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rutilation · 4 years

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hi I have some theories about the Problematic Rock

In my essay for chapter 82, I said that I had settled on a theory of What The Deal Is With Cairngorm. My thoughts on the subject are a bit all over the place, so in the hope of presenting things in a coherent manner, I’ve laid out my thought process from the past eleven months or so in roughly chronological order, beginning with the nitpick that started it all. Welcome to my twisted mind, and all that.

For the most part, the way the series applies fantasy concepts to actual geology has been fairly sound. For example, tourmaline generates an electric charge when heated, so Melon radiates electricity when upset. Cinnabar the rock often comes out of the ground covered in native mercury, so Cinnabar the character is surrounded by magical floating mercury. Alexandrite turns red or purple in incandescent light, so the light the Lunarians give off changes Alex’s color and gives them a mood swing to boot. It’s exaggerated and fantastical, but it’s nonetheless grounded in some nugget of geology trivia which one might find on the back of a Snapple cap. But, Ghost and Cairn’s condition in the story does not line up with how phantom crystals work, even within the science-fantasy framework we’ve got going here. At first, I just filed it away next to other inaccuracies such as Antarc shouldn’t be able to trudge through snow without dissolving in a puddle of their own brine, much less dive into the ocean unscathed. However, if my theory(s) is correct, then this apparent lapse in the internal logic of the story might have in fact been deliberate foreshadowing. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, some context. Phantom crystals form by way of two distinct but related processes:

During a crystal’s formation out of a solution, its growth is temporarily halted for one of any number of reasons. During this time, dust falls onto the surface of the crystal. As the crystal begins growing again, these tiny debris become trapped within, and if the rest of the crystal is sufficiently transparent, the included material appears from the outside as the outline of a crystal within a crystal.

The other process to which this term applies involves color zoning, and is a bit easier to explain. During a crystal’s formation, the chemicals that make up the solution change slightly, and these impurities cause one part of the crystal to become a different color from another part. If the color zoning is concentric, and the different colors in question are visible from outside the crystal, it can be labeled a phantom crystal. Ghost and Cairn appear to be this second type.

So here’s what I’m getting at: a phantom crystal is not two separate crystals, in much the same way that the rings in a tree trunk aren’t a bunch of separate trees. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense for Ghost and Cairngorm to be two separate people, and if they are actually intended to be examples of this phenomenon, it raises some questions. For one thing, watermelon tourmaline forms via the exact same process of concentric color zoning I described in example number two; since you usually can’t see the pinkish part from outside of the green layer of crystal, it’s not often labeled a phantom crystal, but it’s the same phenomenon nonetheless. So, why is it that Cairn and Ghost are two different people, but the green and red parts of Melon aren’t? For that matter, why aren’t the two halves of Euclase two separate people? There’s certainly more of colorless-Euclase than there is of Ghost. If mere color zoning were enough, then why are Ghost and Cairn the only examples of highly-conjoined-twins amongst the cast? Unless of course, we weren’t given an accurate picture of how these two came to be, and there’s something fishy going on.

Of course, whether or not this little contradiction is actually meaningful wholly depends on if Ichikawa was even aware of the distinction as she was writing. As I recall she once said in an interview that she wasn’t very familiar with geology in the first place before she started writing hnk. But, like I said at the beginning of this essay, this is what got me started down the rabbit hole. From this observation arose two different trains of thought. One came to me pretty quickly, but the other took a few months to materialize.

The first idea that popped into my head when I realized that this inaccuracy could have been deliberate was that Ghost and Cairngorm might not be separate people, and there was some split-personality shenanigans going on. I’ll quickly list the things I think this theory has going for it with some bullet points.

Remember that one time, when Cairngorm referred to Ghost as their “former self?” And that other time, in the official translation of volume 6, when they referred to Ghost as their “other half?” That is rather curious terminology for referring to one’s sibling.

That one time in chapter 39, where Cairn repeated Ghost’s sentiment about being “tired of praying” verbatim, and the composition of the panels seemingly called attention to it.

It would serve to explain a certain contradiction in Cairn’s personality: despite their aggressive—and at times violent—demeanor, they nonetheless act like a total doormat in all the ways that really matter. They live their life according to someone else’s wishes, they’re quick to pass off decision making to others, and they fold under pressure pretty easily. What if Cairngorm is, in fact, Ghost’s idea of what being assertive is like, without any understanding of what it means to actually be independent or confident?

A common critique of the story is that Ghost’s character was rather perfunctory, and their death felt like a second-rate retread of Antarc’s fate. Well, if Cairn and Ghost are the same person, then they weren’t actually unceremoniously dropped from the story after all. Come to think of it, right before they were supposedly taken, Ghost said they wanted to change; what if they actually did?

As many of you have noticed, Ghost is one of the few characters who isn’t ProblematiqueTM . Doubtlessly, Ichikawa now regrets killing them off before they could do something kinda nasty. Even Antarc got the chance to cluelessly trample over Phos’s self-esteem before getting turned into road salt. But, if it were revealed that Ghost was actually the same character as creamed corn, then Ichikawa could drag their good name through the mud with one fell swoop. (I’m just trying to think from her perspective, guys! Her cruel, sadistic perspective…)

But ultimately, when I got around to wondering why on earth they would have a split personality in the first place, I found that this line of inquiry raised more questions than answers. Unlike my second theory, which mostly just raises answers.

(I know I just dumped a big tinfoil hat at my readers’ feet like a cat gifting its owner a decapitated bird, but please keep bearing with me, I’m not even halfway done.)

The idea that I’ve found to be the most fruitful came in the weeks following chapter 75. I’ve brought up this line from Aechmea multiple times (probably to the point of redundancy,) because it’s the biggest hint we’ve gotten so far that there’s some Cairn-related context we’re not yet privy to. And the more the narrative keeps reminding us of it—usually by way of Cairngorm bringing it up with varying levels of anxiety—the more it seems to be alluding to something important. So I got to thinking that whatever my little plot twist was, it would have to account for Aechmea’s cryptic bullshit. I put forward a couple preliminary ideas in my essay for chapter 75, but I’ve since discarded those in favor of my second theory.

So, somehow Aechmea knew Cairngorm before they came to the moon, and neither Cairngorm, (nor Ghost for that matter,) remembers meeting him. When I tried to think of how this could be possible, while also keeping in mind my little bugbear about phantom crystals, I developed a theory that’s much more pedestrian by the standards of the hnk fandom. I am of course, talking about the mysterious artificial gem experiments that the Lunarians conducted. That sure is a plot element which has been left dangling, huh? And since no one, least of all myself, believes Stinkmea when he claims that the experiments were a complete failure, it has been a favored pastime of people who write walls of text to speculate on who amongst the cast might have been planted on earth by the Lunarians; e.g. Obsidian, Antarc, new Morga and Goshe… I imagine someone at some point has even postulated that Phos themselves is from the moon. But, if you pay close attention to how Aechmea, and later, Barbata describe the process by which they attempted to create artificial gems, it lines up strikingly well with what we know about Ghost and Cairngorm, and it also serves to explain the geological inaccuracy I was talking about earlier.

Aechmea describes how the Lunarians tried to create their own gems by grafting pieces of gems they had captured from earth onto artificial bodies, and that they were dumped on earth before being retrieved after they showed no signs of life. Barbata also mentions it later, in more oblique terms. He’s speaking vaguely, but his warning to Phos feels a bit odd in its specificity. The use of the phrase “emotionally delicate” also raises my eyebrows a bit. I may be reading too much into this, but I feel that his hypothetical example is less hypothetical than he’s letting on. Perhaps, he is in fact referring to a certain someone in particular, who is emotionally fragile, and subsequently lost their sense of self after being subjected to this experiment. Hmmm…

So here’s what I think went down: once upon a time, probably before the current generation of gems had been born, there was a gem on earth who was just plain old colorless Quartz. I’m going to call them OG!Quartz. One day, OG!Quartz is captured by the Lunarians, and Aechmea uses them for his little gem experiment, probably with Barbata being the one to carry it out. He shaves off the outermost layer of OG!Quartz and discards the rest of them. Then, he grafts those pieces onto an artificial body made of black Quartz. The inclusions from OG!Quartz permeate into the artificial material, and thus Cairngorm is born. The Lunarians subsequently dump them on earth, at which point Kongou, who may or may not realize what’s going on, picks them up and names them Ghost Quartz, despite the fact that they didn’t come about via that process.

This would explain a lot of things. If so little of OG!Quartz was used to make Ghost Quartz, they would likely be unable to remember their previous life, or the ensuing events on the moon, for that matter. And since Cairngorm would be a newborn at the time, they wouldn’t be able to remember Aechmea either, thus solving the riddle of how Aechmea knew Cairngorm before they came the moon.

It would also clue us in to what Aechmea meant by love, why he was quick to swoop in and take advantage of Cairn, and why he kept Cairn’s original arm around. If they were the one success after a series of failed experiments, it’s possible that Aechmea feels a sense of ownership over Cairn, as if they’re his accomplishment. (Yikes.)

It would also explain another thing that has stuck in mind. The way Ghost was taken was kind of weird, wasn’t it? At the time, the Lunarians were being oddly particular about nabbing Ghost instead of Cairn. Usually, the Lunarians try to shatter the gems and be done with it, not shave a bunch of little pieces off the outside. Furthermore, Cairngorm was thoroughly wrecked by the end of that fight. The Lunarians could have easily grabbed them both and gotten away before help could arrive, but instead, they pushed Cairn off of the vessel and only took Ghost. If we assume though that Ghost and Cairn are the result of one of those gem experiments, the Lunarians actions during that battle start to make sense. Perhaps the Lunarians wanted to see if Cairngorm was alive in their own right, or if the pieces of Ghost were just dragging the rest of the body around. They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from their distant vantage point. So, they nabbed Ghost and intentionally left Cairn behind in order to further observe their experiment.

(I should point out that when I say “the Lunarians,” assume I’m referring to Aechmea, Barbata, and perhaps a handful of other unnamed extras. Aechmea probably doles out knowledge of his obtuse schemes on a need-to-know basis, and I doubt people like Cicada, or Quieta, or Goshe’s gnarly skater friends know anything about this.)

Going back to this page, Cairn’s expression has stuck in my mind. They’re trembling, and have a fearful look on their face. By all accounts, even if what Aechmea just said was confusing, it should still be something Cairn would be happy to hear. But their immediate reaction is one of understated horror. It’s almost as if they intuited that there was something very wrong with that statement, even if they can’t put their finger on why. This leads us into another question that’s been on my mind which this theory might serve to explain.

In my very first essay about Caringorm, I ran into a bit of a wall when trying to figure out why Cairngorm’s personality is the way it is. I figured at the time that Cairngorm’s issues arose from having no agency for most of their life, and that their relationship with Ghost was perhaps much less amicable than we were lead to believe. And while it’s hard to argue that being a prisoner in their own body for most of their life hasn’t messed them up, I don’t think that’s the only thing going on here. Furthermore, as far as Cairn’s relationship with Ghost was concerned, we haven’t heard anything about it since, which leads me to believe that it’s not where the trouble lies. While I still stand by most of what I said in that essay—particularly about how Cairn’s dependency complex compels them to treat themselves as a vehicle for someone else’s desires—there’s a major aspect to all of this that I overlooked at the time. During their brief tenure in the series, Ghost exhibited a lot of the same issues that Cairngorm does now.

The way they talked about living life following Lapis’s orders—as if they were Lapis’s lackey rather than their partner, the way they latched onto Phos so strongly after they showed them the barest hint of interest, their abysmal self-esteem… It all seems eerily similar to Cairn’s issues, even if it manifested in a more muted fashion. So, why is it that Ghost exhibited some of Cairngorm’s maladaptive coping mechanisms, despite the fact that Cairn should have been the only one of the two who needed to develop them in the first place?

I haven’t exactly put too fine a point on it since I don’t live with the condition myself, and thus don’t want to risk putting my foot in my mouth, but I can’t really elucidate on this in a concise manner while dancing around the subject. Ever since chapter 68, I’ve been looking at Cairngorm through the lens of borderline personality disorder. Since they seem to check more and more boxes off the symptom list with each new chapter, I think it’s a useful lens through which to view them, whether or not it’s one that Ichikawa had in mind. But, BPD generally arises from trauma, to the extent that many psychologists see it as an alternate manifestation of PTSD. So, for the longest time, I’ve wondered how it was that Cairn and Ghost ended up the way they did. There’s no clear answer in the narrative at this point.

This brings us to what Barbata alluded to, that the process of trying to create an artificial gem was damaging to the minds of the those who were subjected to it. If Ghost and Cairn were (re)born as the result of something terrible, something that destroyed their sense of self, it might explain why they both have mental issues that are indicative of past trauma, despite those issues not having any obvious source. The only other possible source of trauma I can come up with is that the relationship the two of them had with Lapis might have been an abusive one. But if that were the case, then there should have been some buildup for it in the chapters following 67. And while Lapis and Ghost have barely been mentioned in the interim, there’s been a whole lot of incremental reminders that Aechmea’s a shady bastard who’s hiding something from Cairn. Where there’s smoke, there’s probably a fire.

Well, that’s about it. Thanks for sticking with this to the end; hopefully, I didn’t make too many flagrant leaps in logic. Ichikawa, if you would be so kind as to confirm my theories, and also let Phos peacefully live out the rest of their days with their snail friends, I would really appreciate it. See you all in the essay for chapter 83.

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #im kind of nervous about posting this #but if we want the rewards of meaningful engagement with art #we must subject ourselves to the mortifying ordeal of posting crack theories

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bitletsanddrabbles · 4 years

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Footman’s Very Serious Guide to Downton Style Pandemic Fashion for the Essential Worker*

Whether we’re talking about a good, old fashioned disease like the Spanish Flu or one of those newfangled illnesses they keep coming up with, there is one thing about pandemics that will always be true: people need to eat. And if your entire job is serving seven course dinners to the upper class, then guess what? You are essential. Your job (or more importantly your pay check) is not going anywhere. If you’re lucky, you work from a reasonable family who is perfectly happy to hunker down in the family pile with all of their staff, and so you aren’t going anywhere either! If you’re not lucky, you work for some Earl or Duke who looks at his wife and says “You know, Darling, this would be the best time to take in the sea side, because no one else will be there. Let’s invite fifty of our closest and go on holiday.” In either case, one can’t be too careful, but if you’re a personal servant - particularly a footman - you also need to be stylish. A pandemic is, after all, no excuse to let the honor of the house laps. So let’s look at some of the basics, top to bottom, shall we?

1. A Hairy Situation

Bald people have never been so lucky. Women who have not adopted the fashionable ‘bobbed’ hair cut area similarly well off. And if you happen to be one of those sons-of-barbers who learned to shear their own hair without looking like a dog with mange - bully for you. The rest of us are stuck resigning ourselves to that popular pandemic hair style known as “get this mop out of my eyes already.” Pomade may help, or it may leave you looking like a drowned sheep. The good news is, most everyone else is in the same boat, so a reasonable employer will let it go without complaint, or maybe even compliment the manner in which you pull it off. An unreasonable employer will need some managing. The easiest and most effective manner to shut down complaints about your hair length is to say one of the delivery people mentioned the barber’s shop has been closed due to the barber himself dying of the plague. This should cause your employer’s sense of self preservation to outweigh their sense of fashion. You must be careful, however, to make this sound like third party knowledge! If you say flat out that the barber has died, you’re going to have some explaining to do when the pandemic is over and the barber is still kicking about.

2. Breathing is Optional

Masks tend to be a subject of some debate. Some professionals claim that they serve no use since they don’t completely block the virus and you spend a lot of time adjusting them when you shouldn’t be touching your face. By those standards, they serve little purpose except to fog up your glasses, make breathing difficult, and (the one obvious benefit) hide your facial expression when your employer suggests the kitchen staff might enjoy throwing together a light picnic lunch for the entire extended family, ten neighbors, and oh, why not, let’s invite the King and Queen. More people feel they’re beneficial as they help contain virus carrying water droplets and put another barrier between your fingers and your face, which is very helpful if you have allergies and the first thing that happens when someone says “don’t touch your face” is that your nose starts itching.

Whether your employer is pro mask or anti mask, I guarantee they’d rather not be served by someone who looks like a low budget plague doctor. An easy solution to this, if you can manage it, is to get a hold of some of the spare material that matches your livery and have a mask made from that. The tailor who makes the livery will undoubtedly have spare cloth from the waistcoats hanging about and, as people won’t be coming in for fittings, may be willing to send you a yard or so for a reasonable price. They may even agree to make the masks themselves as a source of pandemic income.

Masks come in different styles, so choose the one that is most comfortable for you. Ties also have a number of options. You can make loops that go over your ears or two ties that each tie behind your head. The style shown above is one long tie that loops over the top of your head, then ties once behind the neck. A sliding knot makes for easy adjustment. Also, if you’ve passed on the pomade, you can somewhat arrange your hair over the tie to make it more discreet and eye pleasing.

A final note on masks. You may be wondering how people will be able to hear you through two layers of cotton and possibly some light batting (optional). The answer is easy: they can’t. Your voice will be muffled and no matter how hard you try no one will be able to understand a thing you’re saying unless you bellow at the top of your lungs. Keep something to drink near by and you may survive without laryngitis. Maybe.

3. Gloves, They’re Not Just For Serving Anymore

Remember the lecture you got on how important it was to keep from getting fingerprints on the silver? Fingerprints are nothing next to pathogens. Wear clean gloves whenever you’re working. Make sure your gloves are clean. Change into clean gloves if necessary. This may seem redundant if you’re continually washing your hands, but think: if you’ve just spent two hours polishing the silver with a toxic polish, do you really want to turn around and help put food onto platters while wearing the same gloves?

...no, it is not a good way to get rid of your annoying employer. If you do that, you’ll be penniless and homeless at best, in prison at worst. While prison does mean a roof over your head and food in your stomach, jails do not employ the same caliber of kitchen staff as great houses do. Really, they don’t.

Look, just wear the gloves, alright? If nothing else, the maids are probably going to washing every blessed surface of the house fifty times a day. This will help keep you from getting lye or other caustic substances on your hands or in your mouth or some such.

And they look nice.

Right. That should do it. Now go try not to die and remember: you’re essential and if you do a good job and your employer is reasonable, he’ll remember this the next time you ask for few days off.

*this post is serious like Hostess Twinkies are health food.

#downton abbey #pandemic #covid-19 #ppe #humor #because laughter is the best medicine #and we could all use something to laugh at

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huphilpuffs · 5 years

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flares

chapter: 31/? summary: Dan’s body has been broken for as long as he can remember, and he’s long since learned to deal with it. Sort of. But when his symptoms force him to leave uni and move into a new flat with a stranger named Phil, he finds that ignoring the pain isn’t the way to make himself happy. word count: 4k (103k total) rating: mature warnings: chronic illness, chronic pain, medicine a/n: As always, immense thanks to @obsessivelymoody for beta’ing!

Ao3 link || read from beginning

They settle into bed that night with no intention of going to sleep.

Dan’s laptop is open, resting on his thighs. Phil propped up two pillows against the wall for him to lean against, his back and neck still tender from the pressure point test Dr. Kissel performed. The duvet is draped across his lap, his toes sticking out from the end of it.

Phil stares at the screen over his shoulder. Dan can feel the warm puffs of air from his breathing against his skin.

He types fibro mialgia into Google.

Its response is Did you mean: Fibromyalgia, just enough to have a quiet breath rumbling between Dan’s ribs.

He clicks on the first link, a webpage from the Mayo Clinic. He’s pretty sure that’s in America somewhere. It probably doesn’t much matter. The top of the page tells him it’s believed to amplify painful sensations by changing the way the brain processes pain. He thinks that’s what Dr. Kissel said.

Dan’s not entirely sure what fucked up pain processing is supposed to feel like, but he thinks this is probably it.

The next paragraph is about trauma, about how it sometimes triggers fibromyalgia. Dan tries not to let the fact that he doesn’t relate make his insides twist too much.

Phil must be able to tell, because he leans in close and whispers, “It says ‘sometimes’.”

The one after that includes a list of other conditions that may be related. Dan reads it once, twice, three times before his gaze lingers on the last two. His stomach goes tight. He doesn’t realize his fingertip’s tapping his computer until Phil reaches over to grab it, snagging one of Dan’s hands and drawing it into his lap.

He doesn’t ask what Dan’s staring at. It’s probably obvious.

Dan’s spent years trying to convince himself he definitely wasn’t depressed, that definitely wasn’t his problem, and now it’s splashed across the page again in the clearest of sans serif fonts. Dr. Kissel didn’t mention that one. He wonders how much of his chart she’s read, if she knew it would make him feel like this.

He almost shuts the laptop and gives up on research. Maybe he doesn’t want to know after all.

But then Phil reaches over and scrolls down for him, leaving the list of symptoms lighting up Dan’s screen.

Everything after that is overwhelming in a different way. There’s a lot of symptoms. A lot of possible treatments. Dan’s never considered most of them. Massage therapy sounds incredibly unpleasant. Acupuncture, too. Getting enough sleep sounds so implausible that Dan actually laughs, too loud, too sharp.

The next page on Google is a lot of the same. So is the third, and the fourth.

Exercise is mentioned a lot. Dan’s joints ache at just the thought of trying to go out for a run, at the memory of how painful it was just to walk to class back at uni, of how sick he used to feel after gym class back in school.

There’s a lot they don’t know about fibromyalgia, he learns. There’s no cure, no definitive answer on why things hurt. There’s a bunch of studies that show little abnormalities that might cause it but none of them agree and none are conclusive and Dan doesn’t much care.

He knows, finally. And there’s some stuff they do know.

It’s not fatal. It’s never fatal. Dan reads that bit out loud, because Phil’s sitting next to him, gaze tripping across the page just a bit slower than Dan’s. Dr. Kissel already told them that more than once. The extra layer of reassurance makes Phil lean in close, his body pressed against Dan’s side.

He dusts a kiss to Dan’s bare shoulder, soft, loving.

There was a time when Dan might have been terrified by the prospect of a lifelong condition with no cure and no potential to be let out of his misery. It’s still scary now, not knowing what to expect for any of his future. But giving this up isn’t really an option anymore.

Phil lets go of his hand to wrap his arm around Dan’s shoulders instead, leaning in close so his head rests right above Dan’s collarbone.

“I’m glad you have an answer,” he says. His voice has gone low and gravelly.

He sounds tired. And he has to work in the morning. And Dan suddenly feels bad for keeping him up for so long with a cycle of redundant articles that say the same little bit of information in slightly different ways. He closes his laptop, scrolled only halfway down the page.

“You’re not gonna keep reading?”

“I can read tomorrow,” he says. “Apparently I need to focus on getting enough sleep.”

Phil chuckles. He pulls away just enough slip down the mattress until he’s lying down. Dan tosses the extra pillow onto the floor and rests his laptop precariously on the corner of his bedside table before doing the same. He reaches out, draping his arm across Phil’s stomach, cuddling up against his side.

He can’t handle the pressure against his back tonight. Phil doesn’t seem to mind.

His palm settles flat against Dan’s ribcage, head dipping down. Dan looks up to meet his mouth in a quick kiss goodnight.

When he pulls away, he’s smiling.

---

Dan dreams of being old that night.

He’s sitting in a mostly empty room with white walls and a sofa. There’s a blanket draped over him and an ice pack sitting uselessly atop his head. It’s just like his life now, except when he looks down, his hands are wrinkled and spotted with age.

He wakes up. The room is still dark, hardly a touch of light filtering through Phil’s curtains. Phil’s still sound asleep, snoring softly.

Dan’s brain is echoing his nan’s complaints about how achy her knees were, the ones he could relate to when he was only fourteen.

He swallows, presses himself tighter against Phil’s side, and stares at the window until he falls back asleep.

---

His chest is tight when he wakes up in the morning.

Phil’s not in bed anymore. There’s a note on Dan’s bedside table telling him Phil’s already gone to work. It has a silly little smiley face drawn in the corner. Dan’s laptop has been moved to sit on the chest of drawers instead, more stable there than where he placed it last night.

He sinks back against his pillow once he’s spotted it. His breath comes out as a sigh, his hand coming up to rub hard at the line of his sternum, as though that will ease the pressure there.

His knees crack when his climbs out of bed. There’s still a tingling, radiating sort of pain where Dr. Kissel pressed against his body, all down his legs and up along his spine. Some of them feel swollen, but when he rubs at the back of his neck, there’s nothing there.

Dan grabs his laptop and changes his pants before moving to the lounge.

He turns to look back before he leaves, hand gripping the door frame to steady him. The duvet is ruppled on both sides, a giant ball of fluff where Dan’s feet were. There’s a pillow on the floor and two pressed close together at the head of the mattress. Dan’s phone charger rests on his bedside table, plugged into nothing.

Something spasms in Dan’s chest.

It takes him a moment to realize it’s anxiety.

---

The kettle is half full of water on the kitchen counter. There’s a smoothie in the fridge with a straw already sticking out of it. Phil left the cereal box out, plastic bag half poking out the top of it, and the cupboard door open overhead. Dan closes it as he sips at his breakfast.

He doesn’t turn the TV on this morning.

He drags his computer onto his lap and opens the article he’d left half read last night. He doesn’t finish it. There’s other things on his mind this morning than symptom lists he’s already read and collections of advice that only seems half effective.

Working with fibromyalgia, is what he types into Google today.

The first link is to a WebMD article. Dan clicks it without thinking much.

People can work with this, is the first thing Dan learns. It makes his chest feel funny, something half relief and half not blooming there. Keep working, is what the article says, and Dan tries not to think about the day he handed his resignation to Sue, body aching so much just getting there had been a hassle.

He fails.

He thinks about it for so long that his vision goes out of focus, the article sliding into double. It snaps back into place when he blinks and scrolls down to the next part, too many lists of too many questions to address way too many problems.

The advice is … a lot. It’s flexible work hours and working from home, extra equipment at work and less tasks. It’s finding a job that’s not too stressful and lets you sleep in, and one where you don’t need to do manual labour but can also survive when your brain isn’t working right.

Right in the middle of it, there’s an ad for some pill that starts with, Does your penis curve when erect?

Dan laughs. It’s only then that he realizes his throat’s gone tight and his eyes are stinging. His fingers are shaking over the keyboard when he jams the down arrow to read the rest of the page. It takes him too many tries to stay steady enough to click the arrow bringing him to the next one.

Can I get disability with fibromyalgia? is its header.

Dan almost forgets how to breathe. He doesn’t read it. He doesn’t go back to Google. He closes Chrome entirely and slams his laptop shut and tells himself it’s because the advice was about American law and not because his stomach suddenly really doesn’t like the smoothie Phil made more him.

A tear rolls down his cheek.

He stares at the blank TV screen until it falls off the bottom of his chin.

---

The lounge is full of both their stuff.

There’s a PlayStation and a Wii on the TV cabinet, above neat shelves lined with a shared collection of games. There’s two DS chargers plugged into the wall. There’s a stack of DVDs by the door to the balcony, Dan’s piled on top of Phil’s from when he first moved in.

The blanket Phil got him is draped over the sofa. Decorations he had before Dan moved in are all laid out on the furniture and hanging on the walls. There’s a throw pillow that used to live on the sofa that now sits in the corner of the room.

Dan thinks too much about how none of his A-levels or GCSCs will ever be enough to get him a job that would give him any of the things on WebMD’s list.

And then even more about all the horror stories he’s heard about people living on benefits.

And then, once his chest hurts and pressure is welling at his temples, about how he doesn’t really have a choice but to need one of them if his body’s not going to be fixed.

It’s not. Dan expected that. He tries not to care. Part of him doesn’t.

But the other part of him reminds him that Phil’s parents are still paying his part of the rent, echoes his mum’s warnings about leeching off Phil until tears are welling in his eyes once again. It pictures the people back in Wokingham who told him he’d never go anywhere if Dan didn’t learn to deal with a little bit of pain.

His brain flashes a quick image of being back there.

He reaches for his phone, just to distract himself. He ends up texting Taylor instead.

Dan: can you come over? i have news

Taylor: already on my way out the door

---

“You look less shit today,” is what she says when she opens the door. There’s a smile on her face, wavering just enough to let Dan know it’s her attempt to act normal.

He doesn’t feel less shit. The post-appointment high has settled into something just as heavy and insecure feeling as before, just tainted with different memories, weighted with different fears.

“Yeah,” he says, “Well, stuff happened.”

He leads her to the lounge without explaining first. His body is achy and she knows he needs to be sitting down. When she settles down next to him, it’s with her whole body turned towards him, legs tucked under her and arm draped across the back of the cushions, like she’s waiting for something.

She doesn’t ask for it.

Dan takes a moment to steady his breath before saying, “I’m not dying.”

She chuckles, breathy and uncertain. “That’s good,” she says. “You better think it’s good.”

There was a day, back in at uni, when she’d tossed her textbook aside and said killing me would be less painful. And Dan, safe in the knowledge that she wouldn’t try to send him to a therapist, lest the advice be turned back on her, had admitted sometimes I wish I was dying just so I’d know the pain would end.

“It’s good,” says Dan. He turns towards her, offering a smile that actually feels genuine. “I have a diagnosis.”

“Oh!” She bounces on her knees. “And?”

“It’s fibromyalgia.”

She nods, just once, brows going a little furrowed. “Is it bad that I don’t know what that means?”

Dan laughs. “Neither did I,” he says. “I reckon most scientists don't either, if Google is a reliable source.”

“Sounds accurate, if my quarter of a bio degree is anything to go off,” says Taylor. A smile quirks at the corners of her mouth.

Dan’s not sure he’s ever seen her smiling when talking about those classes. It’s nice.

“Yeah, most of my old doctors confirm the theory,” he says, smiling too. “Dr. Kissel’s actually good, though.”

“Yeah?” says Taylor. “And this fibromyalgia thing, is it good?”

He shrugs. The anxiety from before burns in his chest again. His head tilts back against the sofa, and he watches Taylor’s brows furrow in concern.

“Probably shouldn’t be. The symptoms are royal shit and there’s no cure and I don’t really know where to go from here,” he admits. “But having an answer? That’s good.”

A smile spreads slowly across her face, close-lipped and content. Dan watches her eyes flick between both of his, her head falling to rest against her open palm as she stares.

“I’m not gonna pretend to understand,” she says. “My diagnosis– I knew what was wrong, I just didn’t want to admit it, you know?”

Dan nods. He wonders if that’s one of the things she learned about herself in therapy, wonders how he never really saw it that way. Maybe because he couldn’t relate. He never felt like he knew what was wrong with him. Until now.

His heart clenches at that, eyes falling closed against the rush of anxiety-tainted relief that floods the already too-full space between his ribs.

Taylor reaches over, resting a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her voice is quiet as a whisper when she says, “I’m so happy for you.”

He laughs. It comes out as a puff of air that sounds half like a sob, but it’s the best he can muster without actually breaking into tears.

She must be able to tell, because she pulls away and settles back against the sofa. Dan counts his breath for a moment afterwards, until the steady rise and fall of his chest feels less fragile. When he opens his eyes again, Taylor’s staring up at the ceiling with him, lips still quirked up.

“You get to join me in the arduous process that is recovery now, you know,” she says. “Welcome to the dark side.”

Dan smiles. “Shouldn’t it be the brighter side?”

“Hush,” she turns to him. Her smile’s reaching her eyes, like it rarely used to before. “I’ve been rehearsing that in my head for the last, like, two minutes, let me have this.”

When Dan laughs that time, it actually feels genuine.

---

Taylor stays for dinner. Phil invited her.

They eat around the coffee table. Taylor lets Phil have his usual spot next to Dan with a joke about how she’s pretty sure it’s morphed to their spines by now, and drags over a chair from the dining table instead. She tells Phil all about her new courses as they eat, a grin wide on both their faces.

Afterwards, they play a round of Mario Kart, because they can. Dan wins. Taylor comes in second this time, and Phil complains about how she’s never allowed to play with them again because, even if he can’t beat Dan, he can beat the computers. Usually.

Dan teases him with that last bit. He points out how often Phil ends up stuck in the item clusterfuck and, when he pouts in response, presses a quick kiss to his cheek. Because he can.

It feels normal. As normal as it can when, a few months ago, he and Taylor were playing this game on their DS’, miserable in Dan’s uni bedroom.

So, not normal at all.

Taylor’s laughs so much happy tears leak from the corners of her eyes. Dan has an answer for why his chest aches when he laughs too much. Phil reaches around him, and flattens a hand against Dan’s ribs when his breath catches around an exhale.

He whispers a quiet one, two, three, against the round of Dan’s shoulder.

Dan leans his head back against the cushions again, and enjoys the company of the two people who will give him a second to steady the broken parts of his body without making him feel bad.

When he looks back up, he smirks at them both, and starts a round of Rainbow Road without warning.

---

The anxiety starts to come back when darkness falls.

Phil leads him to the bedroom without a word. Taylor’s just left, the sky’s just starting to go dark. It’s been a long time since they last sat up and watched a movie late into the night, Dan realizes, but he doesn’t much mind. It means he gets to wrap himself in cozy blankets and rest his head on a fluffed up pillow and feel Phil’s arms around him.

He gets to reach up and chase away the tedium of the day with soft kisses pressed to Phil’s lips.

Tonight, though, he doesn’t. His mind is too preoccupied by the time he slips under the covers. He stares up at the ceiling and tries not to think of all the long nights he spent with just his pain and his questions to keep him company. Days when the brush of his duvet was too much against his skin, when his pillow pressed too much against the back of his neck.

It’s because there’s tender points there. Dan knows that now.

It doesn’t feel like he should.

He reaches out into the space between them and catches Phil’s hand over the mattress, squeezing once.

“Can I ask you something?” he says.

“‘Course,” says Phil. He rolls over, so he’s curled up on his side facing Dan, head resting against the crook of his elbow.

Dan doesn’t look back at him. He feels weird when he asks, “You know that thing you made me do the other day? To get my thoughts out of my head? With my webcam?”

“Yeah,” says Phil. “Why?”

Dan swallows. Phil must be able to hear it, because he squeezes Dan’s hand, just for a second.

“Would you find it weird if I wanted to do it again?”

“Why would I find that weird?” asks Phil. He lets go of Dan’s hand, only to reach out and clumsily search for his fringe in the darkness. He swipes some curls away from his eyes. “I told you I used to do it, didn’t I?”

Dan shrugs. It’s awkward, with his pillow tucked right above his shoulders. “Yeah. Just feels weird.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to, if it helps,” says Phil. “Do you want me to set it up for you?”

Dan considers it. There’s comfort in the idea, a weird kind that soothes his mind into thinking Phil actually can’t find it weird if he’s willing to help Dan do it. But it’s getting late, late enough that Dan’s pretty sure if he peeked outside he could see the the flashing trails of airplanes over the city, and Phil worked all day.

“I think I can manage,” he says. “Pretty sure I haven’t forgotten how to use my laptop just yet.”

Phil laughs. His hand trails across Dan’s chest as he slips out of bed. When Dan turns to look back from the doorframe, the hallway light lets him see just enough to tell that Phil’s still curled up on his side, smiling.

---

He sets his laptop up on his pillows, with the grainy window of his webcam app filling the screen.

The room stays silent for long seconds after he hits record. Dan adjusts his hair, all curly in the way he hates but can never spare the energy to fix. He fidgets around on his bed until his too-bony knees are out of shot and you can see the waistline of his pants so he doesn’t look naked.

Part of him wants to laugh at himself. It doesn’t matter. No one will ever see this. Dan doesn’t even think he’ll ever look back at it.

He takes a deep breath, brings his fingers to his head, and says, “Hello internet,” just like last time.

And then he rants into the camera until he’s lost track of what he’s already said and isn’t sure any of it is making sense and the anxiety in his brain fades into some sort of mental fatigue. He’s lying down on his side because he lost the energy to sit up and his laptop clock is telling him it’s been over half an hour.

His hands are shaking when he reaches over to shut the recording off. Dan’s not sure when that started.

He’s not sure about a lot of things, he realizes.

Dan rolls onto his back, and stares up a ceiling that’s just like Phil’s but feels way less familiar until he musters the energy to hold his body upright again.

---

Phil’s still awake when Dan goes back to their room.

He looks up from his phone as Dan closes the door behind him and walks over to crawl into bed. He pulls the duvet over his body, right up to his chin, and curls up on his side. There’s a headache welling in his temples, and a heaviness lingering in his chest.

“Were you listening?” he whispers.

“No,” says Phil. He reaches behind him to set his phone down, sending the room dark, and then reaches out to tuck a strand of Dan’s hair behind his ear. “I don’t want to intrude.”

Dan hums. His eyes drift closed as Phil’s thumb traces small circles on his cheek.

Part of him wishes Phil had overheard, so he could soothe Dan’s anxieties without him needing to ask any scary questions. Most of him just wants to hold Phil close and pretend he isn’t suddenly questioning the stability of his entire fucking life, of all the wonderful things in it.

So he does. He grabs Phil’s hand, and dusts a soft kiss to his palm, and then presses closer until Phil’s arms are wrapped all the way around him, holding him tucked against his shoulder in an awkward horizontal hug.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

Phil doesn’t respond with words. He just brushes a kiss to the top of Dan’s head and then, when Dan looks up, a second to his lips.

And a third and a fourth and a fifth until they actually settle in to sleep.

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #flares #dan and phil #callie writes words

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splashesdarling · 5 years

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A comprehensive evaluation and ranking of all Mariah albums:

Y’all want to dive deep into Ms. Mimi’s discography? Well too bad, we’re doing it anyway (skip to the end for rankings).

Mariah Carey (1990) Mariah’s debut is a great collection of songs, but a great collection of songs and a great album are not one and the same. The songs individually (with the sole exception of Prisoner) are fantastic, but there is no real album cohesion, in either sound or theme. Its main purpose was to introduce the world to Mariah’s voice, and it does so with admirable panache.

- Album Highlight: Alone In Love. Album Lowlight: Prisoner.

Emotions (1991) Mariah’s Debut album introduced the world to her voice, Emotions introduces the world to Mariah THE ARTIST. Her skills as a songwriter and music producer are on full display, as is her voice, which is allowed more freedom and spontaneity her second album out. Carrying the listener to dizzying highs throughout a distinctive yet cohesive album.

- Album Highlight: Till The End Of Time. Album Lowlight: None.

MTV Unplugged (1992) Its sole reason for existence was to prove Mariah’s voice was not a studio creation, MTV Unplugged proves it, though the performances are held back by some sloppy music cues and Mariah’s obvious stage fright. There are some lovely live instrumental rearrangements and vocals, but there are better live performances from Mariah.

- Album Highlight: Negligible. Album Lowlight: Negligible.

Music Box (1993) Serving as a transitional period for Mariah musically, Music Box sees Mariah experimenting with new sounds and singing styles, most of which work wonderfully and those that don’t are at worst only forgettable. Much like her Debut, Music Box is a great collection of songs, but as an album experience it’s lacking. The album doesn’t inspire you to listen from beginning to end, rather you skip to the songs you want to hear.

- Album Highlight: Everything Fades Away. Album Lowlight: Hero.

Merry Christmas (1994) Do you like Christmas music? Do you enjoy talented vocalists? Do you like when talented vocalists sing Christmas music? You’re in luck, but the rest of us will have to wait for a real new album.

- Album Highlight: AIWFCIY. Album Lowlight: It’s a Christmas album, the entirety of it is a lowlight.

Daydream (1995) The title is apt, this dreamy album is a pleasure. Though cohesion is still an issue, it's not so blatant here. Many of the songs tie into a central theme, and soundwise there is a through line. That is not to say the songs that deviate bring the album down, quite the contrary. For the first time Mariah’s hip hop, r&b, and soul inspirations and deep-seated love for the genres are coming through clearly, but they’re somewhat held back, which would become blatant with the subsequent release of Butterfly.

- Album Highlight: Always Be My Baby. Album Lowlight: (If only for me) One Sweet Day.

Butterfly (1997) Mariah Carey crystallized. Her first album to truly capture the woman she was and the phenomenal artist she is when unrestricted and allowed to express herself freely. From the lyrical artistry, to the pitch perfect production, Mariah’s breathtaking vocals and the depth of the album as a whole, Butterfly still stands as Mariah’s magnum opus. The album is cohesive, while still allowing each song to stand easily on their own. Some will argue the exception is her cover of The Beautiful Ones, but I wholeheartedly disagree. If taken on its own perhaps, but within the context of the album it is as essential and beautiful as each of the other tracks featured.

- Album Highlight: Outside. Album Lowlight: None.

#1′s (1998) A celebration of Mariah’s (then) 13 #1′s. The inclusion of I Still Believe, When You Believe, Sweetheart, and a newly duetted Whenever You Call, along with her established hits makes this a worthwhile listen.

- Album Highlight: When You Believe. Album Lowlight: Do You Know Where You’re Going To.

Rainbow (1999) Often overlooked due to its busy musical production and the arguable disappointment at its relative weightlessness in comparison with Butterfly, Rainbow is underrated but undeniably disjointed. A half and half of an album, with half cohesively flowing from one song into the other (this is even the first use of interludes by Mariah) while the other half stumble the album’s momentum and flow. For the most part it’s an easy listen, the melodies, vocal layering, and production making for an enjoyable experience, but the album’s failings sadly result in a missed opportunity on the whole.

- Album Highlight: Bliss. Album Lowlight: Did I Do That?.

Glitter (2001) Intended as a soundtrack more than a traditional Mariah album, however it doesn’t embrace the concept or style of a soundtrack enough to differentiate from the rest of her body of work. Glitter contains the absolute peak of Mariah’s ballads, while the non stop party anthems are fun enough to bring the house down, and there are touching dives into the somewhat autobiographical story of the character Mariah plays in the film from which the album takes its namesake. Audio clips from the film are included only sparingly towards the start of the album, uncommitted interludes if anything, they add nothing to the listening experience and serve only to undermine the album’s strengths.

- Album Highlight: Lead The Way. Album Lowlight: If We.

Greatest Hits (2001) Released a scant three months after the critical and commercial flop of Glitter, the message couldn’t have been clearer. Ironically the strength of Mariah as a vocalist, songwriter, and music producer highlights exactly why writing her off as they did with this release was a resounding mistake.

- Album Highlight: Take your pick. Album Lowlight: Here in the UK we had Against All Odds feat. Westlife included, soooo.

Charmbracelet (2002) The only album to close in on Butterfly’s position atop Mariah’s discography. Generally overlooked and ignored by even the lambs themselves, Charmbracelet is a criminally underrated masterpiece. The revised priorities of musical production and vocal arrangement following the somewhat overproduced Rainbow and erratic Glitter, Charmbracelet is a bracing reminder of Mariah’s overwhelming talent and ability to imbue her music with such beauty and poignancy, to invoke both personal evaluation and universal truths. It is also, incidentally, my favourite Mariah album, just in case you hadn’t guessed it.

- Album Highlight: Yours (fight me). Album Lowlight: None.

The Remixes (2003) Much like the release of a Greatest Hits album following Glitter’s critical and commercial failure, so too was The Remixes released following Charmbracelet’s lukewarm reception. A reminder of Mariah’s talent and decade long stretch of hits across Billboard’s various music charts, another plea for listeners to realise you can’t write off talent like Mariah. The first disc of this two disc set features the club remixes (most courtesy of longtime collaborator David Morales), the only real stumbles are the Heartbreaker/If You Should Ever Be Lonely Remix, which doesn’t blend together or sample each song well enough to justify itself or its inclusion here, the other is the Hq2 Remix of Through The Rain. I appreciate the need to promote the newest album of original content but we know Mariah can do better. The first disc is somewhat of a letdown, as the exclusion of certain club remixes are especially egregious (Always Be My Baby and The Roof specifically) The second disc (featuring the commercially released singles remixes) fares far better, and probably would have been better served being released separately.

- Album Highlight: Thank God I Found You (Make It Last Remix). Album Lowlight: Through The Rain (Hq2 Remix).

The Emancipation Of Mimi (2005) Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, which is amazing given how needlessly bloated the album is. The album benefits from the cohesive sound and style utilized throughout and from containing an abundance of chart ready songs, but ultimately the experience is dampened by all the throwaway filler. There is no justification for the inclusion of To The Floor when we have Get Your Number, no reason for a Part II to So So Lonely when Part I was so forgettable, Circles, Joyride, and I Wish You Knew are too similar in sound and lyrical content to appear almost one right after the other. The highs of TEOM are likely to make you giddy, but the interruption from second-tier material drags the album down. The album is 19 tracks long when it should have been a brisk and memorable 13.

- Album Highlight: Fly Like A Bird. Album Lowlight: Makin' It Last All Night (What It Do).

E=MC² (2008) Much like Rainbow, E=MC² is often overlooked due to its busy production, and make no mistake the album is very busy production-wise. The album lacks the restraint even Rainbow was capable of. That is not to say the album is bad by any means, far from it. The biggest issue of the album is the lackluster beats. Generic for the most part, missguided in certain cases, and overall a less engaging and original sound than we’re used to from Mariah. What saves the album is the infectious fun of it all, Mimi’s celebrating and you’ve been invited to the party. Not that it’s one long party record, there’s an array of lyrical depth to be found hiding within the deluge of uninspired beats, that is if you’re willing to stick with the album long enough to hear them.

- Album Highlight: I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time. Album Lowlight: Cruise Control.

Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel (2009) THIS is how you do a long album. 17 tracks long but, unlike TEOM, there’s no filler, no redundant repeats. The album is long but tight and cohesive, flowing effortlessly between songs, rewarding for those willing to listen from beginning to end. The first time since Rainbow that Mariah had used interludes (Glitter’s half-assed attempt does not count), though they’re more satisfying here. Mariah is telling a story with this album and the languorous pace and the breathers the interludes provide enhance the album’s listening experience. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the lyrical skill on display throughout the album, it’s deep but Mariah still has plenty of fun here, the line ‘it's going down like a denominator’ is a personal favourite.

- Album Highlight: The Impossible. Album Lowlight: None.

Merry Christmas II You (2010) Do you like ‘modern’ Christmas music? Do you like iconic artists slumming it? Do enjoy watching music icons try desperately to reinvent Christmas classics with a ‘modern’ twist? First, what is wrong with you? And second, please don’t come to my house during the holidays.

- Album Highlight: When Christmas Comes (it’s actually sweet, just avoid the duet version). Album Lowlight: All of it.

Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse (2014) The album delivers on the epicness of its audacious title. One of her best albums, period. Many balk at the 62 minute run time (74 if you go Deluxe) but it’s well worth the time. This album is an experience, Mariah said that if this were to be her last album she wanted to say everything she needed to say with it, and she does (and then some). It’s a beautiful and inspiring album, managing to balance that classic Mariah sound while still sounding fresh and new. The album is a tour de force, and had this been Mariah’s last album? She would have been going out on a high note.

- Album Highlight: Meteorite. Album Lowlight: None.

#1 To Infinity (2015) For the love of God, stop releasing greatest hits compilations whenever her albums underperform. Yes, sadly MIAM...TEC failed to grab the public’s attention (for context, the biggest songs of that year were Happy, Dark Horse, All Of Me, and Fancy, soooo, there’s clearly no accounting for taste that year) so we got an updated #1′s album, given that by this point her initial 13 had increased to 18. If you enjoy her #1s the album’s a great way to have them all in one convenient disc, Infinity the song is fine but nothing special. Fun fact, the UK release swapped out Someday, I Don’t Want To Cry, and Thank God I Found You for Endless Love, Without You, and Against All Odds feat. (SIGH) Westlife. Because when you’re buying a disc featuring Mariah’s record breaking 18 American #1′s, obviously you don’t actually want those original songs of hers, you want 3 song covers because they went to #1 in the UK!

- Album Highlight: Take your pick. Album Lowlight: (Why do you keep doing this UK?!) Against All Odds feat. I hate you talentless bastards.

Caution (2018) Mariah could have gone out with MIAM...TEC, but thank God she didn’t because then we wouldn’t have been blessed with this gem. A brisk 11 tracks (only 10 if not for the internet, because apparently Mariah doesn’t want us to have nice things) go by far too quickly, they’re each so enjoyable you don’t want them to end, and though they each have their own distinctive sound they blend together to form a cohesive whole. Mariah is clearly through trying to appeal to the general mass public in any way, shape, or form, and Caution is all the better for it. Mariah has nothing to prove at this point, and she knows it. This is an album made entirely from a place of self-assuredness and an unsuppressable love for writing, singing, and producing music. May she never grow tired of doing so.

- Album Highlight: Giving Me Life. Album Lowlight: None.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Overall Album Ranking:

#1 Butterfly

#2 Charmbracelet

#3 Me. I am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse

#4 Emotions

#5 Caution

#6 Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel

#7 Daydream

#8 Mariah Carey

#9 Music Box

#10 Rainbow

#11 Glitter

#12 E=MC²

#13 The Emancipation Of Mimi

#14 MTV Unplugged

#15 Greatest Hits

#16 #1′s

#17 The Remixes

#18 #1 To Infinity

#19 Merry Christmas

#20 Merry Christmas II You

#mariah carey #era spanning

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lorrainecparker · 7 years

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After Effects: revisiting feature requests from 2008

June 2008 seems like a long time ago now. Adobe had only just released After Effects CS3 and I was mostly working on a G5 PowerMac. Four gigabytes of RAM seemed like an awful lot. George W Bush was the US President and the Apple iPhone was only 1 year old – a month later in July Apple would release the iPhone 3G, but that was still a secret.

Just a quick reminder about June 2008… After Effects came in a box, the iPhone was at version 1, and the US President was George W Bush.

What Apple did announce in June 2008 was the name of their next operating system – “Snow Leopard”. At the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference a few details trickled out – most significantly, the announcement that Snow Leopard wouldn’t introduce any major new features, but rather focus on performance and “under the hood” improvements.

When I read the various Apple news reports I started to wonder – what if Adobe took the same approach with After Effects? What if the next release skipped any major new features and instead focused on performance and small improvements? I thought it was worth daydreaming about.

Just for fun, I posted the idea on the After Effects email list, and asked for suggestions for minor feature requests that would make everyday work faster and easier. I remember finding the responses interesting, as there were several things I had never thought of. It was a good reminder that After Effects is used by lots of different people in lots of different situations. After a week or two, I compiled the suggestions together and emailed the list to Adobe, and received a thank-you email from Michael Coleran, the After Effects product manager at the time.

It’s not quite 10 years later, but last week Adobe announced the latest releases of their major CC apps, including After Effects. As usual with such a major update, it takes time to go through all the new features and work out what’s new and what’s changed. There are videos to watch, blogs to read, twitter posts to examine and so on. Right now, I’m not even sure what it’s called. Is it After Effects CC 2018? The update appeared on my Windows machine as just After Effects CC…

Whatever the name, how does the latest version of After Effects stack up against the list of feature requests I sent to Adobe almost 10 years ago? Let’s go through the list and see. Bear in mind that this is a list of suggestions from a range of different people, so there’s some overlap and a little ambiguity. I’ve loosely grouped them together according to the part of After Effects they apply to.

Interface:

Moving/dragging interface tabs around can be “undone”

I used to think this looked better than the current After Effects interface. I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

It’s hard to remember, but After Effects didn’t always look the way it did. Adobe gave AE a major interface revamp with version 7, but many users – myself included – initially hated the radical change and resisted the upgrade.

Eventually After Effects CS3 was released which prompted us to upgrade and grapple with the new look and feel, and it really was a big leap from the old floating-windows of After Effects 6.5. But while it now seems 2nd nature, dragging those tabs and palettes around took a bit of getting used to. It was easy to accidentally drag something to a new place, or close a panel you didn’t mean to, or basically just click in the wrong spot and find your workspace layout had become all messed up. Unlike changes to the timeline, these changes to the interface layout couldn’t be fixed with an “undo”.

Nearly ten years later it’s still easy to accidentally mess up your favourite workspace with an errant click, but can you “undo” workspace layout changes in the latest version of After Effects? Still no.

Verdict: Still waiting…

a colour swatch palette

It’s fair to say that we got more than we asked for! The Photoshop swatches palette is on the left, the Kuler panel in After Effects on the right also includes tools to create colour schemes.

In 2008, the majority of the work I was doing involved motion graphics for large corporate clients with strict brand guidelines. Clients generally had a small, rigidly defined colour palette to work from, but After Effects had no way of saving colours for easy and repeated selection, in the way that Photoshop and Illustrator did. With CC 2014, Adobe introduced the Kuler panel, which finally gave users a color swatch panel but also much, much more. While the Kuler panel is above and beyond the expectations of any AE user who just wanted the same swatch panel that Photoshop had, it’s unfortunate that Adobe hid this awesome new feature away in the “Extensions” sub-menu, so many users are probably unaware it’s there.

Verdict: We got it, but they’ve done their best to hide it from us…

colour labels for composition tabs…

After Effects used to be monochrome, but colour – and colour labels – slowly crept in over time. The lower image is from a time where layers could be given a colour label, but not the actual composition.

Using colour labels has become an essential part of my workflow, but if you go back far enough there was a time when the entire AE interface was monochrome. At some point, After Effects included colour labels for layers in a composition, but presumably there was a period where you couldn’t assign a colour label to the composition itself. But AFAIK, compositions have been able to have colour labels for some time now…

Verdict: Yes thanks!

colour labels for effects

…but there’s no way to assign a colour label to an effect. If you don’t use colour labels to organize your projects then this is probably pretty meaningless to you – but to those of us who do, they are an essential organizational tool. The “Select label group” function is one of those powerful workflow features that isn’t immediately obvious but can save an enormous amount of time and frustration. Perhaps a future version of AE will allow individual effects to have colour labels – but so far it’s a no go.

Verdict: No, not yet.

Plugins & Effects:

a list of favourite effects

While After Effects has allowed you to save your own presets for many years, the plugins themselves are always listed in same groups in the “Effects” menu. In the same way that many applications keep a track of recent documents opened, and After Effects keeps a track of recently imported footage, it would be nice to have a list of recently used effects. So far, however, that’s yet to appear.

Verdict: Still waiting…

Make obsolete plugins (eg Basic 3D) an optional install. Weed out older, redundant and inferior plugins. For example- why is there a CC Toner AND a Tritone? Do we still need a fast blur AND a Gaussian blur? The CC Power Pin is much better than the older Corner Pin, the “Hue/Saturation” effect is miles better than the “Colour Balance (HLS)” effect etc

Over the years, Adobe has bought software from other companies (or just bought the company) and also licensed existing plugins from 3rd parties so they come included with the basic install. Along the way, some older plugins have been superseded and others have duplicate functionality. In recent years, Adobe HAVE started to address this issue, by introducing the “Obsolete” menu. And while there is the potential to do more with the way duplicate functions are handled – and they confused a lot of people by changing the Gaussian Blur and Fast Blur effects recently – they seem to at least be aware of the problem. Verdict: Well I guess they’ve made a start.

a button to move a layer to the centre of the composition

While After Effects has had an “align” panel for a long time, it was overhauled with CS 5 and gained the ability to align layers relative to the composition. Technically, to centre a layer you have to click twice – once for the horizontal and once for the vertical axis – but we’ll give Adobe a tick for this one.

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe!

a button to reset the anchor point of a layer to the centre

a button to add a keyframe from within the effects palette

These requests are perfect examples of the types of workflow enhancements I was looking for, when I made the analogy between Apple’s approach to Snow Leopard and what I thought Adobe could do with After Effects. They sound so simple yet so useful – but so far neither of these features has been added.

Verdict: No, not yet. But check AEscripts…

a histogram in the “curves” effect

A lot of After Effects users – myself included – complained about the “old” curves effect. It wasn’t that great, and when benchmarked against the “levels” effect it was incredibly slow. In a rare move, Adobe publically announced they were going to completely overhaul the Curves effect and even asked for suggestions as to how it could be better. The “new” curves effect is fast, has a great scalable interface, and is generally much easier to use. While it doesn’t have all of the features everyone may have asked for, it’s vastly improved over the old one. I use it every day. But does it have a histogram? No, no it doesn’t…

Verdict: Still waiting… if they haven’t done it now, they’ll probably never do it. I’ll just keep on using the levels effect after the curves effect just for the histogram…

give all plugins a consistent edge crop and blend-with-original option (like the way all Tinderbox plugins do)

Tinderbox was one of the first 3rd party plugins I owned, but they were sadly bought by GenArts and then discontinued (I assume some of the technology made its way into Sapphire, GenArts existing plugin range). One feature that helped make the Tinderbox plugins feel professional was the way every plugin had identical controls to crop edges, resize the layer if needed, and to blend with the original image. While some After Effects plugins have some of these features, it was the consistency across all Tinderbox plugins which helped them feel like a high-end tool.

Compositing options – I love them!

Adobe addressed this with the CC 2014 release – which gave all effects a “compositing option” to fade the strength of the effect, and also the ability to use masks to isolate where an effect was applied to an image.

In CC 2017, Adobe went one step further and now every plugin that references another layer can now be controlled to see the layer either before or after effects have been applied.

Verdict: Yes thank you! The “compositing options” are very powerful and the improvements to compound effects in CC 2017 were an unexpected bonus.

a depth shadow effect (not sure what this means, maybe an extruded shadow, not a drop shadow?)

Remembering that this list is a bunch of suggestions from several people, I’m not actually sure what the person who suggested “depth shadow” really meant. But since After Effects introduced Layer Styles from Photoshop, which offer more options for shadows (as well as bevels and all the other layer style goodness) I’m going to assume that’s what they meant.

Verdict: Well we got layer styles, which are pretty cool. I guess that’s what you meant?

Fonts & Type:

a reset button on the character palette (but please don’t reset the font, it’s annoying)

If you’re jumping between different motion graphics projects, it’s common to be working with many different fonts, and many different character settings. Font size, leading, tracking and so on can be radically different between projects and when changing to another project it can be easy to miss settings in the character palette that should have been adjusted. Maybe (just hypothetically… it happened to a friend of mine) you’ve spent hours working on an awesome typography layout only to realize that all the text is superscript… or faux bold… or set to 110% wide. A quick button to reset the character palette would help avoid these sorts of issues.

While there isn’t a clickable button to reset all of the parameters in the character panel, you can choose reset from the character palette’s contextual menu. I’m not sure if this has always been there, but it’s good to know. The fact that the person who requested this specifically asked for the reset button not to reset the font suggests they knew about the menu option but really, really wanted a button to press.

Verdict: There’s a reset option in the contextual menu, but whoever suggested this really wanted a button.

keyframable text palette parameters

Animating text is one of the core uses for After Effects, and so it stands to reason that the text animation tools are incredibly powerful. The problem is that they are SO powerful that even basic text animation can be complicated, or just plain overwhelming. Common text treatments such as animated tracking require the user to manually add a text animator and potentially deal with selecting ranges and so on. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to animate simple parameters like font size, leading and tracking without having to dive into the world of text animators? To date, Adobe hasn’t agreed.

Verdict: Still waiting…

make the default kerning optical (PLEASE! At least an option in preferences…)

In my experience, optical kerning nearly always looks better.

Verdict: Still waiting…

include fonts with the “collect files” function

Such a common and obvious request, and I can only assume that the reason it hasn’t been done is to do with legal issues surrounding the distribution of fonts. It’s also possible that Adobe’s push to the Creative Cloud TypeKit means they see that as a solution for font problems.

Verdict: Still waiting…

put all fonts used in a project at the top of the font list (as well as in alphabetical order)

Seriously Adobe, frickin’ accountants using frickin’ spreadsheets had it better than us for years!

This is something that Microsoft Office products have done for years, and it’s great. Especially for those of us who spend weeks at a time working with the same font, or sets of fonts, it’s amazing that an application that is used so heavily for text animation has lacked an easy way to identify which fonts are being used in the current project.

Verdict: Hooray! Thanks Adobe, they’ve overhauled fonts and the font menu with the latest release.

Masks

keyframable/ trackable mask axis

While Adobe have continued to add features to masks since it was released, it’s been up to 3rd party scripts to fill various voids and enable new ways to manipulate or work with masks. While there was a time when you could only have one mask per layer, the most recent release of After Effects now provides access to individual path points on a mask through expressions.

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe! Christmas came early this year.

per-vertex mask feather

This powerful feature was added in CS 6. My own personal observation, however, is that lots of people asked for it but when it finally arrived not so many people actually used it. When you need it, though, it’s invaluable.

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe! It’s there for when we need it.

Animation

separate X,Y & Z position keyframes

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe!

adjust and save your own “ease” settings as keyframe assistants

The velocity of keyframes is what gives animation its personality. You could say that the “design” in motion graphics design comes down to velocity curves. While the default “easy ease” helps make animations smoother with the press of a button (I press F9 many time a day…) the default values can make your animations feel a bit generic. Being able to set and save presets for your own favourite “ease” settings would be a huge bonus, and if you have a project where the overall “feel” comes from using specific velocity curve values, it would save lots of tedious clicking and typing.

Verdict: Still waiting…

solids have their colour keyframable without using the fill effect

At first glance this might seem like a flippant request, but remember that this list was made in 2008 and After Effects CS3 was a lot more restrictive than it is now in terms of rendering order and the way compound effects worked (and see above for the compositing options now available). But in 2008 there would have been cases where changing the colour of a solid without having to use an effect would have been very useful. So while it’s clear that this feature hasn’t been implemented, other more significant features to the After Effects rendering pipeline have possibly made this request redundant.

Verdict: Still waiting, but we’ll give Adobe a pass on this one

Preferences

user-defined keyboard shortcuts

With so many apps offering this feature there’s little to add except to note how long it’s taken to arrive. The very latest release, CC 2018, finally brings keyboard mapping to After Effects.

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe! Christmas came early this year.

adding a preference for the level of detail used by pixelmotion, so you can adjust the quality of time-remapped footage without resorting to using Timewarp.

This is an interesting suggestion, but it will need some explanation. When Adobe licensed the technology behind The Foundry’s “Kronos” plugin and introduced it to After Effects, they also introduced a level of ambiguity and misunderstanding with their terminology. Firstly, there’s the “timewarp” effect, applied to a layer from the effects menu. But there’s also the term “pixelmotion”, which is enabled by cycling through the frame-blending options in the timeline window. Behind the scenes, they’re doing the same thing – you can think of “pixelmotion” as the timewarp effect, but instead of being applied as an effect and being controlled by the parameters in the effects palette, it’s automatically and invisibly enabled by setting the frame-blending button to the appropriate setting.

But as anyone who has ever used pixelmotion/timewarp can tell you – the results aren’t always perfect. But if a layer isn’t rendering quite right with pixelmotion, the next step is to jump into the full-blown timewarp effect and play around with all the parameters. Wouldn’t it be nice and easy if there was a simple way of adjusting some of the pixelmotion settings globally, in the preferences panel, so that the user has a basic level of control over pixel motion. That way, minor artefacts can be fixed without having to change to the timewarp effect.

Verdict: Still waiting…

re-ordering queued items in the render queue when the current render is paused

Once you hit that “render” button, After Effects effectively locks you out of doing anything else until it’s finished. If you have lots of long, intensive compositions queued up then this can mean leaving your machine running for hours, or even overnight. Unfortunately, if your priorities change after you’ve started rendering and you want to change the order that compositions are rendered, you have to stop the whole process in order to be able to move items in the queue. It would save a lot of frustration if you could change the order of queued up renders without having to stop the current one.

Verdict: Still waiting…

saving or locking old render queue information

The render queue isn’t just a blue bar that shows how long you’ve got to watch cats on YouTube before you can get back to work. It’s also a record of what you’ve rendered, where you’ve rendered it to, and when you did it. Looking through the render queue panel can solve the mystery of how to fill in your timesheets, where to find that file you’ve lost, or whether “final final” came before or after “final master fixed”. Being able to save the render queue information or even lock it (locking in file paths for compositions would be very useful) allows this valuable data to be saved for future reference.

Verdict: Still waiting…

overhaul the “Pre-compose” function, at the very least to include options for the behaviors which are currently only available through scripts

If it wasn’t for AEscripts, I would be insane by now…

Pre-composing can be a necessary evil in After Effects, but for such a fundamental workflow tool the options were always limited. With many 3rd party scripts available to add more power and functionality to After Effects’ basic functionality, Adobe added a trim feature to CC 2014, but nothing more. Luckily, there are all sorts of 3rd party scripts out there to help you pre-compose exactly as you want to.

Verdict: Still waiting… best to head over to AEscripts.

an integrated scripting/ expressions environment

Expressions – love them or hate them, they’re essential to many people. But despite their power, you’re still stuck with a simple text box that’s not even easy to resize. If you move up to scripting, at least you have the Adobe ExtendScript toolkit app to help things feel more professional – but it’s hardly integrated with After Effects itself. Many users find expressions and scripting hard enough without being restricted to a tiny text box that has basic problems with copying & pasting text. It could be better…

Verdict: Still waiting for it to be easier to write expressions. The ExtendScript Toolkit is OK for scripters, but not exactly integrated.

3D reflections

Difficult to comment on this one. On one hand, obviously Adobe hasn’t given us 3D reflections inside the After Effects timeline. As After Effects is basically a 2D transformation engine, it’s unlikely they ever will. But they have given us increasingly powerful Cinema 4D integration, and bundled the lite version with the basic AE install. So if you think of Cinema 4D as the solution to this feature request, then Adobe have delivered it with bells on.

Verdict: I’ll just say a big thank you for the Cinema 4D integration.

real time scopes in Synthetic Aperture

Color Finesse is awesome but its integration with After Effects has never felt completely seamless. But the real problem with this request is that it depends on what you mean by “real time”. After Effects isn’t a real-time app, although there’s RAM previews. I do use Colour Finesse a bit and from what I can see, the scopes do update when you play clips within the colour finesse interface – but the playback itself is hardly what you would call real-time. But maybe that in itself is an improvement from 2008. I just don’t know.

However when Adobe released CC 2017 they included Lumetri, a new colour correction tool ported over from Premiere that brings scopes to the regular AE interface. Hooray! I’m going to guess that Lumetri is the future…

Verdict: I don’t know about Colour Finesse, but we got Lumetri. Close enough?

dynamic project structure system, with project folders linked to the file system

This is one of those power-features that makes perfect sense to one group of users, but probably has others scratching their head. Basically, this request means that instead of each user manually organizing their After Effects project by creating and naming folders, importing assets etc etc, After Effects would do this all automatically by copying the folder structure and files from somewhere on your computer. If you’re working on a network drive and someone adds a new folder or a new render on the network, everyone’s After Effects project would automatically (dynamically) update and maintain sync with the master folder. If this sounds useful then let Adobe know, because they haven’t implemented this yet.

Verdict: Still waiting…

And finally…

LAYER GROUPS

Yeah. Ha. Well somehow I’ve written 3,000 words on all these feature requests to date, and I could easily write another 3,000 just on layer groups alone. But let’s just say – they’re still not here. Let’s hope it’s not another 8 years before we finally get them.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

So it’s approaching ten years since that list was emailed to Adobe and much has changed since then. The integration with Premiere has created entire new workflows for some users, and the integration with Cinema 4D has had – and will continue to have – a major impact on the motion graphics industry. And in 2008 who thought VR would become a thing?

But there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Sometimes, those of us who rely on After Effects every working day don’t need or even want the next big headline feature. We just want a few little tweaks to the sorts of inefficient things that we continue to do every day, to help make our lives easier. And layer groups. We really want them.

I’ll dive into CC 2018 over the next few weeks and no doubt I’ll notice many improvements and new features. But there’s always room to go back to the very basics of how After Effects works and make those little tweaks. Are you listening, Adobe?

The post After Effects: revisiting feature requests from 2008 appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

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magzoso-tech · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/vivo-v17-pro-review/

Vivo V17 Pro Review

Vivo has been on a phone launching spree over the past few months in India. We’ve seen the Vivo Z1 Pro (Review), Vivo Z1x (Review), Vivo S1 (Review), and recently, the Vivo U10 (Review) and Vivo V17 Pro. We’ve already tested all these new offerings, and now it’s time to check out the Vivo V17 Pro. This is the successor to the Vivo V15 Pro (Review), which launched earlier this year. Just like the rest of Vivo’s V-series, the selfie camera is the main highlight. In fact, the Vivo V17 Pro features two pop-up selfie cameras and four at the back, for a total of six cameras.

The Vivo V17 Pro is priced close to Rs. 30,000, which makes it a direct competitor to the likes of the Oppo Reno 2Z (Review), Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro (Review), Asus 6Z (Review), and even the OnePlus 7 (Review), as long as it remains discounted. While the Vivo V17 Pro takes the lead when it comes to the number of camera sensors it packs in, is it competitive enough on other fronts? Let’s take a look.

Vivo V17 Pro design

The new Vivo V17 Pro features an all-too familiar design now, sporting a nearly all-screen front with no notch and relatively slim bezels all around, including the chin. The older Vivo V15 Pro (Review) was actually one of the first phones to sport this kind of design at this price point, before everyone else caught up.

The polycarbonate body feels sturdy, and the laminated back didn’t seem to pick up many scuffs during our review period. It does attract a lot of fingerprints and smudges though.

The Vivo V17 Pro is available in a Midnight Ocean trim, which we have, and also a lighter shade called Glacier Ice. The edges of the back are curved slightly, so it’s relatively comfortable to hold.

The Vivo V17 Pro is built well and looks good

On the front, we have a bright 6.44-inch Super AMOLED display with a full-HD+ resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass 6 for protection. A screen guard also comes pre-applied, because Vivo thinks you can never be too careful. Colour saturation is very good, text looks sharp, and the brightness is sufficient for use outdoors under sunlight. There’s an in-display fingerprint sensor which works well, and you can customise the on-screen fingerprint icon and unlock animations.

The Vivo V17 Pro has face recognition too but this is only usable as a last resort, in case fingerprint authentication fails three times. The pop-up mechanism is a little slower than other implementations we’ve seen, which is probably why it’s not offered as one of the primary methods for unlocking.

The volume and power buttons on the right have good feedback and there’s an extra ‘smart button’ on the left, which can be configured to launch Google Assistant or Vivo’s Jovi image search, with a short press, long-press or double-press. On the bottom, we have a USB Type-C port, a tray for two Nano-SIM cards, and a speaker. There’s no microSD card slot. Vivo has also managed to make space for a headphone jack on the top, despite the wide cutout for the pop-up camera module.

The four cameras on the rear are aligned vertically in a module in the centre, which does not protrude much. The overall design of the Vivo V17 Pro is premium, and the phone feels well put-together. The 20:9 aspect ratio of the display means that this phone is fairly tall, and it’s on the heavier side too, tipping the scales at just over 200g.

In the retail box, you get a pair of in-ear headphones, an 18W fast charger, a USB Type-C cable, a plastic case, and a SIM eject tool.

These are the accessories that ship with the Vivo V17 Pro

Vivo V17 Pro specifications and features

Phones such as the Redmi K20 Pro and OnePlus 7 have made Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line processors very accessible, so for the V17 Pro, we were expecting Vivo to use something similar or at least close. Sadly, this phone uses the now slightly dated Snapdragon 675 SoC, which is incidentally the same chip used by the Vivo V15 Pro (Review). It’s a relatively capable octa-core chip, no doubt, but it’s quite underpowered for a phone at this price level.

There’s only one configuration with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Other specifications include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5, USB-OTG, the usual suite of sensors, and support for three satellite navigation systems. The phone also supports Widevine L1 DRM certification so it can stream video at HD and higher resolutions from apps such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

For software, the Vivo V17 Pro uses Funtouch OS 9.1, which is based on Android 9 Pie. There’s no official word on when the Android 10 update will roll out. If you’ve never used a Vivo phone before then Funtouch OS will take some getting used to. We ourselves still find it a little confusing to navigate Vivo’s menus at times.

The single-layered interface has heavy customisations everywhere, including the icons, lock screen, and notifications shade. The quick settings are all on a pull-out menu called ‘Control Centre,’ and you have to swipe upwards from the bottom of the screen to pull it up. This is reminiscent of Apple’s implementation on older iPhones. Even the Settings app needs a lot of digging around before you can find what you’re looking for.

Funtouch OS on the Vivo V17 Pro takes some getting used to

You can customise the look and feel of Funtouch OS through the ‘iTheme’ app but most of the themes need to be purchased. Jovi is Vivo’s AI helper, which is used in the camera app to help frame your shots and identify subjects. It also has something called ‘Smart Scene’ which shows you various information cards for the weather, events, cricket scores, etc, in one place. It can be accessed via the Sony Walkman-like icon in the notification shade or by swiping to the left of the first homepage.

Other features include Ultra Game Mode which blocks notifications, etc when gaming; Motorbike Mode which automatically rejects calls when riding; one-handed mode; and scrolling screenshots. There are loads of preinstalled apps including Gaana, Amazon, and PhonePe, but you can uninstall all the third-party ones. Sadly, some redundant ones including Vivo’s game store can’t be removed.

We’ve covered all the features of Funtouch OS in our recent reviews of the Vivo Z1x (Review), Vivo S1 (Review), and Vivo Z1 Pro (Review), so be sure to check them out.

Vivo V17 Pro performance and battery life

Funtouch OS might not be our favourite Android skin, but it ran smoothly without any issues on the Vivo V17 Pro. It took a while to get used to the quick toggles being in a non-standard place. Also, when using an app in landscape mode, the toggles can only be accessed by swiping inwards from the right edge of the screen, instead of the bottom. The custom look of the UI might appeal to some, but we wish Vivo would give users a choice to switch back to stock Android too.

The RAM and SoC are more than capable of handling your everyday apps and games. In benchmarks, we got decent numbers, as one would expect from this SoC. AnTuTu gave us a score of 1,77,512 while the T-Rex test in GFXbench returned 40fps. These are not bad numbers, but not as good as those produced by other phones in this price range sporting the Snapdragon 855 or even the Snapdragon 730G, for that matter.

The Vivo V17 Pro has a bright and vivid display

The earpiece on the Vivo V17 Pro is in the pop-up selfie camera module, similar to the design of the Oppo Reno 2 (Review), and sound is channeled through a cutout in the phone’s front panel. However, unlike Oppo’s offering, audio through the earpiece on the Vivo V17 Pro sounds clear and not muffled.

Multitasking is handled well, and heavy games like PUBG Mobile ran smoothly at the ‘High’ preset. After about 20 minutes of gameplay, we noticed that the back of the phone got quite hot, which seems to be a trait of this SoC that we’ve encountered before with phones such as the Redmi Note 7 Pro (Review) and Samsung Galaxy M40 (Review).

Within games, you can access a slide-out carousel which lets you toggle blocking calls, notifications, and more. In games that support voice chat, you can use a real-time voice changer which is pretty cool. The single speaker at the bottom gets fairly loud, even without any enhancements. Audio quality is not too bad either.

The Vivo V17 Pro has a 4100mAh battery, which fared quite well in our HD video battery loop test, running for 16 hours and 47 minutes. With normal usage, we typically easily managed a day and half of runtime. With heavier apps, we still managed a full day’s worth of usage. Fast charging is supported and the Vivo V17 Pro can go from zero to 36 percent in half an hour and up to 74 percent in an hour. It took us a little more than two hours to fully top it up. It’s not the fastest, but it’s not too bad either.

Vivo V17 Pro cameras

The highlight of this phone is its front cameras, so let’s start there. You get a 32-megapixel primary camera with an f/2.0 aperture along with an 8-megapixel ultra wide-angle camera with an f/2.2 aperture. The primary selfie camera itself has a pretty wide field of view but the secondary one lets you get an even wider shot, though it adds a slight fish-eye effect. This is also one of the few phones, apart from the Google Pixel line, that lets you use Night Mode with the selfie camera (though only the primary one).

In daylight, the Vivo V17 Pro captured striking selfies. Details were good, textures were sharp (a little too sharp at times), and colours really popped. The exposure wasn’t always perfect, and at times we noticed some blown-out highlights, but overall, we were quite pleased with the results. HDR was handled well too. The ultra wide-angle camera captured slightly softer images, but that’s expected.

Shot using the primary selfie camera on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap to see full-sized image)

Shot using wide-angle camera on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap to see full-sized image)

Shot using Night mode on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap to see full-sized image)

Strangely, it takes two taps to switch to the ultra-wide camera as the toggle is hidden in a menu. There’s also a Bokeh toggle, and portrait shots taken in this mode had good edge detection and background blur. These photos are oversampled, giving you 8-megapixel output instead of 32-megapixel shots, like you get when taking standard selfies.

The separate ‘Portrait’ shooting mode feels uncessary since it offers just one extra feature compared to the standard ‘Photo’ mode, which is beautification. The ‘Posture’ setting is interesting here as it suggests various poses for selfies (for one or more people) by showing you outlines of the pose for you to mimic. If you take your selfies seriously, then you’re in for a treat.

Video quality with the primary front camera is also quite good but there’s no stabilisation. Low-light photos were quite grainy but the fill-light helps here. Night mode made a big difference in brightening up shots taken under dim lighting, getting rid of most of the noise and improving the exposure significantly.

Coming to the rear cameras, there’s a 48-megapixel primary sensor which captures oversampled 12-megapixel photos by default. It also has an f/1.8 aperture. Next up is a 13-megapixel 2x optical zoom camera; an 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle camera which is also used for super-macro shots; and finally, a 2-megapixel depth sensor.

You can switch to the telephoto camera by hitting or dragging the Zoom button in the viewfinder, but it still takes two taps to switch to the wide-angle camera. You can zoom in all the way to 10x (digitally).

Shot using the primary camera on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap to see full-sized image)

Shot using the ultra wide-angle camera on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap to see full-sized image)

Shot using the telephoto camera on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap for full-sized image)

Shot using the Super Macro mode on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap for full-sized image)

Shot using Bokeh mode on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap to see full-sized image)

In daylight, the main sensor captured pleasing details and colours. Objects at a distance had good definition, although shadow areas at the sides of the frame tended to have a bit of noise. Close-ups had punchy colours, good natural bokeh, and good detail. HDR also worked well and dynamic range was good. With the ultra wide-angle camera, colours can look a little boosted but you do get a lot more in each frame.

The telephoto camera is nice to have but 2x zoom isn’t much, and in low light, the camera simply uses digital zoom through the main camera. The Super Macro mode worked well for us, and we were able to get some good-looking shots.

Low-light stills were usually above average in quality. There was mild grain in the shadows but details were good and colours were well represented. The ultra-wide-angle camera isn’t very useful in the dark, since details are bleak and you can’t use Night mode. However, with the primary camera, Night mode had a big impact, making scenes look more dramatic and preserving details.

Shot using Night mode on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap to see full-sized image)

Shot using the ultra wide-angle camera on the Vivo V17 Pro (tap to see full-sized image)

You can record videos at up to 4K resolution but without any stabilisation. Image quality was decent and colours weren’t exaggerated, which is good. Stabilisation does work well at 1080p. You can shoot 1080p videos with the wide-angle camera too, but without stabilisation. At this resolution, you can choose either 25/30 or 60fps. However, video quality was very poor in low light. Also, the framerate defaults to 25fps, making motion feel jerky. Another thing we didn’t quite like was the fact that we had to jump into the camera settings menu to change the resolution, instead of being able to do it from the viewfinder.

Other shooting modes include 48MP, which lets you shoot at the full sensor resolution; Panorama, Timelapse, Live photo, Pro, Doc, Jovi, and AR stickers. We found some of the AR stickers to be quite fun. There are also some interesting features to play around with in the camera settings, such as AR Portrait framing, which guides you into positioning the camera correctly for a portrait shot.

Verdict

As a camera phone, the Vivo V17 Pro packs in some good hardware, but the software still needs a bit of polish. Accessing certain basic functions can be a multi-step process, when it shouldn’t be. If you love taking selfies, the dual front cameras offer plenty of creative freedom, especially with features such as the posing guides. Low-light video is one area which needs a lot of work, as apart from the below-average image quality, the drop in framerate is quite jarring.

As an all-rounder, the phone delivers mostly good results. It has a vibrant screen, the build quality is solid, the interface is snappy, the extra programmable button is handy, and battery life is very good. However, at nearly Rs. 30,000, Vivo should have done a lot more in order to make this phone truly competitive. The Snapdragon 675 just doesn’t cut it at this price, as the competition is offering much more power. We’re also not big fans of Funtouch OS, which can feel unnecessarily complicated, especially for novice users.

If you live and breathe selfies, the Vivo V17 Pro might appeal to you. If not, you should look at phones such as the Redmi K20 Pro (Review) and Oppo Reno 2Z (Review) which sell for around the same price and offer better processors, especially for gaming, and equally competent cameras. If you can stretch your budget just a little bit, you could get the Asus 6Z (Review) or even the OnePus 7 (Review).

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gigsoupmusic · 5 years

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Jason & The Rex Goes In-Depth about New Video "Bullets Are Flying" - Exclusive Interview

Recently debuting with an activist video on gun violence, Jason & The Rex is stepping onto the scene with "Bullets Are Flying". A mixture of hip-hop, future-funk, and dream-pop combine to create a dense soundscape of vibrant horns, a melancholy piano lead, and strange-sounding synths. Jason's pensive, sometimes manic, flow washes over creating a dialogue on the gun violence issue in the US. Jason was kind enough to sit down and give GIGSoup the exclusive inside scoop on the creation and inspiration behind "Bullets Are Flying". https://youtu.be/g5DTa6cvfcs Tell us about writing the song "Bullets Are Flying"…. what emotions were you feeling at the time? Chaotic. Disoriented. There’s a scene in Dario Argento’s Suspiria where one of the characters falls into a pit of barbed wire. The more she tries to escape, the more she bleeds. It’s a mangled inner conflict. That’s kind of how I felt when I was writing “Bullets Are Flying.” I felt more and more entangled in a barbed wire mess of thoughts and emotions and political jabs and daily, present concerns. When the Parkland incident happened, I was already feeling very professionally and creatively stalled. I’m an actor by vocation. At the time, I was going for a lot of Chinatown thug types -- violent, gun-wielding, angry Asian dudes. I was getting rejected over and over again for projects that I didn’t really even believe in. I felt inauthentic as an artist. Music was supposed to be my outlet, but everything I created was stale and uninspired. And the worst part, I felt like I was failing as a citizen. I was -- and still am -- a reasonably privileged adult who has skills and a higher education. The gun crisis stripped teenagers of their adolescence, and those teenagers responded by standing up to the gun lobby and the politicians they controlled. What was I doing? Beating myself up because, after several attempts, I still couldn’t land a part as a stereotype on Iron Fist? Something snapped after Parkland. All the “thoughts and prayers” and familiar rallying cries came to a fever pitch, and I just started writing down…stuff. I was trying to express grief, to articulate my panic and anger, while also trying to provide commentary. I wanted to find an explanation. And someone to blame. A way out. Or a way forward. I wanted to crack the code on gun violence. I was also coming to terms with my guilt. My social posturing. My vanity in all of this. In trying to create this piece, was I turning the attention to myself? It wasn’t joyous or inspiring. It was a regurgitation of all the thoughts and feelings -- all the stuff -- I hadn’t processed.

The refrain of the song actually came to me much earlier, quite randomly. I like to think it’s because it’s more of a passive observation. Bullets are flying. Where? And why? While they fly, people are mourning. These are constants. Whereas, the two verses -- they’re snapshots of that gloomy winter morning when I was pacing back and forth on my bed trying to make sense of Parkland. It’s like I was trying to extricate myself from the gun culture and the epidemic it has created. But every thought would just pull me back into the mess. Barbed wire. Can’t help thinking about it. Gun violence. Mass shootings. I dream of ways to reshape gun culture. But, uh oh, gun culture has shaped giant parts of who I am. And I contribute back into gun culture. Not only do I love a bloody action thriller. I routinely express my love for John Wayne movies. I think the Punisher is a pretty cool anti-hero. In debating and discussing issues related to gun violence, we shout into our echo chambers while attacking opposing views. We display our alliances. We present ourselves on a side. Scoring our solidarity points is just as essential to gun culture as shooting the guns themselves. In writing this song, I was incredibly self-conscious. Was I just filling my notebook with solidarity points and quips from self-reflection? I offered my perspective on gun violence, while simultaneously reflecting and taking apart that perspective. I felt angry and powerful. But I also felt guilty and insignificant. Is saying something mostly an empty gesture? Probably. But not saying something is equally, if not more, disconcerting. Maybe this song is entirely descriptive of this emotional purgatory I create after a mass shooting like Parkland, where processing anything is just squirming in my barbed wire, while bullets are flying. What is your favorite lyric in the song? "I’m an actor, so I know how to weep. "

There are lots of hidden layers and meaning in the video… can you tell us what some of those are and why you chose to include them? I’m pretty fluid with my interpretation of the video. But most days, it goes something like this: Setting - The characters are in a place of purgatory. It’s that place I create when I’m trying to process gun violence. They may or may not know each other. Screens - On the screens, the characters stare at scenes involving their physical selves. Characters - I play the boy, and we designed the look to reflect someone in a prestigious position. On the TV’s, he’s probably a politician of some sort. I don’t think that’s who the boy is in real life, especially if the boy is me. But in this particular place of purgatory (maybe there are multiple rooms in purgatory), I’m presenting the politically active parts of myself. The dancer might be a whole separate character. She’s someone directly impacted by political leaders and their decisions. So in this place, we have a civic leader and someone he impacts. Seen this way, let’s say the boy is fried in the beginning. He’s lost his will. Been in purgatory too long. The dancer enters. Maybe she sees a party she’s currently attending in the real world. She pulls the boy out of his funk. They are actual human beings who can connect. When we hear about gun violence, our screens create abstracts of the event and the victims. But here in purgatory, the two have to make actual, physical contact. Their actions directly impact each other. Movement - There is a loose choreography. But, mainly, Ashley (the dancer) and I created a structure and improvised within it. Basically, there’s a struggle in the beginning. Japanese Butoh definitely informs the early interactions in the video, as the style can create a sense of shared grief. The movement becomes more playful and celebratory, which I think reflects another convoluted part of processing gun violence. After Parkland, I sunk into a pit of melancholy for probably no more than half a day and then I was out with my friends. We’d talk about mass shootings, but then we’d goof off, and the topic eventually recedes, until we’ve tuned it out completely (though temporarily). In the video, the TV screens are upfront and center in the beginning, but then the movement draws our attention to the characters themselves. There’s an ominous outro, where we intercut to the party-goers on the screens lying facedown on a roof. Lives lost to gun violence? In the purgatory place, we only have close-ups of the characters, many of which focus on the hands in spell-like gestures. The issue of gun violence does seem to have this elusive, enigmatic quality. So maybe whatever happens between these two in this purgatory has some ineffable effect in the world.

What do you hope fans gain as a result from watching/listening to your art? Mostly, I hope this keeps the conversation going. Like I said about the video, the topic always recedes, often because the screens start showing other things to us. As artists, I think we can keep things front and center. It’s funny. When I finished the video, I came across grandson’s “Thoughts and Prayers” single. For a whiff, I felt like my project would be redundant. But, of course, until it’s a non-issue, I say the more content we produce, the better. On a more practical note, I’m pledging all the royalties from this project towards organizations like March For Our Lives. So when people listen or watch, they are indirectly or directly (starting to really question my understanding of this concept) benefiting the cause. I think it allows listeners a little extra way to participate in reform measures. You had a hand in creating all of the aspects of the single… writing, producing, creating the video….. tell us about that process as an artist. How does it influence your work? It slows down the process by too much. No, but really, it allows complete ownership over the process, at least of the track itself. I’m entirely responsible for every aspect of it. Holding the work so precious does create a lot of room for self-doubt, but the fears of commitment also pushes for more experimentation. When I create tracks, it’s like I’m recording and re-mixing an exploration. Or maybe it’s like I’m a one-man jam band in my room. It certainly allows me to include weird ideas like recording the words “thoughts and prayers” and using that sample to create different drum sounds. You can’t really tell when you hear it, but I think it’s a fun little Easter Egg. As for the video, I came up with a structure, but this is where I wanted to open up the perspective. I’m kind of enjoying the thought that creating the track itself was like the boy in the video struck in purgatory alone. Then with the video, I’ve invited other perspectives, just as there’s now another person with the boy in purgatory. I’m a nerd, I know. But, yes, I think because I gave myself a clear foundation after working on the track, we were able to do a lot of exploring with the concept of the video, which then allows for its fluid interpretation. Fun fact: the video was originally supposed to involve a dancer and an agent of death battling over a remote that controls one single TV screen displaying a party. You've spoken about how you want your music to be a platform for activism….. what are some other issues you are passionate about? There are a lot. But I’m just going to list one here to emphasize how important it is. THE ENVIRONMENT. Tell us about your upcoming album….. what can fans expect to hear? It’s tentatively called Synthesizer or Variations of: An Endemic Cycle. The EP will have about 6or 7 songs that expand upon the narrative in “Bullets Are Flying.” Just as “Bullets Are Flying” is set in emotional purgatory, the other songs will be placed in their own settings. All the songs will fit into a narrative that has a circular structure. I’m designing musical themes that provide a through-line in the tracks. If you play the album and replay it, the narrative from the last track continues right into the first. You can start the album from any track, and the narrative will continue and circle back. I’m also creating visuals for each track. So if you were to edit them together in a specific and play it on loop, it might feel like one single never-ending movie no matter where you begin. Gun violence is so cyclical. You can enter into it at any point -- initial grief, debate, ennui, etc. --and it’ll eventually loop right back to where you started. How would you describe your musical sound? Musical genres are so bewildering to me. I guess I’ll say this: I’m sort of finding a hip-hop voice in other genres I love. They’re mainly psychedelic dream-pop, future funk, new wave, or even cinematic anime soundtracks. If my process were a scene, I’d like to imagine Childish Gambino getting really high and watching the news with Tame Impala, and maybe Jon Bellion barges in and blasts his new album. I don’t know that these are the sounds that come to mind if you were to listen to my work. But they’re certainly the sounds I’m after, sounds that provide a framework when I produce my music. Read the full article

#Jason&TheRex #newmusic

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ber-bonfamille-lyons · 7 years

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album review-- “Divide”

This is a slick album – I can’t argue against that. It’s got the kinda algorithmic songcraft built to lob number one singles to the top of the charts without Ed even trying. So even among the real moments of genuine cleverness-- mentions of bleached assholes, flamenco guitar, Irish fiddle-- it reeks of the sharp stench of a salesman’s cheap cologne and it’ll get rewarded for it by going platinum and giving Ed Sheeran another world tour. Hopefully, the best songs here will find its fans and we can see more of that kind of experimentation on future albums, since that’s where the real talent shines. In the meantime, I guess this album, while at times redundant, is not that bad. ⅗ stars

Track-by-track review under the cut

Eraser: Ed tries to rap again with his folk-hero version of the classic “I’m famous and it’s complicated” confessional that pop punk bands perfected before him in the early-2000s. It’s not bad, but it’s not exactly original or memorable, which is a suitable way to start this album, which is not exactly original or memorable. Also, it has lyrics like “I think that money is the root of all evil” like he’s some uni fuck-off who stumbled into a voluntourism cult.

Castle On A Hill Euphoric and nostalgic, this song’s switch between hyper-specific to generic detail makes me think Taylor Swift had a hand in tweaking the lyrics. A Radio 2 darling.

Dive This one has vibes of John Mayer and Ed sounds gorgeous, admittedly, as he channels the blues. It’s another song that will dominate airwaves or be on the last five minutes of any TV show on BBC3. It has the polish of Thinking Of You and will be just as popular. Really, the best parts of the song are in its pauses-- those build the climax.

Shape Of You I prefer Walk Off The Earth’s creative twists on this X wannabe. I think Ed thought he was more clever than he is when he penned “I’m in love / with the shape of you” as though that kinda twist has never been done before. It also feels the most hollow of all the songs-- its a well-oiled heartless robot meant to stake claim on Radio One and so far, it reigns supreme.

Perfect Like Dive or How Would You Feel, it’s very romantic and pretty and utterly forgettable to me. Very generic lyricism, polished arrangement-- the kind of thing I can’t nitpick about which pisses me off, but also has no identity of its own. It could be sung by the One Direction boys and no one would know the difference.

Galway Girl The highlight of this album, which kinda feels like three songs in one-- ridiculously flirtatious, self-aware and all its elements-- rap, fiddle, guitar, dance beats-- are expertly weaved together. The sort of thing that Ed Sheeran has perfected since he rolled off whatever couch he was surfing to become everyone’s favourite ging.

Happier It’s a break-up song. There are several on this album. That means Ed Sheeran has done his duty by providing both sickly sweet gushy love songs and heartbreaking etudes to lovers lost. This one gets the full orchestra treatment, which heightens the heartbreak and regret on the pre-chorus and chorus, where Ed wails and emotes. It’s not bad. None of these songs are that bad. It’s also, really, not that good.

New Man For me, the best part of the song is the witty, detailed lyricism attacking bro-culture. It got a second listen from me so I could take in all the delicious, bitter insults and #relevant social callouts (instagram, double tap etc.). It’s a fun track with actual personality though I’m not sure how much radio play a song mentioning a bleached asshole will get. Not enough.

Hearts Don’t Break Around Here This one feels the closest to earlier Ed Sheeran at first until it devolves into the typical weepy love song thing we’ve already done on this album. Honestly, at this point they really feel the same. I like the guitar line on this one better than the others. My boyfriend will probably like it. Otherwise, I don’t think it deserves much mention.

What Do I Know It’s another entry in Ed Sheeran’s diary, highlighting his existential crisis as a multi-billionaire top 40 musician. That being said, the minimal guitar here does establish a real groove-- the subtle layering of Ed’s own voice making the most outta his god-given instrument. It makes the unbearable grudgingly impressive.

(It also officially makes Eraser feel redundant. Insert pun here about how eraser should be, yeah, erased from this album).

How Would You Feel Please see my review here. I’m pretty bored, by the way. We have how many more songs? Jfc.

Supermarket Flowers This song was written about Ed Sheeran’s grandmother who passed, so it feels mean to be too hard on it. It’s fine. (It’s also kinda forgettable. I’m not that sad).

Barcelona This track opens with Ed Sheeran’s frantic breathing, probably because he’s outta shape from all the backpacking he did after Multiply, which is what this song is about. The Spanish influences here are y’know pretty appropriate and sort of expected though I wanna know how actual Spanish speakers feel about Ed Sheeran attempting to speak spanish/appropriating the slick magazine appeal of Barcelona like any pasty English tourist on holiday. I kinda feel like this will be played over a travel medley in any film adaption of the latest big YA novel. All that being said, it’s an uptick from the last two downers-- this one’s genuinely fun-- and much more interesting musically speaking than the majority of the album.

Bibia Be Ye Ya I much prefer these ambitious, weird upbeat pop songs to the droopy love songs. This one flows gorgeously from Barcelona. I got no idea what he’s saying (apparently its Twi-- a language spoken in Ghana) but the music’s playful and sunny and optimistic, while the lyrics are the opposite-- “My heart is breaking at the seams / and I'm coming apart now.” Which makes me think this song is about not giving a fuck. It also sounds like it was a blast to mix.

Nancy Mulligan Ed Sheeran goes back to Ireland here. This song’s modeled after the successful Irish story-song and basically steals all its tricks from that toolbox, down to the “di-de-dis.” It feels both modern and classic, more like a cover than an original, though Ed name-drops himself to remind us that this is his entry into the Irish pub song oeuvre. This is another entry into the “It’s not bad” category of songs. I think it’d be better if Ed were actually Irish.

Save Myself We end on a more poignant, safe, somber note, which means I’m pretty bored again. I dunno why he picked this song to end on either because there’s nothing amazing about it lyrically or musically or thematically or even vocally. It’s about as cliche as it gets. But I guess it’s-- yeah-- not bad.

#reviews #blog #what i do instead of work at work lol

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supersushimi · 5 years

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Wednesday, i compiled most of these note prior to the test.

W1 UI and XI stand for user interface and user experience they are huge growth industries. User centered design is Created for the for end use. User testing ie (falsifying)mental model of how things work.Folk theory and"wisdom of the crowd” both sort of mean how the river flows is how it will flow.

CRAP stands for Contrast, Repetition, alignment, proximity, all these elements i will try to put into practice into my picture gallery. and this to element, line, color, shape, text, form Negative

End game, narrow purposed design to be in control of the interface design Whats my end game, to “will” the user into my portfolio of design and ultimately choose me as there designer.

W2 Heuristics Principles. usability of system status Real world logical. Freedom undo and redo consistency error prevention# Recognition Flexibility Minimal Error handling. Documentation. = Happy users

Heuristic tests, expert reviews. me to carry out

Getting all this right will impact whether or not they choose me as a client.

W3 servers contain website data. Http stands for hypertext transfer protocol, computers use this to communicate with. Cascading style sheets are how elements are styled.

W4 This week we learnt about Root Folders and how websites are structured, this is important because it keeps all the files in the right places and makes it easy for other to interface with.

W5 Static, page specific with, stubborn layout, fixed with. Fluid, crunched all the way-to the with of the browser- not practical . Adaptive Static and adaptive with break points. Responsive design- fluid and adaptive, flexible, fluid, font changes spacing changes and breakpoints. Design for size not devices.

Why is all this important, new devices are being brought to market every day and how many older devices are there?

W6 Skewamorphic (old school) design.vs Flat design.

Redundant design incorporated into new. We learnt how to make buttons, dials, toggle slate. on off, checkbox list and Radio button list, Drop downs with multiple selections, single slider, Dual Slider.

Choose what is functional ! I like both, but for my website i might go for both in the menu page and the design work page.

W8 We learnt how to make GIFs in a seamless loop. here’s how, File. mov import. Video layer to PS. Take video Preview clip limit to every frame Make frame Animation Output. File export to web legacy. Boom.

W9 Low fidelity prototype For App testing. (paper and ink) For VI testing finding faults.

Benefits. 1 less time. 2 Design changes. 3 less pressure on user. 4 Desires feel less wadded to LFP 5 Stakeholders Recognize work isn't functional yet.

I particularly like LFP this really sparked my imagination.

Benefits in High fidelity Prototyping 1 Faster system response 2 interactivity and visuals, testing workflow. 3 live software to users more likely to behave realistically 4 focusing on test instead of what comes next. 5 Less likely to make human error

W10 Wire frames sketches of page layouts and solutions Clarifying a complex system with a graphic dynamic approach

Wire frame fidelity who what tasks tasks desired how are the tasks learnt where are the tasks performed relationships other tools for users how often tasks time constraints ⑥ what happens when something goes wrong.

I like the structured check list here, it puts the question out there What is the purpose of my web site.

W11 “gate way” CARP Rss,feed old tech packaged in unified form- subscription content, podcasts, reader views, social media,, notifications, Rss super limited

whats trending today. send to twitter passing the content.

(Api) another standard. APIS (Application Programming interface.) how interface M to M machine.

Api Page (Development page) security $ other developments. le Amazon. Widgets (plugins) POWR website export into DW adds more features.

All useful tools to add functionality to your website.

W12 Ed Roberts made Curb Cut accessible (digital accessibility)

human dimensions. S, M, L → uniform etc.

SEO, do not forget this one, don’t want to get left behind the pack. FWI (Search Engine Optimization.

In conclusion my Design web site, i want to be first and foremost functional. My demographic will be individuals companies or prospective employees (designers) and interested individuals on social media platforms, all looking for the qualities that they require, hopefully my work will demonstrate technical expertise and a sound knowledge of design principles, typography, 2d and 3d, UI XI, photography color theory etc.

My pages will be comprised mainly of two forms the menu page and my design work pages.

Will my demographic be younger millennial, best bet probably not. In an article from "https://datausa.io/profile/soc/271020/#employment" stated that the average designers age is 40.5, so ill defiantly cater to these tastes, The male female split is relatively even so for males and females ill try my best to pull a few heart strings with my rubies cube and my mac emulated design.

Also in an article from dezeen.com they stated The "2016 Design Census revealed that 73 per cent of those surveyed identified as white, nine per cent were Hispanic, eight per cent were Asian, and three per cent were black.” Catering to white tastes might not be a stupid idea.

My competitors in today's digital age could be on any sort of platform twitter, Facebook, linked, Instagram, etc. What will put me ahead of the pack( clarity of what I’m about, and a clear message of innovation. I did say not millennial right ?, well these platforms like You Tube is the world’s second largest search engine and third most visited site after Google and Facebook, what do i think about that, it cant be ignored. Whats the answer make all these platforms work for all age demographics.

Testing my site i found that i need to set up my tables with a little more though to stop double handling my design work. I found google to be a good “how to in dream weaver” ie. making links into new pages etc and Bridge PS, ie like batch image processing these are both issues explode and resolved. Moving the image to the background to insure that the table of text was visible was also explored and resolved. Making buttons on an image was also explored and resolved also creating a new page and vs a link that stays on the same page also was researched and resolved.

How to make the page responsive i will attempt during my work, i hope to use this so my page will look and feel professional.

Ive got a lot to learn and a lot of ideas yet to come into reality. What i liked the most was the Low fidelity prototyping stages and nutting out problems and finding out what the user really wants. Learning all the ins and outs of DW was also enjoyable.

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doctorwhonews · 6 years

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Doctor Who - The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield - Vol 4: Ruler of the Universe

Latest Review: Writer: James Goss, Guy Adams Director: Scott Handcock Featuring: Lisa Bowerman, David Warner, Sam Kisgart Big Finish Release (United Kingdom) First Released: September 2017 Running Time: 5 hours “Well, you did find something! So what’s the problem?” “You are, Mr President! You are!” “Don’t call me that – you know I hate being called that! I’m the Doctor ...” “No, that’s the problem, you’re not – not anymore!” The “Unbound” Doctor and Bernice Summerfield As this month marks 20 years since Professor Bernice Summerfield (Lisa Bowerman) made her audio debut with Big Finish, it seems only fitting ahead of BF’s birthday celebrations for Benny later this month to review her most recent set of adventures which occurred in a parallel, “Unbound” universe. In Volume 3 of The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield, Benny found herself stranded in another universe with a completely different version of her (and our favourite) Time Lord – one of the “Unbound” Doctors (brilliantly portrayed by veteran David Warner). To compound matters, this variation on the Doctor Who universe (or Whoniverse) was on the brink of total collapse. When Volume 4 opens, Bernice has returned to her roots and is undertaking an archaeological dig on an ancient world, hoping to uncover evidence of the Apocalypse Clock, a mythical device that could halt this universe’s imminent demise. The Doctor, meanwhile, has resumed his role as president of the universe (after initially shunning the responsibility) and is finding himself increasingly burdened in the day to day affairs of state – much to his and Summerfield’s chagrin. He is therefore happy to visit Benny to inspect her progress on the dig as a little bit of PR and to escape the trappings of office. The City and the Clock, the opening instalment in this quadrilogy, is the straightest and most conventional of the four serials which are, for the most part, quite satirical and madcap. Unfortunately, it’s also a quite plain drama, lacking the tension and suspense that you would associate with a tale about mummified, undead creatures stalking the ruins of their ancient city at night. Indeed, if it weren’t for the introduction of the infamous clock that is a recurring theme in the box set, the story would be redundant. It’s saying something when the memorable moments of this play are the cleverly written dialogue, exchanges and interplay between Benny and the Doctor (“What possible interpretation of the words ‘first’ and ‘class’ include having Karfel’s Next Top Model played at you? I wanted to confess five minutes in and I hadn’t done anything!”). A balloon ride over the ancient ruins also has Warner’s Doctor waxing philosophically: The Doctor: It puts things in perspective, rather doesn’t it? Seeing it from up here – a whole ancient town, once a thriving community, people living lives, sleeping, eating, loving and dying under all those roofs and then … Benny: The dust of ages, layer by layer, burying it from sight … The Doctor: You’d think travelling in time, I’d get used to it – the idea that we’re all nothing more than temporary fixtures, walking bones, but I don’t! Everything we’re doing at the moment – all the plans, all the panic, all the meetings, everyone thinks it’s important because nothing’s ever more real than now. The people that lived down there thought the same thing – look where it’s got them! Nothing matters, not really. We’re all just waiting for the dust to bury us! Benny: Well, I’m so glad you popped by – you’ve cheered me up no end! Otherwise, aside from terrific dialogue, the plotline of The City and the Clock – and the premise behind the clock – is entirely forgettable. It’s a pity because writer Guy Adams clearly devises the story to put Benny back into her element – yet the tale, which is slow from the get-go, never builds to a dramatic crescendo, and Benny doesn’t get to employ the smarts that make her such a terrific archaeologist. Strangely, after the “drama” of the first instalment, Asking for a Friend is a more character-based and pensive piece, as Benny and the Doctor grapple with the dilemmas of having to make compromises in a dying universe to save the hundreds of civilisations that fall outside the clock’s sphere of influence. This includes diplomacy with tyrants and zealots, and false promises to the needy. Indeed, Benny’s disappointment in the Doctor is apparently so great that at her suggestion the Time Lord ends up seeing a therapist (played by the wonderfully ebullient Annette Badland, famous for her portrayal in the first season of the modern TV series as the Slitheen Margaret Blaine). Of course, conducting therapy sessions with someone as complicated and self-absorbed as the Doctor is never going to be easy (he himself remarks it’s like “a mosquito scratching at a continent”!) – and that’s before you factor in time travel as well! James Goss, the other writer of this boxset, provides a quite compelling tête-à-tête between Guilana the therapist and the Time Lord, as they verbally spar to pry sensitive information from the other. Attention to detail is required of the listener, as each new session between the two hints at subtle, new elements from the last scene between them (in the CD extras, Goss admits that he has “borrowed” an idea from former executive producer Steven Moffat that he used not just once but twice – notably in the TV serial A Christmas Carol, and a short story called Continuity Errors from way back in 1996!). When the consequences of these sessions finally come to a head, it is only then that you perhaps fully appreciate just how alone and isolated – and hopelessly disconnected – the Doctor must be in this – and in any other – universe. In turn, put a solitary character like the Doctor in charge of executive government, and it’s little wonder that in the next serial Truant, he returns to his adventuring of old. The pre-titles sequence to this third instalment is highly amusing, as the Doctor’s attempts at heroics against amateurish evildoers and ne’er-do-wells are thwarted by their cowardice and his own reputation for being a champion (“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Is there nobody with a backbone in this stupid universe?” he moans at one point). Even when the Doctor eventually encounters a conspiracy he can get his teeth into, much to his frustration he realises he has arrived too late to overturn the appalling wrong that has been inflicted. Nevertheless, Truant is one of the highlights of the set, mixing the right levels of drama and humour, as the Doctor and Benny evade unprofessional and sloppy villains in the Silvans, who are as much incidental victims of the conspiracy historically as their purported victims. Only in Doctor Who could the titular hero convincingly pull off a getaway by stealing not only a vehicle but its effusive driver as well – or “interrogate” the chief villain over coffee and chocolate biscuits! Guy Adams’ script is probably still a little too wacky for TV, but it suits the BF audio format perfectly. The boxset closes with The True Saviour of the Universe, as the Doctor upon his return to parliament is arrested and thrust into impeachment proceedings. Much to Benny’s suspicion, the arrest coincides with the sudden arrival of this universe’s incarnation of the Master (Sam Kisgart, aka Mark Gatiss) and the emergence of a hooded figure which has been offering parliamentarians incentives to oust the Doctor from office since the events of The City and the Clock. Are they connected? Does the Master have designs on the presidency, so he can hijack the Apocalypse Clock? James Goss’s clever script challenges and upturns all the listener’s expectations while poking fun at all of Doctor Who’s conventions. Goss jokes that The True Saviour of the Universe is “a remake of Logopolis involving Cthulu and singing nuns” – which, despite sounding far-fetched, is an apt description. The Sisterhood of Beedlix, like the Logopolitans, can influence the fabric of the universe through songs and prayer that recite the power of numbers. The appearance of the “old ones” at the gateway to another universe at the climax is an old riff on the nineties New Adventures novels, which regularly pitted the Doctor and his companions, including Benny, against “ancient evils from the dawn of time” – to the point of overkill. Further, Goss has fun challenging the many clichés that fans have come to associate with the Doctor and the Master over many decades. For example, when Benny asks the Master how he survived his execution at the Emporium in the closing chapter of the Vol 3 boxset, his response is simple yet curt - “Don’t be boring!” – a subtle nod to eighties Doctor Who, in which no explanation was ever given for the Master cheating death or escaping from tight scrapes. Other quotations and dialogue subtly homage Logopolis and The Daemons, as the Master seeks to harness the power of the “old ones” to seize control of the universe. Of course, the joke is very much on the Master – and in the most unexpected way … The production qualities of this boxset, like next to all of BF’s input, is first class – as are the performances of the first tier and supporting casts. Warner and Bowerman are a fantastic Doctor/companion combo and Kisgart/Gatiss is charming, urbane and oily as the Master (although Gatiss has far too much fun as his Kisgart persona in the CD extras for my taste). The flirtatiousness of the Benny/Master combo also puts an unusual spin on the usual antagonism between Master and companion. As mentioned above, Badland is outstanding as the Doctor’s therapist, while Catrin Stewart (Jenny Flint of the Paternoster Gang) puts in an understated appearance as the aide-de-camp to the wimpy Silvan leader (Jonathan Bailey). Most notably, Hattie Hayridge (better known as the female Holly in Red Dwarf) delivers a terrific performance as the Doctor’s press secretary, deftly diverting and deflecting the tough questions about her President’s leadership in exchanges with Guy Adams’ hard-hitting journalist. Volume 4 of The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield is an entertaining boxset which isn’t afraid to be tongue-in-cheek about Doctor Who’s conventions and show a strong sense of humour and fun. It isn’t constrained by the continuity of the regular series, so it can afford to be more audacious and satirical. This means it won’t necessarily be for every fan who prefers the more no-nonsense style of the TV series adventures, or even some of BF’s regular Doctor Who output – but if you’re a long-term fan of Benny (who as a character herself isn’t above taking the piss), then you’re in for a treat. Indeed, the set ends on an upbeat note and with a paradox to boot. I won’t say what that paradox is (spoilers!) but if BF isn’t already sorely tempted to exploit the potential for a run-in with Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor in the future, then clearly the company’s heart isn’t in the right place! We’ll perhaps have a better idea of how this oxymoron may be addressed later this month in Volumes 1 and 2 of the next Benny series The Story So Far. http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2018/09/doctor_who_the_new_adventures_of_bernice_summerfiel.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

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