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The Bird is the Word: Sophisticated Schoolyard Shenanigans

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Erewhon Smoothies: More than a Drink–a Lifestyle

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By Middle-School Blogger Elizabeth Greenwood

When most people think of smoothies, they don’t picture something glamorous, but Erewhon changed that. Erewhon is not any normal grocery store. Erewhon is an upscale grocery store; it is a health and wellness paradise. The shelves are stocked with all healthy and organic products–which is why their smoothies are so amazing. With their glowing colors, healthy ingredients, and celebrity collabs, these smoothies are more than something you drink–they’re an experience. Here is why I think Erewhon smoothies are not just drinks; they’re a lifestyle. 

Walking into Erewhon is like stepping into a dream: minimalistic, colorful, and clean. The best part? The best part would be the Tonic Bar where the smoothies are made.The Tonic Bar is sleek and modern, with marble countertops where the ingredients are displayed. It almost looks like a cafe. Behind the counter is where the baristas work making the smoothies and other drinks. When first trying these smoothies, you question everything you’ve ever thought about blended fruit. 

My first Erewhon smoothie was a defining moment, an experience that shifted my perception of what a smoothie could be–which for me, was enough to justify the price. Each smoothie can be anywhere from $18 to $23; it is definitely a splurge, but it is worth every penny. Let’s just say if coconut cream, sea moss, and organic almond butter had a fashion show, Erewhon smoothies would be the runway.

Everyone talks about their celebrity collaborations–-because let’s face it; Erewhon is the perfect place for them–but the truth is, all Erewhon smoothies make you feel like you just stepped out of a Pilates class. 

Yes, they’re expensive. Yes, they’re just smoothies, but if you think about it, it’s a self-care ritual that can brighten your day. Erewhon smoothies are proof that health can be delicious and photogenic. Erewhon smoothies are made with healthy ingredients like sea moss and collagen, which are really good for your skin.

Erewhon smoothies are more than smoothies. They define happiness by turning something so simple into a whole experience. I believe that everyone should have a chance to try one at some point in their life. As long as Erewhon sells smoothies, I will buy them. Personally, my favorite smoothie is the Malibu Mango, which is made with mango, coconut cream, and almond milk. If I had to choose another one, I would choose the Hailey Bieber smoothie made with strawberries, hyaluronic acid, avocado, and dates. 

Photo Credit: Erewhon Market

Armpit-gate

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Hopefully, we all regularly use deodorant for our day-to-day lives. We don’t give much thought to it though, and the reality is that there are questions that need answering. What’s the deal with aluminum? Why are “clean deodorants” better than extra strength? This week, conspiracy theorist Jessica Denyer goes armpit-deep in the world of Big Deodorant to expose their dirty secrets. – Editor Levi Kassinove

By Jessica Denyer

I have a conspiracy theory. The last time you went to buy deodorant you probably noticed that there are a few new brands such as Native or Schmidts who are advertising their “clean” deodorants. The main feature of these deodorants is that they are aluminum free. Popular brands like Secret and Dove are also trying to capitalize on this new clean deodorant market. But what does aluminum free in our deodorants even mean? Is aluminum bad for you? What is the deal with these new deodorants? These are questions I asked. 

Now before I start this, I feel like I have to clarify a confusing fact. Antiperspirant is made to stop you from sweating so much. Deodorant is to make you smell less bad. However, nowadays deodorant companies have antiperspirant in them but still advertise them as deodorants. The antiperspirant part is the part that has the aluminum. (Healthline.com)

After a research dive into the internet, I learned that sweat itself does not have a smell, but when it touches your bacteria-ridden skin it does. When the sweat touches the skin of your armpit, which is a warm dark place, the bacteria on your skin mixes with your sweat to give you that classic armpit funk. This is what deodorant is for. It is meant to deodorize, or really remove bacteria from your armpits, or hide smell. WebMD says, “Deodorants offer two forms of protection against odor. The first is antimicrobial properties that reduce the number of bacteria producing odor. The second is a fragrance that masks odor that is produced” (webmd.com). A common concern is that aluminum in antiperspirant/deodorants can cause breast cancer and other not-so-great things, so many choose to avoid aluminum in antiperspirants. The American Cancer Society says, however, that there is no scientific evidence of the link. (Healthline.com)

This got me thinking. I have always been someone who would buy extra strength or clinical strength deodorant out of fear of smelling bad. I’ve always been an athlete, and we live in the desert heat, so sweating is an understandable fear. I would still find myself having to re-apply multiple times a day to achieve my goal of no smell. I would always think to myself, “Geez, it’s not like I have a sweating problem, imagine the people that do. What would they even use?” 

Fast forward on my conspiracy journey to summer of 2021. I was standing in the deodorant aisle at Target, and I decided to smell the Native deodorant for fun. Native claims to be aluminum free, vegan, and cruelty free. I had no plan to buy one as I figured if the extra strength deodorant doesn’t work, the clean deodorant would do absolutely nothing for me. However, I smelled one of them, and it smelled so good that I decided to buy a travel-sized one. The next day I applied it just in the morning, and throughout the day I could smell only the deodorant. By the end of the day, I realized that the deodorant not only kept the “funk” away, but the smell of the deodorant itself was fragrant and lasted all day long. This inspired more research which leads to my actual conspiracy.

So, if the old regular deodorant doesn’t work, and the clinical/extra-strength deodorant only kind of works, then why all of a sudden does this new clean deodorant do the trick? What do they have figured out that everyone else doesn’t? Or do they…

I began researching ingredients, and Native’s website clearly and plainly states that they use baking soda and magnesium hydroxide to act as the antibacterial (anti-stink) component of their deodorant. These are both extremely common things found in everything from antacids to toothpaste and are harmless to the body. There are only 10 ingredients in their extremely effective deodorant, and all of them are natural (Native). On the flip side, when you go onto the Secret website and go to their line of aluminum-free deodorants, they do not list ingredients, just very blankly state that they are just aluminum free (Secret). This is where my conspiracy was born.

Now, technically I have nothing to back this up, but due to this circumstantial evidence, I am now a firm believer in this claim: I think that big deodorant brands choose to leave out a component (natural or not) that is completely anti-stink so that you have to use their product more often and therefore buy more. I feel like this is not too outlandish of a claim. Where before I was buying a deodorant every 2-3 months, I have now been using the same stick for almost 6 months. 

Believe me or don’t, but either way I recommend switching to any deodorant that is aluminum free. 

Drop a comment if you’re with me here.

Frankenstein in Pasadena: The Modern “Modern” Prometheus

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Leo Milmet, along with the PVS junior and senior classes, traveled to Pasadena’s A Noise Within Theatre last month to view the theatre group’s production of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley’s thriller is a staple of English literature. The AP Lit class had just finished reading the book over the summer. Leo, an avid fan of theatre and cinema, submitted this review of the production. His theatrical review is a timely fit, as this week blog celebrates art.

PRODUCTION GRADE: B-


By Guest Writer Leo Milmet

A Noise Within’s production of Frankenstein by Nick Dear was as interesting as it was imperfect. What do I mean by that? The first few moments with the Creature, crawling like a babe, not knowing who or what he is or why he’s been created, are perhaps the best moments in the show. Michael Manuel, the actor playing the Creature shrivels, shudders, shouts, grunts, and mesmerizes his way into the audience’s heads and hearts. He’s fascinating, and the show is worth the price of admission for him alone.  He makes us feel so much sympathy for a character who has been totally dehumanized by his portrayal in popular culture. 

Next to enter the stage, of course, is Victor Frankenstein himself. Now, the actor playing Victor is somewhat of an enigma to me. My main question is, “How could a director good enough to direct Manuel’s performance also be bad enough to direct this one?” Seriously. This actor gives a performance whose over-the-topness would be surprising in a high-school play, let alone a professional one. He plays Frankenstein like we are meant to laugh at his terrible portrayal. I haven’t seen him in anything else, but his portrayal of Victor Frankenstein may be the greatest work of comedy he’s ever done. He bands together with a few truly awful members of a mostly-decent ensemble to ALMOST offset all of the goodwill we’ve gotten from Manuel. What is this actor’s name? Kasey Mahaffy. I understand that it is very hard to recite the line “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!” like it’s well-written, but it can be done so much better. 

Mercifully, the first 30 minutes or so involve very few moments of Mahaffy’s ridiculous performance. Rather, we first see life through the eyes of the first and only member of a species, and it’s heartbreaking. He’s treated about as well as we would treat a rattlesnake on our kitchen table, and it’s sad. The mirror it holds up to society is interesting, and someone was onto something wonderful when he or she decided to populate the stage with mirrors.

As the show continues, it becomes more and more eventful, and the story is fascinating all along; its tone is always of dread; the intent is never to frighten but to create empathy for pretty much everyone, which is very smart because I, for one, find it easy to pity such a lost soul as the Creature. And, if it weren’t for Mahaffy, the play would have succeeded in creating empathy for the major characters, despite some shortcomings in the ensemble department. 

The ensemble is okay at best; the dialogue could use a brush-up; Kasey Mahaffy as Victor Frankenstein is utterly ridiculous. Still, the story’s technical design and especially the brilliantly-characterized performance of Michael Manuel caused me to have a great time watching the play–despite its shortcomings.

*The views of guest writer Milmet are uniquely his own and do not represent the opinions and views of thebirdonfire.org.

Art Editor: Chelsea 

A Review of “Never Gone”

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By Movie Fan Blogger James Zheng

I hardly ever watch Chinese films, but I found a Chinese movie that I really want to talk about. I have several reasons for not watching Chinese movies; the majority of them are really awful.

But not all of them are awful.  While most are low quality products, you can find that ten percent of Chinese movies are exceptional works.

The movie I am going to talk about in this post is a romantic movie that has a simple story. It is mainly about the torturous experience of a couple, the disharmony they have and how they work it out. Well, do they eventually work it out? My answer is watch this film yourself and find out.

The part that draws the most attention is the preparation of actors. Kris Wu, a Chinese Canadian musical artist, is invited by director Zhou Tuoru to perform as the major character in Never Gone. I went into the movie wondering why a director would let a popular music idol be in a film. The director might just as well focus on how good looking the actors are rather than how skilled they are as actors. Two days ago, before I watched Never Gone, I read many negative comments saying how Kris Wu ruined the movie.

After seeing these pathetic comments, I finally chose to watch the movie to give it an “authentic” review. Here it goes–every setting being used in Never Gone has been used at least a thousand times. I could even say that if you are a romantic movie person, you can tell what will happen in the next second; you can see where the plot is going without questioning it. And, dialogues between the characters always give me a sense of being … embarrassed since the dialogue seems improper in that situation or just too generic. And, most times, Kris Wu’s acting just collapses; in other words, his acting is just extremely terrible or over-exaggerated.

So, overall. Is it a worthless film? Just wait: here are some positive things I have to say about it. The story of the movie is really similar to our daily life and reality; it isn’t that dramatic, which is the common flaw the director avoided. In that sense, he rejected the traditional style of romantic movies. In agreement with the negative reviews, I also think that Kris Wu’s acting is truly amateur and inflexible. However, his performance still left me an un-erasable impression. His emotion is real. He expresses his sentiment in the most explicit way. He conscientiously integrates himself into the show; he strives to present to us what the character should be feeling. After all, if you only take it from a single perspective and follow the majority opinion, you may only describe how bad it is. You would never observe Kris Wu’s achievement.

In the end, I am still not sure if I should recommend this movie. If you are interested in a romantic movie, you should try to watch it and see what comments you have.

Editor: Makena Behnke

*Available on Amazon Prime.

These Songs are Actually Pretty Good

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By James Zheng, a surprise music critic blogger

Music, as a part of our daily life, has always accompanied us whenever we need it. And, according to what I have seen so far about what people usually listen to around me, it’s normally either rap music or pop music. I’ve included plenty of unknown songs worth recommending in this post; you might recognize them; maybe not. Let’s find out.

Overall, I categorized them by genre to give you a brief preview of each.

Rock Music

  • Simple Plan the band. Recommendation for their songs: Holding On and Take My Hand. Simple Plan is from Canada. I would consider them as derived from punk rock. I have listened to each of their albums; I am obsessed with their unique style; this style is second to none. They do not generate the conventional idea of rock that makes a very noisy track. They don’t do much heavy metal sound; instead, they have a very cheerful track style. And, before they put the sound of electric guitar in, they usually have a fantastic melody mixed with piano and bass. All of their songs are amazing.
  • Daughtry the band. Recommendation for their songs: It’s Not Over and Over You. Daughtry is from America, and they are more popular than Simple Plan. Their style is a little bit hard to define because they keep changing it in each album. The unique thing about Daughtry is probably the lead vocalist’s–Chris Daughtry’s–wild singing style. You feel like he is yelling, but in fact he is not. He just puts his emotion fully into the song as few people do.

Instrumental Music

  • String For a Queen by ELYZA/Xan. Speaking of instrumental music, String For a Queen is my favorite ever song. The beat keeps rising and falling, it is really unpredictable. In another words, you don’t know what’s coming next, but you are expecting something more, and eventually the better thing than the expectation comes. The String For a Queen has a really dreamlike beat which more sounds like a fantasy motif. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK075fzsDCM
  • Blue by Xeuphoria. Blue has a very tranquil beat. When you are nervous or restless, try to listen to this song and it could help a lot to calm your mind down and make you fall into the enjoyment of this quiet melody.

Electronic Music

  • Demons (Original Mix) by Paris Blohm.
  • Wolves by Selena Gomez, Marshmello.
  • I am not sure if electronic music is popular in America. I think that it is a huge improvement from traditional instrumental music. Initially electronic music was played without lyrics, but to further innovate and make it more exceptional, a DJ (Disc Jockey) decides to add the singing part in to make it better.

Popular Music

  • What Are Words by Chris Medina. This song has a touching story behind it. The incentive for Chris to write this song is due to an accident that happened to his wife. His wife got severely injured and needed a large amount of money to pay for the therapy bill. Chris decided to participate in the show American Idol and strove to get the reward so that he could pay for his wife’s medical bill. Although he was eliminated, the song left an intense impression. The track consists of piano and violin, which is a simple combination of sounds. But he has a great voice and captivating emotion in the song.
  • Color Blind by Matt B. Matt remixed an instrumental song called River Flows in You, and then made Color Blind. Matt has an unexpectedly unique voice; his singing style is quite natural and casual. And the whole rhythm of the song is really relaxing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BInjDfGMUlM

Anime Theme Music

  • Call of Silence by Gemie. Call of Silence is a interlude song within the anime called Attack On Titan 2nd Season. It is more likely to be a character song. The whole song is in English without a singing accent; you can understand the lyrics clearly.  
  • Red Swan by YOSHIKI/HYDE. Red Swan is the theme song for Attack On Titan 3rd Season, and most of the lyrics are in English. It is a light rock song fused with the sound of piano.

If you listen to music a lot and have not yet known these songs, I strongly suggest you to get know them. You might step into a new musical realm.

Undercover–Another recommendation for a party game.

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By James Zheng, with Expert Party Advice

When Editor Holden asked for submissions that “spice up everyday life,” James went back to party games and how to spice up your party life, or how to be the life of the party. (This joke was made by Ms. Zachik, not Holden, for the record).

I did a post about the Werewolves game, and, then, soon after I found more excellent recommendations for party games. The game I am going to introduce in this post is less difficult to learn and more entertaining to play.

Undercover, which is also called Who is the Spy, was generated from a game that appeared in a Chinese variety show consisting of guest interviews and gaming interaction. It became a really popular party board game, and then a game developer created the online version Undercover.

The recommended amount of players is five to eight with one moderator. The most significant part of this game is that the moderator needs to decide on a “major” word and a “minor” word and write them on the paper to hand out later to participants. The “major” word and “minor” word represent the identities of the players. The player who holds the major word is the “civilian”; the player who holds the minor card is the “undercover.” And, to decide what the major word and minor word will be, the moderator needs to find two words that have similar meaning. The words can be anything as long as they are similar. If the amount of civilians is no more than five, the amount of undercover will just be one.

The gameplay of Undercover has the same feature as the Werewolves game–players need to talk during the game process. The players’ ability to express themselves is an important factor in deciding the result of the game. At the beginning of the game, each participant is given a pre-written paper as their identity–civilian or undercover. Then, each of them has to describe what their word is or means. After everyone finishes the description, everyone has to vote for one person who they think is the undercover. When the person is out, the moderator needs to check if that person holds the major word or minor word to decide if the game is still on or finished. The winning precondition for the undercover is when the amount of undercovers is the same as the civilians.

Basic Gaming Rules and Hints:

  • The person who holds the minor word does not know that they are the undercover, so the only way to find out is to listen to everyone’s description to see if they are holding the same or different word, then to guess what the major word is to mask themselves.
  • You CANNOT put the word that you are holding into your description. A person’s description cannot be too short or abstract, but it could be long if the person wants to speak more.
  • If you are playing as a civilian, of course you don’t want to spoil your word too much for the undercover. But, at the same time, your description cannot be too short or abstract; you can be just a little bit specific or try to find the characteristic that the word has. Try to organize your language at a perfect length to let other civilians trust you.       

Depending on what words the moderator comes up with, the game can be played at different levels. Undercover is really easy to learn; the preparation is also pretty simple. Play with your friends and enjoy it!

Editor: Holden Hartle

A Review of “This War of Mine”–Those Behind the War

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By James Zheng, Blogger & Gaming Critic

Are games just games? Are games just for entertainment? That’s what I used to think. But now I have a completely different answer ever since I found This War of Mine. People say that you can see the nature of yourself when you are playing games because your mind is fully involved in the gaming. This War of Mine (TWOM) is a reflection of yourself.

TWOM was developed and published by 11 Bit Studios, a game company located in Poland. It’s not a commonly known gaming company, and currently they have just reached about 100 employees, but this game was released five years ago. It was quickly nominated as the Game of the Year on Steam. I was impressed by this small but growing company.

Game critic Johnny Durn writes, “For soldiers, war is about victory. For us, war is about getting through.” TWOM is a realistic survival game. In this game, the background is set during a period of war, and you get to select a group of people to control in order to survive as long as you can in a shelter. Depending on the group, each character will have different abilities or professions–such as runner, scavenger, chief, etc., which determines their advantages and disadvantages. There are two time periods in the game. During the daytime, you get to organize everything in your shelter and make some useful tools. The most necessary thing to prepare is food for everyone, as well as making sure everyone has enough rest. During the night, characters have three actions to take: scavenge, sleep, or guard.

So, that’s a brief description of the gameplay. But why do I say TWOM is a reflection of yourself? Well… this game is really close to reality. Everything that could happen during a time of war in real life could happen in this game, but since most of us have never experienced a life in war, TWOM will give you a fresh taste of that.

More like a test of morality and humanity, this game exposes everything about war and tries its best to make the player become a part of it. In the game, your psychological state becomes the essential element. Many factors could lead to the collapse of your character’s psychological state; for example, they could become sad. When a player does not deal with this emotion properly, it will lead to negative actions and obstacles. For example, if a survivor steals private items from other shelters or kills someone, it could greatly affect their psychological state. But, here is something that could happen: food and medicines are important in this game, and they are extremely rare, so a player has to use them scrupulously. If the player is in a difficult survival situation and facing the choice to steal in order to save a teammate or kill someone in order to rob their shelter to keep your own shelter running, will you still adhere to your morality and humanity? Whether you choose to or not, your teammates will blame you for many reasons (survivors could start a quarrel or fight), and suddenly this builds pressure on you. However, there is never a right choice in this game since it’s a war after all, and you are either doing this for yourself or your team and you have to take the ultimate risk and pray for a good result.

The difficulty of this game is intermediate. Most of the time it depends on how many survivors you’re managing. Different from the common survival game, This War of Mine can really stress the player out because resources are so limited. A situation could become destitute any time, and there is always a dilemma in making decisions.

I STRONGLY suggest that you do not look at any walk-through to help you conquer this game. I want you to feel this game by yourself, completely. In the whole process of the game, you will learn many things that you could never learn from other games. It’s going to be a crucible for any player. The game borrows the words of Ernest Hemingway as its theme:

In the modern war, you will just die like a dog for no good reason.

Editor: AJ Patencio

Sources Reference: https://www.zhihu.com/question/26834036/answer/34292120

Review of Anime Charlotte

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By James Zheng

Charlotte was an anime that was first planned by two Japanese companies, Key and ANIPLEX, and finally released by P. A. Work. The script and characters were designed by a well-known writer named Maeda Jun. He already had plenty of outstanding works which are usually categorized as “moving” and “affecting.”

Within Charlotte’s story, in a fictional world where superpower holders exist, the hero thought he was the only superpower possessor and abused his power for his own purpose. When he encounters the heroine, his fate was changed.

(This paragraph may contain some spoilers.) Charlotte is absolutely one of the best animes, and  I strongly recommend it, but I want to give it a fair review. The initial part is very interesting and novel; the first episode attracts a lot of audience attention due to the superpower motif. However, I can say that the setting is just okay. The figure of the hero is too “conventional” and too much like the characters you can see in every anime. There seems to be no creativity in the hero’s personality, value, appearance, etc. In addition, the type of anime that sets school as a stage is too common. To make it particular or special, a writer and director has to put extra effort into designing characters and script. Plus, those early episodes give the audience a sense that it is going to be a story about daily life and then suddenly it jumps to a completely different topic; then, people are confused. I am not criticizing its quality, but I am sure that the director is rushing the story, which does crucial damage to Charlotte. Officials also announced that Maeda Jun’s scripts are too massive and need to be cut down a lot, which could explain why the storyline has such problems. It actually took them a long time to make thirteen episodes. What I’ve always believed is that it will be better to split a season into two seasons rather than to rush the plot.

Let me sum it up.

The storyline in later episodes feels scrawled; Maeda Jun puts the focus on the end rather than at the beginning; he was expecting to make a “boom” to the audience. But, he failed at this attempt. He puts his own affection into it, but the audience does not feel it. Well… even though he failed at this attempt, that does not mean the anime is awful or he is a terrible writer. My recommendation remains for Charlotte: see it. The only flaw that Charlotte has is the unreasonably rushed storyline. The characterization, for the most part, is extraordinary, and Charlotte creates a compelling story due to the efforts from character voice actors. There are transformations of plot in the later story which may seem too sudden and unnecessary, but without those details, the whole story would be completely flat.     

Watching anime has the same property as admiring artwork. I would not just see how the surface is bright and ignore connotation inside the story. I was quite upset to see how anime critics throw negative comments at Charlotte. At the same time, I was also glad that I was one of the few people who could really understand Charlotte.

The story of Charlotte is not ordinary.

Editor: AJ Patencio

Werewolf–One of the Best Modern Party Games

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By James Zheng, Master Game Player & Blogger

What games do you usually play for entertaining a party? Normal answers will come out: Uno, Cards Against Humanity, Mario Kart, Blackjack, etc. We’ve played those games a thousand times. All of them are really popular but common, so common they bore you as you play them over and over again. There is an amazing game which would definitely bring up the atmosphere in a party.

The Werewolf game is really similar to a classic party game called the Mafia (Werewolf is actually generated from the Mafia game). They have the exact same setting on some points; however, the Werewolf game is more fun than the Mafia! Originally, when you look up the Werewolf game online, there is only the American style, which is also the initial version of Werewolf. When it spread to China, this game became truly popular and players added more contents to it. So, please notice that all the things I show you are partially generated from the Chinese-style Werewolf game.

Required factors to play the game include six to fifteen players and role cards. Ten or twelve is the best amount. This game must have a moderator during the whole game to direct the procedure. The role cards are decided by players according to the number of participants.

Gameplay part 1–There are two teams in the Werewolf game; humans and werewolves (which also applies to the innocent and the mafia in The Mafia). The Werewolf team has to kill all the humans while all the humans need to banish the werewolves. To achieve their goal, werewolves have to pretend to be the humans to avoid being banished so that they can eliminate as many humans as they can. In the same way, the humans have to find all the werewolves based on the flaws in their statements or any other factors.

Game setting–Everyone should get a role card before they start, and the moderator must be ready, then the game will begin on the first night. There are two rounds in the game, which refer to the night and the morning. Night is always before morning; it will keep rotating until the game is finished. An essential part of the game, during the night, is that the moderator has to tell everyone to close their eyes and remain absolutely quiet. The Lord card (a card which gives players special skills) and the werewolves’ card holders will be called by the moderator to take their action. Werewolves have to decide to slay a player every night. When it comes to the morning, the player who is killed during the night will be out of the game. Then, each of the players need to speak their thoughts individually. The time limit for speaking (30 seconds, 60 seconds, etc.) should be decided before the game begins. After everyone finishes their statement, they have to vote to eliminate a player. Then the player who gets the most votes will be out of the game as well; this movement is called banish.   

Role cards

  • Villager, belongs to the human team. They do not have special abilities, but they have to listen to everyone’s words, find the werewolves, and be active in voting to banish them in the morning.
  • Werewolf, belongs to the werewolf team. They will be called by the moderator, “Werewolves, please open/close your eyes” before/after they take action. Werewolves usually have 20 seconds to point at their target. During the morning, they need to act like humans and mislead them to banish other players beside themselves.
  • Seer, the Lord card belongs to the human team. When Seer is called by the moderator, he can see one person’s role (he can only identify whether that person is a human or a werewolf, so he does not know if that person is holding a Lord card or not).
  • Witch, this Lord card belongs to the human team. Witch is holding a cure and a poison. When called by moderator, he can only take one action each night. He can use a cure to revive a player who was slain by a werewolf or use poison to kill one player. Witch only has one cure and one poison.
  • Guardian, this Lord card belongs to the human team. When called by the moderator, Guardian can protect a player (including himself) from being killed by a werewolf. But, he cannot protect the same player twice in a row. By the way, the poison used by the Witch can penetrate the Guardian’s shield.
  • Hunter, this Lord card belongs to the human team. The Hunter can eliminate one player after he is dead. The only moment he cannot use his skill is when he is eliminated by poison from the Witch. When called by the moderator, the moderator will tell him if he can use his skill or not–based on whether he was poisoned or not.

Further tips and details

  • The player who is banished or out of the game in the first night will still have a chance to speak.
  • Only the werewolves know who their teammates are. Humans don’t know who their teammates are. And werewolves can say that they are human, and normally mask as villagers (since there are at least two or four villagers, it is hard to know which one is fraud).
  • To find the werewolf or to suspect someone, try to treat this game as a psychological game. If you find someone too nervous or too feeble, they might hold a werewolf card. Or, if you find someone who is speaking too much or too little, they will be questionable. You can always take a guess at everyone’s card according to their statement.
  • The core of this game is the Seer because nobody knows who other players are except the Seer. Only the Seer and werewolves have the ability to lead the teams. And the Seer has to share his or her information on the first day.
  • Each player has to be brave to speak out their opinion and tell others their identity, and be active in voting.

The Werewolf game is my best recommendation ever. It’s a very social game because you have to speak and communicate with each other to collaborate during the whole game. It’s also a really casual game to play with friends!

Editor: Makena Behnke

Dead By Daylight Game Review–A Legion of Glitches

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By Dayton Kennard

If you’ve been playing Dead by Daylight recently, you’ve definitely been hearing about the new Darkness Among Us downloadable content (DLC) and all of its problems, and if you actually bought it, you’ve been experiencing those problems firsthand. The sad part is you don’t have to download the DLC to experience the problems. Note: it should be taken with a grain of salt– not all of these problems are actually glitches. Through this post, I’ll cover four problems that have been reported by the community and problems that I’ve experienced firsthand. Just a heads up, if you haven’t heard of this game before, it’s basically a multiplayer game where four survivors try to fix five generators in order to escape before a killer finds them and–you guessed it–kills them.

Problem 1: Random Legion Chase Music

Some people have described that while they’re playing as a survivor against the Legion (one of the killers you can play as), they’ll randomly hear the Legion’s chase music (something that occurs when you are about to be attacked) for a few seconds before it suddenly disappears with no explanation. This has even happened to me! However, this is not a glitch. While playing as the Legion, a killer can bring in an add-on to their unique power that causes all survivors to temporarily hear chase music when the killer successfully lands an attack on a survivor.

Problem 2: Red Highlights After Chase Ends

When the Legion successfully lands an attack on a survivor while in their Feral Frenzy mode (their unique power that makes them faster for a short period of time), they will see nearby survivors highlighted in red temporarily so that they can easily attack them as well, but this highlight ends once the Feral Frenzy times out. Or at least, it’s supposed to. Sometimes the red highlight will persist if you continue to chase a survivor after Feral Frenzy times out, only going away if you either down the survivor or your chase with the survivor ends. This is most certainly a glitch, as nothing like this is mentioned in Feral Frenzy’s official description or any of the Legion’s add-ons.

Problem 3: Loss of Previously Purchased Characters

When players first load up the game after purchasing and installing the Darkness Among Us DLC, they may see that some of the characters they had previously purchased are now missing, and even be told that they have to purchase these characters again. This may be alarming to hear, and even more alarming to see, but it seems to only happen with characters purchased using Auric Cells (an in-game currency) rather than characters purchased with real money. This is a known glitch that’s already being worked on, and it’s easily fixed by closing and re-opening the game.

Problem 4: Two Killers vs. Three Survivors

This may seem impossible given the game’s unchangeable format of one killer versus four survivors, but it’s actually something that can happen. While this is a legitimate glitch, it is quite rare to see on accident, and it’s more likely someone causing this glitch on purpose. This is because the game will sometimes attribute the wrong character ID to a character that you are playing. So, while you joined a game as a survivor, you will load in as whatever character that ID truly belongs to, allowing you to join the game as a second killer rather than a survivor. Being that this problem only happens when a character ID is swapped, it’s fairly easy to replicate this glitch by editing the game files, which is usually what’s happening if you do see two killers in a match.

Editor: Holden Hartle