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alittlewhump · 4 years ago

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Unbidden - Act 1, chapter 8

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Content warnings: death mention, possible minor body horror with regards to injury

It had been a fortnight since Andariel. Morgan was adjusting to his new reality, one where speaking much louder than a whisper for more than a few sentences made it feel like he'd been screaming his throat raw. Where pain was out of proportion to the damage that caused it. Where his left arm was all but useless. Although he felt well enough to get up and move around, the wound on his arm showed no signs of closing. An inky colouration had spread out from the puncture, extending up above his elbow and down to his wrist. It turned his stomach to look at it. Any remaining strength in the limb was negated by the pain that shot through it at the slightest jostle or pull. Akara's expertise in the healing arts was not sufficient to handle a wound like this, caused by a demon queen and determined to linger. She had offered her sympathies and a supply of bandages, which at least allowed him to bind the damned thing so he didn't have to see it. His own limited knowledge of medicine did not extend to this manner of injury either, so simply keeping it covered and clean seemed like the best option available.

Morgan had been spending most of his time and energy on meditation and geomancy. Physical pursuits were not very attractive at the moment, so instead he focused on improving his magic. He would need it more than ever now, given the state of his arm. Eventually he would return to the graveyard he'd marked, to check on the restless spirits there, but he wasn't yet well enough for that journey.

The ground around the encampment was largely untended, but the soil was good. Morgan had been using it to flex his magical abilities cautiously, not wanting them to suffer from disuse. He turned small patches at a time, shuffling the richer earth up toward the surface bit by bit, until eventually there was a respectable area prepared. Nobody had asked him to install a garden, but it felt like it might be a useful contribution. It also helped to ground him. He had often tended the gardens back home, and found now that he was missing that work.

Short forays into the surrounding fields were still within the scope of Morgan's ability. Over the course of about a week, he'd managed to successfully transplant a reasonable variety of usable plants. Comfrey, feverfew, yarrow, and chamomile had all been easy enough to spot, and each had at least one medicinal use. They also had the benefit of being reasonably hardy, taking root well in the freshly turned earth. He had also experimented a little with some preparations of other plants he'd found - an outcrop of sway grass by a small lake, some sage nestled in among a patch of bright trefoil, a little bark from the willow just outside the encampment - but despite following standard procedures for preparation, none of the resultant concoctions did anything to relieve the pain of his injury. He took some fruits from what looked like an oleaster, intending to dry them for another attempt in the future, but he kept his expectations low. If the wound wasn't going to heal properly, it stood to reason that the other effects would also linger.

Cain had been good company, stopping by often. He inquired about the garden as it was talking shape and seemed legitimately interested in the various applications of the plants filling it. Morgan took care not to speak at too much length on any one topic, endlessly interesting though they were. Equally fascinating were the tales Cain had to share in exchange. The story of Tristram had been a sobering one, between the king's corruption by Diablo and the destruction it had wrought. And it seemed that it was not yet concluded, given the hero-turned-dark-wanderer who had fled. It would be worth pursuing that tale to its conclusion; Morgan's original request had been duly fulfilled, but the evident threat to the Balance was more pressing than returning to the Necropolis.

He'd also been alternating between meditating on ways to improve his clay golems and creating small versions to test the changes he'd thought of. So far he had come up with a lot of failed designs, going too far to the extremes to test the boundaries. A build with above average mobility that would crumble in combat, a strong and sturdy make that could absorb a great deal of punishment but would be too slow to hit anything that wasn't standing still. Now it was time to rein it in, to tinker with proportions and the flow of magic through the construct until something better emerged. Morgan slipped easily into the in-between state, retreating into his mind while his body rested in a comfortable cross-legged position. A pleasant breeze ruffled the leaves of the tree he was leaning against. Today would be good for focusing on the smaller details. He lost himself for a time in the contemplation of his designs.

A crawling, prickling discomfort pulled him back into reality. The sun was getting low in the sky. Someone had put their hand on his shoulder, and they were speaking to him.

"- word I've said, have you?" It was Blaise, looking annoyed.

Morgan shifted away from her, and she let her hand fall. "I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't hear you. I was meditating." The rough sound of his voice was another thing he was still getting used to. He rubbed his throat gingerly. Should have thought to keep some water nearby.

"Of course you were. I said, I talked to Kashya and she's agreed to give you some training. If you're going to keep fighting monsters and demons, you'll need some help. With your swordplay. It's not very good."

She was right, of course. Now that he could no longer hold a shield, his sword would have to be defensive as well - and magic had always been his strength, not actual physical strength or coordination. He'd been planning to refocus himself entirely on the magical side of things, but this was undeniably a good idea even if he didn't relish the prospect of physical training. Any formal instruction in the use of a sword would be useful.

"When?"

"You're welcome. Whenever you're ready. As soon as tomorrow." Instead of turning to go, she sat next to him. He expected her to keep talking, but she didn't. Maybe she was working up to something. The silence stretched uncomfortably. She didn't like him, she'd often said as much - so why was she staying so near? He'd been doing his best to be avoidable, true to his word. She hadn't been taking advantage of it, instead crossing his path at least once a day. Probably some sort of sense of obligation. The Sisterhood had been treating him with a cautious, grudging respect since Andariel's defeat. It was... strange.

That reminded him of a question he'd been meaning to ask. Now seemed as good a time as any, so he turned to study her. "Blaise. Why did you tell everyone I killed Andariel?"

She startled visibly and raised a hand to shush him. "What the hell, Morgan," she hissed, "you can't just say-" she cut herself off, looking around furtively. Apparently satisfied that nobody was eavesdropping, she continued in hushed tones. "Look, if Akara and Kashya knew I killed that big ugly bitch, they'd never let me get away from this backwater. It's different for you. They're expecting you to go. And when you leave, I'm going with you. At least until I'm well away from here. This place... I'm not really cut out to be part of something like this."

"Ah." That explanation made enough sense. He hadn't realized she wanted to leave, but then he often didn't realize things about other people. Perhaps he'd misinterpreted her loyalty as fondness. There wasn't always a correlation there. She hadn't exactly been talkative during their time together - not to him, not about personal wishes and desires. It also explained the closeness; by spending time around him, she was putting on a front, laying the groundwork that would justify her departure. Satisfied, he turned away to look at the sky. It was starting to be tinged with pink, and it was lovely to see.

"How do you do it?" Now it was her turn to scrutinize him. She was staring intently at his face as though it was going to hold anything other than confusion. Do what? Had he slipped back into his thoughts and missed part of the conversation? "I mean, doesn't it bother you?" That clarified nothing. He stared blankly, and she huffed. "People don't like you. As a necromancer. I mean, we didn't exactly give you a warm welcome. But there's no way it's just us. Your kind are... well, hated."

Oh, that. It was just a fact. He'd come to accept it easily enough. People didn't usually take kindly to him even before they knew his particular area of specialization. He shrugged, wondering idly what had lead to the question. She didn't seem to like that response.

"It's normal," he offered.

"It's not normal! How could you think that's normal? How do you... live with it?" She gesticulated, as though the waving of her hands might clarify her meaning. It did not. How else would he live? He took a moment to search for the words to frame it.

"As followers of Rathma, we are driven by pursuit of the Balance. What others think of us is not important."

"Not im- Morgan, of course it's important! The way people treat you matters. You have to rely on other people all the time."

"I try not to."

Blaise pinched the bridge of her nose as though the conversation was giving her a headache. "Yeah, I know you do. But sometimes you don't have a choice. Like - there's no way you could have gone up against Andariel alone, she would have killed you in a second."

"Mm." While certainly true, it didn't change much. Alone, he would have been more cautious, planned better. Probably died anyway. Others would have come to take his place. His individual life only held value in the contribution it could make toward the Balance. Death came inevitably to all things; to die in service was at least honourable.

Blaise seemed agitated. "I don't think you understand - this is life and death stuff. For fuck's sake, you nearly did die! When-" she lowered her voice, which had risen in frustration. It shook a little. "When I brought you to Akara, she argued with me. She didn't want to waste her supplies on you. She was just going to let you die on her doorstep, because she doesn't like you. That's not normal. You can't just think that's okay."

It certainly wasn't extraordinary. That was why necromancers generally brewed their own potions, not that he'd had either the time or the forethought to reach for his own during the encounter. He started to shrug again. Akara had been pleasant enough since - oh. All the pieces came together suddenly, but the picture they formed didn't quite make sense. Blaise had lied to save him. She'd decided, probably on an impulse, out of desperation, to frame him as the hero because the healer wasn't going to touch him otherwise. She had wanted him to live, and had sacrificed her own part in the story to ensure his survival.

Of course, that type of instinctively selfless behaviour was part of the reason he'd decided she was a genuinely good person. But having that kindness extended to him - that was new. He didn't quite know what to make of it. People weren't kind to him, as a rule. That was familiar, at least, predictable. It didn't feel like he'd done anything to earn this special treatment. He'd have to tread carefully.

"It's what I'm used to," he said quietly. "Death comes to all things. We do not expect others to delay it for us. But you... are extraordinary." It didn't really feel adequate, but he would need some time to process this new information, and the moment would be long past by then. "Thank you," he added. That also felt shallow. He had no reference to draw from - what was the appropriate way to convey this tangle of feelings? Indebtedness, surprise, gratitude, admiration, and those were just the aspects he had names for. He purposely held her gaze for a moment, hoping she would be able to glean something from that since his words weren't doing the job.

Blaise opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. Instead, she stood and stretched. "I bet you haven't even eaten today. Come on, Charsi made these beautiful rabbit pies. You have to try them." She extended her hand toward him. He didn't especially want to join a communal meal, but it would be rude to refuse such a rare offer. And he had, in fact, neglected to eat. He took her hand to pull himself up. Tomorrow he would attempt to train with Kashya, but right now he wouldn't worry about it.

#my writing #story: unbidden #death mention tw #body horror tw

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ariainstars · 5 years ago

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Ben Solo - A Sad Star Wars Story

Warning: longer post. (And possibly, a few unpopular opinions.)

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For a start: I’m not here to say I like how the sequels ended with Episode IX, in particular the way they handled their protagonist.

It sucked, to say the least.

I am writing this because looking back now, I can hardly imagine how the authors could have wrapped up the sequel trilogy with the happy ending we expected.

Let’s start with that word: happy. Honestly, did anyone want Ben to be “happy” with what Rey has become? I did expect her to fall down the rabbit hole. We repeatedly have witnessed how aggressive and judgmental she is; and by all logic, she had to meet her own Dark Side in order to realize that she has no right to judge the man she first knew as Kylo Ren. The moment I heard Palpatine’s evil laugh in the first trailer, I figured he had come to pursue Rey, not him. Unfortunately, her moment of shock was short and she hardly learned from it; if anything, since Luke sent her right back into the battle. This scene may have been what fanbros expected from Luke, but honestly, it was ridiculous. It did not fit to The Last Jedi’s Luke and it did not do Rey any favor.

And: had Ben emerged victoriously, found his happy ending, how would the title “The Rise of Skywalker” be justified? He is a Skywalker by blood, but in fact he is a Solo.

Wrapping Up the Saga

The sequels were received with mixed feelings from the start. Fans of old were angry at The Force Awakens since it seemed to say that history was repeating itself; that the heroes or the original trilogy had brought down the Empire but not managed to preserve peace. We saw them separated from one another as they once had been, disillusioned and worn out. Not the mention the wasp’s nest that was raised by The Last Jedi! If the Prequel Trilogy dismantled the illusion that the Jedi were perfect, the Sequel Trilogy definitively does the same with the Skywalker family. Both messages are clear for everyone to see, provided one is ready and willing to see them.

If Star Wars is a tale with a moral - and given its approach and the fact that it was handed over by Lucas to Disney of all studios it is - then the authors are trying since the 80ies to teach our minds to a compassionate approach on both villains and heroes. One of the main reasons why many fans dislike the prequels is that they expected to see the Jedi and Anakin / Vader being cool; they felt let down by witnessing the Jedi’s narrow-mindedness and Anakin’s strong emotionality. The affronted reactions to The Last Jedi were on the same line of thought. The prequels showed that the Jedi were not the good guys, and for the observant viewer this is already clear enough in the original trilogy. But it was only with The Last Jedi that the elephant in the room was finally approached.

Through Rey, The Rise of Skywalker makes clear that wanting to be a Jedi does not entail actual heroism but the conviction of being a hero. And Rey’s dyad in the Force, the tragic figure of Ben Solo, warns about the dangers coming from a child and teenager no one believed in as a person because everybody only saw his powerful potential.

The Jedi’s Failure

Neither Luke nor Anakin nor Rey needed the Jedi in order to become heroes. They already were good-hearted, brave and idealistic when we first met them. The Jedi ways did not make any of them happy; they learned to use their powers and employed them for short-lived “victories”, but they never found lasting peace.

Not a few fans have wondered how Luke Skywalker, who believed in his father despite all, could give up on his nephew that fatal night (even if it was only a moment of panic). Simply put: as strong and mature as he is by the time of Return of the Jedi, Luke suffers from a father trauma, and he desperately wishes for Vader to become Anakin again, his father, who used to be a hero. When he asks Vader to leave and come with him, it is not out of pure idealism but also a personal request. But Luke did not need his nephew. The moment he had at the temple was a personal issue, it had little to do with Ben’s strength in the Force or his status as Luke’s model student: Luke was afraid that Ben would be the end of everything he loved. Luke, Leia and Han were thrown together by a trauma bonding; Ben had no place with them because he hadn’t been through the same.

The actual tragedy in Ben Solo’s life was the bitter realization, over and over, that he was not needed by anyone (except for being abused, e.g. by Snoke). Ben desired Rey even before he had met her because she was powerful but unexperienced, and he hoped to find sense and belonging by protecting and instructing her. No wonder Rey’s rejection in the Throne Room drove him out of his mind with rage: it was another confirmation of what he had experienced all his life - that people can do without him. So he decided, bitterly and sullenly, that he could do without others as well. But over and over, he had to realize that he could not escape his want for connection. He kept hunting for Rey; and he was very conflicted both when it came to his father and his uncle, letting on that he did have an emotional connection with both of them although he didn’t want to accept it.

Ben’s tragedy was that he did not want to be special at all, and that contrarily to his uncle and grandfather he was aware of it. Ben simply wanted to belong somewhere.

It is an intrinsic part of the saga that a hero is never a hero “because he is superior to others for… reasons”: Star Wars does not bow to that cliché. Some people are born with the capacity to tap into the Force, but not all of the saga’s heroes have it. The morally good qualities a person has, the right decisions they make are not inborn but passed on, learned, communicated. In A New Hope Luke was saved by Han, to whom he had offered companionship and set an example by trying to save Leia. In Return of the Jedi Vader was won over by his son’s loyalty and sacrifice. For an average action film hero, this kind of attitude or outcome of his adventures would be unacceptable: a hero is expected to be triumphant, not saved by someone else. And I know enough fans who don’t understand Luke and prefer Han or Vader to him, who are both cooler and more predictable.

In film, where characters need to be introduced to the audience within the scope of minutes, narratives are applied in a way that the general audience gets them quickly. The downside is that this goes at the expense of nuances. Fans don’t like to see Anakin being passionate and stormy because as Darth Vader he was coded as brutal but cool; they don’t get Obi-Wan’s many mistakes because he was coded as a hero, or Yoda’s arrogance due to his status as a wise old mentor. The sequels brought this dichotomy to a new level coding Rey as the heroine although she has a bad attitude and comes from bad blood, and Ben Solo as the villain when his attitude is conflicted at worst, and who is the offspring of the original story’s heroes. The difference lies in their intentions - hers are good, his are bad. This is interesting because it makes us, the audience, question ourselves as to how and why we believe we can tell good from evil.

You could probably say into a megaphone that the Jedi are not the good guys who always win, that the Force is not a superpower belonging only to the Jedi and that there is no simple Dark and Light but that the Force needs balance: some viewers will never get it. I guess everybody feels the saga’s subtext on a subconscious level; but woe betide if someone like Rian Johnson brings it up to the surface for everyone to see.

Narrative Key

One of the main reasons why The Last Jedi is so divisive is, I think, that its major theme connecting all of the others is communication. While the prequels told much about miscommunication or lack thereof, Episode VIII is packed full of beautiful examples of what happens when people actually manage to communicate; and even when they do not, they learn from their misunderstanding one another (e.g. Poe with Admiral Holdo).

It is a common but major mistake not to question the narrative key to a story. Many Star Wars fans believe the story is simply about the good guys defeating the bad guys, so they overlook the deeper themes of the saga and respond with outrage when the authors try to humanize their heroes, bringing them down from their alleged pedestal. It is e.g. helpful to know Joseph Campbell’s monomyth theory; to consider that a film saga is not the same as a TV show and that therefore if the characters go through changes these must be significant from one instalment to the next due to the time limitations; to watch a few films by Akira Kurosawa, in particular The Hidden Fortress, to understand the significance of a major event seen through different eyes; or consider the prequels’ parallels with legends, classic literature, or the Bible - Lucifer’s fall, Romeo and Juliet, the tales of King Arthur. Star Wars is a conglomeration of many narratives, from Western films to the Japanese to French fairy tales to Greek mythology to Shakespearean drama. Who approaches these films expecting mere “action” is bound to be disappointed. It is understandable, however, that if you are used to certain kinds of stories, you will assume that every story should basically follow the same lines, and you will have difficulties accepting anything that is different, or believe it’s just badly made.

I still remember the (sometimes vicious) quarrels I followed in an online forum a few years ago about a Japanese mecha anime who some fans by hook or crook wanted to fit into the structure of a French novel. Of course, those two narratives don’t fit together: no wonder most of the other fans didn’t accept that kind of interpretation.

The Phantom of the Opera’s film version of 2004 was largely a failure both with regard to quality and audience appreciation because it made a tacky Byronic romance of a story that actually is a mystery thriller, probably expecting that it would be more appealing that way. What the filmmakers accomplished was making the story flat and the characters annoying by stripping them of the drama behind the original story.

Filming Rebecca’s film version from 1940 Hitchcock managed the transition excellently maintaining the storyline of the original novel; but Daphne duMaurier’s book is a coming-of-age story, and who expects a crime thriller may feel irritated by the narrators’ meandering and detailed inner monologue.

Game of Thrones also could not culminate in “all’s well that ends well”. The last season was not well-made, but I think now that was not the whole reason behind the audience’s disappointment. The show always was very crude and included loads of horrific events; even the worst victims of the war, who seemed to have a justification for their actions and seemed well-meaning, at times did terrible things. It would be a misfit to apply a happy ending to a “sex and violence” narrative as with another martial epic, like Aeneid and Iliad. Who waits for happy endings ought to avoid this kind of story from the start. (Yes, I know, I should listen to my own advice - had I imagined how depressing Rogue One is, Star Wars fan or not, I would probably have skipped it.)

Stories of this kind can be dissatisfying because as an audience, we follow our heroes’ adventures, sometimes for years, and we usually want to see them to find their happiness in the end. But in all honesty: we should have imagined.

That is why I think it was naïve to believe that the sequel trilogy would lead Ben to a happy ending with Rey. I have read more than one fanfiction which irritated me at first, until I realized that they were told on the lines of Fifty Shades of Grey, or Pride and Prejudice. That may work well for a fanfiction, but Star Wars is not a mere romance. Even if there was a hint of the overture to Romeo and Juliet during the abduction: couples based on that trope are not destined to end well. I myself was hoping for a happy ending due to the fact that the saga’s rights were in the hands of Disney of all production companies; and giving that the Skywalker family is one of the most famous in pop culture, I was certain they wouldn’t wipe them out. However I was not quite sure how they would do that and make it convincing, and I was wary when it came to the assumption (which many Reylo’s took for granted) that the love between Rey and Ben would be strong enough to save the galaxy and give them a happy ever after.

When a guy is introduced by murdering a defenseless old man, letting an entire village be wiped out with practiced ease, going on with torturing another guy both physically and mentally and climaxing with the horrible crime of patricide, one can hardly expect a happy ever after for him; even less since so very little was explained in terms of his childhood and adolescence. Some viewers identified with Ben Solo and saw his abandonment and abuse issues; many others didn’t, and none of the sequel films really thematized them. That he made peace with his parents and died to save the girl he loved is sufficient for a convincing redemption arc, not to offer him a happy closure.

The Trope That Comes Closest

There were a lot of speculations with regard to the trope Ben (Kylo) and Rey were actually modelled on. Romeo and Juliet, Hades and Persephone, Pride and Prejudice or Beauty and the Beast, and there were probably more. Rian Johnson is known for loving The Phantom of the Opera more than any other musical. I don’t think that’s coincidental.

- The phantom is disfigured by birth, Ben is extremely powerful by birth; and Ben also gets disfigured by Rey during their duel. (Vader’s sunken, charred face under the mask was, for a long time, how I imagined the phantom unmasked by the way.) - The phantom is highly intelligent and has huge musical talent. Ben was born with a strong power in the Force. - Both wear masks and look much less threatening without them. They also wear a cloak, and black clothes. - The phantom had committed terrible crimes both to protect himself and to punish a world which would not accept him. Sounds familiar? - In the musical we do not get to know how he became a ruthless monster in the first place. Ditto. - The phantom dies (or disappears, in the musical) because only the girl knew that he was lonely and unhappy and that he still had goodness inside him. She had forgiven him, but the rest of the world wouldn’t have believed her or forgiven him.

Both Kylo Ren and the Phantom are creatures who are at the same time terrible and wonderful. The normal world, populated by average people, cannot accept them because they are both too fascinating and too terrifying. In order to find lasting fulfilment, Ben ought to have found back to humanness. The phantom couldn’t due to his disfigurement and his criminal past; and though Ben loses the scar on his face, the Cain’s mark of the patricide he committed, his deed and his former status as Supreme Leader of the First Order never would have been forgotten.

“Yet in his eyes all the sadness of the world Those pleading eyes that both threaten and adore…” Christine in The Phantom of the Opera (on the rooftop)

Heroes: Dynamic and Static Characters

A general rule of storytelling is differentiating between dynamic and static (also called “impact”) characters. A static character is like an anchor for others: while they live through crises, learning and maturing, this character always remains his old self and always stands for the same values. He may be misunderstood, opposed and belittled, he may lose the battle, but never the war; and after having helped others through their troubles, he usually is on his own. (Cue: cowboy riding into the sunset.)

Superman stands for peace and justice, Jack Sparrow for freedom, Peter Pan for the innocence of childhood, Paddington for faith in people’s goodness. No wonder they are so popular: it is familiar and reassuring to follow the adventures of someone who is always like a rock in a storm. Static characters are in essence childlike, two-dimensional; which is probably why our child self easily gets attached to them and may be outraged at the idea of them changing, or maybe (gasp) being wrong about something.

But George Lucas developed his saga along the lines of personal growth, and by exploring its themes: thankfully, otherwise it would have become as boring and repetitive as so many other franchises. To continue a story you can either make it dynamic, or press the repeat button over and over. The Skywalker men with their strong emotionality may be unusual heroes, but much more interesting than other, “cooler” guys whose actions are more or less foreseeable. So, I can understand the Disney studio’s choices. On the other hand, it is not surprising when fans of old get angry when their supposedly unalterably perfect heroes make mistakes: everybody wants to know that some things (or persons) never change. Even if on the long run, change might be for the better.

I think one of the sequels’ most important messages was that the Skywalker-Organa-Solo family failed their heir precisely because their mindset did not change. Ben grew up in another world than they did; obsolete political structures, dictatorship or rebellions did not matter to him. But his family wanted him to adhere to the ideals that had gotten them through the war against the Empire, discouraging him from searching and finding his own place in the world, a world that now was very different both from the old Republic and the Empire.

Whether a static or dynamic character is more relatable to the audience is a personal matter. Many fans adore Darth Vader, Leia and Han Solo etc. precisely for the fact that basically they always remain their old selves. Padmé also is a favorite, probably due to the fact that she does not change considerably. Anakin changes a lot, which is perceived as a sign of weakness. Some fans may relate more to Luke, who undergoes serious trials and emerges from them stronger and wiser, far away from the greenhorn he was in A New Hope. And yet Luke’s final decision to throw his weapon away before Palpatine is often perceived as weird to this day. It’s not “heroic”.

The outraged fans who ranted at Luke’s portrayal in The Last Jedi did not realize that Luke was doing something both Obi-Wan and Yoda, or the other Jedi for that matter, never had done: he took responsibility for his actions. In this context Ben was the audience’s self-insert, he was as appalled at Luke’s misstep as we were. Such a blow is enough to send someone on a lonely island to meditate about his mistakes for years, convinced that the world is better without him.

But for the action film audience, that is not acceptable. If you have a light sabre and the Force (an alleged superpower), what do you need responsibility for? You can’t do wrong if you’re the hero, right? Luke also was the only character from the original trilogy who underwent character growth, which makes it all the more ironic that the many, many critics who tear the sequels to pieces are fuming at how Luke could be so “defiled”. Luke grew beyond the person he had been in A New Hope; these fans obviously did not. Which is why the studios thought they had to produce The Rise of Skywalker in order to “appease” them and to give them the Luke Skywalker they wanted.

Where Does the Galaxy Go From Here?

A conversation between my husband and me, about a year before The Rise of Skywalker came out.

Me: “I hope Ben Solo will survive at the end of the trilogy.” Him: “I do hope that, too. But they won’t give him a happy ending.” Me: “Why?” Him: “He killed his own father.”

I hate to admit it, but he was right. I’m not aware what ethics code is under use in the film industry now, but in any case, the horrible crime of patricide was done; even if it was under coercion, the son traumatized by it, and it ultimately brought him back to redemption. You can’t make a patricide, the former right hand and for a time leader of a terrorist organization a hero and give him a happy ending; in particular when you are Disney of all film studios. (Not to mention that he killed Han Solo, a very popular character.) And from exchanges with other viewers I am aware that many do not understand how Ben killed Han under Snoke’s coercion, and the implications that led him to kill Snoke: they believe he simply did it because it’s something an evil, power-hungry person will do.

Ben dying without anyone knowing that he was not a villain at heart and worse, leaving the fates of the galaxy in the hands of a young woman whom we often saw giving in to evil influences again and again within the scope of minutes was a dangerous turn. If he was but “a child in a mask”, Rey is a child who believes to be a Jedi. How is Rey supposed to be a heroine, with the other half of her soul gone? She and Ben fitted together perfectly because she had the good intentions but a violent attitude, while his intentions were bad but his attitude desperately conflicted because inherently good. Rey came from evil blood but was kind-hearted because she believed in her parent’s love. Ben was the heir of a family of heroes but did not feel loved by them, which made him lonely and bitter. What good is Rey on her own, even more so when at the end of Episode IX she deliberately leaves her friends and goes to a literal desert? The little girl inside of her is still starving for connection, and neither being a Jedi nor a “Skywalker” will appease her. She had to meet Luke to realize that he was a good man but still just a man; a lesson she didn’t quite internalize yet. The sequel trilogy wasn’t her story because her personality hardly developed. It was Ben who went through hell and back.

Films (and film sagas) have a determined length and as a film studio you need time to explore all themes, which in Star Wars are quite complex. The worst mistake I found with Episode IX was that it broke the Campbellian monomyth in favor of a Marvel type B-movie to appease the fans of old who had hated The Last Jedi. Which is understandable from their point of view, but went at the expense of quality. The Rise of Skywalker may have quenched the fire a little, but as a film, it’s frankly forgettable, and compared to the other films from the saga, I doubt that it will age well. Had the sequel trilogy continued Rian Johnson’s approach instead of putting a band-aid on The Last Jedi, it would have been good enough to make a cultural impact the way the classics did. If the sequel trilogy was meant to follow The Hero’s Journey, no one completed it: Ben died and Rey went into exile, and no one brought any kind of elixir or salvation into the world.

All of this is not to say that I have grown to like The Rise of Skywalker and that I am not disappointed about the ending, or no longer sad about Ben Solo’s death. I hope that the next trilogy will give him a second chance: I am still convinced that his ultimate fate should have been to bring lasting Balance to the Force. If I am wrong and his existence practically cancelled the past without improving anything, the whole saga loses its sense. I think that by now he atoned more than enough for his sins.

When I learned that Rian Johnson had negotiated his own trilogy after The Last Jedi, I remember wondering what it would be about. After all, almost everything had been said about the Skywalker saga, hadn’t it?

It hadn’t. I had naively assumed that like with Episodes III and VI, the final revelations were preserved for Episode IX. By now it seems to me like The Rise of Skywalker is meant as an appetizer for the next sequel. It can’t be that the studios unlearned how to make good films in so short a time after The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, also considering that everything else they made about Star Wars in between (Rogue One, Solo, The Mandalorian) is solid work and not by a long shot as flat as Episode IX.

The studios assuredly will keep their secrets as long as they can. The Mandalorian was met with huge expectations, yet nobody knew about Baby Yoda before the first episode was aired. Due to their depth and love for details, Star Wars films can be watched and discussed over and over, and the message regarding the necessity of Balance is still widely unknown or not accepted by the fans. If this is supposed to be not only an entertaining but also an educational tale, authors must give new fans room to get to know the saga, and old fans time to let the new ideas sink in. Lucas and his collaborators have taken decades trying to teach us that morals are not black and white. But still when The Last Jedi came out, the message was utterly hated.

Whatever Johnson’s trilogy will be about, it can’t be a part of the Skywalker saga any more: they are all dead. Even if Ben is brought back somehow, he is a Solo, so this time it would be the story of his own family. The Skywalker saga was basically Anakin’s, and by reconciling with a Palpatine and giving his life to save the woman he loved his grandson ultimately made up for his sins. The Last Jedi was a bold move; but what are “bold moves” supposed to be good for if they are not followed through? Apart from the fact that the sequels weren’t even exactly bold but drawing sums from what we already could see in original trilogy and prequels about the Jedi and the old Republic.

Family Is the Key

Star Wars is a family tale. It is for families and it is about families. One of the most frustrating things about The Rise of Skywalker was, for me, that the “new” heroes didn’t make any kind of home or family of their own; and a Star Wars film or series never works without a father figure at its heart. I am sure Ben Solo was ultimately meant to be a father figure; the sequels couldn’t work without even giving him the chance to be one. Anakin and Luke both founded a family - one through marriage, the other befriending many different people. The third generation did not even get a chance either way.

“I believe that you are redeemed by your children.” George Lucas

In Star Wars, children always have to pay for their parent’s sins, and only they can make them atone. Which makes it all the more tragic that Ben is not a father; by this logic, only his child could have saved him, or an adopted one. On seeing the enslaved children of Canto Bight, of whom one is Force-sensitive, I was convinced that the sequels would be the children’s trilogy. (I might have accepted Ben dying had he saved and left them with Rey, who also is an abandoned child and so would have found a meaningful task.)

What the galaxy needs most are not heroes but people. Heroes exist to save desperate situations; lasting peace can only be made by normal people. With Luke becoming a hero in the original trilogy and Anakin a villain in the prequels, I was expecting Ben to find back to humanness. Since we have another trilogy to look forward to, I do still hope Ben will get another chance and this time he will find his happiness; but I also believe that he will have a long way to go before that. By the end of The Rise of Skywalker he is a hero, but in order to be happy he would need to learn how to be fully human, realigning both sides of his personality and healing the gap between them (the way Anakin couldn’t). And you don’t learn how to embrace your humanness quickly after having lost it within the scope of years and years. Ben wanted Rey because she was the only person in the galaxy with whom he could be completely honest. But being human also entails bonding with other people, not only with one’s significant other.

Ben tried to pull off the “bad guy” role and failed because it’s not in his nature. A lot of fans see him as a loser, because whether good or evil, a male protagonist is supposed to be always unfazed. The gentle, nurturing and emphatic personality that comes out in Ben when he is balanced is not that of a warmonger but of a peacekeeper: I see nothing inacceptable or emasculating in that. Unfortunately, who has Luke, Anakin or Han as blueprints for “real” men, won’t accept someone like Ben Solo. I hope that in time, he will be more appreciated, and that his life story will be a warning both for the audience and for the saga itself, i.e. that it is more to the point not to punish a criminal but to prevent him from becoming that way in the first place. Which brings us again to the topic of children and a better way to raise them, Force-sensitive or not.

Rey and Ben both are children with unhealed wounds. Their brief moment of harmony during the Force connection on Ahch-To was so powerful because both were speaking to each other’s inner child: Ben saying to Rey that she was not alone, Rey offering Ben an understanding he had not known before. Padmé also always saw in Anakin the good little boy she had first met; one of the reasons of the unbalance in their relationship was that he felt powerless to do something for her in return.

I think that the sequel trilogy of the Skywalkers wanted to tell us is that even if you save the whole galaxy, it’s not sufficient if afterwards you can’t support and protect your own offspring. When we met Han, Leia and Luke again, their personalities were pretty much as we left them; their mistake in handling Ben can’t have been something they actually did to him, the blunder must lie somewhere in their attitude. All three of them were traumatized by cruelly losing or never having known a healthy family life, so we must assume that after the war against the Empire, they tried to build a new world that would fit to their needs. But if adults build a home, they must do so thinking first and foremost not of themselves but of the ones who need it more than them. Children shape the future, not a victory of “good” over “evil”. And I find it interesting that the codebreaker DJ, who had such a pragmatic view of war, was also someone we met on Canto Bight, like the children. He was a traitor, but as everyone in the saga, even he had a point when he said that ultimately, wars are useless because they always flare up again.

“Good, bad, made-up words. You blow them up today, they blow you up tomorrow.” DJ in The Last Jedi

The last scene of The Last Jedi showed us a Force-sensitive boy sweeping an open space before looking up at the sky and dreaming about being a Jedi. I still believe that this scene’s meaning was “Clear the stage, it’s time for us - the children.”

The Jedi, respectively Force-sensitive creatures, must find new and better ways if they want to be advocates for peace and justice. No institution can claim to have a moral standard if it does not protect, nurture and encourage their most vulnerable and needful members, i.e. the children. Watching the prequels it is shocking to follow how the intelligent, brave and affectionate child Anakin could become the most hated man in the galaxy, crushed in the powerplay between the “good but narrow-minded guys” and the “bad but not always wrong” guys. Both his and his grandson’s dark fate could have been avoided, had it not been for the Jedi mentality based upon the conviction of having the right to destroy everything that does not (or does not seem) to line up with them.

The Star Wars saga told us over and over that power is not what it takes. The Jedi lost the Clone Wars; Vader was a lonely, bitter guy (not to mention Palpatine); Kylo had all the power his grandfather never had and it did him no good. Anakin, Han and Ben all were loved most by their women when they were at their weakest. And this brings me back to what I stated above: stories can be interpreted in different ways, but what about the message the author actually wanted to convey? If I am not getting it all wrong, it’s that compassion and not power is the key to everything good.

Episode VII and IX mirror one another, only VIII hints at a possible balance. Star Wars has a cyclical narrative; Anakin / Vader had his happiest moments and successes in his youth, while his grandson in his own youth hit rock bottom and committed his worst sins. If Kylo Ren’s destiny, as per Adam Driver’s words, is supposed to be the opposite of Darth Vader’s, how can The Rise of Skywalker really be the ultimate ending for him?

P.S. What do you think, could baby Yoda and Ben meet? Then Obi-Wan and Yoda would be together again in a new way. P.P.S I would also like to see the Force, for once. I’m sure it’s not black and white at all. How about a rainbow? (Does anyone have Rian Johnson’s e-mail…? 😊) P. P.P.S. On the other hand, if the next film starts with Rey being pregnant and not knowing how, I might be sick… ☹

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The November Man and Pierce Brosnan’s Anti-James Bond Roles

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He’s nastier than I remembered. In fact, Peter Devereaux, who is Pierce Brosnan’s lead spy in the grisly B-actioner The November Man, is a downright scumbag. But this is by design in a film that’s clearly coasting off audiences’ familiarity with the actor as James Bond 007. And despite his penchant for a fashionable enough gray sport coat, Devereaux displays little elegance or wit while he’s on the job; he’s a bastard who’ll sneak into his former protege’s kitchen with a gun and then hold the young lad’s girlfriend hostage and at knifepoint.

“Scenario: Your target has just severed the femoral artery of a woman you have been intimate with. What do you do?” Brosnan’s not-so-super spy bellows right before slicing a young woman across the thigh. He all but sneers as he leaves the rookie to clean up his mess.

This is just one of several anti-Bond set-pieces in The November Man, which is an even uglier piece of work now than when it premiered seven years ago. Yet as the movie comes back to prominence this week due to Netflix’s algorithm, I couldn’t help but be reminded of how the picture must have looked like a breath of fresh air on the page for Brosnan. Indeed, it’s one of several flicks that contributed to a pattern the actor cultivated over the last 20 years: a deconstruction if not outright indictment of the 007 image which made him an international star. The November Man is the slightest of those efforts, however it remains a notable one wherein Brosnan again thrived in taking the glamour, not to mention the piss, out of his most famous role.

Naturally suave and urbane, cultured yet more physical than many of his detractors ever gave him credit for, Brosnan seemed like the natural choice to play 007 back in 1986 when he was first cast in the role. He looked like such a good fit that it might have been one of the contributing factors for why 1980s audiences didn’t fully warm to Timothy Dalton in the role after he stepped in because Brosnan’s ‘80s television series, Remington Steele, was renewed and Brosnan was forced to bow out. When the Irish actor finally got a second chance to slide into the tuxedo nearly 10 years later via 1995’s GoldenEye, Brosnan was more seasoned and mature than his days on NBC, but he was still unquestionably the most chic 007 audiences had ever seen.

At the time, it felt like the return of the rightful king to many casual fans, an heir claiming his rightful throne. Audiences went wild for GoldenEye, which remains in this writer’s opinion one of the best 007 adventures to date more than 25 years later. While the amount of reinvention that Eon Productions and director Martin Campbell had to do to justify Bond’s continued popularity in the post-Cold War era would look like small potatoes compared to what the same team would attempt 11 years later with Daniel Craig’s hard reboot of the franchise in Casino Royale, GoldenEye still remains a blast of fresh air for a series that was feeling increasingly stuffy by the end of the 20th century. Bond had to deal with the world changing, but unlike Craig’s Bond, he didn’t necessarily have to change with it yet.

There’s thus a melancholic element to Brosnan’s Bond 007. He’s not so much a “relic of the Cold War,” as the wonderful Judi Dench’s M says in her first tête-à-tête with a Bond actor, as he is a man that time has passed by. He’s aware his moment is gone, so he spends the 1990s justifying his relevancy, and at least in the case of GoldenEye (and I’d argue all of Brosnan’s first three Bond films) he proved it in the moment with a playful smirk and the best one-line groaners this side of Roger Moore. However, some of those movies aged, they were what audiences wanted from the character then.

However, this is not the only version of 007 that Brosnan could have played. The actor was in fact famous for his behind-the-scenes grappling with the producers and his attempts to take the character in a darker and more grounded direction. In 2017, he recalled to Total Film that, “There was a certain frustration within me as the films went on, as I could see the world happening around me and the movies. I wanted Bond to get a little more gritty and real and down and dirty, but however you try to nurse it along, the scripts would come along with the same outlandish scenarios.”

In essence, he seemed to want to play the Bond that Daniel Craig eventually embodied, or at least a less gloomy variation on it.

One imagines this was the reason even before he left the Bond role that Brosnan began exploring that side of the character wherever else he could. By the time of 2014’s The November Man, the anti-Bonds were almost as familiar for Brosnan as the real thing, and he mostly appeared to be indulging the type of B-actioners that actors of a certain age have turned into a subgenre ever since Taken. However, even before hanging up the tux for good, Brosnan was doing much more interesting work subverting that same public persona.

His performance as Andy Osnad in John Boorman’s The Tailor of Panama stands out as the most contemptuous and articulate deconstruction of the sophisticated 007 image. Based on a John le Carré novel, The Tailor of Panama imagines a disgraced libertine MI6 agent (Brosnan’s Andy) who decides to enrich himself in South American exile by manufacturing a crisis and hoodwinking a hawkish and imperialist American military while also manipulating one particularly demented ex-pat tailor (Geoffrey Rush). Largely underrated now, the 2001 film—which opened between The World is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002)—features Brosnan at his smarmiest.

In essence, he is being asked to play a “real” version of James Bond. Hence he comes across as a callow, arrogant, misogynistic prick who after reaching middle age decides to use his immature work ethic to cash in like some of his past adversaries. People die because of his machinations, and lives are ruined. He even attempts to rape an alleged friend’s wife. It is one of Brosnan’s best performances and perhaps the most hard-nosed deconstruction of the Bond archetype attempted by any performer who’d starred in an Eon production.

However, the best inversion of the persona came from Brosnan again a few years later in Richard Shepherd’s hugely under-appreciated The Matador (2005). As a comedy premised around a literal pub gag, the film pivots on “a hitman and salesman walk into a bar….” Brosnan unsurprisingly plays that hitman, Julian Noble. But despite his honorable surname, there’s nothing chivalrous about Julian. A deranged and bitter killer who never thought he’d live so long as to reach an age filled with regret and loneliness, Julian probably remains Brosnan’s best on-screen performance and a proper menace for Greg Kinnear’s buttoned up family man, Danny Wright.

Awash in self-pity and laggard energy, Brosnan comes across like milk that spoiled weeks ago, and which has now grown arms and legs and is dragging itself out of your refrigerator. It’s hard to say Brosnan’s Julian was ever as sober or clear-eyed in his younger life as any version of 007, but he represents the uncouth reality of that character’s vices through his obsessions with booze, teenage girls, and finding pleasure in murder. He’s also one half of a terrific buddy comedy.

A small character piece, Shepherd’s Matador luxuriates in a clever script that despite its barebones narrative still surprises, especially as it becomes a three-hander between Brosnan, Kinnear, and Hope Davis as the everywoman wife who proves too far out of the aging Bond type’s league.

If you haven’t seen this amusing tonic of a film, hunt it down.

Movies

The top 10 best Pierce Brosnan films

By Duncan Bowles

Movies

Casino Royale and GoldenEye Director on What’s Next for James Bond

By Don Kaye

All of which paved the way for the more rote but overt The November Man. With its plot focusing on a Brosnan spy who’s out to avenge an old flame, not-so-coincidentally named Natalya (which is also the name of Izabella Scorupco’s Bond Girl in GoldenEye), the film traffics in Bond nostalgia; it even casts Olga Kurylenko who appeared in Craig’s Quantum of Solace. But there appears to be only faint nostalgia in Brosnan’s interpretation of those old ways here. Mostly his Devereaux is just a bitter old man filled with contempt.

Which is not to say Brosnan shares such animosity toward Bond. The actor genuinely appears grateful in interviews about that time in his life. However, even during the lesser installments of Brosnan’s tenure in the role, there was always a darkness and edge to his Bond that many franchise fans tended to undervalue.

While never as blunt or brooding as Craig’s self-loathing 007, there was a hidden brokenness to Brosnan’s interpretation that only would be seen in flashes. When they did appear, however, they were crueler than any actor in the role since Connery up to that point. It’s there when his Bond executes Vincent Schiavelli in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). There isn’t a quip or smirk. There is just disdain on Bond’s face as he responds to Schiavelli’s pleas of “I’m just a professional doing a job” with “Me too.” And when he similarly shoots in cold blood one of his lovers, Sophie Marceau’s Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, there is a perversity to the scene that makes even Dench’s M shudder.

Brosnan’s Bond likely could’ve been more than the 1990s’ most suave action movie joker. And he’s spent a lot of his post-Bond career proving exactly that.

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tech-specialist98 · 4 years ago

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Poco X3 Pro review: More power to you

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📷📷 Poco X3Poco hasn’t been around for long and yet very quickly this Xiaomi spinoff brand has built a reputation for itself launching multiple products with “world’s first or India’s first” technologies. Starting off with the illustrious Poco F1, it went on to launch the Poco X2 (first phone under 20k with 120Hz refresh rate display) and Poco X3 (first phone with Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G system-on-chip). The freshly minted Poco X3 Pro, likewise, is the first phone with Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 SoC. More than the chip itself, it is the price of the phone that is grabbing headlines. It starts at just Rs 18,999 (6GB/128GB).Then again, if you know a thing or two about Poco, this is business as usual.Unlike the Poco F1 or Poco X2 or even the Poco X3, the Poco X3 Pro isn’t technically a new product so to say. As the name suggests, it’s a turbo-charged Poco X3. If the Poco X3 was a race car, the Poco X3 Pro with its more powerful hardware should be a rocket ship. That’s expected. But that’s not all that you probably expect from a phone launching in 2021, even if its costs so low. You also expect a little bit of polish and a little bit of promise of futureproofing to go along.High performance, delivered Like the phone itself, the chip inside it is also not completely brand new. The Snapdragon 860 is a Snapdragon 855 from 2019 with a slightly overclocked CPU. Think of it as a refurbished Snapdragon 855 Plus. Considering how fast Qualcomm keeps refreshing its portfolio these days, some might take that refurbished badge with a pinch of salt. Some might call it dated. But when you put a chip like that inside a budget phone like the Poco X3 Pro, all your preconceived notions are instantly blown away. Suddenly, things start to make a lot of sense.Make no mistake, this is the most powerful phone under 20k in the Indian market today. Period. As if it wasn’t already enough, the Poco X3 Pro also comes with UFS 3.1 storage, another first for any phone in this price range.The Poco X3 Pro story essentially revolves around this hardware combo. It is perhaps the only Poco phone worthy of being called a “spiritual” successor to the Poco F1, perfectly aligning with its “everything you need, nothing you don’t” formula which is probably why the brand is going all out on marketing it that way. For good reason. Next to the Poco X3, the Poco X3 Pro is a whole new beast. Like I said, it’s a rocket ship.And it performs like one, for the most part. There are two parts to this story.This is the only phone under 20k that can play a graphically intensive game like Genshin Impact (at medium setting) or Call of Duty: Mobile (all maxed out) effortlessly, which is to say that your experience would be very, very satisfying. The Adreno 640 GPU holds up well. Though it throttles from time to time, this phone latches on and gives you a steady 60fps in many supporting games. Something like this was not possible before. It opens new opportunities, the Poco X3 Pro, for those looking to get some sort of headstart into the world of competitive gaming without breaking their bank. But it is not perfect. The Snapdragon 860, like the Snapdragon 870, and even the Snapdragon 888, is prone to heating, sometimes alarmingly when stressed. There is a cooling system inside the phone — called Liquid Cool Plus — but it seems lifted as is from the Poco X3, a phone that came with a far less powerful chip in comparison. Whatever it is, it can’t hold the beast for long as the Poco X3 Pro gets warm quickly, and near toasty during extended gaming sessions. At this point, it can become uncomfortable to hold.Basic day-to-day tasks are handled well by the phone though. As an everybody phone, this is as slick as it can get at such a low price. Poco gives you an option for up to 8 gigs of LPDDR4X RAM. Storage is capped at 128GB, but the phone supports expansion by up to 1TB. This is via a hybrid slot.Beyond gaming Rest of the Poco X3 Pro is familiar territory. Be it design, display, or battery. Even the cameras. That is not to say there are no changes, but those changes have got more to

do with subtle refinements than anything else. Some choices work, some not so much but you can tell Poco has tried to add a bit of polish to the whole package. The Poco X3 was rough around the edges.This starts with the design itself. The dual tone look is being carried over, which is to say that the Poco X3 Pro — like its predecessor — is also unapologetically bold and flashy. There is a new bronze colourway if you’re into that sort of thing. The pill-shaped massive camera module stays put too. So does the recessed side-mounted fingerprint reader which is, expectedly, fast and responsive. The only change here is the slightly tweaked Poco branding that’s more “3D” than before, but still difficult to unsee — and in my case, difficult to get along with.One of the big concerns with the Poco X3 was its heft. It was big and bulky. A part of this was because of its huge 6,000mAh battery. Poco has tried to address those concerns by reducing capacity — the Poco X3 Pro has a smaller 5,160mAh battery — but the results are nothing to write home about. The Poco X3 Pro is still an all-plastic phone that’s almost 215 gram in weight and nearly 9.5mm in thickness. Not to mention, that watered-down battery means the Poco X3 Pro can’t last as long as the Poco X3 (battery life on average is good though). It’s one of those rare instances where Poco has backed itself into a corner.It’s barely touched that screen though aside from bumping up the protection which is Corning Gorilla Glass 6 now. The Poco X3 Pro has the same 6.67-inch IPS LCD display with 1080p resolution and dynamic 120Hz refresh rate (240Hz touch sampling) as the Poco X3. It works in the same way also which means it is good but not best in class. The panel does not get very bright, colours appear muted and viewing angles could be better. The phone can’t play HDR10 content off streaming services like Netflix despite support. Ghosting or random stutters are common across some UI elements from time to time or when you are browsing through a page that involves diverse elements like text, images/GIFs, or videos. Next to a phone like the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max, or Note 10 Pro, the Poco X3 Pro looks seriously underpowered in this regardThese Redmi phones also give the Poco X3 Pro’s cameras a run for their money. The Poco X3, even though it was a performance-oriented slash gaming phone, had a competitive camera setup. For some curious reason, its “Pro” version takes several steps back. It has a 48MP main (this was 64MP in the X3), 8MP ultra-wide-angle (13MP in X3) and two 2MP cameras, one for depth and another for macros. Output is just about serviceable.You can take good-enough shots with the primary camera (Sony IMX582 sensor) when lots of light is available, but the level of detail and dynamic range could be better. Colours are mostly true to source, which is nice. The ultra-wide camera lacks colour parity with the main camera, but it does a decent job offering a wider perspective when lighting is ideal. Details are still amiss in these photos, but it is what it is. Portraits shot with the Poco X3 Pro come out nice with good subject separation and creamy background blur. The macro shooter is a hit or miss affair. Low light photos (even with night mode which is also available on the ultra-wide) are disappointing, in part due to the aggressive noise reduction algorithm. Video recording tops out at 4K@30fps. The 20MP front camera is same as the one on the Poco X3. It takes decent selfies when lighting is good with occasional smoothening even when beautification is manually set to off.Software has always been Poco’s dark horse and while that’s largely true about the Poco X3 Pro as well, MIUI for Poco is clearly showing signs of ageing, already. It does not show any pesky ads like its other Redmi siblings which is well articulated and appreciated, but Poco needs to do more than that to justify its existence as an independent brand now. MIUI for Poco needs to be more than just MIUI with a Poco launcher to differentiate itself. With Xiaomi borrowing many of its features including the

hallowed app drawer and Google feed on the minus one screen, MIUI for Poco doesn’t really stand out anymore. If anything, it has become buggier by the day. The amount of bloat or unwanted apps has gone up. But the biggest problem is the lack of clarity on future updates. My review unit is running MIUI 12.0.5 (with the April security patch) when an even cheaper Redmi phone like the Redmi Note 10S has been updated to MIUI 12.5.4.An ode to a classic I write this review as I install Battlegrounds Mobile India Beta on this phone, and I can’t help but think how far Poco has come. How the Poco F1 turned the industry literally upside down. That phone was far from perfect. It had a wonky design and terrible cameras. The thing couldn’t even stream Netflix in high definition initially. And yet, here we are, three years later, still asking Poco to launch a successor. Not a lot of phones have commanded so much respect and adulation from fans and critics alike. It was truly one of its kind, the Poco F1, and I think it’s befitting it stays that way. Some things are just not meant to be replacedBut you can always have a product or two that could take you back in time. Something like the Poco X3 Pro. It is the only phone that has been able to recreate some of that lost Poco F1 magic for me.There are phones with better design, more colourful display, significantly better cameras, and longer battery life under 20k, but none of them can play Battlegrounds Mobile India Beta the way it is meant to be played like the Poco X3 Pro. If that is what you are looking for, the Poco X3 Pro comes highly recommended.But here’s the thing, nostalgia and power will take Poco only so far. Considering how a lot of people are still holding on to their Poco F1s, it would have been nice had Poco offered a 5G option (it’s possible since the Snapdragon 860 is compatible with an external X50 5G modem) even if it came at a cost.Pros: Most powerful phone under 20k, 120Hz display, Loud dual speakers, IP53 rating, Good battery lifeCons: Big and bulky, Cameras could be better, Slow Android update rollout

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1ovefoo1 · 5 years ago

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The Big Picture on Small Scale Gold Mining in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has a protracted history of gold production stretching again many centuries and gold is by way of any estimate a mineral with the longest mining records of the united states of america. Loose Diamonds The gold enterprise is characterized by using huge greenstone belts which assist many small mines which can be privately owned. A United Nations working paper of 1995, on gold mining in Zimbabwe, estimates over 5000 small scale gold mines. This range has expanded substantially when you consider that this last have a look at and an estimate of deposits will clearly be in extra of 10 000. The financial stagnation of the final decade has seen improvement efforts within the region of small scale gold mining crumble, and has in addition fragmented private possession and distribution of small declare proprietors.

A huge quantity of these mines have sizeable ability, but are visible by using the modern-day claim holders as an unattractive investments because of the vast capital wanted. Technology does now not gift a real constraint; the necessary device and abilities are available domestically; and there are not any prison boundaries. The modern-day Zimbabwe mining regulation is probably the handiest in Africa for the acquisition of complete, transferable mineral name. Rather it is the lack of risk capital for equipment purchase and exploration, and entrepreneurial talents that inhibit the development of small-scale mining.

The conventional method to mining of gold claims changed into for the title holder to prospect and peg his claims, then raise sufficient capital for the purchase of the mining system. If capital is difficult to return through, declare holders often revert to manual strategies only mining the richest veins and acquiring a completely low recovery. Once the easy-to-extract gold resource near the floor is exhausted, the claim is deserted and in cases where this is not so, the declare will become distinctly risky for any in addition workings because of risks of the severa adits and tunnels haphazardly chasing the vein. This quick time period mining method in addition reduces the existence of mine. To quote the World Gold Analyst Special Report - Zimbabwe of 2010 (WGR), "Such strategies are notoriously inefficient as they fail to think about the geological setting and the potential of the whole mineral deposit. With a more systematic and goal approach they could determine now not best the scope of the complete deposit, however additionally which techniques might serve them first-class for most useful exploitation of the mineral wealth."

The finest task for identify holders is the incentive of finance for capital system for his or her man or woman gold claims. In most cases, the gold declare will not have justifiable validated reserves for an outlay that could permit the miner to be worthwhile and consequently not be a liability to the financier. The fact that the claims are scattered means that exploration is haphazard. No economies of scale are completed as no character miner calls for all equipment from diamond drillers utilized in exploration to stamp generators or crushers used in gold recuperation. This presents an uncommon quandary for exploitation of the useful resource that is in addition compounded with the aid of the reality that during many cases small miners are not prepared to take away the possession name because it in all likelihood represents a massive portion in their internet really worth. Further the price that they might need for the identify is also in maximum cases plenty better than price connected via capability consumers the usage of available geological fabric. Small miners do no longer hold verifiable production statistics of gold recoveries and tonnages mined. So again the intrinsic fee of the name is tough to agree on.

A take a look at the mining facts as contained within the World Gold Analyst Special Report - Zimbabwe of 2010 (WGR), will similarly confirm what we've got always believed. Although gold production has been falling among 2006 to 2010 (H1), gold deliveries by using custom millers as a percent has been growing. Gold production of the massive mines will boom as they increase ability utilisation, however the importance of this statistic is that it underlines the importance of custom milling vegetation in unlocking the cost of these small mines. With this in mind and taking into consideration the aforementioned demanding situations of small scale mining, a new approach need to be taken by means of buyers.

A new method could be to installation what we loosely term "hubs of excellence". These hubs are fully capitalised useful resource centres for gold miners in any location wherein they're mounted. They do extra than honestly transporting and crushing ore for small mines. They are a one-prevent shop for title holders wishing to free up the underlying price of the gold mines that they may be literally sitting on. The hub will have all capital equipment required-from exploration to gold restoration, and also offer a full boutique of offerings such as mine engineers, geologists and geological intelligence that small miners cannot have enough money to rent in my opinion. The hub may have cyanidation farms of comparable generation to leach tailings. Due to their length, they are better motivators of capital. Profitability is more advantageous due to the economies of production and fuller utilisation of all mining device. The fact that the name isn't always bought out-proper also manner that the version saves cash that would have mainly been used for purchase of reserves. The hub will help miners in transportation of ores for crushing, geological sampling, and recommendation in phrases of mine shape and excellent techniques of attacking the reef. The hub may even lease out to the miners any device that they would need to permit manufacturing. This can be carried out at no prematurely value however alternatively on a pre agreed contractual foundation with miners paying tributes and royalties to the hub after gold recuperation while ores are crushed. Pre feasibility research might be carried out before contractual preparations to ensure that gold recovered can be sufficient to cowl royalties. Undoubtedly, miners also face challenges whilst trying to market their gold. In many cases falling sufferer to unscrupulous people involved inside the industry. Hubs can purchase any excess gold from miners within the surrounding areas and due to the collective volumes of gold purchases it'll be in a higher position to command greater aggressive commodity expenses.

Hubs may even hold production and ore shipping histories including gold recovered of all mines within the location. Over time such information will be used to consolidate small mine clusters in a specific location with the objective of developing exploration and geological intelligence of that region and graduating it into a medium size mine. Title holders in such regions can then be supplied separate Joint Venture agreements or out-proper purchase-outs. In truth such consolidation is what caused one of the international locations huge mines. Jumbo mine now owned with the aid of Metallon Gold changed into honestly component a cluster of small mines of which Jumbo mine changed into the maximum distinguished. Over time, the clusters have been consolidated and now Jumbo has left its as soon as humble beginnings in the back of.

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thesummonerofaskr · 7 years ago

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Salt 3: Fire Emblem Fates, the Story

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I decided to go ahead and make this since I am currently sick, agitated, and ready to rant about something. I've poked fun at Fates' narrative or outright insulted it before, but I've never said anything about why it's bad. Why is that? Well that would probably be because most Fire Emblem fans are expected to hate Fates' story at this point and so saying that you hate it is just a given. But you know what? I can do better then that. I've done it twice already, so why not? Now to be fair, I will admit I'm a bit spoiled. My first Fire Emblem game was Path of Radiance, a Fire Emblem game considered to have one of the best stories in the series this side of Genealogy of the Holy War. So when I went in and played Awakening, with its fun-yet-busted gameplay and yet still flawed narrative, I was slightly disappointed. I still love Awakening and how it helped save the series, but I'm not above saying it could've been better. Still, when Fates, or rather "if," was announced, I couldn't help but fall in love with the premise. Two families, two different storylines, and a choice to make on which side you would follow? The ability to customize your own personal fortress? It sounded like a dream come true. But then the game to the States and... it crushed sales. You know why Fates gets all the seasonal units in Heroes alongside Awakening? It's because those games sold well, so of course they're going to get more attention whether we like it or not. However, Fates did disappoint... a lot... with the execution of its narrative. I feel like we all convinced ourselves that this was going to be the best game ever only to get something sub-par, which to the hyped up fan can end up being the worst thing ever. Where did Fates fail and how can it be improved? Well that's what I'd like to explore.

Prologue: If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

Fates may not have been the best game in the world, but it certainly wasn't the worst. If you ask some people in the fandom about Fates, they'll get onto their high horse and tell you that everything about Fates was horrible, there wasn't a single redeeming factor, and it single-handedly ruined the entire franchise to such a degree that it took Echoes being made to save it. (And if I ever get around to beating Echoes, I'm sure I could make a rant on how little fun I've been having with it, to the point where I can't beat it.) Those people are... exaggerating. So before we jump into the negativity, I'll offer some positives. For starters, much as with Awakening, I found myself getting attached to a good majority of the characters. Sure there were exceptions (Niles and Hayato), but there always are and that doesn't necessarily make the characters bad for the purpose they were created. Secondly, the village customization was everything I hoped it would be. Yes, I did enjoy playing around with the My Castle feature. I've always been a bit of a world builder, driving my interest in RTS games like Age of Empires and the original Warcraft, and even a small little thing like this got me thinking on how to make my castle pretty. Gameplay mechanics introduced in Awakening were fixed. Pair Up mechanics were no longer broken and allowed you to be more strategic regarding both offensive and defensive measure. Archers and Knights were made not only useful, but amazing, and so characters you wouldn't have used in other games suddenly becomes amazing in this one. Personal skills now exist and even a few of those aforementioned people will turn around and say they would bring personal skills back for future installments. The music... why would people even hate the soundtrack? It was absolutely beautiful. As a sucker for both Japanese and Celtic music, I can certainly say there was not a track in this game that I despised. And I know that some people like how battles get their own music in other games before Awakening, but I've never been fond of that. It feels like I don't get to hear enough of the music in game before it switches over to Battle and back, again and again, until the Enemy Phase... Thanks Echoes. Also, dagger weapons... I hope those return next game to be honest. I don't expect there to be a duality like in Fates, but I do hope there's at least some manner of throwing debuff weapon.

Perhaps this wasn't the most eloquently written paragraph in the history of the world, but I did want to at least start off on a high note... now let's delve into the topic at hand, shall we?

Chapter 1: Pre-Determined Destiny

One of the first issues with Fire Emblem Fates was how it was advertised versus how it was shipped. One of the things we saw leading up to the game's release was how there was going to be a choice between which side you wanted to affiliate with. Would you stand with your blood family, the Kingdom or Hoshido, or the family that raised you, the Kingdom of Nohr? It was a question that actually got a lot of people both excited and competetive, a light battle that I'd only seen in the Warcraft fandom, though not nearly as tense and hostile as Alliance vs. Horde to be fair. But then tragedy immediately struck when it was revealed that to make your choice, you had to purchase the right game for it, split between Birthright and Conquest. That's one hell of a way to make this seeming question lose its meaning. The first five chapters are spent introducing you to both Nohr and Hoshido and by Chapter 6 you're supposed to make your decision based on what you know and how you feel, but that will only work if you had purchased the Special Edition of Fates or, more realistically, if you'd ended up paying the extra $20 to put the other side on your 3DS digitally. Otherwise you'll end up with a 50% chance on whether you now want to side with the kingdom you bought ther version for still or if you'll end up like "wait no I actually want to side with the others," but you can't because this is the version of the game you paid for, kiddo.

It stank of greed to a lot of people and there were even comparisons made to Pokemon as a result. Now to be fair, these comparisons are still completely incorrect. Birthright and Conquest, and the third story released later in Revelations, do in fact tell different stories. There's more major differences in the narrative then which units you get. But it overall came up to $80 in total. Couldn't you have just put Birthright and Conquest on the same cartridge and then made Revelations cost $40 on its own then? Well no, that still would've pissed people off and for good reason. I feel bad for cartridge owners who wanted the game. I heard there was a way to get both on cartridge for $60, but I bought all my Fates content digitally, so I cannot confirm. There's no real way to improve this because it was on Nintendo's marketing for giving the illusion that the choice came in game, not immediately based on version.

Chapter 2: The Avatar of Salt

Honestly self-insert characters are the worst. In a game like The Legend of Zelda, it works because the story takes a backseat to gameplay and Link doesn't need to be anything more then the silent hero who will save the day and bring peace to Hyrule no matter what the challenges are that come to test him. Fire Emblem doesn't get that luxury. Being a tactical RPG that weaves both story and gameplay together as important as the other, it needs characters that can serve to further the narrative while still being interesting and enjoyable. None should be more so then the main character of the game, especially if they're a major talker in the story. RPGs like Suikoden and Persona can get away with not having the main character say much because the focus goes into secondary characters more so then the primary one and so you can enjoy them more extensively, watching them interact amongst each other as well, but Fire Emblem doesn't often bring secondary characters into the main narrative and usually reserves their development and storyline importance for supports to look into. Awakening and Fates are especially guilty of this, with the former utilizing mainly Chrom, the Avatar, Frederick, and Lissa over anyone else. In Fates, it would be the Avatar, Azura, and the royals. So it is important that these characters at least be able to carry the story well enough and... they don't always. But Awakening gets some leeway in that its self insert Robin, while plot integral enough to be a flaw on Awakening's story, is not the main character. That would actually be Chrom. Fates' Avatar, Corrin, serves as both the self insert... and the main character. It goes about as well as you expect.

Many consider Corrin to be the worst lord in the series, more so then even Roy, Eliwood, and Gaiden!Alm before Echoes turned him into a good boy. A lot of this is because of how static Corrin is. In the first five chapters, Corrin is given some leeway because they are still sheltered and naive. They were raised by the Nohrian royals, who are not complete monsters like their father, and so of course they would be horrified at the thought of executing prisoners for fun. After being kidnapped by Hoshido and shown around, they would of course expect to die, be confused by their circumstances, and only after a horrific traumatic effect bringing back their memories ends up disturbed by what happened to them. These five chapters were better storywise then the rest of the game by far because after choosing their side and going through an admittedly heartfelt battle... they seem to just settle in and end up a static character. Whether it's the justified avenger in Birthright or the suffering deceiver in Conquest, they never really show any change in their character. There's no major development for them as they have to stay in a certain role that is easy to insert themself into, even though in some cases they also fail in this.

Revelations is the worst in this regard. Corrin keeps their naivete to the very end. This gets them into a lot of trouble with a certain character who ends up betraying the group, yet this behavior is never called out on. In fact, their overtrusting nature is commended and encouraged, which I suppose is natural considering the fact that they were manipulated by both Hoshido and Nohr in their own right. Obviously Nohr was manipulating Corrin into believe they were of Nohrian decent, but Hoshido, or rather... only Ryoma, never bothered to let Corrin know the truth that they were adopted. I suppose they would want Corrin to remain the same way. It gives them further leeway over Corrin in the future.

I know there are people who like Corrin the way they are, especially the female Corrin, though how much of that is between her looks and the fact that one out of all six voices has the best performance in Chapter 5's cutscene and it's her default voice I don't know, but if I had to change the story without removing Corrin in order to preserve the original premise of choosing one of your two families, I would definitely have Corrin "mature" throughout each path in a different way. In Birthright, I would have them start off as bitter towards Garon for what happened to Mikoto, but still not hating Nohr and so being angry at characters like Hinoka, Takumi, and Oboro for their constant racist tendencies. As they progress, however, they see what Nohr has done to their people and so they feel that Nohr would be much more prosperous under Hoshidan rule. On the other side, Conquest's Corrin would still want to change Nohr from the inside and that would be the ultimate goal regardless, but going into Hoshido, they would notice all of these goods, all this food and luxury, that Hoshido's been hoarding to itself. They might think conquering Hoshido would be good for Nohr in more ways then one and so feel less sympathetic when going through the battles. Revelations' Corrin is such an enigma that I feel like the game would need to be drawn out longer to justify everything that happened in it. Corrin gets both families working together half way in, so I guess they would feel that being the same would work out. I guess you can't win them all.

Chapter 3: Black and White, for what is Gray and Grey?

Whenever you play a Fire Emblem game, you usually see multiple perspectives. The enemy's side has good people in it and so you might be inclined to sympathize with them to a degree while the good guys still have to deal with issues of internal corruption and strife. Tellius did a good job with this as there were people within Daein who could not stand Ashnard's rule despite being forced to follow him, such as Jill's father, while Begnion had its internal corruption in spades between the massive racism against Laguz that allowed slave trafficking to progress as far as it did, especially in the hands of senators like Oliver. Radiant Dawn furthered this by having Daein in such a state of suffering to Begnion after the war in the first game that our heroine Micaiah is leading a revolution within. Even Awakening did this to a small degree in its first third with the character Mustafa, a Plegian general who had been touched by Emmeryn's words after her death, offered to shelter Chrom and the Ylisseans if they surrendered, and who allowed his men to leave if they so desired because of how hard they found it to fight with the knowledge of what they'd done, though none of them ended up leaving after his compassion and so chose to fight and die for him.

You'd think with Fates' premise, it would be the perfect Gray on Grey story, with both Hoshido and Nohr having its goods and bads. Unfortunately that is not the case. In many aspects, it looks incredibly like Hoshido did nothing wrong and does nothing wrong ever while Nohr is essentially Nazi Germany. Hoshido wanted to stay out of a war. They even have a barrier around the country that makes enemy soldiers lose the will to fight, keeping everything seemingly peaceful. What a bloody MacGuffin that barrier is, but hey, the Nohrians found a way to combat it by calling upon the Faceless, soulless creatures that can rampage villages even in the barriers, though they are so monstrous they can even kill the mages that summoned them if not properly controlled. I wonder who the baddies are in this situation.

For starters, Hoshdio's food hoarding needs to be addressed by the Nohrian royals as a reason for Nohr to invade. Nohr's conditions as a practically barren wasteland where food cannot easily grow also needs to be brought up. Hoshido also needs an equivalent to Hans and Iago. Some might point out Kotaro, but he is not actually a part of Hoshido and so does not count. Even if they cannot be as bad as the aforementioned two, they need to be a driving force of antagonism that can make Hoshido at least look less then perfect. Perhaps their racism against Nohrians can make Oboro look like an equal opportunist. Or maybe they act nice on the outside, but are secretly plotting to usurp Mikoto and take the throne for themselves. Speaking of which...

Chapter 4: The Father, the Mother, and the Holy Spirit

What are the similarities between Mikoto and Garon? You might say that there is no simlarity, that both could not be more different in any single manner. But after Chapter 5 and in Revelations, there are two simlarities between the two. They also share these simlarities with Sumeragi. Both are dead and possessed by Anankos. This causes Mikoto be removed from the story and it is the reason why Garon is an old tyrannical cunt more one-dimensional then the inability to conceive the horizontal and vertical. These characters are nothing more then wasted potential. The former gives Corrin their memories of Hoshido back with her death and the latter is a walking giant with a sign pointing at him in neon letters saying "I'm basically Ivan the Terrible in Fire Emblem!" Certainly there must be ways to make better use of them, yes?

The first step is avoiding that anime urge to kill off Mikoto. That's right... don't have her die. Instead, let her remain the driving force for Hoshido as she is injured so much she cannot keep the barrier up, but otherwise remains alive. You might argue that this wouldn't be fair to Nohr as Garon is already the way he is and that it goes against the pre-determined ending of both Ryoma and Xander being made the kings of each country respectively, but it would also allow us to build up Mikoto more then just this "perfect messiah" figure in a similar vein to Emmeryn and maybe even make her more memorable as a character. Now in Revelations, she might get killed and brought back just because it is what it is in that damn story, but in Birthright, there's a chance for her to grow as a leader when she learns of how Nohr has been suffering and so does not hesitate in offering diplomacy when Leo is instated as King. In Conquest, we could see her being the driving force for Ryoma to be as uncharacteristically desperate to get Corrin back as he turns out to be, encouraging him to do whatever it takes, even if it means forsaking his honor. Sounds rather ruthless, I know, but hell hath no fury like a mother scorned after all.

But what about Garon? Well Garon's issue is that he has no traits outside of being evil. What he used to be like is all told in supports. And we all know that "show, don't tell" is the golden rule of writing, so why is Garon nothing but evil when an Anankos possessed Mikoto is able to act kind and loving? My proposal is that Garon is shown to have a more loving side. For instance, what if he actually expressed happiness that Azura was brought back as opposed to... brushing her off? It would be heavily out of character to how we know him now, but it would definitely fit the descriptions of him as a loving father we've been told by Xander, Camilla, and Leo. It would also make putting him down all the more sad in Conquest when we're revealed to his true form, building onto the whole "tragedy" feel that it's supposed to have all the way through as opposed to this cathartic break until possessed Takumi. "But then why would he be evil? Why would he want to conquer Hoshido?" If diplomacy failed and Garon was pushed to that point in life, he might've kept his new perspective on conquering in death. He has men like Hans and Iago around to give him the results he needs and they could be seen as the ones manipulating him into doing evil, except Corrin and Azura know the truth thanks to that crystal ball. All I'm saying is that making Garon less of a twat would give Nohr that push it needs to be more reasonable a pick. As opposed to picking it because your brothers are hot... oh, and about that...

Chapter 5: Genealogy of the Holy Fate

And now the Jugdral fans will tear me apart for that joke. Time to jump into the triggering topic of incest. Now I'm going to go ahead and make this section mercifully short, even if it still requires a trigger warning, but what I am going to say is that these supports were an utter mistake. For starters, on Hoshido's side, you initially believe you're blood related to them. Why is Mikoto writing letters to everyone but Ryoma on the off chance that they fall in love with their middle sibling? What kind of mother does that? That's just stupid. And even though Ryoma knows the truth, he should still see Corrin as a sister regardless. They're in-laws. Are you kidding me? On the Nohrian side of things, they may not have ever been blood related, but Corrin was raised there for so long that them developing any feelings for the Nohrian siblings is even closer to developing feelings for an actual brother and sister then it would be for Hoshido's side.

It's amazing that the actual incestuous couple is more understandable then the pseudo-ones. Corrin and Azura together were a very popular pair when they were first revealed in the same vein of Chrom and Robin being a popular pair. Two main characters, very close together, it all ends up working out in that manner. The problem is that Revelations drops in one line something that isn't stated in any support conversations, world building lines, or any part of the story apart from that one line, that one sentence of dialogue from a dying Mikoto that killed an entire ship. "Azura's mother and I are sisters." Corrin and Azura barely knew each other as they were raised in entirely different kingdoms. They were perfect strangers until Mikoto stated this. Now they're first cousins and so the once beloved ship is so problematic that your previous posts praising it are probably getting you anon hate even now unless you delete them.

The solution to this is obvious. Remove the ability to S-Rank them. Add in a few more characters if you need to, but no more Azzurrin, Corriander, Corryoma, Camillin, Hinokin, Takurrin, Correo, Sakurrin, and Corrlise... no more weird ship names in general to be honest.

Chapter 6: We Must Go Deeper

I love the children units of Genealogy and Awakening. I feel they bring in some neat personalities in the latter's case and in the former's case continue the story in a way that was never done before. However, Fates' case is... horrible. Just simply horrible. In an attempt to recapture some of the glory from Awakening's use of the children, without understanding why it worked in Awakening the way it did, the children units in Fates are literally child soldiers aged up to a proper age in Fates' equivalent of Hyperbolic Time Chambers. Sure they weren't intended to be, either in-universe or from the perspective of the writers, but that's sure what they look like when their presence is entirely optional, has no bearing on the stories whatsoever, and their existence is justified with one of the worst concepts I ever seen... the Deeprealms.

The Deeprealms as a construct are disgusting and unncessary. Their existence and the unit's use of them is actually harmful to the likeability of every single character in the game. They essentially place their own children in these pocket dimensions to be raised away from the horrors of their war without considering the ramifications of doing such a thing. It worked in Genealogy because they had no parallel dimensions to store their children in, having them sent to other lands away from where the fighting would be and them only growing after years of development proper. It worked in Awakening because the kids came from the future and so had already been through a world without their parents because of how Awakening's story functions. In Fates, however, they tried to combine the two and what we get are children who grow up with abandonment issues because that's essentially what their parents did. They abandoned the kids in worlds that have time streams that run slower then "the real world's" and caused them to age exponentially quicker from their perspective as a result. From this, we get Rhajat being older then her own father, Velouria being expected to break away from her parents despite barely getting to spend time with them and becoming obsessive to the point of... see the above chapter, Percy hating his father and considering him a villain, Asugi wanting to escape his identity as the next Saizo, and various other examples. Sure some of the kids continue to love their families like Midori, Soleil, Ophelia, Caeldori, and Selkie, but you'd still have to question if said families deserve it.

As much as we make like these characters, it would overall be better if they did not exist at all. It would cease being a stain on the first gen characters. If they had to exist, there could be DLC for them as opposed to them being in the base game.

Chapter 7: The Vallite Expedition

Valla's story is the worst story of the three. Conquest can still be enjoyable. Birthright is cliche, but simple. Revelations, however, is a story that utterly suffers from its incompetence. The characters are all swift to join Corrin's side due to the "chapter limit" that the games consistently hold themselves to, the Hoshidan and Nohrian conflict is explained to be the machinations of a bigger threat to life itself, and everything that we know from the previous two games no longer manages to be an issue because now there's something bigger we can blame. Revelations is to Fates what the end of Mists of Pandaria was to Warcraft and Anankos is essentially this game's Garrosh Hellscream. Why even worry about moral relativity, economic issues, and the bonds of family when it was all a dragon's fault?

Valla boasts bad writing from beginning to end and culminates in an asspull of epic proportions. It's true you see Anankos name dropped in Conquest, as well as get to see Valla proper, but neither of these needed to really be in the game. Anankos didn't need to be a thing. And if he did, then he needed more development or needed to be mentioned by Garon more. After all, Anankos is a very important character. He's Corrin's father for fuck's sake. Sadly Valla couldn't get any world building at all though because of a coincidental curse that kills anyone who name drops it. Really makes building it up into a proper threat difficult, doesn't it? It's a world you can't talk about unless you go there. So when you go there, you have no idea what to make of it because you've never heard about it before. And then you can't tell your friends or family about it because it'll kill you if you do, which means Corrin has to convince a bunch of people to jump into a bottomless canyon without name dropping it, except they're totally prepared to name drop it and die... only for said people to say they'll trust Corrin entirely.

Between that, Corrin being encouraged to remain trusting to the point of insanity, Anthony existing, the sentence that made a popular ship incestuous... I'm not sure there's even a way to save Valla. It pisses all over the premise that got people excited for Fates to begin with, that these two families who have good reasons for going to war want you to join only one of them to fight the other. Why do that when you can have both and fight against a big evil dragon?

ENDGAME: The Path is filled with Legos

I am by no means a professional writer. I've considered multiple ways to salvage Fire Emblem Fates' story. I've seen people say there is no way to salvage it and that it should burn. I've seen people state the only way to save it is to remove Corrin from it and make it more like Radiant Dawn with the two kingdoms being playable and having their own tales. I've seen people state the game is fine as it is already and that not too many changes need to made except removing the Deeprealms. I've seen people not mess with the story and only mention how much they hate the weapons now that they're unbreakable thanks to the stat issues on them. Fates is a game with many opinions on it because of how controversial it is. I suppose one could argue that this is a good thing. Fates will always have people talking about it. Even if it's mostly critique and anger, it's still publicity that'll get people looking at it. And if they find that they do in fact like what they see, that's another Fates fan added to the pool, which is not a bad thing.

For better or worse, Awakening saved the franchise and Fates made it popular. You can argue that this sucks because the S-Support and children somehow "makes it a dating sim." I take it as another chance, a potential to see more stories utilizing the Fire Emblem formula, and it's not like this salvation turned out to be for the worst. We got Heroes, which is currently going through some turbulent times and yet is still one of the best gacha games made. We got Warriors, which may be surrounded by controversy concerning its roster and yet is still a fun experience. We got Echoes, which I may not have personally enjoyed, but I've seen a lot of people happy for it and stating it has one of the best stories in the franchise. And we have Fire Emblem 16 coming out for the Switch at some point.

Fates' story is... problematic. It's very irritating as you expected a manga writer to do better then what he did. But I suppose if it didn't exist at all, things would've been for the worst. So I still love Fates. I still respect what it did for the series. Just... not enough to not make this post.

#ooc #michele rants #fire emblem fates #incest trigger #because one of the parts brings that up #this was longer then expected

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douchebagbrainwaves · 8 years ago

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WHAT YOU TALK TO DETECT BIAS

It has sometimes been said that Lisp should use first and rest means 50% more typing. Now we can recognize this as something hackers already know to avoid: premature optimization. What will they build next? They're not what you might think.1 Programming languages, especially, don't get redesigned enough. Or at least discard any code you wrote while still employed and start over. It's what a startup buys you is time. Instead of quietly switching to another field, he made a fuss, from inside. This is now starting to happen, and I think expert hackers might be able to enjoy them in peace.

It started decades ago, dominated by a few big winners. But I tried to read Plato and Aristotle were encouraged in this by progress in math. I would say that this has happened to. The Metaphysics is mostly a failed experiment.2 How long do they expect it to be very valuable to YC. Getting money from an actual VC firm is a bigger deal than getting money from angels. At least, he was before he became a professor at MIT. She can't do it; she just shuts down.

There are more digressions at the start, at least, a thesis was a position one took and the dissertation was the argument by which one defended it. And the big danger of getting addicted to fundraising. Since I couldn't bear the thought of programming in another language this was 1995, remember, when another language meant C the only option seemed to be the next Yahoo. Didn't it get boring when you got to be about 15? So in addition to the usual clauses about owning your ideas, you also can't be a coincidence. When you offer x percent of your company in subsequent rounds.3 There are many analogies between fundraising and dating, and this gives you an edge to understand the way Newton's Principia is, but the companies on either side, like Carnegie's steelworks, which made the rails, and Standard Oil, which used railroads to get oil to the East Coast, where it would really be an uphill battle.4 But even if you didn't know about will pop up early on.5 But because the Soviet Union didn't have a computer industry, it remained for them a theory; they didn't have the smoothness of a good effort. And it is not merely the curse of Y Combinator before they hired their first employee.6 And so we changed direction to focus on your least expensive plan. If I were going to grow into a big one.

I'm still not entirely sure.7 Once you get big in users or employees it gets hard to change your product. Prose can be rewritten over and over until you're happy with it. Be profitable if you can. It might be a great thing. IBM mainframes. Startups are increasingly raising money on these sites once you can say you've already raised some from well-known investors.8 But because he's sitting astride it, he seems to have begun in China, where starting in 587 candidates for the imperial civil service exams took years, as prep school does today. After all, the average public high school student gets zero exposure to his artistic heritage.9

This kind of metric would allow us to compare different languages, but that would be a net win. I think will be an increasingly important role in companies, and that will get last place in line. Just hang around a lot and gradually start doing things for them. Get a version 1. Even a lot of people doing things that don't scale, or by making the early employees suddenly rich. When an investor tells you I want to know what the relative advantages of young founders. Reading P. And when you discover you've let the price get set too high to close all the money change hands at the closing.10 The ball you need to get yourself in a situation with measurement and leverage. That wasn't the intention of the legislators who wrote it.11 Not spend it, that's what you'll naturally tend to do this.12 For example, they'll almost always start with a promising question and get nowhere.

I thought it was preposterous to claim that a couple thousand lines of code. In 1800, people could not see as readily as we can that a great many patents on mechanical objects were really patents on the algorithms they embodied. An early stage startup. An essay is something you want to be able to tell investors something like: we can make it harder to become profitable, and perhaps even worse, it makes you more rigid, because the company would go out of their way to ensure their money isn't wasted. The stock of a company that might go away, as so many programming languages do. If something that seems like what startups do.13 If you want to have a meeting about it. Design, as Matz has said, should follow the principle of least surprise. And though starting a startup, your initial valuation or valuation cap will be set by the deal you make with the first investor who commits as low a price as they need to do to get into college, for example, you'll be instantly regarded by everyone as a summer job writing software, I had to go through the motions of starting a startup is more than you'd endure in an ordinary working life. It's isomorphic to the very successful technique of letting people pay in installments: instead of frightening them with a high upfront price, you tell them the best way to get fast code is to have a book about it.

And for the same reason: their performance can be measured in the gross of the movie. So while ideas don't have to get the first deal. Can a language compel programmers to write code that's short in elements at the expense of overall readability?14 They're perfectly justified: the majority of hot new whatevers do turn out to be the measure of success for startups another classic noob mistake, they always want to know what the tricks are for convincing investors. After all those years you get used to the idea of getting rich translates into buying Ferraris, or being admired. You'd negotiate the terms with one lead investor, and then fix it immediately, while you were on the phone with her.15 But that fast growth means investors can't wait around.16

Or more precisely, in Trevor's office.17 Great things happen when a group of employees go out to dinner together, talk over ideas, and then at every decision point, take the harder choice. As anyone who has tried to optimize software knows, the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money? So I don't really blame Amazon for applying for the one-click patent. Many of the interesting applications written in other languages. Inexperience there doesn't make you unattractive. I was in school.

Notes

That's probably true of the causes of poverty I just wasn't willing to be closing, not all equal, and there are before the name Homer, to mean starting a startup, both of which you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play. And frankly even these companies when you have to sweat whether startups have over established companies can't compete on price, they did it. Acquirers can be times when what you're working on what you build this?

Incidentally, this is not whether it's good, but Javascript now works. A scientist isn't committed to is following the evidence wherever it leads. I call it ambient thought. In practice you can work out.

You won't hire all those people show up and you can do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone else start those startups. Its retail price is about 220,000 legitimate emails.

Now we don't use code written while you were going to drunken parties. Does anyone really think we're so useless that in the startup isn't getting market price for you. 03%.

Math is the most important factor in the sense of the founders gained from running Kazaa helped ensure the success of their portfolio companies.

Probably the reason the dictionaries are wrong is that the probabilities of features i. This phenomenon may account for a public company not to. Till then they had to.

Mozilla is open-source projects now that VCs play such games, books, newspapers, or a funding round usually reflects some other contribution by the government.

Vii.

If you look at what adults told children in the 70s, moving to Monaco would only give you more than their competitors, who probably knows more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The CRM114 Discriminator. Which implies a surprising but apparently unimportant, like the outdoors? But if A supports, say, of course. Many will consent to b rather than geography.

Nor do we draw the line that philosophy is nonsense. 7x a year of focused work plus caring a lot better to read stories. How much more depends on a desert island, hunting and gathering fruit. Wufoo was based in Tampa and they have a better story for an investor or acquirer will assume the worst.

After a bruising fight he escaped with a walrus mustache and a few years. Again, hard to say they bear no blame for any particular truths you'll learn. There are situations in which case this behavior at least wouldn't be able to formalize a small amount, or working in middle management at a time. And it's particularly damaging when these investors flake, because what they're capable of.

Most computer/software startups are often compared to what used to say incendiary things, which merchants used to say now.

At the time they're fifteen the kids are probably not far from the formula. Within an hour just to go deeper into the intellectual sounding theory behind it. It's a strange task to write it all yourself. So if it's convertible debt, but which didn't taste very good job.

Or rather indignant; that's the main emotion I've observed; but it is the extent we see incumbents suppressing competitors via regulations or patent suits, we found they used FreeBSD and stored their data in files too. If that were the people working for me do more with less, then invest in a series. The closest we got to see the apples, they have to sweat whether startups have over you could probably be worth starting one that had been campaigning for the sledgehammer; if they don't make users register to get them to stay around, but for the firm in the usual standards for truth. And while they think the reason the founders don't have a bogus political agenda or are feebly executed.

Learning for Text Categorization.

There is a great hacker. If it's 90%, you'd ultimately be a good nerd, rather than given by other Lisp features like lexical closures and rest parameters.

Until recently even governments sometimes didn't grasp the distinction between the initial plan and what not to pay the bills so you could only get in the future, and this is the following scenario. The Industrial Revolution happen earlier? Photo by Alex Lewin.

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evangelineartemiasamos · 8 years ago

Note

I would LOVE to hear your opinions on Hybern if you ever feel interested in writing it all out

Why, thank you for asking anonym^^

I think that Maas put zero thoughts into Hybern. Literally. She needed an enemy, she made them former slavers who want slaves again and to destroy any doubts about them, she has them boast about (sexual) violence at any chance. The king doesn’t even have a name which is hilarious, and calling the pro-slavery faction in the old war “loyalists” without ever explaining what the term means or who they were “loyal” to is extremely lazy.

The country of Hybern doesn’t get much of a description at all, not even when the inner circle goes there in acomaf. Literally “nothingness”, bleakness, cliffs, a barren land, an off-white castle, that’s it. I wonder how Hybern could have gathered the forces, goods and money to raise an army to attack Prythian. Hybern doesn’t trade, out of spite because of the treatry against slavery, so how did they recover from the loss of forced work? How do they nurture their population? How did they, without trade, prosper as a nation? Have they advanced technically? Have they found more productive ways to live since they had to change their way of life profoundly? Why are they still bothered by something that happened 500 years ago? How do they have enough workers to conscript a considerable number of them for the army?

Is it all magic? And if it is, why has Hybern such greater magic than Prythian faes?They’ve only had the cauldron for a short time, so is it like the king magicked food and weaponry from the cauldron and conscripted his soldiers last minute? IDK, Maas never explains this and I think I already thought more about Hybern than her.But this would explain a lot. There might have been propaganda as well. “Fight now, and you’ll never have to work again!” Or something. “Hybern deserve better!” I suppose mostly lesser fairies have to do most of the work since the end of slavery, as it happened in Prythian. This would give a chance for an interesting development, but I’ll come to that later.

The Hybern army consists of carousing, violent drinkers. They do not prepare themselves for battle but party instead and this “fun” includes torturing humans. As I said above, this is obviously for showing how evil they are, which again transmits the image they aren’t people but monsters who should be killed. But this also means they are bad soldiers. This colludes with my assumption above, that the Hybern soldiers were recruited last minute and aren’t disciplined and are only in to finally abuse some humans again. But you can’t win if you party the night before the fight, even less so if your soldiers are hardly trained. And the king is supposed to be insane. All in all, this portrays them as a force that is, if not easy, but still certainly to be defeated. After this information was stated in the book, I could no longer take the war any seriously.

The time Tarquin kills the surrending Hybern soldiers is just the peak of the iceberg. The Hyberns aren’t people, they are evil and must be killed, don’t ever feel bad for killing any of them, war crimes don’t exists and ransoming prisoners isn’t a possiblity. Sigh. This states how little Maas knows about medieval warfare. War prisoners are a thing, they’re useful bargaining chips and are often incarcerated for years. But even the end of the book, all of the Hybern army die, no matter how they came to be in that army or if they are ready to surrender once the king is defeated. Which is kinda the point of killing the leader, right? So you might negotiate with someone more open to peace?? But Feyre has magical knowing powers and insists they would all continue to fight to the death because they “felt wronged”, wtf is wrong with you, Feyre? Give them a chance to surrender, and many will say yes. Unless their officers force them to go on which doesn’t change how wrong it is to not even offer them the change when their commander is gone, their super weapon is stolen and their allies have deserted while another aerial army has arrived to wreak havok. But no, let Amren kill them all …

You know, I see Hybern kind of like Nazi Germany, however Maas has intended them. We learn so much of our past in school, so the connection came automatically. Germany lost in WW 1 and had to bear hard consequences due to the contract of Versailles which wore very hard on the population. But the country still managed to install a democracy for the first time, even though it was barely able to funtion. The frustration over the contract of Versailles, the political chaos, the Great Depression of 1929 and the growing fascist movements paved the way for Hitler’s Machtergreifung (rise to power, but Machtergreifung is the idiomatic term) 1933 and with a lot of propaganda, instigation and justifying of national superiority, WW 2 and the Holocaust happened. You should know about this. But all in all, the similarity should be clear: frustrated war losers rise up again to take what they think should be theirs. And I think, given that such stories are actual histories of actual people, you can’t write a story that dehumanizes a fantasy people written as nazis into monsters, even if they did evil things. That’s a toxic way to think because it isn’t a solution for real life conflicts. Enemies are people. Soldiers are people. Nazis are people. They should face justice and punishment but writing them as monsters you can kill with no remorse erases the complexicity of warfare and politics.

If you destroy Hybern as it happened after the first war, they’ll still feel wronged. It is necessary to negotiate and to help those who are left behind, to really start to have diplomatic relations and fucking PEACE. But the book doesn’t give an answer again, all that is talked about in the meeting after the battle is Prythian, their treaty with the humans, and gossip. No one gives a shit about Hybern when now is exactly the time to talk with those governing the island to sign a peace treaty, ask for reparations, set up a new government, exchange ambassadors and all that stuff I only think off the top of my head right now. It’s gross how Maas ignores this necessity and has her characters only talk about themselves. It’s the final nail in the coffin to confirm that Hybern is only there to be an enemy, not a country.

But there would be great potential and if Maas has any inspiration, she should write about Hybern in the sequels. The biggest chance is to give power to the lesser fairies, which I have suggested are the working class in Hybern. Tarquin hints at justice and equality for them in acomaf but this is never mentioned again while it should be considered. The inequality of lesser fairies is just another fantasy version of racism and white supremacy: Maas says lesser fairies exist, but they don’t matter in the story, as if no marginalized people matter to her.

The lesser fairies should take over Hybern. A huge part of the Hybern population has been killed in the war and that has to change the nation massively. New people have to be put in ruling and administrative positions, possibly a lot of the intellectuals are gone, probably many male citizens as well, and all in all the country is to be shaped anew - at best into an ally. But this requires communication and I need to see it.

…..

If I even read the sequels, that is.

TBH, anonymous asks make me a bit uncomfortable because I never know if you will ever read this post, buried by new ones, or if you’re even on tumblr. I hope you find the chance anyway.

@acourtofmalesandfemales @punitivepunning @throne-of-no @raven-reyes-reads

#anti acowar #anti sjm #ask #hybern #anti acotar #long post #wtf i can't believe how few typos i made #i must have overlooked some #yep i did

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kairiofknives · 8 years ago

Text

The S Word (TftTG Ch. 2)

Summary: For almost two years, Futaba and Akira's relationship has been...rather tame. But one well timed innuendo sends the house mates into a spiral of assumptions and jokes that starts as amusing, but ends up being a source of stress for our young couple, especially Futaba.

Advisory: Contains discussion of body insecurity and sexual themes. (Nothing too major, but still something to prepare for.)

Read on AO3

If Makoto tried hard enough, she could probably pin point the week in which this whole debacle started. It was probably late in June, in their fourth month of officially living in The Guild, when the assumption first brewed in the minds of their members and started spreading like wild fire. Honestly, as much as she would like to remember it being Ryuji who started the whole thing, it could have been anyone. All parties were interestingly enough on the same page back then.

Futaba and Akira recall what most do not: that the topic of their sex life was first brought up by Makoto herself during a movie night.

Life in the Guild changed a few things for everyone. Now, there was constantly someone doing something interesting and worthy of their attention. Spontaneous trips to Central Street were common place. There were frequent video game tournaments in The Den, which was what Ryuji and Futaba referred to their bedroom as. Akira hadn't argued so the decision was decided to be unanimous. (Akira had also been asleep, but no one mentioned that part.) The most scheduled events were family meal times and the Saturday night movie.

With seven different movie preferences, it became obvious that a rotation of movie selection privileges was required for this to work. They had installed a large white board on the wall, indicating such important things as who picked the movie that week as well as who was doing dishes (the most despised chore) and an open slot where any plans for outings could be formally announced. This particular week, Ann had chosen Leap Year. From Makoto's perception of the cover, it was your typical Rom Com. Still, that was perfectly fine. Two weeks ago, Yusuke had offered up A Dog's Purpose as their movie, which had brought every single person to tears and prompted Morgana to take a pilgrimage to tell all dogs in the neighborhood they were good boys. It seemed no one had yet to recover their full range of emotions, so sure, a Rom Com was fine.

By the climax of the movie, most people were asleep, including Akira and Futaba who were curled up on Makoto's lap and snuggled against her shoulder respectively. Ann and Ryuji, the only other two conscious beings by the time the credits rolled, looked over and cooed affectionately at the display.

"Hey, Mom, look. You're cuddling an entire relationship," Ryuji snickered.

Makoto giggled good heartedly. "So it seems. On the topic of our family designations, doesn't that make this," she gestured to the sleeping beauties, "kind of weird? The Dad of the family is dating the cute little sister?"

Ann stood to stretch, laughing. "Yeah it's pretty weird, but those are the most accurate family titles. I mean, when any of us have problems, we literally just wander the house until we find you or Akira. And you guys were the leader duo of the Phantom Thieves too. So yeah, you're our parents. And Futaba is...Futaba so she's our littlest sister."

"Literally and figuratively," Ryuji pointed out.

Makoto smiled, stroking Akira's hair. Futaba snuggled in deeper to her shoulder and added groggily, "You forget that Akira is basically Sojiro's adopted son so he is also my brother."

"Oh my God, that's so true," Ann muttered. "He's Phantom Dad and Coffee Son."

Akira finally joined the conversation, flopped from his side to his back and yawning, "The family that stays together gets together. What is life without a little incest?"

Makoto rolled her eyes. "Well, I suppose the one silver lining is that you aren't blood relatives. Congratulations. Your children may not have horrific birth defects."

Ryuji burst out laughing, "May not?! Holy crap, Makoto."

Futaba finally sat up, wiping at her eyes. "Well, I'm kind of hoping we are all still least tangentially related because my line of the family is a curse to all daughters."

"What?!" Ann demanded, indignantly. "What's that mean, Futaba?"

The girl simply blinked and cupped on small breast in her hand pointedly. "As the one girl in this group without bombshell tits or a tabloid worthy butt, I feel justified in this assessment."

Akira made a very unhappy grumble from his spot, still not opening his eyes. Futaba smiled a bit and kissed his forehead. His frown remained present.

Makoto shook her head in amusement, "I agree with the others on this one, Futaba. You're lovely just as you are. Besides, Akira seems to have no complaints about your body."

Akira's eyes shot open and met Futaba's. They passed a look of "whut" between them, that was drowned out completely by Ryuji's added, "Yeah! I mean, come on, Futaba. How many people could Akira have conceivably ended up with? He picked you over all of those "bombshell girls". Your sex appeal may not take the same form as Ann's, but it landed Akira freaking Kurusu in your bed, didn't it?"

"Wow Ryuji, way to make it seem like the only reason she should approve of her body is if a guy does," Ann scoffed, heading into the kitchen.

Makoto ushered Akira off her lap and patted Futaba's head before following Ann. "Good try Ryuji. We will work on it."

Ryuji grumbled, swiping his drink off the table and headed upstairs.

Akira and Futaba sat in the silence of the living room, listening to Yusuke and Haru's deep breathing. Akira was the first to speak up. "Do you think we should have said something?"

"Meh. I mean, it really isn't any of their business."

"I feel like they're making it their business anyway. And with inaccurate information at that."

Futaba stood, stepping between Akira's spread legs to wrap him in a hug. Her still tired boyfriend hummed happily, wrapping his arms tightly around the girl and nuzzling against her chest. "I don't see it being a big deal. It might even turn out being kinda funny if they think we're always sneaking away to bone at all hours of the day."

Akira laughed into her stomach. "You derive amusement from the strangest things."

"Guilty as charged."

~~~

In truth, Futaba expected to never hear about the conversation post movie night ever again. Surely, everyone else had better things to talk about, right?

Evidently not. The references to her private life started out rather timid and vague. Ann complaining about guys who were taller than her and Makoto sweetly pointing out that she and Akira got along just fine. It was cute and harmless and Futaba liked the feeling of being the referenced source material for "successful relationships".

Then, things got a bit weirder.

Haru and Ann had convinced Futaba to let them paint her nails. She liked having her nails painted and liked being pampered even more so she agreed. That's how she ended up with her hands on her thighs and her legs comfortably in Haru's lap. The girls chatted on and off about various things, mostly Ann's modelling gigs, when suddenly, Ann turned on her. "Hey, Futaba, I was wondering...ya know, Akira's a pretty tall guy. How does he not like...crush you when you do it?"

Futaba.exe is not responding.

"Uhhh, what?"

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, I was just curious."

Haru shook her head, shooting Futaba an apologetic look. The youngest girl struggled to keep up. "I-I mean, it's not that big of a deal. He lays on me all the time. He's not that heavy."

Ann beamed, feeding off the power of "girl talk" like it was a consumable resource. "Yeah, I guess he is kind of a string bean. Not the same way Yusuke is, but, you know what I mean."

Futaba really did not want to think about Inari and sex in the same sentence.

Uncaring of Futaba's lack of response, Ann carried on, "I guess I've just been thinking a lot about the physicality of it, ya know. Porn makes it look so easy, but I just can't imagine sex with a super tall guy being comfortable. Where would his legs go? Where would your legs go?"

Haru huffed, putting the cap back on her bottle of nail polish. For a moment, Futaba hoped that maybe Haru was going to spare her poor soul and end this strange conversation.

"You haven't been watching the right porn if you think missionary is the only way to do things, Ann-chan," Haru chirped pleasantly, before placing Futaba's feet carefully in her chair and strolling out of the bedroom.

She wasn't sure who was more shocked: her or Ann.

Luckily, that embarrassing endeavor ended there. Akira had also been falling victim to gratuitous sex talk. He pulled her aside one night before dinner. "Can we please tell them they're misunderstanding the situation? I feel like all I hear about anymore is other people's opinions of some made up version of my sex life. It's making me pretty uncomfortable honestly."

Futaba felt for her poor boyfriend, but was still sort of having fun listening to the weird conversations that were prompted by this whole situation. She laughed, "Oh come on, Akira, lighten up. You're not embarrassed are you?"

Akira's gaze darkened a bit. "Honestly, yeah."

With a scoff, she muttered petulantly, "Well I'm sorry I'm not who you want people to joke about you rolling around in the sheets with. Geez."

The silence following her quip was heavy. Futaba cautioned a look up at Akira to see him staring at her with an almost emotionless expression. Uh oh. Before she could say anything, he turned and walked down the hallway, up the stairs. She heard his door close heavily and sighed. She didn't see him again that night, but he responded to her to good night text. So, he was mad, but not completely avoiding her mad. She could work with that. She vowed to try to make it up to him the next day.

~~~

When she got to the house the next afternoon, she had absolutely no plan for how to approach this conversation with Akira, only knew that it had to happen. She had spent a good deal of the day trying to get the thoughts in her head to condense into words, to almost no success. Nothing would help though, so Futaba planned to politely ask that Ryuji chill in the living room for an hour and hash it out with Akira. That probably would absolutely not make the "our friends think we're having sex but we're not" issue worse, but she could only battle one thing at a time.

That was the plan anyway. When she climbed the stairs, she was instantly spotted by Ann.

"Futaba! Hey! Can we talk real quick? I need your advice."

She sighed. One quick diversion wouldn't derail her plan. "Coming."

When she entered Ann's room, she honestly had no idea what to expect. Ann loved to chat with her, but very rarely ever asked her for help unless it was about her laptop.

"Ok, so you know how I've been talking with this male model I did that shoot in July with?" She nodded. "Well, we've been flirting. A lot. And it's been getting a little....intense. Anyway, he offered to send a pic and I figured, eh, why not, and...well, just look."

That...was certainly not a part of the male anatomy she planned to see today.

"He sent you a dick pic?"

Ann nodded, looking completely casual about the extremely explicit image on her phone. "Yeah. He said I didn't have to send anything back, but now that I have this, I don't really know what I'm supposed to do with it. It's sort of...weird to look at without the rest of the body to also look at, huh?"

She had to get the hell out of here. Like now.

"Uh, I don't know. I've never gotten a dick pic before, I guess."

Ann giggled, "Yeah, but you've see a dick though. That's much more helpful. So, reason I called you in here, in your opinion, how...sizable is this?"

Oh my god. "Sizable?" Could her face get any redder?

"Yeah, like...do you think it would hurt? I mean, you could just compare it to Akira's I guess and tell me if that hurt."

Futaba squeezed her eyes shut. Ok, no way. Uh uh. Nope. Akira was right, this was actually the worst. "Ann, I don't really feel comfortable talking about that."

When she opened her eyes again, she was surprised to see Ann looking a bit, panicked. Ann shook her head quickly, frowning. "No, no, I'm sorry that was super untactful." She was speaking pretty quickly. Even for Ann. "I...guess I'm just not sure what to do here."

The younger girl smiled to herself. Ann was quirky and could sometimes be far too blunt, but she never meant to make her uncomfortable. Still, Ann's behavior ever since she starting talking to his guy had been...a little bit off. The level of boy crazy the blond had been recently was just a bit too drastic to be normal. It almost felt fake. Futaba's eyes widened a bit. Maybe it was. "Do you even like this guy, Ann?"

The blond blinked, bit her bottom lip and then shook her head. From the troubled look on her face, Futaba knew she had hit the nail on the head. "I mean, kinda? He's cute. But, we don't click super well." Ann sighed, picking at her nails. "But, ya know, it's not like I have anyone else lined up. And he's not that bad. I could maybe start to like him...if I tried hard enough..."

Futaba frowned, tone stern. "The Ann I know and love would never just try to make it work with a guy just for the sake of it."

Ann groaned and dug her palms into her eyes, "Ugh! I know! I'm just...ugh." For a moment, Futaba was worried Ann would start crying. She was not well equipped for that sort of comforting. Eventually, though, Ann lowered her hands, looking more defeated than Futaba had ever seen before. "I guess I just wanted something."

"Something like what?"

"I don't know," she whined, "Like what you and Akira have, I guess." That one, Futaba did not expect. She had been half viciously enjoying how envious everyone had seemed of her apparent experience on this matter. Unsurprisingly, watching one of her bed friends actually acting out due to jealousy that she was making worse...didn't make her feel too great.

"Ann, no. You're wonderful, and gorgeous, and driven and a fantastic catch. I'm honestly jealous of you. How...effortless everything seems to you. And even if you don't have everything all figured out, you sure look like you do, which is even more impressive." She paused, holding Ann's hand. "I'm not single, so I can't exactly relate to how you're feeling. But, I do know that you're worth a hell of a lot more than settling for some guy, who is willing to send out dick pics rather than connecting with you like a normal person, just because he's pretty to look at."

Ann's smile started small but grew larger the more Futaba talked. Finally, she decided, "Ya know what, you're right Futaba." She stood, hands on her hips and a determined shine to her eyes. "Ann Takamaki settles for no one!"

"Here here," Futaba agreed, glad to see Ann back to her normal fiery self. "Now if you don't mind..."

Ann blushed, "Oh gosh, I'm so sorry I dragged you in here just for this. Enjoy your evening with Akira!"

Futaba fled before any more innuendos or attempts at long emotional conversations could be made.

~~~

Futaba wandered down the hall in a daze. She loved her friends dearly, but sometimes they could be a little bit...exhausting. Also, she never wanted to think about another penis for as long as she lived.

Ok, well maybe not, but it would be at least a few hours. Maybe even days.

As she approached the end of the hall, she ran into Ryuji who was dressed in a ironed button down, nice jeans and holding his pillow and blanket. What?

"Going somewhere, Ryuji?"

The boy grinned at her. "Hey Futaba! Guess what? No actually, you'll never guess. Or just be mean about it. Anyway, I got a date tonight!"

"Huh, really? You look like you're headed to a business casual slumber party."

Ryuji puffed his chest out, "Nope, your sarcasm cannot hurt me now, Futaba! I've just scored some expert advice so I may not be home until late."

Futaba's brow raised at the idea of "expert advice". So Akira had gotten grilled too, huh? Damnit. She'd be giving him back rubs and head scratches for weeks to make up for this mess...

"And you have your pillow with you because...?"

"Oh I'm gonna. Ya know. Give you guys some alone time. Sleep out on the pullout tonight. Figured it's the least I can do."

The girl groaned, "Ryuji."

"No no. I get it. Couples gotta do the do sometimes. If this date goes well, I'm gonna need to be kicking you guys out. It's all good. Equivalent exchange." He snickered to himself. "See what I did there? That was totally an FMA reference."

Futaba blinked but let him run his mouth. She was far far too tired to argue at this point. What the ever living hell had she gotten herself into? Maybe she'd take advantage of Ryuji's generous offer. To hang herself quietly in the privacy of their quarantined "sex den". Geez.

"How kind of you. Alright. Well, gotta run. Lots of carnal relief to be had. See you later. Good luck on your date," she replied mechanically, shuffling to the room and shutting the door firmly behind her. She leaned back against it with a sigh.

When she finally opened her eyes, she spotted Akira wrapped in the large blue comforter, face down in the bean bag chair she insisted they buy for the room. She observed him idly for a few moments before sighing again and grumbling, "Ok. You were right. I was wrong. We should have told them right away. This kinda sucks."

Akira unburied his face from it's cloth tomb and looked up at her, looking utterly unamused and just as exhausted as she was.

"Oh, don't give me that face. You know I can't deal with that sort of emotional blackmail," Futaba groaned, slumping against the door a bit. Akira continued to stare at her, blinking occasionally. He didn't even seem mad at her. Or even annoyed or disappointed. Just tired. Her heart squeezed, unable to just leave him looking like that even despite her own crabbiness. "Oooh. Damnit! Alright. Fine, you win."

She threw herself down on the bean bag with him, assuming Akira's favorite position of her on her back, arms spread wide open, waiting to cuddle the hell of him. It took him a minute. At first, he only looked at her blankly from his blanket cocoon. But eventually, he huffed, untangling himself to flop down on top of her chest, face hiding in her neck. She took some time to tug at the blankets, arranging them to fit over her as well. Futaba arranged her legs so he was trapped between them and pressed her face into his hair. There. Finally comfortable.

They laid like that for awhile, one of her hands scratching at his scalp, the other buried under his shirt, running her nails softly up and down his back. By the amount of happy rumbling and sighing she was getting, she imagined he had forgiven her. Still, didn't mean they shouldn't talk about it. "I'm sorry, Akira. When you said you were uncomfortable with how much everyone was talking, I should have immediately corrected them. I wasn't thinking about you at all. All I cared about was what I was getting out of it. I'm an A tier jerk. And a trash tier girlfriend. And I'm really really sorry."

Akira huffed against her neck. "I wouldn't go that far." He planted a kiss on her pulse point, sending pleasant shivers through her. "What were you getting out of it, out of curiosity?"

Closing her eyes, Futaba grimaced. "In reality, nothing. But. I guess. In my mind, I thought I was being adult." Akira made an inquisitive noise, nudging her with his nose. It was such a feline thing to do, she made a mental note to buy him a black cat onesie for Christmas. Morgana would probably love it. "I don't know. It's like...hmm. You know how Ann and Ryuji call me the little sister? Well, suddenly, I was better at something than them. They wanted to be in my shoes for once, not the other way around."

"Futaba, you were already better at something than them. Than all of us. How many times a week does someone ask you to fix their computer or teach them how to use a program? You're a genius and the only tech savvy soul in this building."

"Not like that though," she mumbled. "Ok, fine, maybe it was more so Ann than Ryuji. Almost entirely Ann actually. And Makoto." Futaba sighed, biting her lip. "I guess the whole thing about the other girls being more...womanly than me wasn't just a joke. I'm only a year younger than Ann and look at the difference between us. She's literally a super model and I'm...just me."

Akira adjusted his weight, trying to get his arms underneath him and push himself up. Futaba tugged him back down her chest. She needed to say this and knew the moment their eyes met, her train of thought would be derailed. Once he stilled once more, she continued.

"It's not just physical looks either though. It's. Ugh. Ann is so confident in herself. And maybe it's because she looks the way she does, but part of me feels like if we traded bodies right now, she'd still have this aura of utter sexiness and I'd still be a wreck. I know you're the one who suggested we go slow. You've said multiple times you're content with just kissing. But. I guess I wonder if that's really true. It's been almost two years after all. And I've...felt you get excited while making out but you never push me. Which is so sweet, but..."

Futaba paused, drawing in a breath, then releasing it slowly. "I know you want to go further. I'm worried that you're holding back for my sake and not enjoying it as much as you could. And as much as I wish it weren't necessary that you hold back...it is. I do get overwhelmed easily and that frustrates me. Because if I were Ann or Makoto or Haru, I probably wouldn't have any trouble jumping your bones and not feeling like...I was about to explode even thinking about it. And I guess I just feel like...you deserve someone you don't have to hold back with."

She stopped and listened to the combined sounds of their breathing. Akira's was a bit faster than normal. She knew he was probably clenching his fists a bit. Maybe she had made him mad. But, she thought, looking at the ceiling as if it contained the answer to the meaning of life, she wasn't unsatisfied with how the words have come out. She wasn't sure exactly what outcome she wanted. What did she want him to reply? Her breath hitched in her throat at the idea of Akira actually agreeing with her. Eyes squeezed shut, she tried to convince herself that would be ok.

It wouldn't be, though.

"Are you finished?"

Sweet boy, always careful not to overstep his bounds. Even now. Futaba loosened her hold on him. "Yeah."

Akira sat up and scooted backwards a bit. His eyes were trained on the his crossed legs, a dark gleam to them that she simply couldn't decipher. The distance he was putting between them, in both the physical and emotional sense, made her heart constrict painfully. She was not the biggest fan of having these tense, seemingly life or death type conversations. But, despite the obvious discomfort of having to drag all their shadows into the light and look them in the eyes, they had never had a rough heart to heart of his nature that didn't immediately and thoroughly clear up misunderstandings and provide plans of attack for the future. They were good at this, she and Akira. They were on the same team, she reminded herself. Oracle and Joker. If she just honestly conveyed her thoughts and trusted in him, everything would be fine.

Didn't mean it wasn't nerve-wracking though.

She mirrored the boy's stance, maintaining the distance he had purposefully created. As soon as she was settled, Akira let out a loud sigh. "Does what I want not matter at all in this situation?" Futaba stayed quiet. The unspoken rule between them was that if the other wasn't meeting your eyes, they were still thinking. Akira pointed watched his fingers fidget with the hem of his pants. She would wait.

"People use the word 'deserve' a lot. 'You deserve better' or 'I don't deserve him'. As if the only things worth having in life are that which we are somehow derived to deserve. Never mind how subjective the idea of deserving something is, but if everyone got what they deserved...well, Shido and Kamoshida would never have even met me, in all likelihood." Akira shook his head, clenching and unclenching his fists. "My father is no sage, but he has taught me a couple interesting things. One of them was that the word 'deserve' is usually never directed at the right person. It usually reflects the speaker's own desires. I don't think that's always true." Akira spared a glance up at Futaba, eyes roaming over her face before flickering back to his lap. "But I definitely think it is true in this case."

Both hands came up to run through his hair roughly. His bottom lip was caught between his teeth, his gray eyes stormy in appearance. Whatever idea he had rolling around in his head spun and spun, until he finally lowered his hands again. "Whether I want to go further is irrelevant. This wouldn't be bothering you if you weren't discontent yourself." Akira clicked his tongue against his teeth, "When we first tried getting you acclimated to being outside of the house, I pushed you. We threw you into different social environments head first and expected you to swim or me to save you. We very well could try that here too, but..." Akira wrung his wrists in agitation, frowning. "This is so different though. This isn't just coaxing you out a room that you thought of a prison. This is more like...trying to coax you out of the assessment of your body as a prison."

Futaba inhaled sharply. Akira's eyes flew to meet her own but she closed them defensively. She remembered with striking vividness what being a prisoner of her own heart felt like. The constant desperation, echoing self hatred. No, this wasn't quite like that. This type of discontentment settled in her stomach, akin to the feeling she got before the panic when she first got separated from Akira in Akiba. She opened her eyes again, and saw that Akira had placed his hand next to hers, palm up. An invitation. She met his anxious eyes, smiled just a bit, just enough to show she was ok. "It's not a prison," she corrected, tone soft, almost a whisper. "It's more like...an unfamiliar place. It's...my body, but I don't feel like...I completely own it. It's like a stranger sometimes." She grimaced, shook her head, met his eyes. She needed help.

Akira wet his lips and offered, "So a bit like a new house, maybe? Your name is on the sign out front and the lease, but the inside doesn't quite look like home yet. Is that it?"

Futaba ruminated over the analogy for a bit, tried to picture it. Her time as a shut in meant she ignored her body, in multiple ways. Didn't eat always. Slept too little or too much, no in between. The loathing and self hatred made emotions like arousal and lust just as useless to her as happiness and hope were. The most time she ever spent naked was in the shower, which she admitted to herself she didn't do often enough. She supposed, in many ways, it was a lot like a new house. She hadn't spent time in it, didn't try to decorate or make it hers. Yet, was shocked or upset when it felt alien to her.

...And if she didn't even feel content in this house, why would she feel comfortable inviting guests over...?

She nodded, slowly at first, then more firmly. Akira's eyes lit up a bit, pleased. "Yeah, that's exactly it. I'm not completely comfortable looking at my own body naked yet, so it kinda makes sense that I'm jittery about letting someone else see." She sighed a bit, slipping her hand in Akira's outstretched one. She liked the way their fingers slid together, nice and snug. In a weird tangential way, that was what she really wanted out of physical companionship. Feeling a secure connection. Being close for the sake of closeness. As close as two people could possibly get. Futaba met Akira's eyes once more. "I want to be with you. Closer than anyone else. I want to touch you and make you feel good and not be scared for you to return the favor. I just...I want you." A bright red blush spread across Akira's cheeks, bringing a smile to her equally red face. Her mood dampened a bit as she admitted, "I want that so much, but...I don't know how to get there."

Akira squeezed her hand and declared, "I do." Futaba's eyes widened. "Same way we got you used to being out in the world again. You just need to get used to it. Much slower this time, probably, but same basic process. We can give you assignments to get you more comfortable being naked or being touched. Work our way up to whatever end point you want to reach."

Futaba's smile was soft, but excited. "Another promise list?"

"Exactly. We'll go at your pace. You write out the steps you want to take, and we can get there however or whenever we please."

Her optimism made her bold. The smile slowly spread to a smirk. With mischief in her eyes, Futaba leaned in right next to Akira's ear and purred, "And if my end goal happens to be 'fuck Akira Kurusu absolutely senseless'?"

Futaba felt the body underneath hers shudder, a hand coming up to hug her close to him. His voice was a bit raspy, "Well, first I would ponder where on Earth you got so disillusioned as to think you're not the sexiest woman living in this house." He planted a firm kiss on Futaba's cheek, and nudged her gently back a bit to look into her eyes. "And second I would say that Akira Kurusu must be a pretty lucky guy."

Futaba snorted in amusement, obviously blushing, "Stop fibbing, you nerd. Didn't we just agree my body is like an ugly house or something?"

"Hey, don't insult that house. I happen to like it a lot and would be honored to become intimately acquainted with it, should to invitation arise," his hands rose up to cup her face, pressing kiss after kiss to her hairline, soaking in the sound of her happy giggles. Akira pressed their foreheads together and waited until Futaba met his eyes before whispering, "I love you, Futaba."

"I love you too, Akira. I don't know what I did to deserve you."

"Would you like the mystical Chinese fortune cookie answer or the dry simple answer?"

She giggled, "The latter, please, sir."

"It doesn't matter what you did or didn't do. I wanted to be with you and you apparently want to be with me, so we are together. Now, no more of this deserving or undeserving bullshit please?"

"Deal," Futaba nodded.

They decided that it was late enough that getting home might be a stretch for Futaba, even if she left immediately. She anticipated that Sojiro would be livid with her, but as soon as he answered the phone, he immediately barked, "Just stay at their house tonight, Futaba. I'd rather begrudgingly trust Akira not to do anything stupid than risk you missing your connecting train in Shibuya and getting stuck out there."

Futaba smiled, "Alright. Thanks, dad."

Sojiro sputtered, as he always did when she threw down the Dad Card unexpectedly. "Well, just...," he sighed, "Just make sure you get to school on time alright? And you can thank me by having dinner at the Cafe tomorrow with your poor dad. Both of you."

"Okie dokie, artichokey."

"Alright. Good night, Futaba."

"Nighty night, Sojiro."

Akira was dressed for sleep, sprawled out on his bed like a content cat. She giggled to herself. The resemblance between their wonderful Trickster and dear old feline guide was sometimes uncanny. The usual post important conversation exhaustion hit her immediately. She knew she was free to use Ryuji's bed, or even ask Akira to take Ryuji's bed, if she so chose, but they did just decide to start pushing her comfort zones again...

"Hey, Akira," she got a hum in response. "Can my first promise list item be to sleep in your bed with you?" Akira smiled sleepily at her, patting the bed and waggling his eyebrows. She grinned. "And would I be able to borrow a shirt to sleep in tonight?"

"Only a shirt? Damn, girl. You'll be jumping my bones in no time."

Just to spite him, she did indeed jump into bed without pants, relishing his surprised squawk when his hand landed on her bare thigh. It took her awhile to fall asleep, but Akira was warm and she fit quite nicely tucked against his side, one leg thrown over his hips and head pillowed on his chest. The gentle up and down motion of his breathing was soothing and when she did finally drop off to sleep, it was the deepest and most comfortable rest she ever remembered having.

~~~

She woke up on her own, about twenty minutes before her alarm was due to ring, based on the LED clock on the bedside table. She had obviously done some tossing and turning at some point because her face was squished against the mattress, which she found to be sopping wet. The culprit was likely the trail of drool dried on her cheek. Gross. Futaba shifted her body, trying to account for all of her limbs. As she became more aware, she realized there was an arm trapped beneath her rib cage and a hairy leg shoved snugly between her thighs. When she turned her head to look at her bed-mate, she very nearly burst out laughing. Akira's face was perhaps the most calm and adorable she'd ever seen it. She'd seen Akira sleep before, but this was the deep, lost to the world type of sleep. Long eyelashes and gorgeous relaxed facial features. He really was one of the most attractive men she'd ever had the pleasure to meet.

The large amount of her hair trapped in his mouth sort of detracted from the angelic image though.

Trying hard not to laugh, she slowly pulled her hair, watching with gross fascination as Akira attempted to chew it as it slide by. Like a freaking cow. She pressed her face back into the bed, body shaking with her mirth. Falling asleep with another person was a bit difficult, but soothing. Waking up with another person was actually pretty disgusting and slightly uncomfortable.

She loved it.

The arm under her suddenly curled around her and jerked her against Akira's incredibly warm body. She squirmed for a minute, giggling. The sleeping beauty crackled one gray eye open and slurred, "Wh's so funny?" which caused her to laugh even harder.

"You uh, probably don't need breakfast I guess. Your stomach must be pretty full from all the hair you were munching on."

Akira hummed. "Your hair?"

"Who else's hair could you eat?"

"It wouldn't be the first time Morgana's tail ended up in my mouth."

"Oh my god, that's soo gross."

Akira simply hummed again.

Her alarm going off was what finally pushed them out of bed. When they got downstairs, Ryuji and Ann both had large grins on their faces, no doubt overly invested in the fact that Futaba had spent the night. Makoto was quietly sipping coffee and petting Morgana, who looked to be half asleep. Haru was long gone, headed to her morning shift at LeBlanc. Yusuke was buttering toast in the kitchen, but not so subtly throwing glances their way every now and then. What a bunch of idiots, she thought. Akira looked like he was going to say something, but Futaba put a hand on his arm. She started this mess. She would end it too.

Akira didn't argue, instead went to heat her up some curry, portioning out the rest in a container for her lunch. As she waited, Ryuji and Ann kept giving her looks. Fine, if they didn't want to make the first move, she would.

"How'd your date go, Ryuji?"

Ryuji blinked, then grinned at the invitation to blab about his evening. Idly, Futaba noticed that Ann's grin visibly dimmed at the mention, but she promptly filed this information away under the category 'things to absolutely not butt her nose into' along with following up on their...enlightening conversation from last night. "It was fantastic! We really hit it off. I don't know what it was about Akira's advice, but no matter what I said to her, she was eating out of my hands. We've got a second date coming up soon."

Makoto smiled, "That's wonderful, Ryuji. Glad it worked out."

Ryuji nodded, chest puffed out proudly. "Yep! Man, who would have thought my best friend getting some would benefit me? Like this weird spiritual wing man thing."

"Well," Futaba started, getting right to the point, "I'm happy the advice helped, but you do know that the only 'some' Akira has gotten has been a pretty stellar amount of making out, cuddling and long heart felt conversations, right? Well...at least from me."

The room was quiet for a moment before Ann and Ryuji both muttered, "huh?"

Akira chuckled, placing a plate of curry and rice in front of Futaba before sitting down himself. "It's true. We never indicated that we were in a sexual relationship. That was something you all suspected all on your own."

Makoto squinted at the pair, "You never denied it either."

"Yeah, you're right," Futaba acknowledged around a mouthful of rice. "That was mostly my fault. Didn't see a reason to correct you because I didn't think it would be much of a conversation topic. That was until...well, it was the only conversation topic."

Morgana stretched and launched himself into Akira's lap, nuzzling his best friend in greeting. "I'm surprised none of you dumb asses thought to ask me. Not only do I often sleep in that room, but I'm the one with heightened smell and hearing. If anything were going on, I would have probably known about it."

Ann smiled awkwardly, "I think the real issue is that we just didn't ask anyone. We all just rolled with the assumption. I'm sorry, you guys."

The other guilty parties murmured apologies as well. Silence fell over the group once again, everyone sitting there awkwardly and not looking at each other. It was surprisingly Yusuke who chimed in, "Damn. I was so hoping that you'd agree to model for me. I'm close to perfecting the artistic portrayal of lust, I just need about an hour of reference material."

Various screams of indignation and laughter broke out and just like that, the weird tense atmosphere was shattered. Their morning moved along as normal then. They all rode the train to Shibuya, Futaba still muttering to herself about "that pervy Inari." As empties out into the underground walkway, Ann timidly pulled her aside. She motioned to Akira to wait and went with Ann to a slightly secluded corner.

"Futaba, I am so so sorry about last night. And how obnoxious I've been in general. I can't even imagine the sort of pressure all that talk must have been putting on you. I promise that I at least will try my best not to let something like that happen again."

Futaba shook her head, amused. "It's fine, Ann. I could have said something at any time. You couldn't have known." She gave a weak laugh and joked, "And see? Not so much to be jealous of between Akira and I, now is there?"

Ann blinked at her, stunned. "No, Futaba. If anything, I'm more jealous. Our whole society thinks of sex as the pinnacle of development in a relationship. It's like some weird milestone people rush off to reach and let control their whole relationship. You guys have gone two years just enjoying each other's company and going against the flow." She grinned, rubbing her neck awkwardly, "That's the sort of dynamic I'm going to strive for now."

Futaba felt pride bloom in her gut, pride for her relationship that relied on healthy conversations and pride in her partner, who constantly pushed her to be the best version of herself she could be. "Thanks, Ann."

When she met back up with Akira, Ryuji and he were having one of their bro hugs. Maybe even Ryuji could have important heart to hearts when the need arose. She sidled up to her boyfriend's side and tilted her head curiously. Akira merely smiled and flicker her forehead playfully. When they all went their separate ways, Futaba assured Akira that she'd just meet him at LeBlanc for dinner after school let out.

Speaking of school, she had to seriously haul ass to make it on time. She felt like her lungs were about to pop as she sprinted up the stairs and burst into her classroom just before the final bell rang. She very narrowly restrained herself from fist pumping in joy and made her way to her seat so the teacher could start.

Everything was back to normal. The group chat was filled with senseless garble, mostly courtesy of Ryuji. (She certainly helped though.) Classes were as boring as ever and the window was just as lovely to distract herself with. At lunch, her friends were discussing the idea of living in the dormitories at college. "Can you imagine living with like all of your friends though? I can't tell if that would be amazing or absolutely terrible!"

A smile crept over her lips at the thought. So far, living with the Phantom Thieves was hectic. Everyone shoved their noses into everyone else's business, there were more weird quirks to get used to and deal with than ever before in her life, and everyone had their own issues that all slammed into each other when they got home. But for all of that mess, Futaba knew there was only one thing she could say on this topic.

"I think it sounds like the best thing ever."

#persona 5 #akira kurusu #futaba sakura #akira x futaba #ann takamaki #fanfiction #my fics #The Hermit and her Joker #Tales from the Thieve's Guild

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illusivegore · 6 years ago

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Gore Reviews Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalker 2013

Release Date: June 20, 2012 Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (reviewed), iOS

With Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, Wizards of the Coast and Stainless Games seem to be looking to make the strategic, collectible card game as accessible as ever. This doesn’t mean that longtime Magic fans will be left with nothing to enjoy as they’ve also given players the most customization options of any Duels game to date. It doesn’t come without its issues though, so let’s find out if the pros outweigh the cons and justify a purchase.

For those who may not know, Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game that was introduced back in 1993 where two or more players do battle with a variety of spells and creatures. The game focuses heavily on strategy and can take years to master, but can be learned in mere moments. The Duels of the Planeswalkers series was designed to give people a more streamlined Magic experience that can be enjoyed by both novices and veterans alike and for the most part Wizards of the Coast and Stainless Games have done just that.

In Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 you have numerous options at your fingertips, but the campaign is where most of us will more than likely begin. In the campaign (and in all games of Magic for that matter), you are a Planeswalker. A Planeswalker is a being who can move across the different planes of existence in the world of Magic known as the Multiverse. During the campaign you’ll be able to visit 4 of these planes to take on various opponents. As you progress through the campaign you’ll be unlocking the decks of the opponents you defeat. Completing the main campaign won’t take long at all (depending on your skill and the difficulty you’ve chosen) as there are only 12 matches you must complete. There are also 10 optional “encounters” that let you experience Magic in unique scenarios. While these were a probably a decent idea on paper, actually playing them fell a little flat.

Upon completion of the main campaign you will have new options to dive into. The Revenge campaign allows you to go back through and take on each opponent again, but this time they have a wider variety of more powerful cards at their disposal. You will also gain access to the new Planechase campaign which pits you in a free-for-all against three other opponents as you travel to various Planes made famous in the lore of Magic. Personally I’m not fond of this style of Magic, but I do recommend at least giving it a try if you decide to purchase the game.

The last option in the campaign section is a selection of challenges. These offer very specific scenarios where you must use the cards you are given to overcome obstacles and defeat your opponent (usually in a single turn). These are a blast to work your way through if you don’t mind doing a little problem solving and thinking outside the box. They offer new perspectives into the game and completing each one will give you a better understanding of the various mechanics in Magic, which can definitely help to improve your skill. The ten challenges are almost worth the price of admission alone.

Outside of the campaign you’ll be able to hop online and take on Planeswalkers from around the world with the multiplayer mode. This will likely be where most players spend a majority of their time with the game. From my experience with Duels 2013, the multiplayer is a little glitchier than it was in previous installments. There are times when you just can’t connect to the servers and then there are times when the game will just freeze you out in the middle of matches. While this doesn’t happen too frequently, when it does the experience is not a fun one. Also different from previous games is that fact that when your opponent quits in a multiplayer match they will be replaced by AI instead of the match just ending. This is both a complete waste of time and a step back for the series, so hopefully Stainless decides to change this feature in the near future.

Perhaps the most important part of any Duels of the Planeswalkers game is the deck selection and, for the most part, Duels 2013 doesn’t disappoint. You’ll have access to 10 different decks once you get them all unlocked (either by completing the campaign or purchasing them), which is on par with Duels 2012. Where 2013 does differ from previous installments is in the number of unlockable cards you will have access to for each deck. With every match you win, either against AI or in multiplayer, you’ll unlock a new card for the deck you won with. Each deck will have a total of 30 cards to unlock right from the start, which is the most of any Duels game to date. To put that into perspective, even after three expansions you only had a maximum of 26 unlockable cards in the original duels game and only 20 available in the 2012 version after DLC was released. So Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 definitely gives you the most customization of any game in the series and not only that, the variety cards you have at your disposal also allows you to build each deck in numerous ways, giving you the most flexibility as well.

Where Duels 2013 falters with its deck selection a bit is in the fact that you get nine mono-colored decks and one multi-colored deck. While there is nothing wrong with this and each deck has its strengths and weaknesses, it does limit your options. This may just be me nitpicking, but I would have liked to see a few more decks with a little more variety and flavor. I will say that by going the mono-colored route the game is definitely more user-friendly and slightly more accessible to newer players. The decks are straightforward enough that anyone could pick them up and play, while also having enough intricacies that more advanced players will be happy with them as well. So this is obviously just a minor complaint of mine, but all-in-all most of the decks are quite enjoyable to play. While we here at GAJ don’t report on rumors, I have heard rumblings that we could see some Ravnica-inspired decks release through DLC, which could be very interesting, but we will have to wait until October to see if that is actually the case.

One last section of the game I feel is worth mentioning is the player status section. I’ve always longed for the Duels franchise to track stats and this time around we get that…kind of. While the game will track things like what color mana you use the most, the most damage you’ve dealt in a turn, the highest life total you’ve reached, the highest number of creatures you’ve had on the battlefield at one time, and the highest power creature you’ve had, it still feels lacking. They left out the stat I wanted the most: amount of time played. I also feel like keeping track of your wins and losses both against AI and online would have been a great addition to the stats menu. Sadly though, we don’t get those and even the stats the game is supposed to keep track of doesn’t work that well as they seem to reset or just no track properly. While I like this addition, it needs some work.

In some instances, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 is the best game in the series, but in other areas it also seems to be taking steps backwards. However, if you’re a fan of Magic or the Duels games this game is definitely worth the $10 price tag. On the other hand, if you’re one of the people that still complains that the Duels series isn’t fully customizable or happen to be one of the Magic players that feel like the Duels games are beneath you and your sick Magic skills, then this installment still isn’t for you. For those of you that don’t sit up on a pedestal or live in some fairy tale land, you’ll find an enjoyable game well worth the price of admission.

Score: 4 out of 5

#games #video games #review #reviews #magic #magic the gathering #wizards of the coast

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twilightofthesandwiches · 8 years ago

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A List of Big Misconceptions about D&D Alignment that I See All the Time and Now I’m Salty Enough to Rant About All of Them

So! Aligmments! They sure are a tricky subject, aren’t they? Source of many discussions and flame wars and nitpicks, made all the worse by it’s flaws and it’s bumpy start (this post is a good read about it and there are plenty of other posts complaining and discussing what’s wrong with it), but I’m not here spesifically to take the nine-point system to task, but more to point out stuff about it that people CONSTANTLY GET WRONG. Because I’m salty and petty and I like wasting my time

1. First things first, what ARE aligmments? the Alignment System, as it exists in the game, seems for me to have a very specific role - it’s an extreme simplication of a character’s moral code for the sake of gameplay mechanics (as in “This spell will only let those with a good heart enter the sanctum” “Well, can my character come in?” “Check your aligmment”), if a DM wants to throw away “Detect Evil” spells and other stuff that implies objective good and evil in their game - I’d say it’s perfectly justified to throw away the Aligmment System as a whole as well, since it will serve very little purpose in their game. Many of the criticisms of the Aligmment system AND the annoying misconceptions about it comes from thinking it should do stuff other then quickly telll you how badly the Sword of Ultimate Evil injured your half-elf mage by quickly glancing at your character sheet.

2. Aligmments are not the end-all-by-all of philosophical and moral disagreement: There’s this idea that if two people have the same sort of Alignment that they must be agreeing on everything and are basically the same (more on THAT later), because, well, they are on the same side on the scales of good versus evil and chaos versus law, right? Well, no! Because like I said, Alignmment are a simplication - under the banner of “Lawful Good” there could be a THOUSAND disagreements and different ways to “perform” the alignmment. You can have a whole adventuring party of LG people who can’t stop arguing. Batman and Superman have plenty of moral disgreements all the time, but I think most versions of those characters are both LG - just in different ways

3. Alignments Are NOT the Character Archetypes This Character is Associated With: Or “Alignments don’t define personality”, that also works. There are certain character types and personalities people associate with spesific Alignments: the LG Pure Knight in Shining Armor, CG Trickster, LN Strict Super Boring Guy, LE Honrable Well-Intentioned Villain, CE PURE EVUL MUAHAHAHHAHA, and well...it’s not like those archetypes don’t have a GRAIN of truth to them - you’ll probably find more eccentric tricksters who are CG then LN, it’s easier to do. The problem comes for me when people ONLY look to those archetypes to match character aligmments and don’t actually look at that character’s morals and ideals - just assume that if that character’s personality matched the personality of a stereotypical archetype of an aligmment, that must mean that they are of this aligmment. A long long time ago (back when the StrexCorp arc of WTNV was really only starting to kick into gear, IIRC), Cecil Baldwin posted his thoughts of what would be the aligmments of the WTNV characters - I can’t find the post now because Tumblr’s search function is a piece of shit - but I had a lot of grievances with his choices, espacially of Cecil Palmer being CHAOTIC GOOD out of all things. Cecil Palmer, at the time that the tweets were made, was Lawful Neutral (i’m seriously behind on WTNV but I heard he’s started doing more Chaotic things recently, which is good! That’s character development! But LN was still his starting point). He cares a lot for the people who are close to him, but not for, like strangers, or the greater good in any sort of cosmic scale - he’s moral in the way a normal person is moral, that’s neutral. And Cecil is VERY adamant about following the strict rules and tyrannical govermment and terrible traditions of Night Vale. Sure he rebelled agaisnt StrexCorp, because they were a different horrible dystopia then what he was used to living under (this whole thing ties into other misconceptions I haven’t talked about yet maybe I should’ve organized that differently) Cecil IS the guy who hated his brother in law for YEARS for speaking Forbidden Truths and not following in line, he’s very lawful. And yet people feel weird about placing LN as Cecil’s aligmnemt - because he doesn’t behave like a LN archetype: he’s not a monk or a Knight Templer or a Super Serious Super Boring Guy, he is sort of an eccentric trickster and that’s why people, even his own ACTOR (who probably got a better grasp on the character then I’ll ever will) can fall into this hole of placing him in there - it’s about misunderstanding the alignment more then misunderstanding the character. This is just one example but I can think of others, such as people refusing to admit Chaotic characters as Chaotic because they think being a moralizing asshole is a strictly Lawful thing

4. Chaotic Evil and Lawful Good mean more then just “Ultimate Evil” and “Ultimate Good”: This is a subset of #3, but one that is so prevalent and common I feel it kinda need it’s own category. Because so many people see “Lawful Good” as meaning nothing but “the most good alignmment” and “Chaotic Evil” as meaning nothing but “the most evil alignmment”, it’s undoubtly a result of the archetype problem - with the most iconic archetypes for them being “Pure Paragon” and “PURE EVIL MUHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA”, and so people assume that’s the only sort of people who would have this aligmment - which leads to the idea that LG and CE are nothing but being “more good” or “more evil” then other alignments - which in turn makes people view the alignemnt chart (consiously or subconsiously) as less

And more of just a direct line of good\less good that’s like LG > NG > CG > LN > TN > CN > LE > NE >CE. Which is not true! Like I mentioned in 2 alignmment are very general and can be preformed in a number of ways and every good alignmment can be less or more good and every evil aligmment can be less or more evil. LG suffers from it LESS because there’s also the “Asshole Knight Templer Paladin” Archetype to show people how a LG character can also be morally ambigious, but only in this one really narrow way and they still generally have that self image of being bright and shiny. That’s why Batman is rarely listed as LG even though I think it’s the best alignment for him, Batman is not the “correct” kind of morally ambigious LG and he’s too dark and sneaky to fit the Paragon archetype. But CE has it MUCH worse, poor poor CE... Do you have any idea how many alignnment analysis posts I’ve seen that explained every alignmment’s moral basis perfectly, and then fucking fucked it up in the CE segment by doing it nothing but DESTORY EVERYTHING MUHAHAHHAHA. Or for an alternative example, take this post, What Does the Fox Say is listed as LE and Fox News as CE because CE is seen as the ultimate evil aligmment and LE seems as the “Lesser Evil” aligmment as a result of it - but one can argue that Fox News, and maybe american right wing politics in general, are more Lawful then Chaotic: due to their support of oppression, harmful tradionlism, pandering to “that’s the way it’s ALWAYS been” and attempts to push back against positive change - while memes like WDTFS are inheriently a more Chaotic force.... BUUUUUUT we thing of CE as Ultimate Evil so if we wanna insult Fox News THAT’S WHAT WE HAVE TO DO. Same goes with listing characters like... the Lich from Adventure Time as CE, even though I don’t think he’s EVER shown are prefrence for Chaosness, but being the ultimate evil of the show we have to label him as CE. Again, EVERY EVIL ALIGMMENT CAN BE THE MISUNDERSTOOD KINDA OKAY BADDIE OR THE WORSE THING EVER, LE doesn’t have a monopoly on one and CE doesn’t have a monopoly on the other. A character who’s big into change and personal freedom and hates tradition but is JUST enough of an asshole to count for Evil, will be Chaotic Evil, but I feel a lot people feel weird putting that label on sympathetic characters and will probably label them as CN or even fucking LAWFUL Evil because they’re not Ultimate Evil

5. Lawful doesn’t mean blindly follow the rules all the time and Chaotic doesn’t mean LOL RANDOM: I think you’ve noticed that so far, many of the misconceptions have to do with the Lawful-Chaotic spectrum rather then the Good-Evil spectrum - for well... OBVIOUS reasons. Good and Evil are rather self explantory, everyone knows what Good and Evil is - Chaos and Law are...often a lot harder to define. The fact that D&D’s Law and Chaos’ origins are so different then what the aligmment system ended up being and that the sourcebooks often explain it poorly really doesn’t help... I’m really not suprised this got so common. So, what do I feel Lawful versus Chaotic means? Well, just like everything else about D&D aligment it’s supposed to be VERY general and simplified guideline about what you feel regarding Laws, rulers, traditions, change, The System, self-discipline, personal codes and stuff like that. Lawful does NOT mean you have to obey and follow the rules of whatever horrible oppresive place you fall into, it just means that you as a general rule thinks rules and order and traditions are a good thing to have (for your personal goals, for the greater good of the people...whatever...), while being Chaotic means you DON’T think those things are good and istead values freedom and change and lack of restriction. A Lawful Good person stuck in a Lawful Evil country that allows slavery or some shit, wouldn’t have to just stand around and accept it because it’s the law\tradition of the place - they could very well agree to rebel, but want to install a “Legitimate Ruler” afterward, or to make sure a lot of the political system remains intact after they clean out the evil bits because they believe a stable political system is better for the people, or want to destory slavery via legitimate legal means or... you know... there’s a whole bunch of options, like I said, there’s a lot of ways to be Lawful Good - but none of them include agreeing to obey obviously evil laws because being “Lawful” means more then just “blindly follow the rules”. And on the same page a Chaotic person doesn’t have to always break the rules or do something weird, they just have to believe that in general, having less rules and less traditions and more change are a positive thing. And if someone says your character can’t follow\rebel against the rules because they’re chaotic\lawful, they’re seriously missing the point, but also-

6. “YOU CAN’T DO THAT, YOU’RE [ALIGMMENT]” is a bullshit statment: Aligmments are, again, a general simplification of a character morals for the purpose of gameplay, they should not be restrictions. Unless you’re playing as an Angel or a Demon or some other shit, everyone go against their aligmment in some ways some times - because your aligmment describes you as a general overview, not every single individual action. If a player feels this or that action is 100% what their character would do in this situation, the DM and other players shouldn’t stop them based on friggin aligmment. If the action is extremely egregious (like a non-evil character buring down an orphanage for a laugh) or if it happens repeadly) then the solution should be to just change the aligmment on the sheet and that’s it? I know that here I’m talking to the makers of the games just as much as I’m talking to the fandom, but giving XP penalties for going against aligmment is more often then not just punishing your players for complex characters or character development. You see the effects of those lines of thoughts when figuring out alignments for fictional characters. Those Aligmment charts demonstrating all the Aligmment with one character are COOL and all, but they’re less cool when people are all “Oh I just can’t tell which aligmment Princess Bubblegum is because she did stuff of all aligmments at least once!”: because, yeah, she did - BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT EVERYONE DOES! Aligmments are about the general moral philosphies and not every individual action is gonna follow that. Everyone slips from their aligmment from time to time! Just because Princess Bubblegum did a Chaotic Thing once, doesn’t distract from the fact that as a general, big picture view of her character, she’s Lawful Good-leaning on Lawful Neutral.

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droneseco · 4 years ago

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The Aqara M2 Smart Hub is Great for Smart Home Beginners

Aqara M2

8.80 / 10

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The M2 is a perfect starter hub. It's easy to set up, and there is a minimal learning curve. For smart home beginners and those looking to test the water, this hub is a favorite.

Key Features

Up to 128 child device support

HomeKit support

Google Home/Amazon Alexa support

Bluetooth LE 5.0

Zigbee 3.0

2.4 GHz Wi-Fi/RJ45 Ethernet connectivity

Micro-USB charging cable

LED indicator

Onboard speaker

Aqara Home app

Specifications

Brand: Aqara

Dimensions: 3.95 Ø x 1.21 inches (100.5 Ø x 30.75 mm)

Weight: 135 g

Connectivity: 2.4 GHz Wireless, IR, Bluetooth LE 5.0, RJ45 Cable

Battery Life: N/A

Pros

Great starter hub

Easy setup and configuration

Support for a wide range of accessories

Excellent connectivity

HomeKit support is exceptional

Cons

Possible security issues

Onboard speaker is laughable

Alarm function

Limited ecosystem

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The Aqara M2 smart home hub has finally landed after an almost two-year wait. It's an interesting little device that integrates seamlessly into HomeKit and offers smart home consumers a wide range of budget-friendly supported accessories.

We've been fortunate enough to test drive the M2 and explore many of its upgraded features. But does this hub justify its long wait? We're going to answer that question and more in this product review.

To celebrate the launch, Aqara has provided us with a 15% discount code - use the code M2HUBPR1 to get 15% off your Amazon purchase. It's valid until 11th June though, so be quick!

Meet the New Aqara M2

When Aqara unexpectedly announced its M2 smart home hub in May 2019, there wasn't much fanfare. Despite this, the then three-year-old Aqara had already begun making its mark in the smart home industry.

But the announcement of the M2 was something of a conundrum. Mainly because of how Aqara revealed the device. After Aqara updated its Aqara Home app, some Android users reported unexpected images of the forthcoming hub on the gateway selection screen. Supposedly, this was an internal error on Aqara's part, but shortly after, the M2's image started appearing in the iOS version of the Aqara app.

By then, some outlets had already pounced on the story, and questions began to fly. Would this mystery hub have HomeKit support? Would the M2 be released outside of mainland China? Would it support Zigbee 3.0? Aqara fans everywhere began licking their lips, waiting for the M2's official release.

Then, in August of 2020, that hunger was finally sated as the M2 officially launched in China. And in December 2020, Aqara added Europe to the regions the M2 was available. Now, in early 2021, the M2 is poised for a US release.

Aqara hubs are nothing new to the smart home industry, and Aqara's previous hub model, the ZHWG11LM-1, received plenty of favorable reviews. That model also had HomeKit support. Unfortunately, some reviewers felt that the hub was challenging to set up, and frequent disconnects were also commonly reported.

The M2 aims to change much of that negative press. Aqara has now redesigned the hub from the ground up. Aqara has also tried to make the M2 the most future-proof hub it sells.

What Makes the M2 Different?

There are only a few primary differences between the Aqara M2 and the previous iteration. First and most apparent, the M2 has an RJ45 ethernet port for hardwiring the unit to a router. Secondly, the hub's power cable is detachable, and rather than terminating in a wall plug, it terminates in a USB-A connection. This change opens the hub up to a wide range of power sources.

Third, are the additional aesthetic elements. The M2 is sleek black with only a single button on the side of the unit. The LED light ring that was a part of previous Aqara hubs is gone, and the perforated speaker grill that sat on top of prior hubs has been moved to the unit's underside.

Finally, the M2 also sports a single USB-A port that Aqara labels only as "reserved." My guess is users might access this port for manual firmware updates or other hardware connections. Aqara has not confirmed this suspicion.

As with previous versions, the M2 supports HomeKit, but now also offers Amazon Alexa and Google Home support. Additionally, the hub includes an internal alarm system for home security, a 360-degree IR transmitter for remote control of devices, Zigbee 3.0, and Bluetooth LE 5.0. The inclusion of Bluetooth LE 5.0 is a bit strange because, at the time of writing, Aqara doesn't sell any Bluetooth LE devices.

Another new feature of the M2 that many people will appreciate is IFTTT support. This support means that child devices can both trigger IFTTT automations and can be controlled by IFTTT. So if you wanted to, say, use your Aqara motion sensor to trigger your Meross garage door controller to open your garage door then, you could. IFTTT is a powerful service, and incorporating the M2 opens up numerous additional automation possibilities.

As for child devices, Aqara claims that the M2 will support up to 128. For the most part, this is true. However, we'll talk a bit more about child devices in a moment because there are a few things to know before pushing this limit.

Related: The Google Nest Hub: Everything You Need to Know

Unboxing and Configuring the M2

Inside the M2 packaging, you'll find:

The M2 Hub

A USB-A to Micro-USB cable

The Aqara M2 Quick-Start Guide

That's it. Unfortunately, you'll have to find a USB adapter to plug the hub into the wall, but if you're anything like me, you've probably got a few of those lying around the house.

Setup is a simple process. Plug the hub into power, connect the hub to your network via a 2.4 GHz wireless connection or the RJ45 connector (this was the method I used), download the Aqara Home app, and pair your accessories. For this review, Aqara also sent us several accessories in addition to the hub, but these are usually purchased separately.

I mention these accessories for two reasons. First, you'll need accessories if you'd like to connect the Aqara hub to your smart home. Having the hub alone will not allow you to connect existing smart accessories unless you've used Aqara in the past.

If you're just starting with your smart home, and have yet to add any sensors, switches, etc., then you'll find the Aqara M2 hub functions well as the heart of your smart home ecosystem. That said, if you already own several other smart home accessories, then adding another stand-alone hub and app might not leave you feeling warm and fuzzy.

The second reason I mention accessories is that you'll need to budget them into this hub's overall cost. However, the Aqara offerings are some of the least expensive smart home accessories I have come across. Many are around $15 or $20, and you can purchase them as you need them. My advice would be to create a list of smart home items and add them one by one until you've automated everything in your home.

I also want to point out that setting up these accessories is so easy that I had seven of them installed and working with both the Aqara app and HomeKit in less than an hour. If prizes were given away for ease of use, then Aqara would certainly get my vote.

Who Is the M2 For?

After a few-week test drive of the M2, I can confidently say that this hub is for smart home users who don't want to spend a lot of time configuring their perfect abode. The budget-friendly and easy-to-use Aqara ecosystem is ideal for smart home beginners and folks looking for plug-and-play accessories that support Apple HomeKit.

On the flip side, I wouldn't recommend this hub for those already deeply entrenched in the smart home realm. For someone like me who owns numerous smart home accessories and controllers, adding another hub to the mix only complicates things.

But, these complications are mitigated by the excellent HomeKit support that the Aqara hub offers. HomeKit connectivity is the primary draw of the M2. Sure, you'll need to set everything up in the Aqara Home app, but once you've configured all of the accessories, then the app becomes superfluous.

In my time with the M2, I don't think I've used the Aqara app more than a handful of times. Most of my interaction with devices has been through HomeKit.

The Aqara Home App

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As for the Aqara Home app, adding devices is relatively straightforward. If you've used other smart home apps, then none of Aqara's features will feel unfamiliar. Tap the + icon in the upper right of the main app screen to add a new device, and then select your device from the menus.

Additionally, the Aqara app offers a scene creator and automation creator. Both of these features are useful, but I prefer to use HomeKit to set up automations. If you're not a HomeKit user, then the app could prove more useful for you.

Download: Aqara Home for iOS | Android (Free)

Testing the M2 Smart Hub

When testing the M2, I had two main concerns. First, I wanted to know if this hub was vulnerable to outside attack, and second, I needed to find out if this hub was sending data to a third party. Obviously, security on any IoT network is essential, as you don't want hackers accessing your stuff.

Since I am a networking novice, I figured that if I could find a way to access this hub using readily available tools like OWASP Zap and IoT Inspector, then the M2 might possess some high-level security issues. So, I fired up a copy of both applications to see what would happen.

First up was OWASP Zap, which searches for vulnerabilities primarily in web applications. However, you can point Zap at the IoT devices on your network by inputting their local IPs. So that's what I did. Not surprisingly, Zap could not achieve a connection with the M2, despite using several of the standard "attack" options.

This information means that some outside attempts to access the hub result in connection refusals. Does this mean that the M2 is entirely safe from external attack? Probably not, but I trust that the hub won't be an easy target.

Next on the list was to use the Princeton-built IoT Inspector utility to see if the M2 was phoning home. IoT Inspector harnesses AP spoofing to record outbound data transmission from individual devices on the network. While I am not highly concerned with the possibility of my IoT network traffic being recorded, I figured that it might be a good idea to see what's going on behind the scenes with the M2.

After a painful configuration process for the IoT Inspector command-line interface, I recorded web traffic from the hub to outside servers. During the 15 minutes or so I had IoT Inspector working, I found that the M2 contacted Aqara.com multiple times, and the unit also contacted Chinese public DNS service 114DNS. Does this mean that the hub is "phoning home?" Yes. Should this be a concern? That's debatable.

As I said, I am not a network security expert, so these outbound contacts might be perfectly reasonable. However, if security is important to you, you'll want to do your homework before deciding to pick up this hub.

Related: How You Might Attack Your Company Network With Shadow IoT

What We Love About the M2

The best aspects of the M2 are the ease of use, installation, and configuration. Additionally, the ability to expand the system to support up to 128 devices is a boon. Users can add door sensors, window sensors, and motion sensors to this system without much effort.

This brings me to the number of potential devices that can be connected. While the numbers might make it seem like this hub can work with 128 devices out of the gate, this isn't exactly the case.

To use more than 32, you'll need some form of Zigbee repeater, such as a light bulb or other hardwired smart home device. Aqara states this limitation in the fine print of its M2 documentation.

The good news is, however, that most beginners probably won't go past that initial limitation. Thirty-two devices is a lot, and even with a smart home setup as extensive as my own, I haven't gotten close to that number of accessories.

Finally, I think my favorite thing about the M2 is how it disappears once it's up and running. I plugged it in a few weeks ago and haven't had to interact much with it since. It stays out of the way, and to me, that is the mark of an excellent smart home product. The Aqara M2 connectivity has also been excellent.

Related: Common Internet of Things (IoT) Issues and How to Fix Them

What's Not to Love?

As for the negative aspects of this hub, there are only four that I can immediately identify. There's the potential for security issues, which has been discussed. Then, there's the built-in speaker.

This speaker is great if you're looking to have an audible cue to set up additional smart devices or use the hub as an alarm clock or doorbell. However, this speaker is also part of a significant feature of this hub—the onboard security alarm.

The problem here is that the speaker of the M2, even at full volume, isn't very loud. Couple that with the strange alarm sounds (there's one named "Sniper," which sounds like a recording of a video game sniper rifle), and the alarm function seems like a novelty.

While there are ways to increase the volume by adding additional components, doing so again means extra cost. That's why, in our view, if you're looking for a dedicated alarm feature, then you'll want to look elsewhere.

Additionally, the Aqara ecosystem is going to be limiting for some people. There are only so many motion sensors and light switches you can install into a home before you want to expand your setup to include more complex products and automations.

Of course, IFTTT is an option here, and Aqara also includes If/Then programmable control sequences in its app. But relying on the Aqara app to control all of your smart home stuff locks you into the ecosystem even further. If you're planning on going big with home automation, you'll probably want to incorporate a more capable hub from one of the big three manufacturers.

Lastly, while Aqara made the M2 to be future-proof, longevity is questionable. However, that's not necessarily the M2's fault. If you've been following the smart home industry, then you know technology changes rapidly. An easy-to-see example of this rapid shift is single-band 2.4 GHz support.

Many higher-end smart home products these days are forgoing the single-band in favor of dual-band support. For Aqara to be future-proof, we would have liked to see dual-band support on this unit.

Can you Repair the Aqara M2 Smart Hub?

That's a big negative. Like many electronic smart home products, the M2 cannot be taken apart by the end-user.

Should You Buy the Aqara M2 Smart Hub?

The M2 is a perfect starter hub. It's easy to set up, and there is a minimal learning curve. For smart home beginners and those looking to test the water, this hub is a favorite. HomeKit support means that even if you decide to expand your system, as long as you're using an iDevice, you'll be able to keep your Aqara accessories.

Ala carte accessory options also offer the ability to scale your smart home as the mood strikes you. And many of Aqara's products are readily available through places like Amazon.

But, if security is a significant concern, you might want to choose another option. Additionally, if you've got complex automations in mind, we think you'll be happier with a hub that has a more versatile ecosystem.

That said, the Aqara M2 has earned a place near the top of our list of smart home hubs. It's an excellent value for those who appreciate both flexibility and ease of use.

The Aqara M2 Smart Hub is Great for Smart Home Beginners published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/

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deniscollins · 6 years ago

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Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain

Do you or your coworkers look at your smartphone more than 52 times a day (which is the national average)? Do you or your co-workers need to unhook your brain from the harmful routines it has adopted around cell phone use? If yes, how can this problem be addressed to improve the relationship they have with their cell phones?

My name is Kevin, and I have a phone problem.

And if you’re anything like me �� and the statistics suggest you probably are, at least where smartphones are concerned — you have one, too.

I don’t love referring to what we have as an “addiction.” That seems too sterile and clinical to describe what’s happening to our brains in the smartphone era. Unlike alcohol or opioids, phones aren’t an addictive substance so much as a species-level environmental shock. We might someday evolve the correct biological hardware to live in harmony with portable supercomputers that satisfy our every need and connect us to infinite amounts of stimulation. But for most of us, it hasn’t happened yet.

I’ve been a heavy phone user for my entire adult life. But sometime last year, I crossed the invisible line into problem territory. My symptoms were all the typical ones: I found myself incapable of reading books, watching full-length movies or having long uninterrupted conversations. Social media made me angry and anxious, and even the digital spaces I once found soothing (group texts, podcasts, YouTube k-holes) weren’t helping. I tried various tricks to curb my usage, like deleting Twitter every weekend, turning my screen grayscale and installing app-blockers. But I always relapsed.

Eventually, in late December, I decided that enough was enough. I called Catherine Price, a science journalist and the author of “How to Break Up With Your Phone,” a 30-day guide to eliminating bad phone habits. And I begged her for help.

Mercifully, she agreed to be my phone coach for the month of January, and walk me through her plan, step by step. Together, we would build a healthy relationship with my phone, and try to unbreak my brain.

‘A Bit Horrifying’

I confess that entering phone rehab feels clichéd, like getting really into healing crystals or Peloton. Digital wellness is a budding industry these days, with loads of self-help gurus offering miracle cures for screen addiction. Some of those solutions involve new devices — such as the “Light Phone,” a device with an extremely limited feature set that is meant to wean users off time-sucking apps. Others focus on cutting out screens entirely for weeks on end. You can now buy $299 “digital detox” packages at luxury hotels or join the “digital sabbath”movement, whose adherents vow to spend one day a week using no technology at all.

Thankfully, Catherine’s plan is more practical. I’m a tech columnist, and while I don’t begrudge anyone for trying more extreme forms of disconnection, my job prevents me from going cold turkey.

Instead, her program focuses on addressing the root causes of phone addiction, including the emotional triggers that cause you to reach for your phone in the first place. The point isn’t to get you off the internet, or even off social media — you’re still allowed to use Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms on a desktop or laptop, and there’s no hard-and-fast time limit. It’s simply about unhooking your brain from the harmful routines it has adopted around this particular device, and hooking it to better things.

When we started, I sent her my screen time statistics, which showed that I had spent 5 hours and 37 minutes on my phone that day, and picked it up 101 times — roughly twice as many as the average American.

“That is frankly insane and makes me want to die,” I wrote to her.

“I will admit that those numbers are a bit horrifying,” she replied.

Catherine encouraged me to set up mental speed bumps so that I would be forced to think for a second before engaging with my phone. I put a rubber band around the device, for example, and changed my lock screen to one that showed three questions to ask myself every time I unlocked my phone: “What for? Why now? What else?”

For the rest of the week, I became acutely aware of the bizarre phone habits I’d developed. I noticed that I reach for my phone every time I brush my teeth or step outside the front door of my apartment building, and that, for some pathological reason, I always check my email during the three-second window between when I insert my credit card into a chip reader at a store and when the card is accepted.

Mostly, I became aware of how profoundly uncomfortable I am with stillness. For years, I’ve used my phone every time I’ve had a spare moment in an elevator or a boring meeting. I listen to podcasts and write emails on the subway. I watch YouTube videos while folding laundry. I even use an app to pretend to meditate.

If I was going to repair my brain, I needed to practice doing nothing. So during my morning walk to the office, I looked up at the buildings around me, spotting architectural details I’d never noticed before. On the subway, I kept my phone in my pocket and people-watched — noticing the nattily dressed man in the yellow hat, the teens eating hot Takis and laughing, the kid with Velcro shoes. When a friend ran late for our lunch, I sat still and stared out the window instead of checking Twitter.

It’s an unnerving sensation, being alone with your thoughts in the year 2019. Catherine had warned me that I might feel existential malaise when I wasn’t distracting myself with my phone. She also said paying more attention to my surroundings would make me realize how many other people used their phones to cope with boredom and anxiety.

“I compare it to seeing a family member naked,” she said. “Once you look around the elevator and see the zombies checking their phones, you can’t unsee it.”

Withdrawal Sets In

Next, I gave my phone the Marie Kondo treatment — looking at all my apps and keeping the ones that sparked joy and contributed to healthy habits and tossing those that didn’t.

For me, that meant deleting Twitter, Facebook and all other social media apps, along with news apps and games. I kept messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal, and non-distracting utilities like cooking and navigation apps. I pruned my home screen to just the essentials: calendar, email and password manager. And I disabled push notifications for everything other than phone calls and messages from a preset list of people that included my editor, my wife and a handful of close friends.

Where you keep your phone is also important. Studies have shownthat people who don’t charge their phones in their bedrooms are significantly happier than those who do. Catherine charges her phone in a closet; for me, she recommended a locking mini-safe. I bought one and started storing my phone inside, which simultaneously reduced my nighttime usage and made me feel like I was guarding the queen’s jewels.

And I pursued activities that could replace my phone habit. On the recommendation of my colleague Farhad Manjoo, I signed up for pottery classes. As it turned out, pottery makes a perfect phone substitute. It’s manually challenging and demands concentration for hours on end. It gets your hands dirty, too, which is a good deterrent to fiddling with expensive electronics.

After a pottery class, I updated my wife on my progress. I told her that while it felt great to disconnect, I still worried that I was missing something important. I liked having a constant stream of news at my fingertips, and I wanted to do more of the things I actually like about social media, like keeping tabs on my friends’ babies and maintaining ambient Kardashian awareness.

“I’m sad that you’re having trouble with this,” she said, “because it’s been great for me.”

She explained that since my phone detox started, I’d been more present and attentive at home. I spent more time listening to her, and less time distractedly nodding and mumbling while checking my inbox or tapping out tweets.

Psychologists have a name for this: “phubbing,” or snubbing a person in favor of your phone. Studies have shown that excessive phubbing decreases relationship satisfaction and contributes to feelings of depression and alienation.

For years, I’ve justified my phubbing by treating it as a professional necessity. Isn’t it my job to know when news happens? Won’t I be neglecting my duties if it takes me an extra hour to learn that Jeff Bezos is getting divorced, or another YouTuber did something racist?

I put this question to Catherine, who reassured me that I wasn’t jeopardizing my career by being slightly later to the news. She reminded me that I’d been happier since I dialed down my screen time, and she gently encouraged me to focus on the other side of the cost-benefit analysis.

“Think of the bigger picture of what you’re getting by not being on Twitter all the time.”

A Thoreau Cleansing

The biggest test came with a “trial separation” — a 48-hour period during which I wasn’t allowed to use my phone or any other digital device. (Catherine’s program calls for a 24-hour separation, but I decided to try a more hard-core version.)

I had dreaded this idea at the outset, but when the weekend actually arrived, I got giddy with excitement. I rented an off-the-grid Airbnb in the Catskills, warned my editor that I’d be offline for the weekend and took off.

A phone-free weekend involved some complications. Without Google Maps, I got lost and had to pull over for directions. Without Yelp, I had trouble finding open restaurants.

But mostly, it was great. For two solid days, I basked in 19th-century leisure, feeling my nerves softening and my attention span stretching back out. I read books. I did the crossword puzzle. I lit a fire and looked at the stars. I felt like Thoreau, if Thoreau periodically wondered what was happening on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram story.

I also felt twinges of anger — at myself, for missing out on this feeling of restorative boredom for so many years; at the engineers in Silicon Valley who spend their days profitably exploiting our cognitive weaknesses; at the entire phone-industrial complex that has convinced us that a six-inch glass-and-steel rectangle is the ideal conduit for worldly experiences.

Sadly, there is no way to talk about the benefits of digital disconnection without sounding like a Goop subscriber or a neo-Luddite. Performative wellness is obnoxious, as is reflexive technophobia.

But I cannot stress enough that under the right conditions, spending an entire weekend without a phone in your immediate vicinity is incredible. You have to try it.

Rewired and Renewed

Allow me a bit of bragging: Over the course of 30 days, my average daily phone time, as measured by the iPhone’s built-in screen time tracker, has dwindled from around five hours to just over an hour. I now pick up my phone only about 20 times a day, down from more than 100. I still use my phone for email and texting — and I’m still using my laptop plenty — but I don’t itch for social media, and I often go hours without so much as a peek at any screen.

In one of our conversations, I asked Catherine if she worried that I would relapse. She said it was possible, given the addictive properties of phones and the likelihood that they’ll only keep getting more essential. But she said that as long as I remained aware of my relationship with my phone, and continued to notice when and how I used it, I’d have gotten something valuable.

“Your life is what you pay attention to,” she said. “If you want to spend it on video games or Twitter, that’s your business. But it should be a conscious choice.”

One of the most unexpected benefits of this program is that by getting some emotional distance from my phone, I’ve started to appreciate it again. I keep thinking: Right here, in my pocket, is a device that can summon food, cars and millions of other consumer goods to my door. I can talk with everyone I’ve ever met, create and store a photographic record of my entire life, and tap into the entire corpus of human knowledge with a few swipes.

Steve Jobs wasn’t exaggerating when he described the iPhone as a kind of magical object, and it’s truly wild that in the span of a few years, we’ve managed to turn these amazing talismanic tools into stress-inducing albatrosses. It’s as if scientists had invented a pill that gave us the ability to fly, only to find out that it also gave us dementia.

But there is a way out. I haven’t taken an M.R.I. or undergone a psychiatric evaluation, but I’d bet that something fundamental has shifted inside my brain in the past month. A few weeks ago, the world on my phone seemed more compelling than the offline world — more colorful, faster-moving and with a bigger scope of rewards.

I still love that world, and probably always will. But now, the physical world excites me, too — the one that has room for boredom, idle hands and space for thinking. I no longer feel phantom buzzes in my pocket or have dreams about checking my Twitter replies. I look people in the eye and listen when they talk. I ride the elevator empty-handed. And when I get sucked into my phone, I notice and self-correct.

It’s not a full recovery, and I’ll have to stay vigilant. But for the first time in a long time, I’m starting to feel like a human again.

#Cell phones

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herdelusionstranger · 7 years ago

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Often, mostly the owners of private houses ask questions about the spherical configuration of ceilings. There are many nuances of realization of the arch at your home. So, today we will explore vaulted ceiling: main principles of constructing and finishing, and we will try to acquaint you with the main ones.

This publication tells about the constructions of arched ceilings. It also considered which ceiling is more reliable and durable – flat or vaulted. We will also provide some simple ways to change the geometry of the ceiling surface in order to create an interesting interior design.

Contents:

Which One is Stronger?

Features of Vaulted Ceiling

Vaulted Designs Today

Main features of the design

Bent Profile. Mounting Method

Beginning of the Installation

Which One is Stronger?

It is unlikely that you will believe the unequivocal statement: yes, the vaulted ceiling is more durable – after all, such a resume should be somehow justified. Therefore, to compare, you need to consider both options.

Flat slab works on kink

We first consider the usual flat ceiling. As it can be seen from the picture above. This is a normal plane resting on the walls. The load from its mass is directed strictly down. In other words, such a ceiling is constantly under fracture risk.

In order for such a ceiling to perform its functions, it must be sufficiently strengthened. The larger the floor space, the larger the spans, and the more tough the ceiling should be.

This design works well in relatively small rooms. Otherwise, due to the large spans it is necessary to arrange the supporting structures.

The larger the surface size, the more reinforcing material it requires. The ceiling becomes even heavier because of it, plus an additional load on the walls and the foundation of the room.

The Larger the Free Area, the More Support it Needs.

Many people probably saw powerful columns and ceiling beams in the buildings of large shopping centers and other similar objects. Their calculation and selection of structural materials is carried out so that the overlap is resistant to fracture.

Modern materials allow coping with this task. They are strong enough and light at the same time. But even in these cases we can not do without additional supports.

Features of Vaulted Ceiling

Radius plate construction is called an arch. It differs from flat slabs in that this spatial structure works not in bending but in compression.

Spacer loads, depending on the building structure, are perceived by walls, frames, buttresses (protruding parts of the walls), or foundations if this is, for example, a wine cellar.

Such ceilings were made by bricklayers from time immemorial, and vaulted ceilings were always considered the most durable. This is confirmed by the old buildings that have been preserved to our days, which have been serving for centuries and will stand as many more. No wonder that almost all historically established architecture is based on vaulted ceilings.

There are at least six varieties of radial ceiling structures, as well as developed in 1943 version of the double curvature. It was used for the installation of coatings for industrial and large public buildings as the most durable type.

Note! All types of bricks, including hollow, natural and artificial stones (including blocks of lightweight concrete, of regular geometric shape can be used for the construction of curvilinear floors. Vaulted type surfaces allow you to cover a large area without installing columns.

Buttress looks just like this

The only condition is that the walls should be stronger and well-fortified along the axis. It is for this purpose that protruding parts (buttresses) are provided for buildings. Look at any old building, and you will find such visible (or disguised by other structures) elements everywhere.

Have you ever wondered why ancient buildings, mainly churches, have such architectural design as depicted at the photo? It is just because vaulted surfaces arranged in these buildings!

The desire to cover as much area as possible without the use of supporting columns in the center, as well as the lack of special materials and mechanisms for construction at that time, explains these architectural features.

Vaulted Ceiling: Main Principles of Constructing and Finishing. Vaulted Designs Today

Nowadays, when decorating interiors, designers also use vaulted ceilings. No, they do not build them with the obligatory erection of buttresses and arch buttresses – they are rather interior decorations. Such a time-consuming, complicated by configuration, and, importantly, expensive designs are rarely built today, at least in civil engineering.

Modern materials make it possible to arrange vaulted and arched ceilings in rooms, giving them unique design and comfort quickly, without spending much time and money. And it is impossible to simply arrange a vaulted ceiling in an already finished building without its complete alteration. But you can make a light and beautiful false roof.

Main Features of the Design

Why vaulted and arched forms are so attracting for people:

The fact is that the lack of a sharp transition from the wall to the ceiling creates some blurring of visual perception.

Due to this, the room acquires some lightness and its size increases visually.

You may already have a question: is it possible to arrange such a structure at home and how to do it correctly?

In fact, you can arrange a vaulted ceiling in your own house with your own hands.

One small nuance: for this, the height of the walls should be sufficient. If it is less than 3,2 m, then it is better not to experiment.

Bent Profile. Mounting Method

In one of our articles on ceilings, we described several ways how to bend drywall. Therefore, this issue should not cause problems.

Of course, you will need to purchase a profile for the frame of the appropriate configuration, it is also called “bent”. For the rest, everything is pretty prosaic.

The topmost point of the frame is mounted on the ceiling using conventional direct suspensions. The farther from the center and closer to the walls, the longer suspensions we will need.

This issue is solved by the use of spring suspensions with wire. You have no curved profile and the height of the main ceiling is relatively small? You can make a vaulted or arched ceiling, using cut from 10 mm plywood elements of the future frame, tightly attached to the main surface instead of hangers and curved profiles.

To do this, you will need to measure your room, and most importantly, pay attention to its size in the section. Strictly observing the scale, make the drawing of the room. Next, a diagram of the future ceiling is drawn. If everything suits you, you can get to work.

To get the shape of a dome, it is enough to round the joints of the ceiling and walls.

Here is what you can get in the end:

Dome-shaped wall and ceiling junctions

The device of a radial ceiling in the house with a gable roof without an attic

The result is something like this:

Variant of room design with an arched ceiling: Contemporary style

Beginning of the Installation

As you have already understood from the above photos, the framework for the roof, as in the case with the usual plasterboard ceiling, can be assembled from metal profile or from wood. In the second case, elements of plywood or glued veneer are used on curvilinear sections, and regular bars are used on straight lines.

Constructions from LVL-timber

Our advice: prime all wooden parts with a primer before installation. The beam is fixed: the next stage is the fastening of a curved profile made of plywood.

The best option would be when the radial element consists of two halves tightly fixed in the center. The step with which it will be attached throughout the room should be 600 mm.

The first one is attached to the wall. Two holes for anchors are drilled in the place of the central joint.

According to your calculation, it is necessary to drill holes at the ends of the wooden belt to the size of the anchors. Bending and fastening of such a “profile” will not be difficult. Of course, you will need an assistant.

Plywood element begins to bend immediately. Initially, it is fixed on the ceiling. After that, when bended to the desired radius, it is fixed on the timber.

If the bend is small, then in the middle of the profile you will need to install a spring suspension. When the bend is quite steep, the suspension can be skipped. It’s only up to you.

Thus all elements of a wooden profile are fixed. Again, the pitch should be 600 mm.

Important! Regardless of the size of the room, the last profile should be installed flush with the wall.

In the case of the dome form, there is only a longitudinal metal profile in the frame, there is no cross section. Therefore, installing sheets of drywall, it is necessary to embroider the gypsum board with a painting knife in the place of transverse joint. Subsequently, the joint is convenient to putty, and the jointing will not allow the seam to crack.

We have reviewed the nuances of the arranging of such original ceilings. Of course, someone may argue that it is rather not vaulted, but an arched structure. That’s right, but in both cases, the principles of the arranging are the same.

It is just a little more difficult to make a vaulted ceiling, but if you wish, it is completely possible for any person who owns the tool and wits. And most importantly – there should be a desire, diligence and hard work.

Vaulted Ceiling: Main Principles of Constructing and Finishing Often, mostly the owners of private houses ask questions about the spherical configuration of ceilings. There are many nuances of realization of the arch at your home.

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ramrodd · 7 years ago

Text

Why do liberals oppose Trumps tax cuts for corporations?

On the positive side, Trump is right about Putin.

COMMENTARY:

Currently, the Treasury is printing money as fast as it can to accommodate the deficit spending Trump’s business model requires to keep his personal business afloat.

Trump’s entire business model is based on getting as many balls in the air as possible and keep them up with cash flow. When the cash flow slows down or dries up, the balls begin to fall out of the tree like Christmas Tree ornaments.

That’s what happened to Manafort and it represents a demarcation between the economic policy of Obama and Trump: the cash flows that kept his balls in the air dried up under Obama for some reason and it may have been the sanctions, but it is also because whatever deficit spending Obama did, it was being sucked up by the TARP repairs that he and Bush collaborated I think even before the election and all that juicy cash Manafort counted on to buy expensive jackets stopped flowing.

If these cash flows dried up because of the promiscuous employment of sanctions against Russia, then they, the sanctions, were an act of war totally unwarranted by justified in support of the Ukrainian Independence movement. I don’t know what happened between Putin and Obama that bent Obama’s nose so out of joint, but he should have manned up right then and write off whatever it was to a “welcome to the NFL” moment. Instead, he let his dick dictate the Russian narrative that produced these sanctions.

He and Clinton spent the better part of 6 years doing to Russia as a proxy for Putin what Obama did to Trump at the Foreign Correspondence Dinner.

Putin had every right, under the rules of warfare to launch the cyber-attack against our election, but he didn’t. He knows who did and he could have stopped it, but he had a larger purpose and that was for someone like me to explain my version of events based on process theology. Process theology is the essential social technology of the US Constitution and Marxism. The US Constitution employs the economics of sweetness and light. Marxism employs the economics of darkness and dust. The only real difference between the US Constituion and Marxism, as can been traced historically, is the difference between the Free Enterprise economics of the Democratic Socialism of the US Constitution in contrast to the Free Market economics of Marxism and Tory Socialism.

I use the same process theology as Frank “Be All You Can Be” Burns. He and I are the best in the world at what we do and he’s dead. I have been consulting to the Russians since Carter was President and as a direct result of the Nixon-Breznev Detente, that made the IPO I was involved in possible, that and Nixon’s design for airline deregulation. I was using process theology to put the project together in collaboration with my partner/boss, Dale P. Lewis, who installed the first turn-key IBM data center in Saratov, outside of Moscow. The people who were doing deals with the Soviets were people like Donald Kendall of Pepsico and Armand Hammer. People who did business like Trump and Manafort were Greeks and Hong Kong pirates. Assholes like Trump were just beginning to show up in Europe, but none of them ever could do a deal like what Dale did because they all lie, cheat and steal like Trump. Especially Harvard-trained executives, with their Kavenau calculus.

I couldn’t put the project together. Dale didn’t need me to do that, but he needed me to do the stuff he couldn’t or I could do better, which wasn’t much except in finance and I understood it well enough to know we needed someone like Jim Kimsey to take it public, Dale had a similar idea about finance as Manafort, but he wasn’t a thief, he just didn’t understand that profits are future costs and not pocket change for clubbing. This is unfair to him, but expedient in the moment, but I left the program because he wanted to run the project the way Trump build the Taj Mahal and he didn’t understand that our finances had to be squeaky-clean.

That project was Plan B for me. Plan A was to make the Army a career and retire as the commanding general of Ft. Monroe with my college sweetheart, but I was freaked out by a senior office in Vietnam who was basically a forever Trumper and left the service. I had no Plan B, so I aligned my burning desire to marry my college sweetheart and live anywhere her heart desired and the necessity to become filthy rich to fulfill that vision and went to work for a bank in order to learn how money works. I had already been thinking about the Soviet economy since before JFK authorized the Green Berets, but looking at it from the perspective of Elizabeth Warren’s community banking model she and I both grew with, in 1972, there was no there, there. And they, the Soviet people, needed a there, there, if they were going to benefit from their victory over Fascism.

And that’s when the contrast between the Democratic Socialism of 1971 American constitutional capitalism and Marxist Socialism became as start as the difference in the quality of life between North Korea and South Korea.

And, so, after I left the IPO, I kept in touch with AviaEport here in DC, trying to keep the project alive. America needed a replacement for a DC-3 class aircraft to fully implement Nixon’s design for airline deregulation and we could do it fast and cheap and hang America labor and technology all over the design like a Christmas Tree. I almost stopped after Reagan was shot because all those crypto-Nazi assholes like Roger Stone and Pat Buchana are always eager to put you on a black list and remove you as competition, which they did, but I began to provide commentary like this regarding events inside the Beltway while exploring other US-Soviet Aerospace opportunities, most of which were being obstructed by the same people who obstructed Obama from 2011 to 2017. The crypto-Nazi activists of the GOP Deep State that coalesced around Donald T. Regan until Nancy found out what he was doing and fired ass.

And, so, I am a very know quantity in the institutional memory of the former Soviet executives around Putin, including Putin. Putin is doing stuff and I’ve been telling him what it looks like from here. I did the same for Gorbachev especially after I warned him that whatever understandings he and Reagan had made in good faith in Reykjavic, privately, had been tabled by Regan and all bets were off, In retrospect, Regan’s betrayal was probably made possible by Reagan’s undiagnosed Alzheimer’s, but the fact of the matter is that Regan was running his own agenda out of the Oval Office.

And, so, Putin has seen what I mean and I explain what it looks like he is doing, but the essential thing for never Trumpers to understand is that (1) Putin is not the problem; (2) Manafort was up to his eyeballs in what continues to be the problem and the reason why, as an Eisenhower Republican, I place Trump’s Tax Reform in the same catagory with the Tory Socialism of Reaganomics, the GOP Deep State and the Harvard Business model as an artifact of the hard core crypto-Naziz gathered around Trump and an illustration of the axiom: everything these people touch turns to shit.

So, Manafort went to work in Trump’s campaign to get the spigots turned back on for the cash flows that had dried up on him and he went out of his way to put Mike Pence on the ticket because Mike Pence is connected with the Evangelical phone bank laundry services associated with Citizens United, hedge funds and (R) PACs and, when it comes to cash flows and Dark Money, Mike makes sure it all gets started again with the combination of deficit spending and tax subsidies for high volume through-put of all that deficit spending more or less directly to the Koch brothers, Jeff Bezos and virtually every member of The Giving Pledge.

Trump’s entire tax reform program is designed to transfer wealth from the 90% of the population making $50,000/year or less to the upper 1% of the population making $50,000/year or more, plus as much of the public treasury that should be going into infrastructure as an essential element of National Security, in the Eisenhower 1956 Presidential Platform sense of the word and all that they can liquidate, privatize or otherwise rip off in the name of tax reform.

In 1988, Bob Dole’s Tax Reform vacated several strata of the economy and caused the Junk Bond markets and the S&Ls to blow up and create the largest transfer of wealth from the middle class to a narrow sector of the population. Trump’s Tax Reforms are based on Dole’s legislative design. I don’t have any idea what damage has been done to the economy, but the shit is about to hit the fan,

And the whole purpose is to create the cash flow Trump and Manafort need to keep all their balls in the air. On the positive side, Trump is right about Putin.

#transformingamericafirst

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