Ek Tha Villain Returns Full Movie

[Niobe Hennigan]

Hellothere! We take your privacy seriously, and want to be as transparent as possible. So: We (and our partners) use cookies to collect some personal data from you. Some of these cookies we absolutely need in order to make things work, and others you can choose in order to optimize your experience while using our site and services. It's up to you!

Additionally, we and our advertising partners store and/or access information on your device and also process personal data, like unique identifiers, browsing activity, and other standard information sent by your device including your IP address. This information is collected over time and used for personalized ads, ad measurement, audience insights, and product development specific to our ads program.

If this sounds good to you, select \"I Agree!\" below. Otherwise, you can get more information, customize your consent preferences, or decline consent by selecting \"Learn More\". Note that your preferences apply only to Tumblr. If you change your mind in the future you can update your preferences any time by using the Privacy link beneath each ad. One last thing: Some of your data may be processed by our advertising partners based on legitimate interests instead of consent, but you can object to that by choosing \"Learn More\" and then disabling the Legitimate Interests toggle under any listed Purpose or Partner on their respective settings pages.

so, gubat banwa is a big martial arts game of esoteric martial arts. of beatdown and bone breaking. bakbakan at suntukan, pangamot ug pagdaug. it focuses on martial arts and the culture that surrounds that. during ancient seasian times (the main foundation for this game), formal categorized schools didn't exist: participating in your culture was you learning its martial arts, or a random hermit in the sea cave could teach you a secret martial art, or your family could have its own secret martial art, etc. etc.

so martial arts classes (in gubat banwa they're called Disciplines) are expressions of culture and tradition. from a mechanical side, I knew I wanted to make Gubat Banwa a multiclassing-first game, a la Lancer, for multiple reasons

however, Disciplines were more than just classes, they're also martial arts in their own right. So as I deepened my understanding with the Martial Arts I also found further justifications for multiclassing [which we like to call crosstraining]). these are from my and GB's Art Director Dylan's experiences from Filipino Martial Arts:

i knew since the earliest stages of gubat banwa that i wasn't going to compromise the multiclassing aspect, i just find it very serendipitous that crosstraining fits so well into the martial arts fantasy. it makes me pretty satisfied and happy, and i'm glad i didn't bend to internal talking and thinking about making a "pure discipline" progression possible

filipino culture is largely revolutionary. this is true of almost every colonized culture: as according to Fanon, National Culture is the Struggle for Liberation, and I largely agree with this. in a way, we are still struggling for liberation from outside forces. in many ways, the Philippines is still a colony (or, perhaps, a neocolony) of america. thus colonialism is still on going. thus, fanon's terminology of colonized/colonist dichotomy is still very effective when applied to modern filipino identity.

i've been pretty vocal about my perspective on filipino identity: it being mostly constructed during the american colonization of the philippines. even to this day, i believe that it is mostly a regurgitation of american culture, even seemingly activist perspectives. much of filipino culture is repurposed from american educational systems. much of filipino culture talks about filipinos, and ignores a vast majority of the other people in the isles. ask the general activist how a bisaya or mindanaowon revolutionary and they will balk.

fanon argues that national culture is just the culture of the struggle that arises from nationhood. after decolonization, both colonized and colonist die. what then, afterwards? he states that national culture is the best way to achieve international solidarity. smaller scale focuses of culture can create better and more authentic cultures instead of vague and generic eidolons. i largely agree for the most part, though we can definitely peer a lot deeper. fanon is also quick to argue that national consciousness (the consciousness to fight for liberation) is different from nationalism (that thing that very quickly leads to fascism).

in the case of the philippines, multiple different culture still exist in milieu with the rest of philippine culture. fanon's works talk alot about the importance of word and language in the colonized's world. so it is here: the filipino as a term is claimed from the colonizers (filipino used to mean spanish that lived in the isles). can it be redeemed and twisted into an empowering word for us, na nakatira dito? potentially (as with all things its mostly a percentage chance). unfortunately, larger is the chance that we completely assimilate into the term: we become spanish people that live in the isles, despite having an already multinational culture (the tagalogs, the bisayas, the bikolanos, etc. all only sharing culture through colonization, in the same way africa shares culture through colonization but have bespoke cultures in and of themselves). thus why there's a tendency for filipinos to be separate from the indigenous people of the philippines, despite tagalogs, bisaya, etc. being indigenous people of the philippines

anyway, as i reread fanon i'm realizing too many leftist spaces (at least, mainstream ones in the PH) are currently ascribing to the first kind of culture that fanon spoke about (regurgitation of white culture): looking for pieces of culture to turn into "filipino identity", reinforcing fragments of filipino identity, conveniently forgetting other cultures in the ph (and some even being outright hostile against the idea) when it doesn't benefit their movement (which is annoying, because as real marxists we should be including them under a single revolutionary solidarity). increasingly it's beginning to feel like Mass Organizations are becoming just larger college orgs

however, i'm not saying that won't change--i feel like these orgs will evolve past anyway. and harnessing the power of guilt-ridden petty boojwazee instilled with the fervor of national consciousness is pretty potent in mobilizing large movements, even if they end up burning out by the end of it

so at the end of it i accept filipino as a geographical and revolutionary description, but not as a cultural nationalistic descriptor (as that would end up with us redoing the colonizer's culture). it is a stepping stone. and perhaps we might need to rejigger our definition of the filipino: maybe change its name to pilipinhon (coming from the philippines) from bisaya. or barring that, look at it differently, refuse the colonized intellectual urge to make it a culture like our colonizer's, and accept the culture as it is, of struggle and of liberation.

and then accept that there are multiple cultures underneath it--that there are tagalog cultures and bisaya cultures and lumad cultures and bikolano cultures etc. etc. hell, if the spanish didn't hand us over to the americans, who's to say that the philippines wouldn't have split into multiple different nations (a bisaya nation, a tagalog republic, etc.) it almost happened multiple times in the past. the only thing stopping us was colonialism :)

Let's lay down some groundwork: this post assumes that the reader is familiar and has played with the D&D style of wargame combat common nowadays in TTRPGs, brought about no doubt by the market dominance of a game like D&D. It situates its arguments within that context, because much of new-school design makes these things mostly non-problems. (See: the paradigmatic shift required to play a Powered by the Apocalypse game, that completely changes how combat mechanics are interpreted).

With that done, let's specify even more: D&D 5e and 4e are the forerunners of this kind of game--the tactical grid game that prefers a battlemat. 5e's absolute dominance means that there's a 90% chance that you have played the kind of combat I'll be referring to in this post. The one where you roll a d20, add the relevant modifiers, and try to roll equal to or higher than a Target Number to actually hit. Then when you do hit, you roll dice to deal damage. This has been the way of things since OD&D, and has been a staple of many TTRPG combat systems. It's easy to grasp, and has behemoth cultural momentum. Each 1 on a d20 is a 5% chance, so you can essentially do a d100 with smaller increments and thus easier math (smaller numbers are easier to math than larger numbers, generally).

This is how LANCER works, this is how ICON works, this is how SHADOW OF THE DEMON LORD works, this is how TRESPASSER works, this is how WYRDWOOD WAND works, this is how VALIANT QUEST works, etc. etc. It's a tried and true formula, every D&D player has a d20, it's emblematic of the hobby.

There's been a lot more critical discussion lately on D&D's conventions, especially due to the OGL. Many past D&D only people are branching out of the bubble and into the rest of the TTRPG hobby. It's not a new phenomenon--it's happened before. Back in the 2010s, when Apocalypse World came out while D&D was in its 4th Edition, grappling with Pathfinder. Grappling with its stringent GSL License (funny how circular this all is).

Anyway, all of that is just to put in the groundwork. My problem with D&D Violence (particularly, of the 3e, 4e, and 5e version) is that it's a violence that arises from "default fantasy". Default Fantasy is what comes to mind when you say fantasy: dragons, kings, medieval castles, knights, goblins, trolls. It's that fantasy cultivated by people who's played D&D and thus informs D&D. There is much to be said about the majority of this being an American Samsaric Cycle, and it being tied to the greater commodification agenda of Capitalism, but we won't go into that right now. Anyway, D&D Violence is boring. It thinks of fights in HITS and MISSES and DAMAGE PER SECOND.

3a8082e126