Sacred Forest Meadow

Apparently I forgot to post these! Oops. Ironically, our most recent session was session 7, which I haven't had spoons to edit yet.





As always, the playlist has everything up to date at the moment, and as I mentioned in the video, yes! I have created a joke TV Tropes page in google drive, which you can find here! It's not finished by any stretch, I've still got a lot of tropes to find, but it's a fun way of going through the highlights. Be forewarned though, this sometimes gets updated before the next session goes up on youtube, so sometimes there may be spoilers and unlike TV Tropes itself, google drive doesn't really have a good way of hiding spoilers that I know of. So read at your own risk!

I'm sorry about the sound quality on this episode, for some reason my mic was SUPER quiet, even quieter than the incoming audio, so I had to spend editing manually adjusting my audio so I was on the same level as everyone else. It was a pain. Hopefully this week I can fix it.





If you'd like an archive of the whole series thus far, there's a playlist here

Unfortunately Wolfie has dropped out of the campaign, but we're all still friends and I'll be talking about our other game with him soon, if I ever get around to finishing my first post about it lol

There's a parent walking through a store with a child. They have a specific task they're doing in this store, but as children often do, the child notices something on the shelves, and suddenly they absolutely must have it! They grab it and hold it up to their parent.

The parent says no.

The parent may have several reasons for saying no. Maybe it's unhealthy for the child. Maybe they don't want to deal with the noise it might make. Maybe they know Grandma is getting them one for Christmas. Maybe they can't afford it. They may or may not fully explain why the answer is no. Saying why might lead to the child attempting to work around the answer given, but the answer would still be no in the end. No matter the reasons, the answer is no.

The child refuses to accept this. They start pestering their parent all throughout the store. "Please please please please pretty please with sugar on top pleeeeeeeaaaaaaaase????" "but I WANT it!" Maybe they'll even attempt bandwagon tactics ("Suzy's parents always gets her what she wants!" "Daddy/Grandma/Uncle Bill/Jim next door always gets me what I want!"), appealing to the parent's desire for the best for their child ("But everybody at school has one and they'll laugh at me if I don't!"), or bargaining with promises they don't intend to keep ("I'll never ask you for anything else if you get me this!") In some scenarios, the child may resort to emotional response; whining, crying, sulking, possibly escalating to rolling on the floor, kicking and/or screaming, threatening self-harm ("I'll hold my breath until I'm blue in the face!"). Some scenarios might even escalate to verbal abuse ("I hate you!" "You never get me anything!" "You don't really love me!" "You're the worst mom ever!"), destroying property, or even physical abuse such as punching or biting. If the spectacle is big enough, there might even be onlookers who roll their eyes and say "Just give it to 'em, lady!" or "If that was my kid I would beat them so hard" or other such unsolicited advice on how to handle the situation.

Somewhere in this hypothetical scenario, whether it's the broken record of 'please' or the violent tantrum, the parent gives in. They sigh, huff "fine!", snatch up the box and put it on the register. The child has successfully gotten what they want.

Is the parent really agreeing to buying it? Are they happy about it just because they said yes in the end?

No. They did it because they wanted their child to stop. Maybe they were just too tired to argue. Maybe they were embarrassed by the people watching. Maybe this was just the fastest way to get this shopping trip over with. No matter the reason, they did it against their will. And the consequences still exist; they're still paying for something they might not be able to afford. Their child may be just as obnoxious or rough with their handling of it as they anticipated. And the child might even take away that the way to get what they want is to behave badly, and may act even worse next time. And in the most extreme situations, they might even continue using their childhood abuse tactics as a teen or even adult. (You scoff, but there are children in the world who mentally and physically abuse their parents) Just because the parent said yes doesn't mean that it's really okay.

They just thought the screaming child was the worse scenario.

And if you can understand that, you can understand why coercing your partner into sex is not okay.

True Heroes archive of current script and brainstorming.

( This isn't just about monsters anymore, is it? )

So today I found Achievement Hunter's Let's Play of a game called Until Dawn. It's a game I only recently really heard of but it's an interesting enough idea. The premise is that you play a band of teenagers in a cabin in the woods and - you guessed it - end up smack dab in the middle of a slasher film. And the pushing point of the game is its overarching theme of the butterfly effect; throughout the game you're prompted to make choices about what to do and those choices influence the story. Which in and of itself is an idea that sounds really awesome, but here's the thing. The game is basically an interactive choose-your-own adventure book.

And that's not INHERENTLY a bad thing. It's an interesting premise, there are relationship meters between all the characters that are affected by your actions and those will influence what happens, who dies, all that good stuff. I'm curious to see what choices the Achievement Hunter gang will make and how it'll turn out. But here's my gripe; the game's entire selling point, its entire core, is about choice. And at the end of the day, what are your choices, really? "What button do you press when you're prompted?"

Take for example one particular puzzle that I just watched in the Let's Play. ( spoiler warning just in case )

I now have a backloggery account, which can be found at http://backloggery.com/sagesaria

This is way better than Dreamwidth for keeping track of my games, so updates will be over there from now on.

Heya friends,

If you've been following me on plurk, you know one of the things I will never shut up about is Chessiecon and the video game room I'm putting together for it.

I'll be blunt. I don't have nearly enough games or consoles for it. Most of mine are really old and don't even have multiplayer. So I'm here now requesting help.

I need consoles, especially more recent releases, games, and controllers. If you have some lying around the house that you're not using anymore, I'd love to have them. PM me or email me at sagesaria9475@gmail.com. I'll be glad to work out the details of sending them to me with you and I'll find a way to compensate and/or thank you in the hopefully-not-too-distant-future.

If you live in or are in hassle-free-enough driving distance to Gaithersburg or Timmonium, MD, and would like to lend some things to me over the weekend of November 28-30th, please message me as well and we can figure out details. I will be obsessively keeping track of who gives me what and keep a close eye on them so that they can be returned to you safe and sound when the convention is over. I specify local people for loans because I don't have much money on my hands and thus can't really afford shipping on mailing things back and forth; I want to ensure that it's easy to get the equipment back to everyone who loaned it to me.

Any and all help would be appreciated in this endeavor. Thank you for your time.

Andrew MakubeX Loveless
Beloved Dell Vostro and Sanity Saver
2007-2013

He was a trooper, alright. We thought he was lost long ago but then made a miraculous recovery when Matilda started failing on me. I'm amazed he lasted this long at all, and it's a shame that he had to go because of a stupid deviantArt virus. Unless there was just something else going on on top of that that he never told me about.

Thank you for sticking with me so long, MakubeX. I'm sorry to see you go, but I saw long ago that it was getting to be your time as you fell apart at the hinges and got slower and slower. It was a good, long run. Rest in peace.

(all of you can kindly keep your laughter to yourself right now. this is how I'm coping because I'm seriously frustrated with the whole computer situation.)