#Source 2 level editor

[silentwisher-feed]

Counter-Strike 2 Is COMING

Counter-Strike 2 Is COMING CS2 is generating a lot of excitement and there is good reason for it!… The excitement surrounding Counter-Strike 2 can be attributed to several factors. As a sequel to the widely popular game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), a first-person shooter that has been a staple in the gaming and esports scene for years, Counter-Strike 2 brings with it a lot of…

[valeriehalla]

I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.

I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:

the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and

the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.

Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.

Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.

In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!

And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”

That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.

Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.

It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.

The vibe with “Saki” is different.

It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.

There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.

So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.

The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.

Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???

Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????

[ngeruma]

"Twins" | Perpetual Testing | Portal 2 Community Maps & Mods

Original puzzle design by Leo Hammerisation by totes amaze balls

Laser logic shuffling that GLaDOS insisted on making just that bit more complicated.

Full Video

More Test Chambers

[funkopersonal]

Here's your daily reminder that...

Jews are only 0.2% of the worlds population but...

Jews make up 14% of the World Total and 38% of the United States of America total winners for the Nobel Prize for Literature (source).

Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023, at least 214 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. (source)

Jews make up 14% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 18% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; 53% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction (source).

Jews make up 39% of the total winners of the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for Best Play; 54% of the total winners of the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (with 62% of all Composers and 66% of all Lyricists of Best Musical-winning productions being Jewish) (source).

Jews make up 40% of the total winners of the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Original Screenplay; and 34% of the total winners of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (source).

Although Jews constitute only 3% of the U.S. population...

80% of the nation’s professional comedians are Jewish (source).

90% of American comic book creators are jewish (source)

38% of the recipients of the United States National Medal of Science are Jewish (Source).

Jews are very successful, with educational levels higher than all other U.S. ethnic groups with the exception of Asian Americans, and income levels the highest of all groups. Six out of ten Jewish adults have college degrees, and 41% of Jewish families report a household income of $75,000 or more” (source)

Jews are a minority across the globe. We've been historically opressed and hated. But these key figures from history are all Jewish and loved, yet many don't even know they're jewish (or they don't know these people in the first place!):

Stan Lee (birth name: Stanley Martin Lieber) - An American comic book writer and editor, Former executive vice president and publisher of marvel Comics, creator of iron-man, spider-man, and more.

Albert Einstein - a Theoretical physicist, Received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, developed the theory of relativity and the "worlds most famous equation"  (E = mc^2), and more.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, co-authored the initial law school casebook on sex discrimination, co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU in 1972, and more.

Jack Kirby (birth name: Jacob Kurtzberg) - an American comic book artist, co-creator of Captain America, one of the most influential comic book artists

Harry Houdini (birth name: Erich Weisz) - a Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts.

Emma Lazarus - An American author remembered for her sonnet "The New Colossus," Inspired by The Statue of Liberty and inscribed on its pedestal as of 1903.

Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Stephen Wise, and Henry Moskowitz - Jewish activists that helped form the NAACP along with W.E.B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell.

Mark Zuckerberg - Founder and CEO of Meta, a businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook, and within four years became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire Harvard alumni.

Joseph Pulitzer - a politician and newspaper publisher, his endowment to the Columbia University established the Pulitzer Prizes in 1917, he founded the Columbia School of Journalism which opened in 1912.

Jacob William Davis - a Latvian tailor who is credited with inventing modern jeans and who worked with Levi Strauss to patent and mass-produce them, died.

Irving Berlin - drafted at age 30 to write morale-boosting songs for military revues (including “God Bless America”). Many Berlin songs remained popular for decades, including “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better),” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and two celebrating Christian holidays: “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - received his doctorate in Berlin. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1938, moved to the U.S. in 1940, and became an influential figure in the 1960s, marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and speaking out against the Vietnam War.

Elie Wiesel - Romanian-American writer and professor, holocaust survivor, nobel laureate, political activist. Authored 57 books including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps

Bob Dylan - an icon of folk, rock and protest music, won the Nobel Prize in literature for his complex and poetic lyrics.

J. Robert Oppenheimer - ran the Manhattan Project, considered the "father of the atomic Bomb," presented with the Enrico Fermi Award by President Lyndon Johnson.

Betty Friedan - co-founded the National Organization of Women and became its first president, wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963) and helped spark the second wave of feminism.

Gloria Steinem - one of the most prominent feminists of all time, launched Ms. Magazine and co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus with Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers.

Sergey Brin - an American businessman best known for co-founding Google with Larry Page, president of Alphabet Inc.

Judith Heumann - a founder of the disability rights movement, led a 26-day sit-in at a federal building in San Francisco. The protest spurred implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a precursor to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Larry Kramer - co-founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis in response to the AIDS epidemic but was soon ousted over his confrontational activism. He went on to help launch a more strident group, ACT UP, and wrote a critically acclaimed play, The Normal Heart, about the early AIDS years in New York City.

Steven Spielberg - released his critically acclaimed epic film Schindler’s List, based on the true story of a German industrialist who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The movie won seven Oscars and led Spielberg to launch the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California, which filmed interviews with 52,000 survivors of the Holocaust and genocides in Nanjing and Rwanda.

Calvin Klein - made designer jeans and the infamous ad starring Brooke Shields revolutionized the fashion industry, sold his company to Phillips-Van Heusen (now PVH) for $430 million. Klein was the first designer to win three consecutive Coty Awards for womenswear.

Daveed Diggs - an American actor, rapper, and singer-songwriter. he originated the dual roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton, for which he won a 2016 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Along with the main cast of Hamilton, he was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in the same year.

And so much more. (a pretty decent list is available here)

Not only that, but the following are all Jewish inventions...

The Teddy Bear - made by Morris and Rose Michtom in honor of Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt.

The Ballpoint Pen - *the first commercially sucessfull ballpoint pen was made by Lazlo Biro, a Hungarian-Jew, and his brother.

Mobile Phones - made by Martin Cooper, nicknamed the "father of the cellphone", and was born in Chicago to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants.

The Barbie - made by Ruth Marianna Handler, born to Polish-Jewish immigrants.

Power Rangers - made by Haim Saban, a Jewish-Egyptian

Video Games - made by Ralph Baer, a German-Jew

Peeps - made by Sam Born, a Russian-Jewish immigrants who came to the United States in 1909.

Cards Against Humanity - created by a group of Jewish boys from the same high school

Many Superheroes including Superman, Ironman, spider-man, batman, and more!

and more! (an illustrated list available here.)

Conclusion: If you're Jewish, be proud. You come from a long line of successful people. No matter what happened to them, Jews persevered, and they strived for sucess. Be proud of your culture, your history, these are your people. You're Jewish.

(feel free to reblog and add more, or just comment and i'll add it!)

Last Updated: June 25, 1:35 AM EST

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Levels of Editing

The 5 Stages of Editing: Beta Reading, Developmental Editing, Line Editing, Copyediting, Proofreading

The Editorial Process

Writing

Drafting

Sourcing feedback from beta readers

Self-editing

Developmental editing or manuscript evaluation

Line editing

Copyediting

Proofreading

Publishing

2 Levels of the Process

MACRO / STORY LEVEL

This is where developmental editing (also sometimes called content editing, substantive editing or structural editing)

and manuscript evaluations (sometimes known as manuscript reviews or editorial critiques) are to be found.

It’s big-picture work that looks at the novel as a whole. Editors who specialize in this level of service focus on how your book works – stuff like structure, plot, flow, point of view, characterization and pace.

Story-level editing involves the following concepts:

Character arc: Goals, motivations and conflict

Effective dialogue

Genre: Impact on writing style and length

Narrative arc: Beginnings, middles and ends

Narrative style: Viewpoint, tense, voice and distance

Plot and subplot analysis

Problematic representation, stereotyping and othering

Story structure and pacing

Themes: the main ideas that connect the components of the story

World-building: creating engaging settings

MICRO / SENTENCE LEVEL

Includes line editing, copyediting and proofreading.

Sentence-level work that looks at the text on a line-by-line & word-by-word basis.

Sentence-level editing involves the following:

Chapter sequencing

Character-trait consistency

Cliché and awkward metaphor

Dialogue expression: style, tagging and punctuation

Effectiveness of sentence-level narration

Letter, word, line and paragraph spacing

Narrative style: Consistency of viewpoint, tense, voice

Effectiveness of narrative distance

Pace and flow: Special attention paid to repetition and overwriting

Problematic representation, stereotyping and othering

Spelling, grammar, syntax, punctuation, hyphenation and capitalization

Standard document formatting using Word’s styles palette: indentation, paragraph style, section breaks

Told versus shown prose

The Levels of Editing

STAGE 1: BETA READING

Authors send drafts of their novel to test-readers.

To receive feedback on structural issues such as plot, pacing, characterization, writing style and reader engagement.

Not the place for uncovering micro problems (spelling/grammar).

Beta reading may be free (via, say, a writing group or a critique partner) but some professional editors provide paid-for services (sometimes called early reviews) that provide guidance on the next-best editing steps.

It’s a good first step for those who want someone else to take their novel out for a test-drive before deeper levels of intensive editing begin.

STAGE 2: DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING

Also called structural or story editing - the shaping stage where decisions that affect how the novel works as a whole are made: Plot, story arc, structure, pacing, characterization, genre, narrative viewpoint and tense.

When the reader has finished the journey, they should feel satisfied by the experience of reading your work.

The journey might be bumpy. There are peaks and troughs – action, contemplation, and deduction, all of which are structured and paced so as to engage the reader as the story unfolds.

Developmental editing is where your story is tested and revised so that readers want to turn the page.

Alternative: Manuscript Evaluations/Critiques

Critiques can be thought of as mini developmental edits.

A professional editor provides a report that analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the writing, and what the author can do to improve their book.

Unlike full developmental edits, no changes are made to the book file. They’re an affordable first step for any author who wants to learn how to implement their own structural revisions.

Additional: Sensitivity/Diversity Reading

This is a niche form of evaluation in which a specialist reports on the potential misrepresentation and devaluation of marginalized others.

Readers are looking out for cliched, harmful, biased or false content and non-inclusive language.

Sensitivity readers focus on how others’ identities are represented in terms of race, sexuality, gender, physical ability, mental or emotional health, political beliefs, religion, age, culture and socioeconomic status.

Others identify potential problems with how those who’ve experienced abuse, trauma, violence, bigotry, illness, bereavement and poverty are portrayed.

They’re a valuable addition to the editorial process for authors who want to positively diversify the voices in their fiction but don’t have the lived experience of the individuals/groups they’re writing about.

Identifying goals and selecting a sensitivity reader with the appropriate experience is essential.

STAGE 3: LINE EDITING

The smoothing stage.

Sense is checked and flow is mastered so that the reader is driven to stay on the page and immerse themselves in the story’s world.

Good writing acknowledges that readers absorb words in a certain way – in the West we read from left to right and top to bottom, regardless of the device through which the book is delivered. Though our brains allow us to take in more than one letter and one word at a time, unless we’re scanning we move through sentences from start to finish. Those sentences should say what they need to say, and only that. Too many words, or repetition of what’s already known, can make the reading experience boring and frustrating.

Authors can play with sentence length and language style to reflect the historical period, genre, and the mood of a given scene. And punctuation is not about pedantry. It’s a powerful pacer that can evoke tension and impart clarity.

If a strong story compels readers to turn the page, line editing is what helps them want to stay on it.

Alternative: Mini Line-Level Critiques

No changes are made to the book file.

Instead, a professional editor provides a report that analyses the strengths and weaknesses of sentence-level craft.

The editor may suggest recasts to dialogue and narrative with a view to improving line-level flow, pace, drama and readability.

They’ll also offer advice on layout, spelling, punctuation & grammar conventions.

They’re an affordable first step for any author who wants to learn how to implement their own sentence-level revisions.

STAGE 4: COPYEDITING

The correcting stage

Inconsistent or incorrect spelling, grammar, and punctuation are attended to, and where logic is checked, such that the reader is allowed to follow the story without distraction.

Compelling writing makes readers forget that they’re reading.

Copyediting removes distractions.

Style sheets are the author’s and editor’s friend.

They record decisions on the language choice (e.g. American or British English), style (e.g. -is- or -iz- spellings, both of which are standard in British English), proper-noun spelling, character traits, location identifiers, the book’s timeline, use of idiom, dialogue treatment, how numbers are rendered, how capitalization and hyphenation are handled, and a hundred other decisions.

Many professional editors carry out line- and copyediting simultaneously because they’re complementary processes.

STAGE 5: PROOFREADING

The quality-control stage

Any final literal errors and layout problems are flagged up such that the book is fit for publication. Since human beings are doing the editing work, it’s rare for a book to get to the pre-publication stage without a few snafus remaining.

During the previous rounds of editing, new errors might have been introduced by accident. The design process can cause problems too:

Some elements of the book (a heading, a paragraph, a footnote) might be formatted inconsistently and incorrectly … think about indents, line spaces, end-of-line wordbreaks, page-number chronology, running heads and alignment just for starters.

Proofreading is the final line of defence.

The Order of Play

There’s a logical order of play when it comes to editing.

Think of it like building a house:

Developmental editing is like laying the foundations and building the structure

Line editing and copyediting are like plastering the brickwork, painting the walls, and sanding the floorboards

Proofreading is where you move in the furniture and fill in any tiny cracks that have appeared

Swap the order around and you’ll end up in a pickle.

At best you’ll waste time; at worst you’ll waste money.

Let’s imagine you invest in smoothing your prose and eradicating most of the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and consistency problems (line editing and copyediting). Then you discover a gaping plot hole that requires you to move two chapters, rewrite three, and make 75 sentence-level tweaks throughout the rest of the book (structural amendments).

Every move, every deletion, every rewrite, and every tweak brings with it the chance of damaging the line/copyediting work.

That’s time and money down the drain.

Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References

[aroaceleovaldez]

Mark Oshiro confuses me a little bit not going to lie. In the press tour for the first book all they ever talked about was how Nico is their son and Will is fine I guess. Then they said like 2 weeks before TSATS came out that they didn't understand Will's character at all and it's one of the main reasons why Will has so little POV.

Possibly unpopular opinion but I don't think it's a good, encouraging sign when the writer admits to not really caring about the deuteragonist or not even having a sense of how to write them...

Yeah, no. If you have no interest in 1/2 of the POV characters of your book, you REALLY shouldn't be writing it (or at least, not have that be a main character). Especially when the main way TSATS could have been improved is if it was primarily Will-centric instead of Nico-centric. Will basically had next to no established character prior to TSATS! He was practically a blank slate! But all the new stuff we got for Will in TSATS was so clearly disinterested and had no regard for his previously established traits (or the established timeline/canon). Which is annoying because fleshing out Will would have been the PERFECT opportunity to actually incorporate a lot of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in as a sensitivity reader, which was the ENTIRE REASON THEY WERE BROUGHT ON AS A CO-AUTHOR!!!!

As TSATS stands, there is no reason for Mark Oshiro specifically to have been the co-author instead of someone else. It's so clearly just a PR move from RR following the huge backlash Rick received due to his response to criticism on how he wrote Piper and Samirah (and Reyna and etc etc). This was immediately following Rick saying he wasn't going to write what would become TSATS because "it [wasn't his] place to." Most of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in either weren't relevant at all to TSATS or written very poorly (to downright offensively) in TSATS, so either Mark Oshiro wasn't doing their job or was not able to do their job for some reason, but either way it basically makes the theoretical justification for Mark Oshiro being the co-author/sensitivity reader irrelevant.

With Will, it was HUGE fanon back in the day for him to be trans. Trans!Will and photokinesis!Will were basically the two biggest headcanons for him (both largely popularized by Cherryandsisters). We know Rick is aware of this old fanon because he canonized photokinesis!Will. If we had gotten trans!Will, that would have been great! And then made sense why we specifically got a trans co-author! (Instead, if anything, TSATS canonized Will being cis.) If we had gotten Will being latino, that would have been amazing!!!! And also then made sense as to why they chose Mark Oshiro for the job as a latinx author/sensitivity-reader, versus potentially choosing an Italian co-author since Nico being Italian/Venetian was emphasized so much in the book (and done poorly! Yknow what they could have done to fix that? GOTTEN A SENSITIVITY READER FOR IT)! Based on the themes and focuses actually present in the book, it would have been most logical to get a queer, neurodivergent, Italian co-author or sensitivity reader who specializes in those three topics at least. But we didn't! So why was Mark Oshiro chosen instead when they only specialize in one of those topics? PR reasons. It's blatantly entirely PR reasons and no actual thought or care was put into this book (or, likely, TSATS 2 either).

It doesn't help that we're also actively being told that the published version of TSATS was a rough draft. Or that their editor blatantly isn't doing her job. Or that "The Sun And The Star" was the working title that they just kept cause they didn't bother to make an actual title. And that the final version is full of explicitly last-minute scenes that weren't checked over at all (the final Bianca scene, for one). Or the ACTIVELY ADMITTING TO SOURCING IDEAS AND INFORMATION FROM FANS! That last one is kind of important because at this level of publishing that is a HUGE no-no for legal reasons. You can get into a lot of trouble for that and there is a reason why it is Ye Olde Fandom Law to never try to pitch your ideas or headcanons to the source creator(s) and keep fandom separate from the creators. There is a REASON why Rick Riordan is so distant from the community these days and it's for PROTECTION AGAINST LEGAL REPERCUSSION. Mark Oshiro being the exact opposite while also ACTIVELY ACKNOWLEDGING sourcing concepts from fans does not bode well! It has to do with copyright stuff.

It's just. So. Sighhhhhhhh >->o <- me lying on the floor about all of this. It's sad being able to see the glimmer of what could have been at the very least a decent book underneath all this. If anyone involved in the process had actually cared just the tiniest amount.

[teaandspite]

The Great Goodreads Diss List (Part 3)

[Part 1] [Part 2]

This is the last of the list, at least at present. I'm not quite sure when I started saving these, but it's been somewhere around 6 years!

"I think we should thank this book for finding us a new source of renewable energy: Jane Austen's corpse spinning in its grave."

"DNF @ 30% and I'm embarrassed to have made it that far."

"was written solely because the author received a thesaurus for her birthday."

"This book was so horrible that my friends and I started a Terrible Book Club where we passed around a copy in which we wrote snarky comments in the margins."

"If I wanted to hear endlessly repetitive justifications of bad decisions, I would go reread my journals from 2003"

"I can’t believe I’m expected to care about these two people who have the collective personality of a chair"

'This is one of those books that makes me feel that, even though I had heterosexual parents and a heterosexual family and grew up in a heterosexual world, I will never understand heterosexuals.'

"isn't so much a cliche storm as it is a cliche monsoon, a tsunami of platitudes, a tornado of concepts that have been Done Before."

"someone PLEASE give [author] a bag of commas (or at least give them to his editor)"

"I am reading this For Science."

"This book could be the perfect door stop, but the cat sprayed it."

"This book is fine for people who enjoy chewing sawdust."

"[Title] was my first husband's favorite book, and he used to quote from it all the time. When we got divorced (it wasn't amicable), my lawyer asked how I'd feel about using that fact in court."

"If the main character were an instrument, she'd be a cowbell."

"There's a metaphor that has been beaten to death and will never bother anyone again."

"The characters [...] were flatter than frogs hit by all eighteen wheels of a semi. Even the dogs were underdeveloped."

"It's the OJ Simpson trial! But with an extraterrestrial! This will never get dated!"

"about as exciting as an uncooked Brussel sprout"

[Author is] "Someone you'd sit behind in a 100 level philosophy class and maybe secretly want to choke a little."

"I read this book while locked in a psych ward against my will. I would have rather stared at the wall for five days instead of reading this."

"[...] a metaphor so blunt I am surprised it did not injure me"

"It takes a certain and rare kind of writer to make a story about civil war, genocide, and a refugee crisis boring and unreadable."

"Use this book to stuff an old mattress."

"I cannot honestly say that [book] is the worst novel ever written, but I grant [author] the benefit of this doubt solely because I have not read every novel ever written. (In private, however, I maintain my suspicions.)"

"disintegrated in my hands, which felt like a blessing."

[ipushedthewrongbutton]

Imma do this final vent and then I’ll shut up about it.

This was a dumb move, from every possible perspective.

In the og goodbye video, they really made it sound like they were doing the streaming service because they wanted to go bigger, make cooler videos, really see what they could do and let their creative vision take the lead.

Growing as an artist is what you do when you Already Have The Money To Do So. You don’t tell your audience “give me money and then I will use to it to make cooler bigger things”. That’s not a streaming service, that’s a kickstarter.

They didn’t have the numbers to pull a streaming service off either. “We think we’re ready for television quality content” no you don’t. Sorry, no you do not. Television quality content means 30-50 crew per project, means at least 4-5 production being worked on at the same time, and at least 4-5 productions being broadcast at the same time. Watcher has maybe 2 series they upload simultaneously and they have 25 employees TOTAL. Not even CLOSE to tv levels of content, who the fuck do you think you are???

Did they really think all 3 million of their subscribers were going to follow them on this? Including kids, whose spending is dependent on their parents? Including the casuals, who only subscribed for the occasional video? Including people for whom $6 dollars on another streaming service just isn’t an option? Why DIDN’T they poll this, was this being a surprise really that important??

AND why would you completely cut off another revenue? Even if YouTube is restrictive, it’s still another source of income. Cutting that off completely is… bold.

Especially since in the apology, they let it slip that no, actually, it’s because Watcher is on the brink of having to close up shop because they’re not making enough money with just the patreon, the merch sales, the ad reads, etc.

So… one of those is a lie. Or at least part of the truth.

But let’s assume they are in financial trouble, then this was still the dumbest they could’ve done.

Welcome to the entertainment industry where we follow 1 giant fucking rule: Kill Your Darlings.

Fellas, pals, amigos, bros, dudes. If your projects spend more than what they make, it’s time to downsize. Not upscale. Cut the shit that’s spending the most money, start concentrating on how you can conserve without having to fire your crew. Put the projects where you have to fly out and buy new stuff all the time on the back burner, you can get back to them once you actually have the money for them. Work with what you already have. You have a MASSIVE studio space, fuckin use it. You HAVE sets, you HAVE props, you HAVE talent and you have ideas. Start workshopping all the crazy and shit ideas you thought weren’t gonna work and start thinking how you could make them work with the lowest possible budget you can have. Your audience is there, they’ll watch whatever you throw at them. Now is the time to go crazy and see what sticks. You HAVE viewership. Collab. CONSTANTLY. Get it the fuck out there that you exist. A lot of people had no idea a patreon existed, mention it ALL THE TIME. To the point that it becomes annoying. Do it!

If your studio is becoming too expensive, get rid of it. Sorry, kill your darlings. Move some shit around in Steven Lim’s tesla garage, put up some green screens, this is where you work now until you can afford a studio in LA again, you dipshits. Editors can work from home, sound designers can work from home, writers and researchers can work from home, meetings can happen in someone’s kitchen or living room.

And finally: be transparent. Be honest to your audience and communicate. “We’re sorry to put Ghost Files on hiatus, however we can no longer justify the cost of traveling to locations.” The majority of your audience will understand and show patience. The part of your audience that matters will wait and enjoy your other wacky shit in the meantime. Hell, they might spontaneously start their own kickstarter because those who can, will want to support you financially, if you’re just hONEST WITH THEM.

As a business, you constantly have to choose between your financial stability and that of your employees, your vision and the future of your company and what you Want to do with it, and your integrity, the trust between you and your audience. (Especially that last one, businesses can’t pretend they don’t have a relationship with their audience, that’s not how business works, guys.)

When you’re in financial straits, one of those has to go. Watcher chose the latter, they should’ve picked the middle. Their grand television quality ideas can fucking wait, if money is a problem.

Look, I’m an artist too. I had a vision too. But it was either my creative vision or being able to afford food and rent. Creativity can wait, creativity will always be there once I can support it. Living comes ALWAYS first. Asking my audience to fund my huge artistic dreams though, with only the promise of something cool, NEVER even crossed my fucking mind. That’s what donations are for, that’s what the patreon is for.

They apologised. And good. But this was a dumb decision from the goddamn start. There were like 500 steps in between and they skipped all of it. And for what? For money? For grand ideas? For greed or for hubris? How many of their original subscribers are actually gonna come back? How much money did they lose with this stunt? If they really are in financial trouble, this MASSIVE risk -which is what it has always been- might just be their downfall. And it’d be 100% their own fucking fault.

[smallmariofindings]

In New Super Mario Bros. 2, the boss area of World Mushroom-Castle is, like most other boss areas in the game, very small, containing a small corridor, the Larry Koopa boss room, and the post-boss cutscene room.

However, when loading that area in a room editor, it is revealed that the room is actually immensely large, with the sections seen in-game only taking up a tiny fraction of it (top left of the image). The rest of the room is taken up by a repetitive pattern of blue block platforms, which were possibly used during development as a test level.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source

[tarotwithdanise]

Your future best friend's personality

1 - 2 - 3

SOURCE AND CREDITABLE : All of the pictures are collected and downloaded from pinterest , I don’t own any of them but credits goes to the rightful owners however edits goes and the reading itself belong to me. I use the editor tools canva and ibispaint for the header and divider. If saved/downloaded the divider use a proper credits and tag/mention along my acc @tarotwithdanise. Expect grammatical errors with this reading, bear with it because english isn't my mother tongue.

💌 check out my back-up account @danisetarot bio ; click the link, choose your favorite deals that you wanted to purchase and then send all of them to my email account (daniseallure@gmail.com)

Pile one

This is someone who already on their spiritual awakening. They are someone who you can't just tricked and fooled easily, this person makes you think twice of all your actions. They are smart people, if you play trick ways, they will know it immediately without any hesitation because they are mastermind. You will meet this person to any spiritual groups and places. It can be that this is where they work or they're someone who used to teach others. People come at them to ask for their advices, they're great mentor. They like to inspire and be inspired. They might come off as mysterious and secretive individual too. You two will create a strong foundation of friendships. It's not yet the right time to reveal themselves fully to you. But all of i had said was the highlights of them.

Pile two

-this gonna be long compared to previous pile, this person is like an open book.

If I were describe this person, they always look at the bigger picture. Most likely, this is is someone who have vision board or they already have an idea what they want to be in the future. Most likely this person is someone who have a young spirit or probably younger than you. They enjoy and love to try new things, they're adventurous and brave individual. They're quite rare individual and ready for any change that surrounds them, in fact they're risk taker and will enjoy traveling around and across each country - they're adventurous individual. I see that they're talkative individual, someone who likes to share their MU's and crushes to you. They're typically jolly and has an extrovert personality, they like encouraging people. If I am not mistaken this person is probably the one who will try to get you out of your comfort zone. I picking up a strong masculine energy so they maybe a boy? but they can also be a girl that just embodied a masculinity. The cons of their traits is that, they experience unstable mental health and might have a very childish attitude, they probably has a lot of break downs with their past that's why. It's like they see their past self to you, that's why they're trying their best to help you as they can with pure intention.

They might be young but their experiences is level up into the next level that most of their ages doesn't yet uncover. I do also see here that even though they not really a ‘star pupil’ or a ‘straight A's pupil’ their classmates or their co-workers likes them to be their leader ; someone who will guide and lead them into a project or teamwork. Some people feels very irritated towards them because they're very jolly, hyper and friendly, somehow their friendliness can affect you because you only have them while they have many choices but what's more interesting here is that they're longing always for your presence, you maybe way more matured and intelligent when it's comes to logic rather than them so this is one of reason why few people take an advantage to their innocent and kindness. And what else? They prefer and like more to share their problems and secrets to you more rather than to their other friends. Like they typically see you as their only lifetime best friend while the rest of their friends is temporary. You tickled this person heart, you got their full trust. This feels like a friendship between a straight forward and trash talker person with their wild and funny friend.

Pile three

This is someone who maybe from a well-off family, it's either the relationship with their family is okay or in other way, it's broken. This is someone who is same age as yours, they likes traveling whether inside or outside of country. They also likes country music and artists. They are not emotionally stable and may need someone to lean on. It's hard for them to somehow find balance between two choices. This friendship may lead from friends to lovers, if both of you will pursued this connection. They may not be good at decision making but they are kind person and will do everything to share the life they have to their friends and other people. This person might own atleast one pet at their home and probably someone who may like the color of black. They maybe act spoiled and stupid sometimes but they're totally kind, it's just they used to act one. They may have an unpredictable nature and maybe someone who hold a lot of responsibilities even though they can't.

© tarotwithdanise ── all rights reserved. do not copy, translate, alter, or repost my work in any other social media platforms with or without my explicit permission.

[snorlaxlovesme]

How to Describe House of Leaves, an attempt by Me

it seems to make the most sense to treat it like an onion, and describe it from the innermost layer and branch outwards

it's about Will Navidson's film The Navidson Record. The Navidson Record is a kind of found footage autobiographical narrative about a filmmaker named Navidson and his family moving into a house that is much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, a haunting physical impossibility

but it's not about that, it's about Zampano, the man who wrote this dissertation on The Navidson Record. Zampano is a blind, old man who died in his apartment in an unremarkable way but leaves behind an eerie legacy, a collection of papers inside an old chest that looks like an APA-style dissertation on a horror film/documentary. this dissertation is filled with hundreds of quotes and citations from different sources, all included in great detail in the footnotes

oh, and it's all made up. the film. the citations. Will Navidson. it's all fake.

but it's not about that, it's about Johnny Truant, the man who found the chest full of papers in the old man's apartment, read them, and now is going insane because of it. or maybe not? Johnny feels like he's being stalked by some unknown horrific entity and is powerless to defend himself from it. he's got a fucked up past from two dead parents and a hell of a lot of stories that may or may not be true, and now he's got Zampano's work driving him to nightmares, and the nightmares following him throughout the day. he says as much in long, rambling footnotes of his own that exist beside Zampano's citations

but it's not even about that, it's about the fact that this is the fourth printed edition of this story, complete with colored text, 3 different appendixes, an index, and addition footnotes made by other Editors. this implies that either 1. previous editions existed that didn't have bonus content like that or 2. the author of this book, Mark Z. Danielewski wants you to think other versions of this book exist when they really don't

it's fiction that's like 10 levels deep and i got a headache just typing up that description. just wait til you see letter i just spent 45 minutes decoding

[mariacallous]

From the order in which members of The Beatles should be listed to the origins of the Pavlova dessert, “edit wars” have dominated Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, since its inception. Though many of these online discussions pertain to cultural icons and phenomena, some have taken a more sinister turn—especially when it comes to controversial or politically sensitive topics such elections, protests, or wars. This has become particularly apparent in the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, shaped by multiple competing and ever-evolving narratives.

Started in May 2001, the Russian-language Wikipedia is among the world’s top six Wikipedia sites and, until recently, has remained a popular source of information in and about the country. However, over the last two decades, it has become embroiled in controversy, largely due to the Kremlin’s state-sponsored disinformation plaguing the platform.

Reliant on government sources and edited by Russian editors, Russian-language Wikipedia pages have often featured pro-Kremlin narratives, especially in relation to Russia’s war against Ukraine. For example, while articles in English have clearly indicated the illegal and disputed nature of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its occupation of Donetsk, the Russian-language pages have previously downplayed the role of the Russian military and portrayed Donetsk as a people’s separatist republic (though it has since been changed and is now consistent with the English version).

Another example is the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. While the English-language version acknowledges that the flight was shot down by the Russian military, which is the international consensus, Russian Wikipedia has called it a “catastrophe” without any attribution of guilt. There are also many inconsistencies having to do with famous historical figures appropriated by Russia, such as those of King Volodymyr the Great or Nestor the Chronicler, both of whom lived in Kyiv.

Over the last two years, Russian courts have fined the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, several times over content related to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, according to a 2022 report, multiple groups of “sock-puppet” editor accounts, which have coordinated their activity to rewrite pages relating to Russian-Ukrainian relations while using false identifiers. These groups have actively undermined Western and Ukrainian information sources and instead endorsed Russian narratives and state-sponsored media.

Though Russia briefly banned Wikipedia in August 2015, it has now taken its digital offensive campaign to the next level.

Earlier this year, Vladimir Medeyko, the former director of Wikimedia Russia, launched an alternative platform called Ruwiki. The new platform started out as a copy-pasted version of the original Russian-language Wikipedia, exploiting a technicality of Wikipedia’s open-source agreement. Today, the new platform contains up to 2 million articles in Russian, as well as 12 other regional languages spoken in Russia, and is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation.

Unlike the well-established Wikipedia model, in which any user with internet access can create, edit, or update articles, which then undergo rigorous community moderation, Ruwiki works in a different way. While any user can contribute content, it is subject to review by a narrow circle of undisclosed, likely government-sanctioned “experts” to avoid “mistakes” and adjudicate “complex issues.” But it is no secret which issues are considered “complex” by the Kremlin, whose disinformation machine has been working relentlessly to justify its invasion of Ukraine and vehemently deny the war crimes committed there.

Ruwiki is an isolated digital ecosystem that has created an alternate reality. In this version, Holodomor, the man-made famine under Stalin’s rule that killed up to 8 million Ukrainians by some estimates, never happened. Ukraine’s regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and, of course, Crimea are missing from the country’s internationally recognised administrative map. The 2022 Bucha massacre, in which more than 400 Ukrainians were tortured and killed by the Russian military, is explained as an unverifiable “provocation.” And of course, the platform promotes Russia’s official (wrong) narrative that NATO “provoked” the Russian invasion and that NATO soldiers have participated in the war on behalf of Ukraine.

Ruwiki is the perfect example of the “splinternet”—the fragmentation of the global internet into smaller, divergent, and disconnected spaces. Sometimes, splinters form organically on platforms due to cultural and linguistic preferences of their users. But more often, it is a result of targeted government policies that restrict access to certain websites and services in an attempt to curtail free speech. These measures are often undertaken by authoritarian regimes under the guise of digital sovereignty, ensuring the state’s autonomy and control over its communication and digital infrastructures.

In 2011, Iran’s National Information Network (NIN) project, which envisioned the creation of an absolutely independent online ecosystem back in 2011, is a famous case of digital authoritarianism. Another example is Turkey’s new amendments to the Press Law, which came into effect in 2022. The law increased government control over social media and news platforms and has been dubbed as a “draconian” censorship law by media rights activists and opposition leaders.

Similarly, Russia’s Sovereign Internet Law, adopted in 2019, grants the Kremlin the power to isolate the Russian internet from other countries. The law requires Russian internet service providers to hand over many of their powers to the state, including the ability to directly censor unwanted content and prevent users from accessing alternative ways of seeing banned websites.

While these measures to nationalize the internet might seem benign from the perspective of maintaining technological autonomy, such concentration of power in the hands of the state also comes with an unprecedented ability to surveil its domestic population. Since 2019, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has direct access, complete with encryption codes, to access any messages transmitted via Russian social media platforms or stored on servers located within the country.

These splinternets undermine the idea of a unified and global internet. They create isolated pockets of content that is easy to censor and can only be accessed by users from within the state, thus cutting them off from internationally produced content. As numerous studies show, such fragmentation is a pathway to a rapid deterioration of democratic discourse on platforms that institute it.

Take, for example, Truth Social, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s social media platform, which routinely echoes radical right-wing narratives on immigration, gun ownership, and the 2020 election. Another example is Ukraine’s 2017 decision to ban Russian social media platforms, VK and Odnoklassniki, in the interest of national security, after the platforms had become a toxic cesspool of hate speech, racism, and xenophobia, with well documented calls to rape and murder Ukrainians.

Similarly, in 2022, Russian TikTok blocked all non-Russian content in Russia. Once splintered from the rest of the platform and left unchecked, it became a hotbed of Russian war propaganda.

However, Russian propaganda on TikTok is not limited to its borders alone. Recent research indicates that accounts affiliated with Russian state media, especially Russia Today and Sputnik, have enjoyed a wide international reach, with their content being shared in multiple languages. Once those accounts were flagged by the platform as Russian state-affiliated in 2022, they became inactive and switched to newly created, unlabelled accounts to avoid detection. Another action, which flew under the radar, was Russia’s use of political influencers to sway public opinion in the United States, ahead of its upcoming presidential election.

In light of these disturbing developments, we can reasonably expect to see Ruwiki move along the same historical pathway. Though other countries like China, Turkey, India, and Pakistan have either banned or threatened to ban Wikipedia, Ruwiki’s full control over facts will allow the Kremlin to retell history on its own terms—including denying its war crimes in Ukraine.

This—combined with the targeted destruction of Ukrainian books, the rewriting of Russian school curriculum, and the murder of Ukrainian public intellectuals in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories—will help Russia justify its expansionist goals and cement its colonial dominance over the region.

This digitally mediated historical revisionism is particularly dangerous in light of the increasing use of the internet as the ultimate source of information, especially among Russia’s youth. Splintered from the rest of the world, they will be coming of age in an alternative Kremlin-manufactured version of reality where “nothing is true, but everything is possible.”

[encyclopediacr]

Wiki Survey results: Feedback Pt. 1

Some useful background: Encyclopedia Exandria is a fork of the Critical Role wiki from Fandom. We began initial work in April/May of 2022, and formally announced the split around the time that EXU Calamity aired (early June 2022). A wiki is a living document, so many pages originally created on the Fandom wiki have since been heavily edited, but others have not. Feedback on all pages is helpful, but this is mentioned to give everyone some context on some choices, stylistic changes, and inconsistencies.

Another thing we want to address up front: our editorship is fairly small, and this is a volunteer endeavor. Additionally, within the past year, Critical Role has added both Candela Obscura and Midst - both of which we cover - to their repertoire. Darrington Press has put out two new full games, both of which we cover to an extent; and there are three separate comic series. We are pretty much entirely occupied by keeping up with new content and have not been able to go back to older material in depth. It may put things into perspective that unlike many other fan wikis, we summarize at least 4+ hours of new material almost every week, year-round. The single greatest way to address the majority of this feedback is by becoming an editor - even an infrequent one.

To that end, we are thinking about ways to make editing easier based on some of the feedback we received. Also: there are no qualifications! You do not need to have an encyclopedic knowledge - you just need to be able to look things up and make a good faith effort in citing them. 

We also want to direct you to other fandom projects and official sources, as some of the items we do not cover can be found here:

CR Stats stopped adding new episode information as of the beginning of this year, but has full detailed statistics for Campaigns 1 and 2 and Campaign 3 through episode 81. If you are looking for specific castings of a spell, detailed stats by level, or other granular discrete information, please check out the years of great work they did!

The Omen Archive intends to take up at least part of the mantle from CR Stats and has recently gone live!

The transcript search is an excellent resource as well; we rely on it heavily.

CR's fan art gallery and cosplay galleries are great resources if you are looking for a place to start for fan art and cosplay.

Finally: some of these questions are answered or addressed via the wiki's policies. These are available in the sidebar menu under “Wiki policies and help”. We'll mention some specific examples.

The following addresses constructive feedback from the survey, but thank you to everyone who left positive notes as well as to everyone who provided information on why and how they use the wiki!

The Feedback, Part 1: Existing Pages

The one to address first is quicker updates for new episodes. This is a volunteer endeavor, and the editor who writes the summaries works full time and lives on the East Coast of the US. The summary usually up within 36 hours of the episode's start (ie, by 7 am Pacific time on the following Saturday), and is often up within 24 hours. With the exception of current PC pages and relationship pages, which require some degree of analysis, most pages judged to be relevant to the latest episode are updated before the VOD drops on Monday. If there is someone who has a schedule such that they can immediately write the summary and would volunteer to do so that would be great, but until then, this is a turnaround we are satisfied with.

Relationship pages have recently been updated! These are difficult to keep up to date, and more editors are highly encouraged, especially since relationship pages are one of the more likely sources of bias and so multiple editors and perspectives are helpful in trying to avoid this.

Official images vs fan-created/galleries: All of our images are at this time from official sources (though many official artists are also fan artists). While in theory we would accept fan art and would distinguish that from official art, in practice we have chosen not to. The main reasons are that we want to prioritize canon depictions rather than pushing forth a specific fan's interpretation (with the understanding that there is variation even in official depictions), and, again, time. It takes time to seek out fan art, acquire permission, upload it, and post it. It can become outdated or even in contradiction with canon if we learn new information, and keeping up with permissions can become difficult if the fan artist leaves a social media site or the fandom. We love and support this fandom's artists and hope you check out their work - and our RSS feed on the main page is a great way to get to the fan art gallery - but we have decided not to pursue posting fan art for the above reasons. For more see our Image policy.

Google Search Priority: FANDOM is a for-profit business with an entire SEO team. We are a small group of volunteers. We would love to appear above them in Google searches, but FANDOM's entire business model is ensuring they appear first; they often appear above official materials for various fandoms. We do however own the domains EncyclopediaExandria.com and criticalrolewiki.com, and you can access us through those (which will redirect to our main page).

Style inconsistencies, page length, etc: different editors do different summaries, and have different thoughts re: relevance. The same editor may try new things. The nature of the episode also drives the exact stylistic choices: an all-combat episode will necessarily focus in more depth on the round-by-round combat since that is the content of that episode, whereas a brief skirmish in a more RP-heavy episode might be summarized more succinctly, even if neither combat is particularly heavy on RP or plot. If a difference in style seems to indicate a bias, or if you feel something isn’t being adequately covered in the summaries, please let us know; but as anyone can edit and is encouraged to do so, expect some variation.

Showing the abilities of magical items in table form: We are unsure of the benefit of this, particularly as many items are not terribly complex. If you'd like to elaborate, please feel free to follow up.

E69 or episode 69 or c3e69 not pulling up the episode: C3E69 (and other capitalizations) should work, as does 3x69, so if you have run into issues (especially recently after the server upgrades) please let us know. E69/Episode 69 will not, because if you don't specify a campaign, there are three episode 69s (nice). To make this a bit clearer, imagine you search on episode 1: at this point this could mean the first episode of three different campaigns; the first episode of four Candela chapters; the first episode of two TLOVM seasons; the first episode of three Midst seasons; or the first episode of three EXU miniseries. With that said, we can make a page on episode code conventions if that would be helpful.

Navigability in general: CirrusSearch has recently been turned on and is being stress-tested, so that may help with searching, but we'd love to hear more. We have improved some of the categories, but we’d appreciate more specific feedback.

Covering no longer available content: people are working through old Talks pages. It is a long and ongoing project, and as with everything else, your assistance and patience are appreciated, but it is actively being worked on! We also have a summary of the Feast of Legends, and a number of other since-removed one-shots such as Bar Room Blitz. See above regarding one-shots generally. Summaries for removed one-shots are of a higher priority of this lower-priority group.

Articles that don't correlate with fact or read like meta: This is something we take seriously, and if you could provide specific articles so that we know what it refers to, that would be a major help (the response did not provide any examples of articles) especially because this was an identified issue when a similar survey was run for the Fandom wiki. You can also flag these yourself if you wish; see the Neutral POV policy here, which includes instructions on how to mark a page as needing review.

Requests for a spoiler free option: The choice to not hide spoilers is a conscious one and is outlined in the policy here.

Thank you everyone, and we'll finish up our report of the survey results tomorrow!

[ngeruma]

"EYE" | Perpetual Testing | Portal 2 Community Maps & Mods

By KazerLight

What a wonderfully casual morning! ….Until, it wasn’t.

Full Video

More Test Chambers

[felinedetached]

The April/May 2023 MCSR Cheating Scandal Saga

(or, as much of it that I can explain as of May 3rd, considering we keep getting new info)

So, it all starts back in April of 2019 — 27 April 2019 exactly, when NikocraftHD posted his 3:59 Set Seed Glitchless Peaceful (SSGP) pre-1.9 WR. At 11 million views, it’s one of the most well known speedruns ever, and unquestionably the most well known run of its type. And four years later, on 30 April 2023, Eliotex dropped a video: NikocraftHD spliced his speedruns and nobody noticed.

Two of NikocraftHD’s runs were cheated: the 3:59, and a later 2:49 (26 March 2022). Both had evidence of a cheating method called ‘splicing’, or cutting videos of two attempts together. In this case, he additionally used a recreated world file and a NBT Editor to manually copy the previous world “level.dat” values for getting good End Towers. 

The 2:49′s evidence is, in retrospect, relatively obvious: Nikocraft had placed blocks during his run that should have been visible from spawn, but when he loaded back into spawn after going through the end portal, those blocks weren’t there anymore.

The 3:59 was harder to prove — until Crafterdark noticed something odd about Nikocraft’s hunger bar. If you’ve ever played Minecraft in peaceful, you’ll know that your hunger bar will never deplete. However, there’s two aspects of the hunger bar: the food level, and the saturation level. In peaceful, your saturation level does decrease, and when it reaches 0, your hunger bar starts to ‘bounce’ or ‘jitter’ every 3-ish seconds. Saturation level persists even between dimensions, meaning even when you load into a new dimension, if you have zero saturation, your hunger bar will continue to make that constant movement. 

When Nikocraft enters the end at 2:54, his hunger bar doesn’t start moving again until 3:30. That’s over 30 seconds without the periodical 3-second jitters. In the 2:49, after he enters the end at 1:50, his hunger bar doesn’t start moving again until 2:14 — roughly 23 seconds without movement. That second run, with a 23 second section without movement — the chance of that happening legitimately is 3.9E-34. That’s 0.00000000000000000000000000000000039.

Sources for this section: Eliotex’s video | Cheating Doc | NikocraftHD’s runs (3:59) (2:49)

Cool. So NikocraftHD cheated, twice, but you may be wondering: all of this was uncovered on April 30th. Why is this the April-May cheating scandal?

That would be because ten hours later, at 8am on May 1st for me, a runner who was incredibly popular and well liked at the time, Lide — who is a huge part of MCSR history — admitted to cheating his world records.

Lide got so many people into running. He was the first to use tower strats in a world record, he worked with so many of the legendary runners of that era. I need to emphasise: that this runner cheated, and sees it as a joke, has been heartbreaking for the community. I think Cscuile explained it best:

Sources for this section: Falco’s tweet | Cscuile’s tweet

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of it: around the same time, Loth realised something interesting about a 4:41 pre-1.9 SSGP run by bruono1st — who would have had world record if not for NikocraftHD’s cheated 3:59. bruonost’s run also showed evidence of a splice — the hunger bar once again stopped moving after he entered the end. Unfortunately, upon being called out bruono1st privated his run, and we can no longer watch it, but here are the tweets about it: eliotex tweet | poisonousskely tweet 

As of May 3rd, this is all that’s come out in total, but I hope this was an understandable and informative explanation of what’s going on for those curious!

[bakersstreetirregulars]

CRK 6/28/24 Update Notes

Text has been copy/pasted from the official Discord server with details from both their first announcement from June 19th and their second announcement posted today, omitting any details about a would-be Ancient+ Cookie, and slightly reformatted for appearance. Images are sourced from the announcements posted there. Personal Editor and staff remarks will be added using indented lines. The update is slated to release post-editing on June 28th.

[EN] June 28th Update: Feature Adjustment Notice

Greetings from the Kingdom team!

We would like to start our message by apologizing for the delayed June 19 update and thank you not only for your patience and understanding but also for the valuable opinions and suggestions you have provided. We promise to keep paying close attention to your feedback to make our game enjoyable for everyone.

In this announcement, we will cover the upcoming changes in detail.

——————————————————————————————

■ AWAKENING SYSTEM

To elaborate a bit on our initial idea, we wanted to make it possible to experience Dark Cacao Cookie’s new powers as a separate new Cookie without the need for prerequisite upgrades for the existing Dark Cacao Cookie. However, what we did not consider was the burden of extra upgrades for a new high-rarity Cookie and the potential confusion caused by the appearance of a separate yet similar Cookie.

To alleviate the issue of the upgrade burden, we have decided to change directions from the separate Cookie to a new upgrade system for the existing Dark Cacao Cookie with a greatly reduced number of new Soulprism items required for the Awakening upgrades.

[Awakening System Details]

Collect Soulprisms to awaken Ancient Dark Cacao Cookie.

Anyone can awaken the Cookie without additional requirements: collecting the required number of Soulprisms is all that is needed!

Soulprisms required for awakening Dark Cacao Cookie can be earned through various events, obtained from the gacha, or purchased in the Rainbow Shell Gallery. More sources of Soulprisms will be added in future updates, such as the Arena Tier Shop, Season Rewards, etc.

There are a total of 6 Awakening levels: each level will add a new star, and the stars will be merged into one great star at the final level.

After the initial Awakening, the Cookie’s appearance, background artwork, and lines will change.

Dark Cacao Cookie will gain extra appearance elements on Awakening Lv. 1/2/4/6, and his background will change on Awakening Lv.1/4/6.

⚙️ To attempt to interpret their thought process, they wanted to throw in all of these new features on a separate Cookie from the get-go, which resulted in the initial conception of Ancient+ Cookie Dragon Lord Dark Cacao Cookie. However, the kinds of upgrades and gacha promotions necessary to get a new Cookie regardless of their rarity to a usable level for things like Kingdom Arena and late-game World Exploration were ruled by the community as ridiculous, expensive, and unnecessary, which resulted in the amount of protesting they did on both local and international scales. After all, we have recently-added Beast Cookie Mystic Flour Cookie to use as a reference for a new standard in higher-rarity power. Instead, Devsisters is planning to add a new version of these features to Dark Cacao Cookie as he stands now by adding a new resource called Soulprisms, which can be accumulated by any and all players through most of the same methods that you would obtain Ancient/Legendary Soulstones. More collection methods will be added in the future. No additional upgrades are necessary to use them, meaning that you can Awaken Dark Cacao Cookie from level 1 if you already have enough Soulprisms in addition to the necessary Coins and Legendary Soul Essences.

As for the Awakening levels themselves, here is what you need for them:

20 Soulprisms and 500 Coins

30 Soulprisms, 10 Legendary Soul Essences, and 5,000 Coins

40 Soulprisms, 20 Legendary Soul Essences, and 10,000 Coins

50 Soulprisms, 30 Legendary Soul Essences, and 50,000 Coins

60 Soulprisms, 40 Legendary Soul Essences, and 100,000 Coins

70 Soulprisms, 60 Legendary Soul Essences, and 150,000 Coins

※ Ancient Cookies will acquire new Leader Effects after Awakening, and their skill will be changed to a new Awakened Skill.

※ The Cookie’s appearance, background, and character lines will permanently change after Awakening.

※ Awakened Dark Cacao Cookie’s costumes and Cookie Decor features will be temporarily unavailable. We will do our best to introduce them as soon as possible.

■ BEASCUIT IMPROVEMENTS

In addition to your feedback related to Dark Cacao Cookie, you have shared numerous suggestions regarding the Beascuit system. Contrary to our intention, which was to provide additional strategic diversity, this upgrade system felt overly complex and restrictive.

This is why we are planning to increase the number of obtainable Beascuits and reduce the related expenses in order to make this feature more easily accessible and enjoyable.

Here is the full scope of changes:

Increased chance of obtaining Legendary Beascuits

Cheaper Attunement

Cheaper Resets

More sources of Radiant Beascuit Dough

In addition to that, we intend to keep a close eye on your suggestions related to the Beascuit system to make further improvements.

Increased Appearance Rates

Enjoy an increased rate of appearance for Legendary Beascuits, more accessible Attunement, and more ingredients obtainable through breaking down unwanted Beascuits. Additionally, we are planning to increase the amount of obtainable Juicy Stamina Jellies that serve as the primary consumables required to obtain more Beascuits.

Higher Legendary Beascuit & Episode-specific Beascuit appearance rates

Increased amounts of Radiant Beascuit Dough obtainable through breaking down Legendary Beascuits

Shorter Juicy Stamina Jelly cooldown

BEFORE: x1 per 900 sec

AFTER: x1 per 720 sec

Juicy Stamina Jellies will now restock 1 every 12 minutes, which is faster compared to the 15 minute restock they had before. They will still only refill to your maximum limit.

Attunement & Resets

Enjoy the decreased prices of Attunement and Bonus Stat Resets.

Attunement

1–4 Attempts: Crystals x100

5–8 Attempts: Crystals x150

9–12 Attempts: Crystals x200

13–16 Attempts: Crystals x200

Resets (Beascuit Dough)

Common: x10

Rare: x15

Epic: x20

Legendary: x30

Package Improvements

Another way of upgrading your Beascuits is by purchasing the required materials with various packages. However, in some cases, packages ended up being the primary source of specific materials which was far from ideal.

Said packages will be removed and reworked together with the Beascuit improvements, namely the ones focused on Radiant Beascuit Dough.

To compensate for the disappearance of a potential source of materials, we will introduce new events and mailbox rewards with more ways of obtaining those materials in future updates.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for understanding.

※ Please find more details about the events to be added with the upcoming update below.

■ UPDATE REWARD

Once again, we would like to thank you for your passion for CookieRun: Kingdom!

As a token of our apology, we have prepared a reward for every player, which we will deliver together with the update.

Dark Cacao Cookie x1

Light of True Resolution x2,000, Rainbow Cubes x1,500, Crystals x3,000 (delivered to your in-game mailbox)

※ For those who have already upgraded Dark Cacao Cookie until ★5A will receive Light of True Resolution x3,000.

※ The compensation reward can be claimed after the June 28th update maintenance until July 16th, 23:59 (GMT+9).

🍮 This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for! To celebrate the new update improved with the community’s comments, everyone gets Dark Cacao Cookie for FREE alongside some extra sparkly goodies to get a head start!

⚙️ Here’s a tooltip if you’re a new account-both brand new and alts can enjoy this- in this game for the time being until July 16th. Claim this community reward between 6/28 and 7/16 once you have access to the mailbox for one free Dark Cacao Cookie, then use the two parts of the Might of the Ancients permanent events to get two more Ancients for free! In addition, you can choose Dark Cacao Cookie for Part 1 and you’ll already have a duplicate with 20 Soulstones you can use to immediately promote him to 1 star, all while being able to play with him in all game modes without ANY unlock restrictions that come standard with Might of the Ancients.

Additionally, on top of the above rewards, we have a special Login Event prepared that will begin on June 28 and last for 10 days. (GMT+9)

■ LOGIN EVENT REWARDS

Radiant Login Rewards

* All times below are in GMT+9.

They will most likely be sent to your mailbox.

June 28, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Beascuit Dough x500

June 29, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Time Jumpers x40

June 30, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Radiant Shards x400

July 1, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Mysterious Topping x5

July 2, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Bites Lv.3 x100

July 3, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Beascuit Dough x500

July 4, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Time Jumpers x40

July 5, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Radiant Shards x400

July 6, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Mysterious Topping x5

July 7, 00:00 - 23:59: Juicy Stamina Jellies x100, Radiant Beascuit Dough x100, Bites Lv.3 x100

Lastly, we want to thank the CookieRun: Kingdom community for bringing up the problems we clearly overlooked in our attempts to deliver a greater variety of content over a tight schedule. We are deeply sorry for the disappointment we caused. Please rest assured that we will take your opinions to heart and will keep striving to deliver the best experience in CookieRun: Kingdom!

We thank you for your trust and support!

————————————————————[previous 6/19 notes below this line]——————————

■ WORLD EXPLORATION: BEAST-YEAST EPISODE 4

Dark Cacao Cookie’s adventures continue in the new story episode, “Dark Resolution’s Glorious Return.”

Episode 4: Dark Resolution’s Glorious Return

Dark Cacao Cookie is set out to avenge his crumbled Dark Cacao Warriors! Follow him in his journey to find Mystic Flour Cookie.

Some battle stages have the Yin and Yang effect applied.

Beast-Yeast Episode 4 Battle Effect: Yin and Yang

White Effect (Yang): Enemies gain buffs when the Yang gauge is full. Their ATK and DMG Resist increase for a certain period of time, and they will receive less damage from Darkness-type attacks.

Black Effect (Yin): Allies gain buffs when the Yin gauge is full. Their ATK and Darkness-type attacks, DMG Resist, and Healing from Channel Darkness increase for a certain period of time.

In certain stages, Cookies become affected by Apathy and lose a percentage of their Max HP when hit by enemies.

The Tactical Skill “Twin Dragons" becomes available starting from stage 4-10 in “Dark Resolution’s Glorious Return.”

Witness the power of the awakened Dark Cacao Cookie with this Tactical Skill. Upon using the skill, the team’s Yin energy greatly increases. If Yin and Yang has already been triggered, this effect will be activated at the end of Yin and Yang’s duration. Whenever enemies gain a buff, it will be removed. If Dragon Lord Dark Cacao Cookie is on the team, Awakened King will enhance the Twin Dragons skill.*

*Potentially forgotten edit in their patch notes from their Ancient+ draft. Unknown if this refers to Dark Cacao Cookie’s skill after being Awakened.

You can claim “Fateful Cookie Cutters” for clearing Beast-Yeast episodes.

For players who have already claimed rewards for earning 3 stars in the Beast-Yeast episodes, “Fateful Cookie Cutters” will be delivered via the in-game mailbox once maintenance is completed.

“Fateful Cookie Tickets” can be earned through various events for a set period of time. Please note that the “Fateful Cookie Tickets” will disappear once said period is over.

■ [EPIC] PEACH BLOSSOM COOKIE

Peach Blossom Cookie is a Support Cookie who uses the skill “Heavenly Fruit.”

Skill Description: With a gentle flick of a peach tree branch, Peach Blossom Cookie summons a Peach Tree that will periodically heal the team and bear Peach Bao fruits. The ally with the lowest Current HP will receive additional Healing. Peach Blossom Cookie will give Heavenly Fruits to the allies to increase their DMG Resist and Debuff Resist. The fruit will also grant resistance to Apathy, and ATK and DMG Resist buffs when affected by Apathy. Enemies will receive Unripe Peach Baos, inflicting DMG, reducing their ATK SPD and MOV SPD. Peach Fragrance will protect Peach Blossom Cookie, making him immune to Apathy.

Note the him pronoun noted above. As for the skill itself, let’s break this down starting from the peach tree:

Allied healing, teammate with the lowest HP gets healed more

Buffs DMG Resist and Debuff Resist

Grants resistance to Apathy, and ATK Up and DMG Resist buffs when affected by Apathy

Enemy impact damage from Unripe Peach Bao Fruits

Lowers ATK SPD and MOV SPD

Peach Blossom Cookie is immune to Apathy

■ NEW MAGIC CANDY: DARK CHOCO COOKIE

Dark Choco Cookie’s Magic Candy has been added.

Skill Name: Downpour of Darkness

Skill Description: Blades of darkness rain down on the enemies, dealing extra damage and inflicting them with a debuff Darkness-type damage. The rest of the team will gain a buff increasing Darkness-type damage dealt.

ADDITIONS, CHANGES & IMPROVEMENTS

■ EVENT REWARD

The reward for clearing Beast Raid on Master difficulty has been changed.

Light of Apathy x1,000 > Light of True Resolution x1,000

Unknown what this will change into for now, as this note is from the Ancient+ draft

■ WINDMILL GARDEN

You can now favorite individual Cookie Houses individually.

You can now enter the Windmill Garden focused on a newly leveled up building.

Your position in each tab will now be saved and when flipping between the Windmill garden tabs.

■ RALLY EFFECTS

Names for Crystal Jam’s Rally Effects have been added.

Black Pearl Cookie: Predator of the Abyss

Frost Queen Cookie: Harbinger of Ice

Sea Fairy Cookie: Power of the Blue Waves

■ LEADER POP-UP & RALLY EFFECT TOOLTIP

The following UI elements have been improved:

Team Setup > Leader > Leader Pop-up improved

Team Setup > Crystal Jam & Rally Effect Tooltip improved

Battles > Crystal Jam & Rally Effect Tooltip improved

■ COOKIES

Some Cookies’ stats have been rebalanced.

🥁 Macaron Cookie

Base DEF: +10%

Base HP: +30%

CRIT% increase per stack upon using skill: 11.5% -> 15%

🪔 Affogato Cookie*

Base DEF: +18%

Base HP: +30%

*This will most likely not affect his boss form. If you don’t know the context for this note and haven’t been spoiled yet, you’ll find out in Crispia Episodes 13 and 14.

📚 Eclair Cookie

Base DEF: +45%

Base HP: +35%

HP Shield Duration: 3 sec > 7 sec

🐑 Cotton Cookie

Base DEF: +35%

Base HP: +30%

Periodic Healing upon using skill: 20% > 27.5% (at skill Lv.80)

🪴 Herb Cookie

Base ATK: +15%

Base DEF: +30%

Base HP: +40%

Healing upon using skill: 47.27% > 90%

■ TOWER OF RECORDS

The Laboratorium cutscenes have been added.

The text explaining the requirement for unlocking the Tropical Soda Islands has been edited.

■ NO DEBUFF IMMUNITY EFFECT

The Debuff Immunity animation and icon will not be displayed while under the No Debuff Immunity effect.

BUG FIXES

■ Fixed an issue where a certain cutscene unlock requirement for Tropical Soda Islands was “Explore Clouded Areas of the Tropical Soda Islands once.”

■ Fixed an issue where produced items could not be claimed in the Windmill Garden.

■ Fixed an issue where Star Jellies could not be claimed if Cookie Houses are placed in the Windmill Garden during an upgrade.

■ Fixed an issue where Stormbringer Cookie’s audio would not be played after equipping the Mystic Gold Costume.

■ Fixed an issue where the number of songs in the April Fool’s Day album would be displayed as “4” even for players who have not received them.

■ Fixed issues related to Immunity and Curse effects.

■ Fixed an issue where character touch lines would not show up for Mystic Flour Cookie.