#which is basically my entire field's research component

[rustedhills]

My opinions on genAI are too complex to write in a snappy tumblr post BUT if my university just, say, updated its AI policy and released its OWN AI PROGRAM

And also values its reputation as an academic and research university (I hope)

And generally wants its student body to do Good Academic Work

Then THIS

Is a WILD thing to say when the AI is supposedly SPECIFICALLY FOR THE STUDENT BODY

"Oh yeah we released a new does-work-in-an-academic-setting machine"

"It's just got a significant error rate and shouldn't be trusted lol"

"lmao"

"Also we're laying off a bunch of staff and instituting budget cuts university wide"

"But tuition's still 50k a semester"

"ppppbpbbptpbpbpbpbpttttt"

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

What if the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning? Our research suggests it may have taken place inside a black hole

Professor Enrique Gaztanaga from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation writes for The Conversation

The Big Bang is often described as the explosive birth of the universe – a singular moment when space, time and matter sprang into existence. But what if this was not the beginning at all? What if our universe emerged from something else – something more familiar and radical at the same time?

In a new paper, published in Physical Review D, my colleagues and I propose a striking alternative. Our calculations suggest the Big Bang was not the start of everything, but rather the outcome of a gravitational crunch or collapse that formed a very massive black hole – followed by a bounce inside it.

This idea, which we call the black hole universe, offers a radically different view of cosmic origins, yet it is grounded entirely in known physics and observations.

Today’s standard cosmological model, based on the Big Bang and cosmic inflation (the idea that the early universe rapidly blew up in size), has been remarkably successful in explaining the structure and evolution of the universe. But it comes at a price: it leaves some of the most fundamental questions unanswered.

For one, the Big Bang model begins with a singularity – a point of infinite density where the laws of physics break down. This is not just a technical glitch; it’s a deep theoretical problem that suggests we don’t really understand the beginning at all.

To explain the universe’s large-scale structure, physicists introduced a brief phase of rapid expansion into the early universe called cosmic inflation, powered by an unknown field with strange properties. Later, to explain the accelerating expansion observed today, they added another “mysterious” component: dark energy.

In short, the standard model of cosmology works well – but only by introducing new ingredients we have never observed directly. Meanwhile, the most basic questions remain open: where did everything come from? Why did it begin this way? And why is the universe so flat, smooth, and large?

New model

Our new model tackles these questions from a different angle – by looking inward instead of outward. Instead of starting with an expanding universe and trying to trace back how it began, we consider what happens when an overly dense collection of matter collapses under gravity.

This is a familiar process: stars collapse into black holes, which are among the most well-understood objects in physics. But what happens inside a black hole, beyond the event horizon from which nothing can escape, remains a mystery.

In 1965, the British physicist Roger Penrose proved that under very general conditions, gravitational collapse must lead to a singularity. This result, extended by the late British physicist Stephen Hawking and others, underpins the idea that singularities – like the one at the Big Bang – are unavoidable.

The idea helped win Penrose a share of the 2020 Nobel prize in physics and inspired Hawking’s global bestseller A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. But there’s a caveat. These “singularity theorems” rely on “classical physics” which describes ordinary macroscopic objects. If we include the effects of quantum mechanics, which rules the tiny microcosmos of atoms and particles, as we must at extreme densities, the story may change.

In our new paper, we show that gravitational collapse does not have to end in a singularity. We find an exact analytical solution – a mathematical result with no approximations. Our maths show that as we approach the potential singularity, the size of the universe changes as a (hyperbolic) function of cosmic time.

This simple mathematical solution describes how a collapsing cloud of matter can reach a high-density state and then bounce, rebounding outward into a new expanding phase.

But how come Penrose’s theorems forbid out such outcomes? It’s all down to a rule called the quantum exclusion principle, which states that no two identical particles known as fermions can occupy the same quantum state (such as angular momentum, or “spin”).

And we show that this rule prevents the particles in the collapsing matter from being squeezed indefinitely. As a result, the collapse halts and reverses. The bounce is not only possible – it’s inevitable under the right conditions.

Crucially, this bounce occurs entirely within the framework of general relativity, which applies on large scales such as stars and galaxies, combined with the basic principles of quantum mechanics – no exotic fields, extra dimensions or speculative physics required.

What emerges on the other side of the bounce is a universe remarkably like our own. Even more surprisingly, the rebound naturally produces the two separate phases of accelerated expansion – inflation and dark energy – driven not by a hypothetical fields but by the physics of the bounce itself.

Testable predictions

One of the strengths of this model is that it makes testable predictions. It predicts a small but non-zero amount of positive spatial curvature – meaning the universe is not exactly flat, but slightly curved, like the surface of the Earth.

This is simply a relic of the initial small over-density that triggered the collapse. If future observations, such as the ongoing Euclid mission, confirm a small positive curvature, it would be a strong hint that our universe did indeed emerge from such a bounce. It also makes predictions about the current universe’s rate of expansion, something that has already been verified.

This model does more than fix technical problems with standard cosmology. It could also shed new light on other deep mysteries in our understanding of the early universe – such as the origin of supermassive black holes, the nature of dark matter, or the hierarchical formation and evolution of galaxies.

These questions will be explored by future space missions such as Arrakhis, which will study diffuse features such as stellar halos (a spherical structure of stars and globular clusters surrounding galaxies) and satellite galaxies (smaller galaxies that orbit larger ones) that are difficult to detect with traditional telescopes from Earth and will help us understand dark matter and galaxy evolution.

These phenomena might also be linked to relic compact objects – such as black holes – that formed during the collapsing phase and survived the bounce.

The black hole universe also offers a new perspective on our place in the cosmos. In this framework, our entire observable universe lies inside the interior of a black hole formed in some larger “parent” universe.

We are not special, no more than Earth was in the geocentric worldview that led Galileo (the astronomer who suggested the Earth revolves around the Sun in the 16th and 17th centuries) to be placed under house arrest.

We are not witnessing the birth of everything from nothing, but rather the continuation of a cosmic cycle – one shaped by gravity, quantum mechanics, and the deep interconnections between them.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

[nishnormp]

thinking way too hard about things that probably do not need this much thought

In lieu of tfc merc brainrot, I have decided to do some historical research and character workshopping to shape out the details of everything needed in ficwriting. I have nothing else to post (my art is not going well) so I might as well scream about this

P1: TF2 alternate history bullshit

Abraham Lincoln inventing rocket jumping before the existence of stairs, the entire thing with Australium, so on. Despite TFC having modern kevlar (as opposed to looney toons weapons, but a bit about that later) and a more serious/gritty tone, the setting is still within the TF2 universe; which means having a weird fusion of irl history and vaguely reasonable fantasy absurdities.

To clarify, I am not a bona fide history nut who knows absolutely everything (ffs my own country's history doesn't even play much in western incidents). I've just been doing research thru online articles, videos, and talking to other ppl who know more than me, so my brain can lack a bit for certain things; do correct me if I get anything wrong.

By the 1850s (estimation) Australia became a tech giant due to discovering Australium, making insane progress in basically every field (and also making their population very jacked). Newfound inventions also require raw resources, and this page confirms that australians pick their leader mostly based on pure strength, which begs the question; are they still connected to Britain? Would there still be a benefit for them to be linked to Britian the way they are?

There are many cases where nations plunder other nations just for natural resources; Britian is one particularly infamous force with many colonies, which makes me wonder if Australia ever resorted to snatching them just to afford all the material components that their tech requires. Australia was part of the British Empire up until 1901 irl (not too far from 1890), but the question about resources and sovereignty(even if symbolic) still remain (Britain likely wouldn't like a territory growing at terrifying and eventually unmanageable rates, and at that rate I doubt Australia would settle for middling trade margins)

(Well, apparently Saxton owns England. But that was when he discovered the internet)

There's also the ensemble of first gen mercs. RED and BLU recruit progressively less important mercs as time goes on, starting from important historical/media figures, to modern militant professional-lookin dudes, and finally to the current crop of crackheaded TF2 mercs we know and love. The Original mercs I mostly want to focus on are Abraham Lincoln and John Henry.

I'm not exactly sure if John Henry is even a real person, but he was a symbol for labor movements and the civil rights movement; the fact that he IS a real person in TF2 lore is p vital methinks, especially since him and Lincoln seem to be on the same team. Mercs are paid a lot, even the "bottom of the barrel" tf2 ones: scout has his merch collection to show for it, medic has his exotic animal parts, heavy has his gun ammo (and also casually gave a child 7k dollars), etc; could John Henry have spearheaded civil rights movements not just in America but also other territories (like africa) with the bread and merits he got for the job? Does he have a legacy with rouge merc groups (armed unions?) that fight against imperialism? Maybe even effect/radicalize Lincoln about some things??? Unethical business practices still persist even in Saxton's era (hell, he's an example) but maybe the (hypothetical) challenges to Britain's grasp on its colonies and evolution of munitions would give the people an edge.

I have no idea how a drastically colony-less Britain would affect the timeline of WW1 (esp in less popular side-wars like in South Africa where Britain was very much involved, which may be problematic since my interp of cmedic is FROM there but anyways) (btw they only won that bc they out-attritioned Germany, but by that point maybe the dutch or the americans would take over), but surprisingly enough WW2 ends at around the same time it does irl, despite my initial thought that a roided-out Allied Australia would be more than capable of turning the Axis Powers into a skidmark. The likely explanation for that is that the finer details were just not important for the tf2 comics that took place AFTER (fair enough), but as someone planning to write the 1930s mercs . Pain . My working explanation is that seemingly unaligned private contractors can get ahold of weapons easier than Certain governments, which makes mercs more popular than national soldiers for carrying out certain missions (plausible employer deniability baybeeee).

P2: Conflicting class meta - CHeavy edition

Onto something less heavy, another part of ficwriting is figuring out how characters are...characterized. The TFC mercs dont have much canonical info (I've already turned two of them into straight up ocs because I am NOT going to write p3dos from start to finish of a longfic) so I settle for looking at other things, like gameplay and ingame roles.

The first I focused on was cheavy, the leader of the group. Grouchy, but a surprisingly tolerant team player.

This IS reused from a previous post (im lazy) but the first bullet basically says "otherwise, offensive heavies are frequently looked down on and the power of the other team's defense will have you dead in no time". Gameplay-wise, CHeavy is considered the simplest class and the easiest one to master; most tfc gamers think its a common noob pick. His total health is pretty good, he occupies a big space so he can block narrow paths, and the way he attacks is simple; but he's slow even when b-hopping (grenades cant boost him either) so he can be outrun/picked apart by other classes, which really shows in tfc's most popular game format: capture the flag.

I've seen about a handful video of tfc gameplay that WASN'T ctf (or the slightly diff gamemode with a defense system), and even if the 4th bullet point is right, those two classes are usually doing more important things during ctf. My main point is that despite being the leader, he isn't the type of class to lead the charge.

The most reasonable thing I can think of is that he's just . Really good at strategy and can keep track of his team while reliably holding down a position. That, and his superior bulk makes him shine more outside of the gravel pits. Whatever it is, it does make more sense to me now that I revisit the comic panels where he is VERY spiteful that his teammates got killed (rather than calling them weak, they fr matter to him bc otherwise, he isn't getting shit done)

(Ik the reason hes the boss is bc big scary dude and karmic ass-handing via other heavy who actually respects his doctor but shh the fic demands reasons)

P3: Conflicting class meta - Cmedic edition

The contradiction I can immediately clock is the fact that cmedic never gets mentioned despite his omnipresence in his original game. Most hc's I've seen interpret him as the exact opposite of the current medic, which is a dedicated doctor who also happens to be a sweetheart (with very rare exceptions), but may I propose the theory that all mannco medic mercs are bastards? I'm 99% sure that the original medic was sigmund freud. TF2 medic is just a menace. Post WW1 most moral and noble medics would bust their asses at hospitals rather than sign up to a contract tying them down to just healing 8 other people and killing other people over and over, but that's just my hc (we're all making shit up, might as well have fun with it).

The most common citing for cmed's hidden menace energy is his virus weaponry, but I think his ingame role also shows it pretty well. Practically taking the scout's niche and making it less punishing by having straight upgrades of his two weapons, giving healing utility AND also being able to sniff out spies like a cscout (he can't diffuse bombs or trail caltrops, but he's already powerful as is). Imagine being cscout, having to compete for flag capture points with this guy who practically has everything you have but better (instead of leaving behind super visible spikes he has a college degree). This isn't even like the modern sniper vs spy debate where it can still be debated that spy has a unique niche with his mindgames, cmedic just straight up took copied his homework, 98% percent matching on the plagiarism bot.

Cscout and cmedic beef is very likely, but if cscout is a literal god at what he does then there won't be much issue, since the best cscout is ultimately better at flagrunning than cmedic. Its likely that cscout is simply human tho, so that's some drama that can happen.

Funnily enough the tfc class that gets the most weight and hate on its shoulders is sniper. This is because servers have a limit on how many snipers can join, and if a shitty sniper took up the slots, the rest of the team would be pretty pissed. Meanwhile, a competent sniper is the bane of every player's existence; a missed shot can still slow someone down until a medic cures them.

P4: cmedic backstory building hell - barely organized nonsense

Last one I swear. My drawings of cmedic explicitly portray him as a person of color- more specifically a cape malay, from the cape territory in South Africa; he even curses in malay in one of the posts. Ig I wanted the cast to be more diverse, but it did make his backstory somewhat harder to write.

Mann co is situated in New Mexico, far from SA. How and why did he get all the way there? With the fanon worldbuilding I set, what is stopping him from simply joining a nearer merc group? Probably heard of it through the grapevine, and travelled for fat stacks; wouldn't be uncommon for doctors (or mercs) to be highly motivated due to money. I wondered of what would set him apart from all the other hypothetical medic applicants that probably graduated from upstanding colleges like harvard, then I recall all those common hcs.

1)Most applicants assumed that the job would consist of primarily healing, without considering how bloodthirsty their company would be, and/or 2)the BLU team has been getting genuine medics and chewing them up like gum (and spitting them out utterly mangled, I suppose). There's also the possibility that some margin of these medics actually had some weapon training, but at that point a lot of time has been spent (also some conflicting motives there, I can't imagine the perks that a deadly merc job has over a hospital job unless the guy got a kick out of it).

My next idea was to make him a ww1 vet on the side of the British (australian? american?) colonies of SA, having joined midway after finishing his education. However this would clock his age during the current 1970s timeline to be around 81, pretty old; most of the tfc mercs would be 70s max around that time. Cmedic is visually the youngest of the mercs too, you can compare his smooth eyes to the more sunken cspy's eyes and there is a notable difference. This is really just an issue of me being on the fence about fully oc-fying him (a friend of him suggested making him a vampire, I am almost tempted to make it so).

In the case that particular hurdle is overcome, there are more details I have to iron out. I figured that his motives either come from wanting to financially help out his family after the war's sheer devastation, or just . a general resentment for the way things unfolded, and he swapped to merc work in the states to get properly paid for his work and (attempt to) fill the void in his soul. Maybe a mix of the two. An outlier in his community for being a godless man and having very material and tangible masters (science and money), he abandons the lofty ideals of nationalism and sides himself with the highest bidder in the private market. Also developed an insane immune system (trenches and exposure are no joke).

(Certain classes have shared characteristics across gens, like the demos' deranged smiles and engies' wholesome vibes. With sigmund freud, tf2 medic as the archetypal mad doctor, and tfc medic as the archetypal capitalist doctor, there are now three gens of doctors with dubious machinations.)

He'd probably be a great medic, respecting merc code and all (funfact tf2 medic mentions tfc demo by name, implying that he knows his real name and putting a dent in my theory that being on a first-name basis is a big deal actually , my countertheory to that is that grey mann gave him the team's files and tf2 medic wants to spite them). Cmedic also reverse-engineered the medkit and made a new version for non-gravel war missions, since the usual has several hard drugs (heals to full instantly and gives adrenaline boost, sounds sus especially if you read jarate's side effects) since he ended up somewhat caring about his pack of rabid animals

[thecollectivestrange]

Kickin’ It Together: The Rhythm and Community of Discofoot

When I competed in color guard in high school, being told that color guard was not a sport irked me the most since it included everything involved in a sport: competition, physical movement, strategy, skills, and teamwork. Thus, when Discofoot appeared in my Instagram feed, I was happy that another performative sport was making its way into the sports scene.

Discofoot, a sport that combines football (soccer) and disco dancing, challenges players to move across the field and work together in teams to score goals. The rules of the game are much more fluid compared to its respective components. Aside from the novelty of the experimental sport, we must also explore what drives this particular dance community to keep it relevant.

Groove, Glide Goal: Basic Motions of Discofoot

A match of Discofoot retains the basic elements of football, such as the duration, structure, and usual ceremonies including announcements, warm-ups, handshakes, the anthem, and team photo ops. However, beyond these basics, everything is adapted to performance.

To move across the field, all participants must dance in continuous improvisation while artfully tracking the ball. Scoring a goal is not as crucial as earning the highest evaluation of artistic merit, which is determined by a panel of three judges who assess performances throughout the first half, second half, and halftime. These scores are combined with goal scores, making it entirely possible for a team to win without scoring a single goal.

Another major difference in the game is the penalties. You receive a yellow card if you run or stand still without dancing. For more severe infractions, you can earn a pink glitter card. Aside from the artistic panel, a referee also facilitates the game.

Here’s a match in play:

Legendary Moves That Created Discofoot

Under the choreographers Peter Jacobson and Thomas Caley, Discofoot was born in 2016 with the dancers at the Centre Chorégraphique National (CCN) - Ballet De Lorraine, a French contemporary dance company of 26 dancers who program rich performance projects on their own as well as with other dance companies such as Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago.

Ballet De Lorraine, under Peter Jacobsson's direction starting in 2011, has become a space to encourage public dialogue with the projects they develop around unique themes each artistic season.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by CCN - Ballet de Lorraine (@balletdelorraine)

Thomas Caley and Peter Jacobsson created the free-form sport for the UEFA Euro 2016 Trophy Tour, the tradition of moving the Champions Cup of the UEFA European Championship, a major football tournament. In 2016, the trophy was hosted in Nancy, France, where CCN originated. So, in celebration of the tournament, the choreographers created Discofoot.

Watch Peter Jacobsson’s TEDx Talk about the creation process of Discofoot, starting at 7:40. Like any great idea, it all was written out on a napkin.

Moving with Meaning: A Unique Dance Philosophy

The point of Discofoot is to challenge people on what constitutes dance. In the first half of his speech, Peter Jacobsson talks about how dance can be anything—whether that’s a mixture of existing styles and forms like ballet or belly dancing—or something entirely new. This reflects Ballet de Lorraine’s position as an artistic research institute.

This philosophy manifests in the fundamentals of Discofoot, from the rules to norms. The experimental dance sport challenges the norms of its mainstream counterpart. In football, teams are divided by gender and culture. But Ballet de Lorraine does away with the division of gendered teams and instead adopts mixed teams. As they put it on their website, focusing on gender would take away from the limitless possibilities of artistic expression in the field. And at any rate, everybody is too busy dancing to be concerned with the typical hypermasculinity associated with football.

Naturally, the sport requires open-mindedness and collaborativeness, with just enough healthy competition. Through these ways, dancers and spectators can engage with performing arts outside of what is commonly thought of as dance.

When Funk Meets Footwork: The Future of Discofoot

As Jacobsson touches on in his TEDx Talk, the discourse around discomfort has only just begun. The sport, with more mainstream visibility, generally receives positive praise and invites curiosity. For the company, Discofoot provides new opportunities to collaborate with other dance and performing arts institutions, where they are invited to play a match.

He notes that there are negative perspectives, such as football enthusiasts who cannot support their sport being ruined. He gives a powerful line in his speech:

“Just by moving your body and kicking a ball—you are moving into politics.”

Despite this, that doesn’t take any ounce of fun away from the sport, nor the amusement of curious onlookers and spectators. At the end of the day, Discofoot is about an open and expressive community whose members have fun by dancing in gold pants.

[mandolinistry]

Taru van den Born is a Dutch blacksmith with a degree in Psychology, who offers training to ND folks, which he believes is therapeutic in many ways. He is doing a wonderful thing for ND folks. Folks like me, as I have ADHD.

I feel the same concepts and benefits could be found in woodworking, or any number of handcrafting/trade fields like smithing and woodworking.

I've certainly found woodoworking immensely beneficial for my ADHD. I didn't even get diagnosed or treated until I was 32. I spent my life before that being terrible at everything, and never sticking with anything for long except music, which I still wasn't very good at. I never understood why and assumed I'd always be a mess. Couldn't even hold a job for very long.

I got into woodworking shortly after getting help for my ADHD. Getting therapy and meds was profoundly life changing. Woodworking (or any craft) is no substitute for proper treatment and I wouldn't be where I am without out the support and good work being done by the docs at the Adult ADHD Clinic at the Hope Centre in North Vancouver. It's the only clinic of it's kind in Canada, a pilot project where adults with ADHD can get help entirely funded by public healthcare.

Woodworking had given me something I can engage with and focus on. I can lose myself in it for hours working on some small detail, existing only in the space between the wood and aris of the chisel. It's grounding, and very gratifying.

It requires a degree of planning and organization. I've gotten a lot of use out of the organization and project management skills I learned in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but also refined those and learned a lot more through woodworking. It's taught me a lot of patience as well.

It's also diverse enough to keep my ADHD brain filled with novelty and change. One day I might be carving dovetails, the next restoring an old tool using electrolysis, the next doing some basic metalworking to make a blade or a thread cutter. There's always new techniques and methods to learn or research to do. Maybe today I'll go down a rabbithole on Victorian furniture decorative carvings, or some obscure facet of making iron age lyres. I've even translated books from Swedish and Finnish just to learn the minutae of Tagelharpa and Jouhikko bowed lyres.

So it gives me a universe of things to explore while staying in orbit around that central point of woodworking.

In the end, I have a physical object I created, or someone else does, but I made it. I can see my progress in physical objective terms. There is something deeply satisfying about that. Its creative but also very functional and practical. I'm engaging my artistic side by making something that is beautiful, or makes beautiful noise. At the same time its something physical which serves a practical purpose.

I never thought I'd be good at anything, but I'm getting good at this, and getting better every day, and that simple thing alone has been so good for my ADHD brain.

Of course, at my job most of my day is just making simple components, customizing doors, or replicating pieces for customers, but its still grounding and satisfying. Sometimes that includes restoring 150 year old doors or replicating Victorian moulding. Replicating or making custom components often requires creativity as I need to work out how to do it, and occasionally design new jigs and guides specific to that component. Sometimes I get to make new tools or equipment, such as a router table, for the shop.

I have to give my company a lot of credit for being a supportive environment that's helped me grow and put up with my constant screwups. This is very much a form of privilege that many of us ND folk can only wish for, and I wish we could all have. Taru van den Born seems to be fostering that kind of environment, which is just as important as any practical skill he might teach there.

I think we all, ND and Normie alike, could learn some things from his example, and I don't just mean how to forge metal.

Anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[cerastes]

If I may, except for Hehe Funny Seadragon Deals True Damage, what makes you like Weedy so?

Oh no no, it’s the other way around: Hihi huhu funny cannon does an 8k true damage is a nice added bonus to Weedy, not the main reason I like her. I like her design a lot and, beyond the obvious, such as the invincible white hair red eyes combo and the fact that she’s Aegirian (though not from the Abyss per se), I think her attire is creative and really well put together; it has excellent balance of colors (I love the way the yellow and the drab green are used to accentuate one another in irregular patches of shapes) as well as being equal parts classy and enticing (it’s basically a sundress but made with plastics and other synthetic materials, as she is an engineer and spends a lot of time in her lab, but it also accentuates her legs, particularly her thighs, with the transparent ‘window’ strip on the bottom of the ‘dress’, tastefully obscured by the light refraction on the plastic). Going back to the color palette, the particular shades of yellow and green used on her clothes have a very similar contrast game as her tone of white hair that contrasts with her black ribbons. Speaking of, I love the peculiar shape of the ribbons, they are very charming (they are meant to evoke the leaf-like protrusions on a seadragon). She also has tsurime eyes, my favorite. And last but not least, she’s got not one, but two huge cannons.

So, basically, I am a huge fan of her design, I immediately loved her design the moment I saw her. Still, I’m not at all the kind of person that likes a character for their design, I have to actually like the character for them to be anything beyond “a nice design” for me. Well, she manages to triumph there too. First of all, I have a big affinity for scientist-type characters (bioengineering, in her case), they are inherently appealing to me. I like that her Files paint a pretty interesting individual: She’s not Infected, and her files open up with how Closure tends to have a lot of difficulty finding talent for the engineering teams of Rhodes Island because of the stigma the Infected have, which in turn because a stigma Rhodes Island has to bear: People by and large don’t want to associate with them. Despite this, Closure has one department she says she never has to worry about, and that is the Bioengineering Department, led by Weedy.

It gets stranger because Weedy is an Aegirian from Iberia, which is closed from the rest of the world, and apparently, she received a job offer from Rhine Lab as well, which, unlike the ever-roaming Rhodes Island, is a well-established, notoriously elite, cutting edge entity in the world of sciences with no doubt a far safer environment (on paper at least, we all know Rhine has skeletons in their closet) and a better salary. Weedy still chose Rhodes Island:

“Weedy is not shy about mentioning her belief that Rhine Lab is better suited to her work than Rhodes Island is, but whenever this topic is brought up, she will tack on the phrase, “but I think Rhodes Island is pretty good too.” Of course it is. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have chosen to set foot upon the battlefield either.”

She doesn’t really elaborate on it further than “no yeah, Rhine Lab would be far better for my work, but this place is cool too, we good”. She also consciously and personally decided to become an Operator in addition to being a head researcher, of her own volition... Which apparently, wasn’t easy for the unathletic Weedy.

Weedy’s physical qualities are somewhat at odds with our impressions of the Ægirians. In fact, after she successfully passed the other exams, she spent an entire three months before she was able to pass the physical component. Other than her physical strength and endurance, her condition is completely normal, her regimented routine with extra attention to hygiene bears mention. She is arguably even healthier than most of her fellow operators.

Imagine being used to associating “Ægirian Operator” with superfreaks of nature such as Specter and Skadi, only for this physically weak shorty to collapse on the training field after some cardio. And I love it: She put the effort in and succeeded in doing something she definitely didn’t need to do, but felt the need to, and ended up being a top-class Operator herself.

She’s apparently an older staff member of Rhodes Island, like Warfarin, but she simply wasn’t qualified to be an Operator until recently... Which makes her stated 3 years of combat experience all the more interesting: We’ve heard Kal’tsit, Dobermann and Amiya explain that being strong, physically conditioned and skilled at fighting are NOT the only things that matter when it comes to being approved as an Operator. The implication here is that, for whatever reason, she actually has plenty of real combat experience, and likely depended on her inventions (particularly her cannons) to get the job done more than any physical training or formal combat skills. It is noted, after all, that she passed all other exams successfully, and it was just the physical component of the battery that she had trouble with. Her Files also note that not even Closure can talk back to her, and I quote, “a rare sight to behold indeed”, which suggests a rather strong temperament and way of carrying herself, and we see more of this in her lines.

All in all, it all paints a pretty interesting character. There’s also the fact that she’s explicitly got OCD, particularly about neatness, but it, along her ladylike demeanor, are portrayed in a delightfully human way instead of just going for the easy one-dimensional take both of these characteristics tend to be shown as, and we see this mostly in her lines: She doesn’t really freak out about untidiness as much as she’ll politely but firmly tell you to get your shit together if she notes anything disorderly about you, and her way of carrying herself is very ladylike, but not in the typical overbearing/arrogant ojou way or the yamato nadeshiko way, she’s firmly professional and cordial, but not at all a hardass (like, say, Saria) and, as we’ve seen with the other Ægirians, pretty keen on socializing and hanging out with those she likes, as well as being rather talkative:

Weedy invites Doctor practically all the time to go flower-viewing for a nice chat, fine-tuning operation-relevant experiments and equipment, and to check out her cool inventions and possibly her hydraulic pressing a bowl of Skittles. Perfectly cordial but obviously very fond of Doc and makes no mystery of it.

She pretty much says “no yeah I don’t really like having people around me but you’re an exception”, especially since her Files state that “under normal circumstances, she is never seen in public”. I like that no non-sense attitude.

She’d also like for you to understand that she does NOT talk to her robots when she’s alone, and that if you ever heard Closure claim so or think that you are pretty positive that you did hear her talking to one when she thought no one was within earshot, well, that’s just bollocks, and you should KNOW BETTER.

So, yeah, due to all of this, I like her a lot, she’s very fun and interesting to me, and encompasses a lot of things I like very much, plus I identify a lot with liking peace and quiet but also being very talkative when I feel comfortable with someone, as well as getting very into researching and developing my craft further.

[shattered-catalyst]

Intro to OCD for the RPC part 1/?

This is a balmy 6 page document on the VERY BASICS of OCD by a person who has had OCD for over 15 years and knows their shit.

If you want to write a character who has OCD this series is going to be a good starting point. If you dont know much about OCD I encourage you to read it so you can be an ally to those of us who have the disorder.

OCD is made into a cultural joke and when there isnt the ‘Obsessive Cat disorder’ bullshit its an angst off with other people and their non-ocd intrusive thoughts. Its different. Do your research and be an ally.

This will cover the very very basics. The next post will look into subtypes of OCD and how those are experienced.

 Whomst can write it? 

Literally anyone as long as you 

● Do so respectfully and not make a mockery of the disorder and the harm it causes in peoples lives 

● Dont make OCD the characters single thing or boil them down to it entirely ● Do respect the experiences and opinions of muns who have the disorder if they have concerns about your portrayal.

● Dont milk it for angst - unless you have OCD in which case release some of your angst.

● Dont try and say you know what intrusive thoughts are because they have *insert any other neuro a-typical thing here* 

● Dont police how Muns who have OCD choose to portray it. Its our experience not yours. I like to write out my characters OCD as I experience OCD so my experiences are different from other muns. OCD is very diverse in its effects but always ask if you arent sure.

. What isnt OCD? 

● Cleanliness or organization- OCD is NEVER an adjective. 

● Planning/ Hypervigilance/Organized/Methodical 

● Turning light switches on and off, unplugging things (find out more on later time)

 ● “I have to organize my pencils otherwise it bothers me” “ I have to make sure my mattress is straight” “ my nails have to be the same length” are all typical responses from people WHO DO NOT have OCD. 

● Making sure objects are lined up neatly 

● Having things go in a particular order like the letters CDO as the joke goes

● Really loving Cats, Corgis, or Christmas; if you own any of these items i urge you to reflect and also send me 10$ (jk but do reflect)

The Barest minimum 

Google OCD this will be an advanced version of OCD. This will be long but if you want to be aware of others or want to write the character you will read it. 

OCD is made of Obsessions. Triggers. Anxiety, Compulsions/Rituals.

1. Obsessions are the thoughts 

2. Triggers are the object/person/image/situation/smell ETC 

3. The Anxiety occurs is at uncomfortable levels to the point of panic or anxiety attacks

 4. Compulsions or Rituals are performed 

*There is a variant of OCD called Pure O. In this individuals have the obsessions triggers and anxiety but there is NO compulsion or ritual. This is still valid OCD. 

Obsessions are the precursors to the flawed unwanted and harmful intrusive thoughts: 

Im going to use you so you really understand this because its important.If you misunderstand this you are basically encouraging a mental health condition and dont get a sticker for reading this far. 

First check out this link as it has ALL the subtypes and examples. 

Obsessions can be hidden by the intrusive thought and teasing them out can be difficult to do if you have the disorder because well its a disorder okay thats why. It boils down to ‘i could harm someone’ ‘i could cause harm’ ‘ i may have accidentally harmed ___’ ‘ i may accidentally harm’ etc 

This is the flawed powerful belief that predate the Intrusive Thought. 

Intrusive thoughts appear in every brain on earth. They are not special or unusual however intrusive thoughts with OCD get stuck in the brain- meaning they stay there no matter what you do. So yes , they are different from intrusive thoughts in other conditions. 

The thing about OCD is that it latches on to what you hold dear; it may be you are a caring person and love children and animals- your OCD would give you intrusive violent or sexual thoughts or images. These are horrible to experience. They are not welcome nor appreciated and there is no benefit or positive side to having them. 

If say social justice is something you hold dear your ocd may take the form of intrusive thoughts of slurs, jokes, visuals etc. These are horrible to experience and lead to high levels of anxiety and are not positive nor beneficial to have in any way shape or form. 

Maybe you would not harm someone or you value others; your OCD may present as graphic intrusive images or thoughts around poisoning, stabbing,accidental..ly murdering (yeah you read that right), hitting, insulting etc someone else 

I must emphasize this because it is critical that people understand POCD: for the sake of those of us who have OCD read this until its burned into your brain. 

This is the fucked up awful Obsessive thought that you are/were/ or could be sexually attracted to children. This is NOT pedophilia. People kill themselves over this because they are afraid that these intrusive thoughts are true. People isolate themselves and dont have families out of fear of harming a child. People take work in different fields or avoid areas with children out of the absolute terror their obsessive thoughts could be true. This is NOT pedophilia. There is NO attraction present.

Most people who experience POCD intrusive thoughts would rather punch a sharknado than even THINK of hurting a kid in any way shape or form. That is why the OCD does its thing it is like having an abusive brain. 

Again for clarity's sake 

If you value social justice -> the intrusive thoughts violate social justice stuff 

If you value animals -> intrusive thoughts come up with harming animals 

If you care about the protection and safety of children -> POCD 

Triggers would be the situation, scenario, object, person,creature, context etc that is related to the Obsession. It can be literally anything. 

What follows is a hell of a lot of anxiety that can range anywhere from discomfort to full on panic attacks. 

Everyone has different intrusive thoughts and everyone experiences different amounts of distress upon being triggered. 

● As a side bar. Do not ever try and expose someone to their triggers or write about a character being exposed to their triggers as a way to help ‘cure them’ or ‘expose them’ to ANYTHING. What you are doing is literally taking someone with a mental illness and shoving them into a breakdown and thats a piece of shit move. Exposure therapy does exist and is done by professionals TRAINED in ERP. My parents did this a lot and I am positive I am not alone in that experience. 

Compulsions or Rituals: Now you may be saying ‘hey i know what those are’ yeah dude me too and I have had ocd for over 15 years and trained in mental health for 7 and guess what. They teach ya wrong. 

Compulsions or ‘rituals’ are any behavior done to alleviate the anxiety from the intrusive thought and trigger object. 

This can be as passive as ‘i am leaving the room’ ‘ i am checking my body sensations’ ‘ i am trying SO HARD TO HEAR MY HEARTBEAT’ .

 It can also be repeating the same thing over and over. To illustrate this I once mentally chanted the same song lyric line on a 3 hour plane ride because otherwise we were all going to die. I took one for the whole team.

It can be somatic things like counting your heart beats, focusing on your breathing, swallowing, staring and not blinking for so many seconds. 

It can be readjusting clothing until the seams fit. It can be checking god yes checking IK its a common trope but it IS a compulsion that has ruined my life and can be as passive as checking my reality or texting for proof my cat is still alive. It can also be checking yourself for assurance you wouldnt do the intrusive thought or that the intrusive thought isnt going to happen.

Compulsions are mentally painful and sometimes physically painful; 

● Washing your hands with scalding water for 5+ minutes can lead to horribly dry and cracking skin to down right BURNS.

● If you do the same movement you can mess up joints and ligaments. So if you pray constantly you may have knee issues from standing and kneeling.

● If your compulsion has you doing movement against an object ie say gripping and regripping something you get callouses. 

● If you compulsively exercise you may get trapped doing something above a healthy amount or say going from not working out to running a five minute mile and wiping out on a treadmill because your brain demanded it. Totally didnt do that... 

● If your compulsions make you rub against any object you can get friction burns and scars. 

To put this in perspective 15 years of compulsions have left my hands and finger joints a complete mess, damaged my arm tendons, friction scars on my arms that only now faded, and scars on my legs from doing too much of an activity. 

Its not lmao I gotta fix these pencils its real agony and real torture. 

In short compulsions and rituals are not fun they are absolutely not logical, and we know they are not logical but we are forced to do them. Thats why its a disorder. 

OCD disrupts relationships with social components such as ; 

Obsessively checking in with partner/friend if things are ‘okay’ (this feels horrible to do too fyi like you KNOW things are fine but you cant NOT because the anxiety is SO BAD), 

Relationship OCD is a WHOLE category itself! this ties into sexuality OCD where your obsessive thoughts prey on your sexuality (regardless of your orientation), your relationship, cheating or being disloyal etc.

OCD causes significant withdrawal from others, fears of being a monster, intense guilt over intrusive thoughts, disgust with yourself over the intrusive thoughts sometimes leading to self punishment. 

OCD leads to strange behavior which more often than not leads to bullying and ostracization. To exemplify this I have an intrusive thought that I have stolen something when I am inside stores, my check-check-check-check-check-recheck! of my pockets gets me store security called so often its criminal.

OCD limits activities that may expose them to triggers or influenced by intrusive thoughts ie: not being able to take the train to work or only getting off at bus stops with even numbers.

OCD impacts where they spend time, who they associate with, what jobs they take or even if they have a family or not

OCD leads to overwhelming feelings of guilt, shame, and fear over having intrusive thoughts or images that they experience which causes them to socially isolate or have difficulty in social situations. 

OCD leads to Hyperfixation: like a lot of other things but thankfully it is just hyperfixation and not different from other diagnoses. 

OCD leads to rigidity or structured routines: I have listened to the same CD in my car for 5 years now. Every single day. 5 Years.And Im not okay with that. 

OCD impacts standards we hold ourselves to and others: its like regular perfectionism but like add on 5 extra layers of anxiety! 

OCD according to NIMH statistics 

1.2% Occurrence among US adults 

2.3% Lifetime Prevalence among US adults 

34.8% Of Adults who have OCD suffer moderate impairment to daily functioning 50.6% of Adults who have OCD suffer serious impairment to daily functioning

OCD has strong co-morbidity with the following:

Tourettes Syndrome- is a genetic friend of OCD and if you have tourettes or OCD your chances of having someone else in the family is high

ADHD

Autism 

GAD

Eating Disorders

Depression - this is a big one along with low self esteem because of the intrusive thoughts

Writers like to make jokes about characters “being OCD” well now they have clinical OCD and you should consider fleshing out your character with this information just as you would any other disorder.

Batman (DC)

Riddler (?)(DC)

Domino (Marvel)

 Cyclops (Marvel)

[hopeymchope]

Godzilla Singular Point

I came into Singular Point with some trepidation because Godzilla’s history in anime is both very recent and extremely bad. The three anime movies released between 2017 and 2019 are easily the worst work of famed writer Gen Urobuchi and honestly contain more bullshit than I can even get into here. Those movies and this series were both Godzilla anime properties commissioned by Netflix, which didn’t get my hopes up very much. Thankfully, Singular Point is a very different beast from the anime trilogy. One could argue it’s very different from most Godzilla media, actually — at least from my perspective. And I’m still a pretty entry-level fan of Toho’s Big G, all things considered.

Let me just warn you right up front: This smartphone-based virtual assistant is basically the breakout star of the series. 

When you think “Godzilla,” you probably don’t think “incredibly dense sci-fi concepts,” but with the big G’s first-ever anime series, the writers clearly set out to change that perception. Before the first kaiju even appears, the lead characters are plucked from obscurity and dropped into a mystery that involves fourth-dimensional time travel, physical objects that look different from all sides, theoretical math concepts, self-propagating A.I., and a whole lot more. And it’s NEVER made clear how all of it connects to the rampaging kaiju! Although we spend a lot of time investigating a red dust or sand that is very obviously tied to the monsters in SOME way, no one ever makes a connection that explains the relationship. Maybe we’re supposed to wait for a later season to connect the threads... but let’s get into the idea of “another season” later.

I like to think of myself as someone who typically enjoys hard sci-fi, but even with the characters spending loads of time trying to explain the high concepts driving the story, I was never able to fully wrap my head around what was going on in the mystery at the center of GSP. I rewound and rewatched a few explanations, but I still walked away feeling lost. I eventually settled on some vague, loose understandings of most of the ideas mentioned, but those understandings were subject to being ripped apart in subsequent scenes when I was shown or told something completely at odds with what I thought I knew. I can’t say I was ever bored with the thick, dense scientific concepts on offer — trying to find purchase with these far-out ideas kept me glued to the screen — but damn, I sure wish I was able to comprehend them.

What do we want?! DENSE SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION AND DEBATE! When do we want it?! AFTER THOROUGH RESEARCH, TESTING, AND PEER REVIEW!

Another weird thing about this show is that the lead characters remain in separate locations and on separate tracks for the entire duration. We have Yun — a mechanical engineer and programmer who has an amazing grasp on physics and human behavior. And we have Mei — a grad student who is deeply invested in theoretical science, UMAs, cryptids and other far-flung concepts. Both of them are basically geniuses in their fields, and even though they take opposing views of just how flexible reality is, their shared ability to think “outside the box” becomes the crucial component in solving the mystery at the core of the series. Because they don’t even know one another (despite being separated by like, ONE degree), they only ever interact via text messages and behind screen names, which feels pretty damn weird. At least  I immediately liked both of them, with Yun being the standout to me because of how his lowkey reactions to crazy shit generates a lot of humor.

This soundtrack cover LIES; you will never see these characters in a room together like this. 

Alas, we don’t get to know the characters a whole lot beyond what we learned of them in the first two episodes. It’s not long before they’re trapped in a series of complicated exposition dumps, endlessly attempting to explain the high concepts of the show to other characters as well as my dumb ass in the audience. The fact that I liked them in the first couple of episodes carried me through more than half of the show, but I was always hoping to see them share more of themselves or just display more emotion. Anime as a medium excels at emotional storytelling. But despite the major, world-altering events the characters are constantly warning us about, none of them seem to have many emotions about said events. 

Further complicating matters is how, when major events finally occur in this show, they are often kept off-screen. One character shockingly dies, but the portrayal of that death is so piss-poor that I didn’t even realize it’d happened until someone mentioned their death in the next episode. After that vague death, I was particularly sensitive to anything that looked like it might possibly be lethal. Yet a later event that is played up as a tragic, fatal occurrence ends up... fine, somehow? It’s not clear how the character survives, because — even after one of our heroes is left screaming their name in despair as they seemingly die — nobody ever talks about or explains how he’s just fine a couple of scenes later. And near the end of the series, there’s a major transformation that occurs for one of the characters, and we never see it happen nor do we understand HOW it happened. It’s just that suddenly, this character is extremely different due to off-screen reasons that are only vaguely verbalized.

I guess these two really bonded at some point for some reason? And what you are seeing here is literally the height of emotion shown in the entire show.

Even though the overarching story of the series so far pretty clearly wraps up in episode 13, we then get a post-credits tease for a potential second season. So the question becomes: Would I watch that?

Well... Godzilla Singular Point is a series with a lot of issues that kept me at arms’ length from it — tons of extremely confusing dialogue, highly frustrating choices in direction that lead to baffling storytelling, characters who are mostly exposition-dumping — and yet there’s still some foundational work here that I appreciated a lot. When the action occurs, it’s pretty cool/fun. And when urban destruction occurs, it can be awe-inspiring. The human characters, though little-explored, have likable and interesting foundations to them that could be expanded upon. And I didn’t even mention the soundtrack, which features a variety of musical styles combined with the classic Ifukube theme music and an OP that is an absolute banger. (I have a weakness when it comes to music; a good soundtrack can carry me through even the blandest series sometimes.) Even the core idea of centering a Godzilla series around hard science and mathematical concepts is a compelling one, I think! I just hated the execution of it; they went waaaaay too far on poorly explaining incredibly complex, mind-bending concepts for my pea brain to handle it. They spend so much time trying to explain things, yet somehow they never succeeded for me. 

Ultimately, I’d probably give the show another chance. But if I do give another season a chance, it’ll be on probation. I wouldn’t watch the entire season unless I could see within four episodes that they’d definitely improved things.

Would I recommend that anyone watch the series as it currently stands? I mean... not really? I guess if you really dig complex math, hard theoretical science, and/or Toho’s stable of monsters, then maaaaaaaaaaybe give it a shot. But otherwise? Naaaahh. It’s not good enough at anything to make it stand out from the anime crowd. I didn’t hate it like I hated the Godzilla anime films, but Singular Point is still something that both casual viewers and most fans can comfortably ignore for the time being. It’s not a complete disaster, and it’s not without its highlights... but it’s definitely disappointing in my opinion.

OKAYOKAYOKAY, so let’s talk about the kaiju for a bit! 

Below will be SPOILERS revealing all of the kaiju that appear in Godzilla Singular Point and giving my feelings on them. 

Godzilla — It’s interesting to see a version of Godzilla that borrows some ideas from Shin Godzilla. Shin G has been incredibly unique until now, but this Godzilla manages to fold some of Shin’s distinctive aspects in with the more classic/typical versions to build a fun new depiction. Be forewarned that Godzilla doesn’t show up until the series is halfway over, and he doesn’t get a ton of screen time, either. He’s used quite sparingly and kept in hazy settings, often framed from the neck-up when they show him. It’s a little frustrating that they felt the need to shroud him so much, but I respect the fact that whenever Godzilla is shown, the destruction he causes is on a scale far beyond anything that the rest of the kaiju ever do. He is pure devastation. 

Rodan — He’s easily the biological kaiju with the most screen time in Singular Point. Rodan is first introduced as one gigantic pterosaur, but if you’ve seen ANY trailers for this show then you already know that his depiction transitions into an asston of smaller pterosaurs, all of whom are also called “Rodan.” (Apparently the word Rodan is both singular and plural, like the word “buffalo.”) Although he looks kind of cool at first, pretty soon Rodan showing up isn’t special or threatening anymore. Rodan appearances go from “a big goddamn deal” to “some bland background noise” before the series is even 1/3 finished. The design might be a little too far removed from the original for my own taste, but even if I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t be able to care for this Rodan simply because he’s rendered so unimportant and unimpressive.

If you go out in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise... 

Anguirus — Now check this guy out! Anguirus gets one of the coolest fights in the show and also demonstrates some powers that are well beyond anything we’ve seen him do before. Because he sticks to unpopulated areas, we never see him do much damage to Japan, but he is definitely holding all the attention when he’s on-screen. He’s a highlight for me — a total badass who is very unique in his abilities. And the stated origin for his name is goddamn adorable.

Manda — Yup, Manda is in this series... but I don’t have much to say for him. It seems like the creators of the anime didn’t have much to say about him either. His role amounts to little more than a repeated cameo, and in most of those cameos you only ever see his tail. When we finally see his full body, it’s done so briefly and kept at a distance, leaving me with no real impression. I had to look up his design online and... yup, that sure looks like Manda. Final score: MEEEEHH.

Kumonga — I definitely did not see this appearance coming! Kumonga is much smaller here than you may be used to, but she gets to star in the most suspenseful sequence in the series and easily earns the most exciting cliffhanger moment at the end of an episode. I was utterly glued to the show during her screen time, which comes with a lot of icky twists. Good ones! I honestly like Kumonga here more than I ever have previously.

NEW PHONE WHO DIS

Salunga — Uh, who? This is the one monster that isn’t based on a classic Toho kaiju but instead is a brand-new creation. I suppose that everybody who touches the Toho Kaiju franchise wants to make their own mark on it in some regard. But a big part of the fun of this series for me personally was the anticipation of seeing new interpretations and designs of classic Toho monsters. And so, given that he kind of resembles both Baragon and Gabara, I never stopped wishing they’d just used one of those guys as the basis and namesake. Taken on his own, however? He’s... pretty neat. Not unique or exciting, but solidly above par.  He resembles a cross between a lizard/dinosaur and an ape, plus his head has some nifty coloration. 

Our Jaguar!

Jet Jaguar — I guess Jet Jaguar isn’t exactly a kaiju in the traditional sense because he’s a Giant Robot. However, if you want to consider him one, then I wager he probably gets even more screen time than Rodan! We meet him almost immediately when the series begins. Initially an odd pilot-driven robot that was constructed at the whim of a quirky old factory-owner with too much disposable income, Jet Jaguar grows and changes over the course of the show, ultimately undergoing a transition in episode 7 that makes him pretty damn impossible to dislike. In fact, I utterly adored him by then. This is definitely the best Jet Jaguar I’ve ever seen. His design is recognizably similar to the original yet utterly distinct, too. Like many of the other kaiju here, he’s not nearly as big as he was when he was first introduced to the movies, but his size is ideal for battling the smaller-scale monsters that we spend most of the series on.

[apothecarinomicon]

Spring week 3, part 1

I felt much better this morning. I suppose whatever sickness fairy visions impart is strictly transient—or maybe dealing with reagents has given me a good immune system. 

When I went outside, I found that I’d somehow managed to plant the foxsocks in the garden. I don’t know how I could have done it in my feverish state and I certainly don’t remember it, but there it is. The foxsocks seem to be thriving already, or at least to have a solid foothold. As I’d hoped, they should be reliably available from here on out.

As I stood there, sleepily puzzling over the garden, I heard a screech from above. Looking up, I saw what at first appeared to be a large bird circling down towards the ground. When she landed, though, I saw she was a woman with wings instead of arms, talons instead of legs, and a feathered tail, wearing a khaki uniform—a postal harpy. She greeted me while balancing on one leg and asked me to confirm my name. I told her and she introduced herself as Liùsaidh. She indicated I ought to retrieve my mail from her talon (it’s polite to wait for their permission). She asked if I might be sticking around and I said I thought I was. She said she’d see me next time I got mail and flew off.

What she’d brought was a letter, with a return address listed as “The Gleoclas J. Ledgerwood Muſeum of Magicke.” It was a single handwritten (actually, impressively calligraphed) page. The spelling and grammar was, shall we say, characteristic. It’s easier to just stick the letter in between the pages than copy it down, so that’s what I’ll do.

To whom it may concern:

It has come to our attentionne at The Friends of The Gleoclas J. Ledgerwood Muſeum of Magicke that ye are a practicing vvitch reſiding in the hamlet of Greanmoore. We would like to congratulate ye on your appointmente and hope you find the positionne both fulfilling and rewarding. We had brief correspondence with your predeceſsor and were glad to learn of yovr presence.

The Gleoclas J. Ledgerwood Muſeum of Magicke is among the premiere magical muſeums in northweſternne High Rannoc. It has one of the moſte exhauſtive collections of magical materials, svbſtances, and hiſtories native to High Rannoc in the vvorld. Academicks, travelers, and school field trips regularly reference and reſearch the Muſeum’s collections in their purſuit of more compleat knowledge.

As The Muſeum of Magicke does not have a repreſentative in Greanmoore or the surrounding areas, we have a requeſte to make of ye if you are willing to fulfill it. We pride ourſelves on the compleatneſs of our Magickal Components collectionne, but we are miſsing many of the species native to Greanmoore and its svrrounding locations. We humbly ask that ye help vs remedy this deficiency. If you are willing to do so, we woulde requeſt that ye send one of each magickal componente available in the area to the Muſeum, at the returnne addreſs listed above. Should you do so, ye will receive compenſationne.

We hope ye will partner with vs in this endeavor. Your contributionne to societal knowledge shall be greatly appreciated by generationnes of reſearchers, thinkers, and touriſts.

Eagerly avvaiting your reſponſe,

The Friends of The Gleoclas J. Ledgerwood Muſeum of Magicke

[A plain text accessible version of this letter is available here.]

Obviously, the spelling is horrendous. This might have been forgivable a few decades ago, but the shape of the ‘s’ (that is, it not being that odd ‘f’ looking thing sometimes) and the distinction between ‘u,’ ‘v,’ and ‘w’ have been standardized since before I was born. Not to mention, the Ledgerwood Museum is associated with the University of Arcbridge—so there must be someone there who knows better.

The thing is, for a long time the only people who could write were those who received higher education, so the vast majority of documents that exist throughout history have to do with academia. So, even as reading and writing became more accessible and spelling and grammar more standardized, that outdated irregular styling retroactively became associated with education, with decorum, with genius.

I’ve never really had much respect for that kind of posturing—I think that if you’re brilliant the content of your writing ought to speak for itself. You shouldn’t have to so explicitly climb on the shoulders of those who came before you, especially not by intentionally making the mistakes they made or using the outdated styles they used.

I sent back a letter inquiring about the specifics of compensation along with a sample of my foxsocks.

I’m going to the library.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

The Greenmoor Public Library is near the center of town, not quite in the square but on Market Street directly off of it. It has some interesting architecture: it looks as if it was originally three separate buildings the size of single-family houses, that were all connected up at a later date by a circular addition between them so that the final building looks like a cog with three spokes. Each section of it is made up of a different material—exposed stone, lime render, and brick for the original houses, and cement for the central cylinder—but it all works together in a quirky, oddball way.

There are no internal walls in the library—even where there must have been external walls in the original houses. They must have knocked them down (I don’t envy that job). Every wall is lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, and in each of the spokes there are many close-set freestanding shelves besides, with only narrow aisles left between. At the center of the center is a circular desk, and around this are scattered tables with benches and clusters of armchairs for convenience of reading and research.

The library is owned and run by Donella and Saundra Glasford, an older couple. Saundra is actually the schoolteacher, but she helps with reshelving and organization on weekends. I know this because Donella explained it to me in detail. As soon as I walked in the door she stood from behind (within?) the circular desk and approached me, insisting that she give me a tour of the library. In addition to a survey of the entire space and what kinds of books it contained, this ‘tour’ involved a hefty amount of insight into the daily lives and routines of the Glasford family. 

They have a kid named Muiredach, who’s very interested in ancient things at the moment—giant skeletons and the like. Donella has lived here her entire life but Saundra moved here forty years ago. Saundra’s expertise is in thaumatology (specifically thaumatozoology, the study of magical animals), in which she has a degree. Meanwhile, Donella has extensive knowledge of literary and epistemological history, though she received no formal schooling past twelve.

After she finished showing me all the different sections and layouts of the library, Donella told me I should feel free to poke around as much as I wanted. She added that I wouldn’t find any secret passages or hidden rooms, and that they had nothing to hide.

I hadn’t realized before she said that what this was all about.

I told her that the rumors weren’t true, that I wasn’t some Government spy or anything like that (I heard Saundra mumble something like “well you’d also deny it if you were a clype, wouldn’t you?”). Donella quickly assured me that she believed me, but then said “better safe than sorry,” so I’m not quite sure she actually did. I told her I didn’t understand where all the suspicion was coming from. Saundra piped up, saying that I was a stranger who came to a small, isolated town I had no prior relation with to fill a position whose previous occupant had mysteriously disappeared, and asked if I understood how that looked (not in quite those words—her accent and dialect was rather strong). I told her I’d been summoned directly by Mòrag McKinney, and had the paper trail to prove it. I asked if she thought Mòrag was involved in some conspiracy, too. She shrugged and said she was just saying how it looked.

Donella said regardless that I should feel free to use the library—it was for the public, after all—and pointed me in the direction of the section on rune magic. Thus, the conversation ended, but my uneasiness didn’t entirely abate. Still, I’d come to the library for a reason.

The rune section was limited, but I didn’t need to know any more than the basics. I’d only ever been taught one way to create runes, and it was clear my predecessor used a different one—all I needed to do was to figure out which and I could reverse engineer the runes’ meanings.

I found that she used a combination of the witches’ circle and magic square methods, which are both apparently very popular. I wonder why I was never taught them. Both systems derive the shape of the sigil directly from the letters of the intentions they’re meant to invoke. It’s traditional to remove the vowels before doing so, but luckily for me my predecessor chose not to do that.

So, with a bit of work I was able to determine that the sigils I copied down meant: life, autonomy, gentleness, congeniality, and empathy respectively. It was clearly built to be a very kind golem. Now that I know that, I’m going to try to create my own sigils and charge them, and see if that helps.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

While I was at the library, I also collected a few of the greatest works of modern literature—Lord of the Midges, Beathag’s Choice, To Kill a Gull-Drake, et cetera. The next morning I packed the books into the rucksack I’d used to travel to Greenmoor and set out to take them to Morna, heading to Hero’s Hollow by way of Moonbreaker Mountain.

As I skirted the base of the mountain, I heard a voice call out from above me, crying “hey, you! Groundling!” It was clearly far above me but somehow also quite loud. I looked up and saw, blotting out the sun, a great hot air balloon.  I’d heard vague stories but had never seen one in person before. The most striking part of it was the balloon itself, made of canvas patterned beige and blue and larger than a house. The top half of it (as I was informed later) was enclosed by a net, which had metal rings on its edges attaching it to a tangle of myriad ropes and cords. These in turn held aloft the basket, which was not the simple platform I’d seen described in books but rather looked like a small sailing boat, complete with railings, rotors, and a steering wheel.

The voice announced that it hadn’t seen me around before and that I ought to climb aboard. A ladder with metal rungs unfurled over the side of the boat, just low enough that I could reach it if I jumped. I did so after making sure my rucksack was firmly on my back and shut, and climbed up to reach the aircraft.

The man onboard was only slightly taller than me. His white shirt was rumpled and stained with oil, and his left suspender was fraying. The thick goggles on his forehead, held together with large bolts and screws, were the only thing keeping his thick black hair from whipping in all directions with the wind (mine, in contrast, had already become hopelessly tangled). His sleeves were rolled up, but his forearms were covered by brown leather fingerless gloves, with metal studs that flashed in the sunlight as he hauled the ladder back onto the balloon. He wore a mask over the lower half of his face, with a cylindrical chamber marked “O2” sticking out from each cheek. Directly in front of the mouth was a clear window, so that I could see his lips moving when he spoke. He offered me a similar one and I accepted—the air was rather thin so high up. I could see him say something that was drowned out by the wind, and then he beckoned me towards a door. Given the shape of the craft, I wasn’t surprised to discover that it led to a kind of captains’ quarters.

Inside, the wind wasn’t quite so brutally loud and I could actually make out what my host was saying. He introduced himself as Captain Akash Majhi, aviator extraordinaire, and asked if I needed a lift. I said it might have been a bit late to ask since I was already on the balloon, which made him chuckle. I said that since he’d offered, I was headed to Hero’s Hollow, and he replied that that would be no problem. I noticed as we conversed that he only made eye contact when he was speaking—when I spoke, he instead watched my lips.

As Akash turned to pull a lever on the wall, I asked where he was from. He didn’t respond. With the lever pulled, a large strip of the ceiling rotated so that a piece of what had been the floor above—the piece to which the steering wheel was attached—became the ceiling of this room. Akash then tapped what seemed to just be a wooden accent covering a swath of the metal wall above the desk and bed. The wood slid to the side, revealing a bay window through which he could see.

He took his place at the wheel, positioning me in his field of view, so I asked again where he was from. He told me he was a proud resident of the Cloud Isles. I told him I’d never heard of such a place, and he said I really must be new to the area. Belatedly, I told him my name and that I had in fact only moved here a few weeks ago. He told me that the Cloud Isles were just that: islands in the clouds, with wildlife, ecosystems, and culture. At the center was a great city that, yes, was attached to the clouds, but had mostly been built flying between and amongst them by generations of architects, donors, engineers, artists, and aviators like himself. 

I asked him where the city was located and he vaguely waved his hands. “Here and there.” He said that as the clouds drifted so did the Isles, but that the city itself never strayed too far from Greenmoor—otherwise, mapping and resource-gathering from the ground below would be difficult or impossible.

I asked him how I might visit the Isles, and he told me I’d need to be able to fly. He said the general ethos of the residents leaned towards mechanical solutions, but he had heard that there were magical ways of flight as well. I said I would have to look into that. He handed me a business card with his name, “balloonist | engineer | aviator extraordinaire,” an address, and a smoke signal pattern to use to contact him. He said if I was ever in the city he’d be happy to show me around. Then, he announced that we’d arrived.

We went back onto the deck and he unfurled the ladder over the edge. I  went to hand him the oxygen mask back but he told me to keep it—they were expensive, but he had plenty and I’d be needing it when (and he did say “when”) I visited the city. I thanked him, shook his hand, and started descending the ladder.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

I made it back to the ground (the hop down from the ladder was smaller than the hop up had been), and smoothed my hair down before setting off into the Hollow. I’d only barely made it into the skull when my plans for the afternoon abruptly shifted.

It was just around midday, so the guards must have been on break or between shifts. Hurrying out of the dungeon was a group I recognized—it was the Lows, the mining family. Angus was carrying the son in his arms. The boy was clutching his thigh, and even from a distance I could see blood seeping through his fingers.

Crystal spotted me and immediately called out to me, thanking the gods for my arrival. I hurried to them and guided them back to the cottage, where I knew I’d be able to better determine how to treat the issue. Morna would have to wait—I had a patient to tend to.

⇦●〇●⇨

[rawliverandcigarettes]

Mass Effect Retribution, a review

Mass Effect Retribution is the third book in the official Mass Effect trilogy by author Drew Karpyshyn, who happens to also be Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.

I didn’t expect to pick it up, because to be very honest I didn’t expect to like it. 9 years ago I borrowed Mass Effect Revelations, and I still recall the experience as underwhelming. But this fateful fall of 2020 I had money (yay) and I saw the novel on the shelf of a swedish nerd store. I guess guilt motivated me to give the author another try: guilt, because I’ve been writing a Mass Effect fanfiction for an ungodly amount of years and I’ve been deathly afraid of lore that might contradict my decisions ever since I started -but I knew this book covered elements that are core to plot elements of my story, and I was willing to let my anxiety to the door and see what was up.

Disclaimer: I didn’t reread Mass Effect Revelation before plunging into this read, and entirely skipped Ascension. So anything in relation to character introduction and continuity will have to be skipped.

Back-cover pitch (the official, unbiased, long one)

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on “harvesting” the galaxy’s organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers. To ensure humanity’s survival, he launches a desperate plan to uncover the enemy’s strengths—and weaknesses—by studying someone implanted with modified Reaper technology. He knows the perfect subject for his horrific experiments: former Cerberus operative Paul Grayson, who wrested his daughter from the cabal’s control with the help of Ascension project director Kahlee Sanders. But when Kahlee learns that Grayson is missing, she turns to the only person she can trust: Alliance war hero Captain David Anderson. Together they set out to find the secret Cerberus facility where Grayson is being held. But they aren’t the only ones after him. And time is running out. As the experiments continue, the sinister Reaper technology twists Grayson’s mind. The insidious whispers grow ever stronger in his head, threatening to take over his very identity and unleash the Reapers on an unsuspecting galaxy. This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.

Global opinion (TL;DR)

I came in hoping to be positively surprised and learn a thing or two about Reapers, about Cerberus and about Aria T’loak. I wasn’t, and I didn’t learn much. What I did learn was how cool ideas can get wasted by the very nature of game novelization, as the defects are not singular to this novel but quite widespread in this genre, and how annoyed I can get at an overuse of dialogue tags. The pacing is good and the narrative structure alright: everything else poked me in the wrong spots and rubbed how the series have always handled violence on my face with cruder examples. If I was on Good Reads, I’d probably give it something like 2 stars, for the pacing, some of the ideas, and my general sympathy for the IP novel struggle.

The indepth review continue past this point, just know there will be spoilers for the series, the Omega DLC which is often relevant, and the book itself!

What I enjoyed

Drew Karpyshyn is competent in narrative structure, and that does a lot for the pacing. Things rarely drag, and we get from one event to the next seamlessly. I’m not surprised this is one of the book’s qualities, as it comes from the craft of a game writer: pacing and efficiency are mandatory skills in this field. I would have preferred a clearer breaking point perhaps, but otherwise it’s a nice little ride that doesn’t ask a lot of effort from you (I was never tempted to DNF the book because it was so easy to read).

This book is packed with intringuing ideas -from venturing in the mind of the Illusive Man to assist, from the point of view of the victim, to Grayson’s biological transformation and assimilation into the Reaper hivemind, we get plenty to be excited for. I was personally intrigued about Liselle, Aria T’loak’s secret daughter, and eager to get a glimpse at the mind of the Queen Herself -also about how her collaboration with Cerberus came to be. Too bad none of these ideas go anywhere nor are being dealt with in an interesting way!!! But the concepts themselves were very good, so props for setting up interesting premices.

Pain is generally well described. It gets the job done.

I liked Sanak, the batarian that works as a second to Aria. He’s not very well characterized and everyone thinks he’s dumb (rise up for our national himbo), even though he reads almost smarter than her on multiple occasions, but I was happy whenever he was on the page, so yay for Sanak. But it might just be me having a bias for batarians.

Cool to have Kai Leng as a point of view character. I wasn’t enthralled by what was done with it, as he remains incredibly basic and as basically hateable and ungrounded than in Mass Effect 3 (I think he’s very underwhelming as a villain and he should have been built up in Mass Effect 2 to be effective). But there were some neat moments, such as the description of the Afterlife by Grayson who considers it as tugging at his base instincts, compared to Leng’s description of it where everything is deemed disgusting. The execution is not the best, but the concept was fun.

Pre-Reaperification Paul Grayson wasn’t the worst point of view to follow. I wasn’t super involved in his journey and didn’t care when he died one way or the other, but I empathized with his problems and hoped he would find a way out of the cycle of violence. The setup of his character arc was interesting, it’s just sad that any resolution -even negative- was dropped to focus on Reapers and his relationship with Kahlee Sanders, as I think the latter was the least interesting part.

The cover is cool and intringuing. Very soapy. It’s my favorite out of all the official novels, as it owns the cheesier aspect of the series, has nice contrasts and immediately asks questions. Very 90s/2000s. It’s great.

You may notice every thing I enjoyed was coated in complaints, because it’s a reflection of my frustration at this book for setting up interesting ideas and then completely missing the mark in their execution. So without further due, let’s talk about what I think the book didn’t do right.

1. Dumb complaints that don’t matter much

After reading the entire book, I am still a bit confused at to why Tim (the Illusive Man’s acronym is TIM in fandom, but I find immense joy in reffering to him as just Tim) wants his experimentation to be carried out on Grayson specifically, especially when getting to him is harder than pretty much anyone else (also wouldn’t pushing the very first experiments on alien captives make more sense given it’s Cerberus we’re talking about?). It seem to be done out of petty revenge, which is fine, but it still feels like quite the overlook to mess with a competent fighter, enhance him, and then expect things to stay under control (which Tim kind of doesn’t expect to, and that’s even weirder -why waste your components on something you plan to terminate almost immediately). At the same time, the pettiness is the only characterization we get out of Tim so good I guess? But if so, I wished it would have been accentuated to seem even more deliberate (and not have Tim regret to see it in himself, which flattens him and doesn’t inform the way he views the world and himself -but we’ll get to that).

I really disliked the way space travel is characterized. And that might be entirely just me, and perhaps it doesn’t contradict the rest of the lore, but space travel is so fast. People pop up left and right in a matter of hours. At some point we even get a mention of someone being able to jump 3 different Mass Relays and then arrive somewhere in 4 hours. I thought you first had to discharge your ship around a stellar object before being able to engage in the next jump (and that imply finding said object, which would have to take more than an hour). It’s not that big of a deal, but it completely crammed this giant world to a single boulevard for me and my hard-science-loving tastes. Not a big deal, but not a fan at all of this choice.

You wouldn’t believe how often people find themselves in a fight naked or in their underwear. It happens at least 3 times (and everyone naked survives -except one, we’ll get to her later).

Why did I need to know about this fifteen year’s old boner for his older teacher. Surely there were other ways to have his crush come across without this detail, or then have it be an actual point of tension in their relationship and not just a “teehee” moment. Weird choice imo.

I’m not a fan of the Talons. I don’t find them interesting or compelling. There is nothing about them that informs us on the world they live in. The fact they’re turian-ruled don’t tell us anything about turian culture that, say, the Blue Suns don’t tell us already. It’s a generic gang that is powerful because it is. I think they’re very boring, in this book and in the Omega DLC alike (a liiittle less in the DLC because of Nyreen, barely). Not a real criticism, I just don’t care for them at all.

I might just be very ace, but I didn’t find Anderson and Kahlee Sanders to have much chemistry. Same for Kahlee and Grayson (yes we do have some sort of love-triangle-but-not-really, but it’s not very important and it didn’t bother me much). Their relationships were all underwhelming to me, and I’ll explain why in part 4.

The red sand highs are barely described, and very safely -probably not from a place of intimate knowledge with drugs nor from intense research. Addiction is a delicate topic, and I feel like it could have been dealt with better, or not be included at all.

There are more of these, but I don’t want to turn this into a list of minor complaints for things that are more a matter of taste than craft quality or thematic relevance. So let’s move on.

2. Who cares about aliens in a Mass Effect novel

Now we’re getting into actual problems, and this one is kind of endemic to the Mass Effect novels (I thought the same when I read Revelation 9 years ago, though maybe less so as Saren in a PoV character -but I might have forgotten so there’s that). The aliens are described and characterized in the most uncurious, uninspired manner. Krogans are intimidating brutes. Turians are rigid. Asaris are sexy. Elcors are boring. Batarians are thugs (there is something to be said with how Aria’s second in command is literally the same batarian respawned with a different name in Mass Effect 2, this book, then the Omega DLC). Salarians are weak nerds. (if you allow me this little parenthesis because of course I have to complain about salarian characterization: the only salarian that speaks in the book talks in a cheap ripoff of Mordin’s speech pattern, which sucks because it’s specific to Mordin and not salarians as a whole, and is there to be afraid of a threat as a joke. This is SUCH a trope in the original trilogy -especially past Mass Effect 1 when they kind of give up on salarians except for a few chosen ones-, that salarians’ fear is not to be taken seriously and the only salarians who are to be considered don’t express fear at all -see Mordin and Kirrahe. It happens at least once per game, often more. This is one of the reasons why the genophage subplot is allowed to be so morally simple in ME3 and remove salarians from the equation. I get why they did that, but it’s still somewhat of a copeout. On this front, I have to give props to Andromeda for actually engaging with violence on salarians in a serious manner. It’s a refreshing change) I didn’t learn a single thing about any of these species, how they work, what they care about in the course of these 79750 words. I also didn’t learn much about their relationships to other species, including humans. I’ll mention xenophobia in more details later, but this entire aspect of the story takes a huge hit because of this lack of investment of who these species are.

I’ve always find Mass Effect, despite its sprawling universe full of vivid ideas and unique perspectives, to be strangely enamoured with humans, and it has never been so apparent than here. Only humans get to have layers, deserving of empathy and actual engagement. Only their pain is real and important. Only their death deserve mourning (we’ll come back to that). I’d speculate this comes from the same place that was terrified to have Liara as a love interest in ME1 in case she alienated the audience, and then later was surprised when half the fanbase was more interested in banging the dinosaur-bird than their fellow humans: Mass Effect often seem afraid of losing us and breaking our capacity for self-projection. It’s a very weird concern, in my opinion, that reveals the most immature, uncertain and soapy parts of the franchise. Here it’s punched to eleven, and I find it disappointing. It also have a surprising effect on the narrative: again, we’ll come back to that.

3. The squandered potential of Liselle and Aria

Okay. This one hurts. Let’s talk about Liselle: she’s introduced in the story as a teammate to Grayson, who at the time works as a merc for Aria T’loak on Omega, and also sleeps with him on the regular. She likes hitting the Afterlife’s dancefloor: she’s very admired there, as she’s described as extremely attractive. One night after receiving a call from Grayson, she rejoins him in his apartment. They have sex, then Kai Leng and other Cerberus agents barge in to capture Grayson -a fight break out (the first in a long tradition of naked/underwear fights), and both of them are stunned with tranquilizers. Grayson is to be taken to the Illusive Man. Kai Leng decides to slit Liselle’s throat as she lays unconscious to cover their tracks. When Aria T’loak and her team find her naked on a bed, throat gaping and covered in blood, Liselle is revealed, through her internal monologue, to be Aria’s secret daughter -that she kept secret for both of their safety. So Liselle is a sexpot who dies immediately in a very brutal and disempowered manner. This is a sad way to handle Aria T’loak’s daughter I think, but I assume it was done to give a strong motivation to the mother, who thinks Grayson did it. And also, it’s a cool setup to explore her psyche: how does she feel about business catching up with her in such a personal manner, how does she feel about the fact she couldn’t protect her own offspring despite all her power, what’s her relationship with loss and death, how does she slip when under high emotional stress, how does she deal with such a vulnerable position of having to cope without being able to show any sign of weakness... But the book does nothing with that. The most interesting we get is her complete absence of outward reaction when she sees her daughter as the centerpiece of a crime scene. Otherwise we have mentions that she’s not used to lose relatives, vague discomfort when someone mentions Liselle might have been raped, and vague discomfort at her body in display for everyone to gawk at. It’s not exactly revelatory behavior, and the missed potential is borderline criminal. It also doesn’t even justify itself as a strong motivation, as Aria vaguely tries to find Grayson again and then gives up until we give her intel on a silver platter. Then it almost feels as if she forgot her motivation for killing Grayson, and is as motivated by money than she is by her daughter’s murder (and that could be interesting too, but it’s not done in a deliberate way and therefore it seems more like a lack of characterization than anything else).

Now, to Aria. Because this book made me realize something I strongly dislike: the framing might constantly posture her as intelligent, but Aria T’loak is... kind of dumb, actually? In this book alone she’s misled, misinformed or tricked three different times. We’re constantly ensured she’s an amazing people reader but never once do we see this ability work in her favor -everyone fools her all the time. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes and jump from Cerberus trap to Cerberus trap, and her loosing Omega to them later is laughably stupid after the bullshit Tim put her through in this book alone. I’m not joking when I say the book has to pull out an entire paragraph on how it’s easier to lie to smart people to justify her complete dumbassery during her first negotiation with Tim. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how people work that could justify her power. She’s not politically savvy. She’s not good at manipulation. She’s just already established and very, very good at kicking ass. And I wouldn’t mind if Aria was just a brutish thug who maintains her power through violence and nothing else, that could also be interesting to have an asari act that way. But the narrative will not bow to the reality they have created for her, and keep pretending her flaw is in extreme pride only. This makes me think of the treatment of Sansa Stark in the latest seasons of Game of Thrones -the story and everyone in it is persuaded she’s a political mastermind, and in the exact same way I would adore for it to be true, but it’s just... not. It’s even worse for Aria, because Sansa does have victories by virtue of everyone being magically dumber than her whenever convenient. Aria just fails, again and again, and nobody seem to ever acknowledge it. Sadly her writing here completely justifies her writing in the Omega DLC and the comics, which I completely loathe; but turns out Aria isn’t smart or savvy, not even in posture or as a façade. She’s just violent, entitled, easily fooled, and throws public tantrums when things don’t go her way. And again, I guess that would be fine if only the narrative would recognize what she is. Me, I will gently ignore most of this (in her presentation at least, because I think it’s interesting to have something pitiful when you dig a little) and try to write her with a bit more elevation. But this was a very disappointing realization to have.

4. The squandered potential of Grayson and the Reapers

The waste of a subplot with Aria and Liselle might have hurt me more in a personal way, but what went down between Grayson and the Reapers hurts the entire series in a startling manner. And it’s so infuriating because the potential was there. Every setpiece was available to create something truly unique and disturbing by simply following the series’ own established lore. But this is not what happens. See, when The Illusive Man, our dearest Tim, captures Grayson for a betrayal that happened last book (something about his biotic autistic daughter -what’s the deal with autistic biotics being traumatized by Cerberus btw), he decides to use him as the key part of an experiment to understand how Reapers operate. So he forcefully implants the guy with Reaper technology (what they do exactly is unclear) to study his change into a husk and be prepared when Reapers come for humanity -it’s also compared to what happened with Saren when he “agreed” to be augmented by Sovereign. From there on, Grayson slowly turns into a husk. Doesn’t it sound fascinating, to be stuck in the mind of someone losing themselves to unknowable monsters? If you agree with me then I’m sorry because the execution is certainly... not that. The way the author chooses to describe the event is to use the trope of mind control used in media like Get Out: Grayson taking the backseat of his own mind and body. And I haaaaate it. I hate it so much. I don’t hate the trope itself (it can be interesting in other media, like Get Out!), but I loathe that it’s used here in a way that totally contradicts both the lore and basic biology. Grayson doesn’t find himself manipulated. He doesn’t find himself justifying increasingly jarring actions the way Saren has. He just... loses control of himself, disagreeing with what’s being done with him but not able to change much about it. He also can fight back and regain control sometimes -but his thoughts are almost untainted by Reaper influence. The technology is supposed to literally replace and reorganize the cells of his body; is this implying that body and mind are separated, that there maybe exists a soul that transcends indoctrination? I don’t know but I hate it. This also implies that every victim of the Reaper is secretely aware of what they’re doing and pained and disagreeing with their own actions. And I’m sorry but if it’s true, I think this sucks ass and removes one of the creepiest ideas of the Mass Effect universe -that identity can and will be lost, and that Reapers do not care about devouring individuality and reshaping it to the whims of their inexorable march. Keeping a clear stream of consciousness in the victim’s body makes it feel like a curse and not like a disease. None of the victims are truly gone that way, and it removes so much of the tragic powerlessness of organics in their fight against the machines. Imagine if Saren watched himself be a meanie and being like “nooo” from within until he had a chance to kill himself in a near-victorious battle, compared to him being completely persuaded he’s acting for the good of organic life until, for a split second, he comes to realize he doesn’t make any sense and is loosing his mind like someone with dementia would, and needs to grasp to this instant to make the last possible thing he could do to save others and his own mind from domination. I feel so little things for Saren in the former case, and so much for the latter. But it might just be me: I’m deeply touched by the exploration of how environment and things like medication can change someone’s behavior, it’s such a painfully human subject while forceful mind control is... just kind of cheap.

SPEAKING OF THE REAPERS. Did you know “The Reapers” as an entity is an actual character in this book? Because it is. And “The Reapers” is not a good character. During the introduction of Grayson and explaining his troubles, we get presented with the mean little voice in his head. It’s his thoughts in italics, nothing crazy, in fact it’s a little bit of a copeout from actually implementing his insecurities into the prose. But I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, as I knew Grayson would be indoctrinated later, and I fully expected the little voice to slowly start twisting into what the Reapers suggested to him. This doesn’t happen, or at least not in that slowburn sort of way. Instead the little voice is dropped almost immediately, and the Reapers are described, as a presence. And as the infection progresses, what Grayson do become what the Reapers do. The Reapers have emotions, it turns out. They’re disgusted at organic discharges. They’re pleased when Grayson accomplish what they want, and it’s told as such. They foment little plans to get their puppet to point A to point B, and we are privy to their calculations. And I’m sorry but the best way to ruin your lovecraftian concept is to try and explain its motivations and how it thinks. Because by definition the unknown is scarier, smarter, and colder than whatever a human author could come up with. I couldn’t take the Reapers’ dumb infiltration plans seriously, and now I think they are dumb all the time, and I didn’t want to!! The only cases in which the Reapers influence Grayson, we are told in very explicit details how so. For example, they won’t let Grayson commit suicide by flooding his brain with hope and determination when he tries, or they will change the words he types when he tries to send a message to Kahlee Sanders. And we are told exactly what they do every time. There was a glorious occasion to flex as a writer by diving deep into an unreliable narrator and write incredibly creepy prose, but I guess we could have been confused, and apparently that’s not allowed. And all of this is handled that poorly becauuuuuse...

5. Subtext is dead and Drew killed it

Now we need to talk about the prose. The style of the author is... let’s be generous and call it functional. It’s about clarity. The writing is so involved in its quest for clarity that it basically ruins the book, and most of the previous issues are direct consequences of the prose and adjacent decisions.The direct prose issues are puzzling, as they are known as rookie technical flaws and not something I would expect from the series’ Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, but in this book we find problems such as:

The reliance on adverbs. Example: "Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly”. I have nothing about a well-placed adverb that gives a verb a revelatory twist, but these could be replaced by stronger verbs, or cut altogether.

Filtering. Example: “Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign”. This example is particularly egregious, but characters know things, feel things, realize things (boy do they realize things)... And this pulls us away from their internal world instead of making us live what they live, expliciting what should be implicit. For example, consider the alternative: “They were getting no reponse, which was a bad sign in Anderson’s experience.” We don’t really need the “in Anderson’s experience” either, but that already brings us significantly closer to his world, his lived experience as a soldier.

The goddamn dialogue tags. This one is the worst offender of the bunch. Nobody is allowed to talk without a dialogue tag in this book, and wow do people imply, admit, inform, remark and every other verb under the sun. Consider this example, which made me lose my mind a little: “What are you talking about? Kahlee wanted to know.” I couldn’t find it again, but I’m fairly certain I read a “What is it?” Anderson wanted to know. as well. Not only is it very distracting, it’s also yet another way to remove reader interpretation from the equation (also sometimes there will be a paragraph break inside a monologue -not even a long one-, and that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything? It’s not as big of a problem than the aversion to subtext, but it still confused me more than once)

Another writing choice that hurts the book in disproportionate ways is the reliance on point of view switches. In Retribution, we get the point of view of: Tim, Paul Grayson, Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders, David Anderson, Aria T’loak, and Nick (a biotic teenager, the one with the boner). Maybe Sanak had a very small section too, but I couldn’t find it again so don’t take my word for it. That’s too many point of views for a plot-heavy 80k book in my opinion, but even besides that: the point of view switch several times in one single chapter. This is done in the most harmful way possible for tension: characters involved in the same scene take turns on the page explaining their perspective about the events, in a way that leaves the reader entirely aware of every stake to every character and every information that would be relevant in a scene. Take for example the first negotiation between Aria and Tim. The second Aria needs to ponder what her best move could possibly be, we get thrown back into Tim’s perspective explaining the exact ways in which he’s trying to deceive her -removing our agency to be either convinced or fooled alongside her. This results in a book that goes out of his way to keep us from engaging with its ideas and do any mental work on our own. Everything is laid out, bare and as overexplained as humanly possible. The format is also very repetitive: characters talk or do an action, and then we spend a paragraph explaining the exact mental reasoning for why they did what they did. There is nothing to interpret. No subtext at all whatsoever; and this contributes in casting a harsh light on the Mass Effect universe, cheapening it and overtly expliciting some of its worst ideas instead of leaving them politely blurred and for us to dress up in our minds. There is only one theme that remains subtextual in my opinion. And it’s not a pretty one.

6. Violence

So here’s the thing when you adapt a third person shooter into a novel: you created a violent world and now you will have to deal with death en-masse too (get it get it I’m so sorry). But while in videogames you can get away with thoughtless murder because it’s a gameplay mechanic and you’re not expected to philosophize on every splatter of blood, novels are all about internalization. Violent murder is by definition more uncomfortable in books, because we’re out of gamer conventions and now every death is actual when in games we just spawned more guys because we wanted that level to be a bit harder and on a subconscious level we know this and it makes it somewhat okay. I felt, in this book, a strange disconnect between the horrendous violence and the fact we’re expected to care about it like we would in a game: not much, or as a spectacle. Like in a game, we are expected to root for the safety of named characters the story indicated us we should be invested in. And because we’re in a book, this doesn’t feel like the objective truth of the universe spelled at us through user interface and quest logs, but the subjective worldview of the characters we’re following. And that makes them.... somewhat disturbing to follow.

I haven’t touched on Anderson and Kahlee Sanders much yet, but now I guess I have too, as they are the worst offenders of what is mentioned above. Kahlee cares about Grayson. She only cares about Grayson -and her students like the forementioned Nick, but mostly Grayson. Grayson is out there murdering people like it’s nobody’s business, but still, keeping Grayson alive is more important that people dying like flies around him. This is vaguely touched on, but not with the gravitas that I think was warranted. Also, Anderson goes with it. Because he cares about Kahlee. Anderson organizes a major political scandal between humans and turians because of Kahlee, because of Grayson. He convinces turians to risk a lot to bring Cerberus down, and I guess that could be understandable, but it’s mostly manipulation for the sake of Grayson’s survival: and a lot of turians die as a result. But not only turians: I was not comfortable with how casually the course of action to deal a huge blow to Cerberus and try to bring the organization down was to launch assault on stations and cover-ups for their organization. Not mass arrests: military assault. They came to arrest high operatives, maybe, but the grunts were okay to slaughter. This universe has a problem with systemic violence by the supposedly good guys in charge -and it’s always held up as the righteous and efficient way compared to these UGH boring politicians and these treaties and peace and such (amirite Anderson). And as the cadavers pile up, it starts to make our loveable protagonists... kind of self-centered assholes. Also: I think we might want to touch on who these cadavers tend to be, and get to my biggest point of discomfort with this novel.

Xenophobia is hard to write well, and I super sympathize with the attempts made and their inherent difficulty. This novel tries to evoke this theme in multiple ways: by virtue of having Cerberus’ heart and blade as point of view characters, we get a window into Tim and Kai Leng’s bigotry against aliens, and how this belief informs their actions. I wasn’t ever sold in their bigotry as it was shown to us. Tim evokes his scorn for whatever aliens do and how it’s inferior to humanity’s resilience -but it’s surface-level, not informed by deep and specific entranched beliefs on aliens motives and bodies, and how they are a threat on humanity according to them. The history of Mass Effect is rich with conflict and baggage between species, yet every expression of hatred is relegated to a vague “eww aliens” that doesn’t feed off systemically enforced beliefs but personal feelings of mistrust and disgust. I’ll take this example of Kai Leng, and his supposedly revulsion at the Afterlife as a peak example of alien decadence: he sees an asari in skimpy clothing, and deems her “whorish”. And this feels... off. Not because I don’t think Kai Leng would consider asaris whorish, but because this is supposed to represent Cerberus’ core beliefs: yet both him and Tim go on and on about how their goal is to uplift humanity, how no human is an enemy. But if that’s the case, then what makes Kai Leng call an Afterlife asari whorish and mean it in a way that’s meaningfully different from how he would consider a human sex worker in similar dispositions? Not that I don’t buy that Cerberus would have a very specific idea of what humans need to be to be considered worth preserving as good little ur-fascists, but this internal bias is never expressed in any way, and it makes the whole act feel hollow. Cerberus is not the only offender, though. Every time an alien expresses bias against humans in a way we’re meant to recognize as xenophobic, it reads the same way: as personal dislike and suspicion. As bullying. Which is such a small part of what bigotry encompasses. It’s so unspecific and divorced from their common history that it just never truly works in my opinion. You know what I thought worked, though? The golden trio of non-Cerberus human characters, and their attitude towards aliens. Grayson’s slight fetishism and suspicion of his attraction to Liselle, how bestial (in a cool, sexy way) he perceives the Afterlife to be. The way Anderson and Kahlee use turians for their own ends and do not spare a single thought towards those who died directly trying to protect them or Grayson immediately after the fact (they are more interested in Kahlee’s broken fingers and in kissing each other). How they feel disgust watching turians looting Cerberus soldiers, not because it’s disrespectful in general and the deaths are a inherent tragedy but because they are turians and the dead are humans. But it's not even really on them: the narration itself is engrossed by the suffering of humans, but aliens are relegated to setpieces in gore spectacles. Not even Grayson truly cares about the aliens the Reapers make him kill. Nobody does. Not even the aliens among each other: see, once again, Aria and Liselle, or Aria and Sanak. Nobody cares. At the very end of the story, Anderson comes to Kahlee and asks if she gives him permission to have Grayson’s body studied, the same way Cerberus planned to. It’s source of discomfort, but Kahlee gives in as it’s important, and probably what Grayson would have wanted, maybe? So yeah. In the end the only subtextual theme to find here (probably as an accident) is how the Alliance’s good guys are not that different from Cerberus it turns out. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

7. Lore-approved books, or the art of shrinking an expanding universe

I’d like to open the conversation on a bigger topic: the very practice of game novelization, or IP-books. Because as much as I think Drew Karpyshyn’s final draft should not have ended up reading that amateur given the credits to his name, I really want to acknowledge the realities of this industry, and why the whole endeavor was perhaps doomed from the start regardless of Karpyshyn’s talent or wishes as an author.

The most jarring thing about this reading experience is as follows: I spent almost 80k words exploring this universe with new characters and side characters, all of them supposedly cool and interesting, and I learned nothing. I learned nothing new about the world, nothing new about the characters. Now that it’s over, I’m left wondering how I could chew on so much and gain so little. Maybe it’s just me, but more likely it’s by design. Not on poor Drew. Now that I did IP work myself, I have developed an acute sympathy for anyone who has to deal with the maddening contradictions of this type of business. Let me explain.

IP-adjacent media (in the West at least) sure has for goal to expand the universe: but expand as in bloat, not as in deepen. The target for this book is nerds like me, who liked the games and want more of this thing we liked. But then we’re confronted by two major competitors: the actual original media (in ME’s case, the games) whose this product is a marketing tool for, and fandom. IP books are not allowed to compete with the main media: the good ideas are for the main media, and any meaningful development has to be made in the main media (see: what happened with Kai Leng, or how everyone including me complains about the worldbuilding to the Disney Star Swars trilogy being hidden in the novelization). And when it comes to authorship (as in: taking an actual risk with the media and give it a personal spin), then we risk introducing ideas that complicate the main media even though a ridiculously small percent of the public will be attached to it, or ideas that fans despise. Of course we can’t have the latter. And once the fandom is huge enough, digging into anything the fans have strong headcanons for already risks creating a lot of emotions once some of these are made canon and some are disregarded. As much as I joke about how in Mass Effect you can learn about any gun in excrutiating details but we still don’t know if asaris have a concept for marriage... would we really want to know how/if asaris marry, or aren’t we glad we get to be creative and put our own spin on things? The dance between fandom and canon is a delicate one that can and will go wrong. And IP books are generally not worth the drama for the stakeholders.

Add this to insane deadlines, numerous parties all involved in some way and the usual struggles of book writing, and we get a situation where creating anything of value is pretty much a herculean task.

But then I ask... why do IP books *have* to be considered canon? I know this is part of the appeal, and that removing the “licenced” part only leaves us with published fanfiction, but... yeah. Yeah. I think it could be a fascinating model. Can you imagine having your IP and hiring X amount of distinctive authors to give it their own spin, not as definitive additions to the world but as creative endeavours and authorial deepdives? It would allow for these novels to be comparative and companion to the main media instead of being weird appendages that can never compare, and the structure would allow for these stories to be polished and edited to a higher level than most fanfictions. Of course I’m biased because I have a deep belief in the power of fanfiction as commentary and conversational piece. But I would really love to see companies’ approach to creative risk and canon to change. We might get Disney stuff until we die now, so the least we can ask for is for this content to be a little weird, personal and human.

That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thank you for reading, it was very long and weirdly passionate, have a nice dayyyyy.

[thosearentcrimes]

Intelligence

On a recent post I was pretty glib about the notion of intelligence, to the point of outright denying that it is measured by IQ, and even doubting its very existence. On reflection, this is a bit of an unusual position, since the existence of intelligence is almost self-evident, and certainly I routinely behave as if intelligence were both real and variable. As such, I feel like I should clarify my position a bit.

Intelligence is a term so vague as to be effectively meaningless, unless it is very precisely defined for a particular context. Intelligence research both does not precisely define intelligence, and contains mutually contradictory definitions. Because I really really hate Charles Murray (may his collaborator Herrnstein rest in piss) and his pile of racist and classist vitriol “The Bell Curve”, I will be picking on the Bell Curve apologetic letter to the Wall Street Journal (lol) “Mainstream Science on Intelligence“ which was signed by 52 (out of the 131 to whom it was sent) "experts in intelligence and allied fields". Fun fact: One of the signatories of this letter is Hans Eysenck, possibly the most monumental scientific fraud of all time, who claimed that lung cancer is not caused by smoking but by bad vibes. Other fun fact: He is by far not the worst person to have signed this tripe (that is, to my limited awareness, J. Philippe Rushton).

The first point made by the article is that intelligence is “A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.“ This definition is actually significantly more ambiguous than even it concedes. Apparently not satisfied with the lack of clarity in that sentence, the author of the letter later described intelligence as ”The ability to deal with cognitive complexity” which is frankly laughable. I will happily concede the central conceit, that these activities require roughly the same general qualities of a person, because it is at the very least plausible. Instead, I would like to note that this definition does not specify whether or not intelligence involves the ability to do any of these things (except for learning) quickly, which it really should, for reasons we will come back to. To address specific components of this “general mental capability”, is intelligence the ability to solve a wide range of problems in a satisfactory manner, or is it the ability to solve problems that few other people can solve, or is it the ability to find particularly good solutions for ordinary problems? If it is all three, then to what degree do you weight these things? Which problems are admissible here? “Physical dexterity” is largely the ability to estimate center of balance and calculate ballistic curves. Given that, is hitting a moving target with a ball “intelligence”, and if not, why not? We could claim that hitting moving targets with balls is something that is learned through experience, but learning from experience is a part of intelligence as well! If my complaints concern problem-solving, it is because it is the only one of these that can be assessed quantitatively and at scale, the others only being measurable by way of problem-solving itself if at all. Some of the others can be assessed individually and/or qualitatively, but that is incompatible with the theory and practice of intelligence research. Now, I believe all of the questions I posed can be answered both ways, depending on context. In fact, if all we want “intelligence” for is a contextually-dependent blob of generalized cognitive ability, then I have no objection, beyond its somewhat limited utility as a concept and tendency towards tautology.

The second point of the article is where it all really breaks down. "Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well.“ Intelligence tests basically means IQ, as far as I can tell. The article operates further as if it had said IQ here, and the Bell Curve operates using IQ as its test of choice (IQ being a test designed to produce the normal distribution whose shape gives the book its name). If we compare a popular IQ test like WAIS to the definition of intelligence we have already given, we find that it is inconceivable that it measures intelligence at all. The “vocabulary” section does not measure speed of learning, it measures total learning performed and memory, and memory isn’t even a component of intelligence as defined! Neither is it clear why general knowledge questions would reflect any of the components of intelligence as given. I am willing to grant that spatial reasoning is a component of intelligence but it is less clear to me why this section is timed, given that the only thing intelligence as defined explicitly requires us to do quickly is learn. There is an entire “working memory” section to the WAIS. Unless we count rote short-term memorization as learning, and we should not, then there is no reason to consider any of this relevant to intelligence as it has been defined. Additionally, at no point is the participant required to hit a moving target with a ball, or construct a stable structure of some sort. This would be reasonable if it had already been specified that these sorts of tasks do not fall under intelligence, but it wasn’t. As such, the claim the letter makes, that intelligence tests measure what they have defined as intelligence, is blatantly false. Intelligence tests measure familiarity with academic test-taking environments and strategies, compliance with test-giver commands, memorization, spatial reasoning, general knowledge, pattern identification, and mathematical problem-solving. Only a small component of that is what intelligence was defined as earlier, and entire fields of what intelligence was supposed to be are missing in this evaluation.

To get a good run-down of some of the many problems with The Bell Curve in particular, see Shaun’s excellent video. For more writing on the folly of intelligence measurement in general, criticisms of bioessentialism, excellent writing about biology in general, and also baseball, read basically anything by Stephen Jay Gould.

[dannygals]

Good day, Ms. Reschell An D. Bayo!

Reading Record (English-APP 1st Session)

Unit 1: The Nature of Academic Texts

A paragraph is a group of sentences that deal with a single topic or idea. It is the first structure found in academic texts. The paragraph's components are as follows: topic sentence, supporting sentences, and conclusion and/or transitional sentence. The topic sentence's purpose is to present the primary idea of the paragraph's theme. The supporting sentences, on the other hand, expand on the major notion of the topic sentence. The ending sentence brings the major notion to a close by summarizing the full concept and ensuring that the paragraph concludes with a complete idea. A transitional sentence prepares the reader for the next concept in the following paragraph.

One method of composing an essay is a three-part essay. This structure is divided into three sections: introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction introduces topics that will be covered in the body of the essay; the body should give evidence to support your thesis statement. Finally, the conclusion restates the thesis statement and concludes the essay. IMRaD is an acronym that stands for Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion, followed by a Conclusion. This structure is commonly employed in academic publications, particularly research papers. IMRaD intends to discuss the research issue at hand in order to explain the topic and its intended goal.

Non-academic Texts can be produced by anyone, for the general public, and promptly published; the language employed is informal, casual, and may contain slang. Authors may not be provided; nevertheless, they can be discovered in journals such as Time, Newsweek, or Rolling Stone, as well as on Wikipedia and in newspapers. Non-academic texts include religious literature, graphic novels, and magazines. Academic text, on the other hand, can be written by professionals in a particular field, prepared for an academic audience (educational), thoroughly evaluated, and published through an academic source, academic journal, certified publishing firm, or university press.

Academic disciplines are divided into branches. Accounting, economics, finance, management, and marketing are all aspects of business. Art, creative writing, languages, literature, music, philosophy, religion, and theater are examples of humanities. Biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, geology, mathematics, physics, and medicine are examples of natural and applied sciences. Anthropology, education, geography, history, law, political science, psychology, and sociology are examples of social sciences. Each discipline and its branches have their own communities with their own vocabulary, styles, and means of communication.

Binaries can also be found in a variety of academic disciplines. Business: production-consumption and labor-capital. The humanities include artist-culture and text-context. Empiricism-rationalism and observer-subject in natural and applied sciences. Nature-nurture and free will-determinism are two concepts in the social sciences. These binaries can also migrate freely between fields, and this is often how linkages between academic disciplines can be discovered.

Critical reading is a method of reading more actively. It necessitates that readers employ their critical thinking skills to question both the text and their comprehension of it. Critical reading necessitates the reader performing the following tasks: Form judgments about the text, analyze, interpret, and evaluate it while reading, query what the text does and means, challenge the text's assumptions by questioning its argument and interpreting the meaning in context, and describe, interpret, and evaluate in response to the text. Remember that critical reading necessitates three steps: studying the text, understanding the text, and evaluating the text. Finally, annotate what you read by highlighting relevant facts, stating your queries on the text itself, using the margins for your own notes, and underlining important themes. That was the extent of my knowledge in Unit 1.

Unit 2: Thesis Statement and Outlining

This class taught me that a thesis statement is a single line that normally appears in the first paragraph of a document and states the writer's major idea and stance. A thesis statement has the following characteristics: It demonstrates your position on the subject under discussion. It informs the reader of what to expect from the rest of your paper. It directly answers a question you've been asked, It makes a claim that can be contested, It is a single line towards the beginning of your paper that introduces your argument to the viewers. A good thesis statement is supported by facts and is the result of hours of investigation.

An outline functions similarly to a blueprint or a map, and it ultimately assists the writer in not becoming stuck while writing an essay. A well-written and developed outline includes the following elements: the text's thesis, the main idea developed in each body paragraph, and evidence or supporting details in each paragraph to support the main idea. Outlines are classified into two types: topic outlines and sentence outlines. Only phrases or primary concepts are required for the topic outline. In the aforementioned framework, there is no need for full sentences. A topic outline also makes use of words that is similar to one another. This indicates that for organization, the same format is utilized for headings and subheadings (in terms of word structure or parts of speech). Finally, a heading or subheading should not be separated into only one portion; if there is an idea under “A,” there must also be a concept under “B.” There must be a "2" if there is a "1." Sentence outline, on the other hand, employs sentences. That means that all headings and subheadings must be in the form of sentences. There is less requirement for parallelism between headings and subheadings, but the same divisions per heading notion should still be observed; it cannot be separated into one component solely.

Unit 3: Writing a Summary

Summarizing a text means condensing its main points into a paragraph or two. When conducting research or studying, this is an excellent practice to follow. A summary typically has two goals: to replicate the essential ideas and points of a book, recognizing the broad principles that run throughout the article, and to articulate these concepts and ideas using exact and specific language. There are two methods you might utilize to prepare for writing a summary. These methods are previewing, skimming, and scanning. First, use the previewing technique to better orient yourself to what you need from the content you're about to dive into. You can gain an understanding of a text's overall logical progression by skimming through it. Skimming can also assist you in determining which portions of the text require your undivided attention in order to achieve your goals for reading the content. Finally, scanning is comparable to skimming, but you should have a more specific goal in mind. You're now skimming to look for a specific statistic or figure, or to see if the text discusses a topic you're researching.

One method for summarizing the material is to employ previewing or pre-reading strategies, which can assist you in comprehending the contents even before you begin close reading. Here are some approaches for summarizing a text:

• You can now identify and include the title and author of a text after reading it.

• In the first two phrases, include the author's thesis statement.

• In a text, write one or two sentences for each important notion or idea.

• If necessary, break the book into sections or by primary themes before summarizing the entire thing.

• Remember to leave out unnecessary elements; there is no need to go into minor and supporting details of the content.

• Avoid adding your own thoughts on the material.

• Avoid stealing the author's work. If you are directly quoting the author, include quotations.

The goals of summarizing texts are to recreate the overarching ideas so that the broad notions can be identified, and to express the overarching ideas using precise and specific language. The author's thesis statement should be in the first sentence. Before summarizing the text or research, break it down into its main ideas. Finally, leave out ideas that aren't relevant to the entire text. This is what I gained in Unit 3: Writing a Summary.

Unit 4: Writing from Sources

This unit taught me that paraphrase is a restatement of a text, passage, or work that articulates the meaning in a different way. It is not necessary to cite from the source material. A decent paraphrase demonstrates how well a writer comprehended the reading information. These are examples of paraphrases:

• Change of parts of speech - Parts of speech are classifications that are assigned to words based on their roles in a phrase. Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections are examples of categories.

• Change of structure - The sentence structure is altered to match the writer's perception of the original text.

• Clause reduction entails reducing or changing clauses to phrases in order to decrease confusion and interruption and simplify sentences.

• Synonym replacement - This is the most basic type of paraphrase. It entails replacing the terms in the phrase with comparable or synonyms.

Plagiarism is the act of pretending to own material that is not your own. Plagiarism can be classified into several forms. Word-for-word or verbatim plagiarism, often known as "copy-paste plagiarism," occurs when a researcher duplicates another person's work word-for-word or verbatim without properly citing the author (s). Word order plagiarism occurs when a writer alters some of the author(s)' words by looking up synonyms in order to make the paragraph appear to be his or her own. Idea plagiarism occurs when a writer paraphrases another's work in his or her own writing but fails to properly cite or attribute the idea to the author (s).

Paraphrasing Techniques Texts are changing the words (changing the part of speech, using synonyms, converting figures and percentages to alternative forms) and the sentence structure (change the word order, use different definition structures, use different attribution signals, and change the sentence structure and use different conjuctions). Quoting is when you take what the author said and repeat it word for word. This approach is typically used for brief phrases or sentences. Plagiarism is commonly defined as verbatim copying of an author's words. To avoid this, when quoting, enclose the copied text in quotation marks (“ “) and credit the words to the original author. When you want to use a quotation in your writing, make sure to introduce, cite, and explain the quotation. This strategy is known as the ICE method for ease of recall.

Unit 5: Citing Sources of Information

A citation acknowledges the writers, scientists, researchers, and others whose creative and intellectual work you used to support or enhance your own research. It is also used to quickly discover specific sources and to help avoid plagiarism. A citation often comprises the author's name, the date of publication, the location of the publishing business, the journal title, and a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). A citation style specifies what information must be included in a citation, how that information should be ordered, what punctuation should be used, and other formatting problems. The following are the three most common citation styles:

• APA (American Psychological Association) is used in education, psychology, and the social sciences.

• MLA (Modern Language Association) is normally used in the humanities.

• Chicago/Turabian style is often used in business, history, and fine arts.

The APA citation style is a set of criteria that a publisher must follow to guarantee that written material is presented clearly and consistently. It is concerned with a variety of elements, including header selection, tone, length, punctuation and abbreviations, citation of references, and many more. The MLA citation style also includes brief parenthetical citations in the text, all of which should be linked to an alphabetical list of works cited at the end of the text. Finally, there are two main documentation systems in the Chicago style: (1) notes and bibliography and (2) author-date. Choosing between the two is usually determined by the topic matter and the character of the sources mentioned, as each system is preferred by different groups of researchers. The Turabian citation style is similar to the Chicago style, with slight changes for student authors.

Citations in the Text in APA Format (7th Edition) For in-text citations, the APA citation uses the author-date method. The last name of the author and the year of publishing should be included in the printed text. Footnotes in APA Style (7th Edition) Footnotes should be used sparingly in research, according to the American Psychological Association. For content and copyright concerns, APA footnotes and endnotes are used. In-Text Citations in MLA Format Parenthetical citations are also used in MLA format. In-text citations are often put at the conclusion of a sentence or paragraph. In most cases, author-page numbers are used. Footnotes and endnotes in MLA should also be kept to a minimum because they can be distracting to the reader. It can be used for bibliographic notes that the reader can turn to for more information. Explanatory or content notes, which give brief extra information, can also be included in footnotes and endnotes. In the Chicago Manual of Style, generally known as CMoS, the author-date style requires the in-text citation to be in parenthetical format. For direct quotations and paraphrases, give the author's name, publication date, and page numbers. There is no punctuation between the author's name and the date of publishing, but there should be a comma between the date of publication and the page numbers. Footnotes, endnotes, and a bibliography are used to reference sources in the NB Style in Chicago format.

A bibliography includes a list of all of the sources you used for your study as well as any additional background reading. This includes works that you did not end up citing in your paper. A reference list, also known as a works cited list, differs from a bibliography in that it only includes the sources that you referenced to, summarized, paraphrased, or quoted in your paper. Aside from that, they fulfill much the same function. For your bibliography or references list, the APA citation style provides a specific formatting guidance. The works cited page is how MLA refers to the reference list. It is also found at the end of a paper and should provide detailed information about any sources used in your paper. The following is the format: Author. Title. Container, Other Contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Date, Location. Include only the elements pertinent to the source you're quoting. Order the entries in your works cited page alphabetically, beginning with the first author's last name. A bibliography is commonly used in the Chicago/Turabian citation style, which means that all of the materials you utilized in your study must be included, even if they are not expressly credited or discussed in your article.

[botanyshitposts]

If the way lichens are named is based on outdated information, do you know what ways of renaming them have been proposed to bring them more in line with current knowledge? I imagine naming them by just listing the component species would get unwieldy VERY fast.

yeaaahhh exactly, that’s the main problem. the only major other thing ive seen proposed is the theory that the ‘real’ name of any given lichen is it’s common colloquial name, because the way it exists to us just like, walking in the woods or whatever can be encompassed under said name, but as you can imagine that’s a more philosophical take on it. 

here’s my take, aka ‘what i would do if i suddenly got spontaneous control over all of lichenology’. basically i feel like there’s a few major things that need to happen before we can even start reliably identifying what’s in the lichens themselves. 

to start out, the distress, as i see it, is coming from this idea that we should have to know all the given components of a lichen just from the name. the philosophical idea above tells us why this is impractical: if everyone knows the lichens by a certain name, and all the keys are meant to provide identification down to a certain name, then it really, really seems like we should keep the names on a general level, because the names themselves are doing their jobs; you go to an herbarium and you can find a group of lichens that look the same, but may not have the exact same morphological features and may not test ‘correctly’ on certain chemical tests, indicating different yeasts or something similar. 

meanwhile, the yeasts themselves are…weird. the researchers in the paper found out about the presence of yeasts essentially by accident while trying to figure out why two otherwise identical lichen species (Bryoria fremontii and Bryoria tortuosa) had radically different levels of vulpinic acid; there were papers before that did genetic testing, with no explanation as to why they were so radically different. these researches hypothesized that it was because of different genes being expressed, and did more genetic testing (specifically a transcriptome-wide SNP analysis for those interested) to find that yes, both lichen species are indeed genetically identical– but they were telling the computer running the analysis to search only for known lichenized algae and fungi species. once they expanded the analysis to produce results for any fungi species detected in the samples, they found out about the yeasts, and realized that more yeast seemed to equal more vulpinic acid. 

i tell this extended story because it raises crucial questions about how we identify lichens. these researchers did an extended battery of genetic testing to determine the yeast species in the samples, but in functional lichen identification that happens everyday this is like….so far out of reach it’s laughable. when we identify lichens in the herbarium we plop em down on the lichen bench and follow through a dichotomous key, and the tests include things like ‘drop bleach on the thallus and if it turns a certain color it’s X species and if not it’s Y species’ and ‘look at the lichen under UV light and if it glows a certain color it’s X species and if it doesn’t it’s Y species’. the color lichen thalli turn under these conditions indicate different levels of certain chemicals, or the presence or absence of certain chemicals, and often the key will tell you what chemical is being indicated, and will direct you around depending on the results.

the problem with this is that not all lichens test positive on all chemical tests all the time. it’s a regular thing to have a lichen that like, 400% looks like a certain species but fails a chemical test and is labelled as another, slightly different species instead, and likewise it’s common to have lichens labelled as a certain species that have different chemical test results. 

if we’re working off the assumption that the basis for these minute differences is the species of yeast in the lichen, then we would have to decide– ‘we’ meaning all lichenologists as an academic field, i suppose– whether or not the yeast actually matters, or if it’s entirely conditional. for example, take the infamous Bryoria fremontii and Bryoria tortuosa riddle above. in this case the yeast was like, the answer, and the crucial question then would be, ‘are these the same species but in different forms, or are these two different species differentiated by the species of yeast?’. if it’s the former, then hell, identifying the yeast doesn’t matter, and we can just lump them all in and say that the darker color is the yeastier form or w/e. if it’s the latter, suddenly we have the question of what the chemical tests that have been standard for years actually mean: are they yeast tests??? which yeasts make which colors??? does it change depending on the lichen?? does it matter, if the keys can stay functionally the same??? are we splitting all lichens up based on their yeasts?? what’s happening???

my solution, theoretically, would be this: 

1. we keep the names. just keep them. everybody knows them by the names, all the herbariums have them put in place with the names, etc. yeah lichen names get changed all the time bc of taxonomy discoveries, but it’s sure as hell not practical to just like, do away with all the current names, no matter how weird the archaic fungus-first model is to begin with. 

2. we figure out how to identify the yeasts, whenever and wherever they are present. preferably this can be done with a low-cost dropper test or something similar to what’s already normal for lichen ID. best case scenario, this means just finding out which chemical test results can be associated with certain yeasts reliably, i.e. ‘x species of yeast produces vulpinic acid, and when exposed to bleach on the thallus of this lichen the vulpinic acid turns a certain color, and if it is that color then i can know it’s not just the chemical itself that is present but that x species of yeast in the lichen is the cause of that chemical’. 

3. we get in the habit of writing down on the labels of samples which yeasts are found through said methods. what this would turn out, i have no idea; if we start finding like, 80 kinds of yeast per set of herbarium samples, we’d be in deep shit, but if it’s a simple matter of finding out that half the species in the herbarium have different yeasts from the sample next to them in the box, that would be a little easier to handle.

4. as for fixing the fungi-centric naming issue as a whole: i propose, again, that we keep the names, and instead find some way of indicating easily which combination is present. this, as i have it in my head, would be pretty cumbersome and would probably need a lot of revising to actually be practical, but if lichens are as diverse on a microbiological level as we’re finding out they are, then a flexible coding system would be best. like a dewy decimal system of lichens. we write out all known symbiotes into a chart or put it in an excel program or something, associate a number with each symbiote, and then just put them together, we could come out with a specific number for describing a lichen based on it’s components, in addition to the name, like so: 

[FUNGUS #] - [ALGAE #] - [YEAST #] - [BACTERIA #]

001 - 020 - 2384 - 2

if the lichen doesn’t have a yeast or a bacterial symbiote, it just gets omitted: 

001 - 020

if there’s a second fungus, then the two fungus numbers get put together:

001/004 - 020 - 2384 - 2

if a species in unknown, it gets the code 000:

001 - 020 - 000 - 2

a lichen that can be keyed to a genus but not a species has an asterisk next to the unknown numbers: 

001 - 020* - 000 * - 0* 

is this an incredibly convoluted system? yes. does it solve the combination problem, hypothetically? maybe. possibly. who knows. it would be useful in finding lichens with a very specific combination easy to find en masse in a database or something, though.

[astrallines]

The Crumbling Tower of 2020

Notes on the Triple Conjunction

Hello friends. What follows is a short introduction to the incredibly rare and historical astrological conditions of the year 2020. This was written with the intention of accessibility first and foremost; I believe it’s important that people have some idea of this moment in a historical context, and the tools to evaluate the themes and stories that are emerging currently and in the near future. To my eyes astrology is at its most useful when it is neither prescriptive nor prophetic. It is foremost a tool of psychological midwifery; reading the meaning of the world and its events.

So it’s in my interest to be painting in broad strokes. If you want concrete predictions or exact dates for orbs of conjunction now and in history, then there is a vast field of mundane astrology for you to Google. The myths I’m unfolding here are only for context and consideration—I hope you find them helpful.

Also, there will be a major western bias in my evaluation of history, which sucks, but that’s the milieu I grew up in and can speak to, and it remains the information most easily available. But of course astrological conditions are affecting the entire world. We can still trace the vibe through western examples.

Our Axial Moment There are two incredibly rare astrological events happening this year. One event is the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of Aquarius. These two planets come together routinely, mechanically, every 20 years. But the rhythm of their waltz is such that each meeting takes place in signs of the same element for 200 years at a time. So when they conjoin in Aquarius, in the last weeks of 2020, that will be their first time together in an air sign since the 14th century.

Since 1802, all of their conjunctions have been in earth signs. (Much more on the significance of this later, but some may already notice this 200 period’s coincidence with the industrial revolution and the age of capital). In the 200-odd years before 1802, they would join every time in fire signs—and for the 200 years before that, water. One waltz more brings us back to the 1300s and 1200s, the previous epoch of air signs. Returning to the present day, we should realize that since an age like this persists for two centuries at a time, it is essentially impossible for someone who witnesses such a transition, to have ever even known anyone who witnessed the previous transition. That is, the 100 year old person in December 2020—even if they had, as a newborn, shared a breath with a 100 year old person—would not reach far back enough in history to have even a dim, second-hand knowledge of the epoch of fire (1603-1801). These periods are effectively the frame edges; the curtains around the drama of the world stage.

Rare as it is, the other historical aspect of the year is much rarer: the fact that Saturn and Jupiter will also conjoin Pluto in Capricorn before they dance their first step together in Aquarius. Though these 3 will never occupy the exact same degree together, they will come very close, on and off throughout 2020. Of course a triple conjunction of planets will always occur in more unpredictable intervals than any pair of planets because of the 3 separate orbits. Famously—well, famous among astrologers—it last happened in the sign of Capricorn during the founding year of the city of Babylon, 1894 BCE.

History of the Elemental Epochs Because the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle is so regular, and because we didn’t know about outer planets til the 18th century, the dance of these two planets through the elemental stations is by far the oldest astrological tool for determining epochal periods. It has long been assumed to be the basic attitudinal/affective backdrop of the zeitgeist. (Now that we know about Pluto, we have a new vibecheck every 12 years! But isn’t it funny that generations didn’t have names until we noticed Pluto in 1930?)

I would be remiss not to mention that there are overlaps between these periods. For instance, Jupiter and Saturn were briefly conjunct in an air sign (Libra) for a few months in 1981. So toward the end of each epoch, humanity gets a little multi-month preview of the coming age. 1981 and the transitional period is a whole other topic in itself, but that’s all I’ll say here.

Even though these elemental ages have been observed for so long, we don’t have a ton of historical examples to draw upon to get a sense of the nature of a particular epoch. As for the air age that we’re entering into, we can refer to the high medieval period as the last instantiation, but to get a third example we have to go into history 6 centuries before that! Soon the world starts to look so different from the current day, that we have to stretch the imagination that much farther. So let’s just a get a brief summary of the previous cycle through the elements.

Earth 1802-2020

This is the epoch we are still in as I write this. It began during the industrial revolution, and the earth themes are undeniable. Human begins have had a resolutely atomic understanding of the universe; materialism is rampant; and it feels that capital and capitalism are catalysts of most human drama. We take things literally and concretely: instead of speculating about other realms, we want to drive our spaceships to big slabs of land like the moon and Mars. We have discovered how to build and make so much STUFF!

Fire 1603-1801

This period is famous for the enlightenment and the French and American revolutions. The time of great sparks! Reason, brilliance, luminance ... self-validation and self-determination. This is really when human beings began to appreciate the value of the idiosyncrasy of a particular thinker. “THIS dude’s contribution” etc. Rights, laws, freedom, were all in vogue. “Here I am!” say the fire signs.

Water 1425-1602

Just as materialist scientism was born out of the liberating thought of the enlightenment, so were the insights of the enlightenment enabled by the world-broadening discoveries of the renaissance. During the water epoch, everyone was sailing everywhere, being introduced to new cultures, and the “new world” was reached by the Europeans. At home, classics of antiquity were being rediscovered and the world was broadened in that sense. Shakespeare was poppin off in a big way. The concept of the stage is essentially water; water is the idea that there is an affective component to reality at all.

Air 1226-1424

Is it a coincidence that the least widely known stage of the cycle is the one we are now entering? Or is that just the nature of history, as it fades further into the past? This period was called, in the West, the “high medieval” era. It was marked by civic demarcations that more or less persist to this day—the previous few hundred years saw constantly changing borders, but now people grouped more firmly into ethnic or national identities drawn to territories. This is also where we got chivalry and the first real rights for women in a long time. And there was the discovery of an actual social life and leisure. “Hanging out” was invented, thank God.

Reality itself received a major patch update: we invented mechanical clocks, which caused people to relate to the passage of time in a totally new way. We used to just slice up the sunrise-to-sundown period into 12 equal parts; now hours were a constant length throughout the year. Common folk had glass windows in their homes for the first time, and the elite even wore glass in front of their eyes to correct their vision. Music became much more complex, as people had more time to take it seriously and form theories. People could go to libraries; for the first time ever there were more books in cities than in monasteries. Cities were finally the place to be. We invented the compass, the game of chess, and the printing press. The astrolabe, like the compass, allowed us to orient ourselves to something that was formerly hopelessly abstract (the stars). Most of this cool shit came from the Arab world, which was flourishing.

Air Epoch 2.0 That’s the historical overview. Obviously there is much, much more there for any anthropologist or history of philosophy ass person. But we are beginning to see some idea of the relation between the qualities symbolized by the elements and the respective periods. Now we can begin a more informed speculation.

The movement from the previous earth age to the previous air age seems to be one of dramatically more complex social relations. Less emphasis on the riches of a kingdom, and more emphasis on its culture, civility, and sophistication. Abstract things became the treasures. As we look to our own incoming air epoch, it is easy to envision a world that places more emphasis on networks instead of objects. Social media, gig economy, and blockchain all appear to be prefigurations of this. In terms of philosophy, it no longer seems very radical to conceptualize oneself as part of a universe whose essential composition is not defined by particles (nouns) but relations and processes (verbs).

What Was Babylon? I ain’t no student of ancient culture. Until a few months ago, I didn’t even know Babylon was where Iraq is. Of course I think it would behoove all of us to research as much as possible the previous instantiation of this astrological aspect, but I also think it’s valid to speak about its cultural impact through a layman’s osmosis.  As far as I can tell: what is Babylon best remembered for? The miraculous hanging gardens, the Tower of Babel, and the law code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi’s code, inscribed onto a stele about a century after the founding of Babylon is celebrated as the first known written laws, some 190 edicts long—and by the estimation of modern scholars, supremely humanitarian for its time. What is the modern equivalent of the ancient innovation of codified laws? Hard to fathom, but something for us to consider as the new age dawns.

More famously, there is the story of the Tower of Babel. A persistent image of human hubris, even today people respond to the tower motif as a symbol of defiance of God or of nature, and it is routinely invoked when artists and pundits comment on the ecological folly of industrial enterprise. Human beings tried to use their intellectual capacities to reach the position of God. Without reading the Bible, I can tell you that the punishment for this was the diversification of languages. All of a sudden people couldn’t speak to each other, because there were so many ways to speak.

Today we take for granted the many languages of human beings, so what is the modern equivalent of this event? Taken as a metaphor, the variation of languages could represent a variation of worldview. Styles of interfacing with reality. Because the element of air is so closely associated with concepts like perception, the structuring of thought, communication, and virtual realities, we might imagine that in the new age we will begin to understand just how deeply diversified our mechanisms of interpreting reality are. Phenomenology seems like a pretty fringe field in our current world, but AI is certainly not; and content creators have increasingly brought phenomenological themes to the center of their work over the last couple decades. Just as the previous air epoch (12/1300s) saw the advent of movable type, perhaps we will soon develop novel means of recording our impressionistic realities.

Finally, Babylon was host to the famous hanging gardens. Supposedly built by king Nebuchadnezzar to please his wife who missed the natural beauty of Iran, it is still unclear whether this wonder of the world ever existed in physical reality. In any case, the story is relevant: a ruler, in the midst of tremendous infrastructural expansion, and with it the inevitable subjugation of nature, finds that his greatest cultural influence across the centuries is ecological restoration. Looking at these three legacies of Babylon together is rather interesting: the law code stele, though purportedly divine in origin, is unquestionably real to our materialist sensibilities—you can go and see it. The Tower of Babel, taken from the Bible, was probably not real in the same fundamental way; though there was without question a great ziggurat in Babylon, the Biblical account is not literal. The hanging gardens is the most mythological. So between the three we have different concentrations of myth and historical fact.

Second Second Life I write this in the first few weeks of social isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. There is much more to be said about the connection between this unprecedented social condition and the imminent radical astrology—maybe the subject of some other essay. But off the dome, we can see plainly the defaulting of Capricornian things: governments, businesses, economies, and social infrastructure. Without much of a choice, we are withdrawing our energy from the material to which we are accustomed. We’re cooped up in our houses, where the merciful currents of the internet continue to draw us on, to operate in cyberspace as normal. New social functions and vocabularies are already emerging as we are forced to reconsider the online networks that have seemed so toxic for the last few years. People find themselves operating “peer to peer” out of necessity. Some “inessential” products may no longer be available on amazon, but your neighbor might have them. More importantly, people are reaching out to each other for nothing more than human contact. We’ve been wringing our hands about the importance of human connection, but capitalism—through spectacle or stranglehold—has drawn us away from putting it first.

Social service is (along with certain essential aspects of the internet) ruled by Aquarius. Saturn, governor of concern, has already ingressed into this sign, but will retrograde back out in a few months; and then at the end of the year, it will be joined by Jupiter, who greases the wheels, expands the potentiation of Saturn’s concern, and affords prosperity to those who take social service seriously. And together they will inaugurate the new age.

[jenna54z]

Photo Gallery Maker

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Uncomplicated photo gallery maker download

Whenever we will not, then merely click the Undo button within the bottom right control area of the display screen to return a step or even two. The minute I select one of the images feature such as HTML picture gallery, a new window may pop up with a view of just how the photograph might seem right after processing. Through that it is literally then this, soon after fairly meticulous research, I spotted another options which were definitely either a lot quicker and even more useful. Just after you download photo gallery software, you will certainly be generally revealed to many of the best professional photo manipulation functions which they might want, all laid out in a clear fashion what helps make the whole program child's fun to run.

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Along with this web photo gallery software, anybody will improve picture top quality by simply carrying out activities for example web photo gallery. Working with that, you can probably create greetings notes, produce an image collection and even created a set of small pictures to get a file. Currently there is maybe even an entire copy studio that customers can certainly make benefit of to handle each of the printing may need. Considering that they take many parts out of a picture, even though all are literally photo gallery maker download used to will make that gotten pictures far better.

Photo gallery maker for design a online gallery

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Since a long time we have actually been choosing photo gallery maker upon my computer system as well as lots of lower variants of Vista. In addition to the impressive picture arranging as well as stamping purposes, this photo gallery maker offers countless very useful set handling practices as well as allows producing of photo montages for its own college creator. Everyone will afterwards choose this web photo gallery software to cover an item by palm or maybe, conversely, to reel in fresh items.

However, before everybody begin using that many different functions of image designing, we cause a very short stop on your original photo, since the very most essential thing just before the whole entire generating event is generally that lighting.

[gamutgaming577]

To my gaming friend who saved my life

On the net Gaming Blog

We've after once again teamed up with our buddies at Dire Wolf Digital Studios to bring this remarkable game to your gaming table. Hi Frags, it all comes down to the high quality of guests you get. Selling stuff by means of your web site is tough when there are only basic content on it, but if you target a specific group of gamers and construct a loyal following, recommending merchandise gets much easier. It will also depend on the form of products you sell, there are in the end a lot of components contributing to getting a profitable gaming weblog. Definitely glad you liked the report! I will definitely check out your blog.

The gaming WordPress themes involve some exceptional traits like design and features. And most of the themes that are featured here delivers you with a total answer for your gaming web-site. The Search engine optimisation options, social network tools, several possibilities, and multiple colors will make you simpler to commence your new web site. All these themes are customizable exactly where you can transform each and every and each aspect of the themes devoid of touching any of the codes.

Luca is working in the field of gaming for six years, initially as an indie one particular-man-team junior developer and, the latter five years, as gameplay programmer and application architect in a organization exactly where he developed video games for all primary mobile platforms, Pc, Steam, PS4 and Xbox A single, as effectively as minor gaming consoles, growing as a expert. Recently he founded Twin Wolves, an indie video games development studio, exactly where he's the CTO.

DBL Tap is a further terrific esports news web-site, focusing mainly on CS:GO and Overwatch. What tends to make DBL tap fascinating is that in addition to a employees of specialist writers, any gaming fan can write and submit their own post to the web page. This mixture of content material from experienced writers and each day gamers makes for a special blend of insights into the esports market.

Folks are gaming on tablets, smartphones, smartwatches, consoles and several other devices. This is the proper time to take a plunge into the gaming market. If you are not a game developer it does not imply you can not make some profit from it. All round, developers are seeking into far more methods on how to promote their games and this is where you can develop into the next large player.

Don't you wish you had been actually sitting on a racecar seat every time you play Forza, Gran Turismo, or any other racing game? With the racing seat style of the Ficmax Swivel Gaming Chair , finding this expertise is now a reality. The totally ergonomic Ficmax is designed with a fully retractable footrest to assist sooth tired reduce limbs and support facilitate the more efficient circulation of blood. It also comes with a lumbar massage support to aid avert or even handle low back pain which is pretty typical amongst men and women who sit in an office chair for unusually lengthy period. Our handy guide to the very best ergonomic workplace chairs options much more excellent products like this.

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The Atlantic Gaming Desk is a piece of steel furniture that's specifically constructed for today's modern gamer or even a dwelling workplace owner. Its sturdy legs come totally integrated with cup holders and other attachments that are basically ideal for organizing a range of your computer system accessories and peripherals. The Atlantic Gaming Desk also characteristics a exclusive cable management system that organizes the different wires and cables that your devices possess. There is a charging station, a monitor stand, game storage rack, game controller hooks, gaming speaker trays, and a complete lot additional. Its padded feet will not also scratch your floor.

It's February! In 2017 that implies that we get six additional weeks of winter AND your yearly dose of video game statistics and trends. We're taking a look at main events and shifts in the gaming industry and contemplating the current state of gaming. Take a peak, or keep for a week! All statistics are thoroughly researched. See sources at the bottom of the web page for far more info.

A different of our prime gaming influencers for 2018 is The Rad Brad We had to incorporate this channel for the reason that The Rad Brad is a specifically nicely recognized YouTube gamer. He produces an amazing quantity of hugely-high-quality, enjoyable content material. It is no wonder he's recognized for building the most effective video game walkthroughs on social media. The Rad Brad has helped to make a number of influencer marketing and advertising campaigns a genuine success.

Design patterns: To retailer data in DynamoDB, gaming firms partition game state and other player information applying player ID, and use the key-value access pattern (1:1 modeling). In situations when extra fine-grained access is referred to as for, these businesses use a sort important (1:M modeling). This permits them to access and update distinct properties or subsets of a player's dataset separately. This way, they never have to retrieve an entire dataset. In this approach, various products that shop diverse properties can be updated transactionally by employing the DynamoDB transactional API Some providers compress user information to lessen expense. PennyPop, for example, uses gzip to compress player information and shop it as a base64 string, lowering the player information to ten percent of its original size.

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These numbers can surely vary per study, but it does look like the number of female really serious gamers are on a downward trend. The last time we checked in females have been closer to 45%-48% of gamers. We can speculate as to why this is. Possibly females are much less fond of the emergence of the eSports trend. Maybe females are feeling much less included in gaming forums and online communities following the harassment accusations of the final couple of years. Maybe they are just extra drawn to other entertainment industries, but this is undoubtedly a trend to continue watching.

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