#like i know in the modern era some of this stuff is functionally useless

[magnetic-dogz]

I love vintage tech and if I get the expenses to I'd love to start collecting some of it

[crystalelemental]

Unit Teambuilding - Clair

I didn’t initially plan to do this, but apparently I have never talked about one of my favorites?  Wild.  And for the record, yes, Clair is a favorite.  There was a long period of time where I liked Clair more than Jasmine.  Think about that.  So in absence of a prior post, I guess getting her EX is as good a time as any to talk about Clair as a whole.

General Overview Clair fucking sucks, bro.  Don’t use her.  End post.

I’m only half joking.  Obviously, use your faves, I have used Clair to off-type before (do not do this), but also Clair is atrocious with very few positives to her name.  Her main source of damage is Draco Meteor, a delightful move with high BP thanks to both accuracy issues and a -2 special attack penalty.  Unfortunately, Clair was developed long before the modern meta introduced the concept of drawbacks being optional, so she actually deals with these problems the old fashioned way.  Accuracy +10 node on grid is a goddamn 8 energy node, and she has to run Dauntless or be rendered useless, which cuts into her sync damage.  Clair’s slight saving grace was having very strong multipliers on her move damage: 50% for rain, and 50% for paralysis.  The sad news is that no combination allowed her to get both with any reliability, while also dealing with her atrocious self-buffing.  X Sp Atk is something, but she cannot buff crit at all.  Until SS Kris dropped, Clair was easily among the worst sync pairs in the game.

But hey, Clair has an EX now!  And with that, combined with some of the tools from last year that really propelled her forward, surely she is in a position to succeed, right?

Zero sync multipliers anywhere on grid.  The only option she’s ahead of is base Iris, who suffers similar problems with Lessen Confusion 9 as a lucky skill.  You know, it’s amazing to me that DeNA has entered this era of grid expansions for PokeFairs, giving new tools to options like Dojo Gloria and SS Morty who were already top of the food chain, but can’t be asked to give the early grid recipients something of value on their ancient and debilitating grids.  I know it could be worse, there’s always Crit Strike 1 at 12 energy as your only multiplier, right Flint?  But this stuff still hurts.

The big issue with Clair getting EX is that it’s worthless.  She is a striker in the traditional sense of high DPS.  That is her niche.  She needed sync far, far less, given the absence of any multipliers, and lack of even a lucky skill backing it.  It’s basically useless, barring a bit of spread chip damage for DPS to finish a job late game.  Her old issue was the struggle of needing so much offensive support, Rain, and Paralysis in the same team, which was functionally impossible pre-SS Kris.  But in the modern era, Clair has access to some very useful tools that actually achieve what she always wanted.  And even that’s not enough to make her reliable anywhere but on-type.  The sad reality is, her best point of comparison is Zinniquaza.  Reliance on weather, need for crit support, runs Dauntless to offset a drawback the old fashioned way.  But Zinniquaza has a much higher damage threshold and a sync multiplier and achieves EX for free.  Clair cannot compete with Zinniquaza at all.  Even with both multipliers firing, Zinniquaza’s mega evolution and easier time running Lucas makes her a far superior choice in every possible scenario.  Clair’s become decent with the tools the meta developed, but still struggles to stand out at all.  And is it really worth it to expend that much effort for something sub-optimal?

EX? Yes.  Always for Clair.  EX Mandatory.  (For legal purposes, this is a joke)

Team 1: Clair, SS Kris, Classic Elesa/Lucas This is the team that SS Kris enabled upon arrival.  This was the saving grace.  Rain support on a pair that boosted special attack and crit specifically?  Ideal.  The only downside was that, because Kris needed an MPR to cap crit, usually this means taking first sync.  Which is fine, Clair has no sync multipliers.  But it can slow down the DPS due to missing a crit.  Even when Clair wins, it’s with an asterisk.  Classic Elesa and Lucas are the best possible partners from there.  Lucas offers Dragon Zone, which is the biggest modifier on Clair’s damage you can receive, and doubles down on the Dragon-type damage spam.  But.  I prefer C!Elesa.  The paralysis lets Clair get full access to her multipliers, and her grid does allow Clair to take both multipliers, both sync damage nodes, and accuracy +10 in one comp, so it’s viable.  The debuffs on Elesa, I imagine, also push her over Lucas in terms of broad utility.  The potential disruption on sides is what let Clair once off-type a stage.  But there’s one other benefit.  With Kris taking first sync, you have the issue of quad queuing.  This outright fails if weather ends as sync is set up.  The enemy will queue a move for sure.  And given that Kris starts with Rain, it’s like to run out at that exact time.  To put it plainly, quad queues are hard and not guaranteed.  Elesa has a -1 cooldown effect on her trainer move, which allows Clair to reach sync before the opponent, and get that spread damage in.  With full modifiers, Clair is much more likely to be in range for finishing the job through sheer DPS.

Team 2: Clair, NC Calem, Variety Lance/Lisia I’m going to be honest, uncoupling Clair from SS Kris is not a wise idea, but we’ll talk about another.  NC Calem can also set Rain, and gives at least some small boost to special attack, as well as capping crit at once.  The problem is his buddy move condition sucks, and relies on Water Shuriken playing along.  Classic Elesa works in the final slot too, but I want to talk about two alternate options.  First is Variety Lance.  With paralysis, Dragon Rebuff on the first target to be paralyzed, and a team accuracy buff, V!Lance fixes a lot of what ails Clair right away, and can even free some energy for other traits with that accuracy angle.  Not that she affords much, ancient grid, but you know.  Trying.  The other I will mention is Lisia.  Lisia has a few key effects with this.  While it takes away from Clair’s paralysis multiplier, Lisia’s Twister is a possible flinch whiel getting 3 hits toward Calem’s buddy move.  She can also draw aggro to herself, taking pressure off the fairly frail Calem.  Lastly, Lisia’s Defog serves as another option to ensuring Clair’s moves land, and shifts offense boosting points into Crit Shield, which she dispels immediately.

Team 3: Clair, SS Brendan, Winona/Sophocles One thing Clair has over Zinniquaza is access to SS Brendan.  Zinniquaza desperately needs first sync to access her full power, and remove the horrific defense drops she inflicts on herself, so Brendan rarely gets to do his job.  Clair, however, permits him to do as he wishes.  She has very little use for first sync.  Brendan then gives Clair a ton of benefits in response.  Luster Purge is a rapid debuff to a target’s special defense, maximizing her damage.  Team Sharp Entry successfully grants her capped crit after sync.  Adrenaline ensures second sync before foe’s first.  If needed, Hostile Environment Dragonbreath can be used instead.  The third slot can go to anyone with Rain or Paralysis support for her multipliers.  Winona’s the easy winner of the Rain demand, having easy flinch and her own speed buffs to maintain gauge, with Sophocles offering flinch alongside the sure paralysis.

Team 4: Clair, V!Mallow, Lucian Variety Mallow, at 3/5, gives Clair pretty much everything she needs to start blasting turn 2.  Fast-acting buff, paralysis, even debuffs to keep yourself alive.  Lucian is a necessary third at this point.  While Rain obviously rounds out her multipliers, you need the speed on this team, and Lucian’s debuffs will have to carry from here.  “But the Rain-” listen.  Sometimes we just have to accept the loss.  150 points into Offense +5 will destroy Mallow, whose survival relies on damage-based recovery.  That’s not happening.

Team 5: Clair, Sabrina, Winona When you look outside of limited pairs, you begin to notice how absolutely dire the Sp Atk/Crit buffing game is.  Atk/Crit gets powerhouses like Sonia, Shauna, and Aaron, but Sp Atk/Crit gets...MC Torchic.  Sabrina and SS Elesa are like the only other options, and they are...inefficient, to say nothing of Lodge Morty.  You can get away with inefficiency when supporting a decent pair with high offensive present.  Not Clair, though.  Never Clair.  Still, Sabrina is worth noting, thanks to the accuracy buff that comes from her trainer move as well, salvaging Clair’s potential miss.  If desired, and I would never say to do this, Clair can use Hostile Environment to apply paralysis herself, and let Winona’s Air Slash maintain disruptive pressure on the opponent while Clair gets herself together.  It also really helps to have someone with a good flinch rate alongside Sabrina, who is...not the most defensively valuable sync pair.  She has some issues.  Several, if we’re being real.

Final Thoughts I want to be clear.  There are five teams listed because Clair needs to have as many possible options as she can, because she does not do anything herself.  Modern strikers tend to be easily built around, because they’re self-sufficient to a fairly high degree.  Compare the needs of Summer Liza to this nonsense.  Liza needs for literally nothing.  Clair needs everything down to accuracy in some cases.  It’s such a mess.  I do like teambuilding for the shittier pairs, but also, the game is shifting into an open acknowledgement that off-type is the meta with High Score.  Clair will not keep up in that environment.  She will die.  She can’t reasonably handle off-type in regular CS, you think she’s doing anything in that mode?  Nonsense.

I dunno.  I like running Clair when the mood strikes me, but I also feel like Clair is extremely bad, and a grid expansion, even a tame one, could accomplish a lot.  Like, a simple Pinpoint Entry 1, Dauntless, Sharp Entry, [insert sync multiplier here] would be something.  But that doesn’t seem likely at this point, and even if it were discussed, the grid expansions are coming out at such a glacial pace it’ll be years before she sees it.  Maybe she can get lucky and get an alt.  Tate and Liza did, maybe Clair can too...

[dangermousie]

2020 End of Year Post - cdrama edition

This is only going to cover cdramas that aired in 2020; if I had to make a post about all the cdramas I watched this year, I would still be doing it in three months...

Overall it’s been a fairly decent cdrama year (certainly better than the very lacklustre kdrama year.) It’s no miracle that 2019 was (so many excellent dramas!) but overall pretty solid.

DRAMAS WATCHED

(In order of liking from least to most as opposed to pure quality; I am including if I’ve seen enough to make up my mind; yes I realize that’s inaccurate, but that’s my list)

44 The Legend of Jing Yan - the worst cdrama I have seen this year, and possibly the worst drama of 2020, period. The hero and heroine were both uncharismatic, incapable of acting and saddled with such shrilly moronic characters, the only suspense was how they haven’t both perished long since from forgetting to breathe. Nor was anyone in the rest of the cast much better; the screenplay was written by a lower mammal and the cinematography was the best a third-rate wedding cinematographer could offer. Stay the HELL away from this one.

43 Unicorn Girl - the only unicorn about this bland yet irritating piece of pap was the fact that I was supposed to believe the leads are hockey players.

42 Autumn Cicada - I like spy stories, Allen Ren, and Republican Era settings. I can tune out Communist propaganda with the best of them. Yet, the propaganda ate the story to such a degree that there was nothing left; pre magic change Pinocchio was less wooden then this narrative.

41 You Complete Me - no you do not.

40 Skate into Love - the only positive thing I can say about this is that at least it’s better than Unicorn Girl, if for no other reason that only one of them is supposed to be a hockey player.

39 Irreplaceable Love - how do you make a story about fake siblings with a mad mother falling for each other boring? I don’t know, ask the makers of this.

38 Eternal Love Rain - I hate to rain on their parade, but these two actors cannot act, have about as much chemistry as a piece of bread, and are trapped in a story perfect for entertaining the mental abilities of the leads of Jin Yan.

37 For Married Doctoress - ummmm, you could do worse I guess. It only made me break out in mild hives. The sadistic ending did make me laugh though.

36 Dance of the Sky Empire - why you get Xu Kai and waste him in this insipid mess of a story is beyond me.

35 Love Designer - it’s inoffensive except to my sense of entertainment. There is nothing wrong with it but oh God is it bland.

34 Love a Lifetime - It felt like a lifetime watching this, but I didn’t love it. The story is incoherent, the actors have no chemistry and it’s all an epic waste of time.

33 Love is Sweet - so sweet it gave me diabetes. I like Luo Yunxi and Bai Lu, but there is literally no plot. I don’t need to sink into a plotless morass to watch pretty people engage in PG-rated make-outs. I am an adult with access to stronger stuff if I am thus inclined, though to be fair they could get x-rated and I still wouldn’t be able to sit through so many episodes of plotlessness for that.

32 Fake Princess - I love Zhao Yi Qin, but the guy needs to pick better projects. The female lead in this one has the voice and personality that can strip paint but the story is also doing nobody any favors.

31 The Changan Youth - I lost my brain checking this out. I had to go and read a dense treatise on medieval coinage or Mayan farming to try to recover it.

30 My Dear Destiny - kinda cheesy fun. It honestly shouldn’t be as low except it really feels like community theater.

29 Handsome Siblings - why is the Nic Tse version so good and this one so bad? True mystery for the ages. Chen Zhe Yuan is the sole reason this isn’t lower, because that kid tries SO HARD to make this drama bearable and almost succeeds. I can’t wait to see him in Sha Po Lang which actually will give him something to do.

28 In a Class of Her Own - see my comment on The Changan Youth. But at least Song Weilong is gorgeous to look at.

27 General’s Lady - inoffensive, pretty and so utterly pointless.

26 The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion - those two leading actors are a no go to me but at least they considerately acted with each other instead of ruining two dramas for me. It’s very pretty though.

25 Jiu Liu Overlord - it’s a mess and I bailed, but I placed it this high merely due to the fact that Lai Yi finally gets a leading role and he’s sexy as fuck and I am shallow. Whoever styled Bai Lu should never work again except at a circus, however.

24 Cross Fire - not my genre and Luhan will always look too much like my cousin for comfort, but it’s a surprisingly gripping and dark drama. I liked it!

23 God of Lost Fantasy - if you want to watch a mediocre wuxia/xianxia, this is not a bad choice. Probably better than Legend of Fei actually, because at least it doesn’t have an A-list cast to waste and gives us Sheng Yilun himbo and shirtless.

22 Renascence - the insane cuts (it went from 70 eps to 36!!!) made a fairly cheesy story into a total mess. But I had a good time until I finally bailed mainly because of the male lead (Chen Zhe Yuan yet again carrying a not-good 2020 drama on his shoulders; the guy should be nicknamed Atlas) and the insane but in a fun way story. The female lead (both the character and the actress) were not up to par but oh well.

21 Legend of Fei - only this high because objectively there is nothing I disliked it. But there is nothing I liked either. The most uninspired drama on the list. If you could eat cardboard, this is what it would taste like.

20 Ever Night 2 - compared to EN1, it’s a waste of film. On its own merits, it’s not very good (the cast replacements are uniformly inferior and Dylan Wang is so wrong for Ning Que I cannot even put it into words; the script is useless.) But it had some parts I loved so very VERY much (all the shippy stuff was perfection) so I don’t feel too bitter.

19 Castle in the Sky 2 - a lovely if not too complex fairy tale. It is inferior to its prequel because it doesn’t have Zhang Ruo Yun who elevated it, but it’s still a solid bit of fun.

18 The Great Ruler - it’s very high fantasy, very pretty, and surprisingly involving.

17 (tie) Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos - the secondary couple steals the show but the rest is not too bad if not too involving.

17 Legend of Awakening - a solid bit of fun with a seriously BDSM streak (theme this year apparently - but come on, the lead’s powers only activate when he’s in extreme pain!) It’s a bit generic and the costuming is done by a blind person, not to mention the OTP is a NOTP, but the rest of relationships (romantic and platonic) are wonderful (I live for the found siblings story in this one) and I like most of the characters.

16 Consummation - a rare modern cdrama I liked; a sweet coming of age story (and love story) even if wrapped in a pretty weird virtual reality concept.

15 Oops the King is in Love - this is how you do a low budget, sweet, silly piece of fluff. Our heroine pretends to be a eunuch and crosses paths with a powerless young king and they are adorable, even more so than the drama.

14 Song of Glory - pretty solid, though draggy and I didn’t love the toothpaste filter. But A+ cast, excellent leading couple chemistry, Li Qin being a BAMF and a leading man (Qin Hao) who is actually an adult.

13 And the Winner is love - objectively kind of a mess (and the heroine has the brainpower of a gnat), but the OTP chemistry is excellent and Luo Yunxi fighting and flirting with a fan as finally a leading man is worth the price of admission.

12 Miss S - snazzy and snappy and stylish and whatever else starts with S.

11 Eternal Love of Dream - I don’t know if it would work for you as well if you weren’t a hardcore shipper for this OTP in Three Lives but I was and this was such a darling, wonderful, shippy delight; plus I love this type of high fantasy.

10 (tie) Maiden Holmes - solid and sweet and a wonderful OTP. Proves that functional doesn’t have to mean boring. If you watch one cross-dressing drama this year make it this one.

10 Qin Dynasty Epic - srs bsns history epic. I am not far into it but it’s so good and smart and visually stunning (if you love battles, this one is for you.)

9 Love Lasts Two Minds - I adored this so much more than I should objectively have, but it’s so beautiful (and no I am not just referring to Alan Yu’s face) and the OTP has wonderful chemistry and the story is solid, and the whole trope of her memory being wiped but falling for him all over again while he’s constantly and utterly devoted is a fave; plus he’s in pain and semi-dyng for most of it so sluuuurp (happy ending, don’t worry)

8 To Love - yes, a modern drama is this high! But it involves intensity, tragedy, genuine adults and sexiness that is Lin Gengxin. And there is an actual plot and darkness OMG!

7 Legend of Xiao Chuo - so beautiful, so fun, so full of gorgeousness of Shawn Dou. Plus, Liao is a rare setting for a cdrama and there are a lot of characters and stories I liked a LOT. Less ship content than I wanted but more than I expected.

6 The Romance of Tiger and Rose - so so delightful. I was literally laughing out loud. I have no idea if it will work as well if one isn’t a seasoned watcher of period cdrama/reader of web novels, with bonus for watching/reading Goodbye My Princess, but it was a complete delight for me (and yes, I shipped for real, as well. Best of both worlds.)

5 Twisted Fate of Love - Jin Han gets a leading period drama role! And he’s enjoying it to the hilt, excellent as a smart, twisty bastard who is also charming and so madly in love with heroine. Sun Yi is beautiful and tough and her chemistry with JH is on fire, the story never drags, and it’s so twisty and fun and just awesome.

4 Love In Between - the most underrated drama on this list. It has no big names or big budget, but it’s wuxia that’s clever, driven, tragic, hopeful and so beautifully shot. Three separate (amazing) OTPs, a leading man who is so not typical (a doctor who cannot fight and who never acquires this ability) and who is intense and smart and damaged, a heroine who puts her quest ahead of her emotions, an unhealthy degree of involvement by yours truly. This is a drama Fei should have been.

3 Love and Redemption - such a lovely, addictive, utterly romantic fairy tale. I was obsessed with it for a reason. All the tropes you love and some you didn’t know you did, a star-crossed OTP to the nth power (and a secondary OTP I hardcore love), a twisty yet coherent plot, some insane chemistry and so much whump and hurt/comfort they must have bought blood packets in bulk.

2 Go Ahead - yes, I can’t believe it either. A contemporary slice of life cdrama made it this high on my list. But the way it feels so real, the found family perfection, the characters I love and loathe, the perfect cherry of a wonderful OTP that hits my narrative kinks on top, and just a perfect storm of loveliness all around with this one.

1 The Wolf - is that any surprise to anyone who’s checked out this tumblr for the last couple of months? Tragic, intense and gorgeous; so romantic and angsty and passionate it made me lose my mind (though some of it was gone the moment the camera panned to Darren Wang) - all my favorite tropes and then some; this is a drama that may not be perfect but it is 100% and then beyond perfect for ME.

FAVORITE DRAMA

The Wolf - I have seen objectively better cdramas; even this year. But it has been literal years since I have been this hardcore obsessed, this utterly pleased, this emotionally catered to and devastated at once. A beautiful dark fairy tale that manages to own me despite the storytelling gaps due to censorship, it took me for one of the biggest emotional roller coaster rides of my drama watching career. Visually gorgeous, poetic, intense, and so romantic it took my breath away, this is not just my favorite cdrama of 2020, it’s my favorite drama this year period, and the one cdrama this year to make it into my permanent Top 10 cdramas list.

WORST DRAMA

Legend of Jin Yan - see my write up for it for why as I refuse to waste more time on this stupid mess.

FAVORITE MALE CHARACTER

Wolfie, The Wolf - he is such a haunted, tormented, complex, dark mess; loving and violent, severely damaged and with a hidden yearning softness, longing and aloof. And the amount of charisma and sheer masculine sex appeal Darren Wang brings to the role is insane and not something I see much of in a cdrama. Plus, that character arc with its rapid fall and slow painful redemption is A++++

Runner Up:  Sifeng, Love and Redemption - has a male lead ever loved more utterly and selflessly, suffered more thoroughly and beautifully, and managed to have such chemistry with both his leading lady and his leading man (that his leading lady temporarily turned into) at once? The answer is no.

Almost made the cut - Feng Xi, Twisted Fate of Love, Han Shuo, The Romance of Tiger and Rose, Qing Ci, Love in Between.

FAVORITE FEMALE CHARACTER

Xiao Qian, The Romance of Tiger and Rose - so funny, so much the reason this drama was such a delight. I adore her beyond words.

NEEDS TO BE MURDERED

Murder Daddy, The Wolf - I am sad the censors robbed us of seeing him die on screen. He was fully human but nonetheless managed to be the worst monster in a drama full of literal ones.

Ling Xiao’s Mom, Go Ahead - I hate her so much I don’t want to look up her name. She abused the kid, the disappeared and came back to abuse him some more. I mean she literally gave her child mental health issues. She is the WORST.

FAVORITE SHIP

Xing’er x Wolfie, The Wolf - are you kidding me? Who else could it ever be for me? They destroyed each other and saved each other, sworn enemies and childhood lovers, soulmates and epic messes, they couldn’t live with or without each other. The longing, the passion, the intensity, the angst, the epicness. LIKE THERE ARE NO WORDS!!!!

FAVORITE SECONDARY OTP

Si Yuan, Shen Manqing, Love in Between - I loved them as much and often more than the main OTP. So much angst and passion and a happy ending! She is a seeming sect darling (except the sect is horrible and also sexist so her only worth is as a marriage candidate) and he’s an information broker who is actually one of the members of a destroyed sect that’s blamed for the massacre of her family. That chemistry and yearning is insane. The scene where she touches his face when he’s unconscious was in serious running for my favorite scene of 2020.

NOTP

Legend of Awakening - I have never seen a couple that didn’t just have no chemistry but exhibited actual revulsion towards each other before watching Chen Feiyu and Cheng Xiao try to act as lovers in this one. It was almost entertaining to be honest.

FAVORITE SCENE

It’s a tie and both are from The Wolf. One is a sequence where Wolfie marches to the walls alone, seeking death at Xing’er’s hands and the whole sequence with the battle and rescue follows. The other is the intercut between Xing’er going to her wedding and Wolfie going to his execution, and the auto-da-fe being intercut with her wedding.

BIGGEST CRUSH

Wolfie, The Wolf - Ummm have you seen this tumblr lately, it’s basically a drool shrine to the man.

BEST SCENE STEALER CHARACTER

Yelü Yansage, The Legend of Xiao Chuo - I have loved this actor since The Myth and he continued to competently steal every scene he was in.

NEEDS A SEQUEL

To Love - come out of the coma, dammit!!!!!!!

NEEDS A DIRECTOR’S CUT

The Wolf - duh. It started out as 59 eps and got cut to 49. I reaiize some stuff is never gonna get put in due to censorship, but some of the stuff that got cut got for time reasons because they were deluded and hoping to get a TV broadcast so ep count had to be under 50. I mean I doubt the censors would care if they kept scenes of Wolfie building her a swing or whatever. I really really want a director’s cut the way Goodbye My Princess did even if like with GMP it’s only three extra eps. Hell, I will take extra three minutes, as long as those three minutes are Darren Wang shirtless or with a sword. Ahem.

NEEDS SCISSORS TAKEN TO IT

The Song of Glory - it’s a fairly solid drama but honestly it didn’t need to be as long as it was and kind of got draggy and I got lost interest. (I could have gotten snarky and said all the dramas I didn’t like needed scissors taken to them in their entirety but decided to play nice.)

TOO MANY SCISSORS TAKEN TO IT

There are a number of dramas I could complain about with regard to this (hi there, darling The Wolf!) but this award goes to Renascence - poor Renascence was never going to be a masterpiece, but it had the potential to be a bit of good cheesy fun until it had its run time cut by more than half and became an incoherent piece of insanity.

TROPE THAT NEEDS TO DIE

Dumb shrill innocent heroine who can’t tie her shoes - see basically all the cdramas I didn’t like this year.

FAVORITE TROPE WE’VE SEEN A LOT OF

Male lead torture - I mean it’s always open season on that in cdramas, but between Love and Redemption, The Wolf, Love Lasts Two Minds, Love in Between and so on, it was a banner year!

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

Legend of Fei - what a waste of that cast; what a waste of our finite time on this Earth. What a waste of my intelligence to hope for something better and stick with it for a dozen eps. I have had stale wonderbread that had more personality than this drama.There is absolutely nothing that stands out about this drama in any way,  from half-dimensional characters, to actors who are sleepwalking, to a plot that moves at the speed of an arthritic snail, to uninspired cinematography and direction, to lack of any chemistry between anyone in the cast. If paint-by-numbers was done by a group of particularly linear robots, it might come across the same way as this drama.

BIGGEST GOOD SURPRISE

The Wolf - honestly, I did not expect it to come out AT ALL EVER let alone to become my favorite drama of 2020. I was not familiar with the leading man (hahah), I liked Li Qin but wasn’t yet obsessed with her, and Xiao Zhan was excellent in The Untamed but I was hardly going to follow him from drama to drama (and I don’t do SLS any way.) And the trailer was enjoyable but unlike seemingly everyone, I didn’t think it was going to be some epic masterpiece. And then it came out and while it wasn’t objectively an epic masterpiece, it pulled out all the favorite tropes, shippy and narrative kinks from the deepest darkest recesses of my id. And I fell harder than I have in years. 

2020 DRAMAS I HAVEN’T SEEN THAT I MOST WANT TO WATCH

None. Covid Year gave me PLENTY of time

BEST NON-2020 DRAMA I’VE WATCHED IN 2020

Novoland Eagle Flag and Joy of Life - they are in my Top 10 dramas from anywhere now. They are quite different except being smart and giving me protagonists to obsess over.

ETA: Also The Untamed because @idlewilds3 pointed out I actually watched it in 2020 even though I didn’t think so because this hellyear has lasted about three decades.

MOST ANTICIPATED IN 2021

I am gonna limit it to dozen and leaving out ones that aren’t necesarily supposed to air next year (Joy of Life 2, Love in Flames of War, Novoland Princess from Plateau.)

Monarch Industry, Novoland Pearl Eclipse, Silk Washing Stream, Dream of Changan, Sword Snow Stride, Wu Xing Shi Jia, Ancient Love Poetry, Immortality, The Long Ballad, Mirror Twin Cities, The Imperial Age, Fall In Love

[d-issent]

‘Dissent’ – Rough plot outline. Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Sodor is a supposed ‘safe haven’ where things are a lot better than the rest of the world, after a terrible disease strikes the planet and wipes out a staggering and concerning percentage of the human race, there are very few safe parts of the planet left. At a loss as to what to do, people from all over the world finally put aside any differences and set out to both recover from the damage the disease had caused, and find a way to keep the world running and operational while the human race is given a chance to recover.

The solution? Make machines with sentience, to carry out each and every job that humanity now finds itself quite unable to do, since there are so few of them left.

‘Dissent’ was a work of fiction intending to focus on the rules of robotics, and how, perhaps out of desperation on the part of humans, those rules end up twisted and sometimes completely broken.

It was, simply; a ‘humanised’ and dark take on Thomas the Tank Engine, if you can even call that simple. I wasn’t intending for the story to be a particularly long one, or to be one that was taken seriously, but I believe I made a bit of a mistake in thinking that I could make a whole comic depicting the story. But hopefully with this rough plot outline, I can at least tell the story I intended to tell, maybe one day I’ll have the time and the resources to pick up this story again, but for now I hope this will suffice for anybody who was left disappointed.

1. Who on Earth was Smudger?

The story of Dissent happens in two parts, one for the build up to the main climax, and the second to gradually come down from that climax. I’ll be popping the first four chapters into this post, and carrying on in another post, so I’m not giving you guys literal walls here.

The story focuses largely on Duke’s neck of the woods, the Mid Sodor Railway, but in the era before Stuart/Peter Sam and Falcon/Sir Handel showed up; mainly it was going to focus on the turbulent and painful relationship between Duke, Stanley(NG) and perhaps the most elusive character in the whole story; Smudger.

‘Dissent’ begins much like the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ story of canon begins; with a team of rescuers setting out to find the legendary ‘Duke’, an engine built for the Duke of Sodor, who I imagine was quite a kindly man, who’s character and morals Duke emulated quite a lot, or at least tried to emulate.

I remember deciding that the reason Duke why was stored away when humanity really needed every single engine it could get it hands on – was because he was an older model – as time went on and as humanity got better and better at making these sentient machines, Duke would have eventually been considered a very early model, still completely functional, but a little cumbersome compared to newer, modern models. I believe that the main reason for his rescue was the sentimental value attached to him, the Duke of Sodor was no doubt a very important man to the people of Sodor in such trying times.

Again, much like ‘Sleeping Beauty’, the rescuers find Duke after one of their party falls through the roof of his shed, they light his fire in order for him to wake up and regain the ability to talk, and soon explain to him who they are and why they’re here.

As the story goes, Duke is returned to the Skarloey railway, where he is first reunited with Stuart and Falcon, now named Peter Sam and Sir Handel.

Duke has quite a lot of trouble with these name changes, the two younger engines put it down to him being old and having “so much to remember already!” but Duke’s memory issues play quite a big role in the first part of ‘Dissent’.

All seems well and good, until Duke falls asleep (as if he hadn’t got enough in his shed.) and wakes up to find that two new engines have returned home from the day’s work; the two oldest on the railway, Rheneas and Skarloey, the latter of which strikes up a conversation.

Skarloey talks a lot, he’s hasty to introduce himself and welcome Duke to the railway, also to make a passing comment on how “It’s quite nice to have someone our age around here; we’ve had quite a ride with the younger engines, haven’t we Rheneas?”

Rheneas makes a point to keep to himself until now, so Duke – half asleep still – probably hasn’t focused on the other engine as of yet. But when he does, something very large, and very unpleasant stirs in his mind. Groggy as he is, he scrambles up from his chair and grasps Rheneas’ hands in his.

“I haven’t seen you in decades, Smudger!”

There’s silence.

Skarloey is the first to break it, though he doesn’t sound quite as chipper as before; which is to be expected since there’s an excitable stranger yelling at his best friend. He gently prises Duke off of Rheneas with a calm explanation; “Duke? This is Rheneas, our number 2. I don’t think either of us have ever met you before, perhaps… You’re mistaking him for some other engine?”

Rheneas is understandably shaken up, but he gladly accepts the apology from Duke, he’s an old engine himself and he’s probably seen weirder shit in all of his time on Sodor. Duke stays subdued for the rest of the evening, even after the rest of the engines finish up work, and even after Peter Sam and Sir Handel do their best to make him feel at home, Duke’s mind is stuck on one, disturbing question.

“Who on earth was ‘Smudger’?”

2. The Old Warrior.

There’s a brief time skip of about three weeks I think I decided, and the next scene starts out with Duke dreaming a confusing set of dreams.

It’s the same series of dreams he’s been having ever since he arrived at the Skarloey railway. He’s back in the sheds at Mid Sodor, he’s not alone in the room however, there’s another engine in the shed, fiddling about with a phonograph sitting on a small wooden table. His paint job definitely looks green to Duke, but when he crosses the room to greet his fellow engine, it always turns out to be Rheneas, looking incredibly confused…

Duke wakes to utter bedlam in the Skarloey sheds, rock n’ roll rider Duncan won’t shut up about something; a new engine coming to the railway? Damn, fair dos. Duncan’s friend and possibly also his part-time counsellor, Rusty explains to Duke that Duncan is upset about a ‘ghost engine’ coming to work on the Skarloey railway, an engine who was found lurking about an old mine. Duncan is convinced that the engine is some demonic entity, but – as usual – all it takes is a few words from Rusty to get him to pipe down.

The so-called ‘demonic’ engine is also known as the Old Warrior, though – like in canon – his name is Bertram, and nobody quite knows how he even got to the mines in the first place. Mister Percival – who has managed to escape the disease that has ravaged humanity somehow– explains to the engines that Bertram will be joining them to assist with the workload, since he really doesn’t have anywhere to go. Duke chats idly with a concerned Peter Sam about the state of Duke’s boiler – which is giving him quite a considerable amount of trouble, so considerable in fact that it’s now become pretty difficult for him to do the same work as the others. As is always the case with Thomas the Tank Engine, there’s “no money to repair him” so Duke has to make do with a shoddy ass boiler.

As the day goes on, and the sun starts going down, Bertram arrives, and the first thing he does besides let Mister Percival welcome him, is give Duke the filthiest look he can muster, so filthy in fact that it takes Peter Sam and Sir Handel aback, the latter worriedly asks;

“Have you met him before, Granpuff? It looks like he recognises you.”

Duke denies any knowledge of Bertram, but still chooses to give him a wide birth until that evening, when everyone is back inside the sheds, and he kind of can’t steer clear of him any longer. Duncan however is still doing his very best to stay the hell away from Bertram, but the latter is a little preoccupied with talking to Rheneas and Skarloey, mainly about his time in the mines, and how he got his nickname, “The Old Warrior.”

Duke – in spite of himself – snorts a little at this title, which of course pisses Bertram RIGHT off. The two have a little mini stand off in the sheds, with Bertram telling the old man to do one, and Duke telling him to “watch your tongue young’un, I’m very important to this railway.”

However, throughout the argument, Duke’s memory jolts again, and for a second he’s standing back in the sheds on Mid Sodor, arguing with someone, he can’t make out the engine’s face, but their fists are clenched and they’re yelling fit to burst.

The argument eventually ends with Bertram storming out of the sheds, and Duncan slyly commenting; “Oy, lads, I’ve changed my mind. I like him.”

3. Rain, rain, go away.

The following day, Duke is left alone in the sheds because of his boiler, and because of the rain PISSING down. Everybody else complains loudly about having to go out in it, but they’re all young-ish and in perfect working order so they all leave. Duke is left alone with nothing but his thoughts of Bertram after saying a quick goodbye to Peter Sam and Sir Handel, but those thoughts are quickly interrupted by Bertram himself as the Old Warrior comes crashing through the shed doors, soaking wet, and demanding to be given a towel to dry himself off with; he’s panicked and almost deranged.

Duke, still salty but generally being a kindly soul, makes sure to help Bertram dry himself off, all the while giving him breathing exercises, telling him to empty his mind – kinda useless shit – but it helps to calm Bertram down, and soon the latter is completely dry. He’s embarrassed, but he begrudgingly explains himself to Duke.

“I don’t like water. I can take rain, but when it’s lashing down like this, I can’t stand it. It suffocates me, I can’t see where I’m going and I can feel the stuff seeping into the grate on my back, even if I’ve closed it. I hate it, and don’t think I’m about to tell you why; it’s personal.”

Duke doesn’t ask, he’s not about to repeat last night after all, and soon enough Bertram relaxes, and Duke finds him to be oddly agreeable. Bertram quietly strikes up a conversation about how and why Duke was found, and the two talk for a little while, however at some point Duke mentions his weird ass dreams, and Bertram’s interest is immediately piqued. The Old Warrior asks Duke if there was anything he had forgotten, and of course Duke insists that his memory is fine, but he offers to ‘humour’ Bertram, and asks him what he would have him do if he had in fact forgotten something.

Bertram ponders if Duke had left anything of importance behind in his shed back on Mid Sodor. It’s an oddly specific question, but trust me, it isn’t just specific by pure chance, Bertram clearly knows something, but Duke’s mind really isn’t in a position to think about it in depth. Instead, he ponders back to his old shed, and soon realises that there were a few things he had forgotten to ask the rescuers to bring up to Skarloey; a picture of his Grace the Duke of Sodor, a few books, and a little, unexciting black box that he kept on the bottom shelf next to his books.

Duke is completely unaware as to why his brain has singled out that particular box, but Bertram immediately pounces on it, demanding that Duke go and get it immediately. Duke reluctantly agrees, mainly on the basis that if his brain coughed that box up out of everything else he had owned on Mid Sodor, it must be important.

Soon, the pair reach a bit of a truce, and apologies are exchanged about the previous night, they carry on talking until the rain stops, and Bertram is able to go back out and resume his work.

He doesn’t, though, preferring instead to sit with Duke.

4. Miss Cora.

New character oh boy.

A woman is trying to come into the Skarloey Railway, she’s visiting from her usual residence, which is quite a long way out of town. She’s been stopped at a checkpoint and is having her ID scrutinised, she’s incredibly annoyed at this, and the fact that they’re checking her luggage is also souring her temper. She demands to be let through faster, but the people checking her insist that they need to take all necessary precautions to make sure that the virus that put down so much of humanity isn’t on her in any way.

As they do this, she begrudgingly gives her reason as to why she’s visiting; the current head of the Sodor Railway, Sir Topham Hatt II, is apparently ‘not long for this world’, and he intends to make her the next controller, as her family and his family have been close for decades. The men are a little suspicious as to why Sir Topham Hatt is choosing her instead of his son, but she shuts them down; “His son is otherwise occupied. Why are you so startled at this, gentlemen? Is it because I am a woman?”

Which, shuts them up pretty quickly.

Soon enough, she’s through to head up to the Skarloey Railway, and she thinks briefly that business can wait, she’s seen the news… She has an old friend to visit.

Back up at the railway itself, Peter Sam and Sir Handel have volunteered to go and get the items from Duke’s shed for him. The latter protests weakly, suggesting that he should go instead, until Sir Handel tells him to shut up.

“Listen, Granpuff, I can’t find no way to say this politely; you’re old. The trek back to Mid Sodor is long and tedious, plus everything’s overgrown… Why’d you think the guys who found you ended up having to fall on you? It’s dangerous up there.”

Duke eventually agrees to let the two go, with warnings to be very, very careful along the way, and soon they depart, leaving Duke alone in the shed once again to enjoy some peace and quiet, until Bertram barges in yet again, he’s trying to make it seem like he’s not terrified, but he’s doing a really bad job of it. He informs Duke that there’s a woman outside who wants to see him, and had he been given the chance he would’ve warned Duke against talking to her, but the mystery woman pushes her way in regardless, completely ignoring Bertram.

She sets her suitcases down, and she beams widely at the old engine. Duke – despite the fact that his memory is horseshit – recognises her almost immediately.

“Bless my boiler. Cora Patricia Tomlin… Is that really you?”

Cora was the daughter of the old Mid Sodor manager, who – though he is sadly no longer around – was a good friend to Duke, Peter Sam and Sir Handel, so the man’s daughter was also considered a friend by association. Duke is incredibly happy to see her, despite Bertram lurking about, looking as sour as old milk, the latter looks desperate to say something to Duke, but after a while he realises that there’s no point in trying, and he leaves the shed in a huff. It’s just a little thing he does…

Cora seems a little relieved at the disappearance of Bertram, and soon sits down to chat with Duke about the old times. The conversation includes the news of her possibly becoming the railway’s next controller – on which Duke congratulates her thoroughly – the state of humanity now that the virus finally seems to be dying down, the weather, and the state of Duke’s gosh darn memory. This particular part of the conversation seems to quieten Cora down, and for the first time since her appearance on Sodor, she seems a little lost for words.

Eventually, after gentle prompting from Duke, she lays a hand on his arm and speaks to him softly.

“The situation with your memory is no good. But there is also no good in pursuing the past, my advice to you is to move past your time at Mid Sodor, there’s no point in going back there. Perhaps your inability to let go is because you keep dwelling on it, preoccupy yourself with other things, Duke, you’re far too good of an engine to be wrapped up in the past.”

Her words – as bullshit as they are – make some half assed sense to Duke, and he agrees with her that he has been thinking about his time on Mid Sodor rather a lot. Those times were the times in which he was happiest after all, spending time with Stuart and Falcon on their own little railway, truly he doesn’t like this change, but it’s as Cora says, he has to move on.

He briefly mentions Peter Sam and Sir Handel’s little expedition back to Mid Sodor to fetch his things, which for some reason greatly sours Cora’s mood. She asks him why he would ever think to do such a thing, and he doesn’t know how to respond, she tells him firmly that bringing objects back from his shed will do nothing but worsen the problem, and instructs him to burn the items when they arrive, as part of the process of moving on.

Eager to get himself out of the mist fogging up his brain, Duke agrees, and promises to destroy the items the second Peter Sam and Sir Handel bring them back, even though every single circuit, servo, gear and cog inside of him is screaming at him not to.

Cora soon takes her leave, but not before she once again reminds Duke to get rid of the pieces coming back from Mid Sodor, it’s time to stop living in the past.

Everyone else comes back the sheds that evening, besides Peter Sam and Sir Handel – but that’s to be expected. However, there appears to be no sign of Bertram either…

[salavante]

Aesop 29 or the Helmsman

(I’ve drawn his floating head a lot, so here’s him with his hood up, which I draw less) Also formal apology because I think like maybe no more than four people who follow me play Destiny, so a couple things may sound a little esoteric. I’d suggest checking out the Ishtar Collective (links to offsite) if I refer to something unfamiliar. 

Full Name: Aesop-29

Gender and Sexuality: Male and Homosexual.

Pronouns: He/Him.

Ethnicity/Species: Exo, from the little crop of Destiny fancharacters that I have.

Birthplace and Birthdate: Unknown factor. But Aesop was found by his Ghost in the middle of nowhere, in a southwestern state that I have not chosen yet. Arizona, Texas, Colorado and Southern California are all candidates. Aesop has just a little bit of a Texan accent. 

Guilty Pleasures: Aesop is trying to learn how to play guitar and is really bad at it, making him very shy and nervous about his attempts. Similarly, Aesop enjoys singing, but usually does it when no one else is around - because no one else has really heard him sing before, it is a well kept secret between him and his Ghost that he’s actually pretty good. I personally like to keep the list of music that he likes to the 50’s-60’s bracket to match the kind of retrofuturistic style that the Golden Age tech in Destiny has. We the viewer read it as being ‘old’, even if it’s much, MUCH older than we realize because the setting is far future. That’s really all that matters, that we recognize it as being antiquated. His favorite of the very small pool of albums he has access to are Marty Robbins’ “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs” and Nancy Sinatra’s “Boots” and “Sugar”. Sojourn teases him about it and has thusly introduced him to the feeling of shame. He also likes drinking alcohol even if it doesn’t actually make him drunk. Sometimes he does it out of spite. Someone you don’t like? Pound his drink right in front of him and walk away.

Phobias: Aesop’s kinda agoraphobic - he feels trapped and panicked in enclosed areas with lots of people, can be overstimulated by large groups of people talking/making a lot of noise. This makes him mostly useless in large-scale conflicts. He has managed to curb some of this by being accompanied by Sojourn or Calico to areas or situations that are high risk (whether that means a combat scenario or just going to The City), but this can get squirrely because Calico doesn’t have a ghost anymore and if killed would die permanently, and Sojourn has a tendency to get worked up in a fight and leave him behind on accident. If everything goes well though, Aesop is perfectly functional fighting in the small group that is his fireteam - himself, Sojourn (exo warlock) and King (human titan). His ghost, Chanticleer, can also sometimes talk him down if he’s starting to spin up into a panic attack. It’s something that he wants to fix, but, existing within the confines of your anxiety is a cold comfort that he indulges in. In general, he’s a very anxious person with a lot of existential dread, but he puts on a clownish, brazen act and hopes people don’t notice.

What They Would Be Famous For: Honestly, probably something very mundane, like breaking a dopey Guinness-style record or something like that. The entire point of Aesop is that he is very average in his skills in a world of blisteringly powerful space wizards and the like. I find his challenges are more about what goals he sets for himself and if those goals conflict with the status quo. Does his worth need be defined by how good he is at killing things vs. is the pursuit of personal wellness and happiness selfish in the context of a world fighting for its survival. Can these things coexist. etc.  

What They Would Get Arrested For: Probably something relatively benign done for the sake of pulling a dangerous stunt in the name of fun or looking cool. If he was a regular ass human in a normal modern setting, probably taking a nice vintage car for a joyride.

OC You Ship Them With: Aesop will have a love interest in the comic canon, but I’m gonna keep that under my hat for awhile yet. It’s not Cayde though, Cayde is dad. If Amanda Holliday was a man, he’d be utterly and entirely in love, but, alas. He’s still infatuated with her platonically though, and thinks she has pretty much the coolest job in the world. A promise of visiting her is a good way to entice him into going to The City.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: When death is not a factor, this becomes less of an issue, hah. Aesop and his bff Sojourn have killed each other a number of times in training, to an almost nonchalant degree. Aesop has also been killed much more in training, by his fireteam’s resident titan, King. Aesop will also find a rival in a local Fallen pike gang, the leader of which has the placeholder name of Easy Rider. I also have a Cabal villain I am throwing around and trying to decide if they’ll stick, but I need to do a lot more work and research on that. They’re my least favorite enemy type mechanically, but I think they could make perfectly acceptable antagonists in a narrative. 

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Aesop does not read. He can, he just doesn’t. I think maybe, MAYBE, someone could get him to read comic books, but those aren’t very sturdy and I feel like the amount of intact physical copies at this point would be almost nothing. The pool of movies and media that he has available to him are very sparse, but he absolutely drowns himself in spaghetti westerns, and would probably also like trashy action movies if they were available to him. I also think he would like Grease, HAHA. It has cars and guys in leather jackets singing in it. He’d also probably like any kind of rustic, western themed musical. And anything with cars in it would have his immediate interest no matter how bad it is, but he’d zone out in any parts he doesn’t like. 

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: To be honest I think most of the time, movies are a little too long for him and lose his interest partway through. He has a really short attention span and anything too long, complicated or artsy will lose him and he’ll start being fidgety and chatty and start making his boredom everyone else’s problem. Even if there’s a movie he likes, if there’s a part that’s boring to him, he zones out. He probably watches the same 2-3 movies over and over again, which is fine because his available library of media is probably really small. I like to think that they probably have movies in some kind of archive that they put up publicly in The City every once in awhile, like they have a projector that puts it on the side of a building and people just bring chairs and shit. Aesop has an aforementioned fear of crowds but he probably does some hunter parkour bullshit and perches somewhere at a healthy distance to watch from afar, as long as it’s something he thinks he would like. If he doesn’t he gets up and leaves.

Talents and/or Powers: Aesop seems to have an interest in vehicles, but due to a bet with his mentor, Calico, he has not actually been taught how to drive a Sparrow and so pines for them from afar. As said, he’s learning how to play an instrument, and if we want to be technical, is a Gunslinger speced Hunter with the Golden Gun super. He is very bad at being stealthy, as he is very impatient and is also a little bigger than the average exo. He’s just kinda tall and wide and tends to clunk around. If his Ghost Chanticleer wasn’t as clever as she was, Aesop would probably be perma-dead by now.

Why Someone Might Love Them: He’s kind of a dumbass and a space cadet but has the potential to be very sweet, and the people he cares about, he latches on to really hard. Similarly, when set to a task he cares about, he does not quit. Unfortunately, many of his goals are unresolved, but it does not mean that he will stop trying. If he were to, say, become romantically interested in someone, he would go to great lengths to connect with him, even if it meant doing things Aesop himself may not like. In specific circumstances, Aesop may find that he has a great capacity for nurturing and bringing out the best in other people, a talent Aesop himself undervalues. Though he’s not all that intelligent, Aesop is very reflective and existentially inquisitive, and thinks about a lot of big picture stuff that other people might push aside in an era of crisis. Though he may not understand science or the way the world works in a mechanical sense, he is awed by it, and is a great appreciator of natural beauty. He’d cry at a particularly beautiful sunrise, if he could cry. I’d say he could be described as having a romantic soul.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: To be honest, Aesop has trouble establishing empathy with people he doesn’t know very well, and so is less invested in Earth’s plight than he probably should be (it would not be hard for Dead Orbit to sway him to their views). This makes some people think that he doesn’t take his charge seriously, and they also usually assume that he’s a slacker because he’s plateaued in his abilities so early. Really, Aesop is acutely socially anxious, can have panic attacks in large crowds, and generally prefers to stay away from The City unless he needs to go there, and so has a big emotional disconnect from it. Calico and Chanticleer have tried to get him more accustomed to groups, but has been thusfar mostly unsuccessful. His insecurity and anxiety also cause him to pull odd, dangerous stunts to prove his worth, making him unreliable and impulsive. He can bungle social interactions rather spectacularly, and is easily goaded into doing really stupid shit. Really, he is a person who may just be “too much” for some.

How They Change: Oooooghhh….I can’t talk about this. I forgot how frustrating it is to not be able to talk about things because you’re going to make a comic out of it. Suffice it to say he’s gonna change a lot.

Why You Love Them: I think Aesop encapsulates a lot of anxieties I have post-college. Aesop is a person in transition who is unsure of his future, knowing only that he can’t quit now, because quitting means failure and failure means death. Because he is in transition, he is anxious about forming relationships with people, worried that either he will be left behind by them, or that they won’t like him when he’s “finished” becoming a person. I think he has a complex relationship with his personhood and sense of self. I dunno, I think that’s an interesting anxiety for a protagonist to have. I am also interested to see what Aesop will end up contributing to his society/organization and his interpersonal relationships, and if he’ll be happy with it. I’ve put a lot of work into him, the ‘original Aesop’ I had in mind might as well be a completely different character now. Aesop was originally a little cameo that I did in our TTRPG game, Godslaughter, because my boyfriend had put a dunmer cameo character into our game and I wanted to return the favor. Then he made a sheet for him. Then I decided to keep him around, then I decided to play Destiny 2, then I decided I loved it, lol. There is still a version of Aesop in the TTRPG but he is so incredibly different, they may as well be different characters. We refer to him as “Bad Aesop” but should probably call him something more dignified (we won’t).

[clockworklozenges]

In order:

1. Tories are bastardly old men and women with ties to businesses in the upper echelons and duped poorer people who have been fooled into thinking that the other tories are acting for their interests rather than their own. They are named such because it's what the party was called in the Georgian era, where they were opposed to the Whig party. They're like the US government's republican party, but they are less openly evil in some ways and more in others. The official modern name is the British Conservative Party, and they've been in charge since 2010 over three (or four) governments.

2. "Sacking" does indeed mean fired, it's a UK slang term originating from "being given the sack", a phrase used originally to reference when workers are given a sack to take their stuff home in when they are fired.

3. By "the blond scarecrow man" you may mean Boris Johnson (officially still the prime minister until October of this year) who has been in charge since around 2020 or Michael Fabricant, a lying idiot sycophantic cosplayer of Boris Johnson renowned for saying the exact worst thing to say whenever he's interviewed, which for some reason is frequently. Boris is a clown person who became PM because of his popularity, but his desire to grow that popularity has led to him losing everything, and messing up so badly so often that a third of his own party have resigned on him, including his inner circle and all of his secretarial staff. Probably just as well, as he's on his tenth (confirmed) child with people who he should not have slept with. Searching the #bojo the clown tag will provide you more answers.

4. This one is actually rather complicated. In 2010ish, we had a draw in the last proper general election. This meant that we had a coalition (team up) of two parties - the Conservative Party (or tories) who all the rich and elderly voted for, and the Liberal Democrats (the lib dems) who everyone else voted for as they were tired of a two-party system and wanted option three, who made excellent promises. However, the Tories beat the living shit out of the Lib Dems constantly, meaning for every one of the Lib Dem promises that went through, a dozen awful soul-crushing policies got past. Eventually though, the lib Dems pulled out of this, losing to the Tories.

Now, the tories knew that an election was risky. After all, they had no Lib Dems to scapegoat anymore and were unpopular as hell. They left the leader, David Cameron, who fucked a dead pig and forgot his daughter in a pub repeatedly, in charge, but had him resign before the end of his term. This meant that they could elect someone from within, and not need to involve the public, which is technically not against the law but is against the spirit of democracy. They repeated this again when their replacement for Pig-Fucker-Dave was Theresa May, who was effectively a mouthpiece for the government, like a skeksis puppet controlled by the Legion of Doom to present its plans for world domination. Theresa was useless, but her function was to repeat the resignation trick a few years later.

This is after Brexit, which the people who voted for either didn't know what they were voting for or will be dead for the consequences of, and has gone so badly that almost everyone who supported it in government resigned or doubled down on their wilful ignorance. One such resignation came from Theresa May, and her resignation led to an election in which Jeremy Corbyn, our equivalent of Bernie Sanders but less rich and more likely to effect change, was railed by the Tories as they own all UK media, so we got Boris 'elected' after Theresa resigned. I remember comforting my fiance when we heard that Boris got in, as we were both screwed over by his policies. Now Boris is saying he'll resign in October, to control the circumstances of his leaving and who they'll have in place of him when he pulls the "resign to dodge an election" trick.

5. In 2010, 10 Downing Street (the London residence of the Prime Minister) had rats, and a cat was brought in. He is Larry, and Larry has outlived four prime ministers and governments. He's also a little fluffy baby.

Ok so apparently the UK’s politics are going apeshit usa style, so as a clueless american™ , i have. a few questions:

1: What in the hell is a torie? is that like a republican? that feels like a republican idk

2: what’s “sacking”? does that mean fired? my only knowledge of this is from american football and that one time i saw horrid henry

3: is the blonde scarecrow looking dude good or bad i need answers

4: it took you t w e l v e y e a r s to have another election?? why??

5: WHO IS LARRY THE CAT?!??

[vio1315]

Kreig Cecilia and Kusuma

Full Name: Kreig of [snowland country name]Gender and Sexuality: Male, straight (potentially asexual but idk if I’ll ever make that canon)Ethnicity/Species: Human with about 10% harpy blood

Birthplace and Birthdate: In the country I’ve been calling snowland on here. The dating of this place means it’d be like 82X of the fourth era or some crap, so I'mma say he’s like in his 40s or soHaven’t figured out the calendar system beond the years yet though, so I super dunno month/day (not even an equivalent) Fall or winter bday feels okay… maybe even spring….

Guilty Pleasures: Judging people with friends. Like can you envision a bunch of dads with beers talking crap about foreign policy makers or something? Yeah that’s kinda his thing. He sees nothing wrong with it though

Phobias: Oh dude. He’s so tough… hm, I bet he’s like one of those people who couldn’t handle being made useless in some way. If he knew he was losing brain functionality and was gonna end up in a vegetative state, I think he’d ask his son or someone similar to kill him. Probably his wife actually. He trusts her to do it, and do it when the time is right for it

What They Would Be Famous For: He’s a king, so like…. okay but more specifically he’ll be remembered as a very strong leader. Like in 500 years he’ll still be taught about. He has navigated wars and foreign relations with unparalleled skill, and he’ll certainly get credit in finally securing the alliance with [mainland]

What They Would Get Arrested For: Lol, in modern times? Maybe like some visits from CPS, but nothing would come of that. Maybe assault, if I HAD to pick. But I’ll be honest, dude’s goal in life is to be as legalistic as possible, so it’s tough

OC You Ship Them With: I honestly don’t. He’s married to Heiwa, and they kind of hate each other a little, but also respect each other and similar, and I very much enjoy the weirdness that is their relationship. Ship though? No.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Hmmm… I mean I can think of some villain OCs, but honestly that’s it. As much as Skye and Marth dislike him, they would never hurt him. Not intentionally. I think when they were first married, it could have been Heiwa, but no longer.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Documentaries, biographies, non fiction type stuff. He’s more likely to go for stuff he can learn practical things from though. Strategies and stuff. He’s a workaholic.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Romance probably annoys him on some level. But anything where the leader character sacrifices themselves for an underling would enrage him. “It’s bad leadership”

Talents and/or Powers: Dude is great with strategy and combat. He’s smart/cunning despite his drawbacks.

Why Someone Might Love Them: He does what’s necessary and doesn’t let Anything distract him from serving his people. He doesn’t shy away from self sacrifice for what he believes is the greater good, and he falls under the ‘a jerk, but he’s right’ very often

Why Someone Might Hate Them: He’s a jerk. His methods often don’t achieve the ends he believes they will, especially in his personal relationships. He’s far too harsh and legalistic, even going beyond what’s necessary

How They Change: Kreig is not a man who changes Much. His biggest change is in the slow shift of how he views his son. As someone who’s worth existing. The fact that this strongly correlates to him physically getting stronger is something of a shame, because really, that’s the smallest portion of what contributes. Though in his own way, he always did care for his son, it just has never and will never be more important than their country.

Why You Love Them: What can I say? He’s got the internal strength of a bear. Dude could saw off his own legs for the sake of his country. There’s something to respect there, especially given he’s not even crazy or anything like most such characters.

Full Name: Cecilia… Ward? (Still deciding last name honestly)Gender and Sexuality: Female, straightEthnicity/Species: Based off an Amazon woman. Dark skinned.Birthplace and Birthdate: In the desert east of mainland, their great enemies. Birthdate is not hugely important. Not even a spoiler to say she’s dead honestly. When she died? Maybe around 27??

Guilty Pleasures: Mm, showing people up probably. Proving someone wrong, that kind of thing. It’s not about being right so much as pulling the rug from under people. This isn’t majorly apparent in her personality, she’s just got a slight chip on her shoulder

Phobias: Word of her wherabouts being sent back home

What They Would Be Famous For: Sadly enough? The fact that she married and had a child with someone of a certain race who is very hated among her people

What They Would Get Arrested For: That marriage if she ever went back to her country, honestly. But by todays standards? Well, could see her getting into a fight and accidentally going a tad too far, even if it was initially self defense. Whoops. But honestly she’s actually very well restrained, but that’s a lot to do with that she moved to a country where people are Extremely racist against her, and she kind of has no choice but to deal

OC You Ship Them With: Leo

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Hmm, of the good guys… uhh? Honestly if she was alive she’d be pretty well liked among those who didn’t care about her race. Which by the time of the story is a lot more people than when she was aroundBut one of the bad guys actually is her murderer so l o lYou know, once upon a time the most likely would have been Dalton (Marth’s dad) honestly?? He’s actuually the least racist dude in general, but man that war was sommething

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Maan, she’d probably enjoy stupid spectacle movies just fine, but in books go for pretty phlisophical stuff. Like if something was 100% allegory and got mildly, but underhandedly preachy? She’d love that actually.But mostly she would enjoy realistic fiction I think, especially involving humble characters or similar.Without realizing it she’d def have her favs be farmer characters who loved their animals type of vibe. You know the vibe.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Hmm… Love triangles, and probably when the strawman comes and pesters the Innocents and so they just gotta beat up the strawman. No other choice

Talents and/or Powers: Has extra strength due to her race. Has some pretty alright skills with a sword, and basic magic knowledge.

Why Someone Might Love Them: Girl takes about as little crap as you can in her situation. She’s fairly prideful but really sticks to what she believes in, even when it hurts her pride. Even when it leads to her living in a foreign country where she’s hated

Why Someone Might Hate Them: Prideful. At the start, her pride and chip on her shoulder nature can especially override her kind nature.

How They Change: Becomes a lot more empathetic and undertsanding. Doesn’t get very caught up in her own life and is able to see people a bit more accurately. Overcomes some of her own racism. Becomes a lot stronger in a more real way which is less defensive.

Why You Love Them: She’s a very prequel kind of character, but I appreciate that she’s a fairly simple and straightforward person. Like she’s not dumb, she just sees no use in complicating things. Though she sees things a bit skewed and biased at times, she learns and grows and will admit to when she’s wrong. But she’ll stand by when she’s right even when she’s the literal only one who is

Full Name: Kusuma RitterGender and Sexuality: Female, straightEthnicity/Species: Also that amazon based race, dark skinned (you know how to pick em)Birthplace and Birthdate: In mainland. Due to the nature of post story, it encompasses a lot of ages. But basically she’s introduced when she’s 12

Guilty Pleasures: Roughhousing, showing how fantastically awesome she is to everyone, or even just one person

Phobias: People breaking into the house

What They Would Be Famous For: Coolest kid on your block. When she’s older? Maybe coolest guard in the district

What They Would Get Arrested For: Assault lol. Resisting arrest would be tacked on

OC You Ship Them With: None, also due to the nature of post story. Honestly if I did ship her, it’d probs end up being with Soren, but they’re like adoptive siblings, so I try to just let them be siblings (it’s better that way)

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Soren lol, at least when they first meet. Racism isn’t fixed yet me boyos.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Action. No doubt. Bring on the one liners.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Hmm… honestly romance sub plots in general. She hates when cool action stuff has to come to a halt to develop (or more likely fail to develop, but still force awkward scenes) a relationship.She doesn’t hate romance per se, just in these moments especially

Talents and/or Powers: Bonus strength, decent with sword (as much as a 12 year old can be)

Why Someone Might Love Them: Honestly she’s just a cool 12 year old. Half of what sh says and does wouldn’t be out of place with sunglasses. But she’s also a protective older sister. Catch her using her free time to help with baby care

Why Someone Might Hate Them: She’s a bit obnoxious at times. A bit self important and cocky. It can be a bit clear to older peeps that she’s hiding some insecurities. She can hold a grudge and be Too blunt at times, lashing out in frustration when she has to deal with Soren at first (racism right back ya heck)

How They Change: Forgets any of those racist ideas she had, because Soren’s a weirdo, but he’s not evil. Becomes a bit more secure, so her defensive bluntness goes down, though her sarcasm goes way up. Her empathy and general love of people increases, though she also just develops better EQ in general. She can sense when people are eying her funny or talking behind her back, though she never lets it get to her. Honestly she just becomes the picture of confidence. Kinda Flynn Rider acting?? But legit.Why You Love Them: She’s pretty mature for her age despite it all. She steps up when things need doing without hesitation, but all while maintaining her attitude. Despite what happened to her, she never seems super traumatized or any such thing. It’s a bit hidden, but a lot just comes from how she deals with things too. She tends to work through her problems in an actually healthy way without tons of guiddance, though she ends up really thriving with it. But honestly she’s just sassy without being too blind to where peoples lines are, so stops herself short of being annoying with it. A good girl

[shirlleycoyle]

Smart Devices Will Eventually Die, and the Internet Is to Blame

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

Recently, I had a bizarre customer service experience involving a company that I have been critical of at many junctures over the years. That company was Apple, and the reason I was on the phone with them involved my wife’s smartphone of choice, the iPhone 5.

Sold to her in late 2012, the phone has somehow managed to avoid device upgrades for nearly eight years (despite my semi-frequent pleas that she upgrade to a new device). But when we had problems logging it into iCloud recently, I chose to call Apple, and shockingly found them not only willing to service this device over the phone, but work through a variety of solutions on the phone for many hours as we attempted to figure out why it wasn’t logging in.

It took a few calls and some in-depth diagnostic work, but we figured out the problem, and earlier this week I was able to get the phone working again, with Jesse’s help. We kept a vintage smartphone out of the waste bin for another day.

It was not what I was expecting—it flew in the face about what I know about Apple and upgrades. But the fact we’re seeing problems in the first place reflects something that has been on my mind a while: The lack of consideration towards the upgrade and decay cycle in modern tech, particularly in terms of consumer goods, is going to bite—hard—in a few years. And not every company will be as understanding as this Apple support tech person (his name is Jesse) that clearly deserves a raise.

It’s time to have a talk about the coming gadget apocalypse that we haven’t been preparing for. Strap in.

Moore’s Flaw: Part of the problem we’re seeing is a computing mindset brought to standard consumer electronics

Recently, the speaker company Sonos has been taking a beating in the press for revealing an inevitable, but likely avoidable fact: Its early devices won’t last forever.

Founded in 2002, Sonos is one of the first companies that found success taking a traditional piece of electronics, the speaker, and making it “smart.”

The company, in its efforts to encourage those customers to upgrade and discourage the use of old speakers or bridge devices on its cloud servers past the point of old age, effectively kneecapped them—they can’t be upgraded to next-generation software, and keeping them in your setup could prevent your other devices from getting upgrades, too.

Sound like a bum deal? Fortunately for their investors, they sell a replacement.

The company attempted to clear up its self-inflicted mess by pointing out the devices will still work even without updates, but even with the clarifications, it’s still sticking with the original plan—no updates after May.

In one sense, you can’t blame Sonos for not planning for a future like this. As a startup, how was it supposed to know that it would be supporting speakers that it sold more than a decade ago? The odds were even it was setting itself up for an acquisition, a long life, or a noble failure.

But on the other hand, we have different expectations for audio equipment than we do computing devices. Think about it this way: If you buy a 1960s-era Fender Stratocaster from a pawn shop and it’s still in relatively good condition, and plug it into an amplifier that was produced this year, that guitar is still going to work.

This Bose 901 speaker will continue to work decades from now. Image: Automotive Rhythms/Flickr

If you plug a pair of vintage Bose 901 speakers into a modern audio system, those speakers should work, because ultimately the principles on which Dr. Amar Bose built that equipment haven’t changed in 50 years. It’s what allows a MiniDisc player, a record player, and an iPod dock to live on the same bookshelf.

The problem is, computers have never had these kinds of expectations around them. Sure, you can find some legacy ports on modern computing devices—this recent Vaio laptop has a VGA port, which made its first appearance on a computer in 1987 and still has use cases in boardrooms where old projector equipment lives—but for the most part computing equipment doesn’t work like that. It goes through generational phases.

Part of the reason for this is that computers move faster than other kinds of electronics. While some of the concepts, like soldered integrated circuits and processor sockets, mostly work the same generation after generation, the technology simply moves too fast to allow for hand-me-downs. If you were to reuse a desktop computer from 1996 and upgrade it to account for modern needs, basically the only thing you might be able to reuse is the case, which likely utilizes the ATX form factor.

Planned obsolescence has been built into the computer model since the beginning. In many ways, Moore’s Law, Gordon Moore’s observation that computing power would keep improving exponentially, detected the trend early and has at times enabled it.

Applying these standards to electronics that could once last generations creates a whole lot of discomfort. This can be seen, for example, in the case of the Apple Watch. Recently, Apple’s watch line, a somewhat minor part of its financial picture, outdid the entirety of the Swiss watch industry, which has been around for hundreds of years and has a completely different value proposition than your average laptop.

If you sell gadgets more often, it’s easier to print money. But it means that devices that were once built to last are now suddenly targets of planned obsolescence.

Look, technology moves fast. For decades, the world of computers surged past gate after gadgetary gate in search of the next new thing. The problem with Moore’s Law is not that it didn’t encourage more innovation, but it didn’t account for what we did with the old innovation.

Now, add the internet to the mix, and make it a defining element of its use case. And the problem becomes obvious. Companies don’t want to have to think about things they sold 20 years ago, but the smart device model, by default, requires that they do. Or, it should.

Let’s take another look at Sonos here. This is a company that leapt into a space where speakers could last generations, and decided that it couldn’t even let its devices survive for a single generation. Sure, it will still work, the CEO says, but the lack of updates clearly tips the scales in favor of a future upgrade. Computing power had advanced too much for those old workhorses to stay in use.

You can sell a 30-year-old car and it maintains some semblance of value, especially if it’s been well-maintained. Products like baseball cards and books still remain things people want to buy many years after they were first produced. But if a smart speaker company can’t promise that your internet-enabled device will be able to hook up to the internet eight years after you bought it, it’s useless.

Because, remember, a loss of updates doesn’t just mean you’ll get the fanciest new features—but it means you won’t get access to security updates that will keep the device alive for decades to come. Look at what I’ve already seen from my Mac Mini! Many consumer products have far higher standards for longevity than 15 years.

By allowing computers to infiltrate everything else—by adding things to our internet—we’ve decimated the long-term value of these products unnecessarily, all for someone else’s short-term gain.

And this is only the first wave of a problem that’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better.

Early-generation Roku devices, like the Roku XDS, recently lost access to Netflix. Image: Roku

The Sonos speaker saga is the first wave of what is likely going to be an entire generation of stuff broken by the internet

As I mentioned earlier, Sonos was early to this concept—not as early as, perhaps, The Clapper, but early enough that it might have been the first internet-connected smart device that most people might have encountered.

Another company that was early to this smart device model, Roku, also retired some of its early models recently, and Netflix stopped working on some of Roku’s early-gen devices, along with some smart TVs of the period made by other companies.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, it doesn’t feel quite as bad in the case of Roku, because they charge so little for their devices that buying a replacement box is trivial and worth the cost.

But the news about the early-gen smart TVs also getting the boot gives me pause. These sets, while no longer the latest and greatest and largely predating the recent 4K trend, are perfectly fine televisions. They should work for the next 20 years without a problem. But because Netflix arbitrarily raised its standards, it stopped supporting these sets, which is annoying.

While there is a way to work around losing Netflix on a smart TV set—easy, buy another set-top box that supports the device in some way—it just feels wasteful and cumbersome. The functionality is already in the set, after all! Instead of letting these sets slowly lose functionality, we should offer simple hardware upgrades that keep them up to date with modern standards while not limiting the other 95 percent of an otherwise perfectly fine TV. Put a slot in the back that upgrades the device’s brain. Easy.

These devices came out in 2010 and 2011 or so, and what worries me is what is to come.

In the decade between the release of the first smart TVs and now, the smart device trend really picked up in earnest, affecting things as varied as watches, drinking cups, thermostats, smoke detectors, toothbrushes, and even smart Gibson guitars (which didn’t work out for the guitar company).

Already, new signs are emerging. Just last week, word surfaced that Philips was going to stop updating early Hue Bridge devices, limiting their future connectivity and threatening their security.

Image: David Berkowitz/Flickr

According to a 2009 study from the National Association of Home Builders and Bank of America, the average thermostat is supposed to last 35 years. Can we trust that Google is going to support first-gen Nest thermostats for that long? It’s not like a smartphone.

Extend this to every device that you own that has a computer in its brain and a connection to the internet, that didn’t have those two things a decade ago, and you see the problem.

The microchip, in the long run, has turned things that were functionally fine (if “dumb”) into devices that may not make it into a second decade if they fail to get the ongoing support they need. Many of these devices were built by startups that have since left this world; others have become the victims of lacking warranties. Sure, in some of these cases, you can work around the faults of these things, but smart devices give the sheen of planned obsolescence to objects that could have lasted decades without continued internet access.

That awkward conversation Sonos just had with its customers about smart devices? Expect lots of other companies—including big ones—to have similar discussions in the coming years, with little to no path to repair in the future.

In the span of a single decade, we basically let a computer-centric mindset around planned obsolescence threaten to ruin the long-term usability of entire categories of products unnecessarily.

The solution here is not to fret or just drink water out of regular non-smart glasses, but to push electronics and gadget manufacturers to do better. If a device seems like something that should not stop working after eight or nine years, they need to guarantee upgrades more than a decade in the future. The design of these smart products, when applicable, should allow for user-replaceable hardware.

And for devices where their long-term use must be guaranteed, they need to offer dumb versions with the capability of getting smart upgrades. Let the user decide if they want a computer in their oven—and make that computer easy to plug in and replace, so that a decade down the road, they’re not stuck with a failed investment of a device.

We can’t bank on large devices being smart forever. We should have the ability to remove that functionality—or upgrade it as needed. That’s how we ensure hand-me-downs are worth handing down decades from now.

If they can’t promise that, don’t go smart.

Going back to my recent phone call with an Apple customer support rep, I think that the superhuman effort to attempt to get this phone working past its expiration date was super-noble.

But on the other hand, I wonder why it should have been super-noble. (No fault of Jesse!)

The base of the problem we’re seeing with this not-particularly-vintage gadget comes down to space and lack of upgrades. Apple has never offered a device with a MicroSD card, but for years sold devices with so little space that you would suddenly be out of storage with less-than-normal use. This is bad enough on its laptops, but in the case of its phones, it feels increasingly unforgivable over time, because it kneecaps these devices unnecessarily. I mean, this whole saga began because her 16-gigabyte phone runs out of space basically daily, and I tried to delete and redownload some apps for her to clear the phone’s cached space, and found what appeared to be aggressive bugs in iCloud in the process.

This phone is nearly eight years old and hasn’t received software updates from Apple for roughly three years. Image: Lucy Takakura/Flickr

I’ve been trying to figure out why Jesse cared so much about this phone when everything else about Apple’s actions has traditionally suggested that they would leave my wife’s phone high and dry. The best answer I have is that Apple, while I don’t think they’ve learned their lesson, is realizing this approach is not sustainable in the long term—at least not with these specific gadgets. Or at least some of their employees are.

I didn’t call and say, “My wife’s phone isn’t working.” I called and said, “My wife can’t log into her iCloud on her phone.” That may seem like a small difference, but I think it’s a significant one in terms of how Apple responded to this. It’s the difference between, “I’m having trouble with something you no longer support,” and, “This problem could cost you money now if you don’t fix.”

Technology is going to keep evolving and over time we are going to reach theoretical limits of devices. But if they’re talking to the cloud and people are paying money to access those cloud services, eventually those devices are going to matter less to our tech companies. The cloud is going to matter far more—and it’s going to be in their interest to keep these devices functional in the long haul because their profitability will continue to matter even as the device ages.

I can’t imagine that Netflix will unceremoniously kill another generation of smart TVs without thinking really hard about it—because killing the next gen of smart TVs will hurt a lot more than killing the last one. It will cost them money.

I hope the pendulum shifts in this way. Because that is how planned obsolescence will lose.

Smart Devices Will Eventually Die, and the Internet Is to Blame syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[leorysxi]

(/ω＼)ﾟ.+(〃ﾉωﾉ)ﾟ.+°50 More Interesting Questions

Tagged by the lovely @incorrectmidc, @theempresskaizer, and @spyrothetimelord~! ♡♡♡ Thanks!! :D

Rules: fill this out and tag at least one person you’d like to know more about! Or just fill it out! Or don’t! Answer only some of them! Make up your own questions! “What kind of requirement is that”, you ask? A reasonable one! Who am I to tell you what to do? Anything goes!

1. What kind of food can't you stand? Spicy food, food that has a really strong milk-taste, and any seafood or meat that are uncooked or not fully cooked.

2. If you could choose one minor inconvenience to never have to deal with again, what would you pick? Never having to check if there are any toilet paper left in the roll holder again. My sis likes to use it all up and freaking leave the cardboard tube on top of the tank lid when there are new ones literally three feet away ._.

3. Have you got any useless talents? Um I can use chopsticks with my left hand but it's useless since I usually use my right hand anyway lol

4. If you could be really really good at one thing, what would it be? Communication

5. Name a few people you think are extremely good-looking I think a lot of people are very good-looking tho... I really don't know where to start ^^;

6. What was your favorite way to pass the time as a kid? Reading books from libraries.

7. What is something you’re proud of? My dedication once I've put my mind to it.

8. What’s one character flaw in people that you just can’t tolerate? Assuming things and arrogantly believe they are right (whether they are right or not, it's the attitude that irks me the most).

9. Do you consider yourself to be more of a leader or a follower? I'm more of a follower. But if the leader is not cooperative, motivated and/or decisive enough, I'd do a bit of nudging to get the team project in the right direction.

10. What kind of student are/were you? The average kind that does average work and gets average grades.

11. Butterfly effect question! Has there ever been a seemingly minor decision you’ve made (at the time) that ended up having a profound influence on your life? Yes.

12. Name your most irrational fear/aversion High heights, like really high ones. It's not so much the height but the fear of falling that gets to me.

13. Are there any fictional characters you find especially relatable? Yep~

14. If you drink, what kind of drunk are you? Alternatively, what sort of person are you at parties? I've never drunk alcohol before lololol; it's a personal choice rather than a legal limitation. I'm the sort that sits in a corner and watches chaos unfold at parties :D

15. Do you fall in love easily? Or does it usually take a long time for you to trust someone? Not really, it's more like a premonition of love before I fall hard. And yes, it takes a very, very long time for me to trust anyone.

16. Would you rather have one close friend or 100 casual friends? I'd rather have one close friend than have a hundred casual ones.

17. Do you consider yourself to be more of a slob or a neat-freak? Uh, sorta both? I do organise my stuff neatly, having a place for every item to find them more easily. But I also have a bad habit of hoarding, which leads to a bit of mess in a corner of my room to clear up every once in a while ^^;

18. Describe a place (imaginary or real) that you would find incredibly cozy On my bed, furled beneath the blanket and hugging my pillows. Alternatively, sitting all curled up on my comfy mesh chair and having a towel or hoodie draped over my shoulders and legs like I’m doing now. I can get cosy anywhere that I feel safe at/with tho.

19. Do you have kids? If not, do you want them someday? No, and I don't see myself married anytime soon, much less have kids.

20. What was your favorite book as a child? The Secret Island by Enid Blyton, the Nancy Drew series, Harry Potter series, usually stories that are about solving mysteries or set in fantasies.

21. Name one thing you just don’t get what all the hype is about Fidget spinnersssss (?-?)

22. Name one thing that you think is tragically underrated Manga series that are refreshingly original and good and has so much potential and tragically axed or at risk of it :'c (im5eversaltyaboutClassi9 TnT)

23. If you had to be glued to a person for a month, real or fictional (who you have never met), who would you choose? Eh no way, I prefer my privacy and being alone, so "noone" it is for me.

24. What’s something you’d like the chance to do someday? Visit other countries, to see and experience more of the world.

25. Do you typically speak your mind when you have a controversial opinion? Or do generally prefer to not rock the boat? I prefer not to rock the boat. It's only when I feel it's necessary that I speak up.

26. What’s the dumbest fad you’ve been caught up in? I don't know if it's a fad, but I really regret playing Clash Royale :/

27. What’s something you thought was cool as a kid/adolescent, but now cringe at yourself for? I thought it was cool to have an attitude when I was a kid. Thinking about it now, it's just embarrassing.

28. What’s a trait you consider to be very admirable? Confidence

29. Is there a particular kind of item people always tend to give you as gifts? (For instance, people always get you things with ducks on them because you like ducks, etc.) Not really.

30. Do you speak multiple languages? Which ones? Yep; English and Chinese (Mandarin & Hokkien). I'm also learning Japanese (self-taught) but progress is slow ^^;

31. Would you rather live in the big city or the countryside? In the city, just not the busiest part of it tho.

32. Has there ever been something you were certain you’d hate, but ended up loving? I used to hate wearing closed-toe shoes but now I love 'em :’D

33. Do you mind being the center of attention, or do you prefer the spotlight to be on someone else? Spotlight on someone else pls

34. Favorite holiday? New year, for the festive end-of-year mood if nothing else.

35. Are you a more go-with-the-flow type of person, or do you need to have things planned meticulously? I'm a go-with-the-flow type of person but I NEED to have things planned out to get them done lol

36. Is there something you loved so much you wish you could forget it and experience it all over again? (A tv show, book, series–anything.) Nah, while nothing compares to that first experience, neither does the second or third rerun through nostalgia and familiar moments compare to anything else either. There's usually something new I'd discover in rereads too, whether it's something I missed the first time or how my thoughts have changed about certain moments or places.

37. What hobbies do you have? Reading, drawing, playing video games, writing, watching anime, looking at the sky, collecting stamps and old coins & foreign dollar notes and owl motifs, surfing the internet, archiving, and various other activities that hold my attention every once in a while (like folding origami, baking, voluntary work, DIY projects, etcetra).

38. If you could have a superpower, but it was only mildly useful, what ability would you want to have? Uhhh not having to trim my nails and toenails? idk, what exactly constitutes as a 'mildly useful' superpower~~??

39. Something people are always surprised to learn about you That I'm older than I look ^^;

40. Something that took you way too long to figure out How the mask function works on Photoshop and PaintTool Sai orz

41. Worst injury you’ve had? Splinters in my fingers. I had this constant fear that smaller splinters were still stuck in my fingers 'cause it hurts whenever I press down on them and I couldn’t concentrate on doing work at all D: (I’m pretty lucky tho, never broke a bone or twisted anything in my life.)

42. Any morbid fascinations? Death and tragedies.

43. Describe your sense of humor Weird and poorly-timed.

44. If you had to be born in another era/place, which would you choose? Modern Japan.

45. Something you are irredeemably bad at Time management o(-(

46. Something that sucked but you’re glad you went through School

47. Would you rather have a really godawful ugly tattoo in a place that is only slightly inconvenient to conceal with clothing (upper arm, thigh, etc.), or the coolest, most beautiful tattoo ever in the middle of your face? (Neither tattoo can be removed or concealed with makeup, and the ugly tattoo will deeply offend anyone who sees it.) I'd rather have neither but that's not an answer is it? I'd rather have the ugly tattoo then, at least it can be hidden or removed by laser.

48. Are you more of an optimist or a pessimist? I expect the worst and believe in the best, that every challenge has its share of difficulties and opportunities. I guess I'm something of an optimist who can be pessimistic, and vice-versa.

49. What would be the most flattering compliment someone could give you? That I've made a positive influence in their life.

50. Something you feel people often misunderstand about you That I think I'm better or find them uninteresting or something awful when I just like to stay quiet and do a lot of thinking. They're right about me being weird tho ^^

Tagging: @astridapples @confused-tofu @countdowntocake @emigotchi @infinitycrayons @juzbijou @kakihoden (:3) @lustfullyleocrawford @midnightuglystepsister (hi!) @trixtzu and anyone else who wants to answer these~! >w<)/

[kaorei-endgame]

I know you're not big on ranking stuff, however ...DS>BB>D'sS>DS2>DS3 Can we at least agree on that?

Maybe? Probably!

If you’re counting it by how many times I’ve played each one, that lines up. DS like nine or ten times (cripes, why), BB three or four, Demon’s Souls three or four, DS2 twice-ish, and DS3… once+?

But here’s a thing: me and Graz have been plucking away at the Dark Souls 2 DLC and it’s had me thinking why this game doesn’t get so much credit (even inside my own head, sometimes).

Dark Souls 2′s greatest crime, aside from being a sequel to one of the best games of this modern era, is that it’s too subtle about its shit. Because what Dark Souls 3 says its about? Worlds falling apart and people losing their purpose and etc? Dark Souls 2 is actually about that. In a lot of ways, DS2 is almost as reference-y as DS3, but it’s quiet about it. The best example of this I can think of is the fragments of the Lord Vessel in the Majula basement. They’re just there. The game never calls attention to them. Which makes them easy to miss, and might make them come off as like ‘what’s with this completely purposeless reference tucked away into some obscure part of the game that no one’s even going to notice?’

But the point is you weren’t going to notice them!! 😮  Because Dark Souls 2 is strictly about how much all that shit doesn’t matter anymore; it’s old news. Whereas if Dark Souls 3 was going that scene it’d put an item nearby whose description was like: “Here lieth thoust Lord Vessel, once a power of ancient kings, now eternally forgotten and withoutest purposest” or some shit. In essence, Dark Souls 3 thought it was very important to tell you how unimportant the trials and power of past lords were/are. Dark Souls 2 included information like that, but it treated with the import that comported with its worldview: absolutely none.

So in this way, Dark Souls 2 is super meta. It’s a game about futility. It is also a game about the futility of making a sequel to one of the best games of all time. I think that’s like a least a little fascinating?? The only problem is… and I think this is kinda a big strike against Dark Souls 2 that might be the source of at least like a lil’ bit of people’s displeasure with the game… played out that way, it’s difficult to distinguish that from “who cares (in-universe)” and “who cares (irl)” and, beyond that, maybe even “just some lame easter egg for the sake of” (and hey, maybe it was).

There are also just such variances in the ethos behind the gameplay in each iteration that I wanna sink my teeth into all that meat, no matter the relative quality of each one. Dark Souls 2 has so many THINGS. I will go to bat for anything that feels like it’s juking or reformatting the established rules, no matter how small. Par example: last time I played I found those ninjas drop a “Shadow Dagger,” which seemed statistically better than the Bandit Knife I had equipped, so why not? Quickly, I discovered this dagger has a unique backstab animation that comes out almost instantaneously (which is clutch, because DS2 is the only one where enemies can hurt you during animations), and makes even my 4 Strength magic user do a giganto amount of critical damage. This is a microscopic change in the scheme of things, but it made me remember something I loved about Dark Souls 2: it drowns you in excess.

A lot of that excess is bad, yeah, but even when it’s bad it’s interesting. (Here’s where I bang the same drum I’ve been wailing on since like 2012 but:) I want a shield that casts miracles even if it’s slow and useless! I want butterfly wings that increase my jump distance and spray poison all over every NPC I meet!!  I want a spear you have to bang on a wall or a corpse until it breaks so the boulder weighing it down like Goku’s training clothing shatters and it becomes a SUPER GOD NINJA SPEAR!!! Dark Souls 2 makes you feel like an adventurer. My favorite item in the game is the flame butterfly urn that lights your torch. I love the functionality of it, i love the cute little urn icon in the menu, but primarily I love what it represents: an expansive toolkit, kind of a utility belt of items that Souls games really hadn’t seen before or since. DS2 is definitely the game where I’ve managed my hot buttons the most.

But it’s kinda uggo. It looks so different that I almost can’t parse it as in the same continuity as DS1 and DS3 It’s something about the expanded FoV and the character models that feel a little more Demon’s Souls in style. I dunno, it makes the whole thing look a little more cartoony/anime to me, especially as regards your player characters (even though I make all PCs with purple/pink/blue hair I will still complain about their anime chubbiness, yes).

God dammit, if you light all the torches in the gutter you get invaded by a Super Magic Dickhole who spams you with cheesy, stupid spells, but then drops a unique witch’s veil that makes you 100% immune to curse. Holy crap! That’s a completely awesome chain of events that definitely didn’t drive me crazy as I tried to deal with it last night for long enough that I despawned many of the hollows on the run from the bonfire (having 4 Strength against a character basically magic-immune did not serve me well)

If I ever get around to editing this YFI we recorded, like, a month ago, you’ll hear Graz be like “it’s DS = BB and everything else floats around in their tier below that,” and… maybe?  Finishing up the Dark Souls 3 DLC, then playing some of 2′s DLC with Graz, and then creating a new Dark Souls 2 PC by myself, I felt wistful. For all my grandstanding about “hey if this is what Dark Souls 3 thinks it should be doing maybe it IS time to end it. >:| >:| >:|” I’m worried about: what happens next? Because I’ve become accustomed to this sensation of novelty every 1-2 years, of having a brand new game where its areas feel like places. Where there are things to explore, learn about, discover. A favorite part of my game is dropping prism stones in the Crystal Caves. Maybe it’s a favorite part NOW since I’ve played in 9 times and don’t have to be pissed off falling off ledges over and over until I figure out the trick. It’s been since Dark Souls 2 that I’ve gone back to Dark Souls 1, I think. I’d like to check it out again, especially Artorias and Kalameet, to see if those really hold up as well as I think/hope they do. How much of a cut above they really are.

Even if Dark Souls 3 was comparatively bad at that, it was still better than, uhhhh… like almost any non-Souls game ever. I certainly don’t have my engine raring to go for “”“The Surge””” and I feel bad ‘coz a community member gifted me Salt and Sanctuary but it only held my attention for half the first area and I haven’t mustered the will to go back since. I can’t imagine NEVER going back to Dark Souls 3, I just think it’ll be a longer time than all the others till I do.

So that’s why it’s ultimately difficult to rate these games on an objective scale. Even the ones I don’t like so much, I still like so much. Maybe my rating would go DS=BB=D’sS~?!DS2>>DS3? :o This post inspired me not just to play a bunch of Dark Souls 2, but also through all of Bloodborne as a pure Arcane character (that’s why it took so long to answer! (also i suck and can’t keep my responsibilities (in so much as this is a “responsibility”) straight, so sorry!! D:) 

Honestly, sometimes it feels like my favorite Souls game is the last one I played.

[itsworn]

12 Design Concepts for a New Generation of Pro Street!

The Pro Street build style has been a staple of Car Craft readers ever since it blew up in the early 1980s. It emerged as hot rodders began emulating the look of NHRA Pro Stock, which used production-based bodies with back-halved rear suspensions and narrowed rearends. Big engines, often with power-adders and trick induction, were paired with “pizza-cutter” skinnies up front and huge slicks in the rear—and for the first time, those big meats were enclosed within the rear bodywork for a sleeker appearance and better aero.

Pro Street has always been about bringing the look and performance of the dragstrip to the street; in other words, going fast in a straight line. Turning is something you do at the end of the track or in to the burger joint. Comfort in a Pro Street car has also traditionally been sacrificed for performance, with race-car interiors and few baubles. With the advent of the Pro Touring style in the 1990s, many enthusiasts flocked to its superior handling, braking, and driveability. With turning in vogue for decades, Pro Street seemed passé. Or so they thought!

Of course, everything old eventually becomes new again, and the Pro Street scene is seeing a revival of sorts with more drag-inspired builds stuffing mile-wide meats in the back. If you’d like to be on the leading edge of the next big thing, we thought we’d provide a little inspiration. A while back, we asked automotive illustrator Ben Hermance to come up with some designs for modern Pro Street builds, and what Hermance delivered makes us want to commission a few of these ourselves. These cars definitely look like a cross between old-school Pro Street with the Pro Touring look that is so hot right now. Gone is the radical rake in the chassis; these cars sit low and menacing. Modern touches like flush window glass and sleek lines certainly help these cars stand out from any Pro Street you’ve ever seen.

With a nod to better braking and handling, the useless Pro Street skinnies up front have been replaced with stickier front rubber and bigger brakes, although Hermance stops short of going to a full-blown wide tire in the front in order to preserve the staggered Pro Street look. And although the renderings don’t show it, the race-car vibe inside, in most cases, is replaced with more comfort and entertainment options. We hope you’ll be inspired to build one!

1961 Pontiac Catalina

Let’s start with the car that’s least likely to be built in the Pro Street mold. Illustrator Ben Hermance explains that he liked the challenge of this car and the way it turned out. “If you are going to do Pro Street, there are some vehicles that look like they are going to resist a little bit, so you have to finesse them more,” he says. “That bubble-top–style car is usually used as customs or street machine-type cars, not Pro Street. So to make it work, I had to change the stance, and I increased the wheel diameter so you don’t have those big, heavy tires. That’s a little bit like having a flamingo upper body and a hippo lower body, it just kind of looked out of proportion. But I like the final result. It’s still a little bit unusual for a Pro Street car, but I think it works.”

1972 GTX

The Plymouth GTX and Road Runner body style is normally associated with 1970s NASCAR racing and is not usually built as a Pro Streeter. But this car can change that, because few automotive shapes were as alluring as Chrysler’s early 1970s “fuselage” styling. Hermance accentuated the low, bulging, aero-inspired shape with Plymouth’s most outrageous color ever: C7 “In Violet” purple. Note how he stretched the C-pillar and the quarter-panels wider to improve the flow over the greenhouse and beefed up the rear tires.

1967 Chevelle

The Chevelle is probably the car here that will be easiest to build. Hermance says he imagined this as a skunkworks factory race car, so it retains much of the factory sheetmetal unmolested. Underneath that big hood bulge, we can easily imagine a big-inch big-block with a single-plane intake and a Dominator carb bolted up top. Rendered with a satin bronze sheen, this illustration reflects recent trends in vehicle wraps and refinishing.

Buick GNX

Hermance might be committing heresy by penning a Buick GNX in anything other than solid black, but we think it works. “I’ve always loved the Grand Nationals,” he says. “They are already evil-looking, and not much needs to be done to them. Everybody has seen a G-body on a dragstrip, so I felt it needed to do something to make it stand out, so I did make a few aerodynamic touches. Really just adding vents to the front end to get more airflow.”

Hermance also lengthened the hood bulge over the stock model. At its best, the GNX’s turbo V6 made 245 hp—not exactly good enough to keep up these days—so the extra room under the hood probably makes room for an upgraded LS (with turbos, of course!).

1974 Laguna S3

If you want to be a real bad hombre, figure out how to keep the Laguna’s swivel bucket seats. But otherwise, do exactly this: “This is the opposite end of the spectrum from the understated Chevelle,” Hermance says. “This build will require a lot of fabrication work. The first thing I did was ditch the bumpers, which we all know in the 1970s were the worst ever. Those bumpers were just gigantic and there was no styling involved. They were just these big chrome bricks. Then, with the rest of the design, I tried to let the good parts of the vehicle dictate where I was going to go with the parts that needed some help. And the end result might be a bit of overkill, but I said, ‘You know what? Nobody’s ever really done a Pro Street Laguna, so let’s try something different. Let’s build a badass car.’”

1969 Camaro

Although it may not be obvious at first glance, there’s actually a lot going on here. There are so many first-gen Camaros out there, to come up with something different, Hermance drew the ’69 as a Nostalgia Funny Car. First, the wheelbase has been stretched by lengthening the front fenders. The iconic Camaro nose has also been raked back. He’s given the car a Lexan windshield (notice the fasteners around the edge of the windshield), and you can even see the rollcage through the windows. The hoodscoop has hints of a Corvette Stingray, and dog-dish hubcaps add a bit of no-frills flair that you couldn’t get with a set of modern wheels.

Ford Falcon

Here’s another car that is rarely seen in Pro Street trim, and that engine makes a pretty obvious statement! Another big statement piece on this car is the greenhouse. “I’ve never really loved the roof line on a lot of these smaller Fords and Chevys from this era,” Hermance explains. “It’s the same thing with the Nova’s. I just thought it was too abrupt. So I thought, This Falcon is roughly the same size as the Mustangs, so what would it look like if you took the roof off of a fastback Mustang and mated it to the body of a Falcon?

“So this was just an experiment to see how that would look, and I think it looks pretty nice. With that big blower sticking out of the hood, this little car should go like a bat out of hell, and I think the look matches the speed.”

1969 Dodge Charger

Hermance admits that he barely touched the body on this 1969 Charger, other than to open up the rear fenders to fit the gigantic rear tires. He says the Coke-bottle silhouette is such a perfect design, there’s really not much to be done other than accentuate it with that green-on-black paint scheme and tuck in the bumpers. Oh, and a giant blower and dual four-barrel carbs help get the point across, too.

1970 Mustang

Here’s another where the original designers got the body just about perfect. Everybody loves the 1970 Mustang fastback, so once again, Hermance simply tried to accentuate those fantastic lines with an aggressive paint job in black, blue, and silver. He did draw in a functioning shaker hoodscoop modeled on the famous Boss design, and LEDs in place of the original headlamps provide an ethereal glow.

1968 GTO

Earlier, Hermance talked about having to work hard to make the Pontiac Catalina work as a Pro Street design. The 1968 GTO is the other side of the coin. “When you are doing something that is a little bit more of a rounded body like the GTO, that body lends itself really well to the Pro Street style,” he says. “It is more rounded. It has hips and curves, so it allows the big rear tires to fit in there naturally. Plus, it is already fast-looking.”

1970 Oldsmobile

Like the GTO, which is also a GM intermediate A-body, the Oldsmobile Cutlass 4-4-2 simply works as a Pro Street car. Tuck the bumpers, paint it a great shade of gold (what else for an Olds?), and drop in an old-school, big-inch, blown V8 and you’re ready to go.

1970 Ford Torino

“This design I really love. My intention with this one is to build an absolute rocket ship. A high-end race car,” Hermance says. “If there is a future for Pro Street styling, this is my candidate for what it should look like. I tried to incorporate what we have now in all the vehicles you see that have aerodynamic advantages. This has got all kinds of aero goodies all over it. Brake cooling, venting for heat extractors, a wing that can articulate to take advantage of aerodynamics, all that stuff.” This would be a more difficult build because practically nothing has been left stock, but boy, would we love to see this one in real life!

The post 12 Design Concepts for a New Generation of Pro Street! appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network https://www.hotrod.com/articles/12-design-concepts-for-new-generation-of-pro-street/ via IFTTT

[junseth]

The Hilarious Prospect of Blockchains

Bitcoin is hard enough. It’s rocket science. How it works, why it works, whether it works are both difficult to ascertain as well as difficult and to understand at even a surface level. Take, for example, the recent mining of the 17 millionth Bitcoin. James Lopp has a great Twitter thread describing how hard it is to even know how many coins have been mined. Nothing in Bitcoin is cut and dry. Everything is probabilistic. Nothing is easy to track or understand. Every decision miners make (when they are professional miners) is in dedication to making money. That is their role here. That is the only reason they mine at all. They aren’t benevolent actors working away to make the Bitcoin system run. They mine because selfishness.

That is the nature of “Blockchain.” This is not all as reducible as it might seem. All the questions asked here are difficult. Further, there are so many things that the users of these chains don’t understand. Take, for example, the recent analysis of Monero. This blockchain, whose rhetoric-believing users have touted the science of fungibility built in to the chain because math have transacted in a way that causes a huge portion of the chain’s transactions to be traceable. 64% of transactions have been done with a single mix-in. This tainted set of transactions continues to plague current transactions with broken fungibility. And the fix, according to the analysis, isn’t much better. The fix allows a transaction to be traced to its originator with an accuracy of about 97%.

Monero’s adherents have been using the chain for years. None of this was known until now. And even now, there, I’m sure, will be objections and critiques of the analysis itself. This is science. There is no question. The idea that there are millions of people watching the chain and making sure that others in the chain are behaving correctly is laughable. Most data requires a degree in astro-physics (or its equivalent) to uncover.

So, now, we ask what the purpose of all this crypto is. Money, at least in the Keynesian sense, is understood to be a list of debts. Basically, you give unto me this thing, I give unto you this acknowledgement that I owed you one. This is the simple of why money is debt-based. It’s also the essence of why money isn’t a commodity in the sense that gold is a commodity or oil is a commodity. The use of money needs to be utterly narrow. It’s why written on our money is “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” That is what money is, and that is what money is for. Oil can be used as a lubricant, oil can be used to derive gasoline or diesel. Oil can be used in the creation of plastics. Oil is bad money.

Interestingly, Bitcoin (and I will just discuss Bitcoin) is a great way to transfer value. It is a spaceless commodity with almost no use outside of its use as a value transfer device - at least not yet. This makes it a great way to move money where the process of moving money is expensive. For legal transactions, this will mean that (unless the person has a terribly bad understanding of their risks) they will need an easy way to liquidate the commodity. No business should expose themselves to the risk of holding Bitcoin unless they are a custodian service. For those that are doing illegal things, holding value in Bitcoin is a great way to store value though it exposes that person to the volatility of the commodity. And to those who would tout the benefits of something like tether for this cause, consider that those who are holding money for doing that which is deemed deviant, are exposed to the possibility of seizure every time their money enters an exchange. Moreover, they must ask themselves if they are more comfortable exposing themselves to the volatility of Bitcoin or the risks of a poorly managed peg.

Money is hard. Bitcoin is hard. What I like about it is that Bitcoin forces many of us to ask “why?” when considering how the current system works. Those who have been fair with their answers, understand things like custodianship is one of the world’s most solved and most difficult problems. How do you hold money? The answer for Bitcoiners has involved all sorts of frustrations. Hold your own Bitcoin might be the mantra of the anarchic arrivals, but it’s not practical for ma and pa. And holding it yourself presents all sorts of other problems. Who here had heard of an “air-gapped machine” before Bitcoin? Who had heard of a private key? Some of you will say you had. I’d venture that most hadn’t. And I think the numbers bear it out. Given the Monero data, it seems pretty clear that individuals do not know how to manage their own private keys. And the proliferation of hardware wallets demonstrates something similar. How much money is on Trezors? How risky might that be? These are hard, if not impossible, to quantify.

So now we enter the era of innovation in “blockchain.” All these ICOs have popped up touting their incredible inventiveness. Most of them are doing things in the blockchain space. Many of them are solving what they deem to be hard problems. But generally, these hard problems are being proposed by people no older than their early twenties. Or, they are proposed by narrow-minded neophytes solving problems in industries they have nothing but a myopic understanding of. Listen to the musicians for example. Tatiana Moroz has a token. Originally it was proposed as a token with little to no actual function. She said she was the first musician to adopt Blockchain stuff. She may have accepted payment in it. But that was nothing more than masturbatory self-importance. There was no liquidity in the market for TatianaCoin. Imogen Heap proposed a blockchain solution to the very difficult problem that musicians have: cutting checks to band members. The revolution is here. Now, instead of a bar owner paying a band (which is a corporation) and that band using modern infrastructures like HR software or the humbler check to pay their mates, Imogen has proposed offloading the burden of payments to the payee. Now the bar owner can easily pay the entire band. All he has to do is take his dollars (which he has lots of), obtain Ethereum (which he has none of), take custody of Ethereum for a time (probably will have to buy a ledger or a Trezor or learn private/public key management), then send it off to a checksum-less smart contract where something happens. Now that the band members have Ethereum, they can easily sell it on an exchange. They can then withdraw it for a fee. And voilla, it will end up in their bank account. This simple process is the proposed solution to what used to be the cumbersome and difficult process of direct deposit. Or, the antiquated practice of handing someone cash. I can only dream of a day when my valet is tipped in Ethereum or Bitcoin rather than taking directly from my hands the disgusting fiat. Imagine the improvements that will be rained down by such efficient applications. Every transaction will take only 12 seconds or a minute or 10 minutes or some variation thereof as we wait for a block time to confirm. The valet will subsequently verify he’s received my tip and thank me for giving him custody of the commodity which he will eventually cash out of to pay for groceries.

And while Lightning Network may cut down on necessity of waiting for blocks to confirm, there is something so idiotic about the process of both cashing in and cashing out of these cryptos that is cringe inducing.

The stark reality is that Blockchains are really dumb. There are some innovations that might end up being inspired by them. But for the most part, the current applications are so exceedingly stupid, that I can’t even. More than that they are being funded by more money than I have ever seen move into a space. But the thing is, there’s not really any institutional money here yet. The Universities aren’t putting money into the space. The VCs are just barely starting to touch it. So where is that money coming from? I strongly suspect that it is a combination of foreign nationals and the nouveau rich. I strongly suspect that this is the definition of dumb money. And one doesn’t have to look very far to see times when the dumb money has sunk an economy.

For “Blockchain” the only real businesses that we need are businesses that focus on custodianship of some sort. Custodial services are the fundamental, missing piece of the ecosystem. Institutions have them. Individuals... not so much. Wallets like Armory (which is a bit dead) are necessities. And what’s worse is that as the Blockchain gets more complicated, as Bitcoin becomes harder to understand, we will soon find that these services are both more and more needed as well as more and more absent.

So where does that leave “blockchain?” Blockchain is still as useless as ever. It amazes me that most of the world laughed at the concept of a blockchain only to show up 8 years after its invention decrying naysayers like myself as narrow-minded and ignorant. Those of us who have been here, sitting in the lap of innovation, being laughed at, we are the ones who don’t understand how this works. It’s an interesting turn that I wish I had had the foresight to predict. Obviously, arrogance would have prevented those who avoided this tech early on from admitting why, and Dunning-Krueger would prevent them from understanding how difficult it is to wrap their minds around. Alas, my crystal ball and naivety prevented that prediction. I suppose it will be another 10 years before everyone realizes that the real innovation of products like Ethereum is the redefining of the word “multi-sig” to “smart contract.” Same thing, sexier wrapping. And while people like Pitbull struggle to figure that out, I suppose I can find solace in the fact that real science is still happening in Bitcoin.