#200K 1-Step Challenge

[itspreety]

Prop Firm Trading

Start your Prop Firm Trading with The Talented Trader. Discover opportunities for success in proprietary trading through our innovative programs. Join us to access top-tier resources, expert guidance, and a supportive community. For more: https://www.thetalentedtrader.com/

#propfirmtrading #leverageintrading #fundedtraderprograms #proptrading #instantfundingpropfirm #fundedtradingaccounts #propfirms #propfirmchallenge #instantfunding #thetalentedtrader #talentedtrader

[samuiattorney]

Thailand SMART Visa

Thailand’s SMART Visa is a specialized long-term visa designed to attract highly skilled professionals, investors, entrepreneurs, and startup founders to contribute to the country’s economic growth in targeted industries. Unlike standard work visas, the SMART Visa offers 4-year residency, work authorization without a separate permit, and fast-tracked immigration processing.

This guide provides a comprehensive breakdown of the SMART Visa, including eligibility criteria, benefits, application process, and strategic considerations for applicants.

2. Legal Framework & Objectives

The SMART Visa was introduced in 2018 under the Thailand 4.0 economic policy, managed by:

Board of Investment (BOI)

Ministry of Labour

Immigration Bureau

Key Goals:

✔ Boost Thailand’s tech and innovation sectors ✔ Attract foreign talent in priority industries ✔ Simplify bureaucracy for skilled expatriates

3. SMART Visa Categories & Eligibility

A. SMART-T (Experts & Professionals)

For: Highly skilled professionals in S&T, engineering, finance, medicine, or digital industries. Requirements:

Minimum THB 200,000/month salary (or industry-justified equivalent).

5+ years of experience in a specialized field.

Employment with a Thai entity in a BOI-promoted sector.

B. SMART-I (Investors)

For: Investors in Thai startups, venture capital, or BOI-approved businesses. Requirements:

Minimum THB 20M investment in a Thai company.

Must hold equity or directorship in the business.

C. SMART-E (Entrepreneurs & Startup Founders)

For: Founders of tech startups, R&D firms, or innovative enterprises. Requirements:

Registered business in Thailand (or planning to register).

Endorsement from a Thai incubator/accelerator (if a startup).

Minimum THB 600,000 capital for new businesses.

D. SMART-S (Executives & Senior Specialists)

For: C-suite executives or specialists in large corporations. Requirements:

THB 200,000+/month salary.

Leadership role in a BOI-promoted or Thai-listed company.

4. Key Benefits of the SMART Visa

A. Long-Term Residency (Up to 4 Years)

Renewable without needing to leave Thailand.

B. No Work Permit Required

Unlike standard visas, SMART holders can work immediately.

C. Fast-Track Immigration Processing

90-day reporting waived (only annual check-ins required).

Dedicated SMART Visa immigration counters at airports.

D. Family Privileges

Spouse & children eligible for dependent visas.

Spouse allowed to work without a separate permit.

E. Tax & Investment Incentives

Reduced personal income tax rates (in some cases).

BOI corporate tax holidays for eligible businesses.

5. Application Process & Required Documents

Step 1: Determine Eligibility & Category

Confirm alignment with BOI’s 10 Targeted Industries (e.g., biotech, automation, digital).

Step 2: Secure Employer/Investor Endorsement

Company must be BOI-approved (for SMART-T/S) or registered with DEPA (for startups).

Step 3: Submit Application to BOI or Thai Embassy

Required Documents: ✔ Passport (valid 6+ months) ✔ Employment/Investment Proof ✔ Academic & Professional Certifications ✔ Business Plan (for SMART-E) ✔ Health Insurance (USD 100K coverage)

Step 4: Approval & Visa Issuance

Processing time: 3-8 weeks.

Initial 1-year visa, convertible to 4 years upon extension.

6. Common Challenges & Pitfalls

A. Strict Industry & Salary Requirements

Not all professions qualify (e.g., marketing, general management often excluded).

B. High Financial Thresholds

THB 200K/month salary or THB 20M investment may be prohibitive.

C. Limited Startup Acceptance

Early-stage startups without funding/incubator backing may struggle.

7. Strategic Considerations

A. Ideal Candidates for a SMART Visa

Tech professionals in AI, IoT, or biotech.

VC investors in Thai startups.

Expansion-stage entrepreneurs with traction.

B. Alternatives if Ineligible

LTR Visa (for wealthy retirees/professionals).

Elite Visa (5-20 years, no work rights).

C. Future Policy Trends

Possible expansion to more industries.

Tax incentives for remote workers (under discussion).

8. Conclusion

The SMART Visa is Thailand’s most advanced visa for high-value expatriates, offering unparalleled residency and work benefits. However, its strict eligibility criteria make it accessible only to a select group.

For qualified applicants, the SMART Visa provides: ✅ Long-term stability (4-year stay). ✅ Seamless work authorization. ✅ Family inclusion with work rights.

Before applying, consult the BOI or an immigration specialist to confirm eligibility and optimize the process.

[danaan13]

200k Tumblr Post Sundae

Ingredients and Tools:

1 Printer with ink and paper One pair of scissors This post Ice cream (Vanilla is a good standard, but a caramel swirl would also be good) Nuts of choice (peanuts are classic, but pecans would go well) Hot Fudge Sauce Hot Caramel Sauce Whipped Cream (spray can style is easiest to use) Fruit toppings (fruit cocktail, maraschino cherries, banana, go wild) Bowl of appropriate size

Note: I have no idea how much paper OP is planning to print out, whether it's just the first post or the entire chain. So, I did not indicate amounts for the ingredients. Please feel free to adjust ingredients per health requirements and personal preferences.

Steps:

Print the post, using whatever method you have. I recommend using the thinnest weight paper the printer can handle. But if you want a challenge go for a heavier weight, 90 lbs instead of 20 perhaps.

Using the scissors, cut the paper into thin strips. A shredder would be faster. But I have my concerns about the sanitation of that. Do as you will, of course.

Take your bowl and add ice cream. If you're doing this banana split style, start with the banana and then add ice cream.

Arrange your prepared paper post on the ice cream.

Add nut and fruit toppings to desired amount.

Drizzle on hot fudge and hot caramel sauces. Again to desired amounts.

Top with whipped cream. And if using cherries, top some number of those on top of the whipped cream.

Take instagram style pictures and video for science/posterity.

Enjoy!

Recommendation: Drink water. And have stomach medicine of preference on hand. And maybe a friend for backup.

glad that im not popular enough to have an evil shadow version of my blog that exists just to make contradictions on my posts

[xaltius]

Unlocking New Horizons: 5 Powerful Ways to Use Claude 4

The future of AI is here. Anthropic's highly anticipated Claude 4 models (Opus 4 and Sonnet 4), released in May 2025, have fundamentally shifted the landscape of what large language models are capable of. Moving beyond impressive text generation, Claude 4 represents a significant leap forward in reasoning, coding, autonomous agent capabilities, and deep contextual understanding.

These aren't just incremental upgrades; Claude 4 introduces "extended thinking" and robust tool-use, enabling it to tackle complex, long-running tasks that were previously out of reach for AI. Whether you're a developer, researcher, content creator, or strategist, understanding how to leverage these new powers can unlock unprecedented levels of productivity and insight.

Here are 5 powerful ways you can put Claude 4 to work right now:

1. Revolutionizing Software Development and Debugging

Claude 4 Opus has quickly earned the title of the "world's best coding model," and for good reason. It’s built for the demands of real-world software engineering, moving far beyond simple code snippets.

How it works: Claude 4 can process entire codebases, understand complex multi-file changes, and maintain sustained performance over hours of work. Its "extended thinking" allows it to plan and execute multi-step coding tasks, debug intricate errors by analyzing stack traces, and even refactor large sections of code with precision. Integrations with IDEs like VS Code and JetBrains, and tools like GitHub Actions, make it a true pair programmer.

Why it's powerful: Developers can dramatically reduce time spent on tedious debugging, boilerplate generation, or complex refactoring. Claude 4 enables the automation of entire coding workflows, accelerating development cycles and freeing up engineers for higher-level architectural and design challenges. Its ability to work continuously for several hours on a task is a game-changer for long-running agentic coding projects.

Examples: Asking Claude 4 to update an entire library across multiple files in a complex repository, generating comprehensive unit tests for a new module, or identifying and fixing subtle performance bottlenecks in a large-scale application.

2. Deep Research and Information Synthesis at Scale

The ability to process vast amounts of information has always been a hallmark of advanced LLMs, and Claude 4 pushes this boundary further with its impressive 200K token context window and new "memory files" capability.

How it works: You can feed Claude 4 entire books, dozens of research papers, extensive legal documents, or years of financial reports. It can then not only summarize individual sources but, crucially, synthesize insights across them, identify conflicting data, and draw nuanced conclusions. Its new "memory files" allow it to extract and save key facts over time, building a tacit knowledge base for ongoing projects.

Why it's powerful: This transforms qualitative and quantitative research. Researchers can quickly identify critical patterns, lawyers can analyze massive discovery documents with unprecedented speed, and business analysts can distill actionable insights from overwhelming market data. The memory feature is vital for long-term projects where context retention is key.

Examples: Uploading a collection of scientific papers on a specific disease and asking Claude 4 to identify emerging therapeutic targets and potential side effects across all studies; feeding it competitor annual reports and asking for a comparative SWOT analysis over five years; or using it to build a comprehensive knowledge base about a new regulatory framework.

3. Advanced Document Understanding & Structured Data Extraction

Beyond simple OCR (Optical Character Recognition), Claude 4 excels at Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), understanding complex layouts and extracting structured data even from challenging formats.

How it works: Claude 4 can accurately process PDFs, scanned images, tables, and even mathematical equations. Its advanced vision capabilities combined with its reasoning allow it to not just read text, but to understand the context of information within a document. This makes it highly effective for extracting key-value pairs, table data, and specific entities.

Why it's powerful: This is a boon for automating workflows in industries heavily reliant on documents like finance, healthcare, and legal. It significantly reduces manual data entry, improves accuracy, and speeds up processing times for invoices, contracts, medical records, and more. Its performance on tables and equations makes it particularly valuable for technical and financial data.

Examples: Automatically extracting specific line items and totals from thousands of varied invoices; converting scanned legal contracts into structured data for clause analysis; or digitizing and structuring data from complex scientific papers that include charts and formulas.

4. Building Highly Autonomous AI Agents

The "extended thinking" and parallel tool use capabilities in Claude 4 are specifically designed to power the next generation of AI agents capable of multi-step workflows.

How it works: Claude 4 can plan a series of actions, execute them (e.g., using a web search tool, a code interpreter, or interacting with an API), evaluate the results, and then adjust its strategy – repeating this loop thousands of times if necessary. It can even use multiple tools simultaneously (parallel tool use), accelerating complex processes.

Why it's powerful: This moves AI from a reactive assistant to a proactive collaborator. Claude 4 can manage entire projects, orchestrate cross-functional tasks, conduct in-depth research across the internet, and complete multi-stage assignments with minimal human oversight. It's the beginning of truly "agentic" AI.

Examples: An AI agent powered by Claude 4 autonomously researching a market, generating a business plan, and then outlining a marketing campaign, using web search, data analysis tools, and internal company databases; a customer support agent capable of not just answering questions but also initiating complex troubleshooting steps, accessing internal systems, and escalating issues.

5. Nuanced Content Creation & Strategic Communication

Claude 4's enhanced reasoning and commitment to Constitutional AI allow for the creation of highly nuanced, ethically aligned, and contextually rich content and communications.

How it works: The model's refined understanding allows it to maintain a consistent tone and style over long outputs, adhere strictly to complex brand guidelines, and navigate sensitive topics with greater care. Its "extended thinking" also means it can develop more coherent and logical arguments for strategic documents.

Why it's powerful: This elevates content creation and strategic planning. Businesses can generate high-quality marketing materials, detailed reports, or persuasive proposals that resonate deeply with specific audiences while minimizing the risk of miscommunication or ethical missteps. It's ideal for crafting communications that require significant thought and precision.

Examples: Drafting a comprehensive policy document that balances multiple stakeholder interests and adheres to specific legal and ethical frameworks; generating a multi-channel marketing campaign script that adapts perfectly to different cultural nuances; or crafting a compelling long-form article that synthesizes complex ideas into an engaging narrative.

Claude 4 is more than just a powerful chatbot; it's a versatile foundation for intelligent automation and deeper understanding. By embracing its capabilities in coding, research, document processing, agent building, and content creation, professionals across industries can unlock new levels of efficiency, insight, and innovation. The era of the true AI collaborator has arrived.

[topinformationforyou]

How to Win a 200K Evaluation Every Month: Complete Guide for Traders

Are you a trader looking to secure a $200,000 evaluation and scale your career in prop trading? AtlasFunded offers a golden opportunity with its monthly $200K Evaluation Challenges. But winning one requires more than luck—it takes strategy, discipline, and an edge. In this complete guide, we’ll walk you through exactly how to win a 200K evaluation every month with AtlasFunded.

What Is the $200K Evaluation by AtlasFunded?

AtlasFunded is a proprietary trading firm that funds talented traders with capital to trade the markets. The $200K evaluation is part of their challenge program where traders demonstrate their skills under predefined conditions. Once successful, traders receive a funded account worth $200,000, keeping a significant portion of the profits they generate.

Why the $200K Evaluation Is Worth It

High capital access: Trade with a large balance and maximize your profits.

Profit sharing: Earn up to 90% of the profits.

No personal risk: You trade AtlasFunded’s money, not your own.

Scalability: Prove consistency and gain access to even higher funding.

Step-by-Step Guide to Winning the $200K Evaluation

1. Understand the Evaluation Rules

Before you make a single trade, study the rules carefully. AtlasFunded typically requires:

A profit target (e.g., 10% of account balance)

Daily and maximum drawdown limits (e.g., 5% daily, 10% total)

Consistency in trading behavior

Minimum trading days (e.g., 5–10 days)

Sticking to these rules is crucial. One mistake can disqualify you.

2. Choose a Proven Trading Strategy

The best traders use strategies they've tested and trust. Consider the following:

Price Action: Clean, technical approach based on candlestick patterns and market structure.

Supply & Demand Zones: Identify areas where institutions buy and sell.

News-Based Trading: React to market-moving events with quick, risk-managed trades.

Focus on strategies that allow for tight risk control and reliable entries.

3. Risk Management Is Everything

To win the evaluation, your survival is more important than rapid gains. Follow these risk tips:

Never risk more than 1% per trade.

Avoid overtrading. Stick to 1–3 quality setups per day.

Use stop losses religiously and honor your risk-to-reward ratio.

4. Stay Consistent and Emotionally Stable

Most traders fail evaluations due to emotional decision-making. Stay objective by:

Following a daily trading plan.

Journaling your trades.

Taking regular breaks and avoiding revenge trading.

5. Master Your Trading Psychology

You may have the perfect strategy, but without the right mindset, success is unlikely. Practice:

Patience: Wait for ideal setups.

Discipline: Stick to your rules no matter what.

Confidence: Trust your process, not your emotions.

Tips from Traders Who’ve Won the $200K Evaluation

Here’s what successful AtlasFunded traders say:

“Don’t chase profits. Focus on process.”

“Treat the evaluation like your funded account.”

“Backtest before going live with a strategy.”

“Track your data—it reveals your edge.”

Why AtlasFunded Stands Out

Unlike other prop firms, AtlasFunded offers:

Transparent evaluation conditions.

Instant scaling plans for top performers.

Real-time support and trader community.

Fast payouts with flexible withdrawal terms.

Final Thoughts

Winning a $200K evaluation every month with AtlasFunded is a realistic goal if you approach it with the right mindset, tools, and strategy. Preparation, discipline, and consistency are your greatest allies. By mastering risk, refining your edge, and committing to continuous improvement, you can join the ranks of elite funded traders—and start earning like one.

[kristenjohn]

Seize the Opportunity: Unlocking Commodities Prop Funding for Trading Success!

Just like tangible goods, such as agricultural products, gold, metals and oil, commodities have varied dynamics as compared to financial assets, like bonds and stocks. Different factors like supply and demand dynamics, macroeconomic trends and geopolitical events influence the prices of commodities, offering prop traders the scope to profit from these market drivers.

Commodities prop funding at Smart Prop Trader can hedge against currency fluctuations and inflation, allowing the prop firm to reduce overall portfolio risk through diversification. Market exposure and major price movements make commodities one of the most significant components in prop firm trading strategies.

An Overview of Smart Prop Trader as a Commodities Trading Prop Firm

Smart Prop Trader, under the able leadership of its CEO, Blake Olson, has been operational as one of the best firms for commodities prop funding. The firm offers trading on DX Trade and C Trader platforms and partners with Think Markets as its broker. The range of account sizes available with the firm includes $10K to $200K, catering to a wide array of aspiring traders willing to pay a refundable fee ranging between $97 to $997.

The firm's 2-step evaluation procedure features a profit target of 7% for Phase 1 and 5% for Phase 2, with the maximum total drawdown fixed at 8% across all account sizes. This indicates that the firm takes proper risk management seriously. With the firm, traders get an assortment of instruments suitable for varied trading strategies. These include commodities, FX pairs, cryptocurrencies and indices. Leverage options tailored to individual asset classes include 1:100 for the FX Pairs, 1:2 for Cryptos, and 1:20 for Indices and Metals.

Commodities prop funding offers a world of trading scopes reflecting the essence of commerce and trade. With the support of prop firms like Smart Prop Trader, these scopes become all the more accessible, allowing traders to navigate the world of commodities with sufficient capital and great confidence. Commodities trading with Smart Prop Trader is advantageous because, besides a simple evaluation procedure.

So why the wait? Make the smart choice and become a funded trader today; contact the support team at Smart Prop Trader via the platform's 24/7 discord support: https://discord.gg/spt

Register on their website to buy your challenge account, track your account growth, participate in free monthly trading competitions, and join their online community by engaging in tasks for giveaways at https://www.smartproptrader.com/ now!

Follow, Like, Subscribe and Join it on its social handles for updates on free prop firm account giveaways:

1. YouTube: https://youtube.com/@smartproptrader

2. Twitter: https://twitter.com/SmartPropTrader

3. Instagram: https://instagram.com/smartproptrader?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==

[comfortlesshurt]

Bet you all thought I forgot to do my end-of-month update, and you'd be right! BUT I remembered, so you're still stuck with my goals and stats update again. I'm gonna trying slamming 'em into one post this time though.

So starting strong with the goals: I hit all the ones I was hoping to. Obviously, I still don't have 100k of VLD fic published, but once again, that wasn't a goal meant to be hit in this one single month.

Went well over my monthly published word count goal AND hit my annual published word count goal too, which is nice since I will be publishing jackshit during November!

For LTS(LTFH), I did what I said I was going to do and took a step back. I was still allowed to write as much as I felt like for it on any given day, but there was no required minimum word count. In my opinion it helped, but it definitely didn't need to be a full month of break, so I'm adding a new plan to my November month goals post that I think will be more helpful than this was.

Also, I completely changed the name of LTS(LTFH) this month because I finally had time to do something other than constantly work on drafting that series. So now the whole series and every fic has a title that makes sense, and even a lot of the chapters have final titles. I also came up with a (possibly unrealistic) art plan for the major fics, so you may yet see my shitty drawings again.

I published almost 12k this month that wasn't associated with this series at all, which is a LOT for me so that's neat. Downside, I planned to finish a full 5+1 and only got through the 5. Not sure when the +1 will come, but it's in the works, I swear!

I also FINALLY finished that bingo challenge I kept dragging my feet on (which was silly because I had a lot of fun writing it).

Editing has been paused, but I'm realizing now I possibly didn't communicate that? So if you wanna call it me missing a goal, I won't blame you. I just can't stand to look at Spider-Man stuff right now, so a lot of fics on that list are on hold, and even seeing the Danny Phantom stuff is making me cringe because it's my writing style from 7 to 8 years ago.

And that's it for the monthly goals, so let's look at the stats.

First off, the ILaD series update:

Little sloppy, but here's my daily word count across the entire series. Took a fair few days off (hard to see here because Excel nicely decided to hide my shame by excluding them from the x-axis), but I still came out over 25k added this month.

Breaking it down by story:

This one is VERY sloppy (too many fics, too little space), so I also chopped out the shorter side stories to focus on just the main fics.

Fic 1 has the highest daily par by sheer virtue of being due by the end of 2024, so I kind of naturally focused on writing for that one in an attempt to lower that par. The others still got a decent amount added, but that higher par really did help direct my attention.

Overall stats on the series:

Which kind of makes me nervous! Because I've sort of become dependent on constantly having a writing project to distract myself, and July 2025 is NOT that far off! That's barely over a year spent on this project.

I'm not going to go as in-depth on the regular stats update this month because I just don't feel like it! It really doesn't typically change much month to month, and this month is no exception.

I will preface with this: I'm considering dropping FFN completely. No one seems to read VLD over there, it's full of fucking spam bots, and it feels silly spending time cross-posting over there with the hits at the level they're at. It'd be different if I thought there were people reading there who won't go to AO3, but I just don't think that's true.

For AO3, I am so close to breaking 300 total comment threads, which is cool! I have 11.5k words left to publish before 200k total words over there too. No other close goals for overall stats right now.

Stat changes:

+11,929 published words across 1 existing work and 1 new work

+15 comments (which feels insane compared to my little 0-comment months when I came back to fic writing in 2016!)

+73 bookmarks (though jury's still out on whether people are using private bookmarks instead of the mark for later feature)

Spider-Man word count is still 100,258, and VLD is now 63,315, so I'm 63.15% of the way to surpassing it!

I suspect someone put "Smiling 'cause you're used to it" and "Chemicals, chemicals in my brain" on a rec list because both had a crazy jump in hits, kudos, and bookmarks this month (percentage-wise). Bit of a weird jump on "on the run" too, considering how old and unpopular it is.

"5 Times Lance Doesn't Matter" also had a big jump, but I think that's more because I added one more chapter and got it bumped up for everyone who uses AO3's default sorting method.

New fic achievements:

Smiling 'cause you're used to it: still a weirdly good sub and bookmark conversion rate

5 Times Keith Relies on the Blade: subs conversion, comment conversion, bookmark conversion, and it's in the top 10% of fics by length so like... truly, I am starting to write longer fics apparently

Chemicals, chemicals in my brain: despite competing with way more popular Spider-Man fics, this has somehow landed on the top 10% list for number of bookmarks??? First and only VLD fic I've had accomplish that!

As far as experiments, I've thrown in a couple since finishing out my control period. No results to share yet, but they're out there collecting data. Don't you worry...

FFN doesn't have much interesting, but exciting update: for some reason my old Whump Bingo fic is way more popular over there, and it broke 40k views, making it the most popular thing I've ever published (despite me shamefully never actually editing a single chapter in it).

Anyway, that's it for October. Sorry in advance for the mess next month because I will be more focused on drafting 50k than getting my goals post all tidy and cute.

October 2024 Plans!

Now feels like a great time to say wow, I really didn't plan for this burst of inspiration from back in... June? to go on this long. Anyway, I'm here to say it is still here. Still Voltron, still primarily Keith. Still really stuck on that series idea.

I thought editing was going to go well last month, but I got started and was not feeling it. So now it's more of a "when it gets done" goal. To hold myself accountable, I'm still gonna include the remaining list of fics to be edited on these monthly goal posts. At least I'll have to look the work I'm avoiding directly in the eye on a regular basis as I procrastinate by writing.

General goals:

Newly published WC: 11,928/3,000

Have VLD WC surpass Spider-Man: 63,314/100,258

2024 total published WC: 54,677/50,000

LTS(LTFH):

If you didn't see my quick lil post about it, I'm getting burned out on this! So I'm giving myself a month off. I'm allowed to add to these fics if I feel like it, but there is no daily or monthly word count goal for October.

Fic 4: work on figuring out the timeline

All fics: use the downtime this month to work on chapter titles & flesh out outlines

Change the whole damn series name this late into drafting

Oneshots:

Bingo fic (I promised this AGES AGO, so this has GOT to be the month I finally deliver istg)

Oneshots or ficlets, whatever this month's inspiration tells me to do

Editing:

Flu: title change, style update

on the run: deadass don't remember this one, so we'll see

5 Times Lance Doesn't Matter +1 Time He Finally Does

Smiling 'cause you're used to it (a house that's always haunted)

Chemicals, chemicals in my brain (where'd you go, where'd you go anyway?)

Nowhere to call home (so I'll pack and run away)

5 Times Peter Struggled with Spider Metabolism, +1 Time Tony Helped: possible style update

Whump Bingo: major edit--these were barely edited in the first place, oops

Anywhere but Here: style update

Sick Days

Take the worst situation (make a worse situation)

We are the reckless (we are the wild youth)

Cocktails and Consequences: content edit since I barely drank before I wrote this and didn't research alcohol at all

Sickdays 5.0 Day 7: Temperature: title

See me here (meet me here)

And it hits between the eyes on this side

Sickdays 2.0 Day 2 & 5: Sick at a Party & Gently Tinged with Red: title, brainstorm for a closing chapter

Sickdays Day 5: Rapid Onset: title

Impressions

Sickdays 4.0 Day 1: The Oblivious Partner: title

Sickdays 4.0 Day 7: Chain Reaction: title

Sickdays 5.0 Day 6: Public Illness: title

I've got you stuck on my mind (and it's driving me crazy)

Days locked in a haze (trying to forget you)

Sickdays Day 6: Public Illness: title

I want to know who you are (I want to know who you were)

Will you stay with me for another day? (I don't want to be alone in this state)

I'm keeping you at bay (and I'm lonely)

Sickdays 5.0 Day 3: Caretaking Focus: title

Weightless (only wait for a fall)

Hiding It

I feel strange

Bullies and Bailing: possible content edit because I just don't like this one at all

Made a Mess

Season Three

Oh god

I'm not saying I told you so...

Sickdays 5.0 Day 4: Not the Norm: title and possible content edit because I HATE this fic with a burning passion

Accident

Don't ruin this

Rapid Onset

No Right Side: content edit because I don't like how this came out

Frostbite

Happily Ever After

Wes

Touch of the skin brings trembles and shivers

Favorite Outfit

Sleepless folks watching light grow (through their early morning windows)

Origins

Ember

Peace

Road Trip

+2 anon works

Longer term:

October 2024 - light month! doing whatever I feel like, but probably some oneshots or ficlets.

November 2024 - unofficial NaNoWriMo (fuck AI).

December 2024 - finish rough draft for LTS(LTFH) fics 1 & 2.

January 2025 - LTS(LTFH) fic 1 & 2 major content/continuity edit. Technical edit for fic 1 & begin posting depending on how long edits take.

February 2025 - LTS(LTFH) fic 3 (drafting) & 4 (outline and early drafting).

March 2025 - LTS(LTFH) fic 3 & 4 drafting.

[steamlore]

HighFleet - Shipbuilding Guide

Learn how to build ships that have better performance and higher cost-efficiency than built-ins!

HighFleet Shipbuilding

(Initially created August 5th 2021 for game version 1.1)Building effective ships in Highfleet can be extremely frustrating to new players; but is a very rewarding task. Player ships can significantly out-class built-ins in terms of cost-performance and efficiency. This guide is oriented towards players who are not cheating or have not racked up a giant score for new game mode. While the guide can help players who don’t care about fuel expense or cost efficiency, these items are an important consideration in the guide.

Ship Editor Basics:

Hopefully someday Konstantine will explain this ingame... I've had to tell dozens of players how to place multiple parts without going back to the parts menu every step... -You can hold shift whilst placing parts (left click) to retain that piece on your cursor, so that you can place another immediately. -You can create a disconnected segment of a ship, band-box select it, then right click lift the entire piece. You can place/rotate the entire piece… including shift-placement for very fast construction.

Fig.1

Fig.2 Incidentally, I discovered a placement bug with the antenna... -If your editor seems to have locked up, drag select your main hull (the piece of ship containing the Bridge) and right click to attach to your cursor. Place it somewhere empty and your game should be responsive again. This is assuming you are building a sane ship under 200k of cost, ofc...

Highfleet Ship Design Theory

Hybrids suck. Do not build hybrids. Some may find this controversial, but this seems really obvious, and quite a few other players agree with me on this. TacticalShips (that are designed to duke it out in ship vs ship combat) and Strategic/Support/Auxiliary ships should be built very differently.(Other than AAW pickets, but they are a special case and the angles your opponents will start from in Air Defense Mode are far more limited than in Ship vs Ship) Reasoning? -In ship vs ship combat, you get to pick which ships on your team get to appear. Thus, unless you screw up badly, there is no reason for your tanker, missile carrier or sensor ship to ever have to get shot at by cannons. -Tactical ships want to minimize cross-section, to minimize probability of getting hit and mass required for a given armor thickness. Lots of fuel tanks *greatly* increases cross section, mass, and engine count required to achieve a given design speed, making them inferior in combat. -(Good) Tactical ships should use mostly gimballed engines to have maneuverability in combat. This means they are less fuel efficient for a given mass of ship and design speed. -Electronics (Search Radar, ELINT, FCS Radar, IRST, and Jammer) do not function behind armor. They have reduced function through structure too, so don’t get too fancy with structural cages. -Support ships want to use as many static engines as possible, to maximize their fuel efficiency (as well as cruise speed for a given budget). It is my experience that a fleet of optimized tactical ships and optimized support craft is both deadlier/more durable in combat and more fuel efficient than a fleet of hybrids.

Fundamentals of Tactical Ship Design

Ships need to consider how they will fight, what class of targets they will be optimized against, and how they will protect themselves. Players must also consider their own limitations; saying “speed is overpowered and the best defense” might be true, but most players are not 11 Honor Lightning Pilots and therefore should probably not try to fight cruiser fleets in an ultralight. Similarly, if your aim is bad, pick weapon systems with faster reloading speeds and larger magazine sizes, and maybe pack more missiles.Thrusters should be placed towards the extremities of a tactical ship, for example, the corners on a boxy design. Thrusters high up above the center of mass of a ship generally improves stability, placing them below center of mass decreases stability. Increased stability makes landing easier, while decreased stability allows for doing backflips and other tricks while dodging. As stated earlier, tactical ships want to be as compact as possible for a given amount of capability (generally measured by speed/weapons/defense), this makes you harder to hit and easier/cheaper to protect with passive defenses. Unless you are the greatest pilot of all time, you will find yourself getting hit eventually. Losing your bridge = dead ship; losing the ammo usually results in an explosion that (depending on amount of ammo and size of ship) may instantly kill it, and having fuel tanks get hit may cause fires. Obviously getting hit in power, engines or weapons is bad and will lead to a decrease in the ability of your ship to fight, but they are less instantly fatal than an ammo explosion. Therefore, you want to protect your ammo and bridge as much as possible, then fuel and generators. Generators and crew compartments also have more hitpoints than fuel or ammo, which makes them a decent way to protect your explodey bits. While losing the bridge is an instant kill on that ship, it’s fairly durable and less prone to sudden death than ammo. Thus on small ships you protect the ammo even more than the bridge; i.e. hide ammo from expected direction of fire behind the bridge. For ships with relatively few and light weapons, it is possible to spread out your ammo so that some of it exploding does not cause a chain reaction. For ships with lots of heavy weapons, that becomes impractical and the ideal is to centralize your ammunition and bury it as deep as possible behind other components.

Fig2b, examples of what -not- to do. TLDR cram components as close to each other as possible, make ship smol as possible for same number of stuff. Put thrusters near the edges/corners for better turning. Put critical components behind less important parts to die as slowly as possible, the order of importance is Ammo & Bridge > Fuel > Generators > Everything else

Basic Design Challenge

Alright, put the above information into practice. Go build a simple ship with following (additional, make sure you incorporate the lessons learned so far) specifications: - Cheap as possible - 4x AK-100 - Solid top armor - Line of 2x1 Reinforced structure on each side - Thrust-Weight Ratio at least 3 - 2 static thrusters - No fuel tanks or ammo directly exposed - Range at least 750km You should have something that looks like this:

Fig.3 Ugly, and poorly optimized, but that can be fixed! This is a cheap and basic frigate sized bottom-fighter, one of the more powerful archetypes in Highfleet. Even with this crappy hull you can probably (with decent aiming/dodging) clear Difficulty 3/Small Tester with negligible internal damage… But your ship is nowhere near it’s potential. Heck, it can’t even land! How to improve this? Well, get ready to read alot of words and stare at lots of pictures… First we’ll overview the parts that go into tactical ships before we swing around to advanced design methods…

Turrets

There is no such thing as best weapon, only best weapon for a given situation for a given player. Thus players will have to decide what weapons to fit to what design. n 2A37 AK-725 AK-100 D-80 MK-1 MK-2 MK-6 A-220 Cal 37mm 57mm 100mm 130mm 180mm 180mm 180mm 220mmR Mag 50 14 4 4 1 2 6 6 RoF (burst length) 2000 (1.51) 350 (2.4) 400 (0.6) 240 (1) N/A 180 (0.66) 180 (2) 120 (3) Reload (per second) 20 (2.5) 10 (1.4) 7 (0.57) 10 (0.4) 6 (0.16) 10 (0.2) 7 (0.85) 20 (0.3) Turret Speed Normal Normal Normal Normal Slow Slow Very Slow Normal $$$ 3000 1500 2000 4000 4000 6000 24000 4000 Size 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 Ammo Req 1 1 1 1 2 4 8 4 Power Req 0.7 0.7 1 1 1.8 2.4 6 3 Crew Req 6 6 6 6 12 24 50 5 In terms of damage per shot (and anti-armor performance when using non-AP munitions), the weapons efficiency is: 37mm *Rocket launchers are very effective when they connect, but their rocket rounds start out slow, then accelerate, requiring a different lead reflex compared to firing guns. Their rockets are also easier to shoot down/dodge than cannon shells. 2A37 With good aim, the CIWS can be extremely potent against lightly protected opponents with it’s 2000 RPM and 50 round magazine. However, it takes 20 (!) seconds to reload it’s magazine, meaning once the readied rounds are depleted, holding down the trigger only fires 2.5 shots per second! Therefore if your aim is bad, it is recommended you open fire only when you have maneuvered into point blank range. (The 2A37 also my recommended weapon of choice for Air Defense ships and a good secondary battery for larger tactical ships to shoot down incoming shells and missiles) Ammo Types: HE, Incendiary AK-725 Commonly regarded as a mediocre weapon, the 57mm lacks the stopping power of 100mm+ weapons, or the ability of the 37mm to saturate the local airspace. However, it is the cheapest gun mount, and actually fairly strong in large numbers (8+) due to it’s large magazine size (14) and great reload rate (10 seconds, or 1.4 rounds per second), extremely friendly for gunners without a disciplined trigger finger. Ammo Types: HE, Incendiary AK-100 On paper, the AK-100 is inferior to the D-80; both have the same magazine size and logistical footprint but the other is higher caliber and does more damage, right? Yet the AK-100 is a fan favorite, while the D-80 is not. For one, the AK-100 fills it’s 4 round magazine in 7 seconds, while the D-80 needs 10. Next, AK-100 has a fire rate of of 400 RPM compared to the D-80’s 240, meaning a shot-cluster from the AK-100 is almost twice as tight as that from the D-80. Faster magazine filling speed and higher ROF also make it decent in point defense, when using Proximity shells. And of course, it is half the price of the D-80… Ammo Types: HE, Incendiary, Proximity, Armor Piercing D-80 For all the advantages of the AK-100, the D-80 offers non-trivially more burst damage up front and better anti-armor performance, as well as a larger proximity shell that has a bigger splash area. If you are a very good marksman and can reliably hit a ship zooming around while flying fast yourself, the D-80 will simply kill the opponent faster on the same logistical footprint. Ammo Types: HE, Incendiary, Proximity, Armor Piercing, Laser Guided MK-1 The first thing you’ll notice when using Big Guns is the reduced turret speed. It just rotates slower than other weapons, making it worse at high speed close range combat. It also requires more power and crew than the standard guns. Unpopular with most players due to it’s single-shot nature. Ammo Types: HE, Incendiary, Proximity, Armor Piercing, Laser Guided MK-2 Quite potent against enemy cruisers with Armor Piercing Ammunition, the MK-2 does cost the same amount as 3 AK-100s and uses more than twice the crew of 3 AK-100s, and uses almost the same power as 3 AK-100s… While there are arguments for not mounting the weight of 3x AK100, the 180mm guns are simply less flexible when not fighting heavy ships. There is some debate whether players should use 4x MK2 or 1x MK6… it depends on your aiming skills. If you are very confident of your marksmanship then 4x MK2 can be superior. Ammo Types: HE, Incendiary, Proximity, Armor Piercing, Laser Guided MK-6 At the cost of a decent frigate before you even factor in logistical footprint, the MK-6 has a higher cost than it’s paper stats show; 8x Ammo requires another 4MW in power and 40 crew to operate… and those crew quarters require power too… and the power generators require more crew. Altogether a MK-6 costs about 30,000 Gold and adds over 2000 tons of mass to a ship. This is before you consider how many more engines (and fuel and crew and power and armor to protect the huge volume!) it takes to keep the same design speed with that extra mass! To top it off, the MK-6 has the same rotational speed issues as the MK-1 and 2, but worse. Opening fire also causes white flashes and shakes to appear on your screen, making aiming more difficult. That being said, with good aim and proper ammunition selection you can obliterate an enemy cruiser in a few salvos. Extremely destructive armament, suitable for use on capital ships to fight other capital ships. Ammo Types: HE, Incendiary, Proximity, Armor Piercing, Laser Guided A-220 The only ship-based rocket launcher in game, the A-220 offers excellent burst firepower on a relatively low logistical footprint. However, due to difficulty of leading targets, increased ease of dodging and vulnerability of your attack to point-defense, it’s fairly unpopular with players. Ammo Types: I don’t actually know all the ammo types you can fit to Rocket Launchers. TLDR: Big guns only cost efficient vs big ships (unless you are Simo Hayha II). AK-100 generally adequate vs everything and can change ammo to be better at whatever it’s facing. Use A-220 if you are a hipster.

Landing Gear Design & Propulsion Selection

Landing Gear

Landing gear (“Legs”) require at least 2 parts for good articulation. They don’t have names as of 1.1, so I will arbitrarily label them:

Fig.4a Types A, B, C, D from left to right n Type A Type B Type C Type D $$$ 400 200 100 50 Power Req 0.4 MW 0.2 MW 0.1 MW 0.07 MW (*) Mass 238t 80t 18t 3t *Estimate When piloting a very light ship (say, under 750t) and with good control, you can just use skids to land. But generally most ships should use landing gear, tactical ships to gain an edge in repair speed, strategic missile/aircraft carriers for faster reloading of expended missiles/replacement of destroyed aircraft. I even put legs on my tankers and spyships; ships without the ability to land just don’t make sense in this world. However, especially on smaller ships, you want the lightest possible legs to avoid excessive thrust/power wastage. For brevity’s sake I’ll just show the types of legs I find appropriate for a given tonnage of ship, though if you are very gentle (zero horizontal motion, less than 9km/h touchdown) with landing you can make do with legs that aren’t quite up to par to save mass/power.

Fig.4b Ultralight

Fig.4c “Corvette Legs” 1x Type C + 1x Type D, suitable for ships up to ~2000t mass

Fig.4d “Frigate Legs” 2x Type C, suitable for ships up to ~4000t mass

Fig.4e 1x Type B + 1x Type C, suitable for ships up to 8000t

Fig.4f 2x Type B, suitable for ships up to 12000t

Fig.4g 1x Type A + Type B, suitable for ships up to 16000t

Fig.4h 2x Type A, suitable for ships up to 20000t For ships that are heavier you can use more than 1 pair of legs to compensate, or just land *very* gently.

Propulsion

The RD series are significantly more fuel efficient but require Large Hull sections. Due to their sheer mass of Large Hull sections it becomes inefficient to build small ships with RD series engines, and very expensive to build fast ships (even if large) with them. Faster, smaller ships will use D-30, NK-25 and D-30S engines for propulsion. Larger, slower ships should use the RD-59 and RD-51. As stated before, tactical ships will want to use mostly gimballed engines and support ships should use mostly static engines. While it is possible to propel a large ship with small engines, the large ship will have extreme fuel consumption for its mass and design speed, not recommended when fuel is one of your biggest expenses in the campaign. TLDR: Use small engines for small ships, strongly consider switching to big engines around 6000t of ship.

Defenses

Reinforced Hull Reinforced hull has the same hitpoint total as an armor block, but at one-fifth of the weight. It’s not perfect, though, because it doesn’t have the damage resistance of armor; you can see this when interlaced armor/reinforced structure triangles get hit by a missile; the structure triangles go deep red or die immediately, whilst the armor triangles (that didn’t fall off from the missing structure) go pink/light red.They Read the full article

[fullmoon-sketch]

January recap - Trying new thing(s)

January became month of new things. I have tried new activities that I’ve never tried before. Some worked, some ruined. Hahaha

1. Running I am proud of my running journey and achievement so far. 100 km January running challenge is achieved!! I really really enjoy its ups and down and I think I’ll consider running as new habit that I will keep doing it. But, at the end of the challenge I felt uncomfortable with my right foot then it become worse after I tried to run more. Even after take a break for a week there is no sign of recovery. Fix I got ankle injury. Hope some advice like exercise, leg training and ankle compression bandage will be helpful. Wish me luck :)

2. Drawing The idea came when I accidentally found water color pencil in the box that my friend gave me about 10 years ago when I was in college. Last month when I told 1 of my housemate that I wanna try painting, she opened a box from her cabinet and gave pages of watercolor paper. She said “use it mbak, I give you as compensation of my guilty feeling because of my laziness”. And she bought such a high quality watercolor paper (around 200k IDR). This month, I only created few picture. To be exact, 1 final picture (as on pict above) and some trial of painting technic that only brush here and there. But I have bunches of water color videos in YouTube and Pinterest folder. So instead of drawing, this month my drawing level was collecting painting ideas. A lot. Hahaha

3. Gardening As on the pict, I felt overclaim when put gardening here. Since I live in a rent room and the only possible thing if I wanna grow plant is indoor plant, I chose cactus. The other consideration was the seller told me cactus only need water once in a week (sound simple).  Since it’s my 1st trial, I bought one tiny 15k cactus. And voila, it’s failed. Hahaha. The white round shape at the top of cactus (is it flower?) was broke and its plant seems shrunk. Should I try again?!

5. Learning Spain The progress is superb slow, lack of Spanish exposure, the pronunciation is tricky, inconsistent learning (sounds full of excuse, huh). Not sure will continue. Haha

6. Reading Atomic Habit is kinda key of my success on creating running habit until I can achieve my 100km. Reading while implementing its content at the same time is the most effective way. This book gave the detail explanation about habit mindset and practical step to create habit (or leave bad habit) in a simple and applicable way.  Man searching for Meaning is a book written by a Jewish psychiatrist who write about his experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz, a big Nazi camp concentration. He not only told us how he can survive but also his observation of prisoners to face the lowest point of his life.

Overall, thanks January!!

[marcusrobertobaq]

Idk why people make a big thing out of that Connor. It's very simple: the RK800 is a prototype, the RK900 the commercial version for the State Department.

The RK series is a secret series aimed at autonomous androids (or at least the limits of obedience) and we see that with the prototype to a challenging level (unfortunately we don't know much about Markus). And ofc, like all the other androids designed by Kamski, this one also has susceptibility to SI and can go rogue (it's the reason why CL prepared in case it happened so they could control the deviants from within). All the androids we see in the game come from the same exact base - and CyberLife is aware of it, it's no wonder they're testing new tactics to use this little gift (a brain) Kamski left at 'em favor - a gift i'm sure they ain't able to simply remove without destroying their selling point: realism, efficiency, adaption, service.

There ain't nothing in the RK900 we ain't familiar with, esp considering he's a "Bad Connor" (internal name for machine Connor) with extra steps (wow magical calculation machine upgrade for iphone). We're already familiar with how "machine" Connor ticks, actually how the typical from-the-box Connor model is - besides the obvious forced moments where we can't control how the Connor will behave since, for the sake of the mission (or make the player laugh with comic relief cuz it's the story's selling point), this one gotta maintain a "nice guy" profile or at least not start something that can fuck with the mission. But the mask drops in late Act 2 and Act 3 if u choose doing it.

But Marcus... what's the narrative Bad Connor?

Not a very nice guy if you're a bitch, cuz if you're a bitch u probably think being super corporate-professional is offensive;

Down to earth and "i'm just a machine" every time u say something about androids - cuz that's CyberLife for u, hear that? They're machines. Did u know they're just machines? Yeah... they're just machines;

Don't think much, just do what the boss said cuz it's what i was built for and my mission is the right thing to do. And by "boss" i mean Amanda and CyberLife cuz fuck who u are;

Big mouth... really, don't become an obstacle and u gonna be just fine, unless u like when Connors joke about your suicidal tedencies;

A damn of an ego that can also be used against 'em. And, oh boy, they ain't immune to emotions. No androids are, unfortunately. But boosting 'em ego can somehow encourage dissociation;

The "machine" RK800 is what sells the RK900, CyberLife is just taking it to a "next level" (propaganda bullshit imo) and who knows how long the leash will be this time since they'll be used in the government's foreign affairs officially. It's what we already know but now 200k of 'em sucking CyberLife's fat cock.

U don't need to make a Connor less human-like, they're already dynamic enough to know when to use the human-like act or the less human-like act (well, if you're into Act 1 and early Act 2 u can see no matter what u do the prototype is pretty robotic and less human-like in multiple occasions). But the key point of the series is adapting to whatever it's thrown at 'em anyways.

What we see in the No Reward ending is just a demo, the deal was just made. They're just starting to prepare things when the rebellion is down, otherwise they won't release those Connors unless it's to hunt deviants in secret again, a waste considering they got multiple prototype units for some reason. Deviancy is an old shit, using that logic all the Connors we know were made after deviancy was "discovered".

When u stop to think about the series was already made with intent of testing when an android deviates (since the foundation of deviancy is full autonomy). The longer the leash, the difficult it can be to truly break thru, but it can also be a leap of faith due loopholes. And i'll tell u: this series is probably a 10 yo project.

So i don't think there will be much difference between the prototype and the commercial version in this sense, maybe CL decided wasting time finally perfecting the damn memory backup system and that shitty ass resume control while telling Amanda "boost this mf's ego even more cuz they love when u pat 'em head". I mean, it's part of Connor philosophy having a sense of duty, they're supposed to be the good machines. Every Connor is is emotionless until something starts pissing 'em off, note my words. U piss the mission off, u piss Amanda off, u piss 'em off.

so ive seen some people question why cyberlife would make an android (rk900) that's less human-like after they already had the charming, personable rk800, and i have some thoughts. (this is also me trying to rationalize rk900 existing in a post-peaceful-revolution world)

in the alien film series, the androids ('synthetics') in the main series are seemingly less 'advanced', or at least less human-like, than the androids in the prequels. it's explained in the prequels that for the safety of humanity, androids could not have the ability to create, and were subsequently made easier to differentiate from humans. this reminded me of the possible developmental regression of rk900, especially considering what Connor was made for and why they would even make another model if the deviants seemed to be winning public favor.

i think it's reasonable to assume cyberlife could've considered the possibility that Connor might fail his mission, or successfully betray them in some way. that they might have wanted a failsafe, an android they could perfectly and completely control, to attempt to complete Connor's mission for him if all else fails. in this case I'd be assuming the rk900 didn't make it out of production in time to prevent the peaceful revolution.

even in that case i think there's a possibility they would still create the rk900 anyway, potentially as a 'true android' product to sell to people still reeling from the loss of their servants. sort of like "don't worry, we got it right this time, these ones definitely don't have feelings!" in fact i think the rk900's apparent cold, callousness could even be a potential deterrent for deviancy. the androids we've seen become deviants seemed to do so when treated as a person, but a mean expressionless machine probably wouldn't end up in a situation like that to start with.

basically, i think the rk900 was designed after deviants were discovered (and after Connor began his mission), specifically so that he wouldn't become one, and i think they made him an asshole so that he'd never be treated like a person and would consistently view himself as a machine. and i do think he would become a deviant anyway i just think it would take a lot longer.

also if you like androids and you haven't watched the alien prequels PLEEEAAASSEE just do it you'll thank me later

[unit-zero-two]

Best part of rolling Abby was getting to do her interlude. Lots of interesting stuff in there. Was very much an epilogue to Salem. That said, the most interesting part was all the side characters it featured and how they interact and relate with Abby. The interlude opened with Sheba and David doing business negotiations while Abby watches. Things don't go well though, and it becomes quickly obvious that the pair don't get along well.

Commentary below the cut (lots to say with lots of pictures)

I love Sheba and her expressions so much. She keeps up a good façade, but David is skilled at getting under her skin, and we get to see different sides of her in this interlude. Before things get ugly, Geronimo steps in, and he features prominently in this interlude.

Negotiations broken down, David heads off. He’s nonchalant like usual, but also not willing to budge. We really need more of him. I think the majority of his character stuff is in the Sanzang event (limited) and his interlude. Sheba has something to tell you, but two others arrive with news.

Turns out Abby and Gilles gets along, and he's polite and kind to her. And she’s the same back. Foreigner Gilles when, DW? Abby leaves as Giles warns you that he saw danger coming from the stars. Sheba reveals that she had a vision of the same.

They both warn you and start to prepare for a coming disaster. It’s an interesting addition to their power sets as Casters, their different types of Clairvoyance or knowledge of danger.

Part 1 has no combat. There's four parts and only 2 and 3 have combat, very much like Salem did. This interlude is much more interested in telling a story and developing characters and lore than it is in challenging the players. Although there is a 200k health Foreigner boss in one part. She was easy enough to beat though.

We also learn that Chaldea Abby and Salem Abby are two distinct existences. Salem Abby is traveling through the stars and Chaldea Abby is just her having gone through the regular Witch Trials, not the EoR stuff. But Salem Abby visits, possessing her other self and invading your dreams. Luckily, the Master Protection Squad were on duty to help us.

Nezha and Geronimo take a front and center role. It's an interesting expansion on their abilities, especially in pertaining to dreams. And their view points on dealing with “threats”. Nezha loves Abby, but they also clearly understand how dangerous Abby is, and don’t want to see her fall to darkness. Geronimo as shown here and in his interlude is good with kids, but he’s also not one to go easy if there’s danger. Once again, I wish Geronimo has been in Salem (probably in place of Robin).

Beating Abby, we then talk her down and have a cute heart to heart. She apologizes for everything she did, and tried to do, in the interlude.

Lavinia, Carter, and Sanson also make appearances as spirits and talk about Abby from the wings. Salem Abby foreshadows that she knows the LB Prologue is going to happen soon as well. All in all, a nice conclusion to the Salem chapter hidden in a limited Servant's interlude. Mixed feelings on that, but glad that I got to play through it.

[savrenim]

I love you and I love IFMLAM but,,, I also don't have the mental capacity to try and remember what has happened previously and/or re-read 200k right now. Is it quite alright if I ask you for a summary of the previous rounds?

Yeah totally! Under the cut:

Round 1: event-wise, basically the same as the musical. a quiet take on “if Aaron Burr was the Seer, absolutely nothing happens differently, and also oof the dramatic irony of musicals kind of having fourth-wall breaking is replaced in the written medium by Burr knowing what’s going to happen and not really believing it, and then slowly believing it more and more until he can’t stop it from happening.” Burr ends up saying “if I could pay in my own blood, I would do so seven times over, I would–” in a moment of incredible guilt as Alexander is dying, and, uh, who really knows how Seers work (I do, I know how Seers work) but for some reason it looks like time is repeating and, uh, here we go.

Round 2: plagued by guilt, Aaron tries to make Everything Go Right. This…. kind of works. He ends up confessing to Alexander exactly what is going on the first winter of the Revolutionary War, and getting together with Alexander. The War goes better than great–it will, in fact, end several years early–but Alexander is no longer quite Washington’s favorite and is sent away for Winter’s Ball. Aaron attempts to befriend Eliza so he can introduce her and Alexander, but is frustrated to find that Eliza is not interested in Alexander, Alexander is not interested in Eliza, and the fact that he’s been paying attention to Eliza means that everyone now expects him to marry Eliza. Begrudgingly, he does, although he intends to absolutely give Eliza the best possible life once he has committed as he also feels very guilty about how he left her a widow with no monetary assistance.

Come the Constitutional Convention, with encouragement from Alexander in the years leading up, Aaron decides to attempt to get slavery banned from country in the Constitution. He just barely manages to succeed, and in the process forms an unlikely alliance with James Madison. Alexander never makes it to the Constitutional Convention, but still is Secretary of Treasury. Things actually go pretty much identically to Round 1, except Aaron is sent to England to ward off the War of 1812 and comes back and finds Alexander has submitted his name and gotten him successfully elected Vice President while he wasn’t even there. This makes him very upset, and strains his friendship with James, who thinks Alexander is using him. The next election, Alexander insists on running Aaron for President with now himself as Vice President, and James Madison (with Jefferson in tow) decide to step in and stop Alexander as the threat he seems to be what with controlling Burr via Dramatic Blackmail They Have. Aaron assumes this blackmail is about his and Alexander’s relationship during the war. It is revealed that the blackmail is actually over the fact that Alexander has been sleeping with Eliza since pretty much day 1, and is still the father of his children.

Aaron decides that the only way to proceed forward is to not break with Alexander and not even bother to deny the rumors, because at this point the rumors going around about everyone are ridiculous and he figures if they don’t react, they’ll coast it out. He’s right. Unfortunately, Alexander can’t bring himself not to care when James Callender publishes claims that Alexander’s mother was a whore, and challenges Callender to a duel, gets shot, and dies. About two years later, Philip also decides to get in a duel about his own legitimacy, gets shot, and dies. Aaron completely shuts down and Eliza decides to try to send him on a ship to South Carolina where John Laurens, who survived the war just fine, is now Governor. The ship is lost at sea. (You know, the exact way his daughter Theodosia died.)

Round 3: Aaron decides that his problems came from the fact that everyone knew he was the Seer, so he decides to just not tell anyone. He also decides that the one person who didn’t betray him or really try to use him was James. He befriends James at Princeton. During the war, rather than risk himself, he decides to go to France to work with Benjamin Franklin to try to figure out what actually makes Seers tick so that he can maybe write out the science of what’s happening to him. The war ends, Aaron comes back to the States, and Franklin tries to pressure him a bit too hard to reveal himself and speak against slavery at the Constitutional Convention, and he decides to flee again back to France, because there are more historical resources there on Joan of Arc he can study. Unfortunately, in France there is Thomas Jefferson who has figured out that Aaron is the Seer because of some old notes of Franklin’s and good gut instincts, and uses it to blackmail him (as not revealing that he was Seer during the war is treason) and have him seized and placed under house arrest. He returns to the States when Jefferson returns, and decides to continue feeding Jefferson information about the future and all-around cooperating because of the good chance that if Jefferson figures out Madison knew, Madison would also be complicit in this treason.

This lasts until the Election of 1800, when Aaron is distracted by James being sick and doesn’t step down and declare Jefferson winner quickly enough, cue Jefferson deciding that Aaron has crossed the line for the last time and needs to die. He ends up running and is put just as he was historically on trial for treason for a ridiculously large number of things, all trumped up charges. As it becomes increasingly obvious that Jefferson rigged the House of Representatives to vote against him, he decides to dramatically drink poison on the stand instead of letting the US government and perhaps entire nation fall apart at the caliber of scandal that the very third president might already manipulate things to such an authoritarian state. 

(There is eventually still an impeachment trial along with half of Congress resigning as James and Alexander use Aaron’s written visions and testimonies to bring Jefferson down because they decide screw him, and they manage to succeed without destroying the country, although barely.)

Aaron doesn’t know any of this, he decides to start Round 4 having learned the lessons: okay fucking admit to being the Seer early on so no one can blackmail you with it (goes good), find and befriend James Madison again! (goes entirely off the walls), and now he’s back and ready to rumble and honestly doesn’t really know what he’s doing except that he’s maybe tired of letting people walk all over him.

[shinneth]

subject to future deletion

Normally I wouldn’t resort to that and I might end up being too lazy to do it anyway, but between getting sick again, dealing with some very intense verbal abuse every day irl, and the monthly burdens of the gender, I’m really not in a good place right now and I need to vent something. 

It’s officially gotten bad enough to interfere with my ability to write, even though I’m at a point in my current story that I’ve been very eager to reach... and every step of the way I’m struggling to write it and I hate what I currently have and it’s taking everything in my current power to not just scrap it entirely. 

Basically, I think I’m failing as a writer.

The irl stuff is actually not what I’m gonna get into because it’s really nothing new and it’ll probably resolve itself, but the side-effect of suffering that kind of negativity is that it enhances lingering negative feelings you’ve had about other things.

Namely, things you do to get away from the pains of the real world. The things you do to have fun and get some enjoyment out of life, no matter how challenging it is to be in this thing because it’s so wrongfully derided and demonized by the majority of your peers.

I try to keep telling myself it’s just because I’m still relatively very new to the fandom compared to my contemporaries, but as I’m typing this right now and listening to my favorite wrestler Shelton Benjamin in an interview, immediately I see the pit I’m starting to fall into. 

Like, it’s uncanny. This is what he said as I started on the above paragraph:

“If I sit and constantly compare myself to other people’s successes, you would drive yourself crazy. Because no matter what, there’s always someone who’s gonna be more successful.”

“I need to remember where I come from; how far I’ve came.”

Basically, in the very small world of Stevidot (and to a lesser extent, SU’s fandom as a whole), despite my efforts, I feel very much like the Shelton Benjamin in a small, dedicated group of talented Stevidot content creators.

Which is to say, I’m basically a midcarder in the mix with a bunch of top-tier legends. Shelton graduated from the same group as some modern very well-known mainstream stars that I can easily associate with a very well-known and accomplished Stevidot contributor.

Shelton graduated with the likes of John Cena, Brock Lesnar, Dave Batista, and Randy Orton. At least half of those names should be at least vaguely familiar for my followers as most of them have had such great success that they’re known in avenues beyond wrestling (save for Randy Orton, but he’s well past outshined his father as a legendary wrestler who’ll never be forgotten). 

I could easily say Watcher is the John Cena of Stevidot, while Platon’s probably the Brock Lesnar... sinderella0069′s the Batista. But I honestly don’t feel like I’ve done enough (or stood out enough) to even be a Randy Orton for this pairing. I’d at least give that honor to Ig just for being so active with it on Tumblr despite the wave of hatred thrown her way (even though she’s shifted focus onto Stevinel now). 

Again, I keep trying to tell myself that it’s because I’m not even remotely as tenured in the fandom as any of them are. 

Then I see this said in a review on a very recently-made Stevidot story...

And said reviewer has not once ever left a review on any Stevidot story of mine. Not even a follow or a favorite or a goddamned kudos. Considering I currently have an actively-updated Stevidot story going on (and a two-shot that I just did last month), I highly doubt my stuff was just overlooked.

Now, is it true that Stevidot is hard to come by? Of course it is. But this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a fellow Stevidot fan lament about the lack of Stevidot content while completely disregarding anything I contribute.

I know there’s one that outright doesn’t like my content based on personal taste (nothing to do with Stevidot itself, just how I execute it). There’s another big-name who shows no interest whatsoever in reading what I have to offer - and at this point I feel that’s for the best, because I have a feeling they’d hate my execution as well. 

While I’ve always primarily written for myself, I also felt a great fulfillment for providing content for a niche crowd that really deserves more than what they have. I think Stevidot’s a fantastic pairing with tons of unexplored potential and should be much more readily available than it actually is. Even if I tend to not get many reviews, I keep track of the site traffic every day on my stories and I know for sure that there are people reading my stuff. Since I’m really bad at leaving reviews myself, I go out of my way not to whine about not having very many overall for my series since I’d be a huge-ass hypocrite to do so. 

However.

Statements like the the aforementioned review and statements I’ve seen elsewhere by those who I know are at least aware of me are like stakes through the heart.

Because it can only mean one thing: my content doesn’t count.

I’m honestly not sure which is worse for me; being critically panned for the stuff I’ve put my all into over the past year, or being treated like my stuff doesn’t even exist. 

I prided myself on contributing as much as I did for Stevidot over this past year. Quantity doesn’t = automatic quality, but I’ve got 20+ years of writing experience in, so even someone with a shit self-esteem like myself can’t just say I’m an objectively bad writer, because I’m not. 

But apparently it doesn’t matter that I put in over half a million worlds in the name of Stevidot to a good chunk of the very tiny Stevidot fanbase; according to them, my contributions are irrelevant.

Is it my fault?

One thing I will admit is a detriment to my particular brand of Stevidot is that, save for one story (which happens to be by far my most successful Stevidot story in terms of recognition numbers), the rest of my series follows a continuous narrative that greatly deviates from canon as of Change Your Mind. I’m also notoriously a very verbose kind of writer - I have the tl;dr curse something fierce. 

So all stories I’ve written since my main 3-act series (which ended up being nearly 200k in length on its own) have been direct sequels to that. Because of the heavy deviation from CYM, the environment of the following stories is very different and easy to get lost in if you skipped GA entirely. 

Because there are so many dangling threads and new opportunities to be had after GA ended, I basically committed myself to my AU.

It’s not like anyone else is going to explore these possibilities.

Beyond that, honestly, I just don’t want to rewire my brain back to the canon status quo - not after the shitloads of character development I’ve not only given Steven and Peridot, but nearly everyone at this point has had a moment or two of really intense character growth. 

I like having Peridot co-star with Steven. I like having her become a more competent and active teammate than she’s portrayed in canon (while still giving her comic relief moments). I like that I didn’t redeem the Diamonds and instead had them killed off to force our protagonists to deal with the fallout of the collapse of a mighty empire on a much grander scale than what’s going on in the actual show.

In a way, this AU of mine has helped me cope with the shortcomings of the show itself. I already went on a stupid tirade once about how the sadistic nature of my writing has basically made me no-sell whatever trauma Rebecca Sugar’s throwing on Steven and upsetting everyone else. I’m still fairly certain I’m still outdoing her in that department. 

And because 100% of my passion for creating Stevidot is through this narrative I weaved, I have no desire to leave it. 

So I’ll admit my stories aren’t exactly the most accessible to the average reader who hasn’t been following my work since Day 1. 

Then again... I first got into Sinderella’s series completely ass-backwards at first. I eventually read it in the proper order, and like many of the great Stevidot epics, it’s canon divergent from a much earlier point in the series, so it was very easy to get confused about why certain things happened differently at first... but ultimately, I wasn’t that bothered by it because I just wanted some good Stevidot. I’d figure out the finer details later. 

I really do owe this author more props than I’ve actually given - she’s one out of two readers I know for a fact have been following my series since the beginning without missing a beat. I’ll probably review her newest story sooner or later now that it’s complete. 

Not gonna lie, though... when I saw our numbers side-by-side like this:

Considering they’re very similar stories (Stevidot smuts that were originally meant to be one-shots), mine is over a month old and hers is only a few days old and there’s already that big of a gap in our numbers? 

It’s hard not to feel like a failure; like I did something horribly wrong to suck this bad by comparison. 

I really should stress that I bear no ill will against Sinderella or any Stevidot author; this isn’t a competition, so this isn’t a matter of popularity. I knew coming into this that I wouldn’t get popular overnight; especially not with such an unpopular ship being the focus of my story. 

But when other Stevidot stories get frequent reviewers that I’ve never seen once acknowledge my stories even passively, I can’t help but feel like I’ve massively fucked up somewhere. That despite all my efforts, I might as well be invisible. When they say “Oh, good thing your story is here! It’s been such a Stevidot drought around here until you came along!” to other authors after I’ve written half a million fucking words in under a year for this ship...

You know, is it unreasonable to feel that I utterly fucking failed in several ways? 

I guess it’s no wonder why I’m struggling to keep writing. I still want to - like I said, I’m at a part I’ve been eager to write for a while now - but ever since I started it, I’ve just hated almost all of what I have so far (almost 8k words). And I’m really having trouble trying to salvage it.

I’m honestly not the type who’d scrap all my progress and start from scratch once I’ve gotten this far in. But maybe I’ll have to make an exception this time, because I think I finally made the mistake of trying to write while being mentally and emotionally distraught.

I thought I’d calm down once I wrote all this out, but honestly, I’m not really feeling it. Now I’m wondering if I should have just reached out to someone instead of making this, because now I’ll come off as a whiner with my pansy-ass first-world problems. 

But then again, I’d be an asshole to subject anyone to my idiotic woes. 

Maybe this’ll pass. I’m hoping it’ll pass. I really, really really really don’t want to lose my drive to write again. I was used to it coming and going in short and random spurts for almost all my life - then it finally came to me and stayed with me just a little under a year ago, and I’ve been desperate not to let it go because I’ve been more productive now than I’ve ever been in my 20+ tenure as a writer. 

I don’t want this to go away. There’s still so much more I want to tell. 

But then my logic goes... if you tell the story and no one’s there to hear it, is it ever really told?

[darkling-er]

youtuber au for far cry 5 & ocs, because crack

Joseph Seed:

he would probably have a religious vlog every day, where he reads comments and gives advices

he often does live streams

he calls his subscribers, “my fam”

he ends every video with: “I am your Father and you are my children, and together we will march to Eden’s Gate”

in which Eden’s Gate is a vidcon

he has about 100K followers

Jacob Seed:

he has bad video quality, he makes videos with his phone and it’s always vertical

he makes either 1 minute videos or videos that are 1 hour long

he makes tips about survival, how to make fire, how to make a bow, etc

and he doesn’t reply to any comments, only if it’s an ask, in which the person doesn’t understand his tips, which he replies with: “If you can’t follow my steps, then you’re an idiot”

he has 100 followers max

Faith Seed:

her videos are professional, she has a perfect set up, she’s always happy and cheerful

she calls her subscribers her angels and often does Q&A videos

she has a “my addiction...” video in which she’s sad and tells about her difficult past

usually she makes videos with a meaningful message, she talkes about a lot of illnesses, how bullying is wrong, how a person should always love themselves, etc

and probably will do a special video about her make up and dresses if her subscribers ask her

she has about 2 million followers

John Seed:

his content is all kinds of stuff: vlogs, Q&A-s, political rant, cooking videos ( in which he usually fails and gets super angry and smashes stuff ), flexing with his money

he did once a “draw my life video” because people asked for it, since then he has gained a lot of followers and he started drawing other stuff too in his videos, because people asked for it, liked his art

he’s all charismatic and kind with his followers, but he replies to his haters in such a manner that people are kind of scared of him

his quality is great, because he can afford all the expensive, professional cameras, etc

he has merch and likes to promote it a lot

he has about 800K followers

Sharky Boshaw:

his channel is all about pranks, challenges and experimental videos ( usually about fire and burning stuff )

he doesn’t care about subscribers or haters, he does whatever he likes to do for fun

people either hate him and think he’s stupid or really like him

he has about 500K followers

Mayan Thornton:

gaming channel

he either plays old school games or new ones

he likes to do collabs with other gamers

he loves to have fun and doesn’t care about haters, or that ‘he’s too old to have a gaming channel’

he has about 400K followers

Trinity-Hope Johnson:

music channel

she does covers sometimes, for requests, but she mostly posts her own music

her music videos are usually nature footages

she plays the piano, the guitar and sings

she rarely does Q&A videos, because she’s camera shy

she has about 700K followers

Noah Winters:

he only posts short videos about him and Omega, his wolf

one of his videos got viral, it was less than a minute long video, in which he got tackled by his wolf, it was a vine

he has about 200K followers

Malcolm Callum:

he has a youtube channel because he has a website, where he takes requests and sells his craftings

he makes good quality videos

he makes tutorials on how to carve pumpkins

he also posts videos on how he makes his craftings ( wooden figures, decorations, etc )

he has about 100K followers

Atlas Cove:

he owns a cooking channel

he makes tutorials on how to cook and bake

he often makes different cake decorating tutorials

he likes to interact with his subscribers and asks for feedback on how they succeeded with their foods

he tries to answer every comment he gets

he has about 20K followers

Tee Enderby:

he posts videos about skateboarding and tips on how to skate board

he likes to have live streams and Q&A-s

he has about 50K followers

Rhea Jessop:

she has an ASMR channel, her videos are usually an hour long

she likes to do livestreams and Q&A-s

she has about 600K followers

@onl-you I would love to hear about your ocs *-*

[scanandeggs]

Building a Community and Rapid Testing: Our 3-Day Experiment

Today’s post is a little different since it’s not specific to Thailand. It’s about our experience with a rapid test cycle.

When we decided to stay here and work away from everyone else, we set goals for what we wanted to achieve. We wanted to move forward and improve in major areas that we think are essential for success. One of our clear problems was that we felt we could not build a community. We had developed several cool products and even had successes selling them, but we always failed to build a passionate community around them. The reason? Some weird and illogical discomfort with posting on social media and fear of failure, I guess. So, what could be the solution? On one hand, we had to figure out the core reason, and on the other hand, we had to step outside of our comfort zone. That’s also one of the many reasons for this blog.

At the same time, we also wanted to test if we could create a cool 3D asset and sell it immediately. Since our assumption was that we were bad at finding the right target audience, we needed something very niche.

Day 1 and Day 2

We created a crushable beer can that looks cool but is definitely not something many people need. It was perfect to test if we could find the right people. We posted a video in one of the main professional Reddit groups in our industry, and the reaction was astonishing. Within the first 24 hours, approximately 200K people saw our video, and we had 200+ upvotes. If we could reach so many people with a video we created in one day, it’s time to build our community. So, we decided to build a Discord group for fellow 3D developers. It’s a huge community filled with amazing people who we always loved to work with. We created a server, implemented a basic bot, and came up with the purpose of the group. It’s a community for Unreal Engine artists who love to play around with cool assets and participate in exciting challenges. There will be a weekly new asset to be used for creating stunning pictures and videos. People have to create something and share it till Sunday, so they can get the next asset. Sounds fun. The first week’s asset will be the beer can we created.

Day 3

As I’m writing this blog post, it’s 10 AM on the third day. We’ve decided to launch the group at 11 AM, so things are getting more exciting now. We have a small 3D animation tool we created for ourselves a couple of months ago and decided to share it to make people join our new server.

Expectations

The way I see it, there are three potential outcomes of this rapid test.

Nobody joins. If nobody joins the server, we will have to sit down and brainstorm new ways of connecting with a community.

Many people join. That would be amazing, of course. We can keep growing the community and move on to experiment with the other things we want to test while we are here.

Few people join. From a motivational perspective, that’s the worst scenario. If that happens, we will keep working very hard to make those few people satisfied, but we wouldn’t feel rewarded for our work.

Anyhow, whatever happens, we’re excited to see the outcome. I’ll let you know tonight!