Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens is a collection of scholarly essays that seeks to represent the far-reaching scope and implications of digital role-playing games as both cultural and academic artifacts. As a genre, digital role playing games have undergone constant and radical revision, pushing not only multiple boundaries of game development, but also the playing strategies and experiences of players. Divided into three distinct sections, this premiere volume captures the distinctiveness of different game types, the forms of play they engender and their social and cultural implications. Contributors examine a range of games, from classics like Final Fantasy to blockbusters like World of Warcraft to obscure genre bending titles like Lux Pain. Working from a broad range of disciplines such as ecocritism, rhetoric, performance, gender, and communication, these essays yield insights that enrich the field of game studies and further illuminate the cultural, psychological and philosophical implications of a society that increasingly produces, plays and discourses about role playing games.
Skye O'Malley's magnificent daughter Velvet embarks on her own adventures in this sensuous bestseller. Velvet de Marisco is the daughter of one of fiction's most beloved heroines, the hot-blooded adventuress, Skye O'Malley. Now, in this journey into pure sensual delight by Bertrice Small, Velvet proves she's every inch her mother's daughter. When Alexander Gordon arrives from the Scottish Highlands to claim Velvet as his bride, he must woo her body and soul before he can win her heart. When the Grande Mughal of India receives the beautiful Velvet as a gift, he must win her heart with his patience before he can teach her every trick at his command. And when Velvet finds herself the pawn in a political science, she must use all her wiles to reunite herself with the man she loves.
This study explores the tensions and contradictions in the themes and style of L'Allegria. It establishes links between Ungaretti and the French Symbolist poets, and reexamines the collection's affinity with the work of De Chirico, Cubism, Futurism and Surrealism. Offering ground-breaking views, particularly on the war poems, it demonstrates how Ungaretti used the obscure nature of Hermetic language to express his proto-Fascist and Nietzschean sympathies, thus destroying the myth of Ungaretti as a 'man of peace' searching for a religious answer to the problems of existence.
An MSNBC political analyst and former Hillary Clinton staffer examines the past and present problems of the Left—and makes a compelling case for how to take back our government and secure a better future for America. In the entire history of the United States of America, we've never elected a woman as our president. And we've only had one president who was not a white man. After working on two presidential campaigns (for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton), MSNBC political analyst and SiriusXM host Zerlina Maxwell gained first-hand knowledge of everything liberals have been doing right over the past few elections-and everything they are still doing wrong. Ultimately, these errors worked in President Donald Trump's favor in 2016; he effectively ran a campaign on white identity politics, successfully tapping into white male angst and resistance. In 2020, after the Democratic Party's most historically diverse pool of presidential candidates finally dwindled down to Joe Biden, once again an older white man, Maxwell has posed the ultimate question: what now, liberals? Fueled by Maxwell's trademark wit and candor, The End of White Politics dismantles the past and present problems of the Left, challenging everyone from scrappy, young "Bernie Bros" to seasoned power players in the "Billionaire Boys' Club." No topic is taboo; whether tackling the white privilege that enabled Mayor Pete Buttigieg's presidential run, the controversial #HashtagActivism of the Millennial generation, the massive individual donations that sway politicians toward maintaining the status quo of income inequality, or the lingering racism that debilitated some Democratic presidential contenders and cut their promising campaigns short, Maxwell pulls no punches in her fierce critique. However, underlying all of these individual issues, Maxwell argues that it's the "liberal-minded" party's struggle to engage women and communities of color-and its preoccupation with catering to the white, male working class—that threatens to be its most lethal shortfall. The times—and the demographics—are changing, and in order for progressive politics to prevail, we must acknowledge our shortcomings, take ownership of our flaws, and do everything in our power to level the playing field for all Americans. The End of White Politics shows exactly how and why progressives can lean into identity politics, empowering marginalized groups, and uniting under a common vision that will benefit us all. ***TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2020!*** "Witty and piercing." —TIME
Are you ready for the big show? Maisy and her friends show little ones what it’s like to attend their first live performance. Today, Maisy and her friends are off to the theater to see a show starring Flora Fantastica! First they line up to show their tickets. After the usher helps them all find their seats, the lights go down, and Maisy and her friends take in a feast for the senses: dramatic flashing lights, colorful costumes, amazing songs, and lots of exciting characters. From the rise of the curtain through intermission (and snacks) to a standing ovation at the end, Maisy takes her fans on a trip to the theater that makes a new experience familiar and fun.
This is a fictional story of the evolution of mankind in the middle of the 24th century. These people are known as Ephemeral's and there are two among all of them that have fallen in love, but they are also the most powerful of all of them, which they are unaware of at the time. The villagers are upset because they are paranoid of the unknown and with these two they feel that they are too powerful to be together. A development occurs that forces Jonathan and Annalisa to leave their villages and along with them are others that feel the same way and leave with them. They decide along with these others to leave and start a new life and the Universe is please as it has a special task in mind for these young Ephemerals, which is that they are to be the salvation of the Earth and mankind and will bring the world from war to world peace.