Love 365

The sound of rain, a few drops hit my face through the crack of window I left open last night. I glance to the soundless alarm clock by my bed: 8:13 AM. Much later than I should be up, but early enough that I don’t have to rush to get ready for a work shift that starts and runs late. I grab my phone and check to see if I have a good morning text from my girlfriend, but not this morning, so she’s probably sleeping in too. The next thing I do is log into the newest app on my phone: Love 365. (Found on Google Play and iTunes)

Love 365 is a Japanese-inspired romance game, one of the purchase-as-you-go types. It is absolute fluff, and I have to admit that I’m quickly becoming an addict.

The quality of this particular app is high. One of the better kinds of interactive stories I’ve tried. The choices actually seem to have a decent amount of impact on how the other main character reacts to you. My only qualms are that the roles of the protagonist and the types of characters you pick to romance are limited to only classic tropes. What I would really enjoy seeing in an app like this would be the ability to customize your protagonist a bit and a greater variety of choices in romantic partner. For now though, I have no complaints with this particular app. It knows its target audience and it does a great job of catering to them. The romances are enjoyable, if not exactly replayable.

How it works: first you create a profile, pretty basic information only, and then you pick the name that you would like to use as the female point of view character in the stories. This name does not change unless you go to your profile to update it. Luckily, in this app, the name can be updated if you make a typo or are unhappy with your name after trying it out. After that, you can explore the various stories and pick whichever appeals to you. The app offers a couple of free stories that change monthly; this is a great starting place that doesn’t require you to make any purchases to read through a complete chapter.

Otherwise, you can pick out a story that interests you, and then you pick the male love interest within that story. Usually there are a handful of options with classic personalities for people who are drawn to certain personality types. You can sample a few minutes of story with each choice. Here is where this app truly shines. Each pick will have a distinct storyline that you can only experience with that male protagonist. There is also a game aspect to this, as you have to learn and predict how each love interest will react to the limited choices you are given throughout the story. The goal, if you are a completionist person like myself, is to win them over to get the best ending each time. I wish that there could be more of these options integrated into the story, and that each choice has a more immediate feedback, as you don’t know if your relationship meter will rise or fall until you reach the end of the current story point.

I have always been a romance addict; this is just the newest incarnation of a lifelong fascination with fantasy. No surprise to anyone who knows me, is in one of my three ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, or has taken a look at my book collection. Dominated with fairy tales both light and dark. Novels that have unusual worlds where magic plays heavy influence, and a handful of other fiction wedged in between.

What might be a surprise is the opinion I have that too much fantasy can be dangerous; at least it was for me. Before I met the wonderful person who I am currently dating, I was a bit of a mess when it came to figuring out people’s feelings. There was a formula in my head, checkmarks that I thought were normal. But nobody could ever meet these expectations, and I wasn’t really able to accept them for who they were and not this imagined ideal. Every time I tried, I lost the romance game of life, and there was no option to replay.

Without going too much further on that, I’m sure that for most people this is a phase they are able to grow out of or grow up from in the natural course of life. Sometimes sooner, and sometimes, like me, much later. I am immensely glad that I finally did, and met a person who was able to get me to look past the fiction, and find a very real, very messy kind of love. Our romance meter has ups and downs, a lot more of the ups these days, and she is pretty good about giving me the feedback when I do something that reverses my progress.

Thank you, Kristine. The best thing you’ve done for me is actually breaking my romantic idealist mentality, and showing me that the real experience is the best experience of all.

These days I am able to read fiction, watch movies or TV, and even play a romance game without the investment that I put into the characters really having that much of an effect on me, other than entertainment. But as far as Love 365 goes, my current investment totals $1. I can quit at any time I want to... Maybe the sooner the better.

And I should first text my girlfriend a good morning before I open the app. Maybe.

Buying into the Hobby

The first rule of a new hobby: only buy what you need.

I have never been able to follow this idea, and--being the kind of person who collects hobbies routinely-- over the years I can only guess at how many hundreds or maybe even thousands of dollars I’ve thrown out as I over purchased and then lost interest in what I did with my free time. (Bead jewelry and specialty pets, I’m looking at you.)

However, with effort to restrain my impulse buying, I have decreased this tendency, though not eliminated it completely.

Right now I am starting to get into the Terrain Crafting hobby as an extension of my interest in roleplaying games and miniatures painting. What caught my eye is the amazingly fantastic settings and table dressings that some very creative and talented people are posting pictures and videos of.

I’ve set my current crafting budget between $75-$100 and I’m shopping around for very basic supplies, no expensive equipment just yet. Get the glues, the clay, the general tools and see what small projects I can throw together based on that. Let’s put this to the test though, what will the first project be and what is the cost for each step?

Picking something that seemed pretty basic, the “How to Build a Farmhouse” by Black Magic Craft on Youtube, is where we will start.

Heads up, I have yet to complete this project; I got a few steps in and realized that it’s a bit over my head, but for a first attempt at piecing anything together whatsoever, I’m going to document my results.

Tools:

$6 Glue Gun (from Michaels Arts & Crafts)

$3 Glue Sticks (from Michaels Arts & Crafts)

$22 Revell Standard Knife Set (Amazon)

$20 9Sea Cutting Mat (Amazon, you can find a cheaper version, this was included in a kit and I’m not entirely thrilled with it’s size)

$2 Black Craft Foam (Dollar General, very happy with this foam, will stock up more on it)

Obviously you can tell that I’m already pushing the bounds of what the original budget would be; most of this stuff I got to use for other things, the cutting mat and hobby knife set was for miniatures, but I wanted to include the cost because it can be deceiving if people think just jumping into things is cheap when you don’t already have a built up tool set.

The results left much to be desired and pictures are included for all of you out there who see final projects and don’t get to see enough failed results to get an idea of what coming at things from a very amature perspective. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with this thing, maybe just throw it away… It was a messy, weird, inexpertly cobbled together experience. But it was a blast, all the same.

What I walked away with was the knowledge that, even if I can’t replicate the quality that I’ve seen online, I will have a lot of fun making a mess and giving it a try. Stay tuned for more experiments and crafts to come!

Evil Captain Chai

Hours before the start of my Saturday night Star Trek Adventures game, I was dreading signing into Discord and Roll20. This week, I was going to attempt something I had never done as a player before. This week, I was going to be antagonizing the team from within.

It was time for the Evil version of my character, Captain Riale Chai.

When approached by my game master with the idea of a classic Star Trek transporter accident that divides my character into 'good' and 'evil', I jumped at the chance to play this up. Then promptly forgot about the short story I had planned to write to tie some motivations and prejudices into her background. Luckily the GM prompted me again to think about what might push Captain Chai into a more paranoid state of mind.

Eventually I settled on attempting to portray an idea that I had heard actors discuss from time to time in their roles as villains. The idea that the villain believes they are in the right to an unquestioning degree. Interpreting that for my character, when Evil Chai took effect I tried to do away with the idea of taking everyone's advice into consideration. The captain stopped asking for her crews' opinion, she started issuing more direct orders, and she didn't hold herself back from following her instincts even when they no longer seemed to have a logical basis.

It was a lot of fun.

The first victim of my character’s transformation was a civilian Vulcan scientist, who received a snarky critique of his transporter management. Although the person most surprised by this small conversation was probably myself. Neither the GM or a fellow player in the scene reacted to Captain Chai’s tiny tantrum as anything out of the ordinary. For me however, it was something of a surreal experience, as I tend to withhold my complaints to people who I consider family or close friends. Letting out a negative comment, and an entirely fictional one at that, was crossing a taboo. Soon afterwards, Captain Chai was injecting comments that pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable.

But it was also a challenge. Behind the actions of the character, I had several moments of wondering if I had gone too far, or not gone far enough to hint without ever explicitly saying that something was up. For the majority of the night, Captain Chai did not overtly come into conflict with the other player's characters. During one interrogation of an NPC (non player character) the Captain made threats to harm the non-aggressive woman; this was my least favorite moment of the game. Looking back, I wish I had thought of a different way to handle the threat. More subtlety, or a better phrasing of the threat would have been more in character.

With her crew, the Captain pushed and encouraged them to be suspicious of the starbase they were on, and the nonplayer characters as well. Eventually though, the Klingon exchange officer, our ship's CMO, called her out on her behavior. Captain Chai ordered the Klingon back to the ship, and then issued an order to confine her to quarters as well.

Still, that wasn't quite enough. The game continued on, until the First Officer questioned the Captain's methods of controlling the investigation on this suspicious starbase. We ended with the Captain stunning her XO with a phaser blast to the back.

The secret was out.

Next session I get to use the Threat pool, a resource normally used by the GM and his antagonists, and I get to pull out all the stops. Which is important, because I only have one tenuous ally, the civilian Holo-deck specialist who is unpredictable at best. The rest of the group is going to be out to get me, and, with my rolling lately, the reign of Evil Captain Chai may be short lived!