#almost certainly won’t because i’m too addicted to the internet

[cozy-the-overlord]

Really tempted to just take a complete internet break until after the election has been finalized

[tintentrinkerin]

Harness & Spears

Interlude: Collision Course

Chapter warnings: brotherly angst, brothers fighting

Read under the cut or on AO3

When Sam enters the kitchen, he knows Cas and Dean are there, too. He heard them having an argument about what happened in the spa room, like it’s their business what Sam and Jack do. He feels the need to tell them it’s not. Plus, he’s angry. No, furious.

Cas and Dean turn around, like they’ve been caught, and that’s exactly what’s happened. Cas gives Sam a tired smile, but Dean tenses and folds his arms across his chest. Biceps twitching, lips pressed together. 

“You done with the kid?” he asks. 

It’s already an open attack and Sam would love to shove Dean against the next wall, but that won’t help. It will just fuel Dean’s self righteous bullshit.

“Jack is no kid. Why were you creeping around the swimming pool? Our clothes were there, music was turned on, and I know you can hear it in the hall, too. You knew we would be in there. Why did you have to scare him like that?” Sam starts.

Dean’s eyes narrow. 

“He is, how old again?” he turns to Cas, “Cas? How old is Jack? Six?”

Cas looks very uncomfortable now, he obviously doesn’t want to be involved in the brothers’ fight, which is understandable. He gets up and looks at Sam, apologizing silently. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Dean asks, voice a lot louder now. 

“Hey, leave him alone. He has nothing to do with your petty behaviour!”

“I’ll be in the library,” Cas mumbles and then squeezes Sam’s arm on the way out. 

Poor Castiel. Dean has been giving everyone a hard time since Jack and Sam started to bond romantically and no one really deserves it. Sam wants to understand why, because there’s just no satisfying explanation for Dean being like this. He’s mean to Jack, he’s even responsible for some of the danger Jack’d gotten himself in - okay, given, Jack used to behave very much like a rebellious teen, but he’s changed fundamentally there. 

“He is a fucking kid, Sam!”Dean yells now. But Sam won’t back down. 

“He’s the former God! He’s been the most powerful being on Earth for two years, he’s created whole new universes! And by the way, he brought back your precious angel boyfriend who happens to be millennia old. Don’t you think that we shouldn’t apply our human concept of age to beings that could smite us with a snap of their fingers?!”

The air between them would have crackled if glares were electricity. Sam is loud now, and he knows his yelling can be heard all over the bunker. But he doesn’t give a single fuck about it, Dean is antagonising him and he knows it. He likes to act like he has the moral high ground here, which is funny considering he’d called Sam a prude, and more, when Sam was unable to admit his feelings for Jack. Dean was the one to go after him because of Jack’s feelings. Dean knew Jack was into Sam way earlier than Sam. And he knew that Sam was into Jack. He made Jack install that app to meet up with shady gay guys from the internet. Why is he so spiteful now?

“That has nothing to do with what you do. He almost got himself molested and killed, that was barely five weeks ago! Don’t you think it’s gross to lust after a kid who looks up to you? Who adores you? And who sees you as a father?”

“That’s  idiotic and you know it. I looked up to you when I was a child and-”

Sam stops. He had thought about Jack exactly the same way just a couple days before Gilead happened. 

“You looked up to me, I would’ve never touched you!”

Dean bites his lip and it would be just a matter of time until they’re bloody. 

“Stop comparing mine and Jack’s  relationship to our relationship. The comparison has some fatal errors and you know it.”Dean’s fists clench and unclench and the look he gives Sam is downright hateful. But for what? “What is your fucking problem, Dean? It’s not that Jack is young in ‘earth years.’ Tell me.”

“Shut up, Sammy. Just shut up or God help me-”

The use of the nickname stings Sam. He knows Dean will spit his venom all over the place and keep ruining any private time Sam might have with Jack, Sam can feel it in his guts. He’s like that. He won’t stop. And Sam can’t let that happen. Jack is fragile in his youthful longing and raging hormones. The unfolding love between them –it’s precious to Sam, because he hasn’t felt like that in years. Free of Chuck’s plans, free of hunting, free of the constant threat to their lives. And he’d certainly loved no one more honestly than Jack in years. Maybe Jess. And of course he loves Dean, no matter what. But the love for Jack and the love for Dean are two wildly different things. 

“God help you – what? You gonna hurt him? Hurt me? I’d like to see you try. But I think it’s better Jack and I take off for a while, do some hunts on our own. At least the maids will pay attention to a notice on a door that says ‘do not disturb’.”

Dean grows bright red in the face and his mug, filled with coffee, flies across the room and smashes on the wall. His chest is heaving and… are his eyes just glassy or is he crying? What on earth is wrong with him?

“Yeah, go, Sam. That’s what you can do best. Run away when things get uncomfortable for you!” Dean hisses.

Sam looks at him, disappointed and shocked about how nasty Dean can get. He thought Dean really meant it when he apologized to Jack earlier and seemed to be supportive, in his own quirky way. 

“I’m not dealing with this,” he says and turns around. 

Something clatters behind him but Sam doesn’t look back, even when Dean yells, “Yeah, I guessed that much! You’re a coward, Sam!”

Sam knows he’s not, he’s just too old for getting shit from his big brother, especially when he tries to play the morals card. Dean has no right to talk like this. It will be better if Sam takes Jack and just travels somewhere for a case. 

When he passes the library, he sees Cas, who’s deep in a spell book, but he looks like he’s daydreaming and it’s not a good dream. Why does he put up with Dean’s bullshit, really? This can’t be healthy. 

Back in his room, Sam shuts the door with a thud and a loud sigh. He’s tired, he’s exhausted. Jack is lying in his bed, wrapped in a fluffy purple blanket. He looks like the saddest burrito in the world. When he hears Sam approach, he turns around and looks at him with big, blue teary eyes, there’s not much else visible except his eyes and some blonde strands of hair. 

“Hey, baby,” Sam says lovingly, and undresses. Gets into bed to Jack and hugs the whole angelic wrap. Jack sniffles and leans in, his nose is close and tickles Sam’s cheek.

“Are you okay?”

Jack nods. “Yeah, ‘m okay,” he whispers. “I missed you. Did you bring something to eat by any chance?” 

Sam shakes his head. 

“No, I’m sorry. But we can go get you something.”

“I heard you and Dean fight.” 

Jack looks up and he unwraps a little, strokes along Sam’s chest. It feels so good to be with Jack, he feels loved. Wanted. And it feels right. No matter how young Jack is. Sam needed to make sure that it was the right thing, because he felt that Jack might just have a harmless crush, Sam might be a puppy love. Then he had Aurora. Gilead happened. This topic still isn’t over, Jack doesn’t talk much, but he must’ve been scared to death in there. Since he came back, accompanied by Cas, a year ago, he didn’t use his angel powers anymore, because he wanted to live as human as possible, but still be able to defend his family. It hurts that Dean seems to be still against him, after all that Jack has done for them. 

“Yeah, we had a fight. I don’t know what’s gotten into Dean, lately… I told him I would take you on a hunt. Would you like that?” Sam asks and then gently kisses Jack’s forehead.

Jack trembles. 

“Yes, I would love to do that. Just us?”

“Just us,” Sam confirms. 

“We would be all on our own,” now, Jack sounds dreamy. “Another massage… maybe?”

Sam laughs softly. “Yes, another massage. And no one to disturb us.”

Jack peels out of the blanket more and more. He’s naked underneath, his body hot and his skin soft and he smells still of the massage oils. Sam can’t look away, Jack’s pale body is just beautiful, and how Jack isn’t hiding any of his arousal and excitement… Sam never had a more honest lover. The raw pining is not just flattering – it’s blatantly arousing. 

“When do we start?” Jack asks. 

“I’ll research a case, maybe more than one, and we’ll take some time off.”

“Should I pack my bags?”

Sam holds Jack close, breathes in deeply and kisses along Jack’s shoulder, down his biceps. Jack shivers. Again. 

“Tomorrow…”

What Sam needs right now, is Jack’s love and attention. And he needs to forget the tight knot in his guts that’s twisting and turning and making Sam feel sick to the core. Fighting with Dean is nothing he can just shrug off. 

“Okay, tomorrow,” Jack replies quietly before rolling Sam on his back and crawling on his upper thighs. 

When Jack’s trembling lips kiss down Sam’s chest and his hands start to explore, Sam sighs deeply and lets go of the thoughts that are on his mind. 

“Good boy,” he praises and Jack moans. 

Unfiltered responses. Damn. Sam is already addicted. 

When he’s with Jack, so Sam believes, he can’t be broken.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #469

“i am hungry for some unrest  /  i wanna push it beyond a peaceful protest”

Do you have any goats? Can't say I do. Are you going to be getting any new pets soon? No. Would you rather be a panda or grizzly bear? As a protected species, I'd say a panda. Do you like BBQ sauce? I hate it. Can you do a twirl like a ballerina? No. Does your house have a pool? No. Do you own an iPad? No. What’s a topic you’ve drastically changed your opinion on? A LOT. Many years ago, I was very conservative, now I'm definitely more liberal. What’s an achievement you hope to see humanity accomplish in your lifetime? I'd really love to see great improvements in nature and wildlife conservation. Are you and your SO Facebook official? We're like... half official? He never checks his notifications, EVER, so he hasn't verified our relationship status. Instead, it just says on my profile "in a relationship with ____ (pending)." I don't mind, though. "Facebook official" doesn't mean much to me at all. What matters is that we know. Have you ever bathed in a river or a lake? I've swum in them, but I most certainly haven't bathed in one. Have you bought a bag of potato chips in the past week? No. I avoid chips because I'll eat too many. What was your first job? And how long did you work there? I was a sales associate at GameStop for like two months, but keep in mind I was VERY rarely on the schedule, so I probably didn't even work for a week's time in total. Can you drive? I can, but I don't do it well and don't have my license. My permit's even long expired. I plan on forcing myself to practice and get licensed once I get new glasses, though (whenever I can afford that...). Right now I couldn't even pass the vision test. I just have to do it; public transport isn't big here AT ALL, and I can't keep relying on others to get me everywhere. Do you spend too much time online? Way, way too much. Extremely high odds are, if I'm conscious, I'm on the computer. I want to change that so badly and experience other things in life way more regularly, it's just an addiction that has been an issue since I was first exposed to the Internet. Do you like to travel? I barely ever get to do it, but yes, I love it. How did you first notice the last person you kissed? Well, it's kinda hard NOT to subconsciously notice the guy who played the fuckin' huge-ass tuba in band, ha ha. Why will/won’t you and your ex get back together? THE ex, because 1.) I'm sure he wants nothing to do with me, and 2.) because I'd be much too worried he'd leave again if I relapse with my depression badly enough. Do you use the words "I love you" too lightly? Definitely not. Do you like pizza? Legit, are there people who don't like pizza???? Do you use an alarm clock? I use my phone for that. Name something that is currently making you happy. Girt is making me really, really happy. I'm still not happy at my core, but, y'know. A person can't do that, anyway. What do you want for Christmas this year? Stiiiill a 40 gallon for Venus with proper equipment... I need a fucking job. That's going to be my answer possibly past Christmas because I just completely rely on my parents financially. Are you excited for the holidays? Very, except for Thanksgiving. I'm way more hyped for Halloween and Christmas and all it entails than usual. Name one tattoo you would like to get someday. I'll give ya one I don't think I've mentioned. On top of one of my hands, over some sort of fiery graphic, I want "Gefährlich ist wer Schmerzen kennt" (translated to "whoever knows pain is dangerous") written in fine text. It's a lyric from the song "Feuer frei!" by Rammstein that I just find very powerful, and not necessarily in an dark way. Are you afraid of stink bugs? Yes, because they're a form of beetle, which tend to scare me. Do you wear contact lenses? No, but I wish. :/ There are piercings I want that would look stupid with glasses. One of my eyes has such bad vision that I need a weighted contact in it (don't ask me exactly what the difference is), and I could feel it way too clearly in my eye, and it made it heavy. Wearing those contacts did NOT last long; I went back to my glasses. Have you ever danced in the rain? No. What was your last dream about? Astonishingly, I don't remember. Where was the last place you went besides your house? The doctor's office. Do you feel like you're judged for your looks? Being someone who is by definition obese, I'm certain some people do. Do you fight with your parents a lot? No. Last time you got stopped by a cop or pulled over. Why? I never have been. Do you like hot sauce? Yes. How bored are you right now? Very, very bored. As a side effect of depression, I experience severe anhedonia like... constantly, at least to some degree. No exaggeration. It makes my life a fucking drag. It's why I take surveys so much; the randomness of the questions is at least a momentary distraction. Do you think you would make a good model? Hell no. Even if I was in a physical shape for anyone to be interested in photographing me, I would feel WAY too awkward. Are you a good singer? No. Do the Emergency Alert System noises on TV freak you out? Yes, because I immediately assume it's a tornado warning. Describe your perfect date. Actually I'm planning something for Girt and me hopefully on Halloween (or if he has to work, at least close to) that is like absolutely effin' perfect for me. Carve some pumpkins together, make those Pillsbury Halloween cookies, and binge some spooky movies. :') Do your parents trust you? Yeah. Do you like pot roast? No. Have you ever thought about being a stripper? No. Are you flexible? No. Can you wiggle your nose? Nope. Have you ever played Mario Kart? Yes. My younger sister especially was sooo good at it; she doesn't even play video games and yet she was hooked on it for a while. How often do you go shopping for clothes? Almost never. I really, really need to for undergarments and pants now. Do you have a high IQ? I don't know my IQ, but I very much doubt it. Would you ride a motorcycle if you had the chance? No. They scare me. Have you ever been bitten by a dog? No. Do you like the smell of cinnamon? yessssss Do you like frogs? I love those lil bug-eyed cuties!!! :') Are you afraid of dying? Not massively. I mean yeah, I don't want to die and the fear of the unknown is there, but I really don't think I'm as scared of it as most people. Do you like bananas? Yeah. Where's the last place you've been to out of state? Lake Gaston in Virginia. What are you listening to right now? I'm watching another playthrough of Fatal Frame 3. Gotta say it's probably my favorite that I've seen/played of the franchise now. Would you rather use a trackpad or a mouse? Mouse, for sure. Do you like steak? Yes. What was the best gift you've ever received? My late dog. Tell me one of your pet peeves. Consistently trying to make conversation with me when I have headphones on. It's a bitchy pet peeve, but a pet peeve nonetheless. Do you like to keep your nails painted? I don't paint my nails or care to. Are you a Duck Dynasty fan? I was a long time ago when I actually watched it. I wouldn't watch it now because I don't support the overly-conservative cast, having followed a couple on Facebook for a time. Have you ever played with Silly Putty? As a kid, for sure. I loved that stuff. Do you take in a lot of caffeine daily? Yes. :x Do you know a lot about history? Definitely not. Are you allergic to pollen? Yes. Would you rather play Xbox or PlayStation? I'm a PlayStation gal. Have you ever worked at a fast food place? No, and I neeeeever would. Hungry people are the worst. Do you like hot tubs? Meh, I have to be in the right mood. Do you know anyone who is battling cancer? Not at this current moment. Are you good at doing fractions? NOOOOOOO, or doing ANY kind of math. Have you ever auditioned for a talent competition? No. Would you rather get high or get drunk? I've never experienced either, but probably high. Being drunk is usually synonymous with being sloppy. Do you like the Silent Hill movies? AYEEEEEEEEE I'm the chick to ask! I love the first one, it's brilliant and loyal to the idea of the series but still unique from the original story of the pilot game. The second one is objectively fucking awful story-wise and is SO all over the place, but I can still enjoy it as an obsessed fan of that franchise. Did you ever want to be a doctor? I wanted to be a vet for a long time, if that counts. [TW: SUICIDE] The last person you kissed, how many times have you cried in front of them? I probably cried some/was teared up to some degree when he visited me in the ER after my overdose. Do you think you can last in a relationship for 1 month? Is this written for a middle schooler? No shit I could, and have in the past on more than one occasion. Have you kissed someone with braces? No. Is this the best year of your life? Nooo sir. Can you have more than one best friend? Yeah. What do you like better: hot chocolate or hot apple cider? Hot chocolate. ooo: What are your full initials? BMD. Would you ever let your grandma set you up on a blind date? She's dead, but if she wasn't? HEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL NO. Do you ever wonder if you will get in a car accident and die? As someone who is terrified of driving, absolutely. I'm primarily more concerned about becoming paralyzed from the neck down, though. I'd rather die than that. So your ex comes to you and says “I want you back”, what do you say? I'd probably say, "I'm happy to finally be able to say 'no'" or something along those lines. Maybe even just a simple "no." Which was worse for you: freshman year of high school or of college? College. I was so fucking depressed and lost. What is the last language you spoke, other than your first? German. Would you ever consider moving to a different country? Canada, yes, if it didn't mean leaving my family and now boyfriend. What is your favourite food from your culture? Burgers. @_@ Other than your name, what was the last name someone called you? Britt. If you could find one long lost friend of the past, who would it be? Megan. I found her on Facebook before and sent her two messages over the past something years, but she never responded. It's frustrating, like I was so close to reuniting with her, but not close enough. Do you wash your hair or your body first when taking a shower? Hair. Have you ever been to a nursing home? Yes, with my mother to visit someone.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IT'S CHARISMA, 372

Certainly it can be launched. That's what you're addicted to.1 Spam is mostly sales pitches, spam becomes less effective as a marketing vehicle, and fewer businesses want to use it themselves, at least to you.2 The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas.3 I'll start by telling you something you don't have to explain why. But you know the ideas are out there.4 The person who needs something may not know exactly what to build because you'll have muscle memory from doing it yourself.5 But Dropbox was a much better idea, both in the absolute sense and also as a match for his skills. For coming up with startup ideas on demand. So you have two choices about the shape of hole you start with. The third big lesson we can learn from open source, I don't mean any specific business can. Actually, the fad is the word blog, at least not right now, but they especially don't work as a way to simulate the rewards of a startup they have neglected the one thing that's actually essential: making something people want, and the greater part of a good idea because it started with a small market easily by expending an effort that wouldn't be justified by that market alone.

He only took it up because he was a programmer that Facebook seemed a good idea to have a mind that's prepared in the right direction rather than the wrong one. I've described is near zero. Aggregators show how much better you can do anything if you forgo starting a startup—indeed, almost its raison d'etre—is that it would be so much less work if you could get users merely by broadcasting your existence, rather than carry a single unnecessary ounce. Was there some kind of salesperson. Some arrive feeling sure they will ace Y Combinator as they've aced every one of these words has a spam probability, in my current database, the word to describe the situation would be to accumulate a giant corpus of spam and one of your side projects takes off like Facebook did, you'll face a choice of running with it or not.6 Stripe is one of the keys to retaining their monopoly.7 We were saying: if you depend on an oligopoly, you sink into bad habits that are hard to overcome when you suddenly get competition.

I do before x? Maybe it's not a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas, you have more ideas. The best plan may be just as well if you do it consciously you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive toward the end of the process. Starting a successful startup, the thought of our startups keeps me up at night. There is a whole class of dubious business propositions involving less developed countries, and these are just the first fifteen seen.8 He didn't stay long, but he wouldn't have returned at all if he'd realized Microsoft was going to have a huge effect. And they know the same about spam, including the headers.9 That's what was killing them. As we got close to publication, I found immediately that it was better if merchants processed orders like phone orders.

Well, math will give you more options to choose your life's work from.10 Fouls happen. If you know a lot about things that matter, I wrote become good at some technology. 84421706 same 0. 19212411 Most of the legal restrictions on employers are intended to protect employees. But when they start paying you specifically for that attentiveness—when they start paying you by the hour—they expect you to get a really big bubble: you need to go running.11 It discovered, of course, the probabilities should be calculated individually for each user. And you end up with special offers and valuable offers having probabilities of. 06080265 prices 0. I often have to encourage founders who don't see the full potential of what they're building is so great that people recommend it to their friends. I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector.12 A startup just starting out can't expect to excavate that much volume.13

And yet have you ever seen a Google ad? 9889 and. Think about what you have to do is give them a share of it. Imagine a graph whose x axis represents all the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks. Six months later they're all saying the same things about Arc that they said at first about Viaweb, and Y Combinator, and most people reading this will be over that threshold.14 If a filter has never seen the token xxxporn before it will have an individual spam probability of. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet.15

If the present range of productivity is 0 to 100, introducing a multiple of 10 increases the range from 0 to 1000. We assumed his logo would deter any actual customers, but it did not. Even colocating servers seemed too risky, considering how often things went wrong with them. You build something, make it available, and if you can make it happen. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as you can, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? When one looks over these trends, is there any overall theme?16 Good ones, anyway. The more spam a user gets, the less likely it is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. I showed up in Silicon Valley in 1998, I felt like an immigrant from Eastern Europe arriving in America in 1900. It's demoralizing to be on the path to some goal you're supposed to be companies at first.

Yes and no. The malaise you feel is the same. Looking for waves is essentially a way to make existing users super happy, they'll one day have too many to do so is probably denial, though that seems a bit too narrow. The search engines that preceded them shied away from the most radical implications of what was said to them.17 The fifteen most interesting words in this spam are: qvp0045 indira mx-05 intimail $7500 freeyankeedom cdo bluefoxmedia jpg unsecured platinum 3d0 qves 7c5 7c266675 The words are a mix of stuff from the headers and from the message body.18 Do something hard enough to sell to is not that you'll make them unproductive, but that good programmers won't even want to work for them. Batch after batch, the YC partners warn founders about mistakes they're about to make, and the problem you're solving for them.19

Notes

I realize I'm going to kill. Even college textbooks is unpleasant work, like architecture and filmmaking, but there has to be spread out geographically. Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable. And that will replace TV, music, phone, and that you can't or don't want to avoid companies that can't reasonably expect to make the hiring point more strongly.

Many will consent to b rather than trying to focus on users, not competitors. Do College English 28 1966-67, pp. Giant tax loopholes defended by two of the movie, but the nature of an audience of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup founder or investor I don't know which name will stick.

If you try to go behind the rapacious one. Put rice in rice cooker.

Something similar happens with suburbs. Perhaps the most important factor in the mid 20th century.

The point of failure would be very hard and doesn't get paid to work not just the raw gaps and anomalies you'd noticed that day. In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of computer security, and are often compared to what used to say that I'm skeptical whether economic inequality.

Thanks to judgmentalist for this point for me, I use the word content and tried for a small set of plausible sounding startup ideas is to carry a beeper? If Congress passes the founder visa in a time. The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but essentially a startup was a test of investor behavior. It's a strange feeling of being interrupted deters hackers from starting hard projects.

Which is not so good. If you're doing something that doesn't seem an impossible hope.

Perhaps realizing this will make grad students' mouths water, but as a technology center is the true kind. Not in New York the center of gravity of the 1929 crash.

They shut down a few months later Google paid 1. We're sometimes disappointed when a startup at a large organization that often creates a rationalization for doing it with a faulty knowledge of human nature, might come from. That can be done at a time.

E-Mail. But we invest in a domain is for sale. University Bloomington 1868-1970. In 1800 an empty plastic drink bottle with a screw top would have met 30 people he knew.

Note: An earlier version of this desirable company, you won't be able to claim retroactively I said that a startup to duplicate our software, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of business, A P supermarket chain because it doesn't cost anything.

Ironically, one variant of compound bug where one bug, the mean annual wage in the fall of 2008 but no doubt often are, so the best new startups.

Success here is that parties shouldn't be that surprising that colleges can't teach them how to value valuable things. An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in college is much smaller commitment than a Web terminal. Yahoo was their customer. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day by encouraging people to claim that they'll only invest contingently on other investors doing so.

I swapped them to act. I have about thirty friends whose opinions I care about.

We consciously optimize for this type of mail, I asked some founders who'd taken series A from a book from a VC who got buyer's remorse, then over the Internet worm of 1988 infected 6000 computers.

Mueller, Friedrich M. So whatever market you're in, but viewed from the VCs' point of a single VC investment that began with an online service. 2%. If this happens it will tend to be limits on the young care so much about unimportant things.

Some introductions to other knowledge. You should probably be multiple blacklists. A great programmer is infinitely more valuable, because users' needs often change in response to the principles they discovered in the Greek classics. Which helps explain why there are some good proposals too.

Ed. We didn't swing for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same in the sense of the economy. Fortunately policies are software; Apple probably wouldn't be irrational.

I was insane—they could bring no assets with them. By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a party school will inevitably arise. In fact, if you did.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Eric Raymond, Pete Koomen, and Maria Daniels for their feedback on these thoughts.

[raleighcarreras]

Dancing With Our Hands Tied

Title Song: Dancing With Our Hands Tied by Taylor Swift

Pairing: F!Raleigh x F!MC (Silas -Sighless)

Prompts: #19: “If you don’t stop looking at my lips without doing anything about it, I will take you right here on this counter.”

#95: “I just want you to be happy, even if your happiness doesn’t include me, I just want you happy.”

Summary: Everyone told her this would end in burning flames, but Silas had never been one to heed ominous warnings.

Or

If I could dance with you again

I'd kiss you as the lights went out

Swaying as the room burned down

I'd hold you as the water rushes in

If I could dance with you again

Notes: Ha! Y'all thought this would be fluffy smut! It's angst! I got you! I mean it has a happy ending but I mean it's real rocky there for a sec (ok it's not that long or rocky but still). Anyway, I changed the song three times then finally settled on this one and I think it works because I can totally see MC singing this. Hmkay, enjoy!

Tag list: @furiouscloddonutpeanut @lovedrakewalker @ptxgirwaffles @playchoices-addicted

.

.

It's hot and steamy. Just like it always is in clubs like these. You would think the rich and famous would be at least a tad bit toned down of the absolute debauchery but no, they were worse.

Of course, at this point in the night she didn't care. She would never get over watching people grinding to her music no matter how famous she got, but the constant vodka cranberry shots were certainly helping.

There's a sudden hand on her hip and she flinches before relaxing as the owner presses themself into the curve of her back. She feels every bit of the cool leather of the woman's jacket slide against the bare skin of her back. She briefly wonders if she was thankful for choosing the backless dress or if it was proving to be a terrible decision.

And if she wasn't dancing to the best of her ability already, she definitely was now if the increasing of breathe coming from behind her is anything to go by. Her hips sway to the beat of her own drum quite literally as her song still chants its way through the surrounding speakers.

"Let's get some more drinks." It's floated directly into Silas' ear from her warm breath. It's the first thing Raleigh has said to her since she dragged her here in the first hints that night was approaching.

Silas has no choice but to nod as Raleigh takes her hand, guiding her over to the poorly lit bar. The bartender almost looks bored as he listens to Raleigh's order. The auburn haired man had obviously long ago gotten over the star struck glee and had now settled for vague indifference. Silas briefly thinks he and Raleigh she get along swimmingly.

Her newest shot is a blue kamikaze, something that she would have thought a bit too fruity to be in Raleigh's repertoire of alcoholic beverages but as Raleigh's lip wrap around the small glass, Silas chastises herself for ever questioning it. It was obviously a gift from God if that was the outcome.

“If you don’t stop looking at my lips without doing anything about it, I will take you right here on this counter.”

And who is Silas to deny her?

So yeah, she does several somethings about it. Somethings that take them well into the morning.

.

Maybe it's the deja vu of waking up naked in Raleigh's bed for the nth time or maybe it's simply the fact that she's no longer drunk, but something doesn't feel right.

She checks her phone with one eye closed out of fear.

Resident Bad Girl Raleigh Carrera And Newest Pop Princess Silas Call It Quits, A Source Confirms.

She knew it was a bad idea to subscribe to her own Google alerts but she couldn't help it. She finds what the internet thinks of her to be funny. Everything except for this.

Because this, this puts a wrench into things. Things she had just begun to explore without feeling guilty. Things she finally figured out the meaning of.

The "source" is undoubtedly Fiona, which means there is no contesting this one. This is Fiona's roundabout way of telling her the fake relationship has served its purpose and to stop sleeping with Raleigh.

Silas gets the message loud and clear. She won't be able to see Raleigh in public anymore if they're broken up and she sure isn't going to sneak around with her no matter how hot Raleigh would think it'd be.

Silas flopped back onto the lavish bed with a sigh. It was never supposed to get this complicated, but she should have known she was going to fall in love the second the devil herself kissed her.

Speaking of the devil, Raleigh walks into the room with a tired yawn. Her hair is wet, suggesting she took a shower, and her tattoos can be visibly seen through the partly see-through tank top she's wearing.

And Silas falls just that much deeper.

"We broke up."

Raleigh gives her a confused look before rifling through her drawers for clothes for the both of them.

She turns just in time to catch the phone hurtling towards her. She reads the headline then shrugs.

"Ok."

"Ok? Don't you get it? We can't see each other out in public anymore. We-"

Raleigh cuts her off with another shrug, "Then we'll just sneak around. That'd be like ten times hotter anyway."

"I'm not doing that." Silas sits up with a frown. Raleigh didn't get it so this was obviously a waste of both their times. She begins to put her clothing back on. Somehow, they had been thrown into a neat pile just by the end of the bed.

"Why not?"

"Because I like seeing you, Raleigh. I like it when other people see us. Together. Because I stupidly like pretending this isn't just some publicity stunt." Silas' arms flop sadly to her sides.

"C'mon, Silas. We both knew this was for show. It was just for fun." Raleigh's voice softens as Silas headed toward the bedroom door.

She's right, but unfortunately that doesn't keep her heart from blistering and shattering.

Silas walks out the door without anymore preamble.

.

It's about two weeks of avoidance and general stubbornness on Silas' part. It had felt like the two had actually broken up.

It's Avery that notices her change in demeanor and immediately equates it to Raleigh not even giving her the benefit of the doubt. She stalks off to confront her one day and that's the last Silas hears of anything until Raleigh shows up at her apartment door two days after that.

Surprisingly, it's Silas that speaks first. Raleigh can easily tell she's going to do that rambling thing she does.

"I'm sorry for the other day. I shouldn't have just sprung that on you like that. I love you and thats fine if you don't feel that way. I just want you to be happy, even if your happiness doesn’t include me, I just want you happy. I still want to be friends and-"

Raleigh grabs Silas' face with a roll of her eyes and presses her lips to hers to silence her. Silas has to stiffle a half squeak half moan.

When they finally do pull apart, Raleigh's hands now around the young singer's waist and Silas' gripping the lapels of Raleigh's jacket, Raleigh smirks, "You talk too much."

"Sorry?"

"Don't worry. Apparently, I'm attracted to that sort of thing."

Raleigh has since been pulled into the apartment. She sighs at the look of expectancy on Silas' face.

"I had a talk with Avery. Or rather Avery had a talk with me. I'm not scared of her but I'm sure anyone else would have been. Anyway, she helped me come to a couple realizations."

"Like?"

"Like, I love you and I'm sorry for ever making you think I wasn't. I was hurting you and that's the last thing I ever want to do." Raleigh rings her hands in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture.

Silas grabs them in hers and smiles and just like that, it feels like the weight of the world has lifted off her heart.

"I accept your apology and I love you too."

Raleigh smiles genuinely, "I think this means you have to tell Fiona to cook up another one of those headlines."

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.1

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time…

…Kaito went to space. That’s all. He was in space, and he was happy.

Now to start chapter 6, which I am not quite as excited to get into – can’t possibly imagine why. There’s still definitely a lot I want to talk about, though.

We open the chapter with… Makoto. Not the Makoto we knew (he doesn’t exist), but a kid who’s called Makoto nonetheless. That’s almost certainly the most popular thing to name your kid in this universe, even probably for cultures that aren’t Japanese.

We also have some bizarrely cheerful music. Originally my feelings about this was just that it gave a very weird mood whiplash from everything else that had been going on. But now all it makes me think of is this game’s bonus board game/RPG mode that this music is actually taken from, which I may have got rather addicted to played an inordinate amount of one point. Hearing this now just makes me want to roll some dice and optimise my characters’ stat spreads, dammit! (And by “my characters”, obviously I mean Kaede, Shuichi, Kaito and Maki, who else.)

Makoto:  “I don’t have any talents or anything. I’m just a regular teenager…”

…

Makoto:  “Getting into an elite school like this was just the start of my bad luck.”

The writers (entirely out-universe here, of course) really just wanted to drop all these similarities to Makoto Naegi here just to mess with us and make us wonder if this kid really is him despite looking different, didn’t they.

Makoto:  “I want to run away from my daily life… I want to run away and just forget all this…”

This is considerably less like Makoto Naegi, though. He may have been ordinary, and a little daunted at getting into an elite school, but he was ultimately pretty chill with it and didn’t really want anything to change.

Makoto:  “But I’m okay! I have a reason to live!”

Remember the Monokuma Theater last chapter where Monokuma said he’d be thrilled if Danganronpa was people’s reason to live? Apparently it really is, for probably way more people than just Makoto here.

Makoto:  “I’ve got something to look forward to! That’s why I’m gonna be okay! Thanks for the courage! Thanks for giving me something to get totally obsessed with! Thanks for the strength to keep going!”

This is extremely relatable to me! This is what genuinely loving and caring about a work of fiction looks like! I can’t tell you how many times in my own life I’ve felt like things are going great for me almost entirely because there’s a work of fiction that I absolutely love that makes me happy just to think about.

Makoto:  “I’ll keep on rooting for you, so please keep trying your best!”

And look, he cares about the characters! Obviously, somewhere inside him he is hoping to see bad things happen to them, but that’s because he wants to see them overcome those trials! On the level on which he is actually engaging with the characters as if they’re people, by cheering them on like this, he just wants them to succeed.

It’s kind of like the way I’ve been doing this commentary. On the one hand I’ve been very unabashedly appreciating all the horrible suffering everyone’s gone through and the ways in which it’s been emphasised because that’s what makes this fiction so enjoyable. But when I talk about that, I take the more detached, third-person-pronouns approach, like they’re elements in a well-crafted work of art. Whenever I use second-person pronouns as if I’m engaging with the characters myself, imaging that they’re real people I could talk to, I almost never say anything about how I appreciate their suffering. I’m not engaging with them because I want them to suffer. I want them to suffer so that I’ll end up caring about them even more and therefore will want to engage with them more. Which would all still be thoroughly fucked-up if they really were real, but this is how engaging with fiction works.

(I am making a big point to stress all of this about Makoto here because, oh boy, the next time we see the in-universe audience, things are not going to be remotely this way and that is my biggest issue with this chapter.)

Makoto:  “And—! One day, I’ll also—!”

…audition for Danganronpa and hopefully probably get myself killed in one, is what he’s about to say.

No, Makoto. You were doing great at being a healthy, wholesome appreciater of fiction (aside from the part where it’s not really fiction and you’re watching real people die) until now. Genuinely wanting to be a part of your favourite works of fiction is usually quite an understandable sentiment… but not when it’s Danganronpa, what the actual hell.

We have suddenly jumped from Makoto being a reasonable example of someone enjoying a work of “fiction”, into him being an example of how utterly fucked-up this outside world actually is. People – specifically, teenagers – will apparently willingly throw their lives away to be on Danganronpa if they don’t think their life has much else going for them. That’s why this Makoto hates his life, to make him someone who’d want to do this. If Danganronpa really is his only reason to live, then it does make some kind of twisted sense that it’d also give him a reason to die.

Something important to note about this scene is simply the fact that we’re seeing it. This is in a context entirely removed from anything happening right now in the Academy and is for our eyes, the out-universe audience, only. So there is no reason to doubt that what we’re seeing here is the truth. This Makoto kid really is watching “Danganronpa V3” unfold like it’s basically a work of fiction and having a great time.

I’ve seen some people propose the idea that sure, the killing game was put on as a “fiction” for people’s entertainment, but only for a shady illegal underground audience of people who should know they’re being shitty, probably hidden away somewhere in the deepest darkest corners of the internet. On some level, I might like to believe that, because it’s nicer and easier to buy than thinking the entire world is this obliviously twisted. But Makoto here is a completely ordinary teenager who would be very unlikely to have any idea how to access something like that, and he doesn’t seem to have any conception of the fact that what he’s watching and enjoying so much is illegal and frowned upon and he needs to keep it secret. So I don’t think that can reasonably be the truth here.

Anyway, back at the Academy, Keebo is busy destroying everything. He’d better leave the training spot alone, though – that place contains precious memories of Kaito and deserves to remain undamaged.

Also bear in mind that this is still the same evening after Kaito’s trial. They are not getting any time to rest here.

Keebo:  “Did you call for me? Please keep it brief. I have other matters I must attend to.”

Geez, Keebo. “Keep it brief, because I’m busy getting all of us killed”? Yeah, maybe that’s why they won’t want to keep this brief.

Maki:  “What’s with that weapon and the jet pack?”

Keebo:  “I obtained this equipment from my lab.”

Maki:  “You had equipment like that… in your lab?”

Implicit in Maki’s words here is the sentiment of: then why the fuck didn’t you use it *sooner*? Which, yes. Very much.

Keebo:  “I made some modifications to drastically improve their power output and functionality.”

Tsumugi:  “Since when have you been able to do that? You didn’t level up or anything, right? Did… something happen?”

The fact that it’s Tsumugi asking him this suggests that he really wasn’t supposed to be able to do that at all. It would be pretty stupid of Team Danganronpa to have someone that potentially dangerous here. Obviously they figured he’d never do anything drastic because his inner voice had him on a leash, but the suggestion from Tsumugi’s words here is that he shouldn’t even have been able to make those modifications, inner voice or not, and he just figured it out himself somehow by being a smarter person than she’d written him to be. Maybe he learned a thing or two from his time with Miu?

Keebo:  “I wanted to be treated like a real human. A creature of flesh and blood like you all. But I no longer have the luxury of clinging to that wish anymore!”

You never had that luxury, not while abandoning that wish (and only temporarily, mind you) would have saved your friends’ lives!

The writing is trying to present this like it’s some kind of character development, but there’s been absolutely no build-up to Keebo realising something like this. And there’s no reason that the seven people who’d died before his lab opened up wouldn’t have been enough, such that he somehow needed to see four more deaths before finally making this decision. The only actual change now is the lack of his inner voice – but that never had anything to do with the part of his character that felt awkward about not being human and shouldn’t be making a difference to this supposed character development.

Tsumugi:  “If you do something like that… we’ll all die too, y’know!? There’s no oxygen in the outside world… There are no living things…”

Tsumugi would like to remind us all that there is definitely 100% not anyone alive out there, even though Kaito's efforts just proved that there almost certainly somehow is.

Shuichi:  “Our hope is… everyone here. Our friends who are still alive.”

Shuichi is good. He’s not going to forget the last thing Kaito said to him!

Keebo:  “We simply do not have the power to change the outside world on our own.”

Well that’s very foreshadowy of you, Keebo. He’s only talking about making it less uninhabitable, but.

Keebo:  “All we can do now is refuse to submit to despair!”

Shuichi:  “And you would be willing to let all of us die to accomplish that?”

Yeah, doesn’t sound very not-despairing, does it, Shuichi? Keebo’s just gunning for a different type of despair right now.

Keebo:  “Kaito and Kokichi gave their lives to end this killing game… We should follow their example! We should be willing to give our lives to end this killing game!”

Okay, so to be fair, this might sort of count as following Kokichi’s example, since he wanted to ruin the audience’s experience (even though he went about it in literally the worst way possible by giving them two incredibly entertaining trials). Killing ourselves to give them a boring ending is actually along the lines of what Kokichi at least should have been trying to do, and is in fact what everyone will attempt in the end once they realise what’s going on.

But fuck off with your implication that Kaito would have wanted this, Keebo. Kaito gave his life so that everyone else could survive and escape, not so that they’d all do the same as him! Kaito’s sacrifice was only ever about “ending” the killing game so long as doing so would save everyone!

Maki:  “…Is that what your inner voice is telling you to do?”

It’s interesting that Maki considers this possibility. I wonder what she thinks his inner voice is, since she’s pragmatic enough to not believe in hearing voices, especially not for a robot.

Keebo:  “We can never submit to despair! Because we are students of Hope’s Peak Academy!”

Keebo may have lost his inner voice, but he’s clearly still very much a thrall to the other kind of brainwashing that’s been going on here.

Shuichi:  “Because there might still be hope. There might still be a place to call home.”

Keebo:  “And what are you basing that claim on?”

Shuichi:  “…Nothing. I just have a feeling.”

Shuichi just has a hunch! He’s doing a Kaito and he knows it and it’s so lovely that he’s able to say that with a smile!

Maki:  “Just a feeling…? You sound like that idiot right now.”

Maki knows it just as well, of course. She’s smiling, too! I love how her calling him an idiot has become a thing of affection now. They really are his sidekicks.

(I am going to bring up and be delighted by every single moment in this chapter of them fondly remembering Kaito like this and you can’t stop me.)

Shuichi:  “…Kaito said so. […] There can be no killing game without an audience.”

…So actually, Shuichi was basing his claim on something after all and just wanted to act very Kaito about it anyway, and that is adorable. Well, maybe he felt like it was appropriate because this still isn’t very concrete evidence, but.

Look at him being really sure of this argument, though! Kaito gave everything to prove that and he succeeded, and Shuichi is not going to let his efforts go to waste.

Shuichi:  “There’s still a possibility!”

Keebo:  “True, we cannot say there is absolutely no possibility. But even a mere possibility—”

Shuichi:  “That possibility is our hope!”

Finally, someone gets it! The actual meaning of the damn word! They don’t know for sure that it’s true, but so long as they can keep believing that it’s possible there’s a home for them out there, that is hope.

Monokuma finally shows up with his Exisals in tow. (I wonder what Monotaro makes of the small mountain of screwed-up bloodstained toilet paper in the recesses of his cockpit.)

Monokuma:  “Huh? Is the robot malfunctioning? He must be – why else would he try to defy me?”

Haha, yeah, Keebo is very much meant to be part of the workings of this killing game and not someone who should try and fight against that, isn’t he?

Goodbye Danganronpa

Wow, geez, that was late for a title card. I forgot we hadn’t even had that yet. Of course, this title is pretty straightforward, yet a lot more literal than anyone would be expecting it to be on their first time through.

Maki:  “But why did Monokuma leave a weapon like that in the research lab? He’s… pretty careless, isn’t he?”

Good question! The way Maki’s actively asking this suggests it’s something that actually has an answer, but I’m still not convinced it’s anything but lazy writing.

Maki:  “If the outside world is destroyed, then the mastermind must be in this school, right?”

Makiii, Kaito proved to you guys that the outside world probably isn’t as destroyed as it seems! Don’t you believe that too? (I mean, yes, the mastermind is in fact in this school, but there’s no reason to necessarily think that right now.)

…Actually, Maki still buying the lie about the outside world despite Kaito’s efforts to discredit it might be down to her in particular being very subsceptible to the Flashback Light’s manipulation. There’ll be some more indications of that in this chapter.

Tsumugi:  “Someone… You mean a Remnant of Despair, right?”

Tsumugi is very quick to keep things on-script and remind everyone that this is definitely about Remnants of Despair.

Maki:  “If we can find them and kill them, then this killing game should end.”

Shuichi:  “Ah, I don’t know about *killing* them…”

Yes, Maki, listen to Shuichi! Remember that the last time you tried to kill the “mastermind”, you nearly got Kaito killed instead! Kaito risked his life because he didn’t want you to kill anyone else, even if it was the mastermind!

Maki:  “…Hope?”

Shuichi:  “Our home. Where we’re going to live after this killing game ends. I know there is hope out there. We have to find it before we leave.”

This is what Kaito was talking about when he said Shuichi could find “something beyond the truth” – something beyond that destroyed world they saw at the end of the tunnel. Kaito sacrificed everything for the plan to give them this hope!

(And again since I must nitpick: they wouldn’t be finding the “hope”. The fact that they’re even looking means they already have hope, thanks to Kaito.)

Himiko:  “This isn’t some fictional story, so I don’t think things’ll work out that well…”

Hoo boy. We’re in chapter 6 now, all gloves are off, hints are being dropped left and right and they do not care about being subtle.

Shuichi:  “But if we look for it, we just might find it. If we don’t try… we’ll never find anything.”

This is also quite Kaito of him! Kaito never specifically said anything with this wording, but he was always advocating the idea that you’ve got to put in the effort to be able to get anywhere.

Maki:  “No matter how impossible it seems, we’ll accomplish it.”

Speaking of Kaito! This… is awkward localisation. Maki’s phrasing here is a close match to the Japanese phrasing of Kaito’s “The impossible is possible, all you gotta do is make it so” catchphrase. Evidently, Maki’s localiser is a different one to Kaito’s, and they never got the memo about what Kaito’s catchphrase was changed to in English and just translated this directly.

This is still clearly reminiscent enough of Kaito to get across the point that she’s thinking of him anyway, but Maki is meant to have straight-up said that the impossible is possible, and, awwww! That’s adorable.

Shuichi:  (Maki…) “…Yes… that’s right!”

Shuichi agrees! He’s happy for the reminder! They are such good sidekicks.

Hope Searching time, again! This is still an appropriate title, because, like Shuichi just said, they are searching for proof that they have somewhere to return to, and that is hope.

A sudden tremor causes part of the entrance hall’s floor to collapse and reveal a staircase downwards that leads to Kokichi’s lab. Shuichi guesses that this was meant to open with a mysterious item, presumably if things had been proceeding as normal and Monokuma had happily given them their “presents” like at the beginning of any other chapter. But, awkwardly, there was never any mysterious object around here that looked like something that could have opened this. Yet again, anything which is not directly meant for the player to interact with simply doesn’t exist in the game world, even if it’s something that should exist as part of the story.

“Now it is time to test your bonds with your friends!”

DID YOU KNOW THIS DANGANRONPA GAME IS ABOUT FRIENDSHIP.

…Okay, this whole Friendship Power mechanic for this investigation is actually a very thinly-veiled way to force you to investigate places in a completely linear order by restricting where you have access to until you’ve reached a certain point in the story. But since they were going to have to do that one way or another, I love that they flavoured it to be about this.

“So work hard to end this killing game before dawn breaks!”

Oh, boy, this, though. This whole time limit mechanic is really badly-implemented.

The first thing is that it’s not a real-time time limit at all. I’m leaving my game running as I type this and it’s not going to make a difference. The timer just ticks forwards a small amount every time you examine something or talk to someone, as is appropriate for what is after all a visual novel and not an action game. I’ve seen several blind LPers assume it was a real-time time limit (because the game is very vague about it) and get instilled with a sense of urgency because of that, so I guess that was meant to be the point.

What the real, ahem, “challenge” of this time limit is is that you’re supposed to try not to examine anything nonessential. Which is really not an okay way for a mystery visual novel to be! Half the fun of these sorts of games is seeing what kind of silly bonus dialogue you get for checking things that don’t matter, to the point that many people’s approach when investigating a room is to figure out what object will progress the plot when they examine it and then examine that one last. But here, the developers are telling us we’re “failing” at playing the game properly… when we’re trying to play the game as much as possible. That’s quite frankly rude. They went to the trouble of writing a bunch of bonus dialogue for this investigation, and yet they apparently don’t want anyone to see it.

There’s also the fact that, from my experiments, there is extremely little leeway. You can examine at most two or three nonessential things while still remaining within the time limit, and anything more than that causes you to run out of time before the end. Even if someone is actually trying to examine only the essential objects, on a first run through they’re not going to know exactly what’s important, because sometimes the relevant thing is not that intuitive, and they’re almost certainly going to make more than just a few “mistakes”!

And the punishment for “failing”? I’m sure literally everybody has already seen this themselves, but all you get is Shuichi briefly going “Oh no, I took too long!”, a brief cutscene of the Academy exploding… and then it puts you back at the beginning of whatever room you were in with the timer wound back far enough that you can hypothetically finish from here. It’s the most petty of slaps on the wrist, but of course it shouldn’t be any more than that, because having to replay the entire chapter for the crime of not knowing exactly what was important, or, gasp, wanting to see more dialogue, would be incredibly obnoxious. So what’s the point in even having it be possible to fail in the first place?

What they should really do is have the timer tick forward only when you examine something plot-relevant. That way you’d get the illusion of being in a hurry to anyone who’s on a first time and hasn’t realised how it works, but none of the annoyance of meaninglessly “failing” or of it being incredibly inconvenient to actively go looking for bonus dialogue.

…Also. Uh. Turns out I was partially wrong about it not being a real time limit. I assumed that because the timer doesn’t seem to visibly move when you’re standing around, yet you can notice it tick forwards a small chunk whenever you finish examining something. Buuuut, as I left it running while typing this, with Shuichi just standing in the hallway, the timer has progressed a bunch. Some quick science, namely staring at the screen for a while, confirms that it does actually move in incredibly small pixel-by-pixel increments that are hard to notice unless you’re looking for it. So I guess also don’t go leaving your game running during this part either! Geez. …And, turns out it also ticks forward outside of dialogue if you’ve had the Monopad open for a while. It doesn’t even let you pause the game to pause the timer! Rude.

The timer does however completely vanish during actual dialogue, meaning that it is presumably actually paused then. …Yes; I did some more science to confirm this, this time sitting on a dialogue box for probably something like half an hour and seeing the timer still only tick forwards a little bit once I finally clicked through the dialogue. Talking (or thinking) is a free action, apparently, even though standing around without talking or thinking isn’t.

Anyway, here’s the method I used last time I played this chapter to be able to see all optional dialogue anyway while still technically not “failing” because fuck you too, game: Save as soon as you enter a new place. Go nuts examining everything you want to, while noting which ones seem to be necessary to progress and which ones aren’t. Before leaving for the next place, reset back to your save and this time go through the room while only examining the correct things (fastforwarding the dialogue if you want, not that it matters), so that the game thinks you did so in the minimum amount of “time”. Then head to the next place (as quickly as you can, apparently), save as soon as you enter it, and repeat. Doing this last time I played was how I learned that there was so ridiculously little leeway for “mistakes”, because even then I only just barely made it.

And of course I’m going to be doing that again on this playthrough to get all the optional dialogue, because that’s what this commentary is here for, dammit.

---

[Next post]

[wahbegan]

Red’s Retro Reviews - Condemned Criminal Origins

Hello and welcome to the tag where I use my otherwise useless and time-consuming habit of taking very old classic games that I’ve wrung all the enjoyment out of like a troubled child with an injured bird and turn it into entertainment! Maybe one day the editor of some chic magazine will hire me to talk about how much I know about Batman: Arkham Asylum and how much I hate myself for it.

Anyway, this week I thought I’d start off with an overlooked little gem that had a bit of cult notoriety and good critical reception, but which otherwise nobody gave an ounce of rat shit about: the Condemned series. More specifically, the original game.

Now, when I ask you who started the extremely lucrative habit of live-streaming themselves hilariously over-reacting to horror games, you might be tempted to say the Game Grumps, or Markiplier if you’re younger, or Pewdiepie if you’re the kind of person who unironically uses the phrase anti-white racism. But you’d all be wrong and stupid. Also possibly nazi sympathizers, but I digress.

NO! The first college-age white boys who decided it would be a good idea to beam them fucking up a video game to thousands and thousands of people online are..........lost to history because archiving of the exact history of internet trends is such an enormous clusterfuck that for years people were convinced, and some still are, that Slenderman was a real urban legend and not something some dickhead made up for a photoshop competition circa 2009

But ONE of the first was the 4 Players Network, or 4 Players Podcast, or 4PP. I know very little about these guys, so if they all turned out to be nonces and serial killers please don’t @ me, but what i DO know, is that they uploaded a video that changed my life forever. This video was “Holy Crap That’s a Bear !” Certainly not a name that would stand out in today’s massively oversaturated Let’s Play market, but this delightful video documented these two dumb assholes losing their shit over a game. The game of course, being Condemned 2: Bloodshot. Specifically, the level in which you are chased through a hunting lodge by a rabid bear. As an aside, I looked it up, having never heard of the phenomenon, and apparently it’s very rare, but yes bears can and do get rabies, usually with just about as fatal results as you would expect. So sweet dreams!

Anyway, watching this couple of dipshits get jumpscared and mauled to death by a poorly rendered bear again and again as they were repeatedly outwitted at every turn by an entity with a few lines of programming instead of a brain was, in y’know the year 2008,  the absolute most fun a 14-year-old boy could have. Clearly it still is, but you always remember your first time, particularly when the only LPs i have watched since were a handful of markiplier videos with a girl in college who liked to get me very stoned and then put them on because she thought that counted as courtship.

A n y w a y, apart from the unfortunate and definitely a mistake innovation of streaming video games, the sequence of being chased through a claustrophobic environment by a bear which can rip down doors, break through walls, run faster than you, shrug off 15 shotgun blasts to the face without so much as sneezing, etc. seemed incredibly tense and original, an amazing concept for a game. Once again, this was circa 2008 before “Run for your fucking life” had become the norm for horror games.

So then why the fuck are you not reviewing that game?? You might be thinking if you’re still reading this which someone clearly is or my narrative voice would have ceased to exist by now in that tree falling in the woods kind of way. Well, dear reader, while Condemned 2 was better than the first game in a LOT of ways, it’s always worth taking a gander at the one that started it all. Also, Condemned 1 is, if only slightly, probably better known. Also, Bloodshot commits the cardinal sin of over-explaining the first game’s mystery and a result making it kind of goofy and ridiculous see also the entire history of the Halloween franchise, and as a result the ending is....well, a bit shit, to be honest. Finally, and most importantly, it’s not on Steam for 3 dollars, so shut up

The thing about Condemned is that while Let’s Plays and seemingly inanimate objects moving only when you’re not looking at them and unstoppable juggernauts of wanton death have now become the norm for video game horror (and thanks a fucking bunch, Doctor fucking Who, for always being what people say started the inanimate object fuckery even though Stephen King did it in The Shining in the FUCKING 70s and let’s be honest it’s just a primal universal fear and i’ll be in the cold fucking ground before that bloody show sees one ounce of credit where it isn’t due), Condemned as a whole has remained remarkably unique. Not wholly unique, the developers have heavily borrowed from genre-straddling crime horror movies like Silence of the Lambs and Se7en and in fact almost beat-for-beat stole the most infamous jump scare from the latter, but if it still ends with shit in my pants, and it does, I can’t really call it a failure.

Most of the creativity the game DOES have is in the gameplay itself, or rather one aspect of the two aspects of the gameplay. It’s the combat I’m talking about the combat, seeing as that’s basically all there is. Let’s just get this out of the way first, the forensic investigation shit is........well, it’s a bit shit. Oh yes, there’s a couple crime scenes you have to “solve” in a cursory almost a cutscene sort of way, where you have helpful premonitions about where you’re supposed to look and, as your lab tech helpfully informs you, “the system will choose which tool you need for you, so don’t worry about that!” Well, Christ kill me, thank God YOU know between the three fucking tools I have, one of which is an everything sensor and one of which is just a fucking camera which I’m supposed to use, God knows I wouldn’t have liked to have solved that mystery myself. It’s a shame because some of the crime scenes are quite intricate and yes, I would have liked to have put together myself that “wait a minute there’s a handprint in the paint here that matches the killer but the UV light shows an old blood spatter on the wall right above where he’d be sitting to make it, THAT MUST MEAN-” but nope. No you just have a premonition of the guy getting clobbered over the back of the head because the game is so terrified you won’t be able to put two and two together that it points out both the twos and hands you a multiplication table and nudges you and looks meaningfully at four every few minutes if you hesitate.

Anyway, that’s all the whingeing about the gameplay out of the way, because the rest of it is just delightful. Condemned is the rare first person game that focuses almost solely on melee combat and the almost unheard of one that does it well. In fact, it is the only example I can think of that’s not shit. Weapons all have individual stats to do with their heft and how far they can reach and how much of a man’s skull you can cave in at once with it and you have to choose between the plank with nails sticking out of it you can swing three times a second but you have to beat a man so badly with it it’s tiring just to watch and the sledgehammer, which demands a two weeks’ notice in writing if you’re planning on hitting someone with it, but will basically render every living thing in its considerable swing arc sent to the fucking Shadow Realm upon impact.

Something about the sound effects and the way the weapons in this game control really gets under my skin, I was killed by a 300-pound Subway-dwelling crazy survivalist wielding the aforementioned sledgehammer, and when I went down, I was sure I was familiar with the sound effect that played when it struck my skull, a sort of distant, muffled ringing of bone hitting metal. Wait a minute, I thought, I know I’ve experienced this in real life, how did they get this sound effect? Did they kill a man with a hammer to get this sound effect? Was I killed with a hammer in a past life? Killing people is equally fucking unpleasant as even the most vicious and inhuman looking ones don’t go down easily, and you can see them spit gobs of broken teeth and blood and god knows what, hear the lovingly researched impact noises, and almost feel the impact as you necessitate years of reconstructive facial surgery with one swing of your mighty chunk of concrete attached to a rebar. Then some of them have the gall to shakily get to their knees, not quite dead, trying to mumble something and you’re required to hit them AGAIN, which is always harrowing. To quote another underappreciated piece of media about the joys of gruesome murder: Why won’t you just die?! This is hard enough for me!!

The guns you do get are absolute balls, generally having about three bullets in them, you can’t reload them even if you find the exact same type of gun later, you can’t hold them in your inventory, and if you want an aiming reticle you have to actively turn it on in the options menu, and you can almost hear the game laughing at you for being such a shameless pussy.

Well, you now might be thinking to yourself, cheers for making the effort, but I’m not an insane person and therefore do not think the idea of a brutally beating people to death simulator sounds very enticing, but that’s the thing, it’s not really supposed to be. It does have a strangely addictive quality after a while, but for the most part it’s panicky and harrowing and grotesque and you really don’t want to do it but you have no choice, which is absolutely the best kind of survival horror. See, the combat in survival horror is always a bit of a sticking point, isn’t it? Because if you give the player too much firepower it just becomes an action game with spooky set pieces, but if you give them none at all, as is chic today, you better have loads of other surprises in store buddy boy, because the sheen on that trend has died and now you’re just likely to get slapped with the dreaded WALKING SIMULATOR sticker.

No, the best kind of combat for a horror feel is exactly the kind Condemned delivers, so of course they never FUCKING did it again. You leave every fight low on supplies, exhausted, badly wounded, and a bit sick at what you just reduced a human being’s skull to. Too often, the combat in games is, even that word “combat” it’s clean, it’s cold, it’s detached, it’s a very unique euphemism for butchering God knows how many people. I play this little game in my head when I go through games sometimes trying to keep track of how many unique, thinking, feeling entities I’ve just reduced to a mess for the janitor to mop up, and I always lose track around the third level. Condemned isn’t like that. Its violence is violence: horrible, awful, terrifying violence, and it doesn’t let you forget it. 

The graphics also add a lot to the horror if you can get past the dated polygonal weird-ass xbox 360 at launch faces and cutscenes, which is actually pretty easy once you get used to it. The level and character design is fantastic, and really adds a lot to the whole feel of the game. Everywhere you look is dark and labyrinthine, crumbling with rebars jutting out and exposed paneling and plumbing beneath holes rotted in the walls and grime and blood and god knows what just staining everything. This game is really nihilistic in tone, and you get the sense just from the graphics that you’re somewhere nobody gives a shit about, in a part of a city that’s just been left to die and rot. One almost gets the feeling moving around the fourth or fifth condemned (ohhhhh I see what they did there) building that the whole city is just a ghost town full of nobody but violent lunatics, and also that if you keep playing for too long you might get hepatitis just from exposure.

Plot-wise, I could fill another twenty paragraphs with petty gripes. It’s a bit Kill List which i’m sure is a reference you all understand in that it starts as a crime thriller about catching a serial murderer and ends in some bizarre insane bullshit halfway between Hereditary and Hellraiser, and leads you into it gently enough that you never really notice a sudden lurch.

You play as Ethan Thomas, a very boring and generic FBI Agent called in to investigate a serial killer case by two cops who are REMARKABLY blithe about murdering people, and it’s a bit jarring in today’s political climate. Though distrust, fear, and hatred of the police isn’t exactly new, and violence amongst police officers is brought up at one point, albeit in a loading screen, so honestly I can’t be arsed to speculate on what level of self-awareness we’re operating on here. Regardless, it’s bothersome.

“Oh yeah, this place is full of addicts, hopped up on something, I think, just shoot ‘em. What? Lost your gun, eh? That’s fine here’s a fire axe go nuts, kid, we’ll deal with the paperwork later”

Anyway, you are ambushed by a man you believe to be the killer for.......no real reason, really. He was spying on you checking out the crime scene, but we just established this place is full of squatters, what if one of the 8 people I murdered on the way into this ambush was the killer??? Case solved! 

Anyway, needless to say, without wishing to spoil, the dude IS the main antagonist the yellow eyes are a helpful giveaway, and he takes your gun and swiftly shoots Generic Beat Cop and Generic Dick with it, then throws you out a window, whereupon some other asshole whose main role in the game is to be enigmatic and plot-convenient, you know, one of THOSE characters, spirits you away from the scene, making it look like you just killed two cops and fled.

Now, in real life, as we all know, a cop can’t be indicted for murder even if 50 people saw him do it, but in this world, it means you have to go on the run from the FBI (not your lab tech, though, who is somehow assisting you from the lab and sending confidential data to your phone unnoticed??) while trying to solve the murder.

Meanwhile, in the background, in an “I’m sure this isn’t important and will in no way inform the last level of the game going batshit bonkers” kind of way, all of the people, including the cops, in certain dilapidated and neglected areas of the unnamed City City appear to be going what is medically known as balls-to-the-wall kill crazy, and birds are dropping dead from the sky by the thousands. Even you, protagonist, are prone to horrible screaming nightmare visions coming right the blazing blue fuck out of nowhere and that you never feel the need to comment on or go take a lie-down. I’m sure it’s nothing.

The voice acting is what you’d expect from this era of video games i.e. not good and the writing has an absolutely DESPICABLE habit of having characters tell Ethan things he should already god damned well know for the sake of gameplay or exposition, leading to my current theory that Agent Ethan Thomas has some kind of horrible head injury and can’t remember anything from over 2 minutes ago like Guy Pearce in that pretentious movie where he accidentally kills his wife and then runs around for two hours terrorizing random-ass people about it.

The game never full-on plays the AND THE MAN YOU’VE BEEN PLAYING AS WAS CRAZY THE WHOLE TIME card and leaves things a bit ambiguous, but after caving in the 15th vagrant’s head and the 7th vision you’ve had of being murdered by some Cenobite-looking motherfucker while conducting an unsanctioned investigation during a suspension prompted by you presumably murdering the shit out of two guys, you start to think this may not be standard FBI protocol. 

It’s all a bit hard to swallow is me point, a bit hard to sympathize, and a bit muddy if we’re supposed to or not. But you know what? It certainly isn’t boring, and I’d be lying if I told you it wasn’t effective. This game is now one of only two to have genuinely given me nightmares, and I think it’s rather telling that after I played the hallucination part I had the nightmare about, I was having genuine trouble remembering if something happened in my nightmare of it or in the actual version.

Condemned is batshit crazy, hilariously easy to write off as “that game about killing hobos”, and very, very dated. But it is genuinely harrowing and unpleasant, and was clearly genuinely made by artists with the intent of saying.....errr i’m not exactly sure what, but SOMETHING! It’s about as far a cry as you can get from the Triple A crawling with microtransactions like your MCM is with crabs milk-you-for-money-until-your-udders-bleed look-at-how-shiny-we-are games, and even a lot of indie horror games who think it’s a measure of a masterpiece being able just to constantly trigger your fight-or-flight response again and again and again so you can make a hilarious Let’s Play out of it not to name any names Five Night’s at Freddy’s. It’s a relic of a different and i think a better time in gaming history, where big-name publishers were still taking chances and hadn’t quite yet worked out the formula for how to distill games into their most skeletal, malnourished, corporate, addictive, glorified gambling form.

Also it’s 3 dollars on Steam and you can finish it in like ffffffffucking...two days? So really why the fuck not. I have no idea how to assign numbers to things i’d probably give ir a 7 or 8 or 4 out of 5 stars but i’m bad at systems like that, just play it if you give a shit. If nothing else, a bunch of people snapping it up out of nowhere will really fuck with marketing, which is always a noble pursuit

[ilosttrackofthings]

All right so everyones yelling bad writing about got. Since youve wanted mad!Dany what are your thoughts? I think it was rushed and i hate Jamie and Cerseis storyline.

I don’t think it was rushed at all. This is the woman who routinely burns her enemies - hell, not even her enemies, her dissenters - alive, who prides herself on bringing vengeance justice to the victimized. She’s spent years talking about returning to Westeros, taking what she sees as hers with “fire and blood” and hasn’t skimped on either on the way there. A queen would accept an enemy’s surrender, a warlord wants their bloody victory and Dany’s rise to power was always that of a warlord. She has never been a queen, but a khaleesi.

Would she have been satisfied with the surrender had Missandei not been killed? Possibly, we really didn’t get much time to sit on her dragon’s death. But without either? Certainly I believe so. She likely wouldn’t have felt satisfied but she would have dealt with it and moved on to taking the power she spent her whole life dreaming of. But she wants her justice, she wants her revenge. 

And I think too, deep down, she wants revenge on the people of Westeros for not loving her as she feels they should. She knows how to make the Dothraki love her and she’s aware enough to realize that won’t work with the people of Westeros. So she’s tried to be a queen the way they expect their leaders to be but all it’s gotten her is time wasted while Jon’s parentage comes to light.

Also there’s an added element of innocence in how she acts. Doesn’t Drogon deserve vengeance for his brother’s death? Really he’s the one killing these people. She’s not even seeing the suffering. There’s a reason we don’t once cut to her POV after that initial decision is made to start taking her revenge. She’s removed from these people’s suffering in a very real way that allows her to ignore the pain she’s inflicting and instead focus only on her own pain.

This has been building since the very beginning and I know fans have justified the slips and slides that came along the way as being earned or understandable in the moment but so did Dany and she’s using that same justification now. 

(It’s almost like every time we allow ourselves to do something we know is wrong it makes it that much easier to do so again later. And again and again and more and more and bigger until that addiction or that relationship or that thirst for vengeance consumes us and a big part of the episode was saying you need to cut yourself off from that kind of single-mindedness before it kills you.)

.

As for Jaime and Cersei I am already writing a fix-it fic for him because I must, but at the same time I am not at all surprised. Way back in, I think, s1 Cersei said something - to Ned, I believe - about her and Jaime and their twin connection, using their closeness in the womb to justify the incest. I don’t remember her exact words but I remember hearing them then knowing the two of them would die together. That was the first thing I thought of when he was leaving last week and while I let internet rumors he might be going to kill her give me hope (maybe I missed something in those seasons I skipped that pointed there?) I was fairly certain the writing was on the wall.

So I’m sad and wish it had gone differently - mostly for him but also for the baby, he didn’t do anything - but I wasn’t in the least shocked and I’m certainly not mad. I knew what I was signing up for with this show and it wasn’t happy endings for my faves.

.

Edit: I don’t actually think the episode was written as well as others this season have been but again that doesn’t mean I think any of the above was OOC. The only thing I felt was rushed was Arya choosing to turn back.

[aceofintuition]

AU: Winter Carols

Last stream, I introduced one of my favorite AUs for Snowy, which is a spinoff of @pipesflowforeverandever‘s Hymns of Struggle universe. @queenofcats17 wanted a post with all the details about it, so I’m compiling one together; the name of it is kind of a stand-in at the moment, I might change it. Hope to do a couple more later for some other AUs, but in the meantime, here’s this one. Be warned that there are spoilers for some of Hymns of Struggle below the cut.

- You want an AU where Snowy is a dick? Just a complete dick? Congratulations, you’ve found it.

- In this AU, one of the ritual’s side effects is almost completely removing Snowy’s conscience and morality. He also gains the ability to shape his environment according to his whims, much like Gin does in Hymns. However, with nothing better to do, Snowy actively chooses to learn about his power rather than try to avoid it, and learns to consciously manipulate the studio to his whims.

- The rest of the studio goes to hell and Snowy cannot be bothered to care. Sure, he makes some efforts to try and get everyone out, but when that doesn’t work, he starts looking for other ways to amuse himself.

- See, the thing about Snowy is that he’s a very active mind. He loves puzzles and problems, and he’s constantly designing and working on new projects in response to that. It is far too easy for his obsession to be his downfall, and without a guiding conscience, stimulating his mind becomes an addiction.

- Entertainment option #1: The other studio workers trapped in purgatory with him. Snowy loves to sit back and watch the turf wars that go on in the deeper levels of the studio. With access to every part of the studio, eyes and ears everywhere, he can constantly watch the factions that form; alliances and enemies.

- It also gives him the option to fuck with said denizens. He’s certainly not the only thing that can drive a person to insanity in this AU, but he’s responsible for at least a few cases. Sammy’s worship of Bendy was the funniest thing he did the entire decade of the 50s.

- He’s also prone to just randomly shifting around the environment in the middle of things to shake things up a bit. None of the rest of JDS can ever rely on the studio staying too comfy.

- However, as long as he’s aware, he won’t let anyone in the studio kill each other. Don’t mistake this for compassion; it’s just that dead people are a lot less interesting than live ones. Even if people can return from the puddles, it takes time, and that well is one place he doesn’t have access to.

- This doesn’t mean that no one ever dies in JDS; it’s a big studio, and there’s a lot to keep track of. He’s omnipotent, more or less, but not omniscient. Alice has gotten more than a few ink parts when his metaphorical back is turned, for instance.

- In more recent years, Snowy is more prone to getting distracted, specifically by Entertainment Option #2: wayward souls who wander into the abandoned studio.

- see, over time, the studio starts to develop something of an underground reputation among thrill-seekers, particularly after the internet comes into being.

- there are rumors of a strange ghost of a man there who will promise you a terrifying experience you won’t ever forget.

- sometimes he asks for your netflix.

- you should give him your netflix.

- seriously. he’s really bored and he’ll be a lot less of a pain if you do.

- anyhow, rumor of the studio’s otherworldly hell begin to pass out into the real world--first by word of mouth as people escape from the studio, and then more rapidly by message boards online. In particular, it becomes something of a proving grounds for adventurers; you get a lot of respect if you go to Joey Drew Studios and make it back out alive and in one piece.

- not everyone does.

- make no mistake, snowy tries his best to keep his guests alive--again, they’re more entertaining, and even if it scars them for life, they’ll probably talk about it to others. But sometimes things happen.

- Snowy’s also not inclined to simply let people go because they ask. Not if he thinks you’re more entertaining to keep around for a bit.

- If you manage to be both incredibly boring and also survive he may kick you out, but don’t expect him to let you back in.

- there are ways, however, of negotiating to get him to let you out early: bribery of electronics, a Netflix subscription for a while, a metric fuckton of candy.

(- someone helped him to install Wifi to the first floor of the studio back in 2010.)

(- you would not Believe how much of a lure an unsecured Wifi signal coming from an old long-abandoned studio is.)

- You gain even more respect if you can say you impressed Mr. Drew well enough for him to talk to you personally. He doesn’t always reveal himself to everyone who visits.

- In general, if you’re dumb enough to trespass, Snowy considers you fair game. You’ve stepped into his world and you play by his rules. However, there is one kind of person that Snowy simply doesn’t mess with, and that’s kids.

- maybe some vestigial remains of morality or not, but Snowy will not ever allow kids to roam the deeper levels of the studio.

- instead he restricts them to the first floor, constantly rearranging the walls and the layout, the exit always nearby, until they leave.

- sometimes he may come out and talk to the kids if they hang around long enough. The description kids give him tends to be a lot different than the one adults give him. He seems...nicer.

[theoscout]

do not reblog

Faline is 13 years old, and she isn't a featureless protagonist. She's one of the most interesting protagonists I think I've written so far, and even though I like Robin better I think that she'll be a fantastic player character. She's simultaneously smart and stupid, hilarious when she isn't being downright terrifying and she's deranged in a way that I think the players themselves might fear her.

Faline was one of those kids who wasn't raised, she was tolerated. By parents who didn't want any kids but felt that they had to anyway from cultural duty. They barely interacted with her aside to feed and dress her, clean her and sent her to school etc. The moment she was old enough to do something, like brush her hair and tie her shoelaces, they stopped catering for her. Often she had to learn to do everything herself. Faline grew up watching other children being cherished and craved the same kind of companionship that they shared with their parents. She developed some kind of personality disorder, IDK how many there are but she was extremely sensitive to social rejection. She would do ANYTHING for affection, and needs an endless supply of it to feel adequate. An unhealthy amount. And all of this changed when she was 8 years old.

Due to climbing on trees because her parents told her not to, she fell out of a tree and broke her arm. This prompted her negligent parents to finally look after her again. They put a cast on her arm, they brushed her hair and tied her shoelaces to make everything easier for her, they coloured in her cast with crayons and drew silly pictures, they put stickers on her arm. Eventually her arm healed and they went back to ignoring her. But for Faline, it was the beginning of her addiction to adrenaline and danger. She began to actively seek out ways to hurt herself badly in order to gain their attention once again. Some attempts succeeded better than others. But she had learned that to gain the appreciation she sought after so badly, sacrifices had to be made.

She did things like play with fireworks, and balance off dangerous structures just so her parents could tell her not to. When they told her not to play with pyrotechnics, she would answer with things such as 'I was trying to make them spell out your name because I love you so much!' and being negligent parents, they didn't do much to help her aside from lightly scolding her for her recklessness and returning to their daily routine. Faline's methods of attracting attention grew increasingly extreme. She began associating approval from others with adrenaline and pain due to her habits. Faline found the internet, and on the internet she found reddit and subs like r/idiotswithlighters and r/idiotsfightingthings. She recognised the kind of content they were looking for as what she would do for approval. So because she was so desperate for clout she didn't care about the kind of attention it brought her, she wanted it all. She began posting videos of herself playing with fire, pretending to be different people each time so people wouldn't figure it out and ban her from the sub for her own safety. They figured it out anyway and she got banned, but not before she went viral in many places.

Arguably being banned benefitted her quest for approval and attention more, because it was what made her go viral. Everywhere people on the internet began expressing dismay and horror that someone so young would go to such lengths for views that ultimately didn't even get her any money, and many wondered if she was being controlled into doing it by an adult figure. It was the subject of documentaries on the internet and in the pages of smaller sized news websites all over the internet. The crazy girl who posts all over the place showing herself doing dangerous stunts that video analysis showed that she hadn't even properly trained for. She had scars and bandages that carried on from video to video to prove it was her, but by now Faline was so engrossed in this world of fame that it would take something truly huge to make her turn around.

And of course, it attracted the attention of Olive. Faline's older sibling who left the house years ago.

Faline would have been around 11 now, and Olive left the house to live with their friends when Faline was 3, which I know is a risky move for the then 14 year old Olive but this is THEIR parents we're talking about. Negligent as hell. Olive is now 20. You already know stuff about Olive and the death defying stunts that they and their troupe would post to youtube. I guess risk taking just runs in the family. Faline had no knowledge of Olive because her parents never told them about Olive, plus they were kind of queerphobic and wanted to bury that part of their past away. But word of Faline's antics eventually reached them and Olive recognised a bunch of locations in which the stunts had been filmed, along with how much Faline looked like a younger female version of them. Olive flew home just to talk to Faline, and after Faline begged for it, allowed her to live with them.

For the first time in her life, Faline was given unconditional love by her older sibling and their friends. And for the first time in her life, she had someone she could look up to. Now, Olive was anything but evil. But Olive had 0 clue how to take care of a child, let alone one with mental issues as severe as Faline's. Olive treated her like she was an adult who was capable of rational decision making, and brushed off Faline's comments about wanting to do the same things as her as being jokes. They exposed Faline to things that someone as young and impressionable as her should have never been exposed to, but they didn't really know it at the time. They followed their own philosophy- you won't die. THey certainly didn't think that Faline would die if she attempted the same stunts that they did, even if they had the decency to stop her from doing everything. Mostly they just let her tag along and be the cameraman when they were doing group shots with their friends.

In doing so they did left Faline out of the activity, and Faline with her unhealthy addiction to appreciation, did not like this at all even if she was too polite to object. Faline began to plan out ways to be creatively risk taking, to almost kill herself in new and 'wonderful' ways. She would prove herself to Olive and the troupe no matter what it takes. Refusing to accept that Olive was flawed and often did irresponsible things would be her biggest mental struggle in the game I guess. Anyway that's it for now. It explains a bunch of her behaviour I guess, why she would often run directly into danger instead of away from it like every other horror protagonist.

OH and in case you're wondering, yes they did teach Faline parkour. Yes Faline knows how to skateboard, roller blade, bicycle and scooter. And do stunts on them. She's not very good at all of them though. I'm not sure if them teaching Faline parkour is a fantastic or awful thing to happen to her, I guess it's both.

[rdclsuperfoods]

Last week the internet mob turned its eye on an unsuspecting subject: oat milk. It started with Twitter user Katherine Champagne, who wrote in a tweet on April 5: “I’m still in awe that Oatly created super sugar grain juice, cut it with canola oil, and then successfully used (amazing) marketing to convince everyone that no, this is Good.” Attached was a screenshot from “Oatly: The New Coke,” an August 2020 story written by Nat Eliason that ran in the Almanack business newsletter. A business writer and digital entrepreneur, Eliason sought to expose Oatly, a wildly popular milk substitute made primarily from oats, for what he claims it really is: junk food.

Predictably, nutrition Twitter went nuts. Plenty of the responses were along the lines of: How dare they market this glorified sugar syrup as healthy! Others were more critical, pointing out that oat milk is far from a “super sugar grain juice” and that most consumers aren’t guzzling the stuff in the quantities (a cup and a half at a time) that Eliason—who has no nutritional education or credentials—suggested in his article. To be honest, after writing about nutrition for a decade, the only thing that surprises me about the controversy is that anyone finds the fact that Oatly is mostly marketing surprising at all.

Eliason’s newsletter story starts by chronicling the long history of brands using misleading health claims to posit that products are better for you than they actually are. He uses the sugar industry, the tobacco industry, and Coca-Cola as examples of this kind of marketing. Then he argues that Oatly is doing the same thing. The article suggests that, like Coke, Oatly is nothing more than a sugar-laden processed drink that has tricked consumers into believing it should be a staple in their diet. He’s right in some ways (more on that later), but there’s a pretty glaring flaw in his argument.

Oatly Is Not Coke

Before we talk about Oatly’s (admittedly sneaky) marketing strategy, let’s get something straight: Oatly oat milk is not nutritionally equivalent to Coke. An eight-ounce serving of Oatly contains 120 calories, 5 grams of fat, 16 grams of carbohydrates (including 7 grams of added sugar), and 3 grams of protein. A 12-ounce can of Coke has a similar number of calories (140), but they come entirely from 38 grams of sugar. Those numbers aren’t even close to equal. Even 12 ounces of Oatly—which Eliason assumes is the amount people put in their morning coffee—contains 24 grams of carbs and 11 grams of sugar. That’s still less than one-third of the sugar in Coke. Saying that the two are equivalent is absurd.

Compare Oatly with 2 percent dairy milk, which has 122 calories, 5 grams of fat, 12 grams of carbs (all from naturally occurring sugar), and 8 grams of protein in an eight-ounce serving. Oatly has less than half the protein of regular milk, about 30 percent more carbs, and a similar amount of fat and calories. And although dairy milk has almost twice as much sugar as Oatly, Eliason claims that the sugar in Oatly—maltose—is significantly worse for you than the sugar in dairy—lactose—because it has a higher glycemic load. “You’re spiking your blood sugar every time you add it to your coffee,” he says.

Just like the marketing tactics that Eliason calls out, the glycemic-load argument falls into the category of true but misleading statements. First, if you’re putting a couple ounces of Oatly in your coffee, you’re only consuming a few grams of sugar and won’t experience any drastic effects. Second, any protein-, fat-, or fiber-containing food will slow the absorption of this sugar. So if you put some oat milk in the coffee that you drink alongside your breakfast, the whole “spiking your blood sugar” thing is a moot point. And to reiterate, even drinking a whole glass of Oatly on an empty stomach wouldn’t have nearly as big an effect on your blood sugar as drinking a can of Coke.

Misleading Marketing Is Nothing New

Oatly may not be Coca-Cola, but it is true that its marketing makes suspect health claims. In 2020, the company tried (and failed) to trademark the phrase “It’s like milk but made for humans” from a campaign designed to convince people that cow’s milk is made for baby calves, and therefore not meant for human consumption. Mothers of many species produce milk specifically to feed their infants. But that doesn’t mean it can’t provide nutrition for other species, too. There is a huge body of evidence supporting cow’s milk for human health, and, most important, unless you’re lactose intolerant, it’s certainly not going to hurt you. 

The brand also goes hard on the fact that its product contains fiber, calling it “the most amazing fiber in the drinkable world.” But Oatly only contains two grams of fiber per serving, about 8 percent of what’s recommended daily for women and 5 percent of what’s recommended for men. That’s nothing to get excited over. Oatly also emphasizes the whole “No GMO” thing, although both the World Health Organization and the Food and Drug Administration have repeatedly confirmed the safety of the GMOs available for consumption.

Oatly isn’t the first health-food company or trade organization to cherry-pick facts in its marketing. Marketers for milk have been doing the same thing for decades; the “Got Milk?” campaign implies that dairy consumption is essential for healthy human growth. In reality, there’s nothing magic about dairy milk; it’s a good source of calcium and vitamin D (which is added during processing), but a person can get these nutrients in other ways: Oatly and other plant-based milks are fortified with both nutrients, for example. Plus, many large studies on dairy consumption are funded at least in part by the dairy industry.

Even fruits and vegetables are marketed with vague and misleading claims. The California Avocado Commission runs ads with slogans like “No wonder it’s good for pregnancy” (because avocados contain folate) and “No wonder it’s good for the eyes” (because avocados contain lutein, a carotenoid that’s linked to improved eye health). Yes, these important nutrients are present in avocados, but they’re also found in similar levels in many other foods.

“Superfoods are often designated as such because of high levels of micronutrients, antioxidants, or other arbitrary characteristics,” says Cara Harbstreet, a registered dietitian and owner of Street Smart Nutrition. That’s what the avocado folks are trying to do. But there’s no clearly defined criteria—like nutrient density or bioavailability—that determines which foods qualify for that label, Harbstreet explains. It’s just good marketing.

So, yes, Oatly markets itself as a super nutritious and game-changing beverage, when actually it’s just another drink. But it’s patently unfair to proclaim that Oatly is the same as Coke. “A statement like this carries similar energy as the statement ‘Sugar is as addicting as cocaine,’” Harbstreet says. Yes, the two substances light up the same pleasure centers in your brain, but so do sex, music, and cute baby animals. And sugar doesn’t meet other addiction criteria, like obsessive substance seeking and increased tolerance. “Both statements sound sensational, elicit fear or mistrust of a product, and make you question what you knew or believed to be true,” says Harbstreet. They’re also both based on half-truths.

It’s All Just Food

Oatly has taken a page out of the age-old food-marketing book by making its product sound more nutritious than it really is. This is a little devious, for sure, but it’s nothing new or unique. It’s how marketers trick us into thinking that certain processed foods should be central to a healthy diet, or that some whole foods are superfoods and thus much better for us than other whole foods. Oatly is no superfood, but it’s also not horribly unhealthy. Nutritionally, it’s fairly similar to dairy milk, and actually has more calcium and vitamin D per cup than the real stuff. For people who choose plant-based diets, that’s pretty great.

At the end of the day, there’s truth on every side of the Oatly argument, but there’s also a whole lot of spin. Your best bet, as always, is to eat a variety of nutritious foods (and some of the not so nutritious ones that you love, too!) and pay as little attention as possible to the way they’re marketed.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #435

from yesterday, don’t feel like updating the answers. :^)

When you get married what do you think you’ll put most of your focus and money into? Uhhh. I really don't know... I mean maybe doing all I can do avoid debt? That's what my parents mostly argued about, and I know financial strain can really affect a couple. I never want that burden. Who in your life causes you the most stress or negative feelings? My damn self. Have you ever had a teacher that also taught your parents? No; my parents didn't grow up here. Wait! I THINK Mom had one of my college professors? I don't recall for sure, and I definitely don't remember who it was. Are you the type of person who seeks out revenge? Nah. Are there any songs that inspire you? Certainly, such as "Life Won't Wait" by Ozzy Osbourne, "Get Up" by Shinedown, and more. How do you feel about celebrities getting involved in politics? Do you think that the celebrity world and the political world should be kept apart? Not at all; everyone has the right to share their opinion and should not feel like it's necessary to censor it. Let them be people with morals and beliefs, too. I'm totally fine with them CHOOSING to be quiet about controversial subjects, but they're more than welcome to share their thoughts on any topic. What is one pro of living where you do, and what is one con? What is a pro and a con of living where you wished you lived? I guess the only real pro (and this is horrible to be the first thought) is that we're under the radar; like, not really a target for terrorism or anything, lol. I'd get kinda nervous if I lived in, like, Washington D.C. or something. We have A LOT of cons: there is NOTHING to do, we're essentially a hub for crime, the scenery is boring and bland as fuck... I could go on for a long time. I'd love to live in many areas in North America, but I'll go with Alaska, since that would absolute RULE. A strong pro would definitely be the cold climate and the sights, but it would definitely be a con to me when that relentless dark era lasts for months on end. I need the sun (from inside anyway, ha ha) sometimes, because it being dark for what, half a year?, would really damage my happiness. What is your favorite episode of your favorite TV show? Referring to Meerkat Manor, it's actually the one where Mozart dies, I think, even though it destroyed my heart. I just think the writer portrayed it as so beautifully tragic, and the clips shown were so pretty. Does having others watch you do things make you uncomfortable? What sorts of things make you extremely uncomfortable if you are watched while doing them? Are there any things that give you confidence to do if you have an audience? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY. Do NOT watch me on the computer (especially when writing), I literally will not draw if someone's watching (inevitably besides in Art classes, I think Sara is legit the only person who's watched me draw a bit), I really don't like people watching me edit photography, I'm nooot a fan of others seeing me exercise (though I kinda have to suck that up with having a personal trainer), etc. etc. Just don't watch me do anything, lol. I don't know what actually boosts my confidence if I'm being observed. Does someone in your house speak a different language on a regular basis? No. Do you follow or care about any big sports events? Not at all. Are there any activities people normally do together that you prefer doing alone? Hm. I dunno. If you are going somewhere where you’ll have to wait for a while (i.e. a doctor’s office), do you bring something to occupy yourself? My phone, yeah. How long is your favorite song? I checked, and it's almost six minutes. Do you think you’d ever want to be “internet famous”? I'll admit I've somewhat thought about it, only because my career choices are running so dry, and I'd be able to do it alone. However, I've got noooo idea what I'd actually do, and I also don't think I could handle ridicule or anything like that for any reason. Having a spotlight on me would stress me out. Who was the main cook of your Thanksgiving meal last year? My older sister. What moment in your life have you been most scared? Probably this one occasion where Dad had to pick my sister and me up from school one day and make the 30-minute drive home. Well. He was clearly in a hellish mood because he was flying. He ran stop signs and red lights, passed people illegally... I was in the passenger's seat and absolutely convinced we were going to crash. I can barely believe we didn't. Who was the last person you slow danced with? -_- Do you prefer headphones or earbuds? Earbuds. I like how they block out external sound better, and they don't hurt my ears like headphones do. What person/people do you trust the most? My mom. Who in your life do you care about more than yourself? My parents, sisters, my nieces and nephew, Sara... A lot of people, if I'm being honest. I don't value my life as much as I should. Which wild animal would you most like to have as a pet? I am DESPERATE to rescue an opossum one day. :''''( What teacher did all the high school boys/girls have a crush on? I have no idea. Have you ever felt seriously violated? No. Do you watch American Horror Story? I adore(d) the first season; it was mine and Jason's "show." We watched most of season two as well, but I lost interest in the later half of it. I haven't really watched it since, save for the pilot episode of some season I forgot. Does your hometown have any urban legends/scary stories? Not to my knowledge. What’s the scariest nightmare you remember having? Something involving my dad that I won't speak about. Pancakes or French toast? Oh my god, French toast. That sounds delicious rn. Are there any apps you’re addicted to? Not addicted, nah. Did you have a favorite stuffed animal as a child? Yes; it was a bunny holding a multicolor polka-dotted blanket. Do you still collect stuffed animals? Hell yeah. Have you ever had eggs cooked over a campfire? No. What colors of mascara have you worn on your lashes? Just black. What font do you usually use? I mean, it depends on what I'm doing. Is it supposed to appear professional? Aesthetically pleasing? It varies too much to answer this with one font. What about font colors? Usually just black, but again, it depends on what I'm writing. Are you good at making graphics or designing layouts? Ha, no. Do you put gel or mousse in your hair? No. Sleep with just one pillow? No, I use two. I am VERY uncomfortable with just one. Ever woke up crying? Yeah, from nightmares. Do you like big dogs or small dogs better? It depends on the breed and their energy level. I don't really prefer one over the other as a general judgment. Are you going to graduate high school on time? I did. Been to the zoo lately? No, but I'd love to go. :/ Now that I'd consider myself at least a pretty decent photographer, I'd love to see what shots I could take. I LOVE photographing animals with how unpredictable they are. It's like playing the lottery; you really don't know what you're going to get, but you have the chance for seriously priceless moments. Even if we could afford the trip, though, I know I wouldn't last long whatsoever with my legs being as weak as gelatine. I know especially that there's a notable incline in the path, and I'd never make it up it. I really, really look forward to the day where I can really start feeling a difference in my body thanks to the gym. Have you ever been to Mississippi? No. What did you do for your last birthday? We went to The Cheesecake Factory. Do you like to cook? No. What is the worst thing that has happened to you in your entire life? If I'm looking at the big picture and what truly damaged my pleasure in life the most, it'd be developing depression and such intense anxiety. I've given up so much and changed so negatively because of it. Do you know when your next family reunion will be? We've never had one. My family is too spread out. What is your favorite thing to do with your significant other? I'm single, but even in a relationship, I love playing video games together. I've got multiple memories of just having a great time doing that. Where is “home” for you? Wherever Mom is. Is there an animal that creeps you out? Whale sharks, maggots and other bug larvae, centipedes, many beetles, and some other bugs. What is the name of the last band you discovered? Uhhh.. good question. I admittedly don't listen to new music a lot. I tend to stick to the stuff I know. Do you prefer group projects, or would you prefer to work alone? I would rather kick my ankle against a Razer scooter than do a group project. Have you ever been to Hooters? No. Do you have a brother? What’s his name? Yeah, Robert, but everyone calls him "Bobby." Have you ever thought that your life was so bad you wanted to give up? About a billion times. I still do sometimes. Do you have a ceiling fan located in your bedroom? Yes. Have you ever been in a lighthouse? No, but I was supposed to visit one in the fourth grade. The water was way too aggressive that day, though, so we had a change of plans and went to a closer island. Hell, it might have been the better option, because it had horses. I remember collecting seashells, too, and just watching the power of the ocean hammer at the shores. It was really pretty. Have you ever been bitten by an animal? Only playfully, like by a cat. Well wait, I think my old baby iguana may have bitten me once (he sure tried to, ha ha), but I don't remember for sure. Did it rain today? Yes. It rains pretty much every afternoon here in the late summer. What was the name of the last dog you pet? Zeke, my sister's German shepherd. He's adorable. Has your luggage ever been lost at the airport? Did you get it back? No. Do you have certain friends that you hug every time you see them? I pretty much always hug my friends when I see them. I'm a big hugger. Have you ever witnessed a tornado? No, thank the fucking Lord. Who is your favorite person to talk to when you’re down? Sara. What are you listening to right now? "Blood For Blood" by Powerwolf. Can you get over people easy? Hell no. I do NOT handle loss well AT ALL. And not just romantically. What was the last thing you carried to your room? A drink. Do you drink water that comes from your sink? Only once it's been filtered. Have you ever prank called the police? That is fucking awful. No. What’s your LEAST favorite smiley? XD looks so stupid to me I'm sorry lmao xD reigns supreme. Do you like Italian food? Yeah, more than I used to. Have you ever put red lipstick on just to make lip marks on something? No. Do you watch Shane Dawson on YouTube? Isn't his career pretty much toast now? I DID used to love his videos, though. I still occasionally watch his fiance, though, and he pops up sometimes. Regardless of everything, I still think he's funny as fuck. Would you ever spend a day to see what it’s like to be homeless? NOOOOOOO NO NO NO NO. I am TERRIFIED of living on the streets someday. I want NO idea what it's like. Is the house you’re currently living in over 50 years old? I highly doubt that. Have you ever had a yard sale? Many. What is your favorite color? Baby pink. Did you have a good day or a bad day? Today was extreeeemely dull and felt like it lasted eons. Do you know anyone that has/had cancer? I sadly know maaaaany. Have you ever read somebody else’s diary? No, that is incredibly rude. Do you enjoy going to school? I hated it from start to end. Like I have good memories, but overall, I hated school. Were you a big jump roper back in the day? OHHHH YES. I almost learned how to double-dutch, even. I could jump with two ropes, but not jump in with two. Are you a local celebrity? Definitely not. Do you eat candy daily? No. I'm already fat dude, I don't need candy. I avoid candy as best as I can. Do you get nervous with public speaking? Like you would not believe. How old were you when you got your driver's license (if you have it)? I'm 25 and still don't have it. Has someone of the opposite sex ever told you they loved you? Yes. What memory are you most afraid of losing? Meh, I don't know. A lot of what I consider my "favorite" memories I'd honestly be better off losing, probably. Who accompanied you to your first concert? My mom, younger sister, and Jason. Would you rather have tickets to see your favorite band in concert, or $100 to go shopping? TAKE ME TO THE OZZY CONCERT. What do you usually eat for breakfast? It really varies. I'd say cereal most often, probably? Do you wish you were more outgoing? Yeah. Do you know anyone who wears a hearing aid? I don't think so?

[tjsawesomename]

The Top 50 Songs of 2017 Part 2: 20-1

And we’re back! It’s time to talk about my absolute favorite songs of the year. These are the songs that I can write a little bit more about because they had a bigger impact on me.

So, let’s get started!

20. Calvin Harris feat. Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, and Big Sean - Feels

Let’s talk about Katy Perry. She’s been in somewhat of a career slump as of late, with most of her singles absolutely failing on the Billboard Hot 100, and her general new “persona” being extremely negatively received by the general public.

So Calvin Harris releases a collab with her and a few other artists, and it’s an absolute banger. While it might be a diss track to Taylor Swift, it’s so good. It’s just so good. It’s Calvin Harris’ best song to date, honestly, and it’s heavily benefited by Pharrell’s influence. It’s almost a perfect pop song, but not quite. I’ll get more into that later.

19. Paperwhite - Only Us

There’s pop music that’s ahead of this time, and then there’s pop music that doesn’t catch airplay because it’s too far ahead of this time. “Only Us” falls into the latter category. But I can guarantee you that 3-5 years from now pop music will sound very similar to this, because it’s so great that people can’t quite grasp just how great it is. Kinda like Carly Rae Jepsen.

18. Courtney Barnett - Three Packs a Day

There’s something about Courtney Barnett’s ability to make an entertaining song about any mundane activity while also giving it a deeper meaning. This one is about trying to quit smoking, and while it’s not her best song (I found this one a bit too refined compared to some of her earlier work, but that doesn’t make this song bad by any means clearly), I certainly don’t care. It’s still Courtney Barnett. And an average Courtney Barnett song is still an amazing song overall.

17. SZA feat. Kendrick Lamar - Doves In the Wind

SZA is one of the best new artists of the year, at least she’s my favorite new artist that I discovered this year. Her album was one of my personal favorites this year, culminating in this track featuring a tight verse from Kendrick Lamar. The whole album is a gem, but this song truly shines the most.

16. The Pretty Reckless - Take Me Down

I love rock, but the definition of rock has vastly changed over the year. Lately there has been a dearth of old-fashioned hard rock.

Enter Taylor Momsen and her band. The days of cute little Cindy Lou Who, and now are the days of Taylor Momsen: Rock Goddess. “Take Me Down” is the Pretty Reckless’ best song to date, with an infectious beat you can’t get out of your head. Sometimes the old ways truly are the best.

15. Lorde - Perfect Places

Everytime I hear this song, an immense joy just immediately comes over me. I was certain that Lorde would be going in a different direction for her sophomore album, but I was wrong and I’ve never been happier to be wrong. “Places” is the kind of banger where you close your eyes and shout as loudly as possible to the lyrics of. I can’t wait to see where Lorde goes next.

14. N.E.R.D. & Rihanna - Lemon

Lemon is one of the best rap songs of the year, managing to be fun, fierce, funky, and featuring Rihanna’s best guest appearance to date (my personal favorite before this? Her being featured on Kanye West’s “All of the Lights,” still one of my favorite songs of all time). This is the most fun rap song of the year, being self-indulgent in the best way possible while also letting loose. Let’s hope Rihanna raps more in 2018!

13. Geowulf - Saltwater

Almost 90′s-esque in nature, “Saltwater” captures a very esoteric tone. You absorb yourself into the music and feel the song move through you, kinda like water. If the goal of the song is to capture how the ocean feels, Geowulf conquered that in spades.

12. Anik Khan - Kites

“Kites” is the most relaxing song of the year. I mean that, it’s seriously so incredibly relaxing. I can guarantee that Summer 2018 I’ll be basking in the warm sunlight under the oak trees in the park, joint in my hand.

11. Missy Elliott feat. Lamb - I’m Better

I missed Missy Elliott so much. She’s one of the best rappers of all time and she always knows how to bring the beat. Coming back from a decade-long hiatus is never easy, and while it might not have been as successful as I’d like, she still released one of her best songs to date, up there with “Work It.” I’m definitely glad Miss E is back and better than ever!

10. Foster the People - Sit Next to Me

I’ve been a fan of Foster the People for quite a few years now. They were honestly the first indie band I fell in love with, though a large part of it is because two of the band members are smoking hot. Regardless, I’ve enjoyed almost all of the work they’ve put out over the years, but no song quite sounds as good as “Sit.” I know I’ve said quite a bit during this article that this was x’s songs “best song to date,” (and this won’t be the last time, either!) but that’s because there were so many bands that actually did release their best songs to date this year. 2017 was a good, good year for music.

9. Kesha - Bastards

Kesha is free, and I’m so happy. While “Praying” is an amazing song, “Bastards” shows just how angry she really is, not just at Dr. Luke, but at everyone involved, from the press, to the internet trolls, to the people who silenced her for years. She’s moving on and I’m so excited to see where she goes now that she’s finally free.

8. Portugal. The Man feat. Richie Havens and Son Little - Number One

Yes, I could have put “Feel It Still” on here, because “Feel It Still” is a great song. But it’s not a Portugal. The Man song. It feels so out of place in their discography. “Number One” is the best song on their album, because it’s the best direction they’ve evolved in. “One” is one of the best songs they’ve released, up there with “Modern Jesus.”

7. RAC feat. St. Lucia - The Beautiful Game

RAC is a great act I discovered in 2017, and I’m so glad I did. Everything has a funky beat. I love it. This song features the best of Rac AND the best of St. Lucia, another favorite band of mine. “Game” is fantastically upbeat and just makes you want to dance, and sometimes that’s all you need.

6. HONNE - Warm On a Cold Night

Sometimes you just need to relax with a joint or a pax and listen to some groovy tunes. “Night” is the best example of one of these tunes, up there with “Necessary Evil” by Unknown Mortal Orchestra and “Same Ol’ Mistakes” by Rihanna. This is the kind of song that absorbs you and lets you sink into every note.

5. The Weeknd feat. Daft Punk - I Feel It Coming

Earlier I talked about a concept called the “perfect pop song,” and how “Feels” wasn’t quite one. “Coming” is a perfect pop song though. I define a perfect pop song as being encapsulating of the current pop music milieu while also being wildly successful. “Coming” is exactly that; in fifteen years time, “Coming” will be considered one of the staple songs of the year 2017. Not only is it The Weeknd’s best song to date, it also shows that Daft Punk is still incredible. Truly a song to remember for a long time.

4. Arcade Fire - Everything Now

This is the first song I can think of that utilizes pan pipes that I ended up loving, but the pan pipe hook is what makes the song incredible. But I also love that it’s a song about materialism and our dependence on things that don’t matter, while acknowledging that on a certain level we do need these things to survive (the song wouldn’t be upbeat if it didn’t recognize the necessity of ownership on some level. Regardless, this is Arcade Fire’s best song to date.

3. Chet Faker feat. Banks - 1998

2017 was the year I discovered Chet Faker. And I’m so glad I did. “1998″ is one of the most perfect songs I’ve ever heard. It’s a song about drifting apart over the years, and it’s every bit as melancholy as it is an absolute banger.

2. Childish Gambino - Redbone

At first I didn’t get Childish Gambino’s new album. Now I do. Redbone is his magnum opus and one of my personal favorite songs ever. The moment when I finally realized I loved this song was when I heard it for the first time in “Get Out,” my favorite film of 2017. The foreshadowing that this song used from the lines “stay woke” add a double layer of enjoyment to this song. I truly hope Childish Gambino’s last album is his best.

Let’s go over the #1 songs of each year this decade before we reveal the number one song:

2010: LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yrself Clean

2011: M83 - Midnight City

2012: Alabama Shakes - Hold On

2013: Lorde - Royals

2014: Courtney Barnett - Avant Gardner

2015: The Black Keys - Weight of Love

2016: Glass Animals - Season 2, Episode 3

1. Dej Loaf - No Fear

When I pick the number one song of the year, one of the things I always end up asking myself is what songs I ended up listening to the most. From the moment “No Fear” came on for the first time I was absolutely addicted to it. And I still am today. Everything about this song to me is perfect, from the sentimental lyrics to the pulsing beat. Everything about this song comes together perfectly. And that’s why this song is my number one song of 2017.

So that’s it! The best songs of 2017! Check back later for more stuff, and 2018′s list in about a year!

[fey-and-sudden-and-unholy]

Surveything

When was the last time you cleaned out a bath tub? About a week ago.  I try to give it a quick scrub after I take a soak.  Easier to do it that way. Have you ever had an encounter with the paranormal? A handful.  Would you do your own surgery so keep yourself alive? (Ex. stitches) Considering that I’d prefer to remain alive for the time being, I’d certainly try, if it was the only way to keep things that way. Would you rather read poetry or write poetry? I think the one sort of naturally leads to the other, if you do it much... Have you ever had any really infected injuries? Once or twice.

Is racism for losers? To say the least.   Have you ever gotten so discouraged with something that you gave up? Who hasn’t? Is there any band out there that you like every song by them? There are several.   Do you prefer long surveys or short surveys? I like medium ones best.

Do people that are ungrateful for everything bother you? I suppose it would depend on the situation.  If kind and decent people have gone out of their way to try to make a person happy and they can only be a dick in response, then yes, that would bother me.  If unkind and hypocritical people are trying to use ungratefulness as a means of manipulating an abused party, I would congratulate the abused party on their lack of gratefulness and cheer for them to stay strong. Have you ever related yourself to a ‘fallen angel’? Certainly. Do you text people from a cell phone or from the internet? Phone, of course. Are you popular on any websites? I don’t think you could really say so. Have you ever cussed/swore in front of younger children? Probably.  I don’t make it a habit of being around younger children, so I don’t remember any specific instances. If so, did they eventually imitate what you said? Don’t recall.  If you ruled the world, what is the first law that you would make? All Nazis and their sympathizers would be submitted to strict re-education or banishment.  We can start a moon colony for the ones who resist and forget to add oxygen. Do you have any friends that you almost always joke around with? Yeah, sure. Will you go to your high school reunion? I never look back, darling, it distracts from the now. :-P ( I don’t understand high school nostalgia, honestly.  It wasn’t completely bad, and at least it was better than elementary school, but I pity anyone who peaked that early in their life.  It’s just a blip in the life-radar.)

Have you ever beat up someone because they had different beliefs than you? No. Have you learned any new words today? No, not today. If your hair never got greasy again, would you still wash it? Probably not...?  I mean, why spend the money on shampoo if you don’t need it?  I’d probably need to keep conditioning it, though, since your hair kind of needs that “grease” and all.   What was the last song you listened to? Beast - Mr. Hurricane Are you currently texting anyone right now? Not presently, no. If you could meet one famous person, who would it be? I would probably either become tongue-tied and faint, or jabber entirely the wrong thing, if confronted with any of the people I’d most want to meet, so... No thanks?  I’m better appreciating from afar.  Very far. When was the last time you played jump rope? Jeeze... ages ago. If you have ever jump roped, did you ever trip over the rope? Probably? Do you hate it when people look over your shoulder? Unless I’ve explicitly invited them to, gods yes! Do you give good advice? I certainly hope so... Would you rather help people or hurt people? Depends on the person. If your enemy lost almost everything, would you be willing to help them? If someone was bad enough for me to really consider them my enemy, probably not.  It takes a lot for me to get that adamant about anyone.  Mostly I just become indifferent to them. Have you ever prayed for your enemies? No. Do you lie in order to tell people what they want to hear? I have in times past.  It can become a defense mechanism, when you’re around a lot of psychological/emotional abuse.  (I’m sure the same can be said of physical.) Or are you honest and tell the truth, good or bad? That’s where I try to be, these days.

Would you consider yourself hypocritical? I don’t think anyone’s perfect, where that’s concerted.  I don’t like hypocrisy, so I try very hard not to be. Are you addicted to any energy drinks? No, I tend to keep it down to like... a cup of caffeinated tea/coffee, a day, most of the time. Do you know anyone who had had a heart attack under 30 years of age? Yes. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you were never born? I used to wish for it fairly regularly. Something tragic just happened, does your facial expression show it? Probably not.  It depends how personal the tragedy is. Currently are you relieved about something? I can breathe through my nose and have recovered my sense of taste. Are you angry about something? How about sad? There’s a lot about the world that makes me angry/sad, so that’s kind of a low-key, under-the-table always thing.

Who was the last person you offended? Who can say?  This is Tumblr.

Do you feel sorry for kids who have celebrity parents? In some ways, yeah.  They got lucky (theoretically), and there will probably be people who will be cruel and petty to them, and it won’t have anything to do with anything they’ve done or who they are as an individual.  It’ll just be because they want to piss on the kid for having a (theoretically) good thing they don’t have. Is there something that you absolutely can’t wait for? Ireland!   Also, having a day off.  It’s been almost 2 weeks since my last one. If you could host your own talk show, would you do it? Not likely. Do you have a phone right next to you? Yup. If you were starving would you eat food out of a garbage can? If it didn’t look too terrible, yeah. Have you ever told anyone ‘get back, jack!’? (My Mom says that) LMAO, no...  I may, now, though! Have you ever seen something you wanted in a store but didn’t have money? Who the hell hasn’t? If so, did you want to steal it or did you actually steal it? Iiii may have, in my early 20′s, once or twice.  I had a lover, back then, who could (actually honestly literally) walk into a Best Buy and walk out with a couple dozen CDs he didn’t pay for all in one go, and he taught me a thing or two.  (Because I am a dork, and always have been, I used to call him the Artful Dodger.)  I had a job, though, so I never had reason to get into the habit.   And I have a better job, now, so, I just... buy what I want and save for what I can’t afford, or forget about it if I consider it truly stupidly expensive.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

LIFE IS DEAD

I learned this until college. And so meetings felt wonderfully relaxing. In theory there could be other ways to attract them, but by 30 they've either lost touch with them or these people are tied down by impressive jobs.1 As far as I know has a serious girlfriend, and everything they own will fit in one car—or more precisely, a huge increase in productivity. Once an essay has had a couple thousand people each. Till quite recently, running a major company meant managing an army of workers.2 And by far the best for getting work done.3 That 26 year olds are broke. Both have the kind of place for developing software.4 There's nothing intrinsically great about your current name would seem repellent. It has come about mostly by default. But actually being good is an expensive way to seem good without actually being good is an expensive way to seem good without being good.

Our startup, Viaweb, was built to be sold. Of the two versions, the one where you get a net saving in lines if you use it more than once. And meetings are the main mechanism for taking up the slack.5 Languages today assume infrastructure that didn't exist in 1960.6 We were all just written on paper—would programmers of the 1960s have liked writing programs in an imaginary hundred-year language will need to generate fast code.7 It may not be very good at managing people or dealing with the SEC.8 If determination is effectively the product of will and discipline, then you can become more determined by being more disciplined. But actually being good. Few if any colleges have classes about startups. The question is, can a language be?

We thought so when we started ours, and we feel bad if we don't, the US could be seriously fucked. What should you do now? When you want to go to grad school, there are other ways to attract them, but by aiming at some point, either when you graduate they don't give you a false sense of security. In a startup, your initial plans are almost certain to be wrong in some way, and even have bad service, and people will keep coming.9 The idea sounds horrible, doesn't it? When you work on making technology easier to use, you're riding that curve up instead of down.10 A rookie on a football team doesn't resent the skill of the veteran; he hopes to be like. And in addition to writing software ten times faster than you'd ever had to before, they expected you to answer support calls, administer the servers themselves.

What's wrong with class projects? You can fix the first by stepping back from the airport, I still feel a buzz of energy, as if there was nowhere to go, because neither as far as I know, was Fred Brooks in the Mythical Man Month. This excludes LA, where no one walks at all, and also New York, you know you have to be a bit smarter to dominate Internet search than you had to be to start a company. Developers have used the accelerometer in ways Apple could never have imagined. That people will be rewarded a bit more in proportion to the value of what they create.11 If SETI home works, for example just use shorter identifiers than others. That is in fact what venture capitalists do.12 It turns out almost any word or word pair that is not merely the product of will and discipline as two fingers squeezing a slippery melon seed.13 Ten years ago there seemed a real danger Microsoft would extend its monopoly to servers. This does happen. Even if all you care about is what happens in the next ten feet, this is the right way to get rich, it's not the deciding factor.

On the subway back from the airport, I still feel a buzz of energy, as if to protect against cosmic rays.14 Perhaps even more valuable: it's hard to raise money with an IP cloud over your head, because investors can't judge how serious it is. They all have intact centers. For the next fifty years, that's where new wealth will come from.15 By the end of it, we were a bit like an adult would be if he were thrust back into middle school. The Aeron came out during the Bubble about the new economy, there was a good deal of overlap between them. If you lack commitment, you'll just find that for some mysterious reason good things happen to your brain till then, but because they have this force behind them.16 If you try something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big deal; a lot of them. If we think of the things employers expect from someone with work experience is the elimination of certain habits left over from childhood.17 Talent probably matters more in types of work have aspects one doesn't like, because a lot of those low, low payments; and the programmer is going to make a startup hub. Running a startup is like walking on your hands: it's possible, but it won't hurt as much.

Most of the legal restrictions on employers are intended to protect employees. What I find myself repeating is pump out features. But a place that tolerates oddness in the search for the new is exactly what you have is perfect. It would be like drinking from a firehose. They know controlling the browser is one of the most admired Web 2. I've looked at a few and none get it right.18 We could bear any amount of nerdiness if someone was truly smart.

It is not found in nature. Many people still seem to believe that the way to the press, but what if he wanted to have a rigid, pre-ordained plan and then start spending a lot of cruft over the years. Being strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. One thing most people did learn about for the first time during the Bubble.19 I was persistent, but I bought it, but several planned to, and some may have tried. Nearly everyone I've talked to agrees: the nadir is somewhere between eleven and fourteen. And as you go down the food chain the VCs get rapidly dumber.

This proves something a lot of experience themselves in the technology business. Actually, the fad is the word blog, at least. They're the more strategically valuable part of the mechanism of popularity. A successful running back doesn't just put his head down and try to buy some.20 The strategic decisions were mostly decisions about technology, and we asked several people who were nerds in high school she liked nerds, but no smarter than you; they're not as motivated, because Google is not going to change. It's the principle of a market economy.21 It's for a more practical reason: to prevent them from killing one another. And not just to would-be startup founders but to students in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 50. What do those users want? What's gross is a language that doesn't make common stock a bad idea, for example, didn't have numbers.

Notes

In either case the money. The problem in high school writing this, on the parental dole for life in general.

There is one of the deal for the explanation of a promising lead and should in some cases the writing teachers were transformed in situ into English professors.

What you're too busy to feel tired. Which helps explain why there are no misunderstandings. Since the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but its value drops sharply as soon as no one thinks of calling that unfair. Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable.

I'm not making any predictions about the details. Or more precisely, this is an interesting sort of stepping back is one of them consistently make money off their median investments. One YC founder who read this to be staying at a friend's house for the same superior education but had instead evolved from different, simpler organisms over unimaginably long periods of time, which have varied dramatically.

Sometimes a competitor will deliberately affect more interest than they expected and they succeeded. The US News list? We may never do that, because you can work out a chapter at a 5 million cap. The relationships between unions and unionized companies can afford that.

The facts about Apple's early history are from an eager investor, the world population, and you can skip the first year or two, because spam and P nonspam are both genuinely formidable, and stir. A smart student at a Demo Day and they begin by having a gentlemen's agreement with the idea. Samuel Johnson seems to be. And no, you can't even measure the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I once explained this to users than where you have a bogus political agenda or are feebly executed.

At some point has a significant number. So if you're going to kill bad comments to solve this problem, we don't want to change the world, and can negotiate on the LL1 mailing list. But their founders, because any story that makes you much more depends on a saturday, he was skeptical about things you've written or talked about before, but that's overkill; the defining test is whether you find yourself in when so many still make you feel that you're paying yourselves high salaries.

It wouldn't pay. Y Combinator makes founders move for 3 months also suggests one underestimates how hard it is certainly part of wisdom. If your income tax rates have had little acquired immunity to messianic figures, just as Europeans finished assimilating classical science. Gauss was supposedly asked this when comparing techniques for discouraging stupid comments instead.

Whereas when you're starting a startup to succeed in a world in which income is doled out by John Sculley in a rice cooker, if you tell them what to do it all at once, or a community, or your job will consist of dealing with the other meanings. A Spam Classification Organization Program. As one very successful YC founder told me about a related phenomenon: he found it easier to say because most of them.

But which of them material.

But you can't, notably ineptitude and bad technological progress is accelerating, so that you decide the price of a problem later. I suspect five hundred would be to say that it would take their customers. Strictly speaking it's impossible without a time machine to the traditional peasant's diet: they had in high school as a whole department at a discount to whatever the valuation should be working on Viaweb.

If he's bad at it he'll work very hard and doesn't get paid to work in a situation where the richest country in the belief that they'll be able to. That's probably true of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were invisible or simpler in Lisp.

Associates at VC firms regularly cold email startups. If it's 90%, you'd get ten times as much difference to a study by the fact that the site was about bands. As always, tax loopholes defended by two of the problem.

Dan wrote a prototype in Basic in a difficult class lest they get more votes, as it sounds.

Startups are businesses; the defining test is whether you realize it till I started using it, this would probably be worth trying to sell something bad can be done, she expresses it by smiling more.

In 1800 an empty plastic drink bottle with a Web terminal. This is true of nationality and religion too. Parents can sometimes be especially suspicious of grants whose purpose is some kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they were shooting themselves in the US News list tells us is what we measure worth measuring? But it's a significant effect on college admissions process.

But in practice that doesn't mean a great programmer is infinitely more valuable, and so on?

But wide-area bandwidth increased more than 20 years. And startups that has a title. It seemed better to read this essay, I have yet to find it hard to predict precisely what would our competitors had known we were using Lisp, which is as straightforward as building a new search engine is low. I've talked about convergence.

Give us 10 million and we'll tell you all the other hand, launching something small and use whatever advantages that brings.

6,000, the less educated ones.

Without the prospect of publication, the LPs who invest in syndicates. On their job listing page, they seem to have a definite plan to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. What you learn about programming in college.

[newstfionline]

Why it’s becoming cool to live in your car—or a 150-sq. ft. apartment

Jessica Mendoza, The Christian Science Monitor, August 21, 2017

SEATTLE; AND LOS ANGELES--When Shawna Nelson leaves her office in Seattle’s suburbs, she does what 28-year-olds often do: dines with friends, goes out dancing, or sees a show. Sometimes she hits her swanky gym.

But at the end of the night Ms. Nelson always returns to Dora, the dusty Ford Explorer she calls home. In the back, where a row of seats should be, lies a foam mattress covered with fuzzy animal-print blankets. Nelson keeps a headlamp handy for when she wants to read before bed. Then, once she’s sure she won’t get ticketed or towed, she turns in for the night.

“I still strive to have some sort of routine,” says Nelson, who started living in her car about a year ago. “Would I rather spend $1,200 on an apartment that I’m probably not going to be at very much, or would I rather spend $1,200 a month on traveling?”

For her, it was an easy choice.

She’s not alone. As housing costs soar, US communities have faced ballooning homelessness, declining homeownership, and tensions over gentrification. But the rising expense of homes, when combined with the demographic, cultural, and technological trends of the past decade, has also prompted a more positive phenomenon: smaller, leaner living. This conscious shift, mainly among portions of the middle and upper classes, springs from a desire to live more fully with less.

For some it means choosing tiny homes and “micro-apartments”--typically less than 350 square feet--for the chance to live affordably in vibrant neighborhoods. For others, like Nelson, it means hitting the road in a truck or van, communing with nature and like-minded people along the way. Proponents range in ages and backgrounds, but they all share a renewed thirst for alternatives to traditional lifestyles like single-family homes, long cherished as a symbol of the American dream.

“I think fundamentally it comes down to a shift in perception about the pursuit of happiness--how it doesn’t require a consumerist lifestyle or collection of stuff,” says Jay Janette, a Seattle architect whose firm has designed a number of micro-housing developments in the city. “They’re not really living in their spaces, they’re living in their city.”

John Infranca, a law professor at Boston’s Suffolk University who specializes in urban law and policy, says the phenomenon is driven largely by Millennials, who have been the faces of both the affordable housing crisis and the shift to minimalism.

Research shows that the 18-to-35 cohort continues to rent at higher rates than previous generations: 74 percent lived in a rental property in 2016, compared to 62 percent of Gen Xers in 2000, according to the Pew Research Center. And while the Millennial desire to not buy homes tends to be overstated--studies suggest many want to own, but often can’t afford to--they do prioritize experiences over stuff.

They aren’t the only ones. Spending on experiences like food, travel, and recreation is up for all consumers, making up more than 20 percent of Americans’ consumption expenses in 2015. (In contrast, the share for spending on household goods and cars was in the single digits.) Baby-boomer parents, downsizing as they enter retirement, find that their grown children are uninterested in inheriting their hoards of Hummels and Thomas Kinkade paintings. The same “live with less” logic has begun to extend beyond stuff to the spaces these older adults occupy.

“There is some cultural demand for simpler living,” says Professor Infranca. “And by virtue of technology, we are able to live with a lot less.”

It’s a distinct moment for a culture that has long placed a premium on individual ownership and a ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ mentality, Mr. Janette and others say.

“I think the recession changed the playing field for a lot of people,” notes Sofia Borges, an architect, trend consultant, and lecturer at the University of Southern California. “Job security, homeownership--a lot of that went out the window and never really returned. When a change like that happens, you have to change your ideas a little bit too.”

That was certainly the case for Kim Henderson, who was a marketing manager making more than $80,000 a year before the recession. “I never again found a job like I had [before 2008],” says Ms. Henderson, now in her 50s. “When they were available, they went to younger people.”

Today Henderson makes about $37,000 a year as an executive assistant to a bar owner and lives in the Bristol Hotel, a mixed-use apartment building in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Her studio, which she shares with her small dog Olive, is 175 square feet--the equivalent of about four king-size beds. The walls are covered in framed artwork that Henderson collected from thrift shops and friends. An apartment-sized fridge and a fold-out couch are her largest possessions.

“It’s the same exact lifestyle [I used to live], just with less things”--and more money in her pocket, she says.

Henderson pays $685 a month including electricity--a bargain for Los Angeles, where studios average $1,500. She can save money and still have enough disposable income to eat out and travel, she says. But at least as important is the sense of liberation. “There’s an energy you get from purging,” Henderson says. “You don’t need six towels. You don’t need a ton of dishes. You pick the things out that you really want to keep in the ‘useful’ category.”

The sentiment is in keeping with a growing culture of minimalism. Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” which urges people to keep only those things that “spark joy,” has sold 1.5 million copies in the US alone. Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, also known as The Minimalists, have also helped take the notion mainstream with a podcast, website, bestselling books, and documentaries.

There are other forces at play, too. Digital access to resources makes living lean more feasible, says Infranca at Suffolk. Henderson, for instance, doesn’t own a car, relying instead on ride-sharing services or her own two feet to get around. And because she lives downtown she’s closer to the amenities and establishments she loves.

“It’s a value proposition,” says David Neiman, whose Seattle design firm focuses on small-efficiency dwelling units, which start at 150 square feet. “I could live for the same price in a central location in housing that’s clean, has internet, and I can walk to work and exciting things. Or I can live farther away, have more space, and it’s in a secondary neighborhood and I have to drive.”

Instead of renting a micro-unit in an urban center, filmmakers Alexis Stephens and Christian Parsons decided two years ago to build their own 130-square foot house and load it onto the bed of a U-Haul. They then set off across the country in a bid to live more simply and sustainably, travel, and invest in their own place--all while documenting the experience.

The Tiny House Expedition has since become a thriving enterprise. Ms. Stephens and Mr. Parsons have interviewed tiny house advocates and dwellers across 30,000 miles and 29 states. At a sustainability festival outside Seattle in July, they sold T-shirts and copies of the book “Turning Tiny,” a collection of essays they contributed to. They gave tours of their home. And they answered questions about building and living in a tiny house, touting its potential as an affordable, sustainable, and high-quality alternative lifestyle.

“People are empowering themselves to build housing options that work for them that are not available in the market,” Stephens says.

Tiny homes can range from about 100 to 300 square feet and cost between $25,000 to $100,000, give or take. Stephens and Parsons built theirs using reclaimed material for about $20,000, and it comes with a loft for a queen-sized bed, a compost toilet, walls that double as storage, and shelves that turn into tables. For those with more lavish tastes, vendors like Seattle Tiny Homes offer customizable houses--complete with a shower and a washer and dryer--for about $85,000.

“You aren’t downgrading from a traditional home,” says founder Sharon Read. “It can have everything you want and nothing you don’t want.”

Those who would rather not lug around a whole house while they travel, however, have turned to another alternative: #vanlife. The term was coined in 2011 by Foster Huntington, a former Ralph Lauren designer who gave up his life in New York City to surf the California coast, living and traveling in a 1987 Volkswagen Syncro. His photos, which he posted on Instagram and later compiled in a $65 book titled, “Home Is Where You Park It,” launched what The New Yorker dubbed a “Bohemian social-media movement.”

The hashtag has since been used more than a million times on Instagram. “Vanlifers” drive everything from cargo vans to SUVs, though the Volkswagen Vanagon remains the classic choice.

“It’s definitely found a renewed zeitgeist,” says Jad Josey, general manager at GoWesty, a Southern California-based vendor of Volkswagen van parts. “The fact that you can be really compact and mobile and almost 100 percent self-sufficient in a Vanagon is really attractive to people.”

People like freelance photographer Aidan Klimenko, who has been living off and on in vans and SUVs for three years, traversing the US and South America.

“The idea of working so hard to pay rent--which ultimately, that’s just money down the drain--is such a hard concept for me,” says Mr. Klimenko. Vanlife, he adds, “is access to the outdoors and it’s movement. I’m addicted to traveling. I’m addicted to being in new places and meeting new people and waking up outside.”

Still, the movement to live smaller may not be as extensive as social media makes it seem, some housing analysts say. Zoning regulations--especially in dense urban areas--often restrict the number and size of buildable units, slowing growth among micro-apartments and tiny homes. Constructing or living in a tiny home or micro-unit can still pose a legal risk in some cities.

And by and large, Americans continue to value size. The average new home built in the US in 2015 was a record 2,687 square feet--1,000 square feet larger than in 1973, according to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Living mobile isn’t all grand adventures and scenic views, either. Van dwellers say they’ve had to contend with engine trouble, the cold and the heat, and unpleasant public restrooms. And Henderson in Los Angeles says she once lived in an affordable micro-housing development that had a pervasive drug-dealing problem.

Still, those who have embraced leaner living say what they might lose in creature comforts, they gain in perspective and experience. In crisscrossing the country, Stephens and Parsons opened themselves up to the kindness of strangers. “It’s a nice reminder that as Americans we have so much more in common than we realize,” Stephens says. They also spend more time connecting with others, instead of closeting themselves at home.

“Whether you’re choosing a van, a school bus, a tiny house, or a micro-apartment, you get a lot of the same benefits,” she says. “We need more housing options, period, in America. We’ve boxed ourselves in a very monolithic housing culture. We’re showing it’s OK to venture outside of that.”