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owl-house-switched-at-portal · 4 years ago

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This is a in depth description of my au. Its probably going to be a long one so under the cut it goes.

In this universe Luz is raised on the Boiling Isles and Willow, Gus, and Amity are raised in the human realm, but Luz is still a human and Willow, Gus, and Amity are still witches. In this au Eda would often leave the portal open while she went looking for stuff in the human realm, mostly so that if she needed to she had a quick get away. Each of the kids would end up going through the portal when they where young, but not all at once. Willow was the first to wander through, she was about 2 at the time, she had a blanket with a flower design on it that had her first name stitched into it. She was quickly taken in by Camila Noceda till her parents could be found. Camila eventually adopted Willow naming her Willow Flor Noceda. Willow knew that she was adopted, but still viewed Camila and Luz as family.

Willow grew up with Luz till they were 5 years old, so they both have some memories of seeing each other. Luz then ended up going through the portal, eventually being found by the Blight twins. Luz was taken back to Blight Manor where Mr. and Mrs. Blight decided to raise her as their own, but never told her she was adopted. They decided that since Luz was adamant about keeping her name to just keep it the same first name. She became known as Luz Magina Blight, believing she was Amity's twin, and her ears, skin, and inability to do magic was due to a genetic disorder.

Amity also went through the portal when she was 5. She wandered away from the twins and through the portal. She had on a circular purple necklace with a golden crescent moon and her first and last name etched in it alongside a picture of her, Emira, and Edric inside. She was placed in the care of a pair of newlywed women who cared for her to the best of their ability. Her new mom's named her Amelia "Amity" Blight Allard. They lived across the street from the Noceda residence.

The final one to go through the portal was Gus. He was 3 at the time and he had a toy dog that had his name on it in a moon shaped tag. He was taken in by a husband and wife whose daughter just went off to college. He was named Agustus Lua Silva. He knew he was adopted, but happy nonetheless. He lived nextdoor to the Nocedas.

Willow, Gus, and Amity all ended up becoming best friends with each other. The witchlings began showing their magical prowess around the age of 7. Gus and Amity's parents ended up putting Camila as their childrens Godmother. When Gus was 8 his adopted parents ended up dying in a car crash. Right before the end of school when Amity was 14 her parents decided that they wanted to take their own honeymoon, which they weren't able to do originally since they put themselves headfirst into raising Amity. They left her in Camila's care and said that they would be back to get her at the end of the summer.

Luz loved learning about magic and everything about it, but was upset she couldn't even draw a spell circle. She was friends with a young witchling girl named Bo, till she cut ties with her. Luz eventually had her hair dyed green to match her siblings and was placed in the potions track at Hexside, due to not needing magic to complete.

From here onward the story would play out the way it would in canon, but with a few modifications.

#owl house switched at portal au #the owl house #backstory time!#luz the owl house #toh amity #toh willow #toh gus #owl house au #owl house swap au #kinda

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luanaahq · 5 years ago

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[ LUANA WILLIAMS . 32. CIS FEMALE. SHE/HER] is here! They’ve lived in Silver Lake for [ 1 YEAR ] and are originally from [ WESTMINSTER,ENGLAND ]. They are the [ OWNER OF DAILY PLANET ] and in their downtime love [ READING ] and [ DRAWING ]. They look a lot like [ NATHALIE EMMANUEL ] and live [ ON REDCLIFF ST ]. (ooc: sofia, 24, she/her, gmt)

hiii everyone! it’s sofia here and i’m so excited to bring you all one of my babies! don’t hesitate to hit me up for anything really!

BASICS

Full name: Luana Andreia Williams

Nicknames: Lu;Lua

Birthdate: August 13th,1988

Birthplace: Brasilia,Brazil

Nationality: Brazilian;British

Languages: English;Portuguese

Gender: Cis Female

Sexuality: Bisexual

BACKGROUND

( death tw )

Luana Andreia Williams was born in Brasilia to the most loving couple. Her mother is Brazilian while her father was born and raised in England.

Only a year after she was born,her father passed away in a car accident. Her mother,whose family did not approve of their relationship,had no choice but to raise Luana in Westminster,where her partner's family was.

Luana's childhood was based on living with her mother and grandmother. The stuff she held most dear at that time are still the stuff she holds most until this day which are her father's comic book collection.

Unlike most children,the bedtime stories her mother read to her were no fairy tales but the stories from all the comic books her father had managed to collect over the years. Her passion for comic books and the world related to it only grew as the years passed.

Unfortunately,when Luana's high school years came to an end,she didn't have enough money to go to college and ended up working multiple jobs in a year to get into college. After working as a waitress in a diner and being a babysitter, Luana finally realised that she didn't want to go to college,she wanted to open her own business,something she would build from scratch.

It wasn't until a year ago that Luana packed up and left for Silver Lake,which seemed like the perfect place to relax and accomplish her biggest desire.

Now living on a two-bedroom comfortable house on Redcliff street,Luana,after so long,open the store Daily Planet,that sells everything related to the world of comic books and offers a corner to read and relax.

Wanted Connections

Someone who met her when she first moved into Silver Lake and helped her since she acted like a lost baby for the first months;

Regulars at Daily Planet that Luana has grown close to;

Close friends that make her feel at home;

Fellow comic book lovers (of course);

Best friends that take her out to remind her that there is a world outside her store;

A possible fling/romantic interest/friends with benefits;

A ride or die kind of friendship,someone Luana trusts with her life;

Possible enemies who dislike her because she is dead honest and has no filter;

Luana has a soft British accent that she sometimes tries to hide but always ends up failing miserably;

She is a complete sweetheart and will do everything she can for you unless you push her buttons and then she will turn into the devil;

Her shelves are full of all kinds of books,including comic books of course and she is proud of it;

She can be such a perfectionist and the perfect appearance and organisation of her store is just an example of it;

If there is one thing she lives off is definitely hot tea,she cannot go a day without it;

She hates it when anyone touches her hair,it's her little baby;

Do never ask her about her favourite comic book character,she will give anyone a full slide presentation about it.

#slintro #death tw #like this and ill hit you up!#( also please fill my wanted connections :)

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survey--s · 2 years ago

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456.

1) What’re your plans for the weekend? Absolutely nothing lol. I feel like I've not had a proper break from work in ages as Archie was really sick last weekend so we ended up down at the vets. This week has just been insane too so it's really nice to just be able to relax.

2) Could you ever be vegetarian - why or why not? I was vegetarian on/off for a few years as a teenager but ultimately it's not really something I'm interested in.

3) Name a quote from your favorite TV show: "That's a lot of information to get in thirty seconds".

4) What time did you wake up this morning? About 6.45 as apparently my body clock is back to being on work-time lol. I didn't get up until closer to 9am though.

5) What chores do you do around the house? Well, pretty much everything that needs to be done as it's my house, lol. I mean, nobody else is gonna do it for me.

6) Do you like wind chimes, or do they annoy you? They're fine at other people's houses but they'd drive me mad if I had them outside my own house lol. Especially as they'd probably set the dog off barking constantly. 7) How much sleep do you usually get a night? Normally around seven hours.

8) If you could have any outfit, cost not an issue, what would you get? I'm not really bothered about having nice outfits. 9) Do you play any instruments? I can play a few but I haven't played them for ages.

10) What song would you say describes your life right now? The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars lol.

11) Do you have snacks lying around your room? No.

12) Did you get up to much today? If it’s morning, what are your plans? Not really, just normal household stuff. I had a lie in, fed the animals, let the dog out, vacuumed, did the litter trays, made breakfast, went back to bed for an hour, washed up, showered and now I'm just messing about online and watching TV.

13) What’s your favorite animal to see in the zoo? Penguins, tigers, elephants, squirrel monkeys, lemurs.

14) When do you start back to school or college? I haven't been in any kind of education in over a decade now.

15) What other social networking sites are you on? Facebook and Instagram.

16) What was the best year of your life? Hmm, overall I would say 2007, 2016, 2018 and 2022.

17) What plans do you have for the rest of summer? It's only February but mostly I spend my summers working and riding, plus I have a couple of weeks off in August.

18) How old is the person you like right now? He's just turned 38. 19) Do you get an allowance? How much? No, I have a full-time job lol.

20) What games console is your favorite? What about favorite game? We have an xBox but I haven't played it in ages. I liked Gems of War, the old-style Lara Croft games and also Super Mario back when we had a Nintendo.

21) If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be and why? I'm honestly happy just chilling out at home today. I need a lazy day after how manic my week has been.

22) Do your parents nag you a lot? What about? I don't live with my parents so it's not really their place to nag at me. My mum sometimes complains about the state of my car though lol.

23) What is there on the walls of your room? There are a couple of paintings but that's about it.

24) Is there anyone that just really annoys you? Oh yes.

25) What are your plans for tomorrow, anything good? Just a chilled out, lazy day as I have another fully booked week next week. Luckily Mike is off so he can sort the dog out lol.

26) If you could wake up tomorrow being able to do one thing perfectly, what would it be? Sing.

27) You have two wishes to make to help the world, and one can’t be “another wish” or anything similar. What wishes do you make? Clean water and ample supply of food. <--- this.

28) Do you reckon world peace is possible or are we just too selfish? People are way too selfish.

29) Do you listen to Bright Eyes? Wow, nostalgia alert lol. I used to LOVE Bright Eyes - especially Lua and Bowl of Oranges but I've not listened to them in YEARS. I might download them off Spotify actually. 30) Are you interested in politics, or do you just not care? It's not that I don't care, it's that I don't think anything us "mortals" do can actually make a difference.

#survey #surveys

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data-true-blog · 7 years ago

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Dialogus - A dialogue engine for Unity

I’ve been working on a dialogue engine for Unity (specifically, 2018.2.6) over the past few weeks that can be used in two different projects. I still have some work to do but I feel like I have a good starting point to discuss and post about it. If you want to see my progress, here’s a link to the Trello board I’m working on.

I’ve been working on a little thing called Dialogus which, as I said earlier, is a dialogue engine. It provides a large part of the back end for dialogue systems other than the actual dialogue UI itself. That part is up to the specific game to implement for things such as animations on the sprites, text animations, dialogue boxes, etc. Dialogus takes care of a lot of the heavy back end issues that are seen when trying to program your own dialogue tool in Unity. There are still a few things I want to add to the tool before I push it out and I want to test it on a larger game.

Originally, at least for one of the projects, I was going to use a system similar to what Brackey’s describes in this video. While this is in no way a bad system, if you’re using it for an expansive project, it can become quite cumbersome and disorganized. A few people from my college also tried implementing a variation of Brackey’s tool but quickly found that nesting things became ugly and worked poorly in the long run.

I knew I needed to write a tool that can be used in different types of games with different requirements. The project I am working on for Fishhead (a currently unnamed 2.5D platformer with dating sim elements) requires that it be useful in cut scenes and player/NPC interactions. For The Souls’ Sonata, from Mirror Studio, it’s going to be used in a visual novel setting. This means the engine will have to be optimized for lots of text, dialogue, and voice over work. In both cases, the dialogue tree presents a real challenge as it is the crux of both games.

Editor Features

The editor for Dialogus features a few things: a character creator, a variable declarer, and the all-essential dialogue tree editor. I’ll talk about each of these individually. I apologize now for only showing screenshots; I’m not too aware on the best way to record and make such in-engine presentations look good.

Character Creator

The character creator is a simple, lightweight aspect of Dialogus that has the sole purpose of containing each of the character’s names and sprites. It is a simple, inspector-based gadget that can automatically find the sprites of the character or allow you as the user to input your own sprites. I plan to expand this aspect to use custom folder paths but for now it works simply.

Dialogue Tree Editor

The Dialogue Tree Editor is the most interesting part to the entire tool. It allows users to build their trees up without code. The trees only rely on the Character Creator tool if you have sprites you want to use. You can still use the tool without a CHAR_X file or files, it just exists for the sake of making life easier when linking sprites to specific instances.

The editor currently supports three types of nodes: start, conversation, and choice.

The start node is the simplest of the three: it acts as the initial position to the rest of the tree. If all goes well, it should hopefully be Node 0 in the tree but some things happen and it isn’t. The editor does not allow you to place any other nodes until the start node has been placed.

The conversation node is the pivotal node as it is what most games will rely on. I also bet it will be the most nodes in a single tree unless you have a questionnaire or something similar.

The choice node is the next most interesting node and is the last of the three to have been implemented. The choice node currently supports up to 8 possible branches/choices/paths. Below is a sample from a quick test from within the editor.

Variable Editor

The Variable Editor is a very simple tool, similar to that of the Character Creator. It allows you to create and initialize variables to specific values. Say you want a money counter or to see if the player has a certain item or if you want paths to be limited based off of a relationship with a given character, you’d use the variable editor to make these. As well, you can use these in the connection editor to direct pathing as stated just over a sentence ago.

Connection Editor

The Connection Editor is a simple little window similar to that of the variable editor. You left-click on a connection and you can pull up the window to it. Here, you can add any number of conditions to the path as you’d like. For right now, the conditions must all be met but I do plan on allowing conditionals where one of the conditions need to be met. This will be implemented sooner than later, in fact.

Back-end Information

Dialogus uses NetwonSoft’s JSON library as information is represented in the JSON format (because XML is just a pain for this case IMO). This is the library’s only dependency as it has been tested for years at this point and is widely trusted for JSON de-serialization.

Why not use Unity’s in-engine deserialize components? Simply because it’s support is far more limited. As the tool is further in development, and better ideas are found/implemented, the tool may switch to the lighter-weight Unity packages.

Dialogus has it’s own loader/tree traversal methods that you can call. The only function programmers need to worry about is NextNode(Node).

How does this differentiate from tools like Fungus?

Fungus is a general purpose engine that has the ability to be used in visual novels and games alike. The issue I found with it is it relies on Lua programming and it’s organization for conversations can be quite cumbersome. Dialogus removes a bit of these issues because it allows for each node to be seen and edited rather than hunting inside each of the nodes to find the specific conversation piece.

Why should I use this tool instead of something like RenPy?

You don’t have to use Python.

...

I kid, Python is a good language for certain tasks. It’s a tool in the tool belt that should always be considered.

In reality, it’s a good way to enable freedom for visual novel games. RenPy I find to be limiting in its own right. It’s documentation is something I also have an issue with as it is lacking compared to other resources. Of course, this will be improved over time hopefully. While it’s great for some types of visual novels, it is limited in its capacity to serve other functions for more ambitious VNs. Unity affords you such freedom to experiment and write your own systems. This tool takes care of the daunting task and question of “how do I write a dialogue tree in Unity?”

Are there any plans to support animations in the dialogues?

There are plans to support basic animation stuff (like ‘shaking,’ ‘jumping,’ etc.) however it’s a very, very low priority. There are better things that the tool can use over animations at this point but they may very well come.

What do I have to write/create?

The only scripts you have to write are a manager script to interact with Dialogus’s external facing tools. You have access to Dialogus’s node types (using enum values) as the traverser returns a generic Node object rather than a specific instance of the node. You also have to make your own GUI system (supplying Text for strings and RawImage objects for sprites). Dialogus acts as a way to hold data you need for interactions.

At the very end of the development, I plan on writing a basic dialogue manager so that way people who are not programming savy can quickly implement their dialogue trees while they wait for programmers to free up.

When will the tool be available on the Unity Asset store and will it be paid for?

Not too sure, but it isn’t gong to take another good month or two of development to get there when it’ll be available but I’m even more unsure of whether or not to monetize the tool. It will definitely go to the Asset store once I feel it is ready though.

Challenges Ahead

There are a few things that I’m particularly seeing as obstacles the tool will have to overcome:

Translation/multi-language games: Currently Dialogus only supports one tree language at a time be it English, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, or Russian. I need to solve the issue of how to have one tree with the ability to use any language. This may come down to reworking many of the lower systems in the tool itself.

Optimizations: While general optimizations can (and very much will) happen, the issue comes down to optimizing how files are saved, loaded, read, etc. These could potentially throw off older versions of Dialogus and prevent newer versions from being able to read old data. The basic solution to this is use only the version you have downloaded on the project but I want to do some more testing on this.

External Issues: My biggest fear comes down to managing the project properly. I’m still just a student at this point so exams and the like come first but, more importantly, dealing with burnout. With so many tasks to do outside of this project, Dialogus will be a slow growing tool until the end of this semester.

Breaking the Unix development style: I want Dialogus to be an amazing dialogue engine. That means I don’t want it to do anything else other than that. Some features will have to be tossed out that I plan, or others want, simply because it breaks the Unix cycle. I’m one person working on this right now.

#unity3d #unitytools #dialogus #the souls' sonata #mirror studio #fishhead #dialogue engine #c-sharp

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purplethecolorofviolence · 3 months ago

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The Angel and the Pomegranate (pleasures of the flesh) - 2024

I was in a real blasphemous phase last year (another work made for Art History II - we had to paint in the style of mannerism)

#artists on tumblr #lua's college stuff #lua's art #visual arts #artwork #painting #acrylic painting #religious art #angel #pomegranate

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queenlua · 4 years ago

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You're a druid and an ex-evangelical, right? What does being a druid mean to you? How did you get from evangelicalism to where you are now? And of course feel free to ignore this if it's nosy. (sincerely, a Christian who wants to leave but who doesn't know what to do)

this is going to make me sound ignorant as hell, lol, but i'm happy to share

under a cut because this got very long, sorry, lol.

my personal progression was: "vaguely christian -> VERY christian -> christian agnostic -> agnostic/atheist -> agnostic/druid -> some sorta druid-neopagan-animist thing." i guess i'll just go through what made me switch between each of those, and close out with some high-level thoughts that may be helpful for you?

okay, so when i was

VAGUELY CHRISTIAN,

i went to Sunday school every week because That's What You Do, and because my whole hometown was very southern Baptist, i never questioned the veracity of its teachings much... until they ran a whole weekly series on "why [x] is wrong," where [x] is some other group

e.g., we had a week on why Mormons are wrong, and i didn't bat an eye because i hadn't even known Mormons existed until that moment

then we had a week on why Muslims are wrong, and that... bothered me, because i had a friend who was Muslim, and she was just objectively a better person than me, and i was like "any universe where she goes to hell and i don't seems really fucked up"

then we had a week on why EVOLUTION was wrong, and that just absolutely threw me, because while i hadn't thought about evolution much (i think i was in fourth grade or so), it seemed common-sense? scientists thought highly of it? "adaptation over time" just seems logical?

so i went to the public library every day after school for like a week, read some Darwin and some science books, and came back to my Sunday school teacher with, like, an itemized list of objections to the whole "evolution is wrong" thing. and he came up with some standard Answers In Genesis rebuttals, and i did more research and came back the next week with more science, and we repeated this a few times until he was like "lua, you just gotta take some things on faith"

which. lmao. full existential crisis time, because no matter how hard i thought, i couldn't *not* believe in the science, but i also didn't want to go to hell, so i was like "maybe if i believe SUPER HARD i will SOMEDAY be able to unbelieve the condemn-me-to-hell bits"

so i decided to become

VERY CHRISTIAN

and my frantic googling for shit like "proof of god" and "god and evolution" *eventually* broke me out of the Answers In Genesis circles of the internet, and into some decent Christian apologia, like, think First Things and various Catholic bloggers. and there, i found some way to square my gut sense that evolution was right, with a spiritual worldview.

like, i remember finding some blogger who said:

"young earth creationists get tripped up when they try to explain stars that are millions of light-years away, and end up basically arguing that God's tricking us somehow, and—no! my God lets you believe in the evidence of your eyes, my God does not demand that you make yourself ignorant or stupid, my God expects you to use your brain"

and i just started crying at my computer, because no one had ever said "using your brain is Good and part of God's will," i was like *finally* here's someone who won't tell me i'm going to hell for just *thinking* about things

(st. augustine does a much better riff on a similar theme, fwiw, but i only found him later)

still, it was an uneasy fit, because, the more i learned and read about world history, the more it seemed... weird... that the One And Singular Path To Salvation was... the successor to some niche desert cult... which didn't even occur at the *beginning* of written history, like, it was all predated by that whole Mithraism thing, etc... and like, sure, i could trot out all the standard theological talking points for why Actually This Makes Perfect Sense, but gut-level-wise, the aesthetics just seemed kinda dumb! and no level of talking myself out of it made that feeling go away!

so at this point i started referring to myself as a

CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC

i mean, not aloud. i still lived in southernbaptistopia and i didn't want, like, my hair stylist to tell me i was a horrible person. but in my *head* i called myself Christian agnostic and it felt right.

and i started church-hopping, which honestly was really fun, would recommend to anyone at any point. i visited the fire-and-brimstone baptist church, the methodist church, the episcopalians, the universal unitarians, etc.

unfortunately, while this gave me *some* new perspectives, each of the places either had the same shitty theology as my old megachurch (i remember the *acute* sense of despair i felt when i was starting to jive with a methodist church... only for the dumbass youth minister to start going on about evolution), or, they just lacked any sense of the *sacred*. like, the Church of Christ churches, with their a capella services, *definitely* had it; i felt more God there in one service than i did in a lifetime of shitty Christian rock at the megachurch. but their beliefs were even *more* batshit, so. big L on that one.

having failed to find a satisfactory church, i was basically

AGNOSTIC/ATHEIST

by the time i went to college, but honestly pretty unhappy about it; while it was harder than ever for me to actually *connect* with the divine, i didn't like thinking that my previous experiences of the divine were total lies. because my shitty evangelical church, for all its faults, could not *completely* sabotage the sense of God's presence. there were real moments in that church where i do believe i experienced something divine. mostly mediated by one particular youth minister, who in hindsight was the only spiritual teacher in that church who didn't seem a bit rotten inside, but! it was something!

so when i happened upon a bunch of writings on the now-defunct shii.org (that's the bit that makes me look WILDLY ignorant, lol), i was utterly captivated.

said author was a previous archdruid of the Reformed Druids of North America, an organization that was formed in the 1960s to troll the administration of Carleton College (there was a religious-service-attendance requirement; they made their own religion; their religion had whiskey and #chilltimes for its services). however, this shii.org dude seemed to take it pretty seriously. he was studying history of religion and blogged a lot about his studies, both academic and otherwise. while RDNA had started out as a troll, that didn't mean they hadn't *discovered* something real in the process, he said.

this, already, was going to be innately appealing to me; i've got a soft spot for wow-we-were-doing-this-ironically-but-now-it's-kinda-real? stuff in general.

in particular, shii.org’s discussions on the separation of ritual from belief was really interesting to me: most religions/spiritualities have *both*, but like, you can do a ritual without having the Exact Right Beliefs (if there even is such a thing!), and it can still be useful to you, it can have real power. (he had a really lovely essay, speculating on the origins of religion as just a form of art, but that essay is now lost to the sands of time, alas.)

(note that i wouldn't really recommend seeking out *recent* writing by the shii.org guy; he kinda went full tedious neoreactionary-blowhard-who-reads-a-lot-of-Spengler at some point? sigh.)

the shii.org guy led me to checking out a bunch of books on the history of neopaganism & also books by scholars of religion in general, and the more i read, the more excited i became. and i started doing little ritual/meditation stuff here and there.

then i was fortunate enough to attend some events with Earthspirit (this was when i lived in Boston), which cemented my hippie dalliances into something more real. the folks there, being from Boston, were all ridiculously overeducated (a sensibility that appeals to me), but also, being the kind of folks who drive out to a mountain in the middle of nowhere for a spiritual retreat, they tolerated a full range of oddities (everyone from aging-70s-feminist-wiccans to living-on-a-farm-with-your-bros-Astaru to dude-who-started-having-weird-visions-and-is-just-trying-to-figure-out-the-deal to Nordic-spiritualist-with-two-phds-from-Scandanavian-universities-on-the-subject, etc), which gave me a lot of room to explore different types of rituals, ceremonies, "magic", etc.

(polytheism in general lends itself well to this sort of easy plurality! i can believe other people are experiencing something real with their gods, and i can be talking to a totally different set of gods, and that’s just all very compatible, etc)

anyway, i started calling myself

AGNOSTIC/DRUID

around then, because i knew i'd found *something*, something that felt like all the realest moments i'd ever had in nature, and all the realest moments i'd ever had in that shitty megachurch, but i wasn't quite ready to put a theology to it.

but, idk, you do the thing for a while, and you start encountering some things that you may as well call gods, and you realize you're in pretty deep, and you ditch the "agnostic" bit and just throw hands and start describing yourself as

SOME SORTA DRUID-NEOPAGAN-ANIMIST THING

because that's the most precise thing you can muster. in particular, the druid bit resonates because nature's still very much at the center of my practice; the neopagan bit resonates because i'm not especially interested in reconstructing older traditions or being faithful to any actual pre-Christian traditions, and animist resonates because what i sometimes call gods seem to be tied pretty tightly to the land itself. it's all very experiential; all this mostly means i'm some weird chick who sometimes grabs a car and drives out someplace very lonely and hikes for a while and does some hippie shit to try and talk with the land or the god or whatever is there. and sometimes i come back from it changed, or refocused, or what-have-you, and hopefully i'm better for it. i'm aware this makes me look a little ridiculous, and is an unsatisfying answer, sorry!

WRT YOUR SITUATION

i don't know you or your situation, obviously, but if i wanted to give former-me some advice to save her some angst, i'd say

-> Christendom itself is far wilder and more diverse than many churches lead you to believe. if you still want to be Christian on some level, and it's just a shitty church that's convinced you the whole project is fucked, i'd honestly explore, i dunno, your nearest Quaker meeting. they're invoking the Holy Spirit with regularity but they're not raging douchenozzles about it.

-> if you're specifically interested in druidism, i found John Michael Greer's "A World Full of Gods" really nice. (caveat: Greer has *also* gone full right-wing nutjob these days, sigh, so like. would not recommend a great swath of his writing. but that one's good)

-> deciding that a just God wouldn't give me a brain and then ask me not to use it was hugely comforting to me. like, that was the start of the whole process, that was what made me feel ok searching for other churches and trying to find something that fit. obviously you should take this with 800 grains of salt, because obviously i'm no longer Christian, and thus maybe i'm just some poor misguided fallen soul, but... i still kinda believe that! maybe if you can make yourself believe that, it'll seem less scary?

idk, happy to answer more questions, sorry for the long ramble, hope it helped~

#druid stuff

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canmom · 7 years ago

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@kamidoodles replied to your post “@kamidoodles replied to your post “@kamidoodles replied to your post ...”

i started working on C when i was in college/uni since it was a prereq to C++ but i had to leave for health reasons and never finished :( do you think i should continue with C or jump right ahead? (i am familiar with OOP to a degree and have a ~12 year dev background)

I don’t feel like I have enough expertise to comment!

C/C++ will definitely be in use for a good long while though, I doubt anything will completely depose them as like the fast compiled languages. Also there’s some popularity with C# since that’s used in engines like Unity, though that kinda ties you to Microsoft.

If you know C, you can probably pick up C++ pretty easily of course since it’s like ‘C with extra bits’ - I started with C++ so I don’t know that much about it but I would guess that worrying less about allocating/deallocating memory will be a breath of fresh air.

Rust game dev is very immature, although there’s some interesting things going on like Amethyst; but currently most 3D games seem to be built with stuff like Unity (C#), Unreal 4 (C++) and CryEngine (i literally can’t find what scripting language they use but the engine itself is written in C++, Lua and C#). I doubt you can go wrong by focusing on C++, it’s not going anywhere any time soon.

#kamidoodles

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dragonsturtles-and-sky · 8 years ago

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Do all the even 😇

This took a while, sorry 😅2. Are you outgoing or shy?A mix of both tbh 4. Are you easy to get along with?Once I know you a bit I am 6. What kind of people are you attracted to?Very friendly and confident  8. Who from the opposite gender is on your mind?Well since I’m non binary I don’t exactly have an opposite gender 😂 10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with?My boyfriend Jordan 12. What are your 5 favorite songs right now?Lua- bright eyesLullaby- front porch stepSorry not sorry- Demi Lovato Perfect- Ed SheeranBad at love- Halsey 14. Do you believe in luck and miracles?Not particularly 16. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?Yes ☺️ 18. Do you still talk to your first crush? No he moved 20. Do you like your neighbors?I don’t talk to my new neighbors 22. Where would you like to travel?California 24. Favorite part of your daily routine?Cuddling with my cats after work 26. What do you do when you wake up?Feed my cats 28. Who are you most comfortable around?Jordan 30. Do you ever want to get married?I do plan on getting married, hopefully in like 5 years 32. Which celebrities would you have a threesome with?Demi Lovato and Hayley Kiyoko and Brendon Urie (they’re the loves of my life any combination would work) 34. Do you play sports? What sports?Nope. I don’t do sports 36. Have you ever liked someone and never told them?YES 38. Describe your dream girl/guy?Ummmm coloured hair, hazel eyes, a cute smile, a kind heart, and a pulse.  40. What do you want to do after high school?Welll I didn’t go to college I just work full time  42. If your being extremely quiet what does it mean?Nothing. I’m an introvert soooo 44. Trip to outer space or bottom of the ocean?Either. Both basically mean death 46. What are you paranoid about?The dark  48. Have you ever been drunk?Yes 🤷🏼‍♂️ 50. What was the colour of the last hoodie you wore?Black 52. One thing you wish you could change about yourself?Well I’m going to do it in a few months, but I��ll be getting top surgery 54. Favourite store?Barnes and Noble 56. Favourite colour?Green 58. Last thing you ate?Taco Bell 60. Ever won a competition? For what?Archery, I came in 4th in nationals two years ago and I won at the state level a few times. I also got a lot of stuff in cross country, track, and outdoor archery  62. Been arrested? For what?Nope 64. Tell us the story of your first kiss?Me and my partner at the time we’re hanging out at their house and somehow we were sitting under a blanket and were talking and giving eachother googly eyes. I really wanted to kiss her so I went for it. I ended up just getting the corner of her mouth and then hiding. It took like 5 minutes before she came over and we kissed on the lips and didn’t miss. It was sweet and I still remember it clearly 66. Do you like your tumblr friends more than your real friends?Yes 68. Twitter or Tumblr?Tumblr 70. Names of your bestfriends? Peaches, Mister Pup, Muffin 72. What colour are your towels?Blue 74. How many stuffed animals do you think you have?10 I think  76. What colour is your underwear?Blue and red 78. Favourite ice cream flavour?Rocky road 😋 80. What colour pants?Blue jeans are all I wear when I’m not at work 82. Favourite movie?Finding Dory 84. Mean Girls or 21 Jump Street?I’ve never seen either 86. Favourite character from Finding Nemo?Baby Dory  88. Last person you talked to today?Jordan 90. Name a person you love?Jordan 92. In a fight with someone?Not at the moment 94. How many sweaters/hoodies do you have?15+ but it’s not enough 96. Favourite actress?Scarlet Johansson  98. Do you tan a lot?I get orange when I tan 100. How are you feeling?Full of food 102. Do you regret anything from your past? 104. Do you miss anyone from your past?Yes 106. Ever broken someone’s heart?I think so... 108. What should you be doing?Shiny hunting before USUM comes out 110. Have you ever liked someone so much it hurt?Yes 112. Who was the last person you cried in front of?My coworker Addie 114. Have you ever been out of your province/state?Yesssss. It’s been a while 116. Are you listening to music right now?No, but I’m watching RPGMinx 118. Do you like Chinese food?Not anymore 120. Are you afraid of the dark?YES 122. Is cheating ever okay?Never 124. Do you believe in love at first sight?No 126. Are you currently bored?Hella 128. Would you change your name?Legally yes 130. Do you like subway?Food, yes. Train, no 132. Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with?My coworker Karen 134. Can you count to one million?I could but I don’t want to 136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed?Open 138. Curly or Straight hair?I have straight hair  140. Summer or Winter?Winter bc sweaters and hot cocoa and teaaa 142. Favourite month? 144. Dark, milk or white chocolate?Milk 146. Was today a good day?Yes 148. What’s your favourite quote?“Shoot for the moon, because even if you miss you land among the stars” - unknown 150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page?“HAGRID- Couldn’t make us a cup o’ tea, could yeh?”

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dduane · 8 years ago

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Hey DD, in a turn of absolutely terrible luck, I misplaced my passport in Dublin and will be spending a day to a week searching for it/waiting for a replacement. Would you happen to know any great places that you'd recommend I visit while I'm trying to stave off my inevitable panic and horror at my own bad luck? xx

Oh jeez. What a turn of events! Commiseration offered.

Here are some things you might do.

In the city:

Take a morning or afternoon to run around the National Museum branch at Collins Barracks. Plenty of interesting stuff over there. Also: don’t forget the old “main branch” of the Museum in center city on Kildare Street. That’s where the Celtic gold items are. Lean against the cases and droooool like the rest of us.

Go to Trinity College Library and see the Book of Kells. (Also mock George Lucas for stealing its design for the Jedi Library without crediting the original. Naughty George.)

Go visit St. Stephen’s Green and say hi to the ducks. Lunchtime is good for this. Grab a bag lunch from one of the sandwich places down toward the park end of Grafton Street.

Check out Christ Church Cathedral, which is extremely handsome. Visit the tomb of Dean Swift, writer’s writer and satirist of satirists, finally all comfy someplace where (as the tombstone says) “savage indignation can no longer lacerate his heart.” Be there for the choir if you can.

Do a river or harbor or canal tour! Or maybe you’re feeling goofy enough to take one of the Viking Splash Tours. They have vehicles that go in and out of the water, and they take you around the main sights in town, and you get to wear a horned helmet and wave a plastic sword or axe and yell ARRR at people. This strikes me as highly therapeutic. :)

Outside the city:

Get out of town on the DART – take it down to Bray and walk the seafront. Or go up north to Howth or Skerries and soak up the small-fishing-village vibe.

Or: Grab the Luas down to Dundrum and wander around the big shopping centre there – some nice stuff there for windowshopping and some good places to sit for lunch. (If using the Luas, make sure to buy a Leap Card from one of the machines – you’ll save significantly on fares.)

Or: If you feel like going so far north and have the cash for the train, catch the Enterprise up to Belfast (they’ve just refurbished the rolling stock, finally) and check the place out. If you go up there, right across from Great Victoria St. Station is that queen among pubs and National Trust site, the Crown Liquor Saloon. Go see the tile and the mirrors and the mosaics and the rest of the art. They pull a fair pint, too, though some will feel it’s overpriced. – There’s also the new Titanic Quarter, which is worth looking into.

Now having said all that: I am genuinely slow on the uptake today, because the very first thing I should have thought to say to you is: If you’re stuck in Dublin for the next week, you are about to be stuck in the middle of the St Patrick’s Festival. This is, well, a mixed blessing. There will be a million cool things going on. There will also be a LOT of people in town. A LOT. If you have trouble with crowds, you may want to be aware that last year there were something like half a million visitors in for the Parade. Everything gets insanely crowded, and in some places prices will get jacked up, sometimes ridiculously. Keep your eyes open.

Finally: Food in town, and pubs: Gotham Cafe is great (say hi to David and/or Jackie for us): best NY thin crust pizza in the city, and much more. Food’s good up at Porterhouse Central at the top of Grafton Street. Half the time when Peter and I are up in town, we’ll wind up in one of those two places. Also enjoyable: (I’m not going to link to these – Google them, you’ll find them): Monty’s of Kathmandu (in Temple Bar): Yamamori and Yamamori Noodles: The Counter (fabulous modular/build-it-yourself burgers): Pichet (French, super): Chez Max at Dublin Castle (Palace Street: best steak frites in town): The Port House (tapas and sherries etc): Brasserie Sixty6 (bistro stuff): The Exchequer (gastropub and cocktail joint par excellence): Thai Spice (down Talbot Street behind Busaras). Favored pubs: The Oval Bar (off O’Connell Street north of the river): The Brazen Head (oldest in the city – a pub has operated on that site since the 1100s or thereabouts): The Long Hall (”the wizards drink there”): Neary’s, off Grafton Street (note bronze arms sticking out of the wall like something from La Belle et la Bete): Davy Byrnes (aka “The Moral Pub” in James Joyce)(good oysters there, too): McDaid’s (aka “The Morgue”: apparently it was, once) near the Westbury Hotel: Bruxelles, ditto: The Bailey in Duke Street: and a bit new, Mary’s Bar (& Hardware) across from Brown Thomas in Wicklow Street.

…Anyway: enjoy!

#dublin #ireland #things to do in Dublin #St Patrick's Day #tourism

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laylahtalks-blog · 8 years ago

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A Week in The Life. (Part 1).

From the 12th of September until the 2nd of October I had what were probably three of the busiest weeks of my life. Because I’ve never been one to suffer in silence, I decided to document it and share it with all of you. During this period my Grandmother was very sick so I had to travel in and out of the hospital amongst many other things. I completely recognise that this was my personal choice and I in no way wish to make out that this was a burden for me. But acting like it wasn’t difficult would be a lie. My life isn’t usually this busy but I’m proud of how I handled myself throughout this time.

Monday. Today is my first day back to college. I’m slightly hungover from drinks that I had the night before. I get the bus in with my roommates who are all in the same course as me. I have four lectures from 11 until 6. During our one hour break I go for lunch with my friends, some of whom I haven’t seen all Summer. I really enjoy catching up with them before I head back to college. When I’m finished college for the day, I get the bus out to the hospital. It’s about a 20 minute journey. I sit with my Gran for a couple of hours, telling her about my day and helping her with anything that she needs. I leave in the evening. I get a bus that drops me off a ten minute walk away from my apartment. I collect the post from the pub that I live above and I go upstairs. It’s then that I realise that my keys are sitting on my desk inside the locked apartment. None of my roommates are home. I ring Aoife and she tells me that she’s at the shops. I don’t bother telling them that I’m locked out and instead make myself comfortable on the floor. In my post there are two proofs of my new book “Just Saying” and a novel that I’ve been dying to read. I read some of the novel and flick through the proofs looking for mistakes. It’s freezing in the corridor and I’m counting the seconds until my roommates get back. One good-looking boy from my building comes into the hall and sees me sitting surrounded by stuff. I’m wearing a beret and flicking through my notebook. Disappointingly, I don’t think he fell in love with me. When the girls finally arrive back I nearly jump on them with glee. I make myself some dinner before retreating to my room to catch up on tv and get an early night.

Tuesday. I awake to discover that I had turned off my alarm. I am running late for the first time in my life (I wish). I jump into clothes, make myself somewhat presentable and run out the door, just catching a bus at the last second. I fidget nervously through rush hour traffic and manage to miraculously arrive just in the nick of time (positive thinking really is the best). I had been planning to go to the library and get some work done before going into the hospital for the evening but because of my lateness, I could not do this. I go for a quick coffee and catch-up with my friend Sophie before heading back to my apartment. I have lunch with my roommates before sitting down to work for an hour or so. After packing aan overnight clothes with my essentials, I have to leave. My roommates get the bus into town with me. They are going for drinks and I can not. I am only slightly jealous. I get a quick Luas out to do an hour’s session of electrolysis hair removal. It is particularly painful today but I manage not to scream too loud. I then get two buses to the hospital before spending two hours there. My Mam then brings myself and my sister Rachael to dinner in Nandos and we all spend the night at my Grandmother’s empty house.

Wednesday. I get up at 7 and my Mam drives me in to my appointment relating to my transition in Loughlinstown hospital. I am in a foul humour. I do not want to sit in front of a doctor while he decides whether I should go on hormones or not. People tell me that I should be grateful to have secured this appointment as they seem to be like gold dust but I can’t feel delight for the fact that I’m on of the lucky ones in a broken medical system. I am terrible company for my Mam as we sit in the waiting room for two hours. I can’t overcome my moodiness and I later have to apologise to her for it. I get my bloods done and I’m told that I will be sent out a prescription for hormone blockers. I feel numb as I thank the doctor for seeing me. It is far from a joyous occasion, rather just another thing to tick off my list. My Mam (who is an angel) sympathises with me. She brings me to a nearby shopping centre where we get breakfast and she buys me some amazingly generous gifts (If my sisters are reading this and rolling their eyes I wish to remind them that I was born with an unwanted penis). I then say goodbye to my Mam and get the Luas into town for an hour lecture. My friend and I go for lunch for an hour before we part ways. I walk through the park alone feeling the sun on my face and sipping from a hot chocolate. Due to some miscalculations on my part, I end up getting three different buses to the hospital when I could have gotten one. I don’t beat myself up about it. I just get on with it. I spend a couple of hours at the hospital and my Mam is also there. I hear disturbing news that one of my peers has been giving out about me to certain people (it’s a long story that I don’t wish to disclose). I rather unwisely decide to tackle this issue over text and end up in a terrible mood. I’m probably a little harsher than I should be considering everything that’s going on but I do make apologies for that. The issue is resolved pretty quickly. I get a bus into town and bump into my roommate with a friend of mine. We have one drink together before my friend decides to stay over with us. We get a bus back home and eat nachos. We discuss different matters and I have a rare cry (I think the first time my friends have seen me cry in fact). I recognise that this is because I have a lot going on and my friends are very comforting. We go to bed early.

#journal #writer #stress #transgender #lgbt #college #advice

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