jurors on his side tell him to shut up. Ends the case in a time out table in the corner. Doesn't contribute any valid points, deserves that hot weather cold.

I watched through the first three episodes on an airline that was so Muslim it offered the Qur'an as an in-flight reading material, both digital and print.

Words that were censored

"Gay". The opening episode is now Holt not getting a command because he's ___.

"Jewish". Jake shouldn't express his ethnicity like that.

"Ham", but not the Spanish version. "Hamon Iberico" is Iberian Ham.

"Drug", but "drugs" is fine.

So the first episode is about a man who stole an expensive ____ but he was caught by a squad lead by a ____ captain who is working with his ____ detective.

Second episode is about a ___ bust. (this is unintentionally very funny)

Third episode was almost totally uncensored. The teenagers chanting "black people can sell drugs" was kept in wholecloth.

One of my favorite ways to watch the show now, if it wasn't so expensive to pick airlines specifically for their censorship. I was most surprised by the censorship of the word "Jewish".

Pre-Amnesia Endmin

We have really two main events we know about.

1. Endmin was a part of the exiles, but turned on them and threw them into the aether. They know about this but most have no hard feelings.

2. Endmin established vaults for cultural relics, to restore society when the current threat dies down.

This leads me to think pre-amnesia Endmin saw the exiles as the threats in some way, and anticipated the problem getting worse before it gets better.

Post-Amnesia Endmin

Avoids power like the plague. Takes zero positions from anyone, will set up a factory wherever people want, but will create items for that territory and spend the money on developing that territory, or buying gifts for Endfield ops, or hiring more Endfield ops. Endmin likes people.

Avoids displays of force even when they're arguably necessary like... a kid is holding onto a volatile substance as an imaginary toy. Endmin goes through the procedures set up by the kids in order to reclaim the volatile substance instead of just going "you're going to get yourself killed, give me that."

Has a visceral, emotional reaction to being told that she should take over the world. Responds with an aggressive "no" to a construct, rather than just giving it different orders. Is emotional and angry with Ardashir for the same reason. Anyone who tries to make Endmin rule the world is her iteration of an enemy, everyone else is a potential ally.

Helps with really random stuff, for the sake of making others happy. Sits and quietly watches while Yvonne paints a memorial to her dead robot, for example.

Not very willing to take a break, unless someone else takes a break with her (going on a Kung Fu journey with Mi Fu is fine, taking a nap in the side office in the Dijiang requires both Fangyi and Perlica pressuring her).

Refers to Tangtang as "Supreme Chief" and means it. Willfully subordinate without reservations.

Conclusion

This is a character with a strong specific moral backbone in place despite the amnesia. Endmin likes organizations and structures in place as they are. She's not above fixing some things (like building vertical farms in Qingbo Stockade territory) but she generally wants someone else to be the head honcho, while she quietly tends to the people and machines that need to be fixed.

I think our conflict going forward is a group of villains that want Endmin to take the expedient route to peace and just take the world, and an Endmin who is resolutely against ruling over basically anyone. Perlica is still the commander of Endfield, Endmin is... there for support, for literally anyone and everyone.

The prologue features a party of four characters:

Endmin, the POV protagonist, nobody is shocked that she's playable in the prologue

Gilberta and Laevtain, reconveners introduced early on. Endmin has originium powers, so of course she sees those two in her dreams.

Also adult Perlica, who doesn't sound quite the same as later but that might be the VA's recording.

Facts about Perlica

1. She was a child when Endmin left. There is an official comic about this. Endmin took her in specifically because she was unusually talented. Having been a child before, it's unlikely she's a reconvener, but I could be wrong.
2. She does not have oripathy. This is in her data sheet.
3. Si comments that Endmin chose well with her after she makes one basic deduction- could be a casual thing, could be that Perlica legitimately has some sort of extra potential.
4. Endmin later dreams about Perlica manufacturing hundreds of those masks. It refers to Perlica as "familiar figure" rather than by name.
5. Perlica is the only member of the main cast, Endmin included, who has seen the founder. She has a kind of unexpected reaction >!because the founder was Chen Qianyu!<

Not really sure what this is about but Perlica's something weird.

Not to say you can't do something else! I did a 100 year war campaign and it was great! The problem with a setting in the Korra or Aang eras though is that... Korra and Aang exist. Fully realized, powerful big goods.

Now, if you have someone's child at the table, and they're like 8, sure- they can be the avatar and practice their moral reasoning skills while everyone else roleplays more serious characters, but... outside of that specific niche, you have to find ways to... not have the avatar outshine the players. Essentially, the Avatar is a character the GM has to be forever aware of what the Avatar is. Here are some ways I've thought of or used to skirt around the issue.

The Avatar is a baby- nobody expects a baby to do anything. Early 100 year campaigns have baby Aang, who the players do not have to meaningfully interact with, since he's a baby and therefore can't do anything.

The Avatar is old and feeble- If you have an avatar who is now barely able to walk, you'd expect their bending to be limited, and they're not going to risk the avatar state when they could die at any time for old people reasons.

The Avatar lost their bending- I did this for a campaign, where the avatar had his bending for session 0 (to practice the combat mechanics and introduce the characters in-universe as the avatar's bending teachers) then the rest of the campaign was dedicated to him losing his bending and them discovering how it was taken and who did it, in an enclosed area.

The Avatar is unaware that they're the avatar- Bending requires you to... make some abstract motions and anticipate a thing moving. If you've lived your whole life with restrained motions and talking your way through things, you can spend your life never knowing you can bend. I did this for a campaign, where the Avatar was a trained assassin that recently started hearing strange voices connected to his past and was trying to shrug them off.

In-training earth avatar in the north or south pole- This is a uniquely fragile state. Earth avatars learn earth, then fire, then air, and water last. The poles are a nerf to everything BUT water- minimal rocks, too cold for fire, thin air. Ideal situation for isolation training for an avatar who's been uniquely bad at waterbending, but in a crisis, the avatar is now... a dude who wants to help. Might be able to light a campfire with some concentration, or take out an enemy if he can get his hands on a rock, but that's it.

Avatar lost in the spirit world- I hear players using this one a lot, which is fair. It writes them off, or even makes them a MacGuffin to be rescued if their body was taken while their spirit was away, and now you have to find the avatar, while the spirit of the avatar putters around helplessly nearby.

Note that I have never played this game. I have only ever been a GM for this and... most TTRPG systems-.

It was fun- we had a little story about finding the missing Avatar, who should have been found 20 years prior.

Highlights:

A prophecy saying "you will fight with the avatar" got read by the players as "you will fight against the avatar" and I held onto "with" having two meanings in this case for the better part of half a year.

A player got to play as her previous character (now 130+ years old) for one session. She was a young girl last campaign, it was fun to see how she played that character as an old lady.

Managed to get a really strong emotional beat when the party was split and went to a different NATION than I expected the session before, which was fun.

Lowlights:

I had a character who had a cut on his neck and he spoke with a scratchy voice. I got into the voice by thinking of the "Frosty the Snowman" song and it was always a bit shaky if I could keep it.

A major character was meant to have a mid-Atalntic accent but kept slipping further and further east.

I cannot do low voices, I cannot do high voices. There were several characters who were meant to have low voices and I'm thinking in most of my future campaigns, we're gonna get a lot of skinny, pretty looking guys because I can do their voices.

Paniclights:

Had to introduce a new character and I mistakenly called him "Jimmy". I very quickly just typed in "Zhi Mi" in my Chinese keyboard and wrote it out in Chinese so it looked legit. They believed me. I had two other characters (again, made up on the spot) named "Yep" and "Yup". Couldn't fix that, they just were very agreeable.

Changes to lore I made:

Avatar State is more like possession in my game, so your relationship with the Avatar doesn't matter, it's how the previous avatar sees you. That was fun to impliment.

Conclusion: These characters are set in stone for our little world. Everything was homebrewed, and based on a pervious campaign that was also homebrewed! I've made and used four avatars now (eart, fire, air, water)- and I guess if we did another one, we'd be dealing with the next earth avatar. I have zero plans and zero ideas. For now, I'm going to take a break, and we can schedule something later. It was fun to see these characters off though! Will miss some of my NPCs and some of the player characters going forward, but they had a happy ending.

I made this setting up over the course of a car ride back from work when our previous GM got burnout from running things, so I took the reigns again. When a player said she literally cried one session, it made me feel like my panic car ride idea had some meaning. Felt special.