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vanherst · 4 years ago

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Vher98 Update 5

I know it's only been a couple of weeks since the last blog post about my recent updates towards developing Vher98, but trust me it's for a good reason, I'll split it up into chapters to sorta give a bit more of an explination towards developments and get a bit more in depth about it for once.

Display properties.

This has been delayed for SO long, and finally I've gotten around to doing it. Finishing the display properties menu. The display properties has been the bane of my existance about this website but yet my best feature, just from the schemes feature alone. But this week I have a new addition, and that is to say I now have desktop icon schemes! Inwhich, allows you to change the desktop icons based on preselected spritesheets (Which you can also change by the command prompt!).

At the moment there are 6 presetswhich you can select, I recently did a massive sprite redesign for desktop icons based on my new character, Petra! But that's for a future update, for now I've set the default spritesheet and included all of the old ones, which you can select from, alongside being able preview them at a smaller resolution to be compatiable with the display properties window.

I've also added a few other settings which you can see previews of, not all of which are programmed yet, so at a future date I'll either change them around or program them. But for now, I've added the ability to change desktop icon sizes to a more native modern scale, but leaving the default setting as the classic windows 98 recreation.

I've also added additional wallpapers, only accessable through the effects tab and "CSGO MODE" which was featured in the background of the preview blog post, which recreates the settings for my counterstrike mainmenu, along with adjusting the desktop icons and wallpaper to fit.

As previewed above, designed to be a slight nod to my recent "Neon Genesis Evanjollion" video, featured on my youtube channel. I've recorded and animated my counterstrike character with loopable animations which play continuously in the background.

Now, I know this is a lot of text for what seemingly is a minor update, but the main reason I was able to design the latest additions to the effects tab was because of the recent massive rewrite I've had to do in order to fix a bunch of problems I was coming across, one of which being how unoptimised themes were reletively.

Left: new code which include schemes selection and the new effects menu toggles. Right: old code, only including schemes selection.

This entire re-write revolves around basically storing arrays of data rather than manually switching values of variables, along with tons of adjustments to unneeded variables and how theme data is required to be stored, as CSMODE needs to store the theme data to be able to toggle from the data needed to switch from the current scheme to CSGO mode.

I cannot understate howmuch of a rewrite this is, and as much as I would like to say "I really don't get why I ever did it otherwise", I would be lying. But this is a super incredable optimisation and looking at this comparritively makes me super pleased with how far i've come from knowing nothing about HTML/JS to this. Jquery is a godsend.

Start Menu

On my newly found optimisation craze, I've also done tons of rewriting to the startmenu, another long overdue reform. Even though I've recently done a rewrite on this thing, I knew there was still tons of improvements with my new knowledge of jquery.

Top image: old code in Javascript Bottom image: new code in Jquery

I've also put aside a few hours of time to dedicate creating new assets for the start menu. It became REALLY hard to find a nice and consistant style which windows 98 used, but it was really hard to find sources of any of the original assets but also have the levels of details I knew windows 98 for, especially when tons of the assets from windows 98 came from windows 95, which still relied on 8 bit colour in some instances.

So I did a bunch of digging and found the assets Windows 98 used at the end of it's lifespan and modified them a bunch to put into Vher98, giving my own personal touch and hopefully to keep the art direction of icons a bit more consistant and unique to look at and use.

Task management

Alright, last big one. Task management. Another long overdue reform was needed for this thing. Prior to this month, tasks relied on whatever manual order I decide to create the task and assign a number to, the number will dedicate placement on the taskbar depending on which value was the highest.

So for example, the Display Properties will ALWAYS be the third task on the taskbar if you was to open everything up, simply because I didn't know how to calculate the placement prior to designing tons of assets. Especially when the original conception of the site RELIED on myself manually creating the visual look of the taskbar as the entire site was designed based on images. From windows, taskbar to the starrtmenu. It was awfully inefficent.

Top image: Example of windows being opened from oldest (left) to newest (right). Bottom image: The new optimised and redesigned code for calculating taskbar placement and task assignment.

Anyway, that being said I now have automated calculation for taskbar task placement. If you open a task, it will open and remain in the order of the task being ordered. Writing this makes me have a smug little grin on my face just from how happy I am I was even able to get this to work properly, and it's only a few lines of math to even get the result I have.

Conclusion

There's tons of other stuff I wish to go on about, but that's why I have patchnotes. if you wish to read them, you can check them out on my github, or in the Startmenu of Vher98.

There's a few bugs I need to get around to fixing, but I've invested a few hundred hours into this thing over the past month alone and I really should take a break to get onto other projects I wish to get around to completing.

I recently started developing a mod for Terraria and some drawings I want to get around to finishing sooner or later. But, the most important thing I REALLY need to get around to is branding. Over the past month or two I've been growing more and more displeased with how I present myself and the fact I have stagnated a bit within the realms of my carear and I need to get around to sorting these personal matters sooner rather than later.

I'll be back with a couple of projects. It might take a while but I promise it's for a good cause.

#Theme #Tumblr #Tumblr theme #website development #website #site #vher98 #branding #update

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glumvillain · 4 years ago

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GlumReviews #7

As we continue to explore bands that have pioneered sounds we find ourselves on the 4th studio album from Faith No More. A peculiar but unique band. While the New Wave was waving, Faith No More blazed their own path of funk rock and blended it with metal to come out as one of the more interesting bands of the 90′s.

The 90′s is cursed with a playing-field of post-punk bands just doing their own thing and getting swept up in the Grunge era madness. Faith No More I think is one of those bands that refused to be part of that wave and incorporated heavier metal with their funk and was looking to standout rather than be swept away by the wave.

1. Land of Sunshine

The album opens with a metal-esque satire about the parental state of the United States at this point in time. Told in a theatrical spitfire of infomercial messages. You get a real sense of alienated youth and rebelliousness, a band that really wanted to come out swinging. To build upon--and sort of leave behind their old sound to go a new direction for a new era.

2. Caffeine

A chugging metal tune, that is no worse for wear than the previous track, we keep the momentum moving along. I really get a sense of the Alice Cooper theatrical movements and big sounds all around. It’s a loud album meant to be played loud, you try to digest it like a metal album but it perhaps is too interesting and weird to be taken at face value. So far the album has my curiosity in its hostility and lyricism.

3. Midlife Crisis

This is probably my favorite song off of the album, it stays in this very sterile space of not being metal, kind’ve poppy but also a little bit of that funk groove lays dormant in alot of their songs. This song probably being one of the more cohesive and structured songs, also has this kind’ve strange “Pretty Hate Machine” bridge portion that I really dig. You reach this point of the album wondering if this is a metal record or just an alt rock band flexing their styles for fun.

4. RV

I really don’t know where to approach this song from. They dip their toes into this Primus style of storytelling and twangy bass, which I don’t necessarily hate. I really think this song is just making fun of white trash ignorant racists and after 2020 I’m pretty comfortable making that judgement, especially if you check out the lyrics. Humorous and fun, definitely different and not the direction you expected the album to take. “Toss me inside a Hefty and put me in the ground” that line just really resonated with me for some reason.

5. Smaller and Smaller

Mike Patton is a powerhouse vocalist as far as I’m concerned, able to hit these beautiful clean almost operatic vibratos, ALSO while being able to nail the metal hardcore screams when needed. You got this Anthraxy main riff, sprinkled with a Pantera-y guitar lick and can you really complain. Maybe Patton’s vocal style is a bit different but the music on display in this album is pretty different from the saturated grunge playing field.

6. Everything’s Ruined

The lead guitarist, after touring this album quit the band. Citing the direction of the band declining, calling it “gay disco”. Admittedly this is my first Faith No More album so I don’t have much to compare it to. Perhaps a 1985 single of theirs that sounds like a “Midlife Crisis” b-side. Perhaps coming from funk metal, and ending up on this song may not seem like the coolest choice but it’s not bad music, the guitarwork is awesome and if at anytime you feel a lull in the energy you can expect Patton to delivery some awesome vocals.

7. Malpractice

I don’t know how anyone could feel their band going the way of the dogs whenever they have such a random array of genres to lean into. I initially wanted to remark on how much this chorus kinda sounds like an Alice In Chains type of song but stylistically it just makes too many twists and turns for you to really nail them down to a comparable band in their class.

8. Kindergarten

One area you lose me is the rap/rock hybrid. And this song straddles that fence of Run DMC and Aerosmith if that makes sense. White dudes trying to evoke the coolness of rap and mix it with basic metal noise is usually a way to get skipped in my playthroughs but again, the musical direction this album takes makes this it pretty easy to listen to because it is just different enough to remain interesting. One of the better songs off the album.

9. Be Agressive

This is that funk metal you keep hearing about. Like a badass Red Hot Chili Peppers. Just another face smasher of a song, but again we get treated to these very theatrical.. heavy metal Phantom of the Opera moments. This is one song I’d definitely wanna see live as it just has that big opener energy.

10. A Small Victory

This sounds like a song written completely on synths and a drum machine and Faith No More just said “fuck it, transcribe it”. Undeniably lighter than the album preceding, an underdogs anthem. Gets a little repetitive and doesn’t come off as a highlight of the album for me. Let’s call it filler.

11. Crack Hitler

Did I tell you about that funk metal? And I mentioned how they kinda dip their toes in that strange strange Primus water? Here’s the masterpiece of that. Sweet funkitude. This just has everything going for it with that badass bass slap, wah wah pedal is just working overtime to bring you the jam. Maybe the previous song needed to fall short so this one could hit that much harder for me.

12. Jizzlobber

This is where I unearth a Nu-Metal artifact. I mean--name the band, this is that sound and Patton abandons his clean vocals for heavy distorted screamed. Half rapped, half screamo, this is a pretty decent song and oddly stands out as the black sheep of the album. What the hell are you doing in THIS album? This is their most normal song to me, oddly enough. I was gonna make a joke about JNCO jeans but it flared out.

13. Midnight Cowboy (Theme From)

This is a pretty chill (mostly instrumental) jam. Theatrical rock music if I had to give it an official genre that I made up. I’d say more filler but I know there are a few people who enjoy a nice instrumental soundscape and this could be one of em for you. It reins in the heavy and gives you a nice listening experience.

14. Easy

Funnily enough, their one cover song that was only included on later reprints of the album--is the one that earned them most of the acclaim. A cover of Lionel Richie’s laidback sunday morning jam. Is it better? mmmm arguably. But I’d say they’re in a tie for being good. Faith No More doesn’t change it in anyway that makes it unique into itself but comes off as a pretty decent tribute to the entire energy of the song. Carefree and fun, all this after an album full of chaotic guitar and operatic rock singing, and a beautiful way to end an album full of twists and turns.

As stated before, this was my first Faith No More album and I really didn’t know what I was getting into, even for being knowledgeable about their singles that really doesn’t set you up for what their album contains and that's largely an overlying mission of this review series. Discovering bands past their singles, their one hit wonders, and perhaps there’s something to be learned in that journey alone.

this journey was a

⭐⭐⭐/5

The good moments of this album really shine, I don’t see it as something I can play through without skipping a few tracks though. I enjoyed the heavy metal elements blended with funk and I think Mike Patton is one of the funner vocalists of our time. Worth a one time listen at the most and I think you could very well come out liking a song or two.

#music review #album review #faith no more #angel dust #90s music #grunge #metal #alternative rock

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tigerkirby215 · 5 years ago

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5e Jhin the Virtuoso build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Riot Games)

Jhin is complete perfection. An absolute masterpiece Champion. The perfect ADMC character. Easily Riot’s Magnum Opus.

Alright enough making sentences that contain four words. Jhin will forever be one of the most visually impressive champions Riot has ever created, and a compelling psychopath to put the likes of The Joker to shame. A madman with the mind of a genius, an artist who knows that to truly live you must die. "In carnage, I bloom, like a flower in the dawn."

GOALS

FOUR - If you’ve ever seen Jhin one thing is clear: he likes the number 4, and we will too. Jhin needs to get a perfect kill in 4/4 time, meaning that his final shot needs to do some big damage.

Art shall blossom from your fear - Jhin is more than just a man with a gun. He has a variety of tricks and traps to help him captivate his prey.

I am The Fast - Jhin is much more mobile than most marksmen, gaining movement speed after he fires.

RACE

You must be human to understand the human condition, and you need to be a Variant Human to understand how to rise above the rest. Variant Humans increase two skills and you’ll be increasing Dexterity and Charisma, and they gain a free Skill such as Slight of Hand for mastery on a piano and with gun tricks. You also gain a langue and I’d suggest something romantic such as Celestial.

Finally you get a Feat and Crossbow Expert will allow you to use Whisper more effectively. You ignore the loading property on Crossbows and can fire at enemies in melee range without Disadvantage, in addition to being able to shoot one more time with your Bonus Action. The fourth shot is a bonus; it’s poetic.

ABILITY SCORES

15; DEXTERITY - Dexterity is used for ranged weapons, and does it look like you have a sword?

14; INTELLIGENCE - You may be mad but the truth is that no one understands your genius.

13; CHARISMA - People are still raving about you on the Rift to this day. A performer needs to captivate their audience, and you steal their hearts and minds perfectly.

12; WISDOM - Jhin is a wise man with some wise words to share. “They’re gonna live, until they die.”

10; CONSTITUTION - Jhin is an ADC and a Marksman, not a Tank. That being said feel free to swap these stats around if you want a build that’s more practical and less roleplay-focused.

8; STRENGTH - Have you seen Jhin’s arms? They’re like noodles. I doubt he could lift a sword if he tried.

This would be the stat array I’d use to roleplay the character but if you want a more practical build with less RP stats and more bulk I’d suggest setting your Constitution to a 13 and further buffing it with you racial stat increase.

BACKGROUND

Jhin is a performer with a... unique performance. The Entertainer background is ideal for an artist: you get proficiency with Acrobatics and Performance as well as Disguise Kit proficiency so you can wear your perfect mask. You also gain proficiency with one musical instrument of your choice but unfortunately piano isn’t an option. The next classiest instrument would be a Viol so take that if your DM isn’t willing to put pianos around for you to perform.

Speaking of which your By Popular Demand feature lets you put on the most perfect show of your audiences’ lives. You can perform for an audience in exchange for food and housing, and the common-folk will recognize you for the artist you truly are.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - ROGUE 1

Starting this build off as a Rogue for the added skill proficiencies, so you can be perfect in as many ways you can. Take proficiency in Deception, Persuasion, Stealth, and Insight. The only skill I can argue against on this list is Stealth but as a Rogue we’ll be needing it. You also get Expertise in 2 skills: naturally Performance shall be one of them, and since we need it Stealth shall be the other.

Why do we need expertise in Stealth? Well to Sneak Attack you need to either have advantage on an attack, attack out of stealth, or have an ally within 5 feet of your target. If those conditions are met you’ll do an extra d6 of damage to the target. Remember that you can only apply Sneak Attack onto one of your shots so it would be in-character to only use Sneak Attack on your 4th shot, which would happen every other turn currently. You can sacrifice some roleplay for practicality though. But in terms of roleplay you also get Thieves’ Cant, a special language which only other artists understand. It’s not your fault others can’t read poetry.

LEVEL 2 - ROGUE 2

Taking the second value level in Rogue for Cunning Action which will let you Dash, Disengage, or Hide as a bonus action. Remember that firing a shot with Crossbow Expert also takes a bonus action, so you will have to choose between firing a shot or moving out of the way.

LEVEL 3 - FIGHTER 1

And now we learn how to inspire oneself to fight. First level Fighters get a Fighting Style and naturally we’ll be going for Archery to aim our shots better. In addition you get Second Wind which lets you spend a Bonus Action to pop Heal on yourself for 1d10 + your fighter level healing. You can only do this once without resting so don’t expect this to eat up your action economy, but it’s always good to come prepared.

Now that you have proficiency in all weapons I believe it’s a good time to talk about what your weapons of choice will be. A Hand Crossbow will take the role of your pistol, and if you want to use your ultimate a Heavy Crossbow can be used thanks to Crossbow Expert. Just remember that swapping between weapons takes some time.

LEVEL 4 - FIGHTER 2

Wish level 4 was more impressive, but 2/2 is poetic in its own right. Regardless second level Fighters get Action Surge, allowing them to take another action on their turn. Note that this is only an action, not a bonus action, so unfortunately even with Action Surge we’re still only at 3 shots currently. You only get one charge of this ability so use it wisely.

LEVEL 5 - FIGHTER 3

3rd level Fighters get to choose their Martial Archetype and did you know that Jhin is actually psychic? The Psychic Warrior from the Psionics UA lets you channel your inner genius into your strikes. You have a choice of Psionic Armament - Augmented Defenses lets you use your reaction to reduce the damage that you or an ally takes by a d10, but the much more in-character choice would be Augmented Strikes which lets you do an extra dFOUR psychic damage on one of your strikes. Again the most in-character choice would be to do this every 4 shots but don’t take away your potential. You can swap between these on a Long Rest but Augmented Strikes is far more in character.

You also get a Telekinetic Hand, allowing you to cast the Mage Hand cantrip and make the hand invisible if you wish. It’s not in character but it’s still a nice utility to have.

LEVEL 6 - FIGHTER 4

4th level Fighters get an Ability Score Improvement and of course we’ll be increasing our Dexterity modifier to a +4 by putting both ability scores into DEX.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 7 - FIGHTER 5

5th level Fighters get an Extra Attack, putting our number of attacks per turn to 3. We’re slowly getting to our fourth shot but remember that even without your Bonus Action you can now get 4 shots in by using Action Surge.

LEVEL 8 - FIGHTER 6

6th level Fighters get another Ability Score Improvement and while you’re welcome to leave your Dexterity at a +4 capping off your modifier will give us maximum damage and AC.

LEVEL 9 - ROGUE 3

At level 3 Rogues get their Roguish Archetype and Scouts are The Fast. The Survivalist trait gives you expertise in the Nature and Survival skills. Scout is meant as the nature archetype for Rogue but Jhin has always had a thing for trees and flowers. Your Sneak Attack damage also increases to 2d6 at this level.

But the more useful trait is Skirmisher which lets move up to half your speed as a reaction without provoking opportunity attacks when an enemy ends its turn within 5 feet of you. You need distance if the enemy jungler is ganking you, and if the support isn’t making space for you you’ll make it yourself.

NOTE: Inquisitive is a good alternative if you want more reliable Sneak Attacks. Eye for Detail is more in-character for Jhin and Ear for Deceit is less-so, but Insightful Fighting is the main ability you’d want from Inquisitive.

If you succeed an Insight check against the enemy’s Deception skill you can Sneak Attack them for a minute as long as you don’t have Disadvantage. This mark will last until you use the ability on someone else. If you’re planning on playing this subclass instead of Scout I recommend replacing your Stealth proficiency with Insight for this reason.

LEVEL 10 - ROGUE 4

Level 4 is a wonderful level for a wonderful Ability Score Improvement, or in this case a Feat. Take the Sharpshooter Feat for even more damage, particularly on your fourth shot. Sharpshooter lets you attack at Whisper’s maximum range without Disadvantage, and ignore the effects of cover when firing. But most importantly you can give yourself -5 to a roll for a whopping +10 to the damage! Don’t miss, but you won’t miss. "I cannot be good. I must be perfection."

LEVEL 11 - ROGUE 5

5th level Rogues see their Sneak Attack increase to 3d6 for a better fourth shot. They also get Uncanny Dodge, letting them use their reaction to reduce an attack’s damage by half if they can see the source. Is the sheriff shooting you? Stand behind your support: they can take the hit. Just remember that you only have one reaction per turn so you’ll have to choose between Uncanny Dodge and Skirmisher.

LEVEL 12 - ROGUE 6

6th level Rogues get proficiency in two more skills. Choose Slight of Hand for more gun flips and Insight to know when you’ve captivated beauty on your enemies’ faces.

LEVEL 13 - ROGUE 7

At level 7 Rogues get Evasion, letting them take no damage on a successful DEX save or half damage on a failed save. Jhin can be remarkably evasive with Whisper’s 4th shot loaded, and speaking of which your Sneak Attack increases to 4d6.

LEVEL 14 - ROGUE 8

Eight is two fours, and as we all know four means an Ability Score Improvement. Invest in Intelligence for trapmaking, when the time comes for traps.

LEVEL 15 - ROGUE 9

9th level Scouts are The Fast, and get Superior Mobility to increase their walking, climbing, and swimming speed by 10 feet. Not only that but 9th level Rogues get their Sneak Attack increased to 5d6 - a little over 4d6, but it’s still more damage.

NOTE ON INQUISITIVE: At level 9 Inquisitive Rogues get Steady Eye which gives them Advantage on Perception and Investigation checks if they move half their speed or less. (15 feet.) While this can be a good skill to roleplay Jhin as an art critic of sorts it’s not too useful for the build.

If you want to maximize your fours stopping at Rogue 8 in Inquisitive will give you 4d6 on your sneak attack as well as make both your Rogue and Fighter levels divisible by 4, which does mean more Ability Score Improvements.

(Artwork found on lol-stats.net)

LEVEL 16 - FIGHTER 7

Level 7 Fighters get a Captive Audience with Strength of Mind. With your Bonus Action you can fire a shot at a target within 20 feet of you. The target must make a Strength save and on a failed save they take 2d6 + your intelligence modifier damage, and can either be pulled towards you or pushed away from you by 15 feet. On a successful save they only take half the damage and aren’t pushed. You use it a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier, and regain all uses after a long rest.

LEVEL 17 - FIGHTER 8

8th level Fighters get another Ability Score Improvement: increase your Intelligence for more deadly flourishes and more refined kills. "Death is certain, but killing doesn't have to be ugly."

LEVEL 18 - FIGHTER 9

9th level Fighters get Indomitable, letting them reroll a saving throw once per Long Rest. Considering your two main saving throws of Intelligence and Dexterity have a +10 by this point this will guarantee that you dodge a dangerous skill-shot.

LEVEL 19 - FIGHTER 10

10th level Psychic Warriors get Telekinetic Bulwark. When you take the Attack action you can choose not to shoot one of your four shots to instead create a 10 foot radius of protection around you. Anything in the AoE has half cover and Advantage on Strength saves. The effect lasts for a minute unless your incapacitated, and it comes back after a Long Rest or after you use your Second Wind. Your support should be peeling for you and if your pocket Janna wants to ult you that’s all the better.

Your Psionic Armament feature also sees an improvement, blocking a d12 if you choose Defense or doing a d6 in damage if you choose Strikes.

LEVEL 20 - FIGHTER 11

Our final level is the 11th level of Fighter for a third Extra Attack, meaning that yes: with Crossbow Expert we can now shoot four times!

FINAL BUILD

PROS

You... inspire me - If you apply Sneak Attack, Psionic Armament, and Sharpshooter onto your fourth shot with your hand crossbow you will do a total of 6d6 + 15 piercing damage and an additional d6 psychic damage. In addition if you hit Sharpshooter on your 3 other hand crossbow attacks you will do 3d6 + 45 damage with those shots. This means that in total you will be doing 10d6 + 60 damage if all four of your shots hit, averaging out to a total of 100 damage per turn and maxing out at 120 damage per turn if you roll 6s on all your damage die. This isn’t even considering Action Surge giving you 3 more attacks to use!

I get nervous before every performance - Even though you aren’t the tankiest you have a lot of ways to keep alive in a fight. Evasion, Uncanny Dodge, Skirmisher, and Strength of Mind let you dodge and weave around in combat while keeping away from your enemies.

Learn what beauty truly is - You are remarkably useful out-of-combat with Expertise in 6 skills (two of which are set for you to be fair), an invisible Mage Hand, and tools to help you with infiltration. Not to mention amazing roleplay utility as a performer to get free lodging for your party.

CONS

You have too many lines - Your action economy is completely whack with 4 different bonus actions and two different reactions to choose from. Yes two of those bonus actions are limited but the choice between Crossbow Expert or Cunning Action can be tough.

My theater is the mind - The two stats you have saving throw proficiency with (DEX and INT) are also the two stats you’ve invested the most points into. This means that every saving throw other than Dexterity and Intelligence are astoundingly low, and you are vulnerable to pretty much any spell or effect which requires a save in a skill other than DEX or INT.

Only perfectio- - With your heavy investment in Dexterity and Intelligence you have little to spend on other stats. This means low health with Constitution as well as weak roleplay with Wisdom and (unfortunately) Charisma. If you can guarantee acquisition of a Headband of Intellect (maybe from an Artificer) I’d gladly take that instead of investing in our INT.

But the audience doesn’t know what happens off-stage. Perform perfectly and show your genius to the world; take a bow to the audience after knocking them dead. And be wary of the Steel Shadow blocking out your spotlight.

(Artwork by Revena Mourmoon)

#DnD 5e #dnd #dnd build #dnd multiclass #dnd fighter #dnd rogue #League of Legends #League of Legends Jhin #four #4

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tanadrin · 6 years ago

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Of the many worlds

"There are some--and forgive me if this question seems a bit silly, perhaps you get it from new species all the time--but there are some who worry that with this discovery, with first contact, we humans will struggle in the future - that in understanding ourselves to no longer be alone, we also understand ourselves to no longer be special. Do you find that's often the case when a world discovers it's actually part of a greater interstellar community?"

Ambassador Molkudai cocked his head, putting on an almost quizzical expression; though the interviewer had been warned repeatedly that trying to read human expressions into the alien face was a recipe for misunderstanding. The Ambassador was not unexpressive--his long, narrow face had a kind of elegance, ended in soft lips that moved according to a fixed set of expressions that no doubt were of great significance to those who knew him well, and his large, bright eyes, though they were entirely inhuman in their particulars, nonetheless seemed to impart an electric, curious gaze at everything around him. He sat, awkwardly large, on the soft armchair across from the interviewer, his heavily-muscled, many-limbed body mostly statue-still, except when he made some small gesture for emphasis, though these seemed always to come at strange times and for strange reasons. Resting in one ear was a little electronic device which, the interviewer had been told, was a kind of translator. t was to this he now seemed to be listening.

Molkudai made another quick, fluid gesture. "I am afraid I find the question difficult," he said. His English was slow and heavily accented. Despite the translator, the interviewer was told, the Ambassador had had to learn English like everyone else. What was the point of the thing, then? But for eight weeks of study since first contact, he was doing remarkably well.

"Why do you fear you are lesser, for not being alone?"

"I suppose lesser isn't the word I would use," the interviewer said. "Not diminished in our capacities, only in our... rarity? Our value?"

The ambassador paused to listen to his translator again.

"I am not certain I understand. The concepts are a little strange to me, I think."

"We can move on to another question, if you'd prefer?" They'd already had to do this a few times. There were some questions people insisted on asking questions that even the interviewer--who was a journalist and a TV presenter, not a scientist--could have told them would just be confusing and frustrating for everyone involved. Religion, Earth politics, perceptions of Earth culture. I mean, honestly, they had landed less than three months ago--they barely had enough time to form an opinion on the weather, even *without* the language barrier. "Another issue of vocabulary, perhaps."

"No. Not at all," Molkudai said. "I mean, the question is perfectly intelligible to me. It is an issue of... values."

The interviewer perked up a little at this. The ambassador and his colleagues had been surprisingly cagey on their own values and beliefs in all their interactions with the humans so far--perhaps some kind of Prime Directive thing?

"You are creatures of rarity, yes? Creatures of loneliness-in-the-world?"

"I'm afraid I have to admit that this time I don't understand, Ambassador."

The ambassador fiddled with his translator for a moment.

"Scarcity economics?"

The interviewer raised an eyebrow. He knew what the aliens thought of their economic system, anyway.

"No, that is not the term. Infernal device!" The ambassador plucked the translator from his ear and slipped it into a pocket. "Useful for some things. Not others. Forgive me. It is... a help-of-memory, for words I do not know. We use them also to translate the things that are beyond language. Habits of the body, of the expression, of gesture. And for simulating the minds of aliens."

"Are we so strange?" the interviewer said, smiling.

"Yes and no. And this is what I mean. You are not so strange to me, an arnovate of the motile stage. Not much stranger than are most of my alien colleagues. Your body, your language, your psychology is that of a savannah-runner, a family-clan-maker, a gatherer, a live-young-birther, conditioned to life around your yellow sun, in a place where the trees fail and give way to grasses. You are not so far removed from that past that that is where your mind yet rests, just as I am not so far removed from the foggy swamps and the glowing nights of my ancient past--and where my most ancient kindred would have died of heatstroke and dehydration in an afternoon in your ancestral environment, yours would have succumbed instantly to the crushing pressure of mine. Yet even across bodies developed for such different places, and minds developed for such bodies, and cultures developed for such minds, we may speak. How very fortunate."

"With some help from technology."

"Less than we might hope."

The interviewer laughed. "Quite so, quite so. But this goes back to my question, I suppose: you and the other ambassadors have said that life out there"--gesturing vaguely up at the ceiling--"is very diverse. A dizzying array of species and worlds and cultures, many at very different stages of development. Cooperating, or at least not constantly fighting. In our own stories, we've often fancied ourselves unique, in some ways. Perhaps superior, at least in the narrow things we particularly prize. I guess we've had only other Earth animals to compare ourselves to. But I'd lay odds we must be quite average compared to the rest of the universe."

"Rarity, scarcity. Value in rarity, that is what I mean. Savannah-hunters, still! Mindset of fear of winter, fear of starvation, fear of loss. Must a thing be rare to have value? Is a star less brilliant for being part of a shoal of jewels in the night sky? I think not."

"Forgive me, but that seems a rather anemic platitude."

"Perlin noise."

"What?"

"Apologies. My mouth races ahead. Bear with an explanation, please.

"There are mathematical ways of generating pseudorandom noise; one such quick and easy method is called in English 'Perlin noise,' I believe. To the human or arnovate eye, the underlying mathematical formula is invisible. It is unpredictable, for we are, in the grand scheme of the universe, quite mathematically stupid, though perhaps if we were cleverer it would seem no more random than a list of the natural numbers, who next value can be quite easily inferred. Yet for all the randomness of such noise, it is not diverse. The pattern-recognition capacities of our brains, though very different in how they operate, would both be quickly bored by an endless sea of Perlin noise. No two regions would be quite alike--but none would be dissimilar enough from the others to justify our interest.

"You fear, maybe, that because the universe is filled with life, there will be nothing in the end to distinguish a human much. That here, on this world, are other savannah-hunters who give birth to a small number of live young; here on another world, city-builders struggling with the consequences of rapid industrialization; here, on another, and throughout our region of the galaxy, others unlike you in some details but like you in enough generalities that Earth must necessarily be nothing more than a footnote in the history of civilization.

"I wish to emphasize to you how utterly and entirely mistaken you are. Your error cuts to my heart like a spear of grief, for in it I see, I think, some of the ancient loneliness and privation of your kind. Out of it, you are accustomed to giving value to rarity, to prizing gold as much for its uncommon occurrence as for its shine. Alas! your view of the universe is too watery, too thin."

"It's not just about rarity, is it?" said the interviewer. "It may be a human value, but I don't think it's a foolish one, to want to feel like your life has purpose. What, in a vast, crowded cosmos, can any individual human hope to contribute in the way of math or science or art that hasn't already been done a million times before?"

The ambassador laughed--well, did whatever his version of laughing was. "Not at all a strictly human feeling. Yet I am delighted to inform you, you are still in error! Hmm, how to say..." He seemed to think for a long moment.

"I am no physicist, but my physicist friends inform me that, though often elegant and beautiful, the laws governing nature contain great depth and sophistication. And as you observe, the universe is vast--possibly infinite. Let us for argument’s sake restrict ourselves to a finite universe. A bounded one, even if it is in practical terms bounded only by the horizon of our best telescopes and the swiftest beams of light.

"For all the diversity of the configuration of matter and energy within this vast but finite universe, the term 'infinity' might still reasonably apply. For between the Big Bang and the death of the last star, no human, no arnovate, no machine intelligence of the highest order, could compute the total interesting configurations of matter and energy within that volume; to say nothing of the uninteresting ones as well.

"And even attending to the iron laws of physics, the merciless laws of physics, the tyrannical cruelty which requires our ships to limp at relativistic fractions across the voids between the stars, life may arise in an astounding variety of conditions. To be sure, chemistry favors some configurations over others. Worlds that teem with life are confined to a narrow band around long-lived, stable stars. Worlds on which that life masters steel and fire and interplanetary travel must have conditions which favor metallurgy and orbital flight. All true, all true. Constraints toward a common middle, perhaps. Limits on diversity.

"But oh, how foolish we are to suppose that even in that island in an island in an island of possibility there is in any practical sense a limit! Within those confines, the configuration space of environments, of biology, of evolutionary solutions to environmental problems, is still vast. Vast beyond reckoning! And of everything *else* that ensues--of minds which are built on these evolutionary substrates, of cultures and languages built on those minds--the scope of possibility blossoms outward yet again. Beyond exponential. Finite, maybe, in some austere and philosophical sense. Not in any practical one.

"You are thinking of the living worlds as banks of snow, yes? Fields of perlin noise. From far away, all the same. I shall tell you how we see the matter.

"Your sun was picked out as a candidate star for habitable exoplanets in the 102nd stellar survey from the star Daiamirra, and the presence of an oxygen-bearing world in the habitable zone confirmed two hundred and seven years later, when the first survey ships were able to get close enough to take careful readings. The instant this was confirmed--protocol at the time dictated at least five transits, though the scouts were overeager, and observed only three--a message was transmitted back to the Contact Institute to prepare a mission.

"When we received that message, every world around Daiamirra celebrated for seventy-four days. We declared the holiest of holidays, one that would be commemorated for all time. We sent word of our discovery to every inhabited star system within reach; even now, centuries since, I expect that that message is still winding its way from star to star, and I assure you, as certainly as I know that one and one is two, on every world that that message is received, the most solemn and the most joyous rituals are observed; the most abject thanks given to whatever gods are worshipped.

"And Earth is not unique in that respect. For each of the ten thousand living worlds, it has ever been the same. But even being one among ten thousand, it shall never be said Earth is not rare, or Earth is not beautiful. Its rarity and its beauty is utterly undiminished, though it is set against ten thousand planets equally rare and equally beautiful. And for each new world we find, our hearts are moved to joy and grief at once: joy, that we are so much less alone! Joy, that the universe contains such wonders in it! Grief, that they are so far away; that until our swift scouts and our alien gifts reach them, they shall believe themselves unknown, or forgotten.

"I know of no world even remotely like Earth. And I have studied thousands of worlds. I know of no world of brilliant blue skies where vast leviathans sing slow songs beneath the waves. I know of no world where the moon sometimes is framed by the sun as a burning ring, let alone where this event is so common that every tongue on the planet has a word for it. I know of no world of deep misty jungles where nonetheless ancient stone cities were raised, of no world where the silent can speak with their hands, of no world that burned two cities with nuclear fire then never used that terrible weapon again. I know of no world which, on visiting their satellite, left behind a message of peace, to whatever traveler might pass by in some distant day; I know of no world with your wars, and your sorrows, and your triumphs, for all these things are yours and yours alone, and I marvel, I revel, that I have lived to learn of them and see them.

"There is no world like yours. There is no people like yours. There is no world like Daiamir-Sho, with its towers that pierce the atmosphere; there is no world like Utashanna, whose forests are perpetually burning; there is no world like Farren, high above a deadly pulsar, whose people have never seen the sky; there is no world like Cairasten, all whose deserts are replaced by endless flowering meadows for one day every hundred years. And oh! You do not know of the lives of the saints of Irenost, the holiest martyrs in all the galaxy; you do not know of the joy of Ucaren, who redeemed a world from death; or of Palas, who bargained with the gods for the sake of all Creation, or of her sister, who crowned herself with the pains of hell to save her. You of course have your own tales and your own histories--but so does every world, and they are alike only in that they are as full of beauty and horror and triumph and ruin as yours.

"Earth is not a grain of sand on a beach. It is more like... a moment of time, within all the moments that make up a life. Nor do we, of the stars beyond, overlook its souls: for in microcosm, every soul is like a world. Like a world, a soul is vast, and full of things which are beautiful, and things profane.

"There is a ritual--once unique to the world of my home, but I have endeavored to commend it to others, and so I shall now commend it to you, and all who are listening. The ritual is thus: choose an arbitrary instant in time. Now, say, as my hand strikes the arm of this chair. In that moment, somewhere--on Earth, on Daiamir-Sho, on Utashanna or Cairasten, or somewhere yet unknown to us--a new soul has come into being. You do not know its name, its future, its family, or its condition. You know only that it exists. But that is holy. That is a thing of joy beyond all words. Hold that solemn and that joyful thought in your mind; carry it with you like a warm, comforting jewel. You may perform the inverse as well, of course, to mourn the dead whose names you do not know; to mourn the dead who will be forever forgotten. But you must remember, if you do, that they did live; and without all such lives, even the forgotten ones, we would not be here to seek one another out, to speak, to share our fates, to look up when the sun is hidden from view, and to observe the shining stars."

#tanadrin's fiction

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iamshadow21 · 7 years ago

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How can we help people with disabilities? For example, autistic people who see the world differently.*

* This question was posted on another social media site. What follows is my answer. 1) Treat us as people, not as less. An adult or an older child being talked to in a baby voice is not on, regardless of how their disability presents. Talk to us at age appropriate level. If we're interested in something, get excited about it with us, rather than telling us we're boring. Sharing our interest is our way of trying to communicate. We love a thing. We're opening up ourselves to you. It might not be how you're used to doing a conversation, but it is meaningful communication, and it means we want to share that excitement with you. That's a big deal. Recognise it. 2) Our diagnosis is none of your business, unless we feel comfortable talking to you about it. It's really none of your business if we were diagnosed as a kid, an adult, self-diagnosed, or questioning. It's none of your business if our autism has changed its presentation as we've aged. It's really none of your business if you think you know what autism looks like, and we don't match up with your preconceptions. And please, if we're verbal, dressed appropriately, out in public and unattended, it's not a compliment to tell us how well we're doing. We're just as autistic when we're 'passing' as when we really aren't. Passing for normal is not an achievement, it's a monumental effort that most of us feel long term health effects from if we have to do it daily. Allowing natural autistic behaviours is something a lot of us have to relearn in adulthood to manage our anxiety. An adult flapping, pacing, tapping, or playing with a stim toy isn't being babyish or playing at autism, they're trying to take care of themselves. Don't stare or tut or tell us we're embarrassing you. (Telling us our Tangle is awesome and you want one is totally okay, though.) 3) Our sex life is none of your business, unless we're in a sexual relationship with you. Just because we're autistic doesn't mean we can't consent. That said, if there's someone being weird and intimate with us when we're a minor and they're in a position of authority, make sure we're okay. Compliance based therapies heavily used with autistic children (like ABA) make autistic children very vulnerable to sexual abuse, because they teach children to do things that are uncomfortable, painful or unnatural to them to please adults for rewards. 4) Make a conscious choice to be okay with difference, be it physical, intellectual, neurological, whatever. This might be harder than it sounds. Disability can come with mobility needs, sensory needs, dietary needs and routine based needs. It might require communication devices or sign language, or a picture-based communication system, even if to you, the person 'seems' verbal. It's rare for an autistic person to have no difficulties with verbal communication, and if you've only ever seen them happy or relaxed, you might not know they need to use their phone to communicate when they're upset or overwhelmed. Also, non verbal autistics might have a couple of words, scripted speech, or echolalic phrases they can use when conditions are right, even though they primarily use AAC or sign. Verbal ability isn't a fixed thing. It fluctuates. Be patient if we're struggling. It's more frustrating for us than for you. 5) Everyone's disability is unique. No two autistic people are the same. Likes, dislikes, sensitivities, strengths, difficulties. An autistic person might be sensory seeking, non verbal, highly intelligent, low anxiety, highly organised. They might be highly verbal, high anxiety, low executive function, mild intellectual disability, dyslexic, supertaster. They could have any combination of interests and personality traits, and come combined with a whole array of other disabilities. Don't think because you know one autistic person, you know every autistic person. We're individuals. 6) Listen to us, not to Autism Speaks or 'autism moms'. Our experience is unique to us. It cannot be fully understood by a neurotypical bystander, regardless of how close that relationship is. Read books by autistic people (there are a lot). Donate to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network or Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. Don't light it up blue, put puzzle pieces on your car, or spread anti-vax rhetoric (which is fake science and basically hinges on the fact that a lot of people would rather have dead kids than autistic ones). Watch documentaries produced by autistic people about their experiences. Check out neurowonderful's Youtube series Ask An Autistic. 7) Don't assume we're straight. Don't assume we're cisgender. Don't assume we don't understand the complexities of our multifaceted identities. Gender and sexuality variance is present in autistic people, just as it is in neurotypical people. In fact, there's actually evidence there is a higher proportion of transgender, nonbinary and genderqueer people in the autistic community than in the genpop. Our experience of sexuality and gender is also viewed through our lens of autistic experience, and there are terms created specifically by autistic people to encapsulate this (like gendervague). 8) Don't assume we can't have relationships, friendships, and families outside of our parents and siblings. Don't assume we can't be awesome parents. Don't assume we can't make informed choices about our bodies and procreation. Autistic people have been here as long as people have been here. I'm from a multigenerational family myself, with both male and female autistic people, stretching back at least five generations, anecdotally (further than that, highly probably, but we don't have the information). 9) Don't think we'd be better off dead. This is why adults and children are murdered by parents and caregivers every year without legal repercussions. Our lives have value. The next time you see a news article where a parent cries about killing their child, don't rationalise that 'it must be so hard' to be taking care of us. That's essentially saying we're responsible for our own murder, and that it was justifiable homicide. MURDER IS MURDER. If you want to campaign for better respite and support in your area, GREAT, but don't give parents who murder their children a free pass. Parenting is hard, but people have a choice, and we must stop allowing people who make the choice to kill to get away with murder. Whenever it happens, someone else, somewhere, thinks murder is an appropriate solution to the problem of a disabled person needing care in their life, and another irreplaceable, unique person dies. 10) We have the right to exist in public spaces. Yes, that autistic person having a meltdown might be disrupting your shopping and hurting your ears. I can guarantee their life is harder than yours right then. Have some compassion (not pity) and give them some space. We have the right to be in restaurants, in theatres, in libraries and in schools. If you think a person with a disability being in those spaces is going to have a negative effect on your children, maybe you should think about your parenting, rather than about segregation.

#autism #disability #autistic women and nonbinary network #autistic self advocacy network #asan #autism acceptance #disability activism #fyi #useful information #important #actuallyautistic #not dead yet #ableism #shit people say #don't be that person

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gumnut-logic · 6 years ago

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In Need

Title: In Need

Part Five of ‘In His Place’

Marks series

Author: Gumnut

26 - 29 May 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: “Why do you do this to yourself?”

Word count: 2953

Spoilers & warnings: Virgil/Kayo, Wing!fic, not my usual fare.

Timeline: TBA

Author’s note: This is part five. @the-lady-razorsharp and I are writing this series together. You can find the entirety of the story on Ao3 in order under both our profiles. This one explains a bit more. Thank you all for your wonderful support in this venture of ours. We hope you are enjoying it as much as we’re enjoying writing it :D

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

Alan was running out of brothers.

He returned to John with some breakfast only to find the tension in the room had skyrocketed. John had tears in his eyes, and, oh my god, so did Scott. What the hell?

Something was wrong.

He opened his mouth to ask, but the expression on his eldest brother’s face had him shutting it again.

The youngest was always the protected one. He knew when he wasn’t wanted.

A soft word to John, a brush of fingers against his arm, a glance a Scott and he left.

Perhaps he should go to Virgil. His second eldest brother had always had an ear for him, a kind word of encouragement...

But Virgil had disappeared into his workshop a week ago. Alan had attempted to see him several times, but the man was obsessing over something and didn’t want to talk. To anyone. Alan had even seen Grandma leaving the workshop despondent. Kayo was volatile and worth hiding from if he valued his life. Brains was the only person who managed to hold a conversation with Virgil, but that appeared to be in another language, the engineering concepts were so far above him.

Everything was out of whack, off kilter. IR was barely functioning with two operatives down and everyone was hurting.

Including Alan.

After all, one brother with limbs missing and almost dead from blood loss, and another brother broken in more ways than one.

The only brother left was Gordon.

And god, he needed to talk to him.

Normally, Gordon was his go-to anyway. He went to all his brothers for various things, but Gordon was closest in age and they had always been a pair. So yes, Gordon was most often his confidant and he didn’t hesitate to approach the aquanaut for help.

Except this time, he couldn’t be found.

Tracy Island was under a cloud bank of grief and anxiety. The whole house was steeped in it and this morning the weather was echoing the depression by providing a thick sea fog that obscured everything.

If a brother wanted to hide, it would be easy.

Alan had scoured the house, with no trace of his next eldest brother anywhere. The hangars were next, but module four was empty and, with the exception of Virgil’s workshop, there was no indication that any brother had been down here for days.

That left the beach. If Gordon was worried, he would seek out the ocean. Of course, there was the chance he was in the ocean, but Alan had hope that he hadn’t swum off to wherever it was he ended up on his ocean forays.

He took a guess and headed out to one of his brother’s favourite spots - a rocky beach directly opposite Mateo. It had an array of rock pools always full of life. Gordon had even created a few artificial pools of his own for study purposes. Alan had secretly named it Bay de Gordo. Gordon called it Butt Beach for reasons only known to Gordon.

The fog swirled around him as he made his way past the palm trees and around the bluff. Visibility was minimal and if he hadn’t known the island as well as he did, he could have stumbled himself an injury. It was ghostly. Jagged rock appeared to emerge from the mist and there was no wind. The whole island appeared to be holding its breath.

As the water came into view, Alan let out a breath as a humanoid shape was sketched out in the gloom. Iconically, his brother was decked out in only his swimwear, standing on half-submerged rocks in the lagoon.

Staring out to sea.

“Gordon?”

His brother didn’t respond. He was focussed on the hidden horizon.

“Gordon?”

Alan put his foot onto the first of the rocks and stepping-stoned his way out to the silent figure.

“Gordon!”

The aquanaut startled. “Alan? What the hell?”

“I’ve been calling you.”

“Oh. What do you want?”

Alan frowned. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Sure.”

“What do you want, Alan?”

He fought the urge to take a step back. “To talk.”

“About what?”

“Uh, stuff?”

His brother looked away for a moment, his eyes wandering to the lack of horizon again. A sigh and Gordon ran a hand across his face and into his hair. “Sorry, Allie. This sucks.”

Alan let his shoulders drop. “No kidding.”

Nothing was said for a few minutes, both brothers thinking. But Alan needed to talk. He had to.

“Gordon, why is Scott crying?”

The aquanaut’s head shot up. “Crying? Scott’s crying?”

“Kinda? He had tears in his eyes. John, too.”

A moment of decision in his eyes and Gordon’s whole posture slumped. “It’s Virgil.”

“What?”

“Scott found him pulling out his own feathers attempting to make new ones for John.”

“What?! Why?!”

“Something about needing data. There are gaps in his mark and he was bleeding. Kayo was livid. She and Scott have him bailed up in the infirmary.”

“He was hurting himself? On purpose?” Something inside Alan twisted in pain.

“He said it was the only way. Wants to continue. Needs to pull out more.”

Alan stared at his brother. Gordon obviously wasn’t taking this any better than Alan. His lips were thin enough to be bloodless.

But then Alan thought of John. Of his mangled mark and those two horrible gouges in his back. He thought of his own golden span, as blond as his hair, catching the sun as he flew ever so fast over the ocean. To have that torn from him. To never soar to those heights again.

He looked down at his feet. “I can understand that.”

Gordon was staring. He could feel those russet-brown eyes on him. Out of all five brothers, Gordon would be least likely to understand the joy of flying with only wings for support as he had none of his own.

“Gordon, wouldn’t you do almost anything to help John?”

Voice quiet. “Almost.”

“Then you can’t begrudge Virgil the attempt.”

“I don’t.”

Alan frowned. “What?”

“I don’t.” An indrawn hiss between teeth. “Allie, I need to do some laps.”

“Gordon, can’t we just talk about this a bit?”

“I-“ Gordon was obviously caught between his need for the sea and Alan’s need for him. “Can you give me half an hour? I just need...the water.”

“Okay.” Alan swallowed. “I’ll wait for you here.”

“Thanks, Alan.” He reached out and caught Alan’s shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze, before turning back towards the sea. The unique mark on his brother’s back shimmered grey and silver, the lines shifting and reforming shape in the foggy gloom.

There were no feather lines on Gordon’s back. Gordon was different from all his brothers. His mark was not static. It shifted with mood and need and want. Today it shifted into a complex wide diamond shape with a thin tail trailing down his back into his swimwear.

And unlike his brothers, when he activated his mark, the mark did not lift from his skin, it sunk into it. The lines sculpting his body, absorbing the human and creating the form chosen.

Today, his mark shone as the aquanaut jumped from stone to stone, gathering momentum. On the last rock, he leapt into the air and, in a swirl of fog, shifted into an eagle ray, diving into the water and disappearing beneath the waves.

Gordon’s transformations never left Alan without a shiver and a wonder of exactly how it felt.

And if he would ever see his brother again.

-o-o-o-

Virgil woke slowly, more slowly than usual and once enough neurons had fired in the right sequence, he recognised the remains of sedation.

Scott.

Damnit.

Rolling onto his back reminded him exactly why Scott might have seen knocking him out a necessary solution. Pain shot up and down his mark and he was forced to roll back onto his stomach.

Ow.

There had been yelling. Scott had been furious. But it was scared furious, not anger. He had terrified his brother.

He sighed as yet another wave of guilt washed over him. A cough, a grimace and he closed his eyes against the images that wouldn’t stop haunting him.

A beach off eastern Australia on the way back from a successful mission. It had been unusual to have John and Kay with him instead of Gordon and Alan. But change could be as good as a holiday and they had a few moments so under the pretence of grabbing a few extra rays of sunshine for John, they had set Thunderbird Two down on the beach and taken a moment for a breather.

John was down from TB5 for a break and it had been great to have his little brother along for the ride. Kay had been an extra pleasure and despite the seriousness of a rescue, they had taken those moments to bond a little and freshen up a few of John’s land-based skills. The beach on the way home had just been a bonus.

Some bonus.

Ten minutes after they had landed, a ship had appeared in the sky, Alan had started yelling in their ears and suddenly there were falling children.

Children. The bastard had thrown children off his ship and watched them fall. All to get the two Tracy boys to do exactly what they did.

Virgil didn’t even think. He was in lift, his mark phasing through his uniform within seconds, wings spreading, his boots tossing up sand as he took a running leap into the air.

John was only a second behind him.

Two children, two rescuers. It was simply planned, but effective. Virgil caught the little boy, John a little girl. Kay had boarded TB2, opening and raising the overhead hatch. Virgil had back-winged, killing off his descent velocity enough to hand the child to Kay, before regaining altitude to help John.

Because behind them was an ominous buzzing. John had his hands full with the little girl and three flying mechanical creatures with outstretched claws were narrowing in on him.

Again, Virgil didn’t think.

Perhaps he should have. It might have changed the outcome.

He threw himself between John and the mechas, his laser deployed, slicing one from the sky almost immediately.

“Virgil Tracy, is it?” On loudspeaker from flying mechanical bugs, it was creepy enough to make him pause. “You’ll do nicely.”

The two remaining mechas suddenly became four and Virgil became seriously outnumbered. Kay was yelling at him over comms that the children were safe. He needed to return to Thunderbird Two.

Easier said than done. He took another one out with his laser, but Virgil couldn’t hover and the bugs had greater manoeuvrability than he.

One clamped onto his right wing and yanked. The pain was blinding. The world spun as he lost altitude and began to fall, mecha grinding bone against metal.

But the sun shone off his brother’s glorious white wings. John’s hands caught him, those wings a white blur of muscle and intent, working ever so hard to stop his spin. John’s hands on his right pinion, untangling the bug’s claw from Virgil’s wing and flinging it away.

The other two mechas snatching his brother from behind, claws digging into white feathers.

Laughter over the loudspeakers.

His own hoarse yell and then his scream as the bug grabbed his wing again and simply broke it. Discarding both him and his wing, it joined the attack on his brother.

No!

That last image of John caught in all those claws; red flecking white as he struggled.

He couldn’t reach his little brother. Couldn’t save him. His wings couldn’t support him. He was falling. The planet up and hit him, ripping conscious thought from his mind.

Kay had to tell him what happened next. Apparently, Thunderbird One had torn onto the scene. It was Scott who caught John as he fell, discarded by the bugs as they buzzed off, precious feathers in their grip. Both John and Virgil had been bundled onto TB2 and there had been a mad dash for Tracy Island.

Virgil had woken in this very room to find out his little brother had had his wings torn from his body and would never fly again.

Scott had tears in his eyes.

Scott.

Crying.

Virgil scrunched his eyes shut and had to force the breath he was holding from his body.

His back complained.

He had lain in this bed as long as he could, but eventually he had fled. Kay had followed and he found himself climbing the stairs to John’s observatory. Perhaps seeing John himself would have been more sensible, but he couldn’t face his brother, unconscious or not.

He still hadn’t seen the astronaut.

How could he face him after such failure?

Virgil adored his brothers, all four of them, but there was something connecting John, Gordon and himself, the middle three. There always had been. He knew the moment Gordon was born. He knew when the bullies cornered John in school - the bullies regretted it immediately. He knew when they were injured or ill. There was something connecting them, something keeping them safe.

But from the moment he had awoken in this room, it had been different.

John was in pain.

John was unconscious, but he was in pain.

At first, Virgil had been unable to get out of bed, so it had been Kay and Scott reassuring him that John was recovering, that he was okay.

But Virgil could feel him. He wasn’t okay.

It was as if ripping off his brother’s wings had ripped open their connection. Virgil could feel that shredded mark as if it was his own. He found himself lifting his wingspan just to reassure himself he still could.

And the emotion. He found himself upset at the slightest thing. There was anger. There was sadness, regret and loss. It was as if he was running the course of grief, but not of his own. He found it difficult to control, difficult to keep calm.

And John was still unconscious.

Confused and caught up in his own response, he told no one. Instead he channelled it. John had lost his wings. John need new wings. It became as simple as that.

Virgil had an artist’s hands and an engineer’s mind. He would make his little brother wings. Not wings to replace his own, but wings that could never be torn from him again.

The concept lit a spark and Virgil made it happen.

A light metal-polymer composite laced with cahelium, finely sculpted by laser. He built pinions large enough to support his brother’s weight and strong enough to fight a hurricane. Artificial muscles supported by an electronic nerve fibre network that on consultation with Brains could interface with his brother’s nervous system.

Brains was working on the most integral component. On lift, their wings phased from an otherspace to their space. They were contained within the mark and were summoned on lift. Brains had found a way to access that otherspace, to manipulate objects within it. To call for the lift.

This is what the Hood had been after. Virgil had no doubt it was. How he had found out about it, the engineer did not know, but the bastard knew and he wanted it.

There was no word in existence that could express the hate Virgil felt for that man. He had taken his father and he had hurt his brother so badly.

The room around him blurred and Virgil had to take a moment to control himself.

A blink. A frown.

John was awake.

His brother wasn’t very far away. Just in the room next door. It was like he was hearing an echo of his brother’s thoughts. No words, no pictures, just expression.

He knew the moment he stumbled out of bed and caught sight of the damage that had been done. The emotion washed over Virgil and his breath caught.

And he heard John call his broken feathers to lift.

Virgil gasped. God, it hurt, but the echo was suddenly overwhelmed by his own body’s pain as his black feathers were called forth.

His mark seared hot as his span manifested. His right wing attempted to unfold and the broken bone screamed at him. It had been healing, but he had been pulling feathers in order to digitally print crucial parts of his creation and it had been exacerbated. The medic in his head feared an infection. The agony at this unexpected stretch almost confirmed it.

Abruptly John aborted his lift, the call faded, and his sea of emotion calmed somewhat.

Eight metres of ink black wingspan collapsed to the floor either side of his bed and Virgil whimpered.

John had called his feathers. How? He let out a breath and blinked tears from his eyes.

Ow.

“Virgil!”

Oh shit. Kay.

She was standing in the doorway glaring at his limp wings. “You can’t keep lifting like this! You need to rest to heal.”

Virgil swallowed, tensed, and folded his span inch by painful inch. His eyes were scrunched shut by the time they were properly retracted. A gasp and he let them go.

His mark flared hot as his feathers settled.

He was panting. There were tears in his eyes again and he blinked them madly away.

A hand on his cheek, gentle, brushing at his stubble.

“I’m sorry.” His voice came out harsh. He blinked again.

“Why do you do this to yourself?”

He opened his mouth to answer and couldn’t. Another swallow and he found a rough whisper. “I don’t know.”

His back ached as pushed himself up and reached for her, but it was worth it to wrap his arms around her. He buried his face in her neck and clung.

-o-o-o-

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #virgil tracy #john tracy #kayo kyrano #alan tracy #gordon tracy #scott tracy #marks and wings #virgil/kayo

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dungeonmalcontent · 6 years ago

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Building NPCs

As a DM, making NPCs is essential. You can't drop your players in an empty shoe box with just monsters. How would they have gotten there? Where would they have come from? You can't escape these questions in a story based game. Even if your players are a party of frontiersmen expanding the edges of civilization—going where no man, elf, or orc has ever gone before—they were probably hired by someone to do that, or maybe they were chased into the wilderness... this means that there are NPC forces behind them (in one way or another). My point being that there's no real reason to play if there are no other people (friends, allies, and people to protect/exploit). NPCs create game play value. As the DM, it's our job to create characters that give the players reasons to keep playing. Whether that be friends, allies, arch-enemies, lovers, or just a really nice barkeep that nothing bad is ever allowed to happen to, that's all on us.

So how do you make good NPCs? Well, not the same way you make a player character.

This is sort of a lesson I learned more recently, but I've found that a good NPC is more like a monster than a player. They have simple mechanics that don't distract too much from game play, and they have their own motives that aren't based solely on the needs of the players.

I'm not saying that every merchant, tanner, or map maker your players encounter has to have a life goal and aspirations unique to them. That's some Mercer level dedication that really just functions as the cherry on top of a DM's performance.

This is probably a good time to make clear what I mean by an "NPC."

While it essentially means is any character that isn't a player, you don’t need to make a big deal about all of these characters. Most of them, at least how I have seen them played, are simply merchants. What I want to focus on are those NPCs which are more integral to the story telling experience, the ones you put actual effort and serious planning into (though, that could be all of them for some people). More specifically, a designed NPC is one that the players don't control but can essentially do everything they can.

The first villain I ever designed was meant to be nothing more than a very strong character with strong allies. I wanted my players to meet him early, thinking he was an ally, and experience how strong he as when he was working with them so that they would be adequately afraid of him when they learned he was evil. The problem was that he was so mechanically complicated that I felt like I was taking time away from my players so that I could play my own character. I didn't want to be in charge of the enemies in a fight and one of the characters fighting them, particularly when I had to look through the monster details and the character details. It was a lot of time where my players were doing nothing.

So how do you build an NPC? Mechanically speaking, like a monster. But how? That's the hard part.

There's a science to making enemies, and believe me I'm no scientist (or mathematician). Generally you want the levels to be the same, but challenge rating (CR) isn't exactly the same as a player level. If a monster has a CR of 5 that means it should be suitable for 3–4 level 5 player characters to fight. Depending on your group size, a creature with a CR at the players level would generally be a "boss" monster. You can go higher for greater difficulty, but you probably shouldn't go too much higher unless you don't plan on making that encounter a fight that can be won (which is what happened when I dropped a vampire spell caster on my level 6 party of four, they figured out pretty easily that they needed to grovel and escape).

CR has several implications. It relates to three key factors of monster design: hit points (HP), armor class (AC), and attack ability. HP and AC are pretty straight forward (just look at all the stats of similar monsters in the same CR bracket, Fight Club 5 is great for this). The hard part is attack ability, which isn't so much a stat as it is a limit to what the monster can do.

Monsters typically have one or two special abilities (like spellcasting, magical features, or a reaction attack), but they also have simple attacks they can make as "default" actions. These are generally an attack or multi-attack with a weapon or a weaponized feature. The more chances to attack a creature has, the less overall damage they tend to be able to do (big difference from, say, a PC fighter).

Not to stray too far away from the topic, NPCs should operate in a very similar way. As far as combat goes, they should really only be able to do one or two things (unless they're supposed to be a boss sort of encounter), and the rest of your notes for them are better spent as role playing information.

Great examples of well designed NPCs can be found in the modules made by WotC, particularly Storm King's Thunder.

These days, when I design a character to help my players I follow these basic steps:

If I want a paladin archetype, for instance, I give them a quick stat build based on the array. Then I give them a weapon that fits their personality, not necessarily their class. If they're going to be strong enough, they get a second attack each round. The rest of the features can mostly be ignored, maybe give them a cantrip. That's it. And, if I can, I give them a reason not to fight.

The goal of the game is to challenge the players after all.

Reblog with your favorite NPC encounter?

Also, maybe I’ll make a post on how to turn a character sheet in Fight Club into a compendium bestiary entry. Because that’s a good in-between.

#dnd #D&d #dungeons and dragons #5e #5th edition #character creation #tabletop games

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honeylikewords · 6 years ago

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Hey, K, I know it’s been days but you still feel like infodumping about Spiderverse? :o

pettyprocrastination said to jonedwardbernthal:Hello yes I loved into the spiderverse with my heart and soul please info dump I require sustenance

YES I DO WANT TO INFODUMP ABOUT SPIDERVERSE THANK YOU FOR ASKING

okay okay so i’m gonna put this all under a cut for those who haven’t seen the movie and wish to remain spoiler free, and i’ll also put a couple images so that mobile users (who sometimes automatically see the post, apparently?) to warn them to scroll past!

(pls enjoy my crappy ms paint warning banner ghskhgdk)

SO FIRST OF ALL I WANT TO SAY that genuinely, this movie changed my life. I have never been as excited or happy about a movie as I was with this one, and can find few (if any) flaws with it. I would have to be hyper-nitpicky if I wanted to point out anything wrong with it, but overall, I gotta say, this movie inspired me, made me cry, made me laugh out loud, made me shake and jitter with excitement.

I should point out that, yes, the visuals can be kinda jarring, especially for sensitive people like me who react to flashing stimulus and abrupt movement very poorly, but I honestly LOVED the visual aspect of the film. The character design is incredible, the animation is so unique and stunning, and every single person has this wonderful individuality in the way they look and move that it just blows me away. This movie is already a frontrunner for an Oscar in the animation category, apparently, and it’s easy to see why.

The writing is also impeccable, with a quick pace and genuine humanity to it, and it feels so bright and alive! The way people talk is so full of character and personality, and Miles’ codeswitching is adorable and fun to listen to, and everyone has such a special and unique personality that comes through how they speak. The voice acting is INCREDIBLE and the array of the cast is SO awesome and I LOVE everyone who was in it!

I literally am so excited about everything that I’m having a hard time keeping this post linear and sensical, but I just! Love it so much!

Some people criticize the film by saying that it’s not really the “first black Spiderman movie” because Miles “shares the spotlight”, but, honestly? That didn’t come across to me at all. This movie felt entirely centered on Miles. Yes, Peter B. Parker played a big role, but, like, every movie has supporting characters and co-mains. I understand the frustration, but that’d kinda be like saying that Captain America: The First Avenger isn’t Steve’s story because Peggy gets screentime and so does Bucky. But I also do get where people are coming from and I find the frustration very valid.

But I LOVE all the spider-people, and they didn’t actually overwhelm the movie. Peni, SpiderNoir, and SpiderHam all took backseats. They were fun additions, but didn’t ever detract from the experience of this being Miles’ story. Even Gwen didn’t derail the film, or even Peter B.! They all stayed in their lanes and moved Miles’ story along, more like the wheels propelling him than roadblocks obfuscating his progression.

I loved every one of the characters, and I got so attached to all of them; Miles’ family really stands out to me, because they are such strong and loving characters, and it is so, so sadly rare to see loving black families portrayed like this. Jefferson, Miles’ dad, is allowed to be flawed without ever crossing the line into “bad dad” territory. He’s allowed to be wrong but still love his son and be doing the absolute best for him. Even Miles’ “bad” uncle, Aaron, made me cry and love him. When Aaron died, I was horrified (mostly because, I mean, god, we really did not need to see another black man getting shot by a white guy...), but they also never demonized Aaron, or downplayed the tragedy of his loss. He was heroic, even in his mistakes, and I think that was really noble on the part of the storytellers.

The movie just feels so lived in and loved and human, and you can tell that it’s just a work of art and love and passion. It’s a game-changer. I legitimately consider it the best Marvel movie ever made, on par with Black Panther in terms of artistic value and importance. It’s the fun of Thor: Ragnarok and the art and significance of Black Panther rolled into one, unique, amazing bundle that has forever set the bar for how I want movies, especially movies intended for families and children to be.

“Anyone can wear the mask” means something. It may sound like a cheesy cop-out, but it means that we don’t have to look up to Perfect Pillars Of White Heroism as our standards. It means black children from Brooklyn are heroes. Jewish people are heroes. Women are heroes. Asian people are heroes. Even Miles’ parents are heroes, and it shows the wide gamut of good people and what we owe to each other. While neither Rio nor Jefferson Morales-Davis are “superheroes”, they are legitimate heroes, doing their part to make the world a better place.

Also, check THIS:

Just saying!

Anyway, moving on; the jokes in the movie are awesome, and my family has been throwing them back and forth ever since we saw the movie. SpiderHam’s t-pose ascension into the black hole and “keep this, it’ll fit in your pocket” had us in tears. SpiderNoir and the Rubik’s cube? Incredible. Peter B. crying in the shower? Artistry.

AND NOW FOR ME TO TALK ABOUT THE AFTER CREDITS SCENE BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN HOLDING IT IN FOR S O L O N G

When I read that Oscar had a cameo in the movie, I needed to know. It was the only spoiler I allowed myself to know about, and when I heard he was going to be Spider-Man 2099/Miguel O’Hara, I flipped. I read nothing else about the scene, and wanted to go in blind, but I researched Miguel and, well, you know, I fell in love!

His scene was SO good and SO funny and I LOVE Miguel SO much, you have no idea. I am SO excited for him to be in the next movie (fingers crossed!) and can’t wait to see more of him. I do hope they give him more screen time, because he’s a great character, and because it’d be amazing to have a Latino Spider-Man AND a Afrolatino Spider-Man! And because, you know, more Oscar is always ideal.

I love, love, love Miguel, and Oscar was so funny (he has amazing comedic timing and such great range, omg), and I am desperate to see more of him. I haven’t stopped bombarding my poor friend Cydney with love and affection for Miggy in, like, two weeks. I’m sure she’s sick of it by now. Also, I kinda wanna write stuff about Miggy, lowkey, as self-indulgence, but for now I’ll just keep that foolishness to myself lol.

Miguel O’Hara Is My Boyfriend Now ghdkhgkldhg

Anyway, the movie is chock-full of amazing things, both from an artistic/cultural standpoint and from a Marvel-fan standpoint: so many easter eggs and little surprises, so much amazing writing, so much amazing character design, just!! So! Good! Please go see it immediately, because I’m itching to see it again and don’t know how I can resist going in for a second watch.

Also, Peter B. Parker is Jewish and it’s canon and if you want to step up and fight me about it, feel free to, but I will kick your ass. I will. Know this. Jewish Spider-Man FOREVER, FOOLS. No one is allowed to thirst after him if they also ignore his being Jewish or disrespect it, so if you wanna love him, you gotta love his Judaism too, or I’ll fist-fight you behind the Denny’s at 3 am and knock you the hell out.

also john mulaney’s cussing outtakes for spiderham are the funniest thing on earth and i’m crying

OH and I have the art book for the movie and everything is so *kisses fingers like an Italian cook* B E A U T I F U L! And the soundtrack? BOY I TELL YA I was listening to it for WEEKS in advance even when there were only three songs released and some of those tracks are, like, incredibly powerful, whooh.

Anyway GO SEE SPIDERVERSE. I LOVE IT. ALL OTHER SPIDER-MAN MOVIES ARE DOOKIE BY COMPARISON.

I have more I could say but I’m so excited I’m bouncing around and going hog wild dgkgdhgkg i love spider verse

#spiderverse #messages #spoilers #into the spiderverse spoilers #miggy: LOOK AT YOUR FINGER LOOK AT IT YOU ARE POINTING AT ME #me wiping tears from my eyes: i cant believe i love you so freakin much #Anonymous

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lashoward44 · 2 years ago

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Discussion On House Edge In Casino 1вин мобильная версия

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liliapack921-blog · 6 years ago

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Amazon Black Friday 2019 Deals: Gifts For Boys

Did you miss all of the awesome Black Friday deals this morning because you were at work? Well, luckily, there is still plenty of time to score some big, big savings this Black Friday, thanks to Amazon’s Black Friday 2017 deals. The deals below focus on items that would make great gifts for boys this year, ranging from gaming to NERF to other toys. 50, and it’s a headset that’s so versatile that it’s great for virtually anyone this holiday season.

99.99, which is 33 percent off. Yes, it literally works with all those. Best of all, the mic can be tucked away for a non-gamer look when you’re out in public.

Unfortunately, there are only two colorways left: black and white. Buy the Steelseries Arctis 7 here. 1 best-seller on Amazon is on sale for Black Friday, and it’s one of the best gifts for boys who love PC Gaming. 52 off the MSRP (or 33 percent). It uses an aircraft-grade anodized brushed aluminum frame for high quality and extreme durability. It looks great, and it’s extra clicky because of its mechanical keys. Buy the Corsair Mechanical Gaming Keyboard here. If he’s ever shown any interest in streaming on Twitch or YouTube, he’ll need a game capture card to do so.

119, which is a savings of 34 percent. This game capture card is another one of our favorite gifts for boys available during Amazon’s Black Friday sale, and it’s a great way to let them be creative with a hobby that they likely already love. Buy the Elgato Game Capture HD60 S here. The Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit by littleBits is on our list of the best new toys of 2017, so it’s obviously one of the best Christmas gifts for boys this year. Buy the Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit here. Anki has definitely grown a nice name for itself over the last few years, creating super cool (and highly requested) tech-infused toys for kids.

30 markdown. That saves you 17% off the MSRP. See More Anki Toy Deals here. Nerf’s new line of toys shoots foam cars instead of darts, which is a delightfully weird direction. It might look a bit dumb on the surface, but let me assure you that shooting cars out of a gun is every boy’s dream, and it works flawlessly in practice. 15.85 off of its MSRP. 10 off of its MSRP. 11.54 (which is 54% off of its MSRP). One Night Ultimate Alien is great for ages 8 and up, and it plays best with 4 to 10 players. Each game can last just 10-20 minutes. Roles change every time you play, as it uses an app that sets the rules each time you play (don’t worry…the app is free/included).

Get This Deal here. 299. This bundle includes the headset, the eye camera, and Gran Turismo Sport. Get This Black Friday Deal here. Hands-down, Overwatch was the best game of 2016, and there are even arguments for making it GOTY again this year (which, in my personal opinion, is a bit ridiculous, but that’s an argument for another day). It’s a must-play video game for any gamer that’s even semi-competitive, and it’s one that I personally play just about every night. Get This Overwatch Black Friday Deal here. 39.99 price tag. It’s a great game for kids, and it tugs a little at the nostalgia strings, too. Buy Sonic Forces here. Heavy, Inc. is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon. Our product recommendations are guided solely by our editors. We have no relationship with manufacturers.

It is never easy buying presents for people that we care about. Even at the best of times it is hard enough trying to find 'the perfect gift' that we hope will be loved by our loved one. So how do we go about buying gifts for boys age 11 and upwards. Just thinking about the task is daunting enough to make even the bravest and most resourceful of us buckle. 11 is such a milestone of an age. Firstly, there is the obvious transition from lower school to high school (or primary to Secondary school) and all that entails.

Then there is puberty setting in (lets say no more about that) and the myriad of issues and challenges that brings. But the real difficult part about choosing and buying gifts for boys age 11 is that you will really need to have a sense of their personality and tastes. I have scowered the web to find the best gifts for boys age 11 and put them all in one place so that you won't have to spend hours doing the same. If you have been hearing the buzz words around certain gift ideas or if the young man in your life has been dropping hints that you need to investigate futher this is a perfict place to begin.

Do you remember being 11? Do you remember how days lasted for what seemed like an eternity? And being outside the house with your friends was what you really wanted to do? Things, however, have moved on from and children are now presented with hundreds of options to indulge their interests and spend their time, particularly from the comfort of their own room. With each year the list of available games for consoles as well as the types of consoles available will exponentially increase. The Nintendo DSi XL Handheld Console is still a popular gift selection for boys from age 8 upwards. The Apple iPod nano is a gift that brings video to music with the new built-in video camera.

With a built-in video camera it is here on the list of gifts for boys age 11 as an ideal choice for music lovers as well as amateur photographers and camera men. There is also a built-in mic to capture audio, too. Undoubtedly the iPod is the world's most pupular portable music player and an is therefore a no-brainer on a list of gifts for boys age 11 and above. Three years ago, Amazon set out to design and build an entirely new class of device—a convenient, portable reading device with the ability to wirelessly download books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers. The result is The Kindle. It has been designed to provide an exceptional reading experience using a revolutionary new display technology. Reading Kindle’s screen is as sharp and natural as reading ink on paper—and nothing like the strain and glare of a computer screen. For the 11 year old book worms in your life the Kindle is completely mobile and simple gift that is and uses the same 3G network as advanced cell phones.

Buying last minute gifts for brothers, son, nephews, and young cousins is easy with this quick list. We’ve included a broad array of options for boys of all ages. These gifts are bound to please young dudes that are adventurous, fun-loving, and/or electronically-inclined. Some of these gifts are popular, others are just plain awesome. No matter what you choose, the recipient of your gifts will open something up Christmas morning that will leave them with the joy of Christmas! Here’s the 10 best last minute Christmas gifts for boys. For those looking to interest the young men in their lives in robotics and software development, the Anki Cozmo is an awesome way to do so.

It includes "Code Lab" a platform that allows kids to program the robot to do tasks like express emotions, play games, lift cubes, and more. Also, Anki is constantly updating Cozmo’s skills to add new and exciting features. This is a great gift for the STEM-minded. If you’re looking to interesting the receipient of your mangnamity in programming or video game creation, this Bloxels kit offers an extremely fun way to do so. It is a winner of numerous toy awards and is shockingly robust for a toy. The app works with Android, iOS and Kindle and can be used to develop levels, characters and more. Plus, creators of levels within the games can be shared online, adding a social element to the process.

This is a great kit and an extremely exciting unique gift. For those boys looking to get started playing with drones, a better starter drone does not exist. This Holy Stone model is dirt cheap and offers a ton of fun and value for the price. Sure, it’s not quite a Phantom 4, but it will really set one up to establish themselves as a drone dabbler or someone who is ready to take the plunge to the real thing. As someone whose father loves drones, I can strongly vouch that as fun as they are, one should definitely start with a beginner model to get a feel for them. This will also help set up the right expectations for the real deal.

This drone offers solid speed and good control. That said, it’s not exactly easy to fly. It does take some learning and practice. Needless to say, it’s not wind resistant either. That said, it beats a kite! Users love it for its durability (it can take a fall or a hit) and the fun that comes with it. Again, this is the perfect toy to get started droning with. For younger boys, the Leapfrog laptop is the gift of the moment. It offers a fun, tactile way to learn things like the Alphabet, play games, and to learn animal games.

Parents love it for its solid durability, and a great teaching tool for young kids (toddler age). The games and activities are very accessible and fun for the preschool crowd and bound to keep even picky kids busy Christmas morning and hopefully afternoon. Legos are a timeless Christmas tradition. This set is amazing evoking Pirates of the Carribean and other classic ship dwellers. This set boasts tons of figurines, a variety of accessories, and of course, a mind-blowing watercraft to please even the most discerning Lego enthusiasts. It’s praised for its intricate details, high number of pieces (over 2000), and legendary Lego durability.

For Star Wars fans, BB-8 has captured many of our hearts. This particular version of him is about 16″ tall and can be controlled in a variety of ways. He can respond to multiple voice commands, and can be steered around with a remote control. This model also has authentic Star Wars sounds and lights, so you know it’s something George Lucas would approve of. Buyers praise it as a robust toy, but also as a high-quality collectible. Every boy wants a light saber. That’s just a fact! These light sabers offer great value as they are not Star Wars official merchandise, and hence, sell at a considerably cheaper price.

They have a great range of sounds and are praised as superb for Halloween costumes, light sword-fighting and having solid quality sounds. Nerf guns are the gift that keep on giving. They are loved by boys of virtually all ages for executing lighthearted pranks (no one likes to be shot by a nerf gun, but it’s not very damaging) and for playing games like cops vs. These blasters have a rotating barrel and hold up to six darts. They can shoot up to 50′. The bang for the buck on this toy is tough to beat! For the fans of web comic, "Cyanide and Happiness," this card game is a ton of fun. Three or more players compete to make comic strips about a variety of subjects. This Christmas, give the gift of Pokemon cards. This pack of 100 cards includes all the goods from Pokemon’s official trading card game. That said, at this price, do expect a few caveats:some users had issues with duplicate cards, but for the most part, this is a great value for getting a ton of Pokemon cards. It may be best to taper one’s expectations to expect 50 great cards, which is still an awesome value.

Jeepers (It's Christmas) In July! I received the below-mentioned titles in exchange for this post. Sponsor is responsible for prize fulfillment. Wow, can you believe it's already July? This year and summer break is flying by but I'm excited for all the fun our family has planned for July. Being born in July, I always get that childish anticipation even though I'm not as thrilled about aging as I once was about birthdays. Kids just love celebrating their own special day and we've got some great gift ideas to share from National Geographic Kids! Check out these bright and educational books and enter for a chance to win them below.

No better time to think about all the possibilities the future holds than a birthday! From beekeeper to ice-cream taster, forensic psychologist to Hollywood animal trainer, conservation biologist to Chief Happiness Officer, this book features 100 of the coolest, wackiest and most amazing jobs out there (greeting card maker?? Yes, you can!). This book features cats from around the world, each one with an amazing story to tell about their compassion, ingenuity, and bravery. And are you curious as to why we love those cute cat videos? Page 57 explains the science behind the obsession. Blast into space to explore our solar system and beyond.

This out-of-this-world Atlas takes readers through maps of the solar system, the Milky Way, and deep space, giving them a close look at and locations of planets, supernovas, and other universes. Sky maps will help kids spot these objects in the night sky and maps of planets and our solar system gives the kind of incredible detail that National Geographic is known for. It's the perfect book for space fans and budding astronauts. National Geographic Explorer and snake wrangler Dr. Brady Barr has been bitten by a lot of creatures over the years. So this book is born from first hand - er, tooth - experience of getting close to some of the biggest biters in the animal kingdom. It turns out that there's a lot more to biting than meets the eye.

Physical features and the how (and when and why) an animal bites reveals much about the animal itself. Then it shows how tooth type, bite force, jaw shape, and food source all come to together to make each an incredible member of the animal bite force! Got a kiddo in mind that always wants to know the who/what/where of the coolest things on the planet? Check out the Top 8 lists in the latest Awesome 8! Pay it forward with this big book of gratitude, filled with 30 cool pull-out thank you postcards and fun themed content. Adorable animal photos paired with heartfelt and funny captions show how much we have to be grateful for in our wondrous world.

Each card leaves plenty of room for kids to craft their own messages to show friends and family how much they care. Content includes tips and tricks for writing sincere, well-crafted, and properly formatted thank you notes, as well as more cute creature pictures to spread that warm, fuzzy feeling far and wide. Welcome to our Second Annual Jeepers (It's Christmas) In July Giveaway Hop! This event is hosted by Mama The Fox, The Kids Did It and The Mommy Island. Once you've entered for the National Geographic Kids Book Package keep scrolling down for more great events to enter. 84). Open for entry from 7/1-7/15/17 at 11:59 pm EST. Open to readers in the US, 18 years and older. The winner will have 24 hours to respond to the notification email to claim their prize or a new winner will be selected. The Mommy Island is not responsible for this or any event where the sponsor fails to fulfill prizing.

Looking for the best gifts for 7 year old boys? Well, have I got a selection for you! If you're like me, you probably dread the thought of having to come up with gift ideas for a 7 year old. The main reason for this I think is boys at that age appear to have everything. They've grown up with toys such as Lego, action figures and kites. They've advanced onto bikes, scooters, stereos, digital cameras and yes, I hate to admit that the average 7 year old boy is even tech-savvy enough to have his own tablet device. Some of the best gifts for boys are those that present a challenge - and also solve the challenge of what to get them.

I think the Perplexus Maze Game is one of the best in this regard. Having played it myself (and having failed to finish it, I hasten to add), I can personally vouch for it being completely addictive. No number of electronic games can compete with this awesome puzzle. The version shown here is the original, but it's also available in a number of variations. The age range from the manufacturer is six years and up, so it's spot-on for seven year olds. The aim of the game is to roll a metal ball around a 3D maze, comprized of multi-colored tracks covering the interior of a transparent sphere. If you can wrestle this little beauty away from your 7 year old, you try it.

There are a number of other benefits thrown in as well, including the development of hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, spacial thinking and, of course, patience! Another challenging (and active) gift for 7 year old boys, girls, adults, you name it. You can see the commercial for it below, which gives you an idea of how it works as a game (sorry, the video may not be available on mobile devices - it's a Google thing). Essentially, it's a variation on the age-old favorite Simon, where you follow instructions on what to do with the toy. Again, there are a number of variations on the original Bop It! I said, they're a popular gift for boys and girls aged 7 and more. I've bought toys for my own boys and nephews, I always work on the principle of age, plus-or-minus-one. Bop It - You Have to Try It!

Featuring a variety of games and expertise levels, depending on whether you're playing solo or with a group, it's easy to play and travel-friendly. 1. Don't obsess about getting the best game, toy, book or interesting item. If it's a gift, they'll be pleased. 2. Try thinking about something they're not known to be into. This will be a surprize, and may be the start of a new fascination or hobby. 3. Keep it simple, and remember that any gift need not be expensive to be a big hit. When I was a boy, I remember learning how to play chess from a book.

I eventually got myself to a level where I could regularly stalemate my dad and occasionally beat him - but, I always wish I had some sort of advantage. You can play variations on the standard game of chess, with rules included for all types of game. The board is also double-sided to let you flip between the instructional side to a real chess board.

I can't really stress enough (apologies for another pun) how much of a useful and instructional gift this would be to boys keen to learn the game of chess. I wish I had something like this to learn from when I was younger. No Stress Chess also presents a great opportunity for adults to teach and learn with their kids at the same time. Your seven year old is going to be asking you to play this every night!

Get your 7 year old boys away from the smartphone, tablet or games console and have them learning the game of kings. This no-stress set makes it easy to teach and learn chess. With multiple levels of play, kids can work on their game and get recommendations for the best moves. Great learning for beginners and great fun for veterans of the game. What on Earth is a praxinoscope, I hear you say? Well, put simply, it's probably one of the best gifts for 7 year old boys I'm featuring on this page. As for the scientific explanation, it's actually a rotating platform with an arrangement of paper and mirrors that lets you create moving picture animations exactly like they did 170 years ago - phew!

But seriously, this is one cool toy for boys. In fact, it's not a toy, it's more a recreation of a piece of history. Speaking of recreations, many of the 4M kits require a little assembly and this one is no exception. However, it's well-designed and when kids have put this together, they can feel rightly proud. This is a very interesting gift for boys indeed. Inspire the next cartoonist in your family with the 4M Praxinoscope. It comes with everything you need to put it together and full instructions. As a real neat touch, there's also an included LED light that can be set to flash, producing an authentic silent movie effect.

If you've got a piano at home, then why not accompany the action with a suitably vintage soundtrack! Focusing on hands-on creative play, Melissa & Doug toys and games have been entertaining boys and girls of all ages for over 25 years. Speaking of hands-on, or rather slight-of-hands-on, my next recommendation for 7 year old boys is a magic set. They'll just love showing their tricks in front of family and friends, helping them to build personal confidence through the acts of preparation, performance, being creative and exercising a little dramatic flair. There are 10 illusions to master in this quality magic set.

Each one is a classic that professional magicians still perform in shows all over the world. So, if you know a 7 year old boy who might well be the next David Copperfield, then this gift may be the perfect start. It's a sad fact that many boys these days grow up not really knowing much about the world and the other countries in it. However, you needn't let that be something to worry about with the LeapFrog Explorer Interactive Smart Globe.

This is one of those toys often described as a wonderfully educational and fun gift, and that pretty much sums up the ethos of the company that makes them.

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car-mechanic-simulator-20m5 · 3 years ago

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Car Mechanic Simulator How to Get Money and XP with Cheat

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 It is time to get greasy and go hands-on while tinkering vehicles on your own as the Car Mechanic Simulator comes to video game platforms for those who wanted to get their hands dirty while working on their very own garage empire. Separate from the Car Mechanic Simulator Classic , the game lets its players use their own imagination, along with its large array of more than 4, unique parts, to tinker and restore any one of the over 72 cars in the game by taking it apart, clean and upgrade its parts, and putting them back together again. It's that day! Take the keys to your car repair shop and start your adventure in Car Mechanic Simulator ! Aspiring car builders can use those restored cards to earn a profit either selling it in stores or going to a car auction houses where they can also see other cars in a variety of conditions. The profit that they will earn within the game will depend on how skillful they did in restoring and repairing their vehicles. The game itself will provide the players more time to play as orders for their garage are generated infinitely, making them busy as long as they can do it while learning the ins and out of the automotive mechanical scene. As mentioned earlier, the Car Mechanic Simulator has more than 4, unique parts that can be used to work on over 72 cars. While the former can be purchased through in-game cash which players earned while selling their remodeled cars, the latter, on the other hand, can be unlocked as they level up while progressing the game. For the reason, several of them have taken the opportunity of the simulation's longer game hours to grind for the cash and XP needed to get through the game, but for others who want to take a shortcut, cheat codes are the answer to their prayers. There are two ways to enter a cheat code in the game. In the said video, the uploader used the Cheat Engine software to get the amount of money and XP that he wants in the game. In order for the said uploader to do so, he first opens up the software and inserted the game. Then, if he wants to add some cash in the game, for example, 39,,, he will first go to a shop and buy a part. Before he clicks the " Buy Part " tab, he needs to return to the Cheat Engine window. For there, he typed in the amount of cash he had in the game he typed in "3," , and the said engine will search for the in-game element that holds the said amount. From there, he right-clicked on the first search result, and click the " Change value of selected addresses " tab. A pop-up window will appear, and from there, he inputs the amount that he wanted he typed "39,,". And once he entered the said amount, it will change the "3," that appeared first into "39,, Aftrerwards, he goes back to the game, and buys a car part. Instead of the "3," that was subtracting after the purchase, it was the newly-inputted "39,, This is the same method that he did when he wants to level up by increasing the XP points that he wanted to receive after doing an action in the game. The said method is tedious because it needs time to bounce back from the Cheat Engine window to the game and vice versa, as well as knowing the right "address" in the game where they want to change the amount. If players don't want this method, there is another option. They just need to input said codes as profile names when they start the game. Players must keep in mind that before they start playing using the cheat codes as their profile names, they must decline the offer to play the tutorial first. Otherwise, the game may crash. Players can input these codes as their names in the game depending on how many cash that they wanted as well as what Level they wanted to be in the game: cmspromo , if they want to be Level 36 with CR , in hand; cmsstage1 , if they want to be Level 5 with CR 4, in hand; and cmsstage2 , if they want to be Level 12 with CR 50, in hand. Photo : Photo from Steam Store Website It is time to get greasy and go hands-on while tinkering vehicles on your own as the Car Mechanic Simulator comes to video game platforms for those who wanted to get their hands dirty while working on their very own garage empire. Build Your Own Garage Empire Separate from the Car Mechanic Simulator Classic , the game lets its players use their own imagination, along with its large array of more than 4, unique parts, to tinker and restore any one of the over 72 cars in the game by taking it apart, clean and upgrade its parts, and putting them back together again. Cheats to Help You As mentioned earlier, the Car Mechanic Simulator has more than 4, unique parts that can be used to work on over 72 cars. Do not reproduce without permission.

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youarenotthewalrus · 7 years ago

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this article is dumb, i shouldn’t be hate-reading and you shouldn’t either but here we are so let’s do this:

We begin with a description of a platformer doing something clever and metatextual at the end. Followed by;

What this means is that the game stands in stark contrast to an industry whose products, historically speaking, rely on hijacking the reptile brains of hormone-crazed teenaged boys. In short, the history of videogames is the history of the glorification of violence.

Ah yes, who can forget such bloodthirsty products of the military-industrial complex as Pong, Tetris, Pacman or Zork?

We can debate what constitutes the first videogame, and whether it’s fair to attribute the invention of videogames to the military,

Given the contentiousness of that assertion, I should certainly hope so!

but what’s undeniable is that military engineers—ever ready to coopt, conspire with, or commission innovation from the private sector (e.g., the splitting of the atom, the invention of I.Q.)—more or less immediately recognized that videogames could be employed as a cheap substitute for teaching soldiers how to do everything from fly a plane to take out a sniper.

Kinda reductive to reduce the history of video games to FPSes in general and America’s Army in particular, doncha think?

Anyway, then we get some more waffle about how first-person shooters video games are training us to kill, before we get to the real question: given that this platformer he just finished playing did something a little artsy, can video games be art even despite the fact that were originally works of military propaganda intended to inure potential military recruits to violence? And more importantly, given that this guy seems to think the history of video games began with first person shooters, is he really qualified to answer this question?

Then we get some pointless side chatter over the claim that games are good for your brain, followed by the charge that games are addictive--despite the explicit comparison made to gambling (at “your local Native American casino,” no less), there is no discussion of lootboxes or microtransactions whatsoever, suggesting the author is not aware of specific steps which are taken to make games addictive and is just invoking vague notions of all games being addictive. None of this ever comes up again, and we promptly move back to talking about the actual game.

More specifically, Inside is what’s known as a “2D side-scroller”—meaning that you observe your figure mostly in profile in the center of your screen while a background landscape scrolling right-to-left gives the illusion of left-to-right forward motion.

Somehow, the use of the term “2D side-scroller” in quotes does not make me feel that this fellow is sufficiently familiar with video games to assess whether or not they can be art, as does the fact that he reckons that the platformer he is playing hearkens back to a 1981 shoot-em-up he remembers from his teens, which makes his apparent conviction that video games originated as first person shooters all the more baffling.

And while the world of videogames has already become a “spectator sport,” I’m unaware of any instance of the record of a videogame player’s performance becoming intellectual property, as it has in the world of chess, and in a whole array of sports. True, gamers go “professional” by attracting followers on the internet and earning ad revenue, but their play itself is not copyrighted. Games might wind up in museums (worldwide, there are at least seventeen museums dedicated to videogames), but bracketed moments of the play of particular games have not yet become value-able as art.

I invite the author to start selling unauthorized DVDs of clips from popular Twitch streamers and gaming YouTubers and see how long their lawyers allow him to entertain the notion that Let’s Plays do not constitute intellectual property.

the 2D side-scroller and its pitbull of a cousin, the first-person shooter,

???

The rest of the section is pretty unremarkable, so we move onto him complaining about lousy movie critique, then lousy video game critique, then explaining the concept of Easter eggs, then video game puzzles:

The puzzles of Limbo and Inside are more ambitious than the puzzles of most games in that their solutions often require the player to wait, or to exhibit what in psychology and education circles is known as divergent thought—for example, a corpse is a corpse, but it is also potentially a deadweight that can be used to spring a boobytrap.

Making the player wait or use an unusual object as a weight doesn’t strike me as particularly devilishly clever.

Then we get this jewel of a paragraph:

Nevertheless, puzzles themselves stand as an obstacle blocking the path of videogames’ journey from game to art. For while I might willingly suspend my disbelief long enough to accept that a boy has been tasked with jogging exhaustedly through a factory that churns out invincible blob creatures, I will find that willingness strained when I am also confronted with confounding puzzles placed in my path for no good reason. Videogames, in other words, ignore the basic tenets of internal consistency—in order to keep playing, you must suspend your disbelief, and then suspend it again, and again, and again, which means that in order to play and enjoy videogames you must also suspend the kind of critical judgment that is normally associated with art.

You heard it here, folks, accepting weird gameplay conceits means you can’t critically analyze a game.

Similarly, Easter eggs appeal only on the level of geek fetish—which is more or less the opposite of critical appreciation—and it is for this reason that I won’t address the puzzles and Easter eggs in Inside, even though they eventually lead to what some have concluded is the game’s “hidden meaning.” And this is the problem of videogames in a nutshell, because meaning in work of art is no more hidden from its beholder than the summit of a mountain is hidden from the mountain climber.

Sounds to me more like the problem is that he’s ignoring what the game itself is telling him about its plot and themes because it’s doing it in a way he finds aesthetically displeasing. I don’t know much about critical analysis but I feel like that’s not really how you should be doing it.

We then get a description of the plots of Limbo and Inside, including a decent bit of analysis marred by a bit of “murder simulator”-ism.

This is worth noting because prior to this moment the violence the boy has inflicted, either in Limbo or Inside, has been indirect—really an act of self-defense—but now the game is threatening to creep back into the usual videogame mode of affectless murder. You are given a choice: slip backward toward the wantonly horrific likes of Grand Theft Auto (1997) and Postal 2 (2003) [3] , or pause a moment and then continue on in a macabre but not morally bankrupt pursuit narrative. In this way, the player is implicated in a wryly disjointed bit of commentary on the history of gaming itself.

I mean this entirely sincerely: someone should get this guy a copy of Undertale. I think he’d enjoy it, if he could get past the idea of having to accept JRPG conventions.

Sadly, video game still aren’t art because he can list a bunch of movies that had vaguely similar elements:

From there, it’s not hard to find antecedents for Inside in both literature and film—it’s a little bit Soylent Green, a little bit Logan’s Run, a little bit The Island of Dr. Moreau, and more than a little bit Frankenstein. The imagery starts to seem familiar, too, with milieus lifted from E.T., Alien, and The Poseidon Adventure. But all this allusive flotsam becomes a bit of a disappointment, as eventually you become hard pressed to find anything in Inside that you haven’t seen inside something else.

Ezra Pound demanded that artists “make it new,” and Marcel Proust insisted that a writer is someone who invents a voice as unique as his or her fingerprint, but Inside isn’t even really trying to tell a story that hasn’t been told before. That’s a problem. Art cannot be made up wholly of references to other art. Star Wars, for example, does not come close to art because at its core it is nothing more than a pre-fab mash-up of archetypes mail-ordered from the IKEA superstore of Joseph Campbell.

I mean... why can’t art be composed solely of references to other art? Why can the whole not be more than the sum of its parts? If I take a picture of the Mona Lisa and photoshop a photo of a can of soup over her head, the resulting work is distinct from either of the originals, even though I provided no original content except the idea of sticking the two together.

Put another way, Inside could only have been designed by someone who hasn’t read Roland Barthes’s “The Death of the Author,” and hasn’t read Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” and hasn’t read T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent”—someone who hasn’t, in other words, engaged theoretically with what art is. And that, in turn, leads to the simple conclusion that on the level of its plot Inside is not trying to do what art does.

Good god this guy is snobbish.

Second, there’s still the meta-twist to consider: perhaps Inside is a game with both a text and a subtext. And perhaps a subtext can help the videogame industry evolve beyond the hyperviolence that is its womb and its crutch.

“Hyperviolent” is not exactly how I would describe Breakout or Super Mario Bros. Anyway, he then ponders the potential meaning of the evil scientists at the end of the game being stand-ins for the developers, and comes to the conclusion that...

The problem of games today is that their creators have not imagined any purpose for them greater than fun. There are exceptions to this, of course, but for the most part games equate escape with distraction—to be distracted is to be entertained, and it is good to be entertained.

Unlike the rest of popular media, of course.

The obligation of art, as Henry James described it, is to be interesting, and if you’re paying attention, that is to say, if you’re trying for more than distraction, then Inside begins to be interesting with its name, which stands in stark contrast to games like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

I too enjoy criticizing games for being superficial based on their titles.

Then we get some final analysis, a quote from a Raymond Carver short story I read in high school and remember mostly as something my friends in English class found homoerotic subtext in, and the claim that the goal of art is a feeling of transcendental bliss:

The much remarked-upon narrator of Raymond Carver’s classic short story, “Cathedral,” experiences such a moment as the story climaxes with a blind man helping him draw a church. “My eyes were still closed,” the narrator says. “I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.”

At its most ambitious, Inside aspires to a similar feeling. Escape in art that is not transcendence is cheap, and if you can climb beyond the foolish puzzles and the Easter eggs and the hidden meanings, you can feel, for a moment, that you are not alone on your sofa with your phone, playing a game; rather, you are somewhere else—somewhere grassy, bathed in warmth by a ray of sunlight falling from above.

And that’s nice and all but it feels like he didn’t really lead up to it.

Anyway, I spent way too much time picking through this but here we go. Final rating: 2/10, the next time you want to know if video games are art yet ask someone who actually plays them.

#idle musings #long post

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markzupo · 7 years ago

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DID THE GOVERNMENT BURY A TRUE SYSTEM FOR ONLINE PROFIT FOR ANYONE?

Revealed! What the government doesn’t want to you to know about making a living online.

WARNING: CONTROVERSIAL CONTENT

Please be warned: This story you’re about to be privy to has been DENIED by our own government because they are in fear of the knowledge getting out to just anyone.

Evidence suggests that there has actually been a cover up to prevent you specifically from getting your hands on such valuable information.

As you are reading this powerful forces are working to quiet this release before you get it to keep it hidden.

On 6 August 1991, the World Wide Web became publicly available. Its creator, the now internationally known Tim Berners-Lee, posted a short summary of the project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup and gave birth to a new technology which would fundamentally change the world as we knew it.

USE and Origins

The Internet, as we know it was born and almost immediately, the U.S. Government sought to control its use. ARPANET was the first governmental authority to exploit the computer network for global connectivity but specifically with the U.S. Government’s network that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies

Funding and Control

The funding of the commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network. Although the Internet was widely used by academia since the 1980s, the commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life.

Control of Use Today Let’s do some math. What we know today is that the Internet is not yet completely controlled by any government other than dictatorial governments that restrict its use and availability.

There are over 3-Billion people online at any given moment, each of who has generated million of discussions for good and bad. I have proof that you only need about 100 people to start and make success happen.

HOWEVER, the ultimate use of such a tool has been revealed in the opportunity to “touch” any number of those online…and offer a product or service that will generate a profit for them.

The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through:

· Instant messaging, Internet forums and social networking.

· Online shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers and small businesses and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to serve a larger market or even sell goods and services entirely online.

· Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.

· AND THE MOST IMPORTANT IS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON TO MAKE A PROFIT!

YOU’RE Revelation

Revealed in this document are several myths and several realizations that you must know before they are hidden forever.

MYTHS

1. The average person has to be an expert to use specialized tools to make money online.

2. The average person has to have huge Internet online experience to make money online.

3. The average person has to have special permission to make money online?

4. The average person will never know the real secrets to profiting online.

a. WRONG

b. WRONG

c. WRONG

d. DEAD WRONG!

REVELATIONS [Internet Informant Spills the Beans]

1. Your current experience, education, training, passions and hobby may be all that you need.

2. The learning curve is steep by well defined by systems, automation and processes established that govern your success as an online entrepreneur.

3. The Internet business opportunity is FREE to anyone and everyone to capitalize on immediately…if not sooner…Lol.

4. Before the crucial information is hidden, the average person has the greatest opportunity EVER today to build, start, run and profit from their own business online. There is not time better than NOW! There are more tools and training available today than EVER!

What They Don’t Want You to Know

The secret is that…well…

- The Possibility is FREE!

- The information is FREE!

- The opportunity is FREE!

The government doesn’t want you to know this because if too many people actually take advantage of this opportunity then too many people might gain the profits and power and then they are no longer the powerful force that keeps people in line, poor and under control.

The truth is…there cannot be too many rich people!

BUT – I’ll explain how you can get your hands on the most valuable information, which the Government has systematically denied, that you have ever held in your hands that will thwart the nay-sayers and expose your power to be in control of your destiny.

THE INFORMATION I HAVE!

I. I’ll tell you how to get the underground system that made me a fortune.

II. I’ll show you the system that I used to generate huge amounts of profit from my efforts online.

III. I’ll expose my personal formula for online success.

IV. I’ll give you the blueprint that I developed to follow step by step.

V. I’ll let you in the mastermind that my community shares the tips and tricks for success.

You see…I’ll expose everything I know because I believe that this information will soon change and be hidden when too many people know what the real answers are.

You must know that there are no guarantees…NONE. You might get your hands on this and absolutely fail, lose money, be scared to show your face and lose it all. There is no magic button or instant riches. It takes study and work.

Every business requires two things: time and money. It is a given that you’ll need one or both in different amounts. Of course, if it’s your first online business it will take more time than money but still a serious consideration.

What no one knows is just how successful you can be.

But what we do know is… …you just might learn all that you want to about your independence and freedom possibilities to have your own online business.

Some of the world’s most successful online business people are just now learning what I know. They also know I am going to reveal it to everyone who wants it too. And…they’re scared. They are scared because you just might be as or more successful and kick them out of the limelight.

WHAT I DISCOVERED

I discovered a simple process that I put into plan and effect automated systems that give me the profit I want each and every month. It is really simple and concise and effective and profitable for me.

I want to share it with you too.

You see…I discovered the TRUE MODEL for online business success.

This is REVOLUTIONARY!

The Passive Income Concept Dialog I am a 63-year old life-long entrepreneur. My business is generating passive income from online memberships. After losing over $3Million dollars in 2007, my life changed when I started a new venture to recapture my income and help other MaturePreneurs with a focus on helping others to earn passive income. This is a great concept that I want you to understand so that they will not lose a fortune like I did. Purely and simply, when I tell you that if you're working for the “man”, whether you're trading dollars for hours, then what you need to do is trade expertise and experience for payment. There's quite a bit of a difference between the two, respectfully. The number of people that you can touch in a day is exponentially related to the amount of money that you can make in the same day and how much work is involved in that is what determines how you'll make it. As an example, if you talk with 25 people in a day and it's taken you eight hours to euphemistically touch 25 people in a day, then you've wasted eight hours a day talking to someone who none of them have handed you a check or given you money. When I engage with 25 people a day, every single one of them sends me money. It's automatic. It comes from their credit card. It's once a month, every month. It repeats. It's recurring. It's passive. And I only have to work one time in order to give them some content that they pay for every month. Respectively, you talk to 25 people every day, five days a week and it takes you eight hours a day to do that and you've only made a weekly salary. I talk to 2,500 people a day, all of whom pay me automatically from their credit card, month after month. Some stay, most stay, and some go. And they're replaced just as quickly as they go. I'm not worried about losing that monthly income because it's always replaced one way or another once you've established your value with those customers.

1St - AMAZED

I am inviting you to join my private coaching opportunity so that you have a chance to learn the processes, models and systems before they are gone.

You see, the last thing that I want is for you to miss out on this opportunity to get the knowledge you need to start, build and run your own personal online business. It is truly your turn.

When you accept my offer, you’ll get this incredibly unique bonus…the free autographed copy of my most valuable book ever, THE MATH OF SUCCESS delivered direct to your door. You’ll be amazed at the insights revealed in this book and be able to put the systems into place almost immediately.

2nd – REVEALED

THE MATH of SUCCESS contains one of the greatest secrets in Internet marketing today. The magic of “100” revealed inside. An absolute “must have” in your tools for profit success.

3rd – UNCENSORED

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Go over to

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. What is it costing you to NOT to have this training? What's it costing you to not do it? Imagine if you had gotten this a year ago. Imagine if you had gotten this a year ago and you were selling Multiple Streams Mastery coaching program right now. How would your life be different right now? The truth of the matter is whatever you've been and whatever you've been doing is not working for you, is it? How do I know that you feel stifled and frustrated? Because I was there too and you wouldn’t have spent this amount of time to listen to me if you didn’t think that I had something to offer you in the way of an escape from the 9-5 or whatever stupid hours you trade for money.

1. The truth is that if you don’t start right NOW you will be just where you are for the next year, two years, and three years and so on. Won’t you? The pain is that you know I am right. Look, this isn’t a hard sell. You know what you need to do and when you need to do it. You need to start right now! When you do you will be light-years ahead of your goals and closer to reaching your dreams of independence and freedom.

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Again, that's

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You'll get step-by-step exactly what to do and how to do it so that you can create and sell your own Multiple Streams Mastery coaching programs. Folks with that, I want to go ahead and wrap things up. I want to thank all of you for being here. Obviously, you've learned a lot. Hopefully, you've taken a few pages of notes. For everybody that's just joined, congratulations and for everybody that's just waiting for me to quit talking so that you can go over and get it. I'm excited for you when you join in the next few minutes. Again, I'll give you that link one more time and then, I will say goodbye.

CLICK HERE.

Dr. Mark Zupo

Former Spy

“Now Turned Internet Informant”

#money #make money online #earn money #income #multiple streams of income #passive income #love #passion #creating passive #online business #start an online business #online success

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handsofprovidence · 7 years ago

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Character Prompt Template

(I assume this is being tagged for Providence, owing to whom has tagged me in this post. I have two main iterations of Providence for the two continuities that I RP him in. Whenever there is a distinction between these renditions of his character, I will make note of it here.)

► Name ➔ “Providence.”

► Are you single ➔

(Aligned): “Yes.”

(IDW): “No.”

► Are you happy ➔ “I am when my people are content and provided for.”

► Are you angry? ➔ “I am when I see my people suffer at the hands of another, or from infighting.”

► Are your parents still married ➔ “This isn’t applicable to Cybertronians.”

NINE FACTS

► Birth Place ➔

(Aligned): “The well of all-sparks, as all other Cybertronians.”

(IDW): “Cybertron, in one of the consecrated hotspots. The metal that gave the shape you see me in now might have come from one of Cybertron’s moons, in the days of old.”

► Hair Color ➔ “Cybertronians don’t have these. But, the color of my helm is crimson, and the prongs of my sensor’s array is gold.”

► Eye Color ➔ “Gold.”

► Birthday ➔ “We don’t measure days in a way that would be meaningful. Instead I will give a more accurate measure; it was in the days of old, in the days of Primes, empire, and expansion. It was far before the present troubles you see today.”

► Mood ➔ “Peaceful. When there is no war, then the sufferings of this life become much more bearable, and more easily corrected. This does not mean to say that I am happy; but I have learned to be content with many of the troubles of life, and to accept them as means by which I and others may grow and learn from. Perhaps by this we may yet find ourselves a path into a lasting and better world.”

► Gender ➔ “By human standards, I would be coded in the masculine sense of things, by and large. But I hope to embody some of the nurturing qualities commonly associated with humanity’s femininity, as well.”

► Summer or winter ➔ “A summer’s sun makes for a pleasant sail, and the winter snow brings with it a unique beauty to Earth. I enjoy both for what they offer.”

► Morning or afternoon ➔ “Sunrises are good for inspiration; afternoons are for winding down from work.”

EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE

► Are you in love ➔

(Aligned): “Not with a particular individual.”

(IDW): “That is one way of putting it.”

► Do you believe in love at first sight ➔ “A possibility that is greatly overshadowed by what most would call infatuation. It is impossible to tell with a first impression; I don’t think anybody can know themselves well enough to make an immediate distinction. The mind so easily tells itself the lies it wishes to hear...”

► Who ended your last relationship ➔

(Aligned): “You assume I had one to begin with.”

(IDW): “Shadowplay. That isn’t the name of a person, but it is the act of villains.”

► Have you ever broken someone’s heart ➔ “If I have, it wasn’t by intention.”

► Are you afraid of commitments ➔ “Never. All things in life that is of worth ought to be committed to wholeheartedly, or not be bothered with.”

► Have you hugged someone within the last week? ➔

(Aligned): “Nobody in particular that would come to mind.”

(IDW): “I think I hugged Geardust last week? He’s is in need of them more often than he would admit.”

► Have you ever had a secret admirer ➔ “Nobody that hasn’t eventually confessed something of the sort.”

► Have you ever broken your own heart? ➔ “In a word, yes. The story behind that would take lifetimes to recollect.”

SIX CHOICES

► Love or lust ➔ “I have experienced both, and of the two, the former is far greater.”

► Lemonade or iced tea ➔ “Cybertronians don’t have equivalents of these. I do, however, believe Rider likes lemonade more...”

► Cats or Dogs ➔ “Rider seems to like dogs more. I know they are known for their loyalty, and a generally sunny attitude that stands in stark contrast to the austerity of cats.”

► A few best friends or many regular friends ➔ “What defines a ‘best’ or ‘regular’ friend? For me, a friend is one who I lay my life down for, and there are many for whom I would do this, and will continue to do so. There is nothing ‘regular’ about that, but I find that this is the only definition of ‘friend’ that holds real value.”

► Wild night out or romantic night in ➔ “I have known people who favor one over another. Personally, I have no particular preference.”

► Day or night ➔ “In the day, there is much to be done, but at night I find myself walking among and counting the stars...Take that as you will.”

FIVE HAVE YOU EVERS

► Been caught sneaking out ➔ “Nowhere that I had not already announced my intentions of leaving.”

► Fallen down/up the stairs ➔ “I can recall a few occasions of these, when in battle.”

► Wanted something/someone so badly it hurt? ➔ “Everything I have wanted I have fought and bled for; there is nothing else of worth.”

► Wanted to disappear ➔ “Once.”

FOUR PREFERENCES

► Smile or eyes ➔ “Many might claim that the eyes speak everything, but for me, a genuine smile will always be louder. It is easier to lie with a smile, but those who choose sincerity in all their actions have the better part.”

► Shorter or Taller ➔ “Sometimes I think my imposing stature comes at a greater inconvenience than the troubles of my contemporaries.”

► Intelligence or Attraction ➔ “Intelligence must be wielded with wisdom; attraction is a natural instinct; in both, I counsel prudence.”

► Hook-up or Relationship ➔

(Aligned): “Relationships are always more ideal; nobody can fully determine the consequences of a hook-up. Acknowledged or not, there is always something moving beneath the surface.”

(IDW): “I have experienced both; of the two, only the latter carries depth, and in the end it is the depth of a matter that determines the distance it will travel. Relationships will always last longer, and thus more worth striving towards.”

FAMILY

► Do you and your family get along ➔

(Aligned): “This idea isn’t applicable to Cybertronians.”

(IDW): “As to the family that I have come to define the term by, I would say that we do.”

► Would you say you have a “messed up life” ➔ “That is one way of interpreting it, but I would rather define my experiences by how I respond to them more than focusing on the events themselves, whether they benefited or hurt me.”

► Have you ever ran away from home ➔ “I have walked away from it, but never ran. It was not something to fear such that I might seek refuge elsewhere, nor something so repulsive that I thought it impossible to redeem.”

► Have you ever gotten kicked out ➔ “A civil war twists the experiences of ‘home’ into something that feels much more foreign. It is more accurate to say that we burned down the home that we knew. Who held the planet didn’t matter; even those who seized the privilege to walk on its surface couldn’t recognize it anymore.”

FRIENDS

► Do you secretly hate one of your friends ➔ “I have hated the actions that some of my friends have taken, and I hold them responsible for such decisions, but I have never hated my friends themselves; otherwise, the word is meaningless.”

► Do you consider all of your friends good friends ➔ “What I consider is not the whole picture; ask them. Then, look at my words and my actions and determine for yourself.”

► Who is your best friend ➔

(Aligned): “Silence and solitude. Those aren’t people.”

(IDW): “There is no single one; I count them all among equals, and I am especially fond of all of them.”

Tagged by @pacificae-mors

Tagging: @gear-dust @snowblind05 @thesixteenthspark

#ooc post

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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NFTs Linked to Nobel Prizes Are Being Auctioned by Berkeley How much will someone be willing to pay for a few pages of quarter-century-old bureaucratic university paperwork that have been turned into a blockchain-encoded piece of digital art? The University of California, Berkeley, hopes quite a bit, and it is about to find out. Berkeley announced on Thursday that it will auction the first of two digital art pieces known as nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, next week. The object being offered is based on a document called an invention and technology disclosure. That’s the form that researchers at Berkeley fill out to alert the university about discoveries that have potential to be turned into lucrative patents. The title of the invention, from 1996, is “Blockade of T-Lymphocyte Down-Regulation Associated with CTLA-4 Signalling.” The university hopes that potential bidders will be attracted to an early description of a revolutionary approach to treating cancer developed by James P. Allison, then a professor at Berkeley. He found a way to turn off the immune system’s aversion to attacking tumors and he showed that it worked in mice. That advance eventually led to the creation of Yervoy, a drug for the treatment of metastatic melanoma, and Dr. Allison, who is now at the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2018. Thus, the Berkeley disclosure form could be thought of as the scientific equivalent of Mickey Mantle’s rookie baseball card — a memento of the beginnings of greatness. “I think of it almost as a history of science artifact,” said Richard K. Lyons, the chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer at Berkeley. “Imagine somebody saying, ‘I want to own the NFTs for the 10 most important scientific discoveries of my lifetime.’” A 24-hour auction of the NFT of Dr. Allison’s invention disclosure will take place as early as June 2 using Foundation, an NFT auction marketplace that uses Ethereum, the cryptocurrency network of choice for NFT collectors. Eighty-five percent of the proceeds will go to Berkeley to finance research, the remainder to Foundation. If the piece is later resold, Berkeley will receive 10 percent of the sale and Foundation 5 percent. Because the making of an NFT requires a lot of computing power, part of the money the university earns from the NFT sale will be used for carbon offsets to compensate for the energy consumed, Berkeley officials said. The second NFT that Berkeley plans to auction in the coming weeks will be the disclosure form describing the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing invention by Jennifer A. Doudna, a professor of molecular and cell biology at Berkeley. She shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens for their work on the technique. NFTs have become trendy collectibles in recent months. A unique code embedded in a digital image or video serves as a record of its authenticity and is stored on a blockchain, the same technology that underlies digital currencies like Bitcoin. NFTs can then be bought and sold, just like baseball cards, and the blockchain ensures they cannot be deleted or counterfeited. A dizzying array of documents, far beyond traditional works of art, have been sold as NFTs. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, sold an NFT of his first tweet for $2.9 million. Kevin Roose, a New York Times columnist, sold an NFT of his article about NFTs for more than half a million dollars. (The money went to The Times’s Neediest Cases Fund.) The pages of Dr. Allison’s disclosure form, drawn from the Berkeley archives, make for mostly dry reading. There is a July 11, 1995, letter from Carol Mimura, a licensing associate at Berkeley, thanking Dr. Allison for contacting the university’s office of technology licensing and asking him to fill out some forms. Another page includes Berkeley’s patent policy. The documents reflect quaintly archaic technologies used in the mid-1990s — typewriters, fax machines and handwritten notes. “I am scrambling to protect patentable matter before late July,” reads a memo from Dr. Mimura, now the assistant vice chancellor for intellectual property and industry research alliances. A fax from Dr. Allison to Dr. Mimura includes a simple chart with three lines and 21 data points. “Carol — This is the data that has got us excited,” Dr. Allison has scribbled. His research group was experimenting with colon cancer in mice, and blocking CTLA-4 — a protein receptor that acts as an on-off switch for the immune system — “led to the rejection of the tumor in 5/5 mice,” Dr. Allison wrote. Until now, these forms, filed away, unseen, have had no value, Dr. Allison concedes. “That very first exposure to the world is sort of like, ‘This is the invention disclosure,’” he said. “But once they’ve served that purpose, historically, they get no attention.” The NFT idea was the brainstorm of Michael Alvarez Cohen, director of innovation ecosystem development in Berkeley’s intellectual property office. He said part of the idea came after the publication of “The Code Breaker” by Walter Isaacson, a biography of Dr. Doudna. His friends and relatives told him that they had not known that much of the gene editing technology had originated at Berkeley. “So I was kind of like, Maybe we should post excerpts from the invention disclosure to help promote this,” he said. At the same time, he was following news about blockchain and NFTs. “Then about a month ago, I put the two together,” Mr. Cohen said. Take the invention disclosures about Nobel-winning research like CRISPR, turn them into NFTs, “and drive awareness and also fund research by auctioning the NFTs.” He sat on the idea for a while. “I come up with a lot of ideas,” Mr. Cohen said. “Some of them are bone-headed and everything.” Just over two weeks ago, he started discussing it with his colleagues, and quickly a plan fell into place. In addition to CRISPR, they decided to highlight Dr. Allison’s work. The Allison NFT is more than a simple digital document. “It’s a combination of a lab notebook and digital art,” Mr. Cohen said. A single image includes 10 pages but one can zoom in and read the documents. “I really wanted to preserve the ability to read the history in addition to viewing the beauty of the image,” he said. The designers of the NFT also included subtle nods to the initial resistance to Dr. Allison’s ideas. The pages are all slightly tilted, because “people looked at him askew,” Mr. Cohen said. “There’s a lot of little things like that in the art.” Dr. Lyons was reluctant to predict how much the artwork would fetch at auction. “I’d be surprised if it went for less than $100,000,” he said. “It could go into seven figures. This is a new category, and it’s hard to price anything that is a new category.” Source link Orbem News #auctioned #Berkeley #Linked #NFTs #Nobel #Prizes

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