#and I always think of Frain when I think of that saying [3/3] | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

prumanoenjoyer · 7 months ago

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Doing this thing because I got blorbos on my mind

A - Current OTPs/OT3s etc.

It may not come as a surprise but I am absolutely rotting on PruMano at all times and have been doing so for basically a year now. It's beginning to melt into my personality and nothing can be done about it. Whenever I'm released from the iron grip of PruMano rotting I enjoy GerIta and FrUk like the normie that I am. The BTT are definitely getting together for threesomes when they're all single and I like them as well.

B - Pairing I initially didn't consider

This might shock you after reading the first bit but. PruMano. See I'm not new to this circus, I first watched Hetalia in 2015 but focused mostly on the Nordic 5 with SuFin and DenNor. This was before PruAus 9/11 (Hima suddenly announcing they're cousins) so I think I was on the PruAus rot.

Other than that I got a friend who I dragged into this hellhole (you know who you are) who has infected me with Frain and TurFra. I have some Thoughts about TurPru but uhh. let's leave that for now.

C - Ships I never liked and never will like

All the ones where there is an unbalanced power dynamic (age gaps, having interacted when one was a child and the other way older etc, former colonies and oppressive states, having a relationship that implies being related etc). I am a seasoned hater of these and I do my best to block anyone who as much as reblogs it. I do not care if it's "just fiction" you guys are weird and not in a good way xoxo

D - Ships I just can't get myself to like

Due to the aforementioned PruMano rot I just don't feel seriously interested in any other pairings I fear. Nothing against PruCan or LietPru for example, I am just so rotted on PruMano that it doesn't make me feel anything lol

E - My crack contributions

I may just be the only person who has even considered TurPru and I have done it in the most unbearable fujoshi way possible </3

Other than that I'm helping out with spreading unrequited GerFra, Frain and TurFra which I do also enjoy on the side.

F - Longest I've been in a fandom

I wanna say this one?? Not actively so, I jumped ship to other things such as Love Live and JJBA in early 2019ish (Love Live even earlier in 2017), but even during my longer breaks from Hetalia I've always ended up rewatching it at some point or posting about it.

G - First OTP

For Hetalia it's definitely been GerIta from day one. Do I even need to say anything? To me they're canon.

H - Favorite way of consuming fandom stuff

It's mostly anime series and TV shows I'd say, I do sometimes read but am a bit too busy to properly sit down and do so.

I - Has Tumblr made me dislike fandoms

I think it would take less time to list the fandoms Tumblr HASN'T made me dislike tbh. I try to keep a tight knit circle for my own sanity and rarely interact with the fandom part of stuff apart from my own and my friend's contributions. Highly recommended btw.

J - Fandoms I didn't notice until Tumblr

To be honest I'm not really browsing Tumblr at all. I like to upload here because the image quality is way better than on Instagram. I suppose I highly associate some fandoms with this site (Undertale for example)?

K - Say something nice about someone

You should all go like and subscribe to fruktual on Instagram for more FrUk and Frainposting

L - Say something nice about a mid character

Lithuania I'm sure you are way more interesting than I give you credit for and I care about you the most out of the Baltic Trio (which I honestly forget exists at times)

M - Something nice about a ship I don't like

I'd honestly rather pull a tooth out than say a single word of praise for things such as UsUk or Spamano 🤢🤢🤢🤢 And that's on periodt!

N - Things I wish to see more of in the fandom

More PruMano please please please please please pl

O - Song that reminds me of a ship

Til There Was You by The Beatles makes me think of GerIta, as well as Kingdom Come by Red Velvet

As for PruMano it would be Tales Of Great Ulysses by Cream because I had that on repeat writing my Ancient Rome PruMano AU lol

P - New AU

I'm working on/will be working on a Frankenstein PruMano AU where Gilbert is a much more empathic Victor Frankenstein and Lovino is too traumatized from dying and being resurrected to be out killing people. Look forward to that...

Q - Ship I've abandoned and why

PruAus because Hima came in with a warhammer and bludgeoned it to the cousinzone R.I.P </3

R - Pairing I think no one else ships

Again with TurPru, I seriously wonder whether it's been considered at all. Most likely not.

S - Personal headcanon

Okay more or less true I guess if you bother to read the source material but Gilbert is just a silly loser guy. Like, he's a total himbo. I love him and need to gnaw on him.

T - Headcanons I'll die defending

That Gilbert and Lovino who share a passion for chivalry and knights would definitely go visit museums and LARPing events such as medieval weeks and whatnot. Just warms my cold little heart <3

U - 5 faves from 5 different fandoms

Oh boy. Forgive me for what I'm about to share.

(Hetalia) Gilbert Beilschmidt

(JJBA) Dio Brando

(Madoka) Kyouko Sakura

(Love Live) Yoshiko Tsushima

(Gakkou Gurashi or School Live) Kurumi Ebisuzawa

V - 3 OTPs from different fandoms

(Hetalia) PruMano (shocker, I know)

(Madoka) HomuMado

(Love Live) YohaRiko

W - 5 ships ft 5 kinks for said ship

So obviously gonna skip over the ones featuring minors.

PruMano - Verbal degradation, sadism, masochism, somewhat fear aspect, leaving marks

I do also just think they love each other and have normal sex and that's fine too, but I did write a fanfic where the abovementioned happens

X - My top 5 babygirls

1. Gilbert, I bully him a lot but don't you ever seriously say something mean about him because I will be so sad </3

2. Lovino, he's a flawed man and some of you are MEAN to him for having it rough

3. Rome, some people who haven't read source material claim there's some favoritism going on, he does visit Lovino as well okay? The allegations are canonically false!

4. Ludwig, I think most of us agree he's a good person but for the rare few who claim he's "verbally abusive". Go outside and touch grass no he isn't. GerIta has always been them antagonizing one another, the battlefield is even or perhaps even in Feliciano's favor. Ludwig will never be able to escape the nightmare and I don't think Feli wants him to. They're bound together forever and love it.

5. Roderich, gets slack for various Chibitalia related things, does not deserve it at all, it's all whining and he and Feli are on good terms in modern times. Relax.

Y - Fandoms in-law

My current close friends are into Baldurs Gate 3, Watch Dogs, Dishonored, Evillous Chronicles (Vocaloid), Utena and more. But these are the primary blorbo shows in-law.

Z - Rambling time

Okay if you've gotten this far down I admire your attention span lol thanks. I don't really have all that much to say that is concrete and comprehensible but I am thinking of PruMano and of warm days by the Mediterranean Sea and skies later lit in vivid shades of red and orange as the hot sun sets and the cities come to life. I am also thinking about them cuddling, which I do quite a lot.

Anyway that was all for me bye

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koolkat9 · 2 years ago

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I am a bored mf so have some rare pair has from the singular braincell of yours truly.

Ned is a snuggly bitch when tired and will cuddle Matt, whether Matt is expecting it or not. He doesn't mind tho, because sleepy ned is a nice ned to cuddle with on the sofa.

Engmano, the fuckers are both so bad at directly expressing their intentions that Spain and France have come up with a translation doc of what they say vs what they actually mean, and its really soft.

Spafra, they talk about philosophy on the balcony, sipping from wine like an old married couple, and bickering like one too, and then when they sleep, spain snores like a fohhoran and france mumbled things

Thank you!

Jan being cuddly when sleepy. Gosh the stoic character being cuddly when sleepy has got to be one of my favorite tropes.

Oh my god xD. The two tsundere bitches definitely will need it. But I love Engmano being close even if it’s just as friends. I think they’d relate to each other on a lot of things such as their difficulty at expressions emotions other than anger and smugness, their self-loathing and though more based in my headcanons they’re both trans men. Gosh good t4t ship. We love to see it. Eventually when they realize they express affection in similar ways they probably become experts at reading each others true intentions (though the doc would definitely help).

Frain my beloved <3. God both have been in each others lives for so long and have been alive for so long. They’re probably find a lot of comfort in their philosophical chats because they know the other won’t judge them and it’s a great way to just unload all the baggage that comes with being a nation even if it’s just for a little while. I always saw Francis as a snorer, but I also like the idea of him sleep talking. Anyway, love the idea that both are loud sleepers for one reason or another lol.

#hetalia #hws #nedcan #engmano #frain #spafra #hws netherlands #hws canada #hws england #hws romano #hws south italy #hws france #hws spain #headcanons #hetalia headcanons

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snkpolls · 4 years ago

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SnK Episode 71 Poll Results (for Manga Readers)

The poll closed with 176 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that these are the results for the Manga Readers’ poll. If you wish to see the results for the Anime Only Watchers’ poll, click here.

RATE THE EPISODE 172 responses

This week’s episode keeps up the high mark of the previous episodes, with 98.8% of respondents giving the episode a score of 3 or higher (overwhelmingly 4s and 5s). Nice!

It was aight.

It's cool

8.5/10

great!

Very rocky imo in terms of animation, as the cracks are beginning to show but overall look like the backgrounds and music choices were top tier.

Really good episode, I was disappointed in the jacket scene but it’s not the end of the world

loved it

It was overall a great episode I loved it.

🔥🔥🔥

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING MOMENTS WAS YOUR FAVORITE? 174 responses

46.6% of respondents overall were most excited to see Eren meeting up with Floch and the others, with 23.6% of those respondents favoring the scene of Eren putting on his jacket specifically. 12.1% most enjoyed seeing the angry citizens shouting out the Survey Corps motto. 9.8% were thrilled to see Zackley’s death animated. 8% were psyched to see Pieck in disguise at the end, and 6.9% most enjoyed the moment where Hitch caught Armin red-handed trying to touch Annie’s crystal.

YOUR REACTION TO EREN PUTTING ON HIS JACKET? 171 responses

Eren putting on his jacket was a scene many obsessed over when it first appeared on page and many looked forward to seeing it animated. Most of the response choices were focused on various forms of swooning over Eren and his abs. Some (13.5%) stated that they didn’t really understand the dramatism and some others (another 13.5%) simply stated that they did not see much in Eren outright. We’ve gotten a lot of write-ins about comparisons to the pre-animated trailer shot of said scene. More on that in a later question.

i mean i understand the thirst, but eh

Prefer manga :/

The trailer did it better

Meh. Better in the trailer and the manga.

TF was that? Well it's still good in its own way.

YES! YES! YES! YES! Y E S!

both "HOOOOOLYYYYYY 😳" and "so dramatic and for what?"

Trailer/Manga shot was way better

Manga shot/trailer version are way better. Dissapointed

Trailer looked better :(

Mappa only made Reiner thicc, why Eren is so frain he has 1,85! He is so strong in the manga

I don't care

Manbun.........👀

He can have my babies anytime 😌💅🏻

Not as sexy as advertised; that’s okay, though.

That scene looked weird af ngl. It looked better in the trailer 😔

Me after THAT eren scene: 🤰🏻🤰🏻🤰🏻

Eren makes my dick rise

ON A SCALE OF 1-5, HOW HAPPY ARE YOU NOW THAT WE APPEAR TO BE GOING BACK TO LEVI AND ZEKE’S PERSPECTIVE NEXT WEEK FOR A BIT? 171 responses

Levi and Zeke’s chemistry has been the subject of praise for many, so it’s no wonder that 87.1% of respondents are rather excited to get back to seeing Levi and Zeke again. Wow!

ARE ARMIN’S FEELINGS FOR ANNIE GENUINELY HIS OWN? 173 responses

Armin’s feelings for Annie have been looked at under a microscope for a variety of reasons, which is why we’re asking if you believe that his feelings for her are genuine. A plurality, 49.1% think that they’re a mixture of his feelings for her, as well Bertolt’s. Slightly less (30.6%) believe that Armin’s feelings for her existed since before any of the recent developments. Only a select few believe that he either became interested in her post-timeskip or that his feelings are solely influenced by Bertolt. One person doesn’t think Armin has any feelings for Annie at all. And a few others just don’t care.

Bertmin simping for Annie and that apparently being enough for her to start considering him as boyfriend material is the fucking worst. I hate this shit. It's made me like both characters considerably less.

Uhh Armin where ya reaching?!

He was interested with her even before it was revealed she was the Female Titan and now that he has Bertholdt's memories, he sympathizes with her too and wants to understand her more so maybe Bert's memories intensified his feelings

His feelings for Annie are mostly his own. Bert's feelings might be in there a little, but the feelings are still Armin's.

CONTINUITY ALERT! EREN HAS HIS HAIR UP IN A BUN IN YELENA’S FLASHBACK. THOUGHTS? 173 responses

Uh-oh, Eren’s hairstyle moment. It would appear that there might be a continuity error with Yelena’s flashback and whatever that means for the timeline. A slight plurality (37%) didn’t seem to care about this, actually. But 33.5% appeared to believe that it was a mistake on MAPPA’s part that might get fixed in the BluRay version of the episode. 16.8% also believe that it was a mistake, but don’t believe it’ll get fixed. 9.8% think that it’s actually a retcon and that Eren’ll have the man bun when Chapter 123 gets adapted in Final Season Part 2.

I hope it gets fixed because it's bugging me.

I really wish it was like how it was in the manga. Eren looks good with his hair down in his 16-17-year-old phase. Despite the error, it wasn't a deal breaker for the episode.

He looks totally gorgeous with his hair up in a bun, please let this mistake be

Honestly I don’t mind it. It looks great either way.

Eren in a manbun is a total win for me!

WHICH PIECES OF INFORMATION MISSING FROM YELENA’S ADMISSION IN THE MANGA DO YOU WISH WOULD HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN THE ADAPTATION? 163 responses

As with almost all dialogue-heavy chapters in this series, there are cuts. In this episode, these cuts mostly affected the conversation between Yelena and Pixis. The most yearned for cut material was Yelena never telling Eren to go along with the plan and Yelena saying that she used Floch as a “go-between” between her and Eren. Others also noted missing lines about Yelena wanting Eren to stand up for himself, Yelena stating that Zeke gave the volunteers a hopeful future and the idea that her and Eren came to quick agreement. The plurality (31.9%) however, didn’t seem to mind any cuts.

WHAT ARE YOU OVERALL FEELINGS ABOUT SOME OR ALL OF THE AFOREMENTIONED DETAILS BEING CUT? 161 responses

There is often a sort of expectation to have everything (or almost every) line from the manga adapted in the anime, so it’s interesting to see how people react to that sort of stuff. An almost 50% of respondents stated that they didn’t really care about the cuts, whereas smaller handfuls of respondents stated that the cuts either took away from the characterization of the conversation, or from the context and timeline-building purposes.

I'm not thrilled about the cuts, but I understand MAPPA can only fit so much in on each episode, so I'm okay with it

the yelena/volunteers plot has always been wonky and hard to follow

I don’t think it’s a problem, they need to cut certain things.

i literally never notice but i agree that it makes it harder to piece things together

Meh

It might seem for anime watchers that Yelena didnt do much, and Floch and Zeke that did the most part, in their own plans. Floch to betray and Zeke in predicting Eren wouldnt be on his side in some way. Yelena helped Zeke a lot to where he arrived in the rumbling

All of the above

ZACKLEY WALKS OVER TO HIS TORTURE MACHINE IN THE ANIME BEFORE MIKASA ASKS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO EREN, RATHER THAN GLANCE OVER AT IT AFTER HER QUESTION. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE CHANGE? 170 responses

There was a partially comedic insinuation in the manga that Zackley thought about strapping Eren to his “art piece”. The insinuation is possibly still there in the anime, but in a different form. So we asked how you felt about it. Slightly below a half (48.8%) stated that they thought the subtlety was still there. 18.8% thought the subtlety was lost with the small change and 8.8% believed the change made Zackley seem less unhinged. 21.8% really didn’t care at all.

Why is this a question?

The glance was funny as fuck in the manga, but might have been awkward to pull of in the animation

They're blown up tho, does it even matter?

DID EREN KNOW ABOUT THE BOMB? 170 responses

Whether Eren truly knew about the bomb is a bit unclear to this day and with how it endangered Armin and Mikasa. A plurality (40%) believe he knew about the bomb, but did not know about his childhood friends meeting Zackley. Slightly less (30.6%) think that Eren did not know about either the bomb or AM meeting the Artist. A minority (7.1%) does believe that Eren knew about both the bomb and meeting and 21.8% simply aren’t sure!

Even if he didn’t know, he obviously doesn’t care either way.

THERE IS SOME DEBATE ABOUT WHETHER EREN’S JACKET SCENE WAS BETTER ANIMATED IN THE PROMOTIONAL VIDEO OR IN THE EPISODE ITSELF. WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE? 170 responses

Here we go… The elephant in the room… Which Eren abs scene did you prefer? The Promotional video or the actual episode? A somewhat slight majority (57.1%) seemed to like the version seen in the promotional video more than the episode itself versus the ones who preferred the episode’s style (42.9%).

THE EPISODE MARKS THE BEGINNING OF FLOCH’S ACTIONS AS THE VOICE OF THE YEAGERISTS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING ABOUT IT? 170 responses

Floch has always been a controversial character and the developments seen post-time skip have not been any less debatable. You may floching love him or floching hate, but he’s here and he’s staying for a while. A plurality (48.8%) notes that although they may not personally be a fan of the character, they truly do appreciate the nuance his appearance gives to the story. Just over a quarter (25.3%) stated that as big fans of the character, they’re looking forward to all the screentime the Flochster will receive. In contrast, 20.6% despise the man and his questionable haircut and are also dreading the showcase he’ll soon receive.

I hate Floch and will cheer again when he dies, but I enjoy his character.

I detest Floch but I'm not dreading all the screen time he'll take up.

Since he died in the manga, my hatred for him has cooled down somewhat now that I'm watching the anime.

I am once again asking for you to shut the fuck up, Floch.

WE KNOW NOW THAT EREN DID CONSPIRE WITH FLOCH TO BETRAY ZEKE TO ENACT THE RUMBLING. STILL, DO YOU BELIEVE HE DID IT BECAUSE HE HAS THE SAME BELIEFS AS FLOCH, OR WAS HE JUST USING FLOCH AND THE YEAGERISTS AS A MEANS TO AN END? 161 responses

An overwhelming amount of respondents (87.6%) stated that they believe Eren never truly saw eye to eye with Floch and his ideology and that Eren was simply using Floch as a means to an end. In contrast, 9.3% truly do think that Eren was ideologically similar to Floch and the “New Eldian Empire”. A select few thought you couldn’t just say one way or another.

They both wanted to protect Paradis

DO YOU THINK IF THE YEAGERISTS, BESIDES FLOCH, KNEW ABOUT THE FULL SCALE RUMBLING BEFOREHAND THAT THEY WOULD WILLINGLY FOLLOW EREN? 167 responses

The majority (53.3%) feel that the Yeagerists would see a divide if they knew beforehand that Eren wanted to initiate the rumbling, with some sticking around for the cause and others possibly leaving because it’s too extreme. 25.1% believe that they all would have fully supported the rumbling in the name of their own survival. 15% believe that every Yeagerist already knew about the plan to commence the rumbling, and only 6% feel that they would most certainly have betrayed the Yeager brothers (and Floch) if they had known.

I don’t know, this is a loaded question and I’m tired.

DO YOU THINK THAT, IF THE STORY ENDS PEACEFULLY, MIKASA WILL HAVE A ROLE TO PLAY IN HIZURU? 170 responses

While this plotline may not be going anywhere in the manga (or so it seems), the reminder of its existence is brought to light again as we revisit these older moments from the manga. 32.4% feel that Mikasa wouldn’t leave Paradis behind to start a life on Hizuru. 23.5% think that she wouldn’t leave Paradis behind, necessarily, but will still have a role to play in Hizuru. 21.2% think it doesn’t matter because Isayama has completely discarded (or forgotten) about this plotline. 12.4% don’t know what to predict (if anything) and only 8.2% believe that her future lies in Hizuru beyond the main storyline.

The last two options plus me not caring. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

hizuru is already rumbled, gone, but she will continue the azumabito clan in paradis

Is no one else gonna question Kiyomi's hair being sucked into her skull??? HELLO MA'AM???

Hizuru is likely flattened

WHICH SCENE FROM THE PREVIEW ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? 171 responses

Episode 72 has already broadcasted as of the completion of this poll. For scenes that were most anticipated, 35.7% were most looking forward to seeing Levi and Zeke’s interaction in the forest. 33.3% most looked forward to Niccolo leaning straight from Gabi’s mouth that she is Sasha’s killer. 18.7% highly anticipated the Blouses learning about Gabi killing Sasha, and 9.4% were looking forward to Gabi/Falco and the Blouses gathering at Niccolo’s restaurant. Only a small amount were looking forward to Niccolo protecting Jean and Connie from drinking the wine.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

Man the animation was gonky

no levi </3

So many faces of Niles are weirds !

Let hange aloneeeeeeee and happy, please

I have no word for this, but I feeling good

Shit is getting really real now!

Everyone talking about Eren’s abs and I just wanna say the music in that scene was amazing!

I loved how it was all neatly put together and fast moving

Armin looked so good. Homie walked from point A to B and i SCREAMED. Thank you.

i wish they included eren's warhammer escape from the prison, besides that solid episode all around, the people chanting 'dedicate your hearts' gave me chills

I can't stand Hitch at all but MAPPA made her really pretty. Re: The jacket scene The trailer version was pretty much identical to the manga panel. But I liked the version that made it into the final episode too. People have been so ridiculous about MAPPA ""ruining everything"" this season, they should stop watching if that's how they feel. I thought Eren looked great and found the sun shining on his abs funny. The scenery was better in the episode, imo. I hope they don't cut Jean's line about booze not caring about what race you are. Lmao

Meh. It's not bad of course, I just find the rythm weird and I don't really feel many emotions watching the episodes. And I was so thirsty for the jacket scene, and it turned out weird too.

Mappa pls stop drawing eren like shit he is gorgeous in the manga

MMGH SOON!! LET'S GOOOOOOO

You friccin moron, you just got zooked!

i miss eremin </3

Wish they had shown how eren used his titan powers to escape.

I'm so not looking forward to the controversy that's gonna be reignited during the EMA talk scene. I'm actually dreading it, but we'll finally get the Levi vs Beast Titan scene so I'll be fine

112 will destroy ships

I felt the animation was flawless as usual but the script was kinda boring, I expected more of these aspects: -Yelena, it was bland with the cuts -Hange, they cut something I cant figure what in this Yeagerists coup act that turned her scenes a little bit lacking? Idk something -Again the soundtrack in the episodes is so silent. The only episode so far I liked the ost beyond the Opening and Closing themes is Reiner episode. I miss the melodrama of Witstudio osts

Eren putting his jacket on in slow-speed whilst talking at regular speed is fucking trippy

Just happy to see Hitch!

It was slow and mainly plot driven. I enjoyed it despite the changes.

goddamn is that a hella well-animated explosion

more abs please

Great episode. Really ridiculous how many people overreacted about the jacket scene. It's ok to perfer the way the trailer did it but to those who say Mappa is ruining the adaptation because of minor things like this, calm down.

I wish the jacket scene was better But over all the ep is pretty good

Boring, but then again so was this phase in the manga.

I really like the VA they chose for Onyankopon! His voice is very warm and genuine, which suits his character well

The sunset was so aesthetically pleasing

yoooo just read ch. 138 and im crying in da club :(

These MAPPA episodes have been a low point for me. I’m trying to enjoy them because I love this story but it feels like a chore.

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 161 responses

Thanks again to everyone who participated!

#snk poll #snk polls #snk spoilers #snk s4 #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #snk #aot

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mermaidsirennikita · 5 years ago

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the tudors, twq, twp, tsp and reign rank them from best to worst and explain why

Best: Reign.

Easily. I know, it’s a teen soap opera and it’s dumb as hell with all these random fashion house 21st century clothes and magic and THE DARKNESS and Bash out in the woods.... killing people.... And it did have one unforgivable storyline that almost ruined the show for me. But Reign knew what it was. It never tried to sell its story as the truth. It actually had fairly complex female characters in Mary, Catherine, and to an extent towards the end even Elizabeth. I appreciate that the show went there with them doing shitty things... But you could tell that the writers loved them and didn’t want to “punish” them, as the PG adaptations always do. There was a real love behind Reign, lol, and I also think that the fantastic chemistry between Mary and Catherine, as well as Mary and Francis and Catherine and Francis, kept the show so memorable.

2. The Tudors.

Mainly for the actresses? Mainly for the actresses. I will always love Natalie Dormer’s Anne Boleyn and Maria Doyle Kennedy’s Catherine of Aragon. Despite the inaccuracies of the show, those two got the spirit of the women really well imo, especially in season 2. Maria’s Catherine had that dignity and self-righteous belief, to the point that she played the game she wanted vs. perhaps the the game that would have given her the best results. It’s that self-belief that can only be found in a true religious zealot who has a hell of a lot of belief in her own (corrupt) family. And while Anne Boleyn was a bit of a cipher vamp in the first season... Ugh, her arc is so good in the second season. Her highs, her lows, her desperation--it all played so true without making her this overly perfect heroine. I also really liked Tamzin Merchant’s Katherine Howard (oh poor baby) and the other wives were well-played too, even if I didn’t love the writing. Can’t forget Sarah Bolger’s Mary either! So good.

So like... This show was always fucking inconsistent, sometimes borderline insensitive, but like. The musical cues were great. I did love that shot of Henry eating a swan in an episode with a swan motif that represented his intense evil and the fact that he could only get a new mate by killing the old one. I do like that this show really did make me feel like Henry was an EVIL MOTHERFUCKER after a certain point. Like. Yes. There would still be moments of “lmao Henry” or even “Henry is kinda awesome riiiight” (no). But the end of season 2 played him up to be so VILE (I remember watching the scene of him acting disgusted by his miscarried fetal child with Anne, like it was some dead bird, with my parents back in the day, and they both were like okay fuck this dude forever he’s a monster). I appreciate that. I do think The Tudors was far less sympathetic to its protagonist than, say, The Borgias was with Rodrigo, and I prefer that kind of take. I also love Cromwell. I don’t think JRM was particularly well-cast, but he had some funny moments and he tried his best with old Henry.... it wasn’t right for him and his acting choices are always kinda bizarre to me, but they worked better here than they do on most other things I see with him? It’s a mixed bag, but there are really brilliant moment.

3. The White Queen

Not a good show. Not good. But! There were good performances. Rebecca Ferguson was good, Amanda Hale brought that fanatical aspect of Maggie B. out while also being kinda hilarious, James Frain (who was also a standout on The Tudors) is always a good medieval villain, and I really really do like Aneurin’s Richard III, even though his edit was confusing.

Also, out of all of the PG adaptations I think that this one at least sorta did the most with the witchcraft shit without just being like “THE CURSE!!!!11″. Like. If you’re going to lean into witchcraft, just do it. And I know this is controversial--I do not think Elizabeth of York had an affair with her uncle. But I also don’t really care if a show as dumb as the PG series goes for that aspect if it’s well done. It’s not well done here. BUT IT IS FUCKING HILARIOUS. Let us remember that I once had a url referencing Richard’s creepy uncle status on this fucking show.

“ELIZABETH... you’ve changed”. You saw her like a month ago bro.

“If I bed my niece--IF I MAKE THEM THINK I’M BEDDING MY NIECE” a line on this show.

And I will always fondly remember the outrage when people were like “he’s not really doing it Anne Neville and Richard for life” (never mind that Anne Neville is basically a blank page historically, and was used on this show as a flat character everyone could project everything onto, with a flat romance to boot) but then the Starz edit came out months later and it turned out THEY FUCKED IN A TENT. Oh how smug I was. Fond memories.

4. The White Princess.

Pros: Elizabeth of York and Henry VII are so well played!!! Jasper Tudor swanning about always reliable with the LADIESSSS, Michelle did her best with Maggie B. God bless her.

But this was also where they began the trend of the heroines of previous series being evil in the new series. And the illogical turn of acting like Elizabeth of York was wrong to take her brother out when he was literally threatening the lives of her husband and her sons. The Perkin Warbeck thing was Bad. The rape was Bad and basically has to be ignored in order for you to enjoy the series at all.

5 (the worst) The Spanish Princess.

So. The previous shows could always, even when the shit hit the fan, rely on Performance. Adelaide, Toby, and Michelle in Reign; Natalie and Maria on The Tudors, then later Sarah and Tamzin et al.; Rebecca and Amanda, etc in TWQ; Jodie and Michelle, etc in TWP. Now. There are good actors in the Spanish Princess. I do like older Henry and Lizzie.

But Charlotte just cannot fucking do this shit. The chick who plays Juana cannot do this shit. The streeeeetches made to make Catherine of Aragon seem like she has it coming later? The fucking REEEEACHES re: Henry VIII in every sense? No thanks. And it isn’t even hot, because Henry looks young EVEN THO HE’S WAY OLDER THAN HE WOULD BE IRL GROSS GROSS GROSS.

A mess.

#Anonymous

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chupacabrasmustdie · 7 years ago

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Meme

I was tagged by @goodbibarbarella. Thank you! :D

Rules: Answer the ten questions given and write ten new ones for ten other people.

1. Is there a piece of modern media that has inspired your creativity the most? I’d say the one thing that inspired me the most in the past years has been Dragon Age: Inquisition? I’ve had an on and off thing with drawing/writing for… all of my life lol but this game shook me out of a years-long funnk, got me drawing and writing again, using colors, creating actual characters, headcanoning to infinity and back, not just about the protagonists I built for the game, but also for canon characters and just random OCs. I just finished going through my old tags and had a blast. Not sure why this one game in particular -- I suspect the lore is both rich and generic enough for everyone to have something to get into. Also it was my first time playing on a “next gen system” so everything looked SO FUCKING PRETTY OMG.

2. Do you have to finish a book once you’ve started it, or are you able to walk away if it doesn’t interest you? I like to know how stories end, but I’m lazy enough to just… not pick up the book again (this may or may not be what’s happening rn with White Jazz, whoops).

3. Do you wait until you’ve finished a current project before you start a new one, or are you the kind of person that has a folder full of WIPs? Definitely the latter, but until I’ve churned out The Thing™, I tend to keep working on it, so a lot of these WIPs are essentially the same story, just seen/told from different angles

4. Do things have to be just right for you to be able to write, or can you write wherever/whenever? I’m not sure? I mean, logically I should be able to write best at home, seated at my computer, with a cup of tea and some tasty snacks, but when I do have free time at home I usually end up faffing about on tumblr. I write best in shitty conditions (on my phone, on the bus), or at work, when I’m supposed to be, you know, working. But maybe this is right for me.

5. Do you have a favorite terrible book? I got rid of it eventually, but for a while I kept Irène Frain’s Les hommes, etc. just so I could re-read it and marvel at how dull it was, and badly-written, and cliché af. (seriously, it’s ridiculous)

6. Do you have a OTP? A NOTP? A BROTP? I’m in a bit of a fandom funk atm, but generally speaking, yes -- lots of them! They change over time, but can usually be brought back to life with the right amount of tumblr and daydreaming. Right now I don’t ship anything too hard, platonically or not, but I do hate some ships I’ve seen or read about -- including Downton Abbey’s Thommy (blaming you, tohru) and Game of Thrones’ Jony.

7. Do you write fanfiction? If yes, what was the first piece/fandom you wrote? Well, I’m not writing much right now but I have in the past, and I love it! I think my first "real” fic was a sequel to Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy Adventure GB game. I wrote it on an actual typewriter and it was all dialogue. Iirc -- it was tropey as hell, and just plain bad.

8. Do you find drawing, writing, or reading more relaxing? Reading, probably. With drawing and writing, I’m always questioning whether what I’m doing is Right™ -- and suspecting it isn’t

9. What is your favorite cliché trope - to read and/or write? Pining. In moderation, and even so I’m aware that it’s pretty childish, but it just hits all of my buttons.

10. How many journals do you have? Describe the prettiest one/your favorite. I’ve had a few physical journals in the past, mostly notebooks, but I guess the most consistent journaling I did was online -- on livejournal, actually. I blogged for like… 4 years there? five? I went private in the last year and half, but it helped me realize that I was just going around in circles -- and that seeing patterns isn’t enough to get better. Uh, so yeah. No journal for me anymore.

And now for the tags and questions

When it comes to character creation, what comes first to you, looks or personality? Something else?

Do you make playlists, inspiration boards, aesthetics, whatever? Why?

Have you ever changed/dropped a character because you felt you’d put too much of yourself into them?

Do you have a Fictional Character Type™?

If you write -- how do you write? On paper, on computer? On your phone? Do you have a designated software / workspace?

Still on the writing topic -- do you have a beta reader? Why?

Now for something more domestic -- do you put music on to do chores? What genre/artist?

Do you like to cook for other people?

Is there something you’re really enjoying atm? Hobby, sport, media, it’s all good.

Anything you’re looking forward to in 2018 *knocks on wood*?

Tagging @venatohru, @bugsieplusone, @scribbleymark, @drenn, @rad-puppeteer, @pixiedurango, @tendersquishyjamie, @noseforahtwo, @heyitsharding and @solas-you-nerd -- if you guys feel like giving it a go!

#meme #thank you for tagging me!

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nancydsmithus · 5 years ago

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Designing And Building A Progressive Web Application Without A Framework (Part 2)

Ben Frain

2019-07-25T14:00:59+02:002019-07-25T12:06:45+00:00

The raison d’être of this adventure was to push your humble author a little in the disciplines of visual design and JavaScript coding. The functionality of the application I’d decided to build was not dissimilar to a ‘to do’ application. It is important to stress that this wasn’t an exercise in original thinking. The destination was far less important than the journey.

Want to find out how the application ended up? Point your phone browser at https://io.benfrain.com.

Read Part One of Designing And Building A Progessive Web Application Without A Framework.

Here is a summary of what we will cover in this article:

The project set-up and why I opted for Gulp as a build tool;

Application design patterns and what they mean in practice;

How to store and visualize application state;

how CSS was scoped to components;

what UI/UX niceties were employed to make the things more ‘app-like’;

How the remit changed through iteration.

Let’s start with the build tools.

Build Tools

In order to get my basic tooling of TypeScipt and PostCSS up and running and create a decent development experience, I would need a build system.

In my day job, for the last five years or so, I have been building interface prototypes in HTML/CSS and to a lesser extent, JavaScript. Until recently, I have used Gulp with any number of plugins almost exclusively to achieve my fairly humble build needs.

Typically I need to process CSS, convert JavaScript or TypeScript to more widely supported JavaScript, and occasionally, carry out related tasks like minifying code output and optimizing assets. Using Gulp has always allowed me to solve those issues with aplomb.

For those unfamiliar, Gulp lets you write JavaScript to do ‘something’ to files on your local file system. To use Gulp, you typically have a single file (called gulpfile.js) in the root of your project. This JavaScript file allows you to define tasks as functions. You can add third-party ‘Plugins’, which are essentially further JavaScript functions, that deal with specific tasks.

An Example Gulp Task

An example Gulp task might be using a plugin to harness PostCSS to process to CSS when you change an authoring style sheet (gulp-postcss). Or compiling TypeScript files to vanilla JavaScript (gulp-typescript) as you save them. Here is a simple example of how you write a task in Gulp. This task uses the ‘del’ gulp plugin to delete all the files in a folder called ‘build’:

var del = require("del"); gulp.task("clean", function() { return del(["build/**/*"]); });

The require assigns the del plugin to a variable. Then the gulp.task method is called. We name the task with a string as the first argument (“clean”) and then run a function, which in this case uses the ‘del’ method to delete the folder passed to it as an argument. The asterisk symbols there are ‘glob’ patterns which essentially say ‘any file in any folder’ of the build folder.

Gulp tasks can get heaps more complicated but in essence, that is the mechanics of how things are handled. The truth is, with Gulp, you don’t need to be a JavaScript wizard to get by; grade 3 copy and paste skills are all you need.

I’d stuck with Gulp as my default build tool/task runner for all these years with a policy of ‘if it ain’t broke; don’t try and fix it’.

However, I was worried I was getting stuck in my ways. It’s an easy trap to fall into. First, you start holidaying the same place every year, then refusing to adopt any new fashion trends before eventually and steadfastly refusing to try out any new build tools.

I’d heard plenty of chatter on the Internets about ‘Webpack’ and thought it was my duty to try a project using the new-fangled toast of the front-end developer cool-kids.

Webpack

I distinctly remember skipping over to the webpack.js.org site with keen interest. The first explanation of what Webpack is and does started like this:

import bar from './bar';

Say what? In the words of Dr. Evil, “Throw me a frickin’ bone here, Scott”.

I know it’s my own hang-up to deal with but I’ve developed a revulsion to any coding explanations that mention ‘foo’, ‘bar’ or ‘baz’. That plus the complete lack of succinctly describing what Webpack was actually for had me suspecting it perhaps wasn’t for me.

Digging a little further into the Webpack documentation, a slightly less opaque explanation was offered, “At its core, webpack is a static module bundler for modern JavaScript applications”.

Hmmm. Static module bundler. Was that what I wanted? I wasn’t convinced. I read on but the more I read, the less clear I was. Back then, concepts like dependency graphs, hot module reloading, and entry points were essentially lost on me.

A couple of evenings of researching Webpack later, I abandoned any notion of using it.

I’m sure in the right situation and more experienced hands, Webpack is immensely powerful and appropriate but it seemed like complete overkill for my humble needs. Module bundling, tree-shaking, and hot-module reloading sounded great; I just wasn’t convinced I needed them for my little ‘app’.

So, back to Gulp then.

On the theme of not changing things for change sake, another piece of technology I wanted to evaluate was Yarn over NPM for managing project dependencies. Until that point, I had always used NPM and Yarn was getting touted as a better, faster alternative. I don’t have much to say about Yarn other than if you are currently using NPM and everything is OK, you don’t need to bother trying Yarn.

One tool that arrived too late for me to appraise for this application is Parceljs. With zero configuration and a BrowserSync like browser reloading backed in, I’ve since found great utility in it! In addition, in Webpack’s defense, I'm told that v4 onwards of Webpack doesn’t require a configuration file. Anecdotally, in a more recent poll I ran on Twitter, of the 87 respondents, over half chose Webpack over Gulp, Parcel or Grunt.

I started my Gulp file with basic functionality to get up and running.

A ‘default’ task would watch the ‘source’ folders of style sheets and TypeScript files and compile them out to a build folder along with the basic HTML and associated source maps.

I got BrowserSync working with Gulp too. I might not know what to do with a Webpack configuration file but that didn’t mean I was some kind of animal. Having to manually refresh the browser while iterating with HTML/CSS is soooo 2010 and BrowserSync gives you that short feedback and iteration loop that is so useful for front-end coding.

Here is the basic gulp file as of 11.6.2017

You can see how I tweaked the Gulpfile nearer to the end of shipping, adding minification with ugilify:

Project Structure

By consequence of my technology choices, some elements of code organization for the application were defining themselves. A gulpfile.js in the root of the project, a node_modules folder (where Gulp stores plugin code) a preCSS folder for the authoring style sheets, a ts folder for the TypeScript files, and a build folder for the compiled code to live.

The idea was to have an index.html that contained the ‘shell’ of the application, including any non-dynamic HTML structure and then links to the styles and the JavaScript file that would make the application work. On disk, it would look something like this:

build/ node_modules/ preCSS/ img/ partials/ styles.css ts/ .gitignore gulpfile.js index.html package.json tsconfig.json

Configuring BrowserSync to look at that build folder meant I could point my browser at localhost:3000 and all was good.

With a basic build system in place, files organization settled and some basic designs to make a start with, I had run-out of procrastination fodder I could legitimately use to prevent me from actually building the thing!

Writing An Application

The principle of how the application would work was this. There would be a store of data. When the JavaScript loaded it would load that data, loop through each player in the data, creating the HTML needed to represent each player as a row in the layout and placing them in the appropriate in/out section. Then interactions from the user would move a player from one state to another. Simple.

When it came to actually writing the application, the two big conceptual challenges that needed to be understood were:

How to represent the data for an application in a manner that could be easily extended and manipulated;

How to make the UI react when data was changed from user input.

One of the simplest ways to represent a data structure in JavaScript is with object notation. That sentence reads a little computer science-y. More simply, an ‘object’ in JavaScript lingo is a handy way of storing data.

Consider this JavaScript object assigned to a variable called ioState (for In/Out State):

var ioState = { Count: 0, // Running total of how many players RosterCount: 0; // Total number of possible players ToolsExposed: false, // Whether the UI for the tools is showing Players: [], // A holder for the players }

If you don’t really know JavaScript that well, you can probably at least grasp what’s going on: each line inside the curly braces is a property (or ‘key’ in JavaScript parlance) and value pair. You can set all sorts of things to a JavaScript key. For example, functions, arrays of other data or nested objects. Here’s an example:

var testObject = { testFunction: function() { return "sausages"; }, testArray: [3,7,9], nestedtObject { key1: "value1", key2: 2, } }

The net result is that using that kind of data structure you can get, and set, any of the keys of the object. For example, if we want to set the count of the ioState object to 7:

ioState.Count = 7;

If we want to set a piece of text to that value, the notation works like this:

aTextNode.textContent = ioState.Count;

You can see that getting values and setting values to that state object is simple in the JavaScript side of things. However, reflecting those changes in the User Interface is less so. This is the main area where frameworks and libraries seek to abstract away the pain.

In general terms, when it comes to dealing with updating the user interface based upon state, it’s preferable to avoid querying the DOM, as this is generally considered a sub-optimal approach.

Consider the In/Out interface. It’s typically showing a list of potential players for a game. They are vertically listed, one under the other, down the page.

Perhaps each player is represented in the DOM with a label wrapping a checkbox input. This way, clicking a player would toggle the player to ‘In’ by virtue of the label making the input ‘checked’.

To update our interface, we might have a ‘listener’ on each input element in the JavaScript. On a click or change, the function queries the DOM and counts how many of our player inputs are checked. On the basis of that count, we would then update something else in the DOM to show the user how many players are checked.

Let’s consider the cost of that basic operation. We are listening on multiple DOM nodes for the click/check of an input, then querying the DOM to see how many of a particular DOM type are checked, then writing something into the DOM to show the user, UI wise, the number of players we just counted.

The alternative would be to hold the application state as a JavaScript object in memory. A button/input click in the DOM could merely update the JavaScript object and then, based on that change in the JavaScript object, do a single-pass update of the all interface changes that are needed. We could skip querying the DOM to count the players as the JavaScript object would already hold that information.

So. Using a JavaScript object structure for the state seemed simple but flexible enough to encapsulate the application state at any given time. The theory of how this could be managed seemed sound enough too – this must be what phrases like ‘one-way data flow’ were all about? However, the first real trick would be in creating some code that would automatically update the UI based on any changes to that data.

The good news is that smarter people than I have already figured this stuff out (thank goodness!). People have been perfecting approaches to this kind of challenge since the dawn of applications. This category of problems is the bread and butter of ‘design patterns’. The moniker ‘design pattern’ sounded esoteric to me at first but after digging just a little it all started to sound less computer science and more common sense.

Design Patterns

A design pattern, in computer science lexicon, is a pre-defined and proven way of solving a common technical challenge. Think of design patterns as the coding equivalent of a cooking recipe.

Perhaps the most famous literature on design patterns is "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" from back in 1994. Although that deals with C++ and smalltalk the concepts are transferable. For JavaScript, Addy Osmani’s "Learning JavaScript Design Patterns" covers similar ground. You can also read it online for free here.

Observer Pattern

Typically design patterns are split into three groups: Creational, Structural and Behavioural. I was looking for something Behavioural that helped to deal with communicating changes around the different parts of the application.

More recently, I have seen and read a really great deep-dive on implementing reactivity inside an app by Gregg Pollack. There is both a blog post and video for your enjoyment here.

When reading the opening description of the ‘Observer’ pattern in Learning JavaScript Design Patterns I was pretty sure it was the pattern for me. It is described thus:

The Observer is a design pattern where an object (known as a subject) maintains a list of objects depending on it (observers), automatically notifying them of any changes to state. When a subject needs to notify observers about something interesting happening, it broadcasts a notification to the observers (which can include specific data related to the topic of the notification).

The key to my excitement was that this seemed to offer some way of things updating themselves when needed.

Suppose the user clicked a player named “Betty” to select that she was ‘In’ for the game. A few things might need to happen in the UI:

Add 1 to the playing count

Remove Betty from the ‘Out’ pool of players

Add Betty to the ‘In’ pool of players

The app would also need to update the data that represented the UI. What I was very keen to avoid was this:

playerName.addEventListener("click", playerToggle); function playerToggle() { if (inPlayers.includes(e.target.textContent)) { setPlayerOut(e.target.textContent); decrementPlayerCount(); } else { setPlayerIn(e.target.textContent); incrementPlayerCount(); } }

The aim was to have an elegant data flow that updated what was needed in the DOM when and if the central data was changed.

With an Observer pattern, it was possible to send out updates to the state and therefore the user interface quite succinctly. Here is an example, the actual function used to add a new player to the list:

function itemAdd(itemString: string) { let currentDataSet = getCurrentDataSet(); var newPerson = new makePerson(itemString); io.items[currentDataSet].EventData.splice(0, 0, newPerson); io.notify({ items: io.items }); }

The part relevant to the Observer pattern there being the io.notify method. As that shows us modifying the items part of the application state, let me show you the observer that listened for changes to ‘items’:

io.addObserver({ props: ["items"], callback: function renderItems() { // Code that updates anything to do with items... } });

We have a notify method that makes changes to the data and then Observers to that data that respond when properties they are interested in are updated.

With this approach, the app could have observables watching for changes in any property of the data and run a function whenever a change occurred.

If you are interested in the Observer pattern I opted for, I describe it more fully here.

There was now an approach for updating the UI effectively based on state. Peachy. However, this still left me with two glaring issues.

One was how to store the state across page reloads/sessions and the fact that despite the UI working, visually, it just wasn’t very ‘app like’. For example, if a button was pressed the UI instantly changed on screen. It just wasn’t particularly compelling.

Let’s deal with the storage side of things first.

Saving State

My primary interest from a development side entering into this centered on understanding how app interfaces could be built and made interactive with JavaScript. How to store and retrieve data from a server or tackle user-authentication and logins was ‘out of scope’.

Therefore, instead of hooking up to a web service for the data storage needs, I opted to keep all data on the client. There are a number of web platform methods of storing data on a client. I opted for localStorage.

The API for localStorage is incredibly simple. You set and get data like this:

// Set something localStorage.setItem("yourKey", "yourValue"); // Get something localStorage.getItem("yourKey");

LocalStorage has a setItem method that you pass two strings to. The first is the name of the key you want to store the data with and the second string is the actual string you want to store. The getItem method takes a string as an argument that returns to you whatever is stored under that key in localStorage. Nice and simple.

However, amongst the reasons to not use localStorage is the fact that everything has to be saved as a ‘string’. This means you can’t directly store something like an array or object. For example, try running these commands in your browser console:

// Set something localStorage.setItem("myArray", [1, 2, 3, 4]); // Get something localStorage.getItem("myArray"); // Logs "1,2,3,4"

Even though we tried to set the value of ‘myArray’ as an array; when we retrieved it, it had been stored as a string (note the quote marks around ‘1,2,3,4’).

You can certainly store objects and arrays with localStorage but you need to be mindful that they need converting back and forth from strings.

So, in order to write state data into localStorage it was written to a string with the JSON.stringify() method like this:

const storage = window.localStorage; storage.setItem("players", JSON.stringify(io.items));

When the data needed retrieving from localStorage, the string was turned back into usable data with the JSON.parse() method like this:

const players = JSON.parse(storage.getItem("players"));

Using localStorage meant everything was on the client and that meant no 3rd party services or data storage concerns.

Data was now persisting refreshes and sessions — Yay! The bad news was that localStorage does not survive a user emptying their browser data. When someone did that, all their In/Out data would be lost. That’s a serious shortcoming.

It’s not hard to appreciate that `localStorage` probably isn’t the best solution for 'proper' applications. Besides the aforementioned string issue, it is also slow for serious work as it blocks the 'main thread'. Alternatives are coming, like KV Storage but for now, make a mental note to caveat its use based on suitability.

Despite the fragility of saving data locally on a users device, hooking up to a service or database was resisted. Instead, the issue was side-stepped by offering a ‘load/save’ option. This would allow any user of In/Out to save their data as a JSON file which could be loaded back into the app if needed.

This worked well on Android but far less elegantly for iOS. On an iPhone, it resulted in a splurge of text on screen like this:

(Large preview)

As you can imagine, I was far from alone in berating Apple via WebKit about this shortcoming. The relevant bug was here.

At the time of writing this bug has a solution and patch but has yet to make its way into iOS Safari. Allegedly, iOS13 fixes it but it’s that’s in Beta as I write.

So, for my minimum viable product, that was storage addressed. Now it was time to attempt to make things more ‘app-like’!

App-I-Ness

Turns out after many discussions with many people, defining exactly what ‘app like’ means is quite difficult.

Ultimately, I settled on ‘app-like’ being synonymous with a visual slickness usually missing from the web. When I think of the apps that feel good to use they all feature motion. Not gratuitous, but motion that adds to the story of your actions. It might be the page transitions between screens, the manner in which menus pop into existence. It’s hard to describe in words but most of us know it when we see it.

The first piece of visual flair needed was shifting player names up or down from ‘In’ to ‘Out’ and vice-versa when selected. Making a player instantly move from one section to the other was straightforward but certainly not ‘app-like’. An animation as a player name was clicked would hopefully emphasize the result of that interaction – the player moving from one category to another.

Like many of these kinds of visual interactions, their apparent simplicity belies the complexity involved in actually getting it working well.

It took a few iterations to get the movement right but the basic logic was this:

Once a ‘player’ is clicked, capture where that player is, geometrically, on the page;

Measure how far away the top of the area is the player needs to move to if going up (‘In’) and how far away the bottom is, if going down (‘Out’);

If going up, a space equal to the height of the player row needs to be left as the player moves up and the players above should collapse downwards at the same rate as the time it takes for the player to travel up to land in the space vacated by the existing ‘In’ players (if any exist) coming down;

If a player is going ‘Out’ and moving down, everything else needs to move up to the space left and the player needs to end up below any current ‘Out’ players.

Phew! It was trickier than I thought in English — never mind JavaScript!

There were additional complexities to consider and trial such as transition speeds. At the outset, it wasn’t obvious whether a constant speed of movement (e.g. 20px per 20ms), or a constant duration for the movement (e.g. 0.2s) would look better. The former was slightly more complicated as the speed needed to be computed ‘on the fly’ based upon how far the player needed to travel — greater distance requiring a longer transition duration.

However, it turned out that a constant transition duration was not just simpler in code; it actually produced a more favorable effect. The difference was subtle but these are the kind of choices you can only determine once you have seen both options.

Every so often whilst trying to nail this effect, a visual glitch would catch the eye but it was impossible to deconstruct in real time. I found the best debugging process was creating a QuickTime recording of the animation and then going through it a frame at a time. Invariably this revealed the problem quicker than any code based debugging.

Looking at the code now, I can appreciate that on something beyond my humble app, this functionality could almost certainly be written more effectively. Given that the app would know the number of players and know the fixed height of the slats, it should be entirely possible to make all distance calculations in the JavaScript alone, without any DOM reading.

It’s not that what was shipped doesn’t work, it’s just that it isn’t the kind of code solution you would showcase on the Internet. Oh, wait.

Other ‘app like’ interactions were much easier to pull off. Instead of menus simply snapping in and out with something as simple as toggling a display property, a lot of mileage was gained by simply exposing them with a little more finesse. It was still triggered simply but CSS was doing all the heavy lifting:

.io-EventLoader { position: absolute; top: 100%; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 100; width: 100%; opacity: 0; transition: all 0.2s; pointer-events: none; transform: translateY(-10px); [data-evswitcher-showing="true"] & { opacity: 1; pointer-events: auto; transform: none; } }

There when the data-evswitcher-showing="true" attribute was toggled on a parent element, the menu would fade in, transform back into its default position and pointer events would be re-enabled so the menu could receive clicks.

ECSS Style Sheet Methodology

You’ll notice in that prior code that from an authoring point of view, CSS overrides are being nested within a parent selector. That’s the way I always favor writing UI style sheets; a single source of truth for each selector and any overrides for that selector encapsulated within a single set of braces. It’s a pattern that requires the use of a CSS processor (Sass, PostCSS, LESS, Stylus, et al) but I feel is the only positive way to make use of nesting functionality.

I’d cemented this approach in my book, Enduring CSS and despite there being a plethora of more involved methods available to write CSS for interface elements, ECSS has served me and the large development teams I work with well since the approach was first documented way back in 2014! It proved just as effective in this instance.

Partialling The TypeScript

Even without a CSS processor or superset language like Sass, CSS has had the ability to import one or more CSS files into another with the import directive:

@import "other-file.css";

When beginning with JavaScript I was surprised there was no equivalent. Whenever code files get longer than a screen or so high, it always feels like splitting it into smaller pieces would be beneficial.

Another bonus to using TypeScript was that it has a beautifully simple way of splitting code into files and importing them when needed.

This capability pre-dated native JavaScript modules and was a great convenience feature. When TypeScript was compiled it stitched it all back to a single JavaScript file. It meant it was possible to easily break up the application code into manageable partial files for authoring and import then into the main file easily. The top of the main inout.ts looked like this:

/// <reference path="defaultData.ts" /> /// <reference path="splitTeams.ts" /> /// <reference path="deleteOrPaidClickMask.ts" /> /// <reference path="repositionSlat.ts" /> /// <reference path="createSlats.ts" /> /// <reference path="utils.ts" /> /// <reference path="countIn.ts" /> /// <reference path="loadFile.ts" /> /// <reference path="saveText.ts" /> /// <reference path="observerPattern.ts" /> /// <reference path="onBoard.ts" />

This simple house-keeping and organization task helped enormously.

Multiple Events

At the outset, I felt that from a functionality point of view, a single event, like “Tuesday Night Football” would suffice. In that scenario, if you loaded In/Out up you just added/removed or moved players in or out and that was that. There was no notion of multiple events.

I quickly decided that (even going for a minimum viable product) this would make for a pretty limited experience. What if somebody organized two games on different days, with a different roster of players? Surely In/Out could/should accommodate that need? It didn’t take too long to re-shape the data to make this possible and amend the methods needed to load in a different set.

At the outset, the default data set looked something like this:

var defaultData = [ { name: "Daz", paid: false, marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Carl", paid: false, marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Big Dave", paid: false, marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Nick", paid: false, marked: false, team: "", in: false } ];

An array containing an object for each player.

After factoring in multiple events it was amended to look like this:

var defaultDataV2 = [ { EventName: "Tuesday Night Footy", Selected: true, EventData: [ { name: "Jack", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Carl", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Big Dave", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Nick", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Red Boots", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Gaz", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Angry Martin", marked: false, team: "", in: false } ] }, { EventName: "Friday PM Bank Job", Selected: false, EventData: [ { name: "Mr Pink", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Mr Blonde", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Mr White", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Mr Brown", marked: false, team: "", in: false } ] }, { EventName: "WWII Ladies Baseball", Selected: false, EventData: [ { name: "C Dottie Hinson", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "P Kit Keller", marked: false, team: "", in: false }, { name: "Mae Mordabito", marked: false, team: "", in: false } ] } ];

The new data was an array with an object for each event. Then in each event was an EventData property that was an array with player objects in as before.

It took much longer to re-consider how the interface could best deal with this new capability.

From the outset, the design had always been very sterile. Considering this was also supposed to be an exercise in design, I didn’t feel I was being brave enough. So a little more visual flair was added, starting with the header. This is what I mocked up in Sketch:

Revised design mockup. (Large preview)

It wasn’t going to win awards but it was certainly more arresting than where it started.

Aesthetics aside, it wasn’t until somebody else pointed it out, that I appreciated the big plus icon in the header was very confusing. Most people thought it was a way to add another event. In reality, it switched to an ‘Add Player’ mode with a fancy transition that let you type in the name of the player in the same place the event name was currently.

This was another instance where fresh eyes were invaluable. It was also an important lesson in letting go. The honest truth was I had held on to the input mode transition in the header because I felt it was cool and clever. However, the fact was it was not serving the design and therefore the application as a whole.

This was changed in the live version. Instead, the header just deals with events — a more common scenario. Meanwhile, adding players is done from a sub-menu. This gives the app a much more understandable hierarchy.

The other lesson learned here was that whenever possible, it’s hugely beneficial to get candid feedback from peers. If they are good and honest people, they won’t let you give yourself a pass!

Summary: My Code Stinks

Right. So far, so normal tech-adventure retrospective piece; these things are ten a penny on Medium! The formula goes something like this: the dev details how they smashed down all obstacles to release a finely tuned piece of software into the Internets and then pick up an interview at Google or got acqui-hired somewhere. However, the truth of the matter is that I was a first-timer at this app-building malarkey so the code ultimately shipped as the ‘finished’ application stunk to high heaven!

For example, the Observer pattern implementation used worked very well. I was organized and methodical at the outset but that approach ‘went south’ as I became more desperate to finish things off. Like a serial dieter, old familiar habits crept back in and the code quality subsequently dropped.

Looking now at the code shipped, it is a less than ideal hodge-bodge of clean observer pattern and bog-standard event listeners calling functions. In the main inout.ts file there are over 20 querySelector method calls; hardly a poster child for modern application development!

I was pretty sore about this at the time, especially as at the outset I was aware this was a trap I didn’t want to fall into. However, in the months that have since passed, I’ve become more philosophical about it.

The final post in this series reflects on finding the balance between silvery-towered code idealism and getting things shipped. It also covers the most important lessons learned during this process and my future aspirations for application development.

(dm, yk, il, ra)

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katybirdy95 · 8 years ago

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1,2, 3, 20, 21 , 22, 25 and 35! ^_^

1. Favorite Period Piece(s)?

There is so many to chose from, but here is some of my favourites, mainly based on acting, the entire cast, costume and setting that were perfect (or almost):

Romeo and Juliet (1968) - The acting between the two leads were wonderful and I believe that Olivia Hussey is the perfect Juliet and the costume were absolutely gorgeous and authentic.

The Lion in Winter (1968) - What is there not to say about this movie, the acting was fantastic, brilliant chemistry between the actors playing the warring family. Katharine Hepburn was a amazing as the matriarch of the family, Eleanor of Aquitaine - I think the Queen herself would have been proud.

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) - Again fantastic acting, beautiful costumes - all of Anne’s were beautiful - and Genevieve’s whole portrayal of the Tudor Queen was on point.

Ever After - This was one of my favourite’s growing up. The costumes were fantastic, the storyline, though based on a fairytale, was realistic. Drew Barrymore’s Danielle was a strong lead and the relationship between her and the prince was good and did I mention how beautiful the costumes were.

2. Favorite portrayal in a period piece?

I would have to go with Natalie Dormer’s Anne Boleyn. I think this was to do with Natalie understanding the character of Anne and was able to portray the good and bad sides of the Tudor Queen’s character and it was wonderful to hear that Natalie fought to have Anne’s story portrayed in a realistic way and not turn her in to femme fatal type, oh and the execution scene always kills me.

3. Least favorite portrayal in a period piece?

I have to agree with most of the cast of The White Queen, except for the exception of David Oaks, Aneurin Barnard and James Frain, but even some of their scenes made me cringe.

20. Best wedding scene?

I honestly can’t think, there is one but I can’t remember the name of it unfortunetly.

21. Most surprising death in a period drama?

When I watched Malá Morská Víla (The Little Mermaid) as a child, I had only seen the Disney version, so was shocked when the mermaid died at the end, but at the same time it was such a tragically beautiful film.

22.Best portrayal of a royal family?

Again, I have to agree with the portrayal of the Plantagenet family in The Lion in Winter.

25.Favorite OTP in a period drama?

Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe - Anne of Green Gables (1985)

Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII - The Tudors (Although the relationship ended terribly, the actors’ chemistry was amazing)

Mermaid and the prince - Malá Morská Víla (1975)

35. If you could visit any set of a period drama. What show would it be?

The Tudors - I think a lot of the actors really studied the characters they were playing and wanted to make them as human as possible, especially that of JRM and Natalie Dormer and the actors when I have watched the Bloopers are funny, so I could have a laugh with some of them.

Again, thanks for asking :)

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fardell24b · 6 years ago

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Lawndale and Sandi Griffin’s Genie - Chapter 1 Part 3

After homeroom, Sandi, Jean, Quinn, Stacy and Tiffany had history. Sandi and Jean met Quinn, Stacy and Tiffany.

“There you are, Sandi!” Quinn said as she approached the history classroom. “Who is this?” she asked, referring to Jean.

“This is Jean Jenner. She is on exchange from England and is staying with my family,” Sandi said.

“That is so cool!” Stacy said.

“Yeaaah. Very cooool,” Tiffany said.

“You didn’t say anything about this,” Quinn said.

“It was, like, a surprise!” Sandi said. She then noticed Mr DeMartino approaching.

“Where is the rest of the class?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but maybe, like, their homerooms are on the other side of the school!” Sandi said.

“Stupid timetable changes!” Mr Anthony DeMartino said as he opened the door to the classroom.

10 minutes later Ms Li was going through paperwork when she noticed the addition of Jean Jenner as a new exchange student. She called her secretary.

“Nadine! Why was I not informed of the arrival of a new exchange student to my school!” she said.

Nadine Fenton looked over the paperwork. “She is enrolled starting today. The paperwork looks in order,” she said.

“Good! But still, a new student needs to report to the principal as soon as they arrive on the first day. No exceptions!” Li said.

“Very true,” Nadine said.

“Ms. Jean Jenner, please report to the Principal’s Office. Immediately!” came Ms Li’s voice over the intercom.

‘I knew that would happen,’ Jean thought. She quickly left the room before Sandi, or Mr DeMartino could say anything.

After Jean had left Sandi grabbed the emerald and said “I wish that Jean will know what to say to Ms Li.” The emerald glowed briefly and the wish granting noise came from it.

“Ms Griffin! Please refrain from playing with your gimmicky Jewellery in class!” Mr DeMartino shouted.

“Sorry,” Sandi said, not entirely sincerely.

Jean had turned a corner when Sandi had made her wish. The wish granting noise emanated around her. “You didn’t need to make that wish Sandi!” she muttered. Even so, she gained the extra knowledge about Ms Li’s personality. ‘That may be useful in future,’ she thought.

Ms Li looked up from the paperwork strewn on her desk as Jean entered her office. “Jean Jenner reporting as requested, Ms Li,” she said.

“Good!” Ms Li said. She picked up a piece of paper “It says here that you are billeted with the Griffins. Is that correct?”

“Yes it is,” Jean said.

“Why didn’t you report here as soon as you arrived at school?”

“I got carried away talking with Sandi, Ma’am.”

“I can believe that, your transgression was minor. But you still need to submit to a psychological test before returning to class,” Ms Li said. She pressed a button on the intercom. “Ms Manson, please report to the Principal’s Office!”

“Great, a psychological test!” Jean said.

“It is nothing to be worried about. And Welcome to Lawndale High,” Ms Li said, saying the school’s name in a reverential manner.

20 minutes later Jean was walking back to Mr DeMartino’s classroom. “Stupid Psychological test! It’s a good thing she didn’t think that I have low self-esteem!” she muttered. She was sure it would be time for the next class shortly after she got back. She decided to have some fun...

The security cameras in the west half of the school all failed! ‘That will have Ms Li in an uproar,’ Jean thought.

Jean arrived back at Mr DeMartino’s classroom 5 minutes before the end of the period.

After another period, it was recess.

Elias came up to Jean, where she sat near where Sandi and a large group of other girls, including the rest of the Fashion Club, were talking near the rear of the library.

“Can I talk with you away from the others?” he asked, with more than a hint of curiosity in his voice.

“Sure, absolutely,” she said. They walked away from the group of girls, towards the Home Economics/Music block.

“I have a hypothesis related to the fact that with the strange events that happened in the library this morning and the fact that all of the school’s computers can suddenly be controlled by voice,” Elias said.

“What is your hypothesis?” Jean asked. She was hoping that Elias was going where she was thinking he was going.

“That there is some kind of magic involved, almost certainly some kind of genie,” Elias said.

“I will tell you the truth, Elias. Although I am certain that Sandi will be angry,” Jean began. Elias looked concerned.

“I’ll tell you since you are curious,” Jean said, with a laugh. “There was magic in the school this morning with the computers changing. There is a genie in the school,” she hesitated. “And I am that genie.” She knew that Elias had to find out, regardless of how Sandi felt about the matter. She didn’t know what the repercussions would be if Elias didn’t find out about her within the next day.

Elias was then in thought. “Were you always a genie? Or did you become one somehow?” he asked.

“Good question. I will answer it. Approximately 2000 years ago, I was born as a normal human, and then one day soon after my 15th birthday I became a genie and I found myself in the Emerald,” Jean said.

“Is that all?” Elias asked.

“There is a more complex answer but that would take a lot longer to explain,” Jean said.

“Here is another question; how many people have had wishes granted by you?” Elias asked. He was still curious, though Jean’s answer to his earlier question had him trying to think about the repercussions of such an event.

“Sandi is the 2226th,” Jean said.

‘That is a large number,’ Elias thought. He asked something else though. “Are there any other genies that you are aware of?”

Jean answered that she had seen 6 others since the fall of the Roman Empire. Elias talked to her for a short while more before leaving to eat his recess by himself. However Sandi had overheard most of what had been said.

“Why did you tell him?” she asked, with anger in her voice.

“He asked if I was a genie and I had to tell him the truth,” Jean, who wanted to be honest with Elias for her own reasons, said.

“Do not tell anyone else!” Sandi fumed. ‘Elias may now want Jean for himself!’ she thought.

However someone else had overheard Elias and Jean, Torii Jericho. “What were Elias and Jean talking about?” Torii asked.

“None of your business!” Sandi said.

“There is a genie in the school,” Jean said. She was thinking that there was a way around Sandi’s unspoken wish that she not be identified as the genie if someone asked about what was happening.

“There may be, like, a genie in the school, but Jean is not it!” Sandi said. ‘Of course Jean would say that there is a genie. She has been very mischievous this morning,’ she thought.

Torii was in thought for a second. “Sandi, I am going to look for this genie. Come on Brooke, we’ll look for it,” she said.

Brooke Peters followed Torii away from the group.

After Torii and Brooke had gone, Ted approached Elias from the direction of the Science block.

“I haven’t found the genie yet, Elias, but I will keep looking,” he said. Ted was taking the events in stride; he had heard rumours of strange events in history that could have been caused by rather unusual forces.

“I’ve found her, Ted,” Elias said, having decided to fill Ted in on what he had discovered regarding the genie.

“Who is it?” Ted asked, almost whispering.

“Jean, whom was with STUPID Sandi in the library earlier,” Elias said, not quite so quietly. Indeed, Sandi overheard! She was quite annoyed with Elias. She came stomping over and said; “You are going to regret this, Elias!”

Jean came over “Calm down, Sandi. Elias, Ted, please do not inform anyone else about my nature. They are going to find out soon enough,” she said.

“What do you mean, Jean?” Sandi asked, fuming, but trying to keep her voice down.

“Events are going to get out of control, regardless of what you do, Sandi. That is what always happens,” Jean said.

“Whatever!” Sandi said, dismissing Jean’s comment.

“I am going to tell Mrs Danielson. But not anyone else,” Ted said. “See you, Elias, Jean and Sandi,” he then left going into one of the buildings.

“I hope no one else has overheard,” Sandi said.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Elias said.

“I heard that!” Sandi said.

“Tisk, Tisk, Sandi. You haven’t counted on my mischievousness. I don’t need to grant a wish to do magic!” Jean said.

“What!” Sandi said.

“For instance, I can do, this!” Jean blinked and Sandi started to float up into the air!

#angela li #anthony demartino #daria #fanfic #quinn morgendorffer #sandi griffin #stacy rowe #ted dewit-clinton #tiffany blum-deckler

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midnatt-heronweather · 7 years ago

Text

I usually start the year review with some proverb or word of wisdom from some language i'm interested in. this year the only quote that matters the Quote of the year for me. comes from @Jon_Cor at Forsaken "Nothing is ever infact a fact." but it didn't really work as a title. so "2017 review" it is,

Note

that its not obvious to beging with, but I have to state here and now, that all things I say in this run down of my year, are my opinion, and mine alone, I speak for no other creature but myself. so. to the buisness of year reviewing

Conventions:

Not as many as I would like, but enough to review :D

Forsaken- the uk's first (and most likely last) Shadowhunter verse convention

badly advertised, not very organised, attendees a mix of news and plastics, but past that - Joel labelle, Kaitlyn Leeb, Maxim Roy and Jon Cor...omfg!Jon was my reason if I needed one (besides the fact it was Shadowhunters) He was so awesome, didn't think I was odd for loving Hodge, Wasn't too offended when I told him he'd answered a question meant for Joel but I'd not stopped him because his answer was awesome, signed 3 things for me and even high fived me when I told his PA I wasn't into Disney that I liked broken and dark people, like Hodge.and... He got Hodge! I mean

really

got/gets him! more than any fan or actor I've ever spoken too.Since he's no longer in the show I doubt I'll get another chance to meet him but it was so... so worth the other crap (attendee caused I hasten to add)Kaitlyn recognised me as Meliorn and loved that I was openly not a Malec person and I scared Joel and Maxim with the circle blades Clare made, Jon loved them, didn't help the others though, telling everyone they were projectiles as well as hand to hand weapons."

nothing is ever in fact a fact."

Jon said during the con. but this is: Forsaken for me was the last decent Rogue con I would ever attend

Ultimate's 2 / Collectormania 24

- So we bought tickets to Starfury Ultimate's for Allys birthday, (50) but I didn't really see more than the opening and closing ceremonies and the parties, as we stayed at Allys and travelled in, but also because on the Saturday we drove down to Birmingham to Collectormania 24 (the first CM in its new home of Birmingham) so Ally could meet her AOS crush Ming Na Wen (Chun Lee, Street fighter) and I could finally meet Reverb/Vibe actor Carlos Valdes, my costume was in tatters since the back of my jacket has peeled but I took my shades to show my place as a viber.On the way to the con, Heather, who had purchased a photo with Carlos (I was settling for an auto and meeting him due to coin and said costume issues) was considering poses, I said I wish I'd brought Cyane, a gorilla teddy that my mother gave me as it would have worked for a Grodd substitute, she said maybe next time, but fate is funny, and when we stopped at the services she came across a littler Gorilla plushie with sparkly purple eyes, now, with Grodd/Vibe/Heathers love of Teddies and the fact the birthday woman has a major thing for purple. I still say it was fated. she didn't think she had the coin, but since I'd budgeted to hell with meets and autos I did and bought it for us both. but didn't name it. after discussing the craziness of the idea we handed the naming to Carlos himself, since his character Cisco is the Meta-namer on the show. I cringe every time I think of his choice but he said it, so its law. sat next to Hugin on my shelf waiting for my next flashverse meet is a little gorilla called "Wriggle Rump."So I met Carlos and he gave my Reverb shades the Vibe seal of approval (just need a new Jacket).Ally met Ming, didn't drool, picked a picture of her on a motorcycle as her 8x10 (ming + bike = happy birthday girl) and we met Carly in full Stahma gear (pre Jaime being announced for Enchanted).

Smaller cons

were in small number for one reason and another this year:I did Wales Spring, MCM Liverpool, Finally got to meet Tony Curran and Casper Zafer at Newcastle Comic Con, Met David Yost and Arthur Darville at Em in Nottingham.

But the one that stands out for best reasons is Wakefield:I never thought there would be a con in my area, let alone one with three cool guests (James McKenzie, Roger Velasco and Justin Nimmo) but it happened, and I also got to work the Leeds Bradford Starfleet table with the C/O's"happened" to have my camera on me so I got nominated as the roving photographer/ part time chair photographer. I was by the chair twice when it counted, once to get Roger and Justin to pose out of costume and one to have them pose in full Ranger uniform, Justin even asked for a pose he'd done in the show, went to explain and I just beamed "don't need to explain." now...me in full TNG uniform not sure if I looked cliché or just felt it lol but he seemed to get I was a PRIS fan.. somehow despite my geek showing I seem to have earned the friendship of Roger and Justin's agent Kelly, who..well. 2018 will be interesting.

What more can I say but>>>>>

<<<<I've tried to quantify what happened, into words, I've asked for quotes. and nothing sums up the fall of Rogue Events. especially not for those who attended its swansong

Gigs:

2 plus Whitby where

The Birthday Massacre

played a mix of new and old album.but the stand out of the year has to be

Counterfeit

playing in Leeds. -Finally got to meet Jamie and as expected I made an ass of myself. tried to avoid all mention of TMI but ended up saying #BTA didn't I. anyway. the gig was amazing. the crowd were arseholes. didn't realise they were supposed to use the whole room to dance not just crowd the stage. and when Jamie got down to play "Letter to the lost." they didn't give him or the song the respect they deserved. Will be seeing them next year in Manchester. a city where I have yet to find a badly behaved crowd. but besides the idiots in my local area the band were amazing.I Saw

The Cruxshadows

in Sheffield again. new album is just as amazing as ever. and got to almost get jumped on, fell on, and walked into by Rogue. who came so close when he dropped off stage at one point it looked like he'd not planned it.

Other Events in 2017:

Scotland -

After Newcastle Comic con, Heather, myself and my dad went to Scotland for the week, on the way we stopped at a estuary town along the Clyde and I couldn't get Kate Rusbys Drowned lovers out my head.We stayed in Fort William, a stone's throw from GlenFinnan on the shores of Loch Sheil where the Macleod's from Highlander hail from. we visited Eilean Donan Castle used in the movie and the credits of the show, drove by the location of the farmhouse where Conner and Heather lived in the movie and (just to add another fandom) we were on the Loch when the train crossed the Glenfinnan Viaduct used in Harry Potter, it turns out the Viaduct isn't the only potter connection. the loch was the scene of the 2nd test in the Tri Wizard tournament, and one of the inlets (I think that's what they are) lead to where Dumbledore was buried.We also saw the giant Kelpie heads, and visited Edinburgh, but I underestimated just how BIG it is and we didn't get round everything we wanted to there. we are plotting a city only return visit.

McKellen Pride -

Sir Ian McKellen originates from the same town as my Parabatai (Wigan, Lancashire) and he returned this year to open the towns second ever pride and to hold a small audience the night before. Heather scored us tickets: Sir Ian opened with a reading from Lord Of The Rings (the Balrog/you shall not pass scene) he spoke about coming out, working on the stage and in Hollywood, and playing a widow/dame (strangest sight in history I swear) and read Shakespeare..now I'm an idiot, I recorded him but my speaker was pointed the wrong way so its barely audible but the image is there :D.

Other Fandom Things in 2017

Star Trek

return to Series form with the USS Discovery leaving dock in September this year, starring Sonequa-Martin-Green, Jason Isaacs, James Frain, Anthony Rapp, Shazad Latif and Wilson Cruz. it has been highly debated and talked about both before and after the airing of the first half of season 1. which finished in (1a) in November. it returns (1b) in January and I for one cannot wait.

Killjoys

has been picked up for two seasons, to see it to the end of the story. and

Shadowhunters

has been given a season 3 (announced while we were at Forsaken) - 3a airs in March of 2018

A true friend is one who walks in when the rest of he world walks out:

As always I have to have a section to mark those people who have made this year bareable, the good thing is this year theres no need for a piece on those who've also made it unbearable.SO: to embarrass the hell out of them I am actualy going to name names.through cons and gigs, lunacy and Luls, these few extremly demented downworlders have made this year awesome. Hunter, Kai, Sarah, Clare, Jennie, Adam, Ashley, Rosie, Taz, Carla, Michelle.A special mention to Sam. who, while in America let me bug her and didn't tell me to go jump. and who i managed to wheedle into organising to go to Milan 2018 the very day she returned from America. 2018 is going to be an experience for both of us lass.

Ally and Heather, what can I say that I don't say so often your tired of hearing it ladies? not sure i'd still be topside if it wasn't for you two sometimes. (and by topside I mean, not in an institution)I am not the expresive type as you know. but you know where I stand when needed... i hop.

Minnie: my little black and grey familliar has had her troubles this year. teeth and liver both givng her jip. but she is still here and barking. and I thiank every angel, watchtower, demon and deitiy for her every chance I get. and I do not care if that is soppy.

Short and sweet?

and thats it ladies and gents. my year in review. _________

I am working on a photographic round up.

#rogue events #starfury conventions #counterfeit #the cruxshadows #carlos valdes #Forsaken #jon cor #2017

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