#trying some different lighting here

[tsion-art]

“Inside the ball, I was given a choice: Susan, and my life as her husband and father of the child she now carries… or the Tower. I choose the Tower. I must. Let her live a good life and long with someone else - she will, in time. As for me, I choose the Tower.” - Roland of Gilead in Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

[presiding]

a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

if you have some, do you have any headcannons for barnaby?

honestly! not really! i don't have hcs for any of the neighbors!

[lynnesgalaxy]

ancient grumpuses cudlding and being cute

Sincil (blue) belongs to @soulthefunnyman!

[kisskissgotohell]

i just wanna point out that, like. it's okay to disagree with the main character. just because they're the pov of the story doesn't mean they're infallible or that their word is law? you can like that character that tried to kill the mc. you can think the mc made the wrong choice. you can forgive things that the mc would never forgive, or choose not to forgive things that the mc does, because you're not the main character. you are the reader of the story, and just because you can't change it (and it's not the author's responsibility to capitulate to fans) doesn't mean you can't form your own opinions about it. it's fictional! that's the point! have fun with it!!

[gefiltefished]

haShem will have to forgive me for sitting tonight out but I'm exhausted

[thewingedwolf]

i hate the way people will say the most out of pocket nonsense about Latinos in the US and then act surprised when people say they’ve got some racism issues. “oh if it weren’t for the fact that people in the USA hate everyone with ancestry from Latin America, lock Latino children in cages even under democratic presidents, and regularly hop on tv to call all Latinos evil rapists and murderers, they’d all be considered white” yeah no SHIT if literally every aspect of how Latinos in the US are racialized was different, they would be racially categorized in a different way, that is a very intelligent thing to say about race relations and doesn’t at all exacerbate issues thanks you are so wise and educated and learned

[boomerang109]

remember when you were like "do you want to go to england with me for a week even though we've never met and havent talked that much" and i was like absolutely and then we did it and it was a blast. LIKE WHO DOES THAT AKFHWLFHKWHD ARE WE WEIRD!?!?!?

we’re ABSOLUTELY weird but who else is doing it like us? when hella met my brother he was BIG sad cause he was like, wow you like have cool real friends. and like yeah partially cause she’s international, but also just like, the fact that i have so many friends who i know i can rely on no matter what. like, i know i’m kinda shit at responding to your snaps and your posts and everything. but if you called me rn and said ‘hey i need to get out of [REDACTED] can i come stay with you?’ i would say, yes hannah, of course. i have a full-sized bed and we’ve shared before. you deserve the vacation time and i would love to introduce you to where i live. when you texted me randomly this summer, i was SO EXCITED to meet you in a random ass dog park and see you for 15 minutes. my biggest regret of our friendship is that we don’t talk more, but also i kinda love that my tumblr moots all understand my constant ghosting isn’t personal, it’s just how i am and it doesn’t lessen my love for them. next time i’m on the east coast i want to see you. if you’re ever on the west coast i BETTER see you.

[lilgynt]

alright i’m not gonna lie to ur face being hot and autistic does kinda blow.

[comma57]

hear me out

thanks for hearing me out

[snekdood]

Vaush almost seems manipulative in the way he talks about religion, like i feel very strongly that he doesn't actually think religion is *quite* as bad as something like toxic masculinity but he wants his audience to feel that way, so he keeps drawing comparisons between religion and all these other fucked up things like antisemities or whatever, to give the impression to his audience that he genuinely thinks its that serious, and knowing how a lot of ppl can be in his audience, whatever vaush thinks they decide to take as like the best most intellectually and well thought out take ever, no self analyzing, no questions asked, and i feel like hes manipulating that fact to his advantage, he literally said in his debate w oceankeltoi (which i wasnt gonna watch but did eventually bc i heard vaush kinda sucked in it (and he did)) that hes okay with using peer pressure to try to discourage people from being religious. It seems like hes going to try whatever he can socially to like. Shun anyone whos religious or any of their beliefs and is probably even totally okay with ppl bullying religious ppl so long as the social pressure gets people to stop. Which. Uh. I feel like i shouldnt have to say is a pretty fucked up philosophy

[lordsardine]

.

[biillys]

ehhhh how bout a very vaguely supernatural meets ghost fiIes inspired au

neil being raised in hunting and bringing his wife into it and then his newborn son. his wife leaving eventually, becos she couldn't handle it anymore, and she desperately wanted to take her baby boy with her, but he already knew too much, and she couldn't protect him like neil could. she also couldn't protect him from neil, but there were bigger monsters than humans, and after one too many close calls, she leaves.

billy's left in neil's supernatural capable hands.

life on the road with his dad is rough, jumping around from place to place, never being somewhere long enough to call home, no extended family or old family friends to stay at for long hot summers. just him and his dad, his dads hot and cold temper, and the open road. that's all billy knows.

then one day, they're on a hunt, and there's a freshly divorced mother and her hotheaded stubborn daughter, and billy watches as his dad continues to charm them even after they've eradicated the simple ghost, watches as the mum falls for every word and practiced smile, and suddenly it's the four of them on the road.

susan seems weak, looks awkward with a gun in her hands, still jumps at the slightest bump when they're clearing out a house, but neil's patient with her, repeats the steps on how to fire and clean the gun day after day, holds her fucking hand whenever he notices her tensing up, and billy wants to scream.

neil locked billy in the shed of the place they were renting when he was six becos he fumbled the gun. fucking belted him that one time in texas when he accidentally let a monster get away becos he was scared, like billy actively let the fucking thing get away for fun and not becos he was frozen paralysed, listening to it rattle of things that billy knew he'd never said out loud.

his dad never told him it could get into your head.

max is better about it, but still a fucking pain. at least she doesn't seem to be a baby about everything. if billy's being honest, max has handled the transition from normal suburban life to life on the road and hunting monsters like a champ. too bad neil's basically placed her entire wellbeing and care into billy's hands, and the rope billy's felt around his neck his entire life's went from snug to fucking choking.

life goes on though, and eventually billy's old enough to buy his own car, do his own hunts. max rides with him more often than not, mostly out of habit, but also becos she'd pick being stuck with her asshole older step-brother for weeks at a time over spending even just an hour in close quarters with her piece of shit step-dad.

turns out, life on the road with just billy is good. he's like a completely different person when he can breathe without his dad taking up all the air. he's even fun on occasion. actually talks her through what they're hunting, why they're hunting it, lets her actually help.

(she accidentally tripped on a tree root one time on a hunt with the family when she was younger, and one sprained wrist later, she was banned from coming on anymore. she tried to argue it was a simple tree root, and that billy slipped a disc in his spine getting thrown against a brick wall just last month, but neil put his foot down. said susan was worried, and if susan was worried, neil was worried. billy was a big boy, he could walk it off. max was delicate, she had to be kept safe. billy wouldn't even look at her for at least a week after that fight.)

the time between seeing their parents slowly grows longer and longer between each trip the longer they're away. it started off with just a few days off on a side hunt before reuniting within the week, but then the few-days-hunts turned into few-weeks-hunts, and suddenly it felt like they were only seeing their parents for special occasions.

but the longer they were away, the lighter they became. the first time max hears billy refer to her as his sister, no tone, no stressed step sister, just sister, she does a double take. doesn't dare bring it up 'til they get back to the motel they were crashing at. billy rolls his eyes, bitches about not needing to give some fucking random his entire life story.

they bond over hating neil and hating susan's life choices, get competitive over who can figure out the monster of the week first, and turn the other way when one ~accidentally lets a monster get away.

(the first time billy let a monster get away on purpose, he waited up all night, expecting his dad to burst into the room and knock some sense into him. accuse him of being just as monstrous, just another fucking killer, reckless, letting them get away like that. his dad was 6 states away and deep into a hunt of his own, but billy had second guessed his choice since the second he walked away earlier that evening, refreshing the local news site constantly waiting for another body to drop, to prove the voice in his head that sounded exactly like neil right, that he was a failure of a hunter, falling for the sob story and bullshit the monster spilled and pleaded and promised with on what should have been it's last moments.)

(billy knows real monsters though, and despite what his mother said to him in the last memory he has of her, humans were always worse. most things neil taught billy to hunt were harmless. he's trying so fucking hard to teach this to max. to make sure innocent blood never drips from her hands the way it does his.)

anyway: to the ghost fiIes part of this. i think it would be FUN if, in a big Fuck You And Everything You Stand For to his dad, that one time on a hunt, billy's having a casual joyful yelling match with a ghost, and max whips out her phone and records, uploads it to her insta, and one or two people watch.

then one time, theyre trying to get a demon to fuck off, and billy's trying to fucking sales pitch hell to them, like billy's ever even been there, and max whips out her phone again. a few more people watch.

slowly max builds a following. is always careful to frame every video in such a way that monsters stay the stuff of legends, but make it realistic enough that if you know - you know. starts to gradually add herself to this mix. soon, her and billy are going into legitimately haunted houses just to chat to ghosts, record the whole thing, and chuck the best moments up on youtube.

the first time neil sees a clip, sees his son terrorising a ghost - but not in a hunt-to-kill sort of way, but just for jokes, for a laugh sort of way - he drives for three days straight to sort him out in person. gets him up and crowded against the paper thin wall, asking if he thinks it's funny, what ghosts are capable of doing, if he thinks it's a joke, all those people they were too late to save. if he thinks his mother left him, all over a laugh. billy wishes he didn't buckle under the weight, wishes his voice didn't shake when he answered, but he caught max's eye over his dad's shoulder, and she had a gun in one hand, and her knife in the other, and billy's seen her look at poltergeists that have threatened her life more kindly than the way she's looking at neil in the moment. billy gathers what little strength he can pull, juts his chin out and glares as dirty as possible. finds his voice and kicks his dad out of the motel room, managing to shake his dad off in the split second of shock neil has over billy not instantly caving. max echoing billy's demands, telling neil to get the fuck out. to go protect her mother, since he trapped her into a life she'll never be able to survive on her own, and to keep her safe, and to stay the fuck out of theirs.

basically BASICALLY i'm watching ghost fiIes and i just think billy and max in a supernatural world but like, in a fun way, would be GOOD SHIT. and i want billy to still be lowkey scared of ghosts and demons becos he has seen the havoc they can create first hand, the families they can destroy in just a heartbeat, so he's always a little tense attending a haunting, but he goes in every time, becos its all he's ever done, becos max told him on a bad night once that she thought he was brave, and he talks (and yells and screams and mocks and, occasionally, cries) to them and slowly he starts to find himself and get his life together, helping all these fucking trapped and usually scared and also so so so angry ghosts. helps them to the best of his ability. listens to them when they wail. talks to them when they cry. he starts to heal.

max grows, too, having watched something invisible, with no physical form whatsoever, tear her father to shreds, just weeks after the divorce, to driving around the country with her brother, spending nights in houses so haunted it would scare a priest, adjusting to loving her mother from a distance, cos she'll never understand why she fell for the shit neil was offering, why she stuck around, gripping his hand tight, that first time neil lost his shit at billy in front of them. why she continued to hold his hand, going as far as to look the other way, the first time neil laid into her for not getting detailed enough research for a case, blaming her for his broken ribs and her mother's dislocated shoulder. billy silently offering her an ice pack that night in the darkness, wordlessly passing over some pills and a glass of water.

billy made a point to look over her research from then on out, just in case.

max thinks her life could've turned out a whole lot better if her dad never died, if neil and billy never entered it. but she's pretty sure that out of every option she could've had, that the way it is now, her and billy making some silly youtube show, confronting their own nightmares night after night, saving monsters, hunting things, this is the best option.

OKAY literally none of this captured my original thought of billy and max just fucking around in haunted houses and annoying the dead.

max knowing shits real but billy would swear with the way she acts and talks that she thinks it's all horseshit. billy wouldn't even call her brave, she genuinely just doesn't seem to give a fuck. she's got a fuck with Me attitude and billy gets it, okay, if he were already dead, be wouldn't try anything on her either, imagine dying once by falling down an elevator shaft then getting fucking slayed again by a seventeen yr old who failed her learners permit, not once, but twice. billy'd back the fuck off, too.

billy being a lil scared in a extremely fucking haunted houses, knowing full well that demons were real and they were here, in this very room, and max telling him to shut the fuck up whilst pushing him into the portal, aka the closet, and telling him to turn his light off and talk to it. billy, bitching under his breath, you talk to it, but still standing there, light off, stupid little camera on, opening a line of communication. his usual tactic for getting through the night being to raise absolute hell. if he's gonna chill with demons, the dead, and inter-dimensional freaks all night, he was gonna make sure they were just as fucked up about him as he was them.

feel like this STILL doesn't capture what i was originally going for but anyway if u watch ghost fiIes you Know. thank you for reading if you've made it this far also sincerest apologies for whatever the fuck this is

[dragonanon]

If you told me a year ago that I would get into makeup and then obsess over it to the point where I legit document in the notes app on my phone, the different color and product combinations I’ve used along with which clothes they look the best with, I would’ve asked if you were high. 🙃😅

[ashes-of-ailell]

man me posting that tier list suddenly makes Lucien's dislike of Lorenz make sense huh

(little rant in my tags just cause I'm a bit nervous, would mean a lot of you read (it's nothing too serious dw, just wanted to clarify some things))

[thistlecrimes]

Things I've learned from getting covid for the first time in 2023

I wear an N95 in public spaces and I've managed to dodge it for a long time, but I finally got covid for the first time (to my knowledge) in mid-late November 2023. It was a weird experience especially because I feel like it used to be something everyone was talking about and sharing info on, so getting it for the first time now (when people generally seem averse to talking about covid) I found I needed to seek out a lot of info because I wasn't sure what to do. I put so much effort into prevention, I knew less about what to do when you have it. I'm experiencing a rebound right now so I'm currently isolating. So, I'm making a post in the hopes that if you get covid (it's pretty goddamn hard to avoid right now) this info will be helpful for you. It's a couple things I already knew and several things I learned. One part of it is based on my experience in Minnesota but some other states may have similar programs.

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The World Health Organization states you should isolate for 10 days from first having symptoms plus 3 days after the end of symptoms.

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At the time of my writing this post, in Minnesota, we have a test to treat program where you can call, report the result of your rapid test (no photo necessary) and be prescribed paxlovid over the phone to pick up from your pharmacy or have delivered to you. It is free and you do not need to have insurance. I found it by googling "Minnesota Test to Treat Covid"

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Paxlovid decreases the risk of hospitalization and death, but it's also been shown to decrease the risk of Long Covid. Long Covid can occur even from mild or asymptomatic infections.

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Covid rebound commonly occurs 2-8 days after apparent recovery. While many people associate Paxlovid with covid rebound, researchers say there is no strong evidence that Paxlovid causes covid rebound, and rebounds occur in infections that were not treated with Paxlovid as well. I knew rebounds could happen but did not know it could take 8 days. I had mine on day 7 and was completely surprised by it.

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If you start experiencing new symptoms or test positive again, the CDC states that you should start your isolation period again at day zero. Covid rebound is still contagious. Personally I'd suggest wearing a high quality respirator around folks for an additional 8-9 days after you start to test negative in case of a rebound.

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Positive results on a rapid test can be very faint, but even a very faint line is positive result. Make sure to look at your rapid test result under strong lighting. Also, false negatives are not uncommon. If you have symptoms but test negative taking multiple tests and trying different brands if you have them are not bad ideas. My ihealth tests picked up my covid, my binax now tests did not.

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EDIT: I'd highly suggest spending time with friends online if you can, I previously had a link to the NAMI warmline directory in this post but I've since been informed that NAMI is very much funded by pharmaceutical companies and lobbies for policies that take autonomy away from disabled folks, so I've taken that off of here! Sorry, I had no idea, the People's CDC listed them as a resource so I just assumed they were legit! Feel free to reply/reblog this with other warmlines/support resources if you know of them! And please reblog this version!

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I know that there is so much we can't control as individuals right now, and that's frightening. All we can do is try our best to reduce harm and to care for each other. I hope this info will be able to help folks.