Benice

If you're willing to try an online course for therapy, I can highly recommend The Happiness Trap! It helped me a ton in some hard times. (Plus, my mum's a psychologist and she recommends it too)

OP is finally updated...

Banned because you're still young! (Even younger than me, I think!) You'l have plenty of time to grow and explore the world.

Banned because oof. I've a classmate who left B.C. for the first time this year, but BC's a heck of a lot bigger than Kansas...

Banned because is it the only state you've lived in?

Banned because what's it like in Kentucky?

Banned because I can't read your name on mobile, but it does make you immune to being pinged.

Banned because can it teach you what sex is?

Banned for burning bread.

Banned because two fists?!

Congrats to @Jotari for taking the round! Once you are ready, please submit the next round's prompt. Thank you to all who participated! I reckon the next writing phase will end June 3rd, but we'll see where we are when I get to updating the OP.

Banned for mauliciously banning a fellow member of the forums.

I have no idea what this is... Conservapedia? What's- ... This might be the best thing I've ever seen. Nonono, I enjoy the game, I just don't remember much of it. Nice! I can't remember if you picked your house yet, though.

...guess I'd best restart, then...

LMAO Maybe I'm forgetting something, but IIRC not much has happened aside from us sauntering around to different titans. ...Maybe I should restart my playthrough, but I'm already, like, 65 hours in... A lot of it may be in the story, but... Well, I'm thinking it might be a little off-topic if the meat of the story takes 65 hours to reach. Maybe it's because I've mostly been reading books instead of playing games lately, but I still strenuously believe that, in comparison to even a play like A Raisin in the Sun (which everyone should watch) or the other JRPG I've played, it really could have done better at developing the cast with the story as opposed to alongside it. ...Or is this a Sky FC thing where I've absolutely maimed the game beyond recognition with my play-style? Maybe I live under a rock, but off the top of my head, I can't really think of any stories where the plot and characters are highly distinct from one another. Dramas are super popular, and they're almost all driven mostly by characters. Maybe sit-coms and, like, super action-y stuff like John Wick (never watched either of that type of show) bypass that? Pain-peko

Well, I am very gringo too. Remember when I thought my uncle was named "Tio"?

Which one is she? I don't think I've seen her... We've got the one going across the country, and then Vancouver and Toronto have them... I think that's about it, though. Huh. My Abuelita's from Puebla (Pueblan?), so it's a pretty big deal to her. Indeed. Another one of my favorite things about 1984 is that the American press basically received as "the DEFINITVE proof that communism is bad" and Orwell contacted them to tell them that they missed the point. The funny thing is that Yakuza is really good at it in pretty much every other game, both before and after 5; 5 specifically messes up the pacing so catastrophically that's it's almost funny. It also doesn't help that after the really long prison segment, you have another few hours of an Idol simulator rhythm game. Our home on native land.

Not being French, I guess.

Banned for not blasting Woodlica in the middle of class the other day.

Y'all need to stop doing multi-way ties. I think this is the third month in a row...

HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO

I never thought I'd see you be devastated by the fact that you're not a good dominatrix. I will say that even though there are certainly a great deal of designs that miss (at least in XB2), those are a byproduct of how much they try to do cool things, and they sometimes succeed. But there's also Nim, so... Indeed, characters are an important part of almost any story- A Raisin in the Sun is an incredible story, for example, and it has basically nothing but the characters talking in it over the course of a couple weeks. However, I would like to refute the idea that characterization is the plot, at least in XB2's case, and the reason for that is how it builds its main characters: They're mostly being characterized by events that happen outside (or at the very least, beside) the primary conflict of the story, and therefore feel weirdly removed from it (though alternatively, maybe it's the other way around, with the main plot just kinda being tacked onto the characters- One way or another, my overall point doesn't really change). Even in character-driven stories, characters and plot are closely intertwined; they do not exist separate of each other. The Great Gatsby is a story about the falseness of the American Dream and the cruelty of the upper class, and the characters and their actions exist to serve this idea. A Raisin in the Sun is a story about housing discrimination (and many other things), and its characters are reflections of the harm it causes. Yakuza 0 is about how money, regardless of the context of severe poverty or obscene wealth, distorts the value of human life, and its characters and their actions are reflections of this. 1984 is about leftist governments trying to restrict your speech and its main character is a reflection of a typical American hero struggling against the LBTQ minorities which threaten good western values and woke writers who have characters who aren't white in their stories. Writers don't create a plot and then independently create characters to put into it or vice versa: Characters are part of the plot and the overall artistic vision, and most good stories build their characters both by and while advancing the story, as opposed to doing them separately, one at a time. I could list any number of stories which are primarily focused on characteres that do this without stopping cold- Wicked, the Percy Jackson series (+other Riordan series), LAD, and so on and so forth. (Anecdotally, the Yakuza game with the worst pacing, 5, borks the pacing/character building ratio up magnificently by having a three-to-four hour long prison segment which is pretty much only dialogue with three other characters and no actual gameplay. It also still takes over an hour in the speedrun. I don't need to tell you that XB2 was never even close to this bad) So I suppose what I criticize about the story is a lack of focus; if it were simply trying to be a story-focused road trip type story kind of thing, I think it could have done it quite well, and if it wanted to tell an epic story about whatever thing it's kind of building up to, it could have done it quite well, but what I've seen is a strange mix that leaves me rather unsatisfied on both fronts. I know it's been a long time, but I really can't remember much about the characters or the impression they left on me, (Except Zeke and Pandoria, and that's because my standards for humour are low) and... Well, we're on this topic of discussion because I'm critical about how long the build-up is to the action part. ...Also I got spoiled for the plot twist they talk about in the bathhouse scene because of the silly green fanart website Teehee? In summary of that incoherent stream of words, characters and plot are closely intertwined, and I don't think that a story should have to stop advancing the plot to continue advancing the characters- Many stories do both at the same time, and plots that don't often suffer for it. (Unless we're talking about "plot", in which case I must succumb to my degeneracy and agree wholly that XB2 has many magnificent plots.) World peace achieved. WHAT?! You fool, you shouldn't have said that! I shall now hound you 'til the ends of the earth making you bend to my will and forcing you to play the games I like! It's not so much the level variety so much as the aggro range that enemies have. Probably also a skill issue though, to be honest. They will soon be reinforced. You think we have trains over here?

OP is updated! Voting will end this Sunday at midnight (though it may realistically be a bit longer than that because it's concert week). Sorry about being chronically behind on these things, folks! Hopefully we'll be able to get back on to a proper monthly schedule soon, but we'll see.

Banned because SKULL EMOJI

Banned because 🎡