Hey hey hey writers!!! Especially y'alls who are struggling to develop character or have white room/still character syndrome!!!
Look into Uta Hagen's acting techniques, specifically her 9 questions. I'm not kidding. She built off Stanislavski's techniques to help actors develop their characters and roles & bring that to the stage- specifically, and this is why I'm pushing Hagen specifically and not anyone else, their relationship with the set, props, other characters, setting (yes that's different from set), history and the play's plot, and how that changes how they act and speak. I have my textbook open I'll take some pictures.
If you need a transcript/image description I'll put it under the cut, they're a little blurry cause I'm bad at holding my phone... I know alt text is a thing but I don't want y'alls to have to scroll through a tiny box lmao.
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The lower part of a textbook page. The text reads:
Uta Hagen's acting exercises
[Out-of-transcript note: Most of these, with the exception of Three Entrances, are less useful in terms of writers, but you could make it work, especially for roleplay.]
Basic Object Exercise: Sometimes called "two minutes of daily life," this exercise requires the actor to replicate activities from their own daily routine in specific detail (think making breakfast or getting ready to go out). The goal of this exercise is to increase the actor's awareness of their un-observed behaviour.
Three Entrances: Starting offstage, the actor enters the environment of the scene. The actor's performance should answer three questions: What did I just do? What am I going to do? What is the first thing I want?
Immediacy: Hagen asked actors to search for a small object that they need. You can perform the exercise on a set or in your home. As you search, you should observe the behaviour and thoughts that arise as you authentically try to find something. The objective is to identify the thoughts, behaviours, and sensations you experience when you genuinely don't know the outcome, so you can use them on stage.
Fourth Side: This exercise starts with a phone call to a person you know. You should call them with a specific objective in mind. During the convention, Hagen wants you to focus on your surroundings and the specific objects that your eyes rest on. The purpose is to help actors observe how they interact with all dimensions of an enclosed physical space so they can recreate privacy on stage.
Endowment: this exercise is designed to help actors apply their observed behaviours to endow props with qualities that they cannot safely have on stage. Hot irons and sharp knives are typical examples. The Endowment excercise asks actors to believably treat objects on stage as though they have the qualities the actor needs in a scene.
Uta Hagen's exercises are her greatest gift to actors working today. She developed them between Broadway jobs to solve some acting problems she had never seen anyone tackle to her satisfaction. The result is that Hagen's exercises give actors a way to observe human behaviours and catalogue it so they can recall it onstage when useful in a role.
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Most of a textbook page. The image cuts off about 3 quarters of the way down the page. The text reads:
Uta Hagen's 9 Questions
Who am I? This question's answer includes all relevant details from name and age to physical traits, education, and beliefs.
What time is it? Depending on the scene, the most relevant measure of time can be the era, the season, the day, or even the specific minute.
Where am I? This answer covers the country, town, neighbourhood, room, or even the specific part of the room.
What surrounds me? Characters can be surrounded by anything from weather to furnishings, landscape or people.
What are the given circumstances? Given circumstances include what has happened, what is happening and what will happen to a character.
What are my relationships? Relationships can be with the other characters in the play, inanimate objects, or even recent events.
What do I want? Wants can be what the character desires in the moment, or in the overall course of the play. [Out-of-transcript note: I recommend figuring out both for writing, the former multiple times for whenever it changes! Outside of Hagen's technique, we call it objective and superobjective.]
What is in my way? This is the actor's chance to understand the obstacles the character must react to and overcome.
What do I do to get what I want? In Hagen's teaching, "do" means physical action.
Uta Hagen's nine questions help actors develop the granular details of their character's backstory. The questions come from Hagen's first book, "Respect for Acting," though in her later book, "A Challenge for the Actor," she condensed her original nine questions into six steps.
Uta Hagen's revised six steps to building a character are:
Who am I?
What are the circumstances?
What are my relationships?
What do I want?
What is my obstacle?
What do I do to get what I want?
Later in her life, Hagen distances herself from her first book and encouraged her students to rely on her second book, which she felt was clearer about her concepts. Both books are popular with acting teachers and students today, however. Hagen's questions and steps are the foundation for all of her acting exercises. Whether you rely on the nine questions or the six steps depends on personal preference.
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Personally I like the 9 questions more, but like the book says, personal preference! So yeah, if you're a writer, try some of these out for your characters. :]
Twenty-one tons of potatoes are up for grabs at Potato Palooza on Monday.
The nonprofit’s set to receive a donation of 21 tons of tubers this weekend from suppliers in the Midwest. Hoping to get the starchy vegetables to people in need, the nonprofit will host a “Potato Palooza” event on Monday in Park Hill.
“Anyone is welcome to come. They can bring tote bags, wagons, you could back up your pickup truck if you wanted to,” Hissong said. The event is 9 a.m. to noon at the Park Hill Food Recovery Hub, 6090 East 39th Avenue, on July 27.
the thing about being bullied for being weird as a kid is that even if you've always embraced being weird your brain is still always looking for the line where it's too much. you can be as proudly and intentionally weird as you want and you can love being weird but your mind is still convinced there's a point where you get too weird and people start treating you like a weird looking bug again. also it feels like you reach that point 500 times a day even if everyone you've spoken to today found you pleasant and likable and even if you're completely alone in your house with nobody looking at you at all.
stop letting miserable people on the internet convince you that you must have a concrete, well-constructed opinion on everything that has ever existed.
In Paper Mario, the Master has an unused, unfinished attack found in his code whereby he flies at Mario and then appears to be stuck in mid-air, doing nothing. This would at first seem to be simply completely broken and require the game to be restarted, but waiting 5 and a half minutes will actually make him complete the attack and do damage (most of the waiting time cut out in the footage). He will also remain in mid-air next to Mario on the next turn after this.
This is due to the fact that the attack takes 10,000 frames to complete, which is around 5 and a half minutes at the game's 30 frames per second framerate. While broken and unfinished moves are nothing out of the ordinary for RPGs, it is rare to find a move that appears to freeze the game but actually manages to complete in an unreasonably long amount of time.
Source: elDexterr
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In Super Mario Sunshine, a commonly known glitch is the Dune Bud high jump, whereby a Dune Bud on Gelato Beach is sprayed and then Mario performs a Ground Pound in such a way that he is in mid-air when the Dune Bud activates. This results in Mario being launched so high up into the air that he takes several minutes to fall back down.
However, an interesting interaction of this glitch that actually reveals some of the inner workings of this game can be seen when it is performed directly after defeating the Wiggler boss, immediately before the Shine Sprite spawns. This is shown in the footage; note the unusual black sky during the cutscene.
The reason for this is that the skyboxes in this game (as in many other Mario games like Super Mario Galaxy) actually follow Mario instead of remaining fixed in space. When Mario is launched into the sky, the skybox follows him, so when the camera switches to showing the Shine Sprite, the sky is no longer visible from the ground, having been pulled upwards by Mario.
Source: linky628
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Remember, just because you can run that fast when a tiger is chasing you, doesn't mean you should be expected to run that fast. Or that it's okay for you or anyone else to set a tiger loose on you to get things done faster.
Humans can do incredible things under threat. That does not mean that panic is a good thing for you or your body in the long run.
Announced the end of all physical PS game releases
While simultaneously announcing the end of two of their console game stores — ensuring multiple games will die forever
Declared that they are wholly dedicated to (A) leveraging A.I. when making games and (B) creating live-service games above all other game types
Announced that if you bought any movies through their PlayStation Store, over 550 of them will soon be deleted from all users' libraries — with no restitution offered of any kind
Gamers, it is time — to paraphrase Robert Vann — to turn Sony's picture to the wall. Any one of these insults would be bad, and taken alone? Maybe it could be swallowed. But this is an ongoing campaign of disdain towards customers, with each declaration worse than the last.
PlayStation does not deserve your patronage any longer. The PS6 must fail. Leave them behind.
