#one is not clickable so there's only 11 here | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

twdmusicboxmystery · 2 years

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About a day ago, time posted a news article where they talk with the current cast members about different part of the whole history of the walking dead and as opposed to all the other sections where multiple people speak, the only cast members who talk in the section on Hard Goodbyes, are Lauren, Norman and Melissa.

Melissa say a general statement on how saying goodbye is hard, Lauren talks about Scott of course, and Normal talks all about Beth. He mentions Scott, Steven, and Jon Bernthal. But he says “Beth — Emily — that was a big one for me. I really liked our relationship, and I really like her a lot. Our stories were working really well together when it happened”

It feels like it’s been a long time since he talked about Emily/Beth in interviews that this is so refreshing! Also a little coincidental. Thoughts? Here is the link: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-11-18/the-walking-dead-finale-oral-history-cast?_amp=true

Yeah for sure! I loved this article for so many reasons. It's a really fun look back at all the great moments through all the seasons of a show we all know and love.

But I agree that the parts mentioning Beth are the best. It's nice to see Norman mention her. And of course, we've seen a lot of mentions and promo of her lately, which makes me think this is just another way of intentionally bringing her to the forefront of viewers' minds. We also get some really great pictures, both of Beth and of other cast members.

So, everyone should just go read the article. I guess I don't have a whole lot more thoughts than that. I really loved the article. It's fun and cute. And I love that Norman mentions Beth/Emily in it. I do think it's a purposeful hint.

Here’s a clickable link:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-11-18/the-walking-dead-finale-oral-history-cast?_amp=true

Thanks so much for sending it in. Xoxo! 🦌❣️

P.S. Here are some thoughts from my pals as well:

@wdway:

Guy's go to the group and read the actors interviews someone posted a link to. Trust me it's great. Beth/Emily is mentioned by a few people and Norman talks about her.

@twdmusicboxmystery:

Nice! Just finished. And of course I totally have to side eye. Sure, they mentioned other deceased characters like Sasha and Amy and Merle. But Beth got mentioned at least twice (or was in 3x?) and they also had a pic of her and Scott Wilson. Definitely feels like purposely more than other characters got. Thanks! Loved reading these. They were funny and sweet and nostalgic.

@wdway:

I thought it was good too. Beth/Emily might have been mentioned 3 times. Lauren talked about her, Emily and Steven going to watch fireworks but ended up hanging out playing music. Norman talked about how he really liked Emily/Beth? I found it hard to tell who he was talking about. I'm pretty sure there was at least 1 maybe more mentions of Emily/Beth. I'll probably read it again when I get a chance either tonight or tomorrow and I'll pay more attention.

I re-read the article and counted the Emily/Beth mentions. Lauren's that I mentioned above. The Beth/Emily, Herschel/Scott Wilson photograph. Norman talking about liking Emily/Beth. Norman talking about Scott Wilson mentioned the Herschel was Maggie and Beth's father. I thought Norman including Beth was in talking about Herschel was a conscious decision because I think most people would just say Maggie's father. In actually mentioning Emily/Beth it was Lauren/Maggie and Norman/Daryl, Beth's sister and boyfriend.

#beth greene #beth greene livess #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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hugepolecat3298 · 12 days

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Hello, I am Hashem from Gaza. I am speaking to you with a heavy heart and I hope you will answer. I am a father of four children. I have been suffering from the war for more than 300 days. I used to work as a carpenter and support my family by making furniture, but the war destroyed my only source of income. Not only that, it destroyed my home, my dreams and the dreams of my children. We did not find shelter for ourselves except the roads. We were displaced more than 11 times, and each time was more difficult than the one before. We run at night to the sounds of bombs above us. We do not know where to go. All places are unsafe. The last place we sought refuge in was the beach. Here we are searching every moment for the necessities of life. Forgive me, my heart is heavy with sadness. Help me so that I can provide safety for my children. Every donation from you, even if it is $10, helps me and has a great impact on me. Thank you all.

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good luck and i hope you're able to find safety soon, followers here is a clickable link to the campaign which only has $1000 donated to it atm

#originals

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etceterabd · 2 years

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Most In-Demand Programming Languages

You don’t want to waste your time. If you’re going to put aside the time and energy needed to learn new programming languages, you want to make sure, without a doubt, that the ones you choose are the most in-demand programming languages on the market.

After all, if you’re trying to start (or advance) a career in software development, you’ll need to be at the front of the metaphorical class. You’ll need to know which programming languages are popular, which are useful and which are up-and-coming on the market — and then set yourself up to learn them.

Not sure where to start? Don’t worry; we’ve already done the heavy lifting for you, and looked through developer and market data from the past several years to identify trends and draw conclusions that will help you plan for your programming education. In this article, we’ll walk you through the 11 most in-demand programming languages and give you a few pointers on how to learn them.

But before we get started, let’s recap how we built this list in the first place. When we sat down to figure out what the most in-demand programming languages might be, we had two primary research questions:

Which languages are in demand right now?

Which ones are growing in popularity and will be in demand soon?

You can probably guess the rationale behind our first question. While following trends isn’t always the best way to figure out which languages to prioritize, a language’s popularity can indicate its prominence in the market. Here’s a general rule of thumb for you — the more used or common a language is, the more likely it is that a developer (i.e., you!) will need to deal with it at work.

Next, we considered which skills are poised to become the most sought-after programming languages on the market. To do so, we dug into Stack Overflow’s developer surveys from the last two years and focused on:

The languages that developers report they use and want to continue using

The languages that developers aren’t using yet, but are interested in using

By looking at these trends, we aimed to gain a better understanding of which languages will become popular in the years ahead.

We found that Rust, Python and Typescript all topped Stack Overflow’s list for the most-loved languages in 2019 and 2020, with only slight shuffling across years. Similarly, Python, JavaScript and Go ruled the top three of Stack’s Most Wanted lists for both years. Given their prevalence in developers’ minds, the odds of these five languages increasing in popularity is high — and are therefore worth including on our list.

However, where we ranked each language depended on other factors. For example, because Python has consistently held a top-five spot on Stack Overflow’s most commonly-used, -loved and -wanted lists, we chose to rank it higher than Rust, which, while ranking #1 on Stack’s most-loved list, languishes at #19 on the organization’s common-languages list.

Now that we’ve covered our process, let’s start answering the question at hand: What are the most in-demand coding languages?

Do you want to take your coding skills to the next level? With Berkeley Coding Boot Camp, you will build a strong foundation in some of the most popular programming languages.

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The Most In-Demand Programming Languages

1. JavaScript

What this language is used for:

Web development

Game development

Mobile apps

Building web servers

According to Stack Overflow’s 2020 Developer Survey, JavaScript currently stands as the most commonly-used language in the world (69.7%), followed by HTML/CSS (62.4%), SQL (56.9%), Python (41.6%) and Java (38.4%). It is also the most sought-out programming language by hiring managers in the Americas (PDF, 2.4 MB).

JavaScript is used to manage the behavior of web pages. With it, coders can create dynamic web elements such as animated graphics, interactive maps, clickable buttons and more. Programmers who use HTML, CSS and JavaScript in tandem obtain a higher level of website control and can provide a better user experience in terms of navigation and readability.

JavaScript is the most common coding language in use today around the world. This is for a good reason: most web browsers utilize it and it’s one of the easiest languages to learn. JavaScript requires almost no prior coding knowledge — once you start learning, you can practice and play with it immediately.

Moreover, because the language is so ubiquitous, there are countless communities, courses and avenues of professional support available online. This support, in addition to the language’s top-notch usability, makes JavaScript number one on our list of the most in-demand programming languages.

Additional Resources:

Coding Resources: Learn JavaScript — Berkeley Boot Camps

Learn JavaScript — edX

JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front End Web Development — Jon Duckett

Learn JavaScript By Building Seven Games — freecodecamp

2. Python

What this language is used for:

Back end development

Data science

App development

Python is a general-purpose programming language that empowers developers to use several different programming styles (i.e., functional, object-oriented, reflective, etc.) when creating programs. Several popular digital tools and platforms were developed with Python, including YouTube, Google Search and iRobot machines. It is also, according to HackerRank, the second-most in-demand programming language for hiring managers in the Americas after Python (PDF, 2.4 MB).

As one of the more easy-to-learn and -use languages, Python is ideal for beginners and experienced coders alike. The language comes with an extensive library that supports common commands and tasks. Its interactive qualities allow programmers to test code as they go, reducing the amount of time wasted on creating and testing long sections of code.

That said, even advanced users would benefit from adding Python to their mental catalog of programming languages; with over 50% of hiring managers (PDF, 2.4MB) seeking candidates who know the language, Python is easily one of the most marketable and in-demand programming languages.

Additional Resources:

Coding Resources: Learn Python — Berkeley Boot Camps

Learn Python — edX

The Quick Python Book — Naomi Ceder

The Real Python Podcast — Real Python

3. HTML

What this language is used for:

Web documents

Website development

Website maintenance

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. Don’t let the complicated-sounding name fool you, though; HTML is one of the most accessible stepping stones into the world of programming.

Technically, HTML is a markup language, which means that it is responsible for formatting the appearance of information on a website. Essentially, HTML is used to describe web pages with ordinary text. It doesn’t have the same functionality as other programming languages in this list and is limited to creating and structuring text on a site. Sections, headings, links and paragraphs are all part of the HTML domain.

As of 2020, HTML shares its #2 spot on Stack Overflow’s list of the most commonly used languages in the world with CSS.

Additional Resources:

Coding Resources: Learn HTML — Berkeley Boot Camps

Learn HTML — edX

HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites — Jon Duckett

Intro to HTML/CSS: Making Webpages — Khan Academy

4. CSS

What this language is used for:

Web documents

Website development

Website design

CSS, or cascading style sheets, is usually applied in conjunction with HTML and governs the site’s appearance. While HTML organizes site text into chunks, CSS is responsible for determining the size, color and position of all page elements.

CSS is convenient, too; the cascading part of the name means that an applied style will cascade down from parent elements to all children elements across the site. This feature means that once users determine aesthetics for the main parent, they won’t have to manually repeat their code across a website. Moreover, the delegation of site organization to HTML and aesthetics to CSS means that users don’t have to completely rewrite a web page just to change a color.

CSS is an approachable language that allows beginning programmers to dip their toes in the metaphorical coding pool. If you’re new to coding, there’s no reason not to learn CSS before tackling more complex languages!

Additional Resources:

Coding Resources: Learn CSS — Berkeley Boot Camps

Learn CSS — edX

HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites — Jon Duckett

Intro to HTML/CSS: Making Webpages — Khan Academy

CSS Basics — Khan Academy

5. Java

What this language is used for:

E-commerce

Finance

App development

Java is a general use and object-oriented programming language. In object-oriented programming, developers create objects that encompass functions and data, which can then be used to provide structure for programs and applications.

Java currently ranks as the third-most sought-after programming language for hiring managers globally (PDF, 2.4 MB) and has held the #5 spot on Stack Overflow’s list of the most commonly used languages for two years.

Java’s popularity is for good reason; this language is relatively easy to learn and use, boasts incredible security and can handle massive amounts of data. These features make Java an ideal language for the online finance sector, and it is often applied in industries such as banking, billing and the stock market.

The versatility of the language, however, is what learners find really appealing. Touted as a “write-once, run-anywhere” language, Java can effectively run on any operating system, regardless of which OS was used to write the original code. It is thus ideal for writing apps not only for mobile phones and computers, but also remote processors, sensors and a variety of other consumer products.

Additional Resources:

Learn Java — edX

Learn Java — Codecademy

Real-World Java Exercises — CodeGym

Java: A Beginner’s Guide — Herbert Schildt

6. SQL

What this language is used for:

Database management

Sales reports

Business management

SQL, or Structured Query Language, is a language that allows programmers to query and manipulate databases. As a domain-specific language, it is designed mainly for managing data within an RDBMS (relational database management system). Put simply, SQL can locate and retrieve data from a database, as well as update, add or remove records.

While SQL is highly functional, it tends to work better with small databases and doesn’t always lend itself to managing expansive ones.

That said, SQL still ranks as the third-most-used language in the programming industry, with over half (54.7%) of surveyed developers reporting that they use it.

Additional Resources:

Coding Resources: Learn SQL — Berkeley Boot Camps

Learn SQL — edX

NoSQL Databases Explained — IBM Cloud

SQL & NoSQL Databases: Models, Languages, Consistency Options and Architectures for Big Data Management — Andreas Meier and Michael Kaufmann

7. NoSQL

What this language is used for:

Database management

Sales reports

Business management

NoSQL, or Non-relational SQL, was created to improve SQL’s scalability while retaining the other language’s ease of use.

Remember, SQL utilizes relational database/stream management systems that keep data in tables and allows users to manipulate and extract data. NoSQL databases, on the other hand, don’t use tables and can be more useful than their predecessors for specific applications, such as storing data in a hierarchical network or supporting large-scale, cloud-based applications.

Because these languages are both so versatile, they rank high on our list of the most in-demand coding languages.

Additional Resources:

Learn NoSQL — edX

Hands-On NoSQL: A Practical Guide to Design and Implementation with Technical Case Studies — Arsames Qajar and Dan Sullivan

NoSQL Databases Explained — IBM Cloud

SQL & NoSQL Databases: Models, Languages, Consistency Options and Architectures for Big Data Management — Andreas Meier and Michael Kaufmann

8. C#

What this language is used for:

Game development

Desktop/web/mobile apps

Also stylized as C Sharp, this language belongs to the object-oriented family of programming languages. C# was released in 2002 by Microsoft and stands today as a much-loved improvement on the C++ coding language.

As a general-purpose language, C# is growing in popularity for developing web and desktop applications; according to HackerRank, roughly one of every five hiring managers (PDF, 2.4 MB) is looking for a developer that can code with C#. There’s no denying that it is one of the most in-demand coding languages for the upcoming year; however, there are other reasons to have this skill on your radar.

As with other popular languages, an enormous community works with C# and offers support to new learners. Because of this, learning C# may be easier than attempting to learn some of the newer and less-documented languages. Plus, C# is ideal for building ever-more-popular mobile apps and games. There’s little doubt that this language will continue to be useful in the coming years.

Additional Resources:

Learn C# — edX

Learn C# — Microsoft

C# Tutorial — freecodecamp

Modern Cross-Platform Development: Build Applications With C# — Mark J. Price

9. Rust

What this language is used for:

Operating systems

Web browsers

According to Stack Overflow, Rust has consistently ranked at the top of the most-loved programming languages, with 86% of users claiming that they were interested in continuing to develop with it.

However, Rust users only accounted for 3% of developers in the survey, which indicates that the vast majority of programmers are unfamiliar with its usefulness. Rust is a “multi-paradigm” programming language, which means that it allows developers to work in a variety of programming styles. In syntax, it is comparable to C++, though it supports more wide-ranging applications.

If you’re looking for faster compilation, better cross-platform capabilities or just better career prospects, Rust is a great language to pick up.

10. Perl

What this language is used for:

System administration

GUI development

Network programming

Perl isn’t the most commonly used language on the market. In fact, just 3.1 percent of developers used it in 2020, and it didn’t even make Stack Overflow’s commonly used languages list for 2019. However, we are recommending it for a reason. If you’re already well into your career, learning Perl could significantly boost your earnings potential.

According to HackerRank, developers who know Perl tend to make 54 percent more than the average developer (PDF, 2.4MB). That said, it is worth noting that most of the people who know these are senior developers, who tend to make more at a baseline — thus, attempting to quantify the “bonus” that a programming language provides may be somewhat tricky. That said, learning a language like Perl may still make a junior developer better suited for a promotion or raise.

The Practical Extraction and Report Language — or Perl, for short — is a scripting language that is commonly used to extract information from a text file and create a report.

While many programming languages are compiled languages — wherein a target machine translates the program �� Perl is an interpreted language, wherein a third “interpreting” machine locates the code and executes a task. Usually, interpreted programs require more CPU, but because Perl is such a concise language, it creates short scripts that can be processed quickly.

Additional Resources:

Learn Perl — Perl

Perl Tutorial — Derek Banas

Learning Perl — Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix

11. Go

What this language is used for:

System/network programming

Audio/video editing

Big Data

Developed at Google in 2007, Go is a top-tier programming language. What makes Go really shine is its efficiency; it is capable of executing several processes concurrently. And as far as programming languages go, it has an extensive “vocabulary,” meaning it can display more information than other languages.

Though it uses a similar syntax to C, Go is a standout language that provides top-notch memory safety and management features. Additionally, the language’s structural typing capabilities allow for a great deal of functionality and dynamism. Moreover, Go is not only high up on programmers’ most-loved and most-wanted lists — it also correlates to a 33% salary bump (PDF, 2.4 MB).

Additional Resources:

Learn Go — freecodecamp

Go Annotated Tutorials — Go By Example

Introducing Go — Caleb Doxsey

Final Thoughts

Whether you are an established coder or just starting to look into the industry, learning a new language is one of the best ways to advance your programming career. But how can you start your educational journey?

Your first step depends on you, your schedule and the resources you have at hand.

A college program, for example, will provide you with a comprehensive education in the theory and practice of programming — however, the typical undergraduate program also demands four years of full-time study and tens of thousands of dollars in tuition funding.

If you want a faster and less expensive educational experience that focuses on skills-based learning, you may want to consider a coding boot camp. Coding boot camps equip you with the hands-on skills and language proficiencies you’ll need to land an entry-level job in the field — all within three to six months.

If you’re looking for the cheapest educational course and don’t mind taking on the responsibility of self-teaching, you may want to consider learning necessary coding skills via tutorials, books and online courses. Keep in mind that while this route offers tremendous flexibility and opportunity for low-cost learning, it may not be a fit for students who need external motivation. If you know that you’ll have trouble keeping yourself accountable, try one of the other options mentioned above!

No matter which route you ultimately choose, one point is for certain: there’s no better time to pick up a new skill and kickstart your coding career.

We hope that this list of the most in-demand programming languages will help you begin your journey!

#programming #language

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channelvewor · 2 years

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Nitro pdf 11 pro update download

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malexsanta · 3 years

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Dear everyone,

That's a [slightly belated] wrap on the Malex Secret Santa 2021 exchange. All gifts have been posted, and what a treasure trove of Malex goodness has been created this year! 😍

27 + 1 Malex fics 9 pieces of Malex fanart 1 Malex Mood Board

This is an incredible outcome, and we’d like to thank all our wonderful participants for another amazing edition of this exchange. We are so grateful to all of you for putting so much love and effort into creating gifts for your recipients.

You all made this December cosmic! ✨

We’d also like to thank all our followers and readers for reblogging, liking, commenting, reccing, and leaving kudos. ❤️

👽💚✨ And yes: WE'LL BE BACK IN 2022! ✨💚👽

All fics can be found on AO3, please check out the 12 Days Of Malex 2021 Collection [no clickable link bc for unknown reasons Tumblr doesn't accept more links in this post, sorry]

>> archiveofourown.org/collections/malex_ss_2021/works

And here’s the list of all gifts with links to Tumblr and AO3.

🎄Day 1

Fic under the mistletoe watching the fire glow by @caitlesshea for @alilypea • Tumblr | AO3 Fic This didn't work out as I intended... by @skinsharpenedteeth for @dr-lemurr • Tumblr | AO3

🎄Day 2

Fic what grows within the stacks @breannacasey for @dankmalexmemes • Tumblr | AO3

🎄Day 3

Fic Another Night on Mars by @malzysaur for @gra-sonas • Tumblr | AO3

🎄Day 4

3 x Fan Art Glory and Gore by @dr-lemurr for @alnkos In the Ache of Midnight (Nikita Gill) Tumblr Starlight (Starset) Tumblr Satellite (Starset) Tumblr

🎄Day 5

Fic Two hot palms pressing down on my face by @jule1122 for @malzysaur • Tumblr | AO3

🎄Day 5

Fan Art Alex is the one fidding Michael after Jones kidnapped him by @slynella for @boulangerlee • Tumblr

Fic The Hacker and His Cowboy by @infinite-beginnings for @accal1a • Tumblr | AO3

Fan Art fluffy malex with a space vibe ✨by @bean-me-up for @slynella • Tumblr

🎄Day 7

Fic and i wish that you could hear me when i talk to myself by @manesframe for @infinite-beginnings • Tumblr | AO3

🎄Day 8

Fic Family Can be Just Us by @winged-fool for @manesalex • Tumblr | AO3

🎄Day 9

Fic i’m only me when i’m with you… by @aliciam72 for @sivan325 • Tumblr | AO3

🎄Day 10

Fic Once Upon a (F*cked Up) Time by @alilypea for @breannacasey • Tumblr | AO3

Fic messy as the mud on your truck tires by @angrycowboy for @lambourngb • Tumblr | AO3

Fic Appetite for Destruction by @lambourngb for @changingthingslikeleaves • Tumblr | AO3

Mood Board all i want for christmas is you (and to not see a single member of my family) by @dankmalexmemes for @skinsharpenedteeth • Tumblr

🎄Day 11

4 x Fan Art + Fic sometimes home is right where you left it, and sometimes you have to invite it in by @momecat for @angrycowboy • Tumblr

Fic right where we are by @bloggingbisexually for @secret-guilty-pleasure • Tumblr | AO3

🎄Day 12

Fic Christmas isn't a big deal by @secret-guilty-pleasure for @bekkachaos • Tumblr | AO3

Fic Those Two Idiots by @sivan325 for @caitlesshea • Tumblr | AO3 Fic a little motivation (let me be yours) by@manesalex for @prouvaireafterdark • Tumblr | AO3 Fic I Got a Crush on You (and it's not just physical) by @boulangerlee for @bloggingbisexually • Tumblr | AO3

Fic A Star Sign by @mander3-swish for @ineverlookavvay • Tumblr | AO3

Fic Felice Navidad by @gra-sonas for @aliciam72 • Tumblr | AO3

Fic No Simple Roads by @changingthingslikeleaves for @jule1122 • Tumblr | AO3

Fic Cool Whip For Alex Manes by @aliencurls for @bloodspeckledraphael • Tumblr | AO3

Fic Beneath Lucifer’s Claws - 3x12 Coda by @prouvaireafterdark for @momecat • Tumblr | AO3

Fic an oasis in the stars by @bekkachaos for@winged-fool • Tumblr | AO3

Fic A Storm on the Horizon by @accal1a for @aliencurls • Tumblr | AO3

Fic you’re the one that brings the sun by @alnkos for @mander3-swish • Tumblr | AO3

Fic walk through the fire by @ineverlookavvay for @manesframe • Tumblr | AO3

Fic candy cane lane by @bloodspeckledraphael for @bean-me-up • Tumblr | AO3

🎅 Gift for all participants & followers of Malexsanta

Fic ohana means family (and family means you will love and be loved for the rest of your life) by @lire-casander • Tumblr | AO3

#malexsanta #malexsanta2021 #malexsanta psa #malexsanta master post #malex #alex manes #michael guerin

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wowsoboring · 3 years

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Deconstructing Baseless Harry Potter Arguments#2 (i) : Harmione Edition

Obviously I once again do not mean to target all Harmione shippers. I know quite a few who're very good human beings and tolerant and accepting above all. However these aren't. In this case, you might sense quite a bit of levelheadedness in the beginning, however you must not be fooled as it goes south and takes a nasty turn very quickly. Don't get your hopes up, this is some of the worst shit I've ever seen, especially the way in which it progresses through its course. Naturally, for this post I have picked my own style of writing which will match that of those redditors. Reddit is the perfect breeding ground for all these weird cults, honestly. I shall be resorting to a formal language and style of conversation, very much like a debater would to sound as pretentious as these do. These posts are found on the instagram handle toxicharmonyshippers who gather such toxic musings and sayings for Harmione shippers while respecting the ones that are nice.

Oh yes, let's use words like 'vehemently' to sound smart, why not? Of course, this little tidbit of the highly stupendous post seems more or less civil at the start. They also have the common decency to say "some Romione shippers" rather than generalizing all of us. Very nice of you, how very saint like. Let's wait till they drop the act and show us their true colors. Harkening back to the argument, I have but one question for you, "where do you find these people?". Where's the proof? Who are these radical Romione shippers who worship Ron and dislike Hermione? I haven't seen any such shippers and I am surrounded by Romione shippers on tumblr, instagram and fan fiction sites as well and haven't met the people you speak of. Some point out her flaws, yes, but no one hates her or dislikes her that much. I have seen two or three Romione shippers across hundreds and thousands who're skeptical of Hermione's perfection. Skeptical. Not hating, disliking, or anything. Of course, unlike this person, I have evidence: find these pi charts for your referral (clickable): https://imgur.com/a/QfPnQbB

you can, through these, see the amount of Hermione bashing across Harry Potter fanfiction and you can see that even in Romione fanfiction there's more Ron bashing. Hermione-bashing is a non-issue. That's what it is. Regarding the "nagging" statement, where's the lie in that? "Annoying" is somewhat subjective, I personally don't find her annoying at all. Who are these people and how often do you find them? "Mary Sue" is only reserved for Movie!Hermione. I have only seen book fans call her that. No one has ever called Book!Hermione Mary Sue. The movie does paint her as a flawless, all-rounder who's also drop-dead gorgeous. Only things she's bad at are flying and divination, all of which she denounces as useless, even though flying is like biking for wizards, divination, sure, not that important. with a teacher like Trelawney, even I would denounce it as hokum.

Remember what I said about waiting for them to show us their true colors, well here they are. Bask in the glory of their senseless arguments. Why, I am from reddit, heck I have 25 thousand karma points on there, I just left because it was too stupid for me but I can argue like them very well. And in this case I would like to say that these people are under the impression that Ron is just there in the story for the sake of existence. And he doesn't work hard. That argument is of course, wrong. Because Ron (in no particular order):

1) fights a troll when he's 11

2) is willing to sacrifice himself when he's 11

3) stands up for his friends

4) makes sure Harry feels like he belongs in the family

5) worries about Harry and rescues him from literal jail

6) stands up against Draco rather than by-standing and enabling his behavior

7) tries his level best to make sure Norbert the dragon is in safe hands and carries it out, albeit not in perfection

8) is with Harry every step of the way in his confronting the basilisk

9) sends Harry and Hermione long letters and calls them often to check up on them

10) stands up on a bitten leg to defend his best friend

11) always apologizes for any of his mistakes and is forgiving when others wrong him

12) works his way to join the Quidditch team unlike Draco who most certainly bought his way in

13) destroys at least 2 horcruxes

14) finds out how to defeat a horcrux

15) has an excellent enough memory and observation to notice Harry speaking parseltongue and also using it to his benefit which proves he's resourceful

now since I have 8 more such pictures to rebut and I do have a life, I will stop. These aren't even a twelfth of the remarkable things Ron has done though, so rest assured.

oh wait what did you say about him just existing and not working for anything? If I recall correctly, he did just as well as Harry did in school and didn't score well only in subjects he didn't care about. Which is true for most people except for Hermione who has an eidetic memory which not everyone has, understandably. Rote memorization is not the best way to get by in life, by the way.

what are the "so many reasons" behind why Harry is the best fit for Hermione? Kindly share so I can rebut those too, I'm rather free nowadays, my finals have been cancelled. You say there are so many reasons but don't even give one, yet you want me to take you seriously. I'm afraid that's impossible.

Romione shipper here, i don't dislike Hermione. I haven't met or seen many people in the book!romione fandom who dislike Hermione (except for Movie!Hermione). The question of someone you like ending up with someone you dislike doesn't particularly make sense. In Friends, Chandler ends up with Monica: now I'm not the biggest Monica fan (I don't hate her but I don't like her very much either) but they are my favorite couple because they make sense. It's about compatibility and character traits, not liking or disliking because that's just a set-up for a ghastly invitation for people to pair up hideousness. "Oh yeah, I like Harry and I also like Hagrid, they should be together. I mean it would be very very disgusting but that's my logic, now, you can't fight it. "- that's how you sound. Please read what you write. Your logic is just...abysmal. That's all I can say without breaking my resolve and berating you with colorful profanities.

This is without the doubt, the easiest one to rebut. It's a delight to see such terrible arguments at my disposal. Come on, dear Harmione shippers, write something that makes me question my choices, not things that make me scoff in disbelief.

In this case, you're essentially providing us with theories. Unproved theories and speculation of what you believe because you'd say anything you like. Where's the proof of your theory, though? Where is that crazy radical Romione shipper who does this? Kindly show me these people. Oh yes, you wanna say we objectify Hermione and disrespect her and view her as a prize. This aches me, that you believe this. No one has ever insinuated this, ever, in the history of anything. What is this winner-loser theory? How do you round off Harry Potter to "an alpha-male ends up with lead-lady" trope and still say you're a fan of the series? Harry Potter doesn't fit in with that format. Ron, Hermione and Harry are co-heroes. Similar to how there's no main character in Friends or the Heroes of Olympus series or the Avengers. We're not living in the 80s anymore. Hermione will be a hero, invariably whether she ends up with Harry, Ron or no one. She ends up with Ron and that's it. Talking about her like this doesn't make you sound any better either. Now you're calling me a misogynist because I don't support the ship of two people who describe themselves as siblings. That's very mature of you. Well here's the thing- I'm not a misogynist. It's as simple as that. I believe that women are capable of anything and everything. I believe Hermione is an amazing person and she is a hero and a different person. I believe the series would be impossible without her. I believe she is no one's prize. There's no requirement of a prize. I just think, similar to canon and the truth and her romantic interest, she will have a great relationship with Ron. There's nothing complex or deep about it, really. No personal weird-thing, no psychological complex, no internalized misogyny. There's nothing deeper than what I said. I am not sexist. I am a feminist. I am all for women empowerment. I love women with the fabric of my being. I love Hermione. I think she's amazing. You only become sexist when you ship people with unstable power dynamics, a bully-victim relation or something of the sort. Neither Romione, nor Harmione are sexist. Heck if you paired Neville with Hermione you wouldn't be sexist. And I hate talking about this so much, I can't even tell you. This talk does make it sound like I treat Hermione like an object and I assure you I respect her and I normally won't talk like this unless someone just outright calls me sexist for something that's not sexist. And this is that situation.

in the case of Romione, no one is too good for anyone. Both are amazing people who're heroes and have done amazing work. That's all I have to say. There's no league, they are romantically interested in each other. I have no intention on sounding lame, but, in love there is no league. As long as you're not putting in any effort and are extremely lazy and leech off of your partner, there is no such concept and no, Hermione is not "too good" for him. Unless of course you're talking about movie Hermione, who is too good for anyone.

5) (halftime!)

oh yes they try to pull this off and wonder why we hate them. Classic. This person likes to sound british, so let's switch up our language, yeah? At least then I won't be out of my element. Let me correct ya, Ron at his best is an amazing, loyal, friendly, brave, strategic hero. There you have it. Ron and 'git' can't be used in the same sentence. Now if you talk about Ron's achievements, I re-iterate you to point two. If it's too much work, here:

1) fights a troll when he's 11

2) is willing to sacrifice himself when he's 11

3) stands up for his friends

4) makes sure Harry feels like he belongs in the family

5) worries about Harry and rescues him from literal jail

6) stands up against Draco rather than by-standing and enabling his behavior

7) tries his level best to make sure Norbert the dragon is in safe hands and carries it out, albeit not in perfection

8) is with Harry every step of the way in his confronting the basilisk

9) sends Harry and Hermione long letters and calls them often to check up on them

10) stands up on a bitten leg to defend his best friend

11) always apologizes for any of his mistakes and is forgiving when others wrong him

12) works his way to join the Quidditch team unlike Draco who most certainly bought his way in

13) destroys at least 2 horcruxes

14) finds out how to defeat a horcrux

15) has an excellent enough memory and observation to notice Harry speaking parseltongue and also using it to his benefit which proves he's resourceful

hey, see, I like Ron and I took the time to copy-paste this instead of asking you to scroll up. And I'm a lot of bad things but I am not lazy. I stick to my deadlines like Hermione. I start my homework in library class and continue it during phys ed the day its given. And I am not exaggerating. Bloody hell, I wish I was. I'm the ceo of deadlines, mate, don't tempt me! So you can see that Ron is much more than just a "nice bloke". And being a "nice bloke" isn't a bad thing either. He's all the things I said: intuitive, strategic, helpful, loyal and on top of that he's also a nice person. Yes, I do see a bit of myself in Ron. I do. I see the insecure side. I waste my time hating myself and criticizing myself and undermining myself, telling me I'm no good. But Ron overcomes that. He inspires me to appreciate myself. Is that a bad thing? Are you going to shame me for having a low self-esteem? Do you want to worsen my low self-esteem and make me feel more like shit?

Now the person who replied to your comment saying, "he isn't a nice bloke most of time.", he is. He is not being nice twice in a span of 7 years. How often do you act rudely or with jealousy? Wasn't Harry yelling at everyone in caps lock in OOTP. Now I don't condemn him for that because he's a fucking hormonal teenager like me and that would make me a hypocrite, but by your logic why don't you condemn him? Or why not condemn Hermione for saying "I only date good Quidditch players" and shoving canaries at Ron's face because someone else kissed him, while she kept using Krum and Cormac to make him jealous. She wasn't being a nice girl, then, was she? Now, once again, i don't dislike her or hold that against her because guess what, mate, I'm a hormonal teenage girl who gets jealous most of the time and would probably react in a similar fashion in the spur of the moment (Not defending her actions here, just putting myself in her shoes.) In short, Ron is a nice bloke MOST OF THE TIME.

It would be misogynistic to think that. The thing is, NO ONE DOES my dear friend! My dear daft friend. I have never heard anyone say that! why are you so hell-bent on portraying us as misogynists when no one ever says that? Stop assuming. Just stop. You are crossing a limit here, aren't you? Yes you are. You cannot say these sort of things. We never said that or believed that, no one ever said this to be a reason to ship Romione. God what is wrong with you? Literally, stop fucking ASSUMING god damn it! Do you want me to assume things about Harmione shippers? Do you want me to go there? Because I will go there! I will go there the moment you tell me to. Just challenge me.

Ron is not a perfect best boi , the reason why so many of us like him is that he's imperfect and tries to become better through the course of time. You are once again assuming and I am once again asking you to stop.

Ron might be an ordinary wizard. He might be poor, sure, but he's a pure-blood and won't face much if he chose not to fight. But he did. He fought. Now I identify with Ron's attitude a fair bit, but I am also likely to spend my day in a library without noticing. People aren't one dimensional. Stop trying to act like you're a psychologist, i know you're not. I don't even think Hermione's overbearing at all! You just insulted someone you're a big fan of. Jesus.

Both Hermione and Ron are strategic, jealous, passionate, feisty, argumentative, intellectual...

that's like 6 similarities. They aren't polar opposites in the slightest. Their differences are just: workaholic, not workaholic. Nerd, not a nerd. Like that's fucking it, man!

being relaxed doesn't make you less independent or driven. A relaxed and levelheaded Hermione will think through things, not be impulsive, not panic etc. She doesn't need Ron. I don't understand your obsession with acting like we ever insinuated that. Then she doesn't need Harry either lol. Stop shipping her with Harry, then or like shut the fuck up. Being a bit relaxed won't stop her or anyone from hitting great strides. Just don't get relaxed to the point you're lazy and casual about everything, that's it.

What do you mean? Ron is balanced. He does finish his work on time. And even if he does procrastinate, she could also help him not and be more driven. Of course, this is an open invitation for you to call me a sexist bitch because I said that she could help him and now you'll think her goal is to help him become better yada yada yada. Fuck off. Defeating the horcrux taught him enough. He respected her. He remembered about the elves when she didn't. He begged to be tortured instead of her. He wouldn't need it because school work and jobs are different and the same person might perceive those differently. Calmness and relaxation doesn't hinder your potential. Not caring and laziness does. You can't function if you work and are stressed 24/7 with zero breaks. Period.

10)

No i do not want (nor does anyone want) Hermione to become Ron. Being slightly calmer doesn't change up your personality. I'm sure many people dislike those sort of fanfics without a doubt. I hate OOC and I don't want Hermione to lose her intellect with Ron because that makes no sense. Ron himself is intellectual and loves arguing with her. They'd boost each other, more like it.

-------

okay thats it i am exhausted as fuck. thanks for reading, i appreciate it. notes and reblogs are appreciated, this takes work.

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chaos-event-horizon · 3 years

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Slam poetry vent under the cut cause I'm just tired

Someone just called me a poet

And while I may or may not know it

These words are not on purpose

It's just a thing that flows, that happens

And though I know ways to spin a line

A look too close and you might just find

That not a single word or rhyme

Holds more meaning than what YOU

Bestow upon me with your own thinking

Not mine. But I don't think I mind.

I throw out this phrasing as if I'm waiting

Or have time to kill, to think, to feel,

But you see I don't even have the time

To make a dime and cannot just afford

To keep saying all these rhymes.

They're just a sign of my slippage.

I am slipping and I'm sliding down

This slippery slope that we call hope

And sad to say that as I type

I know these words will not be spoken.

But that's just cause I'm way too humble

Way too well trained, a BOGO bundle

From being an eldest child in an abusive home,

While the world around me became a

Kid-free zone. All disappearing homes

And parks, not to mention arcades

Because after 9-11 our parents felt unsafe

And assumed we could not make the choice

Between liberty and a cage of shameful

Thinking which centered around staring

Unblinking at our neighbors who spoke

In accents and colors that were different

Than some folks and as a mixed queer kid

I didn't know that I belonged nowhere,

Much less here.

It's expected that I be expecting,

Just not too much! It's unrelenting.

How am I supposed to strive for more,

And dream big and try to soar,

Yet when I say I'm just too poor it's all

My fault that they locked the door?

As though I have a choice anymore.

There's a whole world to be explored

Yet I cannot even afford to walk around on

My own floor because all these squeaks and

Groans alert the people I fear most who

Listen way too close and scrutinize

My wayward prose for any deviation

That seems unpatriotic. We are distilled.

Hypnotically forcing ourselves to keep

It cool while we are burning down and

Shooting up schools and churches

And dying on hills fueled by articles of

Blatant misinformation, packaged pretty

And clickable so it's easy to believe in.

And one side cheers while the other cries,

And yet I know it's all built on lies

Because overnight the roles reverse

Just as soon as someone on the other team

Gets hurt by something they feel is worth

More than the lives of their opposing side.

It's like an unrelenting fucked up curse

That I must watch play out.

A groundhogs day of rage, fear, and doubt.

Something I die inside for doing nothing about.

It's all I can do to bust out these words

And hope you're moved too,

Because this plight is really nothing new.

I've seen four decades with my own eyes,

And I think you might be surprised at

How many repeats this song has had.

It's sad.

Neither really a millennial or some Z kid,

I may be from the smallest generation

That grew up already broken.

They tell us to be adults and yet

No one's taught us what they meant

When they said to trust our judgement.

Because we have not been allowed to think,

They always handed us their preferred

Cheat sheets with answers they want us

To just repeat instead of learning.

All it does is keep us hurting.

There's no end in sight, because talking

Only ever seems to start a fight

About who deserves to live and die.

But all I want to know is why we even need to ask.

A human life is worth so much, yet we

Constantly throw these things away.

We're out of touch. It's all way too much.

All I ever wanted was to be enough

But I don't think I'm up to snuff.

If what defines us is our use and worth,

Then count me out of this hellish earth.

I do not need to be assigned a number

That would leave me in a bind

Of chains and metaphors that would

Cause me to see yet another war.

I'm to tired for this shit. No more.

I would rather just hit the floor

Dead on arrival than continue to strive

For no more than cheap survival.

Give me liberty in a warrior's death

So my ancestors know they were not

The last ones left to fight an oppressive

Invading force that tries to change a river's

Course for no more than pocket change.

You see I do not have the range to

Just continue moving on. I have to stop.

I have to breathe. I have to believe

That there is still good inside myself

That has not been removed for something else.

And I think that's all I have to say

Though it don't matter anyway

Because no matter what lines I spout

Some will just say I'm looking for clout

Or chasing some participation trophy,

Which is always something I found funny.

Because if something like that is so damn bad...

Why the fuck did you invent it, dad?

We did not ask to be pushed like that,

We were not the ones who taught others

That it was bad to be anything but

First in line. Competition on your minds.

Handing a four year old a trophy may make him smile,

But he already knows that he's special and worthwhile.

It's the parents who thought losing is dirty.

I don't need to be congratulated for showing up.

I already know you don't think I'm enough.

So do us all a favor and just shut up.

#vent #rian rambles

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vertex-official · 3 years

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virtual-lara · 4 years

Photo

Collection of Information from the official Tomb Raider 1 Website

If you've ever gone back in Web Archive history for the official Tomb Raider website, you may have come across the front page for Tomb Raider 1, but due to the age, any links have been lost and many pages are now inaccessable. After searching for very, very old fansites, we've come across 3 that have filled in these blanks. The following post will go through these lost pages. Hopefully you will find this as interesting as we did.

The left above image is dated Dec '96, the right above image is dated Jan '97. Note how 'Lara's Page & Calendar', 'Features' and 'Contests' is added in just over a month. The websites that I will be referring to are: the official Tomb Raider website and the following fansites: Saint Francis Folly C. 1996-1997 | Robert Wheeler's Tomb Raider Archives C. 30/11/1996-2001? (later hosted by Croft Times) | Tomb Raider Unleashed 1997-1997

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Lara's Page

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- OFFICIAL LINK - Dated as early as Jan 1997 | SFF | TR Unleashed | TR Archives

We believe that this included the very first draft of a biography for Lara. Sadly it does not appear, so we can only ever be 99% certain but the information was saved due to the very early fansites - TR Archives especially as he created pages using exact/very similar titles to the official website. All three listed fansites give the same details:

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NAME: Lara Croft

DATE OF BIRTH: 14th February 1967

PLACE OF BIRTH: England

HEIGHT: 5'7''

WEIGHT: 8 Stone, 11 lbs (about 55Kgs)

FIGURE: 38" Bust, 22" Waist, 34" Hips

HAIR: Brown

EYES: Brown

BACKGROUND: Lara the daughter of Lord Henshingly Croft, was raised to be an aristocrat from birth. After attending finishing school at the age of 21, Lara's marriage into wealth had seemed assured, but on her way home from a skiing trip her chartered plane had crashed deep in the heart of the Himalayas. The only survivor, Lara learned how to depend on her wits to stay alive in hostile conditions a world away from her sheltered upbringing. Two weeks later when she walked into the village of Tokakeriby her experiences had had a profound effect on her. Unable to stand the claustrophobic suffocating atmosphere of upper-class British society, she realised that she was only truly alive when she was travelling alone. Over the eight following years she acquired an intimate knowledge of ancient civilisations across the globe. Her family soon disowned their prodigal daughter, and she turned to writing to fund her trips. Famed for discovering several ancient sites of profound archaeological interest she made a name for herself by publishing travel books and detailed journals of her exploits.

DISCOVERIES: 1993 - The Lost Ark of the Covenant. 1996 - The Alantian Scion.

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VL Thoughts: The inclusion of a discovery date for the Ark is very interesting. Perhaps the developers felt that they needed to date the item in the mansion. Other than that, nothing's too surprising.

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Calendar

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- OFFICIAL LINK - Earliest capture: Jun 1997 | TR Archives

You could visit the Calendar page each month (starting from Jan 97) to see that month's page, featuring clickable links to wallpapers, new sounds and details of any upcoming releases, including other Core/Eidos games. Check out the TR Archives link just above to see 6 months of the calendar. A later capture of the TR Archives fills in the remaining 6 months, but only December works now and the design starts to change, ready for TR2!

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Storyline

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- OFFICIAL LINK - Earliest capture: Jun 1997

No need for any fansite on this one as this page is available!

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Lara Croft has just returned from a hunting trip in the Himalayas where, having bagged a 12-foot tall yeti, she's itching for a new challenge. While enjoying a little R & R, she's contacted Jacqueline Natla, a conniving business woman who convinces Lara to recover a mysterious artifact from the tomb of Qualopec in Peru.

Wasting no time, Lara sets out on her quest to find one of the three pieces of the ancient Atlantean Scion, a talisman of incredible power. After disovering the fragment things get ugly, Lara finds herself face to face with one of Natla's hired goons. Using her cunning wits and athletic strenghth, Lara escapes!

As she delves into the reasons why Natla would double cross her, she uncovers a mystery that reaches back before the dawn of recorded time to the treachery that destroyed the Atlantean civilization and the disasters that struck the world when it fell.

Enter the Tomb Raider world in 15 massive 3D environments within four lost civilizations:

- Vilcabamba... A civilization that flourished for hundreds of years in the Peruvian rainforests of South America. Guide Lara through the lost Incan city while battling wolves, bats, bears, raptors, and more.

- Labryinth...The Golden Age of Greece, and later Rome. Here Lara battles lions, alligators, crazed monkeys and more as she explores ruins of this ancient civilization.

- Egyptian...Where the vast power of Egypt rose with the pyramids. Explore buried pyramids and a hidden sphinx while fighting pumas, crocodiles, and some surprising mystical monsters.

- Atlantean...The pyramid of Atlantis where the mystery unfolds. Play and see!!!

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VL Thoughts: There are a couple of cool things. Firstly, here is an early source to date Lara's escapade for Bigfoot, but later in 2003 when the AOD Official Companion book is released, it is dated to 1995. But a location is mentioned - the Himilayas and Bigfoot is incorrectedly called a Yeti, the latter would be geographically more accurate. Secondly, the locations of the levels are broken up into zones, as mentioned in an early '96 draft recently released by Paul Douglas. Note the Labryinth levels. It was not an accident that St Francis Folly includes a mix up of Norse/Greek/Roman characters.

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Features

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- OFFICIAL LINK - Earliest capture: Jun 1997

No need for any fansite on this one as this page is available!

This page contains a listing of elements about the game, camera, enemies and levels etc. It also includes various 3D patches and demos, too much for us to list here.

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Extra pages

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- OFFICIAL LINK (Sounds) - Earliest capture: Jun 1997 | OFFICIAL LINK (Wallpapers) - Earliest capture: Jun 1997 | TR Archives

There were wallpapers, soundbites and even movies available on the official website but they're not listed on the front page. We believe that these pages would have been linked to via the calendar pages. Tomb Raider Archives lists out the sounds and even the movies. To avoid making this post any longer, check out the link above. We have a little bit of info on the wallpapers. In TR Archives' fansites list (dated 4th June 97), there is a fansite called Game Schtuff's Tomb Raider page. This particular website says that there are 8 wallpapers (backed up by TR Arc) but this site shows them. Sadly only two images load.

VL Final Thoughts: We couldn't find the 'Contests' or 'Screenshots' pages, and although most of this data is now known, it's nice to see it on the official website with an early date. If you've reached the end of this article, we hoped that you've enjoyed looking back in TR1 history as we have raiding the archives!

#Tomb Raider 1 #TR1 Web Art #VL Articles #VL Posts #TR History

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blubberquark · 4 years

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Why Puzzle Platformers?

Why are there so many puzzle platformers? Was everybody simply copying Braid, hoping for the same level of success? And more importantly, now that Braid has been out for over a decade, why are people still making them?

If you make games, you already know why there are so many puzzle platformers, but I haven’t found a comprehensive answer to this question anywhere I can conveniently link to.

There are different ways to read that question:

Why are people adding puzzles to platformer games?

Why are there so many commercial indie puzzle platformers?

Why weren’t the same puzzles presented in an abstract, more puzzle-focused way?

Why are people adding puzzles to platformer games?

When it comes to jam games or small shareware projects, we should first ask “Why platformers, puzzle or not?” Part of the answer is probably “because platformers are easy to make with GameMaker“. Another part of the answer is “Because in a platformer, the player character interacts with the level, items, and NPCs, but these do not, for the most part, interact with each other, which makes a platformer comparably easy to implement (compared to an RTS game) and design (compared to RPG games), and platformers don’t need many extradiegetic UI elements.“

But beyond that, when you can add other mechanics to games, why puzzles?

The two obvious candidates to add to games are combat/stealth, and puzzles.

You can could also add multiple-choice dialogue, inventory, RPG elements (quests, skill points, classes), or procedural generation to any sidescrolling game, but none of these cannot carry a game on their own when you tack them on to a platformer. If the dialogue is actually substantial enough to carry a game on its own, the 2D platforming may stick out as “tacked-on” instead.

Strategy or economy (building, trading, tactics and management) are better served by a mouse-based UI. Dialogue-heavy or text-based games usually don’t have platforming sections, but platformer games can have some dialogue. In both cases, the pacing and movement of a platformer undercuts these game mechanics, and a different UI would be a better fit.

You can give your platformer a theme like horror, romance, science fiction, or medieval fantasy.

Puzzles are something you can add into a platformer game, either in between difficult platforming sections, or in combination with them. You can even alternate between stealth/combat and puzzles. Puzzles can be easy or difficult, and you can use them to break up levels or slow down the pace of an action platformer, or centre your whole game around them.

It takes some skill to design a puzzle mechanic that stands on its own, but it’s much easier to design an simple and easy one-off puzzle that you can throw into a platformer level. Easy puzzles are easy to balance: They have a binary win condition and an intended solution, but often no explicit failure state.

If adding another mechanic to a platformer makes it a puzzle platformer, is Speer a puzzle platformer? Is Super Meat Boy a puzzle platformer because you sometimes have to push buttons and the levels are self-contained? Is Outer Bounds a puzzle platformer? It’s not a bright line, but many action games that are lumped with “puzzle platformers” are still about jumping and running, but with a move set that isn’t 100% copied from Mario Bros.

If the main appeal of a game lies in the platforming, then as long as it’s solvable and doesn’t get in the way, it’s a good puzzle. Puzzles in platforming games can present their own platforming challenges, and rely on a slightly different kind of platforming execution skill, instead of puzzle-solving as a core aesthetic and source of difficulty. Players can be forced to traverse the same terrain back and forth along different paths. This can squeeze more gameplay out of fewer designed levels. Combined with traditional platforming obstacles like enemies to avoid, spike pits, moving platforms, one-way platforms, this can lead to more varied and difficult platforming challenges. Instead of getting in the way or breaking up the platforming bits, puzzle mechanics can go hand-in-hand with the platforming, without presenting a challenge in terms of puzzle solving, but only in terms of executing the solution.

Why are there so many commercial indie puzzle platformers?

For commercial games, the answer is more complicated. Maybe the premise of the question is not even true. Trine, Fez, Limbo, and And Yet It Moves all can in one way or another be described as “puzzle platformers”, but no two of them are in the same genre. If you cast a wider net, you get games like Mushroom 11, Owlboy, The Cave, Starseed Pilgrim, and Gunpoint.

Like “Action Adventure”, the phrase “puzzle platformer” has become a catch-all term for sidescroller games that aren’t punishingly difficult.

Of course, many commercial long-form games are classical puzzle platformers. Braid, Vessel, Closure, The Swapper, and Snapshot. These games are about puzzles, not about platforming.

Many smaller games like WarpSwap, ElecHead, Ministry of Synthesis, or LegBreaker are just exploring one puzzle mechanic to exhaustion in a series of one-room puzzles. Larger or long-form games often expand their repertoire of mechanics to create puzzles based on different mechanics held together by common themes or a story, or they focus more on platforming.

Why weren’t the same puzzles presented in an abstract, more puzzle-focused way?

Simple Controls and User Interface

If you see a puzzle platformer, you don’t need to figure out the controls or UI first, you can just pick up the controller and start running around. In their simplest form, the controls for a puzzle platformer are four directional buttons plus one for jumping and one for interacting the with puzzle mechanic, but more complex controls schemes are common.

The controls make writing a puzzle platformer for a game jam much easier than a mouse-driven puzzle game: You just need to check six keyboard buttons. If you are making a big commercial title, ease of implementation in terms of programming is not really a factor: After a day or two at most you’ll have implemented whatever mouse picking, widgets and UI elements you need. What’s much more time consuming is figuring out where to put the buttons so they don’t obscure the scene, or how to communicate which objects are clickable. Getting user interfaces right requires playtesting and iteration. A puzzle platformer might only need a context-based prompt that says “press X to interact“ or “walk into a boulder to push it“.

Game Feel, Embodiment and Characterisation

Another benefit of puzzle platformers over abstract puzzle presentation is game feel. The player controls the player character, and feels like a the player character existing inside the space of the level, increasing immersion compared to the feeling of a person sitting at a computer thinking about a crossword puzzle.

Many big-name 2D puzzle platformers like Braid and Snapshot have a rather zoomed-in view that focuses the level player character and the immediate surroundings, instead of showing the whole level. This allows the game to present important characters, items or places in great detail, and lets the camera pan to frame the most important parts of a scene. Animated movement in a two-dimensional space can give weight and character to the player character, and connect the gameplay to a story. NPCs can live inside a level, next to their home, their things, and their friends.

Imagine the same thing in a tower defence, or a racing game: You’re walking around in a level, and suddenly you meet an NPC, you’re having a conversation, and then you go on your merry way. Characters and environmental storytelling are not unique to platformers, but it’s more difficult to pull off in a game without a player character existing in the world with the NPCs. Puzzle platformers keep all options open.

Of course, this is not the only way to connect characterisation and puzzle gameplay, and it can be done in abstract games. Just in the most recent Ludum Dare, I played the game Interstellar Connection, a puzzle game with a rather abstract, disembodied presentation, in which the characterisation was delivered through dialogue. (I should briefly remark on two aspects of Interstellar Connection here, even though it has very little to do with the rest of this post. First, the game is at its heart a bunch of mazes that can be solved by backtracking. Every puzzle is equivalent to a maze graph, but the presentation makes use of a quirk of human cognition to prevent you from seeing the solution the way you would see the solution in a small maze. Second, I don’t think this mechanic can support a long-form game. If it weren’t for Ludum Dare, this would have been a forgettable minigame, not the main meat of the game, motivated and contextualised by the plot.)

Characters living inside a world could also be achieved with isometric graphics, first- or third-person 3D, or in a text-based game, but they don’t work well in self-contained or grid-based puzzle levels. We’ll get back to other aspects of more open level design later.

Puzzle Design

In a puzzle platformer, you have a player character, and you can have different kinds of obstacles, like pits filled with spikes, ledges, and doors. In a top-down platformer, you can of course also have doors, but you won’t have the same dynamics of gravity with falling down, of dropping things. It’s easier to get down from a ledge, or to drop something than to lift it.

With a visible and embodied player character instead of an abstract cursor, every puzzle can be complicated by combining manipulation of the puzzle environment with traversal of the level:

The level has an “obvious” solution, but the real challenge is navigating the environment to get there.

The challenge is to manipulate the environment to open a path for the player to jump to the right place to implement the solution.

The level has a “red herring” solution that solves the main puzzle but leaves the player trapped behind an obstacle, unable to progress without undoing it.

Level Design, Progression

Multiple puzzles can be placed in the same platformer “level” or “room“. In a “pure” puzzle game, puzzles are self-contained, with a beginning and an end, a starting state and an explicit solution condition. In a platformer, the goal can be implicit: You want to go from left to right and traverse the obstacles.

If a puzzle has an obvious missing piece, it can be a prompt for the player to explore the surrounding areas, to look for a tool, or for a certain puzzle piece that is exactly shaped like the gap that needs to be filled in the puzzle.

Strange Keyworld is a puzzle platformer, almost a puzzle metroidvania. Every so often, instead of reasoning through the puzzle that is currently shown on the screen, you need to explore the adjacent rooms to find another piece and bring it over. Although the puzzles in Strange Keyworld are mostly self-contained, they are still embedded in the larger world.

Most levels in Braid are bigger than one screen, and they have more than one puzzle. Often the first order of business is to get your bearings and explore. Then you learn to traverse the level to get everywhere, identify and separate the different puzzles, and only then can you think about solving all the puzzles by manipulating time and level state to get everywhere.

An interesting twist on this happens in Recursed: Levels are always on one screen, 20x15 tiles... but you need to explore inside all the chests to see what the level actually looks like!

Of course, you could have the same kind of dynamic in an abstractly presented puzzle with a mouse-based UI, where you can zoom in and out, drag the viewport around, or enter doors (and Recursed-style chests) by double-clicking. Then you’d lose the sense of exploration and progression, and the challenge of traversing the space via platforming. Exploring a large level would be easy, but tedious. You would need to program (as the developer) and then learn (as the payer) a new user interface, or you can just move a player character in a world. This ties back into the very first point: Platformers don’t need many extradiegetic UI elements.

tl;dr “Puzzle Platformers” are actually a bunch of genres in a trenchcoat. Character-focused 2D side-scrolling graphics are compatible with many different mechanics and game designs. Character-focused 2D platforming can counterbalance the abstractness of puzzle games.

#game design #puzzle platformer #puzzle game

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joannetriesdatavis · 4 years

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Week 11-12 | My Love-Hate Relationship with Online Coding Tutorials.

I have a love-hate relationship with coding tutorials (on YouTube, Vimeo, and endless other 2013 forum threads...)

I spend hours on them. Sometimes (most times) bearing no fruit after the long, arduous minutes of trying to figure out what they’re saying.

They are undoubtedly helpful, of course. God bless these two guys for singlehandedly tethering my coding brain gears. My two online coding teachers are Daniel Shiffman, who runs a channel called The Coding Train. I’ve named him the Excited Coding Guy, because he’s very passionate and enthusiastic about teaching code. The other guy is named Matthew Epler, who also comes with his own sense of humour - although, unlike Daniel, he’s quite more sarcastic with a more “whatever” approach. I guess you can say Daniel is a dog person and Matthew is a cat person....

Where was I going with this?

So. In these tutorials, I learn things such as:

- How to create objects

- What arrays are

- How to incite random functions

- How to write your own functions

- Etc etc etc...

The guys both have made Processing and p5.js tutorials, all of which are divided into very clear, categorised videos with levels, which make them easier to understand and follow through. Their teaching is also great - I have to say they are the only tutorial providers I’ve come across, but for good reason. They deliver these materials very well.

I have to say, though, that as amusing and life-saving these tutorials are, they, of course, wouldn’t always be able to help me troubleshoot my own code. Sometimes sitting through four different 18-minute tutorial videos still couldn’t answer my one simple question that still lingers at the end of everything.

Bottom line? I was never a fan of online learning, but online learning while trying to adopt a new skill and that skill being programming or creative coding, takes a significant toll...

It is impossible for me to scavenge the Internet for tutorials on “I want flowers to grow in a garden and I want the flowers to be specific colours oh also it’s all based on a Table and I want the flowers to sway in the wind and to be clickable.... while a song is playing.” Right?

So often, I find myself going around in circles, with 10 tabs open, my brain fried, attempting to understand & learn what they’re teaching, but also to not take everything as copy-pasted knowledge. The most critical skill to apply here is to analyse their code, and incorporate it in our own project.

At least, ideally that’s how it would go...

But at the crux of Week 12, I found myself going in circles trying to get some answers from these tutorials and make my way through this project on my own. Sadly, most attempts have been to no avail, and this drove a wedge in the flow of my progress.

I’m not blaming Daniel nor Matthew though (who knows where I’d be without them), but I think it’s important to acknowledge that these are very unorthodox design challenges we’re facing: The challenge of looking past ourselves and sitting with the less-ambitious, more realistic goals of our project, and then the challenge of gauging whether or not relying on online resources is the way to go.

At this point, though, whatever comes of my project - whatever those flowers turn out to look or “grow” like, and whatever makes it to the final submission in the end - I still see myself visiting these two coding gurus even after this course is over. This isn’t an easy subject to tackle (and that I’ve made clear), but I want to learn more of it. I think four weeks (minus the two weeks of total tutorial-watching time, to be honest), is, as any creative project, not a mighty long time. But after this semester, with the extended timeframe, I want to actually watch those tutorials, this time not to gain something for my garden, but to follow in their footsteps attentively to create new, different messes on my own.

We’ve made it so far in this class, and I don’t think I want to stop learning just yet.

#week 9-14 #task progress

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junietwohundred · 5 years

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Dev Diary: In which a day is hacked, a game is demoed and a question is answered

Bee Foundry Games is, of course, a hobby - a less-than-part-time enterprise that gets attention when I have energy after work and time on weekends. Sometimes I go to work early and get in a few hours writing descriptions and such, and I can often take Fridays to set my job aside and work on the game (I did that this week). I tell you this because I’m proud of the amount of progress I’ve been making week to week, even if it doesn’t sound like much from the outside.

Last week’s goals:

More work on rooms and the nouns within

Learn how to make rooms accessible and inaccessible depending on game conditions while maintaining regular navigation at other times.

Refine the car

Find some Quest 5 code exercises that will help me get my brain in shape for when the really hard work of wiring this stuff up begins.

So how did I do? Let’s run down the list:

I don’t think I actually did any of this. I was focused on technical issues this week.

Success! I took a hack day at work on Friday (a partial hack day; I still had to do some QA work for my real job) and got this working. It was perfect at 11 am, then when I ran through it again at 3 in preparation for the company’s traditional hack day demos, it started throwing out an error on the last step. It wasn’t keeping anything from working - it just waved its arms and said, “I’m a big, ugly error!” The next day, I got it to stop throwing the error, but then on the step where the error had been, the list of directions you can go stopped being clickable. So I just turned off hyperlinks throughout the game. It means you can’t click on “East” to go east; you have to type “east,” “go east” or “e” to make the move. I’m telling myself it makes the game more like an old-school text adventure and not that it makes me super lazy for not trying to fix the problem the proper way.

Hahahahaha no.

There are virtually no Quest 5 code exercises. There’s the tutorial, which I’m doing a second time, but looking at the code as I go this time. And there’s a tutorial game called “The Cloak of Darkness” that might come in handy for conditionals - if I start crying again, I’ll do Cloak of Darkness.

A small section of the game was demoed for people at my company at the end of my Friday hack day. Everyone was suitably impressed that I can make rooms appear and disappear, and no one laughed when I admitted I was spending my hack days on what amounts to Good Omens fanfiction.

I learned other things this week that I hadn’t planned on when I made the list. Allow me to tell you about them:

I can change the POV (switch the player object, for you game dev types) based on an action like dropping an object. Now I know how to make it so you can play as Crowley sometimes and as Aziraphale at other times. I also learned how to change POV with a command, but that’s not something that’s going to come up in this game. Maybe the next one? (Will there be a next one? I don’t know - will people want to play text adventures in the year of our lord 2020 when this is maybe finished?)

I can make the game display an “objective” description the first time a room is entered, and on LOOK, it shows a different description depending on which character is the player object. Each description has the same vital information, but Aziraphale has different opinions about the pedestrians in Soho than Crowley does, for example.

I can make an item description dynamic. Let’s say the description is “There is a table. On the top you see thing1, thing2 and thing3.”

Take thing1

Look at table

“There is a table. On the top you see thing2 and thing3.”

Take thing3

Look at table

“There is a table. On the top you see thing2.”

Take thing2

Look at table

“There is a table. On the top you see nothing.”

This required some help from the people at the Quest forums, who are eager to be of assistance, but seem puzzled by the idea that the solutions required for an operation like this could never in a million years be derived from the “documentation” available. I think I’m going to run into this a lot.

I also started using Git and GitHub, because my old system of “Oh good, I got that to work; let me copy all the code into a text editor and save it so I can try something new and know I have a version that works available if I blow it all up” wasn’t really cutting the mustard. I work in software, so all my friends were shocked and appalled that I didn’t know Git already, but I’ve never done anything that involved keeping track of code until now. So @northofnormal took pity on me and explained it to me like I was 5.

Ok, next week. What do I think I’m going to work on?

More writing. That’s easy to do in the early mornings, and there’s a lot of it to do.

How do I make characters join and leave a party? I want Aziraphale to stick to Crowley like glue...but only sometimes. I think there’s a “follow” script later in the tutorial, so...

Finish repeating the tutorial. Pay attention to follow scripts.

Bentley: how do? Is it a more advanced version of the party? Is it just demonic magic? I don’t know!

So that was the week on We’ll Meet at Nine Precisely. Meet you back here next Sunday to tell you how things went.

#good omens #GOdevdiary #text adventures #interactive fiction

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lizconway-blog1 · 5 years

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Making 4: Swift UI

For my Midterm Project in Rich Media, we had to make an app which plays music. Since I am a big fan of Christmas in November, I made mine from a Christmas playlist. Once I had the project functional, I decided to take it one step forward by trying to apply some of the principles that we’ve been talking about in this class.

When I turned in the project to Emuel, it looked like this:

As you can see, the app is completely functional, but it is hard to understand what the user is supposed to do. How do they play the music? As we talked about in Don’t Make Me Think, it’s essential that things are designed so that their purpose is obvious. Clickable things should be clearly clickable, and you can’t ask someone to think about what they are seeing.

So what did I do? I knew not to add words, so I added buttons!

iOS 13 has a library of symbols which made this super easy. I didn’t have to design them, only pick the ones that suited my needs. So, I added this play button to my music player

Still, I knew that I could make this work better, so I played around a little bit and finished with 3 working buttons that clearly communicate their jobs.

Here’s what they look like on an iPhone 11 screen.

So now, I thought: I want to animate these buttons, especially the play and pause so that the user can tell if a sone is playing or paused. Then I looked at the tutorial for how to animate a button and saw that it was way beyond the scope of this assignment.

This making really had me thinking about how hard it is to actually implement a good User Experience. A designer can come up with all the ideas that they want, but that design has to be passed off to someone who can actually implement that design.

“Animated button” was an easy thought, but the fact is that animating one button would probably have taken me hours to figure out, even with the tutorial. Passing ideas from design concept to coded implementation is hard within my own brain, and I know what I’m capable of and can give instant responses to myself. I can only imagine how hard it is on a team, where different groups of people are involved.

#nmix7010 #making assignment

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facets-and-rainbows · 6 years

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Volume 11 question corner (historical restoration)

Welp, one of my posts [here] got flagged DESPITE BEING ENTIRELY TEXT but it’s a reblog from a deactivated OP asking for a translation and CANNOT BE SAVED, so I’m gonna repost it here for posterity. Enjoy this quaint ancient translation of some volume 11 extras.

December 8, 2013

todo-john-august-cat:

BEGGING FOR JAPANESE-SPEAKERS OR JAPANESE-KNOWERS

to translate at least one interesting fact from the info lists. (maybe Lightning’s class and meister type if there is it)

please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please (Q,Q)

desktop-warrior:

Here’s what I got from Google Translate, combined with my very rudimentary knowledge of Japanese grammar. Don’t quote me on this. It’ll likely be quite inaccurate.

Interesting facts for Angel: - “Joke is not through” - I’m assuming this means that others’ jokes at his expense don’t get through to him, or he takes it all in good fun. Or, HIS jokes don’t make sense to others. - “Demon sword Caliburn enslavement” - Also a tricksy one; from the wording of it, I’m assuming it means he’s ‘enslaved’ Caliburn. - Feminist. No joke. - “No mercy to those identified as enem[ies].” Duh! :D

Interesting facts for Lightning: - Cynic - “How it is called Lightning, which was quite strong enslavement familiar.” From what I gather, this means that Lightning got his nickname from a powerful familiar demon he uses. Which means he’s a Tamer, and we might get to see him in action soon, hopefully. :D - Something about either hating not showering for a week (quite long, if you ask me), or not minding that he doesn’t shower that long and he does so quite commonly. I guess that goes with his scruffy appearance. - “Weak and cleaning.” Probably means he’s slovenly, which wouldn’t surprise me.

Now, for Lightning’s Meisters: it looks like he has all five of them, not surprising for an Arc Knight, but it looks like he got one of them (Tamer) twice. Again, don’t quote me because I’m guessing here based on images of the Exorcist ranks list I found online.

And, ah, if I could ask for a teeny favour, if you can: does Godaiin also get a character profile in Volume 11? I really like his character, so would you be able to upload his profile if he has one? If he doesn’t, or if you don’t want to, that’s perfectly fine.

todo-john-august-cat:

omg, what a clever people on internets ! thank You so much

unfortunately in the 11th volume there are only two profiles, BUT Goddain appeared in characters card (idk what it’s proper name) for the first time

[broken image link, used to be a pic of that page]

(I’m not good in tumblr :( is this picture clickable and downloadable?)

desktop-warrior:

Oh, haha, there was nothing ‘clever’ about what I did! I’ve enabled my keyboard to be able to type Japanese characters. So I copied out the facts and then put them through Google Translate. I took a first-year Japanese course in university, so I understand mostly how Japanese grammar works. I looked at the results and interpreted them in the way that made the most sense to me. You can talk to anyone who knows a little more Japanese and they would’ve done a much better job than I did. :D Nonetheless, you’re welcome.

And thank YOU for uploading that character card! What I wanted to know most of all was Godaiin’s first name, which I do now.

facets-and-rainbows:

Your translations seem pretty darn accurate as far as I can tell : ) “Joke not through” means that Angel doesn’t get jokes. I had to look up フェミニスト in like three dictionaries before I was convinced that it still meant “feminist” in Japanese, but he is indeed a feminist against all expectation. “Enslave” is a strong word; maybe “employ”? “Lightning” is apparently a title given to some sort of master Tamer/Aria (I think?). I don’t know what the second “Tamer” meister is. I don’t think it’s been mentioned before. He’s bad at cleaning and bathing, like you said.

I have volume 11 here, so I guess I might as well paraphrase the fan question corner thing they’re doing. It’s got some neat little facts.

-Angel’s middle initial is A, not O. The times when it was O were typos. -Angel is half English and half French. He and Lightning are canonically multilingual (Angel claims to have dabbled in 8 languages!). They are actually literally speaking Japanese in their scenes. Not just for the reader’s convenience. We’re just gonna go with the explanation that all the foreign exorcists are good with languages because it is, in Lightning’s words, “cooler that way.” -Rin sleeps with his eyes open. A lot. It creeps Yukio right out. -The sandwich Shiemi eats in Chapter 46 is made of herbs from her garden. It was “bitter, but good for you. Probably.” -Paku is doing fine in regular school despite seeing demons all the time, thanks for asking. -You can get TO cram school with magic keys, but you have to take the long way back unless you have a key for your next destination. -Rin is the easiest character for Katou-sensei to draw. Angel is hardest because hair is hard. Lightning is also kind of hard because she’s not used to him yet. She can’t pick a favorite character because she’s spent years of her life developing and identifying with each and every one. -Mephisto is impressed that you noticed how his fingernails only look pointy when he’s not wearing gloves. But you shouldn’t worry too much about it. He’s a shapeshifter and he can do whatever he wants. -If you want to know what class everyone is in in regular school, you’re gonna have to figure it out yourself from the school festival scenes. The information is there. -As previously covered, Godaiin’s given name is Sei. He apologizes for it. -Yes, Amaimon’s face was smoking when he came out of the cuckoo clock in volume 10, just like it was when he went into the cuckoo clock in volume 4. Yes, this is because time is meaningless inside the cuckoo clock. -Caliburn, Angel’s sword, is a trans woman in the manga despite being a cis woman in the anime. It doesn’t matter to Angel whether his sword is a man or a woman. But don’t get your hopes up, Caliburn, he probably didn’t mean that in QUITE the way you think he meant it. Angel’s kind of dense. -You have to recite a demon’s Fatal Verse word for word. Unless you’re really good. Like, Lightning good. Then you can freestyle abbreviate it. -Mephisto will neither confirm nor deny that he is the Mephistopheles from Goethe’s Faust. -If you can’t see demons, can you see Rin’s tail etc? The answer is SURPRISINGLY COMPLICATED. Rin says regular people can’t see the flames. They CAN see the ears, fangs, and tail, but no one seems to mention it. They don’t notice much. Then Mephisto talks about perception and the human brain and inattentional blindness for long enough that he has to be cut off. -How’d you like the cross-dressing, guys? Rin: It was funny! Suguro: I feel like I lost a part of myself that day. I don’t want to do it again. Konekomaru: Agrees with Suguro. Shima: I thought I was really cute but not as cute as real girls lol. Yukio: It was part of the mission. -If the twins are complete opposites, how is Yukio’s cooking? Is it edible? Well, he doesn’t really cook much at all. It’s totally not because he cut himself as a child and is afraid of chopping stuff NO IT’S NOT SHUT UP RIN. -Yes, twelve-year-old fan, it is okay if your original story copies Blue Exorcist a lot. But once you become a manga author yourself, you’ll need to branch out. You’ll understand when you’re older.

#blue exorcist #translation #question corner

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