What is Prep Work Anyway?

Holy smokes, this week breezed by! What did I even do this week? *checks notes*

Oh! Nothing! Cool. Cool.

Generated by Bitmoji

So, Wednesday was the start of a pretty social week, which means all roleplay prep-work and writing kind of took a back seat. That's always a good idea when one wants to start up a campaign in a couple of weeks, right?

Well, to be fair, I was still kinda-sorta working on the prep-work. See, Rozsavaria is going to be one of the players for Scum and Villainy, and on Wednesday, she unofficially created her character. In other words, she came over to flip through the rulebook to figure out how she wants to build her character. We won't do actual character building until the 21st (in theory; the date isn't officially locked in yet), but she likes to prep as well so she doesn't take hours to character build the day-of. It also gives her time to play with her build and tweak things before actually starting play.

Along with reading through the book on Wednesday, Roz also borrowed it to photocopy some pages, which meant I didn't have it for my day off on Thursday. That's fine, Hubby didn't have work either, so we had a long-needed re-coup day anyway. Then, Friday, I was still training the newbie, so no RP work going on while on the job. I probably could have worked on it a bit more Friday night since Roz had returned the book, but chaos was about to go down on nopixel.

One of nopixel's players is a streamer known as Burn. He had become good acquaintances with Sykkuno's character Yuno Sykk, and saw how popular the character was. As a gag, Burn created a second character modeled off of Yuno, and named him NoYu Sukk. He then spent the better part of last week running around the nopixel server with this Yuno parody, purposefully trying to ruin Yuno's reputation. He and Sykkuno played up this "evil twin" gag for four or five days. Canonically, no one is quite sure what NoYu was, because Yuno kept switching up what to call him, between "evil twin" or "evil clone" or "identical cousin."

Sykkuno put no effort into creating his character, resulting in him constantly referring to himself as ugly. Because of this, he typically wears a motorcycle helmet, making it harder to differentiate between Yuno and NoYu when both are masked.

Anyway, after a few days, Burn was getting tired of the joke and wanted to get back onto his main character, so he let Sykkuno know he wanted to kill off his character. I believe in-character NoYu told Yuno that he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, and soon. Well, Sykkuno's birthday was June 4th, which happened to be a Friday, so Yuno came up with a plan to hold a major birthday party for himself, which would also serve as NoYu's grand finale. His plan was to host the party in the lobby of The Vault; the most secure bank in-game. He'd convince the party goers to all dress like him, that way NoYu could blend into the crowd. Then, since Yuno is a master bank hacker, and NoYu is the Bizzaro version of him, they'd have NoYu fail a hack attempt. The hack attempt - regardless if it succeeds - will signal the cops. NoYu would then start shooting at the cops, forcing them to breach into the bank, where they won't be able to tell which "Yuno" is shooting, and be forced to start up a major fire-fight within the bank.

The first part of the plan went off without a hitch. In fact, it may have gone better than any would have expected. Yuno had Twatted (the in-game version of Twitter) out the time and location for his birthday party, as well as instructions on how to dress up like him. These Twats started about 24hrs before the party, and there was also a lot of word-of-mouth. It seemed like at least half the server knew about the party by the time it went down. As evidenced by what seemed to be at least 60 characters showing up as Yuno to wish him a happy birthday.

Just a small portion of the many Yunos invading the Vault for the birthday party.

Instead of having NoYu fail a hack, they had switched gears a bit. The first thing you need to do to break into the Vault is to set off thermite to blow open the barred door to the main offices of the bank. Yuno set off a thermite claiming it's his birthday candles. This was also his "special invitation for the cops" that he had told his cop friends to keep an eye out for. Unfortunately, despite the 24hr planning, and Yuno calling up his friends and telling them he'd really like their roommates/cousins/twins/etc (aka in-character telling the players to switch to their cop characters instead of showing up to the party as their main criminal characters), only one cop responded to the Vault hack. He was promptly set on fire by NoYu and then kidnapped and trampled by the other guests before the cop managed to get some backup trickling in and could be brought to the hospital. The big bummer there, though, was that this was one of the players that specifically switched to his cop character for Sykkuno, but didn't get to really enjoy it because he was ambushed so early. His character was revived soon enough, but, for immersion reasons, he couldn't respond to the same crime he was already taken out of. He ended up being one of the few cops responding to other crime going on, more-or-less missing the whole ordeal. Poor guy.

Anyway, it kept a little while, but eventually there were about seven or eight cop cars out front and the "true party" could begin. NoYu started shooting up the guests to force the cops to breach for the shooter(s). Everyone scattered. There was chaos. But not as many cop casualties as Yuno was going for, and NoYu slipped away unscathed. Eventually, NoYu managed to get himself caught and brought to the police station, where he tried to blow himself up to no avail. Some time later, the cops were able to bring Yuno in to identify NoYu. He did, stating that NoYu was his evil clone that had slipped into his totally innocent birthday party and started shooting everyone. Yuno had also blown himself up at a gas station a little time before that, coincidentally right about the time NoYu - through a game glitch - managed to pull out his phone while in lock-up, so Yuno claimed NoYu called a hit on him, and NoYu admitted to it.

The cops pretended to be disgusted by the whole thing, and one of the cops started a fist-fight with NoYu. She was getting her butt handed to her, which gave her an excuse to defend herself with a knife, taking NoYu down via stab wounds. He could still be revived with an EMT or hospital care, and Burn was trying SOOOO HAAAAARD to get the character killed, so he had NoYu try to instigate the cops further. Instead, through another glitch, one of Yuno's friends that was also there for the identification - Hunter "Wingman" Skye - broke into the line-up room and shot the downed NoYu in the head before sprinting away from the cops. Burn was like "that was a bullet through the head! There's no coming back from that, right? Wingman, you are the best!" (Technically, if he didn't want to kill off the character they COULD find an in-game reason for him to have survived the headshot, but this was Burn's out.)

Wingman ended up getting caught and given jail time for the murder of a suspect in custody, but it just meant he had to RP in the prison for about 40minutes or something. In the meantime, NoYu's body was processed, declared dead (because the player let the other players know he wanted the character dead), and Yuno was called in as next-of-kin to identify the body. There was this touching moment where Burn typed up notes to "fall out of NoYu's pockets" as Yuno interacted with the body. They were both sweet and insulting in the best of ways. Burn then typed up that Yuno found an MP3 player with his name on it, so Yuno claimed he pressed play, and Burn voiced a "recording" NoYu had left Yuno. Go check out this awesome roleplay. 

(Warning: Contains foul language)

The female that is with Yuno is called 4T, just, FYI.

So... yeah. That was my Friday night. Snuggled up next to the hubby and watching about four or five hours of chaos unfold. Like I said, the nopixel server is way more entertaining and engrossing than any show out there right now, especially since you have so many streamers to cut to for their perspective of what's going on. Also, if there's a storytelling lull with the streamer you're following, just switch to another to keep the action going.

Saturday was a slow work day. I was with my manager, so no training needed. The new sale tags weren't ready yet for me to start, so that's one fewer things on my plate. I had the SaV book. Do you think I spent the downtime doing more prep-work for the campaign?

Nope!

I just couldn't focus on reading or writing that day, so instead I was back on picrew.me. Who's ready to see more OC pics?

Created using Character Maker

Honestly, I'm not a fan of Willow's hair at all, but it was as close as I could get to something she'd actually wear as a hairstyle. Plus, I was able to get the blue streaks in, however awkwardly. So.... meh? I also didn't notice at the time that I gave all three X-Future girls the same bang set. The hair options and clothing options were a bit limited, but, for the most part, it worked. Shawn looks sooooo young though. Oh well.

After work, Roz and I went for a walk, then it was anime night with Goob and Hubby. Wolfhearted also made an appearance, glad that Hubby and I are now officially fully vaccinated (past the 2-week mark after our final shot). We gave each other hugs. It was great.

During our micro-party, we watched the anime SK8 the Infinity on FUNimation. It's a short - 12 episodes - anime about racers in an underground extreme skateboard league. The animation is GORGEOUS and the story is fun. I've been gushing about it almost daily to ChibiSunnie, who only encourages this endless fangirling by sending me stuff she's seen on her Tumblr and Twitter feeds. A lot of the people in the same Sports Anime fandoms she's in have migrated to SK8, so she's been seeing fanart and other such content for a couple of months now. And she's passing most of it over to me.

Generated by Bitmoji

Anyway, if you're on my Facebook or Tumblr pages, you already know this story. For everyone else, though. As Hubby, Goob, and I are watching SK8, we're introduced to the character Tadashi Kikuchi. The more we heard this character talk, especially since it was the day after Yuno's birthday party, the more Hubby and I commented that the guy sounds so much like NoYu. The voice just sounded so familiar, and it bugged me that I couldn't pinpoint it. So I looked up the credits, and someone named Brandon Johnson is Tadashi's voice actor. The actor only has the one credit though; this is his first major voice acting role. So how do we recognize it? Hubby just kept pointing out that the character sounds like NoYu, the VA only had this one credited role, and there wasn't a headshot, which is typically another sign that they're relatively new to the business. So I asked Hubby if he happened to know Burn's real name.

He didn't, but did point out that Burn's main nopixel character is Sasuke Johnson, so.... did Burn give his character his actual last name???? I tried looking up Burn's real name, much like how Hubby and I were able to find Sykkuno's, Valkyrae's, and Disguised Toast's. For a lot of streamers, even when they use a streaming/gaming handle, they still have their real names as public knowledge. I didn't find a wikipedia page revealing his name, like I could for the three I just listed. So I went to Burn's Twitter to see if he had his real name posted there somewhere. The answer to that is a big old 'nope', but he does have himself listed as a streamer AND voice actor! So I scrolled down a bit, and right at the top of his page was this pinned Tweet:

You can find the actual Tweet here

My mind was mildly blown by how tiny the world was for a moment there. We started watching SK8 because Goob really enjoyed it and thought we would too. He knows nothing about nopixel aside from what Hubby's been gushing about lately, and even then, Hubby didn't start following Burn until this past week's NoYu shenanigans. We don't follow Burn's socials, so we clearly had no clue he was somehow connected to this anime. We didn't watch SK8 because we knew it was Burn's first major role. Nor did we start watching nopixel or Burn because we enjoyed his performance. It was pure coincidence that we stumbled upon this connection, and I just find that so cool. Especially because, with him being a streamer first and foremost, his audience can spend WAY more time with him, so to speak, than most voice actor fans could. He seems so much more "everyman" than most VAs that you only can interact with via convention panels, meet-and-greets, and watching/reading interviews.

So, yeah, bravo to Burn! That's quite an exciting step into his career as a voice actor, and I did really enjoy his performance. Also, the character Sasuke - which he plays as if it were Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto - makes more sense now considering it showcases how much he enjoys anime, as well as a possible way for him to build up his voice acting highlight reel.

Sunday was another training day.... kinda-sorta. I was working with the newbie again, it was a painfully slow day, and I'm sure there's loads of things to still train her. However, we both were a bit mentally burnt out for various reasons, and the sale tags still weren't ready, so I couldn't really teach her how to do the new tags yet. We chatted for a little while, and I went over some small things; answered her questions. But for the most part, we just each did our own things. I couldn't focus, though, so still no work on the SaV campaign. I thought I could maybe re-focus better at home, but that didn't work out either.

Roz and I took another walk; something we're trying to make a routine out of now that the weather is nice(r) and it's safe to hang out again. I think we overdid it in the heat, though, because once we said our goodbyes - and Roz again borrowed the SaV book to photocopy pages - I was dead. I ended up nursing stomach issues while catching up with Animal Crossing: New Horizons instead of attempting any sort of writing. I didn't have the book again anyway.

Yesterday I finally had some focus. It was a bit fleeting, but it was there. I was also at work with my manager again, with little for me to do since the tags STILL weren't ready to put up. So I figured I'd keep going with campaign prep. Roz had the SaV book, so I couldn't finish reading that or work on my cheat sheet for the factions. I DID have access to the PDF of the Gravity RIP rulebook though, so I started reading through that again.

Each RIP race includes 20 racers. If all four or five (one's still on the fence) SaV players decide to participate in the RIP races, that leaves 15 or 16 slots to fill with non-player characters (NPCs). Normally, they're just nameless NPCs aside from the "rivals": NPCs significant to the overall story of the game. Rivals could be literal rivals for the player characters (PCs), they could be allies, or they could be targets the PCs are focused on for that particular race's objective. I want to make my life easier during play itself though, so I'm making it harder in the prep-work by actually coming up with racers. I'll then reveal them as needed, but at least they're already made up and I won't have to pause the game so I could scramble to come up with something. I can also easily switch out my pre-made characters with whichever characters the PCs meet during the main SaV roleplay. I already have some of the notable faction NPCs set up as racers or main gamblers on the RIP races. I could build off of that.

The thing that's super holding me up, however, is.... naming. Of COURSE it's naming.

I don't Sci-fi enough to really know where to go with these names to make them seem futuristic and/or alien. I have enough of an ear for it to know if a name I come up with sounds like it would fit, but it's such a long road to get there. On top of that, each racer has their own custom rig - their Machine - that they race in, so I get to design those as well. Thankfully, they don't need a lot of description, just a broad stroke describing if the Machine is more bulk and weight, or lighter and more aerodynamic. Then, of course, some distinguishing feature to signal that this Machine is this specific racer's rig. Although, if we do our character creation session on the 21st, like I'm planning, I'll be visiting my mom and sister for the first time in, like, 16 months the Monday after (which is the main reason I don't want to start actually playing until July). If we start officially playing on Monday, July 5th, that still gives me almost two full weeks to look at how the players built their RIP Machines and design the NPC ones accordingly.

I've also been trying to get myself in the right mindset with a playlist. While searching for "space opera" songs to get me - and my players - into the right mood to play SaV, I stumbled upon this amazing video. I've been kind of obsessing over it for nearly 2 weeks now, I just neglected to share it last week since my post was already kinda long. This is also a long post, but... meh.

The song is amazing, and really talks about hope in such a cool way. I live for the 80s music aesthetic. Likewise, I adore the classic anime art styling. The actual STORY of the video is compelling. The main character - dubbed Strive by the production team - is adorable and engaging to watch. Plus, seeing the interpretation of the costumes the band TWRP (pronounced 'twerp') wears on-stage is fantastic.

Along with loving the video for all of the above, I also like watching it to get ideas for character and space ship designs. Fun factoid, Strive was designed off of a bird - hence the fluffy, feather-like hair, pointed face, and wing-like ears - and his spaceship reflects that bird aesthetic.

I also started re-watching the Netflix/Dreamworks revival of Voltron. I had gotten as far as season 3 (out of 8) a few years back, but it's been so long, I figured I'd start over to refresh my memory. Ended up a good plan, because I can also study the character and ship designs in that show to help me with preparing for SaV/Gravity RIP.

There's still so much I have to sort out. I'm a bit overwhelmed, but also so excited to do this. I'm even figuring out how to bring Maggie the Info Broker into SaV. I mean, one of the "factions" already set up in the SaV book is "the galaxy's most renowned info broker and hacker" so, much like if I ever got the chance to bring her into nopixel, Maggie is just AN info broker, not THE info broker, but still. Could be fun to try to flesh her out and at least get a chance to play her. Plus, the likelihood the PCs will INSTANTLY get in touch with THE info broker is pretty slim, so having a more humble option to work with at first should be good.

I just need to get my head to focus again so I can finish reading and prepping. Two weeks to go. Let's do this!

Generated by Bitmoji