#i successfully connected my phone to my tumblr on my laptop | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

eury--dice · 4 years ago

Text

history, huh?

chapter 3: propius

(check the rb for chapters 1 + 2 on tumblr + ao3 links!)

Adam was woken at 5 o’clock on the dot with a series of sharp knocks on his door. “Up and Adam,” Gansey’s voice called, making the one stupid dad joke that always set Adam’s blood to a boil. He was too tired to react, however.

“Kindly leave until a later time,” he called, his voice heavy with sleep. “I don’t have class for another three hours.”

Gansey opened the door anyway, striding in with more pep than anyone should have in the morning.

“You’ve made the tabloids, my friend. Your weekend with Ronan finally hit.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Nope,” Gansey said cheerfully. “‘From America, With Love: Ronan and Adam flaunt friendship.’” He turned on his heel once he’d crossed the length of the room, which Adam could never forget was formerly Malia Obama’s, and seated himself in Adam’s desk chair.

Adam had never been closer to considering strangulation. He elected to shove his hearing ear into his pillow instead.

Unfortunately, the muffled sounds of Gansey speaking still made their way in. “‘Photos: Adam’s Weekend in England,’ oh, that’s boring…ah-hah: ‘New Bromance Alert? Pics of FSOTUS and Prince Ronan.’”

Adam resigned himself to his fate and mentally promised himself a giant cup of coffee. “As long as I’m getting fewer death threats on Twitter, I’m happy,” he mumbled into his blankets.

Gansey ignored him. “Why are you so tired? It’s the hour of kings, time to be awake and alive.”

“I’d settle for dead if it meant I could sleep at this point, to be frank.”

“Please don’t be frank. Be Adam.”

Adam sat up, eyeing Gansey in his wire-framed glasses with disdain. “Any more puns and I suffocate myself with this pillow.”

“Please don’t,” Gansey said, but his eyes had already returned to his screen. While he read through the articles, he continued his line of questioning. “Working on the campaign late last night?”

“Not really,” Adam admitted. “I had a Press and the Presidency paper to write.”

“Just write ‘I’m Adam Parrish’ on a piece of loose-leaf paper to turn it in and you’ll probably get an A. You live it every day, for Christ’s sake.”

“And yet I still need to cite sources in Chicago Advanced.”

“You’d think nepotism would work out more in your favor.” He flicked to a fresh article, a gesture Adam only recognized from all the other times Gansey had done it. “Luckily, I think the press is eating this one up.”

Adam grimaced. “Fantastic.”

“Not-campaign-ruining, you mean.”

“That too, I suppose.” He wanted nothing more than to flop back against his pillows and get the sleep his body so desperately craved after being jet lagged for a week, but he fought the urge.

“That _ People _exclusive takes the cake, I think. I didn’t realize how much you cherished your relationship with Ronan.”

“Fuck off, please. Or end my misery.”

“No to both. Why are you even taking that press course?”

Adam slid out from under his blankets, rolling his shoulders to try and wake up more. “Curiosity, I guess. It never hurts to learn more of what not to do.”

Gansey looked up from his phone to level a glance at Adam. “And what have you learned so far?”

“…Don’t have a sex scandal?”

“You _ would _need someone to tell you that.”

_ “Hey,” _Adam said, affecting outrage.

Gansey lifted his thumb to run over his lower lip, tilting his head consideringly. “One of us three will probably have a scandal before your mother’s second term is up.”

“If there is a second.”

“Chin up, young padawan. With you working on it we’re guaranteed.”

“I don’t know, Gansey,” Adam replied. “I don’t think I’m the good luck charm you believe in.”

“Of course you are,” Gansey said. “We won the first time, no?”

Adam glanced exaggeratedly around the room and to the phone in Gansey’s hand. “I’d say so. That or we’re about to get questioned very thoroughly about the the events of last three years.”

“Don’t make me cut you off on the true-crime videos.”

His eyes narrowed, focusing on Gansey. “Don’t you dare.”

“Blue agrees, anyway,” Gansey said, successfully deflecting topics. “Said there’s a ninety-four percent chance you’ll get into a sex scandal before the general.”

“Both of you date more than I do, why am I the one who’s supposedly having a sex scandal?” Once his initial outrage passed, disbelief crept in at the time of day. “Did you just text Blue at five AM and get a response? How the hell did you manage that?”

“She’s been up,” Gansey dismissed. Adam stared at him for a moment, and then Gansey seemed to feel the weight of his stare. His eyes widened almost comically. “Oh, Christ, no, not that. Nate Silver asked for another set of eyes on the Superbowl predictions, and she’s trying to get a shoo-in with them before the primaries begin. I just brought her some coffee.”

“And you didn’t bring me any?”

“You’re the only one of us who hasn’t been up all night. You need coffee the least of all of us.”

“Don’t blame me for your bad decisions.” Adam squinted at Gansey. “Were you working on an article all night or something?”

He snorted. “Hardly. They’ve been blocking all of my pieces. Too far from my mother’s politics, too far from your mother’s, too controversial, too critical, all in that order.”

“Thought you were liking the _ Post _gig?”

“On paper,” Gansey dismissed. “I’ve defaulted to writing about Welsh history.”

“Sounds like it’s right up your alley, then.”

“Once again, on paper.”

“How do you even connect the Welsh to the hellscape of American politics?”

Gansey waved a hand. “‘Eternal spirit,’ ‘fighting for honor,’ ‘remembering Glendower and others who set a pristine model,’ et cetera, et cetera.”

“People read that? That just sounds like you in high school spouting off again.”

“Yes, Adam. People read it.” Gansey squinted at his phone again. “Twitter _ really _likes you and Ronan together.”

“We’re exciting,” Adam said dryly, reaching for his laptop. He scanned over his most recent paper while Gansey dramatically narrated replies to the gif of them on _ This Morning. _

“‘Either of them could stab me and give me one of those smiles and I’d thank them,’ Jesus Christ,” Gansey read, “They really love your fake smiles… ‘name a more iconic duo, I’ll wait,’ hm, maybe any other duo? ‘Oh my God, just _ kiss already.’” _

Adam choked out a laugh as Gansey punctuated the last one with a dramatic and uncharacteristic hand wave. “At least it’s working,” he allowed, shutting his laptop once he felt secure about his essay. “Now get out. _ Some _of us have places to be.”

Adam’s phone buzzed on his way out of his cursed Presidency and the Press course.

Somehow, the interest of those around him seemed to pique even higher when he looked at his phone instead of in front of him. It wasn’t a new sensation by any means; ever since starting at Georgetown, he’d felt eyes on him constantly, but the intensity increased tenfold each time his classmates thought he was too occupied to see them staring. He noticed every time, but of course nothing could be done about it.

The name _ HRH shitty bird boy _ popped across his screen. How strange - in only a week, he’d almost entirely forgotten that the name he had (quite maturely) given Ronan in his phone was… _ that. _As he swiped the notification open, he felt a certain amount of trepidation as to what a technology-averse prince would ever text him about.

His harassment and emergency fears flew out the window with the body of the text, simply a screenshot of their tabloid appearance with the added caption of _ youre the nerd and I’m the cool jock. _

_ Competitive yachting? _Adam asked in response, nearly tripping over his own feet while typing.

_ ffs i told them to stop writing that as my preferred sport. _

Adam felt his lips twist against his will.

_ I’m sorry, this is a common problem? _

_ you can’t even imagine. _

_ I appreciate that they consider competitive yachting a regal sport. _

_ status symbols and faux athleticism are the core of the monarchy. _

Adam blinked down at his phone, stopping short abruptly. Persephone, from behind him, adjusted accordingly.

He…hadn’t been expecting this. Any of it. The text, the almost-joking response, the casual statement about the monarchy being ridiculous despite him being in it. Their conversation ended there, and it was probably for the better. He resumed his pace, trying to get to his next class. He almost forgot about the texts, too; save for a rogue screenshot Adam sent him of speculation on Ronan’s presence in Majorca, nothing else went between them.

Sometimes, Adam could _ just barely _ get away with being on his phone during briefings with Maura. He hated to be distracted during them - they were _ important, _he knew that, but all the same occasionally she spent a particularly long time covering an obscure dignitary’s comments and he’d gotten too few hours of sleep to truly focus and someone or other was blowing up his phone.

Maura’s topic of conversation this week appeared to be a series of Buzzfeed articles run on the lack of pets in the First Family, complete with a power point dissecting their points

The glamorous side of politics, truly. Discussing a clickbait series in the West Wing briefing room.

_ iMessage chat to _ ** HRH shitty bird boy **

_ Resumed 30 October, 2019, 1:47 pm _

_ if you want a pet chainsaw dragged in a mouse the other day _

_ Ah yes, the mouse. A pet eternally beloved by constituents. _

_ we can’t all have a raven, that would be unfair _

_ Your heights of cool and goth are truly dizzying. _

_ im glad you agree _

_ Modest, too. _

_ it comes with the wealth and fame _

_ As long as you’re being straight with me, feel free to be as ‘modest’ as you like. _

_ i’m the prince of bloody england. i’m straight all the damn time _

_ That’s the biggest lhxemxlp_

His phone slipped from between his fingers, landing with a dull _ thud _onto the wooden floor. Adam stared helplessly at it, a sleek black rectangle hiding between types of oak. But Maura repeated his name, and he suddenly remembered what had made him drop his phone in the first place. He dragged his eyes up, staring at a spot on the sterile white wall just beyond Maura’s head.

“Adam,” she said a third time, but he refused to look her in the eyes. She conceded immediately. “What the hell?”

He felt his cheeks darken as blood found its way up. “I’m sorry.”

Her lips thinned just like Blue’s did, turning into a dark line on her brown face. “Do you even remember what I was saying?”

“Er…” he scrambled. “Don’t mention animals in any public setting?”

She looked at him for a long moment, then picked up a mug of coffee and took a controlled sip.

“Get out?” she said once she’d swallowed her sip.

“I-”

She pointed to the door. “I am impossibly busy. Take your phone and go laugh in private.”

He nodded once, finally, ducking under the table with his spine pressed against the bottom to grab his phone. His fingers closed around it, grip the edge of the wood, and he was up in a second.

He couldn’t regret it.

Because - well, here was the weird thing.

He wanted another text from Ronan.

_ iMessage chat to _ ** HRH shitty bird boy **

_ Resumed 31 October, 2019, 12:03 am _

_ it’s finally spooky day in your hell country _

_ Isn’t it 5 am in England? _

_ Do you ever sleep? _

_ bold of you to ask that question _

_ halloween, bitch _

_ it waits for no one _

_ I’m really going to have to advocate better habits. _

_ I understand, you’re enthused for Halloween. _

_ do you even care at all _

_ I enjoy halloween like everyone else. _

_ Though your level of excitement feels a little pagan? _

when the skeleton army rises Jesus will forgive me

_ appreciate this glorious day parrish _

_ I have enough fear in my daily life, thanks. _

_ I filed my own taxes all throughout highschool. _

_ And payed rent. _

_ The horrors of early adulthood. _

_terrifying _

_ terrible i’ll never deal with that shit _

_ You’re the prince, we know. _

_ Do you also not have enough horror in your life? _

of course i do

_ but parrish. listen. _

_ this is the one day a year all the monarchy and parliament dress as they are in life _

_ hideous monsters _

He laughed a little harder at that than he should have.

_ You’re telling me the monarchy plays dress up. _

_ ronan_frankensteins_monser_costume.jpg _

_ matthew insisted. did this on me an hour ago _

_ oh my god _

The makeup _ was _really good, and the monstrous look suited him, but hell if Adam ever said that to him.

He may have saved it to his phone, though, to glimpse Ronan’s green-paint covered skin and crooked, drawn-on stitch smile on his perfectly blank face.

Although Adam certainly didn’t intend to make a habit of texting the Prince of England, when he saw a funny bird or a stupid article or an obscure meme his first thought became _I should send that to Ronan. _And Ronan, clearly, was thinking along the same lines. The sheer number of sole emojis that seemed to tell a Ronan-centric story he received at all hours only affirmed that. And somehow, between all the pictogramme and jokes, he started to learn snatches of information. Declan was a better storyteller than Ronan, Matthew was the only person who could make Ronan attend family dinners ever since their father died, and his mother - the Queen of England, Adam had to remind himself sometimes - drew further away every day.

The problem became that he always wanted to know _ more, _and Adam didn’t know if that was due to his rampant curiosity or something else buried deep inside of him, and he was too afraid of what he might uncover by digging to look.

Adam had very few friends.

Most of that came with the territory of being part of the First Family; nothing made casual acquaintances drift away quite like being constantly surveilled by Secret Service agents and trailed by NDAs. Adam didn’t have time for small talk and coffee, a fact which he sometimes lamented and often loved. Part of this came from the type of friendship he became accustomed to with Gansey and Blue, the all-encompassing type of friendship that took over their minds in spare moments and forged ties stronger than steel between them. He’d probably forgotten how to have normal, casual friends, not friends an outsider would think he was completely in love with. And, perhaps more than anything else, it came back down to Robert Parrish and his heavy hands and ringing words. Adam’s memories of his first few years were scattered and inconsistent, but they filled up a too-large corner of his brain all the same. Blue, who entered his life at the tender age of 5, had won his trust with greater ease than their other peers, and Gansey had done the same in high school. They knew him and what he’d been through, and so they could (platonically) love him for all that he was. When campaigning and political office came into the mix, that full truth of Adam Parrish became a secret to guard like any else.

But, oddly enough, Adam had a third friend: Noah Czerny, the thirty-three-year-old baby of the Senate.

Noah and Adam met through an Aglionby networking event while Adam was a student and Noah a recently-elected congressperson, both green as grass in different ways. Adam, thrown neck-deep into a Presidential campaign, had questions, and most of the time Noah had answers. Although all of the professors had warned Adam to proceed cautiously with Czerny, Adam found nothing to fear. Noah had mellowed out quite a bit from his high school days, becoming a familiar face at political events and a surprisingly-wise piece of advice always at the ready. Despite Adam’s near hero-worship of this brand-new politician, half-Mexican just like him and just as frequent to lose sleep rewriting policies that unjustly taxed communities of color or defunded children’s education, they’d formed an improbable bond. The summer before his sophomore year, Noah let Adam closer to the politics process than even his mother had as he ran for the Senate, and Adam took to it almost at once. A politician twelve years his senior was perhaps not a conventional choice of friend, but Adam seldom remained conventional.

It wasn’t too out of the ordinary for Adam to arrive at Noah’s congressional office unannounced, either with business or without, and so when Adam rounded on Noah’s stark, bright, white office, he wasn’t at all surprised to see him ducked over an obscene number of papers.

“It’s Friday night,” Noah said without looking up, barely before Adam had even crossed into the office. As always, the tiny burst of color in the Pride flag deposited in a tourist mug drew Adam’s eye for a long moment before Noah himself did. All Adam could see of him was his brown curls, resolutely held in place even as bent over a desk. “Go party or something.”

“Damn, I didn’t _ think _ this looked like a frat. I knew something was off.” Adam slid into one of the seats across the desk. He had several inches on Noah, but he always felt smaller in those chairs across from the most important legislators in the country. “What’s got you here at eight PM?” Off of Noah’s brief, incredulous look, he amended to _ “this _particular time, I know. You’re salaried. Shouldn’t you…ever go home?”

“I’m trying to get something done so that there’s at least a hope of banning fracking in our lifetimes.”

Adam scoffed quietly, though not for lack of faith in Noah. “Let me know when you’ve cracked the code.”

_ “If, _but sure, I’ll be in contact. Now, why are you here?”

“You didn’t answer my leaving-the-building question.”

Noah’s eyes flickered shut briefly. “Jesus, Adam, I am salaried by the taxpayers of millions of Americans. I’m not going to slack on them.”

“Fine, but don’t make me drag Gansey in here to make you take a long nap and drink some hot soup.”

Adam’s phone buzzed, but he ignored it; despite it being almost 1 am in England, Ronan could presumably take the blame. Noah asked, “Did you catch the Fox town hall last night?”

Adam grimaced. He’d seen part of it, trying to multitask with his macroeconomics homework at the same time, but instead he’d fallen asleep with his head on the laptop screen. “Part of it. It was a shitshow.”

“You can say that again.”

“I honestly thought that Whelk would pull more support from the extremists. He just seemed desperate last night.”

“Oh, he definitely was.” Noah leaned away from his desk, appraising Adam as though considering his words carefully. “We went to school together.”

“Aglionby?” Adam asked. He knit his eyebrows together. “How did I not realize he went there?”

“The school doesn’t exactly love toting him.”

“He’s older than you, though, right?”

“Yes, Adam,” Noah said slowly. “I’m thirty-three. He’s already announced a bid for President. How old do you have to be to run for executive office?”

Adam scowled. “I just came from class, I can’t use my brain. He was a senior when you were a freshman?”

“Yep,” Noah replied. “We were paired in upperclassmen-lowerclassmen bonding.” His lip curled a little. “He outed me.”

“Wait, _ what?” _

“He outed me to the school,” Noah repeated. He looked back down to the papers on his desk, his voice softening to a barely audible level. “I trusted him, which was a dumb thing to do, but I was a really stupid freshman. Scared, too. He was a friendly personality.”

_ “Fuck,” _Adam said, pushing a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, that’s…”

“Terrible?” A bit of Noah’s life returned to him. “Don’t worry about it, kid. It was years ago.”

“But then…Whelk, he was the reason you…?”

“He didn’t make my parents react the way they did. They did that on their own. But no, they wouldn’t have known without him.”

Adam shook his head. “I thought it wasn’t possible to like the guy less, if only because of his politics, but he’s done it.”

“Done what? Received the full wrath of Adam Parrish?”

“He very well may.”

“Don’t worry about him. Whelk will be out soon, believe me. I know him. He may have his parent’s money, but he’s barely old enough to hold office and he’s running on fumes.”

“If he’s not, I’ll convince Blue to skew stats until he is.” Noah knew just as well as Adam that that wouldn’t change anything, but it lightened the air anyway. “It seems kind of pointless to entertain any of them. Greenmantle is probably going to win no matter what.”

Colin Greenmantle: former antique collector, congressperson from Massachusetts, and millionaire with the funds to take over the Republican primary, and very possibly the whole election, before any papers were even filed.

“It’s early,” Noah said. “Too early to worry about it. Too early to even be _ talking _ about it.”

Adam slanted a half-smile at him. “Never too early to worry about an election.”

Noah looked back to his papers before broaching the next topic. “I hear you’ve got a job on your mother’s re-election campaign.”

“Once I graduate, and maybe a little earlier, yeah.”

Noah cast a glance around the office. “Are you sure this is the life you want?”

Adam knew he was referring to the constant bustle, the fear of disappointing and harming instead of helping, and the ever-evolving media scrutiny. He knew it was the closest Noah would give to a warning. “I’m sure.”

Noah sighed. “Fine.” He pointed to the door. “But I won’t let you throw your youth away, not this early. After you graduate, Parrish. Go get drunk and make out with someone.”

Adam stood, his frame unfolding and standing tall. “You are a terrible role model.”

“Can’t hear you over the loud music.”

“You and Blue and Gansey - if I die of alcohol poisoning, it’s all your fault.”

“Feel free to blame, so long as you’re out there and not here.”

“Alright, alright, Jesus. You’ve made your point.”

“Finally,” Noah called after Adam’s retreating form. But Adam could hear the amusement in his voice all the same.

For someone so allergic and averse to technology, Ronan sure seemed to share a lot with Adam.

_ iMessage chat to _ ** HRH shitty bird boy **

_ Resumed 13 Novemeber, 2019, 8:38 pm _

_ bird.m4a _

_ she wont stop nuzzling my head?? _

_ Picking for lice, probably. _

_ God knows you have so many. _

_ my scalp is perfectly clean _

_ Forgive me for abstaining from running my hands over it all the same. _

_ I’ll leave that to her. _

He didn’t always respond, though.

Adam tried not to read into it.

(He mostly succeeded.)

Adam never tired of stepping into the Oval Office. On the Wednesday right before Thanksgiving, he stepped in with the same amount of awe he always had, allowing himself a single moment to glance around at the wide windows and perfectly upholstered furniture. He sat on one of the couches without preamble.

His mother looked up from what was in front of her on the desk and smiled, albeit a tired one that frayed a bit at the corners; Adam had seen a few particularly troublesome foreign dignitaries be escorted away not long before, so he didn’t have to guess at the reason. Ana looked like she belonged to sit right there amongst all the history at that desk, from the sun dipping just beneath her halo of hair straightened within an inch of its life and her stick-straight posture. It might have been a lot at times, but seeing her was a reminder of all the good that came from her position.

She rose and walked to join him, her heels clacking lightly at the ground before she sank onto the cushion beside him and pulled him into a loose hug. Adam had overtaken Ana in height some years before, but there had been a long gap in there as he grew - like one day he was three and a half feet tall and wrapped tightly in her arms and the next he was off to Georgetown and several heads taller. She pulled away after a minute, slowly and bit-by-bit as though savoring her moments as a mother rather than a president. Her hand reached to muss his hair a moment later, and Adam ducked away instinctively before exchanging an identical grin with her.

“God, I forgot how light your hair looks in here,” she said, leaning back a little. “Almost golden.” She tilted her head as though examining him. “Nah. Still brown. But much lighter.”

“How could you forget? The photo here was in _ GQ, _the same article that first declared me the family golden boy.” At the corner of their conversation was the knowledge of where he’d inherited that hair color, as it sure as hell wasn’t from Ana. But he let the thought stay buried, patting the dirt back down with the shovel himself. Their relationship always had an absence in it, and he didn’t particularly feel like deepening it in the Oval Office.

“Ah, so that’s the one I have to blame for your big head,” she responded, reaching for a piece of fruit from the little coffee table. It was a familiar half-jest, borne from Adam’s constant contradicting confidence and imposter syndrome. Idiosyncrasies were just Adam’s style, never one to make things easy for himself. He sometimes wondered if so much of himself conflicted because he tried to walk the middle road so often, balancing his weight over all sides to minimize the damage if the rug was yanked from beneath him, like lying down on a bed of nails: a thousand tiny, dull pains over one sharp, potentially fatal puncture. She smiled again. “Is Noah doing well?”

“For Noah he is. He would barely look up from some new reports on fracking, seems hopeful he’ll be able to garner enough support.”

Ana snorted. “Good luck with that. I’ll be shocked if it reaches the floor for debate.”

“That makes three of us, then.” He nodded towards the desk. “Bad meeting?”

The frown lines on her face deepened. “Don’t get me started,” she drawled, falling back fully against the cushions. After only a moment, she _ did _ get started regardless of what Adam did or didn’t do. “We received the memo a few days ago that a delegation from Sweden wanted to be in contact, right? Fairly standard stuff, Maura gets back to them quickly because they worded it like it was an urgent matter, and there’s a back and forth for a while about scheduling and accommodations. We’re of the belief they won’t be out here until Monday at the earliest.”

Adam knit his eyebrows together. “It’s not Monday.”

“You fuckin’ tell me. Anyway, I’m halfway through a meeting with a few UN representatives when Maura has to interrupt. They arrived at the White House, claimed they had a meeting, and just…didn’t leave. Evan Maura couldn’t get through to them, which is the thing that scared me a little.”

“You should have put Calla on it.”

“Believe me, if she were here, I would’ve. But as it was, I had to hurry out the UN members to deal with decidedly more antagonistic foreign relations.”

“Why were they even here?”

“They wanted to discuss the military relationship between our countries-”

“What the hell?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” she said, waving one hand in dismissal. “Any points they were trying to make went straight out the window when they started pulling out cue cards, to be honest. I might have to call Löfven to smooth things over.”

“Well, there’s never a dull moment,” Adam said fairly. His mother snorted.

“Sure isn’t. Anyway,” she said, glancing at her watch, “it’s now Thanksgiving, so no more meetings for twenty-four hours.”

“It’s Wednesday.”

She pulled a face in dismissal. “We take our patriotism seriously, darlin’. Don’t want our home state gettin’ too mad.”

“Of course.”

Ana checked her watch again. “The turkeys will be on their way to the Willard by now, so we’re not ruining any American traditions today.”

“Wait,” Adam said. “Where?”

She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. “The Willard. They stay there every year.”

“What? No. _ No. _You cannot give the turkeys five-star accommodations with taxpayer dollars. You’ve been doing this every year?!”

“It’s public knowledge, sugar. Every news outlet mentions it.”

“How did I not-” Adam cut off. “There is no way you can do that! They’re turkeys! It’s a waste!”

“It’s precedent, Adam. I’m not sure if there’s anything to be done at this point.”

Adam stood quickly, pacing back and forth, and his mother stood behind him. “It’s a _ blatant _waste of money, I’m shocked we haven’t already been-”

“Hon, every president so far has done the same-”

“Imagine the story if we broke the tradition! Even conservatives would have to applaud your frugality-”

“We can’t play games with tradition, you know they already call us disrespectful-”

“-we can’t be using _ taxpayer money-” _

“-by all means, if you have the time to find lodging for two forty-pound turkeys-”

“Put them in my room!” Adam blurted. His mother stopped short.

“You’re not serious,” she said. “We’re not putting the turkeys for me to pardon in your bedroom.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Adam-”

He shifted his feet, coming to a stop. He lifted himself up to his full height. Debate Captain Adam, six-time Best Delegate Adam, and First Son Adam converged into one. His mother barely looked phased.

“Oh, God,” his mother said. “I can’t listen to another sales pitch.”

“Madame President,” Adam began, “I’d like to echo the sentiments of the forebears before me-”

“Nope,” she said, making double-time back to her desk. “You’re not going to filibuster me.”

“In 2018 alone, at least forty-three articles in the Wall Street Journal accused the sitting administration of wasting tax dollars. This came on the heels of a tax increase for Americans making more than ten million dollars per year and the subsequent pushback from a more conservative electorate in Congress.”

“Fine!” Ana said, her hand falling to the desk with a thump. She brought it back up to her head to massage her temple a moment later. “I’m too tired to hear my own history read back at me. You win.”

He sat back down on the couch, crossing his legs primly. “Perfect,” he said, allowing himself to smile once again.

23 notes · View notes

antifainternational · 7 years ago

Text

30 Anti-Fascist Actions: #18

Since we started this tumblr in 2014, we’ve brought you news of literally thousands of anti-fascist actions around the world. Yet one of the most common questions we get asked is “what can I do?” To help celebrate our 4th anniversary month, everyday in June we’re posting at least one real-life example of anti-fascist action that we’ve reported on in the last four years that you could replicate or take inspiration from! 18) 100 nazi twitter scalps - after social media platforms started to own up to their culpability in providing murderous fascists a platform to amplify and organize for genocide and mass murder, antifascists started holding them to that. Many we know committed to “100 nazi twitter scalps” - finding violating content on 100 fash social media accounts and getting them banned by reporting them.

Here’s how one antifa got into it: I’d read that Twitter had started to enforce content violations if one reported them, so because I am a giant nerd who gamifies anything that can be gamified, I issued the 100 Nazi Twitter Accounts challenge to my friends through Facebook. For each Nazi account that they successfully got banned, I would send them a picture of a cute animal. If they reached 100 accounts, I would draw them a bad picture of anything they wanted. Reporting Nazi accounts is easier than you’d think! All you need is a Twitter account and a bit of spare time. You can search Twitter by keyword. Helpfully, modern-day Nazis use a very specific argot to communicate with each other. A good search term is “shoah’d,” because to the Alt Reich, getting your account tossed off a social media platform is exactly like the Holocaust. Other good terms to search might include “femoids,” “blackpill,” “GEOTUS,” “Deus Vult,” or “Dindu Nuffin.” When you’ve found some accounts, click on them to confirm that they’re Nazi accounts and not, say, someone shit-talking Nazis using their own terminology like I just did! From there, Twitter offers a convenient reporting system. Click on the three dots to report the account, then select, “Their tweets are abusive or hateful,” followed by, “Directing hate against a protected category (e.g., race, religion, gender, orientation, disability),” and finally, “A group of people.” Sit back and watch the updates roll in as Twitter investigates your report and sends you a notification when the account is banned! What I like about this action—besides the fact that it really pisses off the fash—is that the only barrier to doing it is a working internet connection. You can do it from your phone. You can do it from a café with free Wi-Fi. You can do it if you have a disability. During the winter, when I struggle to make my pedometer happy, I did it while working out in front of my laptop. Also, did I mention that it pisses off the fash? (Since issuing the challenge, I’ve re-named this little game “100 Nazi Twitter Accounts” because, as a friend pointed out, the association with Aldo Raine’s call to action in “Inglourious Basterds” isn’t immediately obvious to every single person and it can be mistaken as a racist reference to scalping indigenous people. I still use the GIF of the scene, though, even though it and Tarantino are, shall we say, Problematic.) You can also easily do this on YouTube with this web browser extension NYC antifa have created that will let you locate & report fash content there!

#antifa #antifascist #antifascism #antiracist #antiracism #30 antifa actions

645 notes · View notes

mweinbergblog · 7 years ago

Text

Control LED Lights With A Webpage (ESP8266 Relay)

This is a quick tutorial on how to set up a simple web controlled relay using Adafruit’s Huzzah ESP8266 board and Adafruit’s Latching Relay Featherwing. When you are done you will be able to open a web page while on your local network (on your phone, on your laptop, on anything with a browser) and turn lights plugged into the wall on or off.

95% of this is pieced together from other places online, but when I was piecing I couldn’t quite find it all in one place. Hence this blog post. The entire process is pretty easy as these things go.

In order to make this work you need 1) something connected to your home network that hosts the website and turns inputs on the website into action, and 2) something to translate that “action” into power going on or off. That’s the Huzzah ESP8266 board and the Latching Relay Featherwing, respectively.

Practically, you will need:

An ESP8266 breakout board (I used the Adafruit Huzzah because I knew it would be well documented)

A USB to TTL serial cable (I used the Adafruit one too) to program the Huzzah. Note that it will also power the board during development.

A mictrocontroller-friendly relay (I used the Adafruit Latching Relay Featherwing)

Some LEDs to turn on (I grabbed these).

Some wires, a breadboard, and a soldering iron will also help

For the purposes of this project you could use pretty much anything that uses a moderate amount of electricity as the thing that is turned on (you are just creating a remote controlled switch). The most appealing features of the LEDs I chose were 1) that they plugged into the wall instead of being battery powered (relevant to the long term use I have in mind), and 2) that it was easy to access the power cord downstream from the power adapter so that the loads were less dangerous.

Programming

I very much recommend using the Adafruit tutorial for setting up the Huzzah. Once you’ve successfully blinked a light with the Arduino IDE come back here.

The code is taken from this post, which is also a great post about using the ESP8266 boards as simple web servers. The only thing I added as the CSS styling, which I’ll get to in a second.

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h> #include <WiFiClient.h> #include <ESP8266WebServer.h>

// Replace with your network credentials const char* ssid = "YOUR_SSID"; const char* password = "YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD";

ESP8266WebServer server(80); //instantiate server at port 80 (http port)

String page = ""; int LEDUnsetPin = 0; int LEDSetPin = 2; void setup(void){ //the HTML of the web page //don't forget you need estapes (\") around the quotes page = "<style> .button{ background-color:red; color:blue; border-radius: 8px; padding: 12px 24px; }</style><h1>Simple NodeMCU Web Server</h1><p> <a href=\"LEDOn\"><button class=\"button\">ON</button></a> <a href=\"LEDOff\"><button>OFF</button></a></p>"; //make the LED pins output and initially turned off pinMode(LEDUnsetPin, OUTPUT); digitalWrite(LEDUnsetPin, LOW); pinMode(LEDSetPin, OUTPUT); digitalWrite(LEDSetPin, LOW);

delay(1000); Serial.begin(115200); WiFi.begin(ssid, password); //begin WiFi connection Serial.println("");

// Wait for connection while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) { delay(500); Serial.print("."); } Serial.println(""); Serial.print("Connected to "); Serial.println(ssid); Serial.print("IP address: "); Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());

server.on("/", [](){ server.send(200, "text/html", page); });

//turn on the on pin and turn off the off pin server.on("/LEDOn", [](){ server.send(200, "text/html", page); digitalWrite(LEDUnsetPin, LOW); digitalWrite(LEDSetPin, HIGH); delay(1000); });

//turn off the on pin and turn on the off pin server.on("/LEDOff", [](){ server.send(200, "text/html", page); digitalWrite(LEDUnsetPin, HIGH); digitalWrite(LEDSetPin, LOW); delay(1000); }); server.begin(); Serial.println("Web server started!"); }

void loop(void){ server.handleClient(); }

Make sure to replace “YOUR_SSID” and “YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD” with your wifi network ssid and wifi password.

As I noted above, the only modification I made to the code was to add styling to the server. The code above isn’t the final styling - it is just a first cut to verify that the way I thought styling would work was the way that styling actually worked.

The “page=“ part of the code is the HTML for the webpage you will visit with your browser to control the lights. It may look more familiar once it is converted from a string into a more standard layout (apologies - tumblr is very bad with tabs but this may be a bit better):

<style> .button{

background-color:red;

color:blue;

border-radius: 8px;

padding: 12px 24px;

}

</style>

<h1>Simple NodeMCU Web Server</h1>

The links to LEDOn and LEDOff trigger the server.on functions further down in the code. Since the latching relay has two pins, each function turns off and turns on the appropriate pins on the relay so that the relay is either open or closed. If you were using a non-latching relay there would only be one pin that was either HIGH or LOW as necessary. Those pins were defined in LEDUnsetPin and LEDSetPin at the start of the code.

The nice thing about mapping LEDUnsetPin and LEDSetPin to pins 0 and 2 is that those pins are also mapped to leds on the Huzzah board. That means that you can test the sketch to make sure it works by just seeing if the lights turn from blue to red. Of course, to do that you’ll need to go to the webpage that the Huzzah is hosing.

Finding the Huzzah on the Network

In theory the serial monitor in the Arduino IDE will return a message with your Huzzah’s IP address. I found that to be a somewhat unreliable action. Instead, I just went to the connected devices section of my router and looked for it in the table. Once all of this is set up I’ll use the router to assign the Huzzah a static IP address so it is easy to find. For the development period I just track it down in the router every time.

Once you have the IP address (probably some variation of 192.168.1.X) you can just type it into your browser. If everything is going well you’ll see the webpage with two buttons (one with ugly styling):

Clicking on or off will turn on a red or blue LED on the Huzzah. If that is happening things are working out just fine so far.

Hooking up the Relay

Now that the Huzzah is connected to your network, serving up a web page, and responding to clicks on that web page, it is time to connect the Huzzah to the relay.

Note that I’ve been having problems uploading scripts to the Huzzah when it is connected to the relay. That means it is probably best to have the final version of the code loaded into the Huzzah before you solder it all together (obviously you can breadboard it to your heart’s content).

There are four connections between the Huzzah and the relay to make this work. Unfortunately fritzing does not have the latching relay featherwing in its library, so we’re stuck with my description and this picture:

Fortunately there are only four connections so words should be able to get us most of the way.

Connect the GND pin on the huzzah to the GND pin on the relay

Connect the 3V pin on the huzzah to the 3V pin on the relay

Connect the #2 pin on the huzzah to the SET pin on the relay

Connect the #0 pin on the huzzah to the UNSET pin on the relay

Once you have that up and running try controlling it all with the webpage again. If things are working every time you click a button on the webpage you will switch the LED on the huzzah and hear a nice click from the relay.

Connecting the Relay to the Lights

The last step is to make that click impact something you care about. Cut the live wire on the LED power cable (obvious notes about electricity plugs into walls apply - make sure you know what you are doing and take appropriate precautions) and plug it into the “COM” and “NO” ports on the relay. Plug the lights into an outlet.

At this point if everything is working when you click a button on the webpage you should get

An LED switch on the huzzah

A satisfying click on the relay

Lights on or off

And that’s pretty much it. At some point you’ll need to switch the power for the huzzah/relay from the computer you are using for debugging to a real power supply. I haven’t done that yet but will update when I do.

#projects

2 notes · View notes

setthejet · 7 years ago

Text

day 248: new port richey

Knowing that we’re going to be stationary for a few weeks is probably the best part about being back in New Port Richey. I actually find myself making friends, moreso than usual, since we’re going to be here for a hot minute and it’s not like I’m building these strong connections and then I’m like, “Welp, we leave tomorrow so bye”. I get to make plans and hang out with people. In fact, some of my best friends from Sarasota are driving up here on Monday! Mom suggested we break in the new villa with a dinner party and a game of Cards Against Humanity before my friends and I venture off to a meeting that evening. I’m so excited, because my best friend in the entire world is one of the ones coming and I haven’t seen her since the day I left for Maryland. It’s coming up on about seven months since that day, and this is definitely the longest I’ve gone without seeing her.

The one bad thing about New Port Richey (that I can think of off the top of my head) is that my parents don’t live in their villa full-time so there’s really no need for the “extras”. And by that, I am specifically talking about having wi-fi. Yup, no wi-fi. Now it might be apparent as to why I haven’t blogged in a few days. Sure, I have the Tumblr app on my phone, but it’s so much easier to write long posts that are worth reading on my laptop. My fingers don’t work that fast for these purposes on my phone. I actually had Mom drop me off at Starbucks earlier this morning so I could do things like publish the latest video to our YouTube page (there will be a link here shortly, as soon as it’s done uploading) and write this post. Good news is that this Starbucks location is within walking distance so really I can come up here whenever I please. Surprisingly enough, there’s also a very attractive barista at this location. It’s surprising because NPR is notorious for its retirement homes, 55+ communities, etc. Oh wait... I think that’s all of Florida except for Orlando. Oops?

I still feel at home every time I walk into a Starbucks, even though it’s been almost a year since I worked at one. I miss my family at the Midtown location down in Sarasota - they’ll always hold a special place in my heart. Wow, I just realized the length of time that has gone by. This time last year I was struggling so hard to stop using drugs and I had just gotten into a car accident that ended with me totaling my car and my parents flew me out to South Carolina where we were spending an early Thanksgiving (much like we did last weekend) and I had to pretend like everything was okay. Somehow I managed to not look like a strung-out junkie when I visited them and, even though my world was absolutely falling apart, I successfully kept the details of my broken life to myself since my sister-in-law was pregnant and my parents were all about knowing the details (especially mom, of course).

It may not seem like it 99% of the time, but I do give my parents a shitload of credit. Hell, I would’ve given up on me a long time ago. But for some odd fucking reason, they haven’t and thank god for that. I’ll never forget calling my mom from detox and just being so angry - with her, with god, with my friends, with my dad, with myself. And out of all of those, being angry with myself was the most prevalent and rightfully so, since I got myself into that rut. But I was freshly detoxing for the first time in a month or so, so everything was extremely real and sensitive and I just felt like my world was caving in - which it was.

Another thought that just came to mind was why I was so emotional that time, and not this last time I relapsed when I was visiting Sarasota while they were in Italy. When mom asked me at dinner the day we got back if I had used while down here, I just promptly and nonchalantly said “yes” like it was no big deal. But I think why that panned out the way it did is because I had already gotten over the initial hump of not using anymore and I had talked to my sponsor religiously since I got clean again. So I was okay with me being where I was at again. Yesterday I celebrated six months clean, and typically in the past I would’ve expected my parents to keep up with my clean date and I would come back from a meeting flaunting my chip or key tag or whatever but not this time. They’ve seen it too many times before, and honestly so have I. Its lost its luster and I’m kind of over it. I just want to stay clean, whatever it takes to do so. Sometimes I feel bad for going to meetings every night and not really getting the family time that this year was supposed to be giving all of us, but it’s necessary for me.

So now I’m here writing this post while the video uploads to YouTube and I’ve started working on Christmas gift ideas and the like. Basically I’m doing everything on my computer that I can’t do at home due to lack of wi-fi. I think this will be the first blog post that won’t be hash tagged with anything having to do with boats or sailing, since we are not in fact on the boat currently, which then means that we are not sailing. Ciao, for now.

5 notes · View notes

workrockin · 6 years ago

Text

Understanding ROG G20AJ ‘s wireless capabilities

Asus went for a console like design for its prebuilt gaming PC

At workrock we’re always looking at hardware from the perspective of wireless networking. Whether its phones, desktop computers, laptops , smart watches or embedded chips, we want to know how they communicate with the rest of the world. What wireless protocols do they support?

We are by no means experts on hardware and often in our quest we come across machines that surprise us with their capabilities. We make sure to share our discoveries with you and hope that you’re as excited to read about them as we were when we first made the discovery.

ASUS ROG G20AJ is a gaming CPU released a few years ago. It is a prebuilt CPU with an impressive customizable exterior. What brought it to our attention was a post on reddit in which a member was seeking some help to upgrade his RAM

I have a ROG G20AJ, a prebuilt desktop PC made with laptop components (it even uses two laptop chargers as a power supply).

Trying to upgrade it is a pain in the ass. When I upgraded the GPU from GTX750 to GTX1060 6GB I had to even cut a metal box that contains the GPU so I could fit the 1060 on it and fans could push air out.

Now I am trying to upgrade the RAM from 8GB (1x8GB SODIMM) to 24GB (1x16GB SODIMM 1600mhz+ 8GB SODIMM) but the manual and any info I can find online says that the max amount of memory I can install in this PC is 16GB (total, not per slot) example.

I have never seen such a strange limitation. I would find it normal if it was 32GB or 64GB or even 16GB/slot but I don’t know any motherboard that caps at 16GB.

I thought it might be because 16GB SODIMM modules did not exists when I bought the computer (hence the max memory you could fit there was 2X8GB) but I might be wrong.

Is there any way I can check the actual RAM capacity of this PC?

Our response

My first guess was that the limitations on the total RAM might be to preserve power. Since you mentioned that the PC is built with laptop components a cap on the max ram would mean a better battery design with accurate calculations on how long a charge can last.But it seems that it does not have much effect :-

https://superuser.com/questions/40113/does-installing-larger-ram-means-consuming-more-energy

In Linux there’s a command called dmidecode that gives you the max supported RAM by a board.

Dmidecode simply produces a human readabale output from SMBIOS

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_BIOS

Windows has wmi that does the same thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Management_Instrumentation

But since you’re using cpu-z you should be seeing the max supported RAM in the memory tab. If not try hw info (another free program that does the same thing) Under the hood both HWinfo and cpu-z should be querying from SMBIOS [1]. So it might be worth it to cross check by querying yourself directly (use dmidecode for Linux and wmi for windows)

Aside from that if the motherboard has set a limit in max memory there is little else you can do. If you try to exceed the limit computer might not boot or if it does it can access the extra RAM. Here’s more information on what might happen if your try to go over that limit

https://superuser.com/questions/30139/what-happens-when-more-ram-is-installed-than-the-motherboard-supports

Diving deeper into the the hardware

The overall design and the packaging by ASUS impressed me and therefore I decided to look a bit deeper into the hardware. It is built on the intel H97 chipsets . The intel chipsets are marked at $32 when purchased in quantities of 1000 or more. With a dual storage storage support the machine comes with a 32 GB SSD and a 1TB HDD.

Noticeably the CPU only contained 1 ethernet port. For complex wired LAN networking scenarios you’ll need an external switch with multiple ports. A lot more could have been achieved without buying an external switch if only there were a couple more Ethernet ports. Especially since the PC had an impressive Intel® Ethernet Connection I218 network processor. However since networking is not the primary goal of a gaming CPU it is not right for us to dwell on it.

Still what I was most interested in was the networking hardware of the machine. So I continued to look for more.

While the intel core i7–4790 processor is now discontinued it supported Intel’s my wifi technology. In case you didn’t know intel my wifi technology allows you to create a wireless personal area network. With this ad-hoc network you can connect wirelessly to other wifi enabled devices like TV, phones and share your photos, videos, music etc with these devices.

I was curious to know what kind of hardware support Intel provides to use this technology but it proved to be difficult. Supposedly intel had a page dedicated to my wifi technology which they took down

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/my-wifi-technology.html

However I got lucky on way back machine to find the original contents of the page.

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/my-wifi-technology.html

The latest snapshot of the page was in 2017. After that the page seems to have been redirected. But I din’t want the latest. I just wanted the infor corresponding to g20’s release somewhere in 2014. Undeterred I tried again.

Success. I got a match for Dec 17 2013.

https://web.archive.org/web/20131217081237/http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/my-wifi-technology.html

The information I was looking for was in the footnotes

IntelĀ® My WiFi Dashboard is an optional feature and requires additional software and an IntelĀ® CentrinoĀ® wireless adapter.

Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 62205ANH had an fcc page that had been updated as recently as 2016. While the fcc documentation was a good read I found out later that it was not the chip actually being used in G20AJ. In an old forum post I discovered that the CPU used a realtek wifi chip instead.

A new question.

Can intel My Wifi technology work without intel wireless cards?

The answer is no it seems.

Which leaves us with Realtek 8821AE. Features:-

It is an integrated wireless chip with support for both bluetooth and wifi.

802.11b/g/n/ac are supported. With a max channel width of 80MHZ it can achieve speeds of 433mbps. A youtube video demonstrates ~ 433mbps successfully. Just how fast is this? HD video streaming recommends a speed of 25 mbps. Which makes it 17 times faster than the recommended speed.

The chip has a power saving mode that conserves power during idle time. There is built in hardware support for encryption including WPA2-PSK.

As you can see from the FCC document the wifi chip is certified for class B operations. A class B FCC certification means that the wireless chip can be used in homes and business environment.

It is important to note here that the wireless chip manufacturer is responsible for obtaining these certifications. Since ASUS simply assembled the PC they bought chips for home usage and hence won’t need to obtain a separate licence. This is how most electronic devices with wireless capabilities are sold these days.

Components that require wireless certifications are treated differently from the rest of the equipment. Once a certification for a component has been obtained it can be installed in as many devices as you want.

That’s about it. G20AJ is a beast of a machine. Even 5 years after its original release. With a powerful wireless and wired networking stack we’re confident that it would prove to be a proficient platform for multimedia streaming as well as wireless mutliplayer LAN parties.

Need someone to help you with you wireless gaming setup? Looking for custom built gaming routers? Email us on

[email protected]

write to us on our tumblr page

[https://workrockin.tumblr.com/ask]

[https://twitter.com/workrockin]

connect with us on linkedin

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/workrock-careers-21b3a2186/]

Happy networking!

[1] The information from SMBIOS is not reliable. It is supposed to be but it’s not. This information is prefilled and not calculated.

I was once burned by relying on it when I bought an additional mem stick based on the info only to find that my laptop had just one soldered ram and no additional slots!

#gaming wifi technology

0 notes

kplatonova-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Evaluation «Alone in Depression»

The theme of my Final Major Project (FMP) is a very tender, personal and sad topic - topic of Depression. The idea behind this is to send a message to the public about the seriousness and importance of such mental illness. I personally can relate to this topic to a certain extent and wish to produce a «message film» to educate others on this issue. Throughout my project I have opened up myself to the public and shared my own most personal emotions. The goal is to share my feelings, fears and deepest thoughts and build an emotional connection with the viewer. The film will allow the viewer to live a day with a depressed person, experiencing the world through his colours and witness various emotions that one has. The artwork itself is the experience offered to the viewer, which begins from approaching the installation (a fragment of the depressed person life in a form of installation), then continued by viewing and listening to the film. The goal is to leave the viewer with questions in his head: «Is he aware that this issue exists and that somebody in his proximity might be suffering from depression? Will he help or just ignore it? Is he ready to face consequences of his ignorance?».

The initial inspiration comes from my own emotions and my personal life struggles associated with drastic life-changing events in my life. In addition to that I have a close person suffering from depression. The overwhelming emotions pushed me to talk about this to public. I am doing this project not only for college, I wish to extend it further and upload it to YouTube to at least try to play my part in raising awareness about this issue. Throughout the project I kept getting motivational inspirations from various artists like Tracey Emin, who suffered herself from a severe depression and was not afraid to talk about it. Many artists use new media art to portray depression as it allows them to share the artwork easily online and this was increase the target audience.

To produce a fine quality film, which is the main part of my installation, I had to make sure that research is completed thoroughly and to my fullest capability. I have sourced the primary research mainly from the library. I dedicated a lot of time to understand depression from the medical perspective and studied various articles to review statistics and general opinion on this illness. This has given me confidence in talking about depression and helped to form my own opinion. Additionally I conducted a questionnaire to test if previously obtained theoretical information has been accurate and true. People questioned were random people on the street as well as online people in my proximity via Facebook (with use of Google Docs service - anonymous questionnaire).

To assist me in understanding how depression can be portrayed in art, I have continued primary research in the art galleries, most of them as a part of the college trips. I have studied Kathe Kollwitz (Manchester City Art Gallery), Sir John Everett Millais «Ophelia» (Manchester City Art Gallery), Bill Viola (Yorkshire Sculpture Park) and Tracey Emin (Whitwhorth Gallery). In addition to that I have used material gathered from last years college trip to Edinburgh from the British Art Show 8 on artists like Imogen Stidworthy, Benedict Drew and Melanie Gilligan. Each artist’s contribution has been outlined in my journal, but in general they have given me a better understanding and plenty of tips on how to achieve the best atmosphere to correspond with the viewer.

The secondary research was targeted to see how similar artwork to mine has been previously done. I have research online resources and video sharing portal to get a further insight, as I felt that results of the primary research were not enough. This has given me a boost in inspirational ideas for my own project. The artists studied were: Zelda Fitzgerald (self-portrait in the water colour), Pablo Picasso (blue period), Kwangho Shin, Simon Birch, Doug Foster (installations), Clara Lieu, Liz Obert. Some of the above listed artists were self found and some were advised by my tutors to assist me in directing my artwork in the correct way. Each artist portrays depression in its own way and through the prism of his own experience. Throughout this process I seemed to form my own view and my own ideas, based on the influence of the above artists. I found this research very helpful and cannot imagine getting where I am now without it.

To produce my artwork I have used the techniques that I have learnt. I have produced the movie by myself with minimal assistance from others. The lack of the filming crew has given me many challenges to overcome. Major challenge was when idea of filming in the premises of Victoria Bath’s in Manchester has been quashed and I had to rethink and adapt to the circumstances accordingly. The problem was solved successfully and personally I think it worked out in my favour, making my artwork more personal and realistic. I had to overcome this issue by mostly filming at home, displaying my personal space and my own surroundings. To bring my idea in filming under water into life, I had to find a different way, as I was unable to use Victoria Bath’s anymore (as initially planned). The solution was found in arranging filming in my friends apartment, using her bath. Those times were emotionally hard as I was worried that might not be able to fulfil all my plans.

My main tools for filming were my Nikon D5500 camera with 50mm lens, tripod, stabiliser and editing software on my MacBook Pro. The big decision in this project was whether large monetary investment in professional software (Final Cut Pro X) was reasonable or not. I made a decision that I wish this project to be on the next level and look as professional as I can possibly achieve, therefore decided to purchase the software and do all the editing on my own laptop. Before choosing the tools for my project I have conducted a research on them to make sure I am investing into top quality items. With filming process there were many technical skills that I had to improve on, but with help of online resources (tutorials and video tips) and hard work I believe to have managed to overcome this challenge. The process of filming is equally as challenging and exciting, so problems of correct camera placement and numerous cuts were seen by myself as part of routine and were solved gradually as they occurred.

The filming process consisted of constant experimenting with various scenes and different portrayal of the depression. The ideas were based on inspiration that came from above mentioned artists and were developed further by myself. For my FMP i have done over an hours worth of footage with multiple experiments. On top of this, many experiments were with the editing process, as only with help of that I could achieve the correct required ambience and mood in the video.

Using experience from past project, I have used my most favourite techniques. For my time-planning a calendar was created. I have set daily goals and targets to make sure that all deadlines are met in time. This is a great tool to use for overall understanding how my project will progress.

Reflection journal was kept to make sure that my project is progressing in the right direction and to evaluate my own work. The targets I have set to myself as an action plan in the reflective journal have been achieved, some with slight delay within reasonable time due to unforeseen circumstances. Considering the type of my project, which has a lot of media items like videos and images to share, I have kept an online Tumblr blog, to share all of my work with others. I see it as and extension of my reflection journal. In addition to that, I have used all my favourite assisting tools like to-do lists and reminders in my phone to make sure that tasks are completed when their are set for. I think I was successful with time keeping during this project. I had a clear understanding that filming process is very time- consuming and had a full dedication to allocating time for my project work. The problem I had was initially to see the whole film before it was created. I have overcome this by creating a storyboard, which I used to plan filming of the scenes accordingly. Of course, I did not stick to it fully and developed it further on the go with few sudden experiments. Possibly I could have planned my time more efficiently if I could have afforded to take more time off work. It was challenging to balance working hours and college work correctly. As one often clashes with another. Hopefully I managed to succeed in doing this correctly, even at great emotional cost.

Looking behind now I wish I was able to group up with other students forming a crew and producing an even better final artwork. With more time on my hands I could have refined my project better and extended the length of the film by adding more scenes, therefore allowing me to cover more emotions and possibly making it even more emotionally powerful. If I was not restrained by the space provided for installation, I would have made a larger one, emerging viewer even deeper than now.

If I were to evaluate my progress from beginning of the year until now, I can see obvious growth. Personally, I am proud to improve in academic learning, meaning that I spend less time on translating and my writing skills are a lot better. Regarding artistic development, I have challenged myself again and have improved on my already acquired skills as well as obtained new ones. I have set high goal for myself in the beginning of this year as I understood this will be my last project, therefore wanted it to be the best I have ever done. My personal evaluation is that I think my hard work has paid off and resulted in a fine quality, deep and meaningful artwork.

To conclude, I can confirm that have really enjoyed working on this project as it was an emotional roller-coaster ride for me personally throughout the whole process. I will never forget the experiment where I had to cry. The tears were real, as I have remembered my actual horrible past experience and cried out loud forgetting about the filming process completely. Thankfully no more re-filming of this scene was necessary. The all challenges that occurred were eventually successfully resolved leaving me happy with the final outcome. As planned, I think my short film is able to reach out to public and get them emotionally involved with the issue, leaving them with some thinking to do. I genuinely see this project more than just a task that was given by college, I have put my soul in it and hope that my artwork will leave its footprint in this battle with depression.

by Kristina Platonova

Art&Design Level 3 Year 2

0 notes