ISRIERI'S PROFILE

I'm roughly 6000 dollars away from finally paying off my student debts, and am basically pushing myself to the limits of sleep and patience with my jobs in order to meet that amount within the next 4 or 5 months. Thus, I have arbitrarily decided I'm gonna watch some Star Trek. Beginning with the original series and potentially continuing up to The Next Generation, I will log my experience for posterity.

The Next Generation was one my favorite shows growing up, but its been over 20 years and I've not seen all the episodes as I would just catch reruns whenever they broadcast. The other series I only have knowledge of from cultural osmosis, and is more or less a mystery.

Make no mistake: I am a star trek noob, and for the most part these are going to be my inital impressions. I am watching the series for enjoyment and not serious critical study. I hope we understand that going forward. If you haven't seen the series either and you feel like you have the time, come watch them along with me! Some of these episodes are pretty fascinating. There may be potential spoilers but I'll try to keep things vague.

★ = Irritating
★★ = Mediocre
★★★ = Interesting
★★★★ = Engaging
★★★★★ = Riveting

With that, lets begin our voyage.

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Pilot – "The Cage" (★★★)

The best word I think I can use to describe this one is "Surreal." The camerawork, the strange star backdrop sequence when they jump to warp (I think? I had no clue what was happening), and especially Mr. Spock giving a little smile while they were petting that plant. Its certainly a pilot, trying to establish all the potential the show has to offer. We swing from a sci-fi glass menagire, to an old castle, to a horse farm out of some 50s western. Its pretty wild, and I think folks in the 60s must have thought so too.

Those Talosians missed an opportunity. I couldn't help but think when they grabbed the two women from the transporter room "you've got one male human who absolutely refuses any attempts to bend him over your knee and resists your tampering with everything he's got, and a woman who seems more or less on board with the whole repopulation thing. Why not grab two or three of the men from the same away team?" Its that old 60s syndrome. I expected sexism in some form would be present in TOS but not right in the pilot. Poor Vira. If you had left with the crew maybe they could have helped you!

There's lots of pretty great details here. I was initially confused that Vira was clearly so young and not as scuffed up as the older scientists; chalked it up to the aforementioned syndrome. But turns out it makes a lot of sense in hindsight. This is clearly at the sales pitch stage, and a lot of what would come to be known and loved in the fandom hadn't quite materialized yet. Pike? Who the heck is Pike?! I wonder if he'll return. This doesn't feel like star trek so much as a dimestore paperback plot, but one adapted for the screen by diehard passionate fans.

I personally found the central conceit pretty interesting. "Live life, scuffs and all, or turn your back on it and wither" is something I can really relate to and thought about often. A strange pathway to explore it, but I hope its something the series revisits later.

I got a kick out of the one random guy walking around in shorts and a striped polo. Strap in Isrieri: its gonna be a long journey.

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ep 2 "The Man Trap" (★★★)

Oh man. So this is the original series, huh? Things are gonna get jank I can tell.

Yet I'm kinda surprised that through the jank its still kind of...good? Compared to the pilot the dialogue and acting is leagues above, and I feel its only gonna get better. Pretty wacky to kick things off with some weird salt vampire monster, especially considering the modestly cerebral plot from before, but its kinda charming. What made the episode was the charisma of the actors & actresses, as well as the strange blocking: Kirk crawling around in the sand sneaking up on Crater was.... they must've held the camera on it for a fair minute or so. Got a chuckle out of me. I seriously can't wait until we get to that legendarily juicy ham. I live for that stuff.

If you had to ask me, what's the one thing that is unmistakably and quintessentially star trek, something that is the series signature, its the red alert sound effect. I didn't know it was this old and it threw me that it went unchanged from here to TNG apparently? Also I didn't mention last episode but these special effects are pretty damn good for the time. The props, I'd argue, might even be ahead of their time in some respects – the transceivers they used in this episode were basically flip phones.

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Ep 3 – "Charlie X" (★★★)

Rated TV-14 for "Sex, Fear." That's a good sign right there.

And it delivered! Geez louise what a madcap episode this was; what an audience hook! A goofy stare, a musical sting, overlapping voices. That's one way to get you invested as the enterprise faces its mightiest foe yet, an adolescent boy! For something so goofy its a major downer.

Also can I just say, I know starfleet is a psudo-military organization and child-rearing is not in their wheelhouse but I mean c'mon now you can't offer better advice than perfunctory non-answers? Letting him roam around the starship as if he was just another member of the crew? And not as though he hasn't been cut off from all human society for 17 years? If this is even a slimmer of the sort of parenting commonplace at the time its no fucking wonder there's so much stupidity in the world. Just explain things! Mindfully! Literally! Just council the poor bastard and stop off-loading the responsibility! God-powers be damned! This is the reason why starfleet starting mandating psychiatric professionals aboard space vessels: to prevent just this sort of horseplay.

Already we're into the grey zone with the ethical dilemmas. Charlie is someone who's never had to deal with responsibility, and clearly the Thalians are even worse guardians than the enterprise. Having to send him back into their arms is clearly not the right thing for the boy, but what choice did they honestly have? He blew up an entire ship! How is he possibly going to learn about responsibility and empathy when his powers make his will paramount? Through no fault of his own the Thalians (out of pity) made him into a walking beast, his humanity a liability rather than an asset and now with no choice but to be made to quash it. The first episode was the escape from a cage, and this one is about remaining in one. Its tragic.

Y'know Spock might be a Vulcan in control of his emotions but that doesn't mean he can't feel them. Why ya gotta embarrass him in front of the entire mess hall Uhura? That's also why Charlie silenced her when she started singing for him. It might seem baffling to some since it clearly wasn't mean-spirited, but its pretty obvious to me there's little to love about being singled out and put on display for your awkwardness, like some sort of animal to gawk at.

Props to Charlie's actor. I love how he invaded their personal space and stooped over everyone sitting. Made the discomfort palpable.

So I work two jobs as of right now, with one controlling my 'main' schedule and the other reacting to what I inform them the main schedule is. But early this April, my main employer is giving me an entire week off (that's 7 days) for my second job!

Due to my unique circumstances I can basically set my own schedule and say fuck it to both jobs and just take a goddamn vacation.

So. Fuck both jobs, I'm taking a goddamn vacation. I haven't had one in 5 years.

But I have no idea where I want to go! I live in the U.S so there are a lot of places to choose from. I always wanted to go out west to the plains, or even past that to Oregon or the west coast. But I have a tiny little Chevy Aveo that only holds 10 gallons in the tank and it might be quite the arduous journey for it (not to mention that it would probably take the whole damn week just driving there).

I'm not going to be bringing anyone and likely won't visit anybody, I just want some alone time to go out and see all the stuff I've been missing cooped up in the heartland. Maybe do a little camping even, if I can find all my old camping stuff.

Link

By 2020, everyone in China will be enrolled in a vast national database that compiles fiscal and government information, including minor traffic violations, and distils it into a single number ranking each citizen.

Users are encouraged to flaunt their good credit scores to friends, and even potential mates. China's biggest matchmaking service, Baihe, has teamed up with Sesame to promote clients with good credit scores, giving them prominent spots on the company's website.

More and more of Baihe's 90 million clients are displaying their credit scores in their dating profiles, doing away with the idea that a credit score is a private matter.

However, Sesame Credit will not divulge exactly how it calculates its credit scores, explaining that it is a "complex algorithm".

The company refused to give an interview to the BBC, citing concerns that the government would refuse to grant a permanent licence to issue credit scores if it engaged with the foreign media.

From a cultural and psychological perspective this is fascinating.

China is a country consisting of 1 billion people. There is no way they don't realize what's going on.

Isn't this sort of thing what the UN was founded to prevent? Couldn't you make a case that this is a human rights violation?

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Phoenix Wright Mafia
Aka: Red-Tape Mafia

A game for 10 - 20 players.
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RULES
Each game consists of multiple town-aligned Citizens. Several mafioso Killers. And two unique roles: The Prosecuting Attorney and the Defense Attorney, who have unique abilities both shared and separate. It is the job of the attorneys to use their privileged status and guide the town in catching the mafia. They must convince the citizens of a docile poster's guilt, or dissuade them from lynching an innocent. If the killers are caught, the town wins. If the killers murder the whole town, or a situation arises where they cannot lose, the mafia wins.

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Citizens are the regular town players. The decision to lynch or not to lynch is left in their hands. A citizen may have a unique role that gives them an edge over the other players, randomly determined at the beginning of the game.

==Citizen Roles==


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Each game begins with 1-4 Killers who slowly kill off the citizens and create mischief night by night. Killers are chosen from among the citizens after the other roles are determined. For nightkills, one among the mafia must be chosen to carry out the deed.

==Killer Roles==


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Attorney Abilities

The Attorneys are immune to all effects. Neither can be killed. Nor are they allowed to vote conventionally. Despite being town-aligned, they do not count toward total town members for win-condition purposes.

At any time, either attorney may #object to a citizen's statement and officially accuse them of being the Killer. This adds 2 to the total vote count toward majority, to a total of 4 if both push the same lynch. However once declared, it cannot be removed until the day ends. If an attorney mislynches a citizen via his objection, a penalty is applied and he cannot use bolded powers for the next night-day cycle.

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Prosecution

The prosecution may privately convene with the Detective at any time, working together to catch the killer. Once and only once, he may #convict a citizen of being mafia, effectively acting as an instant hammer vote. The standard penalty applies if incorrect.

In the event of a tie, the prosecution determines the tie breaker at his discretion.

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Defense

The defense must, before the end of day 1, choose a client from among the citizens. This client's identity is not revealed and is protected from night actions. The defense may privately talk with him at any time. If the client is lynched, the defense may not select a new one.

In addition, the defense may #investigate a citizen once per night, scanning them for their role and who they targeted that night.

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• The game runs on 72 hour days and 24 hour nights, EST. Give or take a few dozen, depending.
• Votes are decided by majority, not plurality.
• Use the #lynch Isrieri format to lynch a fool.
• No posting after I bring the hammer down. Posting before I bring the hammer down is fine and dandy.
• No quoting mod PMs.
• When you're dead, don't post in the thread.
• No sending PMs to other players. YOUR ENTRAILS WILL BECOME YOUR EXTRAILS. SO MUCH PAIN.

Despite all that makerscore you see on the left, I have not made a single RPG. Not a one. But I've been trying, by god. Ever since the VX Ace Lite event from...what almost a year ago now? I had a really neat idea for beginning a story and opening a game. What started out as a short little joke game I couldn't finish in time, I've now written into something more full-sized. I know that's probably not good, because no matter how much effort I spend on it, I know it won't ever be as good as I want, my talent just isn't there yet. So I never get around to working on it. But I have to just suck it up and accept that anything I make will likely end up at "bad first game" syndrome. Its like chicken pox. Everyone's got to get it.

But that's beside the point! The one thing that's kept me from actively working on this game is that I'm no good at mapping. They never look as good as I want them to or I can never visualize what I want to make. Don't even get me started on mapping towns. WELP. If you want to get better at something you have to practice! And I'll never get this game made if I just sit on my butt and keep hitting the RESET button. So here's a topic where I can start posting some of the junk I'm doing.

My goal is to not drop this thread until I have 14 towns mapped to completion and looking nice. And that's easier to do if you've got a thread to upkeep. Today, I only have two maps to show. The World Map (which doesn't count, I technically cheated with that one), and a small cave I whipped up in an hour yesterday. The Aster Tunnel, which I'm intending to just be a little cave through the mountains to reach a small village. Not even any monsters (except for one big one).





There's no chests in the cave yet because I don't have anything to put inside of them. Before anyone gets on my case about cutoff, this cave is gonna be dark. So your field of view will be limited. It might be the only cave like that, I'm not sure yet. Okay there's at least one other cave that will probably be dark like this.


The game I'm making all this for is called Lotus Land Saga. And its about...well I'll talk about what its about if people are interested. But as of right now there are two things I want to do before I can consider the project out of development hell: Got to get ALL the mapping done. Got to get the story ironed out (decent progress on that but its still rough around the edges). It may sound a bit backwards to you that I'm making maps before the story is done. But I usually work best under constraints, and having to find ways to incorporate all those towns and dungeons into the story usually inspires me more. Maybe it was a horrible idea; TOO LATE TO TURN BACK NOW! :D


I'll probably post random ideas I have for the game in here from time to time too. I'mma just think of this thread as my temporary base of operations until I get a gamepage up.