#its not a system i think exists anywhere in real life for comparison

[androdragynous]

thoughts in tags because im shy

[not-poignant]

I was lurking in the discord, but I was wondering what exactly about Ef would classify him as a "soft client" to Dr. Gary? Is it just because he recognized that Ef is incredibly capable of loving underneath his trauma? Or like because he hadn't had like extreme cases of violence for a period of time? Or is it just like a combination of everything haha

We’ll probably have to give some actual context to Dr Gary’s job here, which I know I’ve done before but I can’t be bothered looking for the ask/s so I’m going to do it here in more detail.

Just a heads up that there will be a frank discussion/detailing of very disturbing themes which will include the malicious rape and murder of minors. (I.e. things that we do not deal with directly in the Spoils of the Spoiled universe at all). Mentions of client death by suicide.

Dr Gary is a specialist psychologist who actually focuses in on the clients that no one else wants to see. That doesn’t include people like Efnisien. Dr Gary sees the teenagers who have been raping their parents or terrorising them for years because it’s fun, he sees the juveniles who have raped or shoved foreign objects into their toddler siblings and killed them through mass internal bleeding, and felt nothing else about it except ‘well I ruined that one and now I think I’d like to find another one.’ He sees teenagers that are resistant, usually hit every part of the Macdonald Triad, have often/usually killed already, or have certainly raped before in a malicious or serial fashion, and almost always express no or minimal remorse for their actions.

They are manipulative, pathological liars who have very little interest in respecting the mental health system or psychologists, they often don’t want to get better, or show minimal interest in getting better, and they have a high recidivism rate (i.e. rate of going right back out there and committing crimes). A significant percentage of Dr Gary’s clients have eventually gone on to commit suicide or end up in maximum security prisons.

But Dr Gary is - due to his own personal interests, and due to his set of skills - suited to specifically helping these people, and also, he has a strong belief that everyone deserves some form of assistance, and that no one should be refused genuine psychological help just because other people believe they should be, as an example, put to death or sent to jail forever. Especially - to him - when they’re teenagers or young adults. He recognises that just because people don’t want to deal with these teenagers, doesn’t mean they don’t exist, or they don’t deserve help. He recognises that most of society will wash their hands of them and pretend they don’t exist, and he will metaphorically push his sleeves up and get to work. He strongly believes that ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away, and jailing the problem is rarely effective on its own.

This is one of the reasons why he falls back on ‘I don’t believe in good or bad people, I believe in good or bad actions.’ If he can reduce the rate of criminal activity, or change the action profile of these clients, even if they still want to behave maliciously, he considers himself on a successful journey. But it also means he works closely with juvenile detention facilities, created Hillview himself, and works closely with outpatients. (As well as in consultation, teaching, and sometimes working in court cases as a specialist). There’s a reason Mack has desk alarms and a sophisticated protection system and it’s not because of people like Efnisien; though Dr Gary wouldn’t see the most dangerous ones at his private office anyway.

I’m sure, when Dr Gary started out, he took more of a mix. But he soon distinguished himself as someone who was not only willing to take on those clients, but was actually more able to get results because his compassion is genuine (let’s be real, psychologists are only human, and a lot of them - despite their best efforts - are still going to really fucking resent someone who raped and murdered a toddler for the lolz), but so is his Take No Shit attitude. So after a while, he was only getting referrals for the most serious clients. And then he had so many of those, he had to assemble a team of specialists, and that was basically how Hillview was born.

In the end, his spectrum of clients were among the most difficult and some of the most dangerous. When Efnisien antagonised Dr Gary by saying ‘how have some of your clients not tried to kill you’ Dr Gary was probably thinking ‘oh, they have, they have.’ I like to think Dr Gary actually has a giant scar along his flank from a time when he was much younger, hubristic and under-estimated one of his clients, and that after that he got a lot more serious about his work and also his willingness to have security standing nearby when he’s working with the most serious ones.

Even his team of specialists take difficult and high risk clients, but Dr Gary is just known in the system as taking the worst of the worst (kind of like how Mikkel is known as being a public defender of domestic violence victims specifically). And these people do get known in the system. A lot of psychologists either won’t take on certain clients or do very poorly with them because they don’t want them or don’t have the tools to handle them or just are manipulated by them. So juvenile detention centres, lawyers, other psychologists and psychiatrists and facilities begin to get a bead on the specialists who will actually help, or at least try. And then they call them incessantly, forever. Dr Gary is a busy, tired man who tries to take at least two weeks off a year to sit on a beach and stare at the water lol.

Efnisien by comparison to Dr Gary’s other clients, molested people his own age - led to it by coercion, never raped anyone, and tortured animals. That’s still terrible, absolutely, but by comparison, he’s just not anywhere near the same calibre as any of Dr Gary’s other clients. He’s someone who is capable of remorse and demonstrated that before Dr Gary ever met him. He’s someone who literally has stopped hurting all animals and people by the time he’s placed in the hospital. And a quick interview with Dr Gary revealed he wasn’t a ‘psychopath’ as Gwyn thought he was, but someone with Pure O and complex PTSD who was exploited into acting on intrusive thoughts by an abuser (which we learn at the end of Spoils of the Spoiled, when Gwyn realises that Efnisien probably never would have grown up the way he did if it wasn’t for Crielle and it makes him very sad). As soon as Dr Gary realised that, he was like ‘oh no, turf him onto someone else, that’s too easy.’

The only reason he took him on was due to a complicated set of factors, including guilt and remorse that Efnisien was molested/sexually assaulted in Hillview by the psychologist that Dr Gary referred him to.

But being referred to Henton in the first place doesn’t mean Efnisien doesn’t have serious mental disorders (he does), and it doesn’t mean Efnisien doesn’t need serious care (he does), he just doesn’t represent the bulk of Dr Gary’s high risk clients. He’s an outlier. Efnisien feels his feelings and ultimately is a very soft person, not just a soft client. He wants to please everyone, he actually hates hurting people, he’s nervous and shy and fidgety, he’s sensitive and responsible and empathetic, and his biggest misfortune was needing to please a psychopath growing up that he was completely dependent on in order to live, who constantly reminded him that he was abandoned and that he’s only worth loving when he’s good (i.e. doing what he she wants), so he had no other choice. And his story or journey is literally the uncovering of his real self, or the self he is without being under the influence of Crielle. And he rebelled against that influence under his own steam, and she tried to kill him for it.

I also think Efnisien is helping Dr Gary realise that he maybe doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life working with ‘the worst of the worst’ just because no one else is equipped to handle them. Even if it can be rewarding at times.

These days he’s building a curriculum to educate more psychologists in aberrant psychology, and developing genuine compassion in the face of aberrant and malevolent behaviour and holding a centre in the face of that, and looking to spread the load a bit more, and work more as a supervisor for other psychologists who are learning how to deal with these clients. He’s realised that clients like Efnisien make him feel a lot more hopeful about the human race overall (not that he was ever a nihilist), and that maybe Efnisien shouldn’t be the only one. But we’re never going to learn that in the story, because it’s not a ‘Dr Gary story’ lol.

[squirrelwithatophat]

Alistair for real also has some of the most insightful political commentary on the Chantry in the entire series.  It’s such a shame how people miss this -- maybe what with the “Templar” label, the shallow comparisons with Cullen (*disgusted noise*), and all the “himbo” jokes, it’s easy to dismiss him.

This exchange lives in my head rent-free:

Alistair: Essentially they’re trained to fight. The Chantry would tell you that the templars exist simply to defend, but don’t let them fool you. They’re an army. The other main purpose for a templar is, of course, to hunt mages. To that end, we train in talents that drain mana and disrupt spells.  

Warden: So templars use magic themselves? 

Alistair: You could call it that, sure. The Chantry doesn’t look on it the same way, however, since really our talents only work on mages. Against a regular person, I’m just a guy in a metal suit. The Chantry keeps a close reign on its templars. We are given lyrium to help develop our magical talents, you see... which means we become addicted. And since the Chantry controls the lyrium trade with the dwarves... well, I’m sure you can put two and two together. You don’t need lyrium in order to learn the templar talents. Lyrium just makes templars talents more effective. Or so I was told. Maybe it doesn’t even do that. The Chantry usually doesn’t let their templars get away, either, so they can spread their secrets. I’m a bit of an exception. Lucky me.

Holy shit.  Seriously, we don’t get this sort of systemic criticism of the Chantry almost anywhere else.  

His absolute horror at the Harrowing really struck me.  I played the Magi Origin first (yea wizards!), directly experiencing the Harrowing, and to be quite honest it didn’t fully sink in just how cruel it was until Alistair gave a description from the outside...

I never actually became a full templar. Duncan recruited me before I took my vows. I was only present during one Harrowing. That was all I needed, too. I don’t know how anyone could get through that. The girl they tested... she had a demon put inside her, to see if she could resist. And she couldn’t. We had to... end it quickly. I have to say I didn’t have much interest in becoming a templar after that.

This isn’t some sick experiment or act of sadism.  It’s a routine practice -- it’s imposed on literally every single Circle mage and has persisted for centuries.  No one inside the Circle questions it.  No mage is even told what they’re going to face, nor what happens to those who fail... only that they disappear forever.  Yet Alistair, an indoctrinated teenage soldier, sees up close what what’s being done, and after just one instance, he knows he can’t bear to have anything to do with it ever again.  He’s determined to escape.

His argument with Leliana during Broken Circle over the captured rebel mage also beautifully captures the cynicism bred by his familiarity with the day-to-day performance of the Chantry’s dirty work.  When the rebel pleads for a chance to surrender to the Chantry, he’s rather blunt in his response.

Alistair: You know they'll never take you. They're very picky about who they let in. Harlots, murderers, yes. Maleficarum, oh no...  

Leliana: Your comments betray your ignorance, Alistair. The Chantry accepts all, regardless of what they've done.  

Alistair: Well, it seems you're familiar with a whole other Chantry, because the one I know wouldn't hesitate to shove a sword of mercy right through her heart.

Even so, it seems that there are aspects he wasn’t fully aware of.  When speaking with Wynne, he still has a sliver of innocence with regard to the life of Circle mages, imagining that perhaps they form families and raise children like those on the outside.  

Alistair: So tell me, you have any children? Grandchildren? I don't know, great grandchildren?

Wynne: What would make you think I have any children at all? You have to know I've spent most of my life in the Circle of Magi.

Alistair: You just seem like the grandmotherly type to me, I don't know.

Wynne: I suppose I'll take that as a comment on my demeanor and not my age.

Alistair: Mages aren't forbidden to marry or anything, are they? It's not such an outlandish question.

Wynne: Isn't it? What sort of man would marry a mage, do you think?

Alistair: How about another mage? There are just as many men as there are women within the Circle, as I recall.

Wynne: That sort of union is... not encouraged. Although that does not stop us from seeking out each other's... company from time to time.

What starts as a little gentle curiosity about whether a “grandmotherly” woman might have kids takes such a tragic turn...

Alistair: You know, of all the mages I've met you have to be the first one I can honestly say I've really liked.

Wynne: Why thank you, Alistair. I am quite touched. I like you, too, Alistair. I imagine my son would have grown up to be someone like you.

Alistair: Your son? I thought you said you were never married?

Wynne: That's true. I never have been.

Alistair: I... oh. Then this wasn't... before you joined the circle?

Wynne: I joined the Circle at the age of nine. So, no. Do you still like me?

Alistair: Err... yes? Why wouldn't I?

Wynne: Good. It appears you got away from the Chantry just in time.

(There’s still that lingering hint of Templar training in his first line, but they quickly move on).

Despite all that he’s seen and what he knows, the revelation still seems to hit him like a ton of bricks.

Alistair: So you... mentioned you had a son? What happened to him

Wynne: I honestly don't know, Alistair. He was... taken from me. Such births are seldom, as there are ways to prevent it, but it does happen. And any child born to a Circle mage belongs to the Chantry.

Alistair: I... didn't know. I'm sorry.

Wynne: It's all right. It was a long time ago. A very long time ago.

Alistair: Couldn't you do something about it?

Wynne: Do what? I was weak from the birthing process and there were... no, there was nothing I could do.

Alistair: Do you think about him?

Wynne: All the time.

That one line from Wynne was honestly one of the most shocking revelations about the Circle to come from Origins.  Wynne was an ideal Circle mage who did everything right, yet simply because she was a mage, her son was taken from her forever.  This feels even more tragic when you realize that unbeknownst to either of them, Alistair’s mother was also a mage and that they too were separated for life -- although in the latter case, he was surrendered out of fear and for his own protection rather than physically torn from her by the Templars.  The son of a mage was knowingly sent to be indoctrinated as a Templar.  

Anyways, Alistair is so good.  

Alistair talks about how he is a “Templar” in a compulsive kind of way, as if he feels the need to apologize for himself in advance. It’s kind of a disclaimer “Oh by the way I have Templar abilities…”

I like to think it’s in part because he acknowledges some of the biases he automatically has from his years of conditioning, and he’s not particularly thrilled that he has them. In fact, in the conversation where he asks you how you feel about different party members, he says something about Morrigan being an apostate, and you have the option to say “Hey your Templar training is showing.” To which he answers something to the effect of “Hah, you’re right. My bad.”

Alistair very openly and bluntly expresses his disagreement with the Chantry as well as the Templar Order, and his failure to understand why anyone would want to serve in a position that mandated killing young mages who fail their Harrowing.

Alistair knows that his presence can bother mages and make them uncomfortable. He states it when you first meet him and he’s talking the Grumpy Mage. He says it again when you arrive at Lake Calenhad with him in tow, and he has a banter with Wynne about it.

He recognizes the power that Templars hold. He asks Wynne how she feels about that, and she has to explain to him that he’s not actually and never has been a Templar, and even aside from that, he is a good person who wouldn’t simply kill her for being a mage.

Alistair is incredibly conscientious and self-aware and I’m not sure why I typed this up. I just really appreciate how we get to watch him struggle with his own privilege and biases, how he checks them, and how he attempts to do better.

I think that’s really cool, and one of the many reasons why I love him.

[ladyofmind]

October Wrap Up

Hey everyone! Sorry for the silence... been busier than even I can keep up with, and also found out that the last Music Monday I had a few weeks back- well it didn’t post so I was quieter than I intended to be...

But it is NaNoWriMo time now, so there should be time to settle in and post like mad to update you all, and write my 50k! After all, I have no plans to be anywhere this November. Fingers crossed nothing else goes crazy on me.

Without further chatter, game answers after the jump.

#CharactersHell

1- Rooms for rent above an active and lively bar, for as long as you like* (*Mgmt not responsible for any damage from the cat or other beings if you leave your door open/unlocked.)

2- Not in the expected way. Most of the monsters are the human Antags. The antags are motivated by jealousy and obsession. Other characters have their own personal demons, or else they aren’t really human...

3- Not real monsters, not really. The Antags are over the top in their issues, but they are rarer. Everybody has some kind of issue though.

4- Frost? That grumpy man is actually a bit of a softy inside… If not, Sly mixes up some ugly looking boozy milkshakes that are pretty tasty!

5- That would be the Antag. Tim is a sort of threat in waiting, one that slips around a bit like the snake he is. The incidents he is involved in are hard to figure out until after it happens...

6- My world is no different than our world. There is divinity in the form of God etc, but it really plays no part in my story.

7- Same world, same dire predictions. Only difference is, it’s a brothel, so one can assume they may already be in hell…

8- Most interesting job? That’s a toss up… It’s an interesting place to work in general, but I’m torn between Woods being in a band, or Tweety, the one in somewhat charge of all the other looney tunes….

9- Best Co-worker award goes to Malta. There is no one else likely to push, prod, and sometimes accidentally beat ya up to have a good time, while respecting limits. Unlike the constant party pusher Bebe, Malta can tell when you need the push, and when you just need a cuppa tea.

10- Most of the time, the networking person is Tweety, as everyone knows her and gets connected by her. But for this, I have to give it to the guys. Nira has a lot of connections from before bar life, music man Martin is always networking and improving his career, and Frost? Well the giant makes friends thru fights. Might not be a lot, but they are the best connections…

11- This is a little bit of everyone really. Malta, Frost, and others don’t do it intentionally, it’s more of a language barrier. Sly is the master of deflection to the point you still don’t know very much. That may be why Tweety sees him as an equal, as everyone assumes they know her, but they never know a thing. She doesn’t lie, just turns things around on ya.

12- Woods is about/has turned professional famous musician, depending on which book you read… Tweet is just really good at talking to people and getting everywhere from it.

13- Antags- Sofia has some fans yes. She’s a strange boss with a back story & has some loyal workers until she does things to mess that up (her MO). Tim on the other hand? Well, he’s liked for what his skills & the more unstable/broken sorts love him to obsession.

14- The Antags are good for backstabbing! Tim and Sophia work together for the mostly common goal, but in places there’s differences. For instance, a rigged auction is supposed to end in Tim’s favor. Doesn’t mean S can’t make more money off of him if he wants it that badly…

15- Tim gives me the creeps. There’s this thing he does that makes me feel violated too, so I know it will be good in the end… I just need recovery time after him.

16- Tweet isn’t monstrous… but it is a pain sometimes, writing for an always happy sort, even if you want to have her fight back against things.

17- Tim is as direct as a blunt log to the face can be. He’s more bull in the china shop. Sophia is the mastermind, making her puppets dance in that web way. You can 100% assume she’s behind something, but you’re hard pressed to prove it…

18- With Tim, smarts is the easy part. It’s Sophia you match wits with, if you have to at all…

19- Woods isn't really vicious… maybe some biting comments while holding a grudge. Tweet is always the “kill 'em with kindness” type

20- I think the side chars are very active in their own ways to push this story forward. Some are even pushy as hell!

21- Ok, so Frost isn't exactly wrathful towards the MC so much as ornery and wrathful at everyone… but he does blame Tweety for flaring his ulcer with her ideas.

22- Not all that hard for me, as I don’t force my characters into doing things they wouldn’t do anyway. I try to learn who they are first and go from there.

23- I don’t really use red herrings, not intentionally. There may be one or two accidentally...

24- So zen! I throw on some earphones blaring my playlist and forget that people exist. The absolute worst is when you’re writing so well, and then someone scares you by interrupting you!

25- I’m not really into the sweets. Once in a while, but mostly my writing runs off potato chips or pretzels. Crunchy and salty balances the romance writing well!

26- #FF #followfriday with interesting stories by: @nomdejillian @TGNeal @SkeptiCybrarian @marshawritesit

27- Halloween was fun when I was a kid. Now I enjoy making Halloween-y cookies and giving them out to people I like, since we never have trick or treaters where I live. One year per the Halloween cookie costume rules, I dressed in all grey with a bell on… Jingle bell rock ya’ll!

28- Not a prankster, so not very wrathful at all. Halloween isn’t a big deal near me.

29- Oh I think I did that already! False arrest of the sweet one anyone?

30- So this is a boost for our Co-Host @manual_arbanassi! His amazing, well rounded character work in #Tiogair is great. Plus he totally shares that character building with all of us with both this game and #CharactersTell!

31- After work where I have to avoid a kids book sale while having a bills closing day? Relax and maybe watch a Halloween-y movie. Really, I am more excited about #NaNoWriMo starting at midnight.

#SciFiNaNoPrep

1- Hi, Nicole here. I was fairly certain for #NaNo I would continue my #RedLetters #series, but this Mars idea won’t let go. It has an outline, so maybe this prep will help me change course?

2- For this Mars idea? 50K or whatever it takes to finish this idea. Definitely looking to start it.

3- It’s very similar in that it’s our Earth, and an exploration of the Mars planet we think we know.

4- The not so very distant future. My research says I need at least 4 years, so mid to late 2020’s

5- Planet Mars for about 90% of it. There’s a little Earth training time, and possibly other planet flash backs.

6- Both generally advanced Earth tech, and some stuff for Mars that feels like #spoilers (plus I need to sort that out –Note to self on more #prep!)

7- Haven’t quite named them… but I do know there’s some diversity and a female MC/narrator

8- That’s definitely a #spoiler! I can say that it’s a “greet the way you’re greeted” thing…

9- Oh, I’m showing my age here for sure… but like Sailor Mercury from Sailor Moon or the original Power Rangers Billy the blue ranger come to mind… for their smarts and calmness.

10- There are both Earth “children” and adults, plus some Martian life.

11- Earth customs, sure, all the standard ones. Martian customs fall into “show you, you decide what happens” things. Because the message/meanings are important sometimes.

12- #FF #followfriday with #scifi writers: @RagingCyclone @authorASMcGowan @mae_mckinnon and a bunch of people at #wipworldbuilders

13- I would say somewhere in between, as it largely depends on which side you see it from. Just because it’s Utopia to one may be dystopia to another. Similar to the grass being greener on the other side theory.

14- Earth politics are the same. Mars doesn’t have politics in the same way. They have more rule, order and understanding.

15- Mars is more science and study, so they are more guardians less lawyers in that sense. They have systems for everything, but mostly they do not have crime within their own ranks. Outsiders are a different story.

16- Oh lots! I am taking some of the known things about planets and life and tying it together to give credible conspiracy theory if you will. Might even include Nikola Telsa…

17- As Mars is a drier planet- with more wind storm, less water, the idea of hydro anything doesn’t work. Plus they have a better greenhouse process that makes planting in the ground useless.

18- There is really no focus on currency in this idea, as shooting for different themes, money being the root of trouble not one of them.

19- ATV type things above ground, underground tunnels with everything from walking to hovering transports.

20- I enjoy a reasonable time travel story. Not the type that appear there just to be there, or where the tech that travels person is hokey. More like Timeless, Krypton, or Doctor Who on good days.

21- On Mars there is advanced tech where medicine as we know it is obsolete. A little more nanites and lasers a lot less oral pills and rectal anythings.

22- Mars is a dry windy planet without water, in comparison to Earth’s visible habitats.

23- Mars grows things without name at the moment, but it is edible, like all things people make do with.

24- Standard Martian wear is something of a lab coat but resistant to its environmental elements.

25- Anything can be a weapon in untrained hands…

26- #FF upcoming writers

27- Earthlings go to school and are trained for space exploration. Martians learn by doing.

#RomanceNaNoPrep

1- Hi, Nicole here. Library worker by day/night/weekend, writer every other chance. Currently two and a half books into my #RedLetters series. So far all I’ve ever written falls into womens fiction category.

2- For Red Letters? 50K is just going to start it. They end up being easily 80-100K, even if its more like 200K words that have to be split into two different books...

3- Romance is my sub genre, as it reads more like womans fiction first. But the other books in the series cover more of the slice of life/journey stuff. This one would have a heavier romantic tone.

4- I love a good believable romance. Whether it starts off as a one night stand or getting to know each other first, the characters have to be real and well rounded. Funny is a plus but not cartoony or asks me to assume too much.

5- Depends on the mood. If I need a little escape, a sweet romance will do the trick. But if I need to be reminded of what it’s like to be human outside of working too much or need a serious escape, steamy tends to have a better grip on me.

6- #RedLetters started as an RP… don’t know where the 💜 of romance came from, but I’ve been writing about it as long as I can remember. Helps that hubs & I have been together 10+ yrs & we’re good friends first. Learned lots about relationships from that alone.

7- The main characters in #RedLetters has always been Naomi, better known as Tweety and the musician Woods. There is a whole host of other characters that are important, and Greg may become an MC… if he stays Greg of course.

8- Well, it’s not really a special meaning, so much as an inside joke. Tweety got her nickname from an outfit she wore, and a drunk-ish Cockney woman. The rest as they say is history…

9- Honestly? Kind of a fan of Emma Stone. Looks sweet and innocent, but can be sassy and a bit sexy too. All around package, inside and out I think.

10- I might have the Evil Other Woman cliche… At least on the surface. Hoping the history fleshes this out to be a full story not just a mad woman scorned thing...

11- Big fan of sassy heroines (aka no weak and fainty unrealistic women) and maybe a touch of the second chance at love thing…

12- #FF #followfriday  @MaeBaumWriter @klimov_author  have been #prepping with me since day one... plus I like the stuff @K_A_Grayson  does in her rockstar #romance...

13- When they first met, Tweety was about 21/22. Woods was 24/25. When they meet again about 5 years later, Woods is 30, Tweety will have a birthday in that book.

14- The characters are struggling 20's. Woods is higher in class while trying to do it himself. Tweety's poorer & finding herself. Inside the bar/club, social status doesn’t matter, & in some cases, makes you less important the more important you assume you are.

15- Woods sister approves, eventually. Tweety doesn’t talk to her parents, instead relying on Frost the manager to be her father figure. After a good bit of threatening during a chat with Woods, Frost approved too.

16- In this book? Friendly enemies. Tweety is not happy to see him, but she is never a rude sort, more the kill with kindness type. Woods is more eager to charm her into regretting her choices and occasionally bringing up the past, even if facts are distorted...

17- What brings Tweet and Woods together? A certain book… you know when you get that déjà vu feeling? Except you have proof from your side of the tale too. Trouble is that the truth has its own version…

18- What’s keeping them apart? Lots of hurt pride, broken hearts, completely different lifestyles… But even with all that past, the thing that made them unique is still there.

19- Remember yesterday, when I said different lifestyles? Yeah. West coast musician with a wildly successful touring band vs an East coast wildly famous bar/nightclub owner. One is always on the go, the other is happily rooted to one spot. Plus the same problems as last time- other people.

20- Woods can be a bit too thick headed or obtuse for Tweet’s liking. Woods isn’t exactly annoyed by her running off tendency, but it isn’t making his days any better either.

21- Well, this pair have been together before, and neither were all that innocent then. But since then… One has gone full on flavor of the month style, while the other is much more cautious about their reputation.

22- Woods & Tweet = the infamous Ghostbusters “don’t cross the streams” thing. It’s a peppy flirt who makes you question if she’s as naïve as she sounds vs a rogue with all the manners of that bad boy you need to leave with. Their game is holding out the longest & upping the stakes…

23- Their first kiss? Very steamy yet semi polite in front of the crowd… You see, it was Halloween, and there were sexy costumes… someone didn't speak, just acted, and the rest is... in the book!

24- In this series, I love that Tweet and Woods flirt at the level of chess moves sometimes. Tweety makes a man play on her level or the game is over. If you use tired lines or give the answer she expects when giving you enough rope to hang yourself… well she’s already over it.

29- Favorite quality about-

Tweety- She’s amazing at making people feel welcome and free to be themselves.

Woods- He’s got an awesome amount of patience and tolerance. The not being jealous adds to his charms.

30- Least favorite quality about-

Tweety- Always with the bright, happy side even if it hurts…

Woods- He picks up a ghost nickname for a reason you know.

31- This has been fun, and I’m totally ready for #NaNoWriMo! (Sits and waits for the clock to strike 12…)

#CharactersTell

1/10- “Oh, it’s my favorite month! Halloween weekend parties are our best buiness, and the most fun! Of course I have to come chat about #RedLetters with you all. You all know me as miss Tweety...”

2/10- Tweety- “Why i’m your hostess with the most-ess! I run the front of house at Soulful, in addition to being a co-owner.”

3/10- Tweety- “It’s only lonely in the sense of responsibility. Otherwise, I have a ton of staff and regulars around at any given time.”

4/10-Tweety- “I guess? I’m great with a lot of things, but Nira is best with the finances, so I leave that to him. Since I started being a waitress, I had him investing & asked for what I needed to buy clothes with. Best way to pay him back for the couch surfing.”

5/10- Tweety- “My time off is usually when I sleep. Now there is some help so I can leave before I start falling asleep, but other than writing, I wouldn’t know what to do with time off.”

6/10- Tweety- “Adventure happens all around the club. You never know what Bebe will do when bored, at least my job and the respect given to me, keeps the place from falling down around it all.”

7/10- Tweety- “Well, I would hope that my kindness keeps me in high esteem… Why else would we be so packed all the time? I know there are those against me, because I built a following from scratch.”

#CharactersTell

8/10- “I'm Greg, Gus’ grandson and recent college grad with a degree in business.”

9/10- Greg- “I had a few odds jobs, some for the experience more than the money, but yeah I work a lot.”

10/10- Greg- “I'm not nefarious. Just a regular guy with an inheritance that apparently affects others…”

11/10- Greg- “That's what I'm trying to decide! A piece of a prosperous club or a life on my own…”

12/10- Greg- “Trying not to do that with this choice. You know, this isn't really helping me decide, not when you're highlighting the downsides…”

13/10- Greg- “Progressive. Smart, firm when I have to be. Not overly nice, you will know I'm the boss.”

14/10- Greg- “If I decided to take the ownership, it's really like a slow raise. Or I sell it and make a windfall quick…”

#CharactersTell

15/10- Rolls in on those shoes with wheels inside “Duranta at your service, but everyone calls me Runta! Soul’s not so resident clothing designer and somewhat personal shopping friend to Tweet, if you must know.

16/10- Runta- laughs “Of course not! It takes money and patronage to become a designer who makes money. They wanted me to have a different sort of full time boring work.”

17/10- Runta- “I’ve made a few fashion week shows, and have some amazingly supportive fans who basically are fashion influencers in their own rights...” #spoilers

18/10- Runta- “Sure, I mean clothes and fashion is how you see a person, so of course people have stereotypes based on looks, but I don’t play that game.”

19/10- Runta- “Absolutely! Networking is a big part of what I do! Connections get me everywhere.”

20/10- Runta- “Total workaholic! A friend of mine says that if you love what you do, it’s not working, but living. And I am living for this life!”

21/10- Runta- “I learned a few things from the place I got my start. Hire people good at what they do, and that you can stand being around constantly. So yeah, the people who work for me become a family, since we’re together that much.”

[spaceshiptosolace]

Pink Diamond’s Zoo

Hey y’all, I’m finally getting around to posting my analysis of Pink Diamond’s Zoo.  In a brief overview, we first hear of this place through Garnet and Pearl:

“During her reign on Earth, Pink Diamond stole humans from their families as trophies of her conquest.”

“Oh no. It was very serious. When I still served... Homeworld, I saw it myself. A private menagerie deep in space. Humans in captivity.”

Sounds pretty unpleasant, right?  But, then we see this:

So, these humans are definitely in captivity, but they don’t appear to be suffering or punished.

“They've never been anywhere else. They love it here. I mean, look at this place. Can you blame them? They've got everything they need, and they never have to worry about a thing.”

In fact, they appeared to be enjoying themselves, that is, until Greg protested “the Choosening”.

Although the Zoo’s relevance seemed constrained to the arc (Steven’s Dream through That Will Be All), fans have cited this particular facility as a testament to Pink’s intent, namely, her goodwill toward humanity and the Earth.  But is that accurate?  I argue that it’s ambiguous, at best, and this post will address and counter various aspects of the Zoo that people believe support the notion that Pink Diamond was sympathetic toward Earth and its species.

The Zooman Life

Life as a Zooman is quite simple: eat, bathe, rest, play, etc.  As Greg pointed out, the Zoomans are [almost] always happy since they don’t have to worry about problems like their Earth-based counterparts.  Look at this exchange between J-10, Y-6, and Steven:

J: “There is a story of an opening wall. A very long time ago, a Gem came through a wall hole to help someone who was hurt.” Y: “What do you mean hurt?” J: “I don't know. I don't know what hurt is.” S: “I know what hurt is!” Y & J: “You do?”

The Zoomans live such a pampered life that they don’t know what the words “hurt” or even “bad” mean.  These painstaking efforts are often considered an act of benevolence on PD’s part, to which the logical conclusion is that PD must have had sympathy toward the Zoomans, and attempted to preserve humanity as she was forced to ravage their planet.  What the former premise fails to consider is this line Holly Blue Agate said during Gem Heist:

“Apparently, humans don't take well to captivity, but once you understand their needs, they're easy to control.”

In other words, there was a point in the Zoo’s history where the humans were not so keen to be there.  Remember, we’re seeing descendants five thousand years or more after establishment.  Her statement also provides motivations for PD’s “generosity”: keep the humans needs satisfied, and then they won’t revolt.  Speaking of revolts, I thought I might remind everyone that the rookie Diamond was in the midst of a rebellion of unprecedented scale, started by one of her very own subjects.  Perhaps the Rebellion is part of her motivation to keep humans; at least they were easier to manage than Gems!  I’d also like to address word choice here.  All characters, Gem or human, refer to the place as a zoo, rather than a sanctuary or preserve.  The terms might seem interchangeable, but the former has a history of grandeur and amusement, whereas the latter two terms suggest a place meant to rehabilitate species or population(s), i.e., a zoo is created to benefit the curator, while a sanctuary or a preserve is to benefit the “captive”.

It’s a Small World

No really, it is.  Sure, the actual spacecraft is quite large, and by extension, so might the human enclosure, but I’m not referring to total area.  Rather, I’m talking about the organic inhabitants of the Zoo.  I can count on my fingers how many different plants and animals existed: one.  And yes, I’m referring to the Zoomans.

Clearly, there aren’t any animals other than humans.  You might be tempted to point out the plant variety, but the reality of the situation is that the “plants” are nothing of short of genetically modified, and given their ability to fruit on command, they are probably synthetic.  From a practical perspective, it makes sense that PD would introduce such plant life: to produce fruit at regular intervals and prevent her human specimens from going hungry.  Considering the Zooman diet consists solely (as far as we’ve witnessed) of fruit, which by the way changes on a daily basis according to Y-6, it must contain all the dietary requirements for adult human sustenance.  If this cultivar was bred in the real world, the proprietor would make billions from the “miracle fruit”, as it does not exist in nature.  Additionally, there are unlikely to be any microbes or pathogens that would otherwise cause illness in the Zoomans, suggesting a highly sterile environment.  Basically, PD’s Zoo environment was engineered specifically for humans, who are only one of a myriad of Earth’s organic species.  While it may support her “compassion” toward humanity, it speaks nothing of her compassion toward organic species as a whole, and how anyone can arrive at that conclusion is perplexing.

Sentience and Sapience

These terms are often used interchangeably, but they technically refer to two different concepts: the former refers to feeling and sensation, whereas the latter refers to wisdom, or rational thought.  The modern human species is called Homo sapiens sapiens, which speaks volumes to how scientists view humanity in comparison to other Earth species.  But Gems?  They don’t seem to recognize human ability and intelligence.

“I'm surprised that a human being is capable of understanding how I feel.”

The encounter between Greg and Blue Diamond is purported to be a lot of things, which again overlook microagressions and subtle social cues/perceptions that provide insight on the Diamonds and Gemkind as a whole.  First of all, Blue Diamond’s realization is a plain as day backhanded compliment: I’m surprised that you, a human, are capable of complex feelings and rational thought.  I don’t know about you, but that’s not my first choice of a pickup line.  As I mentioned earlier, it’s obvious to us, the human audience, that humans are capable of understanding loss and grief, but not to Gems.  How is it that Blue Diamond, who was very close to the Diamond who curated the Zoo, doesn’t know what humanity is capable of?  Humans have been in Gem captivity for millennia, and at least centuries under Pink’s supervision, yet in that time Blue never discovered or learned such a thing?  You’d think Pink would have told her, and would’ve appreciated humans for their greater mental capacity, yet nothing suggests that Pink was even aware of it.  The needs Pink satisfied by her zoo were carnal, or as Abraham Maslow referred to them: B-needs, basic needs for survival.  These are the needs we have in common with virtually every other animal species for that matter, though we may have been more receptive to training and communication due to language.  Still, Pink’s Zoo fails to address other aspects of humanity, such as the sapience required to make decisions.  The Zoomans don’t decide when to eat, despite having both a hormonal system that triggers the hunger response and the prefrontal cortex to decide when and what to eat.  On a higher level, we can decide who we chose to mate with, for life or otherwise, and this is the feature Greg was far less receptive to.

“My mom and dad didn't get together because someone told them to. They spent time getting to know one another and fell in love. They choosened each other 'cause that's what they choosed.”

It also marks the time the Zoomans discover “hurt”, and can barely handle it.  I’m sure a lot of people would prefer to live without ever having negative emotions or experiences, but it’s also a fundamental part of learning.  

Do you need a “Little Voice” telling you how to live every minute your life, or are you capable of learning how to care for yourself?

Ascribed or Achieved?

The concept of learning complex behaviors and decision-making can be applied to differences in Gem Society and most modern human civilizations.  Whereas Gem Society is rigid and utilitarian, humans have more flexibility in what they can chose to “do” or “be”, without becoming pariahs.  When a Gem emerges from the ground, she already knows who she “is” and for the most part what she “does”.  Humans, by contrast, are a blank slate, and can fulfill different roles in society based on what skills they have acquired through learning. Being a “blank slate” means that I can obtain skills and knowledge required for different roles that our Gem counterparts are otherwise limited by.  Pearl wanted to be free of her servitude, but still followed and depended heavily Rose as an eager disciple, and this dependency has spread to her relationship with Garnet.  Although Bismuth no longer erected temples and spires for Homeworld, she was still crafting.  

“When a Gem is made, it's for a reason. They burst out of the ground already knowing what they're supposed to be, and then... that's what they are. Forever. But you, you're supposed to change. You're never the same even moment to moment -- you're allowed and expected to invent who you are. What an incredible power -- the ability to "grow up."”

In Pink Diamond’s Zoo, humans have no “roles”, and they only “grow up” in the physical sense of the phrase.  Education isn’t a formal institution for Gems, and the only things they learn are xenophobia, how to worship the Great Diamond Authority, and refining the skills they were already “born with”.  This lack of education is applied to humans at the Zoo, who being born helpless and incompetent are seen as a far less competent species as a whole.  But that’s not an accurate assessment; the minds of humans at the Zoo are squandered, and hence deprived of their very humanity.

Ultimately, Pink Diamond’s Zoo conflicted with Rose Quartz’s ideals.  Rose admired humanity’s ability to grow, adapt, and change, and the Zoo clearly hindered that aspect.  She also desired a similar fate for her fellow Gems, so that they may gain autonomy in their long lives.  Though the life of humans at the Zoo is not unpleasant, but it’s not enriching or fulfilling either.  Rose Quartz may not have understood humans as well as Greg would have hoped, but she did know them well enough to discover their potential.  When we consider the conditions and circumstances surrounding the Zoo, can we really say that Pink Diamond had a vested interest in protecting humanity, if in the centuries she kept them, she hadn’t made an effort to understand who they were?

[beowulfs-booty-call]

Comic Ideas:

Name: I don’t know, “Hard Times”? “Don’t be gone too long?” I’m not even in the right mindset because I’m too happy to do this y’all

It’s obviously gonna bit nsfw-ish and deals with my OC Demi and how he lives being a half demon going on full in a district where the deadly sin of Lust is his calling card.

Works as a stripper, rooms with his best friend in a rather crusty apartment funded by his “madam” pimp Persephone and her husband Hades. 

Despite being an incubus, he’s still very much a child, who sees the world in his rose colored glasses and makes friends in the most oddest of ways because that’s all he knows.

Problem? There’s multiple districts in the demon world underneath manhattan’s subway system, and each are ruled by demons and fallen gods / angels. Not all are pretty, not all are gonna want a happy go lucky demon/witch boy out there making friends with humans and demons. And some, well, some just want to rule the world and come back above ground again. Plus with God on the war path, what’s a stripper to do?

Scroll through the Blue Hell™ App named Rumblr and talk to his internet friends. Even in the weirdest of ways, it’s both the people in life that makes life worth living, as well as the people you talk to over the internet that makes you really find things beautiful. (Just wait till people realize he’s also a senshi-esque warrior in his dreams...)

There’s only so much info to go on with so, I’ll give some character info and base story stuff

Demi:

Real name is unknown, used to be human before Persephone found him and “changed” him into a demon via his opal choker

Fantasizes being a Sailor Senshi

Bi with a passion but after his ex, has been trying to find the “right” guy

Literal Disney prince and likes to lie under trees in the forest

Will go with you to Denny’s at 3 am

Likes to do “witchy” stuff which is just adding basil to food when he’s not feeling up to things

Has way too much time on his hands

Likes to tattoo himself with henna

Doesn’t know how to handle guys

Wants to learn how to handle guys without sounding like a complete utter animal

The Pollyanna

You can’t take him anywhere that has dogs or he will not come out.

Boft boy (Buff+Soft) who wants to be a full demon

Doesn’t understand he used to be human: his humanity is split from him and actively is looking for him to become “whole”

Has a pelt from a wolf that used to be his friend; when he died saving him from a demon, Parvati skinned the wolf in honor of its sacrifice. Demi keeps it clean and well preserved with much fervor and looks at it not unlike a statue of a warrior.

Parvati:

Goddess of hindu faith (Of love and the family) and Demi’s guardian

Pretended to be a pimp to fool others in the district: Doesn’t realize her outfit’s meaning

Really really is a wonderful mom

Happily married to the god of destruction and teaches Demi about healthy relationships

Easily overbearing but means well

Doesn’t understand “hip” terms

“How do you do, fellow flesh wearers? Oh, apologies, “How do you do, F*ckwads?” I heard this was the proper way to greet!”

When angry she becomes a fearsome opponent, and likes to use a trident / sword to her advantage

LOVES to dress up and dance, and actively teaches Demi how to dance before going off to return home.

Protectively arrives whenever she feels something’s amiss, and Demi calls her via word or by burning seals

Knows who Demi used to be in the past, but wont tell him to save him grief.

Persephone:

Supposed Goddess of the underworld and is married to her husband Hades

Demi’s mistress, likes to be in power and is a trans woman and leader of the District he lives in

Hades helped her long ago when she was abused by her father and was able to be who she is now, a powerful and fair leader in the eyes of demons and visitors.

She’s strict but fair in her actions due to being a “mother” to all in her jurisdiction and care.

Saved Demi and turned him into an incubus to keep him alive, as humans cannot live in the Districts lest they go mad or dwindle to nothingness

Knows that the true enemy exists somewhere in the districts and above ground

Wants to bring the Underground to above ground and rule her people in the skies above

Has not aged for a millennia 

Is touch sensitive so Hades cannot “touch” her, he wears gloves and respects her distance and trauma that she’s working to get through

Don’t fuck with her and don’t try to weasel yourself out of her promises, she’s a very elegant woman but she knows just “what” you may deserve.

Fimbulvetr:

Buff dude, holy shit my G he’s a tree

He’s literally a tree as in he was once a sacred tree that was transformed into a person due to the evil spirits that was sealed into him

UNREQUITED LOVE TO A CERTAIN DEMON BOY; Or is it?

Long hair, tattered jacket, seems to be the bara version of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz

Coincidentally loves the Wizard of Oz and wishes to read it someday, if a certain boy doesn’t already read to him a bit here and there.

Lonely guardian of a forbidden forest only few know, and one of them continues to break the laws of the dimension by trespassing

Supposed “descendent and son” of Odin

Wears an eyepatch to seal the hole in which the evil spirits try to escape

Should he fall, the demons within will try to use him as a shield and a puppet, whispering dark words to coax him into giving up

Fear of abandonment 

Stubbornly sweet under the veneer of being a total walking wall

Doesn’t speak much, his talking “hat” who is the soul of a spirit who escaped his eye does the talking for him, when he’s not around a certain someone 

Carries a spear named Gungnir

“You’re bleeding, Forest Bum.” “Tis but a scratch, hat” “Scratch my ass, call your boyfriend and heal yourself up before you die.”

And this is just a little bit of it!

Join Demi in:

Dealing with boys!

Magical nonsense!

Strip nonsense!

How not to dress in public

Gay demons!

Making friends with a lesbian gang leader of the Wrath district

Learning to dance!

Dreams of utmost importance

Daily life of a demon stripper just trying to make ends meet!

Hard times that end up a bit better than it found you

How the fuck did you use dawn for the dishwasher stop don’t to--

Laundry being a bitch

“Quick I’m out of water, can I drink your nut”

“Out of every single organism I’ve studied, I’ve yet to understand the physics of your ass” “Magic.”

Lots of chai lattes and saying hi to human friends online

RUMBLR DRAMA OF THE SEASON

“OP Is a demophobe, drink holy water”

Other shit I can’t think of rn because I NEED to do this instead of just pictures dudes.

I don’t even know how I’m gonna do this and at how much time because I can’t make a schedule per say, but hey! This is what I wanna do! It’s gonna be shitty af in comparison but I’ll try my best, yeah?

[oscopelabs]

Unready Player One: Why Movies and Video Games Don’t Mix by Daniel Carlson

There’s a concept in video game theory called “ludonarrative dissonance.” At its core, it’s about the interaction between a game’s themes (what it wants you to feel) and its mechanics (what it wants you to do), as well as any conflicts that might result when those two things intersect. An example of this would be a game that promotes themes of individuality and freedom while locking the player into a single, uncontrollable plot-line that doesn’t let them choose how the story will unfold. Or, say, a war-themed, combat-heavy game that purports to discuss the value of life while simultaneously tasking you with slaughtering hundreds of digital representatives of a foreign enemy.

The concept isn’t a law or anything, and millennia of tabletop games have proven that superficially contradictory ideas like competition and collegiality can peacefully co-exist, but it’s a helpful way to get the ball rolling when thinking about games as discrete pieces of entertainment media. What’s the goal of the game? What do you have to do when you’re playing it? On a broader level, how does it make you feel? Why do you keep playing it?

And, for the purposes of today’s discussion: Why do so many people keep trying to make movies out of video games, despite decades of evidence that this is a very, very bad idea?

***

Many movies—maybe even most of them—aren’t original. They’re adapted from other media. Books, stage plays, short stories, magazine articles, songs, older movies, foreign movies, television shows, you name it: Hollywood does not care. If you think the idea will sell tickets, then provenance is not an issue. Of the most popular American movies ever made (adjusted for inflation), seven of the top ten, and 15 of the top 20, are based on stories that started somewhere else.

It makes sense, then, that Hollywood would want to mine video games for film ideas. It’s easy now to forget that video games were initially dismissed as a fad, and that the industry was almost wiped out in a crash in 1983. By 1990, though, just five years after the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in North America, 30% of U.S. households had an NES; by comparison, all home computers combined had only penetrated 23% of the market by then. It’s been pretty much non-stop ever since. In 2016, while the North American box office grossed $11.3 billion, the U.S. video game industry brought in $30.4 billion. You’d have to be crazy to not want a piece of that.

As a result, since the early 1990s, movies based on games have shown up every year or two. Early adaptations were based on games that had achieved almost total pop-cultural saturation—Super Mario Bros. (1993), Street Fighter (1994), Mortal Kombat (1995)—while more recent entries have been inspired by titles that some viewers might not even recognize as games, like 2014’s Need for Speed or 2016’s Assassin’s Creed. Yet despite that variance, pretty much all movies based on games generate the same reaction: audiences ignore them, critics don’t like them, and studios almost always lose money. For every little windfall, like Mortal Kombat grossing $70 million domestically (and another $51 million overseas) on a $20 million budget, there are at least a dozen adaptations that struggle to make their money back, either barely breaking even or flat-out failing.

This is where the dissonance comes into play: a tension between what the industry wants (money) and how it acts (makes movies that don’t earn money). A conflict between how something can succeed in one medium (games) while dying in another (film). A tantalizing but apparently unsolvable proposition to turn one kind of visual entertainment into another. People do it all the time with books, or stories, or really anything they can get their hands on. Why should games be any different—and harder?

There are three reasons, and they’re all about the same thing: us.

***

Start with the written word. A novel (or short story, or novella; you get the idea) is rooted in psychology. The reader is taken as deep into the characters’ conscious and subconscious feelings as the author wants to take them. Thousands upon thousands of words in a given book don’t have anything to do with “what’s happening,” but are instead just about the emotions, history, and family drama that got us to this point. That psychology then flows outward to trigger action.

Movies, which survive on action, need that psychological background to explain character motivation, so a good adaptation of a book will find a way to condense and explain that psychology through images, acts, and dialogue. Their formats are different, but their goals are the same: to start from a place of character and build outward to see how that character confronts the world.

(Even here, things start to get potentially dicey. In a book, it feels totally natural to move from inner monologue to dialogue to physical action in the space of a paragraph, but because a film needs an image or sound to communicate, the poetic emotional reflections of a novel are often turned into clumsy exposition for the screen. When we talk about a book as “unfilmable,” we’re saying that it relies so much on the invisible emotional connections created by its authors psychological exploration of the characters that there’s no easy to way to transform those moments into concrete, physical actions in the real world.)

Games, though, start with action. As the player, you are immediately in control. Super Mario Bros. doesn’t explain a single thing; it just shoves you into the game world and lets you figure out what’s happening. Even modern games like Grand Theft Auto V, which are built on complicated narrative systems of nested choices that the player can make over the course of dozens of hours, only give you a few seconds of animated storytelling before handing over the reigns. Information about the story is parceled out over time, but it’s done in tandem with action that you are asked to execute. In short: there’s a lot less build-up. There’s nowhere to go because you’re already there, experiencing and creating the action. A film’s story is designed to pull you along and explain the motivations of its characters in a way that you can understand, but a game wants you to insert yourself into the story and determine your own justifications for its existence.

Those are two separate and equally valid ways to make and consume entertainment, but they don’t cross-pollinate. A movie based on a game has to invent all manner of backstory and motivations, so much so that you wind up with something so fundamentally different from the source material that it’s hard to remember why you made it in the first place. (Again, I present Super Mario Bros.) The use and structure of a game’s narrative is worlds apart from a book, or a movie. There’s no overlap, and forcing one just makes things worse.

***

Crucially, too, movies based on games misunderstand one of the key appeals of the medium: the ability to interact with and manipulate the environment. As the player, you decide how to move through the game’s world. Do you want to spend an hour just walking from one end of the map to the other? Knock yourself out.

That interactive, three-dimensional space becomes something you can mentally reference throughout the game, and even recall after you’re done playing. The spatial reasoning you’re doing while playing games doesn’t just improve your cognition or memory, but actually renders for you a space that you can revisit in your mind’s eye.

Here’s an experiment: Think about your childhood home, or your first office job, or the street where you live. Close your eyes and picture that place. Now imagine your perspective moving through that space, turning from side to side, taking in everything. Even though that place exists in the real world, and a game’s digital environment doesn’t, there’s no difference between the experience of visualizing your navigation through them.

You can probably see the problem here. Movies, for all their spectacle, are flat. You see only and always what the frame is showing you. You have to make sense of the film’s world by processing the shots and building your own mental map, only without the benefit of being able to do so at your own pace. This is why good directing, especially in action films, does everything it can to create a clear, understandable geography of the scene. If you know where the characters are in relation to each other, you’ll be able to follow the story. But if you can’t make sense of it, it will all start to blur together. Films and games are both visual media, but their presentation of those visuals, and the ways you can interact with them, are so completely separate that they’re almost using different languages. A game’s three-dimensional space is rendered flat on-screen, turning from something special into something predictable.

For instance, the open-world adventure games in the Assassin’s Creed series are all built around the idea of giving the player as much control as possible to achieve an objective. You can run up walls, leap from roof to roof, hide in crowds, send others to do your dirty work, and more. The concepts that drove the games proved so popular that they showed up in others, and “playing an Assassin’s Creed game” now means something very specific, mechanically and structurally. The 2016 film version, though, was a lifeless dud that didn’t fare well with critics or audiences and that squandered the reunion of Macbeth star Michael Fassbender and director Justin Kurzel. It was a generic blockbuster designed to look like everything else at the multiplex. There’s no sense of purpose, wonder, or power in the final product. It doesn’t—can’t—have anything that made the source special, and it doesn’t do anything to stand out in its new medium, either. It doesn’t belong anywhere.

***

Maybe the biggest obstacle, though, is the dissonance at the center of it all: Games are about control. Movies are about surrender.

In games, you hold the controller (or sit at the keyboard) and dictate the action. You navigate the space. You make the decisions that trigger the events that lead to winning or losing. It’s a personal experience built on direct engagement with the medium. If you stop playing, the game doesn’t continue. It can’t. At the movies (or at home), you sit back, focused on the screen. You don’t control the speed of the story, or the plot decisions, or who says what. You are watching the movie to be told a story, to be wrapped up in a narrative controlled by someone else. Your engagement is based on attention, not decision-making.

There are even different degrees of involvement you can have with them, as anyone who’s ever idly checked Facebook on their phone while “watching a movie” can tell you. Some games aim for a different kind of engagement, though, built solely on repetitive feedback loops instead of complicated or lengthy narratives. When it debuted on smartphones at the end of 2009, Angry Birds was an instant success because it was a focused, incredibly compelling game experience that was ideal for killing time. The Angry Birds Movie, though, released in 2016, was a generic cartoon that was only made as a way to capitalize on the existing brand recognition of the mobile game series. The movie misunderstood what we liked about the game in the first place. We didn’t want a story. We just wanted something fun to do for a few minutes.

Ultimately, we want different things from each medium. The only similarity between the two is that they’re leisure experiences, but the fact that they’re both so often presented on home TV screens has persuaded many stubborn writers, producers, and directors over the years that they’re related. It’s not that one is inherently better or worse than the other; it’s that they occupy different spheres. We go to them for different reasons and different experiences. We don’t like movies based on games because, deep down, they don’t even feel like movies. They’re ungainly, bastardized things that try to please two masters and only disappoint them. Even the words that define the audiences bear this out: you can be a player or a viewer, but not both.

[thecoroutfitters]

Experts agree that Harvey was NOT your grand-daddy’s typical Hurricane.

This mega mystery storm has meteorologists unnerved as to its strange formation and inexplicable, atypical pattern behavior which inspired some reporters like one from the New York Times to write an article entitled “Harvey, The Storm That Humans Helped Cause”.

An agenda based commentary derived from certain points of view from the global warming activists. But the article is a focus on the point that represents an important reality that too many of us are still apathetic about.

Something bad IS definitely happening to our atmospheric environment that is NOT natural and far from normal.

But some of us know the terrifying truth. It is important to start to prepare yourself because it’s not what you think, and new shocking evidence indicates that “Frankenstein” weather might be here to stay…

It All Started With God

Ever since the Almighty wiped out his creation of flawed disobedient humans with horrendous floods, weather manipulation was always a smoldering ember in the souls of following generations of even more flawed people who eventually desired to get around to playing god, themselves.

Weather manipulation became serious business after aircraft were invented and science had a better comprehension of the physics and chemistry of our atmosphere. After all, rain was essential to everyday life and prosperity.

Indian rain dances and praying were one thing, and shooting fireworks into the sky to stimulate the thunder gods for rain was another, but good old hard scientific genius always comes through if you’re persistent and have enough money.

The dark state powers took a great interest in weather manipulation. They saw GeoEngineering as a means to expand and sustain their growing world power base through its proprietary agenda based exploitation.

  This smart device will help you slash an excess of 70% off your power bill overnight…

  Weaponizing the Weather!

In WWII, Weather was a major battlefield factor. Had the allies or the enemy benefitted from satellite weather observations like we have today, the entire course of the war may have been different.

In Viet Nam heavy Monsoon clouds drifted over the country for weeks at a time. If they were to suddenly ‘dump their load’ at the time the enemy was bringing supplies down the Ho Chi Minh trail there would be major damage to their efforts because the trail would be so muddy that every soldier and piece of equipment would get irretrievably stuck and be sitting ducks for air strikes.

So the military tried something called “cloud seeding” on the trails to help make it rain just at the right time and place. Weather Weaponization science has been around a long time.

But nevermind warfare, what about weather as civilian population controls?

What if the people someday had enough of totalitarian rule and planned mass disruptive anti-government demonstrations to exercise their constitutional mandate to demand physical removal of the current regime and restore the Constitution? But the mass rallies were…CANCELED, due to extremely inclement weather? Because it was so dangerously cold, wet, and stormy you couldn’t even stand outside and hear yourself protest!

That would be far better than water cannons, tear gas, sound frequency devices, or frying your skin microwave weapons for crowd control. And you wouldn’t have to endanger your riot police or pay them overtime?

Fast forward to 2017 and ‘we’ve come a long way, Baby’ when it comes to weather manipulation.

We all know by now that about the only thing the government does well anymore is lying to the public. This is why most people don’t know about how advanced weather manipulation science has become. Serious details of it stay out of public reach under sanitation cover of military black projects.

And we finally realize that anytime government PTB gets an opportunity to politicize scientific technology to further their proprietary power agendas, they take full advantage and lie through their teeth about it.

Like the CIA recently saying to Congress “No, we don’t spy on our Citizens with NSA computer surveillance technology”…all the while collecting everything you privately say and do online and everywhere else,and storing it for future government ‘necessity’.

Even the FBI (no surprise there) lied to Representative Chavett’s face in a hearing not long ago about not maintaining a facial recognition base of all citizens! It looks like weather manipulation now might be fitting into the overall totalitarian program.

Video first seen on WeatherWar101.

The Great “Climate Change” Hoax

Notice I didn’t say global warming? That’s because we’re really not talking about that as a cause of anything of the magnitude we all may be in direct catastrophic experience of sooner than we want to believe. Even “climate change” is technically not adequate because all weather, by definition, IS climate change in and of itself, in its perpetual dynamics.

But pay attention closely now. The environmentalists and global warming proponents tend to believe that humans are a huge cause of our radically changing environments, particularly the alleged deleterious carbon “warming” of our average normal environment, thus the notion “global warming” which, by the way, is not supported by all scientists.

There’s an ongoing debate in the science community that if there really IS a climate situation where the average world temperature is warming up so rapidly that soon you’d be able to fry an egg on the top of your bald head, you should get huge amounts of verified scientific studies and comparisons and analysis to prove that beyond any doubt.

But that is simply not happening. Melting ice caps are a specious indicator because there’s a constant fluctuation in melting and freezing with glaciers over time in different regions.

While there are weather/climate events around the world that seem to be extreme, these are mostly isolated incidents in the bigger picture. And maybe something more insidious as we are starting to learn.

And one side of the scientific community claims to have proof that there’s barely any minor elevation of any significance in the world average temperature if you compare all the past data over the years? Which could just as easily lean back toward global cooling at some future time in the greater cosmic schema, given enough time.

As far as specific human cause examples sometimes affecting weather in certain parts of the world, this is correct to some extent.

Giant oil spills and heavy pollutions do have some effects on the relative environment, but these are not expanded enough to represent a major global change. And damages occur in specific local areas. Which can be cleaned and managed. While the rest of the world barely blinks.

Of course humans should always tread lightly when the risk of carelessly damaging our natural environment exists, but this planet has endured tens of thousands of years of humans and their destructive habits and barely frowned. It would take an unbelievable amount of human intervention to destroy the Earth.

And stupid humans who even try anything usually get a severe lesson in humility right up front. Ma Nature takes no prisoners. Most of our species would likely be extincted first, if we tried too hard to destroy the climate. Which leads us into the real deal here…

Know This or Die

Even if you don’t believe in global warming as a result of greenhouse gasses as the cause of anything, most of us would stipulate at least to some increase in adverse climate change. And, naturally (pun intended) the PTB want you to believe that.

All of us to some degree understand that orbit distances around the sun and the sun’s activity along with the Earth’s own roiling ocean currents, continental plate movements and volcanic disruption account for slow but often very different climate changes around the world.

But these take place gradually in the Earth’s greater time schema and eventually return to an average. And that’s how they hide their sinister agenda from you. The literally hide the details and manifestations of their GeoEngineering experiments in the clouds so nothing can easily be determined at first glance, especially if it remains secret military business.

When they sometimes get busted out, like in the videos here, with obvious outside proof of serious chemtrailing activities, HAARP, and weather systems far too suspicious to be normal, they quickly dismiss any nefarious content by making unverifiable statements like “oh, don’t worry about that”, it’s just some science experiments in Solar Radiation Management to help keep environment from getting too hot.

This creates the illusion that the government is trying to help make the nasty old climate changes more user friendly for the folks.

And “naturally”, we buy it like bacon and eggs at Sunday church brunch. Never accepting the fact that these lies couldn’t be farther from the truth. And that the death and destruction from radical weather changes is caused by THEM. That THEY are CAUSING the deleterious climate change with their intentional weather control experiments!

And if there IS any kind of general global warming anywhere, THEY are causing that, as well.

Will Trump “Weather” the Storm?

The political writing is on the wall with Trump’s insider government deep state enemies.

Anybody who can’t see that just doesn’t have their glasses on, or doesn’t care. He’s not part of their karma club. He doesn’t flow with the status quo. He’s gotta go!

The interesting coincidence is that if the deep state needed something huge to take down Trump’s presidency with, outside of the constant barrages of agenda based criminal investigations and fake news media attacks nitpicking and distracting his efficacy as POTUS, you couldn’t get a better tailor made event than a massive natural disaster.

This kind of event puts immense pressure on the administration and tests the endurance of the nation’s already strained nerves by causing a level of devastation that will usher in everything from draining Federal emergency disaster funds and requiring untold billions more to even start a clean up.

In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of intrepid Texans brave everything from food and clean water shortages to disease outbreaks to insurance companies refusing to pay, to even huge alligators loose in the vast new instant neighborhood swamplands! And there’s no end in sight to the multiplying problems and domino effects.

This storm completely upended this administration’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) platform. Trump already is forced to equivocate on previous issues he strongly supported like funding for the Border Wall and other financial changes his administration promised in view of the coming debt ceiling votes.

But now he’s challenged with out of control complications that could easily bring down any president, and certainly a vulnerable one like Trump already is?

Another coincidence is the area in which Harvey decided to hunker down and replicate the great flood. Because it’s no coincidence that Texas was the brass knuckles in a political bar room brawl for the election. And it was the Texas electoral college that provided the tipping point for Trump’s election?

If Trump makes one screw up in the Harvey relief effort–which will be greatly hoped for and facilitated by his enemies—during the process of the salvation of Texas, now, his future chances for winning his favorite vote state again are ‘Gone Girl’.

And the Leftist mainstream media will circle like voracious vultures to pick the bones of every single problem with the Harvey Recovery right up until Trump either quits from frustration or loses in 2020.

Also, Texas was the one state that always represented a thorn in dark state totalitarian agenda. They always thought they could take on any Federal government jackbooting by simply seceding from the Union if they had to. After all, they were bigger than several countries in the world. And they have self-reliant resources to where they could easily survive and even thrive without Federal association in their own sovereign, global economy?

But they certainly can’t thrive and are barely surviving now! In this unholy abyss of destruction and economic devastation. Which will be hurting Texas for years to come. No chance for any delusions of secession in the foreseeable future.

Those of us predisposed to intransigent denial might say “You can’t be serious, no government, not even an evil deep state totalitarian regime would risk their own innocent civilians’ lives by intentionally creating a dangerous weather environment to ensure future political success for their agenda?”

Oh really? You think that secret shadow governments who allow Big Pharma to inject deadly poisons for profits into millions of our bodies from cradle to the grave in the form of mandatory vaccinations, or send tens of thousands of our nation’s best and brightest young people to worthless foreign countries to bleed and die or come back mutilated beyond repair would care at all about relatively “minor” human storm casualties and misery by comparison?

Or let that ridiculous notion of “the value of human life” interfere with their plans when they are on the verge of creating environmental weapons systems that will make them “masters of the universe”?

Hell No! They’ll even USE humans as lab rats like they’ve often done in the past! Why not, the planet’s getting far too overpopulated anyway?

  Got your ‘glasses’ on yet?

There are very dark storm clouds forming on the horizon. It’s time we all should seriously start preparing.

The Earth will survive even if humans are a “cause’”of catastrophic weather control. But most humans won’t.

Maybe that’s the plan!

This article has been written by Mahatma Muhjesbude for Survivopedia.

from Survivopedia Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

[reasonreblogs]

User Responsibility and Uploading Platforms.

Aight kids, I kinda wanna make a point about sites that are an uploading platform.

As in you can freely upload your content without having to wait for it to be reviewed and approved.  I will be using the biggest example here, youtube, in a moment.

P much any social media site is like this.  Tumblr, youtube, twitter, dA, etc.  Anywhere you can make a post, hit “post” and it automatically is available to share with anyone.  No one else is involved in the uploading of the content but the user.

What you get when you want that content to be moderated is not an increase in staff to view and approve it, you get bots and algorithms created that tries to catch any content people generally have problems with (copyrighted, real life illegal activities, hate speech, etc).

And I think there is a misunderstanding of the actual cost and man power behind these platforms in comparison to the amount of content posted.

So let’s talk youtube’s numbers. (x)(x)(x)

Youtube has roughly 1.9 billion logged in users each month (that would place it between Islam (1.8 billion) and Christianity (2.4 billion) in number of followers.  Mostly I just think this is interesting but also maybe gives a sense of scale).  This is a third of the internet and higher than the population of China.  

There are over 5 billion videos on the site and increasing every day.  There is approximately 300 hours of content posted per minute.

The cost of running youtube each year is over 6 billion dollars to Google’s annual income of 13 billion in yearly revenue.  Seeing how much content is posted, it’s not surprising a massive amount of space needs to be purchased and maintained to host it all to begin with.  At 300 hours per minute, it’s also safe to say the cost of that space will increase as more is needed for that content to exist.

How many employees does youtube then have for this site?  2000+ total.  That’s roughly one to each 950 THOUSAND users.  1 person to 9 hours of content posted a day.  And that would be if every one of them was reviewing content all day.  There is no way the entirety of their staff is dedicated to one standard work day to reviewing content.

And those numbers are exactly why there is a report function.  That is why users are expected to take responsibility for reporting anything that doesn’t follow the rules.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts lately about platforms “allowing” illegal content, “allowing” hate speech “allowing” violence.

They will often times explicitly not allow this material.  Which is why users generally know this content is not allowed on the site.  It’s why submitting reports generally have a system of organization, the drop downs that ask what the report is in regards to, the additional comments to provide, a link to whatever video is not allowed.

It’s when users don’t take that responsibility and expect the platform to catch all these problems on their own without any input that you get algorithms and bots that take down videos and communities that will fall under their filters.  You can program a bot to recognize content, but you can’t program it to recognize intent or morality.

There’s an expectation that, as a public space, it is youtube’s responsibility to keep unpleasant things from its viewers.  And it is.  But users need to take responsibility for pointing this stuff out.  I don’t mean attacking and berating the platform either.  I mean using the report functions, going through the avenues that are already standard on these sites.

And as stated before, youtube is an example.  Youtube has its problems, but it is also a site that is, albeit not always effectively, paying attention to it’s users.  It’d be stupid for it not to recognize the things the users will get unhappy about.

Sites like tumblr can be blamed for very clearly never really listening to their userbase about anything to be honest.  I can’t remember a single time they’ve put out an update and then a post that wasn’t completely oblivious to issues the users were begging them to fix.  I think the last actually useful thing they might’ve done was make asks rebloggable?

The communities on these websites are massive.  It greatly outnumbers the current staff of any website that you can freely upload content to and outnumbers any realistic amount of people that can ever be hired (amazon has like 600,000 employees, though the US DoD is listed as the biggest employer in the world with 2.35-3 million employees (x)(x) (which would still be 1 person to 680 youtube users).

What I’m saying overall: Value sites that can moderate their content effectively.  Value sites that notice the complaints agreed on by a large number of their user base.  And understand that when it comes to moderating content, you as a user have a responsibility to point it out.  An uploading platform is giving us convenience and freedom to post what we want instantly.  If you want everything manually reviewed, you give that up.  If you don’t want to bother with reporting stuff, the bots and algorithms get rolled out and given more control.

Thank you for your time.

[introductions-to-whatever]

Introduction to thermodynamics

This piece of writing should be, by no means be regarded as a serious introductory lesson in physics. These are just some far-fetched analogies that blossomed in my mind when I needed some familiarity in concepts to hold onto during my bioenergetics lecture.

After just having completed my first in Uni while studying two opposingly different subjects, I have come to the realisation that all of life’s aspects follow the exact same set of rules that are just phrased differently, depending on circumstance. I think the most approachable analogy to be made is that between Newton’s Third Law- “Every action has its equal and opposite reaction” and the Hindu and Buddhist concept of Karma- “What goes around, comes around” (yes, and the JT song).

Basically, everything we attribute to our existence is just a consequence of previous events that happened through chance. This brings us to the First Law of Thermodynamics: “Energy can be transformed from one form to another, but it can neither be created, nor destroyed.” Life is just a big network of feedback loops, with feelings, thoughts and actions never having an actual well-defined starting point. They are an array of emotions and experiences that more or less determine who we are and how we are perceived.

The most comfortable comparison for me to make is, of course, catharsis, and I will use music as an example. Let’s say you’re heartbroken (relatable af), or you’re just going through a really tough time. Therefore, you input all the negative energy you’re feeling into music, and suddenly grief and sorrow have become lyrics and melodies.

Some of us see sinusoidal waves or different cycles and tend to be put off, but they are omnipresent, whether it’s Biology, Physics, Religion or “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King. Aside from being in constant interaction with ourselves, we also come in contact with other people and should therefore be mindful of our capacity to influence our environment (for better or for worse). That cliché about doing random acts of kindness is not wrong at all. Spread the love guys!

The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that “The state of entropy of the entire universe as well as of an isolated system will only increase over time.” The common misconception here is that entropy is seen as chaos and disorder, when in fact, it’s the only thing we’ll ever know for certain. It is the true nature of reality, the inevitable change, the tendency to move towards equilibrium without actually achieving it.

John Donne famously said, “No man is an island, entire of itself”. We can therefore state that nobody is an isolated system. We are all connected in our needs, dreams, fears, wants, we all give and take so nobody is independent in the true sense of the word. Nevertheless, some misguided individuals fail to see that and preach division instead of unity. The tendency to see ourselves unlike everyone else leads to misconceptions, apprehension and even negative emotions directed towards other people. The biggest illusion one can feed into is thinking they can permanently sustain an isolated system, something without any outside interaction, where everything is constant. Sadly, this is the case for populist parties and irrational nationalism, which are becoming more and more of a thing. I think if people realise just how “energetically costly” (besides you know, plain stupid) it is to sustain something like that, they would be less inclined to support the “us versus them” mentality.

Fighting against entropy is a losing battle, in my opinion, because even if a system’s entropy is decreasing, at a universal level it can only enhance. The best explanation I could find for this is the “Locus of control” concept from psychology. People with internal locus believe they are entirely reliant upon themselves when it comes to going through life, while people with external locus tend to attribute everything happening to outside forces (like God or simply chance). I gravitate towards the latter category, as I (generally) believe things happen for a reason. Entropy represents change, but it is the general direction towards which everything moves, kind of like a universal downwards stream. If you disregard its flow and think it’s entirely up to you, you’ll realise you’ve been moving without actually getting anywhere, as moving “upstream” requires great energy levels that can never be permanently sustained. You can wish for something to work out all you want, if it’s not meant to be, it won’t happen.

The Third Law states that “The entropy of a perfect crystal at absolute zero is exactly equal to zero”. This only further reinforces what I’ve been trying to philosophise earlier: the only time when chance is absent from life is when life stops altogether. Isolated systems and perfect crystals low to no entropy, but that’s a property livings things don’t truly have. We yearn for constancy even though our lives are primarily made up of variables. Take the sinusoidal graph again: without the lows, how can we actually appreciate the highs? We need change, it’s intricately linked to our very nature. My mom offered the EKG as an example: *beep*beep*beep*. The graph goes up and down continuously and if it stops moving, if it has become constant, then life has ended.

In “Alice through the looking glass”, the Red Queen got real for a second and said: “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.“ Even in order to live our lives with no apparent change we have to be in motion and go along the stream. All in all, thermodynamics doesn’t provide answers to all of life’s questions but maybe it can make us see what we’re NOT, and that is isolated systems.

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 91 Thoughts

Kid wakes up.

Kid spies with his little eye a bird.

Kid immediately comprehends the freedom of having wings.

Kid is stuck with the Marleyans, so instead of being passionately inspired to rise up and reclaim humanity’s freedom, is being raised into a warrior that will march off to the lands championed by soldiers who fly through the air bearing wings, and murder them all for the good of his people.

Kid’s fucked.

Guys guys guys I am so psyched!

Which is really not the expected mood from another time skip!

But you see, finally, after months of waiting...

I GET TO WRITE A SHORT POST FOR A CHAPTER!

In all seriousness, this chapter is way more fun than I expected, even though I was heartbroken to find that this is a present day war, not the origin of the First King. I have been dying for that story to the point of accepting any character development delays, and for a very brief moment, I thought there was a real chance that was what was going on.

Instead, what we get is front row seat to how Warriors are raised, and... calling it an abomination fused with a tragic mess really lacks lingual punch, but it’s also accurate.

Our heroes in this portrait of the world are young children who are willing to put their lives on the line to assist in the genocide of the people they share a lineage with. They’re nervous, judgmental, ignorant, and willing. Their people are preparing for the peaceful transfer of their most impressive power. The time to name the brave Warriors who will lead the next charge on Paradis and change the world is approaching.

Every kid wants to be a superhero, right? Eldian children brought up in Marley actually get that chance. All it takes is proving yourself.

Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie are a bunch of stupid kids when they show up on Paradis. Reiner and Bertolt can’t even make it to the walls without watching their friend die. They’re flung from a world of cruelty into a world where a horrifying death stands in every corner, and all they have to do to get out is knock down a walls.

They don’t know they’re going to knock down those walls and find friends. They don’t know that causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people will tear them apart. They don’t know what living with their victims will do to them.

They know they’re the best. Their people might be suffering, but they’re Warriors, chosen to bear Titans. Whatever the trial, they’ll see it through, and in the end, that’s worth anything.

The new kids we see here have been taught to thrive in war. Considering that the latest Marleyan conflict comes from RAB thoroughly failing their initial strike, they’re probably far better equipped to handle the various atrocities that their predecessors commit.

They’re still a bunch of children who think that playing the game of their oppressors is the ticket out.

The Eldians on Paradis have nothing to do with the Marleyans scooping up vulnerable kids and turning them into weapons. They have nothing to do with the internment zone. They don’t feed disobedient children to dogs.

For over a century, all the people of Paradis have known is that they will die horribly if they step outside.

All little Eldian Warrior children know is that they’re devils, and deserve to be massacred for the pain they’ve inflicted on the mainland Eldians. It’s a hatred that’s taught so deeply that it’s what Bertolt’s emotionally broken mind seizes when Armin taunts him with Annie’s fate.

Essentially, this is a horrific system that makes the last century of life on Paradis feel like it might actually deserve the name.

That’s not true, of course. The First King committed atrocities in the name of his precious paradise, and left a largely ignorant, power-hungry population drive the people who should have been their neighbors to ruin. Life on Paradis has always been a mess of human rights violations, and it doesn’t get a medal for managing to hold fast to the occasional standard.

Heck, the Paradis Eldians have spent their whole lives hating or fearing other Eldians, they’ve just only recently known that’s the proper name for titans.

The world has not been kind to these people in any regard.

However, the Paradis Eldians have the Survey Corps. Throughout the cullings, and the assassinations, and the power plays, a group with a 90% mortality rate has continued to survive. The Paradis Eldians manage to hold on to their willingness to fight their jailers through a tiny, tiny fraction of their number remembering to want freedom.

And over a hundred years later, they can make it all the way to the ocean without someone dying.

As a people, the caged desperation and hatred follows both strains of Eldians, but Paradis eventually wins out because their superheroes keep fighting for them.

The mainland superheroes are fighting for Marley. They might not think much of it, and know that their end goal is getting their people a better life, but the fact of the matter is that Marley abuses Eldians through the Warrior system to grant their nation a better military standing.

The Warriors are pawns. No matter what their trappings, they're being taken advantage of over a genetic quirk that the entire world is willing to shoot them over.

Marley just goes with getting some work out of them first.

But the important thing to remember is that the worst enemy Eldians have is other Eldians. Get rid of those Paradis bastards, and the world’s your oyster.

Look, the First King might have gathered up all his people he cared about, ditched the others, wiped their memories, locked them up inside a bunch of walls, let Marley populate the island with titans, gone out of his way to exterminate inconvenient bloodlines that remembered all this about him, but as warped as his system is, it left enough holes for Eldians to become their own champions instead of tools of their worst enemy.

(Even while actively trying to keep the Founding Titan holder as a tool.

First King’s kind of a dick.)

For the best comparison of Marley vs. Paradis, I give you Commander Magath.

“The power of the Titans is an absolute. That is how it must be...”

That one statement is everything the Survey Corps exists to dethrone.

Marley’s currently trying to end a four-year war that starts over them losing two (more) Titans in their quest to get the mega Titan. They’re committed to the idea of Titans being the greatest military power in existence, and exploiting the heck out of it.

The Survey Corps only comes as far as it does because they have Eren. Without his abilities, they’d still have titans to worry about, and it would still be a massive pain.

They’ve been careful with that resource, and repeatedly sacrificed people so that the glimmer of hope Eren represents can maybe go somewhere.

But they have been fighting titans for over a hundred years. “The power of the Titans is an absolute”?

They don’t start out with Eren, and they don’t start out with 3DMG or super horses. They start out because the only logical answer to the titans’ power over their lives is a flat denial and fighting to the last breath for just one more step in humanity’s trek for freedom.

Marley is run by obscene cruelty and the fear of losing a power that belongs to people they think of as inferior. They can’t even use Titans without the Eldians, yet this is the hill they think it’s a good idea to die on. This is the power they want running the world.

On every level, these people go against what our protagonists have fought to up until now.

The rest of the world might hate Eldians, but they don’t use them as puppets against their own kin. They don’t use them at all, what with Marley having the monopoly on that.

And this is the environment that grooms RAB.

Those three characters have always been the shadowy foils to our protagonists. They grow, and they see their mistakes for what they are, owning them or not, and have so much greatness in them--but they either see their role in this as inevitable, or something that they’re not strong enough to fight.

That compliance is what keeps Marley’s Warrior system functioning.

Paradis Eldians scrape through on fighting against every single thing they take issue with, while Marley has done its level best to make sure any of that energy from the interned Eldians is either eradicated or put to work.

It’s... really a very sad story.

The character designs we see here for the children are highly reminiscent of other cast members. Gabi could easily pass for a young Freida, Udo is Hange in miniature, Colt calls Erwin to mind, and Falco’s eyes look so much like Connie’s in some panels that it takes a few blinks to get past.

They’re all Eldians.

This war isn’t supposed to belong to them, but by sick cosmic joke, they’ve inherited the wrong side of it.

It isn’t Annie waking up, we only get a flash of Reiner, and Bertolt’s gone, but so much of this chapter explains the horror of their lives. Worse, this chapter is the legacy their mission creates. All of the suffering they endure has just given rise to a new generation willing to do the job.

In other fun things, it looks like the Beast Titan's place of command goes to the Titan, not just Zeke. ...I don’t really have anything to add to that, it’s just cool that the kidlets are fighting for the Armored Titan while Colt is being groomed for Zeke’s role.

No, wait, there is one thing to add to that:

However screwed up things are, the Titans can make the little Warriors light up. The sight of the Beast Titan brings out stars in Reiner and Bertolt’s eyes, and Galliard is probably another figure that all little Warrior children look up to.

...Also, the Jaws Titan moves in dives.

Little things amuse me.

I think the only other thing I can really mention is... hey, look, a time skip.

After the last time skip.

Okay, sure.

My acceptance of that is legitimate. With how complicated the Marleyans have made their politics, I’m fine that things besides Paradis have kept them busy (it’s not like the prisoner island is going anywhere or doing anything, right?), and if I’m perfectly honest, I wouldn’t trust Isayama to handle Paradis’ next step into the world without a major time lapse.

What’s particularly cool about this one is that it lands us right up against the end of Reiner’s, and maybe Zeke’s, tenure. The old guard is changing, and there are old grudges and promises there. Zeke isn’t going to forget his little brother in any hurry, and he already has at least one solid candidate for a successor in place.

Both Titans on the outside that we’re familiar with have serious scores to settle, and that makes the time limit on Titans way more relevant than when we just had Eren and Armin’s distant futures to worry about. Using it to provoke plot lines for Zeke and Reiner is potentially very awesome, and meanwhile, the non-expiring Titans have been given names.

I like where the world is currently set up.

I’d also really like to know what’s happening with Our Heroes, but such is the pain of a monthly series.

[wristwatchjournal]

The Petrolhead Corner – Weird and Wonderful Automotive Innovations – Part 3

To complete the triptych of articles covering weird and wonderful innovations from the automotive world – part 1 and part 2 can be read here – we once again delve into history and uncover some amazing creations. After turbine engine cars or illuminated tires (yes, for real), The Petrolhead Corner tries to up the ante once more and deliver some curious machines that tried to hit… but missed. 

It has been a lot of fun gathering these stories, learning and sharing unique vehicles in our weekly Petrolhead Corner. And yes, we will continue the stories but this is (for now) the final instalment dedicated to the weird and wonderful automotive innovations. And I think I have another interesting line-up for you, a mix of road cars, concepts and racing cars. But more later this year.

Citroen Kar-a-Sutra

Calling a car ‘Kar-a-Sutra’ undoubtedly raises a few eyebrows, and I must admit it sounds quite cheesy. And yes, I am kind of stretching the concept of a car here as this was a mock-up only and not a drivable machine like all the other entries in these three articles. As a concept vehicle though, it ticks all the boxes for weirdness and can even be regarded as somewhat of a precursor to the MPV and many other expandable, shape-shifting concept vehicles.

The Citroën Kar-a-Sutra is a concept by architect Mario Bellini, Pirelli, Citroën and a furniture company and the latter seems to be quite obvious when looking at images of this thing. It was built for the 1972 MoMa exhibition, ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’. The emphasis for the Citroën Kar-a-Sutra is on the interior of the vehicle. The idea is that the interior is more than just space for a number of people moving from point A to point B. It is intended as a temporary living space, bars any sanitary amenities though, but with reconfigurable seating which can be turned into a comfy, velvety lounge area.

The roof of the car is what makes this car so extraordinary, as it can be raised from 4 feet while driving to 7 feet while stationary. It featured ingenious sliding windows tucked into the body when lowered, sliding out to keep a confined space when raised. 

Technically this is not an actual (concept) car as it cannot be driven but it is worth a mention as it predates what many consider the first MPV’s by well over a decade; the Renault Espace was introduced in 1984, over a decade later.

There’s very little additional information, but the Citroën Kar-a-Sutra is covered by Petrolicious and the architect himself is interviewed by DesignBoom. 

Nissan DeltaWing

All entries on this list combine innovation with weirdness and this one is no different; the DeltaWing project. The initial idea was to have a very narrow front profile to reduce drag and increase efficiency in both engine development and aerodynamics. Combined with a lightweight build, the car would theoretically need a less powerful and thus less thirsty engine but still be able to run at a competitive pace.  The project was first proposed as a new single-seater chassis for Indycar, but the Indycar organisers decided to run a more conservative chassis from Dallara instead. 

The team of DeltaWing Technologies, who proposed the prototype to Indycar, turned it into a car that was eligible for the Le Mans 24 hours under the Garage 56 regulations, with the help of Nissan as a sponsor. These Garage 56 stipulations mean that each year a radical, innovative project has the chance to gather real endurance racing experience and test their project to the limit. Each Garage 56 entry is not eligible to win though, it is purely a test-program for teams. In 2012 the roadster version was the first DeltaWing that entered the gruelling race. A 1.6-litre turbocharged inline-four pumped out about 300bhp which at first doesn’t sound like much compared to the 1000hp LMP1 cars. A big factor is weight and drag though and the Nissan DeltaWing weighed in at under 500kg’s without a driver and was thus able to run quite impressive lap times. Despite looking very promising on paper and backing up its potential on track, six hours into the race it was shunted off track and into a wall by another car and was out of competition.

Two years later, the DeltaWing project was back at Le Mans but now as a coupe, and labelled it the ZEOD RC (Zero Emissions on Demand Racing Car). It had a hybrid-electric powertrain with a 400bhp turbocharged 1.5-litre engine and an electric engine developing 295bhp. In its first lap into the race, it reached 300 kilometres an hour on electric power alone, a very impressive achievement! A gearbox-issue sadly meant another retirement for the DeltaWing. For more information on these cars go to DriveTribe.com.

Brooks Walker ‘Fifth Wheel’ system

You think parking assistance is a modern invention, due to the need of computers? Oh no, it really isn’t! It was first conceived in the 1930s by a man called Brooks Walker. Patented in 1932 and first shown to the public a year later, this specific innovation cannot be credited to a single car or brand as it was designed as an aftermarket installation. It is quite interesting to see though. And despite mayor efforts by Mr Walker it never caught the imagination of US carmakers. It is basically a very early, very rudimentary form of parking assistance we know today. 

It basically consists of a trunk-mounted fifth wheel, mounted perpendicular to the other wheels and lowered by a mechanical or hydraulic arm. You would pull up to a parking space, turned in the nose of the car, lowered the fifth wheel which would then pull in the back end of the car into the parking spot. Really rather ingenious, and quite a funny thing to behold.

The upside is it requires less space to park in comparison to regular parallel parking, the downside being it took up all available trunk space. The system never caught on despite all efforts, even into the fifties. In the fifties, it was marketed as an extra use for a spare wheel and was constructed in such a way it could be fitted to just about any trunk. Walker installed the kit on a 1953 Packard with a continental kit (spare wheel outside of the trunk) to free up the trunk again. You can see it in action here:

More information on this innovative system on Hagerty.com

Milliken Camber-Car

One of the mysteries surrounding setting up a race car is the positioning of a car’s wheels. Wheelbase, track width, positive or negative camber, toe-in or toe-out; it all greatly influences the dynamics of a race car. It also should be adjusted according to the conditions a car is run in, as a rally car requires a completely different set-up than, let’s say an F1 car. It affects wear, grip, braking, acceleration, aerodynamic flow, all very scientific stuff.

To explore various cambers for a car, legendary engineer Bill Milliken developed the Milliken MX-1 “Camber-car”. The car was developed with the idea to adjust camber positions and learn what the influences of various set-ups are on handling and driving capabilities. It featured a tubular chassis, with multiple mounting points for the suspension resulting in a set-up anywhere between 0 and 50 degrees of camber. 

Power came from a two-stroke six-cylinder engine, producing 80bhp. No real performance figures are specified but that is not what the car was intended for. Basically constructed as two motorbikes leaning in, it had difficulty running in a straight line until some adjustments were made. When all issues were sorted out, the car cornered at remarkable speeds, proving the concept to an extent. The Milliken MX-1 was tested for a number of years but made its first public appearance at the 2002 Goodwood Festival of Speed. Bill Milliken, 91 years of age at the time, piloted the car up the Hillclimb-course. There’s a short very low-quality clip available on YouTube where you see the car in motion but that’s it.

Rinspeed sQuba

Arguably one of the best car-related scenes in a movie is from the 1977 James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Mr Bond is pursued by some bad-guys in his white Lotus Esprit. After the perilous chase, he reaches the end of the road and jumps his car off a pier. You’d think it would be the end of him, but no. Turns out the car is a submarine! After fending off more thugs underwater, he eventually drives out of the water, onto a beach, lowers a window, drops a fish and drives off!

The car used in the underwater scene is a second Lotus Esprit, converted to be a fully working submarine. Despite what the movie suggests, the road car did not convert into the submarine. There is only one car I know of that can pull off that stunt in real life; the Rinspeed sQuba! As the name sort of suggests it is an actual scuba-diving car, based on a Lotus Elise (a white one, as a nod to the Esprit).

Rinspeed is a Swiss company who have been building some of the wildest, innovative concept cars for over 40 years. The sQuba stands out though, as I believe it still is the only truly submersible car in existence. From a technical perspective, it is a very complicated thing to do. The solution was to make it electrically driven. From the outside it only a set of propellers are visible underneath the rear of the car and a pod on either side for under-water control.  The interior is clad in water-resistant material and all instruments are designed to provide information for both driving and diving the car. A pair of oxygen tanks are fitted, with piping and masks allowing the drivers to breathe. 

A ton of interest was shown when this car was launched, presented at the 2008 Geneva auto show but it never made it into production. The scalability of the prototype to a production-ready car is simply not there, with the concept car costing 1.5 million dollars. More information on Rinspeed.com and Motor1.com. Also, check out this video of the car in action:

Covini C6W

Some say 2 wheels are better than 4, some say it the other way around, but few people join the conversation stating 6 wheels is the way to go. There are some very well-known cars featuring six wheels, especially amongst petrolheads. For instance the Tyrrel P34 and Williams FW08B, both featuring a double axel at the front (Tyrrell) or at the rear (Williams). 

Regarding road cars perhaps the completely bonkers Mercedes-AMG G63 6×6 comes to mind, or the Panther 6, but I would like to focus on the Covini C6W and the C6W Spider. Both these cars were constructed by Covini, an Italian company founded in 1978 and has built a number of prototypes over the years with this one being their wackiest. No doubt fitting an extra set of wheels to a car can be beneficial in some areas but in terms of looks, it is…. disturbing I guess. 

The original idea for a six-wheeled car by Covini stems from the late seventies, most likely following the impact of the Tyrrell P34 in F1 in 1976 and 1977, and the introduction of the Panther 6 in 1977. The Covini C6W (2004) and C6W Spider (2008) were developed with the idea that, much like the other six-wheelers, a larger contact patch in the front would help a car corner better and faster. It would also result in a bigger surface for the brakes, reducing wear and increasing braking capabilities. Also, when one front wheel suffers a puncture, the theory is the other wheels would balance it out so it would still be considered driveable. 

A full carbon fibre body ensured a kerb weight of 1150kg, and being powered by 434 horsepower 4.2 litre V8 from Audi, the top speed was a respectable 300 kilometres per hour. More details on this six-wheeled wonder on DriveTribe.

The post The Petrolhead Corner – Weird and Wonderful Automotive Innovations – Part 3 appeared first on Wristwatch Journal.

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[operawindow9-blog]

Review: Redemption by Jay Rock

2012 felt like a life-time ago, but I still remember getting excited for the talent displayed in TDE after Kendrick Lamar’s breakthrough in Section.80. At the start of the year, ScHoolboy Q’s Habits & Contradictions provided dark, hedonistic grooves for days (“There He Go”; “Nightmare on Figg St.”) while Ab-Soul followed up with Control System, a mostly introspective album that sometimes suggested he might’ve been the group’s most prodigious when it came to wordplay (“Terrorist Threats”; “The Book of Soul”). Jay Rock, maybe the most old-fashioned rapper of the group and certainly the most street-wise, didn’t come up with a full project that year, but I made note of him anyway when he provided one of the best verses on good kid, m.A.A.d. city. I didn’t think much of 90059, but I thought even less of his previous effort, Follow Me Home. Cutting down on the filler was the best move he could make, but we still had that (“Money Trees Deuce,” the direct to video sequel) and the hometown producers only supplied a few beats worth writing home about (“Necessary”; “Gumbo”). Songs like “Easy Bake,” featuring alley-oops with Kendrick Lamar and a detour for a SZA spotlight, and the Black Hippy posse cut “Vice City” with its ridiculous flow, are certainly songs I’d easily miss if I never heard again, but they also highlighted that Jay Rock’s best work might be as features on other people’s songs or when he features other artists on his own.

“WIN,” the lead single of Jay Rock’s new album if you ignore “King’s Dead” (which I’ll get to later), wasn’t exactly the worst thing in the world, and that’s the highest praise I’ve got for it. I’ve been wary of victory-lap “bangers” that use “triumphant” horn hooks since day 1 (on that note, Kendrick Lamar’s “The Spiteful Chant” – sampling Woodkid’s “Iron” – was a dirge, and one of Section.80’s weakest cuts). People have compared “WIN” to “HUMBLE.”, Kendrick Lamar’s lead single to DAMN., and in turn, have started comparing Redemption to DAMN. because they are the artists’ more mainstream-ready records. Quality-wise, there is no comparison. “HUMBLE.”, which gets a bad rep from people who only want more of To Pimp a Butterfly’s impregnable jazz cuts, came with inventive rhymes, a neat flow switch and an exciting music video (particularly during said flow switch). “WIN” comes with Kendrick Lamar shouting “MOMMY” in the background of the choruses, a particularly heartbreaking moment packaged for memes and nothing else.

It’d be fine if “WIN” were like “Started from the Bottom” (from Drake’s Nothing Was the Same), by which I mean, an outlier and the rest of the album would be what we wanted from the artist. That’s not the case. There’s also the “obligatory” sex-rap cut featuring a mushy-mouthed Jeremih (whatever happened to him?) and Jay Rock going “Fuck you in a car in the back / Fuck you so good, call back / For real, though / How many fucks I give? Zero.” The track recalls ScHoolboy Q’s Miguel-featuring “Overtime” from the mostly phenomenal Blank Face LP (Q has gone back and forth about whether or not the label had a hand in that song’s appearance). And for whatever reason, “King’s Dead” – originally from the Black Panther soundtrack – finds its way here, but without James Blake’s brief interlude or Kendrick Lamar’s climaxing verse. Smart move, I guess, since hearing Lamar rap “All hail King Kilmonger!” makes no sense anywhere outside of that soundtrack. But the fact that he has included that song at all makes me think of label interference, and the fact that he hasn’t bothered to add anything to replace the parts he took out reeks of laziness, and both are emblematic of the album as a whole. Whatever: it’s still fun to hear Future falsetto-sing “La-de-da-di-da, slob on me knob,” I guess?

Those are the album’s biggest issues, but it’s not like the rest is anything to write home about either. In contrast to 90059, Jay taps into bigger-name producers but their beats don’t distinguish themselves (Cardo, Cubeatz, Vinyls, Boi-1da). Hit-Boy brings along a pan-flute for “Wow Freestyle” that ends up sounding like most other woodwind beats in recent memory not named “Mask Off” and certainly nothing like the bangers that Hit-Boy is capable of. Elsewhere, “For What It’s Worth,” produced by Sounwave (responsible for an alarming amount of great Kendrick Lamar songs), sounds non- and the same term can be applied to other beats here (ie. “Knock It Off,” “Broke+-“) to the point that some of these beats sound like Black Panther rejects. There are some memorable ones: “The Bloodiest” – produced by Boi-1da, Jake One, and Allen Ritter – features a pitch-shifted vocal that’s been running through my head for the past few days, and I certainly wasn’t ready to hear what sounds like the Super Mario coin noise to appear on “ES Tales.” Elsewhere, Sounwave and Terrace Martin, provide a lovely backdrop for Jay Rock to rap introspectively on should-have-been-closer “Redemption.” But nothing is at stake here, and that goes for the rapping as well.

Throughout this record, I keep thinking back to ScHoolboy Q’s Blank Face LP, wherein ScHoolboy Q tapped a little bit into the mainstream (“THat Part”; the aforementioned “Overtime”) but for the most part stuck to his vision of dark, sometimes violent grooves (“Groovy Tony / Eddie Kane”; “Blank Face”). That record tapped both 90s’ hip-hop artists/sounds and modern ones, and appealed to a wide crowd. That’s the gold standard, and one of the best albums of that year. By contrast, Jay Rock also taps into the mainstream but doesn’t offer anything – no personality, no color, no darkness. Not even a fucking groove, the nerve! And it’s hard to imagine the mainstream tracks appealing to anyone either, so what’s left is a confused record. The best music is stuff that makes you forget other music exists, and in a month where we’ve been spoiled by good (G.O.O.D) music, a record this nondescript’s just detracting from what we could be listening to instead. The best I can say about Redemption is that at least Jay Rock hasn’t completely lost his mind like Ab-Soul. C PLUS

Source: https://prettymuchamazing.com/reviews/jay-rock-redemption

[wendyimmiller]

Ben Franklin’s Tree – an American Story

America co-founder Ben Franklin never got to Indiana – but his tree did, the fabled Franklin Tree; aka Franklinia alatamaha. It’s blooming here in our back yard right now, doing its best camelia imitation; that pure white flower with the frothy gold stamens at its center, not to discount its funky seed capsules.

And there’s no more Franklin Trees left blooming anywhere in the world except those preserved in various arboretums, community gardens and the back yards of garden geeks – and it’s real hard to keep them alive there.

Its story has been told a lot – and yet never enough. It touches all the bases of horticulture exploration: knowledge, curiosity, luck, serendipity and persistence.

It begins in 1765 with two guys, John Bartram, a self-taught Pennsylvania Quaker farmer and native plant collector, and his son William, artist and plant explorer, an acorn who never got too far from the family tree.

Kirk Brown (now with Magnolia Plantation and Gardens) as John Bartram.

That was the year King George named John Bartram Royal Botanist for North America with no real idea of the scope of that job – like 9.54 million square miles. Think about that; John Bartram pretty much had all that newer plant stuff in the colonies to himself, discovering and shipping back hundreds of plants unknown to the Brits.

In addition, his being named royal botanist was only eight years before the Boston Tea Party, so there was a little tension in the colonies at the time. But Bartram’s pay was 50 pounds, pretty good wages for the day.

On Oct. 1, 1765, wandering on horseback, the Bartrams had just crossed the Alatamaha River bottomlands in Georgia when, as John wrote in his journal, “We found several very curious shrubs, one bearing beautiful good fruite.”

The shrubs only existed on a few acres of land. That “fruite” was a seed pod. The journal made no mentions of any flowers, which may have been very sparse to non-existent in October anyway.

But the men did notice the foliage of this plant, which turns a rich orange, red or purple in late summer to fall, another attribute of this beauty. But their records do not indicate if they collected any seed at the time.

Fast forward to 1773 and William Bartram has returned to the same Georgia bottomlands and coastal plains. He would later write of it in his book, “Travels”:

I was greatly delighted at the appearance of two beautiful shrubs in all their blooming graces. One of them appeared to be a species of Gordonia, but the flowers are larger and more fragrant that those of the Gordonia lasianthus.

The comparison was understandable. At one point the Franklin Tree, due to its similarities, was called “The Lost Gordonia,” and both are members of the tea family.

Further research prevailed. William Bartram had seen something new in bloom on those few acres. It would eventually get its Latin ID – Franklinia altamaha – after been named for Ben Franklin, close Bartram family friend, kite-flyer, inventor of the lightning rod, ambassador to France and one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence.

The Franklin Tree was saved for the world after William returned to Philadelphia in 1777 and planted his seeds, a first preservation step that would see those crisp white flowers, yellow center and funky seed pods survive for the next couple centuries.

The original Georgia trees did not fare as well. They were sighted in 1790 by another plant explorer, but by the early 1800s it was never again seen growing in Georgia, or anywhere else in the world.

Reasons given for that include climate change – which would be a recurring issue – man-made habitat destruction, a local tidal flood disaster or, a favorite, a disease brought on by a fatal pathogen of fungus that came downriver from the miles of Georgia cotton.

One major problem with the tree – and many modern gardeners have experienced this – is that with its spindly, fibrous root system, new transplants either become happy or dead. They don’t mess around much in the middle.

They can grow to 25 awesome feet with an average life expectancy of about 50 years. Their best hope for survival is that classic moist, acidic well-drained soil with lots of sun and organic matter. And yet I recently spoke with a man, a good, experienced gardener, who planted three Franklinia in all of above and each quickly decided on dead.

I planted two about 10 feet apart about 25 years ago and both decided on happy until a windstorm took down a larger tree that fell directly on top of one happy Franklinia. I grieved, cursed and did everything but hold a funeral service for it.

The other has gotten more open over the years but still shows up in early to mid-summer with hundreds of those wonderful blooms and late summer leaf color. It’s just a joy to have around, to show off to our guests and to bore them to near death with the Bartrams’ story.

About 20 years ago some Franklinia Lovers took a survey of how many Franklinia were in each state. The national total was 1,894. Indiana had 12. That figure could be higher now. Nobody asked me to be part of that survey, but I just ordered three more.

Photo credits: Franklin Tree with fall foliage, full-size Franklin tree. Flower image by the author.

Ben Franklin’s Tree – an American Story originally appeared on GardenRant on July 19, 2019.

from Gardening https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/07/ben-franklins-tree-an-american-story.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[turfandlawncare]

Ben Franklin’s Tree – an American Story

America co-founder Ben Franklin never got to Indiana – but his tree did, the fabled Franklin Tree; aka Franklinia alatamaha. It’s blooming here in our back yard right now, doing its best camelia imitation; that pure white flower with the frothy gold stamens at its center, not to discount its funky seed capsules.

And there’s no more Franklin Trees left blooming anywhere in the world except those preserved in various arboretums, community gardens and the back yards of garden geeks – and it’s real hard to keep them alive there.

Its story has been told a lot – and yet never enough. It touches all the bases of horticulture exploration: knowledge, curiosity, luck, serendipity and persistence.

It begins in 1765 with two guys, John Bartram, a self-taught Pennsylvania Quaker farmer and native plant collector, and his son William, artist and plant explorer, an acorn who never got too far from the family tree.

Kirk Brown (now with Magnolia Plantation and Gardens) as John Bartram.

That was the year King George named John Bartram Royal Botanist for North America with no real idea of the scope of that job – like 9.54 million square miles. Think about that; John Bartram pretty much had all that newer plant stuff in the colonies to himself, discovering and shipping back hundreds of plants unknown to the Brits.

In addition, his being named royal botanist was only eight years before the Boston Tea Party, so there was a little tension in the colonies at the time. But Bartram’s pay was 50 pounds, pretty good wages for the day.

On Oct. 1, 1765, wandering on horseback, the Bartrams had just crossed the Alatamaha River bottomlands in Georgia when, as John wrote in his journal, “We found several very curious shrubs, one bearing beautiful good fruite.”

The shrubs only existed on a few acres of land. That “fruite” was a seed pod. The journal made no mentions of any flowers, which may have been very sparse to non-existent in October anyway.

But the men did notice the foliage of this plant, which turns a rich orange, red or purple in late summer to fall, another attribute of this beauty. But their records do not indicate if they collected any seed at the time.

Fast forward to 1773 and William Bartram has returned to the same Georgia bottomlands and coastal plains. He would later write of it in his book, “Travels”:

I was greatly delighted at the appearance of two beautiful shrubs in all their blooming graces. One of them appeared to be a species of Gordonia, but the flowers are larger and more fragrant that those of the Gordonia lasianthus.

The comparison was understandable. At one point the Franklin Tree, due to its similarities, was called “The Lost Gordonia,” and both are members of the tea family.

Further research prevailed. William Bartram had seen something new in bloom on those few acres. It would eventually get its Latin ID – Franklinia altamaha – after been named for Ben Franklin, close Bartram family friend, kite-flyer, inventor of the lightning rod, ambassador to France and one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence.

The Franklin Tree was saved for the world after William returned to Philadelphia in 1777 and planted his seeds, a first preservation step that would see those crisp white flowers, yellow center and funky seed pods survive for the next couple centuries.

The original Georgia trees did not fare as well. They were sighted in 1790 by another plant explorer, but by the early 1800s it was never again seen growing in Georgia, or anywhere else in the world.

Reasons given for that include climate change – which would be a recurring issue – man-made habitat destruction, a local tidal flood disaster or, a favorite, a disease brought on by a fatal pathogen of fungus that came downriver from the miles of Georgia cotton.

One major problem with the tree – and many modern gardeners have experienced this – is that with its spindly, fibrous root system, new transplants either become happy or dead. They don’t mess around much in the middle.

They can grow to 25 awesome feet with an average life expectancy of about 50 years. Their best hope for survival is that classic moist, acidic well-drained soil with lots of sun and organic matter. And yet I recently spoke with a man, a good, experienced gardener, who planted three Franklinia in all of above and each quickly decided on dead.

I planted two about 10 feet apart about 25 years ago and both decided on happy until a windstorm took down a larger tree that fell directly on top of one happy Franklinia. I grieved, cursed and did everything but hold a funeral service for it.

The other has gotten more open over the years but still shows up in early to mid-summer with hundreds of those wonderful blooms and late summer leaf color. It’s just a joy to have around, to show off to our guests and to bore them to near death with the Bartrams’ story.

About 20 years ago some Franklinia Lovers took a survey of how many Franklinia were in each state. The national total was 1,894. Indiana had 12. That figure could be higher now. Nobody asked me to be part of that survey, but I just ordered three more.

Photo credits: Franklin Tree with fall foliage, full-size Franklin tree. Flower image by the author.

Ben Franklin’s Tree – an American Story originally appeared on GardenRant on July 19, 2019.

from GardenRant https://ift.tt/2LzOX0y

[profoundgardenertree-blog]

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

"Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

BEST ANSWER:  Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://averageinsurancecosts.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr 

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Is there an over 40's plan in the UK that lasts more than 11 years. Know of any companies, tried direct line not luck. Thanks""

Why do people drive without auto insurance?

Don't give me because it costs too much and they cant afford it. I think it's the price of having a car. You wouldn't get a car and say well tires are expensive, I can't afford them you just need them. The point of insurance is to be able to afford to fix any damages you may cause to another driver's car or person. If I wrecked someone's car I would certainly want the other person to be able to get their car fixed or replaced. And if there was injury I wouldn't want someone else saddled with huge medical bills because of a mistake I made. Is that just me?""

What's the average price for moped insurance for ages 18-25?

How much can I expect to pay per month for insurance for a 125cc moped? I'm just looking for a ball park range.

How much insurance would a 1977 Camaro be for a 16 year old?

My dream car has always been a Camaro. Recently me and my dad have been looking for project cars to fix up and stuff. We found a 1977 Camaro that only needs cosmetic work, so I've been asking him about it. He says the insurance would be around $5000 a year. We could get the at around $2500 dollars. The Camaro has a 350 V8 engine and a T350 transmission. I'm 16 right now but I turn 17 in 2 months. I've had my license for 10 months with no tickets or accidents. I've had 2 cars already, a 1997 Nissan Altima and a 1998 Chrysler Sebring (Which I pay about $90 a month for.) I am on my parents' insurance, but I still pay for the car I drive. I know I won't get a perfectly accurate amount without asking our Insurance providers, but is my dad right when he says it would be $5000 a year?""

""My car has been tranferred name, if I still drive the car, do I need to buy new car insurance?""

I am existing car owner, due to financial problem, I transfer my car to my brother's name. However, I still drive the car, would I need to buy new car insurance for myself, or I can still using existing one""

Car insurance for a 21 year old?

I'd like to know (roughly) how much it would cost to insure a 2001 NISSAN MICRA 1.0 SE 3dr Auto Hatchback for a year? I'm 21 female Have a brand new license (never had a car nor been insured ever before) How much would it cost if i wanted a temp licence for a month? I know all companies are different so just a rough quote please from anyone who knows abt car insurance, thanks.""

How to shop for car insurance rates?

I need to find car insurance rates to compare, but I can't find a site that lets me do a comparison and get results on the internet. I don't want to give them my phone number and email because I know I'll be spammed to death by people trying to sell me something. Is there anywhere I can go to get comparison rates for free without having to put in contact information like that?""

What is the cheapest Insurance for a 16 year old?

I just got my license now i gotta get insurance...

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

Should I cash in my whole life insurance policy?

I purchased a whole life insurance policy about ten years ago. I know, bad decision. Now I have acquired some debt from a divorce and if I cash in the policy minus any taxes and/or fees I can wipe this debt out. I still have an SGLI policy currently for 200K and can increase this after I close the other policy. Is this a good decision?""

Can I be forced to pay insurance for stepchild?

Here's the situation. My husband makes very little money. I have him covered under my insurance policy. Until recently, my stepdaughter was covered under Child Health Care Plus. Coverage stopped when she turned 15. Her real mother is being a real witch and demanding we buy her insurance. Hubby can't afford it. I can't enroll her under my employer's plan because there's only open enrollment one month per year. I really don't WANT to put her on my policy, as she seems determined to get pregnant ASAP, and also she hates me and steals from me. Can I be FORCED to get her insurance? Oh, and did I mention her real mother doesn't work? HELP!!!!""

""I would like to get my insurance license in the state of CA, and I need to know how to start?""

I would like to get my insurance license in the state of CA, and I need to know how to start?""

Where i can get car best insurance information ?

give me a website of car insurance information .

How to find free medical insurance?

i m cheap person who work partime and i can t afford to pay alot money so do u guys know any free medical insurance or dental ?

""My car was broken into last night, insurance?""

I have a good rating, never claimed and fully comprehensive insurance. My car was in a carpark next to the train station but not the official carpark. I lost about 300 worth of CDs and a Sat Nav system, can i claim for these items without proof of purchase? Obviously I dont have any records for Cds dating back 5 years for instance.""

If my dad is a co signer for a car will my insurance be cheap?

I'm 19 and its my first car and my dad is the co signer will my insurance be low? What are cheap insurance agencies for teenagers?

How much would insurance cost?

I am a 16 year old female who just got my license in January. I get good grades, but just a few days ago rear-ended the car in front of me. I totaled my car, and caused minimal damage to the one in front of me. How much should my insurance be on a monthly basis?""

Is there a way to get an affordable car insurance for a 17 year old?

Hey, I have passed my driving test, about a month ago, and I really need car. However, the car insurances are so insanely high, it's incredible! There where some for 27000!! How is someone suppose to afford that?! The cheapest I could find was 6000, that's still too expensive though. Does anyone know if there is a way how to get it cheaper? Oh yea, I already tried to put my parents on the insurance, it's still too expensive...I think it's better to get a new bike instead :D""

Are there any car insurance companies that wont force me to be on my parent's insurance policy?

I got my license 4 months ago and I have NEVER driven since getting it. Not even once. I don't drive. I ride the bus or my bicycle everywhere I go. I don't need car insurance. I don't want car insurance. I live with my parents and their insurance requires that they add me to their coverage simply because I have a license. Are there any insurance companies that don't require me to be on my parents' plan like this?

How much is car insurance for a 16 year old now?

hi im sixteen i dont know where to look for the amount every site i go too wants too much information if you can find one for me my zip is 17325 or give me an estimate. thanks!

Hardtop convertible increase my car insurance?

I know your car insurance increase with a convertible, but will it also increase as much with a hardtop convertible? I was thinking of getting the VW Eos, does anyone have one? Is it a good car? The other car I have been looking at is the Ford Edge but everyone tells me Ford vehicles don't whole their value? What you think I should get?""

Getting a quote on a 67 mustang cobra?

i can't seem to find anything on the internet about getting a free quote on this car. i'm wanting to get a 67 mustang cobra with a 302 engine. i have no idea how much my insurance is going to rise up on it. which is why my father doesn't want to buy it. -.- does anyone know how much this would make my insurance go up? no, i'm not asking for a direct quote, i'm asking for an approximate raise. an example such as: This raises your insurance by approximately $200""

Car Insurance for a friend?

I have a friend (single mom of 2) and she needs to get cheap car insurance on her ford explore. She let it lapse for 6 months and now her loan company wants to repo her car, even though she has made every car payment. (she leases her car)...(kinda like rent to own) She got a quote from my agent, but it was going to be way too much for her. I am guessing since she still owes on the car she has to have full coverage. And can only afford less than $100.00 a month on it. She is a renter, she is going to school, and has bad credit. Are there any companies out there that she can get a good deal or at least get coverage for 6 months and re-apply with a better company?? The only one I have found out there was the general.com. And they seem to be ok...but I don't know what other options she has. Thanks for reading this!! 10 points to the best answer!!""

Car Insurance Question?

Im Getting My First Car In A Few Weeks and Im Wondering About Car Insurance Is $225.55 alot? How much would I Have To Pay A Month/ Every 6 Months Thanks :)

How to get cheaper insurance on a Motorcycle?

I'm 24, 25 in 10 days. I have wanted a motorcycle for the longest time, I have rode dirt bikes most of my life. I plan on getting a 600cc bike, but can't understand why the rates are so high. I hear about people who are 18 who are only paying $90. a month but they want to charge me $200.+ I have called around and just would like advice for those who might be paying less for insurance. The bikes I would like are 2006-2009 Yamaha R6/CBR600/GSX 600. Let me know if anyone has one of these and is a new rider and got pretty cheap insurance. I currently have Geico, and even with a clean record and multiple cars they still want a ridiculous amount.""

Car insurance going up?

We were involved in a hit and run accident. Obviously not our fault, but the people that did it drove off. They've yet to be found. Our car was totaled and we're currently waiting on a payment from the insurance company. My question is, will our monthly car insurance payment go up, even though the accident wasn't our fault? Also, if they find the people that did it (there's more to the story and we're waiting on fingerprints from the car) is it possible to get their insurance to pay the extra amount if ours DOES go up?""

Looking for a Psychiatrist who accepts Medicare Insurance?

I have bipolar disorder and need a psychiatrist who accepts Medicare Insurance a.s.a.p. Please include doctor's name/phone #, my area is (818), San Fernando Valley, Encino, California. Also, I would like to make new friends who are dealing with bipolar disorder. Thank you.""

First time vehicle owner..need cheap car insurance?

18..my first car and i need some extremely cheap car insurance

Can someone else drive my car if i have cancel my insurance cover?

I am going on holiday for 5 months and thinking of cancelling my car insurance. My car is taxed until next year and wondering if my brother can drive my car if I have cancelled my car insurace? (he has his own insurance for his car), does he has to add my car reg on his insurance? Please HELP...""

""My car was stolen and now I'm being investigated for insurance fraud. I'm only 18, help!!?""

My car was stolen on Saturday. I was driving in the car with someone I thought I could trust and when I went inside a subway terminal to meet another friend I left the keys in the car and the person who was in the car with me took off with the car, my phone, my purse, and about $1500 worth of shopping bags and boxed furniture that I had just bought from Ikea. I called the police and they aren't doing much help. I've had to investigate a lot of this myself. The person who took my car doesn't have permanent housing so its been hard to track him down. I found out from the cops he has 4 other warrants out for his arrest for crimes relating to cars. Obviously, I didn't know that when I left him alone with mine. After my dad filed a claim to our insurance company, they said they were going to begin an investigation and sent us a letter saying it was within their rights not to give us any money for the car. They think me and the person who stole the car are working together to get money off of them. Their going to interview me and I'm really scared. The last time I broke the law was when I was five and tried to steal a barbie from Walgreens. I'm only 18 now and I don't even know how insurance or fraud work, never mind insurance fraud. They're going to accuse me. They only thing I'm really guilty of is being stupid/ naive/ gullible. I trusted a person who I should not have trusted. My questions are: 1) How can I track down this person? I sent a messege on Facebook to all of our mutual friends telling them to keep an eye out. 2) How can I move the investigation from the police (who are on my side) along, when they aren't really doing anything? 3) What am I supposed to tell the insurance guy? What should I say? I just want my car back. I feel so helpless, please help.""

""I am looking for cheaper insurance, for a BMW M3?

I am 38 with 7 years no claims. Direct line have quoted me 900 per anum. Anyone know where i may get it cheaper?

""If I get a license and use my parents car, will there be insurance added for having a license?""

My parents have two cars, and are paying insurance currently for said cars. If I get my drivers' license is there going to be money needed for having a drivers' license? Or is insurance only paid just for cars?""

Around how much will car insurance cost?

I'm turning 16 in January and want to get my license. My parents are adding me onto their State Farm account, but I have to save up enough to pay my insurance for at least a year first. I know I qualify for the good student discount because my GPA is 4.0 and I'm going to be in the National Honors Society. I live in the suburbs of Pennsylvania so I hear it should cost less than if I lived in Philadelphia. So, around how much will this cost?""

How much is the average vet visit? and Is it worth it to get pet insurance?

I have inherited a Saint Bernard Puppy (7 months old). We got him 2 days ago and have a vet visit on friday just to get him caught up on shots and the regular wellness exam. I have no idea what to expect as far the cost of the visit will be i'm planning for the $200 range? Am I way off is it going to be more? Also does anyone have pet insurance and if so is it worth looking into? Which one would you recommend? I know alot of questions in one but I just need a little guidance. Thanks for your help.

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

Whats high mileage for an Infiniti G35?

I'm considering purchasing an infiniti g35. I'm looking at the 2004 and 2005 g35's and the ones in my price range typically range from 60-70k miles. Is this high mileage for an infiniti? How long do these cars last on average? Also I'm 20 years old; would this car have high insurance costs? Thank you!

Car Insurance(state farm) hit & run accused of hitting a object?

i was driving on the freeway tunnel(day time) when i noticed the guy driving on my left-side merging into my lane and struck my right fender,so when i get to the end of the tunnel to wait for him the guy simply drives off.I then call my ins and claim a hit & run etc. i gave them the details they say they'll fix it.3 months later i come to find out that they are claiming it's my fault that i hit a object or a guard rail or wall how can i go about this and fight it.the rep that help wasn't any helpful at all she said she re email a letter stated it was my fault and how to fight it. any help will b appreciated !!! i also i asked the lady if i can show pics of a cars that have been into collision with object i even told her it would be pics of my car(not actually my car) but u know what i mean she said they only go off what they see""

Car insurance for teenage girl?!?

I'm an a student. How much would the average cost be for car insurance if I'm under my parents insurance? I'm also 16 and a female! Also on the bill is the payment combined or would I be able to see how much my payment is individually?? Please and thank you!

""Life Insurance -- Is a 78 year old woman too old to get life insurance? If not, who are the better providers?""

I've made preliminary inquiries to get life insurance for a 78 year-old female, however, I get the standard response of no because of her age and the fact that she has been hospitalized in the last year and has pre-existing conditions (COPD, high blood pressure, arhythmia). My sense, however, is that there may be life insurance companies out there with more accomodating terms for senior citizens. If you know of any such companies, or are experienced enough in life insurance to give a definitive no- it's not possible response, please let me know. What are our alternatives, if any?""

How do you know how much insurance to take when you buy car insurance?

How do you know how much insurance to take when you buy car insurance?

What laws in California can a doctor use against me for spending insurance check?

What laws exist in California that a doctor can use against me if I spent the money the insurance sent me for medical services he performed?

Least Expensive Car Insurance in AZ?

I need to switch car insurance companies this month...I am currently with Geico...but its in ALabama...and if I stay with them and switch to AZ, my policy doubles!! I have two accidents and a ticket on there...So i realize I can't get it super low. But does anyone know of a really inexpensive company in AZ? Thanks!""

When to buy motorcycle insurance?

I'm planning to buy a used motorcycle from a private party within the coming month or so. My question is, do i buy the motorcycle first, take it home, then get it insured? Or do i legally have to buy insurance first before i can purchase it from the private party?""

Car insurance Premium?

(I have only had car insurance for about 6 months, so I am still pretty new to this). My question was that my 6 month renewal policy states that my premium is $728.86; however, when I first got with this company, I paid around $368 down because I am in that age bracket where they stereotype you as a bad driver. Will I have to pay the $368 again along with monthly payments of $66.60? Or will I just continue to pay my monthly payment as it is?""

Average cost of auto insurance for a 17 year old male in Washington?

Average cost of auto insurance for a 17 year old male in Washington?

Dwi and insurance?

i got a dwi and got into a car accident and totaled the car...its not even my car its under my moms name... will i be covered by my car insurance? like will my insurance cover me from totaling the car when i was dwi? please help

What is the average cost of insurance for a day care center?

What is the average cost of insurance for a day care center?

""My car is fully paid for, and I wonder what auto insurance coverage would be the less expensive and good?""

My car is fully paid for, and I wonder what auto insurance coverage would be the less expensive and good enough to get in state of California? 1- Liability only? 2- Liability plus collision? 3- Full coverage? 4- Any other type? Regards, Mo.""

What are the people called who work for the insurance companies?

That spy on people who claim insurance from not working because they pulled their back, or twisted there neck, etc.. they usually take pictures, or film them for court evidence to see if they are really telling the truth about there injury. thanks""

Car insurance in california?

is medical expense coverage optional or required in california. I called my car insurance company to delete this coverage and the genius over the phone was telling me its mandatory, and I said to her...mandatory to california or to your insurance co?I know comp/ coll and liability are mandatory but everything else is optional...isnt it?""

""I have a company car, who should pay for the car insurance?

I have a year contract with this company and they are giving me a car for the duration of my employment. they told me i can use it for personal as well as work use. they told me i have to pay for my insurance though. is that fair?

Does anybody know where to get cheap auto insurance for a 18year old?

Does anybody know where to get cheap auto insurance for a 18year old?

How much is a 16 year old guys car insurance for every month ?

How much is a 16 year old guys car insurance for every month ?

Best car insurance for my situation?

I'm 18 years old. I have had one accident about a year ago and have received a ticket last month, what would be the best insurance that is affordable. Right now I'm on my mom's insurance and it's really high. I want to be on my own insurance that would be negotiable with my bad record. If someone could also give me some advice on how to lower my cost of insurance without switching that would be helpful too.""

Will my insurance cover my car?

I went to the mall to shop for an hour or so and came out to my car to find someone had crashed into the rear end of my car and left without leaving any info. I made a police report but im still waiting to report it to my agent/company. will i be covered at all? i estimate the damage at $1500 I have comprehensive and unisured driver insurance, but no collision insurance i live in California""

Affordable health insurance?

So we make about 35,000 a year so I do not qualify for government subsidies. we bring home about $2,600 a month $900 house, $800 car (I've tried geting out but there least so we cant) about $400 for house bills water, electricty ect..., $150 cell phones $100-$150 in gas(to get to work) $100 car insurance, and that only leaves us with $100 dolars a month for food so we keep having to use our credit card just to feed our son which is another $75 dollars a month!. (we dont have house phone, cable, took our son out of pre-school and karate) So we end up with $25 (If I use the credit card for food) and yet the cheapest insurance I can find is $183 a month. CANT! is there anywhere that sells insurance for cheaper? I have and interview on monday but I cant afford daycare. I knot know what to do. help please""

""How to apply for Louisiana Children's Health Insurance Program, LACHIP?""

Are you looking for a low cost health insurance program for your children? Do you live in Louisiana? Well, I just recently found a program called LACHIP that offers affordable healthcare coverage for children. Step1 I'm a stay at home mom, and for awhile my child was getting sick all the time. Our insurance was good but, it didn't cover everything. Then suddenly, my boss told me that she was cutting my hours. I frantically started seeking healthcare insurance that was affordable but, would cover everything we needed. That's when I found a program called LACHIP. Basically, LACHIP is a no-cost or low-cost medicaid health insurance program for children. Step2 First thing, you need to find out if you qualify for the program. The program is basic on income. To find out the income guidelines, contact your medicaid office. They will also give you an application to fill out. To find out your medicaid office contact information, go to: http://www.dhh.state.la.us/offices/contacts.asp?ID=119 Step3 Finally, when you get the application in the mail, fill it out and return it back to the office. Now when I filled mine out, I did not have to put a stamp on the envelope because it was already pre-paid. Then within about a week, someone from the medicaid office will call you and tell you if you are approved or not. If you are approved, then you will receive a medicaid card in the mail for your child(ren) within 6 weeks. Once you receive it, you use the card anywhere medicaid is accepted. Also, don't forget to ask your medicaid representative to include a list of things that medicaid covers. For more how to articles, please visit http://www.ehow.com/members/kleighwickham.html?view=3rd""

Help with auto insurance?!?

So, I'm 17 and just recently bought my first car (2000 Dodge Neon), but I'm unable to drive it due to the lack of car insurance. I'm getting reeaaally frustrated because I don't know where to start! There's so many policies... I'm also running on a budget, so a cheap policy would be awesome. Any suggestions???""

Insurance?

My insurance for Maruti swift gets expired within a week. I payed some Rs13,000 an year back. Now want to renew it.so how much will i have to pay for it. i once claimed insurance for some damage in car for around Rs 6000. Can any one tell me about this?""

Camaro Insurance cost?

I know insurance is a hard to estimate on since there are so many things that determine the price but can anyone tell me about the insurance for a 2012 camaro would cost for me? or how much extra it would cost for my situation. I have a 1998 toyota 4 runner and I am a 19 year old female. No tickets or car wrecks ever. My dad is getting me a new car and I am trying to talk him into letting me get a camaro. About how much extra would it cost yearly to go from an SUV to a sports car like a camaro?

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

How much is teenage car insurance?

I am 15 years old and going to have my permit. I want use my dad's car who already has insurance. But, based on certain websites they say i need to include licensed drivers on my dad's car insurance. I think we do not have me listed. Is it possible to include me as a licensed driver. I am currently under Nationwide. Will it cost me to be included? If, so how much or what is the average and how do I do it?""

Do you think which is better for a 1984 corvette classic car insurance or regular car insurance?

I am planning on getting a 1984 corvette but the insurance for it is a little too high.i just found out about classic car insurance but i really don't know much about it.but for classic car insurance,am i limited to a certain number of things like how far i can drive my car,when i can drive,etc?will the insurance actually be less or more for classic car insurance?and what is the best classic car insurance company i should go with?""

Are insurance payments for turboed cars high?

I am 17 and I am going to get a car soon. I want to get a '95 Nissan 240sx with a sr20 swap from my dads friend. I know it seems like a lot of car for a 17 year old but I've driven turboed cars before and can handle the power, so please no rude comments. I really want this car but the only thing that concerns me is the insurance payments. Will they be really high because it is a turboed car? And because I'm only 17?""

Am I paying a reasonable amount for car insurance?

I am 21 listed under my parents insurance with Progressive. I got my license at 16, and have no tickets, but one accident that was a no-fault to me. I am currently paying 120 dollars. ...show more""

Insurance for Young People?

I'm 21 years old, I live in Northern Ireland (which is not covered by a lot of insurance companies) and I was wondering if it is possible to get reasonably priced car insurance. I'm sure anyone my age knows that insurance for under 25s is a nightmare! Is there a way to get round it perhaps? A type of car that is cheaper to insure? I would appreciate some suggestions on the matter. Thanks.""

What is the average cost to own a car in the UK?

If you went for the cheapest car for Insurance, gas mileage, ETC. What is the average cost a month to own a car in England?""

Cheap car insurance UK?

I'm a young driver 17 I have no provisional experience or pass plus Im a girl and I'm hopefully getting a ford Ka 2002-2003 Do you know what the cheapest place to get insurance is? I've looked everywhere! Any help appreciated :)

Got a ticket for no insurance?

An officer pulled me over for not using my blinker. He gave me a ticket for that and not having insurance. The problem is I have insurance, I just had an expired card in my car. I don't remember getting the knew ones in the mail and I had just forgotten about it. I know I pay my preimum every month because it is taken out of my checking account electornically. The officer didn't believe me. I even told him he could call my insurance company to verify. He refused to do so. I am very upset. He could have spent 5 minutes calling my company, instead I have to spend several hours going to court to get this cleared up. Is it true that officer doesn't have to call a company if he doesn't want to? Shouldn't it be a department policy that he verify insurance if someone asks him to?""

Insurance Q???

would my insurance rates go up if i title/register my sons car in his name

How much would I have to pay for car insurance?

I'm an 18-year-old male. I have been driving for almost two years, including permit time. I should have no tickets on my record (I had one but I was able to get it off with a kind of probation). I'm in college as a B average student. My dad has been with Allstate for awhile now, has had only 1 or 2 tickets in the past five years or so. The car I want to get insured is a '97 Acura 3.5RL with a Nav System and high security system. Any help is appreciated, but answers with numbers will be greatly appreciated. I know there's a lot of factors with car insurance, but if anyone can, I'd like to get an rough estimate.""

What questions can I expect if I want to get a car insurance?

Also how can I lower my insurance rate. Currently I have IP only (not the actual driver's license) but have recently purchased the car. I live in OH.

How much is it to include your teenage child in your car insurance plan?

My daughter is going to get her license soon and will be driving the family car with us.. how much will it cost to add her to our insurance plan?

I was denied medcaid and chips for my 2yr son. Is there any other affordable insurance out there?

I was denied Medicaid which is understandable. I applied for Chips and was denied as well.......because I was $50 over the income guidelines. I don't receive any other kind of assistance. I can't afford the insurance at work. I pay my own tuition for school, my own groceries, and so on. I just would like to know if there is any other type of affordable insurance for my child.""

Few questions on cars and insurance UK ONLY?

i live in the uk and im 16 but 17 soon after my tests and things i want to buy a renualt clio 1.2 and the insurance group is 3E. now is this a high insurance group for a 17 year old as a first car? also if you buy a car and put a body kit on it your insurance goes up. so if i bought a car put a body kit on it and then insured it would it be as much or will it still go up?

Car insurance is very cheap or very expensive?

Car insurance is very cheap or very expensive?

Young drivers (17-18) - What is your insurance?

Hey! Im starting driving and shocked at the cost of insurance! Can't get lower than 3000 on a 1999 1.0 Vauxhall Corsa! Must be doing something wrong. So yeah , 3 questions : 1) What is your age? 2) How much is your insurance? 3) What insurance company are you with and what car? Thanks!""

Should I include collision on my car insurance?

I have a 2002 Honda Civic sedan with 99,000+ miles on it. In shopping around for better car insurance (my old policy expires next month), most agents I interacted with included collision for around a $300 annual premium. Some people I told about my insurance shopping said that to carry collision on such an old car is not necessary. I'm seeking an unbiased opinion as to what are the advantages, if any, about including collision, or any other info on what to look for in a good policy. Thanks.""

What insurances are affordable when persuing Gastric bypass surgery?

I am at the beginning of my journey to have gastric bypass. I am having trouble finding a insurance that is affordable and will cover the surgery, any and all suggestions are welcome. I also welcome any advice people can give as this is something that i have researched for 4 years.""

How do you fight with the other party's insurance company?

Hi, my car insurance covers for liability only and now I have an accident with a big truck. The big truck hit my car from the side. We were driving from 2 lanes next to each other and at one point the two lanes combine into one. While I was alittle pass over the truck, it hit me from the side. Their side has no damage since it is a big truck and our side has damaged from the driver side. The police report didn't explain clearly about whose fault it is except it mentions what the two drivers said. I think it is not my fault and the other driver denied it is his fault either. My insurance company didn't help much because we only have liability. Now, the other party insurance company called me and said they can't pay for the damanges since it is both parties fault. Therefore, pay for damanges on our own. Like I said, the other party didn't have any damages. If we have to fix it by ourselves, it will cost over $1500. :-( How should I fight with the insurance company to get my claims?""

I don't know anything about car insurance?

Determine the claim amount (with deductibles). For each of the following situations, what amount would the insurance company pay? a) Wind damage of $835; the insured has a $500 deductable b) Theft of a stereo system worth $1,300; the insured has a $250 deductible. c) Vandalism that does $425 of damage to a home; the insured has a $500 deductible. Please explain how you got to your answers thank you.""

Car Insurance went up when I removed a car?

I am insuring 2 cars. If I remove one, my insurance rate will go up. Why is that?""

Car insurance switch?

i do have a problem with my current car insurance company processing a cal accident claim , and it wasnt my fault and i did choose to file the claim on the insurance of the person hit my car specially that we both have same insurance company so can i switch my car insurance to another company , and still get my claim or my car fixed with my current insurance company im having problem with ? or i have to stick with this car insurance untill my car fixed , and then switch to another car insurance ?""

Qualify for state car insurance?

Hello; I'm moving to Virginia soon from New York. I know car insurance there is cheaper, but I hear that you have to live in the state for 6 months to qualify for the state car insurance. For example, I can buy a new car once I move in Virginia. With the new car I should be qualified for the Virginia car insurance?""

How does car insurance work? my mom recently wrecked our car-it cost 2000. we have 25000/500 deductible.?

what do we pay?

WHat is a good cheap auto insurance? I am an 18 year old male....yes I know I'm screwed.?

It is bad enough having insurance when your a teen male, but when you have a sports car with a V8 in it...well it gets a whole lot worse. I just bought my dream car (a pontiac trans am) and now I would like insurance so I can drive it....the car cleared out my savings(im a senior in high school so I didnt have a whole lot to begin with). I heard viking insurance is good , but IDK. I want to have decent coverage, but also not have my whole paycheck go to them either. anybody have any tips or know of any good insurance companies. ps and no i dont want to sell my car and buy some Civic lol""

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

Can a 16yr. old making $800 a month, afford a car that cost $24,000....parents payinng for insurance...?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/geico-auto-insurance-liability-only-ethan-bray/"