We worked on the Peter Pan live doing rewrites on the Peter Pan for NBC And she created new lyrics for on the 20th century, which is currently running on Broadway. Did I leave anything out probably many things? Yes, Amanda Green Steven Schwartz you've all heard many times in the last today even earlier and you will hear more about him tonight I will just list off a few things Pippin Godspell Bernstein's Mask the magic show Baker's wife Personals Captain Louie children of Eden Pocahontas hunchback of Notre Dame wicked Enchanted snapshots and seance on a what-afternoon Steven Schwartz and Winnie Holtzman has made you probably know her because she created my so-called life on TV She also worked on with Steven on wicked and she wrote a musical called birds of paradise She wrote episodes of 30 something and the TV show called it huge and can we talk about what's in development right now? There's a show a show with Cameron Crowe on showtime, but it isn't really yet So we don't it isn't really yet, but she's developing something for showtime So it's a pretty impressive panel, and I'm really happy to welcome them here today I'm also excited because we have we're covering TV writing theater writing lyricists composers book writers We've got all that covered so there will be room for your questions But I think the way the the topic of the conversation is how we create character in story and song And I think we can cover a lot of the bases there But I just want to start right out the gate right out of the gate with what kind of conversations Do you have with your collaborators at the very beginning of the process about who tells what about who how the character is created? What are those early conversations like we're looking at you? Oh, you are I? Just assumed Steven would take that one Because he's done it the most of it of anybody and I guess my answer to that would be from my experience It's not about who takes what in the beginning It's about what is this in the beginning and just a really long conversations Conversations plural about What is it? What is the story which becomes for me the question that never goes away? It's just like what is the story? Sometimes that question is slash. What is a story, you know trying to remember of course We all really know what stories are because we're fed on them and we have them in our bones and our blood And we really understand them But when you start to intellectual eyes and look at something you're writing that you've never written before You start to blank out at least this is what happens to me and you start to go I don't even know what a story is And so you have to almost like my friend Bruce Kaplan says like a stroke victim You have to almost like sort of piece together very slowly Like sort of make your way through this thing that you don't understand and when you're writing a musical My experience is you're so lucky because you're doing it with with with somebody else or other people So you have these conversations Yeah, I mean when we were working on wicked when we first started we spent I would say at least a year Outlining the show before we really wrote anything Really talking through the story talking through the characters I Did a couple of tiny little musical sketches for myself, but didn't really write any Songs just kind of came up with sounds that might be appropriate for the individual characters Winnie I know you did a couple of little sketches as well But we really did spend a year before we wrote and then when we started I'm finally getting to answer the question Winnie got Glinda right away She just knew who she was how she sounded and I was kind of hazy on her so I was able to sort of see what Winnie was writing about Glinda and and and And Interpolate that or get that or internalize it on the other hand I think I got alphabet right away and so kind of the early stuff that I was Coming up for her even though actually the first song that I wrote for her as you'll hear tonight Was was eventually abandoned and replaced Nevertheless, I sort of got her sound and her character and I think that influenced how you wrote her the point being that It's collaborative and it and and sort of the the person who has the clearest vision First assuming that the vision feels right to both of you Defines it. I want Amanda an answer to you But before you leave that before we leave that point Steven when you said in the year that you were outlining You were coming up with ideas were they Character sketch music music the reflected character music. They reflect a story. Yeah, this is I'm this is something I was hoping we would talk about in in more detail today Which is how you use music to define character because I think we don't really talk about that very often that that We're always talking about the dialogue and the lyrics But actually music also defines character and what I was trying to do And I'll talk about where I first became aware of that Strongly which had to do with when I worked on the show working and was observing what my co-writers were doing and kind of learning from them but for instance One of the very very first things that I wrote when I went back and looked at these little sketches I had done was just I think the witch Sounds like this I think Elphaba sounds like this when she's powerful and it was actually the Tom Tom Tom bomb that little riff that became the riff into defying gravity was there almost from the very beginning I had no idea where it was gonna go on the show if it was gonna go in the show. It just felt like her to me so yeah, it was it was kind of How do these characters sound? What's what is their? Musical language, etc. And a lot and you know and I've just cited the the two bars That wound up in the show But there are a couple of pages of stuff that that never went in that Just didn't ultimately feel right. It helped you find your way. It helped me find my way. Yeah, and Amanda I'm just listening to what these guys were saying. I think Stephen is right. I mean if you if you You know me or the composer has found a Musical sketch for a character that means you have a pretty good beat on the character, you know because it's it's a musical You know, so it is I mean lyrically of course you know, I'm you know If I find like a phrase that is that person's emblematic phrase or the way they speak or something Then I have a beat on the character But if there's a musical voice for them then that's gold really because it's it's a musical So, you know, I mean I really it feels like you've crystallized the character And if you both agree on you all agree on that vision, but it's you know, Winnie and I were saying when we were kind of preparing for this panel um five minutes ago And talking about the well you're you know, you're so diligent And we were talking about again how you create character in that We realized that the music for Elphaba could not be sung by Glenda Glenda Couldn't would never sing something putting aside lyrics titles whatever she would never sing something that was like It's not in her character similarly Elphaba could never sing something that have the music for popular Regardless what the title was now I didn't find that music until Winnie had written some scenes with Glenda And then I sort of got oh, that's who she is. Well, she kind of sounds like this But I feel that the music itself Defines those those women and they they're not interchangeable Well that leads me to my next question how nice of you to set that up for me Tell me about what happens when a collaborator creates a piece of the character that is new information to you Like you thought you're writing something and then your collaborator contributes a piece and you go Oh, either it's something that comes out in a lyric or or a musical gesture or something And then you as the person who had the first past things. Oh, I that's new to me or now I can run with that Well, I mean excuse me for you know, I know other but but I can quickly answer something again, you know I'm talking about wicked just because when he is sitting here with me I had no idea that they were that there was going there were going to be us isms that they're going to be made up words That are kind of English, but kind of not and then I read the first scenes that that when he had written and That's how people were speaking. So things that I had already written I went back and inserted a changed words, etc To to interpolate that style into the way the people in our spoke Yeah, I've worked I've been working with like Doug Wright on Hanson a hard body often scenes that he did informed Me about characters and conversations we had would inform a lyric You know like in the this song I wrote I'm gone we were talking you know we knew this this young woman worked at the UPS and He says something like well just imagine like every she's there all night sorting things and things come to her and she looks like They're they're heading to Europe, you know, they have all these labels on it and that like gave me a huge inspiration When I was working with Tom Kitt on bring it on we had to write a new song for this character We'd written a song we loved and it just wasn't but it wasn't working and I was like I love that song I don't know what to do. That's like it's funny as I get I don't I don't know Like I was like it's funny. I don't get it I kept trying to rewrite it like what if I change it this or can we save this and use that and I was just stuck and then he had like a musical idea and It was a new character. It was like this whole side of her character before it was sort of like she was this evil scheming You know duplicitous backstabbing little cheerleader and then he the music he came and everything was a variation on that And then the music he came up with was this bouncy bubbly Evil little girl, but she was so cute, you know and that made that like opened it up for me To to like, you know, I could let go of what I had written and write something funny for this different Facet a different way of looking at the same character.  So yeah, that was the music really helped I was just Yesterday I was listening to this, you know Alec Baldwin's show. Here's the here's the thing I was listening to him interview Stephen Daldry and I was telling this to Stephen R. Stephen They had just before and Stephen Daldry was saying this thing I thought was so interesting about writing even though he was he was referring to it about About actors, but he was saying, you know actors come in a lot of times he experienced and They'll say like well my character wouldn't do that or that's not my character or something like that, right? And he was saying that I correct he this is Stephen Daldry speaking He says I correct them and I say no wait a minute We're gonna create the character all together You don't know It isn't your kid. No, he what he actually said was it isn't your character It's it's it's something we're going to do together And that is the nature of writing a musical You know there are places where it's much less like that where you could go off and be a writer and create a character And you'd be all by yourself, I guess but that isn't what musicals are like and there is this feeling of like Some things being slowly, you know sort of fashioned and you are gonna be surprised by By stuff that hit comes in and then I guess the tricky part and there's a million of them tricky parts But like the tricky part is when something just feels wrong, right? Because you don't want to say no too quickly, you know what I mean because who hasn't had the experience of thinking Oh, that's such a terrible idea. And I mean we've done this to each other and you went and and then you know Three weeks later you wake up and you go fuck that is such a good idea I Have to go apologize and I you know and I have to rethink But you know that because at first there is the psychological aspect where you do want to feel like it is yours in a way and you that to me that's part of You know part of understanding how to do all this I think one of the things that's really exciting and I'm interested to hear from from both of you because You know when he is the book writer was sort of when you get The scene from the book writer and even though even if it's been really outlined and you kind of more than kind of know Exactly what's going to be in that scene But then you actually read it and you read what the characters are saying and they're always these amazing surprises and and wonderful things and you think like oh well I could just take that and make that That moment is so delightful to me. Oh always Well, that's what it's all about really I would even say that we're all looking for those moments in each other's work that if a book scene comes to me And there's there's a rhythm in the words or a funny a description of something. You're like, well, there's the song There's the lyric there's the I hear the music now that even sometimes the rhythm of the way the line lands on the page that the The book writer has created becomes perhaps the title of the song or the beginning of the hook or something because the rhythm of The words tells me oh, this is gonna be in 6-8 or this is gonna be in 4-4 like you just know where it's coming Yeah, I the Jeff witty is a wonderful book writer. I worked with him on bringing on He wrote we you know We had a draft of the show and and then we're like maybe we need a song at the end I read his last scene and I was like it's right here. I mean, this is it, you know I mean it was it was he really just had it, you know, it was beautiful and I mean all three of us knew Arthur Lawrence pretty well He was a teacher for me. He taught me and he would teach us that he would he would say That was actually the job That's how he defined his job as a book writer part of his job was to you know His image was sort of like you're almost furnishing Logs into a fire you're sort of you know, and that's why I tend with a book Obviously musical books are tend to be eloquent and and and short and and elegant and spare Because music expands in time and songs take up a lot of the time of a musical so you don't have That's the ability to maybe have an incredibly discursive scene but I tend to write and write and write because I'm not thinking this scene's gonna end up that way I'm sort of furnishing material in a funny way and that's something I was taught by Arthur And what happens if you're furnishing that material and two-thirds of it winds up not being in the show Is it that is how it is? I mean, that's what I'm saying is that That's what that's now I sound kind of old But that's how I've come to expect I don't know how else to put that that that I think is part of part of it Maybe you're saying if there's like a very special part that you love no, I'm encouraging you to say exactly what you said Look, we've had the experience I'm sure you have to where you know a book writer has said I get that you're taking all of this and you want to change that but I really just love this one line and And and I would look and you're like, okay Well, just then it'll we'll find a way that that line is there, you know I mean that's again. That's that's part of the collaboration, right? Yeah, well, I've even had things I mean speaking of wicked go obviously, you know easier for me to talk about since I've done Precious little else and also because he's sitting right here, but there's this work. There's this Part of the way I tend to work sometimes is I do fix it on certain words and certain words are gonna be important to certain characters and they're gonna almost become emblematic to that character and We had a couple of those in wicked certainly lyrically and book wise certainly the word Good and the word wicked is very very important in our world But the word beautiful. I had big plans for that word. I I had a very specific plans of When that word was going to appear in terms of Alphaba and her relationship to being beautiful whether or not she could be beautiful and I think there was maybe a time when I would say to you Well, I don't want to use the word beautiful, right? Yeah, because I'm saving it for that. Absolutely. And you're like, okay It's gone exactly because that's the kind of specificity of word choice, which we will get into talking about that, you know Obviously you're it's just a matter of making constant choices, right? It's horrible I mean you again you sort of segwayed into I sort of had two things that I wanted to talk about and that's one of them That because the title of this is something about creating character through story and so but it's about creating character so I was thinking about that and Your word choice and particularly your choice of nouns is very very important And yeah, and you should write it down because it's something I learned from observation of people whose work I admired and also You know heard and so I was thinking of I was trying to think of an example And we were talking about it and you know We were talking about the the song one short day in Wicked which is really just there Because our producer after I'd written the first two songs that were kind of grim You know said like well, I mean is there ever I mean the songs they're good But I said you want to know if anything will ever be fun in the show, right? He said well, yes, so I said all right. I'll write this sort of song where they go to So the point being that it's not an incredibly character-driven song and was never meant to be and yet there is a little section of the song where the R2 girls X are experiencing being in the Emerald City and What became very significant and it was very helpful for me because Winnie had written of course endless monologues about what they were seeing and what they Were expecting like what do they notice and there is a lyric where? They say, you know what what glinda's noticing is Dressa it goes glinda says dress salons and alphabets as libraries and glinda says palaces and alphabets says museums and those are five words and You know everything about those two girls not everything Do you know a lot about those two girls based on? What what it is that is impressing them in their visit to the Emerald City? So the point being that you create character by by your word choices For for the characters even in a song. That's not necessarily a character number. They I mean Alphaba would never notice that there were dress salons there And glinda would be like if she walked by a library. She'd be like, what is this place? They would not But but you know who they are because of those things and and I mean I know it's obvious to say but particularly when you're writing lyrics and we're all worrying about like oh god It has to fit this rhythm and the right is to rhyme and it's you know There's all the stuff that's so it's it's kind of easy to to let yourself off that hook of being very very careful about making sure that This character is singing words that that he or she that that's within the world of that character So that was one of the things that I want to make sure we said Can I jump into something I just wanted to add that just speaking of collaboration and finding your story finding Finding your tone in a number When he said I had written a lot I had I had written a lot of stuff that is certainly not in the show of them Because we talked about we talked endlessly about well. Yeah, they're going to the Emerald City together But we didn't really feel the tone like what was the tone of it and we stumbled I forget how but through these endless conversations into this idea that it was like if you only have One day in the Emerald City like it was like a like it was like they're there I remember you said it's like two girls in Paris and the feeling was we were going to get to the idea that They were together somewhere and it was forging their friendship But I really hooked into this tourist idea. So I wrote a lot a lot of dialogue about they were looking through They had a book if you only have one day in the Emerald City and they were looking through tourist attractions And I was you know making jokes and stuff But the point is it fed that feeling of the tone that we were looking for so even though none of that stuff is in the show There's the ghost of that is in the show Did you know what I mean that led to one short day the title of the song it led Exactly exactly and you could also say that there's something about the character of the place You know that what you were saying about needing a fun moment there that you are also creating a different place a different location The Emerald City is different from where we've been and so the sound of this place is different in the way that you're two women What's the question When you were writing wicked Yes, I was writing it. I saw it differently. Yeah, I don't know that there was specifically now There's no question. It's just a kind of no, but I do think that language of course languages is vitally vitally important Talk to me about language Well Georgia language is vitally vitally No, it's true. I mean it depends it defines your world and You know hands on a hard body or people and you know, East Texas who all need the money to Win that truck to make their lives possible, you know, not to not as a lark So it you have to write for those people in that world And it was fun I mean limitations of language can be really fun because they they they force you to you know I could still have fun with rhymes, but I wouldn't I wouldn't be using, you know, $10 words And and I also wouldn't be you know, they don't have to say ain't and shucks and yee-ha either because you know So you I mean you it's important to write for a full rounded character For me because I you know, I come from New York So I would have assumptions about people from East Texas, you know, and that wasn't the case But the limitations of the language and and and wicked of you know, that the language you guys made up Those things are limitations and they sort of set you free You know are the fun of it the fun of writing a show Yeah, it's really fun to write for characters who don't have the best grammar in the world Yes, we don't have the best vocabulary in the world on who misuse words who It's it's also you remind me when you said that like rhyme the amount of rhyme tells you things about the character rhyme tends to Indicate intelligence and and verbal acuity particularly inner rhyming etc So it if you have that kind of character that can be your friend But if you're trying to present a very sort of plain spoken character Then it's then it's not your friend And then you're actually working against yourself and creating Steven Steven Sondheim is a very famous story about I feel pretty And the story is that he was young it was one of his first shows and he wrote I feel pretty I feel pretty I feel witty I feel pretty and witty and bright and I pity any girl who isn't me tonight And and later in years later looking back on that. He said she's an immigrant English is not her first language and she works in a dress shop. She would not be that smart Those are not the words she would not be full of the one He's always citing as as being particularly embarrassing to him is it's alarming how charming Yes But clever rhyming is for clever characters Yeah, and I think it's important to make sure that your characters don't all sound like you They don't all speak the way that you speak and sometimes that's especially when When when seeing a new piece or reading something by a new person if you think I hear the voice of the writer More than the voice of the character. That's a problem and that is Exactly what you guys are talking about with the specificity of the character Yeah, and you can go, you know, you don't have to get it right the first time too you can sort of Write the if you if you're doing a song for a character and you can you can work out Well, what is this actually about and what does the character want and what's the title and where am I going with it? And and you can work that out and then say okay I have that in terms of the storytelling But as George just said but it just sounds like me. So now how what do I do? What words do I change? What choices do I make so it really? Sounds like that person That's really great. That's empowering to think it doesn't have to be your first pass It can be part of your editing.  That's not what writing is really like But still there's this fantasy in your head and I I'm just speaking for myself But maybe one or two people know what I'm talking about So it's like just to live it helps me to just literally say to myself this is the draft for this in other words this is the draft where I'm figuring out the story and In a funny way, even though character and story are certainly inextricably Related and part of each other if you really don't know what happens Next you have to figure that out and you you know, maybe your characters will be wooden for a while And that's kind of okay.  I need to deepen this character I need to make them more human I mean, I think it's hard to say that though because of course What people do in a story is is their character? I mean, it's it's it's the same checkup right action is character Yeah, or I don't know who said it somebody said I think Gypsy Rosalie or We had like conversations with hands on hard body of talking about character like You know, there's a guy is an Iraqi vet and like for a while We're like maybe he comes back and kills, you know waving a gun because that happened in real life But we you know So you make you make decisions if that is very different character than a boy who breaks down crying because he has post-traumatic Stress disorder needs and he's comforted by an older man's different from someone who comes back waving a gun So, you know, you make decisions like that. We decided he was not a guy who came back with a gun, you know Another character as we were writing it It was helpful for us to him for him to have prejudices Because he would really rub against characters and stuff and and things that were little jokes became bigger things and that became a dramatic turning point You know, so you don't use developed characters to as it go along. Can I do my other agenda item, or do you have your right? Okay, you're leading to it. Go ahead. I just said talk to me about language. What about musical language? Thank you, Georgia Why now that you bring it up it occurs to me Yeah, this is something that we don't really Talk about very much which is that music itself creates character and Frankly for the first, I don't know 10 years of when I was professionally writing or thereabouts I actually didn't think about that very much. I you know I Was concerned in terms of songs and in terms of storytelling in terms of the emotional truth of what was happening But I didn't really think that much about character rising through music and then when I was doing the show working Great Cornelia wrote a song about a retired man called Joe and the music for that song Tells you all about the character the guy is and it's and it's all subtext the guy is talking about how happy he is now that he is retired and How full his day is and and he's just describing all the things he does in his day and the music is just going Over and over again in this kind of bleak and More in full way and I and and I was I when I heard that I thought oh The music should be telling you things about the character too I realized that you could hear that and not speak English Not actually know what the words were but you know who that character is because of the music And then there were other things in that show like James Taylor wrote the song for the character of the mill worker and it sounds kind of Irish and folk and you just you know everything about that woman's background and her heritage and everything it's all in the music and because I was working with multiple composers and they were Taking characters to whom they had Emotional affinity in some way and therefore their music was conveying that that was very influential on me So when it came time to write the song for the waitress and one of the things that she says and her in her Interview which which became part of the show is she said you know when I get heated I don't I don't give a damn I speak like an Italian speaks and so I thought well, okay How does an Italian speak and so the music became basically La Traviata? It's basically like a take-off on on Semper Libra Libra and La Traviata But the point being that if you hear the music to the waitress song Which has nothing to really to do with about being a waitress or even that much to do with emotionally what she's going through but it gives you sort of her character her her ethnicity and And these were all things I didn't use to think about but then since that time and very conscious of which is why by the time You know Got to writing wicked. I really was thinking like well, you know putting aside the words What does Alphabet sound like musically? What does Glinda sound like musically and I just think a lot of times we forget to consider that but it's very helpful Spote especially with characters of different generations They don't all sound alike and you know if someone's from Europe and someone's you know five You know if they do not all live in the same musical world, and that's what makes it exciting I Lost my train of thought when that happens, right? So I'm gonna go to the next question and maybe I'll come back to it Does the commercial viability of a project change the way you write the character?  I think she was kind of alluding to what Larry Galbart had imparted to her, which is it You know, I think it's kind of a detail where it ends up. I mean, I think it has to do with you know The big the big thing for me is I identify as somebody sounds like a gender question But I identify as somebody who writes something that actors are gonna do That's how I think about it. I don't write a novel. I mean, well, that's so there.  So when I'm really thinking about his actors I saw a panel yesterday where Lisa Crohn said that making a play is really making a blueprint And I was struck by that that sometimes as a writer I think I'm creating a thing and then I have created it But she was like that's not the thing the thing is actually the evening that you spend in the theater The way the actors bring it the way the set looks the way the costume correct evening and yet you and yet if you aren't writing something with the specificity this sort of emotional specificity that could inspire people nobody will come and I don't mean the audience I mean no no really good actors will show up and no really good designers in other words You have to be you have to furnish something that is attracting those creative people into your world and That's what I think about. I don't think about commercial viability. I mean to me That's not a phrase I would ever want to even think about because I feel like that would just destroy my my life actually But I mean I really I I don't even know what that means And I don't think it's possible to know what that means because you know you never know But but I do think it what you it is possible to think is this a part for instance that a person would be excited to play I mean I've said this a million times. So forgive me, but you know This one introduced me to Kristen Chenoweth the second I met Kristen Chenoweth I was like it's got to be her well How do I make that happen? She wasn't as famous then but she was getting quite famous and it wasn't the the lead the lead was Alphaba How do how do you make that happen? Do you see the mean so all of a sudden I knew well that part's got to be better And that's how that no literally and that's how that happened I mean so there's all kinds of ways that you get inspired about what the part's gonna be I'm now gonna go rewrite everything. I've ever written I Remember what I was gonna say a minute ago Steven and we were talking about using character in music And I wanted to talk about when you this isn't maybe not as much for Steven but for the other two what happens when your collaborator is not primarily a theater writer when you have to write with someone who comes from the world of pop music or the world of classical music or something else and and and There is more of a responsibility on you to to be the bearer of character How how do you negotiate that or have you had to negotiate that? Yeah, well I worked with the Trey Anastasio From fish and he joined he joined me as a co-composer on hands on a hard body And it was a learning process, but he surprised me as well because he's he's he's from a rock band And he entertains people so his job is to keep the crowd happy and entertain And so like I had a lyric for this character, and I love the lyric and I was like here you go You're welcome, you know, and he was like, you know, and he was like He was like, why is the guy talking about the truck? I'm so bored about the truck.  What's he doing? What's it? And I was like, I was like, you're right. Boy. Yeah, this is a this is adult This isn't the 80th song about a truck, you know So I went back because of him and then he had like oh, it's like Dr. John and blah blah blah You know, then we created this really fun song together and then there were instances where he was like This is a really cool lick and I was like, well, what are the actors doing?  Like we can't there's no room for that, you know They got it We've got to just keep it going and there can't be instrumentals in between unless there it's it's it's Specific to an action or something not that there can't be but it was you know It was stopping the the drama of his song, but he caught on but a director will have to say here's what's happening Here's what your actors are. Yeah, there's a reason for it Then yeah, yeah, I mean, it's not an absolute there can't be a lick But it was sort of stopping, you know, the song the actor would be there like five six But he caught on pretty quickly but you do and and it was a learning curve for him and and he was certainly surprised about how long it took and Everything that goes into it, but he was also delighted to when the first time he heard actors singing his stuff back at him He just blew him away.  Oh, I just was gonna say I mean I've been guilty of this as much as as probably more than anyone but not more than anyone But I mean you can't really leave it to the director I mean you have the director at some point will tell you things that he or she wants to have happened But in other words if you you have to be furnishing that for yourself first Even though the director might come in and want to change things. Do you see what I mean? Like you do have to know like what's going on when Between between the verses or what in that piece in that interval. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, like that would be I think critical or at least look at it this way to put a more positive spin on it and Soundless like a school marmin annoying person like it's it's an interesting question Like you know in other words you don't want to skip that question. What's happening? What's happening on stage while? Well before the second verse starts, you know what I mean in that interval because if you You you want to just pose it for yourself I Think and try to see if you if that will inform for ha perhaps I mean what is When I say what's happening obviously it's all gonna further the story. I mean it's all it's all about Helping and I love that you use the word entertaining because we do tend to lose sight of this because we've just got a million We've got a million things in our mind and life is really hard But it's got it. You know we have to think about it isn't just we're not presenting a you know a Thesis we're entertaining and it's all about seduction and entertaining and having people have a good time I'm using the word seduction in a very specific very open-ended way now. I sounds filthy, but it's just like I mean It's not about sexual seduction necessarily although that might be your story but it's about some kind of way in which you're pulling a group of people along with you and getting them very interested and that That involves really thinking about psychologically What people are longing for to have you know I always do I mean There's such a thing called obligatory beats You know what I mean like if you're telling a story about blank What would be if you were gonna walk into the theater and you were gonna see a story about a green witch And that's all you knew and you knew that she lived you know that it was This witch that you'd seen in a movie when you were young and now she was gonna have her own musical What are some of the things you would really be disappointed by if they did they didn't show up on stage? Do you know what I mean like if it if there were no munchkins in the story Would you go why were there no munchkins or would you just go? Yeah, that's cool. No munchkins like You you do want to ask yourself like what's the obligatory thing that I'm the people are waiting to have happen I think so Well, you know Speaking of obligatory beats, so there was this song and wicked Which was when the two girls are forced together as roommates and I wrote songs for that spot and none of them worked and it was so frustrating and finally I went to By that point we had a director and you know, I said to Joe Mantello. I'm having so much trouble with this I mean, maybe they don't need to sing a song here at all I mean, do we have to do that? Is this like obligatory? He was like absolutely It is an obligatory beat they're forced together we they're in the room together We have to see that and then fortunately Winnie had the idea of doing a falling in hate song or a hated first sight song And and that solved it for me And then again because again it I could I could approach it from the point of view of These two characters and what do they specifically hate about each other? and The mistake I had been making or the thing that had been a dead end was this sort of general Song they were singing about I hate being with you But it but it wasn't it wasn't specific enough to the characters and that's what what solved it You know, but the point being like it was just an obligatory beat and and we had to do it And I just had to keep trying until finally it got solved We're almost at time and so I have one last question and this is just the the as you exit fun question No audience questions Okay Let me ask this one and then we'll open up with whatever's left Tell me about a favorite character you've created and a proud Contribution of yours to that character story just a moment something that you were like I did that I Mean everything you created alphabet, but everything like a favorite moment Other people for okay. Well, I think my favorite character that I've ever written was is Frollo from hunt back no Chidam I just love being Frollo and I understand why people like to play villains He is so much fun to be this guy who takes no responsibility for any of the terrible things he does and Projects them on to other people and blames them all and that was just it's like being a Republican So much fun to go there you shouldn't go there in real life, but it's really fun to write that so I was very I'm very proud of being able to make that that character and You know and and come up with that you know the that whole hellfire song for him is the most fun I've ever had I just loved being him Amanda I was thinking I mean it's I love ready coming but the thing like one day this song in Hands on a hard body called stronger which is written by a Which is sung by a vet like I it was just one of those days like I I Was out and like the song came to me and this guy came to me I had a vision of this guy like young guy Marine with a guitar I don't know and I just was like I had to stop like I don't you know I had to like stop and sit on stupas and write and write and write and and I And I and it just sort of came like it was one of those like boom You know it happens to you and and then Like a week later. It was around the time of the Iraq war So it's not like I didn't cut it was in the zeitgeist. It was in the air all this a week later I saw a picture of that guy in the Times and this story of this boy And there was a guy at a boy and there was video of him playing guitar And and it was like literally like lyrics I'd written he was like yeah I was cutting up and and thing and my first line is like I was cutting up and acting like a fool And I was like oh my god, you know, so that was like a Chills moment. Yeah. Yeah What about you Georgia? Yeah. Oh, I wasn't prepared to answer I'm gonna make a winning. I don't know, you know, and I have an answer Which is that this isn't really my favorite favorite of I don't have a favorite, but To me we've been unofficially talking about our movie and I did get our wicked movie But it's unofficial, but I got an idea for something with Gallinda that is That is something that pleased me so much because Because it made me go, you know, I don't know I still don't know everything about her And I I figured out something else about her that pleased me so much and made and I found so Interesting that I thought shed light on her in an interesting way, and I thought it was cool that I could Really? Yeah. No, I don't want to. Really? Can I say? Yeah, well Winnie had this revelation because in the show Glinda is Upper-class and she's from the upper uplands and then Winnie had this revelation that in fact she's from sort of Middle-class or like a humble humble little that she but she has these aspirations And it actually pays off for the character in all the choices She makes and this was an example of Winnie told me this and I was like, that's a terrible idea What are you talking about? We can't do that. No, and then about two days later I called her and I said I've been thinking about it. It's just the best idea Have to do that. But my initial response was absolutely shut it down It is it's 250 we have to wrap up Do you want to I'll take one question or two questions? Oh, there are so many Back here. Okay I think this is being taken Addressed in another session, but I wondered is there no Standard etiquette for the relationship between the director the playwright and the actresses or actors in terms of like you had said you come up with an idea but if the director doesn't like it he He or she would defer to the playwright necessarily or if the actress Director sort of the word deferred You have to bring them in the addition No, the only thing is that I do really ascribe to the rule that as the I will never talk to the actors Except to say like, ah, you're doing great But I will never ever give a note to an actor that is sort of protocol in the theater that all in Everything has to be funneled through one source and and it's it's a director So that is protocol, but if you and the director are having Disagreements you have to work it out, you know, don't fight in front of the children you have to work it out privately Right, but who might win in terms of I mean, there's no etiquette. It's depending upon your relationship with the director If you're the playwright, let's just put it between those two and the playwright has another idea But the director's going no, no, no, it's fine the way it is. I don't like that Yeah, it happens all the time, right? It's not going to be that simple. It really depends on everything it depends on everything and I think The best way I can describe it is it's sort of what Stephen was saying the the the play or musical is the baby and Everyone wants to hopefully in a good situation no matter how much people are disagreeing Everybody wants that baby to grow up and do well. Okay, so it's like you whatever is best for the baby in the end Not because I had the idea or you had it or whatever. It's like what really is best for the baby and That's what makes it come together mean That's the best I can answer It's really there. I mean, it's very it's very case specific. I think and you know, not even just relationship specific You know, yeah, it's really on a case-by-case basis and sometimes you I mean, I do you think let's let's be honest I mean, there's some arguments that are not going to be solved and then you kind of have to pick your battles I mean, there were things that we disagreed with Joe Mantello about Who directed wicked and in the end it was like, you know what? That's not so important and Let's do that and then there were a couple of things where we said absolutely not Absolutely not. We are the writers.  I don't agree with you But you're the one who has to get the actors to do it anyway. So absolutely do do that But so when we would actually go say like no, no, no, we're going in the mad on this one He always said okay, so I guess you know, it's it's picking your battles. Thank you and we have to wrap up Thank you Yeah, just just the things to remember


YouTube team keeping clean what's going on is engraving here with another video and in this video We're here to talk about the game.  So then Then that game against the Cowboys that game was just It got brutal man And Trevor Simeon tossing a bunch of touchdowns the defense playing dominant, too But then a little after that they they ended up losing to the Giants They lost to the Giants the Giants team that didn't have any Odell Beckham. No Brandon Marshall no Sterling Shepherd and they lost to them So I'm like man, what kind of team is this? I don't understand these guys at all They confuse me and then the Chiefs on the other hand They start out like five or five and oh a six and oh, then they ended up No, they start out five and oh, then they ended up losing to the Steelers That wasn't really a shock at all to me Because I picked the Steelers to win that game and I know usually Steelers are Chiefs kryptonite Patriots are Steelers, but anyway, they lost to the Steelers and then they ended up losing to um To the Raiders in a heartbreaking game who that game was that that's also one of the games That could be nominated for best game of the year that game the Chiefs and Raiders game the The Seahawks and Texans games. So we've had some really really great games, but anyway Then the Chiefs go out here and they just came off a losing two in a row So what do they do? Somebody had to write the ship and the Chiefs ended up doing it Anyway before we get into this and it's not gonna be very long. Let me introduce myself me. I'm engraving vids This is my YouTube channel engraving vids and I appreciate all y'all that are subscribed man Thank you all that come through. Thank you all to leave your comments. Thank you all to leave your likes on a video I appreciate y'all a lot man I'm a Ravens fan and even though I'm a Ravens fan.  I know they are they call it for Trevor Simeon's head and he was making some ugly plays in this game Some kind of head scratches The worst one came toward the end of the game I think it was for your fourth quarter and the Broncos were down obviously they were down most of the game but they were down and Trevor Simeon Was scrambling in a pocket scrambling scrambling scrambling then he rolled out to his right looked at the Marius Thomas he was like oh, that's my guy and Rolled out to the right but through across his body to the left And he threw it right. I believe that was Philip games. They caught the pick. I don't remember for sure I know it's number 25, but um, he thought right to him. He thought right to him.  He's done it before but you don't expect him to do that every week You expect him to manage the game though. You expect him to keep keep the game under control not turn the ball over But but still make some throws at the same time And normally he's pretty decent at doing that, but This game was just nasty Now will they give Brock a shot? I don't think they're gonna give Brock a shot unless Trevor Simeon has another bad game my opinion. No could be wrong. We'll see But I don't think it'll be Brock's time until at least another week of Simeon if and if he does bad Then I think they'll throw Brock out there because they they still in it They still in it right now the Chiefs got that division, but it ain't over till it's over And there's still a wild card spot, too So they're still in it. So whatever move they're gonna make They got to make it. They got to make it soon and be willing to stick with it They got to make the move soon be willing to stick with it. Now if we flip the ball to the other side Alex Smith may Chiefs offense Chiefs team period of defense, too They trying to fight for something this year, man Chiefs are really trying to fight for something this year. They trying to prove that a lot of people doubt them Who to myself? I wanted those people and I still I'm still not completely sold on them Most on the playoffs. I know what they could do a regular season I know they gonna win some games in regular season, but I'm not I'm not what's up Anthony appreciate that man I'm not still completely sold on him, but Their record says engraving you ain't got to be sold on us. We're winning We're winning We only lost two games So you ain't got to be sold on us, but we're selling ourselves by our record so They've been doing that thing so much respect to the Chiefs man much respect to the Chiefs Alex Smith has been not only throwing touchdowns, but not turning the ball over man He has been oh nice when all your fantasies open He has been careful with the ball, but at the same time he has made plays he's made plays and Alex Smith just Continues to Elevate himself Elevators, uh his play. I love what they are. I love the play callers in Kansas City because like I said, they're offensive line not the best in the world, but they get the Ball out quickly they get the ball out quickly and it makes such a big difference and They excel they come at you with a screen pass They obviously got a nice running game so that nice running game sets up a lot of different stuff But they got Kareem hunting the backfield. He's been doing this thing tonight wasn't his best game But every game's not gonna be a hundred yards from scrimmage game like they've been saying for the past What seven games every game ain't gonna be like that and that's fine But as long as they're winning. That's all that matters Travis Kels I don't know where this dude learned to dance like that. I don't know if he grew up He grew up in the hood or so. I don't know what Travis Kels might be the dude might be the coolest titan in the league Might be the coolest titan in the league not Gronk Travis Kels He is the coolest titan in the league The dude the dude dances better than some black guys Shout out to him man When he start I think he was doing the jerk or something when he scored that first touchdown I say, oh man, what like who is that? But we already know how Travis Kels gets down man The dude is real deal and the thing I like about Travis Kels is that he has fun with it The dude has fun with it. He has a lot of fun playing. You can tell he loves football, man He loves football and he loves just entertaining. He loves just having fun shout out to him but Anyway, Marcus Peters Marcus Peters Geez Marcus Peters and oh Kevin appreciate you subscribing man. Thank you. Marcus Peters he must have had Magnus in his gloves because he The ball just kept coming to him today He got the fumble return for a touchdown then he went in um And I know cheese fans had to love that especially since it was Jamal Charles He had to love that But he got the fumble return for a touchdown then he got an interception and he tried to take it back, buddy He's couldn't do it So big shout out to Marcus Peters who has ever since his rookie year He's just established yourself as one of the better cornerbacks in the league and he's been consistent It's the best thing about it. It's the best thing when you have a cornerback. That's one can stay healthy That's to a great tackler in three consistent and four causes turnovers That's huge because there's some cornerbacks who are nice. They'll cover anybody in the league, but they don't really Get turnovers and that's fine. Not everybody's gonna get turnovers, but Marcus Peters does everything Covers well tackles well and gets them turnovers man Turnovers are big. It's big because that they changed the game They literally changed the game So a big shout out to him man but anyway This was a game it was it was kind of hard to pay attention to this game because just of all the stuff that was going on When this game first started the trades With the Seahawks in the Texans Patriots are 49 us There was some big trades now Those some big trades was how it was hard to focus on this But then and then Ezekiel Elliott news came out, but then everything died down then we got to really focus on the game So anyway I'ma go ahead and get off of here now. I appreciate y'all for coming through again If you're new here, make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel if you're old here Make sure you stay subscribed turn your notifications on some of y'all be missing the videos and then come on a video later I'll be like man. I didn't even know you're streaming. You got to have your notifications turned on If you have your notifications turned on on here, you'll always know when we go live if you follow on Twitter too Follow on Twitter you always know when we go live because I always tweet out the video right before I'm about to go live always Or the last one didn't notify see there it goes man, and then of course YouTube have their mess ups, too They always do they always will they always have But anyway, appreciate y'all man. Thank you. Make sure you leave a like on the video if you haven't already Congrats to your chiefs fans man. Enjoy the win winning has been great for y'all. Obviously stuff has been working out there in Kansas City So enjoy it man. Appreciate y'all. Thank you and good night


I'm eating some cashews, I paned with salt, I paned fried I guess, not fried, but just heated on low heat, and watermelon, feta cheese.   So the salt reduces the bloating of watermelon. I know that some people even put salt on watermelon, right? It reduces the bloatingness.


One of my favorite things about the martial arts, other than the whole, you know, being able to defend yourself deal, is the cultural reference that goes into each art. Many styles of karate, Chinese martial arts, jiu jitsu, and others have such deep roots embedded in their cultures. So it's no surprise that you would find a lot of significant symbols to emerge and represent their art. I previously did a video breaking down the IKKA Ed Parker Kempo crests, which is the symbol of my art, American Kempo. If you haven't seen that one, I do recommend checking it out as a lot of thought and consideration went into its design. We also took a look at the Kanku, the official emblem of Kyokushin karate, and what that stood for in the history of Kyokushin. Now breaking down these symbols stirred my interest, and I wanted to explore more symbols and other art crests. So today we're going to take a quick look at the Shotokan Tiger logo. This is the official emblem of Shotokan karate, as created by founder, Genshin Funakoshi. Now, we'll be delving much deeper into Funakoshi's life when we come back around to the history of Shotokan episode, but for those who are unfamiliar with him, he has quite the significant place in martial arts history. He not only founded the art of Shotokan, but he was also a major pioneer in spreading karate from Okinawa into Japan, and he's sometimes called the father of modern-day karate. He was also a poet, and he was known to spend time contemplating and meditating in Mount Torau in Okinawa, which is also known as the Tiger Tail Mountain. He often liked to spend time in solitude, particularly after a long day of training, and he found his refuge in the narrow, pine tree-covered mountain trail. He would often sit up there at night under the moon and listen to the breeze as it gently whispered through the pine trees, and it reminded him of the sound of ocean waves breaking along the shore. This inspired a lot of poetic imagery for him, and he took on the pen name of Shoto, which means pine waves. Funakoshi was a student of the Okinawan arts, and eventually he established his own art, which was derived from Shoreiru and Shorinru. As a fun fact, he never actually gave his art a name, he simply referred to it as karate. The name Shotokan came into being when he opened his first dojo in 1936. Kan means house or hall, so the word Shotokan translates to house or hall of pine waves. When students would train, they would say they were going to the Shotokan, and over time the name stuck and became the moniker for the art. Now, with all of that established, Funakoshi had a great artist friend named Hoan Kosugi. Kosugi was believed to be instrumental in inspiring Funakoshi to spread his art, and it is said that Kosugi convinced him to write down all his notes on the art into a master text, also known as a Toronomaki. This refers to an old tradition that goes way back when a master would write down all their notes in a long scroll, which became the master text. Even though that tradition was already pretty much gone by Funakoshi's time, Kosugi convinced him that this could be his Toronomaki. He also promised to paint the cover of the book if he were to finish it. So Funakoshi went on to write his book, Ryukyu Karate Kempo, and publish it in 1922. I have seen some references saying that this might possibly be the first official book written on karate in the world, but I would be interested to hear if anyone has any more insight on that. So Kosugi kept his promise and he painted the cover for the book, which included the image of a tiger. This was an interesting choice because there are no tigers in Japan. However, the tiger is often the symbol of power, strength, and ferocity. In a Chinese culture, the tiger can also represent keen awareness and never sleeping. The choice of the tiger image is also very fitting in that Funakoshi spent his free time, up in peace, in the Tiger Tail Mountains. And even though the name Toronomaki means master text or master scroll, the word Torah in Japanese sometimes also means tiger. So you can often see the text referred to as the tiger scroll. So the image of the tiger fit the poetic symbolism often associated with Funakoshi. This tiger is also inside of a circle to show that it is contained. It is a power and a strength that should not be used liberally, but rather with discretion and should remain contained until only when it was necessary to unleash its power. The circle is also imperfect to show that it was done in one continuous stroke. I also saw a reference to the design of the tiger itself. Kosugi didn't just draw a tiger, but rather he compiled a collection of lines and patterns that individually represent nothing when put together as a whole make up the image of a tiger. This is also representative of Shodokan and honestly this can be applied to any art really. The idea is that the art is not composed of just one piece. It is a system of very important smaller ideas that when put together create a larger, more powerful concept. I absolutely love that idea and it really makes me appreciate this Toronomaki even more. And if you look really close to the tiger's tail you can see a little part of Kosugi's signature in Kanji. That's a lot of thought in one simple image. Now some of you might get a kick out of this. This was something I discovered only recently and I found it both funny and shameful at the same time. See this right here is my first karateki ever. I was 14 and I had just started taking Kempo. Our school for the first few years was pretty heavily commercialized, but not over the top.  Now to credit the school we were never forced to purchase anything, especially patches, but we were allowed to get anything that we wanted. Now I thought that was awesome and a great way to personalize my uniform and they had a huge selection. So you know I found a couple that I liked, had them sit on my uniform and went about my training. Now just recently as I was pulling uniforms out of my closet, I've collected quite a few over the past 26 years and I was pulling them out because I'll be going through all of them as a Patreon video, but when I got to this one I just had to laugh. Look what I chose to put on the most important part of my uniform. I had apparently worn the Shodokan Torinomaki for the first three to four years of my training without even realizing I was representing another art over my heart. I find it funny because you know I have a cultural interest in Shodokan now, so this kind of seems ironically fitting, but I also find it shameful that I didn't know this earlier or that my instructor didn't teach me the meaning behind this if even he knew it himself. So there's that. In any case, I highly respect this symbol and I can't wait to delve into the art even more when we circle back around to the history of Shodokan. Now if you are interested in Funakoshi's book, it was republished again later under the name of Karate Do Kyohan and I put a link to that in the description below, so please be sure to go check that out. Thanks for watching. Please like and subscribe. Go back to our Patreon to see the uniform video and other exclusive content. Thanks everyone. We'll see you on the map.


So, content in this online class is delivered via video lectures. And this is kind of an unusual, or I don't know, I don't know if it's unusual or what. But I think the unusual aspect of these videos is that they're literally the lecture you would receive from me if we were in a face-to-face classroom situation. The only difference is that you can't answer ask questions in real time, I won't answer them in real time. But the videos are found on YouTube, although all of them are embedded in Canvas as well. If you ever get lost, you can go hunt things down in YouTube. And I just want to show you my YouTube channel so that you have a sense of how it's organized here. You can search WendyRiggs on YouTube and my stuff will come up. I actually, I don't teach human anatomy or physiology online, thank the Lord. However, I flip the classes, so I've got video lectures for every class I teach. And that is because students have to actually watch the videos before coming to class. Then during lecture time, we play games and do stuff. In this online class, I just am using my general biology video lectures. The exact same content you would receive in a face-to-face class. The video lecture bit, you got to know. Number one, the videos can be up to an hour or even a little over an hour long each. They're dense. They're the content that I would be delivering in face-to-face class, drawing you pictures. I draw pictures on these things. I show you pictures on these things. I ask you questions on these things. They're also me. And you probably get an idea just from this like intro video that I can be sort of like weird and I go off on weird tangents and I come up with weird analogies, whatever. Like that's just me. And so you get me delivering this information to you. People are like, ah, no, I don't want to see that lady talking at me anymore. And I want to assure you that if you read the textbook assignment, instead, look, you can read the textbook. On this calendar, there is a reading assignment associated with the open stacks, concepts of bio textbook that's free and open. You can read that and not have to watch the video lectures. That said, I would argue that watching the videos is going to be a lot faster than reading the textbook, probably in most cases. It's also going to help you target the things that I'm specifically going to be talking to you about. And I actually am going to try and show you, let's see, maybe I will go into the old online bio course. Because what I want to show you really fast is, I want to show you what the video lectures look like in Canvas so that you can see, where'd I go? Video, biodiversity. I've actually embedded, ah, what? No. Okay, whatever, I was trying to work it out. You all leave student view. Because I know I got access. I got access to everything. It's an all access pass. Go, go, give me out of here. Now, look at all these things I have access to. This video lecture, and look at all these things that are not published. Oh yeah, okay, so anyway. The video, most of them, yikes, this is terrifying.  The video is embedded in here. If you pull open this side menu, you can see all the parts of the video. And so you can scan around to the ones that are relevant to you. You can also, on every single one, there is a set of lecture notes, a page of helpful resources, and a page of study questions. I often am asked, dude, I need a study guide. Yeah, there it is. So you do have a study guide for every lecture. The other thing that's cool about the Canvas version of this is that there's a discussion board below it and you can't see it because the page is too small. You can actually reply to the video and ask questions.  You can ask a question like, dude, Riggs, you mentioned histone proteins, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Help. And then someone, either a classmate or me, will come in and reply to you and hopefully clarify some things. So I prefer you to watch in Canvas because we can facilitate conversation a little easier in Canvas. But, I mean, who knows who you're going to find on YouTube to talk to about the video. So I guess you can go there, too. All right. I just want to make sure that you understand that the content is delivered via video and that textbook, reading the textbook and understanding the textbook is a totally fantastic alternative. All right. Be right back.


Daniel Medvedev vs John Isner is the second semi-final for the Canadian Open for 2021. Both players have had to fight their way to get into the semi-final stage. John Isner started the tournament off taking on another unseeded player for Kena in the first round and after a close first set Isner would get through in straight 6-4, 6-1. His second round opponent would be the 13th seed Garin and although Garin is more of a clay court player he pushed Isner into 3 with the big American eventually prevailing 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. His third round opponent would be against top 10 player Andre Rublev, the number 4 seed at this event and Isner looked very impressive against Rublev who seemed to struggle with the Isner power with Isner getting through in two tight sets 7-5, 7-6. His quarter-final opponent would be against the 11th seed and Frenchman Gael Montfies and after a very close first set Isner ended up winning in straight sets 7-6, 6-4. Medvedev came into this tournament as the number one seed and would get a buy in the first round. His second round opponent was against Bublik, a player that he's played a lot this year and after Bublik won the first set Medvedev was in a lot of trouble and seemed to be struggling mentally but he pulled himself together eventually prevailing in three sets 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. His third round opponent was against the qualifier Duckworth who had just come off beating Yannick Sinner in the second round. Medvedev was too good on this occasion winning in straight sets 6-2, 6-4. His quarter-final opponent was against the 7th seed and Miami Open champion Hubey Hercatch and after getting destroyed in the first set Medvedev hung on to eventually win in 3, 2-6, 7-6, 7-6. These two have only played the one time before that was at the ATP Cup last year in 2020 with Medvedev getting the pretty easy straight sets win 3-1. If Isner is going to get his first win against Medvedev he's going to have to serve well and he's probably going to have to win a couple of tie breaks. We saw that Medvedev played really well in the tie breaks against Hercatch but Isner's going to have to serve well and take the baseline away from Medvedev, make Medvedev move and make him run around. If Medvedev's going to win this one he just needs to be patient. We know Isner's going to serve aces, he knows that Isner's going to hit big serves and push him around a lot and probably going to get a lot of easy free points. Medvedev just needs to be patient and outrally Isner. We know Isner hasn't got the best movement so that's what he needs to do. He needs to make sure that Isner's on the run and he might get some chances to break if Isner does get tired. This is going to be an interesting one for me because Medvedev did beat Isner pretty easily in their only match up but against who be Hercatch Medvedev looked a little bit shaky, hit a lot of errors as well. So I'm going to go with Medvedev but it's going to be 3 sets I reckon, a few tie breaks as well just like we saw when he played against Hercatch but let me know down in the comments below. Who do you think is going to win this semifinal?


Hell yeah, what's up guys, this is Chris Pike. My friends, call me Big C. Back in action today, we're talking about MMORPGs. That's right, for you guys that are in your 30s and 40s, do you remember back 10, 20 years ago, when we didn't have families and wives and kids and responsibilities and would play video games for 12 hours a day? Yeah, I'm guilty. I know George is too. I know you're watching this, George. You did it too. What's up, bro? But jokes aside, guys, I wanna talk to you about some of the best upcoming MMORPGs. Not only this year, but in the near future. And these aren't my opinions.  And this guy is a hardcore MMORPG guy. He lives in Thailand. He walks the walk. He talks the talk. This is an fantastic video. We've got some of the highlights from it. Using the heartbeat tool. Links in the description below. Let's get cracking starting off with ashes of creation. All right, so let's kick it off here. I'm on H.KI or H-key. And you'll see here that right here, we're gonna kick it off with ashes of creation. And click on the first moment, which starts pretty quick at the four second mark. Let's get this cracking. Gonna turn the volume on here. And on the right side, before I hit play, you'll see here I've got all of these moments that I've selected out of the lazy peon's video. So let's kick it off. Here we go. Yeah, real talk here. The games are set to launch in one year and then, you know, because it's an MMORPG. Three years later, you're still waiting for it. But anyways, let's keep going. Whilst 2023 was a decent year for new MMORPG announcements, we didn't exactly have a whole lot of releases. Surely 2024 will be better, right? Keep in mind some of the games mentioned in this video will never actually come out. And the ones that do will likely disappoint you. So there you go. Lower your expectations accordingly. A little bit of a dour start. But in the MMORPG world, a lot of people have been burned by a lot of games. So let's kick it off here. I'm gonna click on the first moment for Ashes of Creation that I found interesting. Ashes of Creation. In 2023, Ashes has made amazing progress and over the past few months of development update live streams has shown multiple core systems working from the caravan system to crafting, player housing, world boss fights, the event system, and most recently, a big improvement to the game's combat with the new Ranger class gameplay update. Ashes is a Sand Park MMO catering to both PVP and PvE players. That's gonna be nice. So for you, World of Warcraft PvPers that are kinda itching for something, this has the potential right there. And the PvE, which is pretty much all the population really that plays this game, it's all gonna be here. So in theory, this is looking pretty good. Let's kick it forward to the business model, which does appeal to me. Self, due to its fair business model, going with the good old sub-fee, no box cost and cosmetic only cash shop approach with zero pay to win. All right, so you heard it there. There's no box fee, subscription fee style. So I mean, it's not even World of Warcraft-y where you have to pay for the game and the upgrade at least as of now. And no pay to win, how nice is that, hey? Cosmetics only. So it just sounds like a win all around. Let's kick forward a little bit here.  Overall, Ashes stands out as one of the most ambitious MMORPGs on the horizon with alpha two confirmed for Q3 2024. As for a full release date, I'd have to speculate late 2025 or even 2026, but it's really hard to tell. So there you go. It's gonna be having a Q3, which I guess could be anytime between like, right up to the end of September, I suppose. I'm just trying to think, yeah, September, yeah. I can count, I got this. So there you go. And it could be in 2025, 2026. There's no hard date yet, but overall it looks pretty damn good. Let's skip forward now. The second game that I really have a pretty good interest in is called Pax Die. And this is a medieval, based on a medieval legend. It's quite the idea here. Let's kick forward. Pax Day is an upcoming social sandbox MMORPG set in a vast fantasy world inspired by medieval legends. Embracing a cloud native MMO concept, the game allows players to seamlessly play on any screen or device. In terms... There you go. So that's one big win, any screen or device. And it's Pax Day, not Pax Die. Sorry, my Latin is not up to snuff. Let's just leave it at that. Let's kick forward a little more and check out a little more on this game. The gameplay, the thing that sticks out for me, the most with Pax Day is its player created settlements. The building in this game looks absolutely insane and is likely to be best in genre in this aspect. All you Valheimers and various crafting survival types, you're going to want to take a look at that. This has that built into the game. And if he says it's one of the best ones he's seen, he doesn't BS. So it's definitely worth a look. Pax Day basically seems like it'll be a medieval Eve online with a big focus on resource gathering, crafting, exploration, and a mix of both PVP and PVE. The recent alpha demonstrated promising progress and... Okay, so PVP and PVE. And it's already been in alpha. Let's hear the last part of your though. Fortunately, I didn't get invited to the play test, hence why I didn't cover it on my channel when every other content creator did. Okay, so that could be a red flag. If he wasn't invited and everyone else was, that does not make a lot of sense to me. I have no opinion on that. Other than what the heck? So anyways, there's the second one. Let's get forward a little bit more. The next one's called Codename Ghost. We're gonna have to go over a little minute forward here, but it's gonna be worth it. After leaving Riot Games, Ghostcrawler created a fantastic Pixel Castle studio and started the development of a game with the codename Ghost after receiving a sizeable investment from NetEase. So yeah, just a quick heads up there. The fellow here, he left Riot Games because Riot Games has or had, I don't know, it's kind of out there, but they had an MMORPG in the pipeline as far as anyone could tell. But what's going on with that and where it's at in the development cycle or what it's about, or really anything is really kind of, nobody really knows. So anyways, this is Ghost. He started his own studio and here we go. The game is still in the very early stages of development, but according to Ghostcrawler, they want to bring back central pillars of the MMO experience, such as playing with friends and building a community as MMOs have moved too far towards solo adventuring. So I gotta give him credit on that. That has been my experience as well. When I played World of Warcraft and I started out, it was all about friends and the experience with your people, not solo adventuring alone. That's what Skyrim's for. All right, let's kick forward a little bit here. He's gonna talk about the shard system. The peculiarities of Ghost will be its shard system where the player will alternate between private realms called blue shards, which will have a similar experience to games such as V Rising and public red shards, which will have a more traditional MMORPG experience. So there you heard it. It's gonna have multiple realms there, PVP, PVE. It sounds pretty darn interesting. So again, put that one on your calendar. I don't know when it's gonna release, but it looks good. So here we go. I'm gonna skip forward a little more now to Chrono Odyssey. Keep in mind part of me that this one is built with the Unreal Engine 5 or UE5. Chrono Odyssey is a Korean open world MMORPG made in Unreal Engine 5 that will be available on both PC and console. This game looks absolutely stunning and the recent gameplay trailer is quite promising. It includes classic fantasy RPG classes such as Archer, Warrior, Berserker and Mage. Ah, a little bit of Diablo style in there. But it also introduces guns, hammers, and as the game's name implies, various time-bending abilities. Chrono Odyssey kind of gives me beady O-vibes with its graphics, epic-looking combat and giant monsters. But beyond that, the details are scarce. Yes, so I mean, I'll be honest, I remember long time ago, George and I were excited for a game called Ion and it looked great and then it just disappointed. So I mean, fingers crossed, they got it right on this one, but it does look pretty good. Here's hoping. Let's skip forward to Path of Exile 2 and before you flame me for saying that's not an MMORPG, I know, but it's still in the list and he's going to explain to you why. Path of Exile 2. Not really an MMORPG, but I know all my MMO friends will be playing this game as soon as it comes out. Path of Exile 2 is a free to play next-gen ARPG that promises to outdo its very successful prequel as well as offer a much more in-depth gameplay experience to competitor Diablo 4, which released in 2023. Yeah, so there you heard it. It's basically a D4, not a clone, but it's a competitor and it sure does have some Diablo-esque-looking vibes going on here, but let's kick forward a little more and check out a little more of this one. Earlier in the year, Grinding Gear Games released a new gameplay trailer for PoE 2 and an announcement for the first closed beta, which begins June 7th, 2024. June 7th, 2024. The closed beta is coming. I'm not sure how you can sign up for it, but I would recommend maybe go onto their website and we're sending them an email or saying, hey, I'm a huge YouTuber, send me a code or whatever you need to do these days. So anyways, let's skip forward quite a bit here to Core Punk. This is a really cool fusion type game that I look forward to. You'll see here. Core Punk is quite a unique MMORPG. It tries to bridge the gap between MOBA and MMO with top-down gameplay and Fog of War, which serves as a way to incentivize exploration in the open world. Yeah, so top-down, kind of fusion-ish. I get some League of Legends, but with higher contrast and saturation values, type artwork, not necessarily gameplay, don't get me wrong, but let's check out a little more here. Besides the MOBA-like combat system, you still have your classic MMORPG systems like gathering, crafting quests, randomly generated dungeons and raids. The game had a beta test fairly recently. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to play it, but next beta test I'll jump in and make a first impressions video. So far, Core Punk is looking highly likely to release sometime in 2024. So there you go. It might be this year, which would be nice. You always, you know, if a game looks great, but it's 10 years away, older scrolls, I'm looking at you. You know, it's hard to stay pumped up for it, but this one could be coming soon. Anyways, I'm gonna skip forward to another one here. This is one that I personally want, and I played all of the, I mean, all the space shooters when I was a young guy. Yeah, just check it out. With its crowdfunding of over $500 million, Star Citizen is the most ambitious game ever. So it's an ambitious game. It's got $500 million. Yeah, that's how much money it's raised. Not like a million or two, half a billion. Yeah, keep that, yeah, half a billion. That's just madness. Let's keep going. And whilst after a decade in development, we still have no full release date, we did finally get an incredible gameplay trailer for Squadron 42, the single player campaign version of Star Citizen earlier in 2023. Star Citizen has been playable in a testing state for a few years and does have a dedicated community, some of which make epic videos about all of the latest updates. For many though, the game has been in development for so long that they've just tuned out. One of the things for certain though, if Star Citizen ever does release, it will probably be the best sci-fi MMO ever created. So there you go. I actually own it and I played a little bit of the beta with my buddy Steph a year and a half ago, a year ago maybe, and it was pretty fun.  If it does, yeah, I don't know, man. I just, I wanna go get some kill, Rathi. If you know, you know. All right, let's go to the last one here at 13 minutes. So we're gonna skip forward a couple of minutes and it's called the Quinnfall. And it makes a pretty big claim. The Quinnfall is an upcoming MMORPG that makes the ambitious claim to bring us the largest open worlds we have ever seen. Yeah, that's a huge claim, people. That is a huge claim. Let's keep going. In Quinnfall, your class will be decided by the combination of weapons you equip. You'll be able to have your own shop in the world, play minigames and board games in taverns with other players, explore secret dungeons filled with puzzles, gather craft fish, and pretty much do everything your heart desires.  Let's keep going. This is a big promise and it's possible that Quinnfall is attempting too much, which doesn't always turn out too well. The game's release was set to be on January 20th, 2024, according to their Steam page, but the sneaky devs changed it very recently to Coming Soon, instead launching a closed beta test on January 30th instead. I've not had the chance to play the beta personally, and I'm extremely skeptical that this dev team has managed to pull off such an ambitious project in such a short space of time. Yeah, so there's that, guys. It's kind of sneaky that they would just change it from release date to Coming Soon. And yeah, they are trying to pull off a whole lot of stuff here, so I'm skeptical as well, but you know what, you never know. Let's just watch the last few seconds and then we'll wrap it up. But based on some of the footage I've seen of the game on YouTube, the Quinnfall does seem to be somewhat playable, so it's already surpassed my expectations because I genuinely thought it was a scam. Okay, so low expectations. So there you go, guys. This is a very long video. There's another nine more minutes of this, but the last eight or nine games, 10 games that he covers don't really interest me and they go in order from the most excited at the beginning to the least excited at the end. So we covered all the big ones and the most exciting ones other than the Riot game, which I opted to not cover because I don't believe it's gonna come out. But there you go, guys. That's my opinion. Check out his video. Check out Heartbeat. Let me know what you think of the video in the description or in the comments below. Thanks for watching.


So friends we have taken a new problem to apply the basics that we have learned and to learn how we can you know step by step approach the problem. So here goes the problem there is a small m kept on a larger mass capital M. The length of capital M is small l alright. The coefficient of friction between small m and capital M is mu by 2 and coefficient of friction between capital M and the ground is mu okay. Here we need to find out how much time small m takes to cross the capital M right. Now what comes in your mind when you look at this problem. When we look at this problem the entire system is moving towards the right hand side right. It is moving with velocity v it just started. Now what is the direction of friction force on capital M. From the ground of course it is moving relatively forward. So from the ground there must be a friction in the backward direction on capital M right. What about friction between small m and capital M. Now small m was at rest initially and it has been pulled towards the right hand side because of the friction between capital M and small m. So that is the reason why friction force on small m will be forward direction. So now let us take one by one these two masses and we will represent all the forces and acceleration. If you take a small m mass what are forces will be applied on it. There will be a gravitation force right its value will be mg and there will be normal reaction between capital M and small m n1 right and then there will be a friction mu times n1. This force since this normal reaction is applied by capital M on small m the small m also applies normal reaction in opposite direction. So this will be a pair of n1. So this is n1 force right. There will be mg force downward on the bigger mass and there will be normal reaction from the ground on capital M okay. Now this friction force is applied by capital M on small m. So there must be a pair of this friction force on the left hand side. Let us call this mu times n1 okay. Now there will be another friction there will be another friction between capital M and the ground that friction force value will be mu times n2. So the coefficient of friction value between small m and capital M is mu by 2. So let us correct this. This is mu by 2 into n1 okay and similarly here it is mu by 2 into n1 okay. Now let us write down Newton's second law of equation for small m and capital M. At times what happens student get confused with the fact that velocity is given and they start to visualize in terms of velocity but you should remember the Newton's second law of equation is for the acceleration it is not for velocity right. There is no direct relation between instantaneous velocity and acceleration. Acceleration is rate of change of velocity okay. So if we write the Newton's second law of equation for small m along horizontal direction I will get it as mu by 2 and 1 is the only force along horizontal direction isn't it. This will be equal to mass time acceleration of small m fine and along vertical direction I will get n1 minus mg is equal to 0 since there is no acceleration in vertical direction alright. Now let us write down equation for capital M also along the horizontal direction what all forces you see. There is mu by 2 n1 force backward direction minus mu times n2 force right. This will be equal to mass time accession of capital M fine. So accession of small m will be in this way let us call this as a1 and for capital M accession is backward direction we are calling it as a2 okay. Along the vertical direction we will get mg plus n1 minus n2 is equal to 0 right. So we have four equations how many variables we have we have a1 a2 n1 and n2. So we can solve these four equations to get the value of a1 and a2. So now we can assume that we have the value of a1 and value of a2. Now the question says how much time it takes for this small m to topple from the capital M. Now if we see the motion of small m it goes from this end point number 1 and it must cross this point number 2 to topple over okay. So the total length it covers is l. Now is this length an actual length or it is a relative length compared to or with respect to capital M. It is a relative displacement right. What will happen the small m and capital M will move together with respect to capital M small m moves a distance of l fine and what is the acceleration along the length along the length it has acceleration a1 fine and capital M has acceleration backward direction which is a2. So net acceleration of approach from 1 to 2 is what? This one let us suppose is small m which is moving with a1 and this capital M is coming towards it with a2. So acceleration of approach is a1 plus a2. Let us call this as an. We will say that this is a net acceleration okay. Now initial velocity of approach is how much? We have seen that both have started moving together. This point number 1 and point number 2 both are going in this direction with same velocity. So their velocity of approach is 0. So initial velocity is 0 and displacement which is relative displacement since we are talking about relative variable is l. So which equation comes in mind to find the value of time? s equals to ut plus half at square right. So if I use s equal to ut plus half at square here and I substitute value of s as l, u as 0 and a as a1 plus a2 I will get the value of t okay. So this is how you solve the particular question. I hope now you feel comfortable in applying the basics on problem like these okay. So thanks for watching the video. We will come back with few more problem solving videos which will be testing you on different type of concepts okay.


Good morning. I'm Vice Admiral Robin Braun, Chief of Navy Reserve. I want to welcome you to this Returning Warrior workshop, and I think you'll enjoy the events and the speakers we have planned for this weekend. I also want to thank you for your service. Whether you returned last month or a year ago, it's great to have you home. This is our opportunity to thank you and your loved ones for your shared sacrifice during your deployment. We hope that your experiences this weekend will be positive and will help you to reintegrate back home. This workshop is designed for both returning warriors and family or friends because for the spouses or loved ones at home, you may have faced challenges too, carrying the burden of extra responsibilities while your service member was deployed. So my hope for this weekend is that you'll take time to relax, reconnect, and realize that others may share the same experiences you do, that others face some of the same challenges, expectations, and thoughts during deployment or upon returning home. I also hope you'll become more aware of the resources that are available to you, and I hope you'll share your stories with others and talk about what you've learned. Most of all, I hope you'll enjoy the weekend, make new friendships, and come away refreshed. Opening up and sharing experiences with others isn't always easy. Sailors and Marines are taught to focus on the mission and get the job done. And those who stay behind are encouraged to be strong for their loved ones while balancing the many demands back home. Through your discussions this weekend, I believe your relationships with your loved ones have the potential to grow even stronger. It's important that we develop resilience, the ability to deal with stress and to adapt. Resilience is not something you were born with, nor does it mean that you're immune from sadness or fear. Resilience is developed as you gain knowledge and experience, and it grows from supportive relationships, moral beliefs, and traditions that help you through life's ups and downs.  Rest assured that many are on the same journey, and you're not alone. And always know that we honor your service and sacrifice. Without your dedication, both at home and in harm's way, our country would not be as strong as it is today. We enjoy our exceptional American way of life due to men and women like you who have given so much of yourselves. Thanks to each of you, those who served on a deployment, and those who sacrificed at home to support our employers.  And I'm proud of your efforts to persevere, to grow from your experiences, and to be resilient.  Thank you for your patriotism, your sacrifices, and your service. Have a great weekend.