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Hawkeye S01E05

I’m gonna need y’all to get this whole Young Avengers / West Coast Avengers ball rolling. I mean, I’m seeing all the setups, but gimme gimme. Seriously though, I think Marvel/Disney is handling this new generation of heroes thing pretty well, planting all the seeds. Still need my Mutants/X-Men, but all that’s saying is that there is just so much potential. It’s kinda wild that comic book movies and the like have become so big and mainstream. I wonder how long it will last.

How old is Yelena supposed to be? Is Kate too old for the Young Avengers? Loved their interactions.

Wiccan, Speed, Ms Marvel, Iron Heart, Miss America, Ant Man’s daughter, Elijah Bradley, Kid Loki, and heck, let’s throw Miles Morales in there, even though I don’t think we can say he’s technically made his MCU debut or even been announced like the others, but we know he’s coming. I barely know any of these newcomers if I’m being honest, but Marvel has got me so hyped for them anyway.

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Eternals Was Good

Just saying. Were there issues? Of course, but we enjoyed the movie and the characters. Looking forward to seeing their stories continued.

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BRB, crying over this exchange.

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What If Thor Were An Only Child

Alright, that was straight up Looney Tunes, they even had a duck! I loved it, haha. That ending too, setting up somethin somethin. All is fun and games until [spoilers] shows up. The Watcher said, “Wait, what?” LMAO

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I’d Watch It Again

We really enjoyed Shang-Chi, and rewatching movies is something we hardly ever do, so you can tell we really liked it. “The Mandarin” was a good villain, and just overall a sympathetic character? Granted we didn’t really get to see what he did for all those years before the beginning of the movie, but I tought he was cool, and kinda felt bad for him.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but that first fight between Shang-Chi‘s parents was just, beautiful? Is that the right word? It was so much more than just a fight, and I loved it. The fighting in general, y’all have probably seen comparisons to Jackie Chan, or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, it was just nice, and fun, and overall a good time.

The end quarter of the move was okay, I did like it, but I kinda had to shift gears and remind myself, oh right, this is a Marvel movie, heh.

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Digils

Did we explain it? Digil? A Digil is a digital sigil. A sigil is, a sign or symbol (or an inscribed or painted symbol considered to have magical power). That’s the long and short of it, now on to the idea.

First, you create the Digil. Type what you want, your intention, whatever. Or I suppose, before that, select the type. Fire (Color, Red, Icon, Triangle, Polygon, Tetrahedron), Earth (Green, Square, Cube), Water (Blue, Circle, Icosahedron), Air (Yellow, Diamond, Octahedron). Void, Kaos, Karma, and Basic are also options. So right, type your intention into that, and a Digil is produced. The production process can go a number of different paths including one that use artificial intelligence to mix it up a bit, different encryption, cryptography and compression methods (including the whole dropping duplicate letters and or vowels), you know, options to create the thing. The thing, is a 3D polygon (I’m simplifying here cause it’s gonna loo0k cool, not like a simple polygon), procedurally generated, different effects based on the element and all that. That’s the main idea, but it can also be just plane with an image on it (or a styled version of any of the more well known styles of sigil creation, again, options, but we’re going down this thought path for now). Now you have it, what next?

Well, there are a number of ways to charge the Digil. Say you used your phone to create it (you can use a desktop, laptop, watch app, virtual reality headset, what I’m saying is anywhere basically, but let’s illustrate this). Place your finger on it to give it Focus. This starts a timer and stops when you lift your finger, that time is recorded and stored with the Digil. You can also toggle the Focus mode, so you don’t have to keep your finger there, so you could go off and do some sort of ritual, meditation, whatever you like. A generic timed event I suppose, if we let you rename this one instead of having multiple to handle different things.

Another way to charge is to Tap on it. We record the number of taps, and again this is stored with the Digil. And, sorry to interrupt, feature, the ability for Digils to decay. We’ll get to that in a second, but yes, that number can go down, so you you know, click it more to keep it up until it reaches whatever charge goal you set, decay speed is optional and variable in speed, so it’s only a game if you want it to be if that makes sense, it’s whatever your intention.

Next, Spin. It’s a 3D object, right? Spin it, and again it’s recorded. Perhaps even a mode where it’s harder to spin when it’s really low, or the opposite, easy at first but then it gets harder as the number of spins increases. Maybe you have keep the spin speed in a certain range in order to charge, in which case we record the time in the various ranges (or both, the time and number of spins in that range)

So, that’s the basic ones, let’s get fancy. Step. This is on your phone, if it has the ability to track your steps (on its own, we know some do, but also if it’s paired with an activity tracker like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch). Along the same lines we’ve got Stand, and Move. Stand is a count. Move is in calories. Get creative with that one. Also in this sort of Activity Group is Sleep. You want to tie your Digil being charged to how many hours you sleep. Only if you get 8 hours will it be activated, and the decay is featured here as well. The 8 hours, and again, the decay rate is all up to you, set it to whatever you want, but the idea is you write your intention, package it into the Digil, and then sleep on it.

The next charging method would be Event based. Set a Date, and on that date we can trigger it. Or set a day of the week, repeating or not, we can have it go off after 3 Saturdays, or after 3 days period. Again, you specify how you want it to work. Another event, Weather. Rain, Snow, Wind, Hail, Lightning. Astronomical events, is that the right word. Activate at sunrise, or after any number of sunrises, senset, full moon, Venus rising, meteor shower, constellation saying hello. Also here would be Location based events. Go to, uh, school five times this week and the Digil is good to go. Again, set it up however you like.

Now this last group, we call the Social Group. First I guess we should say, you can link to your Digil (there will be varying levels of visibility you can set as far as that goes). Share a link to your sigil, someone clicks your link and you get a View. Charge it with both, link clicks, or views. Not the same thing cause you know, you can view these in the real world. Don’t want to link directly to your Digil, well we’ve got you covered, Link a Digil to your Digil. If someone Taps the Digil that is Linked to your Digil, that tap can be transferred up the chain. It’s not a one to one transfer though, if you’re using the non Basic Digils. Water to Fire only transfers at a rate of 50% (two taps sends one), whereas Air to Fire transfers at 133% (three taps sends four) for example. So you could have this big battery Digil that soaks up the energy from Digils from across the world, and then once you’ve hit the goals you’ve set for the big bat, boom, it’s activated (you can have this happen automatically, or just hold it and do it manually assuming you get to it before any decay has happened).

Won’t keep going on about this, but the non elemental Digils come with fancy effects like, Void can randomly absorb energy from nearby Digils. Place a Void next to a Fire Digil, click repeatedly on the Fire one and occasionally some of that energy will show up in The Void without it having been touched. When the Fire sigil decays too, sometimes some of that energy will show up in The Void as well. Karmic Digils have a chance to add to those nearby when being charged, Tap for Tap. Wehn a Karmic Digil transfers its energy the target Digil gets “touched by Karma,” which makes any Digils the target is linked to, transfer more energy for a short time. Kaotic works similarly, but a Tap might show up as Spin on the target. The target, touched by Kaos, now has the chance of applying the Kaotic effect to anything that is nearby  for a short time. Private Digils can’t be touched.

So you’ve got the Digil, you’ve set how you want it to be charged, now you want to put it somewhere. The front door, your closet, the driveway. Four Earth Digils with the intention written into to protect your home, on the corners of your hose or apartment, or room, to use it as a barrier of sorts. Okay, we’re not explaining this really well. This is in the real world, Augmented Reality style. Go outside, point your phone at the corner of your house, and drag the Digil into place. Scale it up or down, and you’re set. All that charging you did can be done in 3D now. Put your hand out and Spin it, Tap it. And this doesn’t have to be a solo experience, it’s there for others to see (again, optionally), you and all your friends can all come over and Spin, Tap, Focus right there. This is a limited experience on a Phone, but imagine if you had a Mixed Reality headset. That’s where were headed with this.

Of course you don’t have to put the Digil out there, you can keep it yourself, or you could give it to someone. Sort of like a Link in that case, but the person holding it doesn’t necessarily do anything with it. You’re sending your energy to them, your intention, if they accept it.

There’s a lot more detail we could go into some of this stuff, but I think this post is long enough. I think we’re going to  make this for ourselves, as a way of learning the technologies involved, but also as a way to practice our witchcraft.

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What If... T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?

No spoilers, but wow, this is great!

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That Is Not The Reaction I Was Expecting

My Lord!

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You’re Lucky To Even Be In The Room

I know it’s just a sign of the times, but I was kinda getting annoyed by this line. The last time it was said though, I thought it worked. Enjoyed the first episode for what it was, though I had kinda low expectations. It’ll be interesting to see what from this series transitions over into the live action MCU if anything. Anyway, thumbs up from me.

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The Suicide Squad

Honestly was just kinda meh for me. I didn’t feel like they “tried too hard” or anything like that, cause that could be an issue in a movie like this, so that was good, but they did try and get me to care about the characters, which just fell flat. The squeaky rat was kind of annoying too, sorry. I liked King Shark, Bloodsport, and Polka-Dot Man (though again, trying to make me to care about him through his backstory was kinda annoying, could have presented that stuff in a different way, I dunno).

There’s supposed to be a series or something coming out of this I think, which might be interesting, but I think I’m just going to stick with the animated shows and movies for all things DC.

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He Who Remains

The MCU is setting up so much good stuff, oh my gosh. These Disney+ shows got me so hyped.

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I Think We’re Gonna Be Friends

Just testing Audio Link from the poiyomi shader.

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Glowing

That’s my night blade I made. It’s was initially built into the tail (you can hide it in there, gonna try doing some transitions between the different weapons states including pulling the sword out of there). Added some unnecessary lighting to things, heh, using Audio Link through the Poiyomi Shader so things sorta pulse with the music. Earrings turn black when I’m muted, and light up to various levels when I’m talking. More to come, but I’m pretty happy with how she’s coming along.

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Loki Wednesdays

Just finished the first episode. This is gonna be fun.

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Here’s a quick demo of it animated.

Morning Star

Making a Morning Star, because of course that makes sense if we’re going to have a weapon. At this point there is no point to adding all this stuff to our avatar but to get experience making stuff, but you know, whatever, we learn by doing. Working on some animations so that it sort of floats next to us when not in our hand. Also, not pictured, if we put it in our left hand the whole thing flips around, the big mace bit with the spikes disappears and we can use it as sort of a wand. The next thing with that is we’re going to see about being able to do particle effects (and maybe make a shield of some sort). Getting close to being able to publish it and actually maybe trying to be social in VRChat, but that’s not really the point, though we do want to try it out.

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[WIP] Mx. Morning Star

Continuing to test this model originally created in VRoid Studio, updated in Blender, getting into animations in Unity, and testing #VRChat Avatars 3.0.

Gonna create a couple of floating weapons I think, and some sort of alternate form (something a bit more chibi, and non humanoid). A work in progress, but we’re learning a bunch about all the apps we’re using and as a self taught software developer with some graphics design skills, that’s how we learn best.

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Marvel Studios’ Eternals

Looks cool. That’s all I’ve got to say for now. Maybe we were just hoping it wasn’t gonna look interesting cause we’ve already got our plate full with stuff we want to watch and keep up with (was hoping to be able to skip this), but now I kinda wanna look into their backstories, the comics and stuff, and buh.