#i have each collection color coded in all my notes but the colors in google sheets do NOT align well with tumblr text options lmao

[holmesillustrations]

Since i didnt do live updates for eliminations in the last round here's a summary of the current status:

from Adventures: Boscombe Valley, Blue Carbuncle, and Speckled Band are now out. Redheaded League, Case of Identity, Twisted Lip, and Copper Beeches all still have at least 1 in play.

from Memoirs: Reigate Squires, Greek Interpreter, and Final Problem now out. Silver Blaze, Cardboard Box, and Resident Patient still in.

from Return: Dancing Men, Golden Pince-nez, Missing Three-quarter, and Abbey Grange now out. Empty House is the only remaining competitor.

from Last Bow: Dying Detective now out, no stories remain from Last Bow.

from the Casebook: No new stories out, Three Garridebs, Illustrious Client, Lion's Mane, Retired Colourman, and Veiled Lodger remain.

from the novels: Hound of the Baskervilles is out Only Valley of Fear is still in.

[transsexualhamlet]

so as some of yall may know I work in my college at the school's costume shop, with higher pay (by 50 cents per hour lol) than the other workers because I have the role of Costume Shop Jonathan Sims.

because the costume shop was moving from one building to another (due to the old one being filled with asbestos and mold+ not having drinkable water in the building for several years) I haven't gotten to actually do any work for that actual position yet. However today was the first time I actually got to do duties for this job, and really. got a sense of how Gertrude Robinson Fucked the costume collection really is.

For scale, the college's historic costume collection has over 1000 garments from throughout the 1800s and 1900s, and this costume collection has been managed almost exclusively by overworked college students paid 8 dollars an hour who each had the position for less than three years and had basically zero qualifications in archival. (sound familiar?)

The costumes are all held in about 100 large extremely dusty boxes of various sizes and shapes precariously balanced in a cramped room, which are all labeled variously with at least 3 different non-correlating numbers and with various unlabeled clothes inside with zero organizational system. This collection is Not Being Moved with the rest of the costume shop, and therefore my job has me, and only me, continuing to work in the asbestos mold building with various insect infestations and several orders for its demolishing in effect.

Um. So today I got access to the google drive which has "everything I need for my job" in it. The google drive is the least organized thing I have ever seen in my life, of which the folders consist of

no longer needed docs for grants long passed

personal student projects unrelated to the shop

LIKE FIVE DIFFERENT NON-CORRELATING ORGANIZATIONAL SPREADSHEETS ALL CLAIMING TO BE THE CORRECT ONE, each of which has non-explained color coding, different accession number systems and box numbers, and dozens of "MISSING" notes

6 or so different documents on how the position was supposed to be run from various past collection managers, one from 2011, one from 2013, one from 2015, one from 2019, and one from 2023, literally none of which match up and all denounce each other

an untitled document which literally just says "9/22/23: everything is messed up and it's terrible"

One thing about me is that within two months I fear I will be hiding in secret tunnels mumbling into a tape recorder.

so my job today, as the professor in charge of the costume shop told me, was to "look at the spreadsheet and familiarize yourself with the descriptions of the clothing in Box 1." The "final" spreadsheet which she sent me and told me was the right one had only boxes. Um. 3-75. It just started with 3. The "old" spreadsheet started with box 10, and a hidden third spreadsheet did include a box one, but with zero descriptions attached to it. When asked, the professor tells me that I should "just treat box 3 like box one" and "disregard the actual box one". We are unaware if there is an actual box labeled with the number 1 in the costume shop.

because we are not technically allowed in that building anymore (which jobs like mine disregard) the facilities no longer comes in to clean the building. there is a MASSIVE earwig infestation in the costume shop and there is NOTHING we can do about it

she literally just told me "if you see them step on them"

....so well, you know what happened to me if I start showing up in your dreams covered in eyes, I guess

[endiness]

Debunking misinformation about Netflix's The Witcher (Part 6)

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7]

"Henry Cavill is the only one out of the cast and crew that knows anything about the source material and cares about it."

Joey Batey has read the books more times than Henry Cavill has. (3 times as of 2023 vs once in 2018.)

Henry Cavill himself has basically admitted that he wouldn't want to go up against Joey when it comes to knowledge of the books and both Freya Allan and Kim Bodnia have praised Joey for how knowledgeable he is and that he could "give Henry a run for his money."

Henry Cavill also hadn't even read the books and had likely only ever really played TW3 (and not even the DLC for it) when he first met with Lauren and, given that he thought that the books were based off the games, it's likely that he never bothered to google or wiki or research the franchise in any way (despite proclaiming himself to be a lore buff) as surely he would've found out that the games were actually based off the books if he had (or, y'know, if he had just been paying attention to the game credits as the books are the first thing in the credits.) Yet despite all of that, he's said this:

"I didn't even have the need to prepare myself for the role. Because I breathe, I live this universe every day. I already got numerous opportunities to think about this character while I was playing the games. My preparation was already made before the casting started!"

Meanwhile Therica Wilson-Read had played the games, she set out to read the books as soon as she had the opportunity to audition, she goes back and reads bits of the books if not the full series before each season, and she even goes on the wiki and watches youtube videos to refresh herself on the universe.

Therica's book collection (with color coded notes!), btw:

Mecia Simson also jumped straight into the books and read them all as soon as she was cast and will go on the wiki to research things.

Cassie Clare on her preparation as Philippa.

Btw, Joey had less than 24 hours to prepare for his audition and in that time he memorized 2-3 scenes, wrote an entire song, and showed up in costume to audition.

Therica is also so knowledgeable about the books and the franchise that MyAnna Buring will go to her for advice on her character and understanding what's happening when she needs things explained to her.

Mahesh Jadu also went to Joey for advice on his character when he was first cast because Joey's known to be so knowledgeable about the books.

Joey's also the one who's gotten book scenes and characters written into the show, btw.

Freya talking about getting things from the books into the show, too:

Anya talking about book moments she's a fan of:

Also Anya making a book reference to BoF:

Joey making a book reference to what a diary by Jaskier would look like:

Lauren's talked about her hiring process for the writers which obviously includes having read the books.

Tomek Baginski, who worked on all three games btw, has talked about growing up with the books as a teenager in Poland.

There's loads more examples than this, but this argument is quite obviously complete and utter bullshit anyway and I don't really want to look up every little example proving that, so. I'll just let the post end on this note:

[eyedoeluhn]

I haven’t mentioned the other Celestial (x)s before, so let’s actually run through the three main ones as well as what the Celestial Forge even is. I’m not counting ones like the Celestial Bakery because that’s tiny it’s like eight perks. The CM is my favorite, the CF is…actually not that bad. The CG….

The Celestial Forge is a collection of Jumpchain perks loosely (emphasis on) based around crafting.

A jumpchain, for the uninitiated, is a story prompt game thing where you write a character (most commonly self inserts or ocs) as the ‘jumper’ someone who travels fictional universes at the behest of a random omnipotent being’s entertainment or whatnot. unsurprisingly, I’m not the fondest of them. The power system is in collections of Jumpchain documents which lay the rules ( perks, drawbacks, items, settings, etc) of each universe. These are made independently and are not explicitly balanced. This balance gets more and more wildly out of wack the more jumps you do and the explicit end point of a jumpchain is to become comparably powerful as a ROB by finding a ‘spark’ perk (used to be a specific one but now there are multiple). Sure, jumpchains can end at any point but most people enjoy numbers go-up too much. My favorite wildly unbalanced jumpchains are things like random sitcom shows because oh my god you will find the wildest powers in there. My personal favorite is a free perk that allows you to take command of a vessel and instantly everyone inside or on that vessel will do everything you command no matter what, which is honestly pretty tame but extremely funny.

The CF is a bunch of these Uber powerful perks mashed together into one document. It’s unbalanced, it’s not great for a narrative, its most popular work is BCF, it doesn’t have the greatest PR in my eyes. However I don’t think it’s completely unsalvageable. Some tweaking of points, ignoring powers that ruin your story,and an author who is discerning enough to focus on plot rather than word count could make a fine fic even if it has yet to be done. Also I would prune a lot of powers to make it an actual focus on tinkering.

also, side note, why the fuck are there so many versions on google docs? I understand Jumpchain documents are usually docs but they’re like five pages and some pictures not like eight hundred pages of text. Christ.

The Celestial Grimore is a collection of ‘magic perks’ which are so extremely unbalanced Im not sure how this would even be written. There’s a section devoted to rolling entire near universal compendiums of all knowledge of fictional universes. Basically any magic system, ki, chakra, mana, is in there and it’s terrible. Magic is already a really esoteric and broad power system to bring in OOC especially and putting basically no limits on it and ascribing a million ways to use it doesn’t help. The magic parks of the Forge are its weakest because the technobabble is at least hypothetically interesting and I have no real interest in the Grimoire. Also Got The Grimoire Now What…it did not leave a good impression on me. While at least it’s in a spreadsheet it’s not that readable and looking at it for a minute was enough for me to say it would need extreme pruning or a strong specific central narrative. This is probably the least salvageable of all of the celestials.

The Celestial Menagerie is the odd one out of the bunch. It drops the perk system entirely to be a summons based power where you primarily roll for creatures from real life or fiction. Well I wouldn’t call it perfectly balanced it is the hardest C(X) to become setting breaking imo. It’s the neatest as well, being a pretty google sheets with a built in dice roller and color coding. Well I would make some edits, generally to the powers section to preserve the squishy summoner, you start with limits on how far your summons can get away and how many you summon at once and so on. It’s also my favorite because it allows for some very funny builds, two of my own personal favorites are a guy who has no summons for several thousand words but knows a lot about farming, and on a more punishing rule set a guy who can summon one (1) flea.

The Celestial Menagerie also has the current best C(X) fic, Brocktons Zoo of Myth and Legend. My god do I love BZML. I read it in one sitting, live reacting with my Buddy and we genuinely could not guess where the plot would go next. It’s hilarious and the author makes several extremely respectable choices and values the plot over useless powerwank. It has its problems but in this genre…also most of those problems were extremely endearing anyways. I’ll probably make a post about it at some point but I would recommend reading it blind.

There’s also another c(x) that me and said friend have been playing with that’s deeply stupid on purpose but I’ll wait for some context posts before pitching it.

[imtashamonet]

My Sims 4 Mods and CC Directory

This video is a walkthrough of the directory. This video was edited by my son, StoryOfSaint🦉! Subscribe to his YT Channels ➡️ @SaintusTheOwl @storyofsaint2571 🎶 Listen to his music ➡️ https://songwhip.com/storyofsaint

As an avid Sims 4 player, I have accumulated a large collection of custom content (CC) and mods to enhance and expand my gameplay. To keep it all organized, I created a handy Google Sheets directory that lists all the mods and CC currently in my game. Here is an overview of how I have it set up:

Section 1: The Mods Tab

The first tab in my directory is for mods. Here I have listed all the various mods I use in alpha order by the creator's name (this is the same way I organize mods in my mods folder so it makes updating easy). For each mod, I have columns indicating:

The creator's name

The name of the mod

A link to download it

Its current status related to the latest Sims patch

The date of the last time I checked for updates on that mod

The status column uses a simple color coding system to show at a glance which mods are up-to-date with the current patch: Updated (green), Compatible (yellow), broken/obsolete (red), safe to use, but needs updating (orange), new mod (blue), and unknown status (grey). The last checked date helps me know when I need to revisit certain mods to look for updates. It also helps me keep track of mods I've updated and those I haven't after a patch.

Section 2: The CC Tab

The second tab contains all my CC in alphabetical order by creator name. This tab is simpler, including just the name and direct download link for each piece of content. I don't include statuses here because CC doesn't usually have compatibility issues with game patches the way script mods do, but there is a notes column that I may use from time-to-time.

Section 3: Using My Directory

I keep this directory public via link sharing so other Simmers can benefit from it too. I find it helpful for keeping track of what I already have, as well as for grabbing links quickly when I want to recommend something to others.

However, anyone using CC or mods does so at their own risk. You should always check the file types and sources carefully for any potential viruses before downloading and installing anything. My sheets are updated frequently but may not always reflect the most recent patch status on each mod. Also be sure to read the mod descriptions for usage information and contact the creator if you need assistance.

Let me know if you find my Sims 4 Mods and CC Directory helpful! I'm always looking to improve it where I can. Happy Simming!

Updated feature!

Link: ImTashaMonet Mods + CC Directory - Google Sheets

Note: If you make a copy of this for your own drive, you will not be able to see any updates I make. For the best usage, bookmark on your browser either the directory or this post. 

[aromantisk-fagforening]

hey in the post where you gave website ideas you said to send an ask for coding related ones you had if anyone wanted them. Those sound really interesting for me if you have time to send some?

I don't know if they're gonna be new to you, but I do have a couple!

So there's the most famous one probably: stackoverflow - solves problems. If there's something specific you don't know how to do or you get a weird error message.

I think also it's useful to keep in mind that most, or possibly all, libraries you import from will have documentation or a reference page. Just search it up for each API/library name. Those sites can be fairly useful. If nothing else, you might end up with a more specific question.

And then there's Mozilla webdocs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web (in the references tab). Some people don't like this one, I've used it a lot

If you want to be taught stuff properly, without knowing what questions to ask at all, w3schools is probably the way to go. They have more languages than I can be bothered to type out, but for example HTML, python and C++. This is free just like all the previous btw.

scrimba also exists, I haven't really used it, but it is based on interactive videos I believe. It costs money depending on you. They have a free plan and two paid ones.

And for finding APIs: rapidapi.com has quite a lot. Some cost money, some are free. Usually you can use something for a bit for free and later it costs money. Spotify also has an API which I think is free, that's what all those spotify statistics websites use (obscurifymusic, spotistats, spotifytools, etc).

Then onto more specifically HTML/CSS related websites: google fonts (free fonts). flexboxfroggy (learn flexbox CSS), pixabay (royalty free images), color.review (check if your color contrast is good enough), wireframing (layouts and stuff, not coding).

And importantly: w3 dot org! There's a lot of info there about accessibility, including guidelines. Take note of this page: web accessibility evaluation tools (websites).

I don't remember what these are, I just found them in my bookmarks: webdesignerwall.com, css zen garden, css-tricks, smashingmagazine.com, kevinpowell.co, rfc-editor.org, coolors.org, caniuse.com .

digital safety frameworks: ISO/IEC 27002:2013 , The 18 CIS Critical Security Controls, NCSC CAF guidance, Cybersecurity Framework | NIST, SP 800-53 – NIST Risk Management Framework | CSRC, Information Security Manual (ISM) | Cyber.gov.au, Federal Office for Information Security (Germany), COBIT | Control Objectives for Information Technologies | ISACA, OWASP Foundation , ITIL | IT Service Management | Axelos 

and digital safety laws (obiously check your own countries laws (at least a summary)): General Data Protection Regulation - GDPR, The Directive on security of network and information systems - NIS Directive, EU Cybersecurity Act, Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Cloud Act Resources 

with the laws and frameworks they're most useful if you're not sure, realistically you can't read all of that. But yeah. if you're in the EU or EEA (or expect users from there) you should definetly make sure you understand the basics of the GDPR if you're collecting any data from users that aren't yourself.

This was longer than I expected. This isn't even all that's out there. You might find some stuff on alternativeto.com, articles and web searches too. And also a couple more websites on my neocities, mostly accessibility stuff, not sure if there's anything that's not covered here there though.

[for anyone finding this through tags: I am a queer guy who uses neopronouns and interacting is showing support and appriciation for my queer identity, not just the post.]

[bridge-supplies]

#2: Humanity as a History of Tool Use

I'm an engineer at heart. How some writers must write, some poets must sing, and some artists must paint to demonstrate what they care about, I find myself building Android apps instead.

It probably all started with LEGO. Realizing as a child that pre-built parts could be recombined in infinite ways is surely a way to foster creativity and tinkering. But it didn't really hit its stride until my brother introduced my elementary school self to GameMaker. Going from placing physical bricks to digital ones (their "code blocks" visual programming language) was a natural progression.

Going from code blocks to real blocks of code was yet another step. GML was close enough to standard programming languages that adopting a Computer Science degree alongside Psychology in college became within reach. Who could've known that building a juvenile top-down RTS called Balls of War would ultimately secure me an Android job at a tech startup with a decent work/life balance and room to keep experimenting?

Soon, I found myself concocting ideas for apps using whatever new Android features were available at the time. Realizing that code could create tangible experiences you could literally place in the palm of someone's hand was a pivotal moment. Practically anyone with a laptop and an idea could, in theory, build something that could fundamentally change how we interact with each other as human beings.

And then I stopped huffing the copium. The mid/late 2010s began to dirty the once-hopeful image of our Silicon Valley Saviors. How could we believe technology is inherently a force for good when tools are being intentionally designed to manipulate and extract value from others for the profits of the few? How can we trust digital social spaces with our communities and collective humanity when the platforms themselves are built with anti-human biases from the start?

The only constant that every tool has is the intentionality and bias of its wielder. Anything can be a weapon or a salve depending on who is giving it power and attention.

I'm a believer in the ideology that groups of humans help each other best when they make the right choices the easy ones. Those choices can be made even easier by intentionally designing tools that increase their accessibility and support the solidarity of its users.

When I review my prior attempts at tool building, I've seen my intentionality grow. But something has always felt missing.

Material Typer (2015)

A colorful note taking app with basic color filtering and early Material Design support. Helped secure my first job out of college!

KVAN Radio (2016)

On a week-long work-study program for an Arizona ecovillage/cult my friend was a part of, I built some basic task management software and an app for their local radio station.

Toro (2018)

My first foray into the wild world of wireless inter-app communication. This was a note sharing app I built for my family for Christmas which let you share private messages with each other by tapping your phones together.

Degree (2018)

More of a concept than a fully fledged app. I wanted to use my NFC knowledge from Toro to build a fully in-person social network, where you can only update your friends' information (and info about their networks) by connecting phones over NFC in person.

Bool, Condivi (2019-2020)

Further experimenting with Android's wireless capabilities, I attempted to build my own library called Condivi which would make NFC, QR code scanning, and Nearby Connections sharing (WiFi/BT) easier to develop for. My first attempt at implementing it, Bool, was a basic contact sharing app where you'd scan a QR code to initiate encrypted wireless data transfers with your nearby contacts.

Common (2021) (Google Play)

The pandemic brought about a whole new world, and forced me to change my thinking. If we could no longer connect in person as easily, how could technology still help us be closer to each other? First, we have to start with getting closer to ourselves. Common is a habit tracking app, where you observe your motivations over time for the most important activities you want to accomplish each day. As you use the app, you learn more about yourself.

Archetypist & Adepticadian (2021) (Google Play 1, 2)

With my introduction to the density of the Law of One material, I found myself wanting a way to organize the information provided in a more intuitive format. What resulted were two apps: Archetypist to explain their version of the Major Arcana of the Tarot, and Adepticadian to follow your own "adept cycles" to anticipate both catalyst and reflection.

TeamBuilder (2022)

My idea for Bridge Supplies began with TeamBuilder: an app built for managing and organizing decentralized teams of aligned individuals. Heavily inspired by the approaches outlined in Better Work Together (such as the Group Leadership Chart), the goals of TeamBuilder were to show how 1) everyone has leadership qualities and 2) those qualities are most effective when group leadership composition is well balanced.

Class Warfare (2023) (Google Play Private Beta)

My love of strategy games reared its ugly head once more, as I found myself suddenly obsessed with recreating the turn-based strategy game Fire Emblem into a Jetpack Compose-built native Android app. I wanted the game to have a unique win condition as well: you can only win once every one of your units has "Advanced" to their upgraded form by getting a kill, creating an interesting meta of stronger units protecting weaker units until they can get their own Advanced skills.

The common theme I have seen through many of my projects: from my early abandoned game concepts made with GameMaker, to my more recent abandoned app concepts made for Android, is that I have tried doing it mostly alone. Sure, I have gotten some feedback from others, but never tried expanding to a wider audience, or fully fleshing out an idea to completion instead of just being satisfied with the tech demo.

That is where you come in, dear reader. My goal here is to build tools, align them with what I believe to be pro-human values, and make them accessible and relatable for the masses. This space shall be our collective testing ground, and I couldn't be more excited to share it with you, fellow human.

[looneysguidetolife]

apartment stuff from howtogrowthefuckup

not all of it, but stuff i find particularly useful/want to remember. RIP this blog. the gimmick wears off after a while but it was genuinely useful information.

BUDGETING

suggested monthly budget for groceries for a two-person household is $553. estimated weekly budget is around $100. 

find a pad of paper and a pen and keep it with you for the next 24 hours. Write down every single fucking thing you use or even touch in your house. Tomorrow I want you to look at that list and figure out the cost of everything.

keep track of how much you spend on gas monthly.

add in your estimated utilities. You can fucking google that on your own, because it’s going to be different for wherever you want to live. Absolutely do this if you plan on moving to a different town or state.

divide your total monthly income by three. Hey, look at that, it’s my good friend Math again. Funny how he keeps showing up. Make sure the number of your expenses is less than the other 2/3rds, if it is, you can continue.

FINDING APARTMENTS

apartments.com

Focus on your top 10. Then your top 5. Then your top 3. Don’t go any farther than that (and don’t get rid of the research for the other 7 just yet). Create crazy complicated rating systems. Make an excel sheet or start putting stuff on your wall and connecting them with strings. Go full-on serial killer. Dedicate yourself.

You should also make note of how big the room is so you know if you can even fit what little you own. The same goes for the hallways or stairs or whatever exists outside the apartment on the way from your car. Could you get your mattress through all that shit?

PACKING

Figure out what you want to donate and what you want to put in the trash before you start packing.

Do not go grocery shopping right before moving... Just wait til you’re in the new place to make that trip.

Change your address. Like a week before you move. While you’re doing this, make a list of everywhere you’ve entered your address and need to change. Keep that list. Your future self will thank you someday.

Start in one room and pack all that before moving to a different part of the house. This is a good way to keep all your stuff together and it’s also a good way to find out that you own five decks of cards or one too many furbys.

Put everything into piles: keep, donate, and ditch.

Label the boxes with what room they belong to so you know exactly where it needs to go. Some people like to also mark this with a color coded sticker. 

Also label what’s in the boxes. For example: Kitchen - silverware; cooking utensils; hot pads; magnet collection. You don’t need to label every item individually, but have some idea of what’s in there. Label it on more than one side. Don’t label it on the top, because you’ll just end up stacking boxes on top of each other.

Distribute the weight of your stuff. Mix heavy books with stuffed animals.

Alternately, pack by weight. Heavy stuff goes in small boxes, light stuff goes in big boxes. Basically what I’m saying is don’t pack a massive box with too much weight that it’s too heavy to carry or will break the box.

Use all of your suitcases and bags for packing!

For toiletries - take off the top, place plastic wrap over the opening, replace the top. This way you don’t end up with lotion all over your towels or something.

Know what you’ll need immediately and make sure those boxes are the last thing on the truck, first thing unloaded at the new place. Maybe keep those things in a clear container so you can see exactly what’s in there. Hint: three of the things you’ll need immediately are your toolbox, cleaning supplies, and toilet paper.

note to self: get toolbox and first aid kit.

Take pictures of the new apartment. Before anything goes in it. This way if there are any scratches on the wall or stains on the carpet, the new landlord can’t say it happened during the move.

ASKING QUESTIONS

Apartments.com and My First Apartment both have lists of questions to ask.

questions directly from the blog:

Is the apartment available and is it still listed at the same price or are they trying to swindle you/are they completely incompetent at updating their listings?

Will it be ready when you need it? It’s gonna totally suck if you find the right place and find out it’s not available when you’re ready to move

Are there appliances? Are they included? Do they even work? 

How old is the apartment? This is important to ask because it will tell you how much trouble you’re going to have. Like, if it’s Civil War era, you might have issues with foundation cracks or old wiring or ghosts of soldiers waking you up in the middle of the night.

Have there been any issues with insects, rodents, mold, or mildew? You have to ask this. No good self-respecting property manager would tell you this of their own free will.

What kind of security is there? Did you have to go through a gate when you came in? Do you need a key to get into your building before you get into your door? Or does your door face out cheap motel style? Are there electronic pass codes? Is there any kind of security force on site?

If you ever find someone willing to hang out with you, is there a special place they need to park? Do you need to let the office know if they plan on staying the night?

Where do you park? Is parking included? Is in indoor or outdoor?

Do you need a city sticker to park on the street? [Note: I asked this when I moved to Missouri and everyone thought I was batshit crazy. This is normal in places like Chicago, not so normal elsewhere. See if you can determine that before you ask a crazy question.]

Can you paint the walls? Can you put holes in the walls? Can you do whatever it is you do to walls, so long as they look the same when you move out?

What exactly is the maintenance policy, beyond walls? What is covered, what’s not? And who do you contact when there’s an issue? Is there a maintenance person on staff, or do they call out to someone in the area? Do they have a 24-hour emergency maintenance line

Is there heat and air conditioning? What kind? If it’s a window unit, will it be included in the apartment? Are the costs of heating and cooling included

Do you have control over the temperature or is it a building thing?Are any utilities included?

Who are the cable and internet providers in the area? What are their rates? Does the apartment complex have an exclusive contract with one of the companies?

What kind of people live here? Do they have children? Are they all ancient? Do they have, as I suspect my last neighbors did, a bowling alley in their apartment?

Just how much are you going to hear from your neighbors? On a scale of Ernest Hemingway to Les Mis, how thick are the walls?

When is rent due and how do they want it? Are checks required? Can you pay with a credit card? Do they want it all in cash? Also, how is rent submitted? Can you pay electronically or do you drop it in a mailbox?

Do you need renter’s insurance? About how much does it cost? Are there any weird things that need to be included that might not be everywhere? Like, are earthquakes an issue?

What is the process for applying to the apartment, should you choose to rent it? Are there credit checks?

What’s the pet policy? Is there pet rent?

Are there quiet hours or other weird rules about volume or people or places or things?

Are there public areas like pools or parks or gyms? What are the rules regarding those?

If you have a roommate, will both of your names be on the lease, or will one person be designated as the responsible party (you better pray it isn’t you)?

What about trash? Is there pick up or dumpsters? Recycling?

Is there a storage unit included? Where is it? What kind of security does it have?

What happens with deliveries? Do they all go through the front office or are they left on your doorstep? Are you able to pick stuff up at any time? Do you need certain ID for it?

Is there a dishwasher? Is it louder than the bowling alley next door?

If you’re in an area that gets snow, do they plow or shovel? Will they totally bury your car if you don’t move it when the plow comes by?Is there public transportation anywhere?

not questions, but things to pay attention to:

Where are the outlets? Take note of prongs.

Are there permanent light sources or do you need to go to Ikea?

How big are the rooms? What shape are they? Are you going to be able to fit all your shit in here? [Note: you should already have a floor plan online, but ask for a paper copy if they have one.]

Do the people in the office seem at all competent? Are they going to make your life a living hell?

Can you get your stuff up/down the stairs or through the doors when you move in?

Are the appliances/apartment gas or electric?

Bathtub or shower?

Can you open the oven and fridge and still walk through the room? Will opening any doors block off other areas or hit something else?

Can you get a cell signal in the apartment? Seriously.

EDIT: waybackmachine links:

1 • 2 • 3 • 4

[starspangledbigbang]

Welcome to the 2021 Star Spangled Big Bang!

The Star Spangled Big Bang is a chance for writers and artists to collaborate and create stories paired with artwork, all of which will focus on the members of Team Cap from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Authors sign up to write stories that are 10k words or longer. Artists then claim stories and create art inspired by them. Creations may be canon, canon divergent, or AU. They must be centered around at least one character from the MCU’s Team Cap/Cap Quartet. All pairings as well as gen fic are welcome.

Friday 5 March - Author & Artist sign-ups open

Friday 2 April - Author sign-ups close

Friday 21 May - Author Check-in

Friday 4 June - Artist sign-ups close, Author summaries due (5k of fic complete)

Sunday 6 June - Author summaries available for preview

Friday 11 June - Claims open, Partnerships announced

Friday 2 July - Author & Artist Check-in #1

Friday 9 July Sat 17 July - Beta Claims

Friday 6 August - Author & Artist Check-in #2, Posting Date Claims

September - Posting period

Content Guidelines

Every creation must be centered around one or more characters from the MCU’s Team Cap or the Cap Quartet. This includes Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanov, Bucky Barnes, Clint Barton, Scott Lang, Wanda Maximoff, and Sharon Carter.

Any and all ratings are welcome, as well any setting, be it canon, canon divergent, or AU. Authors will be able to outline their preferences on rating, do-not-wants, and collaboration interest level if desired so that artists may take that into consideration when choosing what stories they’d like to collab with. 

Please be mindful of portraying marginalized communities respectfully. This page from Writing With Color has a list of blogs and resources that discuss diversity in writing. Any creations that sympathetically portray hate groups or actively promote racism, transphobia, homophobia, etc. will not be accepted.

All fics must be edited, beta read, and legible. All content must be thoroughly and appropriately tagged.

Code of Conduct 

Please be respectful of your fellow participants, including your mods. This event is designed to be inclusive regarding characters, ships, kinks, etc. and therefore we will not allow kinkshaming or ship/character bashing within event spaces. We are a diverse community and will not tolerate any racism, transphobia, homophobia, harassment, or general inappropriate behavior towards the mods or your fellow participants.

We want to ensure that all participants have a comfortable experience within the event. If your content or conduct does not align with the guidelines and the spirit of the bang, we will do everything possible to foster conversation and resolve the issue on a case-by-case basis. However, the final decision on how to proceed will ultimately be up to the mods. Please remember that the mods are fans just like you, doing this for fun in their spare time to share more Team Cap love.

What sort of content am I committing to if I sign up?

Authors will be required to create one original, cohesive story with a minimum of 10k words (no maximum). Artists will claim one or more stories (depending on the number of sign ups we receive, as well as artist interest) and create one piece inspired by that story. Each collab team will be required to create a banner for the master post as well.

What sort of artwork is acceptable?

All art must be visual, original art. By original art, we mean that the final product must be an original product of the artist. Using photos for reference is fine, and you can use whatever traditional or digital medium you require, so long as the art starts and finishes as your own product. Photo manips are allowed as long as they have been significantly edited, via Photoshop or other programs, to clearly resemble original art. Hit up the mods if you need clarity on an idea.

What ships are allowed?

Any prominent ships featured must include one or more characters from the MCU’s Team Cap or the Cap Quartet (Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanov, Bucky Barnes, Clint Barton, Scott Lang, Wanda Maximoff, and Sharon Carter.) They may be paired with any other characters, but the Team Cap character(s) should be the main focus of the story. Other than that note, we welcome any and all ships for the main pairings, including polyamorous ships, queerplatonic ships, and genfic. All side pairings are welcome as well.

What canons & universes are allowed?

Any canon or universe is allowed as long as it features one of the specified Team Cap characters. This includes any movies, comic runs, cartoons, etc. as well as non-canon AUs. So, if you wanted to write Planet Hulk Steve or Avengers Assemble Natasha or mermaid Sam, that’s perfectly acceptable!

Are there any age restrictions for participation?

Sorry, but yes. You’ve got to be 18 or over to participate.

Can I use a work that I’ve published previously, or that’s been sitting in my drafts for 3 years?

For this fest, we need all original content, none of which has been published previously. That being said, authors, if you’ve got an outline or a draft that’s been hanging around your WIP folder for too long, now’s the perfect time to dust it off and finish it! Since the art is meant to be inspired by the story, artists must start their work from scratch.

What if a friend and I want to work together?

Writing teams are welcome, but since claims will be anonymous, no author/artist team sign ups will be allowed.

How will claiming work?

Authors will create slides with information on their stories. Claims will take place at the halfway mark, and authors must have a minimum of 5k words written to be considered for claims.

The mods will compile the author submissions anonymously to share with the artists prior to claims. Once claims open, artists will submit their choices via Google forms.

Where are the submissions going to be hosted?

All submissions will be posted on AO3. We will also promote all creations on Tumblr and Twitter.

What if I can’t finish on time, will I get an extension?

We’ll have plenty of check-ins to make sure that you will indeed finish on time! If you’ve got any concerns, the mods will work with you to find a solution on a case-by-case basis. We will also enlist the help of artist pinch hitters if necessary. If you drop before claims, there will be no penalty; however if you ghost us after claims and leave your partner hanging, we’ll take that into account for participation in future events depending on the circumstances.

Can I post work-in-progress snippets on my personal blog?

Prior to claims, all snippets and sneak peeks must be shared anonymously on the starspangledbigbang account; the mods will assist in this process. Once claims are done, you will be able to announce your team and share snippets on your personal blog, as you create. Please keep snippets to 500 words or less, and roughly ⅓ or the artwork or less.

Can the fic &/or art also count towards a bingo fill?

Yes, we will allow cross-posting within bingo-style events, as long as your partner is comfortable. If your partner would prefer to keep your creation to this event only, then we would ask you to respect their wishes. We also ask that all cross-posting be done in good faith and within the spirit of our content and conduct guidelines.

I can’t sign up, but I still want to participate, what can I do?

No worries, there are lots of ways for you to help support the Big Bang! Follow us on Twitter and Tumblr; reblog, comment, and share our posts to spread the word. We’ll also be asking for help with beta reading, pinch hitting, and other cool ways for you to get involved!

Where can I find event info?

Info on the SSBB will be posted on Tumblr (@starspangledbigbang) and Twitter (@starspangledbb), with a collection on AO3. We will also have a Discord for participants.

Who are the mods?

Your friendly SSBB mods are bangyababy, Call_Me_Kayyyyy, HeyBoy, nachodiablo, and velociraptorerin.

I’ve got more questions, help!

No problem, we’re happy to hear from you! Ping us on one of the social media sites above, or email starspangledmods at gmail dot com.

(updated 07/09/2021)

[script-a-world]

How do I keep my worldbuilding consistent when I have multiple timelines and alternate universes? Especially when memories can bleed over too.

Constablewrites: Really, really good notes. You’re gonna need something that allows for a high level of organization and categorization. That might be a tool like Scrivener or Evernote that lets you create folders and tags, or if you prefer physical notes you can use different colored pens, sticky notes, or even multiple notebooks. (There are probably tools out there specifically designed for such a purpose, but I’m not personally familiar with any.)

However you keep your lists, you’ll want to have one set of notes for each timeline and universe that impacts the story. If you have characters hopping around, you’ll also want to have notes for each character’s personal timeline (so the order in which they experience events, which timelines/universes they travel between, what they remember when, etc.). These lists don’t have to be super long or involved--just a brief phrase describing the scene or event can be enough to keep it straight.

Even for writers only working with a single timeline, it can be useful to have a calendar of events. You can call your start point Day 1 and go from there, assign events to arbitrary dates on our calendar, or go into detail with your own system, whatever works for you. The key is just to have a way to be sure of how much time has passed, so you don’t have something like characters saying they’ve only known each other a couple of days when it’s established elsewhere that it’s been a month.

Also, this doesn’t have to be done in advance. Doing it as you go is fine, and so is assembling the lists as you’re preparing to edit and untangle everything. You might save yourself some effort down the line if you sort that stuff out before writing, but not everyone’s brain works like that and that’s okay.

Tex: It’s difficult to make lists and notes if you don’t know what information to put in them. This is a fairly common issue, since the plethora of information available to particularly worldbuilders can easily become a sensory overload.

A calendar of events is an excellent idea, if you’ve got events to catalogue (and dates to go along with them!). Unfortunately that won’t cover the rest of a world, so you’ll need to be careful in how your organize your notes. Please note that both of our suggestions are but one of many methods to arranging worldbuilding notes, especially when it comes to multiple timelines.

Scrivener, Evernote, OneNote, or even a set of notebooks or word documents can be very versatile depending on your style of note-taking. I deeply prefer an iterative process to worldbuilding, wherein I slowly collate and organize scraps of notes into a polished whole that functions as an archive. Usually I keep multiple versions, in case I need to roll back to certain timelines of development and branch off in a different direction, and keep the discarded versions in case there’s a new way to incorporate the research and ideas.

There’s a lot of debate about digital vs physical copies. For digital, the pros are that you can easily edit and transmit files to a high volume capacity, as well as store them in a comparatively small container or even purely online. Its cons, however, are that they’re easily lost, corrupted, or stolen.

For physical, the pros are that the copies are tangible, easy to visually reference in large volumes, and can usually withstand long-term storage without corruption issues. Its cons, however, are that they have a physical weight, can be cumbersome to carry around, and are difficult to edit while retaining coherency.

One of the most successful note-taking styles I’ve seen is a blend of digital and physical. When you’re still developing an idea, a digital format is very useful until you’ve gotten some concrete decisions down. You can do this with some throwaway notebooks or loose paper, too! Just make sure it’s collected in the same place, or at least is annotated in a way that’s easy to identify (e.g. headers of the same colour, washi tape, dedicated ink colours, dedicated folders, etc).

The intermediary point is usually the difficult part, because transitioning into firm decisions about your worldbuilding is where packrat tendencies kick in. “But what if I need this?” is a very common refrain. However, if you’ve isolated your first step, you’ll still have all of your sketches and ideas and notes!

A basic sorting process of “I’ll keep working on this” versus “I’ll set this aside in case I still need this” will tamp down on a lot of that inevitable anxiety. This will give you control over the flow of development, and you’ll always be able to incorporate things from that second pile if necessary.

The main characteristic of the intermediary point is the filing system, and is incredibly useful even when dividing a world into multiple timelines.

The best method that I’ve found for working on multiple timelines is to start from the most common details. Since these notes are likely to be stored with other stories, the first order is fandom vs original work. If you only write original work, it may be helpful to arrange things by title and/or genre.

I’ve made a sample worldbuilding folder on Google Drive (available here) that can be downloaded locally or into your own Drive, and am narrating the main path way; any additional folders you see will largely be blank in order to allow others to learn the overall structure. You can always copy the folders and files I mention into the additional folders, and rearrange as best suits you!

Since I made this for primarily fandom (re-title as necessary for original work), this means choosing Fandom 1 and then World Name 1. Traditionally the first world is the “canon” world, or the original seed, so it gets first pick.

I have in World Name 1 some things pre-seeded:

Timeline 1

Timeline 2

Unsorted

World Name 1 - Meta Info.txt

All of the individual files in there - usually .txt or .docx - have information on them regarding suggestions how to use them. If you already have a method, then disregard and populate as you prefer.

The Unsorted folder acts as a catch-all, and there’s going to be one of these at roughly each level. For the Timeline level, this means working in conjunction with the Meta Info text file - usually discarded snippets and/or research. While you can definitely create subfolders in this one, I would recommend keeping it loose so you don’t create a stressful, nitpicking situation that loses focus on your main goals.

If you have a main timeline, then that’s going to be Timeline 1. However you choose to prioritize the other ones, just make sure you’re consistent with it, and clearly label everything.

Within Timeline 1, you’re going to have the following items:

Story folder

Plot folder

Unsorted folder

Culture folder

World Name 1 - Timeline 1 - To Do List.txt

You already know how the Unsorted folder functions, so pass that one by. I’ll cover the file before delving into the folders. It’s a text file (that’s a bit oddly sized, apologies for that - it can be resized upon opening with Notepad or a similar program), and left without any instructions or suggestions. World Name 1 - Timeline 1 - To Do List is, as it says on the tin, meant to keep track of things that need doing for this timeline. Be it items that need updating, necessary tweaks, reminders for other things, it’s a relatively isolated way to keep track of this timeline on a meta scale.

Moving on to the rest, the Story folder contains two of its own - Chapters and Master Story. I’ve found this method useful, since it’s dumping drafts into a virtual outbox on an as-completed basis. Master Story has a preseeded doc, while Chapters is meant to contain each chapter unto its own folder (Chapter 1 has its own preseeded doc, as well). The guide docs are colour-coded and contain notes for both fanfiction and original work.

The next folder in Timeline 1, Plot, comes with three pre-seeded guide docs of its own:

World Name 1 - Timeline 1 - Characters.docx

World Name 1 - Timeline 1 - Plot Unsorted.docx

World Name 1 - Timeline 1 - Plot.docx

You see how there’s still an Unsorted folder, albeit in file form? That’s for information that can’t be put into Characters.docx or Plot.docx. All three have notes and some sort of sorting and colour-coding applied to them, with some modularity for copying and pasting. Plot.docx functions a lot like programs like OneNote and Scrivener, so the formatting can be ported over if you prefer a more literal digital notebook style.

The last folder in Timeline 1 is Culture. I’ve divided this into Non-Physical and Physical. There’s a readme text file in both detailing the types of things would go into each folder, though otherwise both left blank so you can dive right into creating sub-folder systems of your own. As with the higher-level folders, you can always duplicate the methods of unsorted folders and meta docs!

[phoenotopia]

2020 March Update

Happy New Year! Well, I guess it's a bit late for that...

Much of what transpired in the past few months will fall under polish and bug-fixing. Will and I have a mutual friend who got married, so I had the occasion to visit Will to attend the wedding as well as have Will playtest the game in its most complete form yet. He logged 24 hours of playtime and just reached the entrance of the final dungeon. Then we had to call in for the night since it was 5 AM, and I had a flight to catch in the morning.

His completion rate where we stopped was 42% of Heart Pieces, 33% of Energy Gems, and 44% of Moonstones. So... I think we have a pretty lengthy game!

This will take a while to playtest & polish... Will's daytime profession is QA Engineer so he's pretty great at catching bugs. From his playtest, we jotted down 200+ items to fix/adjust. Some as small as a simple misspelling, and some more significant (like Gail being unable to jump when standing at the edge of a steep slope). I'm about half-way through fixing that list...

(Will’s living room where much playtesting was done)

Here are some other things we've accomplished in the past few months. A lot of it falls under polish and bug-fixing, which won't sound outwardly impressive, so I'll dive in a bit under the hood.

-------------------------- Item Balancing --------------------------

There are over 200 items in the game. Of which, 90+ are healing items. While much of their flavor text was already written, their stats weren't yet finally decided. So a large effort was spent to balance them as well as possible. Initially, I balanced items by observation (ex: "The player is relying on this item a lot, so I will nerf it...") Now, I've moved to a more systematic way of doing things. I made an equation that takes in all of an item's parameters, and spits out a score. The higher an item heals, the higher the score. The longer an item takes to consume, the lower the score. And so forth.

As usual, I used google spreadsheets, since they support equations. I could tweak the values of a healing item, and immediately see how its final score was affected. I also made use of automatic color formatting, so a field becomes highlighted red, if it's particularly bad, or green, if it's particularly good. Of course, the sheet is just a guideline. The aim wasn't to make all items have the same final score, but that they made sense for what they were and when you could get them. Late-game items tend to have higher overall scores versus early-game items. Some items, like doggy biscuits, have notoriously low scores across the board - as a joke!

-------------------------- Cooking Systems --------------------------

Another thing that had to be done with the healing items was finally determine their cooking sequences. 38 healing items could be cooked and will transform into something else. The way I specified that an item could be cooked was to add a a little snippet to an item's "meta data". An example would look something like, "COOK,57,62,ABXY,10,1.5,1".

In order, this specified the item_ID that would result on success (57), the item_ID that would result on failure (62), the button sequence (ABXY), the time you had to complete the sequence (10 seconds), how quickly the cursor should move (1.5x speed), and if the item multiplied on success (1). The system appears simple enough - but it was actually extremely inefficient!

For one, this system didn't allow random button sequences - all "berry fruits", when cooked would have the same button prompts and in the same order every time (ABXY). Initially, I thought having set button sequences would be a feature, but in practice, it was less fun. 

Two, this system wasn't human-readable at all. I'd see a sequence of numbers, forget what they were, and have to look them up over and over.

But the biggest problem was that you couldn't evaluate an item's cooking difficulty from these numbers without manual testing. At 1.5 cursor speed, how many times does the cursor pass the center panel in 10 seconds? Maybe that's 15 times... for a 4 button sequence, the player has 11 opportunities to miss - that's too wide a berth for failure. The system also had variable penalties - if you misspressed a button prompt you loss time on the cooking meter. If you didn't press anything, you missed the opportunity, but not the time - but the clock was still ticking, so you did lose time, just not as much. In the end, the difficulty of cooking each item was all over the place. It was also possible to create "unwinnable" scenarios if I made the button sequence too long, the time too short, or the cursor speed too slow. Testing each item manually to ensure doability was too tedious and unreliable - it was a mess!

Which is why, the underlying cooking system was revamped. The new meta data looks like : "COOK,57,62,seq_length,5,spd,1.5,ease_add,2". This is a lot more readable. Beyond the first 3 entries, the arguments could be specified in any order. And their meanings were easy to understand.

"seq_length,5" means a random button sequence of 5 will be generated (no need for me to personally generate it)

"spd,1.5" means the cursor moves at 1.5x speed. I could also leave this field out to get a default value of 1x cursor speed.

"ease_add,2" - the biggest improvement to the system is how we now approach difficulty. We streamlined a miss-press and a missed opportunity as the same level of "mistake", and difficulty is framed as, "how many mistakes is the player allowed to make and still have a successful result?" By default, the player is afforded the ability to make 2 mistakes, and "ease_add,2" bumps the number of allowable mistakes to 4. We then automatically calculate how much "time" the player should have to cook something based on its cursor speed, how long the button sequence is, and how many mistakes the player is allowed to make. This was a more sensible and efficient system that let me knock out all 38 healing item cook sequences in one sitting!

-------------------------- Badges Nearly Done --------------------------

As you may recall from the last update, I was working on implementing the badges.

Thinking up the badge and having its graphic drawn is just the first half. Underneath, the code also needs to be made to track all the relevant player stats - how many times the player fished, ate, got money, used a certain move, etc. Some badges require extra guards, because they can be spoofed. For instance, the "Treasure Hunter" badge is obtained when the player has collected XXXX RIN through the course of your journey. However, there is something like a "gold exchange" in the game, where you could circularly trade gold and RIN to boost this number artificially. It's important to guard against cases like those.

So far, 30 of 33 badges are implemented. The last three have to do with late-game things that have inter-dependencies that we're still figuring out. The Speed running badge for instance is still dependent on two things. One, I need to speed run the game a few times to see how fast it's possible to beat the game and decide finally what's a reasonable time-limit. Two, there's actually a time-keeping bug which can inflate the game time if the system is left in sleep mode. I don't expect either things will be too hard to figure out - just gotta find the time for it.

-------------------------- Script Extra Polished --------------------------

We continued to polish the script, which I thought was basically done before. We added some extra NPCs here and there, and fleshed out the world with lore text where it seemed appropriate. In the end, the game's script ballooned to over 100,000 words! Hah... It's definitely DONE now however!

Some interesting things I noted as I was polishing old text - there were quite a few instances where Gail talks. I began the game's development with the idea that Gail should definitely talk since I wanted her to be a more active participant in what she chose to do. But I discovered later that if Gail talks, but only talked a little, she comes off as a very reticent person. There's no middle lane here - you're either all in or all out.

If Gail was a silent protagonist, she still talked symbolically. She is understood to be talking based on how people react to her - kinda like Link. So that's the direction I went with in the end (again). When Gail has occasion to talk, it comes in the form of a player dialogue choice. She also has an inner voice when she needs to remind the player to do something.

Another reason I went with this direction, is for brevity. Take this exchange for instance: QUEST GIVER : Can you help me find this super rare ingredient? GAIL : Maybe. I can't make any promises...

If Gail is silent, I can reduce those 2 lines to 1. QUEST GIVER : Can you help me find this super rare ingredient? GAIL : ...

-------------------------- Business Taxes --------------------------

Not too exciting, but new year means I gotta do taxes for the business. They're a lot more complicated than personal taxes, and more expensive! Since the game hasn't sold anything, you would think there'd be nothing to file. Hah! If only... The business is there so we can act as a legal entity and record expenses for when we do start selling. I really want to focus on making games, but there’s a small percentage of it that is sometimes boring and dreadful (-_-) ... still it needs to be done.

------------- Why no Public Beta Testing? -------------

As you may have noticed, I haven't put out any public calls for testing help despite being at that stage. Some have offered to help, which I appreciate! But sadly, I cannot accept. Here's the story for that.

Two and a half years ago, I got my hands on a console dev kit - that's very exciting, so I hurriedly took the steps to convert my dev station to be console-capable. After about two weeks, I had the console version working and integrated into my workflow, so all appeared good...

4 Months later, an artist needed an updated PC build to test some new art assets, so I went to build a new PC version. We use Unity, so generally you just need to click your desired build target, and hit "build". However, I now discovered that by attaching the console "hooks" into my work environment, I could no longer build to PC... It was possible, from my end, to test the game from the dev station in dev mode, which was why it went undiscovered for so long.

I did try to excise the hooks, but proved unsuccessful after a day of work. I decided to take this as an opportunity to focus exclusively on the console version first, which afforded me some niceties. Knowing that there's a standardized control scheme meant I could make full use of the control stick for the fishing mini-game. I also didn't need to create a rebindable keys menu - which is a MUST for PC versions... Most importantly, it lets me focus on making the one version as good as possible before moving onto the next. I have NO idea how those other guys release on all platforms at once...

Chalk it up to inexperience. In my defense, this will be my first commercial release, so bear with me. Don't worry, I still plan to make the PC version! It's a bit unconventional, but we're just going to go in the reverse direction of the usual. Console first, then PC, then other consoles. Wherever it makes financial sense, there we will be. (Sorry Ouya!)

Back to the original question - that's why I haven't sent out any public calls for playtesting. Current playable builds of the game are locked to my console dev kit. So actual playtesting unfolds in a very closed setting. Like what I did with Will, I literally sit behind the playtester, breathe down their neck, and watch them play, taking notes all the while.

But since I'm observing the player directly, even just one playthrough nets me a TON of bugs and adjustment tasks. So it evens out I think.

-------------------------- Trailers, Release Dates, etc. --------------------------

Alright, get your frowns ready...

We finished two trailers, and they're raring to go. BUT! We can't show them yet... We're sort of at an awkward spot where we're waiting on some conversational threads to conclude. Say we win a slot in a show - that'd be a HUGE plus for us - but that may also be contingent on us having NOT shown anything substantial yet. The game in its unrevealed state is a negotiating chip. So we're trying to leverage that... and you can only do the reveal once...

We also want to have some "actionable" items in the trailer - a launch date you could mark on your calendar, a wishlist, a website you can visit, etc. So since those things aren't entirely lined up yet, we can't let the trailers rip just yet...

Right now, I can only say we're *aiming* for a late Q2/early Q3 launch. But I can't commit to anything concrete yet. As soon as we know, we'll happily sing it from the rooftops. I hope I can update this blog sooner with good news, but if things move slowly again, I'll send out the next "we're alive" update 2 months from now (end of April).

I know it's frustrating to have nothing major after so long still, so I captured some gameplay footage... May it sate your hungers!

-------------------------- Footage 1 : Fishing --------------------------

You've seen pictures of the fishing, but never video of it in action. Well, here it is!

(And right after I uploaded the video, I noticed there actually was a video of fishing before. D’oh)

The idea is simple. First, get the lure in front of a fish, and assuming the fish isn't scared, it will soon bite. Then begins a fight sequence, where your energy meter is pitted against the fish's energy meter. Whoever's energy outlasts the other's wins.

The fish's resistance is represented by a red moving circular subsection. You fight the fish by pushing the control stick and keeping it on the subsection, which will dart around and try to escape you. Bigger and tougher variants of fish will do a "shake" which will reverse the wheel. When the wheel is reversed, so too are the controls, so it gets extra tricky!

While fishing, your energy meter doesn't recover, so one of the ways you level up your fishing ability is by finding energy gems to increase your max energy. There's another way - but we'll keep that a secret.

-------------- Footage 2 : Kobold Boss Fight --------------

You can actually skip the next section if you'd prefer to be surprised and you find your hunger for info sated. That's how I prefer to consume the games that I know I'm going to get. If you're still hungering for info, and you don't mind the slight spoilers, then feel free to proceed!

The next video shows the new Kobold Boss fight. Let's take a moment to reflect on the old game's visuals and how far it's come...

(we've come a long way since the time of the flash game)

You'll notice the Kobold boss has a name now - Katash! He's a significant enough character that he's earned it. The second thing you'll notice is that he looks better!

Some people have humorously pointed out that the old boss looks like Wolf O'Donnel from Star Fox. There's a funny story behind that. Basically I asked an artist to draw me a space wolf. And the artist, whom I'm assuming wasn't familiar with Wolf O'Donnel, drew that - all of it - all the animations and everything. The first time I laid eyes on it, it was already done, so it was too late to ask for edits. So I just ran with it.

That was seven years ago. Nowadays, I know to involve myself more in the process. I ask for just the design first, and we don't move forward with animations until we're happy with the design. Life lessons!

By the way, if you like Katash’s personal boss theme, give it a lesson on Will's Sound cloud (LINK)

-------------------------- Fan Arts -------------------------- Lots of fan art came in over the past 3 months!

This one is a pixel animation made by Pimez, and shows Gail singing a Christmas carol in various parts of the game. So cute! Years ago, I too was making little animated gifs for my favorite games, so it really brings me back!

This one was made by cARTographer (twitter link) after a request by Deli_mage, so thank you both. Gail rocking stylish boots with a pose that shows confidence in her batting skills. Very anime - Love it!

Another submission of laptekosz of the Last Song of Earth area. Whereas the last picture depicted the night sky, now the orange trees are lit by a rising sun. Artfully done! Kinda makes me want to eat eggs. I hope you'll like the new Last Song of Earth area just as much :D

A new artist to the scene, Not_Quin, submitted two pictures, one of Gail and one of the Sand Drake re-imagined as a centipede. I'm always a fan of these re-imaginings! I like how it's spiky all over and appears to be wearing a skull mask. The Sand Drake is often pointed out to be too similar to Zelda's Dodongos, so maybe a long slithery body would have indeed served better. Fun fact, long ago, when we were working on Phoenotopia 2 in earnest, we actually had a giant man-eating worm planned - WIP animation depicted below. One day... one day...

Negativus Core made two cool new arts! I'm really impressed by their use of unique perspective! Having characters run towards the screen or reaching close to the screen from afar is tricky since the proportions get all distorted - but not an issue for Negativus Core! Love the blur on Gail to show speed, with 66 in focus - really skillfully done! And the cube. Amazing!

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I'm really honored by the huge fan art community. Thank you all! 

[echodrops]

Ten Totally Awesome, Very Serious, Incredibly Valid Reasons to Ship Shigaraki/Ochako

Pleaseee Note: This is a parody post. If you’re looking for real reasons to ship Shigako (M&Ms voice: they do exist!), they’re over here.

Spoilers for My Villain Academia, watch out.

Uh, also, before anyone goes stereotypically tumblr on me, no, I obviously do not condone shipping minors and adults. But I do fully support future fics, age changes, and AUs because I can actually conceptualize of fictional characters in circumstances different from the canon. First person to send me anon hate about a four-year age gap will be punted into the sun.  

1) Uraraka already has a track record of being attracted to a Merch-Collecting Nerd Prince with Zero Chill and only One Pair of Red Sneakers to his name.

It’s only inevitable that one day she’ll come to her senses and upgrade to the VASTLY SUPERIOR Nerd King Special Edition HD Re-Release™ instead.

Thank you to Reddit for providing me multiple pictures comparing these vile shoes.

2) Shigaraki might be a crazed terrorist hell bent on total world destruction, but he’s not interested in kinky girls.

Freak in the streets, vanilla in the sheets.

A PERFECTLY NORMAL girl like Ocha–

You know what, on second thought, let’s just… move along…

3) He’s got blue hair, she likes to wear pink. He was a skater boi, she said see yah later boi.

According to The Complete Colorstrologist’s Guide to Metaphysical, Metaphoric, and Metastasizing Personal Wells of Well-Being (publication pending); the expert opinions of at least three licensed metaphysicotheologico-cosmolonigologists; whatcolorismyaura .com (which is flagged as a security risk by my browser, and which I was too scared to actually unflag, even for the sake of this joke); like half of a $1.50/hour consultation with the professionals of 1-800-PSY-CHIC (which I hope is not a real phone number); and five whole minutes of Googling, pink and blue are infinitely compatible colors! The intensity and compassion of those possessing the pink aura helps to temper the brutal intuition and blunt honesty of the blue aura! The reliability and follow-through of one pastel soul empowers the bubbly generosity of the other! This is just plain and simple scientifically proven fact. Does your ship align with the stars?! I didn’t think so.

FURTHERMORE, deciphering the Illuminati’s cryptographic RGB code reveals that the-only-color-of-pink-anime-girls-are-allowed-to-wear corresponds perfectly to Numerology Life Path Number 7, while baby blue corresponds to Life Path 2, which, like, basically totally means they’re soulmates.*

* Every sign is your soulmate if you go through enough of the Google results.

Please also consider: Cotton candy is delicious.

I stole this picture from a vape shop. Please don’t sue me, vape shop.

4) Shigaraki and Uraraka would obviously be the ultimate low maintenance power couple.

They say that the most harmonious pairs are people who live similar lifestyles, right? Get you a man who won’t judge your habit of window-shopping at convenience stores.

Think of all the ridiculous AU fanfics the world is tragically missing out on!

Where is the penniless millennial disaster roommate AU?! (Can’t afford real food? Mochi makes the dream work. Their roof springs a leak? F R E E shower. Coupon game too strong. God help the person who cuts them in line for samples at the grocer’s.) Where is the “We got fake married for the tax breaks” AU?! (”Wait, what do you mean divorces cost money?”) The “Don’t think I’ll take it easy on you in battle just because we keep meeting at the 99¢ ¥100 store” AU?! The--

5) Who doesn’t love a beauty and the beast story? A tale as old as time? Song as old as rhyme?

I, for one, have perfect faith in the ability of Shigaraki’s beauty to civilize even the most horrendous of monsters.

6) Look Uraraka–

–you might have to bail his ass out of jail for murder, but at least you know you’ll never catch him cheating!

6.5) Their ship name could be Stardust. 🌠S T A R🌠🌌D U S T🌌!!! Why are y’all still sleepin’?!! Arghhkfghjfgh!

7) She’s already met his whole family!

The introduction got off on an awkward foot, trueee, but look on the bright side: there definitely won’t be any complaints about their relationship from his side of the aisle!

8) Her quirk makes her nauseous? That’s okay. He’s A L W A Y S nauseous.

It doesn’t get any more romantic than taking turns holding each other’s hair, and research suggests people who have maximum innate chemistry mirror each other’s physical behaviors without even noticing! You could say they just can’t hold it in anymore! It’s really overflowing! In this essay, I will-- 

9) The couple that plays together, stays together. 

This is where I WOULD put a picture of Shigaraki gaming... if Horikoshi had ever drawn one, but he WON’T, because he knows full well that Shigaraki is a fake gamer who only ever watches Let’s Plays.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single male in possession of a decent PC build, must be in a want of a hot gamer girlfriend. Semi-mythical in nature, it is rumored that once every nine years, when Mars aligns with the release of a new triple AAA title that has single player and no micro-transactions, a female gamer will reveal herself via dropping push-to-talk in the voice chat and will accept challengers of note. Should you best her in battle, the ancient legend claims, she may deem you a worthy companion. But lose, and your dignity fate will lie entirely in her hands.

Ochako is crazy competitive. Shigaraki’s ass is grass.

10) You ever see him act like this much of a doofus for anyone but Uraraka Ochako?

I rest my case.

[agentredfort]

In that case plz tell me what happened to Blacker was he okay? Did you hurt my boy?

fuck it RubyQuest is abandoned pretty much so I’m gonna lay it all out for you guys. Here’s what I had. 

So if you hadn’t guessed, there were going to be seven letters in total (’first of seven, more to find’). The name of the project file Ruby found in Blacker’s room (’Project Chromatic’) was indicative of that - the letters would all correspond to the ROYGBIV color spectrum, e.g. one letter to each color of the rainbow. You guys found the red letter first. Nice one. Each letter would contain a clue leading to the next one. In the case of the red one (and I’m not sure how oblique this was, you guys will have to tell me) - the first two lines to the poem were the main clue. 

‘NOTHING IS QUITE AS IT SEEMS/I’M FULL OF CLUES - AND FULL OF WHAT?’ - this was meant to indicate the Full-O-Beans Coffee Shop, as seen on the map at the very beginning. the key to this was the inconsistent rhyming scheme (seems/beans is the replacement that would actually rhyme). ideally, i would have made the poem longer to make it even more obvious, but I’m not really a poet. 

Upon going to the coffee shop, Ruby (and whoever else she had managed to pick up by that point, probably some of her other school friends) would have discovered the orange letter, which would have directed her to another location on the map with another clue. I didn’t get as far as writing up all the locations and clues apart from the final one. The running theme was going to be, each letter has a different sort of poem in it (which may or may not be coded), and the main clue in each poem is evident from the line which breaks the standard structure of whatever type of poem it is. I think orange was going to be an acrostic, yellow was going to be a limerick, etc. the final letter was going to be a full-on sonnet. I’m sort of glad I never got that far. That would’ve been hell to write.

Anyway, bottom line: Ruby & co end up running all over town (depending on what you guys end up doing in the comment sections/ask box) and maybe getting involved on other shenanigans that I make up as you go along, just to keep things interesting. 

If you had dropped back into Ruby’s house at any point after discovering the orange letter, you would have noticed that Hitch has also disappeared (no sign of a struggle, though) and isn’t answering your messages or calls. Suspicious and ominous. Ditto for Froghorn and after yellow, LB would have disappeared also. Any other Spectrum operatives that Ruby is close/familiar with (Dr Harper, SJ, etc) would also have been gone after blue. You get the picture. This was all background stuff, though, and it really would have depended on the choices you would make. I was going to make a rough outline (since I had seen that people were enthusiastic about the whole idea and willing to Play With Me In The Space) with bits for every location and notes for events that would occur but sickness struck and I never got around to it, you know the rest.

so, the final location. the grand sonnet in the final purple letter. It would have led... back to Spectrum? whaaaaaaaaaaaaat??? I didn’t work out the exact location. It would either have been somewhere central like LB’s office or somewhere that Ruby’s literally been to before. whether Clancy (and whoever else you guys ended up Collecting In The Party) ended up coming along with Ruby or not for this bit would have been entirely up to you. although, for the record, he and the other kids would have been extremely enthusiastic about tagging along because Ruby Needs Backup, Goddammit.

Also, all the while through this whole adventure, it would have been getting later and later. So late that, in fact, by the time Ruby reaches the final location, it would have been nearly midnight.

as for what’s in the room when you get there?

here’s some things you guys missed/skipped over in the first few installments.

The CALENDAR on your wall has tomorrow circled in a BIG RED RING! 

nobody picked up on this or asked to elaborate on why tomorrow was so significant.. hmm. also, in the first phone call, Clancy is calling to check in on if ‘they’re still on for tomorrow’ for a ‘mystery adventure thing’. hmm. also, Hitch was being SUPER evasive about helping out with the letter and also driving her to spectrum HQ.  h m m . 

Anyway, that final door. Ruby (and whoever) get to it. It’s locked. One final puzzle to solve - how to get in? I probably would have let her (and you guys) agonize over this for a while, before revealing the solution: it’s time-locked to open at exactly midnight.

so, the door clicks open. Ruby takes a deep breath, tightens her hold on whatever makeshift weapon she’s armed herself with (or not, idk what you guys would have ended up choosing) and cautiously inches in -

“SURPRISE”

and there’s streamers everywhere and people wearing party hats and probably cake too. and ruby probably ends up nearly killing somebody because Fight-Or-Flight Response, and that someone is probably Blacker or Hitch (much to their amusement) but honestly the kid probably has PTSD at this point so what did you guys even EXPECT

anyway YEAH it was all an elaborate 14th birthday surprise for Ruby from her Spectrum friends!!! today - because it’s after midnight - Saturday? it’s her birthday!! they faked the kidnapping (also a bit of a dick move in retrospect) to add Intrigue to the Mystery. ruby likes breaking codes and sneaking around so they engineered a whole-ass mystery based around that - Froghorn and Blacker did the codes, everybody else collaborated on setting up the scavenger hunt and party, etc. (the ‘S’ on the letters stood for Spectrum, go figure) and now it’s time for a midnight party. literally everyone’s there. LB’s there, even fucking Froghorn’s there. presents are given. they’re great presents, too. if Ruby’s school friends are there explanations will have to be thought up about Hey Ruby Who Even Are These People but all in all it’s fun and fluffy and goofy. the end!!

if there’s anything else about this you’re curious about feel free to ask! I think I covered most of it though.

also, if you’re curious as to what the Bulgarian Umbrella does/was supposed to do, I advise you to go google it. how would it have been helpful for Ruby? I have No Idea Whatsoever. 

[bigyack-com]

When Department Stores Were Theater

After the hundreds of jobs going poof and the thus-far inadequate discounts, the saddest thing about the closure of Barneys New York is that its signature naughty window displays will recede even further in collective memory.A Hail Mary campaign earlier this year imploring shoppers to go inside even as the store declared bankruptcy (“STRUT STRUT STRUT STRUT STRUT STRUT”) was but a faint echo of the era when subversive tableaus of papier-mâché public figures, found objects, condoms on Christmas trees and the occasional scampering vermin mesmerized crowds, offended cardinals and even sold some clothes.But “we’re in a post-window-display world,” said Simon Doonan, the Barneys O.G. window dresser, in a telephone interview, noting the “impenetrable facade” of Dover Street Market, heir apparent to the luxury avant-garde. Its New York entrance has only small, high apertures above pedestrian eye level.“In the old days, window displays were the primary form of marketing — fashion was the same as butcher shops and fishmongers,” he said. “Now, if you’re waiting till someone walks past your store, you’ve lost the fight.”Indeed, the bustling new Nordstrom on 57th Street dispenses with traditional boxed-in display windows entirely, replacing them with a shallow, wavy facade that John Bailey, a spokesman, assured would be festooned with red and white lights come Black Friday. The facade is “an interactive viewing experience for customers walking by,” he wrote in an email, “connecting the shopping experience in store to the energy of the city.” (And the energy of customers’ phones.) A young employee at the central help desk said elliptically that “our windows are our customer service.”Gather ’round, children, and let Auntie Alexandra tell of when department stores, now mostly glassy, anodyne places you go to exchange online purchases, used to put on a show. Sometimes more entertaining than the theater.First, though, a quick gallop through what remains of New York’s holiday windows in 2019, and the hopeful cornucopias within.At the doomed Barneys flagship on 61st Street, there was of course bubkes, just signs reading: “Everything Must Be Sold! Goodbuys, then Goodbye.” Inside on the fifth floor, female customers were listlessly flipping shoes to glance at the soles and calculate the markdown, as if with muscle memory from the much-lamented warehouse sale. Four creaky flights up, the power lunch spot Fred’s, named for Fred Pressman, Barneys’ charismatic chairman who died in 1996, was full — even as a worker held a headless naked mannequin steady by her neck on a hand truck, waiting for the elevator to go down, down, down.A few blocks away preens Bergdorf Goodman, the beautiful princess whose holding company, Neiman Marcus, muscled recently into the Hudson Yards, like a watchful mother-in-law moving into the guest cottage. There are no old-school windows at the gleaming new Neiman, being that it’s high up off the dirty street in a mall (and incidentally charging kids $72 per head for breakfast with Santa). But at Bergdorf, David Hoey, the store’s senior director of visual presentation, and his team have gamely produced a concept called Bergdorf GoodTimes. Literally gamely. Like, filled with actual games.One window was captioned “Queen’s Gambit” (chess); another, “Jackpot!” (pinball); another, “Winner Take All” (casino — perhaps a dry subconscious commentary on the high-stakes state of retail). Around the corner, a life-size board game, “Up the Down Escalator,” was dotted with fictional gift cards, coin of the online-shopping realm.Mr. Hoey’s sophisticated, colorful creations did not seem intended for little ones — and anyway those were scampering around across the street, splashing in small pools and peering into mirror-glass “sky lenses” outside the Fifth Avenue Apple store. Paging Dr. Lacan!Further east on 59th and Lexington Avenue, dear old Bloomingdale’s was flagrantly violating several of the decorative precepts set out by Mr. Doonan in his seminal 1998 book, “Confessions of a Window Dresser: Tales From a Life in Fashion.” Specifically: “do remember that technology is boring” and “don’t incorporate sex.”If Bergdorf is rolling the dice on the future of the department store — eroded perhaps irrevocably by Amazon’s mighty, corrosive flow — Bloomie’s is searching the stars. Not the celebrities whose daffy effigies used to populate Mr. Doonan’s windows, mostly with enthusiastic cooperation (Madonna, Magic Johnson, Norman Mailer, Prince, Queen Elizabeth), but a lavish commingling of astronomy and astrology titled Out of This World.Robots were placing ornaments on a tree and sitting at a synthesizer ready to play the carol of your choice at the push of a button. Google Nest, a sponsor, was poised to turn on the tree, the lights; the fire. And astronauts were floating in a “3, 2, 1, Gift Off,” or was it a “GIF Off?” Female mannequins embodying various figures of the zodiac were outfitted like go-go dancers, all pearls and feathers and curvature: propped up against each other on a pedestal as a recording played of John Legend singing, incongruously, “Christmas in New Orleans.” Inside, on the main floor, one embodying Cancer the Crab hung upside down from the ceiling: eyes closed, suspended over a hoop, hand-claws splayed, rotating slowly. Her bared, inverted legs conjured less the #MeToo era than the infamous “meat grinder” photo of the June 1978 Hustler magazine that feminists used to protest on Manhattan sidewalks.

Razzle-Dazzle in the Mezzanine

Mr. Doonan had called from Los Angeles, where he was, among other activities, promoting a monograph to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Maxfield, the boutique there. This even though when he was in the window-dressing business, “I was very anti-anniversary and I vetoed all of them. They just made the company seem old and boring. It looks dusty.”Though I agree 100 percent and moreover think the ascription of significance to particular numbers is as ridiculous as astrology, it also happens to be the 40th anniversary of a seismic and undersung event in department-store history: when the performer Elaine Stritch was the M.C. of an elaborate fashion show at Liberty of London, the emporium known for its fine fabrics. (Many women in those years still sewed household clothes from patterns.)Arranged by Peter Tear, then Liberty’s head of marketing and publicity, and choreographed by Larry Fuller of “Evita,” the show somehow managed to cross-promote the low-tar Silk Cut cigarette with a silk congress happening in London. Concordes were deployed with top models on board. Cocktails were concocted by the Café Royal down the road. Fifty-odd designers contributed special outfits for the occasion, including Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Yves Saint Laurent.Another was David Emanuel, who, with his wife and partner, Elizabeth, would design the show’s bridal gown (and later Princess Diana’s).“People gasped,” he said, remembering the Liberty event on a crackly trans-Atlantic phone line. “They were aching for ‘larger than life.’” Mr. Emanuel described Stritch — subject of my recently published biography, “Still Here” (hey, it’s the selling season) — in a sequined tuxedo jacket, singing among other numbers “Falling in Love Again” à la Marlene Dietrich to the enraptured ladies who lunch who had paid five quid admission apiece for the show, which ran thrice daily over the course of a week. “It has more punch and pulchritude packed into its 51 minutes than most West End musicals twice as long,” one newspaper commented.Mr. Doonan theorized that Liberty, fighting a dainty, twin-set image, had taken inspiration from what the storied retailer Marvin Traub was doing then at Bloomingdale’s. “The whole thing was that the store was the stage — the razzle-dazzle of flash and pizazz and lo and behold, there’s a swimwear fashion show with Pat Cleveland coming down the escalator,” he said. “Every day was ‘curtain up!’ at Bloomingdale’s.”Truly, what could be more of an ultimate fantasy set than the department store of yore, with its infinite “costumes,” props and built-in risers, its endless potential for comedy, dance, drama and even horror? Florenz Ziegfeld’s pre-code movie “Glorifying the American Girl,” showcasing his Follies, starts in one. The heroic airman in “The Best Years of Our Lives” returned to work as a soda jerk in another; ennobled by the theater of war, he chafed at his diminishment in the feminine one of trade.Barbra Streisand gamboled through Bergdorf in 1965 for her TV special, trying on fur coats and hats, spritzing perfume and singing a Fanny Brice-ish medley of “Second Hand Rose” and “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” to funny and glamorous effect. James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim’s “Twilight Zone”-inflected broadcast musical, “Evening Primrose,” was set in a department store called Stern’s, and featured a poet played by Anthony Perkins remaining after-hours, giddy at the idea of the creativity that his solitude, enhanced by all the products he needs, will stimulate. At one point he stands on an escalator belting, “I’m here! I’m here!” foreshadowing the famous anthem in Goldman and Sondheim’s own “Follies” taken up late in life by Stritch. (Later a young woman he discovers there sings of remembering snow: “Soft as feathers/ Sharp as thumbtacks.” She had been left there, in Hats, as a child by her preoccupied mother, but now with climate change the lyric sounds like prescient ecological lament.)Even after the fiasco of Andrew McCarthy at Philadelphia’s Wanamaker’s (R.I.P.) in “Mannequin” 20 years later, and the slow creep of the suburban mall, there was yet another remake of “Miracle on 34th Street.”“Where did Auntie Mame go when she lost all her money?” Mr. Doonan reminded. “Selling roller skates at Macy’s.”It’s hard to imagine, though not impossible, that department stores will remain important sites of commerce and culture much longer. But the largest one in the city is not about to go quietly. At Macy’s, which takes up an entire block, there is a jumble of every sort of window.There are old-fashioned windows devoted to the story of Virginia O’Hanlon, the little girl who wrote to The New York Sun in 1897 asking if there was still a Santa Claus. Around the corner, there are high-tech windows giving voice to a little girl who wants to be Santa Claus. And around another corner: still other windows filled simply with giant Barbies. Being female in the early 21st century is nothing if not a series of mixed messages, but this attempt to empower seemed already antiquated; if Mr. Doonan were still working on windows, surely he would have gone straight for Mx. Claus?The ghost of Barneys yet to come is at Saks Fifth Avenue, which has licensed its former rival’s name, and where windows have been themed with glittering corporate efficiency to the international blockbuster “Frozen 2.” This may delight the tourists, but city dwellers remembering the craft and chance and silliness of the old holiday extravaganzas — when the designers and the famous people and the window dressers were all sticking pins in each other, and the audiences crowded four-deep on the pavement for the free sideshow — will probably be left cold. Source link Read the full article

[zeroglitchtic-blog]

Here To Change It All...

Hey Guys -

So hmmm… What can I say? Ok, well I have been working on this Business Plan for the past 13 years. I took the past 13 years and developed a final plan to solve Homelessness, Poverty, and Sexual Exploitation. It took me around 3 years just to get an idea about and to learn how Crypto Currency can fund the entire business. Unfortunately due to Crypto Currency Mining the video cards I need for it are about $4,500.00ea. And I need 20 of them to complete one Build. On another note I invented a game app and the other night I invented another App idea too. It will be cool to get them made for real. Right now I’m kind of in an obsession with this Pastel Goth look and I want to create my own look by taking some Bell Bottoms from this company called Gypsy Rose and a cool Hoodie and then order Bulk Boxes of the same color Boas and a Hemp Back Pack and some clothing LED Lights and to sew them on to the clothing really carefully to get an amazing look and to buy some books on Cosplay Makeup, Glam Makeup, and Tutorials on Makeup for Black People and create my own Glam Goth look. I want to produce the images into products for my new store when I open it. I have worked for over a decade on my plan to rescue the homeless, people in need, exploited kids and adults and it took me three years of researching Ethereum Mining to0 figure out how I would fund my company. One NVIDIA.com Video card will cost me around $4,500.00 to get the best one they have and the most profitable of them and my build that I designed takes 20 Video Cards and brings in around $10K/mo. So I’ll make Hundreds of Thousands of them and fill every business location I gets basement with as many Builds as will fit and warehouses full of them too. Once I get going a lot of people will want for little anymore. I told my fiancé that I would set him up with another personal place of his own, like a loft or something and have several Ethereum Miners there just for him and I’ll show him how to use them and make money with them so that we’ll be on more equal footing and I’ll have legal documents setup that will supply him with his own place and no matter what our relationship turns out to be that I can’t cut him off or affect him in any way to upset his stability and financials. I hope to have it setup before we get married. I plan on having several locations to live over time but one of the very first locations that I get and setup is going to be a three bedroom apartment that I’ll setup to be displayed on my company’s home page in the same way that a 365 degree display of Real Estate Property is displayed except that I hope to use the help of Ad Agents to have special products setup, like displays from Coca Cola, and other Brands and to get the Companies displayed to provide donations for the advertisements.

I hope to land contracts that are with like laundry soap and cleaning supplies and brands of Pre-Paid Credit and Gift Cards, and Electronics, etc. To use only their brands at my locations for special discounts or with some kind of residual donations from them, so things like Bed Bath and beyond and Companies that sell bedding and so on. I hope to get special accounts or even to open Hundreds of Reseller Accounts and purchase from my own accounts. I’ll have fractureme.com High Def Glass Photos hanging on the walls that display images of homelessness and people living in poverty, etc. As the artwork and otherward the location will be setup with Height of Technology in i9t and Luxury and excellent decorations and renovations with new smart appliances and if possible in home laundry too. The entire apartment will be setup to look as if a family lives there that has two kids, a boy and girl and the rooms will be fully setup and stocked with clothing and desks and school supplies, software, text books, reading books, game stations and games, CDs, DVDs, Anime, and Desktop and Laptop on the bed with MP3 Player and cell phone on its charger and even a few pieces of trash in the trash cans and so on, even the adults rooms will be setup the same with a Home Office and files in the living room, etc. Every room will come with their own safes and have finger print and key pad locking doors and in the safes will c0ome an envelope full of cash and several types of pre-paid cards. The computers will be top of the line and Extreme types, totally maxed out, with extensive external Hard Drives and full of useful software that is fully paid for and more. Once the 365 degree walkthrough Video is made than everything will be packed into specially positioned glass cases for display, so like the laptop, cell phones, digital cameras, camcorders, Gift Cards, and some other things will go into displays so that when there are walk trough's to help gain donors less can be stolen easily. I will spend a lot of time setting up the location with a simply safe security system and register everything in the apartment with renters insurance and register them with their own individual companies. I’ll have the entire place setup with services and each room with smaller Ethereum Miners that work and are actively earning money and have monitors on the walls that display the earnings and exchanges pricing in each room. But the apartment will be maintained by my financial Company that I get. Every Account would be active, the lease, the cable, the Home Phone, mobile phones, Internet, and all the individual emails, and all the software will be registered to those emails and even Turn-Key online businesses and so on setup as examples and displays for the apartment and newsletters, and more with ads for the Turn-Key Businesses. The files in the Offices and kids rooms will hold the Hard Copy files of all the Accounts and Registration Info and Gamer Info. Emails and Advertisement info and more, including the online versions, Browser favorite links, and profile saves, address books filled out and more. It seems like a lot but every tiny detail will be through of from every item being photographed and filed with their own insurance, registrations, and receipts, to even unique personally searched out and handpicked USB Drives that are installed with PortableApps.com software and paid versions of the software on those apps and all of it filed and registered both digitally and in Hard Copy.

And there will be a personalized welcome Manual for each person and all their accounts and how the apartment works, the Wi-Fi locks, the smart TV Accounts, their personal safe’s codes, and every computer log-in, how and where to find all their Hard Copy and Digital Account info and if something comes up missing or breaks how to file for renters insurance to replace it and police reports and how to contact their financial Agent for financial Aid and for when they want to go to college or to file a new bill or account for them to manage and also how their personal Ethereum Miner earns them their own money so that they are not tied to their financial allowance’s leash. There will be so much attention to detail because it will be the display house/apartment used for fund raising. It will be decorated and setup with extra details like Artist’s Piggy Banks around the rooms to collect donations and drop safes for people to donate Pre-Paid Cards and Checks and Cash, cell phones and I’ll have a Turn-Key Business in the home that people can buy and donate gift cards and cell phones, clothing cards, and tablets, laptops and to donate money by credit cards too. I’ll even setup cat climbing towers in all the corners and High End cat walks and rests on the walls and toy holders, etc. even Automatic cat boxes that clean and wash their own litter and cat supplies and dog products if the apartment allows dogs and more considerations that are suited for hosting gatherings and even just ease of today’s technological society like a moveable arm under a cabinet in the kitchen that holds a water proof tablet that is dedicated solely to cooking sites, and Home Food Delivery services. There will be cool little personal touches too from unique USB Drives to interesting lamps like this collectors Yoda Lamp and displays of air plants and even like on the desks will be pencils and pens with my company’s custom website on them and possibly even Antique Typewriter on a typing desk with several boxes of extra ribbon and Company Letterhead Quality Paper stacked next to it, possibly with a sheet in the type writer with the beginning page of one of my novels on it or a letter addressed to my First Business Location. And a typed and stamped addressed envelope next to it. I’ll do things like add magazines to the coffee table and things like expensive items will get locked inside display cubes or fastened to where they are. But most of the place will be meant to be fully interactive and the greeters and Hosts of the Donor Parties will be able to show the guests the fully interactive features of the apartment and all of its services, etc. From Posters on the kid’s walls and little Anime and Action Figurines to online Gamer Merchandise of in-game-content from the most popular games like Fortnight and stuff and most of the Books and movies will be excellent Sci-fi Hard Copy Novels of the Greats and books I’ve Loved. The Anime will be Deluxe Full Seasons with all the extra content and really cool 0ones and really good DVD Collections that are kid appropriate and in the parents room they will have more Adult titles like the complete Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal TV Series and Dexter Series, and John Wick Series and other Good Ones and in the kids room will be Ultimate Gamer Setups in a relaxation area away from sight of the desk so the kids won’t game and watch TV while they do homework and out of the bed area so they can have a shut down time and not game and stuff while they are supposed to shut down and sleep and they’ll have an Xbox, Play Station and Gamer Computer with all the VR and Bells and Whistles and even google Home Video Slate Devices on their Desk and By their Beds. The home will have several of them by each sitting area and then the Dot versions mounted on walls around the halls and a water proofed one in the bathroom so that there is whole home connectivity along with all the Tablets and Laptops and PCs connected to the Norton Secured Network as well as smart lights and even security cameras and a Door Peep Hole Device that Projects a large Video of who is at the door and takes photos of who comes to the door and sends it to the owners phone and that also allows for smart lock activation. The apartment will be the epitome of Beauty, Luxury, and Comfort and people that come to the home will be able to view installed manikins that are wearing company uniforms for all around seasons and types, the most expensive being the Winter ne that comes with heated gloves and socks and shoe insoles and Extreme Cold Military Boots and heat shell Jackets and full snow outfits. The outfits will come with their own pedestals that will have fliers on them that explain what the services that they go to are and the equipment needed for each one, like the House Keeping one, the Personal Assistant, the Odd Job, and snow removal, the Food Delivery one and like how much it will cost for the work vans and trucks and snow blowers and shovels and painting/cleaning supplies and the storage unit rentals for the equipment and cost of the uniforms that will each have my company Logo Embroidered on them and on each will be an employee Tag just like all employees will have. Another presentation will be video presentations played on loops on the screens in the living room that explain how my company will hire students fresh out of colleges that are entering the fields of nursing, psychology, and social work, legal aid, and about the services that will come with my company that will help any homeless person with absolutely nothing and addiction issues fully recover their lives with personally adapted services and complete financial support so that even if they are dealing with drug issues that they won’t need to sell their new property or prostitute for funding and that they will receive full support while they attend to their rehab needs as well as fully paid trade and college schooling and financial investments that are everything from timed trust payouts at major age milestones, to retirement and regular funds for travel around the world. There will be full employment programs inside my company and in the mainstream markets and my company will pay companies to keep employees hired and to hire people in need as well as options for customers that do things like use our yard service as incentives to keep my employees hired like getting major yard work done, in ground lawn sprinklers installed and landscaping, home repairs, and other improvements and upgrades to their utilities and home like the best water heaters, Hot Tubs, new Fences and so on to keep my company on contract for lawn care and snow removal and housekeeping and food delivery and so on. It will all be done by professionals in the fields when done and then my clients will up keep it with a flawless and no questions asked insurance and replacement process in case something is ever broken or stolen and there will be tons of other services since everyone in the world suffers from some state of poverty and need, that my company will collect even my customers into my fold and provide them with financial aids, paid schooling, debt payment, and doing things like picking up car and home payments and medical needs. Some families that have Autistic Children or Severally Handicapped family members or people with major medical needs or who are getting too old to take care of those family members, my company will search out and supply them with things like 24/7 live in Aids and money for uncovered medicines or experimental Treatments that their HMOs won’t cover and cosmetic Treatments and more. My company will do more than just that. I’ll use schools of Architecture to create fortified locations of Housing for over 100 Ethereum Miners that will bring in over $1 Million per month and have them built into schools so that teachers will be able to receive Top Pay and the schools will have more than enough for the best in school supplies and equipment and teaching Aids and like an example would be that the limited language learning classes would have a full computer network setup with every language that Rosetta Stone’s Language software offers and every student will have the ability to choose what language to learn. There will be funds for every extracurricular activity and my plans are to adopt the Chinese and Japanese attendance unit where kids swipe in and out of classes except I’ll make it so that kids will actually get paid cash to attend classes and to do homework and extra credit and science fairs and if they aren’t doing well to get tutors and to help others and that it will do things like give economics classes real money and be able to do real things with the money and learn firsthand and school papers and news how to do very real publications and run ads and more. My company will invest in local Mom & Pop shops and the community and get them to keep selling at rock bottom prices but selling High End Products so that the struggling community that uses them will suddenly be able to afford things like really good toilet paper, and snacks for their kids and eat well every day and even though I won’t be able to reach everyone and help the whole city, by proxy the community will become happier and their mood change will make the community better as a whole. I’ll do the same for places that serve food and coffee shops too so that they can drop their prices and use better quality foods and cleaning supplies and decorations and pay better because than the community will be able to come out and eat more and have more family experiences to build a healthier family around and memories and the community will become stronger for it. I’ll do things like take a Digital Camera and GoPro and go to every run-a-way shelter, and battered woman’s shelter and Underground Railro0ad project and Drop-In Center and Teen Challenge Center and photograph the entire area and interview everyone and find out what they need and what needs fixing and what they wish they could provide and install the best beds and most comfortable sheets and fluffiest comforters and turn them into wonder locations and expand their services and get all the kids and people new clothing and school supplies and make it rain and put them on above comfortable expense accounts. I’ll do the same for Orphanages and Un-Adopted kids that are too old, all the while setting up Luxury Apartments and Auction Houses and emptying out every shelter and soup kitchen and giving these Betrayed Souls what society should have done for them from day one. There are a million tiny things that I’ll be doing and I’ll write you all about them in upcoming letters. It took me 9 years to figure out how to do all this and it will take major Donors and Corporate Donors for me to afford to build enough Ethereum Miners to afford to do it quickly. But I’m going to dedicate the rest of my life to thi9s. Mommy Anne is giving me a $10,000.00 Trust and I’ll put it into my first beginner Ethereum Miner and it will only earn me about $2K/mo. And I’ll have to save and buy more of the best NVIDIA Video Cards and add to it. My build will hold 20 Cards and cost me around $88.505.70 to complete and make me around $10K/mo. when done. My goal is to reach 100 builds as fast as possible using Kickstarters.com and every crowd funding site on the internet and every social media network from around the globe. My work won’t just start and stop in Minnesota or even the USA. Once I am at a point where I have enough Ethereum Miners I’ll be able to expand them at a rate of 50-100 or more at a time creating $1 Million/mo. Jumps in income and higher with more donors and my work will jump boarders and I’ll hire kids and young adults from ar0und the world to locate and rescue their needy and sexually exploited and Brothel Children and people living in Poverty. I just hope I can do it fast enough to see it all happen before I die. I would start gofundme.com and kickstarter.com and dozens of other crowd funding sites and spread them across every social media and network possible but I need a cell phone. I’d also write to several Ad Agencies and give them a rundown of my plans and what I want them to do and have them create the Crowd Funding Ads for me because each site is different, has different formats, options for photos and Banners, and voice and the amount of words for each site and burn them onto disc for me and label them so that when I get out all I have to do is cut and paste and upload image 1,2,3 into spot 1,2,3 and know that there’s no grammar errors and I don’t come off sounding like a scam artist but I have no money for that. I’d also like to get Uncle Steve to help me setup my Business Financials so it’s fully tax exempt and so I can do angel giving like write random checks or give out cash or life time paid phones and more and write it off but he refuses to acknowledge me. Anyways… I haven’t written or spoken too many of you in over a couple decades and I wanted to tell you about my new life. Oh I’m an ordained Minister now too. There are several fun things that I want to do that are just to do because they are fun and good for the kid at heart and things that all kids wish they could do. I want to invest a lot into kid’s lives and their fun factor so I want to do things like get big into street fashion from around the world and to create an opportunity for kids to dress in amazing outfits from Japan and that are High Fashion and Cosplay styles and totally awesome so that going to school and dressing up crazy and amazing just becomes a daily part of life. In schools I want to start Drone Racing Programs with Regulation Drones and awesome courses. I want to get schools into robotics and nautical robotics and aerial Drones and to inspire kids to create water cleaners and air cleaners and alternate fuel and to program the most popular Virtual Reality World Communities as classes and to setup classes that have real life work training to them like how to use complicated office copiers and corporate email systems and multi-line phone setups and digital faxes and to change toners and create orders and write and produce proposals for meetings and run projectors and make digital presentations transfer from your personal office to the proper conference room on time and run flawlessly and to be able to do it using multiple types of software and types of the leading tools found in companies today.

I want to create several Safe Zone Houses in Drug Zones that were “Trap Houses” where people use drugs or sell drugs out of and clean them out and fix them up really well and set them up to be locations that street kids can come and Game and to get Hot meals and Great sandwiches at any time Day or Night and that people can come and get Hot Showers and wash their clothing and get Hygiene Products and fresh underwear and new clothing and shoes and Back Packs and school supplies and can get medical care from the nursing staff and have emergency beds Sometimes prostitutes and Drug Addicts need a hot shower, some good food to eat and a place that is safe to sleep at night behind a door that locks where they can feel safe for a moment in the Hell they are experiencing and a locker and safe to lock their property in so that they know that they can actually fall completely asleep without fear that someone will go through their pockets or demand sex. I want to setup each room with as much luxury and comfort as I dare with addicts coming and going and kids without safe homes. I want the beds to be super comfy and to even have weighted blankets and body pillows because weighted blankets give people a sensory feeling of safety and comfort and body pillows allow people to cuddle with someone who takes nothing in return. That is important. The bed must be super comfy and cozy, with too many pillows with a sitting chair that has a throw on it and book case filled with great novels and Manga Books and Built in Computers with a wide variety of Downloaded music and complimentary MP3 Player and paper for writing and an Antique Typewriter with Letterhead typing paper and Envelopes with a sign that says “free mail service down stairs.” I’ll have a laser printer attached to the computer and scanner and hookups for phones available. There will be a decent sound system and gaming counsel with downloaded and installed games on it and Xbox Live Account Active and setup, all secured so it can’t be stolen. There will be an intercom system and by the bed sweets and pamphlets for my Life Recovery Services. The rooms will not be meant for long term stays, usually just one-three days unless there are special and extreme cases. In the common areas will be ultimate gaming setups and multiple mounted TVs that have the ability to connect to wireless headphones so people won’t have to compete for sound if they are watching multiple TVs at once. In the back area will be a full computer lab and education center setup for kids and I’ll have staff that can help anyone with school work they need to get done. Like I said there are a million little things that I plan on doing with my Business. I found a vending company that allows for digital pricing and for an extra $900.00 I can add a credit card processer to it so I’m going to set several types up in different locations. I’m going to use retro ones that take coins and place them in apartment complexes that dispense single serve laundry detergent boxes and fabric softener packs and snack machine pop machine mixes. Than in some locations I’m going to use sources of pre-painted and sculpted fingernails that you can buy off line like on Etsy.com, Tumblr.com, and other sites and put them in machines that are at like malls and possibly schools and arcades and places kids go and have them wired to process credit cards and then put in random packs Pre-Paid Credit Cards with High Balances and advertise the chance to win one. I plan to run donation funding campaigns so that I can afford to supply them free and laptops with paid wireless PCI Cards for free to the kids at St. Jude’s Cancer Research Hospital and other Hospitals and Mental Health Programs that can’t afford to provide them for their patients but who’s patients need a distraction from their extreme illnesses and to do something with their families when they come to visit and for patients to be entertained by with their families. Something that happens to every person with a mental health issue that goes into the mental health system is that they end up losing every possession that they own and their entire apartments full of their lives get tossed in the trash. It’s happened to me 13 times and when I was young and pretty I ended up prostituting to replace over $26,000.00 of property some times. And so do many others. So one thing I’ll do is setup an apartment and property cleaning and packing service that washes all the dirty clothing and sheets and dishes and surfaces and professionally packs everything properly in bubble wraps and garment bo0xes and move and packs the entire apartment, moving it to self-storage units that the patients social security will pay for and for the paranoid patients photos and videos of the process will be taken and delivered on DVDs and the entire apartment will be cleaned and painted back to white with fire resistant paint so that their deposit will get returned to them. Because the mental health system never slows down from sending people back to mental hospitals the business will be a stable service from the start. I want to do some really cool things for kids in schools and all around on buying they super amazing clothing from Japan and China and other fashionable street looks that they normally couldn’t get or are too expensive for them and their families. There was this young boy that actually did it for his school but he got suits and proper fashion and I think it’s really important for kids not to lose that childhood part too soon so instead of suits I want to buy them awesome clothing that fits their aesthetic and that is beyond their reach financially and make it really fund and cool to be able to dress in their own uniqueness and not the regular jeans and T-Shirts. I am also going to download countless tutorials on how to do Beauty Tips like nails crafting, Hair and Makeup techniques from the simple to the extremely complex and to create DVD Collections of all of them and put them in special DVD Cases that hold 10 and 20 DVDs and maybe over 100 Tutorials and then sell them in Genre collections in magazines like Teen Beat and 17 and Girl Magazines. I’ll also do the same for people that are into crafting from the easy to really technical and some from landscaping to building computers and smart mirrors and more and collections of clothing patters and fashion techniques and cosplay techniques and more and sell those in collections in their genre of magazines too. I’ll do the same with cooking tutorials and recipe collections that are all both video and photos and print .pdf formats. I’ll do genres of Home Design and Projects from hanging pictures to making gardens to extreme projects like building underground Prepper Bunkers. Most of these collections I’ll build up over time I spend surfing the internet. I do a lot of Data Mining and read and learn a lot because I'm curious but now I’ll have focused products to create. Something else that I’ll do is assemble teaching tools for classrooms by using paid accounts on sites like curiosity stream and locating lectures and explanations on sciences and other subjects from simple math to high level theoretical math, sciences, biology, space science, robotics and AI, Virtual Worlds. I’ll even put together sex education presentations of different types and present them to multiple schools for review. Some schools don’t allow real sex education, some teach abstinence, others only teach STDs and so on. It will be a balancing act. Some might want diagrams and some might actually allow real images of sex organs and then there are practices of different cultures to consider and explanations of circumcisions and the Muslim culture that clip or burn off female baby’s clitoris and the explanations of their shawls. There are the full stories behind puberty and when females go through maturity and what they need to do when that happens. The changes in Boys and Girls the ages they change at, Birth Control, options of rape pregnancy pill options and the ways that people can give up a child if it’s too much for them instead of killing it. How adoptions work, the options of sperm donations, egg donations, and surrogacy, the birth process, C sections, and vaginal bi9rths, the drugs (epidermal) the effect of drugs and alcohol that will go through breast milk into the baby and HIV and how HIV is inside Breast milk. Types of parenting same sex parenting and relationships and even same sex rapes and domestic violence and more. The healthy beauty behind same sex relationships not just straight ones. Also things like medical issues, Handicaps, Autism, and more and pre born and medical dangers that can happen and what to do, ways to prepare for if your baby has a disability and more. It may take a ton of work to do but once a school accepts the educational program the work will be worth it. I want to create Job skill development programs and more. I want to actually change the entire education system. And the Prison Reform system. I’ll write more about those things in another letter. I (have a ton of personal experiences that give an insight into the world that most people don’t have and motivations that people don’t understand why someone would spend a fortune only to give it all away again. The thing is that money and wealth mean nothing to me. It’s just an annoyance and an obstacle and a social retardant. My Business will solely be about making people and their lives and futures and not about making profits and products. My entire life has consisted of setting up stages and being an advertisement so that I could make money and void of friendships, love, or connections, not even to my own family which has been my greatest sadness. Mommy Anne has been my only connection to hearing about my family’s lives and what’s going on with them my whole life and Aunt Barbie writes me about her farm life but that is about it. Rarely do I get a letter from Julia or Aunt Beverly. Once I went 5 whole years without coming into physical contact with another person or speaking to anyone and I think it really freaked mommy Anne out that I’m not talkative or Haggier but I’ve been conditioned as a child and again since the age of 11yo. When I entered the mental Hospital Systems and group homes never to touch or hug anyone because it’s not supposed to happen in hospitals and group homes which is where I was raised for 89% of my life. I’ve maybe spent 10 hours with my own Brother during my entire life and maybe spoken with him about half that without having actually any meaningful exchanges other than casual polite conversations not counting just being in the same location at the same time. And dramatically less with the rest of my family. I mainly just dressed nice and sat around waiting to be talked to or asked questions. I faced Addiction, Mental illness, multiple sexual assaults, rape that left me with HIV, Contracting HIV, Homelessness twice, forced prostitution, Two Attempted murders on me, a Home invasion and six suicide attempts and child abuse and a laundry list a mile long including starvation and eating out of dumpsters because I refused to prostitute alone without even a card from my family like “Hey sorry you got HIV” or “Too bad you ended up with a mental illness for 30 years” or “Hey heard you are struggling with addiction, that’s rough.” or “hey your homeless, it’s not much but here’s $20 get some dollar burgers at McDonalds.” or “hmmm… raped! Rough.” or “Hay when you are going to bring a boyfriend to X-Mass?” or “Suicide, wish you wouldn’t do that we like having you around.” Once I went into the Hospital after a suicide attempt that involved 3 cop cars pulling me off a ledge on the side of a parking ramp and I weighed 118lbs. I usually weigh 175-180lbs and that is skinny for myself. I know things like friendships and Love from a boyfriend and happi9ness because of the absolute void of it in my life. I know it perfectly and intimately on a deep level because I have never experienced it. It’s an odd kind of knowledge to have. I use to watch YouTube videos and Troll peoples feeds, not so much as to observe their lives as much as to see what they had on their bedroom walls and what they wear and what was around them and try to figure out what it was that gave them all the feelings and excitements and joys in life that I never knew. All my life I never had a single poster on my wall or anything that wasn’t a tool for survival, no plants, no color paint on my walls, nothing that would display warmth or comfort or personality or a Home. And it was all trappings of a stage set that I occupied but never truly lived in. The only thing that had decoration or meaning of any kind was inside my Computers and Hard Drives and my Data Mining Collections of Music, .pdf files, photos, and social media and blogs and modeling photos. Outside of the digital world I had nothing but pain and suffering, rage, and sadness, and isolation, and complete loneness and mental and emotional damage that eventually became so vast and so deep that I had to use as much drugs as possible not just to fight it back and numb myself to it but to even remove myself from the equation, for many years I just stayed alive out of spite of it all. It was one thing that broke me out of my inner bondage and that was a homeless man that I’d passed over a dozen times and he always sat in his spot and I saw him that morning while going to a client’s house and then that night after dancing into exhaustion at a club. It was late and the snow had started to fall but in a ring around his body was a bare circle from his body heat and he hadn’t moved all day. Across the street was a Target and the man had nothing, no food containers around him, nothing. People had walked by him all day and shopping at Target and no one thought once to go across the street and give him a pop or can of soup and I had been a prostitute for years helping dozens of homeless kids and minors with a safe free place to stay, even pulling tricks to pay other people’s rent and maxed out two credit cards buying a fellow meth addict food and toiletries and that one man sat there all day, every day and no one helped him and Target Managers never gave him a job. Shortly after that I came to this Center and for the last 13 years here in this long term treatment program, every single day for hours a day and deep into the night I have written thousands of pages in Journals, collected every magazine and catalog I could find, filled over 45 journals with notes and resources and links and scrap booked and spent my Dad’s entire $4,800,00 inheritance money from when he died on Business Manuals and researched Crypto Currency for 3 years, read 5 books on it and spent years going to every site in the books and checking them out, watching YouTube videos, going onto bulletin boards and blogs until I learned what I needed to learn to design the most powerful Ethereum Miner possible all the while with a goal to end Homelessness, Unemployment, sexual exploitation and to improve the world and fought for years just to have the right to use my free time to write and study. And I solved it. I figured out a social service Business that will fully recover almost anyone's life and it has finally given me an ounce of peace. Now I just need the people here to give me the chance I need to get out and do it and to live a better life than the one that was quickly killing me. I’ve spent 13 years working on my plans and there are a lot of them and I hear repeatedly to focus on one thing but what people don’t understand is that it is all one thing. I’m not helping one or two people. I’m helping over 30,000 homeless people and exploited kids and people living in poverty. One thing can’t solve that. An entire population of people not only need money but a place to live, jobs to support themselves, and other help and those helpers need to get paid and other communities need fortifications to help the rest of the population that is in need and it’s not for one summer or one year or even 30 years. Every year hundreds of kids become exploited, thousands become homeless and more live in poverty and the cycle will continue long after I’m dead. I have to start building the strongest foundation possible that will last and support generations of people now and long after I’m dead and that won’t happen with me getting a pizza delivery job or a lawn mowing business going. I have to start something so revolutionary that those that pick up where I leave will one day be able to change the lives of Millions of people in need and people in need around the world and it will take Huge Donors and Crowd Funding and rewriting of policies and dismantling of antiquated industries and building new ones.

[g-w-3-d-damn]

Like God’s Breath 2

Hey guys, guess what?!

Congrats!  You guys won!  Here’s the part two I promised.  I’ll try to tag everyone that re-blogged this.   Part one is here  THIS ONE IS MORE EXPLICIT THAN THE LAST ONE.

Part two is not formatted with HTML for color coding.  If you would like to see the color coding, try the google document here.  This writing was created in exchange for a commission by @Teckmonky and the original request can be found here.  

Songs played while composing this work can be found at this playlist:

Like God’s Breath 2

Anthony slept upon his throne of bones.  His failure to rest for one day in seven exhausted his inner fire.  His earlier tryst with Loki expedited his burnout.  Loki returned to this scene on silent feathers.  One excruciating week passed since Loki met the fallen angel, one week since God called Loki back to His light in a Heaven where Anthony could not follow.  The tension in the joints of Loki's long alabaster legs cringed as he crept on the balls of his feet toward the macabre throne.  The gait of his creeping waltz resembled the motility of a silent white spider.  He muted his inner light, which yearned to glow in his excitement.  He told himself he could not let this opportunity pass.  He rested one knee on the arm of the throne and reached for Anthony's face.  Loki swallowed his own elation and pressed the tips of his fingers against Anthony's serene eyelids with a featherlight touch.  Loki took from Anthony his light, his memory.  Loki's lips twisted in a wicked grin as he stole millennia of Anthony's combat experience.  The grin dropped to a curious open mouthed stare as he took Anthony's dreams, his fantasies, his vulnerabilities from his mind.  Goosebumps appeared on Loki's porcelain flesh, his stare morphed into a look of awe as he re-lived his own sexual encounters through Anthony's eyes.  Loki saw himself, saw the look of ecstasy on his own innocent face, felt himself basking in his own light, in his own song.  Loki shuddered at his own beauty, and fell like Narcissus into the allure of his own reflection.  He felt what Anthony felt, and loved Anthony all the more for the depths at which that love sank.  He felt the wrenching sense of loss as he watched himself fly away from Anthony, called back to God by God's Word.  Loki felt the despair left in the wake of his absence just as Anthony felt it.  The knowledge that Loki's absence left Anthony in a deeper pain than his own fall from God shocked Loki.   Anthony's sexual focus bled into Loki's light and aroused him.  Loki pried.  Loki relived the past week as Anthony.  He raised dullahans as a distraction to his suffering, between bouts of deficient masturbation and failed attempts at self-love and self-appreciation.  Loki witnessed everything Anthony imagined doing to Loki, and everything he'd imagined Loki doing to him.  Loki witnessed everything Anthony did to the dullahans, everything Anthony made the dullahans do to him, and everything Anthony did to himself, to entertain these fantasies.  The visions stimulated him.  Loki disregarded the precum pooled at the head of his cock, until Anthony twitched and the light went dark.  Loki lifted his fingertips, hovered them over Anthony's eyelids.  The eyelids flicked open, the brown iris grew as the pupil contracted in focus on a spot on Anthony's leg.  Loki's own eyes darted down to his cock; he realized his dribble of precum fell atop Anthony's lap and roused him.  Loki felt hot, strong hands on his hips, for just an instant, as Anthony threw the angel off of him and rose in  preparation for combat.   Loki landed on his feet with his body bladed towards the older angel.  Anthony launched himself from his throne at Loki.  Recognition lit Anthony's face mid jump, chased away the fog of exhausted sleep-induced confusion.  Loki caught Anthony with a graceful flip.  Their bodies somersaulted over each other in the air.  Loki controlled the fall, landed on his feet; only his feet landed atop the bottoms of Anthony's wings, ground the majestic feathers into the floor.  Loki stood over Anthony with a wide stance, then squatted down to pin Anthony's arms atop his wings.  Anthony's sleep-deprived face posed a dozen questions at once.  Why are you here, what are you doing back here, how did you get out of Heaven, does God know you're missing, don't you know not to wake me up, what were you doing in my head, and how much do you know, asked the angel's face. “Let go,” Anthony said. The words compelled Loki, who released the grip in his hands with a grunt. “Surrender,” Loki ordered. Anthony struggled against the binding Word.    “I won't hurt you,” Loki crooned, “calm and gentle, now.” Anthony sank limp into the floor with a huff.  His arms remained outstretched in compulsory surrender.  Loki gently placed his hands at Anthony's graying temples and smiled. “I don't like this smile,” Anthony said to Loki in The Light, “this is different, what have you done?” “I've fallen,” Loki said. “What, how, oh!” “Wrap your legs around me,” Loki interrupted Anthony's thoughts. Anthony looked up at him but did not move.  A fearful sadness painted Anthony's face, as if he were on the brink of profuse apology.  His lips quivered. “What did you see?” Anthony asked. Loki grinned down at Anthony. “Wrap your legs around me,” Loki requested again. “Take back your order to surrender,” Anthony asked. “Promise me you won't keep fighting,” Loki asked of him in The Light. “I was half-asleep, kid, I don't wake up to angels without expecting a fight,” Anthony apologized. “I release you from The Word that bound you,” Loki said aloud. Loki caught Anthony's hands on the way to his throat.  He looked at Anthony with a total lack of surprise. “You promised,” Loki said flatly. “You took my light, didn't you?  What did you see?  Please tell me,” Anthony said. Loki, flatfooted atop Anthony's wings, dropped his shoulders towards Anthony's chest.  Loki's wings dipped beneath Anthony's legs.  The crooks of his wings hooked the undersides of Anthony's knees, and Loki drew Anthony's legs apart beneath him.  Anthony's calves draped over the white wings, nestled in soft down, as Loki lifted Anthony's legs to hold them aloft around him.  Loki caressed Anthony's caught wrists with his long thumbs and stood.  His wings supported Anthony's legs, brought Anthony's hips  off the ground.  Anthony felt his ass slide into Loki's lap.  Loki held Anthony's hands, interlaced their fingers palm to palm. “Oh, you saw this one,” Anthony whimpered. “Shh,” Loki said aloud. “Yes, I saw this one,” Loki said in The Light, “and I needed to see how beautiful you are while we do it.” Anthony drank the compliment with the same addicted greed as a sober alcoholic would a shot of whiskey.  He looked to Loki, ravenous for the rest of that bottle. “I'm warning you, flattery will get you everywhere with me,” Anthony said. Loki smirked, clenched his fists around Anthony's hands.  His light seeped into Anthony through his fingertips.  Loki bent forward, lifted his wings, bent Anthony.  Loki caught Anthony's ankles with the alulae of his wings.  Anthony pushed back against Loki's palms in support.  They settled into a position in which Anthony's weight rested on the back of his neck and shoulders alone, his back in the air, his spine aligned along the length of Loki's long legs.  The insides of Anthony's pinned wings lifted and twisted between Loki's knees.  Anthony's feathers felt like velvet beneath the soles of Loki's feet.  Loki released Anthony's hands.  Anthony's arms returned to their position of submission at his sides, stretched out, pushing pressure into the floor to better take his weight.  Loki drug his palms along Anthony's abs.  Loki's wings controlled Anthony's legs.  Loki bent his lover until Anthony's own cock hung towards his neck, and Loki's cock hung against the seam of flesh between Anthony's legs. “I wanna make you come first so we can watch you,” Loki said. “We? What do you-” Loki reflected Anthony's memory back into him.  He led Anthony to experience the narcissism he felt in watching himself through Anthony's eyes. “No, n-n-n-n-no, you're corrupt enough already, if you proceed to put your self-worth above His- Oh, that's, that's very nice, but no, Kid, listen, He won't just banish you, He'll destroy you,” said Anthony. “He'll have to catch me first,” whispered Loki. “Idolatry is pretty easy to spot, Loki,” Anthony said. “Loki?” Loki huffed, “not calling me 'kid' anymore, I see.” Anthony nudged his ankles apart, and Loki adjusted his wings to hold Anthony's legs open in the manner that Anthony's body language suggested.  Loki showed Anthony the memory of those stolen fantasies that made him drip.  Loki drew his finger over the errant line of precum that woke Anthony.  Loki swabbed the dribble from the front of his leg where it still remained.  Anthony experienced Loki's extreme arousal at the theft of these memories he returned.  Loki reached down, under Anthony's cock, to catch the unavoidable trickle of precum before it reached Anthony's throat.  He rubbed the slick gel back onto the head of Anthony's cock.  Anthony felt wetness build beneath his balls where Loki rutted between his legs.  Loki collected this wetness as well and added it to Anthony's shaft. “That's nasty, but I like it,” Anthony said. “Whatever makes you come is what I like,” Loki crooned, “you should see yourself.” Loki reflected Anthony's light back into him.  Anthony saw himself, felt himself, from Loki's perspective.  Anthony felt Loki's love for him as if it were Anthony's own love for himself.  Through Loki's eyes, Anthony was stunning. “Oh no, Kid,” Anthony groaned, “you've got me painted wrong.” Anthony felt Loki's hand stroke his cock in a too-perfect rhythm, a too-perfect pressure.  Anthony realized that Loki had watched him masturbate, experienced Anthony's masturbation when his light was stolen.  Anthony realized that Loki had taken excellent notes.  Anthony's back arched, his toes curled in the air.  Anthony felt hungry for himself, as Loki made him watch his own cut abs crush together from Loki's vantage.  Loki made Anthony watch his cock stroked through the lens of Loki's own blue irises.  Loki made him watch his own handsome face, his own tanned broad shoulders and biceps tense, bulge, and roll as he pressed himself towards Loki.  Loki reflected Anthony's being back into Anthony.  Loki made him bask in his own light. “No, I'm not that beautiful, I'm not,” he said. One of Loki's eyebrows lifted without the other. “But you are,” Loki said, “you're the brightest star in the night sky, you're the most beautiful angel He ever created.” Anthony held back.  He tried not to come as he watched his own chest heave, his own feathers squirm at his sides under Loki's long, bare feet.  His whimpers formed a feedback loop, as hearing each of his own whimpers elicited a louder whimper and a longer shudder. “This is a line I haven't crossed,” Anthony gasped, “it's His first, most unbreakable unforgivable command, I haven't broken it.” “And what command is that,” Loki asked. “You will have no other gods before Me,” Anthony answered.   Loki's pink lips cracked wide.  He let Anthony watch himself say 'you will have no other gods before me.'  Loki twisted the context of Anthony's words.  As Anthony commanded himself to not have any other gods before “Me,” Anthony truly commanded himself to not have any other gods before Anthony, Himself.  He squirmed beneath Loki.  Loki caught his own arousal as it dripped into his free hand.   “I intend to see you bask in your own glory,” Loki whispered. “I really think that should be my own decision,” Anthony said. “There's not much I would force upon you, not much I would make you do,” Loki said in the light, “but if I have the power to make you love yourself, I will not hesitate to take that decision out of your hands.” Loki massaged Anthony with both hands.  Anthony's toes curled, gripped tufts of velvet feathers. “Sing,” Loki said, “praise yourself, come to light for yourself, see your own light and bask in it.” “I want to see you,” Anthony said. “You'll see all you want of me,” Loki said, “after you come first.” Anthony viewed himself through the lens of Loki's experience, and saw that his light was a paragon.  Faced with this vision of himself, Anthony admitted his self-appraisal of himself to himself.  In that appraisal, he found himself to be as immeasurably beautiful as he was valuable.  He felt forced to admit that God had thrown away something priceless when He cast Anthony out of Heaven.  Anthony never wanted to admit that God made a mistake when He cast Anthony down; Anthony desired only to make amends and be forgiven, himself.  Until this moment, Anthony thought he had forgiven God.  Loki made Anthony realize that it would be improper to offer forgiveness to God.  Anthony's newfound love for himself manifested as a rage against God who made and harmed him.  Anthony's rage at God's mistake manifested as an incinerating light.  Loki whispered into him through the light. “I want you to come first,” whispered Loki, “I want you to put yourself first, love yourself enough to come first for once.  I've seen you put yourself second all throughout the memories of your light.  You, in every moment of your existence, put yourself second, when you, Anthony, were first, always.  You were brightest, you were what God first wanted, His first breath, His first wish was for you.  First.  You're first.  Put yourself first.” Anthony kicked into Loki's feathers. “Fuck 'em.  No, fuck Him.  I hate Him,” Anthony said. “Then, love you,” Loki said, “love yourself, look at you, look what you'd steal from Him if you loved yourself how I love you.  Take it for yourself.” “Okay,” Anthony uttered. Anthony locked eyes with himself.  The incinerating light cast from Anthony's body poured back onto him.  His lightwaves cycled into a feedback loop.  The buildup of energy grew exponentially.  The particles sped faster and faster with each moment, until reality ripped within Anthony's irises to form singularities, controlled black holes in which his own light could never escape once sucked inside.  The singularities in Anthony's eyes drew Anthony's own love and energy within, compressed inward for eternity.

Loki watched the edge of Anthony's irises bend light back into themselves, watched light spiral into his eyes.  Loki steadied himself against the sudden gravity of Anthony's eyes.  Loki stared in shock, dizzy, as he realized each pupil contained its own hell, a hell both infinitely hot, and endlessly dark.  The black holes captured Anthony's light and unwound God's will, unmade what God created.  What God exhaled into existence, the singularities inhaled until nonexistence.   All the light and love that Anthony ever radiated, he now drew back to himself to absorb.  He sucked his own existence out of space and time, sucked himself out of God's very own mouth.  Singularity crashed against singularity to create its own exhalation.

Anthony devolved into plasma, so dense that atoms could not form, so shrunken into the dark that it ceased to exist, yet so strong that light could not escape.  He returned to the darkness from which He was formed, before God separated the darkness from the light.  Anthony recreated himself, how He Himself wanted to be.  Anthony chose not to change.  He chose to be everything God wanted Him to be, except for God's own.  Anthony separated His light from the darkness, Himself.  He evolved from darkness into black plasma.  From black plasma, he spread out, exploded outward until His Light flew free.  He filled Himself out into Loki’s welcoming grasp, filled Himself into the exact same position as the destroyed Anthony occupied as he exited existence, and began His new existence in Loki’s embrace. Anthony shone as bright as the day God made Him.  And Anthony decided to shine brighter, as a gift to Himself, to outdo what God had done.  He basked in His own brilliance, and put himself aside. “Alright, kid,” Anthony called to Loki, “I want to see you.” “W-what happened?” “I stopped existing for a moment,” explained Anthony, “these are brand new eyes, and I want your light to be the first thing they've ever seen.” Anthony's light forced through Loki's reflective vision of Anthony's body to reveal Loki's beautiful face.  Loki's face shimmered with uncontained light.  Loki suspired audibly, overcome with the sweetness of Anthony's words.  His pink lip trembled as he held an intent gaze on Anthony.   Anthony looked between his spread legs, up at Loki's face.   “I can't wait to do that to you.  I can't wait for you to feel exactly how I feel, right now,” Anthony growled. “First, you,” Loki insisted. Loki watched Anthony's eyes trail down Loki's neck, his chest, his torso.  Anthony's eyes lingered at the vision of their cocks. “Can I get that inside me?” requested Anthony. “But you haven't c-” Loki protested. “I'll get there in seconds, I just wanted to see you,” Anthony said, “I needed to see this, it's all I'd need to push me over the edge.” Anthony showed Loki his own face.  Anthony wanted Loki to know what it felt like to look at himself through the lens of Anthony's self-absorbed black iris.  He smiled at how innocent he looked to Anthony's eyes. “You have me painted wrong,” Loki said. Anthony let the vision fade back into a vision of himself, on the edge of orgasm, basking in his own light.  He felt Loki push inside him. “Don't let go, Loki,” Anthony said. “God's Word could not pull me from this,” Loki said in The Word. And those were the first Words that Anthony’s new ears ever heard.  Through Loki's reflected light, Anthony could still see himself even when he closed his eyes.  Loki ensured that Anthony knew how beautiful he looked with his eyes screwed shut and his head thrown back in ecstasy.  The music in Anthony's light reduced to a desperate, broken roar, and Loki could not miss the opportunity to show Anthony how irresistible the song of Anthony's frenzied light could feel. “Ooh, I wish you to bask in this,” Loki crooned in The Word. He howled.  Light itself howled with Him.  He rained down on himself in spurts, drenched his stomach.  Cum swished into the furrow between his pecs and split to run through the fluting beneath his collarbones.   Loki paused, held Anthony's cock between both hands and gingerly pressed the last drops from it with the lengths of his thumbs.  Loki held Anthony the way Anthony would have held himself.  Loki panted, broke into a sweat of soft bluish flames.  Anthony enjoyed his brief recovery, his cock lovingly cradled while Loki's throbbed and twitched inside him.  Anthony smiled at his own afterglow, then pushed the artificial image of himself away to focus on the star-kissed alabaster skin of his lover.  Loki's smooth face twisted in feigned disregard to his distress, so much so that a crease appeared in his otherwise smooth forehead.  Every cum-slicked muscle in Anthony's torso worked as the two panted.  The spectacle tightened lust's wrenching grip on Loki's body.  Urgency darkened the creases in his forehead.  Anthony flexed his calves to pull his ass upward in suggestion.  The bones near his tailbone cracked a bit with the motion, and he grunted.  He swirled his hips in the air, careful to keep Loki inside him as he worked the kink from his spine.  Loki dropped Anthony's cock and grasped Anthony's squirming legs with a huff. “I know you like what you see, so why hesitate?” Anthony asked. “First,” Loki said, “We're putting you first, we do what pleases you.” Anthony commanded him with The Word.   “You're aching.  Do it.” These were the first words that Anthony said aloud in his new form, since mastering himself.  They were as powerful an influence in the universe as God's First Words.  Even without The Word, Loki could never have resisted the compulsion Anthony's request stirred with him, and so the sweet snap of Loki's hips against the airborne ass rang out as Loki slaked his lust upon it.

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Songs played while composing this work include the following playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK8YAuIxTrI&list=PLdq33DKh_VLUMY5sn3W_6qFT2xx8aMkTD&t=0s&index=2

Original prompt by Teckmonky in trade for awesome art!

http://teckmonky.tumblr.com/post/176778064527/frostiron-angeldemondevil-au-loki-is-the-angel