#(piece about the new generation always recognizing fault lines in the system)

[dandeeliion]

i would like to talk abt the WHAT EVEN WAS THAT of tewkesbury being shot???? by his grandmother???? this is, of course, is The Conclusion / missing puzzle piece / what-have-you to the original mystery AND YET it’s simply never addressed again. not to be “oh my blorbo” posting but that would be so insaneeeee to conceptualize trauma-wise and, moving forward, in building new relationships and distrust within existing ones. how do you recover from that? besides the obviously cracked ribs and sternum and whatnot lolZ

[mobius-prime]

246. Sonic the Hedgehog #177

Home, New Home

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

As the Egg Fleet approaches New Mobotropolis, Nicole erects a forcefield-like shield around the entire city, protecting it from the bombardment that Snively, leading the fleet, begins dropping on it. With the shield protecting everyone, however, a slightly more immediate concern reveals itself - namely, the many criminals that have been teleported here along with the actual residents of Knothole, who see an opportunity to not only break free of the justice system, but take a few of the citizens with them.

Amazing speech on your part there, Mogul. Really, it's a wonder everyone didn't immediately fall at your feet. Sonic and Sally are impressed at Nicole's foresight, only to become concerned when her hologram begins flickering and she appears to show signs of pain in response to more shells hitting the city's shield. She tells them that she has to devote most of the city's power supply to keeping the shield up, and reassures Sally that she'll always be nearby even when they can't see her before disappearing. Sally and Elias address the crowd of rescued civilians, telling them that right now they can trust Nicole to keep them safe while they come up with a plan and that for now everyone should find their new homes. Sally stops Sonic, however, and orders him to go get medical attention before he does anything else, something he's predictably a bit grumpy about.

Okay, so this is where we address one of the most controversial things Ian ever included in the comic. It's controversial for good reason. We've already established that one of the major things Ian has been doing for the comic since taking over as head writer is bringing the world of the comics more in line with that of the games, and this includes the various characters and their attitudes. Vector is no longer as insufferable as he was under Kenders, Knuckles is one of Sonic's closest allies now rather than a distant rival, and so on, but this is where the age discrepancy between Charmy from the games and Charmy from the comics becomes a problem. If you'll recall, Charmy is six in the games but sixteen in the comics, and obviously a sixteen-year-old is going to act pretty different from a six-year-old. So how exactly does one take a fairly mature teenager, who's a prince of a lost kingdom and literally engaged to someone else his age, and make him act like a child? Well, I don't have any particularly good ideas myself, but Ian's highly controversial solution was to give him brain damage. From this point on, Charmy suffers from some substantial memory loss, and generally has a much more childlike personality than he once did. There's many problems with this, and others have gone into this topic much more in depth than I care to, but suffice it to say that while giving a character brain damage simply as part of their character arc isn't inherently a bad thing, and can even be a positive if handled right, giving a character brain damage purely as a plot device to make them act more like a child feels incredibly insensitive and insulting. From what I understand, this isn't totally Ian's fault; Sega was pressuring him to make these changes, and I suppose at the time this was all he could think of for the Charmy problem, but I know he has stated later on that he wishes he'd handled this particular issue better, so at least he's acknowledged how bad this whole thing seems. Furthermore, he does appear to treat Charmy as a character with as much respect as possible in future issues, so there's that at least.

Anyway, Saffron is relieved when Charmy happily confirms that he remembers who she is and hugs her, and Dr. Quack moves on from Charmy to take a look at Sonic. It doesn't take him long to confirm his suspicions that indeed, all the magical ring energy Sonic's been exposed to have given him a high resistance to injury as well as apparently an accelerated rate of healing, something which is quite fascinating and I wish would have been expanded upon in this universe's worldbuilding at some point. As Dr. Quack heads off to find his own family, we take a quick look at the Chaos Chamber on Angel Island, where Finitevus appears to be doing some kind of weird ritual with the Master Emerald, reciting Tikal's prayer. Scourge runs up and informs him that Dimitri has run - err, floated off, presumably to contact Knuckles and warn him of Finitevus' treachery. Finitevus, however, merely tells him that this was part of his plan all along, and he isn't concerned, as he'll bring back Enerjak one way or another. Sounds quite ominous indeed…

Hey man, someone needs to remind Antoine that bravery isn't a lack of fear, it's standing up to danger even when you are afraid. Sally becomes lost in thought for a moment, remembering all the times she led the Freedom Fighters into danger in the past, long before she was ever thrust into the role of acting ruler or forced into a disastrous arranged marriage. She suddenly stands up and reminds Bunnie of her old hairdressing ambitions, and asks her for one more favor before they begin their defense against Eggman's attack… Meanwhile up in the sky, Snively continues to try to break through New Mobotropolis' shield, only to become startled when a single, tiny aircraft begins firing onto his flagship. His robots prepare to return fire, but he suddenly orders them to stand down with a look of shock, and contacts the plane… having recognized it as the plane that Hope built. Hope yells at him through the comm when he opens a channel, furious that she took his advice and went to Station Square, but when she tried to return to Knothole, which she still considered home, it was in ruins. She blames him for all of it, too ashamed to show her face to the Mobians again after leaving, and begins to sob.

I absolutely love the way that these comics continue to humanize Snively more and more. I feel so bad for Hope here, especially knowing that none of the Mobians would blame her for what happened, but as for Snively, it's clear that despite his nature, he does value family, and does care about Hope. He's gone from being the cowardly, sniveling, silly minion of the evil Dr. Robotnik to an actual human with flaws, feelings, and attachments. From inside the city shield, Tails watches the bombardment continue with his parents and Merlin, and Amadeus expresses that though the destruction of Knothole was a tragedy, all in all this may actually be a good thing for the populace, as he believes that such a major event will prepare them for "the shift in thinking" that he plans for them. Merlin, however, warns him not to push ahead with any reforms he has in mind too soon, as the monarchy will also be very tense from all this chaos. Rosemary expresses her belief in her husband, and Tails excitedly says he'll support his father no matter what, but the sentiment is interrupted by Eggman's furious screaming from outside the city walls, banging on the shield with his battle suit and yelling for the Freedom Fighters to come out and face him, infuriated that his perfect victory has been stolen from him. Sonic cheerfully interrupts his tantrum, suddenly standing outside the shield, and Eggman is initially pleased, mocking Sonic for not learning from his initial defeat mere hours ago. However, it turns out that Sonic has learned, and with the knowledge that the battle suit was created to counter Sonic and Sonic alone, he and Sally have come up with the perfect plan while Eggman wasn't looking.

The entire Freedom Fighter and Chaotix force descends on Eggman's battle suit, and they're all able to locate weaknesses that Eggman hadn't anticipated in its construction. They tear it apart piece by piece while Sonic gleefully reminds his nemesis that there are more heroes on this planet than just himself, and that anything he can't handle on his own, the others definitely can. In the end, Eggman is left with barely half a shell of his precious armor, furious and humiliated, which leads into perhaps one of my favorite pages of this entire era - perhaps even the entire comic.

Eggman, still unwilling to let victory slip away despite his situation, orders his fleet to fire directly on their location, meaning either he was somehow unaware that this would kill him too, or he was aware, and was more concerned with killing his foes than surviving. Honestly, my bet is on the latter - it seems like something he'd do if angry enough and feeling sufficiently cornered. However, he's forgotten that Nicole has full control over the nanites in the city, and since everything in the city is made of nanites, she's able to stretch the city's wall out to create a wall between everyone out on the field and the bombardment from the Egg Fleet. She projects her form to Eggman and urges him to reconsider his decision, as frankly, Sally is showing him more mercy than he deserves by a long shot. And honestly, she's right - it would be a much better decision to either kill him right there, or, if they're feeling too honorable and whatnot, at least arrest him and shove him in a cell next to Mammoth Mogul…

Well hello there, old haircut! I will say, I did enjoy Sally's long hair while she had it - I thought it looked good on her. But hey, cutting one's hair as a show of maturation is a common fictional trope, and in a way, it's nice to go back to seeing Sally rocking her old look. I will actually note here that while I've mentioned before that Tracy's pencils have standardized the design of a lot of characters, I actually don't care much for his redesign of Sally as a whole. While I appreciate her proportions becoming more like those of every other Mobian - the human body that a lot of other artists gave her looked kind of weird, to be honest - her facial features have actually been significantly altered by his style. She always had a distinctive slanted-back eye shape and a more gentle slope to her nose, but by making her eye shape closer to than of characters like Bunnie and Tails, I feel she's lost some of her unique visual charm. That isn't to say that I think Sally is lesser as a character for this change - she's still one of my top favorites in the series - nor that I disapprove of Tracy's art style as a whole. And in the end, her hairstyle change here marks the beginning of a new era - one where she begins to act once more like her old self and once again joins the others on missions just like old times. She's worked through a lot of the trauma and self-doubt that she's been plagued with ever since Sonic's return to Mobius, and now we can look forward to new adventures with her, in a new location. I mean that "new era" thing literally, by the way. Congratulations, we've reached the end of the comic's fifth era - many of the eras beyond this one are significantly shorter than the ones we've seen previously, but that also means we'll be moving through distinctive arcs a little more quickly, and furthermore, the next era holds some pretty exciting new surprises! Shall we now - how do they say - do it to it?

[thelastspeecher]

I can’t think up a title for this thing that I wrote today, but it takes place in the Angiewolf AU.  Specifically, it takes between this ficlet and this ficlet.  It’s the morning after Ford gets back, where he visits Stan and Angie’s house to help explain everything to Dipper and Mabel.  But before he even sees the Mystery Twins, he has to talk to his sister-in-law and his newfound niece.  Don’t worry, he’s excited to see them.  A lot more excited than he was to see Stan.

              Ford stuffed his hands in his pockets as he stood outside Stan and Angie’s house.  It hadn’t changed in appearance since he’d been gone.  It was still spacious and rustic, like a cabin built for a family of basketball players.  Daisies and bluebells in full bloom stood side by side lining the front of the cabin. The Stanleymobile was parked in the driveway, as red as the day Stan had gotten it.

              It was like he was back in time, on the day Stan and Angie had first moved in.  He could practically see Stan, Angie, Fiddleford, and Angie’s family, full of excitement as they brought in boxes and furniture.  Stan challenging Lute on who could carry the most boxes.  Angie waving off Fiddleford’s concerns that she was straining herself by carrying the largest, heaviest furniture.  The six-month-old triplets sitting in the grass, playing with pastel toys under the watchful eye of Angie’s parents.  Ford swallowed, painfully aware of how the happy memories didn’t line up with the last time he had been there.  He made his way to the front door and knocked.

              “Someone’s at the door!  Someone’s at the door!  Someone’s here!” a voice shouted.  Ford frowned, trying to place it.

              Daisy, perhaps?  A muffled voice said something in response.  The door opened.  Ford smiled at the person standing before him.

              “Emily, I presume?” he asked.  Emily beamed broadly at him, her grin stretching from ear to ear.  Last night, in wolf form, he’d mistaken her for Angie.  But in her human form, the characteristics she’d inherited from Stan were more obvious – the large ruddy nose, the square jaw, the stocky figure.

              “That’s me,” Emily chirped.  Ford’s smile became warmer.

              “It’s a pleasure to properly meet you.”

              “Right back at ya.”

              “Short stack, let yer uncle in,” a new voice said.  A voice that Ford recognized.  He looked over.  Angie was standing in the entryway to the nearby kitchen, drying her hands on a gingham towel.  She grinned at him.  It was the same smile spread across Emily’s face.  “Long time no see, Stanford Pines.”

              “Yes, it has been a while,” Ford said, adjusting his glasses.  He tried to banish the mental image of the last time he’d seen Angie.

              Angie pale and unconscious on the floor, burns from silver spread across her body.  The triplets, whom she had managed to lock in their room when his possessed body arrived, shouting at the top of their lungs.  Stan physically throwing him out of the house, looking as feral as Angie on a full moon.

              “…Stanford?” Angie asked.  Ford blinked, surfacing from the memory.  Angie’s blue eyes were full of concern.

              I don’t deserve concern from her. Not after what happened thirty years ago.  She could have died.

              “Yes, I am.  I’m just, um,” Ford stammered.  Angie let out a small chuckle.

              “A sci-fi makeover hasn’t changed ya a bit.  Come on into the kitchen and I’ll feed ya.  I’m assumin’ ya haven’t eaten breakfast yet?”

              “That would be an accurate assumption to make.”

              “Figured.”  Angie strolled back into the kitchen.  Emily raced after her.  “Hold yer horses, pup.  The sausage is cookin’.”  Ford followed his niece and sister-in-law.  He looked around the kitchen with interest.  Among the mass of magnets covering the fridge was a wolf-themed calendar.  Several events were scribbled in red ink.  Many of the generic pictures of food that had decorated the walls thirty years ago had been replaced by pictures of Stan and Angie’s vast family.  The kitchen table was covered with yarn, glitter, and chewed on pens.

              “Project of yours?” Ford asked, picking up a skein of bright yellow yarn. Angie looked over.

              “No, that’s Mabel’s.  So’s the glitter.”

              “You haven’t bothered to clean up?”

              “Mabel’s mess is an organized mess.  Everything’s in its spot,” Angie said.  “The last time I cleaned up her supplies, she turned the house upside down ‘cause cleanin’ disrupted her system.  Made even worse of a mess.”

              “Ah.”  Ford carefully nudged a few sparkly pieces of yarn aside and sat at the table.  He clasped his hands.  “So, Fiddleford tells me you and Stan added to your family since I last saw you.”

              “Yes.  In a rather major way.”  Angie nodded at Emily, who was rummaging through the fridge.  “Emily’s the oldest of quadruplets.”

              “Quadruplets?” Ford said, aghast.  He shook his head.  “You have seven total children.”

              “Yep.”

              “You and Stan raised seven children.”

              “Mm-hmm.”

              “You.  And Stan.”

              “If yer tryin’ to imply that they were all wild and difficult, yer correct. I mean, the combination of myself and Stan is a handful alone.  Add onto that the lycanthropy and the fact that they were multiple births…”  Angie let out a bark of laughter.  “I’m honestly surprised the house is still standin’.”  Ford chuckled.

              “…Do you have any pictures?” he asked.  Angie grinned.

              “What do ya take me for?”

----- 

              Ford laughed as he turned a page in the photo album Angie had grabbed for him.

              “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?” he asked.  Angie shook her head, hiding a smile.  

              “Look, when you’ve got seven kids, ya don’t have that many options fer fam’ly Halloween costumes.”

              “These are wonderful.”  Ford looked at Angie.  “Thank you.”

              “…Fer what?”

              “Not kicking me out of the house the second you smelled my arrival.”

              “I heard ya ‘fore I smelled ya,” Angie said.  She turned another page in the photo album.  “But if I’m bein’ honest, Stan was the one who talked me down.”

              “Stan?”

              “Yes.  The day that you…”  Angie cleared her throat.  “I was still sick and hurt, and if I recall correctly, my words were ‘good riddance’.”

              “…Oh.”

              “Stan, though, he reminded me that what happened wasn’t under yer own volition, and you’d never do anything to purposefully hurt people you care about.” Angie shrugged.  “And I do feel like, even if we aren’t related by blood, we do have a bit of a connection.  We’re both scientists, after all.”

              “Stan was the one who talked you down,” Ford said quietly.  He rubbed his face.  “Why did he do that?”

              “Yer his brother.  He cares about you.”

              “I don’t know if I believe that.”

              “Oh, Lord.”  Angie steepled her fingers.  “What happened last night between you two?”

              “What do you-”

              “Stan came home furious about somethin’.  He wouldn’t tell me what happened.”

              “We fought.”

              “You fought?  Why?”

              “Because of the immense risks he took to bring me back after he pushed me through the portal in the first place!” Ford shouted.  Angie pursed her lips.  “And I heard the boy – Dipper – say that he got bitten by a werewolf, too.  I don’t know how Stan is involved, but I know it’s his fault in some way.”

              “Stanford.”

              “That’s his MO, Angie, and you know it.  Bad things happen around him.”

              “Does this have to do with the science fair incident?”

              “No.  I’ve moved past that.”

              “I don’t think you have.”

              “Angie, please,” Ford said.  He took a breath.  “I don’t want to talk about Stan.  I want to talk about your kids and Shermie’s grandkids.”

              “But-”

              “I mean it.”

              “Fine.”  Angie held her hands up.  “I’ll drop it.  And when Stan gets up, the chips ‘ll fall where they may.”

              “Thank you.”  Ford turned his attention back to the photo album.  “What did you say Cadenza does?”

              “She’s a lawyer.”

              “A lawyer?  Wow.  I assume she inherited Stan’s silver tongue.”

              “Mm-hmm.”

              “I’d like to meet her.  I’d like to meet all of the quadruplets.  And I’d like to see the triplets again.”

              “Sorry, but most all of the pups didn’t stick around in Gravity Falls. The only ones here right now are Emily and Molly.”

              “Aka the best ones,” Emily piped up.  “Caleb’s not even a werewolf anymore.”

              “He’s not?”

              “Nope.”

              “Huh.  Given how proud you all are of being werewolves, I would not have expected any of you to use the lycanthropy cure.”

              “Caleb’s always been a bit ‘meh’ about the werewolf thing, and being allergic to silver was making it difficult for his job,” Emily said.  “So he gave it up.”

              “What’s his job?”

              “He’s a pastry chef,” Angie replied.  “He lives in Piedmont like Mabel and Dipper.”

              “A pastry chef.”

              “Mm-hmm.”

              “Where is everyone else?”

              “Most of ‘em aren’t close enough to visit easily,” Angie said.  “Danny’s in Washington, D.C.  She works fer the Pentagon.”

              “Really?  With Stan for a father, how did she pass the background check?” Ford mumbled.  Angie frowned.

              “If I can’t talk ‘bout Stan, you can’t talk ‘bout him, either.”

              “Very well,” Ford sighed.  “What about the rest of your pups?”

              “Daisy’s back in Gumption on the fam’ly farm, doin’ testin’ on the crops. She’s a geneticist, so she’s tryin’ to improve the yield.  Emmett’s in dance school in San Diego – he studies ballet.  And Cadenza runs her practice from Portland.”

              “What about Molly?”

              “She’s bounced around doin’ botanical research, but right now she’s back in Gravity Falls, like I said.  She’ll be stoppin’ by this mornin’.”

              “She doesn’t live with you?”

              “…She’s in her thirties.  She has her own place.”

              “Oh.  Right.” Ford swallowed.  “She’s in her thirties.”

              “It’s got to be strange fer you,” Angie said sympathetically.  “She wasn’t even in kindergarten when you…left.  Now she’s all grown.”

              “Yes.”  Ford sighed softly.  “I’ve missed quite a bit.  Fiddleford even has a grown son.”  Emily, who was looking for something in one of the cupboards, froze.  She closed the cupboard door and stared at Ford with wide eyes.

              “Oh my god,” she whispered.  Angie stood up from the table.  “Oh my god! Ma, that’s-”

              “Emily, come with me to wake up yer father,” Angie said in a tight voice.

              “But Ma, Tate’s-”

              “Shh!”  Angie shot Ford an awkward grin.  “Go ahead and help yourself to some breakfast.  If Dipper and Mabel come down, tell Dipper he’s not allowed to have any pancakes.”  Ford nodded.

              “Because he’s been bitten, he’ll need plenty of protein.”

              “Exactly.”  Angie ushered Emily out of the kitchen.  Ford looked over at the counter.  Bacon, eggs, sausage, and pancakes were piled high on platters.  He smiled.

              That’s another thing that hasn’t changed.  Angie’s insistence on feeding everyone.  His stomach growled.  It’s been thirty years since I’ve had her amazing cooking.  Before he could get up to make a plate, footsteps rushed from the second floor. The two children he had met last night, Mabel and Dipper, ran into the kitchen.  They made a beeline for the food.

              “Dipper, no pancakes,” Ford said quickly.  Mabel and Dipper froze.  They slowly turned to face him.  Mabel squished her face excitedly.

              “Great-Uncle Ford!  What are you doing here?” she asked.

              “I came over to help Stan and Angie explain everything.”

              “Everything?” Dipper gasped.  He grabbed a notepad and pencil from inside his vest.  “Like, everything?”

              “Um, everything regarding the werewolf situation,” Ford said hesitantly.  Dipper’s eyes widened.

              “Awesome!”

              “Why can’t Dipper have pancakes?” Mabel asked.

              “Pups need protein,” a voice grunted.  Ford let out a small sigh.  He looked at the person who had just entered.

              “Stanley,” he said shortly.  Stan glared at him.

              “Ford,” Stan ground out.  He looked back at Dipper.  “Dipper, you got turned yesterday.  Getting turned isn’t a joke.  You need a lot of protein when you’re changing species, and you’re gonna be a pup on top of it.  Werewolf pups have to eat a lot of protein ‘cause they’re still growing.”

              “I’ll only have one pancake then,” Dipper said.  Stan glowered.

              “No.  No pancakes. Only protein for breakfast.”

              “But-”

              “No buts, kid,” Stan rumbled.  Angie walked into the kitchen.  “Ang, keep an eye on Dipper.  Don’t let him have any pancakes.”

              “Of course, darlin’.”

              “Thanks.”  Stan looked at Ford.  “Sixer. We should talk.”

              “…Yes,” Ford said.  “We should.”

[theonceoverthinker]

OUAT 1X08 - Desperate Souls

Holy smokes! Not counting today’s review, I’ve racked up 30 pages worth of content for this rewatch!!! For me - someone who has barely written maybe twenty pages total for everything OUaT in the two and a half years I’ve been here - that’s pretty neat!

So, without further adieu, let’s SOUL-der on and talk about this adventure, for I know you’re DESPERATE to read my thoughts under the cut!

Press Release Regina and Mr. Gold play dirty politics and take opposite sides when Emma runs for a coveted Storybrooke public office against Sidney. Meanwhile, back in the fairytale world that was, Rumplestiltskin tries to track down the ultimate power source in order to help his son avert the horrors of a meaningless war. General Thoughts Past The intro to this episode is phenomenal. Immediately, we’re thrust into the action and everything from the writing to the storytelling tells us what we need to know about the characters and the unique setting they’re currently living in. We feel the fear that they do and it’s intense. And what’s better is that sentiment carries on through the rest of the episode. The biggest draw it got out of me over the course of the episode’s runtime was this dual feeling of sorrow and pity as the child collector madde Rumple kiss his boot. It gives the murder at the end of the episode an extreme layer of catharsis. Fuck, I gotta talk about that scene between Rumple and Zoso. This scene sets the standard for so much of Rumple’s life going forward. I love that here is where we get to hear the line “all magic comes with a price for the first time.” While Rumple won’t know that true price for some time, he clearly gets the sense that he’s in for a rough time in this moment. For someone who is so often on this series on the other side of this equation, Rumple was new to the concept at one point too, and it’s so crazy to revisit that.

The theme of being wary of how one acts in times of desperation really works in this flashback, and that’s because of consistent character writing in accordance with their stakes. Present The intro here is fantastic too. While I didn’t like the drama from the last episode, the way that this scene handles it makes it feel better. It builds on it while keeping things subtle and at the same time, furthering the storytelling from the past’s segment’s intro through the bonding point of parenthood - whether either party is conscious of it or not. Emma’s conflict in this episode is so good. It shines leagues above what it was in the last episode because it’s actually having to do with characteristics and dynamics of hers that are actually established, and what’s better is that it melts together like a fine stew. We see right from the get go - as stated before - that Graham’s death and Emma’s subsequent grief has something to do with her desire for the job, but also, Emma’s rivalry with Regina and her desire to assuage Henry of his anxieties as best as she can without playing into (what she believes to be) his delusions of the curse. I like how the ending works too. While I don’t think the reiterated wham line works the way the writers intended it to, Emma’s victory isn’t taken from her and it’s not any less earned. However, the final twist is still able to be effective and prove that while a force against Gold, Emma is still up against someone always a step ahead of her. Both There’s a fascinating couple of moments in both the past and present that I want to touch upon. First is a cool contrast between Rumple and Emma. Rumple discusses the role that Bae plays in his life, while Emma talks about the role that she plays in Henry’s life. I like how those discussions come before our leads hear about possibilities/make decisions that completely alter their current standings in life. “I know how to recognize a desperate soul.” This line works really well in the case of the flashback, but kind of feels like a round peg in a square hole in the present. Emma’s not in a dire straight the way Rumple is, despite the internal weight of the conflict. I don’t consider it a major problem, however because while very much a wham line, acting as if it’s supposed to be the central theme of the episode when it’s not, it doesn’t take away from the good story from before that moment. I love how the general theme of this episode - while the forces of good never intentionally try to incorporate evil into their endeavors, sometimes it can’t be avoided - gets shown in two ways: both consciously and unconsciously. Rumple makes the choice to use darkness in the past and Emma - while not knowledgeable of it - plays into Gold’s game in the present. Emma and Rumple/Gold are fantastic foils to each other and seeing this kind of starting point build as the series goes on is really cool! Insights I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen the intro changed up! I like how it changes depending on the focus of the episode. It’s a good blending of a uniform intro and a recap. Man, I’m gonna be sad when we lose it, though I do miss the “Previously on Once Upon a Time.” I never noticed before, but Zoso’s magic is so distinct from everyone elses. It’s like a supersonic wave rather than the puffs of smoke we’ve seen both before and since this point. “That’s the thing about children - before you know it, you lose them.” I’d be here all day if I tried to unpack that one. Breaking a toaster is the weirdest way to act out in anger. What makes it better is that we don’t see any sign of her attacking it or whatnot so how it got to be that way is up in the air and so much funnier for it! I wonder how a town charter was created. Why would Regina build a balancing system into her curse. Headcanon: Gold used his “please” clause to make it so. I take issue with the duke for not saying “Did you teach him how to run, RUNplestiltskin?” How DARE you pass on that beautiful pun opportunity? “If they take him away, I will truly become dust.” *Cuts to the Season 7 finale* Apparently, that was quite literal. Why can no one identify each other in the flashback? The Duke doesn’t recognize that the beggar is Zoso nor Rumple once he’s become the Dark One! I love how as Rumple and Bae are preparing the lanolin, we get to see hand movements that mirror Rumple’s once he becomes the Dark One. Archie, mate. Speaking from my experiences with a certain blooper reel, you might want to spend a good few seconds practicing the candidate’s names instead of your intro ;) Then again, your public speaking on the whole is just a mess. Practice your finesse. “I can’t beat Regina - not the way she fights.” Regina’s not the one fighting dirty at the moment, or less so: Gold is. Why say a line like that? You gotta wonder, were there ever plans to expand on Zoso’s points about Baelfire or were the writers aware that he was only saying that to get a rise out of Rumple? “You have to tell me what to do.” Oh he will, Rumple. He or Nimue, probably. Damn, I wish we could’ve seen that first night by the Dark One’s vault. Are there fanfics out there for it? “Glass. Swan.” Wow, ship names and hindsight makes that sign hilariously awkward! XD It’s weird how seldom we see blood on Rumple’s dagger. You would think since it’s a weapon, we’d see it more. I don’t know if it was a conscious choice on the hair stylist’s part, but Rumple’s not only blinded by his own ambitions of power in the final flashback scene, but also by his hair! Awww! Emma brings a picture of Henry into her office! I bet she got it from Mary Margaret. The way that Henry’s positioned makes it look like a school photo and she seems like the kind of teacher who would want to keep a record of her old students like photographs for sentimentality! It’s so cute!!! “You knew I’d agree.” I think she’s talking about agreeing to Gold’s initial campaign proposal? Otherwise, this line makes no sense. Arcs The power struggle against Regina - This was a major peg being taken down from Regina, and it was set up very well with Emma being positioned as deputy, which in turn was built off of her skills, and culminated here in her being elected sheriff. Through this moment, we see not only a shift in Emma, but one in Storybrooke as well. While still prone to falling for gossip, the townspeople respond to courage and we finally get to see the impact that both Regina and Gold have had on the town by how people respond to someone standing up to them. Still, going forward, Emma and Regina’s dynamic will in a much more delicate - and much more interesting because of it - place. Gold and Emma’s deal - We only get a brief mention of it here. I wonder what Gold had in mind for Emma’s favor before learning that he needed her help to find Bae outside of Storybrooke. At the very least, we know it wasn’t half of a pastrami sandwich. His loss though. Pastrami’s delicious. Favorite Dynamic Rumple and Bae. I think that the simpler characterizations of Rumple and Bae was a good way to go in this episode, with Rumple as cowardly as we’ve come to expect and Baelfire as brave to a fault. It - partnered with the parent-child power dynamics - makes for a very easy to understand, yet still nuanced conflict. Rumple comes off as more worldly, but still frustratingly stubborn and cowardly while Bae comes across as braver certainly, yet naive too. Rumple’s not wrong when he tells Bae that the call to fight in the Ogre Wars is a call to death, and it conflicts with a lot of our sensibilities that it’s honorable to die in battle. I just love as well how Bae’s faith in Rumple falls as he learns more and more about his father’s past. You can just see the lack of belief when Rumple tells him that his mother is dead, and you have to wonder what Bae’s resolve would be to the events of the end of the episode had that encounter with the Duke in the forest not occurred. But even still, while there’s a noticeable yet slight loss of trust, there’s no love lost, and that helps make the final piece of the flashback all the more tragic and give the audience an insight into what Zoso’s last words to Rumple end up truly meaning. Writer Now here’s the Jane Espenson I know and love in full form! It’s weird that with a more complex theme, she manages to tell a story leagues above her last one’s flashback in terms of quality. It makes me think of an advanced computer science professor that had to teach entry level Web Page Design class I once took. What works in this episode - as did work in the present day section of “That Still Small Voice” is an understanding of stakes. Rumple’s actions get more desperate and Emma’s decision whether to tell of the true reason for the fire get more complicated as higher stakes are revealed to these characters and build on their already present characteristics (Ex. Rumple can’t just take control of the Dark One because he’d be terrified of owning him as a slave, so he has to become the Dark One), whereas in “That Still Small Voice’s” flashback, there was no reason for Jiminy to jump to condemning his parents to a fate worse than death when he’s already conflicted about leaving them because they’re old. Here, the handling is done so much better. Rating 10/10. This episode works really well. I won’t repeat myself too much, but we’re given not one, but two very nuanced and complicated stories to work with and the characters are faced with likewise decisions. Before we end off, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about Robert Carlyle’s acting because this man is a star here. He displays this insane range throughout his time on the series, but this episode may be one of - if not the best - depictor of it. We get to see his cowardly side, the first bits of madness from being The Dark One, and his more manipulative tendencies in Storybrooke. It’s all conveyed flawlessly through his voice’s tone, body language, and facial expressions. What’s better is that the use of props, costumes, and makeup come together alongside his acting to enhance every moment of screen time he has and show the contrast between his dynamics across the worlds.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Sorry! Not my deepest analysis, I know, but I hope I conveyed just how much I enjoyed the episode! Sometimes, it’s hard to explain what makes something good, but I hope the more comedic “Insights” segment was enough to entertain. Thanks again to the fine folks from @watchingfairytales for putting this project together! Season Tally (66/220) Writer Tally for Season 1: A&E (23/70) Liz Tigelaar (10/20) David Goodman (9/50) Jane Espenson (16/60) Andrew Chambliss (8/10) Ian Goldberg (8/10) Operation Rewatch Archives

[earlgreytea68]

That Time I Was a Lawyer and There Was All This Systemic Sexism I Never Let My Brain Deal With

Last night I had a dream that went like this: I went to an improv show. I didn't really want to be there but I went anyway. The man sitting in the row behind me kept running his fingers through my hair. I didn't want him to do that, so I leaned forward to try to dissuade him. He also leaned forward so he could still reach my hair. Finally I turned around and demanded that he stop touching me, and immediately everyone in the audience frowned at me for disrupting the show, and the man was like, "Wow, way to super-overreact, you could have just told me you didn't want me to do that, you didn't have to make a scene." I then was enlisted to take part in the improv, even though I didn't want to. For no real reason that I could discern, I was given the task of pretending to repair a door. I went about my task, and was immediately criticized for the poor job I was doing of pretending to repair a door, with people coming up to show me how I could pretend in a more realistic and entertaining fashion. Then the improv group decided they didn't feel like performing the rest of the show and basically headed off the stage, leaving me alone, when I never even wanted to do the improv in the first place. Soooo I think I'm working through some stuff. 

Basically yesterday I came back from vacation and caught up on the news and in the legal news especially the talk was Courtney Milan's piece on Alex Kozinski, which I read. And as I read it I had two thoughts. The first thought was: Yes. That's what being a lawyer is like. And the second thought was: Wait a second, and that's wrong. If you have been with me since Doctor Who days, then what you know about me is that I used to be a lawyer in a big law firm. Like Courtney Milan, I had the sort of law school background and ran in the sort of legal circles where expectations and demands were both high. I was a miserable lawyer, so intensely depressed I could barely get myself out of bed and cried many times a day and, I can say it now, just wanted to die. It seemed to me it would be so much easier if I could just die. I didn't consider myself suicidal, because I didn't want to actually kill myself, but I was okay if death happened to me, so to speak. It would save me the effort of having to live the rest of my life. I got myself out of that situation. If you've only known me since Sherlock days, then you know a very different me. In all honesty, you know what I consider to be the more real me, because Law Firm Me still feels like a different person. And I knew the law firm was a terrible place to work, but Courtney Milan's piece made me realize that, all along, I have been blaming myself for that: The law firm was terrible for me because I didn't have the right personality test for it. I wasn't strong enough to make it through. I allowed them to destroy my spirit and steal my will to live and shatter my entire sense of self. There was something wrong with me that made me not a good enough lawyer. I was a person who should be a teacher instead. All of these statements in my head about that whole situation were all about me. I made a miscalculation and chose the wrong career and messed everything up and I had to fix it. And Courtney Milan's piece suddenly, as I sat there reading it, made me realize: Oh, my God, that was not my fault. None of that was my fault. While I was at the law firm, I kept notes on the things happening to me. I'm a writer. I write to process things. Even though my time at the law firm was the only time in my life I have ever not been able to write because of how severely depressed I was, I still jotted things down, some part of me struggling to stay alive recognizing I'd need to write my way through it later. And I did. I wrote a 50,000-word memoir about my time at the law firm. Every single thing in it is true. The only thing I did was change names. And then I read through it and realized that it probably implicated attorney-client privilege and so I just stuck it in my documents. I took it out again and skimmed through bits of it and...oh my god. It is filled with so much sexual harassment that my brain just dismissed and compartmentalized as somehow being about me, like, about my reaction to it not being the right reaction that would have solved the issue, rather than it being their problem for treating me that way. And I'm realizing now that I sat on it for so many years, worrying about attorney-client privilege, the same way Courtney Milan sat on her Kozinski story because of judicial confidentiality, and the same way other women sign NDAs, and I'm like, this entire system of secrecy that we as law students were taught was vital to promote honest advice and deliberations has been entirely constructed to keep women and minorities silent as to systematic white male abuse. And part of the problem is the line-drawing. I think of Matt Damon's statement about a pat on the butt not being as bad as a rape. What happens when you put that in a hierarchy like that is you normalize pats on the butt. You're like, "Hey, he just pat your butt, he didn't rape you, have some perspective." And then that silences you. That makes you swallow back your protests. In fact, it makes you stop seeing that as something to protest. There are worse things, after all. So much worse things. My law firm had procedures in place for sexual harassment, and that was about, like, walking into an office and being told you'd make partner in exchange for sexual favors. And prioritizing that had the effect of normalizing everything else happening to us as being acceptable. In fact, it allowed the men I was working with to say, "Hey, I've never raped anybody, I'm a good guy." So that, if you protested their hands in your hair, as in my dream, they could turn it back on you as the unreasonable one: You were never raped over a desk, after all. No. I wasn't. But I did have a (married and much older) male partner ask me, during a discussion of the facts of a case, if a particular thing turned me on. The details of this discussion--what we were discussing, etc.--are shrouded by attorney-client privilege. It wasn't an overt hand down my blouse or something. But it was definitely an inappropriate remark that I had been deprived of a vocabulary to deal with. I had a male partner command me to give up concert tickets I had so I could work late for a male associate going to the same concert. When I protested why I had to stay while the male associate got to go to the concert, I was told that he'd been "working hard." We had obviously both been working hard. But he was the man and I was the woman, and society is such that women are expected to just keep working hard, without protest. In fact, men are trained to dismiss our protests as hysterical overreaction. Given a choice of two associates in a room, it's the female associate who will be asked to keep minutes, and when the female associate points that out, the male partner gets huffy, because, hey, no one in this room has been sexually assaulted, it's a simple request about taking notes, someone has to do it. I remember once my favorite partner to work with gave me a bad annual review. We worked together constantly. He always requested me for his cases. He had never once displayed any qualms about my work product. So I asked him about it. And he said, "They'd dismiss my opinion of you if they thought I liked you too much. They'd think I was playing favorites." I think back on that now and I'm just astonished, because I can remember so clearly how many male partners "played favorites" with male associates. We didn't worry that they liked each other too much. We called the male associates their proteges. There were concerted partnership campaigns. We knew who went to bat for who. There was no frowning upon this...unless a female associate was involved, and then it became questionable. Every single thing about the law firm's patriarchal structure was designed to deprive me of power and agency while pretending it had not, because they had allowed me in the door, and they have given me a job, and didn't that make things better? Fifty years ago they wouldn't even have given me a law degree at my law school. Look how far I had come. If I couldn't make it, it was merely a confirmation that they'd been right about women, we were too weak and flighty, lacking in ambition, unfocused, too into romance novels and the stories in our heads. I had one partner tell me flat out I had too many friends and that was my problem as a lawyer. And I believed him. I have too many friends, I thought. I'm not a good lawyer, I thought. I'll be better at other things, I thought. You know what? I was an incredible lawyer. I was great at that job. Courtney Milan suddenly made me realize: NOTHING THAT HAPPENED WAS MY FAULT. I WAS GOOD ENOUGH. I WAS ALWAYS GOOD ENOUGH. And I hadn't thought that in...ever. I sat yesterday and read that piece and cried. Because all along I'd thought, I wasn't "leaning in" hard enough. That whole idea is the most toxic and irresponsible thing. It is letting people off the hook all over the place for failing to treat others like human beings. And I am a white, cisgender woman, so in fact I do have it the easiest I can. I cannot even imagine how it feels for the women of color, or the LGBTQ community. I am a happier professor than I was a lawyer. I do think it's probably true that this is generally a better career for me. But I also will never really know, because my law experience was so tainted with systematic abuse that I am still suffering the trauma of it now. Even now, years later, I can find myself unexpectedly weeping and dreaming about being forced to do pointless things I don't want to do and then being blamed for those things. And it isn't that being a professor means there's no more sexism in my life. It's just that the power structure is such that I feel slightly less voiceless in the face of it. There have been a couple of times when I have been in a position where I thought to myself, "This is not good, I feel the way I did at the law firm," because this anxious panic would start rising up in me. Until yesterday, I had never really noticed that those moments are actually pegged to moments when systemic sexism rears its head again and tries to pin me under it. But it's true. Those moments have all revolved around men asking me to do things that I did not want to do. "No," I say to these men, because these men are not my boss and what they want me to do is not my job and they can't fire me. "No, I do not want to do that." But men hear a woman's "no" as "talk to me about this more until you get me to say yes." They bear down on you. They call you incessantly, send you emails, stop by your office. The only way I have found to get a man to accept my saying no is to ignore that man: refuse to take calls, delete emails, lock my office door. And these are men who otherwise would tell you that they are nice, enlightened, feminist men. They just cannot shake their socialized belief that a woman should not be allowed to say no to a man's desires. That a woman saying no must be saying so against her own self-interest, and she should be told in what ways her decision is wrong. And if she stays steadfast in her decision, well, that's just a woman for you: completely irrational. I would not have said I wasn't a person who didn't understand the ways in which society's systems are used to perpetuate racial and gender injustice. I think, though, that this is the first time I have allowed myself to internalize it as to me personally, and to realize how much my thinking "sexual harassment is a terrible thing happening to people out there" was normalizing and minimizing and dismissing the sexual harassment that had happened to me, in so thorough and overwhelming a way that my brain literally could not label it as such because it was too big. I think many women might be going through this moment now, and it's this moment of not just recognizing our ways of being complicit in much of this but of also recognizing how many of the things we've been blaming ourselves for have never been our faults. We've just been allowed to shoulder all this guilt and own all these mistakes that were never ours in the first place. Do not belittle your traumas because you know of bigger ones happening to others. It is of course important to acknowledge those bigger traumas. It is important not to be too enclosed in your own bubble. It is important to listen to the stories of others and to amplify their voices. But it is also important not to render yourself unimportant in the list of cultural casualties. Because to do so is to allow them to continue to render you unimportant and meaningless, not worth the time to cherish and listen to and respect. You're important enough in this world that you matter. Let yourself matter. I'm not sure I realized until yesterday how incredibly difficult that can be sometimes. Once, as a professor, in the halls of the law school where I work, I ran into a visiting federal judge who I did not know. This was our first meeting. "Hi," I said to him, shaking his hand. "I teach copyright and trademark stuff here."  "Then we have nothing in common," he informed me, and returned to his office. I was done, dismissed, not worth his energy. He was wrong.

[extradan]

Hey I like your art a ton and I was wondering just how long you have been drawing and working to improve as an artist.

Oh my gosh haha thank you so much for liking my art!

I have been drawing for the longest time, I think ever since kindergarten, well at least the artistic dedication! 

I used to draw my when i was in middle school, starting from fourth grade i have been drawing more and more frequently until fifth grade in which I was drawing on a daily base, back then I would also be sitting and making animations on flash, which unfortunately I dont have backups of

but from middle school, up to high school 2012, my art never improved, it was just all the same all the time, I was back then on ritalin and I decided to start my first pony blog, while updating my blog, I couldnt consider yet Tumblr being part of the effective social websites that I go on as nobody was following me and I had no one to intreact with back, tumblr would be the thing i would check once every few days, it was nothing to me but a mere another google plus, until i was sponsored by catfood-mcfly back when he was running the Herpy Derpy blog, and thats where I got recognized and I was determined to continue my activity on tumblr as an ask blog, and I have gotten to become more interactive with people, being inspired by the many of the art I have been seeing from following other people, I would adopt and experiment with what I saw mostly shines through their art, and 2012 was the year I have made the biggest change in my art throughout the months, whitin 6-8 months I have improved by a ton!  tumblr was a very resourceful to the evolution of my art! and I also made so many friends and I have as well learned to become a better person! I am a better person of who I used to be in the past, and i am still improving! there are still a lot of things I need to work about myself as a person!

Also stepping out of drawing in flash and starting doing my stuff in sai was revolutionary to my art, flash back then wasnt recognized fully as an animators program by macromedia and neither by adobe, as they saw it an all purpose program for making goptimized ames and ads, only until all browsers and webpages grew out of flash and flash officially was blocked by all browsers since you could have implanted malicious codes into flash files, only then flash recognized as an art and animation tool for creators.

So moving to sai allowed me to build sketches and bodies easily and paint and yadda yadda and it was all great and helped boosting my art upwards

Flash limited my improvement as I wasnt drawing sketches on flash since you couldnt just lower the opacity of the layer you drew the sketch on, you would have to go through several actions to achieve that, but you would be lowering the opacity of your selected drawing and not the layer, I couldnt also paint on flash and flash ever since the stone age had those horrible vector tools that SUCKED DICK unless you do stretching and smoothing and fixing, in my opinion at least, they did improve the vector system a bit BUT IT STILL SUCKS, i prefer bitmap brushes more, which why I prefer Toon Boom harmony as a program for animators.

If you have been back in the days, you could have watched me go through a several phases! like drawing like atryl, raikissu’s shading and coloring styles, florecentmoo’s shading techniques and eye pupil style, and I uhh.. dont remember the rest, but theres have been a lot of artists out there whom I adopted artistic traits like:

theflyingtacoz, kittentoots(drunk fluttershy), w300, Santi, belaboy, dr idiot, inzergue (big impact on my current style), David (the guy who now works on mighty magiswords along with kyle), fungasm, colorlesscupcake (known as caek now), ahappypichu (a pretty powerful current impact on how i paint my art today), uhh, also “pinkie in private” which, to this day, drawing the way the draw the cheek for their characters, and some other artists I that I couldnt come up in my mind but I did adapt a trait or two from.

My current big inspirations are artists who work on OK KO and as fake as it might sound, my own fiance! yes!! they have been an inspiration for me for quite a while even back at 2012, but to how I viewed it, I never really dared to adopt anything from them because I was so out of their league, and my art was still shaping and i already had ideas that I wouldnt think would work if i mixed some of their’s, but now that my art have been developed and has a solid state of how it looks, they inspire me so much!!

Drawing ponies was probably the best practice I have ever had that thanks to that I have pushed so far in the art that I do, ponies are so simplified!! and easy to draw! it allowed me to produce more and that means that it allowed me to experience differently with each time! 

It helped me improve with a lot of stuff like gesture, facial and painting and other other minor stuff! drawing ponies was such a booster seat for me!

But unfortunately, from drawing ponies alot you wont learn how to draw humans, which understanding muscle, action line, figure and bones is so crucial for drawing, anything really! understanding how the body works is extremely fundamental and its there for you to know how to manipulate the drawings your making, of any specie, its not there to just teach you how to draw the anatomy of the human body, that will only serve as a plus.

I have learned a lot from ponies but how bodies work and draw clothes lmafo, to this day I cant draw clothes for days

in 2014 I ordered a really good book and I have polished my anatomy and human drawing skills, I yet dont know some stuff because i stopped practicing because of varios reason like relationship, access and physical health.

In the begging of the year I acquired a cintiq and it been nothing but dreadful to me, but im using it because i spent.. so much money on it.. and i have been so concerned about bringing it to my home country as well.. but it has the adventage of a screen so... 

its just, I dont have a low enough desktop or high enough chair to draw on it, its always above my shoulder no matter the angle and it puts so much weight on my shoulders, the thing is heavy too so its not something you could lean on your legs while you draw, neither it is portable, it made work much more harder and difficult and I wasnt drawing as frequesnt because my time wasnt so so enjoyable, my 2015 as well become a dreadful year to me and I was feeling guilty and shitty everyday, and it was my fault because it was all my doing and i let myself feel that way, and I had barely the stamina to work on my art ever over the year, I also lost my passion and motivation to draw and basically it dragged also to 2016, I drew a few commissions but I didnt produce much art neither, then I flew over the united states and I didnt have acess to drawing for 4 months as i was away from my equipment, my fiance had the equipment, but that means that I would have to use their computer for all the dedicated hours I use to work on my art and they would have nothing but a mere phone to entertain themselves, also our time togehter was really precious and every minute counted, so we rathered having fun other than doing work work work

2017 came and I still had the sense of drawing lost in me, I would draw whenever i would have a piece of paper available to me since I find fun in that, since im comfortable and cozy and i dont have to concentrate the entirety of my body weight on my hand and arm as i draw, but I would never draw on the cintiq unless its a miracle or if had a crazy comic idea in mind that i had and MUST HAD executed, i almost didnt draw anything in 2017, and neither in this year but the ok ko drawing i have recently created, but I found a new comfortable focus and its doing 3d, I am using my mouse to do everything and i dont have to feel my horrible chair scraping againt my butt like sandpaper, and I dont to feel like my shoulders are about to give up, I did try Tam’s 13hd and it was so much more comfortable and nice to draw on as i could put it on the bed or on my legs, but I cant afford another expensive piece of equipment, especially not in this generation of technology, wacom fucking sucks but no other brand is willing to be their competitive because tablet is not the purchase the average person would make.

Another reason why I have been so held on drawing and using the cintiq, which was probably the most major thing was it’s total, hot flaming shitty garbage diarrhea poopy stank abysmal horrible disgusting nasty dumbass smelly drivers which made every chance i had to draw a miss because i would battle myself from 30 minutes to over a hour fixing my tablet to draw a single thing, and its been like that every time i would turn my cintiq on! the situation was severe and everytime i would find a solution, it would be later suppressed, it was so harsh that i had a few months in which nothing I would do would make the drivers function, i was basically tabletless, so many, and a lot of opportunities for me to create a piece of drawing was flushed in the toilet with the rest, and so it was a deeper burden on my passion, determination and motivation to draw.

But yeah, now im doing 3d and it feels like a fresh hobby to me since I felt that im not going anywhere in and with my art (even though I yet have to learn how to draw bodies better, let alone drawing limbs, feet and CLOTHES!!)

and now the future has yet to be revealed!

[elmehdihmiche]

9 tips  to start with your website

When you open a store in the real world, the name is not the first thing you need. It helps to have the name first, but it isn’t essential. In the hosting world, though, the site name, known as the domain name, is the first thing you need to decide on. You can’t buy hosting and start designing your site until you have decided on a name and have purchased the domain name. See Chapter 2 for an explanation of how to pick a name. Finding the right location (and landlord) As I explain earlier in this section, you should picture your website as a store regardless of whether you’re actually selling anything. Remember that in this analogy, your hosting is like a building that your store is in, and your website is the decor, products, and everything else 2- that goes inside the store.

When you first open a store, you need to find a building you can lease in a good location at the right price. You may want it in the local shopping mall, but that has its drawbacks because then you’re restricted by the mall’s opening hours and by its rules and regulations about what you can and can’t do. Alternatively, you may want to lease some property of your own or get some space in a strip mall. With the strip mall, you have more freedom but are still somewhat restricted; if you lease a piece of land, you’re free to do whatever you like on it (providing the city council allows you). Finding somewhere to host your website is the same. You can go for a hosted website as described earlier in the chapter, but a hosted site is like being in a mall. The plethora of restrictions might outweigh the benefits. You can locate your site in the web-hosting equivalent of a strip mall — a shared server. There, you’re fairly free to do what you want, but you’re sharing the space with possibly hundreds of other sites, and some things you do might affect them (and vice versa). The final option is to lease your own server. Like leasing your own plot of land, nobody can tell you what you can and can’t do on your own server. Don’t try to go too big too fast; your web hosting can grow with your website. Unless you know you will be getting thousands of visitors from the get-go, you don’t need top-of-the-line hosting right from the start. With a physical store, not only do you have to find the right location, but (unless you buy the land yourself) you need to make sure you have a landlord you can work with. Your landlord leases you the building and is responsible for the physical building. It’s his responsibility to make sure the walls are sound and the roof doesn’t collapse, but beyond that, everything is up to you. If one of your racks or product display stands breaks, it isn’t your landlord’s responsibility. It’s yours. The same is true of your hosting. The web hosting company you buy hosting from is renting you space on a computer connected to the Internet. It’s the web host’s responsibility to make sure the computer keeps working and the Internet connection stays live, but beyond that, it’s all up to you. Most store owners only contact their landlords to pay the rent or to tell them when there is a problem with the building. Likewise, website owners only need to contact the web hosting company to pay the hosting charge or to report that the server seems not to be working correctly. Ask around online to find out how good your chosen web host is as a landlord — in other words, how good the host’s service, response time, and communication are. Hiring the right staf Before paying for hosting, think about who is going to keep the website updated. If you were opening a business, you’d have to think about what staff you are going to have in the store, whether you’ll sell enough to pay them, and whether you’ll ever get any sleep with all the work you’ll have to do.

2-Keeping a website updated is very similar.

Whether you’re creating a site for your community group, a blog, or even an online store, who is going to keep it updated? It always sounds easy, but the challenge of writing every day or remembering to update the website with new events or even adding and deleting products can soon drive even the most patient person to insanity. Stocking the shelves It is not enough to open a store and stock the shelves once then never restock them. The stock on the shelves needs to be replenished regularly or people will have nothing to come back to buy. Likewise, unless the content on your website changes regularly, there is nothing new for people to come back to your site for. Not all websites need to be updated daily, but regular new information gives your visitors a reason for continuing to return on a regular basis. Your hosting plan and your website are not the same thing. Your hosting plan is the facility that gives you a location in which to house your website. The website itself is comprised of the files, databases, and pages that create something viewable to Internet users. If you picture a store, you generally think of a building with products inside. What you’re seeing, though, is two separate parts: a building and the decor/products. If you take the decorations, racks, products, and everything else out — and even take the sign off the front — the building is still there. Hosting is the building. It’s empty; it simply provides space for you to work in. Your website is everything that’s inside the building. Delete your website and the computer it was hosted on still exists (and you’ll still be charged for your hosting plan whether you’re using it or not). Every store needs an office. Somewhere where you can sit and relax without being in front of customers. Somewhere you can do all the background administration the store needs. For the hosting plan, that’s called the control panel or the dashboard. Your control panel is where you administer the hosting, set up passwords and e-mail accounts, and do all the back-end stuff that is related to the hosting but not specifically the site. With most hosting companies, you can run multiple sites under one control panel, like having a central office doing the administration for a chain of stores. You need a lock and keys to keep your office safe, and that’s your control panel’s username and password that your host will have provided for you when you registered for hosting. Stores need a way to get stock in and out, so where possible they have a loading bay. The loading bay is typically at the back so the customers don’t see the deliveries being made and can’t interfere with them. FTP provides a loading bay for your website. Any time you need to update the site in any way, FTP is the tool you need to do that. It’s like a delivery driver. You tell it which files you want delivered and where you

3- want them delivered and the FTP does the rest.

Finally comes the part everyone hates — insurance. Nobody likes making insurance payments until something goes wrong, and then they’re really glad to have insurance and wish they had paid a little more to get even better coverage. Website owners face the same problem. Nobody wants to pay for daily backups — or even weekly or monthly ones — and many people choose not to, but then their website goes down and they really regret not having paid for the backup service. Just as I would suggest that any company get insurance, I absolutely recommend that website owners get a good backup system.

4- Avoiding Misconceptions and Missteps

Building websites and purchasing web hosting are things that are still new concepts to most people. Knowing who does what and who is responsible for what does not come naturally. A few things trip up many people . The next sections describe these things so you don’t fall into the same mistakes. Know what to expect from hosting support Your web host will offer support in some manner. Some hosts offer phone support or an online chat option, whereas others might only offer support through an e-mail or ticket system. Either way, there are limits to

5-what your host can do for you.

As I mention in the section Finding the right location (and landlord), your host’s responsibility is to provide you with a computer connected to the Internet to host your website on. Generally, the hosting support desk will work with you to ascertain whether the problem is with your site or the hosting plan. If it turns out to be your site that is causing the problem, most hosts will tell you to find someone to help you fix it, or they may offer to help fix it for an extra charge. It would be unreasonable to assume that your host would be an expert in whatever language or script your site is hosted with and would have staff available to fix every problem you come across with the site you are creating. Make sure that you identify in advance other ways to troubleshoot problems that arise with your site for those situations where your host cannot help. Knowing where to turn in an emergency can be a great comfort in itself. Recognize that you’re the owner and you’re the responsible party Whenever anything goes wrong at home, I always look for someone else to blame. My poor kids get the blame for everything! The same is true online. Whenever something goes wrong, it’s always someone else’s fault. I never do anything wrong — at least, not that I’ll admit. The problem with that attitude, though, is that it gets me nowhere when something goes wrong with my website. What I’ve learned, the hard way, is that a website is the owner’s responsibility. You put a lot of time, work, effort, creativity, and money into creating the site, and, ultimately, if the worst happens and you lose it all then you’re the only one who can re-create it. Re-creating it will take a long time. You must take responsibility for your site and ensure that you have a good, recent backup of it at all times. In case the server blows up or your host goes bankrupt or some teenager with nothing better to do on a Friday night hacks in and deletes everything you need, you must be sure you have a recovery plan. Shouting at your host might feel good, and if the problem is the host’s fault, suing the company might be successful, but neither of those actions will get your site back. A website requires simply too much of your valuable time and talent for you to not do everything you can to ensure that you can recover it when disaster strikes.

6- Don’t fall foul of your host’s terms and conditions

Did you read the seemingly endless pages of your host’s terms and conditions when you signed up? I didn’t think so — I never do either. Web hosting terms and conditions make for interesting reading, though. You’d be amazed at what they say. Every host’s terms and conditions are slightly different, but here’s the general gist of them: “We’ve listed a thousand things that we could class as being unacceptable, and if we find you doing any one of them we will most likely suspend your account immediately and possibly even delete it without any notice.” Yes, seriously, your host is like a landlord, but there aren’t many laws covering what it can and can’t do. This means the host can, if it wants, change the locks right now and never give you access to your stuff again — for pretty much any reason. Now, most hosts won’t do that, but they generally give themselves the option should they need to. Things that will normally get you in trouble with your host are pornography, illegal content, and phishing sites (where you mimic a bank or other website to try to steal people’s login details). If your site does get suspended, contact your host immediately. You’ll probably have to do a little convincing that your site got hacked or you genuinely didn’t realize that what you were doing was wrong, but most often your host will at least let you collect your files before deleting the account. Don’t delay in contacting your host, though, because delays can be seen as proof that you knew you were in the wrong and you’re not going to fight to get your stuff back.

[yazmaeylemi]

Run Your Own Organisation By Reselling Wholesale Baby Clothing On EBay

In order to chat concerning love and also still create a socially acceptable metropolitan identification, artists often tend to apply among the five successful love narrative kinds. Nobody recognizes circumstances like that, individuals cant handle it, so they 'll discuss it permanently. The female attempting to market me their newest phone set described a tv advert. She kept me speaking for around 10 minutes throughout which time she referred me to this particular TV advert a further 4 times, and also each time I assured her I had actually not seen it since I don't view television. Weaving can be selected up throughout the adverts as well as operated at for 5 or 10 minutes at once. New threads and also fashionable pattern layouts make knitting enjoyable as well as quickly, and also I can knit also if I am watching TELEVISION, albeit an uncommon occurence for me directly! With the net, even if you live in a neighborhood that is tiny, you aren't limited to your regional location, as well as can discover people not simply around the UK, however across the world too! After that decorate with baby images and such, after that take it to your local duplicate shop, like Kinkos, and also have them publish the web page on pastel tinted paper. Often weve discovered regional road fairs or windsurfing tournaments or a design train museum. Weve spoke about endometriosis, that which can be a cyst. So, you can have bleeding with a cyst but many of the moment those are rare scenarios. The endometriomas, if they continue, as well as theres continual blood loss in the abdomen and also the ovary that can trigger bonds. Any kind of hemorrhaging cyst can be an issue. A maternity with a corpus luteum, the second sort of practical cyst takes place to establish as the child is expanding. The majority of these, the larger blood products, the larger blood vessels on cysts are generally the corpus luteum cyst. The majority of ovary cysts in as well as of themselves are not going to be triggering a trouble. But, the important point below, is that cysts themselves, in as well as of themselves are not mosting likely to be a problem or harmful trouble. The nature of the celebration is possibly going to have a tendency towards the womanly side; if the coordinators of the party have an arrangement for this, after that welcoming guys would certainly be fine. Without a doubt, there are numerous men and also ladies that are making great loan using the net company path. In this tune, the poet uses the perceptual narrative to recognize that some guys "dont be comin right ", however that he has a different assumption of females than these other guys. Supposed to aid with the discomfort, intended to assist me preserve In this song, Master utilizes the different story to share his sight of what love should be. It is important for the clothes to be completely dry before they are done away with or worn by a kid, as well as hanging the garments on childrens clothing hangers will certainly help maintain their type. Nonetheless, aspartame was enabled on 1981 for completely dry items and 1983 for carbonated beverages.

free baby stuff expecting mother

People used to exchange items as well as services for various other products as well as solutions prior to money was produced, and also some people still barter today to stay clear of using loan (mostly for tax obligation factors I am informed). Some various other excellent services are a baby diaper solution for towel diapering moms, and even a baby diaper delivery solution for disposables, as well as spend for the very first two weeks or a month worth of diapering items. Even the colors used in the textile needs to be organic and also safe. You may be initially drawn in by all the eye catchy shades as well as the fanciness of the attire, yet if your kid is not mosting likely to like it, it is going to become useless. Pajamas as well as bodysuits for little infant women been available in all different shades and also styles, and also are created all sorts of weather. One or 2 pieces would do - a set of rompers, a pair of tee shirts, a set of jammies. At the same time, you can place a Tees over their jammies. They will certainly guard and also guarantee any type of money you take into an interest-bearing account and pay you probably 3% yearly rate of interest on your deposit. They know that if you're satisfied with your sample, greater than most likely you be ended up being a routine client as well as invest money with them. There are really a whole lot of freebies offered; you just need to know exactly how to browse for them. Or search by chemical ingredients (see list below for some instances) as well as discover what brand names include it. Next, you will come to your search results page page; this is a checklist of all items that fulfill your search standards. Allow us take a peek into what makes these criteria a must for those parents purchasing baby clothes. Likewise, let your very first couple of road journeys teach you what you need to have along. There are millions of very first time mamas available that have a lot of information to share with you and they do not desire you to be without the information. They desire to have outfits with breathable material as well as easy on the body. Is this what we have involved, - everybody in our area enjoys the very same adverts, the very same programs, the very same newspaper article every day or night? Keep in mind: After trying single foods, good combinations are potatoes as well as carrots or carrots as well as peas. And not just will I evaluate it for him, Sickness make it appear like the Elvis of foods, since Im already rather certain that Ill love a hamdog. He likewise refers to his love rate of interest as "this Ethiopian queen from Philly ", making use of the imperial characterization so usual in spiritual love narratives. If you're actually strapped for cash, then you can probably use utilizing your bed as a changing table, yet if you can, this is something I extremely recommend. Its better to feed child first point in the early morning, then permit some play or rest time in between prior to providing infant a bath. At a "Pamper Party," an idea increasingly preferred for moms that already have several kids and therefore most of right stuff they really need, they might take house health facility accessories such as a loofah or bubble bath. A great bath-themed gift basket would consist of some hypo-allergenic bathroom things, like child baths, baby powder, towels, as well as bath playthings.

The major and also is that most, if not all of these complimentary products, are provided right to the mommy's house. And also, with that, lets solve down to the core. Do you have the software program you need to begin? At some time you are mosting likely to intend to move your child, so you will require to buy something. Unless you're preparing to hang on to them for your following infant, they're simply collecting dust. With a few straightforward skills, an useful collection of "things, " and just a little bit of planning as well as preparation, youll get on your method! There is a place for TELEVISION in our lives as well as it is after all the fastest means of absorbing information from all over the world. Taking courses abroad Below, the poet makes use of the spiritual story to define the moment, place as well as feelings that his love was founded on, talking of them as if they were somehow implied to happen. Probably she believed that was her location worldwide as well as no-one might fault her if she executed her responsibilities to miraculous of her ability. I when had a neighbour that informed the world as well as it's mom she thought cleanliness was next to Godliness and invested all day daily cleaning her home. It is thought that from this you really have the option to inspect out whatever prior to you also need to acquire something. Tight neck lines would trouble you as well as also the placement of buttons at odd placements would trigger you issues, so inspect these beforehand. At the same time the switches and also various other aspects in the layout should be very carefully stitched. But Betty had the cash money whenever I went to prison This tune even more highlights making use of contrasting stories to express love. This example further illustrates making use of initial language in conversational narratives. The poet feels it is unacceptable for anybody to "call you out your name ", or to put it simply, make use of disparaging language towards his love. A lot of the baby shower suggestions will function for any area, indoors or out. Do you want your baby to look cute or trendy with child clothes yet you don't have suggestions on where to seek them? Expense is a significant thing you would certainly intend to think about when acquiring baby clothing. It's easy, check out a baby garments shop. Apparel care plays a big role in your baby's safety. Therefore, it is always recommended that you keep the safety as well as comfort consider mind also when you are looking for celebration dresses for your little one. Even when you have actually purchased a lacy blouse for your tiny girl, if you finish up obtaining a size that happens to be slightly bigger than her actual dimension, she will be comfy in it. As well as, parents will certainly be likely to keep buying clothes to stay on par with the changes in the child's growth - dimension, weight, size, as well as shape. For this reason, acquiring garments that are somewhat larger than the genuine dimension of your infants body gifts will be good as it makes certain optimal convenience for the kid.

Nevertheless, these immunization procedures will only make their systems solid but it does not offer a guarantee that microorganisms can not permeate their method. So why did she behave this way? The very same point can be real with, certainly with tube maternities, thats why those 2 can be confused. Yes it is real that baby clothes do not last long with children growing as rapid as they do, yet caring for an infants clothes is still equally as, otherwise even more, vital. Hip-Hop, you the love of my life as well as that holds true This passage is unique since it makes use of both the metaphoric and contrasting narrative methods. The discussion of Hip-Hop love narratives is a really uphill struggle. Which leads us to the most popular metaphoric Hip-Hop love story of our time. Children will certainly like this recipe. Thick as well as fluffy clothing will keep the baby cozy from head to toe. Below is a list of popular things that has actually been investigated with several of the largest on the internet stores of infant items. Here are a few of the basic points you'll intend to have. Do you want to offer a present to a new mom without spending a great deal of money? They use it when washing to remove odors, soften the fabrics, and offer your infant as well as kid clothes a fresh and extra natural fragrance. When you are considering your youngsters comfort, its not only regarding the style of the apparel youre acquiring it will certainly also refer just how the thing rests on your infants body. Think about just how much you have into the thing. The next time you are re-assembling your package, make certain to include that thing. I would certainly instead spend time with my household as well as pals, chatting on the phone, choosing lengthy walks or dancing the evening away. With all that having been said, Ive discovered a new food that I understand I'm going to love. Soon you'll discover that having just a couple of wonderful outfits ends up being impractical. I had a great cost-free website a couple of years ago I saw every day. Use your Road Experience logbook to videotape everyones remarks regarding the day. This will offer no good as buying baby items indiscriminately will not just be waste of loan however also wild-goose chase and also energy which you can place for some constructive usage. If passing by automobile you need to constantly make use of a cars and truck seat and also comply with the maker's directions for fitting. If your trip limit is no more than a one-hour vehicle trip one way, after that search for places of rate of interest within about 40 miles of home. Which is not an issue because much like kidneys, much like testis, females with one ovary can have just as lots of babies as a female with two ovaries as well as 2 tubes. Obviously it is a 2x matrix, meaning those initial 2 people you obtained to sign up with get on your very first level. You must constantly have two sets at night time, since you never know when a child is going to spew up or have a baby diaper leakage that can need a full garment adjustment.

[smartecky]

Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR. I chose it mostly for aesthetic reasons. As much as I appreciated its well-rounded technical merits, I was downright giddy at the notion I could have an iPhone in my favorite color: blue. I’ve not once regretted my choice nearly a year later. Color aside, the XR was—and remains—a terrific device.

At a fundamental level, choosing the iPhone XR was more significant than a favorite color or a willingness to accept some technical differences. As a visually impaired person, foregoing the XS meant I was purposely giving up a pivotal accessibility feature—the OLED screen—that would have made my experience with the device more accessible. In hindsight, the fact I decided on the objectively worse phone in the XR speaks volumes about how great it was as a product, and how color can spark such raw, immense delight.

This year, there is no blue iPhone. Without the emotional appeal of color in the equation, I’m reminded once again why the best iPhone money can buy—the iPhone 11 Pro Max—is the best, most accessible iPhone for me.

The Awesomeness of OLED

Apple provided me with two review units: one white iPhone 11 and one midnight green iPhone 11 Pro Max. As of this writing, I’ve had both phones for close to two weeks and I’ve spent roughly a week with each phone. I also have my year-old XR handy as a reference tool.

While I have spent lengthy time with OLED displays before—my iPhone X had one and, on a much smaller scale, every Apple Watch has had one—coming back after a year with my XR’s Liquid Retina LCD screen was quite literally eye-opening. Even with my poor eyesight, I immediately could notice a substantial difference in quality after putting my XR (and iPhone 11) side by side with the 11 Pro Max. For two years now, Apple has rightfully boasted about the XR’s (now 11) LCD screen being the best in the industry. It is ridiculously good, but the Pro’s OLED display is itself so good that I’ve wondered during testing how I was able to live happily with my XR last year.

In practice, the Super Retina XDR display on the 11 Pro Max is appreciably better in all phases. In addition to being physically larger (albeit not by much), the 11 Pro Max display’s brightness and sharpness make everything I see on my device much easier. It reduces eye strain and fatigue, which are constant battles for me. iOS 13’s new dark mode looks fantastic on OLED screens; I have it set to automatically switch from light to dark at sundown, and use apps like Twitter and Things in their pitch black modes at nighttime. Although there are dark mode skeptics, I personally find it to be a welcome reprieve during evening hours, and the credit is due to the Pro’s OLED display.

I started my testing with the iPhone 11 Pro Max for a few days, then switched to the regular 11 for another few days. After using both, knowing their respective screen technologies, I instantly knew which model I preferred. I could use the iPhone 11 with no problem, but having access to both phones reaffirmed to me just how superior OLED is for my vision. For my needs, it’s OLED or bust.

Three years with Face ID

I’ve written about my trials with Face ID before. As we collectively enter our third year with Apple’s facial recognition system, I think it’s worth briefly examining where it stands in context of the new iPhones and accessibility.

Apple says Face ID in the new iPhones is “up to 30 percent faster” while working from further away and at more angles than before. I cannot tell how much better it is in these regards; it’s Face ID and it seems to work just as well as it ever has. My strabismus still seems to wreak havoc on the phones’ TrueDepth camera system.

I set up Face ID on my 11 Pro Max and turned off Require Attention so that I needn’t look directly at the camera to unlock my phone. (When you do this, Apple blasts a modal alert on screen saying Face ID won’t be as secure as it could be. Fair enough, but it’s a trade-off I have to make in order to use it.) It’s worked like a charm, as usual.

What’s interesting, though, is what happened when I switched to the regular iPhone 11. I set up Face ID, but forgot to go into Settings and disable Require Attention. I suddenly realized this the other day, as I had clearly forgotten Face ID settings don’t sync from device to device. In hindsight it’s impressive how much Face ID has seemingly improved at recognizing my gaze. Whether it’s purposeful on Apple’s part, I don’t know, but I think it’s telling that I was unlocking my phone and paying for Lyft rides pretty much hassle-free for days with Require Attention on by default.

My strabismus still makes me an edge case, so I prefer Require Attention be disabled, as it’s the path of least resistance. Yet the happy accident I had regarding Require Attention led to a pleasant surprise. I can’t say it’s directly attributable to this generation of Face ID, but it’s an improvement regardless.

Adieu, 3D Touch

Like the much-maligned Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro, I have long been an ardent supporter of 3D Touch. I wrote about how it could positively impact accessibility when in debuted with the iPhone 6s four years ago, and missed it with my XR.

Apple’s removal of 3D Touch lends credence to the cons I outlined in my 2015 piece—namely, that it was too complex (for users and Apple) and it was too undiscoverable. The Apple community at large has felt this way about the feature since the beginning, especially bemoaning how it never percolated across iOS devices, most notably the iPad.

iOS 13 has brought Haptic Touch, first introduced with the iPhone XR last year, as a replacement for 3D Touch. It’s more or less equivalent; iOS 13 has expanded Haptic Touch’s scope so as to pick up many of 3D Touch’s tricks. These include Quick Actions on home screen icons and message previews in Mail and Messages. And importantly of course, these features work on iPads running iPadOS.

From an accessibility perspective, I have enjoyed having access to these shortcuts again on my iPhone 11 review units. I missed them during my time with the XR until now; the contextual menus throughout the OS really do cut down on excessive swiping and tapping. I like how Apple has grown Haptic Touch for the most part. I cannot tell an appreciable functional difference between it and 3D Touch in terms, say, starting a new email or text message from the home screen.

Where I believe Haptic Touch is a regression from 3D Touch is in performance. Accessing Quick Actions or link previews, for instance, feels like it takes forever relative to before. It isn’t so bad to the point that it’s unusable, but it’s definitely noticeable. More importantly, it causes Haptic Touch to lose a bit of the luster that makes haptic feedback such a promising assistive technology. Where 3D Touch always felt instantaneous, Haptic Touch, capable as it is, feels slower, thus ruining the fun a little. I assume this latency can and will improve over time, but count me as one who misses 3D Touch in the new iPhones.

Miscellany

A few cursory notes on the new iPhones worth mentioning.

SIM card swapping. This is an extremely first-world problem, because I am privileged in the sense I get to review new iPhones every year. But this is an accessibility matter! Every year I get a new iPhone (or multiple iPhones) for testing, I’m reminded just how inaccessible the act of swapping my SIM card can be. It is a test of my visual acuity and fine-motor skills, both of which are not strong suits of mine. Especially on the midnight green, where the finish is so dark on the sides I can hardly see where the SIM tray is, moving between three iPhones can be quite adventurous. (I remember the jet black iPhone 7 having the same issue in terms of finding the SIM tray.) I like that Apple provides users with the SIM tool; the SIM card dance isn’t their fault. Still, as a visually impaired reviewer, I felt compelled to share this bit of accessibility minutia.

Color. Speaking of color, I do like the new midnight green finish a lot. The CW’s Arrow is my favorite television show, and the shade of green strikes me as the iPhone Oliver Queen would choose.

Battery life. One of the iPhone 11’s biggest selling points is the dramatically increased battery life. I’ve long compromised my battery—on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch—because I need to run my devices with maximum screen brightness in order to see. That I can do so on iPhone 11 and still mostly benefit from the battery gains speaks volumes about Apple’s battery work. I can go a whole day, using my phone normally at max brightness, and not stress about conserving my battery or finding an outlet somewhere.

Portrait (pig?) Mode. Seriously, Portrait Mode on the new iPhones was made for pigs.

Portrait Mode on iPhone 11 was made for pigs. Namely, mine.

cc: @Pickavet pic.twitter.com/jUXGsRiIDv

— Steven Aquino (@steven_aquino) September 30, 2019

The bottom line

It’s a testament to the “completeness” of last year’s iPhone XR that I was so happy with it. Yes, it was beautifully blue, but it was also a damn good all-around iPhone. Apple describes the iPhone 11 as having “just the right amount of everything,” the iPhone for everyone, but that tagline could just as easily apply to the XR. Even today, the XR is a great phone if you can do without the second camera. The iPhone 11 is simply a better iPhone XR.

The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro are close enough, spec-wise, that if it the regular 11 came in blue, I might’ve been tempted to upgrade to that. There’s a reason Apple offers iPhones in a rainbow of colors; the psychological impact color has on consumerism is a very real phenomena. Perhaps someday soon there will be a blue iPhone with a Super Retina OLED display. That said, while both iPhones are highly impressive, I’m happy with the Pro for the upgraded screen quality and three cameras. You really can’t go wrong with either iPhone 11, but for this year anyway, the return to OLED was the clincher for me.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/07/iphone-11-pro-is-the-most-accessible-iphone-yet/

iPhone 11 Pro is the most accessible iPhone yet Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR.

[charrmedia]

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Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR. I chose it mostly for aesthetic reasons. As much as I appreciated its well-rounded technical merits, I was downright giddy at the notion I could have an iPhone in my favorite color: blue. I’ve not once regretted my choice nearly a year later. Color aside, the XR was—and remains—a terrific device.

At a fundamental level, choosing the iPhone XR was more significant than a favorite color or a willingness to accept some technical differences. As a visually impaired person, foregoing the XS meant I was purposely giving up a pivotal accessibility feature—the OLED screen—that would have made my experience with the device more accessible. In hindsight, the fact I decided on the objectively worse phone in the XR speaks volumes about how great it was as a product, and how color can spark such raw, immense delight.

This year, there is no blue iPhone. Without the emotional appeal of color in the equation, I’m reminded once again why the best iPhone money can buy—the iPhone 11 Pro Max—is the best, most accessible iPhone for me.

The Awesomeness of OLED

Apple provided me with two review units: one white iPhone 11 and one midnight green iPhone 11 Pro Max. As of this writing, I’ve had both phones for close to two weeks and I’ve spent roughly a week with each phone. I also have my year-old XR handy as a reference tool.

While I have spent lengthy time with OLED displays before—my iPhone X had one and, on a much smaller scale, every Apple Watch has had one—coming back after a year with my XR’s Liquid Retina LCD screen was quite literally eye-opening. Even with my poor eyesight, I immediately could notice a substantial difference in quality after putting my XR (and iPhone 11) side by side with the 11 Pro Max. For two years now, Apple has rightfully boasted about the XR’s (now 11) LCD screen being the best in the industry. It is ridiculously good, but the Pro’s OLED display is itself so good that I’ve wondered during testing how I was able to live happily with my XR last year.

In practice, the Super Retina XDR display on the 11 Pro Max is appreciably better in all phases. In addition to being physically larger (albeit not by much), the 11 Pro Max display’s brightness and sharpness make everything I see on my device much easier. It reduces eye strain and fatigue, which are constant battles for me. iOS 13’s new dark mode looks fantastic on OLED screens; I have it set to automatically switch from light to dark at sundown, and use apps like Twitter and Things in their pitch black modes at nighttime. Although there are dark mode skeptics, I personally find it to be a welcome reprieve during evening hours, and the credit is due to the Pro’s OLED display.

I started my testing with the iPhone 11 Pro Max for a few days, then switched to the regular 11 for another few days. After using both, knowing their respective screen technologies, I instantly knew which model I preferred. I could use the iPhone 11 with no problem, but having access to both phones reaffirmed to me just how superior OLED is for my vision. For my needs, it’s OLED or bust.

Three years with Face ID

I’ve written about my trials with Face ID before. As we collectively enter our third year with Apple’s facial recognition system, I think it’s worth briefly examining where it stands in context of the new iPhones and accessibility.

Apple says Face ID in the new iPhones is “up to 30 percent faster” while working from further away and at more angles than before. I cannot tell how much better it is in these regards; it’s Face ID and it seems to work just as well as it ever has. My strabismus still seems to wreak havoc on the phones’ TrueDepth camera system.

I set up Face ID on my 11 Pro Max and turned off Require Attention so that I needn’t look directly at the camera to unlock my phone. (When you do this, Apple blasts a modal alert on screen saying Face ID won’t be as secure as it could be. Fair enough, but it’s a trade-off I have to make in order to use it.) It’s worked like a charm, as usual.

What’s interesting, though, is what happened when I switched to the regular iPhone 11. I set up Face ID, but forgot to go into Settings and disable Require Attention. I suddenly realized this the other day, as I had clearly forgotten Face ID settings don’t sync from device to device. In hindsight it’s impressive how much Face ID has seemingly improved at recognizing my gaze. Whether it’s purposeful on Apple’s part, I don’t know, but I think it’s telling that I was unlocking my phone and paying for Lyft rides pretty much hassle-free for days with Require Attention on by default.

My strabismus still makes me an edge case, so I prefer Require Attention be disabled, as it’s the path of least resistance. Yet the happy accident I had regarding Require Attention led to a pleasant surprise. I can’t say it’s directly attributable to this generation of Face ID, but it’s an improvement regardless.

Adieu, 3D Touch

Like the much-maligned Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro, I have long been an ardent supporter of 3D Touch. I wrote about how it could positively impact accessibility when in debuted with the iPhone 6s four years ago, and missed it with my XR.

Apple’s removal of 3D Touch lends credence to the cons I outlined in my 2015 piece—namely, that it was too complex (for users and Apple) and it was too undiscoverable. The Apple community at large has felt this way about the feature since the beginning, especially bemoaning how it never percolated across iOS devices, most notably the iPad.

iOS 13 has brought Haptic Touch, first introduced with the iPhone XR last year, as a replacement for 3D Touch. It’s more or less equivalent; iOS 13 has expanded Haptic Touch’s scope so as to pick up many of 3D Touch’s tricks. These include Quick Actions on home screen icons and message previews in Mail and Messages. And importantly of course, these features work on iPads running iPadOS.

From an accessibility perspective, I have enjoyed having access to these shortcuts again on my iPhone 11 review units. I missed them during my time with the XR until now; the contextual menus throughout the OS really do cut down on excessive swiping and tapping. I like how Apple has grown Haptic Touch for the most part. I cannot tell an appreciable functional difference between it and 3D Touch in terms, say, starting a new email or text message from the home screen.

Where I believe Haptic Touch is a regression from 3D Touch is in performance. Accessing Quick Actions or link previews, for instance, feels like it takes forever relative to before. It isn’t so bad to the point that it’s unusable, but it’s definitely noticeable. More importantly, it causes Haptic Touch to lose a bit of the luster that makes haptic feedback such a promising assistive technology. Where 3D Touch always felt instantaneous, Haptic Touch, capable as it is, feels slower, thus ruining the fun a little. I assume this latency can and will improve over time, but count me as one who misses 3D Touch in the new iPhones.

Miscellany

A few cursory notes on the new iPhones worth mentioning.

SIM card swapping. This is an extremely first-world problem, because I am privileged in the sense I get to review new iPhones every year. But this is an accessibility matter! Every year I get a new iPhone (or multiple iPhones) for testing, I’m reminded just how inaccessible the act of swapping my SIM card can be. It is a test of my visual acuity and fine-motor skills, both of which are not strong suits of mine. Especially on the midnight green, where the finish is so dark on the sides I can hardly see where the SIM tray is, moving between three iPhones can be quite adventurous. (I remember the jet black iPhone 7 having the same issue in terms of finding the SIM tray.) I like that Apple provides users with the SIM tool; the SIM card dance isn’t their fault. Still, as a visually impaired reviewer, I felt compelled to share this bit of accessibility minutia.

Color. Speaking of color, I do like the new midnight green finish a lot. The CW’s Arrow is my favorite television show, and the shade of green strikes me as the iPhone Oliver Queen would choose.

Battery life. One of the iPhone 11’s biggest selling points is the dramatically increased battery life. I’ve long compromised my battery—on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch—because I need to run my devices with maximum screen brightness in order to see. That I can do so on iPhone 11 and still mostly benefit from the battery gains speaks volumes about Apple’s battery work. I can go a whole day, using my phone normally at max brightness, and not stress about conserving my battery or finding an outlet somewhere.

Portrait (pig?) Mode. Seriously, Portrait Mode on the new iPhones was made for pigs.

Portrait Mode on iPhone 11 was made for pigs. Namely, mine.

cc: @Pickavet pic.twitter.com/jUXGsRiIDv

— Steven Aquino (@steven_aquino) September 30, 2019

The bottom line

It’s a testament to the “completeness” of last year’s iPhone XR that I was so happy with it. Yes, it was beautifully blue, but it was also a damn good all-around iPhone. Apple describes the iPhone 11 as having “just the right amount of everything,” the iPhone for everyone, but that tagline could just as easily apply to the XR. Even today, the XR is a great phone if you can do without the second camera. The iPhone 11 is simply a better iPhone XR.

The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro are close enough, spec-wise, that if it the regular 11 came in blue, I might’ve been tempted to upgrade to that. There’s a reason Apple offers iPhones in a rainbow of colors; the psychological impact color has on consumerism is a very real phenomena. Perhaps someday soon there will be a blue iPhone with a Super Retina OLED display. That said, while both iPhones are highly impressive, I’m happy with the Pro for the upgraded screen quality and three cameras. You really can’t go wrong with either iPhone 11, but for this year anyway, the return to OLED was the clincher for me.

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iPhone 11 Pro is the most accessible iPhone yet Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR.

[dizzedcom]

Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR. I chose it mostly for aesthetic reasons. As much as I appreciated its well-rounded technical merits, I was downright giddy at the notion I could have an iPhone in my favorite color: blue. I’ve not once regretted my choice nearly a year later. Color aside, the XR was—and remains—a terrific device.

At a fundamental level, choosing the iPhone XR was more significant than a favorite color or a willingness to accept some technical differences. As a visually impaired person, foregoing the XS meant I was purposely giving up a pivotal accessibility feature—the OLED screen—that would have made my experience with the device more accessible. In hindsight, the fact I decided on the objectively worse phone in the XR speaks volumes about how great it was as a product, and how color can spark such raw, immense delight.

This year, there is no blue iPhone. Without the emotional appeal of color in the equation, I’m reminded once again why the best iPhone money can buy—the iPhone 11 Pro Max—is the best, most accessible iPhone for me.

The Awesomeness of OLED

Apple provided me with two review units: one white iPhone 11 and one midnight green iPhone 11 Pro Max. As of this writing, I’ve had both phones for close to two weeks and I’ve spent roughly a week with each phone. I also have my year-old XR handy as a reference tool.

While I have spent lengthy time with OLED displays before—my iPhone X had one and, on a much smaller scale, every Apple Watch has had one—coming back after a year with my XR’s Liquid Retina LCD screen was quite literally eye-opening. Even with my poor eyesight, I immediately could notice a substantial difference in quality after putting my XR (and iPhone 11) side by side with the 11 Pro Max. For two years now, Apple has rightfully boasted about the XR’s (now 11) LCD screen being the best in the industry. It is ridiculously good, but the Pro’s OLED display is itself so good that I’ve wondered during testing how I was able to live happily with my XR last year.

In practice, the Super Retina XDR display on the 11 Pro Max is appreciably better in all phases. In addition to being physically larger (albeit not by much), the 11 Pro Max display’s brightness and sharpness make everything I see on my device much easier. It reduces eye strain and fatigue, which are constant battles for me. iOS 13’s new dark mode looks fantastic on OLED screens; I have it set to automatically switch from light to dark at sundown, and use apps like Twitter and Things in their pitch black modes at nighttime. Although there are dark mode skeptics, I personally find it to be a welcome reprieve during evening hours, and the credit is due to the Pro’s OLED display.

I started my testing with the iPhone 11 Pro Max for a few days, then switched to the regular 11 for another few days. After using both, knowing their respective screen technologies, I instantly knew which model I preferred. I could use the iPhone 11 with no problem, but having access to both phones reaffirmed to me just how superior OLED is for my vision. For my needs, it’s OLED or bust.

Three years with Face ID

I’ve written about my trials with Face ID before. As we collectively enter our third year with Apple’s facial recognition system, I think it’s worth briefly examining where it stands in context of the new iPhones and accessibility.

Apple says Face ID in the new iPhones is “up to 30 percent faster” while working from further away and at more angles than before. I cannot tell how much better it is in these regards; it’s Face ID and it seems to work just as well as it ever has. My strabismus still seems to wreak havoc on the phones’ TrueDepth camera system.

I set up Face ID on my 11 Pro Max and turned off Require Attention so that I needn’t look directly at the camera to unlock my phone. (When you do this, Apple blasts a modal alert on screen saying Face ID won’t be as secure as it could be. Fair enough, but it’s a trade-off I have to make in order to use it.) It’s worked like a charm, as usual.

What’s interesting, though, is what happened when I switched to the regular iPhone 11. I set up Face ID, but forgot to go into Settings and disable Require Attention. I suddenly realized this the other day, as I had clearly forgotten Face ID settings don’t sync from device to device. In hindsight it’s impressive how much Face ID has seemingly improved at recognizing my gaze. Whether it’s purposeful on Apple’s part, I don’t know, but I think it’s telling that I was unlocking my phone and paying for Lyft rides pretty much hassle-free for days with Require Attention on by default.

My strabismus still makes me an edge case, so I prefer Require Attention be disabled, as it’s the path of least resistance. Yet the happy accident I had regarding Require Attention led to a pleasant surprise. I can’t say it’s directly attributable to this generation of Face ID, but it’s an improvement regardless.

Adieu, 3D Touch

Like the much-maligned Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro, I have long been an ardent supporter of 3D Touch. I wrote about how it could positively impact accessibility when in debuted with the iPhone 6s four years ago, and missed it with my XR.

Apple’s removal of 3D Touch lends credence to the cons I outlined in my 2015 piece—namely, that it was too complex (for users and Apple) and it was too undiscoverable. The Apple community at large has felt this way about the feature since the beginning, especially bemoaning how it never percolated across iOS devices, most notably the iPad.

iOS 13 has brought Haptic Touch, first introduced with the iPhone XR last year, as a replacement for 3D Touch. It’s more or less equivalent; iOS 13 has expanded Haptic Touch’s scope so as to pick up many of 3D Touch’s tricks. These include Quick Actions on home screen icons and message previews in Mail and Messages. And importantly of course, these features work on iPads running iPadOS.

From an accessibility perspective, I have enjoyed having access to these shortcuts again on my iPhone 11 review units. I missed them during my time with the XR until now; the contextual menus throughout the OS really do cut down on excessive swiping and tapping. I like how Apple has grown Haptic Touch for the most part. I cannot tell an appreciable functional difference between it and 3D Touch in terms, say, starting a new email or text message from the home screen.

Where I believe Haptic Touch is a regression from 3D Touch is in performance. Accessing Quick Actions or link previews, for instance, feels like it takes forever relative to before. It isn’t so bad to the point that it’s unusable, but it’s definitely noticeable. More importantly, it causes Haptic Touch to lose a bit of the luster that makes haptic feedback such a promising assistive technology. Where 3D Touch always felt instantaneous, Haptic Touch, capable as it is, feels slower, thus ruining the fun a little. I assume this latency can and will improve over time, but count me as one who misses 3D Touch in the new iPhones.

Miscellany

A few cursory notes on the new iPhones worth mentioning.

SIM card swapping. This is an extremely first-world problem, because I am privileged in the sense I get to review new iPhones every year. But this is an accessibility matter! Every year I get a new iPhone (or multiple iPhones) for testing, I’m reminded just how inaccessible the act of swapping my SIM card can be. It is a test of my visual acuity and fine-motor skills, both of which are not strong suits of mine. Especially on the midnight green, where the finish is so dark on the sides I can hardly see where the SIM tray is, moving between three iPhones can be quite adventurous. (I remember the jet black iPhone 7 having the same issue in terms of finding the SIM tray.) I like that Apple provides users with the SIM tool; the SIM card dance isn’t their fault. Still, as a visually impaired reviewer, I felt compelled to share this bit of accessibility minutia.

Color. Speaking of color, I do like the new midnight green finish a lot. The CW’s Arrow is my favorite television show, and the shade of green strikes me as the iPhone Oliver Queen would choose.

Battery life. One of the iPhone 11’s biggest selling points is the dramatically increased battery life. I’ve long compromised my battery—on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch—because I need to run my devices with maximum screen brightness in order to see. That I can do so on iPhone 11 and still mostly benefit from the battery gains speaks volumes about Apple’s battery work. I can go a whole day, using my phone normally at max brightness, and not stress about conserving my battery or finding an outlet somewhere.

Portrait (pig?) Mode. Seriously, Portrait Mode on the new iPhones was made for pigs.

Portrait Mode on iPhone 11 was made for pigs. Namely, mine.

cc: @Pickavet pic.twitter.com/jUXGsRiIDv

— Steven Aquino (@steven_aquino) September 30, 2019

The bottom line

It’s a testament to the “completeness” of last year’s iPhone XR that I was so happy with it. Yes, it was beautifully blue, but it was also a damn good all-around iPhone. Apple describes the iPhone 11 as having “just the right amount of everything,” the iPhone for everyone, but that tagline could just as easily apply to the XR. Even today, the XR is a great phone if you can do without the second camera. The iPhone 11 is simply a better iPhone XR.

The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro are close enough, spec-wise, that if it the regular 11 came in blue, I might’ve been tempted to upgrade to that. There’s a reason Apple offers iPhones in a rainbow of colors; the psychological impact color has on consumerism is a very real phenomena. Perhaps someday soon there will be a blue iPhone with a Super Retina OLED display. That said, while both iPhones are highly impressive, I’m happy with the Pro for the upgraded screen quality and three cameras. You really can’t go wrong with either iPhone 11, but for this year anyway, the return to OLED was the clincher for me.

iPhone 11 Pro is the most accessible iPhone yet Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR.

[abetheone]

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Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR. I chose it mostly for aesthetic reasons. As much as I appreciated its well-rounded technical merits, I was downright giddy at the notion I could have an iPhone in my favorite color: blue. I’ve not once regretted my choice nearly a year later. Color aside, the XR was—and remains—a terrific device.

At a fundamental level, choosing the iPhone XR was more significant than a favorite color or a willingness to accept some technical differences. As a visually impaired person, foregoing the XS meant I was purposely giving up a pivotal accessibility feature—the OLED screen—that would have made my experience with the device more accessible. In hindsight, the fact I decided on the objectively worse phone in the XR speaks volumes about how great it was as a product, and how color can spark such raw, immense delight.

This year, there is no blue iPhone. Without the emotional appeal of color in the equation, I’m reminded once again why the best iPhone money can buy—the iPhone 11 Pro Max—is the best, most accessible iPhone for me.

The Awesomeness of OLED

Apple provided me with two review units: one white iPhone 11 and one midnight green iPhone 11 Pro Max. As of this writing, I’ve had both phones for close to two weeks and I’ve spent roughly a week with each phone. I also have my year-old XR handy as a reference tool.

While I have spent lengthy time with OLED displays before—my iPhone X had one and, on a much smaller scale, every Apple Watch has had one—coming back after a year with my XR’s Liquid Retina LCD screen was quite literally eye-opening. Even with my poor eyesight, I immediately could notice a substantial difference in quality after putting my XR (and iPhone 11) side by side with the 11 Pro Max. For two years now, Apple has rightfully boasted about the XR’s (now 11) LCD screen being the best in the industry. It is ridiculously good, but the Pro’s OLED display is itself so good that I’ve wondered during testing how I was able to live happily with my XR last year.

In practice, the Super Retina XDR display on the 11 Pro Max is appreciably better in all phases. In addition to being physically larger (albeit not by much), the 11 Pro Max display’s brightness and sharpness make everything I see on my device much easier. It reduces eye strain and fatigue, which are constant battles for me. iOS 13’s new dark mode looks fantastic on OLED screens; I have it set to automatically switch from light to dark at sundown, and use apps like Twitter and Things in their pitch black modes at nighttime. Although there are dark mode skeptics, I personally find it to be a welcome reprieve during evening hours, and the credit is due to the Pro’s OLED display.

I started my testing with the iPhone 11 Pro Max for a few days, then switched to the regular 11 for another few days. After using both, knowing their respective screen technologies, I instantly knew which model I preferred. I could use the iPhone 11 with no problem, but having access to both phones reaffirmed to me just how superior OLED is for my vision. For my needs, it’s OLED or bust.

Three years with Face ID

I’ve written about my trials with Face ID before. As we collectively enter our third year with Apple’s facial recognition system, I think it’s worth briefly examining where it stands in context of the new iPhones and accessibility.

Apple says Face ID in the new iPhones is “up to 30 percent faster” while working from further away and at more angles than before. I cannot tell how much better it is in these regards; it’s Face ID and it seems to work just as well as it ever has. My strabismus still seems to wreak havoc on the phones’ TrueDepth camera system.

I set up Face ID on my 11 Pro Max and turned off Require Attention so that I needn’t look directly at the camera to unlock my phone. (When you do this, Apple blasts a modal alert on screen saying Face ID won’t be as secure as it could be. Fair enough, but it’s a trade-off I have to make in order to use it.) It’s worked like a charm, as usual.

What’s interesting, though, is what happened when I switched to the regular iPhone 11. I set up Face ID, but forgot to go into Settings and disable Require Attention. I suddenly realized this the other day, as I had clearly forgotten Face ID settings don’t sync from device to device. In hindsight it’s impressive how much Face ID has seemingly improved at recognizing my gaze. Whether it’s purposeful on Apple’s part, I don’t know, but I think it’s telling that I was unlocking my phone and paying for Lyft rides pretty much hassle-free for days with Require Attention on by default.

My strabismus still makes me an edge case, so I prefer Require Attention be disabled, as it’s the path of least resistance. Yet the happy accident I had regarding Require Attention led to a pleasant surprise. I can’t say it’s directly attributable to this generation of Face ID, but it’s an improvement regardless.

Adieu, 3D Touch

Like the much-maligned Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro, I have long been an ardent supporter of 3D Touch. I wrote about how it could positively impact accessibility when in debuted with the iPhone 6s four years ago, and missed it with my XR.

Apple’s removal of 3D Touch lends credence to the cons I outlined in my 2015 piece—namely, that it was too complex (for users and Apple) and it was too undiscoverable. The Apple community at large has felt this way about the feature since the beginning, especially bemoaning how it never percolated across iOS devices, most notably the iPad.

iOS 13 has brought Haptic Touch, first introduced with the iPhone XR last year, as a replacement for 3D Touch. It’s more or less equivalent; iOS 13 has expanded Haptic Touch’s scope so as to pick up many of 3D Touch’s tricks. These include Quick Actions on home screen icons and message previews in Mail and Messages. And importantly of course, these features work on iPads running iPadOS.

From an accessibility perspective, I have enjoyed having access to these shortcuts again on my iPhone 11 review units. I missed them during my time with the XR until now; the contextual menus throughout the OS really do cut down on excessive swiping and tapping. I like how Apple has grown Haptic Touch for the most part. I cannot tell an appreciable functional difference between it and 3D Touch in terms, say, starting a new email or text message from the home screen.

Where I believe Haptic Touch is a regression from 3D Touch is in performance. Accessing Quick Actions or link previews, for instance, feels like it takes forever relative to before. It isn’t so bad to the point that it’s unusable, but it’s definitely noticeable. More importantly, it causes Haptic Touch to lose a bit of the luster that makes haptic feedback such a promising assistive technology. Where 3D Touch always felt instantaneous, Haptic Touch, capable as it is, feels slower, thus ruining the fun a little. I assume this latency can and will improve over time, but count me as one who misses 3D Touch in the new iPhones.

Miscellany

A few cursory notes on the new iPhones worth mentioning.

SIM card swapping. This is an extremely first-world problem, because I am privileged in the sense I get to review new iPhones every year. But this is an accessibility matter! Every year I get a new iPhone (or multiple iPhones) for testing, I’m reminded just how inaccessible the act of swapping my SIM card can be. It is a test of my visual acuity and fine-motor skills, both of which are not strong suits of mine. Especially on the midnight green, where the finish is so dark on the sides I can hardly see where the SIM tray is, moving between three iPhones can be quite adventurous. (I remember the jet black iPhone 7 having the same issue in terms of finding the SIM tray.) I like that Apple provides users with the SIM tool; the SIM card dance isn’t their fault. Still, as a visually impaired reviewer, I felt compelled to share this bit of accessibility minutia.

Color. Speaking of color, I do like the new midnight green finish a lot. The CW’s Arrow is my favorite television show, and the shade of green strikes me as the iPhone Oliver Queen would choose.

Battery life. One of the iPhone 11’s biggest selling points is the dramatically increased battery life. I’ve long compromised my battery—on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch—because I need to run my devices with maximum screen brightness in order to see. That I can do so on iPhone 11 and still mostly benefit from the battery gains speaks volumes about Apple’s battery work. I can go a whole day, using my phone normally at max brightness, and not stress about conserving my battery or finding an outlet somewhere.

Portrait (pig?) Mode. Seriously, Portrait Mode on the new iPhones was made for pigs.

The bottom line

It’s a testament to the “completeness” of last year’s iPhone XR that I was so happy with it. Yes, it was beautifully blue, but it was also a damn good all-around iPhone. Apple describes the iPhone 11 as having “just the right amount of everything,” the iPhone for everyone, but that tagline could just as easily apply to the XR. Even today, the XR is a great phone if you can do without the second camera. The iPhone 11 is simply a better iPhone XR.

The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro are close enough, spec-wise, that if it the regular 11 came in blue, I might’ve been tempted to upgrade to that. There’s a reason Apple offers iPhones in a rainbow of colors; the psychological impact color has on consumerism is a very real phenomena. Perhaps someday soon there will be a blue iPhone with a Super Retina OLED display. That said, while both iPhones are highly impressive, I’m happy with the Pro for the upgraded screen quality and three cameras. You really can’t go wrong with either iPhone 11, but for this year anyway, the return to OLED was the clincher for me.

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iPhone 11 Pro is the most accessible iPhone yet – TechCrunch Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR.

[cyberblogin]

Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR. I chose it mostly for aesthetic reasons. As much as I appreciated its well-rounded technical merits, I was downright giddy at the notion I could have an iPhone in my favorite color: blue. I’ve not once regretted my choice nearly a year later. Color aside, the XR was—and remains—a terrific device.

At a fundamental level, choosing the iPhone XR was more significant than a favorite color or a willingness to accept some technical differences. As a visually impaired person, foregoing the XS meant I was purposely giving up a pivotal accessibility feature—the OLED screen—that would have made my experience with the device more accessible. In hindsight, the fact I decided on the objectively worse phone in the XR speaks volumes about how great it was as a product, and how color can spark such raw, immense delight.

This year, there is no blue iPhone. Without the emotional appeal of color in the equation, I’m reminded once again why the best iPhone money can buy—the iPhone 11 Pro Max—is the best, most accessible iPhone for me.

The Awesomeness of OLED

Apple provided me with two review units: one white iPhone 11 and one midnight green iPhone 11 Pro Max. As of this writing, I’ve had both phones for close to two weeks and I’ve spent roughly a week with each phone. I also have my year-old XR handy as a reference tool.

While I have spent lengthy time with OLED displays before—my iPhone X had one and, on a much smaller scale, every Apple Watch has had one—coming back after a year with my XR’s Liquid Retina LCD screen was quite literally eye-opening. Even with my poor eyesight, I immediately could notice a substantial difference in quality after putting my XR (and iPhone 11) side by side with the 11 Pro Max. For two years now, Apple has rightfully boasted about the XR’s (now 11) LCD screen being the best in the industry. It is ridiculously good, but the Pro’s OLED display is itself so good that I’ve wondered during testing how I was able to live happily with my XR last year.

In practice, the Super Retina XDR display on the 11 Pro Max is appreciably better in all phases. In addition to being physically larger (albeit not by much), the 11 Pro Max display’s brightness and sharpness make everything I see on my device much easier. It reduces eye strain and fatigue, which are constant battles for me. iOS 13’s new dark mode looks fantastic on OLED screens; I have it set to automatically switch from light to dark at sundown, and use apps like Twitter and Things in their pitch black modes at nighttime. Although there are dark mode skeptics, I personally find it to be a welcome reprieve during evening hours, and the credit is due to the Pro’s OLED display.

I started my testing with the iPhone 11 Pro Max for a few days, then switched to the regular 11 for another few days. After using both, knowing their respective screen technologies, I instantly knew which model I preferred. I could use the iPhone 11 with no problem, but having access to both phones reaffirmed to me just how superior OLED is for my vision. For my needs, it’s OLED or bust.

Three years with Face ID

I’ve written about my trials with Face ID before. As we collectively enter our third year with Apple’s facial recognition system, I think it’s worth briefly examining where it stands in context of the new iPhones and accessibility.

Apple says Face ID in the new iPhones is “up to 30 percent faster” while working from further away and at more angles than before. I cannot tell how much better it is in these regards; it’s Face ID and it seems to work just as well as it ever has. My strabismus still seems to wreak havoc on the phones’ TrueDepth camera system.

I set up Face ID on my 11 Pro Max and turned off Require Attention so that I needn’t look directly at the camera to unlock my phone. (When you do this, Apple blasts a modal alert on screen saying Face ID won’t be as secure as it could be. Fair enough, but it’s a trade-off I have to make in order to use it.) It’s worked like a charm, as usual.

What’s interesting, though, is what happened when I switched to the regular iPhone 11. I set up Face ID, but forgot to go into Settings and disable Require Attention. I suddenly realized this the other day, as I had clearly forgotten Face ID settings don’t sync from device to device. In hindsight it’s impressive how much Face ID has seemingly improved at recognizing my gaze. Whether it’s purposeful on Apple’s part, I don’t know, but I think it’s telling that I was unlocking my phone and paying for Lyft rides pretty much hassle-free for days with Require Attention on by default.

My strabismus still makes me an edge case, so I prefer Require Attention be disabled, as it’s the path of least resistance. Yet the happy accident I had regarding Require Attention led to a pleasant surprise. I can’t say it’s directly attributable to this generation of Face ID, but it’s an improvement regardless.

Adieu, 3D Touch

Like the much-maligned Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro, I have long been an ardent supporter of 3D Touch. I wrote about how it could positively impact accessibility when in debuted with the iPhone 6s four years ago, and missed it with my XR.

Apple’s removal of 3D Touch lends credence to the cons I outlined in my 2015 piece—namely, that it was too complex (for users and Apple) and it was too undiscoverable. The Apple community at large has felt this way about the feature since the beginning, especially bemoaning how it never percolated across iOS devices, most notably the iPad.

iOS 13 has brought Haptic Touch, first introduced with the iPhone XR last year, as a replacement for 3D Touch. It’s more or less equivalent; iOS 13 has expanded Haptic Touch’s scope so as to pick up many of 3D Touch’s tricks. These include Quick Actions on home screen icons and message previews in Mail and Messages. And importantly of course, these features work on iPads running iPadOS.

From an accessibility perspective, I have enjoyed having access to these shortcuts again on my iPhone 11 review units. I missed them during my time with the XR until now; the contextual menus throughout the OS really do cut down on excessive swiping and tapping. I like how Apple has grown Haptic Touch for the most part. I cannot tell an appreciable functional difference between it and 3D Touch in terms, say, starting a new email or text message from the home screen.

Where I believe Haptic Touch is a regression from 3D Touch is in performance. Accessing Quick Actions or link previews, for instance, feels like it takes forever relative to before. It isn’t so bad to the point that it’s unusable, but it’s definitely noticeable. More importantly, it causes Haptic Touch to lose a bit of the luster that makes haptic feedback such a promising assistive technology. Where 3D Touch always felt instantaneous, Haptic Touch, capable as it is, feels slower, thus ruining the fun a little. I assume this latency can and will improve over time, but count me as one who misses 3D Touch in the new iPhones.

Miscellany

A few cursory notes on the new iPhones worth mentioning.

SIM card swapping. This is an extremely first-world problem, because I am privileged in the sense I get to review new iPhones every year. But this is an accessibility matter! Every year I get a new iPhone (or multiple iPhones) for testing, I’m reminded just how inaccessible the act of swapping my SIM card can be. It is a test of my visual acuity and fine-motor skills, both of which are not strong suits of mine. Especially on the midnight green, where the finish is so dark on the sides I can hardly see where the SIM tray is, moving between three iPhones can be quite adventurous. (I remember the jet black iPhone 7 having the same issue in terms of finding the SIM tray.) I like that Apple provides users with the SIM tool; the SIM card dance isn’t their fault. Still, as a visually impaired reviewer, I felt compelled to share this bit of accessibility minutia.

Color. Speaking of color, I do like the new midnight green finish a lot. The CW’s Arrow is my favorite television show, and the shade of green strikes me as the iPhone Oliver Queen would choose.

Battery life. One of the iPhone 11’s biggest selling points is the dramatically increased battery life. I’ve long compromised my battery—on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch—because I need to run my devices with maximum screen brightness in order to see. That I can do so on iPhone 11 and still mostly benefit from the battery gains speaks volumes about Apple’s battery work. I can go a whole day, using my phone normally at max brightness, and not stress about conserving my battery or finding an outlet somewhere.

Portrait (pig?) Mode. Seriously, Portrait Mode on the new iPhones was made for pigs.

The bottom line

It’s a testament to the “completeness” of last year’s iPhone XR that I was so happy with it. Yes, it was beautifully blue, but it was also a damn good all-around iPhone. Apple describes the iPhone 11 as having “just the right amount of everything,” the iPhone for everyone, but that tagline could just as easily apply to the XR. Even today, the XR is a great phone if you can do without the second camera. The iPhone 11 is simply a better iPhone XR.

The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro are close enough, spec-wise, that if it the regular 11 came in blue, I might’ve been tempted to upgrade to that. There’s a reason Apple offers iPhones in a rainbow of colors; the psychological impact color has on consumerism is a very real phenomena. Perhaps someday soon there will be a blue iPhone with a Super Retina OLED display. That said, while both iPhones are highly impressive, I’m happy with the Pro for the upgraded screen quality and three cameras. You really can’t go wrong with either iPhone 11, but for this year anyway, the return to OLED was the clincher for me.

Source link

iPhone 11 Pro is the most accessible iPhone yet Last year’s iPhone was an outlier for me. Although I reviewed the then-new iPhone XS line, the model I ultimately chose for myself was the “lesser” iPhone XR.

[chocolate-brownies]

Mindfulness is often packaged as an individual pursuit: you carve out a space in a comfortable setting or a studio that suits your needs so you can take time to calm down, relax, or focus better for work. The benefits advertised are very me-oriented.

This personal project, essential to mindfulness, overlaps with an inherent tendency in society to stack or silo individual and community, says Rhonda Magee, mindfulness teacher and law professor at the University of San Francisco, in a recent podcast with Mindful’s Editor-in-Chief Barry Boyce. In other words, we see an opportunity for mindfulness to make us better team leaders, community members, and activists, but we don’t see where the personal and social agenda can align—indeed, would they cancel each other out altogether?

“The problem is that in our society it’s sort of either or, it’s either about the personal or it’s about the social. And yet, if we can open to our own experience we know we’re always already both individuals and a world,” she explained.

Magee’s research focuses on issues of social justice and inclusivity. In a world that faces increasingly complex problems, Magee argues that mindfulness provides an opportunity to understand issues through multiple points of view.

The following excerpt explores the difficulty of achieving both personal and social growth, and the role mindfulness plays in balancing the two:

  Rhonda Magee on Mindfulness and Inequality

9:28

Rhonda Magee: We largely continued to live in very segregated communities and cultures and systems. And that’s a fact that is one that we struggle to keep coming back to. You know, we know that part of the way we’ve been taught to look at these issues is that we were segregated officially, and now we’re not. And now if communities are racially identifiable or culturally distinct, it’s all a matter of choice. It’s all, you know, a matter of the market. It’s not, about patterns or conditioned habits and also structures, the way we do schooling, public and private, the way we continue to structure our religious communities. We tend not to really see how we are very, very, very deeply still embedded in and committed to, actually, we have a taste for, it seems like, segregation.

Barry Boyce: We reinvest invest in boundaries that we think we’ve gone beyond, mentally, in our media, we reinvest in those boundaries.

Rhonda Magee: We really do.

Barry Boyce: …that you are more different from me than is really the case.

Rhonda Magee: Yes, and we reinvest meaning, we send our kids to schools that are still very isolated. We move around the country. I live in San Francisco. I hear people find various and sundry different ways to explain why they leave a very diverse region. And often my white friends, for example, find themselves in much more white spaces after the “stresses of the city.” And, you know, sometimes this racial piece of it is mentioned, often not widely, but maybe in these quiet conversations. I had a young woman come and talk to me about a friend of hers; it’s often, you know, speaking about a friend, not myself. This young woman was an immigrant from Eastern Europe and she had another friend, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who came to San Francisco and said she wanted to move away because she wanted to be around more Americans, and by that, she actually meant more whites.

There still is a way that part of the legacy of white supremacy in America is that we define what it means to be American, still and in the eyes of many both domestically and internationally, as white. And that is what we are still up against, is what we have been seeing emerge in the political culture and the discourse around making America great again. So there’s a deeply embedded desire, or kind of a way in which we keep moving into segregation and reinforcing it, reinvesting in it, as you say. We’re all in that world. So, even mindfulness organizations are built up in networks that are already very segregated. All of our networks for reaching out, finding potential teachers, finding people to come to our organizations, our events, they’re already very segregated. And so, we are up against that challenge of, again, living in a society that’s already structured to push us apart. And those dynamics are coming from so many different institutions that it’s actually very hard for any institution to start reaching out to adults, adult learners or adult practitioners, and saying let’s come together from these very different places of relative segregation and isolation.

And so a concrete way to address that is, I mean, there are short-term steps, but I actually think a longer-term cultural change is what has to happen. This effort must outlive our own lifetimes. It will. Another problem we deal with in the West is very short-term focus. If we can’t imagine our efforts realizing some gain tomorrow, or at the outside six months from now, we’re not sure it’s worth our time. We are not going to change these patterns in this country that took hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years to embed without a commitment to changing them that is at least as farsighted.

There still is a way that part of the legacy of white supremacy in America is that we define what it means to be American, still and in the eyes of many both domestically and internationally, as white.

Barry Boyce: Are you suggesting that if you have too much of a hunger for immediate results, you won’t really commit? That you really have to take on that notion that we’re planting seeds in a garden that we will not see flower? I haven’t really thought of it that way: If silently in your mind you think you want to see a short-term gain, you just give up…

Rhonda Magee: It’s very easy to get frustrated.

Barry Boyce: You think… this neighborhood isn’t going to change.

Rhonda Magee: Yes, the community isn’t going to change, this meditation group isn’t going to change.

Barry Boyce: Yeah. So yeah that’s very helpful. Keep going.

Rhonda Magee: So, we need both a very long-term commitment and a lot of patience, both of which, I think, are gifts from me of my own mindfulness practice. And not that I’ve gotten there, right, I’m a work in progress just like everybody else. But to be able to sit with the frustration that comes with, oh, here we are again trying to address this same issue of the denial of white supremacy in our history with people who, once again, don’t want to talk about. It’s frustrating.

Barry Boyce: How does patience square with the possibility of falling into apathy or not being willing to call somebody on something?

Rhonda Magee: So it’s “both and” again. You know, realizing there’s time for, and a place in our own being in the world, for patience. And there are times for, and a place for, being in action. And it’s again, it’s not either or. It really is both. So there are ways we can call people into conversations about white supremacy with compassion for the fact that we all are in this together. We’ve all been trained away from this conversation. So, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to have to go by fits and starts and be interrupted, maybe even for years in a single organization because we’re not ready for it yet. To really deal with these issues is high pay-grade level mindfulness work. It isn’t for people who have not really come to see the depth of what it means to see clearly, what it means to work with our own conditionings, to sit in the fire of the painful recognition that, oh my mind actually does orient me to people who look like me. Oh, I do feel safer. Honestly, I wish I didn’t, but in fact I do feel safer when I’m in these places. Mindfulness can help us with a lot of the really subtle difficulties of doing the work that must be done to dismantle these patterns and habits that draw us to reinvest in segregation. Mindfulness compassion practices, these actually can help.

Mindfulness can help us with a lot of the really subtle difficulties of doing the work that must be done to dismantle these patterns and habits that draw us to reinvest in segregation.

So, it’s actually, it’s both that kind of patience that comes with a mindful holding of a multi-generational looking back and forward at the same time type of project. Because we are both, looking at a particular history is how we got here and trying to imagine a future for our children and our children’s children that will be much different. And then trying to work towards that future, in part by trying to redeem our past, looking at the role our particular communities, our particular families, our cultures have had in setting us on this journey that we’re on that keeps pushing us in corners and polarizing us. What’s been the role of our family, our culture, my neighborhood, my own conditioning in those tendencies? How can I address those and at the same time realize that we’re not going to address them overnight? We can’t. It will not happen overnight. We didn’t get here overnight. But we can take steps, we can take steps.

This conversation is adapted from Episode Seven of the Point of View podcast with Barry Boyce.  

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The post Can Mindfulness Helps Us Dismantle Inequality? appeared first on Mindful.

[dapperkobold]

Review at Random: Diablo 3

Just finished the main plotline of Diablo 3, and I have some thoughts on it. If you’re settling in to hear my analysis of its in-depth systems... don’t. I just finished my first playthrough of the basic story, and while it’s a good game those in-depth systems I basically didn’t notice.

Presentation

The Diablo series of games is pretty much the iconic example of the isometric hack and slash RPG, and while not a lot wowed me the presentation is without a doubt solid. Graphics, performance, voice acting, music, UI, it’s all really solid. I never hit a bad bug, or something that was just ugly, or wonky voice acting, or any such nonsense.

You’ll spend a lot of time in dungeons, and the rest of the time in I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-a-dungeons, and each dungeon has its own unique tileset and atmosphere. Really, they clearly went the extra mile to get good graphics and environmental details, such as one point when you’re on the walls of a fort and sometimes you can look down and see a battle raging on the ground, without letting them overtake the gameplay and writing.

That said, those dungeons aren’t perfect and especially the longer ones with larger floors got a little monotonous. More on this later, but the issue is partially presentation; I realize that these dungeons are procedurally generated but having one or two kinds of halls and maybe half a dozen rooms per tileset was FAR too few. Since those tilesets are really the core of the presentation of the game, it was disappointing. 

Overall, while everything was solid nothing was spectacular. Nothing really made me stop and say “that’s so pretty!” I don’t want to really force games to do that to please me, but it’s still an area that could have used improvement. Nothing even was too shocking to me, each area has a custom tileset but never really has a surprise in store. As a result I really focused on the gameplay and story instead of the presentation, which I’m all for but doesn’t really say good things about the presentation itself.

There is one more issue, though. I feel a need to address it because it has a sizable impact on the game: The always on-line connection. Now, I’m not militantly against always on-line games. I’ll sigh about it, I’ll roll my eyes about it, I’ll note a good long list of reasons why it’s a bad idea if asked, but I’ll generally only throw a snit over it if there is just NO reason to enforce an always on-line model. For example, Overwatch is so focused on online play that singleplayer is borderline unheard of, so an always on-line connection is (while still not needed from my point of view) understandable.

Diablo 3 has NO excuse.

Yes, it does have a co-op mode, yes it has challenges, BUT that’s no reason to lock the singleplayer campaign from offline access. And this has been a problem for me, Diablo 3 has the touchiest netcode of any game I have ever played. I’ve had this game for a long time (since the necromancer expansion) and only now have I gotten around to finishing it, because every time it was “but do I want to suffer the threat of it disconnecting right now?” This game has disconnected me more than any other online game I have ever played, including ones I have logged a lot more time in.

Yes, it is honestly that bad. The saving is consistent enough that I never lost a meaningful amount of progress (with one weird exception) but it was just aggravating enough for no good reason that I’d go as far as to call it this game’s fatal flaw.

Final Presentation Sore: B

A solid core, no doubt, but the not enough breadth in the tilesets and no wow factor for extra credit keeps this at an A or A-. Then the connection issues kick it down a letter grade. YES, I am that grumpy about them.

Gameplay

The real meat of this game, make no doubt, this is clearly a very deep complex and nuanced system I do not give a whit about!

...yeah.

Class mechanics seem solid. Okay. Mechanical character customization? Mainly just what you choose for your ability loadout. The famous loot? I basically just equipped up a new piece when the total + from the three broad categories was more than the total - and I was fine.

“But but but what about elemental damage, and heal on kill vs heal per attack, and intelligence vs dexterity, and thorns vs straight damage?” I didn’t care. The game did not explain how all the stats worked together, I did not need to know how the interactions worked out, I just played through and had some fun. Did this result in me making less than idea decisions? Yes. 100%. I likely would have made MORE nonideal decisions if I had all the information, that’s just the kind of person I am!

But I didn’t care, and didn’t need to care. I guess that could have a good spin on it, ‘good depth for those who care that can be ignored by those who don’t’, but I’m not sure it’s quite that true. You see, I’ve only completed one run through on Expert level, and it was pretty easy. I only died once, chasing a treasure goblin into a mass of angry super-enemies, and after that I only really gave respect to arcane enemies and other outliers that did a lot more than normal damage. For all I know that becomes massively untrue on higher difficulties, it’s possible that by clicking over to torment you suddenly need to actually know stuff to go anywhere.

That said, ‘Expert’ could have afforded to be more challenging. I basically found one loadout of skills that I used the entire way through, never changing because I never hit something that it couldn’t take on. I was playing a crusader, if it matters, but I solved basically all my issues by throwing hammers or occasionally calling down a sky laser. Ideally a ‘takes all comers’ loadout should have trouble in one situation or another, but the only time I changed was when A. I got a bit of equipment that gave a huge boost to something or B. I got a new customization option that did it better.

And I know what you’re saying. You’re saying ‘so turn up the difficulty!’ You can’t turn it up past expert on your first play-through. I would have if I could have.

It doesn’t help that basically all the enemies are interchangeable. Okay, I mean, sure some have range attacks, and some have knockback, and some cast spells, but there’s nothing I hit that made me say ‘ooh, these are trouble!’ Or ‘oh this is bad’ other than running into two groups of rares at the same time. I just tanked and threw hammers. Sometimes straight hammers, sometimes hammerangs, sometimes sky lasers, sometimes I became big so I could throw infinite hammerangs for a bit. I never found a situation that made me change up my strategy.

The only monsters I remember as being of note are the tremblers, because I thought at first they were protected from the front but they weren’t, the fat demon casters that were annoying, and the punishers from the start of the expansion act because I recognized them from Heroes of the Storm. Turns out they were just generic big enemies with hops.

Yes, maybe it is my fault for not experimenting more, but I was just never given a reason to experiment. And if the problem isn’t there at higher difficulties, why force the player to play at ‘low’ difficulties the first time through?

That said, the mechanics clearly are very in-depth, and barring when it drags on it IS A fun game, make no mistake. It’s just that it does tend to drag on.

This isn’t helped by the dungeons being large and not having much variety. Yes, I already said this above but it’s true for mechanics, too. There’s basically no puzzles or challenges of wit, just enemies, things to loot, doors, and the occasional trap. The big exception to this is a keep level where you need to activate things or defend some NPCs for a bit, but that’s the only time I remember odd mechanics other than one quick townsfolk saving bit. I seem to vaguely remember something from a prison that was slightly unusual, but I think that just boiled down to activating a thing before killing the things.

Maybe this just isn’t for me. I dunno.

Final Gameplay Score: C+

The gameply isn’t bad, or even just disappointing, just... not a big deal. It’s a little disappointing, I guess, to not have to worry about the advanced systems even a little. It was too easy and became monotonous, but (despite my gripes) it’s not a bad game. Maybe it’s just not my thing, but by the end I just didn’t care.

Writing

I had heard good things about the writing in this game. I went in with high hopes, and was... well, I was a little disappointed. It has a good plot for a non-narrative-focused game, but it wouldn’t make it in the ring if put up against gaming history’s writing heavyweights. A lot of the twists are really obvious, not a single one of the villains are the least bit trope-savy, and the logic partaken in by some of the characters is laughable.

Likely this game’s biggest saving grace is some of the character writing, however. There’s a fair amount of it scattered around and a good chunk is quality stuff. My favorite characters are, without a doubt, Lyndon the Scoundrel and Covetous Shen.

Neither of those are main characters. It’s that kind of game.

That said, I would like to take a moment to give a shoutout to whoever wrote the Crusader’s dialogue. This is how you do Lawful Good without being a pain, people. If you want to play a paladin in D&D or Pathfinder and want to know how to do it without being That One Paladin, check out the D3 Crusader.

Final Writing Score: B+

The poor plot logic is the vast majority of lost points here, but some honestly lovable characters and solid writing around the shaky plot means that it’s still enjoyable.

Overall

I mean... it’s fine?

Okay, this game is a success, and it deserves to be a success make no mistake, but it’s not amazing. The gameplay doesn’t stand out for me, the presentation doesn’t stand out for me, and while some of the character bits are good the core plot is pretty trite stuff. There was no one point where I went ‘ooh’, no one thing that grabbed me. Maybe it’s meant to be played several times, with friends, and I’d be all for playing it some more with friends, but it doesn’t really stand tall enough that I want to turn around and play it again right away.

Presentation: B

Gameplay: C+

Writing: B+

FINAL GRADE: B

It’s fine, make no mistake.

Awards:

Fatal Flaw

Get an Interior Decorator

The Most Honest Thief You Will Ever Meet

[heartxofxglass-blog]

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