So, I saw all the hubbub about that one actress starring in the live-action Snow White. And, long story short ages ago I wrote this. It's not the best, and I'd like to revisit it someday, but here's The Snow White Dethphonticth
I'll leave you with an excerpt, please note I started touching it up so this version and what's in the ebook might be different:
It is in due time the two wed and Snow White is nowhere to be seen. She refused to come to the wedding. It was expected, but the king apologizes to his new queen nonetheless. It would not be for a few days until Sylvia cross paths with Snow White. It would be an uneasy moment.
Snow White is taller and skinnier than Sylvia. The contrast between Snow White's pale, sickly-looking skin and void black hair was unnatural. She stands up straight at the end of the hall in a beautiful gown and no shoes, her toes poking out from under the hem of her dress. As slim as she is, her presence saturates the space. Sylvia can not get herself to move, she is not even sure if the girl was looking at her, Snow White's bangs cover her eyes. She turns from Sylvia and goes on her way. Sylvia has not realized the door she is at has opened. When she turns, there stands the king inviting her in.
“What has caused such an ill look about you, My Queen?” the king brings her to sit.
“I saw her. At the end of the hallway. Snow White, was it? I don't know how, but I'm certain it was her. She... Is she always...”
“Calm down. I apologize. She's grown fond of her games. She's just been acting out ever since her mother's death,” the king takes her hands in his.
“Yes, of course. Any child would grieve such a loss. I'll do what I can to help ease the pain.”
“Thank you. That's part of the reason I brought you in here. I want you to help Snow White to heal, to grow, to learn. No teacher wants to work with her because of her outburst. The staff will barely go near her. She doesn't want anything to do with me. She runs and hides when I go looking for her, so I've never seen this behavior myself. But everyone is complaining, so there must be something wrong. I know it's a lot to put on you all at once. But I need this, she needs this.”
“It's fine, My King. It's the queen's duty to watch over a child's schooling as is. You aren't asking too much of me at all. But, if I may ask you a question, My King?”
“Yes, by all means.”
“Who came up with her name?”
“There was an... incident in her youth,” the king tells Sylvia the story.
“No wonder she's acting out, whatever happened in those woods must have scarred her and then to lose her mother on top of that. Poor babe,” Sylvia squeezes the king's hand, hoping to leave some reassurance imprinted into them.
The next week bumbles in as clouds of dust and torn down cobwebs. The old queen's quarters are finally being cleaned out after all these years. Amidst the moving of furniture, the old queen's journal is found and brought to the king.
He pulls it out that dusk and reads into the night. Unsure of what to make of his late queen's notes, he places the notebook away. The king is not sure if the last few entries were just the ramblings of a madwoman or a warning something awful, he decides to go with the option he can wrap his logic around. He knows he needs to start being a father to Snow White again. Everything should have been fine.
The sun breaks on the horizon and he roams the castle for his daughter. He follows sightings of her, somehow she must know he is looking for her and is actively avoiding him like usual. The king hunts for her through lunch. He refuses to quit and he believes his effort rewarded. He has followed her to the last room of a slightly empty hallway. She can no longer avoid him. The king walks in on her crouching in a food pantry. The king can feel their eyes connect through Snow White's bangs.
“We really should get those cut soon. It's unbecoming of a princess to hide her face,” the king pauses as Snow White stands up, she has his height. “Listen, you know you can't keep going on like this. Everything you've been up to will be coming to an end. You will not be bringing any more chaos into my castle. Your behavior will be punished from here on out. Am I understood?”
Snow White tilts her head in thought.
It is a few days until the castle is silent. The king's hysterics had echoed through the stone walls, shaking Sylvia to the bone. There was nothing the doctors could do before he was too far gone. The king was buried in the family cemetery far back behind the castle.
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Since some people might want a Mac, I'll offer a Mac equivalent of your laptop guide from the perspective of a Mac/Linux person.
Even the cheapest Macs cost more than Windows laptops, but part of that is Apple not making anything for the low end of the tech spectrum. There is no equivalent Mac to an Intel i3 with 4 gigabytes of RAM. This makes it a lot easier to find the laptop you need.
That said, it is possible to buy the wrong Mac for you, and the wrong Mac for you is the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar. Get literally anything else. If it has an M2 chip in it, it's the most recent model and will serve you well for several years. Any new MacBook Air is a good pick.
(You could wait for new Macs with M3, but I wouldn't bother. If you are reading these guides the M3 isn't going to do anything you need done that a M2 couldn't.)
Macs now have integrated storage and memory, so you should be aware that whatever internal storage and RAM you get, you'll be stuck with. But if you would be willing to get a 256 gig SSD in a Windows laptop, the Mac laptop with 256 gigs of storage will be just as good, and if you'd be willing to get 8 gigs of RAM in a Windows laptop the Mac will perform slightly better with the same amount of memory.
Buy a small external hard drive and hook it up so Time Machine can make daily backups of your laptop. Turn on iCloud Drive so your documents are available anywhere you can use a web browser. And get AppleCare because it will almost certainly be a waste of money but wooooooow will you be glad it's there if you need it.
I get that you are trying to help and I am not trying to be mean to you specifically, but people shouldn't buy apple computers. That's why I didn't provide specs for them. Apple is a company that is absolutely terrible to its customers and its customers deserve better than what apple is willing to offer.
Apple charges $800 to upgrade the onboard storage from a 256GB SSD to a 2TB SSD.
A 2TB SSD costs between $75-100.
I maintain that any company that would charge you more than half the cost of a new device to install a $100 part on day one is a company making the wrong computer for you.
The point of being willing to tolerate a 256GB SSD or 8GB RAM in a Windows laptop is that you're deferring some of the cost to save money at the time of purchase so that you can spend a little bit in three years instead of having to replace the entire computer. Because, you see, many people cannot afford to pay $1000 for a computer and need to buy a computer that costs $650 and will add $200 worth of hardware at a later date.
My minimum specs recommendations for a mac would be to configure one with the max possible RAM and SSD, look at the cost, and choose to go buy three i7 windows laptops with the same storage and RAM for less than the sticker price of the macs.
So let's say you want to get a 14" Macbook pro with the lowest-level processor. That's $2000. Now let's bump that from 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD to 32GB and 2TB. That gets you to $3000. (The SSD is $200 less than on the lower model, and they'll let you put in an 8TB SSD for $1800 on this model; that's not available on the 13" because apple's product development team is entirely staffed by assholes who think you deserve a shitty computer if you can't afford to pay the cost of two 1991 Jeep Cherokee Laredos for a single laptop).
For $3000 you can get 3 Lenovo Workstation laptops with i7 processors, 32GB RAM, and a 2TB SSD.
And look, for just $200 more I could go up to 48GB RAM and get a 4TB SSD - it costs $600 to upgrade the 14" mac from a 2TB SSD to a 4TB SSD so you could still get three laptops with more ram and the same amount of storage for the cost of one macbook.
I get that some people need to use Final Cut and Logic Pro, but hoo boy they sure are charging you through the nose to use products that have become industry standard. The words "capture" and "monopoly" come to mind even though they don't quite apply here.
"Hostile" does, though, especially since Mac users end up locked into the ecosystem through software and cloud services and become uncertain how to leave it behind if they ever decide that a computer should cost less than a month's rent on a shitty studio apartment in LA.
There's a very good reason I didn't give mac advice and that's because my mac advice is "DON'T."
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Fluent Freshman - Part 44
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The flight up to New York is a pleasant one.
The time in the airport itself had been less pleasant. Matt, as it turns out, is a firm believer in arriving with just enough time to check a bag, get through security, and get to the gate. He had claimed up, down, left, and right that he had it down to a science.
No matter how many times Smith had wondered about the scientific rigor of this 'science' he still kept it to himself. There was no need for Smith to voice his uncertainty with this plan because Kevin well and truly had it covered.
"You're giving us only an hour to check bags, get through security, and get to our gate?!" Kevin demands.
"Kevin, if you wanted to be there earlier then you could have asked Andrew to give yo a ride." Matt says. "We'll be fine."
"You know what Neil and Andrew get like when they have a long roadtrip ahead of them." Kevin argues.
"All lovey-dovey?" Nicky asks as Aaron makes a gagging sound.
"No, well yes, but no they always stop and buy all of the worst food too." Kevin reminds. "I'm just concerned about us missing our flight! We have barely enough time!" Kevin huffs crossing his arms.
"You're wrong anyways." Aaron says idly as he continues to text with Katelyn.
"How am I wrong?!" Kevin demands.
"We also have to park within that hour that Matt has left us with." Aaron says looking up from his phone.
"Matt!" Kevin squawks.
"It'll be fine." Matt reassures for the 2nd time.
"We all have checked bags!" Kevin exclaims, "What if we miss our flight?!" he wails.
"It'll be fine!" Matt repeats.
"No it won't!" Kevin exclaims.
---
It was fine.
The only real delays they met were at security.
Smith prided himself on being efficient in the security line. He has his watch off, his phone and ID secured in a zipped jacket pocket, his backpack and electronics in separate trays, and his shoes ready to be slipped off.
So he was shamed to have been the cause of the first delay when the TSA agent wouldn't wave Smith through the metal detector since she didn't realize he was there. That had been a whole anxiety attack and a half as the line had formed up behind him all wondering what the hold-up was.
Finally she seemed to startle as she realized that Smith had been standing there waiting and waved him through.
The other delay was that Kevin got patted down after he had forgotten to empty his 'emergency' water bottle.
It was probably for the best that they didn't have to be in the airport for that long. Every announcement that it was very important to not leave your bag unattended made him worry that with every blink somehow someone had slipped a bomb into his backpack.
While it was on his back.
As he was running with the rest of his friends to their gate.
"It just had to be the gate on the other end of the terminal." Aaron huffs.
"It would have been 100% perfect if someone hadn't left their water bottle in their bag despite the, let me check, 3,820 signs that said remove all liquids from your carry-ons!" Matt says as they continues to run.
"I said I forgot!" Kevin yells back from his spot at the front of the pack. Smith was under the distinct impression that Kevin was keeping pace with them since he had seen the Striker move much faster on the court and during warm-ups.
"We could have forgiven that!" Nicky pants, "Why did you have to slam the whole thing to prove that it was 'just water'?" he asks.
"Because I wanted to prove I wasn't a national security threat!" Kevin says. "I'll be going to the Olympics in a couple years and I can't have that on my record." he continues as he rounds a corner.
"What record?!" Smith asks suddenly worried that there was a record.
"Smithy, there's no record Kevin's just an idiot. An idiot who got patted down, tested for explosives, and had his carry-on searched." Nicky huffs.
"You don't know that there's not a record! The record everything nowadays!" Kevin huffs and their gate is in sight.
"Kevin, just shut up!" Aaron exclaims as they reach the line for their flight.
"Wait why aren't any of you getting shitty with Smiths?!" Kevin asks.
"His delay was like a minute and more importantly NOT HIS FAULT!" Nicky defends.
"He should have just walked through!" Kevin argues.
"Oh it's fine if he gets a record but not you?!" Aaron asks.
"So there is a record?!" Smith asks again.
They reach the line and the largely empty area around their gate is more than enough evidence that this was the final boarding. Smith breathed a sigh of relief as he took his place in line behind Nicky.
"The lines pretty slow, I'm going to go get a water." Kevin says and before any of them can say anything he is off towards a busy looking Newsweek store.
"I cannot believe him." Aaron huffs.
"All that water he just drank and is about to drink? He has lost window seat privileges." Matt pants wiping sweat from his brow.
"Agreed." Nicky says.
Smith laughed between panting breaths. His stomach hurt a bit from the stress of running but it was fine.
They get on the plane without Kevin and head to their seats. Most of the overhead storage is taken up at this point but Smith slides his bag under the middle seat in front of him after Matt
In the end, Kevin barely made it onto the plane in time since he got caught up in deciding on water. "You're in my seat." Kevin says as the only man not yet seated.
"I am not about to spend this flight getting up every 2 minutes because you have to pee." Matt says, "Abby didn't used to need to take all those pitstops when we're on the bus." Matt adds.
"I hate the aisle, the cart could hit my legs." Kevin argues.
"Then you can sit in the middle if Smith's willing to move." Matt says.
"You can have the middle Kevin." Smith offers actually preferring the aisle seat since then he doesn't have to ask anyone to move for him.
"I hate the middle seat, there is no room." Kevin crosses his arms.
"Smith is like only 3 inches shorter than you and he's not complaining." Matt continues.
"It's an important 3 inches."
"I bet it is."
"Nicky, are you serious?"
"What?!"
"There is an uninvolved member of the public, right there."
"He's wearing headphones it's fine!"
---
It's fine.
Eventually Kevin takes the middle seat if for no other reason than Matt stubbornly pretends to go to sleep but absolutely does not want the aisle seat either.
Smith gives it up and ends up with his own preferred seat while Kevin pointedly takes both of the arm rests, as is his right. The plane ride progresses smoothly from there. Smith has always liked flying. There is always a sense that the second that he gets onto the plane and the door closes he has absolutely zero control over what happens afterwards.
That is a nice comfort.
He pays attention to the safety briefing, finds his nearest exit, and that he should secure the bag over his own face before securing it on Kevin's.
He puts his headphones on and tries not to think about the anxiety of meeting the 'girls'.
He has heard much about the 'girls'.
Allison Reynolds. Allison was someone who's legacy existed even outside of the team. Smith didn't know much about fashion but a Reynolds bet remained a solid practice within Palmetto. She was, undeniably, absolutely gorgeous and if Kevin was to be believed 'kind of a bitch'. Nicky had swatted his arm but had said that it was not entirely inaccurate but like 'in the best way'.
Dan Wilds. He met Dan. Dan was nice. Also, if Matt was to be believed, the best human to ever walk the planet earth. The reason the sun rose in the east and set in the west. The gravitational pull that held the universe together. If Andrew is to be believed, she's fine.
Renee Walker. Renee was the one who taught Andrew how to use knives. His friend has talked warmly of her, in the way that Andrew talks warmly about anyone which is mentioning them at all. She was the one that Smith was the most anxious about meeting.
Kevin turns his nose up at the ginger ale that Smith gets but he's allowed these now per his actual doctors orders.
1 hour left until arriving at JFK.
He hopes this ginger ale is enough to calm his stomach since he's still not allowed Pepto.
MASTERPOST FOR ALL PARTS OF FLUENT FRESHMAN AU
NEXT
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