#it's kind of a misleading title that makes it seem like it might be bigger than it is

[variousqueerthings]

Time can be rewritten...

Angels In Manhattan, Amy and Rory goodbye. this is a... difficult one to rank. it may or may not make sense. Amy and Rory work better or worse depending on whether you've excised parts of previous seasons. it's kind of a... simple way to go in a sense, but is that good? (and yes, in classic!who sometimes companions would be written out between seasons, but I always assumed M*ffat would try to outdo everyone by being more tragic than anything before)

also this interesting post by @brilliantfantasticgeronimo that at the end talks about laws of time and how and when and why they're broken or upheld in terms of timestreams. things to think about going into this one, but luckily there's a handy-dandy ratings system

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 6/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored): 5/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 3/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 3/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 3/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 7/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 6/10

isn’t trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 6/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 2/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 6/10

FULL RATING: 47/100 (if I can count….)

not the lowest a M*ffat episode's gotten. I think mainly it's just a bit... there. and I cannot help compare it to The God Complex, which is one of the two highest rated episodes of this era and manages much the same thing in a more cohesive way

OBJECTIFICATION: on the whooole considering River Song is in this one, it's mostly okay after the first few minutes

we do get some shit in the beginning: "My lipstick was combat ready and I was packing cleavage that could fell an ox at twenty feet" which the Doctor is... into? as a description? he doesn't even know it's River Song at this point, he just likes the description for some reason

but yeah, mostly it's okay. River is a femme fatale in a detective novel called "melody malone" but it's fine on the whole

PLOT-POINT: there's this bit where Amy reads a bit from the book River wrote in the past, and the Doctor is like "Now that you've read this it has to happen," and it turns out that the line (why do you have to break that) is a reference to River's wrist as she tries to get free from an angel

and it's this sort of theme of the episode, it's been read, it must happen, buuuut the Doctor could have just... not broken her wrist, according to this logic, right? it didn't say "and then River Song's wrist was broken" it just said that bit of line (and then "because Amy read it in a book...")

my point here is that then the Doctor gets really pissed off because it means something bad will definitely happen. he reads a chapter title called "Amy's Last Farewell" and it sends him into a rage -- (sidenote, Matt Smith's Doctor is the only Doctor I've seen so far where his kind of anger makes me very uncomfortable, that's subjective, but he comes across as An Angry Man sometimes and I'm not a fan of that) and instead of helping River out of the angel he tells her to figure it out herself in a way that doesn't break her wrist

she pretends she manages it and the Doctor is happy, until he realises she lied, and her wrist is broken and then he fixes it using time energy and she slaps him (we'll get to that in a minute) and Amy treats it as a "you just don't understand Womens" moment and then goes out to comfort River, asking why she lied

TO WHICH River replies: never let him see the damage, and never let him see you age

and this is just. peak River in the grand narrative once again. walking on eggshells around this rather petulant child in terms of the writing, and I'm meant to understand her feelings as anything other than "I was brainwashed as a kid to be obsessed with this guy and now I cannot break out of the programming" (which to be fair could be interesting, if it was done on purpose and not... by M*ffat)

and this also plays into Amy, who has since gotten reading glasses and "lines around her eyes," and it's this thing that's come up a lot in this iteration, that the Doctor has serious Peter Pan syndrome, but it's never been more textual than in this era

point being, Amy is the recipient of this line, but Amy isn't really narratively engaging with this. Amy could have let go of the Doctor ages ago, and in fact in the last episode the Doctor is saying that it's clear he needs her a lot more than the other way around... so why are we bringing this up now? what is it doing here? what is it saying about Amy or even River tbh, who's been in the form of a middle-aged woman most of the time we've known her and also at the end of the episode flat out refuses the Doctor's offer to travel with him for... no real reason

there's just a lot of quite uneven writing here that feels like it's trying to put together last-minute connections that don't belong there, and they're not in service of River or Amy, but to further hammer home that The Doctor Is Basically An Eternal Child Who Feels Bad

also this: When one’s in love with an ageless god who insists on the face of a twelve year old one does ones best to minimise the damage (at the Doctor, before he heels her wrist)... fascinating lampshading of all the seemingly very sexy flirting (including in this episode) River and The Doctor do... it's almost enough to make them interesting, in the sense that yeah, sometimes loving the Doctor means a different gender, different skin colour, different external-looking age, short, tall, thin, fat, etcetc

of course it's not really doing much with that, it's just another thrown out there line that feels like it's going "I know I know Matt Smith looks like a baby next to Alex Kingston and they have no chemistry, but stop complaining about it!!!" it's almost deep but not quite

COMPLEXITY: so the thing about the angels is that M*ffat invented them, right? and then he brought them back again, and now he's brought them back for a third time (feat. statue of liberty)

but way back in the very first episode of them a few things were established

. the angels feed on temporal energy -- sending someone back in time to live out their days . Martha and the Doctor are sent back in time, but with the Tardis aren't stuck there . they can be defeated by making them look at each other (or, I imagine but have never seen confirmed, with a sledge-hammer)

I think that's it pretty much. (sidenote, I heard that M*ffat didn't come up with "make them look at each other" and had no idea how to finish the episode, but that it's Gatiss idea? would have to search to confirm, but ooh, not-even-a-conspiracy -- would explain why M*ffat didn't ever bring it back, although he's not brought back his own Stuff on occasion as well)

so does M*ffat continue on the throughline of the angels? well, we know he doesn't because in s5 we saw them moving, which was a shame, considering the fun filmic idea that the camera in s3 functioned as another eye.

ah well, does the apartment make sense?

soooort of? I'm confused about logistics like... food. which may seem pedantic, but I feel like it's one of the many things that makes it hard to suspend my disbelief

I also realised that it sort of hinted that this whole set-up was very bad no good and was making time all squiggly, because of so many temporal mishaps, but it didn't go into it enough for it to feel like it was anything but a quick handwavy explanation for why you should keep suspending your disbelief no matter what happens, and still doesn't explain... the statue of liberty

almost had me with it, thinking this was why the statue of liberty was there because it was meant to be wrong, but actually no it doesn't make sense and worse, it doesn't need to be there, so that's... that

mmm, angel in a graveyard, I guess, but the thing that is a thing. The Thing. is yes, the angels are scary in a sense (so scary to Amy that she thought one of the spooky rooms in The God Complex with angels in them was for her), but arguably (subjectively) they were good villains because of their one-off appearance. do something kinda spooky and never try to explain more, leave it there as a little ooooh

bring it back over and over and you have to start getting into proper lore and you're Thing has to be strong enough to be able to hold that pressure, and to be honest. the angels aren't a good choice for that. they're very unwieldy when you get too close to them as concepts, especially when you start to pile a whole bunch of them into one tower block

New York, city that never sleeps, I get it, single line going "it's because everyone is secretly afraid of spooky things and so an eye has to be open at all times" eh but it's not quite enough

lot of sets for no reason, we could have cut the evil rich guy, he's not important to the story

and of course, the crux... why can't the Doctor just pick up Amy and Rory from the past? written in stone? my guy, you were declared dead for the whole of last season! again, I kind of get what's happening here, but it's kind of "inventing new rules for the plot" rather than established story rules informing the plot

the more you think about this episode, the more it doesn't quite fit together, and the more it feels like one big, overly complicated way of writing Amy out of the story, when she could have been out of the story at any point between here and The God Complex

not every companion leaving has to be a big tragedy, sometimes it's just the sadness of knowing peoples lives are going in a different direction from you, and that's exactly how The God Complex ends

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: so technically yes, this is the last episode of the Ponds so there's a whole bunch of stuff, however I would argue that not much changes one way or another from season 6

Amy and Rory still love each other (The Dalek Asylum was stupid and offered us nothing else on them that actually mattered), they're still planning to leave at some point, and they live a life

moreover that life is no more tragic than, again, The God Complex, because one doesn't really have a sense of the things they've left behind -- yes, Rory has a dad now (seen in two episodes) and he's honestly not a bad character, but he's not really firmly established in any way and might as well not exist, but for a bit of "oh that's nice"

Amy never had parents or family really (fight me M*ffat), and they left Leadworth with all its non-characters and live in London with a further bunch of non-characters

them leaving to live their life in the past is no more ungrounded than the life that was written for them in the present, in all its "I'm a Kissogram no a Model no a... Travel Log Reporter..." undefined lack of glory

also River Song doesn't travel with the Doctor because Alex Kingston can't commit to a whole season and so River Song just flat out turns him down, which is very funny in a sort of "does this make sense for the characters apparent inherent tragedy of not having enough time," kind of way -- should've just not said anything (especially not "one psychopath per Tardis is enough don't you think" SERIOUSLY M*ffat????)

and I think that's the problem in the end. post-God Complex has tried to justify Amy's and Rory continued meaning in this story but it's just not managed to do it. it feels like an overextended coda, with one relatively fun entry (The Power Of Three), and five stories that don't need to be there and give us scraps of things that might be important at some point in the future (such as the Doctor shouldn't travel alone for extended periods of time, but we already know this!)

also Brian... does the Doctor ever tell Brian, whom he had this seemingly deep conversation with about not losing Amy and Rory and bringing them back, that he will never see his son again?

COMPANIONS MATTER: yeah, I guess. I mean the whole book is written by River Song who's semi a companion, Amy and Rory jump off a roof which creates a paradox, which breaks the angels hold on the block (do they wink out of existence or are they still there or???)

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: this episode is more about the Doctor than the Ponds really, although he doesn't do much, just runs around, so...

in some ways we're anti-godlike-doctor in that there's a whole bunch of laws the Doctor suddenly can't break, despite... doing so... previously... notably in fact in the preceding season

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh got nothing. it's about the angels and it does weird shit their lore, but it's a surprisingly small episode on the whole, considering it's a companion's final setpiece -- not that it has to be massive (The God Complex, my preferred final episode for Amy and Rory is also in many ways a simple episode), but it's interesting for M*ffat

“SEXINESS”: so we've got the Doctor being into book!River, an ongoing joke with the word "yowza," a flirting scene when River and the Doctor first reunite (again, fascinatingly undercut by River later saying he "has the face of a twelve year old")

and an early scene where Amy asks Rory if she has lines around her eyes and him being "afraid" of telling her yes

it's not so bad on the whole, shockingly chill considering this is written by M*ffat

INTERNAL WORLD: one of M*ffat's biggest consistent weaknesses is that he eschews the "boring" details of making a place seem real, in favour of a plot just going at breakneck speeds without waiting around to see if it makes sense -- if you keep going very fast, nobody can see behind the curtain (unless you're actually breaking down the episode in which case... ah)

but yeah, they're in New York I guess, that's about it

POLITICS: there's not much in the way of overt politics once again, and honestly not much of anything else either. I guess one can pick up on a lack of things, but tbh there's so much else to pick at in this episode, a lack of interest in pre-WWII New York would have required an interest in world building at the minimum, and obviously that's not a thing in this episode, so much as it's a series of vibes (and you cannot coast on vibes alone forever)

FULL RATING: 47/100 (if I can count….)

So how do we leave the Ponds on the whole? it's got a few arresting scenes, Rory and Amy jumping off a roof together, the Doctor making a sad face while reaching for Amy

the rest of the episode is kind of there. neither the worst M*ffat has written, nor thaaat good. some good concepts that are under-written, a bit of shoddy lore-continuation and world-building

a big question for me at this point is where to end the Amy & Rory plot so that it fits going into the next stage of events (Clara). because The Power Of Three is quite fun, and might function as a coda (acknowledging they have a couple more adventures and then they drift out of the Doctor's life). but definitely, The God Complex is the ending for me

[clueless-fan-critic]

I'm a Sucker for Witches: Agatha All Along Episode 1 Reaction

Okay, it has been a while since watching a MCU tv show with the last one losing me. I mean, a spy show with the Skrulls? It was way too much work to sit through. But Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur hasn't finished Season 2, so I might as well get back into the MCU by watching the show that continues arguably one of the best MCU miniseries WandaVision.

First Episode Time!!!

We get a serial drama with Agnes Conners as the morally complex police detective who encounters a body in the woods. As the show progresses, we get to see how the lines of fact and fiction are blurring, revealing that Agnes, aka Agatha Harkness, was trapped in Wanda Maximoff's spell as the nosy neighbor. Upon Wanda's death, it seems the spell was losing hold over Agatha's mind and finally freed. But only to realize that she's completely powerless with witches wanting revenge against her. The ending/title sequence clearly make it clear that it's all about the witches of the MCU and their collective history.

It Was Agatha All Along!!!

The first episode really gripped me with whether or not Agatha was actually going crazy or that the spell was becoming undone upon Wanda's death. They established that Wanda's death in the Doctor Strange movie took place around three years after the Hex and Agatha's imprisonment. Meaning, Wanda's spell was weakening or fading. It's also establishes key points such as the destruction of the Darkhold copies, as well as some allusions to the fictional reality that Wanda created based on Agatha's demeanor. It puts out a lot of necessary info but doesn't feel like info-dumping for the sake of the MCU algorithm. Okay, moving on.

The new characters portrayed by Joe Locke and Audrey Plaza make a big impression with each sharing some connection with Agatha. The returning Westview residents make it clear they were aware of Agatha and played along to avoid trouble, still clearly shaken by the trauma as Wanda's puppets in the Hex.

One standout scene was Agatha slowly going into her previous personas in the Hex: Modern, early 2000s, 80s, 70s, and finally 60s. It felt like she was clawing her way into remembering who she was while clearly confused and distressed as she might be going crazy.

Quick Theories/Thoughts

The show is building up to what happens at the end of the Witches' Road and what might be in store for Agatha and her coven. I think Agatha will gain her powers to some capacity and might discover a much bigger threat than the Scarlet Witch.

I also hope there's some confirmation on Joe Locke as Billy Kaplan in the show because people have been mislead in the past with the whole Mephisto debacle and Fake Quiksilver. This could establish an adaptation of the Children's Crusade featuring the Young Avengers. And may finally give us one step closer to Wiccan and Hulkling. I just hope they can do justice by them while also putting a good spin on what kind of characters they are in the MCU.

[gothamsnightmare]

List of Gotham/Valeska twins stuff I’ve been writing on that I might consider sharing some day

Note: So far, all of my stories are reader-inserts. I found that to be a lot easier to write when I started out, also, I’ve always sucked at coming up with names. I have been thinking about possibly turning a few of them into OC’s later on however, especially since it’s starting to look like in at least one story it will actually require me to have a specific name for the reader character at some point, so there’s always the chance I’ll re-write some of these later. Can’t say for sure though, cause I’ve been looking up names and now I’m having the problem that a name that spoke to me as a gf’s name, but also really sounded great to me for a sister character, so, now I can’t decide what to use it for.

These are the stories I think I might like enough that I would feel comfortable sharing them one day, although I can’t say for sure cause I really haven’t finished any of them yet and many of themdon’t even have a beginning with, so I could possibly really only do a preview for most of them so far, cause even though I tried really hard over the last couple of months to finish at least one of them, I just keep getting more ideas for them but never for the parts where it matters

Long story short, I might post some previews from some of these stories soon, especially if there turns out to be some interest (which I hightly doubt, since there wasn’t any so far). So on to what will be a long and pointless post about some of my stories:

Family Ties

I have to thank @sunlitroom for making this post, the first picture in it inspired me to write this story.

I don’t know why, but I always loved the idea of a sister for Jerome and Jeremiah that ends up being kind of torn between the two of them because of their hatred for each other.

When I first played with the idea for her, I imagined her only a few years older than them, like in my first story ‚Hands off‘, but this post gave me the idea: what if Jerome and Jeremiah had a sister that was several years older than the twins, and by that, already old enough to have moved out and left the circus when Jerome killed their mother, and she always had to look after them when they were younger because of their mum not bothering.

Basically, the moment I saw the first picture of this post I thought: I could totally imagining the twins and their sister being part of their mothers act at the circus when they were little, like that she had a different act back then. That she wasn’t an exotic snake dancer yet, just a regular snake artist, and her children were essentially the main focus of her act, like an idea of the owner of the circus, you know, cute kids and deadly animals, guaranteed crowd pleaser.

This is the first story that is going to be different than my other stories, in the way that it doesn’t take place in one time line, but it jumps around between various stages of the Valeska siblings life, starting out with when the twins were around 5 and then as they get older at the circus, on to when Jerome kills their mother and ends up at Arkham, all the way to when Jeremiah is reunited with his sister again for the first time after he was changed by Jerome’s laughing gas.

The story is perhaps a bit heavy at times I guess, because I really decided to dive into how hard it was for the Valeska siblings at the circus with the on-going abuse, and I let them deal several times at various ages deal with the aftermath of these moments. Most of these so far I made up, but I am also planning on including pre-existing things from the Gotham canon, like the story Jerome told about him having his hand boiled in a pot of soup I’m currently trying to write something with, so yeah, it is definitely a bit rough at times.

This story also deals with why the twins’ sister decided to leave the circus and her brothers behind even if she can’t look out for them anymore then, why his sister is the only one who Jerome still trusts after Jeremiah left, what might have played a part in Jeremiah later turn into a villain that has a habit of manipulating people and why it’s so difficult for their sister to navigate her relationship with the twins. Also Jeremiah and Jerome always have their problems getting along in this one, even when they’re little, because they’re just so very different. 

Sleepless Nights

This is a story that takes place over Seasons 1 to 3 (but will likely just brush Season 2 briefly). It starts out shortly before Jerome kills his mother as he sneaks over to his only friend at the circus after a night of torment at his mother’s. She’s the only one who he’s able to talk to about what he has to go through at home because he knows he can trust her, although he’s starting to reach a point where he’s done going into the details every time. She cares a lot about Jerome, and the more she has to see what’s happening to him, the more she’s starting to see things his way. So she gradually doesn’t just grow into the only person he will ever care about, but likely his future partner in crime.

Arkham 

Title is a bit misleading now because it doesn’t just primarily take place at Arkham anymore, but I had intended it to take place at Arkham in Season 4 originally and end with the breakout, hence the title. But once the ideas for it really hit me, I realized it would go way beyond it. Now it starts at Arkham and goes all the way to the end of Season 4

This is to date my longest story (almost 32,000 words at this point and I’m still nowhere near done yet).

One day, I had an idea where I wanted to write just a story about Jerome hanging out with someone at Arkham, but it ended up not really anywhere cause I couldn’t really think of anything, the idea seemed to random.

Then I came the old discussion about how many Jerome fic writers tend to write about the exact same themes on here on tumblr again and before I knew it, I suddenly had my idea. Since my goal with any of my art has always been to try to be different, I hope I kind of managed to accomplish it with this one.

Essentially, the original story idea turned into a story about a woman that Jerome meets at Arkham that instantly becomes not only the only person who cares about him, but is everything he never thought he would ever have in a person and he ends up opening up to her more than he ever intended to when he first decided to talk to her.

Basically, she ends up becoming the only one who Jerome tells the real reason behind his plan to break out of Arkham, however, despite how close the two end up with each other, since she gives him a lot of freedom and never pressures him to do something he doesn’t want to do, and this kind of backfires on her a little because she ends up never being 100% in the loop about his plan despite how much he shares with her. And in case your wondering, yes, this is going to go all the way to the very end of Jerome’s story in Season 4.

Note: This is the female character I mentioned above that I might rewrite from reader insert some day because she needs a specific name at a certain point.

Fights at Arkham

This is another story where the twins have a sister, this time, it’s more like an AU where Jerome didn’t die but still managed to change Jeremiah with his gas, and now they currently happen to be stuck at Arkham at the same time as their sister.

This turns into a huge problem for all three of them, because since she still loves both of her brothers, she expects them to act as civil as possible when around each other, which they will have to do if they want to spend time with her, as she’s fed up of having to put up with their fighting by now and doesn’t want to switch between having to spend time with one of them at a time.

Since the twins just hate each other so much by now, she can’t really prevent the fights from constantly happening, the only thing she can do is try to make sure their fights don’t turn violent, something that is often a bit of a challenge for her

However, since she knows her brothers way better than they would probably like to acknowledge, she also knows a thing or two about how to keep them under control.

Unfortunately, I’m still massively struggling to find a way into this story, it requires a the random argument between the twins that is supposed to turn into a bigger fight, so I could only give you a preview of what happens once their fight is close to getting out of control.

Mad

Simple premise, Jerome’s girlfriend is mad at him after one of their crime sprees, and after giving her some space, he decides it’s about time to make her get over herself.

Partners

Jerome inadvertently develops a crush on his partner in crime when he looses track of her during a crime spree. When he confronts her about it, she doesn’t really know how to handle it

Chance meetings

A story that unfortunately so far only contains a few segments that don’t really connect with each other yet, which is a shame because the basic idea would be based on another attempt of writing something a little different.

We all know the old idea of course that Jerome is definitely the kind of guy that would likely end up stalking a girl when he takes a liking to her, and while I could totally see him do that, I suddenly thought: what if it was the other way around and it happened to him?

This is not exactly a stalking story per se, but essentially, one of Gotham’s female criminals (not one from the Gotham canon) is so impressed by Jerome and the way he does things that she shows up out of nowhere one day while he’s out killing people, and from that day on, she just keeps popping up everywhere he goes, until the point comes where he almost expects her to be there because she can’t seem to stay away from him.

And at the end, this story ended up giving an idea at the end that led to another story called:

Nightly visits

While thinking about the fact that Jerome would not be above stalking some woman he’s obsessed with, I suddenly realized I could also totally see him just crashing at a woman’s place at night that he took a liking to without her knowledge, you know like secretly staying on her couch every night and leaving before she wakes up in the morning.

And that thought turned into: what if she knew about it though. And what if she just lets him do this while pretending not to notice? And this leads to eventually them both becoming aware of it and finally starting to acknowledge it and start talking to each other.

So basically Jerome turns into the crazy guy who keeps showing up at her apartment every night to spend the night and leaves again in the morning, but once they get to know each other better, they get closer and he ends up staying longer or showing up earlier than he had originally meant to when he had decided to hang out at her place.

There’s another story that I’m thinking of sharing that doesn’t have a title yet, but I’m worried it might be to plain and cute. In it, the twins have a sister that is a little bit younger than them (cause I figured the way the behave towards her might work better if she’s not the older one this time) who suffers from nightmares because of the abuse in the family, and it started to become so bad for her, that she now spends the night sharing a bed with one of the twins to cope. But, since Jerome and Jeremiah are at a point where they already constantly fight with each other, you could say they end up in a little bit of a competition with each other about who’s better at comforting her after a nightmare.

And, in a similar type of premise, also without a title so far, Jerome is at Arkham at the same time as his sister (this time she’s older again), and he goes to visit her at night in her cell, seemingly for no particular reason, but since she knows how to read him way too well, she figures him out pretty quickly and they have a little bit of a late night talk about growing up and how things have changed now (or how they haven’t really)

[bloomingundertheshadows]

Okay. So. Deran finally knows, and Adrian is coming home <3. Now, everyone on FB and reddit is speculating that Pope is going to kill Adrian. I’m actually not sure that Pope is Adrian’s biggest problem right now. Yes, Pope is unstable and would def kill Adrian if he found out about Adrian talking to the cops. However, Pope seemed kind of put off when Deran went off on him at the bar, like he was surprised that Deran snapped. Additionally, Pope seemed pretty set that Deran would have to take care of Adrian if it came to it. He only knows about Colby, and it would take a lot more digging and time to get to the fed issue(time which I doubt Pope wants to spend stalking Adrian). Frankly, if the next episode synopsis are anything to go by, Pope has bigger problems than Adrian.

With that in mind, I think the next big Adrian plotline is coming in 4x09 since it is titled SHTF (although I choose to believe this stands for Smurf Hunting The Feds). Adrian’s sister is set to be in 4x08,  so we know something’s going down, but the promo makes it clear that there are larger issues. I’m actually worried about Deran because that ambulance crash is bad news. He’s clearly not mortally injured, but a crash like that is going to draw huge attention to them and even more bad news if the stolen merchandise was inside. On the good side, Pope’s attention is clearly being redirected towards J. 

Now, I actually think that Adrian’s biggest worry is...Craig. Look, Craig is clearly the best supportive brother, but I don’t like the episode synopsis of 4x09. Craig has made it clear that he’s okayish with Adrian knowing about their jobs. However, I don’t know how far that goes. Deran clearly trusts Craig the most, which is why he takes him on the mysterious jobs, but he’s going to get suspicious fast. 

I’m actually pretty clueless about what the “dangerous job” is that Deran recruits Craig for-although it’s def related to Adrian. He’s not going to kill Pearce because that would look suspicious. The only thing I can think up right now is that Deran is going to try to frame or somehow really screw with Pearce or those around him. He also might be running a job as a favor to someone who could get Adrian off the hook? However, I question how “frustrated” Craig actually grows. The synopsis have been known to kind of overstate or mislead the importance/significance of Deran and Adrian’s storyline. So, this could be a huge issue or Craig being mildly annoyed Deran is taking him somewhere.  We shall see. 

Anyways, a possibility this season is Craig eventually finding out what Deran is doing for Adrian. Then, I think he’d go tell Pope. Who would then proceed to try to kill Adrian. This is still iffy. I’m not 100% convinced the rest of the family finds out that Adrian talked to the feds because that would basically force the writers to kill him (which I find unlikely for lots of reasons). However, I think Craig is a lot closer to Adrian and Deran, and therefore may spell a lot of future problems. 

I think they may kind of start closing in on Adrian before it comes out that Angela is the snitch. I’m pretty sure it’s not Adrian because the feds told him that were “moving forward” with the Cody case and Adrian should get on board, implying to me that they feel they have enough evidence to move forward. If Adrian was the snitch, then Pearce wouldn’t have been so concerned with Adrian refusing to cooperate in 4x07 because they would already have information. Also, from a writers standpoint, if Angela is not the snitch, then what exactly is the purpose of her character? 

Adrian is clearly going to have to keep talking to the feds, at least a little, until Deran figures out what to do. So, I think there could be a possible clash with Deran trying to protect Adrian as his family starts trying to figure out what’s going on. 

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Episode 2 Review: Kayshon, His Eyes Open

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This Star Trek: Lower Decks review contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 2.

At this point, asking whether or not Lower Decks is “real Star Trek” is nuts. Not only does the series capture the warm and fuzzy TNG-vibe nearly perfectly, it also talks about the meaning of Star Trek, quite a bit. In the Season 2 debut, Lower Decks examined the old TOS trope of a mortal suddenly having “god-like” powers, and looked at what that meant from at least three different ways, in three different storylines. But this week, Lower Decks is being a bit tricker. If we think of each episode of this series as like a treatise on the nature of a certain Star Trek concept, “Kayshon, His Eyes Open,” was all about competing definitions of what it means to be good at your job in Starfleet. And sometimes, when that happens, you end-up meeting your double.

Although the introduction of a Tamarian crewmber named Kayshon hogs the title of the episode, that’s a bit misleading. Yes, Kayshon is from the same alien race as captain Dathon in the wonderful TNG episode “Darmok,” but in this episode, Kayshon isn’t really that big of a deal. You could argue that maybe the Tamarian’s exclusively analogy-based language is a larger metaphor for Star Trek itself, but that doesn’t really seem to be what the episode is going for here. Kayshon is a feature of the episode, but not its subject. Just like “Much Ado About Boimler” in Season 1 was about many other things other than Boimler, this episode is mostly about Mariner getting called out for being too reckless again, and the story of how Boimler himself makes it back to the Cerritos.

While on a mission to help catalogue a “Collector’s Ship,” Mariner, Tendi, Rutherford and Jet, all get trapped by some killer security systems pretty quickly. In Jet, Mariner sees a rival for who will be the dominant “cool” member of the group, and so, she predictably acts like she’s in charge until things go horribly wrong. What makes this work is that Jet is her equal, and is in no way influenced by Mariner’s bullshit. But, unlike Captain Ramsey in Season 1, Mariner can connect with Jet by the end of the episode, because she figures out they actually have more in common than they don’t. In short, although the show is relying on the gimmick of Mariner screwing something up again by being too arrogant, it totally works because the context is pretty different than last season.

But the real brilliance of the episode is all about Boimler’s adventures on the USS Titan, and how “getting transporter cloned” sends him back to the USS Cerritos. While on an undercover mission with some of the Ttian’s resident asskickers, Boimler finds himself defending the softer aspects of Next Generation lore. When his Titan shipmates mock the fact that the Enterprise-D used to have “a regular string quartet,” Boimler sticks up for “the D,” and everything that crew was all about. By the end of the episode, Boimler realizes that the kind of missions that the Titan crew goes on aren’t exactly why he signed up to be in Starfleet, and says it outloud. At the end of the episode, when his old buddies on the Cerritos ask him what the Titan was like, Boimler says: “It was a bunch of complex characters thrown into heavily serialized battles, which always ended in mind-blowing twist which made me question the basic tenets of my reality.”

On some level, you could take this as Lower Decks poking fun at the season-long plot structures of its sister shows Discovery or Picard. The missions of the Cerritos are closer in feeling to what happened on the Enterprise-D than anything happening on the newer shows. (Though Strange New Worlds might be a throwback, too.) The point is, Lower Decks continues to give voice to “old school” Star Trek, which, in this case, means 1990s Trek. At the end of the episode, Boimler’s Titan friends call him “Enterprise,” in a kind of teasing, friendly way. Boimler fits into a different era of Starfleet, maybe one before the Dominion War happened, and certainly not the Starfleet we saw in Picard Season 1.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

But, what Lower Decks is saying with this episode is that maybe all versions of Starfleet can exist alongside each other. Yes, sometimes Starfleet is all covert-ops and phasering, like in the movie Into Darkness or like half of DS9. But maybe, sometimes, things are more like the goofy TNG episode “Second Chances,” in which Riker was infamously duplicated.  Toward the end episode, when it’s revealed there are now two Boimlers, one of the Boimler’s says “Wait, I’m the transporter clone, boo!” But, the bigger message here is much smarter. They are both the real Boimler. Both versions of Starfleet can coexist. And, it turns out, Boimler can want to be part of both crews. Each one is the genuine Boimler, proving that the definition of “going boldly” can mean different things, even within the same person.

The post Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Episode 2 Review: Kayshon, His Eyes Open appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3D2Dez9

[dotshiiki]

Since the sneak preview of The Burning Maze is now floating about (which I have not read, so no spoilers in this post), I thought I'd go back to where we left off in The Dark Prophecy and, well, have a look at the dark prophecy itself, and have some fun guessing at what might be coming our way. Also because @eternal-state-of-voorpret inspired me to take a good hard look at it. 

I'll probably be way off (I'm always pants at this sort of thing) but hey, I'm happy enough to be proven wrong.

So here's our lovely Shakespearean sonnet, broken up as it was in TDP.

The words that memory wrought are set to fire, Ere new moon rises o'er the Devil's Mount. The changeling lord shall face a challenge dire, Till bodies fill the Tiber beyond count.

Our main cast have already parsed most of this—an attack on Camp Jupiter in five days, possibly to destroy Ella's recreation of the Sibylline books. And with the reference to the Devil's Mount, I guess we're looking at the attack coming from that direction too … which is interesting given that the Little Tiber actually borders Camp Jupiter on the west, at least according to RR's map of it. But that's probably beside the point.

But I actually think this is only going to be a minor part of the book and we've possibly been mislead by the 'bodies fill the Tiber' bit. Let's face it, I really don't think we're going to get a massive bloodbath because hello, ultimately, children's book. What I do think is that Frank (the changeling lord, as guessed by Leo) is going to pull off something like what he did in HoH with the katoblepones. Because he kind of filled Venice with those bodies (beyond count)!

I had a think about what sort of shapeshifters could possibly come up if 'changeling lord = Frank' was a misdirection, but Greco-Roman mythology isn't exactly filled with notable shapeshifters besides the gods shifting into animals and whatnot. And there's no one god that's really renown for it, so I think the attribution to Frank is probably a safe enough one.

But I stand by my prediction that all this is going to take place fairly early in the book, possibly in the first couple of chapters, because the rest of the prophecy fits the book title and set-up (with Grover and the Labyrinth) much better. Not to mention, there's five days. I mean, sure it's possible the whole book can take place in that short a period (since a lot of the series pretty much happens over one week or two in each book), but five … is kind of cutting it very fine, I think. Especially if we're going into the time-warping Labyrinth. And also the last line talks again about the Tiber reached alive. So prediction: we'll have some action at Camp Jupiter involving loads of monster-killings by our awesome shape-shifting Frank, but resulting in the loss of the Sibylline recreations/kidnapping of Ella, because why not? Half the first two series is people being kidnapped! Followed by which Apollo, Meg, and Grover head off south (I'll get to the next prophecy chunk in a bit), likely going after the Sibylline prophecy/the Oracle of Cumae.

Yet southward must the sun now trace its course, Through mazes dark to lands of scorching death To find the master of the swift white horse And wrest from him the crossword speaker's breath.

Okay, so south they go, and we're pretty much committed to the Labyrinth now. Here's the interesting thing—in THO, we have people accidentally ending up in Peru. We also have the introduction of Paolo, a Brazilian demigod. Could this be a clue that we're heading to South America? (The Atacama Desert borders Peru and is the driest in the world … just saying. There's also the Sechura Desert in Peru). Not to mention Peru is southwest! Of course, it could just be that we're headed to Arizona or some other US desert or really hot state (you US citizens will know what there is better than me, I'm sure) but wouldn't it be cool if we do go overseas? (I loved popping over to England in Ship of the Dead, but hey, I'm biased. And I'm fairly sure RR's 'verse isn't going all the way to Asia, so I'll take the UK as a win.)

The master of the swift white horse is posited to be the third emperor, but I don't know—this could in many different ways. I admit I thought immediately of Arion, but I think he's a different colour? Anyway, a horse named Incitatus was the favoured steed of Roman Emperor Caligula (and he actually attempted to appoint the horse a priest …), which could point at him being the final of the triumvirate. More on that in a bit.

Apollo names the crossword speaker as the Erythraean Oracle, which gives me pause, because we're already looking at finding the Sibylline Cumae, and I kind of think we're probably going for one Oracle per book (since there's conveniently five and five books … and I'm fairly sure the last one has to be Delphi, because Apollo slaying Python makes a nice symmetry and relates back to old mythology). So which would it be?

Legend has it that the Erythraean Sibyl spewed prophecies in the shape of leaves, which connects nicely back to Meg and Demeter's daughter's ancient roots … which brings us to the next stanza.

To westward palace must the Lester go; Demeter's daughter finds her ancient roots. The cloven guide alone the way does know, To walk the path in thine own enemy's boots.

This bit has been glossed over quite a bit in TDP, where Apollo just goes how he can't wrap his mental fingers over what the westward palace means. Which just means this probably is the plot 'twist' in the next book. I admit the first thing I think of with westward palace is Mount Othrys, but I also think that's pretty unlikely, because the Titans are pretty much done with. But then, given the Triumvirate's apparent hand in orchestrating/financing those wars … possibly they're building on something from that?

As for Demeter's daughter's ancient roots, I do think that goes beyond a simple family connection. It's interesting to note that Demeter was associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries, which RR has not really drawn upon thus far in any of his books. So while admitting I have no clue how that could possibly be spun out, I do think it may be somehow related to that.

We've pretty much committed Grover as the cloven guide, but relying on him to know the way suggests more than just his ability to get them through the Labyrinth, because let's face it—Grover was never the Labyrinth guide back in BotL. I'm guessing the 'the way does know' discusses a different way that Grover knows about—possibly providing an answer to that last line: to walk the path in thine own enemy's boots. And Grover knows plenty about walking in (literally) another's shoes. Even traitorous, drag-you-down-to-Tartarus shoes.

And okay, side point that I can't quite work into the rest, but let's not forget the Teumessian Fox that got raised at the end of TDP—I think it's got to come up at some point (if not in this book then one of the next). I just can't figure out where to slot it into the prophecy just yet. Unless the lands of scorching death is a reference to a modern-day Thebes.

When three are known and Tiber reached alive, 'Tis only then Apollo starts to jive.

I'm guessing the three here refer to all three emperors in the Triumvirate, which sparks the guessing game as to which is the last. My money’s on Caligula, who seems like a shoe-in given his description as referring to himself as a god during his own lifetime. And also, he owned a swift (possibly white) horse.

Finally, Apollo starts to jive could refer to some godly power finally returning to him (well, he's had some flashes on occasion, but this could be the point at which he finally gains a modicum of control over it).

And this brings us back to the Tiber, and the question of what prophecy will shape this book. There's two ways I think the overarching plot could go. One, they track down the Erythraean Sibyl and get the prophecy from her; two they rescue the Sibylline/Cumaean Oracle and the next prophecy leads to the Erythraean. I favour the book being about the Sibylline Oracle because it makes a nice little enclosed adventure within a bigger series, which is neater, literarily speaking. As opposed to resolving a new Oracle and leaving the existing one dangling for two books (since we are pretty certain to be going to Camp Jupiter where the Sibylline books will be under attack).

And here's a question about poetry and prophecies in the upcoming books. We've already seen the limerick and the sonnet, and most likely there's two more to go if the next two books will follow the same general structure. Since every chapter title's a haiku, it might be unlikely that one of the prophecies will end up being one (it's not easy squeezing a prophecy into seventeen syllables … believe me, I've tried!) Yet it might be poetic (sorry!) if Apollo's final prophecy comes out in his over-abused favourite style.

I don't think RR will go for a long one again, so my money's on something like a sestet, a sestina, or even free verse (hey, you never know!) Or maybe we’re looking at visual poetry if it’s the Erythraean Oracle ... 

[cutiecrates]

Cutie Semi-Reviews: Gacha Gacha Crate August 19

Hello everyone :3 today’s review is going to be a bit different than usual, but you can probably tell by the title. It won’t be too different, but I’m not going to be putting in ratings; I didn’t have that much opinion about this box so I really don’t see how I could rate the items honestly. Quality wise they’re all really good and I didn’t have complaints there, but I couldn’t bring myself to really become attached to the items, even though I did like most of them. I’ve had this box for over a week now and just can’t really... assess how I feel about it? 

To be fair though, I’m also sick and I’m more focused on getting back on pace with these. My thoughts are kind of all over the place right now and don’t want to focus enough on anything either, and I’ve only been awake for a few hours and I already have a migraine and want to go back to bed.

Glowing Jellyfish

These jellyfish cuties are cellphone straps that glow when exposed to light. As you can see come in variety of fun shapes and colors, I think I would have liked to get one of the longer bodied ones, or maybe the little boxy purple-ish one. The one I got, I don’t believe I’ve seen before so I have no idea what it is other than a mat with some algae growing out of it. Or a moldy pancake.

Personally this isn’t one I would pick out, but I don’t hate it. The quality looks nice and its a rubbery material so it’s fun to touch, but it will also attract hair and who knows what else so I don’t think it would stay clean very long. Also, the glowing feature in the picture is a little misleading, it could just be me but it looks like they glow a brighter variant of their actual colors, so I was surprised mine turned out to be neon green.

Dragon Ball Z Figure

If you read one of my recent GachaGacha Crate reviews you might recognize the style of this next gacha. It’s by the same brand that made my Kingdom Hearts gacha, but it shares some resemblance to the prior Dragon Ball chibified figure I got too; almost like they were crossbred or something.

So as you can see, I just got basic super saiyan goku. The figure quality and painted detail is really good, although I did notice they didn’t paint on his “behind“ features of his clothing, which seems a little lazy to me. The hair always impresses me, but I’m a bit disappointed because they always look like they should be holding something. I think it would be fun if they all could come with an accessory of some type.

I won’t be keeping this one. I’ll either give it to the guy who got me into DBZ when I was younger or to the Japanimation store I frequent. It’s not that I don’t like it but I don’t have a use/need for it, and I know there are bigger fans of it who would appreciate it more.

Pokemon Figure

You can probably tell, but they were really figure themed this month. I kinda wish they would have went for something more summery, but they don’t really do themes with this box. I wish they would try it out though; imagine one full of squishies, or Pokemon, cutesy foods, or idol characters~ 

Anyway, these Pokemon all come with a berry and are ready to begin eating. I got the adorable little Togedemaru, and they’re all very cute so I think I would have been happy with any one of them. They would be really cute for re-ment sets.

The detail on the figure is really nice and accurate, there’s no issues with that but I did notice you can make out some of the “seams“ of the figure, and mine oddly has like a... smudge in its plastic on the back? Like it’s not a stain on it, but in it. But I’m pretty sure that was a random mishap.

Putitto Team Rocket

Putitto figures are very popular, but so far I think this is only the 2nd time we’ve gotten any in the crate. It’s also fun to see a Team Rocket exclusive gacha, I’ve always liked them, mainly because I loved Meowth, but also because they were really funny.

Putitto are a series of figurines that balance on/around/in various objects, usually cups. There’s been tons of these released and they’re mainly based on various characters and mascots. If you’d like to see more, here’s a link to a Youtuber I’ve watched for years who has some: 

https://www.youtube.com/user/japanesestuffchannel/search?query=putitto

I love love love the Osomatsu-san ones~

Anyway, the quality of this figure is great, like the above it has an amazing paint job and although Meowth has less-details, he’s much smaller proportion wise and it looks twice as impressive. Everything is entirely detailed, and he lays down fine even though he isn’t flat-backed.

Sega Keychain

Our next item is this fun pouch that comes in a variety of sega console and remote shapes. It’s very cute, I love video game-inspired stuff  so I’ll find some way of using it. The detail is really nice and looks pretty accurate for a cloth representation of a game remote. It’s fairly small though so I feel like it would only really be good for money or things like a list, receipts, notes, etc.

Until I was like 7 or 8 I was very attached to my sega and Sonic games. But I also had a thing called Sega Channel that had all the games on it and would annually add more or swap them out with others. At one point I also bought a Dreamcast (like around the time some their games started being ported to Gamecube) for a game I really wanted but when I got it home and set it up, it had a lot of problems and didn’t work. It was disappointing, but they actually did end up releasing the game (an upgraded version) I wanted on Gamecube~

Fan

This is our last item, and another one that actually makes me think of summer so I like that. These are little model fans that actually work! I love gacha items like this, so that was another fun surprise. It’s available in 10 colors, including 3 translucent, and 1 that I think is supposed to glow.

As you can see I was lucky enough to get one of the translucent ones, and besides an adjustable head, it also comes with a battery in it so all you have to do is assemble it and turn it on. It’s very cute and would be great with figurines, dolls, certain re-ments. It’s also small enough you could bring it with you or leave it nearby, like on a desk or table.

However, I will say that in terms of use... like you can’t expect it to really keep you cool, even if you’re directly on top of it. The breeze is extremely light, but enough that you can still feel something.

------

Alright, so this is the end of my review. I’m not very happy with this one, but I really didn’t think there was much for me to say either -not counting all the rambling I did- for what its worth the items are great quality wise. I liked them mostly, but I wasn’t in love with any particular one? I wouldn’t say this wasn’t a good box though, I just wasn’t feeling it right now....

[marcoscheel]

Manage Microsoft Teams membership with Azure AD Access Review

This post will introduce you to the Azure AD Access Review feature. With the introduction of modern collaboration through Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams being the main tool it is important to mange who is a member to the underlying Office 365 Group (Azure AD Group).

<DE>Für eine erhöhte Reichweite wird der Post heute auf Englisch erscheinen. Es geht um die Einführung von Access Reviews (Azure AD) im Zusammenspiel mit Microsoft Teams. Das Verwalten der Mitgliedschaft eines Teams wird durch den Einsatz von diesem Feature unterstützt und stellt die Besitzer weiter in den Mittelpunkt. Sollte großes Interesse an einer komplett deutschen Version bestehen, dann lasst es mich bitte wissen.</DE>

Microsoft has great resources to get started on a technical level. The feature enables a set of people to review another set of people. Azure AD is leveraging this capability (all under the bigger umbrella called Identity Governance) on two assets: Azure AD Groups and Azure AD Apps. Microsoft Teams as a hub for collaboration is build on top of Office 365 Groups and so we will have a closer look at the Access Review part for Azure AD Groups.

Each Office 365 Group (each Team) is build from a set of owners and members. With the open nature of Office 365, members can be employees, contractors, or people outside of the organization.

In our modern collaboration (Teams, SharePoint, ...) implementation we strongly recommend to leverage full self service group creation that is already built into the system. With this setup everyone is able to create and manage/own a group. Permanent user education is needed for everyone to understand the concept behind modern groups. Many organizations also have a strong set of internal rules that forces a so called information owner (could be equal to the owner of a group) to review who has access to their data. Most organization rely on the fact people are fulfilling their duties as demanded, but lets face it owners are just human beings that need to do their “real” job. With the introduction of Azure AD Access Review we can support these owner duties and make the process documented and easy to execute.

AAD Access Review can do the following to support an up to date group membership:

Setup an Access Review for an Azure AD Group

Specify the duration (start date, recurrence, duration, ...)

Specify who will do the review (owner, self, specific people, ...)

Specify who will be reviewed (all members, guests, ...)

Specify what will happen if the review is not executed (remove members, ...)

Before we start we need to talk about licensing. It is obvious that M365 E5 is the best SKU to start with ;) but if you are not that lucky, you need at least an Azure AD P2 license. It is not a “very” common license as it was only part of the EMS E5 SKU, but Microsoft started some time ago really attractive license bundles. Many orgs with strong security requirements will at some point hit a license SKU that will include AAD P2. For your trusty lab tenants start a EMS E5 trial to test these features today. To be precise only the accounts reviewing (executing the Access Review) need the license, at least this is my understanding and as always with licensing ask your usual licensing people to get the definitive answer.

The setup of an Access Review (if not automated through MS Graph Beta) is setup in the Azure Portal in the identity governance blade of AAD. To create our first Access Review we need to on-board to this feature.

Please note we are looking at Access Review in the context of modern collaboration (groups created by Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, ...). Access Review can be used to review any AAD group that you use to grant access to a specific resource or keep a list of trusted users for an infrastructure piece of tech in Azure. The following information might not always be valid for your scenario!

This is the first half of the screen we need to fill-out for a new Access Review:

Review name: This is a really important piece! The Review name will be the “only” visible clue for the reviewer once they get the email about the outstanding review. With self service setup and with the nature of how people name their groups we need to ensure people are understanding what they review. We try to automate the creation of the reviews so we put the review timing, the group name and the groups object id in the review name. The ID is helping during support if you send out 4000 Access Reviews and people ask why they got this email they can provide you with the ID and things get easier. For example: 2019-Q1 GRP New Order (af01a33c-df0b-4a97-a7de-c6954bd569ef)

Frequency: Also very important! You have to understand that an Access Review is somehow static. You could do a recurring review, but some information will be out of sync. For example the group could be renamed, but the title will not be updated and people might get confused about misleading information in the email that is send out. If you choose to let the owner of a group do the review, the owners will be “copied” to the Access Review config and not updated for future reviews. Technically this could be fixed by Microsoft, but as of now we ran into problems in the context of modern collaboration.

Users: "Members of a group” is our choice for collaboration. The other option is “Assigned to an application” and not our focus. For a group we have the option to do a guest only review or review everybody as a member of a group. Based on organizational needs and information like the confidentiality we can make a decision. As a starting point it could be a good option to go with guests only because guests are not very well controlled in most environments. An employee at least has a contract and the general trust level should be higher.

Group: Select a group the review should apply to. The latest changes to the Access Review feature allowed to select multiple groups at once. From a collaboration perspective I would avoid it, because at the end of the creation process each group will have its own Access Review instance and the settings are no longer shared. Once again from a collab point of view we need some kind of automation because it is not feasible to create these reviews by an manual task in a foreseeable future.

Reviewers: The natural choice for an Office 365 Group (Team) is to go with the “Group owners” option. Especially if we automate the process and don’t have an extra database to lookup who is the information owner. For static groups or highly confidential groups the option “Selected users” could make sense. An interesting option is also the last one called “Members (self)”. This option will "force” each member to take a decision if the user is any longer part of this project, team or group. We at Glück & Kanja are currently thinking about doing this for some of our internal clients teams. Most of our groups are public and accessible by most of the employee, but membership will document some kind of current involvement for the client represented by the group. This could also naturally reduce the number of teams that show up in your Microsoft Teams client app. As mentioned earlier at the moment it seems that the option “Group owners” will be resolved once the Access Review starts and the instance of the review is then fixed. So any owner change could be not reflected in future instances in recurring reviews. Hopefully this will be fixed by Microsoft.

Program: This is a logical grouping of access reviews. For example we could add all collaboration related reviews to one program vs administration reviews with a more static route.

More advanced settings are collapsed, but should definitely be reviews.

Upon completion settings: Allows to automatically apply the review results. I would suggest to try this settings, because it will not only document the review but take the required action on the membership. If group owners are not aware what these Access Review email are, then we talk about potential loss of access for members not reviewed, but at the end that is what we want. People need to take this part of identity governance for real and take care of their data. Any change by the system is document (Audit log of the group) and can be reverse manually. If the system is not executing the results of the review, someone must look up results regularly and then ensure to remove the users based on the outcome. If you go for Access Review, I strongly recommend on automatically applying the results (after you own internal tests).

Lets take a look on the created Access Review.

Azure Portal: This is an overview for the admin (non recurring access review).

Email: As you can see the prominent Review name is what is standing out to the user. The group name (also highlighted red) is buried within all other text.

Click on “Start Review” from the email: The user now can take action based on recommendations (missing in my lab tenant due to inactivity of my lab users).

Take Review: Accept 6 users.

Review Summary: This is the summary if the owner has taken all actions.

Azure Portal: Audit log information for the group.

After the user completed the review the system didn’t make a change to the group. Based on the configuration if actions should be automatically applied the results apply at the end of the review process! Until this time the owners can change their mind. Once the review period is over the system will apply the needed changes.

I really love this feature in the context of modern collaboration. The process of keeping a current list of involved members in a team is a big benefit for productivity and security. The “need to know” principal is supported by a technical implementation “free of cost” (a mentioned everyone should have AAD P2 through some SKU 😎).

Our GK O365 Lifecycle tool was extended to allow the creation of Access Reviews through the Microsoft Graph based on the Group/Team classification. Once customers read or get a demo about this feature and own the license we immediately start a POC implementation. If our tool is already in place it is only a matter of some JSON configuration to be up and running.

[sunshine-captain]

do you have any good star trek novel recommendations? (tos please!!)

Yes! I do! I’ve been meaning to make a post about this for…so long, whoops, but I’ll answer this ask instead! (might still make the post someday, idk tbh. I probably should though because since I have so many Trek books I haven’t read yet, I might like more enough to rec them, haha.) Okay, anyway… (By TOS I assume you mean the original Enterprise crew, I hope it’s okay that not all of these actually take place during TOS, aka the five year mission.)

Sarek by A. C. Crispin You might have seen me mention this one the other day on my blog; I really love it. It takes place post TUC, Amanda is dying and Sarek is uncovering a plot that’s way bigger than anyone realizes at first… Also there’s some stuff about Jim’s nephew Peter (from the episode with the farting flying pancake aliens? lol.) and yeah, it’s a great read. All the parts with Sarek and Amanda are lovely and sad and the plot is interesting and it’s just all around enjoyable.Definitely recommend.

Collision Course by William Shatner This is the other one I mentioned on my blog already, and this one is probably my favorite Trek novel. Spock is nineteen and Jim is seventeen when they first meet, and they’re both too smart for their own good and get into trouble and…well, all the things you expect from Jim and Spock. It was originally supposed to be the first in a series, but for various reasons, there probably won’t be any more (CRIES) but this one is so good. And it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger so it’s okay. I especially enjoyed tbh how Bill appreciates what an effect Tarsus would have had on Jim (this is only three years later, after all) and it’s still very visible on lil’ Jim. Not a spoiler, bc a reference is made to Tarsus on…literally the very first page. Lol. Anyway, this one is really fun and sometimes sad (bc Tarsus) and just really great! Also, at least one of the plot twists genuinely surprised me, which is rare… I normally see them coming a mile off in Trek novels. ;) (Which doesn’t usually take away from my enjoyment, tbh!) But I really appreciate when they can surprise me.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (novelization) by Gene Roddenberry You knew this was coming. This is an absolute must read if you’re a Spirk fan, tbh. I’m not all the way through with it so far, about halfway done, but I can tell you it’s a much better way of telling the story of TMP than TMP. Lol. The movie has this simple feeling and Jim rushing to Spock on the bridge and saying his name like a prayer and other things, but it also has all those dreadful special effect sequences. And the novel has its own gay to offer. I don’t necessarily agree with the way Gene wrote Jim (in fact, it’s been forever since I picked it up but I distinctly remember being bothered by it), but…yeah, at least borrow a copy from someone and witness the gay parts for yourself, haha.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (novelization) by Vonda McIntyre I’m going to go ahead and say right now that if you’re going to read the novelizations, go for the ones by Ms. (Mrs? idk) McIntyre. She wrote 2, 3, and 4. I haven’t read 3 yet, but I have read 2 and 4 and I like that she actually adds in scenes and stuff that weren’t in the movies. It makes me feel like I’m actually getting something additional for my time even though I’m reading a novelization of a movie I’ve already seen. I like this one, because there was quite a bit that wasn’t in the movie (I have a hunch the extra scenes, at least some of them, might be based on the script? because the scene with Sulu’s great….something or other grandfather as a child meeting Sulu is in the book, and I know they tried to put that in the movie but never managed to. anyway.) But yeah, there’s actual stuff in there that’s not in the movie! that’s the way it should be. Also…she ships Saavik/David pretty clearly. :P Like I said, haven’t read TSS novel yet, but I know she was working it into 2, and it’s mentioned in 4 as a thing. Anyway…good stuff! This is the one where the whole “Vulcans get drunk on chocolate” thing comes from btw :))) (Avoid the novelizations by JM Dillard! Avoid!!! I’ve read them and they’re not good.) (Oh and pretty much everything I’ve read by Vonda McIntyre I’ve enjoyed, she’s a good Trek writer.)

Dwellers In The Crucible by Margaret Wander Bonnano Margaret Bonnano is another writer I just generally recommend bc I like all the stuff by her that I’ve read, too. Anyway… okay so let me say that this book’s main characters are not Jim and Spock. I know, I know. But wait!! It’s so worth a read!! Jim and Spock are in it, not much, but when they are they’re literally so married and explicitly confirmed to be t’hy’la… :)) it’s great. okay anyway. The main characters are a human named Cleante and a Vulcan named T’Shael. They are ladies. THEY ARE GAY AF. OKAY. THAT ALONE MAKES IT WORTH A READ. it’s so glorious.I mean the book only says they’re friends but…in the same way Jim and Spock are friends in canon. they’re super freaking gay. and also there are like a thousand incredibly obvious parallels between our human and vulcan lady and Jim and Spock. it’s fun. also Sulu goes undercover as a Romulan. :D yeah, just…read it. it’s great. (it made me angry at one point. I’m still angry. but I recommend it.)

Ishmael by Barbara Hambly This one was, for me at least, just a genuinely good read. I really enjoyed the plot. So…Spock goes back in time to 1867, not willingly I don’t think. And he gets amnesia. So right there are two tropes I ADORE (time travel and amnesia, I don’t care, I LOVE THEM.) He lands in North America, in Seattle if I remember correctly. And that’s the plot pretty much. Haha…okay, there’s a Klingon plot, the Enterprise crew searching for Spock, Spock trying to adapt and hide he’s an alien while bonding with the members of the community he lands in. Also Jim and Spock’s reunion is a bit gay. (Warning for spoilers if you click that? it’s pictures of when they find him near the end, so. Yeah.) I just really enjoyed the book in itself, the plot and everything. Fun!

Enterprise: The First Adventure by Vonda McIntyre In light of the tv series called Enterprise, the title of this one might be a little confusing… But it’s most definitely TOS and has nothing to do with Enterprise, haha. The premise is that it’s the first voyage of the Enterprise with Jim as the captain. And the mission is…to transport a theater troupe. It’s ridiculous and so silly, I know, but it’s really fun. There’s a winged horse, a really un-Vulcan Vulcan (I think he’s Spock’s cousin? I don’t really remember tbh), Spock heckling the theater troop, Uhura being a good friend to Janice…that’s all I remember off the top of my head, but I remember really enjoying it when I read it! 

Unspoken Truth by Margaret Wander Bonanno Remember what I said about those two writers? Lol. Okay so this is a Saavik-centric book. I really love Saavik, okay? So, as you might know, Saavik is half Vulcan, half Romulan. Well in this book (actually, in a bunch of books, by at least three different writers, it seems to be her accepted backstory in the novels) she was the result of a terrible experiment by Romulans, and when it didn’t work out, she and a bunch of other children were abandoned on a planet called Hellguard, and…some really horrible things happen. Anyway, Spock saves her, mentors her, and Amanda and Sarek basically adopt her (literally, she calls them mother and father, IT’S MY FAVE), well anyway, years later, either after or during TVH, she learns things are happening to the survivors of Hellguard…and the story goes from there. This was really good! Intense tbh. I loved it, but then, I love Saavik. If you don’t like her… But if you do, you’ll enjoy this one!!!!

Doctor’s Orders by Diane Duane Diane Duane is another must read author. All her books are excellent. In all honestly, I don’t remember too much about the plot of this one, but I know I liked it! Dr. McCoy is like “you can’t make me take command on the bridge” and Jim is like “uh actually I CAN” so he does and of course on McCoy’s very first day watching over the bridge Jim goes AWOL and shit starts going down. Poor Bones. Also, there’s some crazy aliens in this one, but they’re interesting!

The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah This one has such misleading cover art, lmaooo. At least, the version I have. There might be others… Anyway. Patients at a hospital on Vulcan keep dying and stuff, and then Amanda is in trouble. Lots of Sarek and Spock and Jim and Bones interaction. It’s a good one. (It’s been soo long since I read this one, too, sorry. But again, I know I enjoyed it!)

Uhura’s Song by Janet Hagan I love the alien species in this one. They’re like giant cats, and I love cats. When I read it, I got really into the planet and the species and their culture. The plot is that an old friend of Uhura’s is from this planet, and they “exchanged songs”…songs are a big deal in their culture. Anyway, there’s a plague threatening everyone on the planet and humans, too, and they think a song might hold the key to curing the disease, so they all go down on the planet to try and find it.

Strangers From The Sky by Margaret Wander Bonanno The plot to this one is…kind of hard to describe. Okay. So the parts with Jim and Spock go back and forth in time, part of the time being like, post-all the movies (I think) where they’re old friends (and really married, they’re just like. Margaret Bonanno has this way of inserting this really easy, casual intimacy they have with each other, and calling it friendship when OBVIOUSLY they’re married af, but either way I love it) and part of the time being very early on when Jim hasn’t been in command for long and he and Spock didn’t care much for each other (I mean personally I think they liked each other quite well from the start, but I’ll let it go, lol)… And then there’s a book. In the book. That everyone is reading and obsessed with and Jim starts reading it… It sounds weird, I know, but the book in the book is the story of the first time Vulcans came in contact with humans, long before the OFFICIAL first contact, it was when Vulcans crash landed on Earth and were discovered by some humans… I fucking love Vulcans, so that is obviously a great point of interest for me. Lol. Anyway when Jim reads the book he has nightmares, but then he discovers Spock has those nightmares, too, and it’s more than ‘just’ a book. Probably sounds bizarre but I really enjoyed it. ….and doesn’t every Trek plot EVER sound bizarre af when you try to describe it?

That’s all I’ve got right now!! This got so long I’M SO SORRY TBH BUT I HAD TO BE THOROUGH.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT YOU WEREN'T MEANT TO DETECT BIAS

The obvious solution is to have the junior people do the work for him. But the best thing of all is when people call what you're doing inappropriate. Which is not to be in this phase now.1 You need to know basis can attest, dividing information up into little cells is terribly inefficient. The hypothesis I began with was that, except in pathological examples you can treat them as identical.2 That's why I write them.3 Recursion means repetition in subelements, like the classic Lisps of the 1970s. In fact, of all the different types of people. Hygienic macros embody the opposite principle. One reason we don't see them is a phenomenon I call schlep blindness.

He followed that advice. I think future programming languages will have libraries that are as carefully designed as the core language. Well, it was a big surprise to me and seemed to have huge implications. As long as that idea is still floating around, I think, is to divide projects into sharply defined modules, each with a definite owner, and with interfaces between them that are as carefully designed and, if possible, as articulated as programming languages. The easiest program to change is one that's very short. I ran out of ideas. Larry and Sergey, for example.4 One thing I do feel pretty certain of is that if there were some excessively compact way to phrase something, there would probably also be a longer way. But it is not all the sort of things we now patent as software, but individual hackers won't, and it's hard to imagine a world in which Windows is irrelevant.5

In this particular case there is a great artist.6 Pointing out that someone is unqualified is as desperate as resorting to racial slurs. A novice imitates without knowing it; next he tries consciously to be original; finally, he decides it's more important to be right, even though it feels wrong.7 Merchants bid a percentage of sales for traffic, but the people we were picking would become the YC alumni network. So I'm going to try to recast one's work as a single thesis. In architecture and design, you probably need to be able to write a serious program using only the built-in Common Lisp operators are comically long. If you can keep hope and worry balanced, they will drive a project forward the same way that mathematicians and modernist architects are lazy: they hate anything extraneous.8 Is it worth trying to define a good programming language is, they'll say something like Oh, a high-level abstraction, for example, they're often reluctant to redo parts that aren't right; they feel they've been lucky to get that far, and if you love to hack you'll inevitably be working on projects of your own.

But times have changed. In the first phase of the two-cycle innovation engine, you work furiously on some problem because of patent trolls.9 At the very least I must have explained something badly.10 And expect to encounter ferocious opposition if you do it consciously you'll do it even better.11 The Google guys were lucky because they knew someone who knew Bechtolsheim. If anyone at Yahoo considered the idea that we ought to be writing research papers.12 But what a difference it makes to be able to see things from the user's point of view. Responsibility is an occupational disease of eminence.13 Frankly, it surprises me how small a role in software?

It's hard for such people to design great libraries. If most of your ideas aren't stupid, you're probably imitating an imitator. In startups, the more hooks you have for new facts to stick onto—which means you accumulate knowledge at what's colloquially called an exponential rate. You have to understand a field well before you develop a good nose for what needs fixing. For me, interesting means surprise.14 That might be a good thing.15 As you move earlier in the venture funding process, the ratio of help to money increases, because earlier stage companies have different needs. It's the concluding remarks to the jury. The professor who made his reputation by discovering some new idea is not likely to be more readable than a line of Basic is likely to be the way most big programs were developed. The worst consequence of trying to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as you must not use the word algorithm in the title of a book. You might as well flip a coin.16

If all you want to design a popular language needs is time.17 And so they're the most valuable features.18 That means the wind of procrastination will be in your favor: instead of avoiding this work, this will be what you do. I pointed out that because you can only judge computer programmers by working with them, no one will pay for software, but there will be other new types of inventions they understand even less. But I think there's more going on than this.19 Few will even notice. We didn't draw any conclusions. And the reason it's inaccurate is that, if something is fun, it isn't work. And one of the first things they discovered was what we call the classics. The texts that filtered into Europe were all corrupted to some degree by the errors of translators and copyists.

It's that the detour the language makes you take is longer. In 1995 it was hard to take search seriously. You can't make a mouse by scaling down an elephant. It was perfectly reasonable to be afraid of them.20 The eminent, on the other side. If you don't know who needs to be a genius who will need to do things their own way, he is unlikely to head straight for the conclusion that a great artist. Yahoo discovered, the area covered by this rule is bigger than most people realize. Essays should aim for maximum surprise.

They produce something, are convinced it's great, and never improve it.21 It has sometimes been said that Lisp should use first and rest instead of car and cdr often are, in theory, merely explaining yourself to someone else.22 They launch it with no indication of whether you're succeeding.23 So did Apple. Plus you're moving money, so you're going to have more syntax in the future. Only a small percentage of hackers can actually design software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters. Fortunately, this sort of essay, you can ask it in real time. Now, thanks to the Internet, they can start to study good design in detail. Early YC was a family, and Jessica was its mom.

Notes

The problem is not always intellectual dishonesty that makes you much more attractive to investors, is this someone you want to turn down some good ideas buried in Bubble thinking.

If anyone remembers such an idea where there is some kind of people who are good presenters, but the route to that mystery is that most three letter words are bad.

That's not a commodity or article of commerce. As Paul Buchheit points out that it's doubly important for societies to be evidence of a severe-looking man with a sufficiently identifiable style, you could try telling him it's XML. It is a function of their core values is Don't be evil. At the time it takes more than whatever collection of qualities helps people make the kind that prevents you from starving.

On their job listing page, they still probably won't invest. Put rice in rice cooker and forget about it.

Enterprise software.

The VCs recapitalize the company, you might be enough to supply the activation energy required.

The reason you don't see them, not economic inequality, and try another approach.

In 1800 an empty room, you create wealth in a non-programmers grasped that in 1995, when in fact they were more the type who would never even think of it. Some blue counties are false positives caused by filters will be the next investor.

The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, many of the acquisition into what it means a big effect on social ones.

If I were doing Viaweb again, that alone could in principle is that promising ideas are not all, the thing to be important ones. How many times larger than the set of canonical implementations of the young Henry VIII and was troubled by debts all his life.

But that turned out to be important ones. And bad outcomes have origins in their IPO filing. A supports, say, real income ignores much of the former, because a there was when we started Viaweb, and how good you can base brand on anything with a face-saving compromise. There were a property of the breach with Rome, where x includes math, law, writing and visual design.

For these companies when you use the phrase the city, they could just expand into casinos than software, because the illiquidity of progress puts them at the valuation turns out only to the Pall Mall Gazette. All he's committed to is following the evidence wherever it leads.

Though they were, like angel investors. Brand-name VCs wouldn't recapitalize a company just to load a problem if you'll never need to import is broader, ranging from designers to programmers to electrical engineers. Family, school, because even being deliberately misleading by focusing so much better to read is not pagerank commercialized.

It's suspiciously neat, but something feminists need to fix once it's big, plus they are not written by the fact that, founders will do that. Ideas are one of the other hand, launching something small and then stopped believing, so they made, but there are those that will sign up quickest and those that will seem more interesting than later ones, it often means the startup eventually becomes.

The problem in high school writing this, but I took so long.

It turns out it is very long: it might make them less vulnerable to legal attack. 3 months also suggests one underestimates how hard they work. I don't like content is the most demanding but also like an in-house VC fund they outsource most of the 20th century was also the main reason kids lie to them. It was only because he writes about controversial things.

Most of the per capita income. In high school junior. I find myself asking founders Would you use this technique, you'll have to sweat any one outcome.

But the change is a bridgehead. His theory was that the word has shifted. So instead of being absorbed by the customs of the anti-dilution protections.

I assume we still do things that don't include the cases where you read them as promising to invest at a 3 year old son, you'll be well on your product, and yet give away free subscriptions with such tricks initially.

But which of them consistently make money, and are paid a flat rate regardless of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were invisible or simpler in Lisp, they compete on price, and one or two, and only one. But that's not likely to be very hard to game the system, written in C, the whole. According to a can of soup. So far, I advised avoiding Javascript.

However, it seems. Fifty years ago, the technology business.

But we invest in syndicates. He had equity. The markets seem to have the same thing 2300 years later. Instead of bubbling up from the DMV.

In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other people.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Stephen Wolfram, Trevor Blackwell, Aaron Swartz, Geoff Ralston, Bill Birch, Fred Wilson, Jeff Clavier, and Jessica Livingston for inviting me to speak.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Nothin’ But Hos an’ Tricks

by Dan H

Saturday, 12 June 2010

Dan talks about “Rockstar Hypocrisy”~

A little while ago Viorica posted a link in the playpen to an article entitled

Six Things Red Dead Redemption Taught Me About (Hating) Women

.

I’ve already talked about this a bit on the playpen, so I won’t repeat myself here (so sorry if you’re reading this article in 2012 and haven’t got a clue what this is all about) but broadly I thought a lot of its criticisms were at best misguided and at worst wilfully misleading (I am still not certain it isn’t a parody, if it is it’s actually far more offensive than anything in the game).

Children of the Wasteland: A Little Gaming History

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away a company called Black Isle released a game called Fallout 2. In America, the towns and cities of the post-nuclear world were full of dirty, ragged looking children, playing in the streets and occasionally picking your pockets.

Fallout 2, like its predecessor, was a big, open-world game, in which you could pretty much go anywhere and do anything. You could also, it being an RPG, kill pretty much any NPC in the game (there was none of this “plot flag” nonsense you get so much of nowadays) and this included the kids.

For the European release, the producers were given an ultimatum: take the kids out or make them invulnerable. Making the kids invulnerable would – so the producers thought – undermine the player’s sense of immersion, as well as the go-anywhere do-anything quality which was such a selling point of their game (this was, I think, before the days of the “Sandbox” genre proper, but “exploring the world” was a much bigger feature of RPGs back then). So they took the kids out.

You can get a patch to put them back in, and on most of my playthroughs (plays-through?) of the game I’ve left the children – umm – unmolested. On the times when I’ve played an “evil” game, however, I have sometimes had occasion to take out the odd six-year old, which earned me the “childkiller” title and stopped some of the “good”-aligned NPCs from talking to me.

Perhaps I’m just dysfunctional, but I really do appreciate the choice. Having kids in the game makes the world feel more real, having those kids be invulnerable to shotgun fire would make the game feel less real. Ipso-facto I’m glad the game gives me the option to shoot them.

Go Anywhere, Do Anything, Kill Anyone

The “go anywhere, do anything, be a saint or be a mass murdering psychopath” vibe is an integral part of a sandbox game, be it a full on GTAalike or any game with a strong sandbox element. A common criticism of Oblivion was that it wouldn’t let you kill questgivers in case you “accidentally” cut yourself off from important questlines, which was probably a sensible choice all told, but which to a lot of people felt like unnecessary handholding. After all, if I’m the kind of guy who will shoot you in the face for looking at me funny, I’m probably not the kind of guy who’ll go looking for your lost kitten.

Having the option to kill anybody means having the option to kill women. In Fable and its sequels, it’s entirely possible to spend hours of gametime luring attractive women into isolated locations and beating them to death. In Fallout 2 it’s feasible to stalk the streets of New Reno gutting prostitutes (although admittedly this will put the whole town into combat mode, which might make things slower than you’d like). If you’re going to give the player the freedom to be a psychopath (and indeed tout it as a key plank of your game even – in fact especially – if your game is ostensibly making a serious point about morality) then you have to give them the option to be a misogynist psychopath, because the only way to implement the alternative would be to have no women in the game at all, or to make them all immortal both of which would be dumb.

Of course you might reasonably ask the question of why gamers are so keen on games in which you get the option to be a mass murdering bastard in the first place, but that’s a different issue for a different time.

What I do find interesting, however, is the fact that while the sandbox genre is huge, and pretty much all of them support, as a form of emergent gameplay, the option to beat the crap out of women, it’s almost always Rockstar games that are singled out for specific criticism.

Rocking the Boat

Okay, I say “find interesting” but what I actually mean is “find relatively easy to understand, but think people are often a bit too eager to get up on their high horses about.”

Whys and wherefores aside, Rockstar games do have a greater tendency to produce violence against women as part of their emergent gameplay experience. Whether it’s killing prostitutes for a refund in GTA or throwing women on railway tracks in Red Dead Redemption there’s always one or two little bits of the game where they reward killing women just slightly more than many people feel comfortable with. You can kill prostitutes in Assassin’s Creed 2, but you don’t get a reward for doing it.

For some people, this is a deal-breaker, and I’m cool with that. For some people this is something you look sideways at, and I’m cool with that too.

But I think there’s more to it than that.

If you look at Rockstar’s big titles: Grand Theft Auto, Bully, Red Dead Redemption there’s not one of them in which you have the option of having a female protagonist. It’s a small thing, almost a trivial thing, but it matters, and its indicative of a more general problem, which is that Rockstar flat out aren’t interested in women.

Rockstar games (even Bully, to some extent) are about manly men doing manly man things in a world of manly manness. Red Dead Redemption goes one step further by being set Back When Men Were Men.

Nobody in a Rockstar game is particularly well realised except the (male) protagonist. Everybody else is a stereotype or an archetype, and like it or not, that's a big part of their appeal. A sandbox video game gains a lot of its impact from making you feel like you “are” whatever you're supposed to be. The GTA games rely on making you feel like a gangster (or possibly a gangsta) and Red Dead Redemption relies on making you feel like a cowboy in the dying days of the old west.

The thing is, these settings – particularly when painted in all their broad-strokes glory – are implicitly sexist. If you've deliberately chosen to play a game in which you're a pimpin' hos in da hood, complaining about specific instances of sexism seems redundant. Similarly, if you've chosen to play a game which is set in a gritty, violent version of the old west complaining about women not having that big a role feels a little bit like protesting too much.

Rockstar just plain aren't interested in women. They like games about men being men, with women hanging around in the background to provide whatever forms of validation the player prefers, whether that comes from saving whores or cutting them up with a hunting knife. For a lot of people, this is a deal-breaker, and it's completely reasonable for it to be a deal-breaker. Rockstar games do have a faintly skeevy attitude to women, and that faintly skeevy attitude to women is an intrinsic part of the way their games work. It's slightly less integral to the cowboy genre than the gangsta genre, but it's still the kind of setting where you expect half the women you meet to be prostitutes.

Rockstar Hypocrisy

The thing that bugged me about the Red Dead Redemption Hates Women article is that it seemed, fairly clearly, to be written by somebody that played and enjoyed the game. Specifically, it seems to be written by somebody who played and enjoyed the game and wasn't massively bothered by the game's attitude to women until it got to the point where they were actually confronted by it.

For example, the article singles out for particular criticism a random encounter in which a woman asks for your help and then, if you stop to help her, tries to steal your horse. The author seems to read this as the designers saying “OMG women are all evil bitches who will rob you blind.” This, I should note, is despite the fact that half the NPCs in the game will steal your horse given half a chance.

What the author of the article does not single out is the random encounter with a man cutting up a whore. He mentions it, in fact he makes a throwaway joke about the guy maybe “having a point” since apparently the women in Red Dead Redemption are all horse-stealing bitches anyway.

The thing is, the “guy cutting a whore” scene, from where I'm standing, is far more problematic than the “woman tries to steal your horse” scene. The latter I read as a woman doing exactly what everybody else in the damned game is doing – being a low down thieving varmint. The former on the other hand uses a violent, sexually motivated attack on a woman as an excuse to make the player feel cool.

I confess here that this is one of my pet peeves, and something I'm a little bit oversensitive to, but I am profoundly creeped out by rape/revenge narratives. It takes violence against women and makes it all about men: the bad men who commit it, and the good men who kill the bad men who commit it. Women aren't a factor – there's no consideration given to how the whore feels after you shoot the guy who's trying to cut her up (except insofar as she is grateful to you, the good man who rescued her).

Indeed looking at the article, a lot of the author's evidence for the game's “hatred” of women actually seems to come from situations in which he, personally, got angry at women in the game for not behaving how he wanted (right up to his final point being that the game apparently “hates women” because the prostitutes aren't sexy enough). He seems to take as further evidence for his position the fact that he chose to vent this frustration by shooting a woman in the head.

It is perfectly reasonable to criticise Rockstar games for presenting women as nothing but victims and whores. It is perfectly reasonable to criticise Rockstar games for glamourising misogyny. It's perfectly reasonable to criticise Rockstar for mechanically rewarding people for killing women in “funny” or “appropriate” ways. It's even reasonable to criticise Rockstar for providing an environment in which people can enact violent, misogynistic fantasies without fear of reprisal.

It's not reasonable to run around shooting prostitutes, then criticise Rockstar for letting you do it.

Themes:

Computer Games

,

Minority Warrior

~

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Wardog

at 18:53 on 2010-06-12I have to say, I always enjoy Rockstar games but I think I can get away without feeling too morally uncomfortable about it because I'm a woman.

And I honestly thought that article was a hideously badly done parody...given Cracked's reputation for humour, or should that be "humour." I thought it was a poor quality satire on what somebody with no awareness whatsoever thought a feminist might find objectionable in RDR, workong from the assumption that all feminist criticism is hysterical and ignorant, of course.

In either case: I hate the article.

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Andy G

at 19:29 on 2010-06-12In Fallout, I always ended up killing quest characters because I would accidentally wander into town with a weapon out and end up having to kill everyone. It made the game incredibly dull though.

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Arthur B

at 19:34 on 2010-06-12

A common criticism of Oblivion was that it wouldn’t let you kill questgivers in case you “accidentally” cut yourself off from important questlines, which was probably a sensible choice all told, but which to a lot of people felt like unnecessary handholding.

To be fair, I always thought

Morrowind

found a really good middle ground for this sort of thing - let you kill the NPCs that give you the plot-critical quests, but if you do so you get a little message saying "You've just made the main plot unwinnable - feel free keep playing if you're cool with that, but if you're not, load a saved game". So it wasn't just unnecessary handholding, but it was handholding that represented a move away from a perfectly workable compromise.

On the main subject of the article: it's kind of depressing that it took

Saint's Row 2

to finally give you the chance to play a female protagonist in a GTA-like sandbox game. By which point Rockstar had published GTA, GTA 2, the two London expansion packs, GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, GTA IV, and Bully, of which precisely 0 lets you play a girl.

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Jamie Johnston

at 19:43 on 2010-06-12

... sorry if you’re reading this article in 2012 and haven’t got a clue what this is all about...

Hello, People of 2012! You are correct, the Ferretbrain archives are much more entertaining and rewarding than the Olympic games. As a reward for your good taste, let me present for you: Viorica's

playpen post

, Arthur's

response

, Dan's

response

, Arthur's

response to Dan's response

, and that gives you the whole conversation up to the date of publication of this article.

(It was a bit of a complex process to get hold of those permalinks, though - maybe we could have them accessible from the playpen itself, as with comments?)

[Reads rest of article.]

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http://alex-von-cercek.livejournal.com/

at 22:38 on 2010-06-12Didn't the removal of the children from Fallout 2 actually keep the children in the game, just make them invisible?

So the situation became that an invisible six year old could walk up to your character, pickpocket them and then invisibly run away with your loot.

Although you could still give them primed explosives to pickpocket.

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Dan H

at 11:23 on 2010-06-13

Didn't the removal of the children from Fallout 2 actually keep the children in the game, just make them invisible?

I believe it made them invisible and non-interactable, so yeah the guys in the den would pickpocket you, but you couldn't complete the Find Johnny quest for example.

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http://puritybrown.livejournal.com/

at 11:45 on 2010-06-13My recollection is that the non-interactable-children "fix" made at least one main plot quest unsolvable unless you had either consulted a walkthrough or randomly happened to go to a place that you'd have had no reason to go to and randomly looked in the one locker that contained the object you needed. (And hadn't sold it or dropped it somewhere.)

That Cracked article was really interesting on a meta level. It looks like the author's picked up on the fact that feminist/anti-racist/etc. critiques of pop culture are a

thing

nowadays (certainly Cracked has posted a number of them), but completely failed to get why misogyny in pop culture is a bad thing or how it works. It's a pretty good imitation of the outward form of a feminist critique of pop culture, but with none of the inward essence.

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Dan H

at 17:25 on 2010-06-13

In Fallout, I always ended up killing quest characters because I would accidentally wander into town with a weapon out and end up having to kill everyone. It made the game incredibly dull though.

I've got to confess to secretly liking that element of the game. Having to remember to put your weapon away was a pain, but it added a sense of immersion.

And with that I realise I'm one of *those* gamers. I'll be complaining about fast-travel mechanics next.

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Andy G

at 17:58 on 2010-06-13@ Dan: I meant the game became incredibly dull once you just went around killing everyone, even though it let you do it. I did quite like things like that, except they did make it REALLY easy to fuck up and ruin everything (but hey, what are save games for?).

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Andy G

at 17:58 on 2010-06-13Things like that = features such as your weapons making people hostile.

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http://kingwalters.livejournal.com/

at 17:53 on 2012-10-11Thanks, JJ!

[flauntpage]

Kell Brook-Errol Spence Jr. Is the Fight Boxers Want to See

If boxing does fight its way back into in the American mainstream, 2017 will be remembered as the turning point. Estimates differ on the length of its hiatus, but the telltale signs of the sport's reemergence are everywhere: Saul "Canelo" Alvarez's recent win over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. generated over a million pay-per-view purchases; and boxer-turned-promoter Oscar De La Hoya expects Alvarez's Sept. 16 bout with Gennady "GGG" Golovkin will match Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s 2015 victory over Manny Pacquiao with a record 4.6 million PPV sales.

Then there was Anthony Joshua's unforgettable comeback win over heavyweight stalwart Wladimir Klitschko, which was witnessed by 90,000 screaming Brits at London's Wembley Stadium and millions more around the world last month.

And unlike Mayweather-Pacquiao—a passionless fight that seemed to diminish boxing's status among casual sports fans—the matchups of 2017 have been riveting. Joshua survived his first ever knockdown to earn an 11th-round stoppage against Klitschko; on March 18 at Madison Square Garden, Daniel Jacobs nearly shocked the seemingly unbeatable Golovkin; and earlier that night, Srisaket Sor Rungvisai scored an improbable upset over Roman "Chocolatito" Gonzalez, who was previously undefeated and considered the world's best boxer, pound for pound.

But as gripping as these fights have been, and as tantalizing as Canelo-Golovkin is, the calendar date that screams out to boxers is May 27, when Kell Brook is set to defend his IBF welterweight title in his native Sheffield, England against American contender Errol Spence Jr.

"As soon as they made the fight, it was my favorite fight on the schedule," said former two-weight world champion Paulie Malignaggi, who will serve as an analyst on Showtime's broadcast Saturday night. "This isn't Mayweather-Pacquiao, where both fighters were already accomplished, elite guys, and they'd already made so much money… They weren't willing to go through that fire the same way and you had that kinda fight that just went through the paces.

"That's why it's important for a fight to happen at this point [in Brook and Spence's careers]," Malignaggi continued. "You test these fighters when they're in their prime and when they're hungry. Being hungry is very important. You can have a super talent, but if he's not as hungry, he's not bringing that ferociousness."

Both Brook and Spence are accomplished to differing degrees.

Not only did the 31-year-old Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) win a majority decision over Shawn Porter in 2014 to win the IBF crown, but he had the courage to move up to middleweight to face Golovkin at London's O2 Arena last September.

And even though Brook lost that fight when his corner threw in the towel after he suffered a broken eye socket in the fifth, the fighter known as "Special K" gave Golovkin all he could handle, if only for a few rounds.

"Even against a guy as good as Golovkin," Malignaggi said of Brook, "he showed a lot of skills: counterpunching, determination, and a good chin."

Spence (21-0, 18 KOs) is only 27, but the former Olympian hasn't taken the easiest route to his first title fight. In April of 2016 he became the first fighter to ever knock out Chris Algieri—something not even Manny Pacquiao accomplished—and Spence followed that performance with a knockout of Leonard Bundu, a boxer who dominated in Europe before trying his luck in America.

According to Malignaggi, Spence would have fought a few more top contenders if any were willing to risk being knocked out by a welterweight who punches more like a super middleweight or even a light heavyweight.

"He's had to fight whoever he can fight because most guys have stayed away from him if they possibly could," Malignaggi said.

Spence has an inch height advantage and his reach is two inches longer than Brook's, but his biggest advantage isn't physical. Instead it's the accuracy with which he throws his power punches.

Whereas the average welterweight connects with 37.9% of their power punches, Spence has landed 47.8% over his last four fights, during which time he connected 15.5 power punches per round, according to CompuBox.

But Spence isn't just a brawler, eager to get inside and connect a few hooks and uppercuts. He can also fight like a classic boxer, which is why he lands 22.7 jabs per round compared to 17.6 for the average welterweight, according to CompuBox.

Like Spence, Brook doesn't fit cleanly into either the "boxer" or "brawler" categories. Over his last seven fights, he's landed 34.9% of his punches, according to CompuBox. And although he connected on just 11 power punches per round over that time (the welterweight average is 12.7 a round), those figures are somewhat misleading. Brook's TKO wins over Kevin Bizier and Frankie Gavin were stopped mid-round, and the figures from his 2015 win over Ionut Dan Ion suffered only because he had to wait for the Romanian southpaw to pick himself up off the canvas four times in four rounds.

"These are both very good punchers and boxers," Malignaggi said. "It's a fight that can end in one round; it can end in 12; it can be vicious; it can be a tactical fight. Both of these fighters can do it all."

If Brook does have a weakness, it might be his surgically repaired eye socket. But American legend "Sugar" Ray Leonard, whose career was hampered with a string of eye injuries, doesn't see that as an issue.

"I know there is talk about Kell's eye surgery being a psychological problem, but from personal experience, I don't see that being the case," Leonard said. "I never thought about my eye once the doctor gave me the green light."

Brook's perceived advantage going into Saturday's fight was the 30,000-or-so supporters he'll have at Bramall Lane, an outdoor football stadium in Sheffield.

Of course, the recent terrorist attack at a concert in Manchester will undoubtedly change the mood in Sheffield. Security is expected to be tight, and the atmosphere will almost certainly be affected by the tragic deaths of 22 people.

"Obviously there's a black mark in the air with what just happened in Manchester," Malignaggi said. "There's bigger things in the air right now than a boxing match. England is still hurting—Northern England especially. I'm praying that the energy is still there and these people are able to go out and enjoy a good night of fights and create a tremendous atmosphere. The atmosphere in England is always great."

Fighters' Thoughts on Brook-Spence, Welterweight Division

Former undisputed welterweight champion Ray Leonard: "To ask me who is going to win this fight, I have my favorite in Errol Spence. But, based on the each fighter's physical artillery, one punch can turn the tables around. That being said, I am going to sit back and watch a great night of boxing."

WBA & WBC welterweight champion Keith Thurman: "This is an interesting fight. I have not followed Kell too much, but I have obviously seen Errol fight in the U.S. Errol is a tough, young fighter who is just getting into the public's eye, and Kell obviously has the strength of the British crowd on his side.

"It should be a tough fight that really speaks to the strength of the welterweight division. Both fighters are men that I would be open to fighting as I continue to unify the division in 2018. As a fight fan, let's see what's 'Special' about Kell Brook, and we'll see if Errol Spence can show us he's 'The Truth.' It should be a great fight and I'll be watching."

Former WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia: "I think this is a 50/50 fight. I think the person with the better game plan is going to win. There is a lot of pressure to go into someone's backyard like Spence is doing, and he's never faced a fighter in his prime before like Brook. It is definitely a test for him and a big step up in competition. If he is ready, he can do it. He just has to go in there and stay focused.

"The welterweight division is the best division in boxing. I still feel like I am one of the best welterweights in the world even though I came up short. I never thought I would say a loss would make me stronger because I didn't see myself losing. I want my titles back and to be seen as the best in the best division."

Former IBF welterweight champion and current WBC No. 1 contender Shawn Porter: "I'm glad Errol is getting his title shot, and I'm happy he's going to England for it. I'm obviously pulling for the American. Errol is a phenomenal athlete and a great boxer. I think he's ready to show the world something, but Kell is right up there in that top tier of welterweights. People who tune in should be thrilled. I know I'm looking forward to it.

"The welterweight division is awesome, top to bottom. We're right where we need to be and should be. Boxing returning back to the masses… There are so many of us capable of winning a title right now."

WBA regular welterweight world champion Lamont Peterson: "This is going to be a tough fight, but I think Errol should win. At least I'm pulling for Errol to win. He's got to overcome the idea that there will probably be 30,000 people cheering against him, so he has to show the judges that he deserves to win.

"Brook is a good fighter and is going to bring his best, but I think Errol, in the end, is the better fighter. But he will have to prove it.

"The welterweight division is one of the best in boxing right now. We've got a lot of good fighters in their prime making the division strong. And guys are willing to fight each other. We are seeing the kind of fights the fans want to see. If this keeps up it could bring boxing back to where it was in the days when Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler all fought each other. So it's really good for boxing right now."

Former unified welterweight world champion Andre Berto: "I'm going with Errol Spence. He is young, strong, hungry and full of fire and a great technical fighter as well. Brook will be his biggest test to date. Being in front of his hometown crowd, Brook he has a lot to fight for but I'm giving Spence the edge."

Kell Brook-Errol Spence Jr. Is the Fight Boxers Want to See published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[nomoreinnocents-blog1]

How to Take Care of Your Lawn Mower Machine

When you practice routine lawn care, your yard will look fantastic. But the truth is a great looking lawn means spending the necessary time to take care of the mower that cuts it. 

And nowadays lawn mowers are expensive pieces of equipment.

However, when you don't look after your lawn mower, which is a growing problem among American householders these days, you can end up with an expensive piece of yard equipment that merely takes up room and performs no service.

Just as some lawn mowers can cost almost as much as a small car so too can the repair costs be just as costly.

You'll conserve money by not needing to do repairs if you take the time to maintain your mower and make sure it keeps working nicely.

Look After Your Machine

Among the primary things which you have to do is to find the top mowers that require very little maintenance.

While you can easily pick one which provides you with the most effective results for the lawn you also need to think about running costs and maintenance costs.

 After you get it, take good care of it!

You only need to do some fundamental things to upkeep the maintainance of the machine and ensure it keeps running nicely. 

Below are a few ideas to think about. 

The Engine 

For the ones that possess a gas lawn mower, it's essential that you make use of the right kind of gasoline in the device.

It is so easy to mix up gas types especially in small machines liek lawn mowers as we tend to be more concerned about are bigger vehicles., but be convinced it's the kind that is right. 

It is also very easy to forget to top-up the oil levels. Any machine allowed to run on low, or no, oil will cause severe damage to the engine.

If you are in possession of a corded electrically powered machine or a rechargeable cordless mower, then you need to be certain that you take good care of the characteristics in the manner described in your owner's manual.

DIY Lawn Mower Repair

Repair may be a misleading title to this section as it is still really maintenance.

The Blades 

Another part of lawn mower care is the sharpness of the blade. 

Your lawn mower will eventually develop a blunt blade. Many lawn mower reviews actually use the lifespan of a mower’s blade as a positive selling point it is so important.

Always ensure your lawn mower’s blade is, or blades are, sharp enough to ensure that the grass will cut correctly.

You will probably need the assistance of a professional to sharpen the blade and this can be expensive.

This is why most lawn mowers reviews tell you to simply buy a new one unless you can sharpen the blade yourself.

It's important that you know before you try how to do the job yourself. Look online or on youtube for advice about how to do the sharpening.

Spark it Up

Next, check the spark plug and clean it with some fine sandpaper.

Many people change their spark plugs every few years as they are inexpensive.

Take away and spark plug cable. Make certain that the lawn mower is totally off at this stage, also. 

You'll find most times that the spark plugs, along with air filters, only need to be cleaned and rarely need to be replaced. They only need to be replaced when they fail to spark or if your lawn mower seems to be sputtering and is not working at its finest.

Cleaning

The main thing to do is to clean the debris from the blades as well as the deck after each use and you should aslo blow the dust from the motor. 

Always make sure that the oil is emptied and is changed at least once per year either just before the machine is stored for winter or when it is taken out for teh first mow at spring.

This might be carried out with the aid of oil evacuation systems accessible the marketplace. 

The care of the mower is necessary to maintain not just your mower but also to ensure your lawn stays healthy. 

Take the machine for a service prior to the start of the mowing season if you have a very expensive zero-turn mower.

Pre cleansers might be mounted on the mower. The hinge point of the mower needs to be greased well. To avoid lubricating and corrosion greasing is extremely crucial, particularly throughout the wet winter cycles.

Servicing

There are many companies who will send out a technician to service your mower and they can perform things like

blade sharpening

greasing

oil filtering 

for a small fee or as part of a package you have agreed upon at purchase. So do check out some lawn mower reviews online to find these type of deals.

Conclusion:

At the time of purchasing a really good lawn mower, if your evaluation is perfect, it can serve you for years. 

While using it, always follow the safety tips like focusing on your work, wearing safety glasses etc. 

There are many books and videos about the best way for servicing your particular lawn mower which are available on the internet.

[osumaremarketingsolution-blog]

The SEO 'Secret Formula

Sorry of us, the title may be a bit dishonest . sadly, there are not any ‘secret formulas’ which will enable your complete to organically rank for relevant search terms nightlong. once it involves computer program improvement (SEO), there are not any shortcuts. to confirm that your web site or sites area unit discovered by users conducting searches in Google, you need to implement the proper ways that charm to the wants of users and search engines alike. At its core, SEO is regarding user intent. Search engines, like Google, need to produce users with results that are relevant to their queries and supply the utmost worth. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the most effective and most relevant pages are given higher positions on a quest engine results page. Any sensible digital promoting skilled understands the importance of a cohesive strategy that supports your content promoting efforts. merely distinguishing keywords that you just would really like to rank for and so every which way plugging them into your content won’t assist you grow your business online. To gain visibility in search engines, it’s vital that you just follow a number of these SEO tips I’ve printed belowYou’ve detected it aforementioned time and time once more that “content is king” and this is often significantly true within the era of SEO. it's essential that you simply produce distinctive and valuable content that's a worthy scan for users. no matter your business is also, tailor your content consistent with the wants of your audience. continuehigh of relevant trends, produce “how-to” web log posts, and regularly update older content to form positive you’re continued to serve your audience with helpful and timely data even when it’s ab initio revealed. Aside from providing users the simplest insights potential, high-quality content goes hand in hand together with your back link profile--a key component of SEO. The additional links that you simply amass back to your web site from alternative authoritative websites, the bigger the likelihood is that of rising the visibility your web site receives in search engines. In theory, the higher your content, the additional websites you'll notice linking to you owing to the sincere worth you have got to supply.2. Relevant Title Tags On every and each page of your web site, relevant title tags (under fifty five characters to avoid truncation by search engines) ought to be gift. Title tags lets Google recognize what's on your page, and ar a main text part employed in programme results, thus it’s necessary you select keywords and phrases that match user intent and align with what your audience is looking for.For example, one among our services at Blue Fountain Media is non-profit web site style. As you'd imagine we've a page that's dedicated to the current service providing, and our title tag for that individual page contains that keyword, acting as a quick indication of what the user might expect to search out if they click through thereto pageBy appealing to the requirements of the user after you produce your title tags, you'll be able to hold a big advantage over your competition. If you specialise in what a user is longing for after they search, and build that into your title tags, you'll be able to capture the proper variety of user that may ultimately take Associate in Nursing action on your web site. If you merely enter keywords that you simply need to rank for, you’re not giving the user what they’re sorting out and will probably mislead them to inapplicable content. 3. produce distinctive Meta Descriptions Meta descriptions facilitate to line the expectation for what data is on the page itself and might facilitate to enhance click-through-rate, which can be key to improved keyword rankings. This brief, nevertheless descriptive, copy ought to be between 150-160 characters and contain a call-to-action that encourages the user to pick your result.4. embody Structured knowledge Structured knowledge helps Google decide what seems once somebody searches for your company or a relevant question. Schema, a kind of structured knowledge, is improbably useful for click-through-rate and creating your result stand out amongst the remainder on the page. whether or not it’s pictures, ratings, or locations, having this infoseem on a research engine results page makes your website way more charming and click-worthy than its competitors.5. Use H1s the proper manner In a heap of how H1 tags are basically the title or headline of your page, providing a broad summary on what the page entails, and setting expectations concerning the content that follows. These tags ought to be towards the highest of the page so you'll fittingly introduce users with the content subject.  visit us :- http://osumare.in/