#I mostly checked in now to find 1 on 1s but getting back into the gist would be fun again

[idiotinsuspenders]

I low-key forgot mcsm rp existed in Tumblr.

That’s what this account was literally for, yet I forgot about it cause it was when I first got into the mcsm fandom. Now there’s so much rp here. Include me guys 😔

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #160

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making... wait a minute! Isn’t King Arthur supposed to be a girl?

Anyways, this faker is a Watcher Paladin and Monster Slayer Ranger to hunt down beasts wherever they may hide, as well as a Zealot Barbarian for his own Mana Burst skill and even bigger smites.

Check out his (god, it feels wrong using that pronoun) build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here!

Next up: He might not be allowed at pride, but I’m not waiting a month to do another build.

Race and Background

Arthur may be from a different reality, but he’s still a Human, and since we need those ability scores more than any feats, this gives him a +1 to all abilities. You’re a Pendragon, so you’re a lil bit basic by FGO standards.

He’s also a Knight, getting proficiency in History and Persuasion.

Ability Scores

Unfortunately your mana burst can’t do all the work, so make your Strength as high as possible to swing your sword sword. After that is Charisma; you have a whole skill named after it, and I mean have you heard his White Day voice lines? Dude’s sexy. If you want to set off on an interplanar hunting trip, Wisdom is also a must. Your Dexterity also has to be pretty good, mostly for multiclassing, but also because sometimes you fight in a tuxedo. Sadly, this means your Constitution isn’t as high as we’d like, and you’ll have to dump Intelligence. I honestly don’t know how smart Arthur’s supposed to be, but we’re juggling a lot of balls here. The only things we could dump are intelligence and constitution, and he definitely doesn’t have a negative con modifier. If you’re really worked up about this one, just remember all his historical knowledge comes from another dimension, so it probably isn’t that useful in this one.

Class Levels

1. Paladin 1: Starting off as a paladin gives you proficiency with Wisdom and Charisma saves, as well as proficiency with Religion and Athletics. You are still a Pendragon, and I’m pretty sure a holy grail fits into your backstory somewhere.

You also get a Divine Sense to help you hunt down extraplanar beasts, and you can use your Lay on Hands as an action to heal a creature you touch as an action, healing up to five times your paladin level per long rest.

2. Paladin 2: Second level paladins get their Fighting Style, and Great Weapon Fighting makes your attacks more consistent by re-rolling damage dice that land on 1s and 2s. This adds up, especially when you start factoring Divine Smites. Yes you too can use up spell slots to deal extra radiant damage to your Excalibur’s attacks!

Speaking of, you can use Spells, preparing and casting them with your Charisma. We’ll go into more detail about which ones to pick when we grab a subclass next level.

3. Paladin 3: Upon taking your sacred oath, you become a Watcher, this plane’s bulwark against extraplanar threats. (I mean, CotTT hangs out in his own demiplane, Tiamat spends most her time in Imaginary Number Space, and Kiara’s from the moon... most of the beasts we’ve seen so far count.)

Once per short rest, you can Channel Divinity in one of two ways. You can use your Watcher’s Will to give your allies advantage on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves. You can also Abjure the Extraplanar, turning extraplanar creatures who fail their wisdom save, running away for a minute or until it takes damage.

You also get your freebie spells, Alarm and Detect Magic. The former will prevent your camp from getting ambushed, while the latter will be very useful to track down that beast you’re tailing.

Once you find them, use Compelled Duel to keep them in sword range, or Protection from Evil and Good to even the odds if they go on the offensive. Also, smites. Smites are good.

4. Paladin 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to round up your Constitution and Charisma for stronger saves and more health.

5. Paladin 5: Fifth level paladins get an Extra Attack each attack action, making Excalibur’s victory a bit more promised.

You also get 2nd level spells, like the freebies Moonbeam and See Invisibility. Beasts do come with the tendency to transform for the climactic battle... I wonder if forcing them back into their less intimidating forms will actually weaken them?

Beyond the free spells, you can use more Smites, as well as Magic Weapon to make Excalibur a truly legendary weapon, adding +1 to its attack and damage rolls.

6. Barbarian 1: Changing planes to barbarian gives you your Mana Burst in the form of Rage, giving you several benefits: you get advantage on strength saves and checks, as well as bonus damage on melee attacks, and you resist physical damage. The downsides are; you can’t cast or concentrate on spells, the rage only lasts 1 minute, as long as you take or deal damage each round Also, you can’t use heavy armor. Hope you like a breastplate, because that’s the most you can hold onto here.

You also unlock your tuxedo, thanks to your Unarmored Defense, giving you a minimum AC based on your dexterity and constitution. I never said it would be good, but it’s better than nothing.

7. Ranger 1: Switching over quickly now, first level rangers get a free skill proficiency! Grab Survival to track your quarries, then use Canny to double survival’s proficiency bonus so you can track them beyond planar boundaries.

You also gain a Favored Enemy, a kind of foe that you have advantage on checks to track or recall lore about. Most beasts probably qualify as Aberrations in D&D, so go with that one.

8. Ranger 2: Second level rangers get another Fighting Style. Fighting in a tuxedo is pretty unrealistic, so let’s double down on the armor with Protection, giving you +1 to your AC in any kind of protection.

You also get another set of Spells that use your Wisdom. Thankfully Hunter’s Mark and Zephyr Strike don’t really care about your modifier. The former adds extra damage to every attack and makes tracking even easier than it already is. The latter only adds damage to a single attack, but it makes you able to ignore attacks of opportunity and move faster the one turn you deal extra damage. DW might not have given you a wind-based spiritron dress, but you can still make them work for you.

9. Ranger 3: Third level rangers get Primeval Awareness, spending a spell slot to sense various kinds of extraplanar and otherworldly creatures around you to make tracking down beast four a little easier.

Once you find it, you can use your skills as a Monster Slayer to take it down. Your Monster Slayer Magic gives you Protection from Evil and Good as a freebie, and you also gain two actual features! Hunter’s Sense is an action to determine a creature’s weaknesses and strengths. You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to your wisdom modifier.

You can also turn one creature at a time into your Slayer’s Prey, spending a bonus action to deal an extra bit of damage once per turn with your weapon attacks. It sticks to that creature until you finish a short rest.

Finally for your normal spell this level grab Searing Smite. It’s a smite, it sears.

10. Ranger 4: Fourth level rangers get another ASI, so bring your Strength up for stronger sword swings. Wielding the breath of a planet doesn’t mean anything if you can’t hit people with it.

11. Paladin 6: Your Aura of Protection gives you and allies within 10 feet of you a bonus to all your saving throws equal to your charisma modifier. Honestly this is super useful, you might want to think about doing this earlier. Or don’t, I’m not a cop.

12. Barbarian 2: Second level barbarians can make Reckless Attacks, giving you advantage on attacks for a turn in exchange for your enemies having advantage on attacks against you for the round. The smart thing to do is to smite them out of existence before they get the chance.

You also get Danger Sense, giving you advantage on dexterity saves if you can see them coming. You probably wouldn’t last long against Beast 1 if you weren’t able to survive a fireball.

13. Barbarian 3: Third level barbarians get their path, and as a Zealot you can put the fear of god into anything you fight. Your Divine Fury deals 1d6+1 extra radiant damage with each attack while raging, and as a Warrior of the Gods, you can be revived with magic without needing material components.

You also get Primal Knowledge to figure out an Animal Handling proficiency. Riding skill, checked off the list.

14. Paladin 7: Seventh level Watchers exude the Aura of the Sentinel, adding your proficiency bonus to your initiative, as well as the initiative of any creature within 10′ of you. With most beasts, attacking slowly means you won’t be attacking at all.

15. Paladin 8: Use this ASI to bump up your charisma for stronger spells and better saves. I’m still not entirely sure how we’re building Kiara yet, but rest assured those saves will be necessary.

16. Ranger 5: Fifth level rangers get an extra attack, but that doesn’t stack with the one you already have, sorry.

It’s not all bad news, though! You also get Zone of Truth from your Slayer magic, and Enhance Ability as your usual spell. The former forces humanoids to tell the truth if they fail a charisma save, while the latter just makes whoever you cast it on better in one kind of ability check for the duration, giving them advantage for the duration.

17. Ranger 6: If a Beast isn’t an aberration, it’s probably a Monstrosity, so grab that as your second Favored Enemy. You also get another Deft Explorer perk, Roving, which gives you an extra 5′ of movement speed, as well as a climbing and swimming speed. Since you’re never getting a summer version, it’s important that you can keep up with your female counterpart as-is.

18. Paladin 9: Ninth level paladins get third level spells; Counterspell and Nondetection both work to put a damper into beasts’ plans, either shutting down their super form or making it harder for them to spy on you. You also get more smites, Dispel Magic to force them out of their super mode later, or Spirit Shroud for more damage. more damage is good.

19. Paladin 10: At tenth level, you and your allies can’t be frightened because you’ve got an Aura of Courage! It’s level nineteen so that’s not super useful, but it’s still one less thing to worry about.

20. Paladin 11: Your capstone level gives you an Improved Divine Smite, adding a bit of that radiant goodness to all your melee attacks, regardless of what spell slots you do or don’t spend on them.

Pros:

Arthur has a big sword, and he knows how to use it, dealing some heavy damage with each swing. While raging and preying, he deals 6d6+4d8+10 damage each round (assuming both attacks hit), all boosted by great weapon master, and that’s before any kind of smites get included.

Despite your low dexterity score, you’re still pretty quick when you need to be. You’ve got a faster walking speed than most people, your dexterity save is solid thanks to your aura and danger sense, and you’ve got another aura boosting your initiative! Basically you have a high dexterity in everything except ability checks and AC, with almost no direct investment needed!

Mixing your primeval awareness with your divine senses means you are a fine-tuned tracker when it comes to locating creatures from another plane. Just make sure you don’t mix up your quarry with MHX, I doubt she’d be happy to see you.

Cons:

While medium armor does a solid enough job of protecting you, your HP is pretty low for a front line fighter, with barely over 120 HP. You’re here for a good time, not a long time.

As always, mixing spells and rage is pretty bad, forcing you to choose one or the other. That’s especially painful because it means you can’t use your neat gish spells to add effects if you want to deal more damage. Kind of like your smites, when I think about it.

Your paladin, barbarian, and ranger features all want use of your bonus action, meaning it will take a while for you to get up to full speed in a fight anyway. I’d definitely rage first, it’d help with the squishiness.

[redjennies]

i have a crack theory of beau growing apart from jess on travelercon because of artagan and jess' relationship: even after she tried all the ways of telling her "you are the special one, and he only helps you a bit" it seems jess never liked that, and i think beau understood their dynamic is not one she wants to be a part of. too crazy?

I don't think it's crazy at all. it is however something I heavily avoid talking about because Beau and Jester are a fandom can of worms and there's this really annoying fandom narrative that "nobody except [person I ship Jester with] gets Jester" so if you talk about things where someone doesn't get something about Jester and Jester doesn't get something about someone, you're attacking the ship, which is fucking stupid because no two people perfectly complete each other and see eye to eye on everything and never have at least some misunderstanding or something they need to work on in order to better understand each other. that's bullshit. Beau and Jester still have a solid friendship and have a lot to offer each other and uniquely understand certain aspects of each other even if TravelerCon did highlight a major difference between them.

I'm also not sure I'm 100% sold on there being a conscious rift between Jester and Beau right now in the narrative. Jester's attention has been kind of split between Yasha and Caleb who are more at the center of needing emotional support regarding the current storyline, which is what Jester tends to do. she checks in with Beau specifically after the first face to face with Lucien, she checks in with Caduceus because of the spooky woods, and Fjord has been checking in with her because, well, *points at episode 118.* similarly Beau hasn't really been initiating a ton of 1-on-1s with anybody except Yasha lately because well, *points at episode 120*, and has been mostly taking some time of introspection and study and only really speaking up in group settings. like even if these two hadn't had a bit of a conflict, it's still understandable as to why they're not as close at the moment as we've seen in the past so I can see this lack of communication being a coincidence or simply a shortcoming of the format.

that being said, it would be more interesting if this is a conscious rift because they have had a series of misunderstandings since even before TravelerCon that honestly in my opinion starts with Jester continually overstepping Beau's boundaries with her father, for which she was easily forgiven because "oh she meant well" and well, probably a certain amount of feelings, but it still couldn't have felt good for Beau to have Jester put the burden back on Beau that she should reconcile with her parents because Beau shouldn't have to do that. then we see Beau constantly trash talking the Traveler to Jester and the truth is while I perfectly understand why Beau feels this way and once again, "she meant well," it put Jester on the defensive, both as someone is experiencing a crisis of faith after defending her god for the entire campaign and as someone who deeply understands what it's like to have complicated relationships with loved ones but ultimately care more about them than feel hurt by them and want to do all she can to reconcile the relationship.

and both of these mentalities (Beau's "fuck it, cut and run" and Jester's "anything for love") have been both strengths and weaknesses of their characters. it's arguable that the same part of Beau that advocates for others to stand up for themselves in the face of toxic people and says "you're special, not him" is the same part of her that was willing to give up the Nein because her low self-esteem made her feel like she was the problem, and it's inarguable that the part of Jester that hung onto Artagan is the same part of her that made Beau feel unconditional love for the first time in her life. ultimately, despite their on paper similarities, they have two very different backgrounds and it influences the way they interact with the world. Artagan and Marion are not Thereau and Clara, and that leads to a major misunderstanding on both their parts but it's a difference they could both stand to learn from.

if this "rift" is a conscious RP choice, I don't necessarily see it as something that needs to come to head in some form of argument as I've seen other people muse on, but maybe that's just the Jester in me. maybe it's an anticlimactic resolution to a conflict, but I think it can very much be "I have a new and evolved understanding of you that I'm still processing but I still love you so very much and want nothing but happiness for you and it seems like your finding that right now in a way that doesn't involve me and so maybe we just take a breather for now and meet up again later." because I do think that's how they feel about each other and hell, maybe that solution is poetically perfect for a conflict of the need for self-preservation vs. unconditional love.

[clumsyclifford]

1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11 for airport malum?? I'm going far back but that is the first fic that came to mind so i'm sticking with it - taylor <3

ooh that is pretty far back all the way back to sam's 23rd birthday and now she's almost at her 24th not to stress you out or anything sam besides i love that fic every time i reread it i'm like damn. this one hits

anyway spoilers ahead for airport malum fic

changing flights so you'd stay with me (aka airport malum)

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way? easy answer! i took sam's responses from when i asked her what stuff she liked in fic, and then i just...did that.

i'm not sure where the 5+1 came from but i tend to drift towards that format in spite of myself because i really like the satisfaction of a narrative thread that keeps cropping up and then gets flipped on its head like that. i fucking love 5+1s. and i think i did it by month because i wanted a realistic amount of time to pass between each interaction so that the reader could assume (1) that michael and calum had been communicating and growing their relationship offscreen and (2) that the point at which they got together or whatever was a realistic amount of time away from when they first met. also that (3) calum isn't just constantly flying around for his job. i think it made sense

2: What scene did you first put down? the first one, think? i should check the doc history for this but i believe this fic was written at least mostly in order. yeah the first scene was written first

3: What’s your favorite line of narration? there are so many. i'm really fond of the first paragraph tbh

They say that you sleep for a third of your life. Calum is pretty confident he’s going to have spent another third of his life in one terminal or another, at the exact same airport, drinking the exact same coffee from the exact same Dunkin Donuts, and all he’ll have is thirty-three measly years to accomplish everything else he wants to do. Which really isn’t that many, considering he’s already used up twenty-four of them. What can anyone accomplish in nine years? Not a lot. And that’s assuming that Calum is going to live a grand total of ninety-nine years, which is highly unrealistic. The average lifespan for human beings these days is really closer to seventy-five years, which actually means that Calum’s life is going to end in one year. One year.

it's the most bullshit logic ever written. i fucking love it i feel like it establishes calum as such a specific character right from the start

also though

Michael beams and falls into a backwards walk. “I’ve got you,” he promises. “Text me when you land?”

“I will,” Calum says, wondering when he became the type of person to have someone to text when he lands, and when that someone became Michael.

WHEN HE BECAME THE TYPE OF PERSON TO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ANYWAY

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue? coughs significantly

“It’s fuckin’ August, man,” Calum says. “Summers in D.C. are horrible.”

okay that's not my favorite line of dialogue but it's definitely the most fucking accurate. i scrolled through the whole fic and honestly could not narrow it down to just one so here are a couple of my favorite dialogue moments

“Hello?”

“I said I’d call,” says Michael from the other end. He sounds like he’s smiling. “So I’m calling.”

“This is so obviously not what I meant,” Calum says, rolling his eyes, but he’s grinning despite himself.

and

“That’s such pop star bullshit,” Calum returns. “I need to know what the promo is for, Mike. My Twitter followers are dying to find out.”

“Mhm,” Michael says, rolling his eyes over a grin. “You and your twenty-seven Twitter followers. On your private Twitter account.”

“For all you know I have a second, secret account, where I moonlight as a teenage girl who swoons at the indescribably hot Michael Clifford and his sexy sexy guitar skills,” Calum says, and then wrinkles his nose. “That makes me seem super creepy and gross. I don’t — I don’t do that. That’d be really weird.”

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story? once again i point you in the direction of miss samantha tirednotflirting!

oh the times they are a-changin.

11: What do you like best about this fic? the PRANKS!!!!! THE FUCKING PRANKS!!!! calum talking about all the fucking pranks he and his coworkers do on each other!!!! most of these pranks are ones my dad (also a lawyer) has done to his coworkers or has had done to him and i think it's hilarious i fucking love the dynamic of a group of colleagues who prank the shit out of each other and i just love how the pranks keep sneaking into the story for their lil moments of stardom. good for them

fic asks

[jq37]

The Report Card -- Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 1

Sophomores and Spring Break 

Note: Hey guys! I decided to try something a little bit different and slightly more structured than my usual recaps for FH: Sophomore Year. I’m hoping this will be a little easier for me and a more useful tool for keeping up to date since there will be a lot more eps to keep track of and they’ll be easier to miss. Lemme know what you think and if you want raw, unfiltered opinions on anything specific, feel free to send me an ask. I’m always down to go off about literally whatever. 

We’re back, baby! It is Sophomore Year at Aguefort and the gang is on Spring Break. A lot is going down so lemme break it down. The Bad Kids, having defeated Kalvaxus last year, are all entitled to a share of his hoard and all the red tape is finally cleared so they all get 20k gold each (which is an insane amount of money converted to USD if you use the WOTC conversion rate of a gold coin being around $145 (circa 2006 when they answered the question)--which would be close to $330 with inflation). Jawbone and Sandra-Lynn are moving in after less than a year into a profoundly haunted house and it’s kind of a Full House situation because Adaine, Fig, Kristen, and Tracker all officially live there (plus it seems that Zayn has also anchored himself to Adaine’s tower--btw, Adaine took the tower that the haunted house obviously has) and you know all the other Bad Kids are gonna be there on the regular. 

More importantly, Aguefort gives the gang their big project for the year--finding the crown of the Nightmare King which was stolen at the end of last season--which is worth 60% of their grade (Adaine does a full Hermione at this information). Each of the gang has info about the NK but the trail has mostly gone cold. Luckily, Fabian just got a hot tip about where Falinel is keeping Aelwyn and she seems like a pretty good lead to start with since she was super tied up in the bad side of all the messiness of last year. Adaine is displeased to say the least. 

Going off to find the crown is super exciting story-wise for two reasons. First of all, it means the gang gets to hire, well, hirelings to help them and temporarily join the party! They ping basically every cool NPC they can think of (except for Tracker for some reason which is BONKERS because (1) she probably would have done it for free and cutting her in would still be keeping the money in the family, (2) she’s dope as hell, (3) she’s a cleric and the party can always use more healers, (4) she’s a werewolf so presumably she has skills that would help in the woods, and (5) they’re t r a c k i n g down a crown and the girl’s name is literally T R A C K E R, but I will not backseat D&D) and eventually end up with Ragh (who has been without an adventuring party all year, poor guy), Sandra-Lynn (swayed by a nat 20 rolled by Fig), Cathilda (!?) ,and, for some reason, Gilear (which Fabian is happy about, mainly for the opportunity to maybe bump him off on the way). Second of all, if you recall, Elmville is a pretty modern town but the rest of the continent is less fantasy high, more high fantasy. Horses and lanterns and all that pseudo-medieval goodness. They are gonna stick out like a sore thumb. I am very here for it. 

Everyone goes home to rest up but, after some ominous dreams, only four of them wake up. Riz and Fig are left asleep and then Brennan mic drops and ends the episode which is a power move and I am extremely upset about it but also, respect. Right for the jugular immediately. I heard Murph and Emily are on tour in the UK next week which probably has something to do with this but, in the moment, I did not know that and I really felt the hammer drop in my heart. It was wild. Cannot wait to see where we go from here. Plus, who doesn’t love watching characters freak out because their friends are in danger?

Random Thoughts

I have no idea what the title of this episode is or if it’ll even have one and not a number but I gave it a placeholder one for now. I also don’t have access to the stream yet so I didn’t get to include some info I wanted to (like a record of nat 20s, and nat 1s so I can track their stats for the school year) and I probably missed some stuff because my brain can only hold so much info guys. I’m not Brennan. 

I mentioned this yesterday during the stream, but there will never be anything better than the pure D&D joy of everyone, in character, talking over each other to clown on each other. They get the friend-group banter that’s a hair breadth’s away from bullying so true to life and it’s so fun to watch. On the flip side, the opening scene with everyone introducing themselves and affirmatively claiming each other as their best friends was also peak D&D. Found family= best trope. 

Fig and Adaine burn spell-slots at basically the same time to try and beat each other to the best room in the (Scooby-Doo ass) house--which is exactly the kind of thing that would happen in this world. It’s such an intuitive setting. I love it so much. (BTW, Fig ends up staying in the false space under the revolving grand piano because, of course).

Fabian and Gorgug went to recruit Ragh, who assumed they were propositioning him for a three-way. In his defense, they did do it in a super proposition-y way and they were in the middle of the LGBTQ student union.

Also, Gorgug gives Ragh an inspiring speech about thinking you’re your own dad which makes him burst into tears. 

Speaking of, Jawbone offhandedly says he’s poly but, like, based on some of the stuff he’s said, I feel like that’s not really a reveal. He also gets along well with Gorthalax and would be down w/ a three-way if Sandra-Lynn wanted to which, again, totally checks out. 

Arthur Aguefort uses Chronomancy to rewind time and catch a snide comment Adaine made under her breath, which is exactly the kind of frivolous use of God-like power I’d expect from him.  

I really love Adaine’s energy coming into this season. She’s in therapy. She’s in a good home environment. She’s comfortable enough with her friend group to do stuff like prank Fig (love that they’re gonna be living together now). And she’s good friends with Zayn now which I want to see more of based on their one interaction in this ep which was very cute. I am already on record as saying I would be down with her getting a ghost boyfriend--I mean, for the aesthetic alone--but I’d be happy with just more friendship. 

Fabian is also hilarious this season because you can tell he’s gone a bit soft from having friends and leaning into that (the friendship necklace with Riz) but also he’s fully aware that it’s happening so he’s, like, ping-ponging back and forth like, “These are my friends,” and, “What am I saying? I used to be cool,” and it’s very funny. Very happy the Aelwyn storyline is happening right out of the gate, both because I think Aelwyn is a very interesting character with a lot of potential for nuance but also because Fabian reacting to her and Adaine reacting to Fabian reacting to her is always gold. 

Prompted by an offhand conversation from Fig about rock and roll, Brennan--earning another feather for his Cap of God Tier DMing--goes on an impromptu five minute long improved diatribe about a bard who played such a good concert that it instantly impregnated everyone in attendance (dudes too) who gave birth to kids with sick rocker hair and denim jackets and ascended to Rock Heaven on their 18th Birthday. You truly have to watch it to believe it. At a certain point I thought he was gonna drop it but that was the moment he doubled down and kept going. Amazing. 

Watching Murph, in real time, make up a girl/boy/whateverfriend in Fantasy Canada was a gift. 

I don’t have access to the stream yet but best quote of the night that I can remember is Kristen choosing her room: This is triggering and I’ll take it. (Her line about her lesbian starter kit and the one about wanting a horse were also bangers). 

The group talks about what they’re going to do for transportation outside of Elmsville since they don’t really use cars out there and they somehow get from “disguise Fig’s tour bus” to “commission Aguefort to create a brand new animal that can hold six people plus hirelings, one of which is Fabian who is also riding his motorbike”.

I love that Sandra-Lynn’s Mom Powers work on Tracker. 

Basrar doesn’t accept the invitation to come with on the quest, but he does give Kristen a bag of infinite ice cream sandwiches, which is basically just as good, IMO. 

Oh Gilear. The man is sleeping in the Seacaster garage, being bullied by skater kids, and now he’s stuck on this quest with his ex and Fabian who actively wants him dead.  

Speaking of, I’m psyched to see more of Sandra-Lynn. She was kind of a sleeper badass at the end of last season. 

Ragh is keeping secrets which I hope the cast doesn’t forget because it could be nothing serious (like the high school drama happening with Skrank and the 7 maidens--maybe he’s just crushing on Gorgug who did full kiss him during Promocalypse) or it could be Serious Business that will blow up if the don’t stay on top of it. We’ll see. 

Oh, almost forgot. Adaine wants an emotional support frog. Every time I think I can’t love her more.   

Detention

Fig for Not Respecting Personal Boundaries

Fig goes full Emily right out the gate and, after finding out that Skrank (nerdy bird dude who apparently can get it) was not only dating Ostentasia (rich, popular dwarf) but also dumped her in pursuit of Danielle Barkstock (one of Ostentasia’s party members, the scandal), disguises herself as him with Danielle to figure out what’s going on. And, wouldn't you know it, when she gives herself away, Danielle immediately is shocked and appalled, as you would be, obviously. We also learn that she’s still catfishing Dr. Asha which is, how you say, for sure a crime. Fig, please, I’m begging you. Cease. 

Honor Roll

Fig, Riz, and Adaine for Researching the Nightmare King

Fig made both lists, look at that. Wasn’t my plan for this to be a three-way tie (also didn’t expect to use the word “three-way” this many times in this writeup) but I think their contributions were pretty much equally valuable. Rainsolo on the Discord wrote up this summary of the lore dump Brennan gave them.

[tiaramaki]

About the hospital visit

I know it’s been over three months since the prayer request post. I have a feeling some of you were wondering what happened, so I felt it was fair to do a final update on that on its own post so you could get some closure, especially now that I feel ready to share.

I apologize that it’ll be lengthy and oversharing. I’ve kept it under the cut so it won’t clog up the dash.

That day was very hot, humid, and miserable. There wasn’t a ride to work, so I had to walk. Keep in mind, I didn’t have much water that day.

About two hours into my shift at work, I became incredibly hot, moreso than I did a few days before. I tried to get some water to drink, and I almost passed out. I was lightheaded, sweating excessively, weak, pale, had cold/clammy skin (I think due to said sweating), and it still wasn’t good even though I had this happen a few times before in the past. At least I knew what to do.

One coworker got water, another called 911. It was really embarrassing for me since I had to take off a couple things (I was still clothed tho) to make my body cool off. Patrons went around me, a few of them who knew me and were regulars. I just felt bad that I was causing a scene at my workplace, out of anywhere I could be. The paramedics soon came by and brought me to the hospital in the ambulance. It was a short ride.

After the usual vital checks, I got some more water. Then I started to feel better, so I figured this would just all be a case of dehydration. A big waste of everyone’s time.

Then I waited in the ER rooms. It was a lot of waiting, but eventually the doctor came by to do more tests. One of them was for blood sugar, because according to my mom, Type 2 runs in the family. Something to note: I haven’t done this ever since pediatrics. The way they tested it was very awful: they used this sort of thing that I somehow remember as a ballpoint pen-like needle, and they pricked the middle of my finger--it hurt a lot, for hours. It made me not want to test for over a decade.

So they got the numbers. My blood glucose was at 343 mg/dL, and my A1-C at 12%. For those who don’t know, a good range is about 80-130 mg/dL with A1-C under 7%. 

So with those, I received the lovely diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes.

And that was also when I found the concrete answer of “How did I lose this much weight, since everyone at school/work is pointing it out to me?” instead of “oh, you know, stress and not eating much during the semester :)”.  Although it’s funny in a sad way: when I told God I wanted to lose weight, this was just about the last kind of way I wanted to have it go about.

Hours were spent in another room as they had insulin and saline pumped into me. I had a dying phone and a very short visit from my brother and his girlfriend, so I was mostly alone, especially physically. My self-hatred was showing up really bad here, since I thought there was something I could do to prevent it (I later would find that it might not have been preventable, anyway, back in the pediatrics).  A late family friend who had Type 2 was at the point where she needed dialysis and had an awful end related to her condition, and a coworker with Type 1 had a stroke and is still out of work. I was absolutely afraid. My mind had thought of this as a death sentence.

I had a doctor’s appointment the next day to start this whole new life. And let me tell you all, a month before a college semester starts, when you’re trying to save up on money buying groceries that you no longer can eat, it hecking bites. Drastic change to my diet, prescriptions, more doctor visits than I wanted, daily needle pokey-poke tests--it was a rough start for this new life.

I might be doing a lot better now, and I’ve been told by many that it can be reversible, but it’s still been tough. I was not only one who was big with using food for comfort, but I also would eat a lot more than I do now. I also have to limit what things I eat--this Thanksgiving, I had to pass on many things I would’ve been happy to have the year before.

This isn’t nearly at the level of challenges Type 1s have, but when I thought I was lucky to not get Type 2 (my brother and mother weren’t diagnosed with it despite genetics), this was a hard blow on me. At the very least, I know a bit better about this disease, and a bit more about myself.

Thank you guys so much who prayed for me. I’ll keep on praying that either I’ll be able to manage this and have a smoother road, or it’ll turn out to be reversed for me.

[hopefullysomethingnew17]

Chapter 1: Peter

​I slapped the alarm as I rolled over. It was too damn early. Way too damn early to be waking up on a weekend. It was a good thing classes were already over. I pulled myself out of bed and grabbed the first clean shirt I could find. It ended up being a faded tank I hadn’t worn since spring break. I plodded around half-asleep, half-naked, and all-irritated. I trudged into the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. That helped. I squinted into the mirror, the image of my face a little fuzzy without my glasses. I needed to shave. Oh well. I walked back into the bedroom and grabbed my glasses off my nightstand. Once I had them on I found a pair of khaki shorts and pulled them on, only to have them slide halfway down my ass by the time I made it into the living room. So I turned around and grabbed a cloth belt off the back of my closet door and cinched it tight as I walked back into the living room.

It was too early for any of my roommates to be up, but I wasn’t worried about being quiet. They were all probably too hungover from whatever end-of-the-year parties they had been to the night before. I checked the fridge. It was overflowing with cheap beer and Chinese takeout, easily the most stereotypical college apartment fridge I had ever seen. I grabbed the carton of milk from behind a case of Bud Light and shut the fridge. Then, I grabbed a box of cereal and a bowl and made myself a meager little breakfast. I ate it quickly and went back to my room to double-check my stuff. Most of the clothes I owned were stuffed into a duffel bag on the floor next to the bed. I rifled through it to make sure I had enough for the next week. It was mostly khaki shorts and t-shirts, but I made sure I had two pairs of trunks and plenty of underwear. Never could be too safe.

Once I was sure all my clothes were in order, I unzipped my backpack to make sure everything else I needed was packed inside. My laptop and various chargers were tucked into the back pocket; my shampoo, soap, and deodorant was bagged up in the bottom; my toothbrush and toothpaste were sitting on top of that; my headphones were neatly tucked into there case on top of the toiletries; and my sparkling clean sneakers were holding everything in place on top. All my other shoes were in my duffel bag, but these sneaks were special. They were vintage Chicago Air Jordan 1s, 1985 stock. I wasn’t a sneakerhead by any stretch of the imagination, but my dad had given them to me as a kid, and I had taken meticulous care of them since. They were like my good luck charm. I took them with me everywhere I went. I ran my thumb along them before zipping my backpack up and checking the front pouch for everything else. Tylenol, check. Earbuds, check. Aux cord, check. I still had a nagging feeling I was forgetting something. Extra glasses maybe? I opened my nightstand drawer to find them. They were sitting next to an unopened box of condoms. I laughed and tossed both into the bag. As if, I thought. I zipped everything back up and slung my backpack over my shoulder. I grabbed my duffel and headed towards the door before I remembered one last thing. I set my stuff by the door and walked back to my dresser to pick up my record player.

I pulled off the record sitting on the turntable and thumbed through my collection until I found the right sleeve. It was Queen’s Greatest Hits, sides 3 and 4. I slipped the vinyl back into its spot and shut the lid to my player. I unplugged it and rolled the cord up, sticking it into my carrying case along with the player itself. I had room for ten vinyls in the case, so I flipped through my collection and picked out my favorites: Queen, Snarky Puppy, Steve Miller Band, Imagine Dragons, They Might Be Giants, Survivor, Commodores. I tucked them all into the case and closed it tight. I looked around the room for anything else I might need, and, finding nothing, I grabbed my record and headed out the door, grabbing my backpack and duffel on the way out. I checked the clock on the living room wall before I left. It was only 7:30. I told Charlie I’d be there at 8:00. I’d have to hurry. But then again, knowing Charlie, it would be 9:00 before we ever left. I turned the lights off behind me as I left, heading downstairs to the parking garage. I decided to go through the courtyard on my way. It was more doors to go through, but even as early as it was, it was a beautiful day. The lights hanging around the courtyard were just turning off as I made my way out. I headed through the lobby and out to the parking garage, weaving my way through until I made it to my car.

Baby was my dream car, a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, baby blue with original chrome trim. My grandpa had bought off an air force base before my dad was born, but he stopped driving it in the 90s, mainly because he could never drive a stick very well. Once I got a job in high school, half my paychecks went into new parts for the old girl, and by senior year I had her running beautifully. I’d driven her ever since, fixing her up more and more whenever I could. She was now sporting whitewall tires, a completely rebuilt engine with twice the horsepower of the original, a new paintjob, and custom upholstery. I couldn’t remember when I’d started calling her baby. It was probably around the time I finally started driving her. I was the stereotypical new car owner and referred to her as my baby, and the name kinda stuck. My friends had all made fun of me at first for driving such a “dorky” car, but once they took a ride in it, they all fell in love with it just like I did. I joked that if my engineering degree ever fell through I could always fall back on mechanics. As many hours as I’d spent fixing up Baby, it really wasn’t too far from the truth.

I took a deep, heavy breath as I turned the engine over, struggling to keep my eyes open as I pulled out onto the road. I made the executive decision to be late to Charlie’s for the sake of coffee. And booze. After seeing the pathetic selection in my fridge, I decided to take those matters into my own hands. I pulled into Grit Coffee Bar, a popular streetside café I frequented throughout the week to fuel my unhealthy reliance on espresso. Parking was no problem, being as early as it was on a Sunday morning. I managed to get a spot in the right in front of the coffeeshop. It was 7:45 when I pulled in, and I remembered that they didn’t open until 8:00 on Sundays. I killed the engine and pulled out my phone to text Charlie.

ME: Hey, gonna be late. Needed coffee and booze.

I waited for a reply, but it didn’t come for a while. I plugged in my earbuds and opened Spotify, not looking for anything in particular. I was halfway through “Lazaretto” by Jack White when my phone pinged with Charlie’s response.

CHARLIE: Ah shit I just woke up.

ME: Why am I not surprised?

CHARLIE: Oh get off my case.

CHARLIE: You’re the one buying booze at 8 AM.

ME: Well it’s either I buy it now or you get stuck with Bud Light for a week.

CHARLIE: Oh, nvm good call man.

I checked the time again. It was 8:05. The doors were just opening. I locked the car behind me and headed in to grab a coffee to kickstart the long day of driving ahead of me. Gus, a good friend of mine, was working the morning shift today.

“Should’ve known you’d be in here this early,” he joked. “You’ve gotta be the only guy on campus crazy enough to be up right now.”

“Thanks, Gus,” I feigned sarcasm, slapping a five on the counter. He didn’t even have to ask what I wanted. I came in so often that almost every employee knew I always got a medium caramel latte with two shots espresso and whipped cream. Gus was already grinding the beans as I walked up to the counter.

“I’m serious, you know,” he said, pouring the coffee into the cup. “I didn’t pass a single car on my way to work today. Why are you even up so early? All your roommates were at the big party at Trinity last night.”

“I’m going on a big road trip,” I said, grabbing my coffee and change off the counter.

“Really now?” Gus asked as he turned to clean out the espresso machine.

“Yup. I’m taking Charlie to Gulf Shores for Hangout.”

“Oh, you’re kidding! I’m so jealous, dude. That’s gonna be awesome.”

“Yeah, I really hope so. We’re gonna try to make it to Atlanta tonight.”

“Well, have fun. But be safe! Can’t have our number one customer up and leaving us.” Gus grinned and waved as I walked out, coffee in hand. I took a deep breath as I got in the car and cranked it up. This was without a doubt the craziest thing I had ever done. I shook off my nerves and broke into a grin as I pulled out of the parking lot. I turned on the radio just as my lucky song came on. Elton John was singing “Rocket Man” on the FM, and I couldn’t help but join him as my adventure started.

[twilightsporklez]

For Want of a Nail, the Kin was Lost

    Exactly two weeks ago, the world had entered the Darkest Timeline. Andrew Hussie, creator of Homestuck, had died from a heart attack at the ripe old age of sixty nine, and, as he had passed to the underworld, his creations had passed from the underworld to Earth. The constellations glittering in the sky, once beacons of hope, had loosened their chains and come down in order to destroy the world. The twelve trolls of Homestuck were alive, and they wanted humanity dead.

Story continued under the cut (cw: violence, death, gore)

    Using their god-like powers, they first targeted power plants and the homes of world leaders. Then they came for the fans. They recruited readers of Homestuck in order to help them destroy Earth. Every one of them had agreed and had immediately sworn their loyalty. 

    Along with their rampages came another change. Everyone, overnight, had had their appearance changed to match that of their assigned zodiac kin. Deku, as far as he could tell, was a Vriska. He was pretty sure that his zodiac sign was Cancer, but maybe his birthday was on an edge day.

    Deku had spent the first week hiding in his basement reading the entirety of Homestuck. His house had then been burned down by a rampant Sollux. Most of the city had been, actually. The only safe spots now were shelters with closely guarded locations.

    He had spent the past few days wandering through the ravaged streets, searching for the location to a safehouse. The heat of the day beat down heavy against his cloak, but he dare not take it off in fear of burning his gray skin. According to a nearby spray-painted billboard, a brave Tavros had set up shop inside the EBGames he was standing in front of.

    The surface was mostly bare during the day, but Deku was still cautious. He did a quick search of the surrounding parking lot before entering the lobby.

    The doorbell chimed as he wiggled his way in. Deku pulled down his hood and waved at the Tavros.

    "What are you in for today?" The Tavros wasn’t in character. Phew. Only those who had had quirks beforehand spoke with their typing quirk.

    "Some food and a safe house, ideally." Deku turned and scanned the shelf that had used to house Nintendo games. It had a couple copies of the physical editions of Homestuck, along with a few handbooks for ‘your new troll body and you’. Deku sighed at the sight of them.

    He heard a few thumps and some swearing, and turned around to find the Tavros bumping his wide horns against the door-frame of the back room. Ouch. Deku feigned interest in the handbooks to help the guy’s self esteem.

    Along with the appearance and typing quirk of your assigned kin, you also gained their powers. Deku had been ecstatic at the news, but then, as always, inevitably disappointed, as it turned out that it only replaced your old quirk instead of fitting you with a new one. He was still powerless in a society filled with superheroes. Er, trolls. Quirk-having trolls were indistinguishable from the originals in every way other than their height, lack of limited immortality, attitude, and blood. Thankfully, everyone had kept their blood.

    Tavros, having managed to not hit his horns this time, came back into the room carrying a couple loaves of bread and a map. "That'll be seventy dollars."

    Shit. He didn't have any money. He didn't have any powers, either. The only thing Deku had, aside from his pure charisma and perceptiveness, was a bunch of weird paper that he had stolen while committing tax fraud. Wait. That's money. Deku paid quietly for the goods and then sat on the floor and took a bite of his spoils. Judging from the map, the safe house was three or four blocks away and pretty well guarded.

    By the time he was finished memorizing the route, he had hungrily wolfed down an entire loaf of Wonder bread without noticing. Grabbing the remaining two loaves, he rolled up the map, pulled his faded orange hood back up, and left.

    The constant surveillance of his surroundings turned a five minute walk into twenty, but it paid dividends. The original route shown on the map was crawling with Eridans looking for someone to take out their anger out on.

    Happy with his avoidance of a close call, Deku examined his surroundings. The outside of the base was relatively hidden. It resembled a normal, beaten-up subway entrance. However, the bottom of the stairway was blocked off with metal and presumably, bullet proof glass with an open hole a the bottom, like at the movie theatres, or maybe a dentist. What were dentists hiding from? He would need to think about this immediately. He had time: there was a sign about someone being "OUT FOR LUNCH."

    Just then, his phone went off. Labelled as the caller: "(Vriska)." Not one for dramatic pauses, Deku answered immediately.

    The voice sounded female. It was hard to tell, because all they were saying was ‘doot’ over and over to the tune of some song that Deku didn't know. The audio quality was pretty bad too, like if someone made a SBAHJ podcast and then made it shittier. He hung up.

    It was another ten minutes before someone came out. The Terezi had her hair cut short, and her left horn was chipped. She sat down in a chair in the booth and waved.   

    "N4M3??" Like eighty percent of the population, she had a quirk.

    "Previously Izuku Midoriya. Currently assigned Vriska. Forgive me if I don't remove the hood."

    "USU4LLY W3 CH3CK TH3 BLOOD OF SOM3ON3 B3FOR3 L3TT1NG TH3M 1N TO S33 TH3 BOSS BUT 1N YOUR C4S3 1T SHOULDNT M4TT3R."

    Deku found that unsettling, but free room and board is free room and board, so he didn't question it. Terezi leaned back in her chair and slapped a button on the wall. The window between them swung open and Deku jumped back to avoid it.

    “COM3 ON 1N.” Terezi moved her chair over to the side, and Deku saw that the interior was much larger than he had thought. It was a little bigger than a supply closet, and had pictures of various Homestuck characters plastered along the walls.

    The space felt personal, so Deku didn’t lag behind when Terezi left down a hallway to the side.

    After a short walk, the hallway opened up into an abandoned underground parking garage. The sturdy concrete walls were covered in graffiti, and most of the cars had doors busted open. Trolls from most of the hemospectrum were lazing around, talking and sleeping. All of them except for Cerulean bloods. 

    Maybe he should get to know the person—troll—currently leading him away from any witnesses.

    Start simple. “Are Terezi’s powers any fun to use? I never had a quirk, so I’ll never get to experiment with mind-”

    “1 DONT H4V3 4 QU1RK.”

    “You don’t? Then why the typing quirk?” He would never have thought he would be having this kind of conversation.

    “1 US3D TO K1N T3R3Z1. 1M V3RY S3NS1T1V3 4BOUT 1T.”

    “I understand.” Deku did not understand, but he did not doubt for a moment that the 5’1” Terezi beside him could kill him instantly, even without a quirk.

    Looping around cars, Terezi led him into another hallway, barking at some of the other trolls to keep it down during sleeping hours. They passed a few kitchens and supply closets, until winding up at an oak door.

    "PL34S3 CLOS3 TH3 DOOR B3FOR3 YOU ST4RT BL33DING."

    Deku hoped that she was joking. He took a breath in and opened the door.

    An older-looking troll with long, tangled black hair sat in front of him. She wore a faded yellow robe with a sun poorly embroidered on it. Her tired face glowed a soft blue, and it scrunched up in seething hatred once all eight of her eyes saw who—what—he was.

    Vriska shot her hand out towards him. Dice spilled out, zapping in the air and glowing brightly. "No dou8les!!!!!!!!!"

    Deku pulled his hood on and ducked, narrowly avoiding certain death. "Wait!” Reminded of his conversation from earlier, he decided to lie. “I'm not a Vriska,” he said. "I'm a (Vriska). Completely different."

    Vriska motioned for him to sit down. "Let's talk. And close the door 8ehind you."

 It had been a few weeks since Deku had joined the underground group. He was sitting with the Terezi and Vriska he had met on the first day, conversing about possible long-term solutions to food shortages. It was difficult because they kept getting distracted and making out instead of getting work done.

    “If we were to grow our own food above ground, we’d run the risk of being—er, 8eing tracked-” Deku cut himself off. A nearby Karkat had a knife in his hand. “Did you guys check everyone’s blood? I think that Karkat is about to kill someone.”

    They stopped kissing and looked over to where Deku was pointing. Vriska reached into her bag and started rummaging through it. “First of all, not a dude. Second of all, o8viously I checked them all.”

    Vriska pulled out a handful of dice and a tube of red chap-stick. Terezi gratefully took the chap-stick, biting into it like a Popsicle. They both stood up.

    “WH4T 4R3 YOU DO1NG?” asked Terezi.

    The Karkat smiled. “NOTHING.” He proceeded to walk over to a sleeping Sollux and pat him on the head.

    “I have a new way to solve our food shortage. Reduce damand.” Vriska flung out her dice towards the red-tinged troll. They flashed and spun, until hitting the ground to reveal the damage count. Because of her luck, it was the maximum possible. Lightning shot out of the die and phased through the Karkat, killing him instantly.

    Except, he wasn’t dead. He peeled himself off the pavement and dusted himself off.

    Terezi turned towards Deku and Vriska. “OK4Y 1 TH1NK 1V3 FOUND TH3 PROBL3M. K4RK4T H4S MUT4NT BLOOD. TH4T 1S TO S4Y HUM4N BLOOD.”

    Karkat nodded, as if to approve the theory. Apparently a blood test doesn't work if the one you're trying to find has freakishly normal human blood.

    Vriska facepalmed. “This is so unfair. He never 8ecame a god in the alpha timeline!!!!!!!!”

    The floor rumbled softly, and the roof started to crack and splinter. Beams of energy shot through the roof, and a large part of it collapsed. Hundreds of trolls streamed through the hole, carrying weaponry and a thirst for destruction. Homestucks.  Did they not realize this conquest would result in the demise of humanity?

    Initially filling the area with deafening shouting and pushing, they soon fell silent. A troll in a bright yellow robe floated above them, staring directly at the trio.

    “It’s 8eneath me to ask nicely, 8ut please kill each other so that we don’t have to waste time.” She flipped her long black hair as if it were a simple request.

    Deku, unsurprisingly, liked being alive. “What happens if we don’t?”

    An enthusiastic Nepeta pulled out a gun and pointed it at him.

    "Calm down. I'll deal with this 8ozo myself." Deku realized that floating above him was Her. The original Vriska.

    He was doomed.

    Vriska pulled out dice from her pocket and started playing with them in her hand. “I h8 doubles, 8ut I’ll give you one chance at redemption. Prove yourself a real fan and I’ll let you join my army.”

    Deku considered his answer carefully. He didn’t have a lot of options. Better to go with something tried and true rather than lose at a Homestuck trivia contest. If it worked once, why not again? "I'm actually the original (Vriska). Don't kill me."

    "It seems unlikely. Karkat, test her 8lood."

    Okay yeah he was definitely doomed. Why did Vriska have to take basic safety precautions?

    Karkat’s knife dripped with the yellow blood of a Sollux, and Deku cringed at the sight. Karkat came close to Deku, and took his arm in one hand. He carefully grazed the knife along Deku’s skin, letting the blood drip out for all to see.

    Cerulean blood. 

    He was safe. But he was (Vriska)... And if he was (Vriska), then who was phone????????

[topfygad]

3 Day Itinerary to Verona and Lake Garda

Of all the destinations in Italy, Verona and Lake Garda are often overlooked. I didn’t regret at all choosing these cities for my visit. Through this itinerary, you can enjoy the best of Verona and Lake Garda in just 3 days!

The view of Monte Baldo from San Felice in Lake Garda

About Verona & Lake Garda

When choosing cities to visit in Italy, Verona may not be most people’s top choice. Relatively close to other bigger cities like Milan and Venice, small enough to be explored within a short period, this city would be perfect to be included in your next Italian bucketlist. The city has all the historical venues, romantic places, and serves as a gateway to an even more wonderful destination, Lake Garda.

Despite being the biggest lake in Italy, it is still less famous and touristy than its neighbor, Lake Como. This doesn’t mean that this lake is any less beautiful. There are several towns surrounding this lake, Sirmione, Salo, Riva—to name a few. Upon your visit, you can pick to stay at one of these towns.

About This Itinerary

This itinerary was inspired by my visit to this area last September. Obviously, the great thing about visiting on the shoulder season is that it’s less crowded and expensive, but we can still enjoy the wonderful weather. In Verona, it was still very humid and hot especially during the day. While in Lake Garda, the temperature was mostly great and sunny even though it gets misty in the morning and night.

You can easily swap out the days between exploring Verona and Lake Garda, whether you prefer to visit Verona at the beginning or at the end of your 3-day stay. This itinerary will focus on the south-western part of Lake Garda (Gardone Riviera to Peschiera).

How to get to and around Verona & Lake Garda

Verona is a very accessible city. You can come either by plane, train or bus from other cities in or outside of Europe.

Verona Porta Nuova train station

By Plane

There are several non-European flights coming into Verona Villafranca Airport, such as from Egypt, Tunisia, and Israel. Other than that, most of the flights are coming from within Europe.

From the airport, you can take Bus 199 to Verona Stazione FS then continue to the city center. There is no direct transit from the airport to Lake Garda, so you will need to take Bus 199 first.

By Train

The train from all over Italy and other countries will stop at Verona Porta Nuova. The train station is located comfortably in the city center, so you can continue on foot or by short bus ride.

If you plan to continue directly to Lake Garda, you can buy a train ticket (Trenitalia/Trenord) to Peschiera or Desenzano, which is on the south of the lake.

Scenic drive from Verona to Lake Garda

By Bus

The main bus station is Verona Stazione FS which is just outside Verona Porta Nuova, you can check the bus schedules and routes here.

By Car

If you want to do a road trip from another European city, Verona & Lake Garda are just north of the A4 and west of the A22 autostrada. Prepare the money for the autostrada.

This is also the most convenient way to explore Lake Garda, but expect heavier traffic and more crowded parking areas during summer months.

Verona and Lake Garda Itinerary

Day 1

Breakfast around Piazza Bra

The best way to enter Verona in style is through I Portoni della Bra, which will lead you to Piazza Bra. This arc is relatively a new one because in ancient time, the entrance to Verona is through Porta Borsari.

I Portoni della Bra

In this piazza you will find some notable buildings around the area, namely Arena di Verona and Palazzo Barbieri. You will also find a lot of restaurants, cafes, and gelato shops, but the one right on the piazza is very expensive. You can walk around the smaller streets and see a café that you like. My recommendation is Caffè Dersut a short walk to via Roma. After a cup of coffee and a brioche, enjoy the morning sun a bit more before heading towards other sites.

Arena di Verona

This looks like a smaller version of the Colosseum, but nothing less impressive. This amphitheater is also still very well preserved. Nowadays, the arena is used for concerts, opera performances and orchestra-philharmonic that attract visitors from around the world. If you happen to be in Verona in June 2020, make sure you come to the Opera Festival.

Right in front of the Arena, there is a statue of Vittorio Emanuele II, the first King of united Italy who assumes nickname of Padre de la Patria (Father of the Fatherland). There is also Palazzo Barbieri on the other side, which is now a city hall building. This part of town is usually very crowded, so always watch your belongings.

Juliet’s Balcony

Casa di Giulietta

Only a short (confusing) walk from the Arena, you will find the other main attraction of this city. Juliet’s House is always overcrowded with tourists . Inside, you will find Juliet’s statue and the famous balcony. On the entrance, the wall is plastered with love letters from people all over the world who pours out their feeling in writing to (fictional) Juliet.

If you’re confused how can one send a letter to a fictional person, you’re not alone. The letters are actually handled by “Secretaries of Juliet” from Club di Giulietta, which is funded by the township of Verona. You can actually sign up to be one or book with them to read archive of these letters.

The crowd at Piazza delle Erbe

Lunch around Piazza delle Erbe

After wrestling your way in and out of Juliet’s House, it would be nice to have a good lunch. Next Piazza to visit is only few minutes away. This Piazza was a forum back in ancient Roman days and now people still gather here around the square.

I would recommend Sapore Pizza. Even though I don’t really like typical thick northern Italian pizza, I found the pizza delicious and very affordable. You can also have some dessert, go get a gelato! Gelateria Imperio would be my go-to gelato place at the piazza.

Stroll around Centro Storico and enjoy Adige River view

Enjoy your chilly treat and continue walking around. On the north of the Piazza there is Torre dei Lamberti, where you can climb the tower (either by stairs or elevator) and enjoy bird’s eye view of Verona. If you walk towards the north, you will end up at Verona Cathedral and Ponte Pietra, which are great places to see as well.

Aside from being very pedestrian-friendly, the narrow streets of Verona to are very picturesque. Why don’t you stop a bit and take some pictures?

Adige River in Verona

Getting to Lake Garda from Verona

You have finished exploring the whole Verona city center in just a day! Next you can choose to drive or take train/bus to Lake Garda and enjoy the sunset on the way, or you can stay in Verona for the night and head there in the morning.

Day 2

Exploring Gardone Riviera

After having breakfast, we can explore the western part of the lake. The must-visit attraction is this impressive lakeside estate called Vittoriale degli Italiani.

The Italian writer Gabriele d’Annunzio once lived in one of the buildings in this estate. The estate comprises a villa, an amphitheater, a cruiser, and a boathouse. During your visit, you will learn about the history of this estate and be given an amazing view of the lake. You can book your ticket in advance on their site, it costs EUR8 for the non-guided tour.

Boat trip around Lake Garda

Picnic, Sunbathing and Boat Trip

If you have not had enough amazing view of the lake, drive south a little bit to San Felice. There are various beaches along the lake but this one is definitely my favorite. You can stop by the supermarket to buy picnic supplies, lay down a mat or towel by the lake and enjoy the sun! This beach is especially hectic during the summer months.

Want to take it up a notch? There is Garda Boat Rental along the beach where you can rent a boat for half a day (4 hours) and go around the lake a little bit. The afternoon is best as the morning mist is gone, you can enjoy the view of Monte Baldo on the other side and the castle at Isola del Garda. The small boat can take up to 7 passengers and only costs around EUR120 on shoulder to low season!

You can find affordable lakefront restaurants in some parts of Lake Garda

Dinner at Desenzano

After a great day by the water, it’s time for amazing dinner. Most of the restaurants around Lake Garda are expensive, especially ones in front of the lake. I would recommend Santa, it is one of the more affordable restaurants in front of the lake. It has an amazing view, awesome food, friendly and quick service despite being a busy night there.

As Lake Garda is more catered towards families and honeymooners, there is barely any nightlife here. So enjoy some restful night before more adventure on the next day.

Day 3

Rocca Scaligera & Grotte di Catullo

In the morning, we drive to Sirmione, which is the peninsula in the south of Lake Garda. There are plenty of attractions in Sirmione, but there are two that you shouldn’t miss. The first one is Rocca Scaligera (Scaligero Castle), a fortified port that was built in 13th century by the Scaliger Family of Verona, which is said to be the most well-conserved in the country. If you look at Lake Garda pictures on Instagram, there are plenty of drone shots because the panoramic view of this place is incredible. If you decide to enter, there is a museum that houses medieval artifacts inside.

Scaligero Castle of Sirmione

The second site is called Grotte di Catullo. You should visit this site If you enjoyed or wanted to visit Pompeii. Surrounded by olive groves, this ancient Roman villa was constructed in 1st century AD and still well-preserved until this day. Enjoy the amazing view of Lake Garda from the ruins of the villa, which also has a museum in it. This site also serves as the set for Call Me By Your Name movie.

The ticket price is EUR14 for the castle, ruins & museum combo. It opens for longer hours during summer, even though the museum only opens until 2pm. These places are closed every Monday, January 1st, May 1st, and December 25th.

Winery tour around Sirmione

Lake Garda region is the northernmost Mediterranean climate in Italy, so it is mild enough to cultivate grapes, olives and citrus trees. Make sure you do a wine tasting or winery tour during your visit. The area is known for its Bardolino, a light red and Chiaretto Rosato, an even lighter and refreshing white.

There are so many wineries and tour operators offering winery tour, pick one that suits your preference, including whether you would like to be picked up at your accommodation, whether you would like the one that includes food, etc. My only advise would be, don’t drink and drive!

Wine Tasting around Lake Garda

The price for a tasting could range pretty significantly between one winery and the other, as well as the tasting menu. I would recommend Onepiò, they offer from light wine tasting (three kinds of wine and breadsticks) all the way to platinum wine tasting (eight kinds of wine and variants of Italian chocolate).

Dinner & going back to Verona

If you still want to get dinner around Lake Garda, there are plenty of good restaurants in Sirmione and Peschiera. I discovered Pasta Salame in Peschiera, a restaurant with a simple menu that is less touristy, very affordable and tastes really good. If you still have room for dessert, make sure to try their tiramisu.

How to Travel to Verona & Lake Garda on a Budget

Lake Garda has been known as the summer destination for the elites, even in medieval times. With some tweaks and planning (and a lot of research) you will be able to stay in these cities without spending too much.

Accommodation Verona & Lake Garda

When picking a place to stay in Verona, pick accommodation right in the city center (Cittadella, Citta Antica) so you will be able to walk to all the important attractions.

To pick a place to stay in Lake Garda, that would depend on the mode of transportation you have. If you depend on public transportation, I would advise staying closer to the lakeside so you can walk to the lake without spending too much on bus ticket. If you rent a car, you can stay a bit further from the lakeside for cheaper, nicer accommodation.

Finding cheap and awesome accommodations around Lake Garda is not too difficult

We stayed at a wonderful villa in Puegnago, with free breakfast, bathtub, huge pool and amazing (farther) view of the lake for only EUR120 per night. In comparison, similar place in Desenzano costs at least EUR205 per night. If you want more simple room, you could definitely get one for a lot cheaper.

Food in Verona & Lake Garda

If you’re not too fussy about food, there are plenty of food stalls that offers delicious sliced pizza and panini for a really low price. Just take the food and eat at a park or back at your accommodation. If you want some pasta, you should try to find places where they offer a more simple menu and most locals go. You can also buy supplies at the supermarket (the local ones are called “Alimentari”) and wine bottles for a really cheap price before visiting an attraction.

Attractions in Verona & Lake Garda

Most of the attractions in Verona are free. The views in both Lake Garda and Verona are amazing, so you don’t really have to pay for anything. The attractions I mentioned above are totally worth it for a small amount of money, but you can totally skip them and still having a good time!

When to Visit Verona & Lake Garda

As you have guessed, visiting during the summer months will make everything more expensive. I highly suggest visiting in May, September or October. In winter months the region gets cold and in Lake Garda, it may get foggy. But if you love winter sports, you can go high altitude skiing on Monte Baldo or go for a thermal bath in Sirmione.

Pin This Article

This post was originally published in October 2019

from Cheapr Travels https://ift.tt/2pb0dXp via https://ift.tt/2NIqXKN

[daisyachain]

a small scene from the 212th, in the middle of a fight

It was in the middle of a skirmish-turned-battle that Cody found himself in possession of the General's lightsabre. It had flown out of his hand during the fight, but the man had been too intent on beating a droid to pick it up — and, of course, it was Cody's job to clean up the mess.

The General had a calm and collected demeanour, and Cody could say he'd been fooled into thinking he would be as careful and conservative as General Unduli on the battlefield.

Key word: "fooled."

That had been in the cool, darkened rooms of the Coruscant barracks.

Now, the General was somewhere in the piles of debris and clouds of smoke, and Cody was wondering if it was possible to accidentally activate a lightsabre. It was hanging on his belt, on an empty ammo clip, so if it decided to turn on, he'd be looking at a nasty gash, if not a rushed amputation. They could go on at the click of a button—

Years of battle training made him recognize the faint beeping of a detonator in the soundscape, sending him diving and rolling for cover. The ground and his armour were hard enough to snap his neck, but he'd learned to keep the roll on his shoulder instead of his back, absorbing the shock into his movement.

Even so, the smoke from blast would make it harder to find his way back to Kenobi.

With the lightsabre safely clipped, Cody found cover in a thin stand of trees, and surveyed the battle. This area of the planet was mostly grassland and parkland, dried out and burnt by blaster fire. The advance squadron of the 212th had spread out — Waxer and Boil led their respective sections on the flank, funnelling the droid forces towards the empty riverbed some clicks ahead, while Cody and the General took the middle. Or had taken the middle, until the Seppies had set off some massive series of explosives, just a few minutes past.

The clankers manning the tanks seemed finally to have locked on, with a heavy cannon bolt sending Cody back into the fray, ducking down to hide in the dust clouds.

Now was not the time to panic. Yes — the General was a standing, leaping, somersaulting duck, wherever he was, and the front ranks had collapsed, but panicking now assumed it couldn't get worse.

Besides, he trusted his lieutenants, for all that they bickered with each other. Somehow, they both seemed to understand what the other was doing at any given time, and what needed to be done. Very, very useful when the dust was thick in the air and the comm lines were jammed.

Cody worked forward slowly, sticking to patches of cover, waiting for the rest of the troops to catch up with him and the General — it shouldn't take too long. Until then, Waxer and Boil could handle themselves.

Some sets of brothers were like that. Even closer than owns. There wasn't even a clone term for it, but to Cody it felt something like the Force the Jedi used. Something that ran deeper than just shared genetics or shared experiences.

He'd started to feel something like it with Rex, but they'd been separated too often lately for him to really have a grip on it. For now, own was what he'd have to use.

Suddenly, a stinging pain flashed through him. Blaster bolt, near the edge of an armour plate. Kriff's sake—

It spread, too, weighing him down, making his movements hesitant, uneven. The only reason he was still alive was because of the haze — and because the General needed his weapon back.

He was out of ideas.

He missed Rex.

But — and here he clamped down on the thoughts, letting training take over — that wasn't of concern right now. The 501st was on its way with reinforcements, but for now and for a few days the 212th was alone.

Without a General, it wouldn't be efficient for too much longer.

The tell-tale thunder of boots on the ground, working its way up through his joints, told him that the rest of the centre guard were here. Thank Force.

Cody launched himself forward, still searching for Kenobi and the distinctive glare of the lightsabre, when he checked himself. Stupid! The lightsabre was here, with him — the General was elsewhere.

"Don't risk random fire!" he shouted, signalling the instructions with the clone hand-signs, "Targeted shooting and droid poppers only, until I give the word."

He could practically sense the grumbling from the men, and tightened his grip on the blaster. Signalling a few troopers, Cody pushed forward, sticking to the taller clumps of grass and few trees or rocks, trying to spot the company's NCOs and specialized units. Without comm lines, this was going to be a hell of a lot harder.

"Dell! Get the wounded back behind our lines. Turner! Cover him."

He kept running. The clone with the stylized blades of grass painted on his helmet, and one with heavily modified armour watching for enemies, moved in sync. Most days a brother could pick another out of a crowd by his movements, but sometimes the painted signs helped.

An explosion ahead caught Cody's eye — there — the General was holding his own with a blaster, but his face and awkward stance marked him as a Jedi.

"Brine!" Cody turned to the trooper at his left. "Find somewhere clear of interference, and tell Boil to fall back in with the General's squad. They're going to need it!"

"Sir! Do you need cover?"

"Thank you, but I'll get Opt to do that. Just get the message to Boil."

"Yessir!"

Without stopping to take on the approaching wave, Cody held his blaster up, driving through a couple of staggering battle droids. Their eye sensors were more sensitive to light than colour, so the firing and the dust distracted them. They aimed more at the lasers than the clones.

These lines were holding, but up ahead, the General was more or less alone. The clones he'd been covering had retreated, according to protocol, but he hadn't — instead, he seemed to have taken out a tank, using it for cover. Typical Jedi. Didn't even have his lightsabre.

"Opt!" he called, signalling the clone to his right. "I'm going to need some cover."

"Yes, Captain."

Opt stuck by him as he peeled off to the side, leaving the rest of the men to take the droids head-on.

"I'm going in to get the Jedi."

Cody didn't pause to look around — Opt was a crack shot; he'd know the best location to set up camp when they got close.

"But sir!"

"But what?"

"He can handle himself."

Cody rolled his eyes, safe in the knowledge that no one would see. Opt was a good soldier, but a special one.

"Not without his lightsabre he can't!"

He thought Opt mumbled something in reply, but it wasn't important.

Now, they far were out in front of the lines, zigzagging their way through. They'd been trained for this.

1. Kill the biggest droid you can.

A handful of B-1s would have to do, for now. They went down like train before a scythe.

2. Use the shell for cover.

Crouching as they fell, Cody let loose a few rounds, counting on the visual interference as optic cables saw both droid and clone in one.

3. Shoot up to confuse the smaller ones, then tear through them.

Simple enough. The Separatist lines were thin here, thanks to the General.

4. Hope that Opt can still shoot like he did last time.

Before Cody could react to the creak of metal, the droid running in from 8 o'clock went down. Then the one from 2 — yes, Opt still deserved the crosshairs on his shoulder.

Finally, break through to the General—

"General! Catch!"

Throw the lightsabre, and skid to a halt back-to-back with the Jedi.

5. Achieve the objective.

"Thank you, Cody!"

He skidded to a halt at the General's side, once the man had taken care of the droids surrounding him. For some reason, he was grinning — not just the odd half-smile he wore like a bucket, but a broad one. He hefted the sabre, as if relishing the feel of it in his hand.

"So much better than a blaster, if you'll pardon me."

Cody could only nod in reply, before hoisting his blaster to his shoulder.

Time for Rex's addition: 6. Get the kriff out of there.

The lines of shorthand ran through Cody's mind, and he signalled a retreat back into their lines. Even a Jedi would have to be tired, after all this; this one was human, after all.

"No — Captain, I'm afraid I have more work to do. Can you handle the troops?"

Damn Jedi.

"Of course, sir."

"Very well."

Time to go.

Cover the General as he rips into enemy lines. Get Opt on the now-blinking (thank you, Wires) comlink and tell him to regroup, and cover the wounded. Wait for Boil's reinforcements. Take command from him and Waxer. Leave them to their one-sided arguing. Berate the General when he finally rejoins the group, looking far too fresh for someone just out of a firefight.

"Sir." Cody stepped forward, turned halfway between the troops and the General, leaning in to be heard. "Permission to speak freely?"

"Permission granted," gasped the General, too out of breath to say much more.

"One Jedi is worth a hundred clones. If you lose your lightsabre again, we'll all be in trouble."

It was improper, but Cody's sheer fatigue made it hard to mince words. Kenobi's stunt could have gotten more than a few good men killed, for a moment's lack of foresight. Jedi were supposed to be better than this!

"I can't argue with that logic, Captain," Kenobi answered, after a brief pause, "A Jedi is no more, and no less valuable than a clone."

"You are to the Republic," Cody said shortly.

"I'll argue about that later, Cody."

"I have no doubt you will, sir."

He couldn't help but roll his eyes, as the troops around them started to march forward. He was slowly picking up the crisp sounds of a Coruscanti accent.

…

Cody knocked three times on the General's door. As usual, a sly answer came back.

"It's open, Cody. It usually is, if you ever want to drop by."

"Sir."

Once he was inside the small room — the Negotiator's quarters were bare even compared to the central barracks — Cody stood straight, arms folded behind his back, at ease. Not that there was much room to do so.

"General. Captain Rex just contacted me with news."

"Very well, Cody, you my go ahead."

"Yes, sir. General Skywalker and Commander Tano are cleaning up the last few wounded, and should be done within a few clicks. The Separatist base is empty. All combat droids have fled or been destroyed, and tactical droids have self-destructed."

There was nothing extraordinary in the news — just a rote read-off of the situation, so the General was better prepared to give the 212th's next order.

For some reason, though, Cody noticed he was smiling. He smiled often. Still, he had no reason to be, unlike Cody — Kenobi hadn't heard Rex's tired voice on the other end of the holo, or seen him flash a grin when he mentioned the trouble his Jedi had gotten into today.

So here Cody was, still with the warm afterglow in his chest of seeing an old friend after too many rotations, watching Kenobi's eyes start to crinkle at the edges as he scribbled down the notes. No — it could have been just a squint, or the same old half-smile.

"Wonderful."

The General's voice was quiet, coming from far away. No — it was at a moderate volume, and it was Cody who could only nod in reply.

"That should make our job far easier," Kenobi continued, "If Anakin's been paying attention — is there anything else, Captain?"

Cody shook his head, speaking automatically as his breath froze in his lungs. "Not from Rex. General Skywalker will probably contact you soon."

"Thank you, Cody."

What was that look? The smile that wasn't a smile, and the body language that all Cody's CC courses hadn't covered. The eyes that met his—

"…but I was asking you."

The words touched Cody gently, then spiralled in to shock his core.

The General had turned his chair around to face him, in what little room there was between them, and wasn't just soot and dust that made his eyes look sunken — he was tired, and his words came slowly.

He did not look away.

"It's — there's nothing, sir," Cody murmured.

"Very well."

The silence that descended was not uncomfortable.

"Is there anything you need me to tell the men?" Cody found himself saying, words bubbling up to try and make something change in this stillness. "We're treating the wounded and compiling data at the moment, but if you need any assistance…"

Then, he let the words trail off, wondering if he should not have broken the moment.

It was almost tempting to let it stay there. Nothing to explain, or be explained.

No. He was getting to used to this informality. He was a Captain. He followed protocol.

He paid attention to his superior officer.

The General looked sad. Turning in on himself, like Cody had see Rex do after a training mission gone wrong.

He was sad, then, though the losses had been minimal. It was just Kin and Buzz, and Rake, and Ergo, and Dam, Wary, Halo, Gorse.

They'd been good brothers. Cody knew them. He'd shed tears. Even now, he felt them weighing down on him. But the clones were trained for this as well — he'd write their names down, pin their last letters up on the bulletin board, and be happy that they went without regrets. Everything a brother ever wanted to say but couldn't, he wrote down, to keep things from getting messy.

Did the General know that?

Cody didn't say anything. Each emotion that drifted past was as difficult to grasp as the last. Why? Why he paying attention to that? Why did he wonder what the General was thinking? Why did the General look at him like that?

Almost—

"Cody, you know General Skywalker was my former padawan."

"Yes, sir."

—almost like he looked at Rex.

Kenobi stood up. His eyes never left Cody's.

"He was a handful. When I gave him his lightsabre, I told him it was his life. It's a lesson my Master handed down to me, and that he has handed down to his own padawan."

Cody felt that this was not the right time to say something.

"It's true, you know. A Jedi with a blaster has little more skill than a clone…"

As he said it, Kenobi winced at his own words.

"No — I'm sorry, Cody, that was cruel."

"No offence taken, sir."

"What I mean is —"

And here, a hand rested lightly on his shoulder as Kenobi's smile stretched thin.

"Thank you, Cody."

The frantic search for something good to say.

"You said, sir."

Kenobi chuckled. "Very good, Cody. You might learn humour yet."

So, mild insults were acceptable for this particular situation. He'd have to remember that.

"Not if you have anything to do with it, sir."

That said, the protective layer of rules and protocol around Cody's mind had thinned too much. Even in the middle of the night, with a talkative General.

"Ve-ry funny."

Kenobi had stepped back, arms crossed in their usual position as he grinned.

"Thank you, sir," Cody replied, genuinely.

Rex would roll his eyes, after so long with Skywalker and Tano, but he really was happy to have made it this far through the conversational minefield.

Suddenly, though, the sad smile came across the General's face again.

"Cody, do you ever wonder what you would do, if there was no war?"

…and just when he thought he'd gotten the hang of it, Obi-Wan pulled out some new weapon, slim and polished from his infinite inventory, to dig at Cody's heart.

I don't know, he almost answered truthfully. "Sometimes, sir."

This seemed to cheer him up, if that was the word — at least, he now glanced away, talking more to himself than anyone else.

"I do, too."

And now, the General who never shut up seemed to be at a loss for words, settling instead for Cody's favourite standby: the business of running an army. It was all they should have been talking about, a Jedi and a clone.

"I imagine your troops will be needing some direction, now."

Cody almost wanted this to continue, even though he scrabbled now for something to say.

"They're good men, General. They'll be fine on their own."

"Unlike me, I guess."

Kenobi chuckled as he said it, but did not meet his eyes.

Then, he did, and smiled that odd half-smile again.

"Good night, Cody."

Cody nodded.

"Good night, sir."

[shonikado]

Possible solution to the level 30 problem: the modifier caps at 19, but you automatically get an extra advantage for each point beyond that?

Also, for my D&D5e-wrangling purposes specifically: players always succeed if d20+mod >= 20, and just let them win ties?

Possible thought: only creatures benefit from the "nat 20 is auto-success" rule? (Though the above change invalidates the nat 20 rule)

This one is NOT well-organized and is ramble-y, so, advising against the readmore

it’s sorta like, the bullet points above are my solutions, and everything below is showing my work. Or concept art. Except it’s less interesting and more word-eresting.

So the three points above the readmore were extracted from this post. Originally it was just the "level 30 problem" thing, then near the end I added the two other ideas. So, keep that in mind, as we now enter the unedited post:

bounded accuracy arguably holds. Like, if you wanted to land one attack on that Lv.30 god per turn, I think you'd need: * About 40 peasants/fighters (Lv.0 or Lv.1) * About 20 heroes (Lv.11) * About 6 legendary heroes (Lv.20) which seems reasonable to me.

an unfortunate note arises, though - once you're converting modifier differences into advantages, it means you can't just let the players add whatever stats or item bonuses they like without involving them in the system. Because if they have a +1 to Strength while hitting that god, that changes the number of advantages involved. Unless modifiers and level bonuses are treated separately somehow, which, ugh,

Really though this is only a concern because I'd like level 1 players to look at a level 20 dungeon, then look at a level 30 dungeon, and be able to differentiate the 30 as being harder than the other. Instead of "these are both equally difficult because we're that low-leveled, if we wanted to try one we may as well do the 30". And additionally, the idea of saying "you'll totally fail going into either" bothers me because if they WANT to risk it, they should be able to.

sigh

I mean what I -could- do is say that level stuff all works as-is but player modifiers change how likely you are to get a crit - like, if you have +1 to Strength, then 19+1 is a crit just as much as 20+1 is a crit. Except when comparing crits, which would need more rules, possibly like "highest natural number wins, if it's a tie then highest modifier wins, if THAT'S a tie then see whatever your rules are for ties". How would that impact the probabilities of success now that there's an entirely separate thing mucking it up? Will it be weird if I don't also give enemies the same stat boosts? Will it be weird if I do? But then I have to track potentially small numbers again. But they might significantly skew the probabilities otherwise.

I feel like this is the obvious result of trying to reconcile two different systems in a way that restricts me from imposing new rules on players

also I feel like my problems mostly arise from the fact that I very very enjoy the idea of a system that doesn't impose limits, so things can go on forever. This is only a problem if I say I want level 30s, but I could just stick with 20s. And there's possibly solutions to the 30s that don't affect the players (increase THEIR crit range?) but then what about 40s? 50s? 100s? There is no satisfying my desire to put increasingly bigger numbers on the table

but where does it end, really

0 has meaning, you're not adventurey - 1 has meaning, you're just starting. 20 has meaning, you're a legendary badass. 30 has meaning, you're a god. What is 40? God-dad? Is 50 the universe? 60's the multiverse? This isn't like a game where a level is just "I can fight things also this level", this is a game where the level is a representation of how powerful that character is in relation to the world. So there HAS to be a cap, where the most powerful thing you can interact with is.

which is probably not gods, if we're gonna be honest. 20 seems like a totally fair endcap for "the most powerful beings of the mortal realm" and anything beyond that is just beyond levels to begin with

and we can simulate level 0s by making them level 1s with a "civilian" or "small animal" trait that just gives them disadvantage always. Done.

oh but there's still the concern of player stats other than level, then

mothrfk

ALSO I STILL HAVEN'T WRITTEN THE SUMMARIES I NEED TO DO THAT but I've been busy actually planning D&D and doing Productive Things (job hunting!) so. That'll happen... Eventually.

okay but if we say player-added modifiers can increase crit chance, maybe that's good enough. Maybe that's fine. Except for the characters who have +11 stealth even though they're only level 5 because they min-max'd super hard and are going to end up with... Hm. 6*2+5=17? Which means they'd crit on absolutely any valUE SHIT ROLLING ATTACKS TO HIT THE PLAYERS. I can't devalue their AC and I can't devalue monster AC either probably can I. I don't think I can.

well there you go. AC has to stay. It was always a special case anyway, not super surprised or bothered. (I am bothered.)

But yeah, if you can add +17 to a roll, possibly more, and 20+ counts as a crit, that's a 90% chance to crit, meaning a 90% chance to succeed regardless of who you're up against if they aren't also employing crit-boosting. Barring complex crit-discerning rules. The running theme here is that I don't actually know the probabilities, that's what I write programs for!

If a level 1 with +4 to stealth goes up against a level 30 with no stealth bonus, the level 1 has a 25% chance to crit while the level 30 has, like. A 43% chance to crit because they get a shitton of bonus so let's scale back and instead talk about a level 20. Who only has a 5% chance to crit.

I think maybe what I should do here is look at it from the perspective of "what effect would this have had when added in addition to levels" and if it matches up reasonably, then I'm fine taking it to whatever logical extreme it ends up going towards. To do that I will need to math a bit.

oh, well, there's a concern. If critting means "20 or higher", what happens when your bonus is +19? You always crit. Unless 1 is an auto-fail. But anyway, if you always crit, and enemies can also do the same, then it means you'll both never crit because you always have it and that means it goes towards regular ties. Unless 20 is a "true crit" that beats any other crit, except for cases where they're both natural 20s, in which case the higher number wins as usual, with ties sometimes happening. Which is. Maybe complicated.

Maybe, making things worse, there's crit tiers? So, for starters, check for nat 20s. If those are not present, check what each roll's crit level is. 1-19 is a 0 - 20-39 is 1 - etc., just divide by 20 rounding down. If someone's higher, they win. Otherwise, if it's a tie, compare modifiers. Wait. If someone's crit tier was higher then they'd have already won by having a higher number, right? Wait, no. It doesn't increase the actual number, it increases... something... ... okay so. Level is an entirely separate deal. These modifiers DIRECTLY modify the die. If neither person rolled a natural 20 then it's just... It's just a strict comparison, isn't it? Wait. The idea is that if both people crit, it's a comparison, meaning you can't have more crit than, the other, person. ... if I have +19 and roll a 1, I have 20. That's a crit. If you have +16 and roll a 5, that's a 25, you crit. We're both critting, so we strictly compare numbers. Yours is higher, you win. Why is 20 a crit, then? What's different between me rolling a 20 and you rolling oh. Modifiers. Right. Wait. Okay so a 20 is automatically a win. And if that doesn't happen then we compare the numbers. We're saying you can win with a lesser number than 20 with your modifier. Because it makes the number higher. no no the level modifier is basically saying "you must win by this much" and a 20 is saying "nah I win anyway" but we can compare numbers so let's do that so I roll a 16, you roll a 12 but you're 5 levels higher. So you get a 17(12) and I have a 16. If you roll a 17 and get 22(17) and I have a 20 then I win. But I can make it so I win on a 19 AND a 20 by using that modifier. So I guess there's Natural, Bonus, and Final? Natural 20 beats Bonus 20, Bonus 20+ beats Final Anything, or something how does this shake out once I have a +19 bonus, only X(20) can beat me, even from high-leveled things. Let's format this as... Natural->Skill->Level? Maybe Luck->Skill->Practice so, if I'm level 5, have a +19 bonus and roll a 1, that's 1->20->25 A singular lucky 20 wins. A singular skillful 20 wins. Lucky 20s being opposed just means "ignore them". Skillful 20s being ignored means going beyond +19 is pointless. Let's compare these two: 10->30->35 15->30->35 They're both skill crits, in the same tier if we're doing the tier thing. Well, what does 19 mean? It means you're absurdly skillful. Maybe the most skillful you can possibly be. There's no way to be more skilled at what you're doing. Again - caps are needed to explain the world. So a +19 means you've achieved perfection. There is nowhere left to go. Except if I can find a way to make +20 meaningful that'd be nice Well, against someone else with skill, you'd both be in crit territory, meaning it'd come down to who rolled higher. Note: having a high bonus may result from being decked out with magic items or being under some sort of buff. Maybe we just can't cap that bonus? But it obviously stops being relevant to anyone except for people who have rivaling bonuses. The super-buffed person can still lose if their opponent gets a nat 20 and buffperson doesn't. But that is the "0 is just as good as 11" issue from earlier... Except I'm not sure how bothered I am by -this- case. Once you're impossibly good at something, being even more impossibly good won't chance the little unknown consequences popping up. Although strength is a question, for things like picking up a rock. The rock can't win. It's a rock. Maybe only creatures can nat 20? Or, again, it's luck getting involved. I think for static challenges, dropping their nat 20 might be fine. You have +20 intelligence and are trying to remember something you have a chance of remembering? Cool, you remember it. No question. They should still be contests to allow for DM fudging, though. Anyway. So where does this leave us? Level is separate from personal modifiers. Personal modifiers can drive up crit rate, which drives up chances of winning. If no monster has stats like players, then it's easy to explain personal modifiers always winning - monsters never go higher than 20, they can't contest you without also hitting 20. If monsters have stats like players that complicates things a little bit. Players don't need to know about the critical system - just that a 20 or higher will always win for them. It can be ignored for enemies if you're in a player-centric game. This also means that having high stats means a guaranteed increase in consistency, although that's not new, I think. Well. I mean. If the idea with the level stuff was that their stats now served a new purpose if they went into higher-leveled territory, that's been shot. We've just made a way for their low rolls to not be so certainly doomed. If an enemy rolls a 24, it's level-based, and the player rolling even a 21 via mods would win because the enemy (assuming their modifier is +5 or more) didn't hit a 20. So now we've gone in the opposite direction of saying high rolls will ALWAYS succeed and we can't fudge them failing. Although, let's be fair - I don't think there's any time where I should be fudging failing to begin with, at least in my campaign. I'm trying to have things be accurate and if a player wants to do something and I let them and they roll well, they should get it. We've already done that. It was a good idea. I mean, if I'm prepared to accept the result on a 20, then I should be prepared to accept it on less. The only weird thing I guess is making level no longer matter. Whether you're up against a dragon or a kobold, if you've got +9 to stealth, you've got about 50% odds of succeeding in your stealthery. also again if monsters never have bonuses themselves then once you hit +19 there's no reason to go further but... oh well? I'll just compromise to keep things clean, the important thing is being able to make my current campaign move as quickly, smoothly and fun-ly as possible without letting players onto all of the shortcuts I'm taking behind the screen.

[chaj]

via www.darkreading.com

Say goodbye to the entry-level security operations center (SOC) analyst as we know it.

It's one of the least glamorous and most tedious information security gigs: sitting all day in front of a computer screen, manually clicking through the thousands of raw alerts generated by firewalls, IDS/IPS, SIEM, and endpoint protection tools, and either ignoring or escalating them. There's also the constant, gnawing fear of mistakenly dismissing that one alert tied to an actual attack.

But the job of the so-called Tier 1 or Level 1 security operations center (SOC) analyst is on track for extinction. A combination of emerging technologies, alert overload, and fallout from the cybersecurity talent shortage is starting to gradually squeeze out the entry-level SOC position.

Technology breakthroughs like security automation, analytics, and orchestration, and a wave of SOC outsourcing service options, will ultimately morph the traditionally manual front-line role into a more automated and streamlined process.

That doesn't mean the Tier 1 SOC analyst, who makes anywhere from $40,0000- to $70,000 a year and whose job responsibilities can in some cases include running vulnerability scans and configuring security monitoring tools, will become obsolete. Rather, the job description as we know it today will.

"The [existing] role is going away," says Forrester principal analyst Jeff Pollard, of the SOC Tier 1 analyst job. "It will exist in a different form."

Gone will be the mostly manual and mechanical process of the Tier 1 SOC analyst, an inefficient and error-prone method to triage increasingly massive volumes of alerts and threats flooding organizations today. Waiting for and clicking on alerts, using a scripted process, and then forwarding possible threats to a Tier 2 analyst to confirm them and gather further data just isn't a sustainable model, experts say.

"I've never been a fan of the term 'Tier 1 SOC analyst.' The term itself is a symptom of a larger problem," says Justin Bajko, co-founder and a vice president of new SOC-as-a-service startup Expel and the former head of Mandiant's CERT. "There's a lot of manual crank-turning, and I'm [the analyst] awash in a sea of alerts. My ability to do real analysis and add value to the business with clickthrough work … is pretty minimal.

"That's where we are right now" with the Tier 1 SOC analyst, he says.

Bajko believes this manual role has actually contributed to the cybersecurity talent gap. "It's not a great use of talent that's out there," he notes.

The Tier 1 SOC job not surprisingly has a relatively high burnout and turnover rate. Once analysts get enough in-the-trenches experience, they often leave for higher-paying positions elsewhere. Some quit out of boredom and opt for more lucrative and interesting developer opportunities.

Large organizations meanwhile are scrambling to keep their SOC seats filled while they begin rolling out orchestration and automation technologies, for instance, to better streamline operations.

"The majority of a Tier 1 SOC analyst's job is just getting through the noise as best you can looking for a signal," say Bajko. "It starts feeling like a losing battle with a bunch of raw and uncurated alerts" to go through, and sometimes multiple consoles that aren't integrated, he says.

With the use of analytics, orchestration, and automation technologies as well as new SOC services that perform much of the triaging of alerts before they reach the analyst's screen, the Tier 1 analyst can become more of an actual analyst, according to Bajko. "Instead of a sea of alerts, they can spend time being thoughtful about things they are looking at and make better decisions and apply more context."

Greg Martin, founder of startup JASK, which offers an artificial intelligence-based SOC platform, says Tier 1 analysts are basically the data entry-level job of cybersecurity. "We created it out of necessity because we had had no other way to do it," he says. But he envisions them ultimately taking on more specialized tasks such as assisting in investigations using intel they gather from an incident.

The Tier 1 SOC analyst will become more like the Tier 2 analyst, who actually analyzes an alert flagged by a Tier 1 and decides whether it should get escalated to the highly skilled Tier 3 SOC analyst for a deeper inspection and possible incident response or forensics investigation. Tier 2 analysts, who often kick off the official incident response process, also would get more responsibility in that scenario, and Tier 3 could spend more time on proactive and advanced tasks such as threat hunting, or rooting out potential threats.

"So Tier 1 would be able to figure out if [an alert is] real and Tier 2 would make decisions like we should isolate that machine," for example, Forrester's Pollard says. "Tier 1 won't go away; it must move up to more advanced tasks."

Today's Tier 1 analyst drowning in alerts is at risk of alert fatigue. That could result in a real security incident getting missed altogether if it's misidentified as a false positive (think Target's mega-breach). "My big worry in the SOC is a Tier 1 analyst is under pressure to get through as many alerts as they can, and they make some bad decisions," says Expel's Bajko, who has built and managed several SOCs during his career. "I'm much more worried about calling a thing a false positive" when it's not, he says.

Aggies in the SOC

Some SOC managers are already re-architecting their teams and incorporating new technologies. Take Dan Basile, executive director of Texas A&M University System's SOC, which supports the 11 universities under the A&M system as well as a half-dozen state government agencies on its network. Basile had to create a whole new level of SOC analyst to staff up: he calls it the "Tier .5" SOC analyst.

"We initially have Tier 1s, 2s, etc. But we have had a hard time even hiring full-time employees, much less hanging onto them for more than a year. We fully expect them to leave and go to industry and make three times what" a university can pay, Basile says.

So Basile got creative. The Texas A&M University System SOC partnered with several groups on campus to identify undergraduate students who might be a good fit for part-time SOC positions. The student Tier .5  SOC analysts work closely with Tier 1 SOC analysts, who oversee and perform back-checks on the students' alert-vetting decisions. The students look at the alerts and then grab external information to put context around the alert. "They pivot and hand it up to a higher grade student or an official Tier 1 employee," Basile says. "They're doing that first false-positive removal."

The Texas A&M Tier 1 SOC analyst then verifies the Tier .5's work. "They send it on up if it's okay," he says.

Hiring undergrads helps fill open slots in more remote campus locations, for example, he says. There are some 250,000 users on the university's massive network at any time, so there are a lot of moving parts to track. "Due to the location of some of these universities [in the A&M system], it's just hard as heck to hire anyone in cybersecurity right now."

Texas A&M recently added an artificial intelligence-based tool from Vectra to the SOC to help cut the time it took to vet alerts, a process that often took hours to reach the action phase. AI technology now provides context to alerts as well, and now it only takes 15- to 20 minutes to triage them, Basile says.

The Tier 1 SOC analysts at Texas A&M are viewing results from the AI-driven tools, next-generation endpoint, and SIEM tools, he says. "They're doing that first rundown: Is this really bad? Do I need to escalate it? Is this garbage? Or do I need to scream at the top of my lungs because it's that bad?"

Basile says even with newer technologies that streamline the process, you still need person power. "I don't see people moving away because of AI," he says. You need people to verify and dig deeper on the intel the tools are generating. "AI is just providing you more information," he says. "You will always need someone sitting there behind the screen and saying yes or no."

It's not about automating the SOC itself. "I don't think you'll ever automate away the job of SOC analysts. You need humans to do critical thinking," Expel's Bajko says.

Meantime, it's still more difficult to fill the higher-level, more skilled Level 2 and 3 SOC analyst positions.  "I've been looking for a good forensics person for a year now. I don't even have the job posted anymore" after being unable to fill it, Texas A&M's Basile says. The result: the university's Tier 3 analysts have a heavier workload,  he notes.

Meanwhile, the student SOC staffers get to acquire deeper technical experience. "Now they can dig into packet capture," for instance, he says. "This gives entry-level people the opportunity to learn, and to find more bad things."

That's good news for entry-level security talent. While SOC Tier 1 jobs today are relatively low-tech, the positions often call for a few years' experience in security, including analysis of security alerts from various security tools. Such qualification requirements make it even harder for SOC managers to fill the slots since most newcomers to security just don't have the hands-on experience.

SOCs Without Tiers

Not all SOCs operate in tiers or levels of analysts. Mischel Kwon, co-founder of MKACyber and former director of the US-CERT, says she doesn't believe in designating SOC analysts by level. "I don't see my SOC in tiers, and a lot of people are not looking at tiers anymore," says Kwon, whose company offers SOC managed services and consulting.

Placing analysts by tiers – 1, 2, and the most advanced, 3 – only made the job tedious for lower-level analysts, she notes. "It puts the more junior people into boring and pigeonholed activity. We really find that that exacerbates the turnover problem."

Kwon says a SOC analyst should understand all things SOC. Her firm "pools" SOC analysts into groups, she says, rather than tiers. Pooling is not new, though:  "It's been in sophisticated SOCs for at least [the past] 10 years," she says.

MKACyber's SOC strategy is similar to that of Texas A&M's: pair up the junior analysts with more senior ones so they can learn skills from them. "No one wants to be Tier 1 and it's hard to be Tier 3. But if you put them them into pools working together, the junior [analysts] become midlevel very quickly, versus in a very stovepiped SOC," Kwon says.

See Dan Basile, executive director of the Texas A&M University System SOC, present Maximizing the Productivity and Value of Your IT Security Team at this month's INSecurity conference.

  Related Content:

Emerging IT Security Technologies: 13 Categories, 26 Vendors

Security Orchestration & Automation: Parsing the Options

Security Orchestration Fine-Tunes the Incident Response Process

Kevin Durant Effect': What Skilled Cybersecurity Pros Want

Kelly Jackson Higgins is Executive Editor at DarkReading.com. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and editing for various publications, including Network Computing, Secure Enterprise ... View Full Bio

More Insights

[dippedanddripped]

Tips from Sneaker Heads on Scoring the Hottest Shoes and Keeping Them Fresh

Experts at Sneaker Con offered strategies for identifying counterfeit shoes, gave advice on how to choose investment sneakers and said what they would be willing to pay for the right kicks ($30,000).

Sneaker Con, a gathering of shoe fanatics founded in 2009, brought 500 vendors and over 19,000 people to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York late last year. The heart and soul of the event is the trading pit, an area in the back of the 840,000-square-foot center where a crowd of mostly teenage boys was talking and holding up their sneakers, looking forbuyers. The experience was overwhelming, confusing (where are their parents?) and educational.  

But first, some quick tips:

1) Store your sneakers in a dark space, because light can cause yellowing, which devalues your shoes.

2) Become friends with people who work at sneaker shops.

3) Always check details like font and stitching when verifying real versus fake sneakers.

4) Ask your elders for their old clothes and sneakers. Chances are they will eventually come back in style.

5) Wash your insoles for, well, obvious reasons.

Here’s what the sneaker experts had to say for themselves.    

Antonio Linares

Specializes in authentication of product,

@fake_education

What are the things you look for first when authenticating sneakers? Ultimately it always comes down to craftsmanship, detail and the material used. The counterfeit industry is going to get as close as possible to the original materials, but they cut corners and use inferior products. Stitching is usually a big thing to check across the board, whether it is a hoodie or a pair of shoes.

What are some of the biggest differences between real and fake sneakers? A common difference amongst real from fakes is usually on inside size tags of sneakers, as well as on the box labels. The font style is 99.9 percent different, always. On Yeezys, for example, since they are some of the most counterfeited items I see, I look at the stitching; build structure; wherever it says, “boost”; the font style; and the box.

On eBay, some users will post photos of the real shoes, but then send counterfeit ones. How do you know you are not getting scammed? I personally do not use eBay. Why I started @fake_education was by getting scammed on eBay.

What about people with good ratings? Buy from somebody credible, from somebody reputable that has a reputation to uphold. To be 100 percent certain, buy from somewhere that has a return policy. Somewhere that if it gets out that they sold a fake, that it’s going to tarnish the image.

What are the top counterfeit items that you see? Anything made by Adidas: the Yeezys, NMD, Ultraboost. They’re selling off demand as well. For example, a general release NMD or an Ultraboost shoe holds almost no resale value, but that’s some of the most popular replicas on the market, because people are not even thinking that they’re buying a counterfeit. Whereas when it comes to Yeezys, they’re calling every lifeline possible to prove legitimacy. But when you come up to somebody with a pair that’s $180 in store and they’re giving it to you for, let’s say, $150, you just think you’re getting a good deal, right? Little do you know, they bought it for 60 bucks.

Ariana Peters

Co-founder,

the Chicks With Kicks

How do you know when a sneaker will be an investment? Now it’s a lot of hype. Kanye West drops something and all the kids are running, and a month or two months later, the price just drops. We don’t buy into the hype stuff. We buy stuff that held its value over time. We have sneaker patents. We have one-of-a-kind Yeezy samples. We specialize in prototype, samples, vintage, rare samples.

How do you know when something will generate hype? Right now the market is all hype.

So your strategy is that you look for rare and unique sneakers that you know will hold value.  What are some of the rarest pieces you have? 1985 Air Jordan 1s; we have the largest collection. That’s my favorite part of our collection, just because it holds so much history — it’s the first year of the Jordan. We have signed Julius Erving Converse sneakers. We have Yeezy samples, a few different colorways that have never been seen.

How many sneakers do you have in your collection? My sisters and I have over 6,000 pairs, but we stopped counting. Our dad started the collection over 25 years ago, and we took it over about five or six years ago.

What are you looking for when buying sneakers? It depends on the sneaker. Let’s say I were buying a 1985 Air Jordan: I would look at the yellowing, the cracking in the paint. If it’s metallic, that’s a big issue. You can use sneaker-cleaning products, and a lot of issues when it comes to yellowing just happen with age. So if you can get a dead stock pair from, like, ’85 or the ’90s and it has no yellowing, the value is just astronomically more.

Tips for sneaker care? We store our collection in an air-conditioned, no-humidity storage room. If it’s a collection piece, you want to keep it away from a lot of lights — they could yellow it.

Yu Ming Wu

Co-founder, Sneaker Con

What is your favorite sneaker? The Nike Air Max 1. If we have to kind of go down to actual colorway, it would be the 2002 or 2003 Atmos colorway. It has a very safari, fun print to it.

You told me that you’ve waited years to find a pair of shoes. Which ones were they? The Nike Air Max 1s in the Amsterdam colorway. I’ve probably spent now nine or 10 years looking for them. For the longest time, I refused to pay the high prices for them. I broke down this year.

How much? $1,500.

What is the most you would pay for sneakers? Most recently I have been contemplating purchasing the real auto-lacing Nike Air Mags, the “Back to the Future” shoes which were released last year. Today they go for anywhere from $23,000 to about $60,000. I found a pair on eBay for $33,000, and I talked them down to $27,000. If I do get them, that will be the most expensive pair of shoes I will ever purchase in my life. The price of a nice decent car.

ADVERTISEMENT

Tips for getting your hands on hard-to-get sneakers? It’s tough. Today I try to be as safe as possible. I use eBay much more rarely. I am involved with the resell shop Stadium Goods here in New York City. I try to buy most of my shoes from there, just because they’re authenticated.

What are some tips for eBay? I generally look at sellers that have excellent feedback on eBay. I always look at people who write their name.

How do you care for your sneakers? I do sometimes use Mylar bags. For people who’ve collected comic books out there, they use Mylar bags to keep them from getting the acid air or whatever it is from boxes. I also sometimes take out the insoles and throw them in with my bleach cycle, or I also use vinegar.  You wash your underwear and your socks, but you’d never wash insoles. Those guys get pretty nasty.

Mubi Ali

Buyer,

Sneakersnstuff

Firstly, how many pairs of sneakers do you have? About 4,500 pairs. I’ve got a storage facility. I’ve been collecting since maybe 1996. So it’s been a long time to accumulate a lot of shoes.

Favorite sneakers? Supreme Dunk High Stars. I just love the whole aesthetic of them. The embossed croc leather, the gold stars. The fact that they brought out three, it was very premium at that time.

How do you know what shoes will be investments later? Trends are moving so quickly nowadays that it’s hard to predict. A pair that you’ve hedged a lot of bets on and think that is going to be very hot, eight months later doesn’t end up being so hot because the kids don’t get into it. But if a brand puts enough money behind something, it’s generally a sure winner. So looking at 2018, we’re hoping that Nike comes back because I’ve had a tough couple of years. And Adidas either maintained or even improves on the previous year.

How can you tell a counterfeit sneaker from a real? There’s lots of telltale signs: the box, the sticker tags, the inside label. If you know that there’s a certain number that comes out of a shoe and someone’s got 15, 20 pairs, you’ve got to think that’s a little bit suspect.

Any tips on getting limited-edition sneakers? You can try to get lucky with a raffle or a queue. Try eBay. Or even like Sneak Con is the best way to get what you want and what you need. The prices might be inflamed, but think of it as an investment piece. If you love it that much, go for it. Why not?

Benjamin Kapelushnik, a.k.a. Benjamin Kickz

Sneaker reseller to athletes and celebrities,

@benjaminkickz

When did you start collecting sneakers? I started as a hobby when I was 13. And my parents just didn’t want to support it at first. So I just had to resell sneakers to make money to buy myself more sneakers.

What are some tips for people trying to get sneakers? You go to events like Sneaker Con and make a bunch of connections, and you just text them. You say, “Yo, how much is this? How much is this?” You just eventually get all of it.

What sneakers are you looking at for 2018? Probably hoping Nike SBs. I know SBs died out a little, but hopefully they come back.  

Tips for authentication? When you over and over look at the same shoe, you can just tell. And there is this Instagram @fake_education. He’s one of my boys, he does it.

What the most you’ve ever paid for sneakers? $14,000 for a sample for myself. It was a sample Air Jordan.  

What are your tips for sneaker drops? It kind of gets hectic at sneaker drops. I used to camp out with my brothers all the time. I used to pay kids $50, $100, but I stopped doing that now.

What about eBay? I used to when I first started out. I used to get clean used shoes on eBay, buy them and clean them up and try to make them look close to new.

Matthew Ting

Senior brand activation manager, Adidas N.Y.C.

What are some of your tips for sneaker care? Occasionally I just use a wipe. It could be a household wipe, a Crep Protect or a Jason Markk wipe. It’s pretty easy to take out the insole, and then I leave it out to air dry.  

How do you know when a sneaker will be an investment? That’s driven by supply and demand. I think kids are hip and know when things are limited, and that’s really the impetus for a reason to buy. Whenever a Yeezy 350 comes out, people know that quantity is quite limited, and that is a driving factor.

What the most you’ve paid for sneakers? I’ve been in the footwear industry so long, I don’t think I have to have paid for sneakers in the last 15 years. It sounds like I’m spoiled, but I’ve been very fortunate to be in this industry where I haven’t had to pay for my own shoes. I pay for shoes for my son.  

What is your son wearing? He’s wearing Jordan 1s. He enjoys mixing them up, so he has one blue and one red. We bought two pairs to accomplish that.

What was you first pair of sneakers? It was a Nike Jordan. I think seventh or eighth grade. My parents were very strict, so it was unheard-of to spend a hundred dollars for sneakers. Between birthday money, Christmas money, Chinese New Year money and rolling up quarters and coins, I scraped up enough money. They took me to New Jersey, because there it was tax-free. We went to some mall and I think I bought it at the Athlete’s Foot over 20 years ago.

Amber Jackson

Vintage clothing store owner,

Flight Vintage

How do you authenticate vintage or new clothing?   I basically study the past. I watch like a lot of old MTV, like rap videos and rock videos. I also do a lot of eBay, so I know what goes for what price and what to buy and what not. There are certain tags to look for, especially with Supreme. There’s a lot of fake Supreme going around. Study the tags. Study details. Stitching is everything, and the color of the shirt. Sometimes an item could be discolored color and it could be fake.

Some tips for people looking for vintage clothing? Go everywhere. Ask your grandma, ask your grandpa, ask your mom, your dad. Bring out that old concert T-shirt. Someone’s got it.

[gulescamisade]

Betty Crocker Headquarters:  Prison Break

[It's been quiet here in the prison area... Maybe the prisoners have accepted their fate at this point, or maybe the stillness is something like the calm before the storm. The atmosphere seems to foretell a happening -- but there's little more evidence of that than a fading blood stain on the floor.]

TEREZI: =In a soft glow of light, a body returns to it's area of expiration, plopping gently feet first onto the floor in a garb of green. For the second time in a short time, Terezi is returned to the land of the living. She clenched and unclenched her hands - was this real? It wasn't quite as jarring as the last time, but unlike last time, she wouldn't hesitate. Whether it was real or not, she didn't have time to doubt it; she had to believe it was.=

TEREZI: =Noticing that she stuck out quite literally, being smack in the middle of a hallway along with her attire a colorful beacon, Terezi ducked down against the wall. Hoping no cameras caught that, she continued moving. Even though she didn't know where she was going or where she could remain out of sight, the very least she could do was make herself a little harder to track.=

TEREZI: =slipping down another hall, she stuck close to the left side, keeping her ears open.=

[If the cameras did pick it up, no one has immediately swept in to deal with her... Definitely not little red riding hood and her pointy jam. The only signs of life are those inside the cells, if Terezi takes a peek...]

TEREZI: =she does. A very slow, careful peek. Guh, gotta get this hood out of the way first.=

[Let's say luck is on her side and she happens upon JAMES very quickly, catching a glimpse of him through the tiny slot in the door.]

JAMES: -is seated at his cot and meditating. He has been conserving his energy for this moment. TZ only needs to get his attention.-

TEREZI: !

TEREZI: =She taps a finger against the slot.= ((h3y m1st3r 3gb3rt s1r, psssssst!)) =tiny wave=

JAMES: -That'll do it. He recognizes the voice and rises to stand. Subtly cracking his neck as he does so.- MISS PYROPE.

JAMES: I TAKE THAT IT IS TIME FOR ACTION?

TEREZI: ((1m go1ng to gu3ss so, y3s))

TEREZI: ((1 dont r34lly know wh4t th3 h3ll 1s go1ng on, but 4ct1on 1s 4 gr34t pl4c3 to st4rt)) >:]

JAMES: SAY NO MORE. -coming over to brace his hands by the door.- I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU CARRY A KEY WITH YOU?

TEREZI: ((no, 1 just got h3r3)) =Literally=

JAMES: WHATEVER THE CASE, I AM PLEASED TO SEE YOU HERE.

JAMES: I ALSO WOULD LIKE TO SUGGEST YOU STAND CLEAR OF THE DOOR.

TEREZI: ((y34h, sur3 th1ng)) =She disappears from view as she stepped aside.=

JAMES: -Wastes no time, pulling his fist back and swinging it againt the door in a single mangrit-charged punch. One punch, if you will. Please expect the cell door to explode off its hinges. Crashing into the hallway.-

JAMES: ...

JAMES: -steps through the forced hole he just created.- HELLO.

TEREZI: =....= ....

TEREZI: W3LL 1 GU3SS TH3R3S NO PO1NT 1N B31NG QU13T NOW, 1S TH3R3? =but she's smiling!! ITS WONDERFUL TO BE ALIVE. She was stock still for a moment before continuing=

TEREZI: L3TS G3T TH3 OTH3RS

TEREZI: TH3R3 4R3 OTH3RS H3R3 TOO, R1GHT?

JAMES: ROXY, JAKE. THE CHERUBS. LAST I WAS INFORMED.

JAMES: -Does take a moment to take in the state of her... but decides not to dwell on it.- THEY ARE CLOSE.

TEREZI: =Most of her is hidden under these green jammies, but there are conical horns poking through slits that seemed to be made just for them.=

TEREZI: GOOD! L3TS G3T GO1NG! =she motioned with a hand, to lead them further down this hallway. She paused only to peek through the slots thoroughly for more of the crew and friends.=

JAMES: -as Terezi peeks for friends, James is going to take the initiative and scout further down the hallway. Checking the doors don't lead to cells.-

[There is one door, that at first glance just appears to lead to another cell, but behind the window slot is instead something like a locker room. The door is locked, of course, but a panel opens on it to reveal a keypad.]

TEREZI: =with no one else in the cells she checked, she joined James, glancing down at the keypad.= TEREZI: KNOW 4NY SW33T H4CKS? =she does take a glance down towards each end of the hallway to make sure they weren't being followed.=

JAMES: I PERHAPS KNOW ONE SWEET HACK. -reaches far into the steel trap of his memory and tries a code.-

JAMES: ...

JAMES: IT IS THE BINARY NUMBER FOR CAKE.

ROXY: =RATTLES HER BARS, only no=

JAMES: - 01100011 01100001 01101011 01100101 -

[THE DOOR OPENS.]

JAMES: -Golly... it worked. Of course, it did. Cake is the answer to all the world's problems. He's pretty sure CrockerCorp had a slogan of that nature some years ago... Anyway, James is taking a cautionary look into the lab.-

TEREZI: W41T 1...

TEREZI: =she returned to one of the cells she had previously checked. The room was full of fucking green.... How??=

ROXY: =Heckin magic is how=

JAMES: WHAT IS IT?

[It's mostly just lockers and storage bins stacked on shelves. James might notice that one of the bins has a HANDSOME WALLET in it.]

JAMES: -Strong fatherly exclamation point! Swiftly moving to pluck this wallet out and looking to ransack the rest of the storage bins for STUFF. Clips his whole sylladex back onto himself. He is ready.-

TEREZI: =Still peeping through the slot. Is there anyone in there?=

[Roxy, Jake and the Cherubs sylladexes are definitely in the bins too, if he can recognize them. They maye or may not be obvious.]

JAMES: -Retrieve sylladexes.-

ROXY: =Some of the cubes shift about, two of them move to the side and there's pink eyes staring back=

ROXY: !!

ROXY: =Suddenly the disappear and after a few seconds Roxy (and about 50 green cubes) decend on Terezi= rexrezzie!

ROXY: =Get buried=

TEREZI: !!!!!!!!!!! >8O

TEREZI: =That was perhaps the most startling thing she experienced in her new life so far=

TEREZI: ROXY! >:D

ROXY: =HER EYES, holds her face also her body, looks around and sees James= wut.... wait

ROXY: explain on the way this is a bust out right? i have snausages 4 the guard dawg

TEREZI: STR4NG3LY 3NOUGH TH3R3 H4V3 B33N NO GU4RDS

TEREZI: OR GU4RD DOGS

TEREZI: >:\

TEREZI: =gives roxy a quick, tight hug though=

ROXY: =SQUEEZES even tho she stank= that's suspicerous

ROXY: =Squints a bit and looks around=

JAMES: -returns back to their place of convening.- ROXY.

JAMES: ...

JAMES: -scoops both these girls in a brief strong fatherly embrace.- I HAVE RETRIEVED YOUR SYLLADEX.

JAMES: HOWEVER I FEAR THERE MAY BE A REASON WE HAVE YET TO ENCOUNTER ANY CONFRONTATION.

JAMES: -hands roxy back her sylladex.-

ROXY: =A BIG HUG FOR EVERYONE SHE'S SO HAPPY=

ROXY: =takes her dex back and immediate puts on her strife spec= let's take advantage of that for now n find jake n callie

TEREZI: =that's okay! she's happy to see her alive and well! Terezi on the other and smells fresh and new like laundered linen.=

[Roxy likely remembers the way to where they're being held from before she was chased away by the guard dog. It is basically a straight shot through this exit, the next hall, and through a spooky and suspicious door labeled "we do horrible experiments here" OR SOMETHING. It was implied.]

ROXY: =SHE SURE DOES=

ROXY: =stretches her legs a little then nods down the hall=

ROXY: this way itll b a good place to start at least also maybe theyve made progress since i last been there =starts to guide them down the hall=

JAMES: -carrying up the rear. Will leap to defend the ladies if he needs to. He is armed with his photon watch shield and 100 count of cakes kept fresh in his sylladex. Hope everyone is hydrated. James is going to make sure they are.-

JAMES: -distantly fussing at them children.-

ROXY: =A sweet hot dad :') =

TEREZI: =she's got nothing on her except the literal clothes on her back=

[They exit the prison area and into the next hall with the tech labs. The staff NEVER seems to be around here... That probably isn't a good sign, but oh well. It makes their trek to their destination all the easier. The super secret lab they're looking for is still locked, but nothing void magic, gadgets and gizmos, or fists thru the wall can't fix.]

TEREZI: =Is there another keypad for this door?=

[INDEED. Or it requires a keycard... I can't remember. Either way.]

ROXY: =Is someone gonna fist that wall? 👀 she missed wall fisting=

ROXY: =she can totally handle this but like.... 👀=

JAMES: -What about cake override codes... Aw, darn.-

JAMES: -There was a door punched off its hinges back in the hallway. She def can appreciate that now.-

ROXY: =She does but also she'll just give some SWEET HACKS to this door for now to save her energy. All this absence she feels like she'll need it=

[DOOR: HACKED.]

ROXY: =turns to them= im in

TEREZI: H33

ROXY: =NOW WHAT NERD SCIENCE BULLSHIT HAVE THEY EVEN DONE UP IN HERE?=

JAMES: WELL DONE, ROXY. -He's proud of you... but also focused on this serious business.-

[Inside, as she remembers, there are some panels on the wall where video feeds used to be, but everything is shut off right now. She would ALSO rememebr another door being locked in here, but it's WIDE OPEN NOW. This will lead to, you guessed it, even MORE rooms. But they are less like prison cells and more like dingy examination rooms. One of them has pumpkin vines peeking out from under the door...]

JAMES: ...

JAMES: ODD.

TEREZI: D1DNT J4D3 GROW PUMPK1NS?

ROXY: =Squints at that open door and peeps all at the one with vines growing from under the door- WAIT! Is there a panel to this door too?= hang on....

ROXY: cuz i remember jake was like.... o =she remembers... the greenery... the tiny shorts. Yes, it's all coming back to her=

JAMES: THEN IT ONLY STANDS TO SAY JAKE IS BEHIND THIS DOOR. -Should he pry it open? Or maybe he doesn't need to. If Roxy would like to do the honors?-

[Flashback cut to photos of Jake in tiny red Crocker Corp booty shorts and suspenders.]

TEREZI: W41T 4 S3C GUYS, 1---

TEREZI: MMMNG... =a hand hovers to squeeze at her temples before she moved to the door, her hand lowering to the keypad. Reaching into the past, she searched for someone who had used the keypad last.=

ROXY: =Ah.... yes... she remembers......=

[Whoever used this keypad last LOOKS LIKE A NERD. Probably a scientist. So definitely a nerd. She can see them typing in the code.]

TEREZI: =After a pause of her looking COMPLETELY out of it, Terezi's fingers moved, punching in the code.=

[DOOR: SEER'D.]

TEREZI: =a little surprised that worked actually!=

JAMES: -He is... so concerned. And also surprised. Before James can think to comment on it, however a pumpkin is being FLUNG from behind the door. Thrown with such a force that it explodes violently against the wall opposite his cell.- !!!!!!!!

JAKE: BACK AT IT AGAIN YOU WEASLY SONS OF BITCHES??? TIME FOR ROUND TWO!

JAKE: -PUMPKIN FLINGS. PCHOO POCHOO.-

JAKE: -SPLAT-

ROXY: =👀= girl wu-!! =YIPE=

[If Terezi seer'd just a little bit longer, she might have seen the nerd get pelted with a pumpkin.]

ROXY: =but also= JAKE!

JAKE: -a mustached face peers from behind his cot/pumpkin fort. But not another second is spared before he is EMERGING. Hello booty shorts. It's also apparent that he is armed with pumpkins attatched to a vine sash on his back.- ROXAROO!!!! TEREZI? JAMES?

JAKE: Good golly is it time??????????

TEREZI: =everyone ELSE had exited calmly!=

TEREZI: =RELATIVELY=

JAKE: -don't blame him... he's got bandages plenty on his arms from many needle pokes... He's BEEN rowdy.-

TEREZI: =peeks around the door at Jake= GOOD GOLLY 1S 1T S4F3?

JAKE: -He doesn't care and is blubbering a little bit. Q_Q- You came...

TEREZI: >:D

TEREZI: H3CK Y34H W3 D1D!

ROXY: =Baby no.... she frowns at him then goes to give him a gently FIRM squeeze= baby ...... :C

ROXY: ofc we woulda come

JAMES: -There, there Jake... James is ruffling his hair in support.-

JAKE: -obviously takes a minute to be scooped in Roxy's muscle embrace and cry a little bit. Terezi too. Come here quad in law.-

JAKE: -he hug...-

JAKE: I knew you would! -It's all he could tell himself all alone in his kennel.-

[ENOUGH HUGGING TIME IS MONEY MONEY IS POWER POWER IS PIZZA PIZZA IS KNOWLEDGE.]

JAKE: -He wants pizza!!!!!!!!!! Swipes his face clean of tears and puts his angry eyebrows on.- Now what the hoo heck hash are we diddydaddling around for? Weve some cherubs to track!

JAMES: WE WERE SEARCHING FOR YOU, SON. -hands him his sylladex- JAKE: !!!!! -EQUIPS. HOLA double pistols.-

TEREZI: =quad in law....= >:']

ROXY: yeah! but i dunno where they are :c

ROXY: least with u i had an idea..... =starts to get back out of this cell=

JAKE: -suddenly guns. 🔫- Well find them no problemo. -he BELIEVES IT.-

JAMES: -Son... do you maybe want to change into a different garb? He has extra clothes.-

JAKE: -No........................................... Leave it............................................... He burns to see this through to the end.-

JAMES: -I'm proud of you.-

ROXY: =jake she can make you more booty shorts and suspenders its ok=

TEREZI: S1NC3 NO ON3S S41D 1M GONN4 S4Y 1T

TEREZI: 3V3RYON3 LOOKS SO R1D1CULOUS

JAKE: -they cling to his every curve. He breathes out with a low hiss.-

JAKE: All the sweeter the victory when we blow this laboratory to SMITHEREENS.

JAMES: -fixing at his tie self consciously... Does he look ridiculous? Oh dear.-

TEREZI: =Youve been in jail a month, sorry mister=

JAMES: - :( He'll have to put on his hat to hide his shame.-

ROXY: im hot always

ROXY: also we got a sweet precious baby girl 2 find! =Trnansformers.... ROLLOUT=

[Its true, they will find the Cherubs no problemo. For all the cells are empty, but further investigation will take them to an open lab... But it isn't a pretty sight here. Large tubes with floating... body parts? Inside of them. Vials and beakers of rainbow blood standing against the red of a human's... Stained slabs and tables.... Just to name a few of the unpleasant sights. There are large drawers, too, which give the whole lab the look of a morgue.]

TEREZI: HOT HOT T4T3R TOT

TEREZI: .......

ROXY: =MMMNNG GROSS.....=

JAMES: -Entire vats drained of blood. There are no words.-

JAKE: -the sight and feel of this place is freezing the breath in his lungs a little bit. Big old, cold sweat gulps.-

TEREZI: WH4T...H4PP3N3D H3R3?

TEREZI: =but even as she asked the question, something in her reached out for her to reach back, and her mind delved into the decisions made in this place. =

JAKE: Id...

JAKE: Rather not know. -hiding behind roxy just 8C -

[But Terezi will know, decisions were made here to follow out their Empress' fucked up, and frankly ridiculous, endeavors to make humans more like trolls. Going so far as to even try to fill their veins with caste colored blood. It isn't limited to that, and what all was decided and executed here would likely be overwhelmed. Particularly when it involves familiar faces like Jake's and Calliope and Caliborn's.]

TEREZI: =she tried to pull herself away from the memory - the visions? - and when she finally had control over her limbs again, she used them to propel her to the nearest trash can=

TEREZI: =blaaaaaar=

ROXY: .......oh

ROXY: =Rushes over and rubs her back= ... what happened are you okay???

JAKE: -gHGHGHHGHHG. Now he feels terrible...-

JAMES: -swiftly fetching a bottle of water for Terezi.-

TEREZI: =shes dry heaving; food isn't real in dreams=

TEREZI: 3XP3R1M3NTS...ON HUM4NS

TEREZI: TO M4K3 TH3M MOR3 L1K3 US =she felt like she really NEEDED to have something in her stomach because nothing felt so much worse=

TEREZI: TH3 CH3RUBS...W3 H4V3 TO F1ND TH3M-- W3-- =but a part of her knew that search would be fruitless=

TEREZI: =finally noticing the waterbottle, she took it tentatively=J4K3 =she turned to spitting stomach acid into the wastebasket= 1M SO SORRY...

ROXY: mmmnnng :c

ROXY: =She looks to the drawers now.... a little scared to open them=

ROXY: fuckin.... maniac bitch fish =goes over to them to like, peek in a few=

JAKE: I-- hmm hn... -he can't exactly be left to try and think about EXACTLY what they did with all those pokes and prods from before. He feels more conscious of the bandages on his arms than ever before.-

JAKE: Im whole and here. What more can i ask for?? -gathering himself up, still cold and sweaty. Roxy, don't... Jake can't handle this.-

ROXY: =she'll SHEILD THEIR GAZE WITH HER BODY=

ROXY: =But she really can't not...=

TEREZI: =no need, she's seen everything all at once. it was horrible=

JAKE: -HE'S VERY AFRAID OF WHATS IN THE DRAWERS AND DECIDES TO TURN HIS BACK AWAY.-

JAMES: -stern and steady hands on his back. Look away, son...-

[Unfortunately for Roxy, most of these are full... Mostly of ashen skinned humans, but there is one body that is very distinctly green.]

ROXY: ..... =like... with ganggreen?=

ROXY: =She'll take tthat=

ROXY: =But also her expression falls and something in her tightens up.... wtf=

TEREZI: =she would have told Roxy not to look, but she's busy coughing into the trashcan again=

ROXY: =SORRY EVERYONE SHE'S TOO CURIOUS FOR HER OWN GOOD=

[CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT.]

[At the very least, it made her quite sad...]

[She can BELIEVE the skin tone is unnatural, but of course she knows the truth. They found the cherubs.]

ROXY: =WOW THIS IS A BAD CASE OF GANG GREEN=

ROXY: =but no she's crying and holding the handle of the drawer tight=

ROXY: (fuckin.....)

JAKE: Theyre dead arent they? -he doesnt have to see. He knows in his hopes of heart.-

ROXY: =Can she just... sylladex this body= ROXY: .. yeah

ROXY: =They deserved so much better.... better than all this. All these people did=

JAKE: - ;__; - Oh callies...

[Caliborn is flipping you off in the afterlife, Jake. It's okay...]

JAKE: -HE WOULD CORPSE SMOOCH YOU BACK TO LIFE IF HE HAD TO, HE SWEARS!-

[She can steal the body if she wishes, however.]

ROXY: =Steals it she does and strides out of the lab with rage renewed= lets get the fuck out of here and find these dicks >:''(

TEREZI: =wiping her mouth with the back of her hand=

TEREZI: SH1T...

TEREZI: 1M W1TH YOU TH3R3

JAKE: -cocks his pistols. The world's grimmest, most grumpiest look on his face.- They wont even know what hit them.

TEREZI: =Is there anything lying around that she can use as a weapon?=

ROXY: o the fuck that yes they will =time for her ROXY LNDE brass knuckles=

JAKE: -Why not hopevoid her a weapon?-

[Good plan, because there isn't much else around besides scalpels and needles.]

TEREZI: =Imagine, flying into combat: NEEDLE JAB! Now you have some horrible troll disease! Congrats!=

JAKE: -eyeballs Terezi.- Say...

JAKE: How...

JAKE: I mean.

JAKE: How did you manage to get here?

TEREZI: UH....UM....W3LL

TEREZI: ....

TEREZI: 1TS 4 LONG STORY

[For all intents and purposes, they should be able to escape easily between Roxy and James' sweet hacking skills, whenever they are ready to vamoose.]

[AKA their work here is done. MISSION COMPLETE. You found your dead friend.]

ROXY: =SQUINTS WHILE HACKING SO MUCH, water u hidin rez=

JAKE: Oh okay... Would you like one of my pistols? -He literally has a whole pile of them in his sylladex. Ushers after the HAXXORS, letting them do their thing.-

TEREZI: =perks a bit= Y34H!

TEREZI: =She hasn't quite used such a precision weapon in a while, but it's a weapon and she'll take it.= TH4NKS

JAKE: -potentially giving a blind troll a gun??? This is normal. He has yet to be updated on things.- THATS THE SPIRIT!

JAKE: -Assuming Terezi is wearing the seer hoodie that covers her eyes. Not weird in the slightest to him.-

TEREZI: =She is indeed wearing the hood. You'll see, Jake. You'll see.=

ROXY: =Touches Terezi's bitchin jammies, so soft=

TEREZI: =softer than a baby's booty=

JAMES: -assisting in leading the way through the building and all the confusing layout business. They are well on their way OUT OF HERE.-

TEREZI: =takes the gun and checks to see how much ammo is left in the chamber. She remembered how to do that at least.=

TEREZI: TH3 SHORT OF 1T 1S 1 D13D =puts the clip back in and turns off the safety= TW1C3

JAKE: -Wall eyed...- Erm....

JAKE: Now that sounds like some tale. Too bad its so short!

JAKE: Terezi!

ROXY: ...wtf??

ROXY: ughh :c

ROXY: UGH >:(

ROXY: thats... bullshit!

[Outside they will probably see a GIANT ASS DRAGONFLY.]

TEREZI: M4J3ST1C

JAKE: -spongebob caveman memes in his booty shorts.- What the piss???

ROXY: =MORE LIKE A BITCHASS DRAGONFLY, SHE KICKS OPEN THE DOOR= MA-DEAD-STIC!

TEREZI: =there's dragon in the word. it's close enough=

ROXY: =GUN READY SHE READY TO BLASTEE U ASSTEE=

[kisaragizan]

“Dragon King’s Ritual” [Shadow Paladin]

Hey everyone, Kisaragi here to bring you all yet another deck profile! However, for the first time on this page (with the exception of Blue-Eyes), I’m bringing a non-Aqua Force profile - a Shadow Paladin one. I wasn’t going to do much of these ones since I figured I’d wait until they get supported (which would be soon), but I found myself playing the deck recently and was asked about it via a profile so: here we are. I’m going to do this profile a bit differently because I don’t have this deck in real life so I can’t really give alternatives for budget purposes but moreso as “preferences”. So without further ado, let’s take a look at Luard.

Before I begin, if I haven’t already done so: I’m going to mention that Shadow Paladin is my official secondary clan because a close friend of mine whom I look up to as a rival and a teacher mains Shadow Paladin. And during the time of my introductory to competitive Vanguard, I always talked and listened to him about the clan and his decks so the clan became secondary nature for me. I started actively playing Shadow Paladin more during Stride Era with Diablo and Raging Folm’s upgrades, with the former being my primary choice if I wanted to switch it up from Aqua Force. I didn’t take an interest of Luard until later when I saw how fun it was managing the resources, tool-boxing, and building advantage to which I started to like it enough to take it into competitive events which it did pretty well.

x4 Dragheart, Luard: The entire deck revolves around this unit - Dragheart, Luard. His main ability being Ritual 3, return two normal units from your drop to bottom of your deck and you can stride without paying the stride cost. His heartbeat is when you Stride, counterblast retire one rear-guard to call two grade 1 or lower units from deck to your field. He’s able to stride constantly without any issues, and he’s able to build up a field and provide units necessary for combos or to build resources. In some ways, he is the best Grade 3 not only in his clan, but in the entire game. He removes the caution of securing the ability to stride allowing players to play and guard more flexible than before. As per his namesake, Luard is the heart of this deck.

x2 Supremacy Dragon, Claret Sword Dragon Revolt: So to be perfectly honest, I’d much rather be playing Blaster Dark Diablo here like I did originally since he also has a similar “reduced cost of stride” concept going on. However, Claret Sword Dragon Revolt is searchable via his own stride fodder (which we do play but I’ll explain when it shows up) which is good for deck thinning and if you just wasn’t able to get Luard. His heartbeat looks at the top cards of the deck until 2 Grade 1s are revealed: one goes to hand and the other is called to field while the rest is shuffled to the deck. This is really just honestly a back up even though there is another preferred yet riskier back up of the deck.

x1 Sharp Fang Witch, Fodla: Fodla is the “true” back up/support Grade 3 of any Luard deck currently because she can call two grade 0s for one counterblast: some of which being key cards to plus off of. The reason I have her at one is because I do not wish to ride Fodla and would prefer to ride something a bit more safer if I couldn’t get to Luard, especially when she’s a 9k.

x4 Dragwizard, Morfessa: Morfessa is Luard’s best grade 2 with a Ritual 3 getting an extra 5k power when she attacks and an on hit to call a grade 1 card from the deck. Her other skill is when she’s in the drop zone, she’s treated as a Grade 1: allowing her to fulfill Luard’s Ritual costs.

x4 Dragwizard, Naoise: Naoise is the second best grade 2 in the deck for it’s ability to call grade 1 or lower units from the top five for free. Without a doubt, building field, getting units to retire to build resources. Naoise also gains power depending on the unit called, becoming a maximum 14k. At the end of the turn, the unit called does return to the deck if it’s still on the field.

x2 Knight of Brawn, Grosne: Grosne used to be played more in this deck being able to gain power for every grade 1 or lower called to your rear-guard. However, with the introduction of Naoise and having to remove my 10k Grade 2s, I lowered Grosne since he is very susceptible to control unless I place him down after using Luard’s heartbeat skill thus missing out on a free 6k.

x4 Abyssal Owl: Abyssal Owl’s is Luard’s trusted Owl that when placed from hand to rear, you can check the top seven cards and if you see Luard within those cards, you may add it and then discard cards equal to it’s grade to the drop zone. When Abyssal Owl is retired due to the cost or effect of Luard, you counter charge 1 (provided you have Ritual 3). Abyssal Owl is a grade 3 trade that you can afford to use since you’d be effectively building your drop zone and securing a Luard ride.The counter charge is also good because it makes your plays (which are typically counterblast one) free.

x4 Dragsaver, Esras: Esras another key unit of the deck being the default sentinel. On Ritual 3: you can choose another card named “Dragsaver, Esras” and return it to the bottom of the deck and retire one rear guard, to add her to your hand. It goes without saying that Esras is the best Perfect Guard in the game and would continue to set a trend for future clans to have recyclable sentinels (after fulfilling conditions) and even Perfect Guards with bonus drop zone effects. Being able to have infinite perfect guards makes Luard a very sturdy deck with it’s only answer is through a sentinel restricting unit.

x3 Black-winged Swordbreaker: When placed on rear-guard from the deck, you may soul blast one to draw a card. Originally, I didn’t play much of swordbreaker: 1-2 at best only preferred to call her if needed. However, there were times when she’d get placed in the damage zone or stuck in the soul: to which in later on the game I did actually need her. So I put her to three because it means while I won’t use all three, I can at least guarantee one being in the deck. Luard’s deck upon release was also very soul blast heavy (much like most decks nowadays) and even now meaning it’s best to use Swordbreaker if you need the extra hand and not to spam it just because you can.

x3 Cherishing Knight, Branwen: As I started in the Claret Sword Revolt section, Branwen is played here even if the Vanguard can stride for free because if you go second, you need to have another grade 3 since Luard’s skill happens at the beginning of the ride phase. So increasing your ability to pay the stride cost traditionally is good. Additionally, Branwen is a grade 1, so when you do stride with Branwen, it is adding to your Ritual condition being in the drop zone.

x2 Witch of Nostrum, Arianrhod: Arianrhod is a very strange card to use in Luard or rather in Shadow Paladin in general since her skill is to drop and draw while resting herself. However, there are amazing benefits to having her. Opening up with her early in the game will allow you to dig into your deck for whatever it is you’re looking for while also building up your drop zone with either grade 1s or just dumping away useless cards. There have been times when just dropping an Esras with her to draw into another card, and now having two Esras’ in soul, I can retire her and add back my Esras and have one at the bottom of the deck. And after she’s served her purpose, you can retire her away for skills as demonstrated above. Though I mostly value her for being able to dig into my deck especially if I’m looking for a grade 3 or a combo piece or something that’ll allow me to search/grab either of those two, on top of deck thinning.

Difarbau: Difarbau is my starter of choice for Luard. If he’s retired for the cost or effect of a “Ritual card”, you can throw him into the soul to check the top card and either call it to rear or put it to the drop zone. There aren’t too many starters for Luard save for Dragprince Rute, David, and the Creeping Dark Goat. Rute I find useless only adding a 5k and soul charging himself for a counterblast when retired. David used to be my go to starter since my finishers were Diablo units who retired 2-3 and being able to relax your field is a good thing. Creeping Dark Goat can secure a grade 3 but the chance to whiff after paying a counterblast and giving up a unit is not very fun. Difarbau let’s me replace himself while also having him be soul charged and leaving the rest to luck: either getting a solid attacker, a grade 1 to be retired later - worst case being a heal or vanilla trigger to be retired for a skill.

x4 Belial Owl: When you use Luard’s heartbeat skill, this is the unit you will call out the most despite being a trigger. When Belial Owl is retired from rear-guard due to cost or effect of one of your cards, and if you have a Luard vanguard, you draw a card. This also triggers when retired for Esras, any stride stride, and Luard’s heartbeat. Belial’s second skill is on Ritual 3, if you have a Luard vanguard at the end of your turn, you may put Belial at the bottom of your deck. This card is your engine and the reason why Luard is able to generate so much advantage by constantly skill after skill. The more Owl’s you’re able to kill in a single turn the stronger your defenses will be and of course being able to cycle them back into the deck. Even if it were to get damage checked, you can heal it and then it’ll be back in your deck by the end of turn.

x4 Critical Trigger: The rest of Shadow Paladins’ critical triggers are vanilla (except for one but in a Luard deck, it can’t be used so it’s vanilla), so it really doesn’t matter which critical you use. Alternatively, there are some stand triggers that are recyclable in Cursed Eye Raven or Mage of the Rogue Eye, Arsur: which both are really good if you’re looking to have a recyclable deck but I personally prefer to keep it critical due to LJ and due to Belial being out of the deck more than in the deck, will keep my ability to deal extra damage at a moderate level.

x4 Howl Owl/Dragwizard, Babd: Either of these will do since they both have the same effect: throw into the soul to +3k. Luard has little to no advantage at the start of the game, thus making him super vulnerable. Not to mention, his soul building is non-existent without the starter or these draws. So these draws in particular do help the deck a lot.

x4 Witch of Heresy, Jeliddo: Jeliddo is the only heal trigger with an effect that’s somewhat beneficial to Luard - pitching a grade 1 or lower to draw a card when she’s used for the cost of her G-guardian. However, and spoiler alert: we don’t run her G-Guard so at this point, any heal trigger will do.

(Note: Some of the G-Units are not present here because I couldn’t fit them in the banner.)

x1 Supremacy Black Dragon, Aurageyser Doomed: To this day, I still call this card by it’s original named: Aurageyser Damned. This is your first stride in every game, unless you G-guard and are in range to kill. Counterblast 1 and choose a facedown copy of Aurageyser Dragon face up from the G-zone and then retiring three units. You reveal the top two cards of the deck and for each Grade 1 or less revealed, you may retire an opposing rear-guard and the cards revealed get added to hand.

x1 Supremacy Black Dragon, Aurageyser Dragon: Aurageyser Dragon is here to fulfill the cost of Aurageyser Doomed. However, I wanted to use this section to explain why I prefer Aurageyser Doomed over Aurageyser Dragon. Aurageyser Dragon has to soul blast, counterblast, and retires two only to add 5000 for each Grade 1 or lower revealed upon attack. Aurageyser Damned: doesn’t have to soul blast, and is able to retire opposing units but more importantly retires 3 of yours in the main phase. Retiring more unit’s in Luard means you’re able to gain more benefits whether it’s retiring 2-3 belial owls, 2 Abyssal owls, so on and so forth. Additionally, retiring during the main phase is a lot better than in the battle phase because you can even strengthen your board or even go for more skills after using Damned’s skills with units you drew. Damned is a lot more flexible and opens the window to plus more than you normally would without having to expend soul which can be used for later skills.

x2 Dark Dragon, Phantom Blaster “Diablo”: Phantom Blaster was the original Shadow Paladin boss and was one of, if not, the strongest strides in the game. Counterblast 1 and persona flipping, you can gain 10k and +1 Critical if the number of cards in the G zone is two or more. It also gains another skill where if you retire three of your units when he attacks, your opponent may choose to retire two of their units and if they don’t or can’t retire 2 units, they cannot call cards from hand to the guardian circle. Phantom Blaster was the card you strode if your opponent wasn’t staying on their toes and leaving themselves wide open and an amazing punishment for mirage decks like Pale Moon, Granblue, and even Resist decks. In Luard, you hardly ever stride into him because retiring three in the battle phase is not really good since you don’t have units that can count as two retires so you’ll be left with only two units and one thing to note about Luard is that he wants to keep his field by the time it’s his turn, so he can use his heartbeat skill. Plus with G-guardians in the game, Phantom Blaster can still be guarded even if they choose not to retire three (especially since there’s no Blaster Dark Diablo to force a retire upon striding into him). Most deck’s don’t bother to run him, but I still feel he’s good to have if not for the mandatory retirement, but for the free 10k/+1 Critical.

x2 Dark Dragon, Spectral Blaster “Diablo”: By soul blasting 1, retiring one of your units, and flipping a face down card from your G zone, face up: Spectral gets the ability to stand after his attack with drive-2, by counter blasting two and retiring two. Spectral Blaster is a very powerful and flexible G-Unit, setting a trend for G-zones to have generic flips because financially it’s perfect: only needing one or two and not an automatic four and can even adjust for G-Assists and even flipping up specific units whose effects are dependent on the number of face up copies of itself. It also has a special bonus for having the “Diablo” heart which is also a G-Unit design that never got re-used again, but rather, preferring to stick to the heart restriction style. Spectral Blaster was at a time my go-to finisher, especially in his ideal deck, Diablo. In Luard, counterblast two is very hefty unless he’s retiring Abyssal Owls. Like Phantom Blaster, I very rarely go into Spectral once let alone twice, but if the situation calls for it, I will stride into one while the second copy is either flipped to pay for a flip cost or will be strode: depending on the game.

x2 Dragstrider, Luard: Going to note, I wish this cards name was swapped with “Dragdriver, Luard”’s name for a very obvious reason based off of their evolution from Luard and their effects. Dragstrider has Ritual 7, when he attacks, you retire two of your rear-guards and discard any number of cards from your hand to the drop zone. He gains 3k for each card discarded and if the number of cards discarded is two or more, he gains Critical+1, Drive+1, and guard restriction of grade 1 or higher from hand. This is your go-to finisher and is the reason why Phantom Blaster Diablo is considered to be removed from the deck. This is a really powerful card to go up against considering the requirements at minimum is discarding two cards to touch 32k with bonus skills. With no counterblast or soul blast card, you can just constantly stride into Dragstrider and keep throwing cards until your opponent has nothing else while also recycling your deck. It also takes advantage of the nature that Luard does draw a lot of cards: so you can go all in with very few clans being able to guard this effectively. I feel two is fine because if they survive one, then chances are, you’re probably dead and if they can’t kill you, then chances are that they’re dead.

x1 Draganger, Ogma: My favorite art from any Shadow Paladin. Ritual 5: counterblast 1, soul blast 1, and flip up a face down card in the G zone. Choose up to 5 grade 1 rear-guards and retire them and for each one retired, the opponent chooses a card from their hand or their rear-guards and puts them into the drop zone. You also draw a card if a total of three or more rear-guards by both fighters were put into the drop zone via this effect. This is a really really niche card, as most Generation Rares should be. Like Phantom Blaster Diablo, it punishes mirage decks and resist decks by dropping their hand since there’s either no field or the field cannot be touched. The only issue I have regarding this card is having five grade 1s to retire since specific Grade 0s such as the starter and Belial Owl also benefit from being retired, however, I think that was done intentionally so I guess it’ll just settle for being able to counter charge 2-3 from retiring Abyssal Owl or by flipping him for Spectral. Ogma is also the reason why having Naoise around is really good.

x1 Dark Dragon, Carnivore Dragon: Very basic stride, retire one of your rear-guards and your opponent has to retire two of their rear-guards (even if they have one) and they couldn’t retire two, three units in the front row gain 4k until end of turn. This is really just filler and very rarely would you stride this because even if you’re lacking counterblast and/or soul blast, you can stride into Dragstrider. Originally, I had two Claret Sword Helheim’s in place of this and one Spectral but I didn’t think they were that useful in this deck and I didn’t want to run Dragdriver either (even though he’s good for an empty board.)

x1 Dark Knight, Irgahn Vert: Irgahn Vert is the generation break 8 of Shadow Paladin. You counterblast one to choose up to five of your rear guards and retire them. Then you search your deck for up to the same number of grade 1 or lower units as the number of units retired and call them to seperate rears and they get +15k until end of the turn. Additionally, you retire the same number of your opponents rear-guards as the number of units called. This is a really strong game ender - not so much that they survived against everything in your arsenal but because you accelerated your G-zone far enough to pull this off. And because Luard does recycle his deck, getting a deck of grade 1s for this is pretty easy to fulfill.

x1 Air Element, Sebreeze: Standard G-unit because Luard is a stride based deck and doesn’t like to give up stride. There are also a number of Generic flips to flip this card should you choose not to go into him, making him flexible to play.

x3 Dark Dragon, Plotmaker Dragon: Plotmaker is a 25k Shield during Ritual 3 while on the Guardian Circle. This is currently the best and really should be the only G-Guard you should be playing except for the following one.

x1 Dragwiser, Bronach: Bronach is best used as your first G-guardian since once placed she checks the top five cards of the deck and calls all of the grade 1s from among them to the guardian circle with her. If you’re really lacking ritual, she will build it back up for you, especially when you want to go for a counter attack.

Deck Conclusion

Luard at a time was considered one of the best decks after his introduction and a follow up support set in Set 10. His only equals were Nightrose, Link Joker, and Gear Chronicle. Being able to draw and recycle his entire deck and have near infinite defenses, it was quite difficult to beat Luard because while he was overpowering other decks offensively and defensively, he also was allowed to grind out others forcing them to deck out. With a specific style deck build, not this one, Luard is also able to access a loop which can strengthen specific units and deck thin extremely hard. However, ironically, in his recent support: Set 12 Dragon King’s Awakening, while giving him Dragstrider and other important cards, they also strengthened decks that had the means to make him obsolete such as Narukami’s Thunderstrike, which is a keyword - like Ritual - revolves around the opponent having a specific number of cards bound. Most of the binds come from the drop zone, and with enough, you can lose access to your Ritual requirements making it extremely hard to go into your power plays. And with a number of guard restricts available to most clans in the game, Esras can be invalidated: forcing Luard to rely on his hand to guard everything. I don’t really have too much expectation of what Shadow Paladin will get in Set 14, let alone Luard since I would much rather see Diablo support since I do love Diablo a lot, but I also do appreciate Luard’s tool-boxing and combo play making.

So thank you all for reading this profile since this is my first non-AQ profile, I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to do this since I generally prefer to do deck profiles on real life decks that way I can step through alternatives but this didn’t seem too bad. I think next deck profile will be one that I actually have in real life: not to mention potentially some screenshots of a few updated decks in real life but other than that, look forward to this deck profile!

[micleadd7]

Social media

Just add me on Facebook. Did you see my lunch the other day on Instagram? CleverBets2017 is now following you.You have been added to the whats app group Jeans 40th birthday. I guarantee at some point in the last few years you have all heard these things be you a Twitterer, Facebooker, Instagrammer, whatsapper or otherer (there's always an otherer) the crazy world that is socialising and social media absorbs your daily being, turning you into a mindless scrolling zombie. Flicking from one app to the next without a care in the world. Have we forgotten the days of calling people for a chat in the kitchen because that's where the phone is? looking through pictures you have had developed from holidays gone by? TEXT MESSAGING!?  HAVE WE LOST OUR WAY IN A BLUR OF CLICK  BAIT ARTICLES, MEMES AND COMMENT SECTIONS ON GROUPS THAT OFFEND THE PEOPLE WHO NEED TO BE OFFENDED!!  Let's start at the beginning.

Firstly I must point out the thing that makes most of this possible, the enabler of such activity, without it people would sit in a bar by themselves waiting for their friends awkwardly, the smart phone. Iphone/Samsung/Pigeon carrier whatever you are you have the tech literally at your fingertips to engage with anyone anywhere at any point. Bluetooth, 4g, WIfi, order a taxi, order a pizza for the taxi, watch TV, listen to the radio, I mean what is there that your smartphone does not do? What happened to the days of 3 ringtones per phone, polyphonic nonetheless, the genius that was snake, phones that when you dropped them instead of the screen smashing into a thousand pieces you feared for every bone in your foot. Now you have a bing, ding or some other strange noise you've never heard before and that's it, you are taken away into the online world forever, well not forever but at least for the foreseeable.

Ok anyway the beginning, well maybe not the beginning let's not forget Myspace with its click counter and putting your friends in order of who you liked the most. But no the real beginning for me has to be the arrival of Facebook. Facebook changed the boundaries of social etiquette in so many ways. People; be it dates, friends, random weirdos at a party or work no longer exchange phone numbers or show pictures. No no that's no longer necessary, ‘What's your full name?’ That is necessary, and a whole lot simpler to try and guess than a long list of numbers. Yes a person's full name is all you need for a full back catalogue of the last 10 years of anyone's life. Pictures, relationships, family members, age, home town, which spice girl you dressed up as at your local school disco it's all there, waiting for you, willing you to find it! More info than any sane human being should be able to process after 5 minutes of facebook stalking someone. Oh yes that's the other thing, I mean another thing, there are many things. Facebook stalking someone is widely known and accepted. As if this level of intense research into someone's life is any different from actual stalking. Looking through Katies pictures from her trip to Benidorm in 2003, specifically pausing on the bikini clad pics is just as creepy as standing outside her house in the rain hoping to steal a glimpse of her in the shower. Katie if you are reading this you can't prove anything. I guess the difference being is Katie put those pictures on Facebook right? So she wanted people to see them right? Her friends right? In which case she should be ok with her friends waiting outside her window in the rain, trying to get a glance at some sideboob action. Not sure why it has to be raining but it just does.

So what's your name? Add me on facebook. If they are interesting enough you trudge through making opinions on things. The thing is Facebook is a keyhole into someone's life that they want you to see. We all know this yet we all forget it. People (and when I say people I mean everyone) are fabricating whole lives through social media. Informing overs about brilliant family get togethers, forgetting the 16 arguments that occurred on the day and merely commenting on the pictures with everyone smiling. Adding road trip tags about how awesome the journey was even though Dave was asleep the whole way and Nick wouldn't stop farting. Or there's the amazing stays in hotels or brilliant 5 star meals or BBQing with every friend possible… You can forgive people for wanting to only post the most exciting parts of their  lives, I do the exact same thing but just once i'd like flick open the app and see:

Katie is thinking about staring at a tree.

It would probably get the same amount of likes anyway!

All that being said there are several scenarios that have grown into the very fabric of FB. Those things that happen which we all know about but either ignore, forget or are apart of. The ground to cover here is vast so I will move quickly;

The sheer anger towards each other in comment sections on a post nobody can even remember after the 45 replies is embarrassing.And it always ends with someone correcting someone else's fucking grammar, And no Michael Jackson isn't just here for the comments and popcorn.

People who re-post nonsense that starts with, ‘Most of your friends won't have the guts to re-post this’ can all suck a bag of dicks.

People who still play games and still send out invites - HOW ARE YOU STILL DOING THIS?

Click bait articles in which you never get the answer to the question posed in the headline which just makes me so mad I want to argue with anyone in the comments section.

When you see people still fraping each other and it depends on your mood as to if it's funny or not that MIke loves huge cocks.

And then there's this;

Saying Happy birthday on your birthday. I kid you not I have both posted happy birthday on a good friend's wall when he changed it for a joke looking like I have no idea when his birthday is and also missed a good friend's birthday because they took it down from Facebook. In fact the alert of someone's birthday on every single morning of every single day reminds me that i'm still friends with that person on here and that I should remove them from my Friends list, HAPPY BIRTHDAY INDEED! I do enjoy the Happy Birthdays on my birthday though, I wonder how many friends I lose on that day. Imagine that last sentence attached to real life, ‘I wonder how many friends I lose on my birthday’. Yeah thanks Facebook.

After all that nonsense there's then the people which I always say I will never be but will never know until I get there, Mums and Dads. The people who feel the need to show their children off to the whole internet every time he/she sneezes. Don't get me wrong, new parents I understand, absolutely, but there's a point where it surely must stop.

So proud of little Tommy here he is on:

His first day at school. 20 likes

At a swimming Gala 30 likes

Riding a bike 35 likes

Sleeping 100 likes.

FUCK OFF, i'm serious. How Is it that parents manage to escape the ability to realise that nobody else on earth is as interested in their child as much as they are. Well apart from the Savilles of the world but surely that's just adding to reasons why little Tommy on a bike should be kept to exactly that. I mean you wouldn't walk up to a stranger in the street and go, hey guy look at my kid in his new school Uniform, you like? Just give me a thumbs up and then tell all your mates to come look and give me a thumbs up as well.

Saying that I want to see pictures of your kids (sounds odd) about as much as I want to see pictures of your dinner. A friend of mine whatsapped me the other month (because nobody texts anymore. You all have that one friend that still texts you and you can't understand why) asking if i'd seen his dinner from the night before. What on earth happened before facebook/Instagram? Did people invite the neighbours over to look at their food before telling them to go away so they could eat it? Stupid thing is if someone stalks me ON FACEBOOK long enough i'm probably guilty of this myself. If like me as well you grew up with facebook when it first became a thing, I was at UNI. Hundreds of pictures of me being drunk and doing stupid things went up over a 3 year period. I was completely oblivious to the concept that my Parents Aunties/Uncles and all relatives may at some point join this network, leaving a huge window into my life open for anyone to see. Adam why are you in a shopping trolley at 6am? At least it's not my dinner!!!

While Facebook was the poster boy for socialising online there were many other apps following suit which had you mindlessly scrolling through smart phones as if other people were simply not in the room. To coin a phrase, does your phone want a drink? If it's not instagram with its crazy hashtags, #blog #tumblr #words #life #trees #Lettuce it's Twitter with well it's crazy hashtags, or SnapChat or Tinder or Fuckafish. I made that last one up but i'll bet if I had a quick look I would find an app for such means, probably endorsed by Bear Grylls.

With all this mindless scrolling going on we venture into the world of whatsapp. Past the causal 1-2-1s you have with your friends where you send constant pictures of yourself smiling like an idiot because you are bored of checking if your twitter post has been retweeted, there's the groups. Not as in Louis got the groups but the groups. You will have a group of friends group, a different group of friends group but with certain friends from the first group in that group, a family group and birthday group, a work group, without that dick from finance, a travelling in the car somewhere that nobody comments in anymore because you went wherever you were going group, a holiday group, a friend's pet group a... you get the picture. Your life is taken over when you wake up to 50 unread messages, mostly because Nick posted a funny meme or Rachel wants the money for the birthday present.You reply as thoroughly as you can copy and pasting Nick's now that you've woken up hilarious meme into several other groups,  pleased with the joke stealing laughs you are getting. Even if they all seem to be out loud. You find you have lost hours of the day communicating with people you could have just gone to see.

Further to that time wasting notion the creators then bought you whatsapp.web. Allowing you to have the app on your desktop, a sort of throwback to Messenger but with less smileys in people's titles and no nudge function. Shame on the no nudge function, loved having the feeling of a headache portrayed on a computer. So yes Whats app on your computer. At home. At work more like. With a million and one things to do, you are busy chatting to friends, family members and anyone who wants to listen. Tweeting about something completely unimportant, clicking through picture after picture of a lovely pie and mash or cheese board or a dog's dinner on Instagram only stopping to briefly stalk that girl you met last night on Facebook, she didn't give you her number but that's ok you don't need that. You've got a complete overview of what she's been doing for the last 10 years or so.Hell you don't even need an umbrella, it's not raining in your office.