#and i think in general when i list my comparisons out Master and Commander is the better book

[isaacathom]

Just finished reading Master and Commander, which I overall enjoyed but found a bit difficult to read (O'Brian is clearly very knowledgeable about nautical matters, and unfortunately I am not, and so my mind glazes over). I mostly enjoyed being able to compare it with my memory of having read the Hornblower books, and how similar events are handled very differently by the narrative. which was cool!

[skitskatdacat63]

super obsessed with your art, seb looks soooooooooooo stunning!!! I am now very curious however, only if you feel like going into it, as to which other historical figures you align with which drivers?👀👀

AAAAAA tysm Grace!!!! Though I am so so so sorry for how rambly and long this post is gonna be, but you just asked me abt one of my brainrots!! I will answer your question but also talk about my history alignments and AUs in general LOL

But if I'm making comparisons of F1 drivers and historical figures, my brain kinda forces me to make it an AU because I'm like "this needs to make absolute sense historically and contextually.)

So, tbh of the four historical AUs that float around my brain, only two of them are really specifically about certain historical figures. The four are: Nandopoleon(About how Fernando reminds me of Napoleon), War of Spanish Succession(mostly about that era, but Seb and Nando are supposed to be paralleling Charles VI and Philip V), Napoleonic Hussars(which is about how , in general, Hussars = F1 drivers), and Rennaissance Muse(this just happens to take place in a different era.)

Explaining my AUs and the historical contexts(proceed with caution, its a lot)

Nandopoleon:

Okay so I'm really really am so deranged about Napoleon = Fernando, but I’ve not posted about it too much because I wanna make a well thought out post about it. But basically I think they’re similar people with similar characteristics and motivations. There was this period of time over the summer where I was only brain rotting about how well any of Napoleon’s quotes fit Fernando(with my fellow nandopoleon confidant @/sweatyflytrap haha.) Here’s some quotes as example: 

“Victory belongs to the most persevering.”

“It is not necessary to bury the truth. It is sufficient merely to delay it until no one cares.”(Piasco era lol)

“Victory is not always winning the battle…but rising every time you fall.”

“From triumph to failure is only one step.”

"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon."(trophies y'know)

"Always carry champagne! In victory you deserve it, and in defeat you need it!"

Tell me Fernando wouldn't use these as instagram captions! TELL ME!!! But the other thing that was driving me crazy is how well excerpts from the personality/image section of Napoleone's wiki line up with testimonials from Fernando's doc. Examples:

"He cheated at cards, but repaid the losses; he had to win at everything he attempted."(Napoleon) "Whatever activity I take part in, I have this compulsion to find the compeititon in it."(Fernando)

"He could rapidly dictate a series of complex commands to his subordinates, keeping in mind where major units were expected to be at each future point, and like a chess master, 'seeing' the best plays moves ahead"(Napoleon) "When you talk to him, his mental capacity is so strong. He's talking to you, but his brain is thinking ahead"(Fernando)

Like c'mon tell me they aren't at least a bit similar??? There's a lot else I find similar about them but I cannot list my whole manifesto here skdjlsd

Anyways this AU would be Fernando as Napoleon and would be Webbonso -> Strollonso. Basically, Napoleon had two wives: his first wife, who was older than him and who he was super in love with, but had to divorce because they couldn't have kids, but he still loved her deeply. And then his second wife , who was much younger thanhim and from the Austrian royal family, and this was a politically motivated marriage but they still got on pretty well!!(also it's funny, before she married him she didn't want to be with him because the public perception of him made him out to be not the best guy, but then she wrote to her father about how loving and kind he was. very Strollonso, no?)

War of Spanish Succession:

Mostly explained it here and here. I'm not too interested in either Philip V nor Charles VI themselevs as individuals, but rather the roles they fufill in the "story." Though I will say, I got hit with a brick while reading Charles VI's wiki when finding out that he apparently had several male lovers! So I guess my AU having an arranged m/m marriage isn't even that far off the mark hahaha. Why did they have a 13 year war, they should have just arranged a marriage between the two canidates sigh sigh. But yeah, mostly Austria vs. Spain, I think it fits well with the Vettonso rivalry!! They would end up being: Fernando I King of Spain and Sebastian I Holy Roman Emperor hehe. Also I sketched some more:

Napoleonic Hussars:

Explained here as well as with art, and more art here. I'm really still proud of the points I made, I just feel very ardently about it!!! Not about any specific figure, but rather a historical group that I think lines up extremely well with F1 drivers. But this one is fun cause I can kinda insert any driver into it and they'll work pretty well. It's fun to figure out what kingdom what driver would be, either based off their nationality or the nationality of their team. I remember vividly staring at a map from this era trying to figure out where Maranello would be....But like Renault = Kingdom of France and RBR = Kingdom of Austria, and stuff like that

Rennaisance Muse:

Mostly just this post, I've not thought about this one incredibly deeply. Mostly just brainrot about how I think Seb looks like The David with his curly hair

[shlabam]

TOP TEN COMICS BOOK VILLAINS WE PROBABLY WON’T SEE IN THE MOVIES

Superhero media is the hottest thing going right now. It was true ten years ago when the MCU was in its adolescence, and it’s even truer now. Even with film production on lockdown, Marvel and DC are still planning on literally dozens of their characters entering their respective cinematic universes. However, for the fans of the source material, things can be contentious. For every memorable Tony Stark quip, there’s Superman destroying an entire city because he’s, frankly, kind of dumb now. A major point of contention is how the various popular villains are utilized. Making an intimidating and potent villain in a comic book is very different than in a film. In comics, you have months to establish motive, powers, and backstory before the villain even makes their first move. In films, that all has to be compressed and spilled out in the scarce few minutes when Captain America and Bucky aren’t making bambi eyes at each other. To be concise, some villains adapt perfectly, and some, no matter how good they are in the comics, just don’t. And to be clear, this list is of popular villains who have the possibility of appearing in a big-budget film, so no, you won’t be seeing Ten Eyed Man or Big Wheel in there. Their powers are, respectively, having ten eyes, and being very good in business. (That’s a lie, he’s just a huge wheel who chases Spider-Man.)

10: Mr. Mxyzptlk:

Cool, let’s get this one out of the way. Despite being one of Superman’s oldest, longest-lasting, and most popular enemies from all the way back in the Golden Age, there’s no way in hell he will be in a movie. For the uninformed. Mr. Mxyzptlk is a 5th dimensional wizard-genie who appears every ninety days to torment Superman with his reality-altering antics, and can only be sent back to his home dimension if Superman tricks him into saying his own name backwards. Yes, it would be very dazzling, as Mr. Mxyzptlk’s powers in a movie would basically look like if Christopher Nolan directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but he’s a little too silly to fit in with the current “everything is gloomy and also a bummer” tone of the Superman films. This silly tone has lent itself perfectly to the Supergirl series, where he’s made a handful of appearances. Besides, if we get Mxyzptlk in a Superman movie before Brainiac, I’ll lose my entire freaking mind.

9: Hobgoblin:

There have been eight Spider-Man movies so far, and of those eight, four of them have, in some capacity, featured the Green Goblin. And that makes sense, right? The Green Goblin is easily Spider-Man’s most memorable and reoccurring nemesis, with Doctor Octopus and Venom close behind, and Peter Parker’s link with Norman and Harry Osbourn makes their tragic story perfect for film adaptation. On the other hand, we have the Hobgoblin, who is essentially Green Goblin with all the gimmicks, none of the Parker-adjacent backstory, and an orange and blue color scheme, likely tying him to the Denver Broncos [citation needed]. Still, in those four cinematic attempts at tackling the Goblin, none of them have quite gotten him right, and I can’t imagine this character, who is, even in canon, an intentional Green Goblin rip-off, would fare any better.

8: Starro:

Brave and the Bold #28 from 1960 featured the first story with the Justice League, and this story put them up against a very unique new villain: Starro the Conqueror, a giant telepathic starfish who can release tiny versions of himself. If these tiny starfish latch onto your head, you’re under his control and obey his commands. The Justice League have battled him fairly regularly over the last fifty years, and he’s a distinct and powerful enemy that the fans generally appreciate, leading to him being referenced occasionally in Smallville, Arrow, and Flash. Why won’t he ever be in a movie? Because if you’re a Hollywood producer, you stopped paying attention at “giant telepathic starfish”. Sorry. Maybe Shuma-Gorath will pop up in the next Doctor Strange movie, and he’ll set off a Twilight-esque wave of starfish monster movies! Then again, almost absolutely not.

7: Puppet Master:

Speaking of mind control, what’s scarier than that? For my money, nothing. Having your body and will taken away from you by an unseen force is a terror greater than death. How could you possibly make a villain based around such a chilling concept and have him not be scary? Well, maybe if it’s an old bald man in an apron playing with dolls. The Puppet Master is an ongoing threat for the Fantastic Four who is just that: he makes models of his foes out of radioactive clay, and makes them punch themselves and dance around and kiss each other, because he’s, y’know, a weird old man. Why is he such a consistent threat who hasn’t fallen into obscurity like other dumb gimmick-based villains? His stepdaughter, Alicia Masters, is the Thing’s longtime girlfriend. As long as she keeps appearing in movies (including being played by… Kerry Washington? That can’t be right), there’s always a chance he’ll pop up, but I don’t think any movie studio is that stupid, despite the quality of every Fantastic Four movie blatantly defying that prediction.

6: Bizarro:

Superman has always suffered in the villains department. When you’re essentially a god, what can they throw at you? As it turns out, Lex Luthor, almost always. But why not another Superman? Bizarro is essentially that, an imperfect clone of Superman who speaks in opposite speak - “Bizarro am good! Me not punch you until you live!” - and features the same abilities as the Man of Steel. Sounds great, right? Putting a hero against a villain with their same powers has worked for nearly every Marvel movie (shots fired). So why won’t we see him grace our silver screens any time soon? Because they’ve never really figured him out. Is he funny? Is he lethal? Does Kryptonite work on him? If he does everything the opposite of Superman, why does he wear clothes? Isn’t being naked the opposite of being clothed? Bizarro is a major Superman side-character and has made appearances in Smallville and Supergirl, but the idea of him being the Big Bad going toe-to-toe with Henry Cavill doesn’t sound like it would generate a lot of views.

5: Impossible Man:

You remember what I said about Mr. Mxyzptlk? Remember? So take that bit, but everywhere I say Superman, have it say Fantastic Four instead… yeah, that should do it.

4: The Wrecking Crew:

Thor has a unique quirk of having a very cinematic rogues gallery. Sure, most of the movies have pitted him against Loki, but if they were to run him up against the Enchantress, or the Absorbing Man, or Ulik the Troll, or Kurse, or even the Stone Men from Saturn, that’s not a bad movie! However, in one of the attempts to give Thor more of a mortal nemesis, they put him up against the Wrecker, who has an… enchanted… indestructible… crowbar. Yeah. Incredibly, the Wrecker and his Wrecking Crew have become very present characters throughout the Marvel Universe, essentially serving as “jobbers”, being rolled out to get beaten up by the new top hero or villain, but that may not work in a movie, where villains have to be seen as having some level of potency before being struck down. That means we’d need at least a short scene where it seems like Thor might lose to a guy whose power is “crowbar”, and that’s about as likely as an Edward Norton cameo in the next Avengers. Ho boy, they did NOT part on good terms!

3: Clayface:

When the movie-going public goes to see a Batman movie, they generally want something a bit more grounded than your typical superhero fare. After all, Batman has no powers, and therefore the most supernatural thing that should happen in these movies is a gas that makes you smile, or a different gas that makes you think your dead parents are back and disappointed in you. Might wanna put a mouth covering on that mask, Bruce! The one and only they’ve made a movie where Batman fights people with real, off-the-wall super powers (Batman and Robin), it did not go great. And those guys pale in comparison to Clayface, who is, yes, made of clay. In the comics and cartoons, Clayface looks awesome, turning his limbs into weapons and being very challenging to incapacitate, but in a live-action, realistic Batman adventure, we wouldn’t want to see the Dark Knight fight a poop-colored version of the T-1000, especially if it’s got the same chemical composition of a little dreidel that I made.

2: Red Hood:

A relative newcomer to the Batman universe, Red Hood is the revived body of Jason Todd, the second Robin, who was brutally killed by the Joker in one of the most controversial storylines DC Comics ever produced. Literally, fans called a 900 number to tell the writers to kill him off. A 900 number. That’s how much they hated the little turd. Anyway, Jason Todd, whom Batman and the rest of the world believed was dead, was revived by Ra’s al Ghul and became a ruthless villain. Since then, he’s gravitated more to the side of the hero, though one a bit more willing to spill blood than his mentors. Why won’t we see him in the darker, edgier Batman films? Because… that’s Bucky. It’s the same thing that happened in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Teen sidekick killed in controversial manner, revived by super villain to be a thorn in said hero’s side, later changes his mind and becomes a good guy again, though with enough PTSD to fill a PTSD super store. The two storylines even occurred in the comics in the same year, 2005, to much fanfare and across-the-board declarations of one company ripping off the other, reminding the world of the great Aquaman-Namor debates of the 1940s. Considering that DC’s films have criminally underperformed compared to Marvel’s, the last thing they want to do is be accused of lazy plagiarism, so Jason Todd will likely remain a permanent fixture in the afterlife, hanging out with Batman’s parents and, at the rate that people are coming back from the dead, literally no one else. (Plus, if they can’t even get Robin right, how are they gonna do this?)

1: Mister Sinister:

Yes, he was teased at the end of X-Men Apocalypse, but ignoring that the film underperformed both critically and commercially, Mister Sinister is never going to be in a movie. It would make sense for him to appear, though, right? He’s one of the most present and potent X-Men villains, he’s played crucial roles in many memorable storylines, he’s got a sick cape, but… something a lot of comic book fans tend to overlook is his murky backstory, powers, and motivations. He was a biologist in Victorian London who did genetic experiments on homeless people in the hopes of finding clues about the oncoming threat of mutants. In this time, he unearthed the long-dormant En Sabah Nur, whom you plebeians may know as Apocalypse, and Apocalypse gifted him with great abilities. What abilities you ask? HA HA, good question! At various times, Sinister has displayed: telepathy, telekinesis, energy projection, shape-shifting, regeneration, and teleportation, but these powers will mysteriously disappear whenever they want him to get sliced up real good by Wolverine. Additionally, it has never been made very clear what Sinister wants. Does he seek perfect mastery of the human genome? Does he live to torment Cyclops? Is he a blind follower of Apocalypse? Is he just running through all the different kinds of goatee? Of course, in adaptation, the writers would pick and choose the aspects they’d want to use, but I doubt they’d want to untangle the Christmas lights mess that is Mister Sinister, especially when they’ve got a perfectly good villain whose power is just “magnets”.

[ober-affen-geil]

Now that we have wrapped up the season, I know a lot of people will be filling the Roswell-sized hole with some fanfic. As someone who comes from a military family, and an Air Force one at that, I thought I could lay out a few things for those wanting to write fic that expands on the military aspect of the show. If anyone has questions more specific than what I put here, just ask and I will answer to the best of my ability! 

*Please do note that I do not have a history of military service. All of this is stuff I picked up by proxy, if someone tells you something that is counter to what I’ve written here please listen to them and/or double check. This is meant for ficwriting purposes and nothing more in depth than that.*

- First things first. So far as I can tell, Jesse and Alex Manes are in the Air Force. Flint Manes is in the Army. The two are not interchangeable terms, they are completely separate branches. If you need an all-purpose term use “military”; it covers all the branches (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard). They are also proper nouns, they should be capitalized. (Cam has stated she has a military background, but says nothing else about it. So we have no clues as to her branch or rank.)      - “Soldiers” is an all-purpose term used to describe members of the Army. It should not be used to describe members of the Air Force, that term is “airmen” or “airman” if you want singular. (”Sailor” is for the Navy and “marine” is for the Marines. Not sure about the Coast Guard.) So Flint is a soldier, Alex and Jesse are airmen.

- The Air Force actually developed out of the Army. It was originally the US Army Air Forces and was not declared a separate branch until after WWII, in September of 1947. (The original Roswell incident happened in mid 1947 and official reports state it was actually an Army Air Forces weather balloon that crashed. Do with this information what you will.)

- Character ranks are as follows. (I did not use the ranks from the pilot as those are different from later in the series; pilots tend to have a little weirdness and don’t necessarily reflect actual arcs or details as the series goes on.) Here are further rank references for the Army and the Air Force.       - Jesse Manes is a Chief Master Sergeant (CMSgt). This is an “enlisted” rank, an E-9 to be specific. He is an NCO (noncommissioned officer or noncom) which is a fancy way of saying he has authority but does not outrank officers.      - Flint Manes is a Sergeant First Class (SFC). This is also an enlisted rank, an E-7. He is also an NCO. I’m not sure of all the intricacies of the chain of command, but I know that in situations where multiple military branches are operating concurrently, personnel need to respect the lateral comparison of ranks. Therefore, as an E-7 in the Army, Flint is technically laterally outranked by Jesse, who is an E-9 in the Air Force.      - Alex Manes is a Captain (Capt). This is an “officer” rank, an O-3. It can also be described as a “commissioned officer” which is above an NCO. (Note, you do not abbreviate “commissioned officer” as CO, that stands for “commanding officer”. Idk it’s stupid.) And yes, this means that Alex outranks his father.      - A note about “commissioning”. This is the main difference between officers and enlisted: an enlisted member literally “enlists” in the military, an officer commissions. This is why an NCO is called that, they are still “enlisted” personnel so they have not “commissioned”, but they are given command of units like officers.      - A note about officers vs enlisted. While enlisted members certainly can be promoted to officer status, it is important to know that O-1 is also an entry point into the military. If you go to a military academy (different ones for different branches) or go through an ROTC program in college (the acronym stands for “reserved officer training corps”) you start as an O-1, the lowest officer rank in your branch. (In the Air Force it’s a Second Lieutenant, informally called a “butter bar” because of the color of the rank insignia). It is not uncommon for career military members who are well on their way to retirement to be enlisted and therefore outranked by people decades younger than them.  I would personally bet my eyeteeth that all of the Manes family started from the bottom and worked their way up through the enlisted ranks, Jesse Manes at E-9 is pretty much as high an enlisted rank as you can get in the Air Force and is about right for someone his age who is career military. Same goes for Flint. I am operating under the assumption that Alex entered right out of high school, so he’s been in for 10 years. He’s apparently a Big Damn Hero (see next section) so it’s not surprising that he has been promoted to Captain in that time. 

- Medals and decorations. We know nothing about anyone’s except Alex’s so I’ll be going into detail only on his. A note first, while there are literal medals that are given out, they are most commonly actually worn in the form of “ribbons” which are tiny rectangles about an inch long and the width of your little finger that are pinned to left side of the wearer’s chest when in a dress uniform. They stack in order of “significance”, and you can tell them apart because they are all colored and striped uniquely to mean certain things. (Fun fact, a “plate” of ribbons all stacked together on a person is informally referred to as their “fruit salad”. No, I’m not kidding.) They are also not as big a deal (mostly) as you might think, a lot of the ribbons airmen earn are actually just for the general course of duty. A well-versed person can take one look at someone else’s ribbons and know exactly when and where they served and what operations they have been a part of.    - It is mentioned that Alex was put in for the Air Force Medal and the Air Force Cross, but it does not say that he was actually awarded either. (The Air Force Medal does not exist, I am going to assume they meant “Airman’s Medal”.) Both involve “heroic acts” but the Airman’s Medal is a “lower” honor because it does not involve actual combat. The Air Force Cross on the other hand is a Big Fucking Deal, it is second only to the Medal of Honor which is a Really Big Fucking Deal. Here are more details on the Airman’s Medal and the Air Force Cross. Again, we do not know for sure that Alex has actually been the recipient of either of these medals, but the fact that he was put in for them means that his CO at some point thought he had earned them.    - As someone who has been wounded (I assume) in action, Alex also most certainly has a Purple Heart. Another note on ribbons, if a specific ribbon has been earned more than once it is marked by adding “oakleaf clusters” to the ribbon, one for each additional award. So a Purple Heart with one oakleaf cluster technically equals two Purple Hearts. So far as we know in canon, Alex has one.      - Again, I am making the assumption that Alex joined the Air Force out of high school, which means he has been in since 2008. He has therefore most likely been a part of Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation New Dawn, Operation Inherent Resolve, and Operation Freedom’s Sentinel; and he would have campaign ribbons for each.      - Additional ribbons/decorations would include unit citations and such, find more about various military awards here.

- Because we know Alex was a code breaker, he may have been classified as either Intelligence or Cyberspace Operations, but he is now operating in the Security Forces after his injury. We know that Flint is a Weapons Specialist, but I’m not sure about Jesse. He may also be Security Forces.

- Alex has mentioned he is going to be “honorably discharged” soon, this is one way to exit military service. (Note, if you serve for more than 20 years you are not discharged, you retire. Jesse is probably on track for retirement.) There are a few levels of discharge for the US Armed Forces, find more details here.      - An honorable discharge is basically given to people who did dun good; they have either completed their tours in good standing or otherwise would have had something not happened to them to prevent it. (Like losing a limb.) Anything less than an honorable discharge is Not Good and can and will affect the recipient in civilian life.      - There are a few in between these two, but I’m just going to list a dishonorable discharge here and let the curious do their own research through the link above. A dishonorable discharge is Super Fucking Bad and in a lot of states is regarded as equivalent to a felony conviction. This type of discharge can only be given by a general court martial, and to earn it you have to seriously fuck up, like commit treason or murder.

- When it comes to “classified” information, your access depends on your security clearance. We have no hints as to what the clearance of any of the characters are, but we know that Alex was a code breaker so it’s probably safe to assume his is pretty high. Flint’s is probably also pretty high given the types of weapons he is working with, and Jesse also potentially has a high level given his involvement with Project Shepard. (Although that has apparently been running unauthorized for a while so idk.)      - The US has three levels, from lowest to highest: Confidential, Secret, Top Secret. Find more information about the levels here.

- Generally speaking, the relations between service branches is that of friendly competition. Like different sports teams or sibling rivalry. Every branch of course believes it is the superior one, and service members will frequently josh each other about the various “failings” of each one. All the branches have their stereotypes and nicknames. I’ve heard “grunts” for Army, “flyboys” for Air Force, “squids” for Navy, and “jarheads” for Marines. If the branches were people stereotypes: Marines are dumb jock gym-bro types, the Navy is prissy (white dress uniforms I mean come on), the Air Force is lazy (heh “chair force” ha ha), the Army is full of try-hards who wanted to be in the Marines but weren’t “good enough” (not true), and the Coast Guard is the red-headed step child who is either “too good” to associate fully with the others or can’t keep up depending on who you talk to. In reality the branches are all apples and oranges, here’s a quick overview.      - Army: ground troops/support. Infantry, artillery, calvary, paratroopers, that kind of stuff. Their motto is “This we’ll defend” and their song is “The Army goes rolling along”.      - Air Force: air troops/support. Planes and pilots of all sorts and weather forcasting. Their motto is “Aim high...Fly-fight-win” and their song is “The US Air Force”.      - Navy: water troops/support. Boats and ships out the wazoo and some pilots. Their (unofficial) motto is “Semper Fortis” meaning always strong and their song is “Anchors Aweigh”.      - Marines: technically the Marines are a branch of the Navy. (It is not a good idea to tell a marine this.) The Marines are essentially the initial landing force troops; it’s not pleasant but they’re basically cannon fodder. Their motto is “Semper Fidelis” meaning always faithful and their song is “Marine’s Hymn”.      - Coast Guard: in times of war, the Coast Guard acts as a branch of the Navy. In peacetime they are under the Department of Homeland Security. They are basically the boat police (don’t tell them I said that), and also do search and rescue. Their motto is “Semper Paratus” and their song is also “Semper Paratus”.

- Jodies. These are essentially marching songs or chants designed to help people keep in step. They are mostly used when drilling, or for infantry troops when they aren’t trying to be covert. There’s a whole lot of them and some of them can get pretty filthy, but there are a few that are “grand traditions”, like “Blood upon the risers” which is sung to the tune of “Battle hymn of the republic”. (It’s about a paratrooper whose chute doesn’t open. It doesn’t end well.) Some of them have been adapted for camp settings, like “Gee ma, I wanna go home”, but every branch has their own special ones and words are often changed around to fit the unit. This is a general overview of the tradition, find examples of some Air Force ones here and here.

- There are a whole bunch of different uniforms that I can get into but I won’t here, this is a good resource for Air Force for the more detail minded. Suffice it to say there are two main ones to know, the service dress and combat uniform.       - Service dress is the mid-level fancy uniform, in the Air Force it’s also called “blues” or “dress blues” because they are blue. This is basically the equivalent of a suit. Service members can wear this to civilian events as well, one member of my family actually refuses to buy a civilian suit because he claims any event he goes to where he has to wear a suit, he can get away with wearing his blues. (He hates suits.) Members can also wear these after they retire.      - Combat uniforms are the everyday service wear, usually in a camouflage pattern of some kind. They’re informally called “fatigues”. The military is actually surprisingly finicky about this sort of stuff, and there are specific acronyms for specific patterns and none of them are allowed to be the same. It’s a mess. The Air Force is currently in the middle of transitioning, the official name for the new uniform is the Airman Combat Uniform (ACU) and the pattern is Operation Camouflage Pattern (OCP).

- The US Military has been around a while, and there are a few things it is really good at because they learned the hard way.      - Discipline. This is going to sound very harsh and dehumanizing (because it is), but in boot camp the entire goal is to break people of independence and foster group cohesion. But there is a reason why. You have to remember, every training exercise is designed around the idea that these people will be in active combat. You cannot question orders or do your own thing in active combat, you will die or worse, your unit will die. Boot camp is designed to turn you from a person into a cog in a machine, because humans cannot function in life or death combat scenarios. Machine cogs can.      - Moral. War is a mind game. Troops in good spirits handle stress better than troops in bad spirits, it is a fact of life. So as much as everyone complains about it, the military is pretty good about making sure deployed members have a way to contact their families at home. Phone banks, computer banks, snail mail, the works. And I’ve heard a story from one family member about the higher-ups keeping track of who isn’t getting mail, and encouraging people to share care packages with them.      - Dependents. These are immediate family of service members, usually spouses and/or children. A spouse is a dependent for as long as they are married, a child is a dependent until 26. The military considers dependents to be their personal responsibility. Widows and widowers will receive their spouse’s pension and benefits until they themselves die. There are support groups out the wazoo for family members.      - Next of kin notification. The military has many strict regulations that it follows pretty closely for this kind of stuff. You can find a good rundown here. Fortunately I have no personal experience with this, but I believe the same principles apply for wounded in action as well as killed. 

- It is an option for families of service members to hang a type of small flag in a window that has a blue star on it for every member of family in the military. (Blue star on a white field with a red border, hung horizontally.) If one of those members dies in the service, the star is changed to gold. People who have lost members of their family in active duty are therefore called “gold star families”.      - The ribbon color to wear in support of the military is yellow. We tied a big yellow ribbon on one of our trees in the front yard when one of my family members was on deployment, but it can be as small as a pin as well.

- A note on the general attitude of service members regarding their service and the dangers of what they do. Almost every one I have encountered thinks of their military service as a job that they volunteered for. They are not in it for the glory, they don’t demand to be thanked, and any injury they may have is regarded as an unfortunate result of the hazards of their job. Alex’s flippant line about “doing it for the attention” when Liz thanks him for his service is not only funny and character informing, it’s also typical. His injury happened as a result of his service, it’s a matter of course. One of my immediate family members tells me he always accepts when people thank him for his service, but he personally does it on behalf of the service members who are not able to (KIA, MIA, or past veterans.) He also then thanks that person for their support.

- Dog tags. These are identification tags worn by all members of the military. In the US, each of the branches have slightly different layouts (find details here) but all contain the same basic information. First and last name, social security number, branch of service, blood type, and religion. The main purpose of these is for identifying bodies or rendering aid to wounded; rank is not listed because it’s not important in those situations, and it changes frequently enough that it’s not practical to reissue tags just for that. (Blood type is listed to help medical personnel aid the wounded, religion is listed so that in the event of death services can be conducted appropriately.)

- Small arms handling and hand-to-hand combat. Every service member, regardless of specialty, is trained in how to handle guns and how to fight in close quarters. (They’re not called the armed forces for nothing.)      - Basic gun safety is to treat every weapon as though it is loaded at all times, never aim a weapon at anything you don’t intend to shoot, and don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you are prepared to fire. It should be noted that when Alex disarms Flint and turns his service weapon on him, Alex is not practicing trigger safety. He is fully ready to discharge that gun from the second he has it in his hands, which is to be expected given the fact he was surprised from behind. (What is interesting is that he does not immediately lower the weapon, nor does he take his finger off the trigger straight away after recognizing Flint. Do with this information what you will.)      - Service members are taught to shoot for the “easy” targets on the body, which is basically torso. Fancy sharp shooting is not highly prioritized, the main idea is to hit the enemy before they hit you.

- All service members are taught basic “first aid and buddy care”. This is so that, in the event of incurring casualties during combat, the people closest to you can provide immediate assistance while a medic hauls ass over to you. (Note, a “casualty” refers to both the wounded and those killed in action. Alex is a casualty because he was wounded.) When going into combat situations, service members will have loose tourniquets around their upper arms and legs so that, in the event of injury, all their buddy has to do is pull it tight around the relevant limb.

- The US military uses a 24 hour clock system, when times are written out no colons are used and all four number slots are filled. It seems tricky at first, but all you have to do past noon is subtract 12 and you have the equivalent time. Midnight is also written as “00″. So 12 midnight is 0000, 3 am is 0300, 1 pm is 1300, and 8 pm is 2000. When saying the time verbally, it’s usually “___ hundred (hours).” So 8 am is “o eight hundred hours” (0800), and 5 pm is “seventeen hundred hours” (1700). The “hours” part is optional. Any time in between is usually pronounced like normal (0730 is “o seven thirty” and 1645 is “sixteen forty five”, 7:30 am and 4:45 pm respectively.) The US military also does a thing with time zones, in order to coordinate internationally. It’s very confusing and I don’t fully understand it, but basically everything is measured off of the Prime Meridian, otherwise known as Greenwich Mean Time or “Zulu Time” (”Z” for “Zero”). Find more details on it here.

- The military uses the NATO phonetic alphabet for spelling or using letters over the radio; this is for clarity of conveyance and is standard operating procedure, any military member is required to know and use it. Basically each letter of the English alphabet is replaced with a word that starts with that letter. (The word for “E” is “Echo”, do with this information what you will.) A complete list of the current alphabet is here. These are used over a radio to spell something or use letters, to avoid mistaking them. For example, instead of saying “Requesting reinforcements in quadrant A” you would say “Requesting reinforcements in alpha quadrant.” (Numbers are basically all the same, except I’ve heard “nine” said as “niner” quite often. Not sure how widespread that is.) But because this is such standard practice, service members will frequently use the alphabet in civilian life, like when you have to spell your name for someone over the phone. I know A-K really well because that’s what was used when I played Battleship as a kid, for example. There are other basic radio standards used for clarity of communication, find them here. A note, While “roger” is the proword given for “I have received and understood your transmission”, the word I have encountered more often in my personal experience meaning the same thing is “copy”. My immediate family members will use this in everyday conversation to mean “I have heard and understood what you said.” I don’t know if this is an Air Force thing or what, I can only say that it might be something more commonly used in actual, everyday speech by service members.

[tigereye771]

The Fates

Just a drabble about what happens after S8.

Queen of Ashes or the Mad Queen were some of the more innocuous names they gave her.  Daenerys who so loved having her meaningless and ultimately false titles listed upon introductions was given much less kinder names by the people of Westeros.  Queen of Murderers. Slaughterer of Innocents. The Burner of Children.  It was not unforeseen that the people, particularly the small folk, would not have kind memories of the woman who had burnt down a city and murdered thousands.

And her former allies did not escape the consequences.  It was foolish of the Unsullied to think that there would be no consequences to the murderous rampage they took part of five years ago.  They had been the first to fall.  Afterall, the relatives of the ones they had just freshly slaughtered were the same people they expected and relied on to fill their boats for their long voyage with supplies.  All it took was a smear of blood here, a trace of excrement there in the foodstuff and the heralded Unsullied warriors found themselves on their knees, dying by the dozen out in the middle of the sea until their boats became ghost ships, floating unmanned until they were taken by storms or rocks and sank to the bottom of the ocean.

The Dorothki did not fare much better.  In some ways, the few that remained in Westeros, were easy to take care of as there was not much anyone needed to do.  Unused to the climate and illnesses in this country, they quickly sickened and died and in a few moons after they had set sail, only a few were left and little cause for concern.

Out of Daenerys former allies, it was one who’s association with one of her allies that fell first.  Many had questioned King Bran the Broken’s choices for his small council. What was the reasoning to appoint a former sellsword like Bronn as Master of Coin?  It wasn’t Bran’s choice, but his Hand’s selection, fulfilling an obligation and hoping to secure one ally in a city that hated him.  However, the prominence of Bronn’s role likely marked him early for reprisal. Many viewed the Lannister, particularly Tyrion Lannister who helped bring the Queen of Ashes to their shore, with undisguised hatred.  Friends of his weren’t viewed with kind eyes.  But unlike Tyrion who knew he was hated and kept close to the Red Keep over concerns of his safety, Bronn thought he was not in jeopardy.  He was wrong and the knife in his gut after visiting one of the makeshift brothels set up made the last Lannister even more paranoid of his own safety.

A representative of Dorne became the next Master of Coin.  People had not forgotten Dorne was once an ally of Daenerys Targaryen as well, but the new prince had wisely distanced himself from that association, noting it was Ellaria Sand who had made the alliance, and became a stalwart supporter of the new monarch.  The new Master of Coin proved to be a wise and judicious official and the Six Kingdoms benefited greatly from his appointment.

Yara Greyjoy, blindly and foolishly still loyal for whatever reason to Daenerys’ memory attempted to attack the North in reprisal for Jon Snow’s actions.  They were easily repelled by the Northern ships, one in particular with a direwolf as its figurehead.  That ship had rammed Yara’s own and her men were quickly overwhelmed.  Yara herself was killed in that fight, by a small, quick figure.  Her death created a momentary power vacuum in the Iron Islands, but a cousin eventually won out. This cousin was more savvy and less blinded and worked with both King Bran and Queen Sansa and soon found a way to make the Iron Islands prosperous without attacking and pillaging: they simply were some of the best sailors. As trade with other countries opened up the Ironborn found their services for shipping in great demand and as for potential pirates, they learned to steer clear of ships with Kraken sigil.

After two years on Bran’s council, Davos found himself back in the North.  It was more for his safety and sanity than anything.  While he managed to get the fleet back into shape, he found himself, while not hated as much as Tyrion, still tainted by his association with the Dragon Queen.  He was among those who participated in the destruction of Kings Landing.  His actions to try to help people was disregarded or scoffed at by most.  Afterall, small actions of one pale in comparison to the enormous horror inflicted on the people.  He found he could not traverse freely in the streets and always had to travel with armed guards. An attempt on his life, a knife attack that left him with a wound to his shoulder and weeks of recovery, convinced him he should resign his post and perhaps partake himself to more friendly territory.

Bran accepted his resignation gracefully and sent Davos to be with Sansa who allowed him to assist her own Master of Ships.  While the Northerners regarded him suspiciously, not forgetting how he had helped bring the Dragon Queen to their land and offering praise of her “kindness” in the beginning, they at least did not try to assassinate him.  So Davos fell into comfortable existence, if a much less grand one.

And what of Tyrion Lannister? The former Hand of the Burner of Children?  Many were appalled by King Bran’s choice of Hand, but as the young Stark said, he would be spending his time making up for all of the destruction caused not only by his assistance to Daenerys, but the reign of the Lannisters as well.  Tyrion found himself working long and hard hours, trying to rebuild the city and meet the needs of the people.  There was nothing else he could do.  If he showed his face outside of the Red Keep he would undoubtedly meet the same fate as Bronn, if not worse. He dared not even bring any women in to entertain him, uncertain if they would try to kill him.  He grew suspect of his wine, wondering if it was poisoned.  When he complained about his fears to King Bran, the young monarch had simply replied,

“Then you much do more to show that you are trying to set right all the wrong you had done in the past.”

“I wonder if you want to get me killed,” was Tyrion’s bitter reply.

“All of our fates have been set.  We can only let them play out.”

“And is my fate to be murdered in my bed or at a council meeting?” Tyrion sneered.

“For now, your fate is to figure out the sewage system for Flea Bottom.”

On this went for five years as Tyrion grew increasingly paranoid, but the country began to recover. But did he get the credit for this? No, he grew even more bitter as the people began to hail King Bran for his clever ideas and helping and relieving the suffering of the people. And then, just before the fifth anniversary of the burning of Kings Landing that Tyrion made his last and most fatal mistake. As preparations were being made to recognize the tragedy, Tyrion, in a drunken stupor decided to visit some of the memorials that had been erected over the years to the ones killed.  He was found the next morning, beside one such statute, the one of a mother trying to shelter her child.  His face and body was twisted into awful contortions as some great pain had wracked through him before he drew his last breath.  However, no maester could find a cause and thus no search was made for his killer.  If there ever was one.

And what of Jon Snow who was exiled to the Wall?  He was not welcomed in the South.  While recognizing he had ended the reign of terror of the Dragon Queen, like Davos, he had participated in its destruction by nature of commanding some of her troops. It was also not lost of them that he had been her lover and loudly and frequently proclaimed her his queen.  No, they did not want him in the South, but they did not much care about his fate either.  As long as he never left the North nor held any position of power, they were happy to forget about Jon Snow.

And thus, King Bran was able to quietly pardon Jon five years after the destruction of King’s Landing. The memories had not faded and it would be generations before the horrors would become a distant memory, but as long as Jon stayed out of the Six Kingdoms, the South would not care.  They would give him that peace in exchange for ending the Burner of Children.

So with this pardon in hand and the one Queen Sansa had given him months after his banishment, Jon Snow made his way out of from the far North towards Winterfell.  When he arrived, he knelt before Queen Sansa, the Queen Who Never Bent, offering her his sword and allegiance which she accepted and he was made head of her Queensguard.  The North too regarded him with some suspicion.  They had not forgotten he was the King Who Bent the Knee and brought a murderous tyrant into their homeland, but they also, quietly and shamefacedly recalled that some of their own Northernmen, some of their kin, were among the murdering savages that dark day in Kings Landing, or were reminded of that, and quickly kept their comments to themselves.

That first year was not easy on Jon as he re-adapted to life in Winterfell, but the routine helped. It wasn’t until he was there almost a year that he was finally welcomed back as a Northern son.  The Queen had been out visiting some of the farms who had adapted some new techniques to help with increased crops.  As always, she was accompanied by her Queensguard when they were suddenly attacked by a band of brigands made up by outlaws and even three Dorothki.  The Queensguard were outnumbered, and one attacker got close enough to the queen to pull her from her horse.  Instead of dragging her onto his own horse, the queen had fallen to the ground and it appeared as if a horse had trampled her.  As some who were there will tell the story later, this sent Jon Snow into a frenzy. He alone began to cut down attacker after attacker, trying to get to the queen who laid still on the ground. As the bodies of the brigands laid strewn and covered in blood, he had dropped to his knees beside the queen and uttered in a voice that was the epitome of anguish,

“Sansa…”

She was unconscious and her party rode quickly back to Winterfell, Jon Snow cradling her in his arms. He haunted the hallway outside her door as the maester saw to her injuries, the blood of the men who attacked them drying on his hands and clothes.  Soon the door opened and the maester came out to give Jon and members of her council assembled news of her condition.

“Just a little bump on her head and sprained wrist,” the maester had said cheerfully.  “She should rest today and tomorrow, maybe even the next day.  She’ll definitely not be doing any writing for at least two weeks as she rests that wrist.” He gave them all a nod and waddled off.

Her council members had sighed in relief and left Jon standing in the hallway staring the Sansa’s chamber door.  Later, her handmaiden would say that she came out to ask Ser Jon to go in and see the queen as she had asked for him.  No one knew exactly what transpired between them but they noticed a shift in their relationship. A growing closeness and an even more protective fierceness within Jon. Soon There were whispers about the Queen and the captain of her Queensguard, but the Northerners had no issue. Had he not shown his loyalty to their queen?  Issues any Northerners had with Jon began to fade.

So it was no surprise a year later when Bran received a raven inviting him to the wedding of Queen Sansa and Jon Snow.  He would be her consort and take the name of “Stark.”  He would hold no titles or position.  He would simply be her husband, the father of her children and the man who would protect her with every ounce of his being.

Bran laid down the scroll with the invitation on it and looked up as Samwell Tarly regarded him closely.

“Did you know it would play out this way?” Sam asked curiously.  “That things would right themselves in a few years?”

Bran gave him for what passed as a smile for him and repeated the words he had said to Tyrion a few years ago, “All of our fates have been set.  We can only let them play out.”

[neophix]

Elsword PvP Stereotypes: 2nd Edition

Alright. It’s been a year and a half. Let’s do this again, sure.

Unlike last time, where people salting at me during the match contributed to a large portion of the character stereotype, I only have their gameplay to work off of this season. Mostly. Rage whispers have gone down significantly which honestly is a change that's good for everyone. {Nod nod.}

{Additional commentary by @demos-cloud​ will be in braces}, and my responses to her commentary will be italicized, since I’ve ah. Ranted to her about a lot of these before, and asked her to help proofread.

Elsword: Bullheaded, stubborn, and does not think very far ahead.

This is mostly thanks to the amount that they've built up Elsword's defensive options lately. The changes to Autoguard mean that Knight Emperor doesn't really have to worry even if he gets caught (I've had more games turned around thanks to that than I care to admit). Infinity Stoic is still a thing, not in the least helped by the large number of quick, stoic approaches and normals he has. Melee Elsword gameplay basically rewards LEEROY JENKINS. Rune Masters are surprisingly rare.

Aisha: Still Bullies.

This has always been the case. Though lately I've come to the realization that Aisha, and Void Princess' line in particular, usually stays out of PvP unless she has access to something dangerously close to hacking. Meditate+Trans slot cooldown drops are always popular, but Oz Sorcerer lives and dies depending on whether she can pretend-hack or not (looking at you, Angkor Millions and Shadow Body). Metamorphy's population likewise dropped drastically as soon as they nerfed the stoic on her >>X(Z). {Her damage output was also hit hard by the Impact Zone nerf in PvE.}

Rena: Slime.

There's been a lot of complaining about the changes to the NF system, though honestly it's probably better for PvP-health in the long term. Now, instead of basically being guaranteed to eat 3 cancelled Violent Attacks to the face in the middle of every single combo, you probably only have to worry about it happening once or twice per game. They're still really slippery, thanks in large part to physics bending over backwards around her and >>Z being so fast, though their PvP numbers have taken a drastic drop since the nerf.

Raven:

Basically only the oldest Raven mains are left, a corps of elite veterans who know their character and yours inside and- oh and I guess you have the bandwagon RH horde. {Man the bias is practically dripping out of your mouth here Ketsu.} The majority of my Raven matches are against players who I recognize on sight, though. The canon Raven has certainly been getting spoiled, comparatively speaking, though the fact that KoG nerfed M.Maximum Drive almost immediately is a good sign. RH is still probably the most consequence-free Raven at the moment; he doesn't really have to worry about taking combos because it's extremely likely he'll be able to mash a Spread out and revenge-catch you if there's even the tiniest delay or mistake.

{PvE is full of old, rich, Ravens as well. BMs/FBs especially are the oldest and most funded. Yeah they know their class in and out, but they’re also not above shelling out $200 to +11 that glorious Void weapon. VCs are dead.}

Eve: Nasod Bitch. Runs on money. {はい、はい。}

Eve on the whole is very confrontation-adverse, and all three of her classes avoid direct combat. Good thing for her, too; aside from the Exotic line Eve's combo game is so poor she can barely hold anyone in place on her own. All three Eves have very strong utilities kits which are supposed to come with a weak damage-per-hit ratio, but Eve players are already very strongly conditioned to spoil her rotten. Nobody's ever been accused of spending too little on her, after all. Codes 4v1 and Sariel both just dunk on melee-centric characters, and Ultimate has enough unsafe-cancels and core synergy that you'll be spending more time eating lasers than spears. {Like I’ve been saying for the past four years, Eve’s Core Release system was built for CN. Of course she has the best Core synergy out of all Eves.} Illusion Thorns' debuff field really should not trigger core. Raven's lingering skill effects (grenade fires and smoke clouds) have NEVER triggered his core, and those at least deal damage, but I guess even KoG isn't tired of spoiling Eve just yet. {Maybe it’s because Illusion Thorns’ debuff area only lasts a measly two seconds compared to Raven’s lingering AoEs (dead laugh).} Raven’s lingering AoEs also only last for a couple seconds, too, though. {oh.}

Chung: HERE I GO. {HERE I GO!!}

Hoo boy. Okay. After the absolute Chung dominance in the 1v1 tournament, there's been a significant rise in Chung PvP populations. Sure, Base Chung has Heavy Stance to mitigate being slow and getting caught, but these three basically never have to deal with such puny things as "consequences" and Heavy Stance itself has actually been vanishingly rare. {DC really should not have so many Heavy Stance/stoic opportunities, given that his whole backstory is based around being faster and thus, being less defensive. IP’s ridiculously high attack speed is abnormal and needs to die. Even back in S1 it was a pain to deal with…} Back Blast and Reload are core skills not because of utility or reload, but because they're such hard to deal with panic buttons when strung together. Cannonball management is a total farce. Super spoiled, getting amazing tools and mod skills with each update. A few significant differences between them:

Comet: Basically indestructible. Will not die. A rocket powered turtle who can strike you from anywhere in the map and always has an advantageous position. The new goddess of PvP, stripping Yama Raja of the title. You could just tell that a couple of the tournament finalists were screwing around and winning anyway, and that flagrant disregard for consequences has been adopted by the bandwagoners. {I feel like having one of the IP semifinalists intentionally handicap himself of the class’ best skills, fool around, and still manage a strong victory.. Really says a lot about the class’ current standing.}

Phantom: Homing Ruthless attacks for days. Mod Shooting Star caused a lot of passive ruthless to get stripped, but I guess there was enough of a Chung tantrum that they got it back on base Shooting Star AND in M.Burning Punisher. Could probably win a game blindfolded thanks to all the high-damage homing at his disposal. A non-berserk awakening is so rare you honestly think it's a glitch. {Remember when it was only like a 25% activation chance. lmao.}

Centurret: After a long and arduous process of moderately intelligent cockroaches bashing on keyboards tested every possible configuration, tactics have been finely reduced to "if your dog craps on enough lawns, someone is going to step in it." Instant-hit Grav Shots are far more than any character deserves, especially when they have practically no vertical limit, and whoever approved of this as an Siege mode option should be spaghettified.

Ara:

Lately, the number of Aras who fully depend on the X or ^X loop has gone down. Devi is still incredibly oppressive, able to basically slam their face on the skill bar whenever they're in trouble to turn it around with any one of their many, many incredible utility actives (with skill storage). Shakti populations have been on the rise in comparison, though as a Shakti main myself I can't really comment on any other trends without being... more biased than usual. {Dead in PvE, though very willing to shell out money. More-so than other Ara classes, I find (even Devis, yes!)} Apsaras generally rely way too much on Kite or Suppression and barely have two brain cells to rub together, having godawful combo maintenance outside of the aforementioned X loop, despite Ara's strong kit. {They changed how ZZXX works how else am I supposed to do fancy combos nowwwww} It feels like if they did have any more to work with they would've job changed to Devi by now.

Elesis:

Population is in decline, but still powerful. Empire Sword still has some of the most safe combo maintenance in the game, and it's exceedingly rare for her to make anything remotely resembling a mistake. {The fact that she has such a high DPS ratio in PvP really hurts, what gives.} INJECTION finally got the nerf it deserved and is starting to sound like a word again. Fire Wallsis is still horrifically oppressive if it goes off, however, and reduces many games against her to "play perfectly or die."

Add:

Doom Bringers are vanishingly rare. Dominators basically all spontaneously ceased to exist once Charged Impulsar got nerfed and they realized they'd actually have to try in PvP again. Paradox is, once again, the most popular PvP Add, and for some reason still has an infinite. Purple is the color of bullies, it turns out. {Death to purples.}

Lu: Almost as Leeroy Jenkins as Elsword, but not a large sample to work with.

If the dive that magnetically homes in on targets wasn't enough of a giveaway, Lu's ability to zero in on a target is still very high. Diangelion's switch-attacks have the same bizarre hitboxes and gravity as ever. Lu in general seems to be about throwing giant hitboxes around the map and hoping they hit something, and her combo game is so safe that there really isn't need for precision there, either. {If she can’t hit you with a command normal or a skill, she’ll lag you out with her FPS-killing abilities. Surprisingly not very high up on the whale list, and even lower on the whales-for-fashion list.}

Ciel mains still don't exist. {Nobu would be sad to hear this.}

Rose: Rich, but shallow.

You're basically not even a Rose main if you don't have an 11+, the same way you're basically not a Chung main if you can't get 4+ X-drops in a single launch. {I am apparently no longer a Rose/F. Gunner main. Okay.} Their gameplay shows no personality to speak of, and you'll be fighting the same kind of Rose tactics at Rank C that you will at Star. Despite being the only non-Chung in the 1v1 Finals, Minerva has actually seen something of a population decrease lately. I imagine a lot of players disliked the fact that the player got to finals by using a Freeze Grenade infinite. 

{POs seem like one of the most funded Rose classes, despite being lowtier in both PvP and PvE. About 20% of them have an elitist complex, and another 40% only play her because “OMG MECHA WAIFU”. I’ve only encountered like two POs who acknowledge that she feels and plays nothing like her DFO counterpart, and the fact that I had to argue with a super stubborn NA forumer about this is flat-out stupid. Ah, also. TBs are dead now. Unsurprisingly.}  PvP Rose is actually mostly TB thanks to her pseudo-meditate.

Ain: I was horribly, terribly, no-good very bad wrong about the prediction last time.

PvP Ain is as homogenous across all three paths as Rena: {はい、はい。} Base Ain normals are so strong that the only ones his other classes really use are dives. Otherwise, you can treat all Ains the same. Watch out for airdashes, stomps, Xes, and basically a full kit of backwards melee hitboxes (we got rid of that on the Polar Bear suit for a reason, right? Right??) which are all so strong that, even though the bug has been patched out, Schwert Platzen is still a core PvP skill for all Ains. Bluhen is very rare in PvP, due mostly to the fact that he doesn't have a dive combo. Richter basically plays "The floor is lava" the entire game. The stomp noise is as annoying and stuck in my head as Aisha's "HYA" voice clip now and is a standout among Ain's generally obnoxious sound design. {Maybe if KoG gave us more combo options my fellow Richters wouldn’t have to sink this low.}

his german is off but i appreciate the effort.

[jasoncocker]

It would make him discontented and unhappy.

In the final analysis, how Egypt's elections measure up depends on the measuring stick one uses to assess its importance.. It would make him discontented and unhappy.” There words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. Still have that stick up your arse?” He turned to Young Griff. Higher the speed, faster are the overall operations of the drive. Clydas returned to the hearth to stir the wine. But if she left, what would happen to her city? Meereen was never your city, her brother’s voice seemed to whisper. He broke his fast in the cellar with his officers. "You could tell from the [9 2 loss] that [my absence] did have an impact," Alse said. It came two days after Athanasiou made one of his assistant coaches smile with a different sort of handiwork."I feel bad for the guys who are on the same start line where he puma red bull racing evo cat ii is," Tomas Tatar said with a smile. But you know how one may love a child.” (My heart melted looking at her and at her eyes fastened upon me intently with profound, earnest and impatient attention.) “And the less Natasha herself is like a child, the more serious she is, the more readily she might fall sandalias doradas gioseppo in love with him. The scene with the locket affected her deeply.. Will it receive a warmer reception than the lauded High Line in Manhattan? Or will critics who called it nothing more than a backyard for pricey condos be proven right?. He alleged that he had been the subject of poor dental treatment, that the dentist had caused the pain by damaging the nerve and that he had never been made properly aware of the risks. She never expected her daughter to drop so low." But it could all have been in the genes. “He has heirs. What could he be thinking? 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[thenatureofnarrative]

Best Films of 2020

The basis of my annual list is simple, these are the films that were, for me, mesmerizing and memorable. These were the cinematic experiences that either provoked a depth of emotion and/or provided a whole lot to talk about. These are the films that I could not forget and I cannot wait to see again. 

After you read this year’s list, you can also find last year’s list here, and if you’d like to watch an epic conversation about the best films of the year I encourage you (or dare you) to watch this video. You can also follow me and my reviews on Letterboxd. 

1. Time

Time is a documentary that doesn’t feel like a documentary, but rather sets itself apart as a transcendent piece of visual poetry about the perseverance and devotion of family in the face of injustice. This film is so many different things, and yet is one cohesive lyrical experience. This is a story about love and commitment. This is a story about parenthood and motherhood. This is a story about the forgotten and the voiceless, those discounted and discarded by an oppressive and racist system of incarceration. And this is a story about repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation. Time is an 80-minute cinematic experience that beautifully and seamlessly ties all these threads together, through the singular voice and expressions of wife and mother, Fox Rich. I’m telling you, you’ve never seen or heard a film like this before. The way it’s shot, the way it sounds, the way it’s cut together, and the way it lets us linger and just sit with this woman and her family as they wait, but most importantly, as they persevere and fight for the release of their husband and father. Time is a masterpiece, and I can’t wait to watch it again and share it with others. On Amazon Prime.

2. First Cow

First Cow, Kelly Reichardt's masterpiece, was the most unexpected cinematic experience of the year for me, and I'm not even quite sure why. Maybe it was because I had heard such strange things about this film? Maybe it was because I've never actually seen any of Reichardt's previous films (though I am well aware of them)? And maybe it was because I genuinely didn't know what it was about? Whatever the reason(s) may be, I was truly captivated by the charming sincerity of this simple historical tale. In the first half-hour, the cinematography and production design was giving me made-for-TV-Canadian-heritage-moment vibes; and I don't mean that as an insult. I didn't know what to make of this film at first. It was like - - The Oregon Trail: The Movie - - which made me feel nostalgic and all the more intrigued. But this is Kelly Reichardt's genius: an unexpected, perfectly paced and plotted tale. I mean, sincerely, this film is the perfect example of how a story should unfold, of how the pieces of a narrative should be laid, and how the rug can get pulled out from under you at the end. Even though I didn't feel particularly emotional while watching the film, it was the ending - - Good Lord - - that ending! I mean, I was putty in Reichardt's hands. She got me. She totally got me, and I loved it! How foolish of me to think the final act would become something else, how susceptible and satisfied I was when, in the end, the story was pure and true. And that's all I'm going to say about it, because you need to see this film. On Crave-HBO and Rental Services. 

3. Da 5 Bloods

Spike Lee’s latest offering of cinematic greatness is less a work of protest and more a re-education. With Da 5 Bloods, history is given a voice, those oppressed and ignored now share the stage and their stories. At this point in his illustrious career it’s almost hard to believe that Spike Lee can still surprise us, but with Da 5 Bloods he masterfully and brilliantly blends together multiple cinematic styles and genres; and deserves an Oscar for it. Through the reunion of four Vietnam vets, who return to Ho Chi Minh in search of the lost remains of their fallen squad leader, an unbelievably heartfelt, exciting, and at times, shocking, story is told. A story that defies convention and summation; a film that genuinely has to be seen to be believed. For its entire two and a half hour runtime, we are never bored, always engaged. Some might accuse this film of trying to be too many things, but two transcendent performances keep us anchored through it all. Unnervingly, Chadwick Boseman plays a small role as the departed squad leader, appearing in flashbacks and as an apparition to one man. This one man is, Paul, played by Delroy Lindo, who portrays this grief-stricken and traumatized protagonist with staggering strength; and deserves an Oscar for it (though some suspect his departed co-star might win posthumously for another film). Nevertheless, Da 5 Bloods is a memorable and meaningful work of art and an essential education. On Netflix.

4. Judas and the Black Messiah

While watching Judas and the Black Messiah, I couldn’t help but draw lines of comparison between it and The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020). Both films are award-worthy pieces of penmanship. Both films are brimming with award-worthy performances. The distinction is, however, that TTOTC7 is a terrific piece of entertainment, while JATBM is an important work of history. Director Shaka King has carefully crafted, not only a captivating piece of cinema, but a necessary education about the historical efforts of the Black Panthers and the cyclical-social struggle of standing against injustice while resisting the influences of political coercion and moral corruption. And while Daniel Kaluuya, as a true thespian, gives a commanding and courageous performance, I believe the work of both, LaKeith Stanfield and Dominique Fishback, deserve more attention and award consideration. Their performances brought a depth of soul and struggle that was especially agonizing to watch during the film’s conclusion because not a single person in this story is a caricature. These are real people with real motivations living out the truest of conflicts: the preservation of power vs. justice for the oppressed. On Rental Services.

5. The Trial of the Chicago 7

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a terrific piece of entertainment. This true story, adapted and directed by Aaron Sorkin, is expertly written and structured, condensing a complicated six-month trial into a brisk and captivating two hours. For some, the story’s brevity is a cause for concern, but for me, in terms of cinema, I could not escape the momentum all three acts uniquely displayed, effectively intercutting several testimonies so that we would feel the chaos and uncertainty of the proceedings. Across the board the cast is incredible, but I believe it’s John Carroll Lynch, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II who are most worthy of award recognition. And yet, we cannot ignore the necessity of a fully-embodied antagonist, performed perfectly here by the great Frank Langella. The truth is, TTOTC7, doesn’t work without Langella’s performance. In the hands of another actor, Judge Hoffman could have come off as cartoonish, because his behaviour and actions seem so unrealistic and unbelievable, but thankfully, due to Langella’s craft and care, we do believe it, and it makes us angry for all the right reasons. Nevertheless, in the end, TTOTC7, isn’t a perfect film, but it is a great one. On Netflix.

6. Possessor 

You probably shouldn’t watch this film. Fair warning. It is extremely graphic and violent, and yet, profound in its artistry and themes. The visuals are both simple and mysterious; clever and confounding. Possessor is a story that forces you to confront the frailty of the human condition, both physically and psychologically, and consider how easily influenced our sense of being and identity can be. While watching this film I couldn’t help but think how aptly equipped filmmaker, Brandon Cronenberg, would be to direct the next Christopher Nolan screenplay. Their themes and skills would be a perfect match. Young Cronenberg (son of David Cronenberg) is a remarkable director and provides us with some of the year’s best cinematography; along with another terrific performance from my favourite “young” actor, Christopher Abbott. On Crave-HBO and Rental Services.

7. Soul

Pixar’s Soul is a masterful, moving, and unpredictable work of art. This may not be a film for the youngest ones, but it is for the young at heart, or more specifically, those whose hearts are in a middling crisis of some sort. On the macro-level, there is absolutely nothing generic about this film. Whether in a spiritual plane or a material one, everything on screen is detailed and nuanced. From the philosophical and ontological, to the cultural and vocational, every audience member is invited to experience a universal narrative through a very specific lens; and there is tremendous power in that. Even though, in the Pixar family, Soul might be a stylistic cousin of Coco or Inside Out, and explore a narrative arc similar to Woody’s experience in the Toy Story films, it still sets itself apart as a work of Ecclesiastes. This is the sort of artistic confrontation one needs when dreams and passions are no longer sufficient, and one’s calling is no longer a pursuit of something unattained but a present embrace of an already unfolding narrative. Soul is a profound and beautiful work of art. On Disney+ and Rental Services.

8. The Climb

The Climb was one of the biggest surprises of the year for me, and the funniest film of 2020. Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin have crafted a hilarious and wildly entertaining portrayal of friendship; fiercely loyal, desperately-co-dependent, backstabbing friendship. And while the story may not explore any great psychological depths, no scene in this brisk roller coaster is wasted. Every sequence is an elaborately choreographed vignette, a clever and creative single-take or “oner.” And even though the visual craftsmanship might strike some as excessive, I found it elevated the excitement and unpredictable nature of the story. From opening sequence to touching conclusion, The Climb, is a surprising and side-splitting comedy about enduring friendship, a story of despicable people doing despicable things in hilarious ways. On Rental Services.

9. Horse Girl

Horse Girl is a surprising film, with a truly stunning and subversive narrative. Alison Brie has always been a strong performer, but her performance in this film is award-worthy, and has sadly been overlooked this year. In the first half-hour we are charmed by Horse Girl. For those of us who love Duplass productions, or quirky films about lonely people, we are easily won over at first, but then this story takes a serious turn and we realize we’re watching a shockingly poignant portrayal of mental illness. Nothing is taken for granted or included without careful consideration in this story. Everything, every scene and every interaction, draws us in and allows us to experience the symptoms and disillusionment of a loved one losing their grip on reality. It’s heart-breaking. It’s harrowing. It’s tenderly rendered. My only wish while watching was for a more intricate or visually complex composition. Nevertheless, Jeff Baena’s Horse Girl is still a terrific achievement and one worth typing into the search bar. On Netflix.

10. The Father

The Father is a stunning achievement in directing and editing, especially when you consider it as a first-time feature, from an artist adapting their own stage play. This is a heartbreaking, harrowing, deeply empathetic portrayal of dementia and mental illness, as we experience it through eyes and mind of the afflicted. In a single apartment, every doorway and room is a different memory or time in one's life, and even though our protagonist appears to be in a familiar space, they cannot grab hold of the present. It’s almost scary how realistic Anthony Hopkins’ performance is. Both he and Olivia Coleman are fully embodied, and it’s devastating to watch. This film is a remarkable achievement. On Rental Services.

 Honourable Mentions (alphabetically):

The Devil All the Time: A masterclass in southern gothic storytelling; it’s bleak, dark and disturbing, and deeply compelling. On Netflix.

Extraction: A truly impeccable piece of action cinema, with just enough heart and soul to keep the story grounded. On Netflix.

Mank: A black and white talky-bio-pic about a Hollywood socialist who’s dependent upon millionaires that manipulate their audiences with familial metaphors and manufactured newsreels. Watch with subtitles. On Netflix.

Minari: A simple and sobering tale about familial struggle and heartache, with a striking deftness to each and every character, across the generations, from children to parents and grandparent. On Rental Services.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always: Every year there is one film, one story, that is so honest, vulnerable and raw, that it’s hard to watch and yet undeniably essential and important. This is that film. On Crave-HBO and Rental Services.

Nomadland: With more focus than a Terrence Malick film, and less obligation than a documentary, Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland is a beautiful and innocent observation of our unknown neighbours. On Disney+.

One Night in Miami: The best ensemble of the year, with carefully crafted, fully embodied, sincere and nuanced performances from every cast member. On Amazon Prime.

Promising Young Woman: A unique and unpredictable thrill. Emerald Fennell’s award-worthy screenplay walks a tight-rope between black-comedy and revenge-thriller. On Rental Services.

Red, White and Blue: Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology of five films is a marvel, but Red, White and Blue is the cornerstone at the center of it all. On Amazon Prime.

Sound of Metal: A deeply affecting story about recovery, discovery and the stages of grief - - all explored through the experiences of our deaf protagonist. I wept through this one. On Rental Services. 

[unknown-de-mordor-blog]

Five ships I’m still not over

Beleg Cúthalion/Túrin Turambar

Universe: Middle-earth, first age

Ship name: Nothing that’s widely used in the fandom, I don’t think. But I like to think of them as ‘Black Sword (referring to Turin’s cursed weapon) and Strongbow (direct translation of Cúthalion)’

To me, there's no character more tragic than Turin son of Hurin, and no pairing more tragic than him and Beleg. And no clearer love, too. I don't know if J. R. R. Tolkien intended for them to go that far, but their emotional connection is so deep and powerful that whether you ship them or not it's undisputedly one of the most beautiful relationships in Tolkien's lore. Alas! It's not powerful enough to undo the curse placed on Turin and his clan, which ends both his and Beleg's life all too soon and all too tragically. So, yes, I count Beleg as one of the elves who die for love.

Favourite quote: 'I would lead my own men, and make war in my own way,' Turin answered. 'But in this at least my heart is changed: I repent every stroke save those dealt against the Enemy of Men and Elves. And above all else I would have you beside me. Stay with me!' 'If I stayed beside you, love would lead me not wisdom,' said Beleg.

Uh, I love this so much because it shows the difference in their temperament and maturity. Beleg's an elf who has lived through and fought in so many wars. He's an (elf)man of duty, honour and intellect, and Turin is still a young man whose pride and stubbornness can seriously get in the way of a grown-up conversation. And Beleg is so not having any of that in this scene. He’d do anything for Turin, including ditching his command to find him, but he can pull some tough-love moves, too, when Turin’s unreasonable.

Uzumaki Naruto/Uchiha Sasuke

Universe: Naruto

Ship name: sns, narusasu, sasunaru

I think Naruto and Sasuke canonically love each other, I really do, but I don’t think they are together romantically at any point in the series. And that’s by design, really. Sasuke -- the last of the Uchiha, the tragic figure of the Naruto series (still not as tragic as Turin, but let’s not do this morbid comparison) -- has too many issues to work through, and Naruto isn’t in the position to really help him through them. So as soul-deep as their bond is, they couldn’t have been together and survive each other. Although, I really want that to happen. That’s what fanfictions are for, I guess.

Favourite quote: ‘If you attack Konoha, I will have to fight you... So save up your hatred and take it all on me, I'm the only one who can take it. It's the only thing I can do. I will shoulder your hatred and die with you.’

Honestly, Naruto might just as well propose to Sasuke with that because he’s essentially saying ‘give me your worst, I’m not leaving and never will’. I know friends could be like that, too, but normally not to this degree and not with this kind of commitment. I’m not surprised at all when Sasuke has to ask Naruto why the hell he is doing all this for him. It just goes beyond reason, really.

S'chn T'gai Spock /James T. Kirk

Universe: Star Trek

Ship name: K/S, Spirk

The Daddy of all ships! Pun intended! Spock and Kirk's friendship really walks that fine line of are they/aren’t they. I personally think they aren’t (another controversial statement coming from a shipper), but they’re so cute together you just can’t help think: what if they are? They have this deep trust and affection for one another anyway; why not push it a notch further? ‘This simple feeling,’ as Spock calls it, might as well be love.

Favourite quote:

Kirk: How's our ship? Spock: Out of danger. Kirk: Good... Spock: You saved the crew. Kirk: You used what he wanted against him. That's a nice move. Spock: It is what you would have done. Kirk: And this... this is what you would have done. It was only logical. I'm scared, Spock. Help me not be. How do you choose not to feel? Spock: I do not know. [tears fall] Right now, I am failing. Kirk: I want you to know why I couldn't let you die... why I went back for you... Spock: Because you are my friend. [Kirk places his hand against the glass and gives the Vulcan Salute as he dies]

It’s actually really hard for me to pick a quote for these two because I think every ‘Jim’ from Spock does the job except nobody else would understand it but me. (Second to that is, ‘Captian, not in front of the Klingons.’) While I love them teasing each other a lot, I think Kirk’s death scene from Star Trek Into Darkness has all the right punches to it. Spock has been unable to accept the feeling of friendship towards Kirk (actually just feelings in general) until the moment he watches Kirk dies behind the glass door. And all just comes out like BOOM! Not to mention how close Spock comes to killing Khan for revenge before Uhura tells him that Kirk can be saved but they need Khan alive. Honestly, that’s the only reason Khan’s head doesn’t go plop in Spock’s hands.

Morgoth/Sauron

Universe: Middle-earth, first age

Ship name: it just came to my attention that the fandom is calling this ship Angbang (a wordplay on the name of their home/fortress Angband). Nicely done, you naughty people. Also Melkor/Mairon if you’re going by their proper first-age names.

I think a lot of people seeing this ship would go ‘what?!’ Like, how is that even possible when Tolkien didn’t write a single scene with the two of them in it. I’d say in this case the absence is more powerful. Tolkien wrote the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales as lore, so they necessarily come from the perspective of the tellers; i.e., humans and elves. That doesn’t mean Tolkien didn’t drop hints about the complex characters that the dark lords of Middle-earth are. He even has Elrond says that people don’t start out evil, not even Sauron. So the question becomes, what the heck happened? And the heck that starts it all out is pretty much in the first few chapters of the Silmarillion where Morgoth is clearly a powerful and inventive figure but in many ways an outcast and shunned by everyone including the very power that made him. (*cough* daddy issue *cough*) And then we are made aware of the fact Sauron, who is also powerful and creative, isn’t on Morgoth’s side from the get go but decides to join him later. The power-hungry dark lords we are later told about aren’t that at all, so it raises the question of their true characters and motives. If anything, I think the length in which Sauron would go for Morgoth thousands of years after his master is defeated and shut away says something about their bond with each other. And if I know one thing, it can’t be fear or respect. If I have to make a guess, I think it is akin to love.

Favourite quote: There isn’t anything I can quote from the source material since there hasn’t been a dialogue or anything they say to an audience that could be trusted as genuinely representing who they are. One thing I do scream about is the scene in the Return of the King movie when the black gate opened and behind there isn’t just the tower with the eye of Sauron but Mount Doom next to it in the same frame. I was like ‘I know Morgoth’s not here but isn’t that him in spirit.’ Yes, I’m a proper trash for these two.

Also, there’s this awesome comic series (unfortunately discontinued) by Suz. It’s legitimately hotter than the fire of Aule’s forge, honestly.

Beren/Lúthien

Universe: Middle-earth, first age

Ship name: I’m not aware of any ship name for these two but ��Beren and Luthien’ is catchy enough as it is.

How else to finish this list but to dedicate the last entry to the greatest love story of Middle-earth, and, yes, I'm saying that with a straight face because, holy hell, this couple defies expectations left, right, and centre. Luthien, our elven princess, is an active participant in her own fate. She falls in love with a human who, in an act of valour, accepts her father's stupid, impossible task to steal the most treasured jewel from Morgoth the Dark Lord himself. Luthien basically runs away from home, finds her man captured and tortured, and tears the goddamn fortress down in a showdown with the-dark-lord-to-be Sauron himself (which makes you question the competency of everyone else in Middle-earth). They then proceed to steal the jewel together. They don't quite succeed in bringing it back and Beren loses his hand in the process, but hey, they could say it's in his hand, somewhere, and now could they please marry because otherwise I have a feeling that Luthien is going to elope with her boyfriend and her mom and dad won't be seeing her again ever.

And this is really just scratching the surface of Luthien’s feisty personality quite unbefitting of most princesses until the recent overhaul of attitude by Disney. And all this came from a man who was born in the Victorian era when women's autonomy wasn't given or respected. But I think Luthien's depth of character comes from the fact that she has a real-life counterpart, and so she feels more like a real woman. And the love between Beren and Luthien feels compelling because its the love the professor himself had for his wife and life-long partner, Edith. You can check out their gravestone. I'm so not making this up.

Favourite quote: The song of Lúthien before Mandos was the song most fair that ever in words was woven, and the song most sorrowful that ever the world shall ever hear. Unchanged, imperishable, it is sung still in Valinor beyond the hearing of the world, and the listening the Valar grieved. For Lúthien wove two themes of words, of the sorrow of the Eldar and the grief of Men, of the Two Kindreds that were made by Ilúvatar to dwell in Arda, the Kingdom of Earth amid the innumerable stars. And as she knelt before him her tears fell upon his feet like rain upon stones; and Mandos was moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since.

It’s not a scene between them, but this is how far Luthien’s love and badassery goes. She loses Beren in a battle to protect her father’s kingdom, and she dies grieving him. In the afterlife, she gets to meet the god of death Mandos and sings him a song of their love and her grief. Apparently, she’s so good with words and music that Mandos is like, ‘I can’t handle the feels. You can have your husband back and have a mortal life with him.’ And Luthien takes the deal, of course.

[willwritesablog]

Pillars of Eternity - Definitive Edition: Impressions, Criticisms and Review

Published by Obsidian Entertainment. Original release date: March 26th, 2015. Definitive Edition release date: November 15th, 2015.

Price: $29.99 MSRP. Current Steam Sale: $7.49. Current Epic Games Sale: $9.99 (with coupon.)

This article has also been published on Blogger.com (Mirror Link)

12/23/20

Over the past week or so, as a part of the Epic Games Free Game of the Week promotion, I’ve picked up Pillars of Eternity - Definitive Edition for free and have been playing it on its Normal difficulty almost nonstop ever since. This being the second video game by Obsidian I have played (the first one being Outer Worlds--releasing four years after Pillars had its original release), I felt it appropriate to share some of my thoughts over the quality and experience of this game, comparisons I have made, and some other miscellaneous observations. It’s worth prefacing this with that I have not fully completed a run through this game and haven’t actually completed the game’s second act as of yet (more on this later)--however, I’ve put close to 70 hours into this, and while others have spent thousands of hours on this video game I feel I can write on this with some authority.

Starting with its strengths, Pillars of Eternity is engaging. There is a lot of content to delve into. Much of its characterization is convincing, and the voice acting that it does have is well-performed. Another YouTube channel that I watch, “Should You Play It,” estimated in their review that “25%-30% of the game is voiced,” which seems like an accurate assessment to me. Regarding its story writing, its overall plot and characters themselves are very reminiscent of a decent or good Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Some tropes can be expected, but overall the plot runs smoothly enough, and the characters themselves are generally rather fun to interact with, even in cases where they're not very original.

The game does suffer from a variety of flaws, many of which aren’t immediately apparent to the player and that bear mentioning. The talent pool that Obsidian recruited to do their voices is incredibly small. Half of my party, as it turns out, was voiced by Matthew Mercer--possibly the most distinguished voice actor of the bunch--with my main character (using the “sinister” voice effects), the story character Aloth, and the story character Eder all being voiced by him. Kana, a character that comes later on, is voiced by Patrick Seitz (famous for many different television, video game and anime roles) and also does a character at the beginning of the game (Sparfel), the voice for the commander of the Crucible Knights, and multiple other additional voices. To my own ears, Richard Epcar had to be the most frequently-appearing voice actor in the game, voicing the Caravan Master at the beginning, Raedric’s voice, the spirit of Od Nua (whom I haven’t encountered yet) and the forge master Dunstan in Defiance Bay, along with other additional voices.

Sadly, Pillars of Eternity’s Credits page as well as the Full Cast and Crew IMDB Page only provide incomplete insight on who voiced which character within this game, and while some message boards exist on the subject I’ve not found a comprehensive resource over this topic (maybe I’ll attempt a full list for myself later on.) It’s a massive rabbit hole to go down nonetheless. The Outer Worlds handles this limitation as well, although that game’s execution of this I’d be inclined to say was a little more successful. Only 1% of Outer Worlds's entire production team were actually voice actors, which strikes me as interesting; the NoClip documentary series discusses details about this as well as how the writers had to plan questlines ahead of time to prevent characters with the same voice actor from interacting with each other, when possible. No definable moments of this happening in Outer Worlds come to mind off memory, although there were a couple of occurrences in Pillars (e.g. Kana and the Crucible Knight commander) where it wasn't avoided.

One of Pillars of Eternity’s major problems is interestingly a feature of its design--its Kickstarter rewards implementation. When you visit the first town, you are effectively bombarded with a number of uniquely-named NPC’s--and when you approach them, you get the opportunity to “look into their soul” or walk away. As a new player I was pretty befuddled by this, thinking that these were details I needed to memorize for some upcoming puzzle, when in actuality it wasn’t anything more than crowdsourced product-placement. 

Some games can pull this off with success--LISA The Painful, for example, had a majority of its character names sponsored and selected by Kickstarter backers. As an RPG, this worked; you had a name on-screen detailing who it was that you were going to attack (on a black border above your characters), you kill them, and you move on. Other donor rewards involved creating a party member or a boss battle character, but these were done cautiously, and at least in my own experience, they didn’t hinder the game enough for me to discover that these were Kickstarter-donor characters on my own.

It’s the opposite case for Pillars. In many cases it’s special snowflake-ish. You’ll enter a bar and encounter 5 people named “commoner” and Archduke Franz “Quickfeet” Elfenhein, with a two-paragraph set of memories that mean frick-all to the actual experience. If you read all of these, you *might* encounter one or two funny ones, but what’s the point? You can expect that these were written before a finished product was released. It’s a dilapidated experience. Later in the game you’ll visit a house, with one of these pointless O.C.s effectively “standing guard” for no other purpose than to nick you town reputation points for trying to steal something.

Outer Worlds includes a stealing mechanic as well but it was implemented more fairly. Your character didn’t have to dump a bunch of points into a nearly-useless Stealth skill--instead, it was dictated by NPC line-of-sight. Stealing in Outer Worlds, for the most part, is actually *fun*, in Pillars, it was worth me avoiding entirely.

This may as well serve as a segway into the leveling system--on which I don’t have much to say about it, other than (maybe not relative to other ISO-RPGs, or in comparison to, say, Dungeon and Dragons) that it’s a headache. The story characters that the game gives you access to all have unoptimized and relatively-mediocre starting-stats, so to use all of them (exclusively, without hiring an unvoiced “mercenary” NPC) some creative planning is needed. You’ll also effectively want to min-max your own character’s build to help compensate for inevitable party weaknesses--the game (similar to Outer Worlds) offers a releveling system should you level up the wrong stats, but anything set at character creation is basically unchangeable--which is when the greatest number of character traits needs to be decided. Wizards are good, a priest or two is required (otherwise your party is without a healer), Chanters are bad--but you wouldn’t know this unless you looked it up ahead of time, or unless you’ve played the game before.

And this description leads me to my strongest point--Pillars of Eternity has a habit of setting up unclear rules, punishing players for breaking them, and calling that “replayability.” To be clear, if these “unclear rules” were drawn across moral lines then it wouldn’t be an issue. Fallout: New Vegas has a few main factions that the player could side with and give control of the main world to; all but maybe one of these choices could be argued as potentially being the “best outcome.” Pillars of Eternity (and Outer Worlds to a similar extent) is lacking in a lot of this--*and* game mechanic-wise, the game punishes you for doing normal, explorative stuff and so often sets up inconceivably unwinnable scenarios where you have to be so deliberate about your actions and game mechanic options to actually achieve a (clear-cut) best outcome. Outer Worlds is better with this.

A small example; in the beginning of Pillars, your character encounters some rioting townspeople accosting the owner of a grain mill. If you go inside, the mill owner notes that he is fair in his dealings, although he prioritizes the best of his grain stores to townspeople who need it the most (like pregnant women)--this quest being strikingly similar to one in Outer Worlds’s beginning. If you pass a resolve check of 14, the mill owner will allow for his grain stores to be seized by the rioters. Only if you pass a intelligence check of 12 does he actually lower the prices--and you can postpone solving this quest for an absurd amount of time, waiting until you have the right items and buffs to pass that speech check.

Another example; when exploring the docks at Defiance Bay, your character can notice a shining purple light. If he/she interacts with the light, your character will encounter the memories of a dead child. Should you trigger this innocuous interaction, you will have locked yourself out of being able to talk with townspeople on the disappearance of this boy, which includes the boy’s father, who has since become an alcoholic at the local bar. If you had spoken with the mother first, and then him, and passed a speech check, the man would go back home--otherwise, he’s stuck at the bar forever.

The worst example, *by far* of unfair, “gotcha!” game mechanics has to come from the quests within the game’s DLCs, The White March 1 and 2. Moderate spoilers ahead (warning to anyone concerned with those): you either have to outlaw the study of animancy, make certain dialog choices that lead to a companion becoming an evil crime boss, or lose out on a speech check at the end of DLC 2 when trying to teach mercy and compassion to a “god,” instead getting railroaded into one of two lesser outcomes, *OR* deliberately not finish the game’s second act, do all of the DLC stuff, and then come back if you want all three good endings.

Surely, however, it’s for “replayability.”

It’s punishing in the stupidest ways. Outer Worlds had a few negatives similar to this; you have two major factions that you can ally with, one being cartoonishly evil, and one quest exists where if you neglect to open up some unsuspecting dialog on a computer terminal (and instead delete it straight away) you permanently lock yourself out of a speech check and are then forced to genocide one (or both) of the other factions (or ignore it and get an even worse outcome.) Outer Worlds is metagameable in the sense that you can discover which decisions affect the ending slides ahead of time, and it encourages you to take advantage of its game mechanics a couple of times (particularly with how you can cheese an ending for a certain quest and with how you can cheese stealing a certain poster on Monarch that, by all accounts, an NPC should see you stealing) but certainly nothing to Pillars of Eternity’s scale--and it isn’t as demanding on the player’s time investment, either.

Another criticism--the amount of text present in both games fringes on ridiculous. To quote Philip J. Reed’s review on The Outer Worlds, “ Obsidian’s [writing] tends to be long, meandering, and packed with characters who will never use six words where a twelve-page monologue would suffice.” Pillars of Eternity is no exception to this claim; your character will frequently encounter lore books that most players will pick up and forget where they received them from (their placement usually being an inconvenience to immersion) and I as a player quickly had to learn to tune some things out--especially considering that I was already “metagaming”/looking up other quest analyses beforehand and had more-direct information about the characters on-hand.

A quirk in the dialog that’s consistent in both games is its style of integrating companions into your interactions; both games follow a formula of having an NPC talk to your character, followed up by a companion making some side remark that is hardly ever acknowledged by the NPC--as if your companion is whispering it to you (although the voice acting negates this), or as if it’s a theatrical aside, the companion characters doing a fourth-wall break to react to the events with you--and only you.

One aspect that Pillars of Eternity is stronger than Outer Worlds in, I would say, is in its combat scenarios. Early on in Pillars, the player is encouraged to storm a local leader (Lord Raedric)’s fort. The player has three options on doing this; climb up the side of the tower (using the grapling hook and some small skill checks) and fight through a small number of guards, go in through the main gates and fight most of the guards head-on, or sneak in through the sewer grates and fight monsters after using a strength check. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, as this is early on enough that the loot you would acquire from fighting actually matters and each route can be fun in its own right. 

Compare this with The Outer Worlds, where you have a similar fortress assault involving a sewer, a temporary disguise, or direct assault option, where the sewer entrance leads you straight to your objective, the combatants are innocent, non-soldier people (or robots), the disguise you would have falls off after every ten steps you take, and it’s late-game enough that attacking enemies won’t give you any worthwhile loot. Or compare it to the quest “The City and the Stars,” in which you can either stealth through a whole building, or kill the building’s guards and lose town reputation points... or pass a simple skill check where your character can acquire a permanent disguise and not set off any of the enemies whatsoever, allowing you free travel to loot and make it to your objective. Or again, compare it with the quest “Passage to Anywhere” where you as a player are either tricked into spending all of your money on opening up a shortcut, fighting and beating two overpowered enemies (which I did), or blitzing through an alternative route, outrunning all of the enemy characters and potentially bypassing a third of the game in the process (the easiest, by far, to do.)

Maybe these deficiencies are easier to see in hindsight, after a finished product exists, but these are negative aspects of game design.

The combat mechanics themselves are pretty fun. Sometimes the pathfinding glitches out (or A.I. will inhibit your characters from automatically attacking a new enemy), and the lack of a single button to change your entire party’s weapons is a small inconvenience, but for the most part it works well. The design choice of having this be a game where you repeatedly “pause” the game to issue new combat instructions (rather than feature a turn-based system) can be fatiguing over long play sessions, and Pillars being that style of game might be a dealbreaker to some players, but I generally enjoyed that feature.

A final point on the writing--Obsidian is a little “woke.” There’s really no getting around this one. I’d like to revisit the idea of certain (reasonable) dialog choices not being included in Obsidian’s games, either out of laziness (e.g., in Pillars of Eternity, my character, a priest of Berath, encountered a small chapel to Berath... and all of the dialog choices amounted to “Who is Berath,” “I’ve never heard that title of Berath’s be used before,” even though other dialog checks take your background into account) or from lack of playtesting and feedback (e.g. in Outer Worlds, not having the option to transport a certain character to a different planet on this early quest’s third outcome) but certain decisions and design choices by the studio don’t have that excuse.

In Pillars, for example, the only way to get a good outcome on one quest and thus significantly raise your reputation in the town, is to lower the price of black market birth control. No moral qualms are raised and no ways for your character to roleplay against this are made available. Prostitutes also exist in Pillars of Eternity (although that feature remains partially broken), and the only way to get a (stackable, temporary) +2 enhancement on your resolve is for your player to solicit a male prostitute in the game. Outer Worlds also features a major quest, where you’re expected to assist one of your companions in getting into a lesbian relationship; again, no way to repel or address any disagreements or differences through your player character’s roleplaying are present. The mentality is like the equivalent of the show Arthur’s episode on gay marriage; “if we don’t address or allow representation for our opposition, it doesn’t exist.” It’s ironically closed-minded and annoying when the game that frames the weight of your moral decisions is so detectably and consistently biased.

Minor spoiler alert, but both games also feature a priest support-character that (at some point in the game) hates their god, and the character leading the not-evil main faction in Outer Worlds was directly inspired by Rick from Rick & Morty--if that speaks anything as to the mentality of this studio. Other choices, such as (in Pillars) winning reputation points by buying and freeing slaves as opposed to killing the slaver and freeing slaves, and winning reputation points for forgiving someone of manslaughter and allowing the person to keep his secret, also speak a little on Obsidian’s morality and inhibit player freedom in additional annoying ways.

ALL that complaining aside... there is a lot to enjoy. It’s a big world to tap into, and it does have a sequel where you can import data from this game into that and have some of your major decisions be reflected in that game as well. It also features a stronghold (a Kickstarter stretch goal) that the player can manage--some meta knowledge of the game’s upcoming events and mechanics helps a lot in this, but it’s certainly a unique addition to this type of RPG and is genuinely a fun thing to work with. The combat mechanics are fun, although in many situations, it felt far easier to cheese the opponents’ pathing A.I. by luring a single enemy away, murdering him, and saving the game (note: both Pillars and Outer Worlds will likely leave you with a mess of save files after one playthrough), rinsing and repeating, and it would have been a welcomed feature had there been a button to change all party members’ weapons at once (which is helpful in that strategy, where you shoot a character, run away, and then beat on him/her/it as a group with swords) but the combat was still overall fun (albeit perhaps tiring and a monotonous after long hours of play.) The player economy is relatively punishing, with found items typically holding around an eighth of their sale value when you resell them, but this too is manageable (especially if you exploit a money glitch like the one from the first town.)

Obsidian can make a good game. It’s just disheartening to see that many of its flaws are systematic.

Ratings: 

Pillars of Eternity - Definitive Edition: 7/10

The Outer Worlds: 8/10

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Xbox Series X Review

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After spending over a week with Microsoft’s top-of-the-line next-gen console, one thing is clear: the Xbox Series X is a powerful machine, and an impressive hardware upgrade for anyone looking for a home console that can run games at 4K resolution and up to 120 frames per second. The Series X is also lightning fast thanks to its custom 1TB NVME SSD and Velocity Architecture, which seriously cuts down on load times, and the console also features many other quality of life improvements that make it the best way to play Xbox games in 2020. But even a console this fast can’t outrun its most glaring issue: a lack of next-gen exclusives at launch to justify making the upgrade on day one, even if its impressive 4K upscaling and Auto HDR technology does enhance the console’s vast library of past-gen experiences.

Before we jump into the games, let’s talk about the hardware itself. I covered the console’s physical attributes more closely in my unboxing article, but the short of it is that the Xbox Series X is a big, hefty piece of hardware. At about 5.9 inches wide and 11.8 inches tall, and weighing in at 9.8 pounds, the Xbox Series X isn’t quite PC tower size but it’s still massive when compared to most other home consoles. While its absolutely dwarfed by the 15.4 inch tall PlayStation 5, you may still have trouble finding a spot for the Series X in your home entertainment center. I certainly had to get creative with the Ikea TV stand in my living room, and ultimately had to lay the console on its side in order for it to (barely) fit in one of the shelves.

And while I find the Xbox Series X’s minimalist, monolith-shaped design to be eye-catching and a refreshingly clean look when compared to its next-gen competition and PC gaming rigs bathed in RGB lighting, Microsoft’s console looks much less cool when in its horizontal position. It’s true that putting the Series X in either its natural vertical or alternate horizontal position takes a lot less effort compared to the PS5’s removable stand, but I think Microsoft might have sacrificed a better horizontal solution for the sake of convenience to the player. When in the horizontal position, the Series X’s round stand sticks out of the left side of the console, a slightly ugly appendage that you can’t remove from the console’s otherwise clean shape. Maybe I’m seriously nitpicking here, but the point is that this console wants to stand in the vertical position, and I’d advise you to figure out how to display the Series X the way it was meant to be shown off.

You can check out the unboxing video below to hear way more of my thoughts on the console’s shape, size, and design:

Once you turn on the Xbox Series X, set up the console with your Xbox Live account, and sync it to the Xbox app on your phone — and I suggest you do so you can enable Remote Play and more Share options, which we’ll get to in a bit — the first thing you’ll notice is how quiet this machine is. Unless you put your ear real close to the vents at the top of the console, you won’t even hear a low hum from the Series X’s single “whisper-quiet” fan. In fact, the only time I was able to actually hear the Series X from the other side of my living room was while installing a game from a disc, the console’s 4K UHD Blu-ray optical drive working quickly to install the 32GB Mad Max. Still, the virtually silent Series X is a major improvement over the mechanical sound of the original Xbox’s hard drive and loud hum of the Xbox 360 and Xbox One’s fans.

Speaking of fans, the powerful airflow solution in the Xbox Series X is very good at keeping the console’s components relatively cool most of the time. Generally, what you’ll feel when putting your hand close to the console’s vents is a gentle breath of cool to tepid air. Things get a little hotter inside the Xbox when you’re playing Optimized for Series X titles like Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 4 at 4K 60fps, but the heat levels never felt all that alarming. I didn’t have a fancy thermal camera to test heat levels in the console, so I’d suggest you check out Digital Foundry’s excellent breakdown of the console’s power efficiency if you want to get into the nitty gritty.

The Xbox Series X’s specs have always been impressive on paper. Back in March, when we finally learned the specs of both consoles, we even speculated the Series X would be slightly more powerful than its next-gen competitor. It’s obviously too early to give a final verdict on the XSX vs. PS5 debate, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that Microsoft’s console has an advantage out the gate, boasting a more powerful CPU and GPU, even if the PS5’s potentially game-changing SSD has commanded much of the technical discussion.

Here are the main Xbox Series X specs you need to know:

Let’s talk about the console’s custom 12 teraflop GPU. While it might not be able to eclipse NVIDIA’s brand new line of GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs in terms of the raw specs, this is still an incredibly powerful graphics card when it comes to the home console market. Ever since it announced the Xbox Series X, Microsoft has had a clear mission: to make 4K 60fps the standard for all next-gen Xbox titles, while looking ahead at an 8K resolution future. After spending a bit of time playing Gears 5, Forza Horizon 4, and Sea of Thieves at 4K 60fps, it’s clear that Microsoft has absolutely knocked it out of the park.

While the Xbox Series X has no first-party next-gen exclusives at launch, which may make some players pause when considering the console’s $499 price tag, this machine does a lot to improve the Xbox experiences you already love. Playing Gears 5 at higher resolution brings the game’s diverse landscapes to life like never before, with improved textures and particle counts, while the inclusion of raytraced shadows and lighting makes all of the environments more immersive than ever before. There is some seriously beautiful lighting in this game to begin with, but the Optimized for Series X version of Gears 5 feels like the most fully realized take on this world. The higher framerate provides a better gameplay experience as well, especially when it comes to shooting mechanics, which feel silky smooth, a major boon when taking on Grubs.

Players can also set the framerate of Gears 5 multiplayer to 120fps, which provides the best look at the Series X’s current graphical ceiling (while the console is 8K-ready, there aren’t any 8K titles out to actually showcase that resolution). While I’m not sure I can tell as much of a difference between 60fps and 120fps when compared to the absolutely massive framerate jump between 30fps and 60fps, the ability to play a game on a home console at framerates that were once considered possible only on PC is no less impressive.

Ultimately, the jump to 60- and 120fps is a much bigger improvement to the home console experience than 1080p vs. 4K resolutions, especially when playing competitive shooters, racing, and fighting games, which demand quick reaction times and low latency. The clearer 4K resolution is certainly an improvement worth commending — just look at how good Forza Horizon 4 and Sea of Thieves look in the 4K screenshots taken from my Xbox Series X — but I’d pay more attention to what games you can turn all the way up to 120fps.

Unfortunately, there weren’t many Optimized for Series X games to actually try during the review period — only the Xbox One version of Yakuza: Like a Dragon was available ahead of the embargo, for example — so it remains to be seen how new titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs: Legion, current-gen games that are also Optimized for Series X and will boast 4K 60fps visuals, will perform at launch. What I’ve seen from the three optimized games I tried so far bodes well for the rest of the Xbox Series X’s launch lineup, though.

As I said at the start of this review, the Xbox Series X doesn’t have any first-party next-gen games on its list of launch titles, so it’s impossible to say how the Xbox Series X will perform when true next-gen experiences arrive to push that GPU and SSD to its limits. With Halo Infinite delayed to 2021, and other first-party releases like Obsidian’s Avowed, Ninja Theory’s Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, and Playground’s new Fable game still a way’s away, we may be at least a year out from seeing what the console can really do.

Fortunately, there’s a lot to play on the Xbox Series X until then. In fact, the Series X may be the most backward compatible and most bang-for-your-buck console ever released — as long as you already have a $15 Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription (and you totally should, if you’re an Xbox fan). Boasting a library of hundreds of backward compatible titles from across all generations of Xbox consoles, you can bring all of your physical and digital games from the original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One with you to the Series X. And with Xbox Game Pass, you also get a selection of over 100 games to download and play right out of the box. When compared to the PS5’s backward compatibility options, which only include PS4 titles and what’s available on PS Now, the Series X’s library of games is absolutely stacked.

I spent some time playing Star Wars: Republic Commando (an absolute banger for the original Xbox), Fable Anniversary for the Xbox 360, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection (which is also getting an Optimized for Series X upgrade later this month) and Mad Max on disc for Xbox One. The Series X emulates the original Xbox and Xbox 360 experiences perfectly, while Xbox One titles run natively on the console, which is a nice touch for those who simply want to pop in a current-gen disc and play without worrying about a middle man.

But even that quality of life feature pales in comparison to the way the Series X is able to upscale 720p and 1080p experiences from the past to next-gen 4K and up to 120fps, while also seriously improving the picture quality of those titles through the console’s Auto HDR technology. While I spent a limited time trying out these backward compatible titles on the console, I can definitely say that Republic Commando looks and plays better than it ever did on the first Xbox, while I noticed a distinct choppiness in the framerate in Fable Anniversary and Mad Max (again, running on a disc). Digital Foundry said in its own detailed breakdown of the Series X’s 4K upscaling and Auto HDR for past-gen titles that this isn’t a “one size fits all solution – but when it works, it really works.” I should also note that Republic Commando did crash on me once at the start of my playthrough, but hasn’t given me any issues since.

Now, you can of course make the argument that people buy next-gen consoles to play next-gen games, and I tend to agree with you on that, but the vast backward compatible library on the Xbox Series X still makes this machine a hell of a deal for people jumping into home consoles for the first time as well as new gamers. The size of the Series X’s games library may very well be the best selling point for parents buying next-gen consoles this holiday season. You simply get way more options on Series X. And that’s before you even factor in the console’s Smart Delivery system, which allows you to upgrade select Xbox One titles to the Optimized for Series X version for free.

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Microsoft has also made the incredibly consumer-friendly decision to allow Xbox fans to bring their Xbox One accessories over to the Series X. Both the Xbox Wireless Controller for the Xbox One and the Xbox Media Remote will work on the Series X, for example. As a player who doesn’t like the idea of spending $60 a pop on extra controllers, this is a huge deal. Setting up to play a few rounds of Mortal Kombat X on the Series X, it was very easy to sync my white Xbox Wireless Controller with the next-gen console and jump right into the fight. If you already have an Xbox One and are upgrading this holiday, rejoice in the fact that you already have more than one controller for the Series X.

The only Xbox One peripheral I wasn’t able to sync with the Series X was my SteelSeries Arctis 9X wireless headset, which is supposed to be compatible with the next-gen console at launch. It’s possible that third-party peripherals weren’t compatible with the Series X during the review period, or that this is a bug Microsoft will squash at launch with a firmware update, but just a note of warning if you’re trying to bring your fancy headset over to the next generation.

I’ve waited this long to elaborate on the Xbox Series X’s SSD-powered Velocity Architecture and Quick Resume feature for dramatic effect — because this is where the console truly reveals itself to be an absolute showstopper. Not only does the Series X virtually eliminate load times in past-gen games like Republic Commando — no longer must you wait while different sections of a level load in the middle of the action — but seriously cuts down load times in Optimized for Series X titles like Gears 5 and Sea of Thieves. Gears 5, for example, transitions between cutscenes and gameplay almost seamlessly, while jumping into the campaign in the first place takes only a matter of seconds. Comparing load times between the Xbox One version and Series X port resulted in the latter winning every time. An unsurprising result considering the XBO uses an HDD, but a comparison worth making if you want to see the real difference.

Then there’s the Quick Resume feature, which allows you to switch between several games at once without having to stop and restart applications. With Quick Resume, you can play a few hours of Gears 5, switch to the Halo: Reach campaign in Halo: MCC, play a few quarters in Madden 21, and then go back to Gears 5 and pick up exactly where you left off without having to go through the game’s initial startup again. Loading back into Quick Resume-enabled games takes only a matter of seconds — and this goes for back-compat titles like Republic Commando, Mad Max on disc, and Gears 5 through Remote Play on my Google Pixel 3a XL, too.

The only two games I tried that didn’t seem to work with Quick Resume were Forza Horizon 4 and Sea of Thieves, which had to load from scratch again after switching to other games, but that might come down to the console’s pre-launch state or the fact that both of these games require logging into online servers. Every other game I tried seemed to be compatible with Quick Resume, though. Besides one hiccup where, after Quick Resuming, I lost all sound in Madden 21, this quality of life improvement, along with the graphics upgrade, is enough reason for hardcore Xbox fans to make the jump to the next-gen console.

You can see Quick Resume in action in the video below:

Meanwhile, not much has changed with the Series X’s UI, which has made an almost seamless transition from the Xbox One version. Yes, menus on the dashboard load much faster and everything feels much snappier and flows more smoothly, with little buffer between the dashboard and loading into Settings menu for example, but you won’t find a major UI redesign here. As someone who thinks that the current Xbox UI outpaces the competition, I’d say that continuity between generations is a good thing.

I have a few nitpicks regarding the UI, such as the unintuitive way you access recent screenshots and gameplay clips captured through the console’s Share function, but I’d hardly call this a deal breaker. I will say this: for a company so invested in making PC-level resolution and framerates a reality on a home console, Microsoft missed one key aspect of the PC gaming experience — the ability to quickly adjust graphics on the go. At the moment, you have to exit out of games and visit the console’s Settings menu to change resolution and framerates. The exception out of the Optimized for Series X games I tried is Gears 5, which lets you switch between 60- and 120fps multiplayer in its in-game graphics menu. While it’s true that developers themselves decide just how adjustable a game’s graphics are in-game, it wouldn’t have hurt Microsoft to have implemented more robust graphics options in its first-party optimized titles at least.

The above might not be something console-only gamers are really all that concerned about, of course, which would explain why Microsoft hasn’t done much about it. But when you tout 4K and up to 120 fps gaming so often, you should at least create a faster way to access graphics options on the console without forcing gamers to exit out of the game. Maybe some quick toggles in the Guide menu would do the trick?

Like the UI, the Xbox Series X controller brings pretty much everything you loved about its Xbox One predecessor back for the next generation. Microsoft has perfected its gamepad to the point where it’s also become the preferred controller on PC, so there’s no point in fixing what isn’t broken. I went into way more detail about the actual feel of the controller in my unboxing, but the short of it is that the Xbox Series X gamepad is comfortable, responsive, and features some neat improvements.

The first addition is its new D-pad. Microsoft has done away with the traditional cross-shaped design and replaced it with a new facetted dish inspired by the Xbox Elite Controller. While the new, rounder D-pad felt a bit odd at first, I’ve quickly grown accustomed to it, and have even started to prefer it over the Xbox Wireless Controller’s cross, which now feels a bit stiff in comparison.

The other big new feature on the controller is the Share button, which I had an absolute blast using throughout the review period. With one click of the button, you can now easily capture screenshots of your gameplay, while holding down the button allows you to record 30 seconds of 4K gameplay (you can record longer clips at lower resolutions). From there, you can upload the captures to your activity feed, message them to an Xbox friend, post to Twitter, or even save them to your phone through the Xbox app.

All of the images used in this article were taken with the controller’s Share button, and the results look pretty impressive to this very amateur game photographer. As I mentioned above, for the best experience, I’d suggest handling these captures on your phone once they’re uploaded to the cloud, as it’s easier to zoom and switch between them on the Xbox app than in the console’s Guide menu.

There’s no doubt that the Xbox Series X is a powerful console, one worthy of the next-gen label, but what will ultimately decide the console’s success is its games. Unfortunately, and this is absolutely no secret, the console’s launch lineup is a bit of a letdown. Leaning heavily on third-party Optimized for Series X titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and first-party next-gen ports like Gears 5 — most of which aren’t exclusive to XSX — as well as its Xbox Game Pass and backwards compatible library, the Xbox Series X doesn’t really have an exclusive next-gen title in its launch lineup to entice gamers who are on the fence. Even timed next-gen console exclusive Yakuza: Like a Dragon will be available on XBO, PS4, and PC at launch.

It does seem at the moment like Microsoft’s console will limp out of the gate when it’s finally toe-to-toe with the PS5. Without something truly new and exciting you can only play on the Xbox Series X, I’m not sure I can recommend you buy this console on day one unless you’re looking for raw power in your next-gen gaming. So who is this console really for at the moment? Hardcore Xbox fans who want the best way to play upcoming Xbox titles as well as Game Pass and backward compatible games.

For everyone else, getting an Xbox Series X right now is really an investment in the console’s future. With so much GPU and SSD power at its disposal, the Xbox Series X should prove to be an excellent canvas on which developers will be able to create great pieces of art. And what’s coming up from within Microsoft — Halo Infinite, Avowed, all upcoming Bethesda titles — certainly has me excited about the types of experiences we’ll eventually be able to play on the console. What I’ve experienced so far in terms of graphics and load times tells me that the future of Xbox is very bright.

But at launch, Microsoft wants you to feel like this is still the Xbox experience you love with some major upgrades to performance. Is this a good strategy when it comes to hooking PlayStation and PC gamers across the aisle? That’s up for debate. But as a celebration of everything Xbox fans love about the brand, the Xbox Series X absolutely succeeds and shows a ton of promise to boot.

The Xbox Series X launches on Nov. 10. The Series S, which wasn’t provided by Microsoft in time for a review, will also release on Nov. 10 for $299.

Stay tuned for more of our ongoing coverage of the Xbox Series X here.

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[heedra]

Exalted Secret Santa

I’m excited to jump in on @shiftingpath‘s Exalted Secret Santa for the first time! A busy quarter meant I didn’t really have time to get adequate reference material for everyone I wanted to add to this list (there’s always next time!), but here are two of my (terrible) favorites.

Avenging Phoenix- Dawn Caste Solar (Formerly Ravenous Vulture Picks Clean the Bones of Creation, Dusk Caste Abyssal)

Orphaned at an early age, Phoenix was adopted by a Guild mercenary and raised as such. He spent his later mortal life as a city guard captain in Thorns, where he exalted during the fateful siege itself, disillusionment and rage at the circumstances of his death making him an easy recruit for the Mask. His path has weaved far and wide since then, a slow painful crawl from rebellion to eventual redemption; a journey that ultimately gave him a place among the saviors of Creation. He now helps command an organization that trains mortals, ghosts, and renegade deathknights alike to combat the forces of the Underworld (is it based on the BPRD? yes.). As long as his soul is on this side of Lethe, he is determined to fight against the Void- not because he considers himself antithesis to it, but because he has known it and survived it. He has impostor’s syndrome when it comes to his redemption by the Sun, and still feels uncomfortable thinking of himself as a peer to the other members of the Solar Host.

Phoenix is of Western descent, very short, fat, and beefy, with warm brown skin and a round, open face.  He keeps his burgundy hair closely shaved, not fond of dealing with the mess of wavy curls it becomes when allowed to grow out. His eyes are dark brown, almost black, the outside of the iris rimmed with the faintest edge of golden yellow. His nose looks like it has been broken multiple times in the past, and never properly healed. Due to unfortunate wyld misadventures his tongue has been mutated to resemble and function like that of a frog or chameleon’s, though this is only really apparent when he opens his mouth to use the damn thing. He is frequently found wearing his armor; black jade lamellar embellished with cruel-looking spikes, and often a shaggy grey fur cloak made from the pelt of some hunting trophy. A horned skull helm, made from the skull of a nephwrack’s war-body, often completes this ensemble. The helmet is a minor artifact: when worn, it causes his eyes to glow balefully behind its sockets and makes his voice gravelly with deathly menace. He is reluctant to take it off unless he feels at ease in a situation. Phoenix’s casual clothes tend to be simple, comfortable, loose, and in sharp contrast to his prickly combat garb. He enjoys floral patterns. He does not dress fancily unless pressed to for big occasions, and in those cases usually grudgingly follows the fashion direction of the one twisting his arm.

He usually tends to give off a vibe of someone who is tired, stressed, and sad but trying to seem laid back and amiable wrt expression and body language. Other common emotions include: ‘concerned dad face’, polite confusion, grumpy confusion, blank confusion, tired confusion, worried confusion, exasperated confusion, “is it time for me to fight something yet” confusion, and general gormlessness. This all hides a talent for strategic leadership and a stoic determination that gets fiercer as the going gets tougher. On the battlefield, he is brutal and bloodthirsty. He goes out of his way to make sure his enemies are intimidated, and few of his threats go unbacked. 

His anima banner starts as burst of gold-and crimson fire that solidifies into the form of a fierce and predatory-looking phoenix, with aspects of a garda bird and a lammergeier both. It moves as he does across the battlefield, swooping and rising with each swing of his axe, its fierce eyes focused on his prey. Refs: [1] [2]  Quick sketch of the skull helm (messy, sorry!) His grand grimcleaver looks like this, except made of solar essence (a la Glorious Solar Saber).

Example of the sort of casual clothing he wears

Feel free to get creative with the armor if you want. I’ve never had a fully cemented design for it, besides the fact that it is black jade lamellar and has those spiky shoulder pads. The one thing I would say is that it likely has spikes elsewhere as well, and has clawed gauntlets.

Harvester Of Corpses from Bones of the Barren Wasteland- Daybreak Caste Abyssal Necrosurgeon Harvester grew up in a small villages of ancestor-worshipping farmers that had lived next to the shadowlands southeast of Thorns for generations upon generations. He exalted at 19 in an unceremonious manner when he was ambushed and gutted by bandits upon returning from selling crops and wool at the market. Fueled by bitterness towards his previous life of powerlessness and poverty and the rush of newfound power he received, he served as a loyal deathknight for several years, but mounting attacks of conscience and growing fear of his master eventually led him to abandon his increasingly half-hearted servitude and flee with what little he could take. He now lives a destitute life on the run, hiding beneath rags and the veneer of disease, adrift in a world that rejects his essence, still reeling from just how far in over his head he’s managed to get himself. Harv is 6ft8 (or rather, the Creation equivalent in comparison to average height), very thin, bony and gangly, with greyish, clammy skin that used to be brown. The tips of his fingers and toes are marked with the black of necrosis, and his skin is marked by leprous boils and sores. Hardly any of his hair is left, only his big eyebrows and one small, scraggly patch remaining. His eyes are tired, underscored by heavy shadows, and often seem to have a pale, unhealthy yellow cast to them. He has several scars, most of them from his ‘trials’ as a new deathknight and one from the moment of his ‘death’, a giant scar across his stomach that still looks supernaturally raw and unhealed. The scar on his nose, however, is just from a time he got attacked by a chicken as a kid, a scar which got repeatedly reopened throughout incidents in his childhood and is kind of there to stay.

Harv wears an ever-shifting litany of ragged and grimy cloaks and bandages, prefering to conceal his body as much as possible. Beneath, he wears an unadorned soulsteel breastplate, nabbed from the armory on his way out of dodge, which fits poorly on his scrawny frame, and beneath this a sleeveless high-necked shirt, also black. His one accessory is a pair of obsidian earrings, tokens that marked the passage to adulthood in his village, which he wears at all times. His weapon of choice is Famine’s Mouth, a relatively unadorned artifact soulsteel war-scythe. 

Harvester is an unsettling deadbeat drifter with a penchant for drink. He comes off as defeated and glum, prone to melodrama, cowardice, passive-aggression, and extremely dry humor. Deep down he’s still the gentle and caring farmboy he once was, though it is hidden behind paranoia, avoidance, a nasty passive agressive dramatic streak, and immense social awkwardness. Despite his fear of his deathlord and peers and self-hatred towards his abyssal nature, he is also a zealous underworld nerd, fascinated with necromancy and the Neverborn alike (tho certainly not interested in being loyal to the latter). His passion for his craft is such that he makes use of pretty much any corpse he finds, and is not averse to graverobbing (he’s big on recycling). Harvester can often be found with a retinue of equally cloaked and bandaged zombies, frequently with bizarre and dangerous modifications made to them; this has gotten him in trouble one more than one occasion. He daydreams of one day having the workspace, safety, and materials to create much more ambitious constructs. He is also, despite himself, too fond of dogs to avoid them for resonance’s sake, and the local strays frequently trail after him once they realize that he hands out treats. His anima banner is a sickly green and black swarm of locusts that coalesce thickest behind his head in a grim halo. 

Refs: [1] [2] [3] (old, but good outfit ref] [4 (not my art!)] [5 (ignore the silly outfit and tatoos, but there’s colors here)] The top three drawings here show the weapon his grimscythe is based on. I don’t have a cemented design for it, but it resembles a basic war scythe like the one shown here only much larger, crueler, and made of soulsteel. If you choose to depict it, feel free to get creative!

[odanurr87]

My thoughts on... The Seven Deadly Sins

A long time ago, more specifically, when I wrote my thoughts on The Irregular at Magic High School, I mentioned I had watched another show by the name of The Seven Deadly Sins and would, eventually, write up a review on it. Unfortunately, one thing led to another and I kept postponing the review until, well, too much time had gone by for me to remember everything that had transpired. Curiously, last weeked I found myself binging the series on Netflix again so I figured, what the heck, might as well tell you what I made of it.

Simply put, it was really good.

A small disclaimer, I’m not an avid anime viewer and I’m certainly nowhere near an expert, so it’s possible that The Seven Deadly Sins is not the best exponent of the Shōnen genre. Regardless of its categorization, the show follows a team of superpowered heroes called The Seven Deadly Sins as they help a princess retake her kingdom from an order called the Holy Knights. If I had to make a comparison, I’d say Sins is very similar to Akame Ga Kill! (yes, I watched that one too, part of it at least). Both are shōnen, and in both you’ll find teams of superpowered heroes and villains constantly fighting each other and upping their game, slowly revealing new and more powerful abilities that make us fear for the lives of the protagonist/s. However, I found Sins to be the more light-hearted and fun of the two; it did help that it’s also less gory, and features less creepy and deranged villains (that dog girl was bonkers). In fact, one could argue the show echoes the personality of its lead protagonist, Meliodas, or at least aspects of it. Hmm... Come to think of it, perhaps it’s more of a mix between Akame and Magi: Adventure of Sinbad, another fun shōnen with an OP main character well worth watching. Anyway, back on topic...

This is Meliodas. He owns a tavern and has a talking pig named Hawk.

Meliodas is the Sin of Wrath and captain of the Seven Deadly Sins. He is also, incidentally, the first person Princess Elizabeth recruits to her cause and together they set out to find the scattered Sins and save the kindgom. Similar to Tatsuya in The Irregular at Magic High School, Meliodas is a clearly overpowered character, as are the Sins in general, and has little trouble dispatching the enemies sent his way throughout the show. As a matter of fact, most of the time he comes across as restraining himself in battle, as if he were afraid to go all out. Of course, there are very few enemies that call for a full display of his abilities so maybe he doesn’t want to break a sweat. As such, it’s easy to predict he’ll never truly be in dire straits, even more so when he can count on the other Sins to come to his aid: Diane, Sin of Envy; Ban, Sin of Greed; King, Sin of Sloth, and not to be confused with the actual King of Liones and Elizabeth’s father; and Gowther, Sin of Lust.

No, you’re not wrong, I’ve only mentioned five Sins thus far, and that’s because those are the only five you’ll see for the most part of the show, with Merlin (Sin of Gluttony) showing up in the last few episodes and Escanor (Sin of Pride) not even that. Even so, these five are more than enough to give the Holy Knights a run for their money and then some. For better or worse, Sins is not a show where you’ll have to worry about one of the protagonists dying, even though there are several of these moments, but rather wonder how they’ll make it through their latest predicament, what new ability they will reveal to counteract their enemies’. Like I said, it’s a more cheerful, hopeful, version of Akame, something that is also reflected in its soundtrack, with the track “Perfect Time” being the, well, perfect example of this.

By the way, the soundtrack is surprisingly good and you’ll easily guess it was composed by Hiroyuki Sawano (Blue Exorcist, Attack on Titan, Aldnoah.Zero) just by listening to tracks like “Nanatsu no Taizai” or “Yosei Ba” (incidentally, two of my favourites tracks). You are bound to notice the influence from some of his previous works like Blue Exorcist and Aldnoah.Zero (maybe more) in this soundtrack. Having said that, tracks like “Yosei Ba” veer from the cheerful, dwelling in the sad memory of how Ban became immortal. The show will often explore the past of the main cast as Meliodas and the Princess find and recruit each of the Sins, and it’s one steeped in misery and tragedy for most of of our heroes. Meliodas’ own past, while repeatedly mentioned and hinted at, is surprisingly the least well-developed to my mind, or perhaps the least well-rounded. Unlike Ban, King, or Diane, we never get to see a full flashback of Meliodas in his role as Captain of the Guard of Danafor, relying instead on third-party accounts. Maybe this is something that will be explored in Season 2? After all, Gowther’s past is not explored at all. In fact, the season never does answer the big question of how the Sins were branded and how they got their powers in the first place, although this is somewhat hinted at via Meliodas’ arc and the Holy Knights’ own. I won’t spoil it so let’s just say that one of the Grandmasters (the actual title is Great Holy Knight) of the Order found a way to boost the power levels of his knights so they could be more of a match for the Sins.

Another thing I wrote in my Mahouka review was that the story of The Seven Deadly Sins was one where the villains had to save the kingdom from its heroes. This is true, from a certain point of view. Ten years ago, Zaratras, the Grandmaster of the Holy Knights of Liones, was murdered and the Sins were conveniently in the right place at the right time. Framed for a crime they didn’t commit, they chose exile rather than... I’m not sure. Couldn’t the Sins have explained the situation to the King? I mean, if they had wanted to overthrow him, surely they had more than ample power to do so. In retrospect, I can’t help but think that, had the Sins intervened then and there, there would’ve been less bloodshed. Of course, odds are they wouldn’t have found the real mastermind behind Zaratras’ murder then. In any event, it seems like the Sins are now fixing a problem of their own making.

That’s just how the Sins greet each other.

The show does a good enough job building suspense, introducing different characters within the Order of the Holy Knights that seem to have their own agendas, such as Grandmasters Dreyfus and Hendrickson; Gilthunder, a Diamond-ranked Holy Knight with a score to settle with the captain of the Sins; or Master Helbram, another Holy Knight who has a history with the Sin of Sloth, King. These are possibly the only characters who can rival the Sins in terms of power, save for one other group: the Sins themselves. As you’ll undoubtedly see throughout the course of the series, some of the Sins have scores to settle amongst themselves what complicates matters further. At other times however, they’re just bashing each other for the fun of it, as is the case between Meliodas and Ban. In fact, one of my favourite arcs has the Sins enter a fighting contest alongside a couple of Holy Knights by the names of Howzer and Griamore. It’s an obvious setup but it provides an ideal opportunity for Meliodas and Ban to test their mettle against each other. Howzer himself, upon learning the identity of the Sins, turns into a fanboy and warns the other Holy Knights not to interfere with the contest until their duel is concluded, echoing my sentiment that this was one fight not to be missed. It was a very humorous situation and, to be fair, Sins is a show that always finds the time to mix in some humour between, and sometimes during, its action sequences. Some of it is hit and miss however, such as Meliodas’ inappropriate groping of Princess Elizabeth from time to time, her bashful reactions, and Hawk’s and Diane’s (she’s very jealous that one) subsequent admonitions. To my mind, these were superfluous, adding nothing to the story, as if someone was simply ticking the fan service box in the Shōnen list of tropes. Fortunately, the fan service is kept to a minimum, at least when compared to other genres (certainly a lot less than Slice of Life).

Overall, I’d say The Seven Deadly Sins makes for a highly entertaining watch and I thoroughly recommend it. From what I’ve managed to gleam from the series alone (there is a manga), there is certainly enough material to create a second season considering we haven’t uncovered all of the Sins’ abilities nor thoroughly explored their past. On the other hand, Meliodas seems to have revealed his ultimate ability already and, seeing as he is the main character of the show, it may get repetitive if we see him spam that ability in combat. Of course, he still hasn’t recovered his Sacred Treasure, an artifact that boosts his already-powerful abilities significantly, so we may yet see Meliodas unveal even more powerful skills against deadlier enemies. The animation studio behind Sins, A-1 Pictures, has already confirmed Season 2 will air in 2018 and it will be called, “Revival of the Commandments.” Hopefully, the sequel will also see Elizabeth grow out of the “damsel in distress” trope and wearing more suitable attire (Meliodas!).

If you’re done with Season 1 already and are eager for more, Netflix also has an OVA that they had originally incorrectly labeled as Season 2 and have since renamed it to, “Signs of Holy War.” The OVA features four 20-minute episodes that explore the aftermath of the Sins’ victory (hardly a spoiler, is it?) before they embark on their next adventure. In fact, you know what? I think I’m gonna do just that. See you again in Season 2!

[ihifizat-blog]

Download photo editing software

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Photo editor for Windows and image tool to edit photos or correction of contrast

Edit a photo with this simple to operate photo editor for Computer and experts

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[forskolindroz21-blog]

Secrets to help Harnessing the facility connected with Social Media

I'm sure promotion will be outrageous presently in excess of SMO applying guerrilla practices, nice viral video lessons, adobe flash video game titles, in addition to several different different fickle bridal strategies to receive persons conversing or maybe planning on the model on the net. We have a untrue conception, I do believe, of which whenever you can receive many men and women to examine anything, of which on auto-pilot means achievements. Although the way will it be effective? It may not be of which complicated for getting persons keen on anything -- When i check out hilarious Vimeo video lessons at all times.

Even so I'm sure of which generally, publishers don't realize this change concerning fascination in addition to steps. You possibly can to produce viral online video media and find 100, 000 individuals to consider the item, although several may perhaps react on there -- or perhaps learn it's associated with a unique model. Shifted Pixels increased many significant issues within a new writing of what models must evaluate previous to making use of a web 2 . 0 bureau.

Precisely what is the connected with promotion? TO PROMOTE. 100 % pure in addition to uncomplicated -- right at the end on the time, it truly is to promote, in addition to obtaining focus connected with people momentarily from the web 2 . 0 living space is usually connected with small business oriented importance into a model. Web 2 . 0 optimisation must not be known as this short period approach that is certainly plan structured buy high retention youtube views . Repeating this typically simply just makes some sort of shark termin using a graph -- Non permanent fascination which will mature on an ongoing basis, ; however , people go through a big lower with fascination (which is additionally exponential) that makes that you blip from the hugely fought for earth on the world-wide-web.

John Chen had written an incredible document applying Metcalf's Rules to recognise the way apps mature on an ongoing basis with support systems along with the chance on the corollary: Eflactem's rules. John argues of which increase in addition to retention will depend on understood importance by means of end users, and since people eliminate end users, on-line of this circle lowers on an ongoing basis.

Developing importance normally takes time period. You might be Myspace, produce a using connected with thousands by means of placing good information everyday. Remedy folks' issues in addition to engage ones 'friends'. SMO is concerning providing ones model because of an individual can levels. Models really should not possibly be confidential -- it truly is an immensely strong advertising and marketing software to get a adviser of this corporation acquiring talks having people -- including Shiny Cutts by The search engines. While The search engines is usually substantial, Matt's blog site produces the item because of an individual can levels.

The search engines is usually my good friend!

Get those workers blogs in addition to distribution this model quality! Avoid getting a advertiser, become a pal. In the event another person states that anything adverse in relation to ones model on the net, technique these individuals in addition to appologise -- deliver these individuals some sort of price cut, or maybe hand them over anything cost-free.

You might be Facebook or myspace -- employ a collection that provides end users reductions, offers, in addition to information that's kept up to date generally. Receive critical customers to utilise new items in addition to cause them to sense that there're linked with this model within a substantial technique. Replace ones blog's information regular in addition to circle having blog writers based on the place that you are with -- Make a 3 technique debate that is certainly basically substantial.

Nielson advises i am at this point filled having all around 3000 announcements on a daily basis that's generated cheaper slice as a result of in addition to responsiveness by people caused by a facts excess. More painful however, solely 7% connected with telly advertising is usually differentiated on the relax, significance promotion is starting to become fewer applicable, far more general and is particularly containing cheaper profits with investment decision.

This human brain don't even have the capacity to help understand these many facts which often ends up with what exactly Georg Simmel termed this 'blasé attitude'. The normal conclusion is usually which the human brain interprets the earth by using a strategy of differentiation in addition to modern society is actually and so difficult that any of us usually are finding 'an intensification connected with tense stimulation'. This blasé mind-set is usually a respond to that -- the explanation most of us tend not to talk with folks relaxing near to you within the shuttle bus. It may not be that any of us halt perceiving what all around you, it truly is purely blunting this splendour mainly because most of us will not have the capacity to be aware of everthing.

Tend not to complete many dumb gimmicky plan which often not a soul will probably recall available as one 2 or 3 weeks time period -- guaranteed, you can receive 50, 000 vistas along with the purchaser will likely be delighted, although that would not read to help almost any profit with the corporation.

SMO is concerning developing ones model in talks after some time in addition to we should go clear of observing the item to be a swift gain. Focus on your clients -- Applying thrill metrics, Nike awakened to the fact on the list of key terms of which maintained on the agenda seemed to be 'sweat shops' so one of these aimed at advertisments to help interact to that. SMO can be quite vast, although finally the item comes down to help developing top grade intended for people. You've got simply just bought to see what exactly makes up 'value' to your account potential audience.

The involvement in web 2 . 0 by a promotion view initiated in relation to three years before as i seemed to be getting work done in cafe's to be a barista. This achievements of any bistro is based to a great extent with constructive referral marketing, in addition to tips on how to build constructive WOM is usually to assure good services, beneficial meal, in addition to high quality gourmet coffee.

Seems like weird, although I've got mastered far more in relation to web 2 . 0 optimisation by getting work done in some sort of bistro in addition to appealing having bistro way of life in comparison with I've got examining articles or blog posts, ebooks in addition to conversing having promotion persons. The true secret is usually to make a distinction by yourself because they are the most beneficial -- for being exceptional seeing that Seth Godin could possibly claim. Subsequently, we have a healthy talkability. Persons will probably state on the net in addition to off-line no matter if that you are greater than a different bistro, and they'll safe bet someone to all of their good friends.

The explanation cafe's undoubtedly are a good case by a SMO view is usually of which all people possesses the most liked just one. Where we can get the most beneficial gourmet coffee is normally contested in addition to everybody enjoys to get a completely new good area to use. This can be a subject matter quite a few Australian's including to express and this can be viewed while using the exploding market connected with ADVERTISING articles or blog posts with regular print out. Instantly everybody is dealing with benefit connected with home roasted gourmet coffee, in addition to what exactly gets into to help doing a wonderful capuccino.

When you unique some sort of bistro, possibly be a lively player from the gourmet coffee earth -- a lively participant with gourmet coffee message boards, gourmet coffee linked information sites, CRM software programs for example. Become involved in gourmet coffee games, generate articles or blog posts intended for print out, write-up 'how to' video lessons with Vimeo for producing a wonderful gourmet coffee, in addition to circle approximately you possibly can. Repeating this has impact on this judgment commanders -- this gourmet coffee nerds -- folks exactly who take in two times ristretto's -- folks whose good friends many request where by they should be having the gourmet coffee.

I've got viewed cafe's receive gourmet coffee geeks on their bistro 'after hours' intended for gourmet coffee mouth watering consultations, to express the capuccino products, to investigate completely new pinto and black beans by world wide. They subsequently look at people on the net, on their good friends, in addition to the good friends talk with the good friends.

When you unique some sort of vino downstairs room, find the vino aficionados in for vino mouth watering consultations in addition to cause them to think exclusive. Hand them over exclusive participant greeting cards and watch seeing that ones gross sales soar. Most likely offer cost-free bottles of wine to help most of these customers in addition to ask them to generate an appraisal with your blog site. Considering that the similar applies intended for vino aficionados -- the good friends many request best places get hold of a good low cost vino, and they'll advocate people -- in truth they're going to cherish people that is a complicated matter to obtain -- for making persons health care.

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Tidy Your Fronts lights With A Brush From Tooth paste (IMAGES).

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Given the enthusiastic and powerful following that was gotten from this is actually early development phases, my ideas to the activity's durability is actually one I have faith in. Pressing the limits where various other video games lack fuel, Venture Cars has actually established the brand new requirement, in-terms of both racing credibility, and being actually a visual benchmark. If you possessed a $0 security deposit, the only technique the car dealer could receive the financing permitted would be to lower the list price to $11,500. If they can buy the cars and truck at public auction for below you agree to pay for, they might buy that for you, given that that is small yet effortless loan for all of them. As the title proposes, this will include TWENTY self-governing autos coming from 10 staffs dashing from one another. The large flatbed has a 50-sheet Automobile File Feeder (ADF) on the top, with an orderly, high-gloss panel which unfolds to reveal the newspaper resources. For the sake of your car and also your wallet, attend to exactly what the manufacturer has to mention. He hasn't already steered the cars and truck but, but Maserati guarantees him that, on and also off the street, the Levante is going to have the capacity to take on the Porsche Cayenne. Thus even though driverless cars and trucks are actually much safer as well as lessen an individual's chance from death, motorists have a hard time to approve the suggestion that they may be eliminated through a device, as opposed to through individual inaccuracy. You should demonstrate precision, review, judgement, car command, right guiding and also factor to consider for various other roadway customers as you accomplish the physical exercise. When most individuals opt for to require and finish a relocation automotive transportation, this is. Setup-wise, for simplicity of utilization you'll prefer the unit fastened right into a USB socket or the auto's 12V energy, either by means of a 12V socket or even wired directly in. The latter will require specialist proper, however can be practical along with much older automobiles that have limited electrical power outlets accessible. Market professionals said on Wednesday that cars and truck manufacturers ought to be actually pushed to remember and update vehicles that release greater amounts from dangerous pollution while driving in comparison to they did in formal exams. Much of the automobiles utilize what is referred to as Lidar (Light Diagnosis as well as Ranging) - a rotating laser, generally placed on the roofing system, that continually scans the atmosphere around the vehicle. Dedring points out London has constantly been actually progressive in relations to public transport - its slim, falsifying streets were actually certainly never for the automobile dominance that happened in lots of US as well as European urban areas in the 70s as well as 1960s, when the auto was master.