I have a “world bible” that I created on onenote with all of my characters, locations, lore, etc. As part of that I have my stories plotted out in rough notes, then chapter by chapter in a table, (this often changes when actually writing but it’s a great foundation).

Lots of people use Obsidian or Notion to do the same thing. I already had onenote on all my devices, so it was easy just to add notes to my notes section if an idea came to me on the move that I could return to later.

I’ve tried to move to obsidian or notion a couple of times, but I think I have a certain efficiency now with my crude system, and it just seems to work for me.

So many amazing characters throughout the series.

Some examples I’d say:

Stetzer, Edgar & Sabin, even edgelord Shadow has a fantastic backstory. VI had such a large cast with such unique stories all round, I only wish a few were fleshed out a little more, Locke felt a little bland in comparison, but that could simply be translation not giving him as much of a personality, or maybe I’ve played it too many times.

Vivi in IX will always have a really touching story, the whole concept of trying to understand the world and his own existence from a very naive perspective. The fact that they still managed to portray that with wisdom and grace within that naive framework was just pure poetry, imo, and very much a staple of Japanese cultural fable/storytelling.

Sorry, but the fact he was even elected the first time made America a complete joke to the rest of the world. It is utterly bizarre watching this all unfold, and that after everything that’s happened since, Trump still has a good chance of election AGAIN?

Wtf is going on over there?

I remember reading that thread! Well, kindly asking my half-german wife to translate it for me. It was very helpful!

Give me animated cosmere over films any day, it’s so expansive and only growing. A well done animated series would be incredible and easy to maintain.

I just don’t feel comfortable having these big companies profiting from my information. If it’s that valuable to them, then they should be paying me for it.

“We believe in free speech, so you should let us sell your data.”

Just incase you didn’t actually know, but that is Refused, they were hired to make the music as the fictional band in the game!

The beautiful thing about YouTube is that fundamentally, it is still an incredible platform for anyone to be able to create content for the entite world to watch. That is so cool when you really think about it.

However, the horrible thing about YouTube, is the algorithm that is designed to push all sorts of views and opinions onto people, burying all of the actual good content beneath thousands of hours of utter shite and adverts.

If you know where to look, you can still get all the entertainment and information you need from it!

Music Producer input here. It’s sort of been a general rule of etiquette in production that piracy is fine if you intend to buy the product.

A lot of the better plugins can be very expensive and prior to subscription models, were limited in free trials. It can take some time to know if a particular plugin works with your workflow and gives you the results you like over multiple different projects.

I’ve always stuck with this. If I see something I like the look of, I’ll pirate it, use it over a bunch of projects and if I find myself relying on it then I’ll save up to buy it legitimately. Of course, there’s a fair bit of trust involved there, and a lot of people will be happy enough to keep the pirated version and try to find a new crack every time the DAW or plugin requires an update,

No chance I would have been able to afford half of the software I use in my workflow when I first started out, nobody can. But I eventually found my flow then caught up and paid it back.

I consider that ethical piracy. Or maybe I’m just justifying it to myself. But that’s how it was implied when I first started out in college and it’s a good system where you can still eventually support the small companies that make quality products that work for you.

Yep, that’s confirmed my suspicions then. Thank you!

For everyone suggesting Revanced, I used it for a while and found it to be incredibly slow and breaking up videos to buffer all the time. Was I using a dodgy version or was I missing something? I had it from the app store if I remember right. (Might be thinking of Vanced??)

Edit: Sorry folks, I wasn’t bashing revanced, I was just pretty sure I had a fake app and wanted to make sure. Thanks for the replies putting me on the right track!

Nah, can’t do it on principle. I know they already make money from me for selling my data, I’m not going to also pay them to do that.

I know this is really bad. And I know they need to make money somehow. But on precedent I just refuse to pay for YouTube premium, having been there since the beginning. Before adverts started showing, and everyone predicted they’d plague us with ads until charging you to get rid of them.

Also a part of me refuses to believe Google can’t afford to run YouTube without adverts.