#librettothoughts

The First Ever BreadBox is here!

What the heck is a “BreadBox”?

BreadBox is the name for a collaborative week-long jam, in a combined effort from the BreadUp community, a discord server hosted by @wunkolo. BreadBox is administrated by both myself, “Libretto”, and Malevolence, another mod.

Participants have one week to create something relevant to the voted on theme, and their submission can be ANYTHING, as long as it is redistributable in some form. More rules can be found on our Discord channel over at: https://discord.gg/VdEANt2

Once a particular BreadBox is over, all submissions are collected and piled into a repository, to be downloaded and shared with anyone and everyone!

This BreadBox had 9 entries, all of which are worth taking a look at.

The theme was “Glitch” this time ‘round, and you can take a look at all the entries over here!

DOWNLOAD JANUARY’S BREADBOX!

Underneath: Nervous

Palms: Sweaty

Snowpocalypse Cowboys.

Just gonna post a little bit about what’s been happening in my life the past few days, in order to clear up perhaps why Mythical Monday is so late, and a few other things.

5 days ago my most beloved pet, the most affectionate little sweetheart kitten, disappeared into the night. It’s approaching a point where I’m starting to give up on ever seeing her again. This is my third cat that has disappeared, and I think i’m just done with owning pets for a while...

Moving on, last night was something I am now dubbing the “Hellstorm”. It was the most unprecedented hailstorm in probably the history of Vancouver, at least since I started living here. It hailed at full force from 10 at night to 1 in the morning, petering off around 2AM. Power went out periodically and lasted for half-hour stretches. Now, my house has a flat roof over the Living room. Awful decision, yes, but we didn’t build it. 

At around 11AM after an hour of heavy hail, the roof started leaking a bit. Got some bowls, no big deal. An hour later, it started flooding from the roof. Full on water spout spilling onto the floor. New leaks kept springing up, and it was a very scary moment because periodically, we’d hear a large sharp crack and feared that all that ice and water was gonna bring the whole roof down.

Fortunately after tending to all the bowls and moving all the furniture, it calmed down. We all went to bed (myself a little later so I could watch and see if any new problems rose up)

In the morning I wake up to the power off, having been that way an hour prior to awakening. My parents inform me that the drainage that kept rainwater from seeping into our ground floor had been blocked by all the hail and flooded our office. Otherwise known as where I keep all my computer stuff. Thankfully, it’s untouched, and no further damage than a warped and ruined hardwood was sustained.

TL;DR, One lost kitten and frightening structural damage has me a bit shaken up as of late, but i’m okay.

It’s not a good movie, at least in the classical sense. Do I love it? Yes. It’s complicated;

With normal movies there is the assumption that a director can present all the elements he needs in order to tell a fascinating and engaging story. WarCraft fills a weird niche because film critics hate it, but longstanding fans of the Warcraft series love it. Why?

Because the movie didn’t need to be like a classical movie. Anyone who knows the lore of the series knows how convoluted the plots can be, and how the histories of Azeroth are driven by multiple individuals told in multiple intertwined events. There are so many micro-interactions and backgrounds to each lore-important character that to have a single film fill a 2 hour time-slot, and be able to wrap it up cleanly, is completely unrealistic.

The movie does indeed explain things, but generally only incidentally, as the characters learn of each others’ cultures, or through the audience inferring knowledge. It’s not classical film exposition, but any information given by the movie feels organic, and not like a tutorial to the Warcraft universe. This is a grandiose world rich with story.

If you want to enjoy the movie to its fullest, you need to know the lore. That’s not to say it isn’t a fun fantasy thrill ride if you’re not into Warcraft, but you will be missing out on a lot of character motivations, relationships, and the cultural identities of the various races portrayed. Plus, the things that the movie adds are much more noticeable and appreciable (or disappointing) if you are flush with the events of the First War.

I’ve also been seeing people say “Wow, Videogames shouldn’t have movies made of them and WarCraft is the reason why.” And to that I say bullshit. The majority of this film’s story is adapted from not the game, but the novels which are actually fairly good! They add a lot to the universe; the problem is that there’s so much.

Honestly? Critic reviews had me worried until I realized why they were rated so bad.

It’s a great Warcraft Movie. But if you measure it by cinema standard alone, it’s awful.

Personally? I loved every second of it, apart from a few strange choices regarding design/plot elements.

I might do a full writeup on my thoughts about the movie tomorrow, so all I’ll say here is;

I quite like the Atoned; they were a concept sitting on the burner for a long time but I just never got around to designing them. They also tie more into the nature of the Darkness and what it represents, so it’s good to get a little bit more of those narrative tidbits out, too!

Now the thing is, if I were to start doing this, It’d be pretty low in price to start, and i’d be putting in slots to keep myself sane, since my primary focus is still working on The Hunted Few.

Who is my prime audience here? I’d like to think it’d be anyone deep into RPGs and Fantasy/D&D, although I am really open to drawing anything. Common sense still applies though.

There’s also the fact that when I’m paid to do something, I treat it with much higher regard than my own stuff. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know either.