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cultivating-wildflowers · 2 years ago

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Books of 2023 - June

Temporarily broke out of a reading funk by finding some easy sci-fi; but the rest of the series didn't exactly hold up, and I'm back to where I started (behind on my non-fic list, slogging through a good but thick historical fiction, and unable to focus on anything). It may be time for a reread that isn't Narnia.

Total books: 7 | New reads: 6 | 2023 TBR completed: 1 (0 DNF) / 12/25 total | 2023 Reading Goal: 43/50

May | July

#1 - Old Man's War by John Scalzi - 5/5 stars

*obligatory content advisory here: language, violence, and gore on a level with The Murderbot Diaries; sexual content on a level with the World of the Five Gods series (and easy to skip)*

The easiest way for me to describe this book is "Ender's Game but with retirees instead of children". And possibly a little less introspection on the part of our hero, not that I'm complaining.

I snagged a copy of this book from my local used bookstore after a friend heartily recommended it. (Thankfully the dust jacket was missing, because I found what the cover art probably looked like and. No thanks.) When a succession of historical fiction, children's fantasy, and classics left me feeling a little bored, I decided it was time to pick up Old Man's War.

I tore through it inside of 24 hours.

While the main character's voice is a little bland, the writing itself is fantastic: bantering dialogue, masterful strokes of world-building, a good balance of humor and gravity, just enough techno-babble to convey the stakes without bogging down the story, and moments of sincerity that made me tear up. Solid sci-fi all around.

#2 - Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery - 4/5 stars (audio)

Another hit from Montgomery. This one reminded me a lot of The Blue Castle, which was an automatic point in its favor. A straightforward, cozy sort of story; although, knowing it was Montgomery's last book and that she was working on the sequel when she died, I got to the last couple of chapters and really started to fret that we wouldn't get a resolution before "The End". (Spoiler: everything turned out alright.)

#3 - The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi - 5/5 stars (audio)

This sequel to Old Man's War features a new POV character and a new cast, with a few familiar faces thrown in. I definitely found Jared's POV far more compelling and engaging than John's, but what I really loved were the underlying themes of home and belonging. I also appreciated a deeper dive into technicalities that were understandably brushed over in the first book. It worked well here, with characters who needed that deeper knowledge.

#4 - The Last Colony by John Scalzi - 4/5 stars (audio)

And back to John's POV for most of this one. John is just so...meh. I don't know why but he isn't compelling to me. He feels shallow, maybe?

The story itself is solid as ever and I really liked the conflict. A little predictable, but good all the same.

#5 - Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi - 3/5 stars (audio)

Scalzi's weak point really seems to be his characters. Somehow, despite not actually being related to him, Zoe suffers from the same "just some guy" syndrome as her father John (but not in the way that makes it fun). I think most of it stems from Mr. Scalzi not really knowing how to write teenagers.

As for the book itself? Decidedly meh. It's a retelling of the story from the previous book, told from the POV of John's adopted daughter. About 75% of the book tells about Zoe's experiences while her parents are trying to keep their new colony from collapsing, sprinkled here and there with details we didn't get in The Last Colony.

And it's frickin' boring. It feels plain old lazy, like Scalzi finished his trilogy and then had all these ideas of things he wished he'd added to The Last Colony, so he went back and added them in, and then swore the POV character and her friends to secrecy so it didn't look like retconning.

But hey, I got a title that starts with "Z" for my alphabet book challenge, so? (Also if anyone sees this, this is the book with the unhugging.)

#6 - The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis - 5/5 stars (reread)

I never noticed before this reread exactly how much Lewis loved the dynamic of "snarky boy and girl thrown into an adventure where half of their mistakes are because they're stubborn and the other half because they're showing off". Eustace and Jill, Aravis and Shasta, and now Digory and Polly.

This installment shot up into second place on my list of favorite Narnia books. There are so many little things to admire here, and so many intriguing questions it opens up for the world of Narnia. (Where did the Lady of the Green Kirtle come from if she was one of Jadis's race? What happened to the toffee tree? What happened to the guarding apple tree? Why don't we see more pegasuses in the other books? If Frank and Helen's kids married nymphs and dryads and the like...I don't really know what the question is but I have one.)

#7 - Ahab by E.B. Dawson - 3/5 stars ('23 TBR)

"It is the nature of man to fight his enemies. If none are readily available, he will create them for himself."

I would like to start by saying I've never read Moby Dick and possess only a passing understanding of the plot. So as for how this retelling holds up to and honors the original? No idea.

It had a strong opening that carried through to about the 40% mark, but after the first major confrontation the pace eased up and I got distracted for...well, several weeks. At that point it was easy to get back into, but somewhere around the 70% mark things switched gears and the ending felt incredibly rushed. Who are all of these new characters? Wait, this specific issue is what we should be focusing on? The final confrontation is happening NOW? And then the epilogue, which…again, felt rushed.

I loved the broad strokes of the worldbuilding and I liked what was happening with the characters, but it seemed like we needed a little more time to process a rush of information near the end and fully understand the stakes; or maybe when the pace eased up at the 40% point, we needed that time to learn the true stakes and character motivations, instead of taking a romance subplot sidetrack (which I wanted to like but, again: not enough time). Overall, it felt incomplete.

My only other complaint was that the dialogue was kind of stiff. I definitely skimmed a lot of that.

DNF

Synapse by Steven James - Talk about heavy-handed spiritual themes. They were Mjolnir-heavy, and I only got 3% of the way in before stopping.

World-building was clunky rather than organic, and not at all eased by general exposition. "There was an explosion. Ok, now that I have your attention, lemme info-dump on you about everything that looks different here compared to your world and time." (Side note: will someone please give us more sci-fi/futuristic stories where the main characters go "don't ask me how nano tech works; I'm in customer service!")

The search for tolerable modern Christian spec fic continues.

#2023 reading list #mine #I can't believe I spelled Mjolnir correctly the first time #minus the fancy ö but that can be forgiven #Old Man's War #The Ghost Brigades #The Last Colony #Zoe's Tale #John Scalzi #Jane of Lantern Hill #L.M. Montgomery #The Magician's Nephew #C.S. Lewis #Ahab #E.B. Dawson

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hard-core-super-star · 1 year ago

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exactly!! It's not like I went to bed at that time precisely because - as mentioned here before - It takes almost 5 years to finish responding correctly, including deleting and writing everything again and any obstacles to sending the message. and thanks for not scolding me jfkskakjsk. In fact, this information is really important! well, with the test and this information I came to the conclusion that there is a difference of 5 hours or so between us. okay, admitting this where everyone can see was not very well thought out.... ANYWAY, It's not fair, I have to be right for once, It's impossible for someone to always be right 🤨 I-.... that- that makes sense..... 😶

I'm on the way to understanding all (or almost) of them! I'm watching this track record, when I'm finally right I'm going to have a party with the theme “I was finally right”...... since you're happy I think I'll be less of a brat about it. babe I'm already wanting my third star since you gave me the first one jshskak. hmmmm, I had an idea with this spider-man thing, If you know an app called rave then you probably know what I'm discreetly asking 😶 lmao we should. okay, we'll leave this topic open, end of case *🔨🔨🔨* I didn't find the gavel that is used in court. why are you like this???kshajwkskksk I won't answer. thank you, stand-up awaits us.

but I'm not leaving sentences unfinished anymore 🤨 oh kshskaks..... right. remember your goal to keep making me smile? well, this has been achieved again. but I think now this just instigated me to want to know what these so-called “stupid things” are lmao. I think I need an example just to be sure of what I should think 👀 yes, it actually counts as me agreeing. I mean, I'm not the best person to read between the lines so your non-discreetness helps me more than I'd like to admit.

well, I'm not going to say that being called out doesn't show that there are people reading this- jshsjakakk well, I don't know what I should do now, but I don't think I'll ask for your Instagram in this case and I won't send you a message on tktk just to make sure. and I'm not thinking that this math was low! I will test it.

It would be funny if you made a reference, I understood it but then you no longer remember it lmao.

just reading this is difficult... pronouncing it is where the real problem lies. It's not usual but I'm with you, liking writing is something, but now liking grammar is something else- especially if it's from another language. It's a strange but really cool tradition, we're not going to lie here, the parties are cool. that makes sense! It's so good to feel this when you travel, feel the whole place and even the smallest details, enjoy every second and make it count. I'm glad you enjoyed your trip and your birthday. “the sounds” JSHAKAKAKNDKK It seems like you're having war memories with this 😭 yeah yeah I'm here for it! I don't know if you've ever watched strange things, but kate's personality seems a bit like robin's in terms of being an overthinker, talking nonstop, hyperactive and things like that. even the “reacts way faster than she thinks” thing. what am I seeing here, a big softie yelena???? the biggest plot twist that I created in my head right now is because yelena and kate were playing uno and she was sad because yelena made her take almost all the cards in the game. don’t you want to share how she would encourage that? 🥹

– 🌟

i've been trying to reply to you for like 4 hours but life just didn't let that happen 🫠 everything's fine i'm just dramatic and easily overwhelmed as i've mentioned like 50 times at this point. basically, please forgive me if i make less sense than usual, my brain has completely shut off by now. yeah, of course not, we are in fact very speedy and i didn't spend like 3 hours on my phone today because of these messages. in fact, that information just revealed how long it actually takes me to type these things out lmao. but yeah, i agree with those results which means it'll probably be 2am for you again when i post this and hopefully you'll be asleep, not because i don't want to talk to you but because i hope you're taking care of yourself and sleeping enough. yeah, but it's fun so :) i've given you the chance to be right and yet somehow, it never happens so...that must mean i'm very clearly always right. does it? you want to expand on that for me?

i know and that makes me very happy! that...sounds like a boring theme, tbh. do i get to be invited to this once-in-a-lifetime event, though? aw, that's cute but i find it hard to believe that you'll genuinely stop being a brat 👀 wow, let me try to act surprised about this knowledge 😲 was it convincing, darling? i certainly know about this app now that you've mentioned it but i think you should be less discrete about what you're asking, just so we're on the same page 😶 i was fighting the urge to say caso cerrado and failed lmao. why am i like what? incredibly witty? incredibly obvious? i'm going to need an answer. i agree, we're already closer to being comedians than most people.

true, you're just not even attempting to answer anymore which is technically an answer. YES! thank you for not keeping this information to yourself, it's exactly what i needed to hear. oh come on, practically every sentence i write to you is one of those "stupid things", i make it very easy. an example? don't get greedy on me again, little star. i find that very difficult to believe but then again, maybe i've just been very obvious lmao. i don't think you have to try super hard to read between these lines, tbh. i've basically been exposing myself in every message.

i'm so glad you're not reminding me that i've been called out because that moment isn't going to be ingrained in my brain forever now. well, i'm not going to admit that this actually confused me but that might be because i'm tired af. i'm also not going to say that i randomly got a new follower on tktk today but since i assumed they would be messaging me first, i didn't reach out yet. i'm also not going to say that if you're not interested i won't give you my Instagram. the only reason i'm not double-checking is because i don't want to appear annoying or clingy. and i'm certainly not excitedly waiting for said message so i can talk about alpha!kate, not at all.

it would be equal parts funny and sad, tbh. the worst part is, it will definitely happen lmao.

i KNOW, it doesn't matter how much time goes by, there are still words i get self-conscious saying (like strategy) i don't think anyone genuinely likes grammar. maybe sociopaths or masochists or something. oh god, i basically just pretend grammar doesn't exist when i practice writing and spelling in french 😶 that's...a good point. i honestly can't remember the last time i went to one of those parties, though so i'll have to take your word for it. there's no way that actually made sense to you, how tf do you do it??? but yeah, i love paying attention to those small details because it makes everything else easier to remember. asdskdlg technically yes, lmao. i'll just say it goes back to why i use rubixcube instead of my actual last name. i've never seen stranger things 😶 but i'll take your word for it. this does bring me to another point though, does kate have ADHD? i go back and forth on this one, tbh. oh yeah, yelena's the biggest softie ever. a cool softie but a softie nonetheless. dghashgahda that sounds accurate af. yelena would boast about how great she is at the game until she sees kate's sad little eyes and then she'd be forced to hide +4 cards in the stack so kate could get them and use them in revenge. honestly, yelena gives me like an encouraging nod type of vibe. she'd just look at kate while she goes off on her random rant and nod along the entire time, feigning shock when she has to and smiling the rest of the time.

#rubix replies #🌟

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bernadinesweetspot · 2 years ago

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Day 2: My First Game Jam!

At the end of my last blog post, I had decided I wanted to achieve two things today:

1. implement some CSS;

2. expand and randomise sections of text.

I feel like I can safely say I met both of those goals today!

Most of the morning and afternoon were taken up by reading through CSS documentation, mainly using W3 schools as reference. I then put what I had learned (or relearned... lots of my knowledge of CSS and HTML coding came from my college years, which I can admit was about... 12 years ago~) into a simple stylesheet that my twine game can use.

This involved thinking about certain design aspects. Whilst I could easily decide on what fonts would be used for headers vs text, the sizing of borders and styling of hyperlinks, I had not yet chosen what colour palette I wanted to use for my game.

I frequently use pinterest as a low effort mood and idea board, and I already had a board that I had saved plenty of my favourite colour schemes in. These have mainly been used as inspiration for bitsy games or games that use less than 8 channels of colour. However, when browsing the ones I had saved over the years, I found none had that post box aesthetic (whatever that actually is...). so I searched for palettes with a post box/mail type theme.

I limited it down to three options, but I most liked the last palette I had referenced (it's always the same, it's the last one you try!). This probably wont be my final colour palette, but it's been nice to not have to think about it again, and should I wish to change the hex values, I know exactly where and how to make those changes.

After mucking about with CSS, I switched over to randomising my text segments. This was easily than I had imagined, only using the either() function in sugarcube. Now each point defining passage has a 50% chance of having different text in the storyline! I hope that with this change, my game could be a bit more replayable.

Randomising my suspicious scores alongside my happiness meter proved a bit more tricky... and I wish I could tell you how I fixed it but I don't quite know what I did?

At some point I was super embarrassed because I had a functional game before, which then changed to a non-functional game and when trying to troubleshoot why, I was greeted with a whole ass page of + 4 repeating. I wish I got a screenshot but I also am grateful I no longer have to look at an entire screen of + 4 + 4 + 4 over and over and over...

Finally, after losing some steam since it is currently midnight over here, I jiggled around my twine wysiwyg passages into a more readable format. This wasn't particularly hard but my fiance had a good point about flow chart readability, and I trusted his opinion due to his history and experience with other pieces of software that depended on flow charts (for example, Magic).

Other than that, I might call it a day! What I'd like to do tomorrow is:

Refining score probabilities using maths (will likely need a helping hand to make gameplay balanced);

Adding more functionality and random text segments;

Creating a new level wherein your suspicion meter could advance you to a promotion? Unsure... stay tuned!

Over and out!-

#myfirstgamejam #devlog #itch.io #twine #sugarcube

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germanshepherdhealth · 2 years ago

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Is your German shepherd too fat?

Does your dog need to lose weight? Obesity in German shepherd is a very common problem. It is believed that 50% of all German shepherd are overweight. German shepherds that are more than 10% over the ideal weight have too much on their ribs. And once the extra pounds are there, it's not that easy to get rid of them. It is worthwhile to declare war on the excess kilos. If the dog is cranky or even severely overweight, this always has an impact on the health of our four-legged friends.

Being overweight is bad for your dog's health!

Being overweight not only puts more strain on the joints, it also harms many other organs and bodily functions. I'll list the most common ones here:

The cardiovascular system is put under more strain

The joints are more heavily loaded (risk of arthrosis increases!)

Increased risk of tumors, skin and liver problems, and diabetes

Increased anesthetic risk

The immune system is weakened

Life expectancy is falling

Your dog is less fit and has less joy in everyday life

It is assumed that German shepherds that are overweight die about 2 years earlier than German shepherds of normal weight! So you see, losing weight is worth it and that's why I'm going to show you how your dog can lose weight properly.

How do I know if my German shepherd is overweight?

To be able to judge this correctly, you must first look at your dog.

So grab your dog and let's start judging:

The German shepherd’s waist

Look at your German shepherd’s waist from behind and from above. Your pet has a perfect figure if you can see a constriction between the chests and hips. If your pet has a very thick or long coat, gently run your fingers from chest to waist. Can you feel an indentation? Perfect, your pet is at the ideal weight.

The German shepherd’s ribs

Now it's time for your German shepherd’s ribs. Gently run your fingers over your pet's chest. Can you feel your ribs without exerting much pressure? Then your pet is not too fat. A small layer of fat is completely normal. However, if you can only feel the ribs with greater pressure, you should declare war on the fat. A second test to find out if your pet is overweight is to count their ribs. Feel free to try it out. Can you easily count your pet's ribs? If this is not the case, your pet is too fat and should lose weight. In addition to these three tests, there are other ways to assess the shape of your pet. However, the options shown are usually sufficient. Okay, you're now sure that your pet is overweight and that's why we're going to tackle it right away. Your pet needs to lose weight!

You have to be clear:

Obesity always occurs when your pet takes in more energy than it uses!

The excess energy is then stored in the body in the form of fat for "worse times".

So your goal should be: reduce your pet's energy intake and increase your pet's exercise because that, in turn, increases energy burn!

My weight loss tips

Tip 1: Research the causes

First, make yourself aware of how it happened that your dog has gained weight. Ask yourself the following questions and write down the answers. Here’s how you will become more aware of the reasons:

What is the current feeding like? Has anything changed?

How many treats are there?

Is there much else “on the side”?

How much does my dog get from other people?

Is your dog moving less than before?

Was there a specific cause (illness/accident/in training, etc.)?

Has anything changed in my daily routine?

Read your answers again. First of all, it is important to recognize the reasons for obesity. This makes it much easier for you to change something and to be able to implement it in the long term.

Tip 2: Analyze the current feeding

Write down exactly what your pet is currently eating. You can use the following template for this:

Tip 3: Recalculate your calorie needs

Now it's time to get down to business: the calories have to be reduced!

In return, your GSD should only receive about 60% of its maintenance needs! Maintenance requirements are the energy requirements that a German shepherd needs to support all normal bodily functions and normal movement. The normal maintenance requirement of an adult and normally active dog is calculated as follows:

95kcal/ kg body weight 0.75

That means: Ideal weight of the dog HIGH 0.75 x 95

Now we calculate the reduced calorie requirement as follows:

Dog's ideal weight HIGH 0.75 x 95 x 0.6

Now you know how many calories your dog should eat every day. Compare that to the dog food you currently give.

Tip 4: Fewer calories in the dog bowl

There are sometimes very large differences in the fat and energy content of the finished feeds. Therefore, you should take a close look at the energy density of the feed and choose a feed that has a low-fat content and a low energy content - 1.4 -1.5 MJ uE per 100 grams. There are now numerous diet foods on the market. But please take a close and critical look at them! For example, many manufacturers advertise with the term “light”. However, since this term is not protected by law, there are no exact fees for it. In principle, this should be a feed with reduced energy content. From a practical point of view, however, there are serious deviations and not every light food is light.

Tip 5: Your pet should lose weight slowly

As with us, radical diets should be avoided. In terms of health, it is significantly better if your dog slowly but steadily loses weight every week. It is said that the dog should lose an average of 1-2% of its weight per week. For a 10 kg dog, that's only 100-200 grams.

Tip 6: Make sure there is an adequate supply of nutrients in the feed

If you simply halve your German shepherd's dog food, your dog will automatically receive significantly fewer nutrients. This can lead to deficiency symptoms in the long term. Rather, the goal of a proper diet should be to reduce the energy content and still provide your pet with sufficient nutrients. If you prepare your German shepherd's rations yourself (BARF, cook), you can influence it yourself and adjust the rations accordingly. With ready-made food, you should ensure that the fat and energy content is reduced, as described above. Take a close look at the composition of the dog food!

Tip 7: When the cravings are plaguing you

At the latest when the sweet eyes of our dogs look at us and the perfectly practiced begging is unwound from them, it is very difficult to endure.

Many dogs struggle with hunger while on a diet. If your pet is also hungry, just try to increase the fiber content. You can use very well: chopped carrots, apples, cucumber, zucchini, feed cellulose

Tip 8: Avoid fattening foods!

In addition to the measures mentioned, it is particularly important to avoid foods that are real calorie bombs. Sure, in our diet we usually know exactly that chocolate, ice cream, cola, and etc. are full of calories and that you should rather avoid them when losing weight. But do you also know which dog foods your dog should avoid? I'll list a few for you here.

Nevertheless, I recommend you to be aware of the dog food. Look carefully at the composition and the calorie content. There is no point in reducing the amount and calories in the dry food if the dog is getting some calorie bombs on the side.

Tip 9: Feed treats consciously

As an owner, you often don't even know how many calories are in the individual snacks and dog treats. In Tip 8 I introduced you to some calorie bombs. Especially with a German shephrd that is overweight and needs to lose weight, you should pay special attention to the treats. That doesn't mean that your pet shouldn't get any dog biscuits and the like. But as the owner, you should pay close attention to the calorie content and prefer to use carrots and apples more often. Not only are they low in calories, they are also healthy.

Tip 10: With exercise to lose weight

Hand on heart: how much exercise does your pet get? In addition to changing the food, it is at least as important that your dog gets some exercise. But especially with very fat dogs, you should increase this slowly and carefully so that the body has enough time to adapt to the new situation. So, as is so often the case: Get out into nature. But everything is in moderation. Again, regularity is the key here. How about a workout together? True to the motto: fit and healthy together?

If illnesses are behind the obesity

In fact, in most cases, we are to blame for our German shepherds being overweight. The wrong diet, too many or very high-calorie dog treats too little exercise ... to name a few causes. But in some cases, diseases can also be behind it.

Possible diseases that lead to overweight (obesity):

Underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism)

Adrenal Gland Dysfunction (Cushing's)

Medications such as cortisone can also lead to obesity if administered over a longer time.

Indirectly, other diseases such as cardiovascular problems, joint problems, and the like can also lead to obesity. Because some diseases reduce the activity of the dog and this in turn can lead to obesity if the diet remains unchanged.

Other factors that promote obesity

Some dog breeds are more prone to obesity than other dog breeds. These breeds have a relatively low energy requirement and on the other hand a "very good appetite".

And castration and age also lead to a change in energy requirements, which in turn means that the dogs gain weight more easily. As a dog owner, you should always keep this in mind.

Lose weight - my conclusion

Precisely because obesity in dogs is a very common and serious problem, as a dog owner you should do everything you can to get rid of the excess pounds. In any case, you should take a strategic approach to losing weight. Spontaneous and radical diets are of no use to the dog in the long term. That's why I've given you a kind of "red thread" with my tips that you can use to create an individual diet plan for your dog.

#Shepherd health #german shepherd #overweight #pet health #Animal overweight

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bulletnotestudies · 4 years ago

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☁️ 10 tips on studying when your motivation’s nowhere to be found

i got an ask about this yesterday and decided to turn my reply into a post because having trouble focusing when you’re super unmotivated is really common, so i thought more people might find this helpful :) buckle up kiddos, this is gonna be a long one!

1. i want you to remember that this is a universal experience.

every student out there struggles like hell sometimes, and that’s completely normal; you’re not a machine and that means you can’t possibly churn out work 24/7 without burning out. so try not to beat yourself up too much okay, you’re doing great!

2. take a deep breath and identify the reason you’re feeling like this

are you burnt out because of stress or overworking yourself? are you overwhelmed by the amount of tasks on your plate? is there a particular assignment or exam scaring you to the point where you don’t want to start studying? these are all normal reasons for lack of motivation and knowing the why will help you figure out the how - you gotta know the problem to solve it.

3. i know you feel like you’re months behind, but start small

small achievements accumulate. repeat this sentence to yourself daily, write it on a sticky note and keep it on the wall above your desk (it’s exactly what i did). break up daunting tasks into smaller ones; got a billion formulae to know by heart? memorise 3 every day (you’ll have memorised more than 20 by the end of the week!). got a long chapter to study? divide it into smaller chunks and just focus on 1-3 pages a day. slow and steady, you can do it

4. the pomodoro technique is a lifesaver!

i always use this technique when i’m feeling unmotivated and cannot focus. sometimes, your mind just won’t stop wandering off and so scheduling regular breaks is a must! try going for 25 minutes of work, followed by a 5 minute break, then repeat the cycle :) you’ll be less tempted to prolong your break if you know there’s another one coming in less than half an hour. if 25min is too long, try just 15 minutes of focus and work your way up form there - there’s no shame in studying in really short bursts! sometimes that’s all you can bring yourself to do and that’s okay! and if you can, i really recommend a 45/15 or 50/10 ratio (those are the ratios me and my friend - 2nd year med students - use the most :))

5. track your productivity

use the forest mobile app or a hand-drawn productivity tracker in your bujo - a visual representation of productivity will activate the reward system part of your brain. it’s the same part that’s involved in addiction formation and you can use it to your advantage - get a mini high from seeing your effort, not only from seeing your results!

6. set up a reward system

continuing on that tangent: sometimes, a short break isn’t enough motivation to stay focused. sometimes, you gotta pull a little sneaky on yourself and bribe your brain. some examples: - ‘if i can manage to reach 3 hours of productivity today, i’ll watch my fave movie in the evening’ - ‘i’ll have a bubble bath once i finish reading this chapter’ - ‘if i complete this assignment by the end of the week, i can do absolutely nothing the whole day come Saturday’

7. consider different sources/modes of studying

switching things up can do wonders; try making flashcards on quizlet, watching youtube videos on the topics you’ll be tested on, you can read wikipedia articles (wikipedia is severely underrated!), browse for podcasts on the topic, there’s a million different ways to learn, not just sitting down and reading from your textbook for hours on end :) on a similar note, if you have the option, try studying elsewhere - go to the kitchen table or study on the floor - beware of the bed and sofa! not a good idea, you’ll most likely end up taking a nap.

8. take care of your body and your mental health

have you drunk enough water today? have you eaten enough vitamin-rich foods? make a healthy snack! or get your fave comfort food, that works too, extra serotonin :) have you been outside in the past 3 days? if not, i highly recommend a short walk outside (if your corona regulations allow it, ofc). i know getting out of your house is hard, i suck at it myself, but getting fresh air and direct sunlight is crucial for your wellbeing! think of yourself as a slightly more complicated house plant:) you gotta nourish to flourish!

9. stop for a second and think how you value your work.

i’m sure you’ve done more than you give yourself credit for. it may seem too little, a drop in the sea of assignments you’ve yet to hand in, but every single minute of effort counts! every little task you do brings you closer to your goal! replied to a school email? good for you, you’ve got your correspondence covered and your professor knows you’re working hard. took 3 minutes to clear your study space? wonderful, a fresh setup = a fresh mindset! got more than 6 hours of sleep? yay, your brain had time to recuperate from a day’s worth of activities!

10. and again, you are not alone in this!

i promise there are at least 50 other people feeling exactly the same as you at any given moment. we all struggle with the same things, in one way or another, and motivating each other always helps. whether it be aggressive pep talks or gentle words of encouragement, studyblrs always have each other’s backs and you can message practically anyone in this community if you’re in need of support :) our job is to hype each other up and watch as we reach our respective goals <3

take care and good luck with your studies!

some additional posts you may find helpful: ◦ a wonderful ‘how to get stuff done’ guide ◦ energy management ◦ focus & productivity tips ◦ a very straight to the point guide to starting a successful study sesh ◦ how to handle having too much to do

my other masterposts: study sounds⎪dealing with failure⎪chrome extensions for students

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limetimo · 2 years ago

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RAB fics I read (22-28Nov)

Lethe by MADR1D1SMO Voldemort won. Or did he? The Blacks have people on the other side they would do anything to protect. James finds himself captive in Grimmauld Place under the care of the man who killed Dumbledore himself, "The Handler", Regulus Black himself. Thankfully he has his best mate by his side, the knowledge that Harry is still alive, and oh yeah there's also the man-eating Indian demon he and Sirius summoned semi-accidentally

The Five W's by primeideal for VagabondDawn Ravenclaw Regulus! That's it, that's the fic. Very thoughtful.

Secrets of the Darkest Art by primeideal for FeatheryMinx This. Was. So. Good. Regulus, fresh out of Hogwarts, comes to apply for the position of the DADA professor. Why? Detectives Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall are on the case.

Ogni Parte È Viva (Every Part Is Alive) by euphorial_docx bisexual Regulus be still my heart, also Italy, also James Potter

Till Tomorrow and Till Death by thistlecat huhuehehe. Voldemort knows Regulus betrays him and thanks to Bellatrix's quick thinking, Regulus is tossed to the wolves instead of getting killed outright. Why is the prospect of being a werewolf plaything better than a swift merciful death you ask? Because Remus Lupin is there to save the day.

Impact by thistlecat James and Regulus used to do the hanky-panky and now Regulus is dead and James is trying to not think about him. Really well written okay

Duty by thistlecat AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. GIVE MY BOY A HUG. THIS IS SO SAD. I AM SAD. Regulus learns from an early age his duty is to serve the other family members and to keep them safe and happy.

career goals: tyrant by justwhatialwayswanted ♥♥♥ Regulus thinks Voldemort is full of shit starts undermining his authority at Hogwarts. This is war and Regulus is going to win (over both Voldy and Dumbles). also slowburn RegxEvan ♥

Scatter the Shadows by heartofspells The Marauders are a band that's trying to band in both the Magical and Muggle worlds, so far its been Sirius-centric but I'm only at the beginning :D

The Little Green Incident by PortraitofEmpathy this one is for the aros! ♥♥♥ and the besties! ♥♥♥ and the siblings! ♥♥♥

Death's Bright Green Face by Once_Upon_A_Potter Regulus is a seer and he tells Voldemort exactly how it's going to go down.

Mortal Once More by SheOfTheBookAndSong Regulus survives teh cave and takes Snape's place in the narrative more or less

to the dark lord by justwhatialwayswanted ♥ Regulus plans to come out of the war victorious, leading a faction that accepts both Muggleborns and Dark Arts. Also Evan ♥

let me by 1940SBARNES regulus gets out of the cave and goes to James'. love confession ensues

Divergence by abovetheserpentine Hermione accidentally dimension travels on top of time-travel and uses her knowledge to try and save everyone. Regulus did like 50% of horcrux hunting and personally i think Hermione should give him more credit

The Serpent's Tongue by Equinesandcanines Sirius gets Sorted to Slytherin, it doesnT change all that much... i mean, so far

Clear Black Glass by bluerosebouquet big sad past JEgulus cave diving

Sky Full of Stars by TowardTheStars time to bring all the Hollywood's peadophiles to the court! Movie star Sirius (with slownbunr Sirius/Severus), good brother Regulus

Let’s make the most of this by jelfulry wrong number, estabilished jegulus, wip (wolfstar in progress)

A Snake in Wolf's Clothing by PortraitofEmpathy AAAAAAAAAAAAAA SO GOOD SNAPE SENDS REGULUS UNDER THE WILLOW I REPEAT WEREWOLF REGULUS

my almost lover by alarainai for lustemotions "I like you," Regulus says, climbing in James' bed. "Ah!" James thinks to himself, "he finally admits we are friends! yay." Six months later James finds out they were dating. He is literally the last one to find out he's dating his best friend's little brother.

The Long Game by lackadaisical_lizard jock James and artist Regulus work on the theatre club's production. pining ensues

The Altar of the Phoenix by lemongrovesandcloves Hermione is reborn by Sirius' older twin sister, Walburga absolutely hates her, it's not a happy story but maybe it will be later on?

fragile hearts by alarainai the Blacks just can't resist the one JAmes Potter it seems. Sirius is long over his crush on his best friend, but that doesn't mean Regulus has to meet the same sad fate! matchmaking ensues

All of You, All of Me (intertwined) by ajom28 askuhfla d im feral james and regulus hate each other but both of their celebrity careers really need the boost a fake relationship would give them. fake dating but the stakes are super high

The Missing Link by Keysie ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

love is not a predicate by mordax pianist!Regulus ft incomniac!James modern highschool AU slowburn

A Little Bit of Everything by Frenchroast99 Regulus raising Harry

How Harry got through first year by Starkandrogersforlife Harry Potter has a secret friend, his name is Regulus and he's a ghost. I personally didn'T vibe with the writing style but the plot was interesting enough for me to plough through

blue and yellow skies by alarainai papparazzi mistake Sirius for Regulus one time and suddenly he's 'trapped' in a fake relationship with James bloody Potter. modern magical

#regulus black #fic rec

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white-tulips · 4 years ago

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well, since it’s 5 in the morning I think now’s the perfect time to ramble about my thoughts re: OMORI vs Yume Nikki game design, Black Space, and how trying to copy something successful kind of sets you up for missing the mark

these are thoughts I’ve been stewing in since january, I don’t want people to forget that I have a lot of opinions about OMORI as a game

(firstly, I’m sorry if this is all over the place or not worded well. it is 5AM)

I’ll preface this by saying that these are merely my opinions. I’m specifically going to be focusing on one aspect of game design here, so if you’re curious about any of my other OMORI game design opinions they’re scattered around my blog and are not hard to find tbh

okay so my thoughts about this are mostly Black Space exclusive, and considering that’s one of the climaxes of the game this might be a bit of a spicy subject to talk about KJFGHKFJG but I am passionate about good game design okay. especially in psychological horror RPG games. (also throwing out there jic that I don’t think OMORI is a bad psychological horror. pls reference this post)

(also want to say that I genuinely like Black Space. okay? okay)

so this was something that I was talking about with a couple of friends back when I first finished OMORI around the beginning of january. actually, at this point I hadn’t even played Yume Nikki yet, but when I did finally play it recently my thoughts on this were 100% solidified

essentially, our thoughts on this can be boiled down to how Black Space was trying too hard to be Yume Nikki, but didn’t grasp exactly what made Yume Nikki so impactful in the first place

obviously taking inspiration from something you like and wanting to rework it into your own creation is normal, good, and even encouraged! however, the most crucial thing with that is the “reworking” part. when being inspired by something, the goal is to take what you loved, and didn’t love, and mold it into something entirely new. it shouldn’t be “well I like this thing, and this thing did it like this so I’ll try to do it like that too” because it’s just not going to work. (this is actually an all around issue I have with OMORI, not just Black Space, but more on that later)

so to me, a good 50% of Black Space came of feeling kind of... eh...? it was like... you have 50% that feels so well thought out and meaningful, and then 50% that’s there just to. be there. and be like Yume Nikki, I guess. even before I played Yume Nikki, I couldn’t even remember some of the rooms in Black Space existed until I replayed it again, which is a shame because Black Space is the type of area where everything should leave an impact

now I want to talk about the game design itself-

Yume Nikki is a game about experiences, and atmosphere. there’s limitless area to explore, so much so that it feels endless. there are so few things to interact with that sometimes it feels like you’re doing nothing at all. all you have is aimlessly wandering these huge areas, taking in the sights, and listening to vague sounds and music in the background that are often just a few seconds of audio played on loop. (this is one of my favorite OST in the game. having this be all you hear for 30 minutes as you walk around in a looping forest really does things to your head)

it uses all of these elements to make you feel lost, confused, and very alone. you’re just trapped in a dream, where even with all the space in the world to explore, the lack of anything to do makes it feel suffocating. even the small area you have in the waking world is designed in such a way that feels cramped and destitute-

Yume Nikki is a perfect example of “less is more” and “show, don’t tell.”

then take OMORI, which doesn’t really know how to balance those things with it’s tendency to try and shove too much in. for instance, think about the over abundance if NPCs with irrelevant fluff dialogue. it was all too much and so dull it got to a point I stopped reading most of them altogether

(and something important to note I think, is that the general feeling of Yume Nikki is the same throughout the entire game. the tone never really changes, and neither do the expectations. OMORI, however, tends to just drop things on you out of nowhere. and that’s not necessarily a bad thing! it works for a lot of different sections of the game, I’ll say.

however, Black Space was different. it’s kind of like, it just drops you in there and expects you to understand the way it works, despite the fact that all of the other horror segments lead you to have a completely different set of expectations for what you should be doing/feeling. it’s like shifting you into another game entirely, and it’s almost immersion breaking. up until this point, OMORI was not the same type of “show don’t tell” type of game, so suddenly jumping to attempt to do that can make it lose some of it’s impact)

like I mentioned before, Black Space is designed in a way that’s meant to mimic Yume Nikki. and I think we need to ask ourselves “just because we can do this, does it mean that we should?” again, taking inspiration isn’t a bad thing, but it’s the execution that matters

and here’s where my biggest issue actually lies, I suppose. it’s the fact that OMORI has multiple instances of trying to take inspiration from other things, and failing because it’s trying too hard to copy, not rework. it’s just most obvious because of Black Space, I think. because, like I said before, a good half of Black Space is just trying to be Yume Nikki without giving it any OMORI original flavor, and the fact that it’s trying to be something else is immersive breaking as hell to me

for example, take the red mazes. I don’t think the idea to incorporate it into OMORI was bad, but. you can plainly see when you compare the two maps that nothing was really reworked, made more interesting, or even given a OMORI flavored twist-

(Yume Nikki-1 ; OMORI-2)

another instance is less about the game design itself, but surprising/not-surprisingly, it actually has to do with OST

this is something my friend was telling me, because I myself have not read Umineko, but there are OST in OMORI blatantly trying to mimic songs from that VN, even down to their names

the biggest offender imo is GOLDENVENGEANCE which is a decent song, I won’t say it isn’t, but compare it to it’s Umineko inspiration, Golden Slaughterer

it’s just another unfortunate instance of “this thing I like is good, so I’ll try to copy it!” with no clear grasp on why it’s successful and it’s disappointing. that’s really the only word I have for it at this point, disappointing

and the reason it’s most disappointing is because of things in OMORI that are obvious inspiration, but were reworked so well

let’s take this other Umineko OST, Worldend Dominator. this is a brilliant song, and it’s really fun to listen to. and, it very clearly inspired beloved World's End Valentine

World’s End Valentine slaps. it’s great. it takes aspects of Worldend Dominator and shifts them around to be a unique and fun piece of music that also fits into OMORI perfectly.

something important to note about this, is that World’s End Valentine and GOLDENVENGEANCE were written by two different composers. what this makes clear to me is that there were people on the OMORI dev team that were better at reworking ideas than others. because, despite a lot of the criticisms I was talking about, there are things in OMORI that are obvious references that I love and think are great!

like this one, the most pointed out nod to Yume Nikki-

I think it’s great. it’s taking a very memorable bit of imagery from Yume Nikki, and giving it a reference while also giving it it’s own deeper meaning beyond just the aesthetics of it. it’s just good, I love it

and yeah, not all of Black Space feels like one giant copy of Yume Nikki. there are plenty of doors that I think take the same aimless, empty, and unsettling feelings and use them in a new way that feels more grounded in OMORI. my personal favorite door is the “Sunny... I love you.” room.

actually, funnily enough, the area in OMORI that felt the most like Yume Nikki to me wasn’t in Black Space at all. it was actually the snowy area right before Snowglobe Mountain. something about the vast empty space, simple yet atmospheric OST, and little things to find scattered around just gave me a nice Yume Nikki vibe, but mixed with the OMORI style (hell, the OST there and the one for the snowy area in Yume Nikki even have a pleasantly similar vibe, and not in the “oh this is a copy” way [X] [X])

gosh, I feel like if I keep talking I might end up going in circles more than I already have

hopefully my words made sense!! I’d love if anything I said resonated with anyone aha. I just hope that I’m not coming across as hating on something because I’m biased towards something else or something... almost all of the critiques I have about OMORI come from a place of genuine interest

thank you if you read all of this!

#text #omori #omori spoilers #oh no tumblr user white tulips made another opinion post that took 3 hours to type #meta

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finleycannotdraw · 4 years ago

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Guess what? I’m re-binge-reading Good Omens. And here are some Obervations that I forgot about and some things I might put in fics. Also things I found funny. Basically my dumb commentary on the book.

Crowley actually flees Sister Mary. He doesn’t saunter vaguely away. He flees.

Ligur is rather more thoughtful than he’s portrayed in the show

Anathema likes to read about herself, and her teachers are confused because she spells words like Agnes Nutter

Crowley apologizes

By page 41, it is mentioned at least twice that Aziraphale and Crowley Do Not choose each other’s company for any reason other than that they are constants, that they have an Arrangement, and that they are Friends because being Enemies got boring.

Aziraphale blushes!!!!!!

The Drunk Scene is fuckin hilarious and it’s actually a lot longer than it is in the show, and really you ought to read it. (Book pages 47-50)

My mom (who has a PhD in human development) would probably like to talk to Crowley about upbringing because they seem to agree on how important it is

War has always looked 25, and had a vulture that died of fatty degeneration

Pollution is very cleverly compared to actual pollution

Warlock has Kermit the frog overalls, and Nanny Ashtoreth is described as someone who “advertises unspecified but strangely explicit services in certain magazines”. The tutors are present for about four paragraphs. Warlock is good at math and likes banana flavored bubblegum.

Crowley has a slice of angel cake. Aziraphale eats it. Aziraphale also eats deviled eggs. Hm.

Crowley calls Aziraphale angel casually enough to suggest he’s been doing it for a long time

Some girl at Warlock’s party calls Aziraphale a f*ggot

Crowley glares suspiciously at a gerbil. It is suggested that Hell has, in the past, sent hell-gerbils in place of hellhounds.

“Oh dear,” muttered Aziraphale, not swearing with the practiced ease of one who has spent six thousand years not swearing, and who wasn’t going to start now.

Adam and his friends play in a place called The Pit, where shopping carts go to die, apparently

Crowley is the first one to mention sides in the book!??!? Also Crowley goes on about how humans are more evil than Hell (but he calls himself evil—is he calling himself human already?)

Aziraphale yells “get off the road, you clown!”

“What’s a velvet underground?” *love confession???* “you wouldn’t like it”

Aziraphale is a bit rude to Crowley in the “flashes of love” scene and Crowley is less panicked about it

Crowley glares at the Bentley and it fixes itself

Anathema’s bike is called Phaeton

COULD THEY ACT ANY MORE MARRIED OH MY GOD

Aziraphale speaks like. Like ugh. “FlOUndeR on tHe rOcKS of inEquiTY”

“Thirty seconds later someone shot both of them. With incredible accuracy.” *cuts to a random pleasant story about Mary Hodges* *cuts back to where Aziraphale has fallen into a rhododendron and Crowley licks the paint before he knows it’s paint* dumbasses

Crowley does not slam Aziraphale into the wall

Crowley is actually pretty impatient and doesn’t argue with Aziraphale when he’s worried

“Nothing but dust and fundamentalists” “that was nasty” “sorry, couldn’t help it”

When the radio sings “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me,” Crowley sings “for me” and then screams

Crowley asks Aziraphale if he’ll keep in touch, and Aziraphale doesn’t say tickety-boo, and then Crowley says “right” and feels very alone

the international express man is small and has glasses, and wears green woolen socks

The sword, which turns out to be Aziraphale’s, is described as having an aura of hatred and menace, which makes me think of how it could’ve gotten that aura from Heaven or from humanity or from War...

In the book Pepper has red hair and freckles, which makes it a cool comparison to War’s appearance and the defeat of War

Adam is excellent at slouching, apparently

Occasionally, as Aziraphale reads the book, he would very nearly swear

“He wouldn’t have said ‘that’s weird’ if a flock of sheep had cycled past playing violins.”

“If you had told him there were children starving in Africa he would’ve been flattered that you’d noticed.”

“...that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.” (151)

Wensleydale watches David Attenborough programs

Shadwell’s voice is described as “the color of an old raincoat” and seems to fake smoking cigarettes

Aziraphales cocoa is moldy and solidified by the time he calls Arthur Young, and has a thin layer of dust on himself too

Newt says that the walls look like nicotine and the floor looks like cigarette ash, and he suspects both are, actually, coated with these substances

Newt looks a bit like Clark Kent, and people seem to like Shadwell for some reason, much to his annoyance.

Aziraphale calls Shadwell “dear boy” on the phone

Agnes Nutter called God a daft old fool #goals

Adam is wayyyy too good at video games

Smelling Anathema’s perfume makes Newt uncomfortable

Adam suggests that Pepper ought to have Russia cause of her red hair (huh)

Anathema and Newt actually have decent conversations?? Like?? Show??? C’mon, man. The show kinda butchered their relationship.

Trees, apparently, make a ‘vvrooooommm’ sound when they grow very fast

“He suspected that Crowley was from the Mafia, or the underworld, although he would have been surprised how right he nearly was.” Shadwell also thought Aziraphale was a Russian spy. Wow, Shadwell.

Aziraphale calls Crowley and actually says “shut up” to him, and then when the answering machine beeps, he tells Crowley to “stop making noises” and then he swears for the first time ever.

The fuckin’ footnote on page 227

“A sleek computer was the sort of thing Crowley felt that the sort of human he tried to be would have.” I like the word choice here. He’s not pretending to be a human, he’s trying to be one. That’s a really important distinction.

It never actually says what Crowley does to his plants.

Crowley’s flat is very white. Wow, Crowley. It just looks dark because of the lighting. Heaven imagery and symbolism out my ears, goddammit.

Why does Hell say Crowley’s name so much when talking to him?? Honestly, I think that’s an intentional dig at his chosen name, using it in their speech to scare him. Wow, Hell. (And wow, Finn, excellent sentence)

Whenever the book says something is shaped like something, it definitely isn’t that thing. “man-shaped” “dog-shaped” “car-shaped”... makes it pretty obvious they aren’t men, dogs, or cars, huh.

The code to Crowley’s safe is 4004. The year he “slithered onto this stupid, marvelous planet”... and the year he met Aziraphale, of course. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, Crowley, my dude.

Crowley consideres sticking Hastur into his car until he turns into Freddie Mercury but then decides even he isn’t that cruel

Actual text that I feel like nobody really agrees with: “Madame Tracy was by many yardsticks quite stupid”

“Do I look like I run a bookshop?” “...imagine me out of uniform, sir, and what kind of man would you see before you? Honestly?” “A prat.”

I’m crying. The fucking bookshop fire scene made me fucking cry. I’m literally crying.

“...on all fours in the blazing bookshop, Crowley cursed Aziraphale, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below.” “The police and firemen looked at him, saw the expression on his face, and stayed exactly where they were.” “...a crack of thunder so loud it hurt....” *the sound of Finley sobbing into their cat*

The shortest biker in the cafe thing is 6′2, what the fuck

War, Famine, Pollution, and Pop Trivia 1962-1979

“Pollution removed his helmet and shook out his long white hair. He had taken over when Pestilence, muttering about penicillin, had retired in 1936. If only the old boy had known what opportunities the future had held.” HMMMMMMMMMMM

“There were no bitches in Hell either.” I know it’s talking about female dogs, but I rather thought Hell was full of bitches.

“Why are you talking like a poofter?” “Ah. Australia.”

“gOsh, aM i on teLEviSiON?” (Basically Aziraphale gets passionate about stuff and likes to talk).

Crowley is actually an optimist and doesn’t dwell too much on how sucky the world is. He doesn’t go get smashed in a bar. He just finds Aziraphale’s notes in the book and heads to Tadfield. And also, his new pair of sunglasses just... materializes out of his eyes. And he likes to whistle.

“Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking to Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty to Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You’ve Given Them A Good Thumping But Secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People traveled with them.”

“on top of the pile a rather large octopus waved a languid tentacle at them. The sergeant resisted the temptation to wave back.” Honestly dude, if an octopus waved at me I’d wave back.

Wait Agnes was apparently talking to Shadwell and not God when she said yowe daft old foole. I dunno

Madame Tracy: You old silly. Shadwell:

Aziraphale does not know how to get rid of demons. Canonically. “Had never done other to get rid of demons than to hint to them very strongly that he, Aziraphale, had some work to be getting on with, and wasn’t it getting late? And Crowley always got the hint.”

The road to Hell is paved with frozen door to door salesmen, apparently. The question is where it is, because the demons always seem to just stem out of the ground.

“Heigh ho,” said Anthony Crowley, and just drove anyway. I love this sentence during that scene.

I bet Hastur gets really mad whenever he hears Aziraphale’s voice from now on

Crowley isn’t breathing the entire burning Bentley scene

ADAM. SAID. “But I reckon you can make your own side” AND WE FUCKIN IGNORED IT?

The temperature above the M25 was simultaneously 700ºC and -140ºC which makes me think of something I read about magenta not being real. The M25 is magenta.

I feel like “Agnes” is just going to become an inside joke between Anathema and Newt at this point, and it will drive Crowley insane because he knows who she is but somehow still doesn’t get the joke.

I’m six inches taller than R.P. Tyler, and apparently according to the back sleeve of the book jacket, I’m very similar in height to Neil Gaiman

R.P. Tyler thought Shadwell was a ventriloquist’s dummy, and then sees cows doing somersaults

“That’s terrific. Much obliged,” said Crowley. — “Funny weather we’re having, isn’t it?” “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” “Probably because your car is on fire.” .... Also the fact that Crowley looks like a young man which I find interesting.

“The Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse”

“Where is Armageddon, anyway?” “I’ve always meant to look that up.” “There’s an Armageddon, Pennsylvania”

Famine is the one that says “that’s one big avocado”, and also, I find it interesting that War, more than once, talks about love. (All is fair in love and war much?)

Anathema threatens the guard with a stick, pretending it’s a gun

Aziraphale, of course, asks Crowley to sort it out because he, Aziraphale, is “the nice one” and then proceeds to sort it out himself. Because of course he does. Because what else could he possibly do.

I just ADORE THIS BOOK OKAY

I’M PROBABLY GOING TO READ IT AGAIN IN A MONTH

Aziraphale and Crowley are so fuckin married I can’t

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peterwknox · 3 years ago

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My 2021 Year in Reading at GoodReads

32 books. 8,582 pages.

16 Fiction. 16 NonFiction.

16 Female Authors. 16 Male.

7 Print. 25 Digital.

24 Library Digital.

*2020

33 books. 8,029 pages. 14 Fiction. 19 NonFiction.

16 Female Authors. 17 Male. 14 Print. 19 Digital.

18 Library Digital.

*2019

46 books/14,455 pages. 17 Fiction. 29 NonFiction.

20 Female Authors. 26 Male. 22 Print. 24 Digital.

21 Library Digital.

*2018

52 books/12,504 pages. 20 Fiction. 32 NonFiction.

30 Print. 22 Digital. 21 Female Authors. 31 Male.

18 Library Digital.

*2017

47 books/15,472 pages. 18 Fiction. 29 NonFiction.

19 Print. 28 Digital. 16 Female. 31 Male.

25 Library Digital.

*2016

50 books/18,944 pages. 22 Fiction/28 NonFiction.

18 Print/32 Digital. 15 Female/35 Male.

27 Library Digital.

*2015

44 books/14,765 pages. 25 Fiction/19 NonFiction.

30 Print/14 Digital. 10 Female/34 Male.

7 Library Digital.

*2014

39 books/14,316 pages. 18 Fiction/21 NonFiction.

20 Print/19 Digital. 14 Female/25 Male.

12 Library Digital.

This year I read 32 books, which was below my yearly average and my set goal for the year in reading challenge. But considering my new life (post 2hr commute and with 2 children and much more reading for work), above 30 books is going to be my new PAR, like getting more than 100 in bowling. I’m happy with it.

I read one less book (thanks Ulysses) but more pages (thanks Ulysses) than 2020.

This is the first year that I actually reached a balance, reading exactly the same number of female and male authors. And exactly as many fiction as nonfiction!

Turns out I didn’t pay for a single digital (ebook) read all year actually... they all came from the Library, NetGalley, or Prime. That’s been a goal for awhile now as well... if I want a book I’m buying it in print (to own it) or I’ll wait for the library hold.

Continuing my trends, I read mostly new (frontlist) books this year - published over the last two years, except for a handful. There’s so many amazing new books that I’m just trying to keep up. And as usual, all my favorite fiction is from female writers.

If any book ever catches your interest, I hope you follow through in finding a way to acquire and read it - check out my reviews (I write a review for every book I read) and let me know what you’re reading these days. Read on!

My top 3 reads from 2021:

Favorite Fiction:

Such A Fun Age

Laserwriter II

No One Is Talking About This

Favorite NonFiction:

Gone to the Woods

Why Fish Don’t Exist

Fulfillment

Honorable Mentions:

How Lucky

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

The Smash-Up

#2021 #goodreads #year in reading #fiction #nonfiction #favorite books #PWKreads

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refinedbuffoonery · 4 years ago

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@improvidus thanks for the tag boo <3

1) How many works do you have on AO3? 14

2) What’s your total AO3 word count? 106,078

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? I’ve only finished + published MacGyver fics, but I have a whole folder of other unfinished stuff, primarily for Sarah J Maas’ three book series (Throne of Glass, ACOTAR, Crescent City).

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Riley + Sunglasses + Undercover (aka my claim to fame lol)

Quarantine Moments

Looking Through A Window

I + Can’t + Lose + You

Fridge Meeting

5) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? Out of my published ones...R+S+U (unbelievable that I didn’t get cancelled for ending it the way I did lmao). But in a million years when I finally finish it, Broken Like Me won’t exactly have a happy ending (it’ll be bittersweet at best...I know because I wrote the ending first).

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? I+C+L+U has a good ending, so do all of the holiday fics I wrote last year. But I think the most satisfying happy ending will be the ending to Flawless (I already wrote this ending too).

7) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written? I don’t do crossovers! Honestly I don’t read them either. I think they’re off-putting and usually fairly OOC, but if the characters all exist in the same universe (or it’s just written really damn well) then a crossover is more palatable for me.

8) Do you write smut? If so what kind? Hell fucking yeah I do. The emotionally charged, very plot-relevant, little-to-no cringey vocabulary kind. But not much for this fandom because the audience for it is very small. But for the fantasy romance book fandoms I (mostly) lurk in??? Definitely.

9) Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I always try to! Except sometimes y’all make predictions that are a little too accurate and I have to avoid responding to those comments so I don’t accidentally spoil something (yikes).

10) Have you ever received hate on a fic? Nope (thank god). Which is a good thing, because I’m not actually as nice as y’all think I am, and I’d throw (virtual) hands.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of! On the flip side, I’ve definitely accidentally stolen lines/phrases from people. Every once in a while I’ll reread a fic and go “THAT’S WHERE I GOT THAT FROM!!!!! whoops.”

12) Have you ever had a fic translated? Does asking people to translate like 3 lines of dialogue for Flawless into French count lol? (real answer: no)

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before? Listen. I swear to you that this pirate AU exists. We have a whole chapter written. I have a good 50% or so of the plot outlined in my head and in our shared google doc. However none of us have worked on it in months so......

14) What’s your all time favorite ship? Not to out myself as the kid who was obsessed with Percy Jackson but....PERCABETH. They really invented love. Second place is Rowaelin (from the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J Maas), and third place is MacRiley (no shade to my Team Spy Siblings friends though....tbh if the show hadn’t set them up romantically I never would’ve even considered it).

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? That aliens fic I’ve teased for a solid year. The goal was to see if I could write an episode of the show (which I totally think I could), but I just don’t have a plot for this one. Only the resolution and some comic relief. But the basic premise is that Mac, Riley, and maybe Bozer (aka our resident nerds) get sent to examine a UFO that crash-landed in the middle of fucking nowhere, which of course sends everyone down the rabbit hole of alien theories, but the UFO ends up being something.....significantly less cool. If any of you gen writers want in on this, hit me up and we can co-write it.

16) What are your writing strengths? DIALOGUE. FORESHADOWING. also filling in the nuances of a plot once I have the bare bones in place.

17) What are your writing weaknesses? Brainstorming said bare bones of a plot lmao. And describing settings is the bane of my existence.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? Super dope as long as a) the reader can understand what’s happening via context clues or brief translation in the main language (presumably English) b) it’s used to develop the plot/character(s) in some way, i.e. a spy’s helpful skill or part of someone’s cultural background.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for? MacGyver is the first (and only) fandom I’ve finished and published fics for. Everything else (many of which I started pre-Mac) isn’t developed enough to necessarily count.

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? FLAWLESS. But I will say that I’m far more attached to LTAW than I ever could’ve expected going into it. So.....both?

Tagging: goddammit idk I wasn’t paying attention to who already got tagged. so if you’re reading this and you write fic consider yourself tagged. <3

#tag game

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florrickandassociates · 4 years ago

Text

TGF Thoughts: 5x03-- And the court had a clerk...

Hello again! It’s nice to have this show back. This episode was a bit less of a standout than the previous two, but I’m still happy with the overall direction for this season. More under the cut (or here, because tumblr sucks).

When Robert King tweeted the episode title, I asked him if all the titles this season were adding up to one long sentence/story, hoping he’d confirm it and give a little more information. He did! He said it’s “in the Farmer in the Dell mode” and while I think I get what he’s saying, I’m very curious to see how it plays out. Haven’t been able to track down 5x04′s title yet, but the promo is out. (As of this morning! It’s interesting they’re not putting them after the episode this year; I kind of like it.)

Kurt’s job is up in the air given the new administration. I think this scene exists mostly just to remind us where Kurt works and the stakes.

What month is this supposed to be in? The transition seems recent but no one is wearing masks.

Kurt spots a poster asking for help ID’ing people at the Capitol on January 6th. He thinks he recognizes someone...

And now we’re in case of the week land. This case is about a small business owner whose business went under after someone created fake news articles accusing him of pedophilia.

I think the whole point of this (kind of long) scene is to show that this case is a pretty small deal. Low stakes, inexperienced opposing lawyer. (Not even sure why Liz would be arguing this in court, but whatever.)

Tbh I thought this was going to wind up in 9 ¾ court.

Now that we have junior level characters, we get scenes showing that there are, in fact, people at RBL who are mid-level. Liz asks an associate to work on something, he asks another associate to work on it, she delegates to other associates, and they delegate to Marissa and Carmen. This work seems terrible.

It’s so funny to me how this is probably more realistic than most of the lawyering on the show and yet it only shows up selectively. We only see the hierarchy here to make it clear that Marissa and Carmen are at the bottom.

David Lee interrupts and asks for Carmen. He’s very rude to her. Interestingly, she’s hesitant to leave her grunt work and follow David, even though she must know he outranks the associate who gave her the grunt work.

“Why am I supposed to know you?” David asks her as they walk through the halls. “I don’t know if you are,” Carmen responds. “Why does Benjamin Dafoe know you?” he asks. She doesn’t know who he is.

“Who are you?” Dafoe asks when Carmen enters. She states her name, again. “Why are you important?” he asks. “I don’t think that I am,” Carmen responds.

Then Dafoe says his top client, and it’s a name that the characters all know. I’m glad this scene is free of any “he’s the white OJ” expository lines (that’s from Sweeney’s introduction) -- it’s clear from the reactions and the discussion of police and rape that the top client is a bad guy, probably a rapist. The rapist wants Carmen to represent him.

Putting 2 and 2 together, Carmen asks if the rapist knows Rivi. He’s not, but he’s at the same prison. As soon as Carmen says she’s representing Rivi, David Lee switches gears, understanding the situation and trying to sign the new business. He’s so shameless!

Marissa sorts ALL the papers. There are a LOT of papers. I’m swamped. Look at all this paper.

She catches the associate who assigned her the task leaving for the night just as she finishes up, and cheerfully notes she’s finished the task. Then the associate mentions this was only half of the bills. Marissa does not like that. Since her goal in wanting to be a lawyer is mostly just to give her something exciting to do and earn respect... this hierarchy thing is not going so well.

Marissa decides that after her rough day, she’s going to stop by Wackner’s court. He’s in the middle of a case about Emily in Paris fanfiction and he’s very happy to see Marissa.

Wackner’s night court has a program—it notes the sponsor is Copy Co-op (I thought it was Copy Coop?) and the paper products were also provided by them. And “there will be regular intermissions at the discretion of Judge Wackner.” It’s very theatrical.

Wackner takes a recess and calls Marissa to his “chambers.” He asks for her thoughts on the case. “All they want is attention and to feel like they’ve won,” Marissa notes. Wackner’s on the same wave length and compares it to the Scarecrow’s diploma at the end of The Wizard of Oz. So, he makes copyright certificates and some minor modifications to each of the fanfic books. They say “I respect you and I love you” and that’s that.

Wackner catches Marissa before she leaves and asks her to be his law clerk—part time or full time, 10% of all the legal filings and unlimited use of copy machines. She is hesitant because she “doesn’t even know what this is.”

Wackner says his court is “the future.” Marissa turns him down; notes she wants to pass the bar. “You know why all these people are here? ‘Cause the courts and the lawyers and the appeals have made justice... unattainable. Out of reach. To anyone who doesn’t have a shitload of money to wait it out. That’s why Exxon beats out Mr. Nobody. Read Kafka’s Before the Law.”

I just read it, and you should too! It literally is a page, but tl;dr, there’s a man who wants to get to the law and instead he spends his whole life trying to win over the first of many gatekeepers on the path to the law. He never gets through the gate.

“Justice is only just if it’s available to everyone,” Wackner says. Marissa thinks about that.

As I said last week, it’s smart that Wackner makes so much sense. Hearing him say all this, knowing that it’s true... it makes it very easy to get on board with the thought experiment. Of course there would be huge repercussions to this kind of system, but it makes so much sense it’s compelling TV!

Kurt’s showering when Diane gets home, which gives her time to stumble across the WANTED poster and notice that Kurt has drawn facial hair onto one of the pictures. “Who is this?” she asks him. “No one,” he says. “Well, you drew in a beard and a moustache on him,” Diane notes. Kurt says he was doodling, but Diane calls him out as he is the “exact opposite of a doodler.” Kurt says he thought it was someone he knew, but he’s not sure. Diane pushes him to tell the feds. Kurt reiterates he’s not sure, but it’s someone he went shooting with. “Oh my God, then it’s him,” Diane jumps to (not incorrect) conclusions. Kurt says he didn’t talk that way; he’s a veteran. “Kurt! That’s the profile!” Diane argues. Kurt isn’t convinced and he doesn’t want to be responsible for naming names. He notes he’ll be threatened with indictment for not naming names and then only lawyers will end up benefitting. Diane is not convinced.

I think this is an interesting conflict for Kurt and Diane. I understand why Kurt is hesitant to speak out before he’s sure. And I understand and agree with Diane that it’s important to identify the attackers and prevent anything like that from happening again.

I don’t mean to blame Kurt, exactly, but I feel like all of what happens next could’ve played out differently if Kurt had been just a little clearer with Diane about why he was hesitant to ID the man. Like, the threat of indictment for not naming names sounds like some typical anti-government rambling. Saying you specifically are afraid that this will turn back on you and you need to weigh your options and come up with a plan first would put Diane in a very different mode, in which they’d work together to craft the best strategy. Because this man would’ve been ID’d by someone, sooner or later, and Kurt would’ve needed to be prepared.

Diane stares at the wanted poster at work and asks Jay to find his identity. He’s on the FBI TEN MOST WANTED? Ten!? Ok!

Diane shares the extra information she has—the gun range and that he’s a veteran—and Jay gets to work.

Turns out there’s no money in the case that Liz, a name partner, is working on and Marissa just spent all those hours sorting bills for. I could’ve told you there was no money in that case lol.

Jay IDs the guy very fast. He’s faster than the feds because they didn’t know where he shot. The range had his license on file, and Jay got ahold of it.

“Well, we don’t pay you enough,” Diane says. “Oh, I know that,” Jay laughs.

Diane says she’s going to think about calling the feds—it's definitely the same guy.

Marissa notes someone high profile (David Cord, who I presume is a thinly veiled stand-in for David Koch given the name, his role in the plot, and the fact that he is “David Cord of the Cord Brothers”) in the lobby giving a fake name and goes to tell Liz.

David Cord is performing magic tricks for the receptionists (they don’t recognize him) when Liz and Marissa show up. “I knew your father. I hated your father,” Cord says. “Yes, well, he hated you too,” Liz says. He says he gave a fake name to see what the reception would be like since he’s kinda infamous.

Liz introduces Marissa as one of the law clinic lawyers. Marissa knows what to say in this situation. Specifically, she knows that it is the exact right moment to name drop her father.

“Democrats as far as the eye can see,” Cord notes. At that, Liz asks Marissa to get Julius involved.

More good expository work! (No, editor feature of Word, I do NOT want that to say “Better expository work,” that would change my meaning, go away and please stop grading my recap??? I don’t know how I brought this up but it’s telling me my score is 72%, so a C, and it’s driving me crazy. Oh, now I’m a 71%. It had me at like, 50%, because I had written “Wackner” and “Wackner” is not a word. No shit.)

Anyway, back to the exposition. I like that we don’t get a line like, “Liz! David Cord, the Republican super donor, is here!” We just get to see Liz’s reaction, Cord’s hate of Liz’s father, and the line about democrats. Then it becomes clearer who Cord is.

Just noticed Liz is wearing an Apple Watch.

Liz stands for her meeting with Cord, likely to maintain power. Cord says January 6th changed everything to him and now he’s all about unity and loving America.

Cord has something to say about Liz’s case, the one that’s not making any money, and he seems to know quite a lot about it. That spooks Liz.

Then Cord offers her $12 million to continue the case for another six months (all of these months, seemingly, will play out in the couple of days the rest of this episode takes, but, whatever). He just wants them to go after the social media company that distributed the fake news... and Section 230.

Don’t know what that is? Now you do, because there is a Good Fight short! These work so much better when they’re actually needed (explaining concepts, etc.) than when they’re trying to force one into every episode (remember that Downton Abbey one? What... was that?)

I was talking to @mimeparadox about this short and he pointed out that this short has a VERY clear POV on an issue that actually doesn’t seem to be all that straightforward. If you’re like me and only had a vague sense of what Section 230 was prior to this episode, this short is telling you what to think of it—it isn’t just explaining what it is.

I do tend to agree with the show’s POV on most things, but this is an issue I’d like to read more on. I love how Section 230 was something I hadn’t really read up on prior to this episode and now that it’s been on TGF I realize it’s something that actually, yes, I would’ve been interested in knowing about earlier. Is this because things that are on TGF are interesting to me because they’re on TGF or is it because TGF generally only discusses things that would be interesting to me? Probs a little bit of both.

Diane asks Jay how to make an anonymous phone call and he hands her a burner phone. She calls the FBI with the rioter’s name. She doesn’t leave her name and then she dumps the phone.

Credits! Did you catch there’s a Jordan Boatman in the credits? She plays one of the associates who passes down the grunt work to Marissa, and she’s Michael Boatman’s daughter in real life! She’s also been in one other episode, in season 3.

I never get tired of these credits!

The RL partners (and some associates who are on the case? I think these are the same ones who delegated the work to Marissa?) debate whether or not they should take Cord’s money. Madeline notes that he’s funded a lot of Republican campaigns; Julius notes that both Republicans and Democrats agree that Section 230 is flawed and this is an opportunity for unity.

Diane notes that the right doesn’t want to stop conspiracy theories from spreading, so is this really that bipartisan? “It would help if the boomers would stop falling for those conspiracy theories and sharing it with their friends,” an associate (I believe this is Michael Boatman’s daughter again) notes. That quiets the room and the partners all glare at her. Yeah, that was a kind of stupid thing to say. First of all, it’s just not appropriate to say to the partners, and it’s also, like, missing the point? If it’s easy for conspiracy theories to spread among boomers, maybe just expecting each member of that generation to suddenly have a millennial’s understanding of the internet is the wrong strategy? Maybe there’s some structural issue here? That maybe, just maybe, this case is actually about?

The associate also points out that the internet is currently a place where people can speak out about sexual harassment-- “they repeal section 230, and there would be no #MeToo.”

One of the partners says he doesn’t believe that—if they regulate section 230, then newspapers can actually be competitive and there’s still free speech online.

“We’re not going back to reading newspapers, grandpa,” some associate says. What the actual fuck, dude? Who talks like that to their boss?! It’s so condescending. He’s also wrong! “Newspapers” are not just physical things... reporting by major publications still matters and will continue to matter. Like, is he suggesting that in the future all news will just be random people tweeting things they think are true with no fact checking or curation? Sure, journalism is struggling right now—but I don’t think that’s because there’s a lack of desire for well-reported news.

I am glad the partners call him out on saying “grandpa” and honestly I’m shocked he isn’t asked to leave the discussion after that rude remark. Unless this young looking dude is a partner too? But I don’t think he is.

Julius notes that if they’re going to pursue this case, they need money like Cord’s. At that, Liz starts to leave the meeting. “We haven’t decided if we’re taking this Cord money yet,” Madeline protests. “Of course we are,” Liz says and leaves.

Now that’s more like it! I’m not sure if this is necessarily the best way to handle this, but she’s a) correct, they were always going to take the money because it is $12 million and an issue of interest and b) using her authority. Should Liz be making decisions totally on her own? Maybe not. Does Liz making this decision and then leaving (with everyone accepting that she’s correct) cut through a lot of bullshit and establish Liz as the one in charge? Yup.

Diane says, “Ooh-kay” with a little bit of an eyeroll after Liz exits, but she’s still laying low. I think in a different season Diane might’ve tried to push back.

Is it me or does Baranski get a lot of material this episode we haven’t seen before? Lots of really good reaction shots/tones in this episode I don’t really think we’ve seen from Diane before. I’m impressed there’s still new stuff after 12 years.

At some point maybe I will actually write the essay I’ve been wanting to write for ages about how TGF is still so relevant despite being in a universe that should be showing its age by now. I wish I could find the first time that I called TGW a period piece set in the present day (I know it would’ve been during season five) because I think that’s the key to TGW/TGF’s enduring success. The shows always feel timely because they try to capture the present moment (which is, of course, always changing) and don’t get stuck in any one moment in time. Further, the fact that the writers are always so tuned in to events and skilled at quickly reacting to what happens in the world makes them VERY good in a pinch, which is (I think) why they’re able to make the most of unexpected situations (Josh leaving TGW, the pandemic).

Liz and Julius bring a suit against ChumHum to attack 230. Judge Friend is initially skeptical of their argument that 230 is unconstitutional; then she’s intrigued. I am too. This argument about the press is a very interesting one. I obviously have a lot of reading to do on 230, but my take after this episode is pretty much that social media platforms have to be held responsible in some way, but I don’t think it’s feasible or desirable for them to be responsible for every single one of billions of posts. I think there has to be some way to regulate social media giants that would allow everyday people to share things and speak out but would prevent the curated (even by an algorithm) spread of fake news and make social media giants accountable when there are very public bad actors using their platforms. What that regulation would be I have no idea. I just refuse to believe that our options are to give the social media sites full immunity or to regulate the internet so strongly that no one is able to speak freely because all the platforms are worried about lawsuits.

Over at the VA, people are being fired. When Kurt gets into his office, Madeline Starkey (wait, are there two characters named Madeline in this episode?) is waiting for him. She’s still very quirky and scary.

Starkey says the guy that Diane reported is now saying Kurt trained him on using assault rifles and buying ammunition in bulk. Kurt notes these were topics covered in a group setting, which Starkey knew—and what she’s really after is the names of the others in the group. (She may already know them, since she knows there were five of them.)

Kurt refuses to name names and just stares at her.

Case stuff happens! (I liked the last two episodes a lot but it’s much faster for me to just write, “case stuff happens” for some of the scenes.)

Hey, surprise Aaron Tveit! (Not really a surprise; he is in the credits. But still yay!)

I don’t really know why Liz and Julius are talking about newspapers specifically and not all types of fact-based journalism/press? I feel like their argument is most convincing when it’s about actual newspapers (especially local ones) but still would apply to cable news...

Marissa’s still hard at work sorting papers when the associate comes back in and informs her she can stop; they’ve changed strategies and everything she’s done is now irrelevant. She also says “I forgot to tell you” at the start of that thought, meaning that she neglected to tell Marissa this important information earlier and wasted her time. Marissa is not pleased and so she goes to Wackner’s court, where Wackner now has a deli ticket machine and is wearing super-sized novelty sunglasses. Why not!

He sees Marissa and calls a five-minute recess. In “chambers,” Marissa tells him she’d like to work for him part-time but keep her RL job.

Wackner needs her help processing more copyright certificates. He’s priced them competitively at $20 and found that a lot of writers want these certificates, even though they have no legal value. (Neither do actual copyrights, Wackner notes. And he notes that if anyone plagiarizes, they can sue in HIS court.)

“Marissa, I’m building something here. I want you to join me. I want your advice on cases. I want to bounce legal theories off you,” he says. “What are your legal theories?” she asks. “I don’t know. That’s why I need to bounce them,” he says.

Marissa gives him from noon to 2 and 5-7, which seems awfully ambitious for someone working at a law firm!

“That’s how revolutions are made. Back rooms of copy shops,” he says, accepting her offer.

Kurt is sulking in the dark when Diane arrives home. He lets her know about Starkey’s visit and she immediately goes into lawyer mode. Notably, this scene does not spend much time on how Starkey found out the rioter’s name. Curious if they’re saving that for later or if Diane and Kurt both know what Diane must have done or if Kurt think’s it’s a coincidence.

Kurt SET UP A TOUR OF THE CAPITOL for one of the veterans in his shooting group, and that tour was ON JANUARY 6TH! I really do wish he’d told Diane that upfront.

Maybe the long pause where Kurt refuses to tell Diane which congressperson arranged the tour even after she promises she won’t say is him letting on that he knows that Diane ID’d the guy? Or maybe it’s just Kurt.

I do not like the dead birds in Starkey’s office, mostly because I do not like thinking about dead birds.

Starkey compares Diane and Kurt to the Conways.

And now more case stuff happens.

Julius gets to question a witness for the first time in two years! He’s a little shaky at first but then he does a fantastic job! Yay Julius!

When Diane arrives at the office, reception is filled with around a hundred teddy bears. “What?” she asks. “Build-a-Bears. They were sent to Marissa,” the receptionist explains. “Okay... why?” Diane asks the logical next question. The receptionist does not know.

“This one’s a Marissa bear,” she says, showing Diane a bear wearing boots and a wig. It does not look much like Marissa and it says “Hug me.”

Diane looks confused and furious at the same time. Her look here is, like, a milder version of the death stare she gives Alicia in Outside the Bubble when she learns about Alicia and Cary’s plan to leave.

“Why don’t we, meaning you, take all these stuffed animals and put them in the conference room,” Diane instructs the receptionist. She is NOT! HAPPY! The receptionist seemed to be having fun with the bears, but clearly the right answer was to have done something with them and... not to have put them over every surface in reception. Eeek.

Carmen’s new client, the rapist, arrives at the firm before anyone can hide the bears. “This may not be the firm for you,” his advisor/lawyer (I’m not totally sure what this dude’s job is) warns.

Madeline notices the rapist and glares at the receptionist. “I know. I’m putting them in the conference room,” the receptionist says, thinking Madeline is upset about the bears. She is not upset about the bears.

Diane finds Marissa, who’s working with Carmen again. She asks Carmen to give them a moment.

“Why are there hundreds of teddy bears in our reception?” Diane asks. Marissa is confused. Diane shows her the Marissa bear. Marissa looks horrified and amused. “That doesn’t even look like me,” Marissa notes, completely missing how pissed off Diane is. I don’t think we have seen Diane be this direct/no-nonsense in ages.

“That would seem to be beside the point. What is going on, Marissa?” Diane demands. Marissa suspects this is based on some advice she offered to a client who was buying a Build-a-Bear franchise and thinks this is a thank you gift. “What client? You’re not a lawyer! Why do you have clients?” Diane says exasperatedly.

Marissa gives her a look, and Diane immediately understands that she’s been back to Wackner’s court. “Oh my God, this is about that Copy Coop court?”

“Marissa, no. By participating in that simulacrum of a courtroom, you exposed this firm to malpractice, sanctions, and God knows what,” Diane says. If that were really true, she wouldn’t have sat there and argued. I mean, I don’t know the legality of this all, but I feel like it’s a bigger optics issue than legal issue if Diane and other lawyers are willing to even consider participating?

“If you wish to continue your employment at this firm, you will never do anything like that again. Do you understand?” Diane says. She will not hear any arguments.

I love that Marissa is the thing that keeps Wackner coming back. It’s a good plot for her, but structurally, it also allows the show to keep Wackner around without many contrivances. Wackner sees that Marissa would understand what he’s up to, she sees that he shares some of her frustrations with the law, and they both want to work together again. It’s not like suddenly everyone’s talking about Wackner’s court and all the cases somehow end up there or anything.

The receptionist, who is having a truly terrible day, comes into announce that Kurt and Starkey have arrived. “Don’t put them in the conference room!” Diane commands, knowing that the teddy bears will be there. It’s too late, though, because the receptionist (who previously seemed to be fine at her job if bad at recognizing public figures and understanding that partners might not find teddy bears amusing) has already put them in the conference room. I feel bad for her, and don’t think the other things were her fault, but I feel like she could’ve seen this one coming...

I find the teddy bears HILARIOUS, mostly because the reactions to them are so funny. It’s kind of the same gag as the balloons for Lucca in season two, but I don’t really care, because I’m getting to see Diane Lockhart treat hundreds of Build-a-Bears like they are a real work problem.

Starkey jokes about the bears; Kurt is silent.

The rioter from the poster is now accusing Kurt of coming up with the STRATEGY for January 6th, which Kurt and Diane both dismiss as bullshit.

I could do without Starkey’s musical cues.

I can’t tell if Kurt is in trouble here or if she’s just pressing him to name names. Why wouldn’t she just have rioter guy name names if he’s so eager to blame Kurt? I guess maybe if the others were actually there, he might be less likely to name the names of his actual co-conspirators? Or, Starkey might already know the names (surely the shooting range has logs) and be using this to raise the stakes.

No one (except maybe the partner named Daniel) is happy about the rapist in reception. “Since when are we representing people like Wolfe-Coleman?” Julius asks. Didn’t these people help both Sweeney (though I think Sweeney was in some weird police brutality case and they didn’t actually want to represent him) and Bishop? And Rivi? But they draw the line here? Sure.

Ah, there we go, an expository line-- “he’s the next Jeffrey Epstein”. Almost made it the whole episode without one of these. I’ll forgive it since it’s so late in the episode lol.

“Did you approve this, Liz?!” Madeline demands. Liz did not. Daniel wonders if that means Diane approved it. Liz doesn’t think so and calls Diane (who happens to be walking past) in.

“I know, the teddy bears. I’m working on it,” Diane says when she opens the door. I think the teddy bears are a bigger issue to Diane than to anyone else.

Diane didn’t approve representing Mr. Rapey either. She’s uncomfortable that a meeting was happening without her; Madeline notes that she is standing there specifically because they wanted to involve her.

David Lee pops up out of nowhere with the answer: one of the new associates (not Marissa, “the real one”) pulled in Mr. Rapey. Are there only two associates now even though orientation was for a big group?

Firth is gone, btw. David Lee is the new Mr. Firth. I have no idea why David would want to be STR Laurie’s guy for managing RL but... sure, whatever? David Lee is an effective antagonist, especially in small doses, and this allows the writers to keep him around and continue the STR Laurie plot without a key guest star. If STR Laurie is still a thing, and it seems like it is going to be a thing for a while, then having David Lee take on this role makes sense for plot. Otherwise they’re going to have to shoehorn him in to every plot somehow. At least now he has a reason to be around.

Liz and Diane take a walk to chat. Diane is worried about having David as their boss. Liz says she has a worse worry—David Lee knew exactly when to come downstairs with information, suggesting he know what they were talking about. “Would he do something like that?” Liz asks when Diane wonders if there’s a bug. “Oh, yeah,” Diane replies. Hah, yeah. He absolutely would.

They decide to have Jay search for bugs and Liz is frustrated with how much time they have to spend on things other than lawyering. Yup.

“What is going on with all the teddy bears in the conference room?” Liz asks as they head back to the office. “It’s a long story,” Diane sighs. I also love that the teddy bears link the various pieces of the episode together—it feels like all of these threads are happening simultaneously because of that constant.

I don’t get RL’s approach to clients. Bishop and Rivi are ok, Wolfe-Colman is not (except that actually he is fine). Cord is okay too. Do they draw the line anywhere? I know Liz was right when she said that OF COURSE they were taking the money, but is there really nothing that differentiates that situation from this one? I feel like there should be.

Marissa goes back to see Wackner. Since someone refuses to say “I respect and I love you,” Wackner reverses his ruling. This is part of the “Bad Loser Law of last Wednesday,” so the rules of Wackner’s court are clearly a work in progress.

Marissa explains she can’t be the law clerk because of Diane. She tries to connect him with a real lawyer, still not understanding exactly what Wackner’s after. “You know just enough not to crush what I’m doing here,” Wackner explains. “A real lawyer will look for reasons why not. I need someone to look for reasons why.”

Case stuff happens. I cannot read Cord’s handwriting. Liz and Julius lose the case because Judge Friend says what’s happening isn’t fair, but it is constitutional. (So here we have, at least in the show’s POV, a good and attentive judge who can’t make decisions that make sense because she’s bound by a document written before anyone had ever dreamed of the internet.)

Cord is waiting for Liz in her office. He’s prepared to bankroll an appeal. Did they blow thorough that $12 million already? Impressive; it’s been like a day.

Cord says they are definitely the firm he wants. Interesting.

Now Liz wants a meeting with Carmen, so it’s Marissa who leaves the room. This scene seems like it was meant to be a different day?

Liz wants to talk about Mr. Rapey. Carmen is, yet again, chill about the case. “Carmen, is there anyone that you would not represent?” Liz asks. Funny, Liz, I could ask you the same. Being hesitant about it is not changing the fact that you’re representing bad people. Carmen’s just cutting the bullshit.

“I don’t understand. Is there someone you don’t want me to represent?” I love how Carmen’s incredibly polite responses always seem very pointed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Carmen’s reply, and yet it puts Liz in a place where she can’t dance around what she’s trying to say.

“I’m just trying to get a sense of who you are,” Liz explains.

Then Liz decides she’s going to help on the Craig Wolfe-Colman (Mr. Rapey) case, and they will keep talking about her career path. Liz, this does not seem like the right solution! You're worried about your associate representing bad people so you’re like, I know, what if I ALSO represented bad people? If your goal is to convince Carmen not to take clients like this, you’re kinda shooting yourself in the foot!

“Are you worried about me?” Carmen says, again turning things on Liz. “I don’t know what I am about you,” Liz replies. Me either. Well, I know I'm intrigued, but beyond that, no clue!

All the bears have ended up in Diane’s office, where Wackner is waiting. He jokes about how his court is always seen as informal, yet this real fancy law office is covered in Build-a-Bears. Then he says he wants to hire RL—he's willing to pay. He wants consultation from Marissa (“consultation on legal issues”) and he’s prepared to spend a lot. And, if there’s one thing we know, it’s that they’re always going to take the money. So, they do.

I love that Wackner’s goal is to “perfect my little clubhouse of the law.” It’s a fun plot, and it also allows for the rules in his court to change (I’m sure we’re going to be treated to/subjected to a lot of whimsical gags around changing and ridiculous rules). It's also a good way to work through the thought experiment over the course of the season. It’s not like Wackner already has a system set up and it’s perfect—I'm sure we’re going to see his system run into issues and explore that more, too.

Wackner monologues a bit here about why he’s running fake court, and he lets us know he’s going to monologue. Basically he thinks people no longer want to help people and are only motivated by their own self interest. He notes that no one talks about the Peace Corps anymore and asks the last time Diane heard anyone say those words. I’m sure I’ve heard a reference more recently but my mind went RIGHT to season one Cary Agos saying “Peace Corps. Belize,” as some kind of smarmy pickup line. This is likely not where my mind was supposed to go.

Wackner wants “A new Peace Corps. For America.” Diane’s sympathetic to that and agrees to take him on as a client.

Wackner asks if he can take a bear. Diane instructs him to take two.

Aaaand Wackner and Cord end up on the elevator together. Wackner hands Cord a bear, the elevator doors close, and the episode ends. Since last episode ended with Marissa and Carmen in the elevator together, I’m hoping this will be how every episode this season ends. I think using the Kings’ favorite liminal space to transition between episodes is kind of fun, and it fits with the ellipses at the end of every episode title.

Speaking of... did you see today’s elevator-themed episode of Evil? It was written by the Kings. Those two have been obsessed with elevators for at least a decade.

#the good fight #tgfthoughts

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nocticola · 3 years ago

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2021 Fic Year in Review

Tagged by @greyhavenisback . It’s over a week into 2022, but I wanted to see what exactly I managed to write during 2021 before doing this, so here it goes:

Total Number Of Completed Works: 11+ one poem. And that number is a bit high because I mostly added chapters to works I had already completed and then there is the doubling of a Finnish/English language works. And then I closed Drabbles on Touch and Haven Oneshots/Prompts to start a new fic for those, so this isn’t very accurate. And it least a few of these are ones I might add to this year.

Total Word Count: 69952 words for 2021, which is not accurate because most of these are older. I’ve also written a few Six Sentence Sunday fics, but tumblr doesn’t let me find them right now so *shrug*

Fandoms I’ve Written In: Haven, Cherry Magic (also podficced!), Game of Thrones (a Varys oneshot based on one scene!), Marvel Comics/MCU, Country Comfort, Country at Heart/Love Song, Dollhouse, House, MD (to fix the aphobia), The Christmas Setup, The Dark Artifices, The Expanse.

That was a bit more than I expected lol

Looking Back, Did You Write More Fic Than You Thought You Would This Year, Less, Or About What You’d Expected?

I had higher hopes for Ace Week but considering I had two jobs for many months and some studies, yeah, I’m happy with how much I managed to write.

What’s Your Own Favorite Story Of The Year?

Duke Sterling, (closeted aroace) Country Superstar

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28402077/chapters/69594087

I will write the rest of this fic because I love it so much. Country at Heart has become a real comfort movie for me, and looking at Duke Sterling was this perspective is really fun and validating for me.

Did You Take Any Writing Risks This Year?

I think maybe actually writing in the MCU, especially since I am writing a character who is aroace in the comics and fandom doesn’t want her to be and I am making it clear that is how I am writing Yelena. I haven’t gotten any push back yet but I am never going to venture into her tags over on Ao3 without some serious blocking and filtering and that’s never a fun experince.

Do You Have Any Fanfic Or Profic Goals For The New Year?

I have some plans for Genuary I just learned about, and I hope to finish a lot of the fics I started last year.

Most Popular Story Of The Year?

It’s not even a contest Pizza Dog and Fanny

https://archiveofourown.org/works/35721904/chapters/89070631

It’s a gen Kate Bishop & Yelena Belova fic AU set during Hawkeye. I’ve only written the Kate pov but it very quickly got over 700 hits, it has over 50 kudos and 7 bookmarks, and right now it has 15 subs, which is almost the amount of my user subscribers lol. And it’s only 3 weeks old.

Story Of Mine Most Under-Appreciated By The Universe, In My Opinion:

This is also not even a question:

Marvel Guy and...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/35046331/chapters/87291742

It has one hit and I’m not completely convinced that isn’t a mistake on someone’s part. This is easily my least read fic.

It’s about Benjamin ‘Benny’ Thomas aka Marvel Guy, a teenage superhero who’s asexual and demiromantic and the first chapter is about his friendship with Carmen Cruz, an afrolatina mutant lesbian. They’re from Children of the Atom and I enjoyed that run and their friendship so I wrote about it.

I have a sibling chapter for Benny and his brother Jason coming up at some point. And I am kinda thinking of writing one with Nadia Van Dyne. If no one’s reading it, I can write what I want.

Most Fun Story To Write:

Comfort at Heart. For some reason , combining Country at Heart and Country Comfort was just really fun, and I have at least 2 chapters I’m writing for that one at some point.

Most Unintentionally Telling Story: New chapters for Finnish American Nathan Wuornos/Amerikansuomalainen Nathan Wuornos. IDK, Duke Sterling Country Superstar, having an aroace reading of a Hallmark movie.

To Be or not to Be (Out) for Christmas Setup. Whether ot not to be out and how and why.

Biggest Disappointment: Marvel Guy and... Seriously, I’ve had more interest in a fic for 8/12 year old Christmas movies.

Biggest Surprise: This only kinda fits but almost 5 years ago (Feb 2017) I wrote a fic for Roshanna Chatterji, DC Comics’ only asexual character, and it finally got its first comment!

Roshanna Chatterji does not like to be touched

https://archiveofourown.org/works/9717557

And that was very gratifying for me, because the reason I started writing fics for ace characters even if they barely get a response, is for someone to have the reaction that commenter did, of ‘I hoped there was fic for this character, didn’t assume much, but you gave me what I wanted’. Am I the best writer? No, especially not back then, but I have aspec thoughts and I will write about them.

My Favorite Part Of Fandom This Year:

Getting a podfic for Fujisaki's Aro Week . Having someone else be inspired by my words and interpret them so beautifully, it was very validating. And the fact that it was an aro fic makes it even more special to me.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29674707

Podfic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29834853

I think this is it. Not tagging people, but feel free to do if you see this and write fic.

#nocticola art #greyhavenisback

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cinderelliee · 4 years ago

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My final character opinions before Chain of Iron...

Just finished my reread of Chain of Gold ahead of Tuesday’s release!!! I am posting my thoughts/opinions of the main cast so that after Chain of Iron I can see how or if my feelings change. Spoilers: most of my opinions are going to be that I don’t know enough about them lmao. I love the big cast of characters, but that unfortunately also means less time is spent on each one.

Disclaimer: I know that I love some characters that people hate and vice versa. My intention is not to start anything, but more to be more open about what I think about the characters. It’s okay to disagree and just because I say I don’t like a character, it does not mean I believe they are badly written...

Alastair Carstairs:

One of my favorites of the series, and possibly TSC as a whole (let’s see how the series goes first). I love him so much and I can’t wait to see how his story goes. I love that he keeps everyone at arms length and pushes everyone away, but he would also go to any length for the people he loves. I think he has a gift of being able to see people as they are, and notice things others don’t. Probably why he was the one, not Cordelia, who saw what was wrong with his father and kept it from his sister. I’m sure he used to look up to his father like Cordelia did, but instead suffered great disappointment when he learned the truth. And then when he went to the academy, finally having some time away from it, all he found was more disappointment. He did what he thought he had to to survive. And I think along the way he sort of lost himself.

I do think Alastair should make amends with the Merry Theives, but less for their sake and more for his own. I think his journey is more about finding and forgiving himself. There are other ways to live and survive than hurting anyone who gets too close to you. I think he started that journey in Chain of Gold when he dyed his hair back to black and broke up with Charles. But fixing yourself is easier said than done, it’s not one choice, but something that you strive for everyday. His journey actually reminds me a lot of Matthew’s; they have a lot in common and I think their paths will parallel each other’s. I also think Thomas will be a catalyst for Alastair’s growth, as well as a helping hand.

I can’t wait to see his dynamic with the characters this next book as he tries to return to his true self. It’ll be interesting to see how his relationship with Elias plays out too.

Anna Lightwood:

I really like Anna so far. I think she’s very unique and exciting. I love how dedicated she is to being true to herself, but at the same time cares deeply about her loved ones and shows it. Often times I feel like characters like her often act like they’re above showing affection towards their family, so I was pleasantly surprised when she wasn’t. This is probably because her parents love and support her, so she never had to scorn familial love.

Romantic love is a different thing. Now, my two pieces about her life style is: why don’t we all just have a good time. I know there’s some people who didn’t like that she called her many partners ‘conquests’ and that she had a little black book. But I didn’t really see that criticism until recently and I’m confused as to what people thought Anna was doing? Would they rather her not keep track and forget them all? It’s perfectly healthy to explore your sexuality as long as you aren’t harming yourself or others. I know Anna is seen as older, but she is still only 19 (I think? 20 at most right?). She’s still on her journey to figuring out who she is. She is a bit self-centered and definitely privileged (see her relationship with Ariadne), but if she didn’t have flaws there would be nowhere for her to grow from. I highly doubt Anna will be living her seductress lifestyle by the end of the series

Personally, I cannot wait to see how her relationship with Ariadne plays out. Hopefully Anna will have some healthy confrontation with how she reacted to her heartbreak and why. Anyway, Anna is definitely one of my favorites.

Ariadne Bridgestock:

She seems like an interesting character, and I like how she’s not afraid to go after what she wants. I’d like to know a little more about her past and motivations. I also think she’s in a really difficult situation with her family and who she is/wants to be. I think she made a really understandable choice when she engaged Charles, and I support her journey in winning Anna back (I don’t not agree with the people who judged her for not backing off from Anna. She is fighting for who she loves and we are all fools in love). I think she has a lot of potential, but I can’t quite say that I like her yet since she’s probably the character we know the least about.

Charles Fairchild:

No opinion. I don’t love or hate him. No feelings whatsoever. The only thing I care about is the possible drama he will cause for Alastair and Thomas or the Clave as a whole lmao

Christopher Lightwood:

This boy is great! I have no complaints about him at all. He is precious. Honestly I’d just like to see more from him! His lines always make me chuckle. Also I’m not convinced that he would be able to create a antidote before the Silent Brothers would’ve been able to. But whatever, it’s just a story so who cares.

Cordelia Carstairs:

I just think she’s really neat. She is a fantastic protagonist and definitely on her way to becoming my favorite TSC lead, other than Tessa, obviously. I love her strength, kindness, relentless resilience, and how headstrong she is. I think it’s hilarious how straightforward she is. There’s so many scenes where she just says exactly what she’s thinking and just surprises everyone around her because they underestimated her or never expected her to so forcefully share her opinions. I adore her relationships with everyone. Her and Lucie are adorable. Her relationship with Alastair is so sweet and watching them rebuild their relationship was one of my favorite parts of the book, and definitely something I’m looking forward to. Matthew and Cordelia’s relationship is one of my favorites from the book; I love how they challenge and surprise each other (I think they could learn a lot from each other). Her interactions with the Merry Theives in general are perfect.

One thing I will say is there just wasn’t enough of her. I was very surprised when I read it that James and her were basically co-protagonists. I didn’t expect James to have such a prominent role, usually the split between the girl and boy lead is 60/40 at most, but this felt more like a 50/50 split. I just would’ve prefered more from Cordelia I guess, but that’s just me.

Grace Blackthorn:

So at first I was neutral towards Grace. I didn’t care about her at all, but after I came online and saw how many people hated her and acted like her was a villain, I started liking her more. She obviously is a victim of her mother’s manipulation and she doesn’t want to do what she’s doing to James. It’s clear to me that she is doing what she can to survive and to help her brother, the only person she truly cares about. Since she is also one of the few characters that it’s unclear where her story is going to end up, I am curious to see how her story goes.

I know there’s some people who just wanted her to be a villain, and I totally get that. But I feel like if she was, we would get a less complex character. Cassie’s villains, with the exception of Jonathan perhaps, tend to be one dimensional (which is fine because that’s not the reason I read her books anyways!). I also don’t really think she needs much of a redemption arc because she’s just trying to survive.

James Herondale:

This is where I’m going to get a little unpopular. I don’t love James, BUT I don’t hate him either. I am just not interested in where his story goes at all. I think I get what Cassie’s goal was with his character. He doesn’t have Will and Jace’s dark past and he’s not a morally grey bad boy like Julian. James is caring and sweet and noble and has a good family and I can totally see why people like him. For me, he still fills the same exact role that I’ve seen, not just from Cassie, but other YA books as well, and I’m just tired of it. His motivations are doing whatever he can to protect his loved ones and doing things because they are the right thing to do. He is willing to lay down his life for the greater good. I just can’t see anything about him that feels new. The only times I’ve felt anything towards him is when Jem, Cordelia, or Matthew were making me feel something for him.

It could be because I don’t really care for Cassie’s plots and his arc is so heavily involved with all the Prince of Hell stuff. And the bracelet just pisses me off in a bad way. The solution to it is so simple that it just frustrates me, but does not intrigue me at all. I will say I like him better with the bracelet off so I’m hoping in stays off this next book so I can enjoy his POV a little more. I really want to like him, but I just don’t connect with him at all. I wish Cassie had come up with something other than the bracelet as well.

Jesse Blackthorn:

Imma be honest: at the moment I don’t really care about Jesse either. I don’t know enough about him. But it seems like we’re gonna get more from him this next book so I’m reserving my judgement until then. In Chain of Gold I noticed most of his scenes were pretty expository or he was passing along information, but we never really got to know much about him. Hopefully I will like him in Chain of Iron though!

Lucie Herondale:

I really like Lucie so far! My favorite part about her is that she is so practical, but also able to loose herself in whimsical fantasies. She is totally 100% Tessa and Will’s child!! I don’t have much to say other than I love what I’ve gotten from her so far, but I just need a little bit more to connect with her. I’m hoping Chain of Iron really explores her darker side and her motivations. I kinda have a feeling this next book will either make or break my opinion of her.

Matthew Fairchild:

Anyone who has been following me for a while now could probably guess that Matthew is my favorite from TLH. I don’t know what it says about me, but I relate to him on a personal level. Although I haven’t made the same mistakes he has, (thank heavens for that!) I do know how he feels. I do know what it’s like to have something happen, that’s completely your fault, and have it change your life into something completely different than you thought it would be. I have made a lot of posts about him so if you want more in depth details, they are on my blog.

I’m just going to say that, very similar to Alastair, I think that Matthew has a lot of amends to make, to everyone in his life. And his journey is what I look forward to the most. He’s made a lot of mistakes, huge ones, and I know it’ll probably get worse before it gets better. But I hope his story isn’t going to be as sad as everyone believes, (I don’t think it will be, since a vast majority of Cassie’s characters eventually get happen endings) it just means a lot to me that his character doesn’t end up a tragedy. Like I said before his relationship with Cordelia is something I am really looking forward to. And his relationship with his family as well.

I love him your honor. *if I loved him less I may have been able to talk about him more*

Thomas Lightwood:

I really like Thomas!!! I favorite thing about him is that he can so easily see the beautiful and worth in everyone and everything (which makes him perfect for Alastair!). I love how gentle and kind he is. So far what I have seen from him has been so great. And how he was able to carrying on despite his sister’s death and then Christopher’s illness was really admirable. But I’m going to say for him as I’ve said for most: I want to see more from him!!! I have faith that his and Alastair’s relationship with be the best part of the book, so I have high hopes!

Okay!!! I think that’s everyone!! Let me know what you think?? Do you agree or disagree! I would love to get into some discussions with people to pass the time until the release!! If anyone wants to make their own post, please tag me!! I’d love to see!!! Do you think I have enough ‘!!!!!!!!!’?

#Anna Lightwood #ariadne bridgestock #Charles fairchild #Matthew Fairchild #cordelia carstairs #alastair carstairs #James herondale #Christopher Lightwood #Thomas Lightwood #Grace blackthorn #Jesse blackthorn #Lucie Herondale #chain of gold #chain of iron #the last hours #the shadowhunter chronicles #cassandra clare

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thelovelyghostwriter · 4 years ago

Note

How many responses have you gotten so far, if I may ask?

Hello, thank you for your question. I open the Q&A if you guys want updates on the survey or any problems I'm facing.

Currently, there's 380 responses in total. [It was actually 362 last night, don’t know where I got the boost overnight, perhaps that Kurapika post]

tThere's actually 84 questions in total, but I coded it in such a way that certain questions don't appear when you indicated an option. For example, if you indicated that you are not up to date with the manga (indicating that you have read the post-Election arc AND read till Chapter 390), the questions regarding the Succession arc theories and predictions will not appear. This is why the manga readers' survey is actually longer.

Currently, 149 respondents indicated that they had read up to date, and therefore, they indicated

Another example is the shippings part. For example, if you indicated you don't ship anything, you won't see the list of ships. If you only indicated that you ship, let's say, het ships, you will only see the het ships. This is to make it easier for people to do the survey. The key is for others to not answer unnecessary questions.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to talk about certain issues/explanations that I need to address.

The reason why I'm always emphasising the goal of 385 responses and above (400 is a good number) because based on calculations. I checked on MAL and that there are over 1.2 million who have watched HxH. The "population" in this case is the total number of people who have watched/read the series. Since some people do not have MAL, the actual population number is higher (currently, we do not know what is this exact number).

At 5% margin of error and 95% confidence level*, the ideal sample size is 385 in populations above 100K, and it doesn't change after 100K.

*I do not really know how to explain this, but don't worry too much about it.

Alright, so I'm at 380, do I still need more than 5 people?

Yes, I need more people. Why? I have three concerns:

1) I said this before, but I need more men/boys to do the survey.

As mentioned, I did not put demographic questions because my country is strict with asking people for personal data. While this survey is casual, I do not want to encounter future complications. However, I can roughly guess the gender composition of respondents because of certain questions and the way the survey was distributed.

Firstly, this survey blew up mostly on Tumblr and there’s a lot of mixed statistics. This says that 47% are female in 2021 and this other article says 72% of women use Tumblr in 2014. Anyway, most of my online (majority from Tumblr) are women and they had actively helped me sent it out to other women who likes the show as well. This same thing happened to my friends in real life.

Actually, this is one of the biggest limitations of this survey - convenient sampling, which is giving the survey to only people that we know. Our friends who may have similar views/interest will get to do the survey, but people that we are not friends with who may have a different view/interest does not get to do the survey. Their thoughts/opinions are not recorded.

Secondly, there are certain questions that makes it easy to guess for me if the respondent is a woman/man.

For example, the “which character do you simp for” question.

“nil” means they don’t simp for anyone by the way. Also, note that this is just the word cloud diagram. I will chart them manually in bar charts later on.

Usually, when someone indicates a lot of male characters, they are normally women/girls. The ones who indicated Killua Zoldyck and Gon are usually young girls. Of course, I’m not saying men won’t indicate they simp for a male character or something, but yea know, common sense a bit here. The likelihood of someone placing Chrollo being a woman/girl is higher than the respondent being a man. That also same goes for the shipping questions.

The survey is posted on Reddit that consisted of 83.1% males in the HxH area, according to the 1K survey that they had. This helped me boost more people (and possibly guys who do survey). However, I think only about 20 to 30 people did it (based on the boost I got after the Reddit thread was posted). I also had help from a large hxh IG account that had slightly more guy followers to give me a shoutout. I also went to reach out to some accounts whom I know the admin are guys.

I still need a bit more help though, because currently the survey results... I’m sensing that there are more women/girls who did it from the way the results are turning out.

Why is this important?

It’s simple. I cannot just release the results that had an uneven ratio of the gender of the respondents and claim that this is the hxh fandom. It won’t be representative of the hxh fandom population as a whole when there are many cis-men who actually had watched/read the show, and absolutely loved it. I think it’s important to hear people’s opinions, be it men, women, young, old.

Currently, I’m trying to attract more men to do the survey by designing my hxh analyses posts from Tumblr and transporting them to IG, because I realise they like these kind of posts and they get to see my bio profile (with the survey link) + post about the hxh survey. I also get to befriend some of them in the process (and also because I have long been wanting to post my hxh analyses on IG, but it’s just a hassle to make it into pretty poster designs). So win-win.

Of course, anyone is welcomed to do the survey. I just need help with “balancing” it out, so please help me by sending it to your bros, guy friends, boyfriends, fathers etc. Or if you know any social media platforms where most guys dominate, then yeah please send them. Or if you’re a guy, then yea go ahead and try the survey.

2) While the responses are 380 in total, the number of people who have read up to date is 149.

Okay, I’m not saying I need to get people who had read up to date to be 385 as well. Realistically, not sure if I can do it. However, most of the questions pertaining the Succession arc are the most interesting ones and it takes a large chunk of them.

So yes, it will be great to have more people to do the survey especially if they had read the manga so that we can have more respondents in those questions.

3) The 385 response calculation is only assuming 5% confidence level and 5% margin of error.

I don’t exactly know how to explain this, but I will try to quote for the margin of error:

“Company X surveys customers and finds that 50 percent of the respondents say its customer service is “very good.” The confidence level is cited as 95 percent plus or minus 3 percent margin of error. This information means that if the survey were conducted 100 times, the percentage who say service is “very good” will range between 47 and 53 percent most (95 percent) of the time.”

So if you put it in HxH context, with 95% confidence level, and 5% margin of error, it goes like this:

50% of respondents indicated that Bisky is their favourite HxH girl (this one is only one option). If this survey was conducted 100 times, the % of people who indicated Bisky as their favourite girl would be from 45% to 55%.

But if I actually key in 3% margin of error, the sample size goes up to 1056.

I’m willing to open the survey for 1.5 more weeks. Three reasons:

A) I will wait for more responses of course!

B) I am currently busy with my part-time student research assistant job during summer break till this week, and they are rushing to finish up the research paper. Therefore, it’ll be nice to just wait while I do my work.

C) I am planning to write up the theories that I had included in the survey. This means having a lot of time finding the links/threads to the theories and reading them, making sense of it. I plan to post it and also merge that in my report.

I’m closing the survey in 1.5 weeks because I need time to do up the charts and report by mid-August because I’m afraid I might be busy once the semester starts and I won’t have anytime to do this mini fun project.

Another thing I want to address:

Most of the time, certain options I created is based on technical reasons. The other reason is by mistake.

For mistakes, I went to fix them if someone highlights a mistake.

Now, for the technical reason. I did not appreciate this response in the NOTP section that says:

The reason why I listed out almost all ships in Hunterpedia, including the ones with a large age gap and the incest ones is simple - because it helps me chart easier when I put them into options. It also decreases the chances of nonsense answers like this one. It also places less fatigue on people doing the survey. Text boxes are only meant if the options aren’t clear or “others, please state” so that I can include people’s opinons.

The reason why I didn’t do that for the NOTP section is that I was unable to do a certain specific coding. That’s why it ended up as a text box. It’s also based on the assumption that if something is really your NOTP, you’d know and remember it.

Why do people online goes straight to trying to prove they are morally superior and whatnot, assuming that I listed the options because of my morality. You do not know me personally. It is based solely on technical reasons.

This is why I used this disclaimer:

Which part of this is not clear. You can leave, just like what I said in the beginning. Another thing is not following instructions and being rude about it.

I had also instructed clearly to list out the NOTP combinations. I even noted it clearly. Some people put “any incest/pedo ships”, which happened more than five times. What’s more, one response contained “don’t tell me what to do”.

Yes, I get it, you don’t like these type. But what you’re doing is making me guess everything, which is unproductive. If you don’t like certain ships that are common but a “taboo” like “HisoGon”, “Killumi”, then say that. If you say it generally, I’m just going to assume the ones on the Hunterpedia list.

Another thing is the “any toxic ships”. This is very vague. Often, some so-called “wholesome” common ships in hxh are toxic. Mind you, Killugon is also a toxic ship (let’s not be blind to the CA arc please, this pairing is unbalanced), yet almost everyone perceives it as wholesome. Most characters in hxh are toxic in their own ways, and for sure their canon dynamics if they are in a relationship are likely more toxic than what is often portrayed in the headcanon way. I am wondering what to do with this, I might put it as invalid or “no”.

This is why my instructions are to list them. I had already edited the question twice to make it even clearer yet there’s people who defy them. I’m not just doing the instructions out of fun or make people’s life harder. Those are instructions.

I do not understand why certain people have to feel offended/be rude at an anonymous survey.

I can understand if people don’t follow instructions because you might missed it out and I can help to chart it for you. It’s totally okay, everyone makes mistakes, but I do not appreciate the extra unsolicited comments about me because it implies that you have read them, you just chose not to follow it.

If you think there’s a better way to do it, then DM me. I will explain to you why I had done it so, or I might even change it based on your suggestion. For example, someone actually told me to add certain options and I did it. Another person suggested to add the non-romantic dynamics and I love that, though I think it’s a little too late to add that. Maybe in the next survey.

If you do not like the instructions, kindly exit the survey. Nobody is forcing you to do it. It won’t record your response if the survey is incomplete for one hour.

#hxh #hunterxhunter #gon freecss #kurapika #leorio #killua #killua zoldyck #kurapika kurta #leorio paladiknight

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white-tulips · 4 years ago

Text

I spent most of this morning continuing playing through the hikikomori route, more of my thoughts below!! (major spoilers ahead!!!!!)

if you haven’t but want to read my first post on my hikikomori playthrough, you can see it [here]!! it’s been a month since I last played any, aha...

I played for quite a few hours earlier but I don’t think I really progressed all that much aha. most of my time went towards grinding and wandering around and seeing little things. oh, and also playing through Orange Oasis. I never actually did that in my first run of the game. it was okay.

I really love how many little details and things to go back to that there are, but I’m still a little bitter at just. how long everything is. I talked about this a lot in my previous post, but it irritates me that the first 15-20 hours (give or take depending on how fast you’re able to blast through this game) is just. exactly the same as what you experience in the main route. especially since now my hikikomori save file is even longer than my main story file, and I think I still have a decent ways to go until I finish. I don’t actually know! I haven’t been spoiled for this route, thankfully, so I don’t really know how much is left. I have a vague idea of a couple areas I need to go to, but that’s about it.

ok, on to my thoughts!! this post is probably just going to be me rambling about tiny details I found interesting since I didn’t progress through much plot stuff, I think.

when I opened up my save file, I. completely forgot what I had been doing a month ago and what I wanted to do next, so I decided to go back to the Last Resort. I don’t know what compelled me to go, but there was a lot of fun stuff there so I’m glad that I did!

I had never tried to use Aubrey to go into the girls’ bathroom before? it was very cute, I liked it. I don’t know why, but as soon as I walked in it really reminded me of Basil. I think it’s all the flowers, photos hanging from the wall, and general soft cutesy vibe. I’m not really sure what to make of that, but it was just my general impression. hmmmm.

I have no words for this other than it just made me amused. go get your vacation, king.

also:

I didn’t know Hero had a confirmed age!! all this time I had been assuming he and Mari were 16 years old, so it’s nice to have something set in stone!

I have no words for these, either. seeing all of the Hero pictures just made me laugh out loud a little I loved it.

when I was standing in Jawsum’s office, I noticed that the elevator behind his desk was shaking. I went to examine it, and was surprised when this was where I ended up.

the black space elevator.

something I completely forgot to mention in my last hikikomori post was black space!! it had completely took me by surprise so I can’t believe I forgot to talk about it.

last time I played and went back to Last Resort, there was a completely black car on the highway and it had really freaked me out. as soon as I clicked on it, instead of giving me some kind of prompt Omori just got in and it drove off. I was so shocked because I wasn’t expecting it fhgjdfhgj. it ended up taking Omori back to one of the black space rooms, and I had no clue what to make of it. I wandered around for a little while, and ended up finding this... friend?

I’m... not sure! who are you......

anyways, so I got in the elevator and we’re back here, now with more spiders.

the spider wasn’t interactable. not sure whether to be upset or relieved.

aaaand then there was this guy in the treehouse. I want to know what these black space NPCs are!!! as soon as I tried to interact with it, the screen glitched out (intentionally) and then it was gone. one day I’ll know what it means.

oh, another thing I spent quite a bit of time doing at the Last Resort-

getting statues made of everyone!! RIP to all of my clams, but these are so cute.

cuuute.

I really liked the comment on Mari’s! it made me happy that it highlighted her playful side.

after I was done reexploring Last Resort, I wanted to go back to Sweetheart’s castle. I was walking through Pyrefly Forest, and I noticed one of the picnic blankets had a cooler open (signaling that you can see a new picnic cutscene) so I went to go sit down and have a picnic.

so, when I was going around earlier and doing some stuff, there were a few picnics that I think I had skipped for some reason so I was doing them and mindlessly skipping through the text for no reason other than it would bother be if I just left them. nothing about the conversations was different even though Basil is here now, so I didn’t think anything would be different for the one in Pyrefly Forest, but I was wrong!! I almost completely skipped through everything aha.

it started off the same, with Hero being scared of the spiders, and then Kel prompted Basil to say something positive to try and make him less scared.

it’s pretty insignificant, but I thought it was interesting that he said pretty much the exact same thing he says in the spider room in black space.

when I got to the castle, I went straight to the library. something about the pattern of going to black space, plus being able to go into the barn in Otherworld, just made me feel like there would be something there. and oh boy was I right. the entire place was crawling with Something.

very good.....

I wasn’t able to get screenshots of them, but there were a couple text popups that really stood out to me. my memory is so bad I can’t remember all of them even though it was only this morning,,, but I’m pretty sure one of them had a popup that was just “Liar.” and I was like HM....

it just really had me thinking....

in my previous post, I mentioned that I had a gut feeling that the Something in the barn was supposed to represent Basil, not Mari. this kind of added fuel to that thought!

the barn in Otherworld was only used in the main route in reference to Basil, with it literally showing Omori a vision of him, and also having Stranger walking into it. now, the library also has a lot of connection to Basil! after picking up one of the keys, it shows us another vision of him, and it’s also littered with egret orchids. I don’t think choosing to have all of these Somethings in both of these places is just a coincidence.

now, about the “Liar.” line. in any fight with Something, if there’s a text popup meant to be Something speaking, it’s always done like this-

with the “???:” to indicate character speech. but the “Liar.” popup was just a standalone line. and it instantly reminded me of this room in black space-

and this just kept making my brain whirl.

in this room, there were all of these popups with “Liar.” and then of course there was-

see here how there also weren’t indications of who was saying ‘liar”, but there was for Something? my idea for this room was always that it was Omori repeating it to himself. because we all know by now that Something is Mari, and her saying “I love you”, especially in this form, is nothing but pure torment. and I think here, we have Omori unwilling to believe it. there’s no way Mari could love him/Sunny. she has to be lying.

soooo then, this brings me back to the library. having the “Liar.” popup there, keeping in consideration that the Somethings there might represent Basil, what could that mean?? it could be in reference to Basil’s words “Everything is going to be okay” because clearly everything is not okay. if all of these Somethings are meant to be Basil, it could fit!!!

... so there’s my long winded theory. idk! I think it makes sense, but I could be wrong!! that’s just my first impressions right now, maybe my thoughts will change when I play more!

moving onto the piano room-

this was when I thought “ohhhh so that’s why the wall always felt hallow. it all makes sense now”

and then I spent the next 30 or so minutes fighting all of the Somethings

I LOVED this. this was the first time a fight was put on a time limit, and since Something was so much more powerful, it felt actually stressful. I was stressed! but I managed to make it with 2-3 turns left, and I didn’t die. I did die about 1 or 2 times to arachnophobia and thalassophobia though F. but it’s okay because I got an achievement and also Omori’s suffocate skill is really good.

anyways I did some more mindless walking around (I had to kill time waiting for all my statues to be built, you know!)

this made me really happy. Big Molio I love you you’re the mvp and you deserve the world.

... looking through my screenshots I wish I could forget this one-

,, do I need to even explain it.

I remember a while ago, I saw someone on twitter post this and iirc the caption was something like “isn’t it a bit morbid to have the jumprope there” and, at the time, I had never gone through Orange Oasis, so seeing that tweet I had the wind knocked out of me. I was just sitting there like “fuuuuuuuuck”. and then I went through Orange Oasis today, saw it again, went “fuuuuuuuuck” and then forgot I screenshot it. it’s just a lot.

okay who knows how I filled the rest of the 6 hours I played because I didn’t take many screenshots of the downtime and running around completing sidequests I never did. the last point of interest today was I had went back to Humphrey.

I didn’t do too much, but I did fight Mutantheart.

I adore her!!!! so cute!!! Mutantheart my beloved.

I lost to her once, because I was a bit confused, but once I caught on to the gimmick of her fight, it was actually pretty easy. rest in peace, queen, I love you...

and then, uh. Her-

I tried 3 times. I didn’t win... all of the characters are maxed leveled at 50, but this is so difficult... well, the first half of the fight I found to be pretty easy, actually. but once she switches into full power mode it’s over. I don’t know how I’m supposed to win. farewell my dream of completing the foe facts book, it was a nice goal while it was realistic.

and then I stopped for the day! I think I needed that month of not playing, because coming back into the game after a lot of my rage and burnout settled was probably best, and I had a lot of fun playing! hopefully it doesn’t take me another month to continue.

if you made it all the way through this post, thank you for reading! I hope you like my thoughts~

I’ll leave on this note-

king shit

#text #omori #omori spoilers

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