Highlights From June 7 to 13 2020

This video features highlights from my Twitch channel from June 7 to 13, 2020. Clips are from Overwatch, Mass Effect Andromeda, Gears of War, Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle, Star Trek Online, Trials of Mana and Twitch Sings!

First Impressions: Gears of War

This week over on my Twitch Channel, we started up Gears of War which was gifted to me by Iceman, and here are my initial thoughts and opinions of the game that launched the franchise that has been a staple of the Xbox library for nearly 15 years.

What Is Planned For The Week Of June 14

Looking ahead for this upcoming week over at twitch.tv/fredcasden, I'm trying to figure some things out as what the line up is going to be. Of course some things are already locked it based on major games that are either weekly features or part of the current tour.

June 14: Sunday Night Overwatch (PC)

- More than likely this feature normal quick place / role queue matches, as the Anniversary event has already ending earlier this week. So there isn't any pressure to get wins or to run something like Uprising over and over again.

June 15 & 16: Mass Effect Andromeda

- Monday and Tuesday will be completely focused of Mass Effect Andromeda, with roaming around Eos being the major priority on Monday, doing what quests I am able to before returning to the Nexus. That may carry over into Tuesday, it really depends on how much better I can with playing ME:A with a controller as opposed to a mouse and keyboard in order to deal with the Kett.

June 17: Gears of War

-Wednesday night the plan is to tackle more of Gears of War with Iceman, picking up somewhere in Act II. If Iceman can't make it, then I'll probably do some random gaming, maybe Power Rangers Battle for the Grid's story mode, or other console things

June 18: Star Trek Online

- Thursday of course is dedicated to Star Trek Online, and picking up with things on New Romulus for our Cardassian Captain in the Klingon Defense Force. More than likely this will be a lot of ground stuff as it does take quite a bit of time to get from part of the map to the other.

June 19: Trials of Mana or WWE 2K20
- So as of the time of this writing, on June 12, I figure I should be able to finish Trials of Mana, but of course, things could go horribly wrong with an expected difficulty spike. If I don't finish Trials of Mana tonight then it will be finished next Friday. If I do finish Trials of Mana tonight, then next Friday we'll start going through the story stuff for WWE 2K20

June 20: Twitch Sings

- Saturdays are of course always for singing, no real plan other than continuing to do songs on expert, complete duets and open seeds. The usual literal song with lack of dance.

Of course this is subject to change but this is a general idea of what I have planned for this upcoming week.

Be Like Kor, But Don't Be Like Doctor Beverly Crusher

I saw this meme going around on Twitter based on the Deep Space Nine episode Blood Oath, where Kor calls Daz 'Curzon' when he's in a holding cell and is exited to see an old friend, and is corrected by Dax who says their first name is now Jadiza. The reason for this is that Dax is a Trill, an alien race that has a symbiotic existence, a humanoid host carrying a slug that has centuries of living experience. When a host dies, the symbiont is transferred to the next qualified person to its host, regardless of it being male or female. There is an entire process to determine if someone is qualified to be a host for the symbiont, but for the most part it is pretty straight forward.

The Trill do have a 'policy' that when the symbiont gets a new host, all ties to its previous life are cut, so Dax would not have gone out of their way to tell Kor who they are now. Hell the only reason Commander Benjamin Sisko knows about Dax in the series pilot the Emissary is because he and Dax are both assigned to Deep Space Nine and Dax while they were Curzon was Sisko's mentor. With that said, Kor knows that Dax is a Trill, he hasn't seen Dax in who knows how long, and when Dax tells him the new first name, Kor just goes with it because again he's exited to meet an old friend once again.

So with all that on the table, being a Star Trek fan and really into a lot of the details, it made me think some people were really trying hard to connect a few moments from that episode to Pride month.It kind of works if you don't know the actual backstory of how how the Trill go about their business. So yeah, Be like Kor because of his instance acceptance of Dax's new host.

And this is where we talk about Doctor Beverly Crusher from Star Trek The Next Generation and the episode 'The Host', the first time The Trill as a species is introduced. You see in this episode, Beverly is having a secret fling with Ambassador Odan, and she doesn't know that he's a Trill until after he is injured on a shuttle flight to mediate a situation between two potentially warring sides. Beverly finds this out when Odan is dying on the operating table and is told that the body is just a shell and that Odan himself is the symbiont within it which needs to survive. The symbiont is placed inside Commander William Riker to provide it a temporary host, and this causes some drama for the negotiations but for Beverly who struggles a bit with the fact that the essence of who Odan was is now in Riker.

There is some drama about Riker's body rejecting the symbiont placing both he and Odan in peril, but in the end everything works out and the new host for Odan is a woman. Odan, in their new permanent host for the foreseeable future, is more than willing to continue to continue the relationship because they do deeply love the good Doctor... but Beverly takes issue with the fact that the Trill basically have no preference for gender orientation because the hosts can be either male or female and she basically can't handle that. Odan fully understand this, but for crying out loud, Beverly shoots Odan down hard. Yes in the context of the show, there is no way the relationship was going to go beyond this one episode, but Beverly was more than willing to work things out in her mind when Odan was in Riker's body for a time, but when she sees the new host, the good Doctor is basically makes up her mind that it isn't going to work for her. Sure Beverly says she'll still love Odan but what are the odds she actually kept in touch with them, as is often the case with relationships in Star Trek that involve a 'guest characters', out of sight, out of mind.

It really is eye-opening going back and seeing that, and realizing Beverly Crusher is completely anti-trans and ends up being a bit racist on top of it because of how the Trill exist. It's really fucking surreal.

So with that said, Don't be Like Doctor Beverly Crusher

New Artwork Commissioned To DarkWolf Creative

DaemonsWolf once again delivers with awesome art pieces for my Twitch Channel. The plan is to use this in the intro video seen at the start of every stream. Hopefully will have that put together by Saturday.

And if you're looking to get some artwork done, visit: https://www.darkwolfcreative.com/

Don't Complain About Poll Results If You Refuse To Take Part

While most know me for broadcasting nightly over on Twitch (twitch.tv/fredcasden) that is not all I do, as my day job is in the realm of a Market Research Interviewer. In that role, it is my job to interview people for various different types of projects, it could be something like customer service about a business, giving feedback on area hospitals, or getting thoughts on issues pertaining to politics. It is that last one which is the topic of this particular rant.

Now I know most people hate getting telephone calls to do a survey, because depending on which side of the political spectrum you consider yourself to be, sometimes the questions can come across as being slanted. Can surveys be a little long, they vary in length, but typically they end up being about 20 minutes, and I know, there are things one would rather do than answer questions for even that length of time, particularly if there are statements being made for or against people in or running for a particular office.

However, when you factor in that number of polls results that published on major news websites, universities and are featured on news channels such as Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN... and on top of that we at this time have President who either bragging or complaining about the results of polls, depending on what the results are which carries over to the average citizens that either support or oppose him, it seems that taking part in political polls is carrying more weight now than it did a few years.

Which brings me to the 'title' of my rant here, and I'm not just saying because of my current profession, I'm saying it as an American who sees the poll results, and I actually wonder how many people are complaining about the results were asked to participate but did not, regardless of their party affiliation. Or how many responses were thrown out because someone did not like the line of questioning when there answer choices that reflect exactly that. You see, to ensure that the polls you see on your favorite news site or news channel are fair, that they are representative of how you think or feel, taking part in when invited too helps... and it cuts down on disputing the results.

Plus more often than not, doing a political poll gives you an idea of what both sides are saying, and if you haven't even thought about an upcoming election, it's way to get some information to give you some consideration over the major players are on the ballot. Yes, I do run into those folks who say they are just going straight Republican or Democrat, but considering most polls are also looking to see how people react to current events or issues, or to see how they view the typical political mudslinging that happens in general elections.

So with all that said, don't complain the next time your see the results for a poll when you could've taken part!

Freeform Rant: The DMCA Drama on Twitch

This week, many of my fellow Twitch Streamers have been hit with DMCA take-down orders as it relates to clips containing licensed music, and from my point of view, it's just the latest in a series of on-going legal wrangling from the Music Industry to 'protect the recording artists and record labels'. Is it their right to make such demands, why yes, yes it is, they own the copyright on the music... and from my point of view as a Twitch Streamer, I often look at those channels that do nothing but act like glorified radio stations or night club DJ's, playing nothing but licensed music as being a novelty act that was just asking for trouble... and they are probably the ones being hit the hardest by this.

From my point of view, this is nothing new, as some may know I did have a YouTube Channel that was called Fred Casden's Basement, where I did full on reviews that featured content in the realm of Fair Use, such as using screen captures of shows or scans of comic books I was discussing, among other things to try and spice up my content. When my channel grew to where it could be monetized to get some income on my work, that's when I started to have a few issues, such as CBS taking ownership of a review I did for their awful MacGyver reboot because I used a few screen shots from that weeks episode to make my point, and when I started to port Twitch broadcasts to that channel, I noticed that the Warner Music Group was really protective over certain songs that appeared in Saints Row The Third and Saints Row IV. Now in the case of the issues with CBS, since I was doing a review I could of challenged it based on 'Fair Use' because I was making a critical point, but the issue with WMG was a little more complicated.

The music industry, in my lifetime at least, has been really anal about protecting itself against piracy thanks to the events surrounding Napster, and the combinations of the recording artists and the record labels have been doing everything they can to keep as much control over their songs as possible. While the Film and Video Game industry has certainly moved with the times, the former more reluctantly than the later, the Music industry has only taking the smallest of steps forward to expanding use of licensed music, begrudgingly loosing how it appears on streamers channels on YouTube, Mixer, and Twitch if its in the context of a video game... it's why most people tend to turn off in-game music for things like the Grand Theft Auto series because it's such a headache.

As the copyright holders, any record label, for example the Warner Music Group, can demand something be removed, and Twitch has the platform in question here, much like YouTube has to comply with that request. In fact any video game publisher can do the same, however that's not exactly smart business considering the amount of virtually free advertising they get from people who stream video games. Some may argue that Twitch should look out for its streamers, however YouTube already set the president on just being the service provider when it came to such issues back, so Twitch is just following the path laid out.

I don't blame the hire ups at Twitch, they are a business and they are providing a service for people to use. Could they have handled it better, probably, but at the same time, the music industry for the most part is just like Donal Trump, it makes threats that could be bad for everyone if it doesn't get its way. So the question is what do people do if they aren't gamers and want to play music on their channels... well one, if you are musician, create your own content, don't do covers or perform licensed songs, do your own thing. If you're wanna-be DJ, well mix your own beats, create your own tracks that aren't licensed to a record lable. If you are gamer, don't have Spotify, iTunes or Amazon music playing tracks as you stream. The issue of in-game music is still a thing, but if its a game with a ton of license music like a Saints Row or a Grand Theft Auto, probably best not to use the in-game tunes, you might want to either lower the volume to where can barely be heard or just turn the in-game music off.

Of course that's just my opinion.