#Google it - Your Rad This Week

[zephyrchama]

Hello!!! I love your writing and hcs its so fun and silly!!!! I hope I'm not bothering you and if it's ok do you do headcanon lists? I want to hear more of your hcs if its ok

Hi! You're not a bother at all, I have so many asks I want to respond to but they're never a bother and I seriously think about every single one!

(I overthink asks way too much and then get worried that too much time has passed but I still want to answer them hhh. I also hoard praise like a dragon. I will get to my ask backlog, I've already written a bunch of stuff for them.)

I've seen that list style before, I don't think I've ever tried it? Have I? 🤔 Let's give it a shot with some headcanons. (hold on how do I make a bulleted list on this site) (I need to google it)

Lucifer

He probably greatly enjoys when Asmo does his nails, because that means he can't pick up a pen and is forced to rest for a bit.

I like to think he gets his gloves from the same shop as Barbatos.

I have these gray/transparent hairs in my bangs that are currently not too noticeable (my hair is naturally dark), but they sparkle in the sunlight kind of like hair tinsel. I like to think Lucifer (and maybe Mammon and Belphegor?) have hair like this sprinkled throughout their heads, and that it sparkles like starlight in the HoL's candlelight.

Mammon

He'd probably iron his money. I don't know if the Devildom has bills in their currency or if it's purely coin-based, but if there are bills I feel like Mammon would take the crumpled up ones and iron them crisp again.

I bet he tried to take a bath full of coins just to see what it was like one time and got in trouble for scratching up the sides of the tub.

He goes gambling so often, he's probably good at telling when someone's bluffing. He calls lesser demons out all the time for bluffing to his face and it's incredibly intimidating.

Leviathan

Being one of the Seven Rulers, he's probably just as famous as his brothers and is recognized in public way more than he realizes, but he isn't approached often because he's so famous and powerful. I like the idea of a gap in how he perceives himself (an unconfident shut-in loser) vs how the public perceives him (a strong and mysterious demon within the prince's inner circle).

His tail is long. I made it irl, in-game it's gotta be over 10 feet. I imagine when he's relaxed at home it just splays out however, but anywhere else he keeps it coiled close to his body. Hitting people with the tail would be unbearably awkwardly, he doesn't want to take up a lot of space, and it's probably comforting to keep it close. He could subtly rub his own back with it when he's feeling anxious?

Satan

He knows a guy for everything. He's got a crop rotation guy. He's got an ear piercing guy. He's got ten cursed book guys. If you need something, Satan always knows a guy. Though, he prefers to be self-sufficient. I think of him as a very charismatic person who's great with other people, yet a big introvert.

He's so good at curses that I feel like he sometimes might accidentally put a low level curse on someone, without really intending to. It just happens on rare occasion, especially when he's mad. Someone looks at him funny and is cursed to spend the next three days sneezing every ten minutes.

Similarly, he's the one who uses magic most casually. His room appears the most 'magical' of the brothers, he probably has a very efficient way of incorporating his magic into daily life. (Nowhere near Solomon's extent, but moreso than the other brothers.)

Asmodeus

He probably sings a lot, just for fun, because Ayme-san is such a good singer. You'd often hear Asmo's voice humming or singing when he's home and in a good mood (or bored). He has an easier time memorizing school subjects when he puts it to music.

I bet students at RAD search his seat after school for stray hairs, and then sell those hairs to witches for love potions. It really upsets him but after getting them to stop for a few weeks, someone will inevitably start doing it again.

Beelzebub

Beel probably has one of the fastest reflexes out of anybody. They all have fast reflexes, but I like to think he'd be at least a few milliseconds faster than some of his brothers when physically reacting to things.

I don't think he likes being alone with his thoughts, which is why he's always eating or working out or spending time with his brothers. He might start overthinking things and getting lost in a maze of dark thoughts, so he works hard to keep those thoughts at bay. He has a lot going through his head but is a guy of few words.

Belphegor

I bet he knows so much gossip. RAD students probably have loose lips around him thinking he's asleep, but even if he is sleeping, he hears them and picks up on rumors. He doesn't care at all. He won't go around spreading things more. But it could become intel stored in the back of his mind.

He probably doesn't like to brush his hair - he prefers to have it brushed by someone else - but I don't think he'd allow Asmo to do it often. Asmodeus might get carried away and start giving Belphie high-maintenance hairstyles that are a pain to keep up, so he refuses hair help from Asmo on most occasions.

I was going to write the other characters but this is getting long and I realized it's not quite bullet point-y so it might not be what you wanted. ;u; Hope that's ok, thanks for the ask!

[otakusheep15]

Hey, sorry if your requests are full, and don't bother if you don't want to do it. But, I have four autoimmune conditions, and I'm wondering if you can make the Obey Me brothers (and any others you want) react to them. I have arthritis, which, for me, means the cartilage between my joints swells, causing pain, especially when it rains, snows, etc. I also have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is hyper flexibility (that with my arthritis means my joints pop out of place a lot), and I have localized scleroderma which means "hardening of the skin" and anywhere I get hurt has a chance of becoming a scleroderma spot which is where my immune system attacks the muscle underneath it, causing silvery bruised areas that dent in and i scar super easily. I have one big one right over my shoulder blade. And finally I have multi-connective-tissue-disease which means I have symptoms of other autoimmune conditions, the most noticeable one if occasionally my lungs try to fill with fluid (not bad enough that I can't breath, but enough that my lungs feel half the size). I got all of these diagnoses between the ages of 10 and 14. If you want to only do one or two of these, it'll be fine, but I haven't been able to find anything remotely close to this in someone else's posts. I do have a high pain tolerance, so I can still do almost anything others can do (except the monkey bars 🥲), and I walk with a cane on bad days. Stress does make my conditions worse. (Also, Mammon and Levi are my faves, and I like Asmo less.) Thanks a lot if you decide to do this! 😊

Of course, I can absolutely do this! I'm not the most familiar with autoimmune conditions, so a lot of what I mention is coming from google research and outside sources. If anything sounds incorrect, please let me know so I can fix it!

Also, so that this can relate to as many people as possible, I'm going to try and keep the specifics vague. I hope that's alright!

So, first things first: the Devildom is not exactly the most accommodating for you. It's unfortunate but it's true. If you need anything specific, you need to let someone (like Lucifer, Barbatos, or Diavolo) know so that they can better help you during your stay. Otherwise, you'll pretty much be on your own.

The first couple of weeks are a struggle. As you're getting to know everyone, not many of them are willing to help you immediately. As you make pacts and form bonds, they're more willing to understand your condition(s) and help you out, but it takes a while.

Getting around the Devildom is probably your biggest struggle, especially if you use any sort of mobility aid, or if you're less physically capable. Everything was built with demons in mind, and demons are already more advanced than the average human, so you can imagine how someone with your condition(s) might fare.

Luckily, you have all of the Devildom's most powerful demons on your side, and they're more than happy to help you once you've made connections. If there's a long set of stairs you can't get up, Mammon or Beel will absolutely carry you. If you need to take a break and catch your breath, Levi and Belphie will stick with you so you don't feel lonely. If someone is making fun of you or bullying you, Asmo, Lucifer, and Satan are all ready to throw hands on your behalf.

You also (somewhat accidentally) help bring about a lot of change to the Devildom. Diavolo sees how often you struggle to get around, what with all of the demon-centric architecture, and decides that it needs to change, especially if he wants to better relations with humans. He makes a lot of areas more accessible to those with mobility aids, and he also makes sure to place more rest stops (such as benches) around places that didn't previously have many places to rest. He also introduces more education on autoimmunity into RAD so that more demons can know about all the different types of conditions a human can have.

If you're having a bad pain day, your favorite brother is by your side the entire time, tending to your every need. Since the request mentioned Levi and Mammon, I'll use them as examples.

Mammon is lowkey worrying over you if you're having a bad pain day, but he's doing his best. Most of his day is spent grabbing things around the house for you. He brings you water, cooks you food, and finds sources of entertainment for you. If you have any sort of ointments or creams applied to your skin, he's very gentle with you as he helps you. He's also good at massages if you think it'll help you. If you desperately need to go somewhere, he is picking you up and carrying you there himself.

Levi is surprisingly good at taking care of you. He originally wanted to keep you in his room, but he realized his bathtub might not be comfortable to you while you're in pain, so he stays in your room. He brings plenty of snacks and drinks, as well as games and anime to keep you entertained. Most of your time is spent cuddling in bed while watching comfort anime. He does worry about accidentally making your pain worse somehow, but he does his best.

Overall, having any sort of autoimmune condition will definitely be a struggle during your time in the Devildom, but it gets better as you spend time there. You have a great support system of demons ready at your beck and call, all more than willing to take care of you.

[gold3nladybug]

* Gently places a grenade inside of a wasp’s nest *

Alright, so now that that’s out of the way, lets talk. I first read Worm in, oh, around 2014 when I was stuck in a city I didn’t live in with nothing to do for the better part of a week because all my plans had collapsed. I found it by googling something like “original superhero fiction”. I read it again in the last few years, and then read Ward. I say this because it means I read both pieces as complete works, and never engaged with them in progress - I didn’t stop to read the comments or even really spend any time in the fan community until quite recently, so I didn’t really have a handle on how other people were reacting to the text. Which means that I’m having an opinion about something that I’ve seen other people talking about in the parahuman tags, and I'm about to make that our problem together - that is to say, describing Victoria Dallon as a Cop. And, to be fair, that’s a pretty sensible thing to saddle her with; she do be upholding unjust power structures for the benefit of the strong at the expense of the weak. Its just that she also, sometimes, upholds unjust power structures for the benefit of the weak at the expense of the strong. Or the benefit of the strong at the expense of the strong. Or the benefit of the weak at the expense of the weak.

My favourite thing about Victoria Dallon, as of her stint as the protagonist of Ward, is that her only guiding Moral Principle is “I will do whatever I want, and I will justify to myself that it was the right thing to do” and that is so much more fun than just being cop-brained. Do what is Right (as defined by Vicky’s parliament of Herself, Herself but a Kid, Herself but a Wise Mentor Figure, Herself but a Nerd and Herself but Not Fucked Up) unless she doesn’t want to. Do what is Legal unless she doesn’t want to. Do whatever she wants that she wants to. She gets first pick on whatever the moral high ground is, because wherever she’s standing is the moral high ground - even if she’s just making the Tough Decision in a Bad Situation with No Good Outcome, she gets to place herself in a position of control and good judgment. And that’s a fascinating place to shove your protagonist, because it elucidates a lot of the inconsistencies in how Vicky views the world - . How can putting “criminals” in prison be imperative if Rain and Ashley going to prison is unbearably stupid? Vicky, ultimately, gets to square away the inconsistencies in her ethical axioms, because she doesn’t let them get in the way of her doing/feeling what she wants.

Which is a great flaw for a protagonist to have - the text even gestures at it when we get a quick look from The Fragile One’s perspective, because Vicky’s Genocide Alien Piece thinks its absolutely rad that Victoria will do anything to get her way and justify it to herself the whole time since that might make it possible for them to take over the world together and crush it beneath a forcefielded boot. Its a really natural flaw for Vicky to have, as well, because its all about manifesting control - she has to be right, she has to set her own path, because otherwise someone else could be setting it for her and that’s not something she can accept or go back to. Vicky’s not a Cop because she’s, in some way, better than that - she’s not. Its just that I feel like describing someone as a Cop implies that they’re following some kind of code, defending some kind of institution, part of some kind of group that is acting in its own interests or the interests of its superiors. Victoria might seem like she's doing that, but its incidental - the only one or only thing that she's accountable to is herself, and even then only if its convenient. (Where this all breaks down, of course, is that Wildblow decided at some point that Vicky actually was just right about everything which takes some of the wind out of my sails)

Anyway, I just think she's neat.

[protofans]

via mailer:

New single from Act III, “The Fight,” is now streaming on all the platforms. Click this link and pick your poison. We’re already up to like 30,000 plays on Spotify, so that’s something like 50 dollars! About 4 of us are gonna get to eat a burrito with that chunk of change (the other 4 will starve)!!! But seriously, we’re glad you’re all seeming to like it. There’s plenty more where that came from.

Cover design and new logo done by Caspar Newbolt with artwork by John DeLucca. I think they did a hell of a job, if I do say so myself.

And yeah… James Cameron may have beaten us by getting Avatar 2 out before we could release Act III, but mark my words, I almost somewhat guarantee that we’ll have Act III out before Avatar 5! The gauntlet has been thrown, Mr. Cameron. Come at us.

—FIGHT MERCH— Like that Fight art and new logo? Get it on some shirts! We’ve got a regular coal colored (nearly black) Tshirt, and girl-style scoop Tshirt to choose from.

And on top of that, we’ve got a pretty rad new raglan sweatshirt (raglan is the only way to go with sweatshirts. Believe me, I’m an expert). 

We’ve also got a pretty awesome windbreaker (with some rain protection) pullover with silver-ish print. This sort of a jacket is a first for us, so let us know how you like it by buying it or not (whichever is funnier). 

**please note** this new FIGHT merch will not ship in time for the holidays.

—CHICAGO— Our 2 shows at Reggies with Cybertronic Spree are now super sold out and we couldn’t be more excited to get back to Chicago for some Italian Hot Beef Sandwiches!…. and shows. See you there!

—EURO TOUR— And let’s not forget our upcoming Europe and UK tour! Get to a show and you’ll hear “The Fight,” as well as some other Act III jams. So get your tickets and help spread the word over there. Send your friends the link to “The Fight” to see if they like it and then bring them to a show even if they don’t. Maybe bring them to 5 shows. While you’re helping us with promotion, go ahead and start requesting “The Fight” at your local radio stations. And call in to TRL and demand that Cason Daly puts us on the show. Then Google who/what Carson Daly and TRL are.

MARCH 10th – Paris – Les Étoiles 11th – Amsterdam – Melkweg 12th -Berlin – Frannz Club 16th – London – Shepherd’s Bush 17th – Great Yarmouth – Sci-Fi Weekender 18th – Swansea – Sin City 19th – Oxford – 02 Academy 21st – Wolverhampton – KK’s Steel Mill 22nd – Glasgow – Stereo 23rd – Bradford – Nightrain

Remember that time in the last email where I said, “see you back here in about 3 weeks?” This is what I was talking about. Now that “The Fight” is out there, we’re gonna do the holiday thing for a bit, but then get right back into the studio at the start of the new year. Feeling good about this one.

-Commander

[internerdionality]

Rules: Be gay, do crime

Tagged by @dragonmuse (amen to you, that shade of blue is fucking gorgeous)

Relationship status: married since September 2019 (we didn't know that we were bringing on the apocalypse, I swear). We had a rainbow steampunk wedding at an amusement park on top of a cliff, it was fun.

Favorite color: I'm one of those scary fanatic purple-lovers your mutual warned you about

Song stuck in my head: Ooof, that's hard, there are several, you can check out my Current Earworms playlist for all of them, but in the past few months I've been listening to a lot of Stromae and Alec Benjamin, and then of course Lover, Lover, Lover by Leonard Cohen has been stuck in my head since I wrote a fanfic to it. The verse:

He said, "I locked you in this body I meant it as a kind of trial, You can use it for a weapon Or to make some woman smile."

has been, ahh, resonating with me a lot.

Last song I listened to: Darkside by Neoni (which I started listening to cause it has a Sandman fanvid set to it, you should watch, is good).

Three favorite foods: Duck confit, chocolate truffles, and my favorite restaurant makes these french onion soup dumplings that are ama... Kkay, look, I know how this sounds, but my mother was born in France, she got me started on this stuff early. I'm not a food snob, I swear. (A food domme, maybe, but...) Look, I literally had a fast food burger with extra cheese for dinner.

Last thing I google searched: A hamentaschen recipe (I'm late this year, I know. I was on vacation for two weeks over the holiday and then re-entry was difficult so I didn't really have baking energy until this weekend). I have always been devoted to Smitten Kitchen (who has my absolute favorite challah recipe), but her pastry skills are clearly better than mine because whenever I try her various hamantaschen recipes they fall apart on me. This time I used Tori Avey's no-fuss recipe and they came out much prettier (if, yes, less buttery and flaky).

Dream trip: My college bestie and I have always dreamed of taking two or three months and doing an eastern Mediterranean boating tour. Like, get one of those big catamaran yachts and visit Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt. One day when we win the lottery, right?

Anything I want right now: I'd really like a million dollars or so to buy the duplex next door so they don't tear it down and force my family to live next to a construction zone for however long (it'd probably be more than that, depressingly—housing prices are ridiculous here right now—but I imagine if I had a million in cash to put down I could get an offer approved). We just got the demolition notification about a month ago and... yeah. Gonna suck. Plus I've got ambitions of building (more of a) polyam spoonie co-op out here.

Barring that, a licensed contractor in the Denver who can build a wheelchair ramp, is willing to work with the mill levy funding process, and won't ghost me after our initial consultation would be super rad.

Per usual I blathered on here for far longer than the prompts demanded but that's me. Tagging @thetardigrape, @gement, and anyone else who runs across this post and feels like joining us.

[toastedicarus]

I was feeling bad about missing the first post, but apparently the next update is in MARCH so I'm not too late if you think about it?

One of the things that put me off reading Twig the first few attempts was that instead of joining on the premise of 'superheroes' or 'magic' I was instead slapped in the face with the premise of 'biology' which while I think Wildbow does an excellent job of mucking about with to create cool, horrifying, and other sorts of rad shit with, isn't exactly my personal cup of tea? I'm a fake wildbow fan, I'm here mostly for the Rad Shit and rely on other wormbloggers to present Themes and Ideas and such.

Sy this is a lizard. A snake with legs is just a lizard. Did you perhaps miss the second lesson, after 'life needs these elements' in which they go 'this is a lizard'?

The beginnings of Sy being a little shit. I don't remember him laughing a lot later on though? I've heard people (including wildbow) describe twig as a coming of age story, so maybe this is part of it. Like I said earlier, do not expect particularly deep cuts in this liveblog lol.

Hello Fred-From-Scooby-Doo. I sure hope you don't rot away first when these child experiments are revealed to have expiration dates. This is also the second mention of the wax masks that I thought were going to be like, an Everytime thing instead of just something prepared for this particular outing. I dropped my first reading this very chapter because I didn't want to read about wax cracking just as often as taylor reached out for her swarm, given wyvern makes Sy watch peoples faces for tells or whatever.

Hello the girls! I'm sure the gender ratio of the team here will have no surprises later on. Lillian gets a smaller introduction here compared to the other lambs(? I'm not sure if they're called that at this point.) I faintly recall her being the unenhanced medic/intern on the team, and I wonder if Sy thinking about her less here is intentional.

Hello Helen, who's apparently the best lamb (And I found myself agreeing with this with what little I read.) I forgot you were a fucked up blonde little girl like bonesaw, with the 'bending body in odd angles' I had swapped your mental image to the girl from the ring after a bit.

I had to google Wallaces law, because I am dumb. I don't know if this is 'alt earth Wallace got more credit for shit than Darwin did' sort of thing or if Wallace's Law is also a real thing.

Is this the problematic yuri I've heard about or am I reading too much into things because the next chapter comes out in march?

Giving Sy the benefit of the doubt for now that he's doing this because he thinks it's funny to make her mad and genuinely doesn't think it's an issue, and is also twelve(?). May change my tune later given I've heard it doesn't really get better?

Mostly clipping this bit trying to burn the aesthetic into my mind given I forget it over time, replacing every location with a new Generic Brown Brick Building. Haphazard buildings with petrified trees holding them up. Not just Detroit but More British.

We live in a so-Sy-ety.

Oh yeah it was intentional. I remembered one thing about twig, woo.

Very good character establishing being done here.

Hi Jamie. Trying not to read too much into initial description seeing as I know some spoilers about them, but not liking how they look with short hair instead of being happy with long hair is relatable. Men's haircuts suck.

I wonder if we ever get details about the gangs previous monster of the week shenanigans. Also if one counts the kittens, this is two mentions of baby murder in the first chapter.

Sy doing his thing is fun. The fact he's like 12(?) and looking down on the ten year old is also fun.

Wildbow fixing his problems with numbers by introducing ten dollars as a lot of money to share between a few ten year olds. Any attempts to calculate how much anything is actually worth in the twigverse is going to be wrapped up in this murkyness.

So you were curious then.

And given Helen's manner of sitting it actually is a recurring problem. god damn it Sy.

Wollstone, after a google, is just a reference to Mary Shelleys mother, and not another real scientist I should feel dumb for not recognizing.

I could not picture Jamie's hiding spot or the way the door was propped up. Taylor and your omniscient swarm to make sense of wildbow tabletop RPG paced fights, I miss you. I'll even take Victorias 'thinker 1' power. Someone stitch echolocation bat ears on Sy or some shit I'm begging you.

Confirmation that Sy was being a twelve year old about the ten year old he was playing.

I guess I can let the lizard thing go if Sy is only calling that because they're giving all their cases dorky saturday morning cartoon names

I remember Sy calling himself dogshit at fighting and I really hope theres more of these moments where shit he tries just fucking fails like this.

The gang of 12 year olds watching a man be devoured by his own creation, and Sy is more interested in putting Lillian in the out group for covering her eyes. I think this is why I dropped twig the second time, I judged it by it's first chapter and thought with the 'monster of the week' type of plot, with the focus on hunting and food, pretty much every death was going to be indulging in vore instead of other fun ideas for death in a 'biopunk' setting. Snake charmer is a decent starter antagonist, I'll probably have more thoughts about him once we have others to compare him to. Being against the academy but wanting to join it, spouting a few lines about

I don't know Sy well enough yet to know if he was lying to me, the reader about the fake fall he made sound natural in the narration, or if he's just actually bad at fighting. There's a post going around about 'real people falling for the acts that characters put on' and Sy might be doing that to me.

Hooray government created child murderers! You did it! See you again in March, apparently.

[twincitiesgeek]

This Week in Geek (12/25/23–12/31/23)

This week, celebrate the new year with a bunch of events, including a Big Lebowski themed bash, Sparklerama at the MN Children's Museum, a Totally Rad dance party with DJ Jake Rudh, a comedy sendoff from Vilification Tennis, luminary-lit trails, and more!

Welcome to This Week in Geek, your guide to events of interest to the Minnesota geek community for the week of Monday, December 25, to Sunday, December 31. (Jump to In-Person Events) Virtual Events Creative Night @ GPS Online What: Arts, Community When: Monday, December 25, at 6:30 p.m. Where: Virtual via Google Meet Let your creativity shine with drawing, painting, crafting, or whatever your…

[thatfraudcassandra]

2 months ago I found a lump somewhere in my body, and I watched it with morbid curiosity until I realized it could be something serious. I came home from the doctor with a BI-RADS 4 classification. "Suspicious for malignancy". Not exactly what you want staring back at you when you read your ultrasound results, but life has a wicked sense of humor.

So off I went to get it biopsied like the obedient patient I am, and I'm still not 100% sure what it is, but I'm getting "treatment" for it anyway. I live in fear that I'm getting treated for the wrong thing, that we missed something and I fucked myself up permanently. The human body is a curious little thing in that there could be 100,000 things that could kill you. I obsess about every single one, furiously Googling and writing spreadsheets to list my symptoms, medication, the food I eat. I have the health anxiety of an octogenarian. I suspect I have a mild inclination toward insanity. I find myself making playlists and Letterboxd lists labeled "grief" or "when it happens", but I abandon the project midway through because I'm terrified of the power of suggestion. Even writing this meant speaking the situation into existence, and I'm tempted to select all+delete. But it's been eating at me for weeks, enough for me to quit working for a week because of the enormity of the emotions. I never wanted to be one of those people whose topic of conversation is always about the constellation of illnesses that plague their existence, but here we fucking are.

Ugh.

I feel like I've reached the pinnacle of bad luck this year so I'd be happy to get off this train now, thankyouverymuch.

[itswavelengths]

The Steam Deck

After preordering Valve's Steam Deck in February I'm happy to finally have one in my hands. A week+ of use has me feeling confident in saying the dream of the device — to create an entry point into PC gaming that rivals the ease of console gaming — has been mostly achieved through a combination of great hardware and software tricks that boggle the mind. There's great writing out there about where the Deck succeeds in this quest, where it fails, and where it manages to exceed expectations, and despite being pretty high on this thing overall I can't help but nod along with some of the more critical takes. If you want to hear a few first-blush thoughts, Stephen and I have a new (maybe unsurprisingly huge) episode of Into the Aether focused on our feelings about the Steam Deck — from how it handles the basics like playing smaller and older indie or AAA titles to some of the newer and beefier titles like Elden Ring. You can listen to it here:

PC Gaming for the Console Crowd

Before recording the episode I set some ground rules for myself, specifically that I could only play things I downloaded from the onboard Steam store in an effort to get a feel for the device as someone who is buying a Deck to experience a taste of what PC gaming has to offer. In that regard, results are mixed but mostly positive. Some handy UI elements indicate what games play seamlessly out of the box, but older or more obscure titles may lack identification entirely. The games you'd expect to work well — those that feel like they were built with consoles in mind and have full native controller support — work well. Games built with PC in mind and require a mouse and keyboard... well that's where things can go off the rails. Titles like the Civilization series use a combination of the touchpads and trigger buttons to simulate pointing and clicking in ways that feel immediately natural and allows for a perfectly playable experience. Others come burdened with small text made for larger hi-res displays and keyboard commands that quickly become tiresome when trying to use the provided on-screen keyboard in the absence of actual hardware.

This valley between what is considered by Valve to be "Verified" and "Playable" is wide, but made manageable by the more genius aspects of Steam's community-focused features. Any game in the library has a handy button with a gamepad icon that will allow users to peruse community-submitted control layouts and sort them by either the amount of upvotes they've received from the rest of the Steam userbase or by the total cumulative hours users have played with each enabled. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (my muse) was released for PC in 2007 without gamepad support despite simultaneously launching on the Xbox 360, and yet because of the breadth of control inputs available on the Deck and the Community Layouts function, the game can be played without the need to download mods or alter the game files in any way. It's rad.

But even this process raises the biggest question regarding the Steam Deck as a product: Who is this thing for? For those seeking a console-like experience with the benefits of a PC library, the simple act of tinkering with settings to find the right gamepad layout might already be a step too far. And that's before the game has even booted up — there's the entire realm of tweaking graphics settings in-game and enabling the Steam Deck's frame and refresh rate limiters to find the right balance between performance, visuals, and battery life. Even for games like Elden Ring which have been marked as "Verified" by Valve, there's an aspect of getting your hands dirty in menus that might make less technically-minded players uncomfortable and hitting Google more often than they'd like.

The truth is that although I love the Steam Deck so far, I can't recommend it to everybody. I can't yet place it alongside the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series as though the biggest and best games will run smoothly out-of-the-box on release. I am hopeful that we'll see a "Community Settings" option appear alongside the "Community Gamepad Layouts" one day, or a way for "Verified" games to come downloaded with the best possible Deck-compatible graphics settings and gamepad layouts pre-installed. I'm thankful to sites like ProtonDB and the many many YouTubers endlessly cataloguing which games run well, and how to fix titles should they fall short — but for some consumers, the need to find and peruse those resources at all will be friction enough to bail. As it stands, I can't blanket-recommend a device that comes with a "you're going to need to do a lot of Googling" asterisk.

The Everything Machine

Once we finished recording, my self-imposed rule fell to the wayside. Although I still have a hard time nailing down who the Steam Deck is for, I know without a doubt that it's for me. Here's what I mean:

Although I'm excited about the prospect of playing games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding on the go, current AAA releases were never the reason I wanted to get one of these bad boys for myself. Hypothetically if God of War Ragnarök launched on PlayStation and Steam simultaneously, I would not choose to play it on the Deck. Some games deserve the pomp and circumstance of the big screen, of good speakers, and of fidelity without caveats. I'm not about to close my heart to the possibility that some games bridge the gap and become even better when made portable (the Yakuza games come to mind here), but I consider Elden Ring and its ilk to be a nice bonus instead of The Number One Reason to purchase a Deck.

There's a whole world of independent or PC-focused games that exist on storefronts like Steam, Itch.io, GOG and nowhere else that I have dearly missed over the past few years, specifically since switching to MacOS full-time. Sometimes these games come to console, sometimes they don't, but in both cases I consistently feel like I'm missing out on some of the most interesting work being created in the space. For every odd Mac-supported game (which to be fair seems to happen more frequently these days), there are ten others I miss out on until they appear on another platform. Rogue Legacy 2, which entered Early Access in 2020, is the sequel to one of my favorite games of all time and remained PC-only for two years until releasing on Xbox consoles. I spent a majority of those two years kicking myself for not having a way to play it, not being able to watch the progression of development over time during its testing period. I wanted dearly to be an early member of the community, and the Steam Deck will ensure that doesn't happen again.

I've spoken often on and off the show about my love of the emulation handheld market. These tiny devices enable us to revisit games that have been left behind by their developers in a form factor that feels modern and with functionality to match, like the ability to save and load a game wherever and whenever. As time marches on the games being left behind require more power and better hardware to run, and while that means trade-offs like the devices themselves becoming large enough to exceed pocketability, the caveats are worth it for those whose favorite games launched in the PlayStation 2 era and beyond. Besides being great for PC gaming, the Steam Deck is also run via the Linux operating system and is compatible with a plethora of emulators. Not only do I have a deep admiration for the previous generations of consoles gone by and frequently challenge myself to explore more of gaming's history, but I absolutely love tinkering with emulators. What the Deck is already capable of running needs to be seen to be believed.

With these three tenants in mind I've found the Steam Deck to be a resounding success by Valve in terms of providing what I expected and hoped was possible. The more time I've spent playing games and messing around with the many many options available to me, the more I feel like this is close to becoming An Everything Machine. That's not to say it's going to replace anything I currently use, but the flexibility offered branches into spaces I couldn't quite wrap my head around until using it for myself. The more I reach out into what I expect to be the Deck's limitations, I'm surprised at its ability to surprise. One shining feature offered by the Steam Deck is the ability to hold the power button down and shift the device into "desktop mode" — a fully featured PC based on the Linux operating system that makes use of the on-screen keyboard and trackpads to provide a surprising amount of mobility and customization. Taking it a step further, plugging any USB-C dongle with and HDMI port into the Deck allows users to make any external monitor an extra (or the primary) display. Add Bluetooth support to the mix with a wireless mouse and keyboard, and you've turned the Steam Deck from a device running a "desktop mode" into what is just simply a desktop computer. In my testing I've already gotten a ton of mileage out of the mouse and keyboard I have paired to my Mac Mini (the Logitech MX Master and the Keychron K3, both of which support multiple connections simultaneously) alongside a cheap $30 USB-C dongle I bought years ago from VAVA¹. You could, hypothetically, just purchase and use one of these things as your main computer. I absolutely will not do that. But you could, dear reader, and that's wild.

Moving the Steam Deck into desktop mode with this setup also wipes away my concerns about games that don't play well with the hardware's more obvious control schemes. The beauty of the options Valve has provided means UI-intensive strategy games with small text and a bevy of keyboard commands can be played exactly as they were intended. Sure it would be nice to find a community gamepad layout and make these games portable, but in the same way the spectacle of AAA sometimes demands a big screen, some strategy games demand sitting in your desk chair like a troubled lord in a ponderous rabbit hole waiting twenty real minutes before finally reaching towards the mouse to make your next move. Games can be both! And the Steam Deck can do both easily!

And then there's the emulation, which absolutely blows away the many devices I already own specifically for emulation purposes. I won't go too into specifics, but I will add my voice to the choir of people singing the praises of how impressive the Deck handles games from even the more recent generations of consoles. However, I do think it's worth noting that my experience getting to the point where I felt like retro games were working as expected took arguably more effort than many online would have you believe — there's more elbow grease required in almost all of the steps involved than you'll expect from the outset. We are, of course, early in the lifecycle of this product and all of the hiccups I ran into will smooth out over time between simpler custom-built software by community members and forum post after forum post of fixes and solves for those with the search-box acumen required. But as it stands right now, I found a lot of road blocks in my path to what I'd expected... and I consider myself to be pretty good at this stuff. There's bliss on the other end of that journey though. I'm playing games I missed dearly and completely lost access to, I'm playing games I've always been meaning to try, and all of them run about as well or even better than they did on original hardware somehow. And they can be taken on the go!

Playing Wind Waker – the original GameCube one – upscaled with HD textures truly is an amazing experience. The game is so beautiful and, 20 years later, I still love the sailing and soundtrack. And I get to play this on a Steam Deck. Without an official remaster, this will do 😍 pic.twitter.com/PPDkqRmB1V

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) September 19, 2022

Verified

So far, for my needs, the Steam Deck is all it's cracked up to be and then some. I appreciate that Valve has been shifting all of their production power towards getting consoles in the hands of players quickly because it means more and more people will have the same transformative experiences I've been having for the past week. And again, I'm only scratching the surface here. The extensibility of this product and the software it's built upon is going to continue to reveal new and exciting use cases over time and I'm deeply excited about the growing possibility-space. Valve themselves have stated they're hard at work on a second generation of this hardware, and while this might launch prospective buyers into the "should I wait for the Steam Deck 2" gravity well, as a current owner it only speaks to the success of what's been accomplished here and a commitment to further updates and development.

I'm amped about the future.

⏆

---

¹ Using a standard USB-C dongle and a Bluetooth controller like something from 8BitDo you can even come close to something resembling the Nintendo Switch's titular magic trick of easily flipping between handheld and docked modes. I'm currently eyeing this surprisingly affordable dock from JSAUX as Valve's official dock is delayed indefinitely as a way to test this out for myself on the big screen, or possibly even for a dedicated streaming setup.

[davincisslut]

What were you doing at the moment you read this question? reading this question

Have you ever been to McDonald’s? unfortunately

Do you prefer Chicken McNuggets or Filet-O-Fish? I’d sooner eat the box it came in

How many hours did you sleep last night? ~~5

What kind of television programming are you most likely to watch? none? static? lol

Have you ever owned a dinosaur? If so, which one? sadly, no

Do you have any actual gold? What do you plan to do with it? yes, keep pouring it down the throats of the greedy while molten

Do you have any children? Do you plan to have any? ew, no. no womb nuggets for me thanks.

Have you ever been in prison? If so, why? nope✨

What is the first thing you see when you look out your window right now? an indecipherable blur. I don’t have my contacts in rn to see long distances

How far away from you is the nearest nuclear power plant? an hour and a half. no clue if that’s a little or a lot.

How far away from you is the nearest tuberculosis ward? I’ve never contemplated that one. I’d have to google that

What are you doing right now? googling that (30 mins away from me)

How far away from you is the nearest ocean? 38 minutes without traffic, 55 with

What caused you to look up at the moment you first saw the sunrise this morning? bold of you to assume people here get up early enough to see sunrises

Do you drink alcohol? When was the last time you drank? yes, too long ago

Did your name change when you married? Why or why not? no, I married a cardboard cut out of myself and it has the same last name

Do you live alone? If so, why? If not, who else lives with you? my family for better or worse 

How many brothers do you have? How many sisters? What is the age difference between each of your siblings? one brother, 5 years

What date will be your next birthday? What day of the week was it last year? monday the 15th 

How many people do you know who have spent time in prison? 1

What is your position on the death penalty? should be used in fewer cases and needs to be better regulated and more humane.

Have you ever sat in a cemetery? it was a grounding experience

What is the fastest animal? me when running away from my problems

Are you mostly right- or left-handed?

Do you own any real gold? I do, an heirloom from my grandmother.

If you could live in any place on earth besides where you live right now, where would it be? amsterdam maybe?

When is your birthday? the beginning of the universe itself

Can you read in the dark? no, I do not have night vision, though that’d be hella rad

Have you ever taken a laxative? I can proudly say I have not

Proust left us with (or more accurately, helped popularise) a famous questionnaire that is still used today. Tumblr loves ask games, and I wonder, dear Frank: what would be your own questionnaire?

What were you doing at the moment you read this question?

Have you ever been to McDonald's?

Do you prefer Chicken McNuggets or Filet-O-Fish?

How many hours did you sleep last night?

What kind of television programming are you most likely to watch?

Have you ever owned a dinosaur? If so, which one?

Do you have any actual gold? What do you plan to do with it?

Do you have any children? Do you plan to have any?

Have you ever been in prison? If so, why?

What is the first thing you see when you look out your window right now?

How far away from you is the nearest nuclear power plant?

How far away from you is the nearest tuberculosis ward?

What are you doing right now?

How far away from you is the nearest ocean?

What caused you to look up at the moment you first saw the sunrise this morning?

Do you drink alcohol? When was the last time you drank?

Did your name change when you married? Why or why not?

Do you live alone? If so, why? If not, who else lives with you?

How many brothers do you have? How many sisters? What is the age difference between each of your siblings?

What date will be your next birthday? What day of the week was it last year?

How many people do you know who have spent time in prison?

What is your position on the death penalty?

Have you ever sat in a cemetery?

What is the fastest animal?

Are you mostly right- or left-handed?

Do you own any real gold?

If you could live in any place on earth besides where you live right now, where would it be?

When is your birthday?

Can you read in the dark?

Have you ever taken a laxative?

[gandalf-theslay]

Wouldn't it be like... really cool to like... have a Rabbi

[lucyoccupy]

“Is google broken or are people grasping the radioactive realities?” 461,000,000 MILLION A WEEK CLUB search results!? Really!?! GO CENSORS! GTFO!

“Is google broken or are people grasping the radioactive realities?” 461,000,000 MILLION A WEEK CLUB search results!? Really!?! GO CENSORS! GTFO!

“…Good luck on your efforts. As they say, “It’s complicated.”

Conclusion. The amount of Rad in the air now Dooms Humanity to a relatively quick Extinction. Have a wonderful radioactive weekend and remember to Dodge the Rads, it’s dangerous out there.”  Bob Nichols

  https://animoto.com/play/uDFHJpUsJ4WOXwv9B71IGw

  There’s #SomethingInTheAir   – SOMETHING TO TWEET ABOUT! GET UPDATES:   tinyu…

[fuck-customers]

Yall get a long one today because i guess i never told the first one on here before.

I used to be the Dept Manager over the otc pharmacy at my workplace and now I'm a nationally certified Pharmacy Tech at the same workplace. I make like 7 more dollars an hour for a MUCH easier job. It's great. My boss is cool as hell. Most of my coworkers are rad af.

Back when i was a DM:

Cust:what's the difference between rubbing alcohol and isopropyl alcohol?

Me, just googled this like a week prior because i was curious: well, all of the rubbing alcohol we sell is actually just isopropyl alcohol, so there's not one.

Cust: then why do they say rubbing alcohol.

Me: because different manufacturers make the labels differently. You know how Tylenol and acetaminophen are the same?

Cust: you're not smart. You're just a smartass.

Me: ok whatever. (this apparently upset her, and she demands i go get my manager, who conveniently was doing busy work like 4 aisles away, it's rare but they do work sometimes!)

Manager asks whats up and she poorly reiterates all that shit^ and he says, is2g, "you know how tylenol and acetaminophen are the same? It's like that"

She comes in a month or so later and tries to bypass me to call for the manager at the pharmacy, but they paged me. She goes "they made you a manager? Oh my god." to which i muscle memory respond "oh your god" she calls for a manager, i fuck off.

All that was like 3 years ago, right before the pandemic. She showed up last week and asked to speak to a TECHNICIAN (our cashier is a rank lower at pharmavy assistant and just won't cut it. I've been inside the pharmacy for 2 years at this point. So i stand up and offer to help. She asks for a thing i had never seen, because i stopped working out there to be a tech, and she just starts yelling about how she's gotten it here and blah blah blah and storms off. She came back ten seconds later holding the item.

BITCH IF YOU KNEW WHERE IT WAS WHY'D YOU EVEN ASK?

[ronoken]

So, who wants a publishing story?

No one?

…Tough.

To preface, this was prompted by a post I saw about always making sure you read a contract before signing it. I wholeheartedly agree.

So, I write books. A roundabout result of writing books is I occasionally get to speak at conventions. When I do speak at conventions (which hasn’t been for a year. Thanks, covid), a standard question I get asked is about the benefits of self-publishing versus getting a contract. And yes, I fully realize that everyone’s experience in this is different, and I get that. Here’s mine.

So, several years ago, I wrote a book. I put a solid year into it and did numerous rewrites, edits, etc. with three wonderful editors and boom. Book. Done. And then, like many who are impatient or who don’t want to run the risk of rejection, I self-published my first novel.

And to my great shock, I actually sold some copies.

Quick aside. I’m not famous. At. Fucking. All. Some is not millions. Some is several thousand at best. And that’s over YEARS. I am not widely known and I do not claim to be. At all.

So yeah, like, I didn’t sell a million or anything, but I was moving over 100 copies a month when I was putting in the marketing work. Not too shabby. I was hustling on Twitter, FB marketing, Google ad marketing, working the review sites, doing interviews, everything I could. And it actually worked. I can honestly say the number of copies I moved a month directly correlated with how hard I pushed. And when I pushed, I pushed damn hard. I even got to a point where a reviewer who became an editor for DC would routinely provide public reviews for my books, and I was doing a superhero series. Not gonna lie- it was fucking rad.

Anyway, after a couple years of doing this, putting out a second novel which sold okay, a bunch of novellas, and so on, I received an offer out of the blue to have my work officially picked up. For realsies.

Admittedly, I was over the moon about this. I was being contacted by an unsolicited source! AND THEY HAD MONEY!

Now, my work wasn’t Shakespeare. I knew that. They did, too. They offered me a nice little starting sum. Not a lot, but holy shit it was FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS UP FRONT. One of my editors reads my Tumblr and I don’t think I’ve ever told them how much it was. It was 5k. To start. Not a lot, publishing-wise, but that’s because the work was already done. See, most publishers will give you more, but the catch is it’s considered a down payment for more books in a series. They pay you to write future novels, and then they expect you to pay it back. I already had a shit ton of content out, so I essentially skipped that step. Which tells me that publishers really don’t expect to have to actually pay you much, but that’s another post.

To my editor- sorry I never said the exact amount. It felt weird, but it’s been years, so it’s not as weird? I dunno. That logic train made sense as I was writing this.

So, 5k upfront, and then 50% of all sales thereafter, and they would handle EVERYTHING. Marketing, scheduling tours, covers, putting me in stores, the lot. Considering how much time, money, and effort these things took, this was not a terrible deal, but there was a catch.

My story would officially no longer be mine.

Oh, my name would be on it, and I’d write it, but from there on out, the publishing house would have 100% control over how it was marketed, where it went, and so on. If they wanted to option it, I would have zero say and zero rights, meaning they could take it and do fuck-all, and I would be left with nothing. Per the contract, they could even go so far as to issue me a cease and desist on my own work and hire a new person to take over. I was signing away everything in my universe if I said yes.

So, despite the allure of having things offered to me like a legit marketing team, book tours, and money (such as it was), I said no thank you.

Now, it didn’t hurt that I’d already made 5k in sales by that point. I knew my worth and how to push to keep it that way, if I so chose. Also, it helped that I was in an okay place when that offer came in. I could look at it and say, “well, that sure would be nice, but I don’t need it.” A lot of talented writers aren’t in that space, and the offer of several months rent or money for food as well as REALLY-REAL PUBLISHING can be hella tempting. And I get it, for some folks, the deals work out alright. And for some they don’t. And I sure as Hell am not going to judge. Seriously, I still have vivid nightmares about working 60+ hours a week and not being able to afford baby formula. Hell, if they had offered that to me just one year earlier, I would have been forced to take it. At that stage of life, 5k would have been life changing. I was just starting to hit the OK section of life, and only barely. Money when you need it is fucking awesome, and sometimes, you take what you can get.

But if you are a writer? And you’re in a place where it’s not life and death? Read the damn contract. Every single time. Make good and sure you know what you’re getting into and ask yourself, is it worth it to you? If it is, awesome. Again, not gonna judge, and every situation is different.

In my specific case though, it was choosing a nice bit of cash over something I had slaved for years over. I couldn’t do it. I still can’t. It’s the one property I’ll never let go of because when I wrote it, I didn’t even know if I could write a book. It proved to me that yes, I really could, and that was worth more than I can put into words.

TLDR: Read your contracts. Make choices good for you. Some things are worth more than money.

[bustyasianbeautiespod]

to help answer the question of if catholic churches in the US are ugly...here of some pictures (from google) of churches i’ve been to. these are all in the same geographic area

this one is older, built in the 1880-1900ish. it’s considered the “nice” church people have weddings and baptisms at

this one is brand-spanking-new built in like 2012 i think? lots of people think the murals are stupid including my brother who loves to point out that the deer shouldn’t have both spots and antlers because when deer hit puberty and get antlers they lose their spots. 0/10 on the color scheme and like what the fuck even are those stupid peach/white stripes on the arches

no idea when this one was built. maybe the 1970s based on vibes

and this one is a very rad Irish Catholic basilica, even as an ex-catholic i can still appreciate the art and shit. built in 1890ish

overall i’d say the older ones are cool and the newer ones tend to skimp on the details like fancy light fixtures, stained glass, metalwork, etc. that give it a “catholic aesthetic”

My first reaction upon seeing this was “why is there so much blue⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️“ since the color is not usually used in Philippine churches. We mostly stick with reds and browns and golds (although i only attend church when it’s a family obligation like during christmas and holy week, perhaps in other days they have different color schemes?)

Unfortunately, I can’t find any interior photos of most churches I wanted to show as an example. Here’s one that’s renowned for being our oldest church i think and being very baroque and very pretty.

pretty sure this was 1500s. you can see the place where priests used to stand to give their homily (the elevated brown stand on the right side) which im surprised to not see in even the older churches you sent. When we do visita iglesia during holy week (viewing seven churches in a row during holy thursday and good friday) it’s churches like this that we frequent.

I would say this is the usual color scheme i see, especially if they’re old. newer ones (built in the 2000s) fall into more minimalist designs of white and brown.

This is the church I did my first communion in.

it’s significantly less grand. finished in 1994.

anyway, this has been fun! especially where and how i grew up where even if you’re not particularly religious, catholicism still plays a huge part in your life, seeing how stuff differs in other places is super interesting! Thank you so much for sending this in!

-Grey <3

[thehighfiveproject]

What should my card look like?

Confused about the format of your FBB card? No worries! There are no rules for how you use it. Print it out and decorate it with (eco-friendly) glitter if you want to. Use it as your target for archery practice. If you want to keep it digital, we have some very rad stamps that our friends have made which you can access at this google drive.

If you want to share it with us so we can reblog it, all you have to do is fill at least one square (just one! although if you filled more that would be swell) and notify us by including @thehighfiveproject in your post when you're ready to share. (You can also use the submit feature; check out our FAQs page if you have questions.)

Check below the cut for our sample posts. They're cute, we promise.

Nothing fancy, right? (Please do admire the very beautiful hearts, though.) As many squares as this user could manage that week, along with a list of what they did and links to the creators. Tags are also nice, because then -- when we reblog it to our tumblr -- we can easily apply those tags, and anyone who wants can see the fandoms/authors/artists represented in the bingo.

Here we have another sample post:

This person used one of our fun stamps to decorate their card! They also got a full blackout, so they'll get a Very Special Prize when we reblog it. Notice that this person also included ships and fandoms in each link -- that's not required, but it's a nice move! Means that other friends can see what treats might await them when it's time to share.

Hopefully these will give you a good idea of directions you can go. If you do the archery thing, though, please take pics.