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gascon-en-exil · 4 years ago

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Three Houses 100% Completion: The Joys of Spreadsheets

The idea that someone like me would ever write a gameplay guide to any Fire Emblem title is somewhat ludicrous on the surface. While I’ve finished nearly every mainline game in the series I also freely confess to being a filthy casual except ironically I ignore Casual mode because resetting/rewinding after death was ingrained in me back in the GBA era who only plays these games on their lowest difficulties, ostensibly because I find the lower challenge to allow for more flexibility in how I pick and develop units. This is of course entirely true, although it’s also no surprise that from a completionist perspective FE is much more approachable when you can make it as easy as possible. For most of the games 100% completion is nothing more than filling out a support log, music library, and other features of an Extras menu, and while there are certainly some tedious times to be had with that - I hope you like popping out the same kids over a dozen times for that many generic parent-child supports in Awakening and Fates - none of it is what anyone would call challenging. Shadows of Valentia has in-game achievements, but the worst of those involves weapons with low drop rates so it’s otherwise a manageable endeavor to get them all.

Three Houses, however, is something else altogether. In a stroke of brilliance that may presumably not be attributed to the developers who expected most people to only play through the game one time, this is the first in the series with a New Game+ feature. This allows you to carry over much of your units’ development over multiple playthroughs, and to catch up instantly where you left off by spending Renown to buy skills, supports, class masteries, etc. that you’ve obtained in previous runs. Thus it is possible to build up a NG+ file over many runs in which all of the game’s forty playable characters have all of their skill ranks maxed out and all their available classes mastered - or at least available for purchase. That’s how I’m defining 100% completion here, and I’m delighting in a very nerdy way to report that not since The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask has a game so tickled my love of efficient scheduling and careful management of available resources to achieve such a substantial goal. I wouldn’t call it hard per se, not in the same way as the built-in difficulty of Maddening or any number of self-imposed challenge runs, but there’s a lot of planning that goes into something like this - to say nothing of how well you need to know the relevant mechanics.

EDIT: After a lot of playtesting I’ve made quite a few updates to this guide, so some of the information here may now be outdated (or less efficient, more like). See here for the updates.

Parameters

New Game+ saves your units’ progress over multiple runs in its journal, although as this is limited - you can only see the progress of units currently in your army, and because of how availability works in this game you’ll never be able to see them all at once - I strongly recommend keeping a separate log of your own. Other than that the only other way the game records your investment is the timestamp on save files, and while that might be helpful if you’re interested in speedrunning this it’ll probably take around 300 hours minimum though so why bother I find it more useful to keep track of how many times you’ve run through the game. The least number of runs needed to fulfill this achievement, and therefore the number to shoot for as a goal, is 29. Why 29? That’s the number of characters who can be dancers, and of course you can only have one dancer per run.

29 runs sounds long but generous on paper. After all, when I did this more or less blind over the course of a year and with the DLC coming out progressively during that time I finished it in 35 runs which isn’t that much higher. It’s a tighter requirement than you might think however, particularly as I’m not accounting for the grinding on infinite skirmish maps that Normal allows for. I feel like the challenge, such as it is, of something like this comes in the form of plotting everything out and knowing how to use the limited time and resources the game gives you as effectively as possible, and grinding throws that out the window. I admit that during my first time doing this I did have to grind out some stubborn skill ranks with skirmishes in the last chapter, but optimally that shouldn’t be necessary and you should be able to work to avoid that.

I’m not including the support log, music library, or event library (i.e. the Goddess Tower events) as points of consideration. Strange as it sounds to exclude what is often the only draw FE presents for completionists, all of those save to the cartridge and not to individual files and are therefore irrelevant to the concept of building up a “perfect” NG+ file. None of them are particularly difficult as it stands - most S ranks can be bought with Renown after you’ve filled characters with enough furtive gay thoughts for the same-gender Byleth, the Goddess Tower can be save scummed, and for the soundtrack you just have to remember to switch the audio to Japanese at a few points to get every track - so I’m going to overlook them. I am however assuming DLC content, and that you already have a completed file of Cindered Shadows on the cartridge. Most notably this allows you to recruit the Ashen Wolves and access the DLC classes, but it has a very important third benefit I’ll get into a bit later.

Also, a final note on difficulty: this guide obviously assumes Normal (Classic vs. Casual is basically irrelevant with Divine Pulse). You might be able to do something like this on Hard, although I’m not going to attempt it. Maddening is completely out of the question, as you have to level every single character through suboptimal skill ranks and classes, both for themselves and in general.

Routes

Regardless of what you might think of all the controversial discourse surrounding it, Crimson Flower is by far the worst route for unit development. It’s a full three/four chapters and three/four calendar months plus one week and weekend (contrast CF Chapter 13 vs. non-CF Chapter 12) shorter than the others. Of the remaining three, Verdant Wind marginally edges out Azure Moon as the longest route as it has one extra instruction week and free weekend in the last chapter...because Dimitri and Edelgard take that entire week for their parley in AM. Silver Snow’s last chapter is as long as VW’s - but it infamously skips out on an entire calendar month (four free weekends, three instruction weeks, and the Gronder rematch) because your army is off having a drug orgy or something equally unproductive.

Still, despite this objective evaluation running through VW 29 times isn’t a possibility. This is mostly because all of the routes except SS have exclusive units who have to be accounted for, and also because other units have small but significant availability advantages on certain routes. On top of the perk of not having to spend Renown to recruit them, students in a route’s affiliated house get to appear in Chapter 1 (the mock battle) and non-CF Chapter 13 (the infamous bandit hunt map right after the timeskip). Seteth slightly favors SS as he appears in Chapter 13 in place of your house leader, while conversely Hilda, Catherine, and Cyril should be avoided on SS as they’re not available until much later than they are in VW and AM. Then there are, again, the route-exclusives: Claude for VW; Dimitri, Dedue, and Gilbert for AM; and for CF Edelgard, Hubert, and....ugh.

Do you hate Jeritza for his weird voice acting, terrible characterization that spills over onto all of his support partners, and the same tone problems from which all of CF suffers? Prepare to hate him all over again as a unit, because Jeritza single-handedly makes 100% completion in a timely fashion much harder. Not only does he have the worst availability in the game at a mere six chapters and essentially four calendar months, unlike his fellow Part 2 exclusive Gilbert he has skill weaknesses - and one of them is in authority, which as I’ll get to later is even more annoying. Compounding this, Jeritza being locked to CF means you have to run CF far more than you’d like, giving him a disproportionate share of time and resources in Part 2 at the expense of whoever’s being used alongside him. This is why a Gotoh unit just doesn’t work in conjunction with FE16′s core design philosophy.

With this in mind, my theoretical plan - and note that some of this guide is indeed still theoretical, and I’m plotting it out as I go along based on my first time through - for a 29 run 100% is 8 runs of CF and 7 of each of the other routes. This sounds counterintuitive in light of the objective ranking of route length, but Jeritza really is that much of a headache.

Cross-Run Planning and Renown

One of the most important points to maximizing efficiency for 100% is knowing what carries over between runs and what does not - or in other words, thinking more in terms of the overall goal of maxing out your units than of the individual needs of each run beyond what’s needed to finish the game with no deaths. This being Normal mode of course that’s not a high bar to clear, but it’s still worth noting that many of the traditional parameters used to measure the development of your army in FE outright do not matter in the grand scheme of things. This includes your units’ levels and stats, money, and your inventory.

Money isn’t too hard to come by particularly with auxiliary battles, increased earlygame money with auto-leveled professor rank (see below), and other sources. Stats only matter to the point that you have enough of them to finish the game, and standard leveling, certifications, and the +1 stat booster drops from auxiliary battles will take care of that for the most part. Getting specialized weapons and equipment can occasionally be useful, but it shouldn’t be a priority especially lategame when you’re not going to have much time to use what you get. In any case the quick pace of these runs means it’s unlikely that you’ll have much material for forging/repairing beyond the basic buyable ores, so forged silvers are usually the way to go unless you feel like breaking out a brave weapon or Relic or something similar if you need a really powerful hit. As for levels, other than the stat boosts they only matter insofar as different class tiers have different benchmarks for certification. The highest of these is 30, so after that point levels are all about the stats. That said however, with Normal experience being as high as it is your units will likely end the game in the 40s or even 50s, especially with the EXP boosts from the saint statues.

This brings me to Renown. Renown is the main resource for 100% completion, and is in fact what makes it possible in the first place. In a new game you can only spend Renown on restoring the saint statues, and while this is very important to do in your first two or three runs for the boosts it adds to EXP gain, skill points gained during instruction, and most crucially of all class mastery EXP (by far the top priority - drop 2000 Renown on the Saint Cethleann statue for this as soon as the statues become available in Chapter 5 of your first run) later runs allow you to spend Renown on the journal in Byleth’s room. This is how you save and continue progress on skill ranks, as well as how you can instantly max out your professor rank at the start of the game which is crucial for getting the most out of the monastery.

Now for some numbers...and here’s where that Cindered Shadows file comes into play. With a completed run of CS you unlock a reward that appears at the start of each run including 10000 Renown (as well as the very useful Chalice of Beginnings accessory - sword and gauntlet users love this thing earlygame). Each NG+ run starts you off with 10000 Renown multiplied by how many times you’ve completed the game, and each run you can get the CS reward again on top of however much Renown you had unspent from the previous run(s). You also get a small amount of Renown for completing battles and quests around the monastery, although this is minor compared to starting your second run with a minimum of 20000 Renown, your third with 30000, etc. By the last few runs you can expect to hit the cap of 999999 Renown, which is more than you could ever reasonably use at a time. So what to spend it on?

The saint statues: Each has a one-time cost of 10000 Renown to fully restore and can be done incrementally. This costs 40000 total and should be finished no later than your third run, because as mentioned almost all of the bonuses granted by these statues are absolute necessities for a fast 100%.

Professor rank: On the first free day after choosing your house, complete Sylvain’s quest to eat in the dining hall to instantly level up from E to E+ professor rank. After that it takes 4000 Renown to max out your rank at A+, easily manageable from your second run onward with the CS reward. This gives you ten activity points in exploration, seven instruction sessions, three points on battle weekends, the ability to assign up to three adjutants in battle, more flexible dining hall options (both neutral and liked dishes will restore full motivation), and access to master classes and high-end forging as soon as you unlock their other requirements. It’s an essential expense for every run.

Skill ranks: The value here is obvious, but as it costs 500 Renown per rank it’s important to be sparing and only spend on what you’ll actually be using in a particular run. The exception here is Byleth - see their section.

Supports: Mostly unimportant unless you’re recruiting a student from another house (just make sure to get these Byleth/student supports in a previous run first) or if you’re running CF and not using either Byleth or Edelgard in which case you’ll need to buy the Edeleth C(+). Supports cost 400 Renown per rank which is fairly cheap, although if you’re doing cross-house recruits it’s best to spend 1200 to get their A in which case they’ll always agree to join your house when asked. Note that non-student characters whose recruitment is dependent on Byleth’s level can have that requirement lowered with supports, but this is unnecessary - again, see Byleth’s section.

Class masteries and Crests: Ignore these. While the gameplay bonuses can be nice none of them are worth spending Renown on, especially in earlier runs. The class mastery menu is however what you’ll use to keep track of which classes units still need to complete, so bear that in mind. Incidentally, unlike the skill ranks menu the classes don’t update until you clear the game, so you’ll have to check your units’ status screens to see which classes they’ve mastered on the run you’re currently doing.

Abyss: Finally, Abyss has a few one-time Renown costs for its various facilities, similar to the saint statues. It’s only 8000 Renown to unlock everything (although for some of them you’ll have to wait until Part 2), but honestly only the pagan altar really matters at all so it’s not a huge priority. Generally speaking the weapons and equipment purchasable at the altar aren’t worth the Renown cost until you get multiple runs under your belt and have resources to burn, but Master Seals and Abyssian Exam Passes may be an exception as they’re limited in availability otherwise. Optimally though you should plot out your classes such that you shouldn’t have to spend Renown on seals.

Last but not least, a word on battalions. Battalions do carry over in NG+, as do their levels. It’s therefore important to build up a guild of strong max level battalions early on, mostly by completing paralogues. Assigning these to units in the earlygame gives them massive stat boosts, to an even greater extent than equipping silver weapons or high-level spells - which unsurprisingly come with serious weight issues early on, so best to stack with battalions for more OHKOs and better defensive parameters.

Building Your Army: Active vs. Classroom Units

It’s common knowledge for the games in the series (except FE5, because Fatigue is weird like that) that it’s rarely worth it to use all the deployment slots available to you, and that concentrating your resources into a smaller number of units will yield better results. This is true of FE16 as well, and I’ve determined that the best active army size for 100% completion runs is 5-6 units. This allows space for everyone you’re training to get the attention they need at the monastery and in the classroom, and it also dovetails nicely with how many runs it will reasonably take for each unit to master all of their classes. As I’ll go into in more detail later, it’s best to split each unit’s classes into four groups, and 40 characters x 4 = 160 which when divided by 29 runs works out to 5 active unit slots for about half of the runs and 6 for the other half. As regards composition, a core of two or three of the route’s house units and/or Byleth is important for Chapters 1 and non-CF 13, with the remaining slots free for the Wolves, non-students, and if absolutely necessary cross-house recruits although these are not optimal owing to the support costs. Recruitment should always be done as early as possible; this isn’t Maddening where it’s important to consider that auto-leveled growths sometimes make units better if you wait to recruit them. For the Wolves and students from other houses (except Hilda in SS, but don’t use her there) that means Chapter 2, with the non-students coming in at various points up through Chapter 13.

As is the case with every FE though you’re also going to have units in your army who you’re not using. I recommend recruiting everyone you can on each run except for cross-house students, for this reason: units not in your active army, hereafter called classroom units, can still be trained...in the classroom. Simply setting their goals appropriately when you first get them is all the effort you’ll need to put into them passively gaining valuable skill experience that can be put toward runs where you will use them, and between skill ranks and classes the former are going to take considerably more time and effort overall to max out. This is because class certification never asks for anything higher than A in a skill, but there are three additional ranks beyond that. Also, skill weaknesses are a thing, and while they cease to matter to class mastery once a unit is certified they’ll continue to be a problem on the long slog to S+. The thought of individually assigning classroom units goals may seem daunting, but in practice there’s a priority to skills that helps out considerably, as follows:

Authority: top priority for several reasons - it grants access to high level battalions which as mentioned makes earlygame a joke, it’s the only skill that can’t be leveled as an adjutant meaning that once a unit maxes it out they can be comfortably leveled in the back full-time, and it’s the skill that matters least to the class system so maxing it out won’t lead to any awkward situations, ex. a unit with S+ bows still needing to master sniper

Authority can be comfortably pushed to S+ solely in the classroom and rarely needs to be focused on as a goal by active units (Jeritza being a notable exception). The skills below however should only be raised up to A, A+, or S to allow room for some active training, and should be switched once a unit has reached a benchmark around that point so as to have more skills worked on overall. Also worth pointing out - it’s generally easier and more efficient for classroom units to train only one skill at a time.

Heavy armor: everyone who isn’t Edelgard only has three classes that boost it, and of these classes (including Edelgard’s) the only one without terrible movement is great knight

Flying for male units: except for Claude they have just two flying classes, although since wyvern rider and wyvern lord are pretty much the best physical classes in the game this isn’t as much of a hindrance as it is with heavy armor

Brawling for female units: there are only three unisex classes that boost brawling apart from f!Byleth’s enlightened one, and two of these (fighter and brigand) only give +1 putting a lot of pressure on war cleric to compensate

Skill weaknesses: this is where it gets more individualized, but as weaknesses slow down a unit’s progress in both the classroom and on the battlefield it’s very helpful to build up a good base when they’re not being actively used

To use Dimitri as an example, on AM runs where I’m not using him I would first max his authority, then boost up his flying or heavy armor (these two, or brawling and heavy armor for females, are about equal in priority and should be attended to with skill weaknesses/proficiencies in mind), then the other one, then either axes or reason as those are his weaknesses. If you want to really break it down bows, brawling (for males)/flying (for females), and riding take precedence over the remaining skills for having fewer classes, and faith is slightly more important than reason for the same, er, reason, but realistically classroom units aren’t going to be getting that far without much more substantial active growth taken into account.

Active units on the other hand can afford to be much more dynamic in what they learn during instruction, especially as they’ll be motivated to receive private instruction. Ahem. One thing to note is that if an active unit is working on a budding talent it should always be instructed enough to unlock as soon as possible, even if you plan on leveling the skill passively/in battle afterward. Gaining a proficiency really does pay dividends, and sometimes the ability is useful too. Group tasks are also important to keep in mind, and ideally you should plan each run to have at least two active units training the same movement skill to take advantage of the weekly boost.

On Byleth

Byleth is in many respects a special case. I frequently rail on their defects as a flat self-insert who makes every story they’re in worse because it has to accommodate their wooden presence, but here I’ve really only got good things to say. It should be pointed out that the journal treats Byleth as one character despite the gender difference, which is good as the male and female versions do not have to be worked on separately. Byleth can’t gain skill experience from instruction, but instead they gain it from faculty training which costs activity points but is on the whole a faster process. As noted below faculty training is the primary way of dumping excess activity points during exploration, because maxing out Byleth’s skill ranks is very high priority. Units receiving instruction get an extra +2 to their base skill growth if Byleth has a higher rank in the skill, hence it’s in everyone’s best interest for Byleth to max out their skills first. This is also the big exception to the rule about spending Renown only on skills you’ll be using in a run; Byleth’s ranks should always be topped out as high as you’ve gotten them at the start of the game, to give this bonus as often as possible. Admittedly you won’t be able to do this earlier on as it costs a hefty amount of Renown to get all of a unit’s skills up to S+, but in later runs it will pay off considerably.

Something else to consider about Byleth is their level. There are three reasons to level up Byleth even if they’re not an active unit in a run: recruiting non-student characters, the Proper Conduct Tournament, and making them less likely to die instantly if they get attacked in battle lategame since they’re force-deployed on every chapter map and paralogue. The highest level required to recruit anyone is 15 (if in AM or VW doing so in Chapter 4 gets you Catherine, but this might be unfeasible and it’s not a big deal if you have to wait a chapter for her), but you should aim for 20 by Chapter 8 in order to win the tournament. These levels are entirely manageable with Byleth soloing the Prologue and then spending the rest of the time as an adjutant, or playing a minor support role when they’re force-deployed (I favor giving them the Stride gambit personally). For the tournament I recommend certifying them as a fortress knight first for the massive DEF boost and then certifying and changing to swordmaster because they’re required to use a sword and therefore appreciate that class’s abilities. Winning gets you the usual quest rewards as well as a free brave weapon, not to mention the inherent humor of the game itself mocking people clutching their pearls over the teacher/student relationships.

What Matters and What Doesn’t at the Monastery

Learning how to streamline exploration is a key component to keeping these runs fast-paced and cutting down on real time spent. Bluntly, a fair bit of what goes on at Garreg Mach is irrelevant when you’re thinking on a cross-run level. Here’s what actually does:

Quests: should be done all the time as they increase Renown by small amounts, award resources and some inventory items, and in some cases unlock monastery facilities or other features like the White Heron Cup. Most of them also don’t take very long to complete, and once you’ve run this game enough you’ll develop a good rhythm for the quests in each chapter. Quest battles are also worth doing - see the calendar section.

Dining hall: the best way to increase your units’ motivation for instruction. Fishing and the greenhouse are for the most part wastes of time since you don’t need to manually grind out professor rank (important note: except on your first run, where it’s probably better to do them) and the rewards from them are either negligible or, in the case of the greenhouse’s stat boosters, can be replicated with auxiliary battles. However, you should get enough resources for meals from quests and such to be able to carry you through a run without much trouble, and if you do start to run out note that you can also buy poultry and wild game from one of the vendors.

Choir practice: comparable to group tasks for the faith skill, and as with those you should preferably plan to have two active units leveling faith each run to take the most advantage of this. Byleth also gains both faith and authority from choir practice, so you can make use of that as well.

Lost items: usually more trouble than they’re worth to remember where they are and when they appear, but technically they function as one-time liked gifts if you want to restore motivation without eating or spending money on regular gifts.

Faculty training: how Byleth raises their skills outside of battle. This is the main dump for activity points in earlier runs once the dining hall and sauna are taken care of, but it’s important to note which characters increase which skills and to spread your training out accordingly. This is a major reason why you should recruit non-student characters even if you don’t plan on using them, because they’re more reliable sources of this training than the student characters even into Part 2. Obviously once Byleth has maxed all their skills this can be dropped from your task list completely.

Special vendors: unrelated to activity points, but once you do the quests to unlock the NPC vendors and Anna’s secret shop at the monastery it’s important to stock up whenever you’re exploring since you can’t buy this stuff from other menus. Important items are gifts if you lack the activity points to feed your active units, Smithing Stones for basic forges and repairs, Arcane Crystals lategame for magic weapons if you’re using any, meat if you’re running low on dining hall provisions as mentioned, and Master Seals from Anna once you’ve exhausted the free one plus the five you can buy from the regular shop menu.

Saint Statues: see the above section on Renown.

Sauna: also starting in Chapter 5, provides an important boost to skill gained during instruction or faculty training that month: +2 for refreshed or +4 for very refreshed. Getting very refreshed is more a matter of RNG than anything as there’s only so much skill involved in this minigame, but most of the time you can at least aim for +2 on all your active units. This should always be done the first free weekend of the month, but if the sauna decides to be finicky with a unit and deny them a boost you can try again on a later weekend.

Mark Your Calendars

You’d think that the in-game calendar would be the centerpiece of my mania for scheduling and thus this entire guide, but in actuality it’s quite simple. Events like saints’ days and special meals cost you nothing to attend, but who joins you is totally random from among your current party so there’s no guarantee the associated boosts will go to characters you care about. Birthdays are negligible, but if you just have to have teatime for whatever reason it’s more efficient to do so in honor of a character’s special day than by wasting an activity point on a weekend.

I find that the most efficient way to spend your free weekends is that all but the last of each month should be used for exploration, to pick up and complete quests, recruit new characters, raise motivation for instruction each week, and do the sauna on the first weekend. The last weekend, the one before the chapter battle, should be used for battling. What kinds of battles depends on what’s available:

Quest battles should be gotten out of the way, especially those that bring new vendors to the monastery, but they scale poorly with your units’ levels and are generally very easy. A prominent exception exclusive to CF is a quest battle where you can only deploy Byleth and Jeritza, which Jeritza should always solo because he needs all the favoritism he can get.

Paralogues are hit or miss overall. Some are absolutely necessary - Sothis’s for a Knowledge Gem (see below), Dedue’s unless you’re completely finished with him and are also a heartless monster - but for the most part it’s up to your discretion. Some offer very good rewards and some have very good battalions to add to your guild, but on the flip side some paralogues are more annoying than others thanks to odd initial positioning, more level scaling issues, and/or fog of war. The cutscenes before each paralogue are also unskippable, so they cut into real time as well. Still, paralogues do have one benefit over every other type of battle available on weekends in that they restore full motivation to their non-Byleth MVPs, just like story battles. It’s therefore possible that if you have a bunch of paralogues available at once (common late in Part 1) you can do three of them on one weekend in place of exploration and come out of it with some extra combat experience as well as three characters with full motivation for the next week of instruction.

Auxiliary battles are DLC-exclusive and are distinguished by a yellow exclamation point on the menu. Compared to regular or red exclamation point skirmishes the enemies in them scale much better with your army (making them the best battles for grinding your units up to 30 for master classes), and they offer bonus gold and stat boosters that can sustain your army in the absence of facilities like fishing and the greenhouse. There are also only about half a dozen of them overall and each follows a quickly recognizable pattern of enemy placement, so they are by far the best source of regular, reliable unit development outside of story content.

Apart from Chapter 2′s month which is structured like a tutorial there is only one major hiccup to how you plan your weekends. If you’re planning to go CF then in Chapter 11 you’ll have to watch Edelgard’s coronation, but doing so takes up all the rest of the month up to the story battle. In order to skip the least amount of content you’ll therefore have to either forego a battle weekend entirely or else do one earlier in the month and accept that not all of your active units will be motivated the following week.

And Now for Some Actual Standard FE Gameplay

Skills may be the focus for long-term goals and development over multiple runs both in active armies and in the classroom, but it’s class progression that frames a unit’s development in a given run and is, relatively speaking, easier to plot out and manage. I say that...but the reality is rather messier than that, which I will prove with a live demonstration.

Before that though, the numbers: each unit can access 35-42 of the 52 total playable classes. As before mentioned four active runs is the number to aim for based on optimal army size, and that number of classes divided by four means that units will be expected to master 8-10 classes per run. One of the advantages to a four-way division is that it allows you to split up classes approximately according to the four beginner classes: each unit will have a myrmidon run, a soldier run, etc. As shown below however, these are very loose descriptions and are better thought of as a framework to aid development than as a set formula.

With regard to class and skill EXP gained in battle, the formulas are a lot more set in stone. Every time a unit engages or is engaged in combat, uses white magic or a gambit, or dances they gain 1 class EXP, increased to 2 with the bonus from the Saint Cethleann statue which you should definitely unlock early in your first run. There are two ways to increase this number further. The first is by equipping a Knowledge Gem, undoubtedly the most important item to 100% completion. You get one in a chest in Sothis’s paralogue, which should be obtained your first battle of Chapter 8 when it’s first available, and another after Chapter 11 provided you don’t let any enemies escape with Crest Stones. Equipping this item doubles the amount of class EXP gained, so 4 after the statue bonus. The second way to increase this the Mastermind ability, Lysithea’s personal ability as well as one in Jeritza’s starting list that he must equip in order to use. It has the same effect as a Knowledge Gem on its own, and if the two are combined they stack additively for a maximum of 6 EXP at a time.

Skill EXP has a few more parameters but is similarly straightforward. When dealing damage or using white magic units will gain skill EXP with the weapon/magic type they used, their movement type if their class boosts one (and they’re mounted in the case of riding or flying), and authority if they have a battalion equipped - and as mentioned, all of these except authority also apply to adjutants. The base depends on the unit’s proficiency in the skills in questions: 3 for strong, 2 for neutral, and 1 for weak. The Knowledge Gem and Mastermind work in the same way to increase this base: 6/4/2 using one of them and 9/6/3 using both. Then class boosts are added to this, with each class boosting affiliated skills by +1 to +3. Putting this all together, the most skill EXP that can be gained at one time is 12, if Lysithea or Jeritza w/ Mastermind equips a Knowledge Gem and raises a skill they are strong in in a class that grants +3 to that skill. Gremory!Lysithea with a battalion and a Knowledge Gem using her favorite meme Dark Spikes on Jeritza’s obnoxious serial killer ass would give her 6 class EXP, 9 authority EXP, and 12 reason EXP - and this is why Lysithea levels so fast.

Now then, to build some class sets. I’ll be using Hubert for this example, and for a different reason other than shameless favoritism mostly.

Logically a unit’s first run should play to their strengths as much as possible, to ease them into development with skills they’re naturally inclined toward. Hubert is a default magic user, so his monk run should be his first. To start:

Noble (this or commoner should always be a unit’s first mastered class because it’s so quick to get out of the way)

Monk

Mage

Dark Mage

...And here’s the first problem. As is contractually required for CF exclusives Hubert is an edgy atheist and is weak in faith, making the expected combination of a monk run difficult to pull off without prior investment as a classroom unit. But wait - Hubert has a budding talent in lances that a therapist could have a field day with, and his most feasible master class is easily dark knight. This encourages something like so:

Noble

Monk

Mage

Dark Mage

Cavalier

Warlock

Dark Bishop

Paladin

Dark Knight

There we go, nine classes which is entirely reasonable for Hubert’s total of 37. For his first run he can focus on reason, lances, and riding, safe in the knowledge that he doesn’t have to max any of those skills here as there are other classes that require them. Looking ahead to his second run, soldier might seem like a logical second pick...but if he spent some time working on his faith as a classroom unit there’s a better run of classes to knock out.

Myrmidon

Mercenary

Thief

Priest

Swordmaster

Assassin

Bishop

Trickster

Mortal Savant

Holy Knight

After this he’ll be done with all reason-boosting classes and should be comfortably finished with that skill, along with having high ranks in swords, lances, faith, and riding as well as with authority probably maxed out as he’s strong in it. Assassin might seem like an odd stretch here, but note that he’s strong in bows so it shouldn’t be hard for him to reach. With his third run it’s finally time to go back for soldier.

Soldier

Armored Knight

Archer

Dancer

Hero

Fortress Knight

Sniper

Bow Knight

Great Knight

Lances and bows frequently pair well together as they converge at the end at bow knight, and bows don’t have many classes overall and pair less with axes or brawling than those two do with each other. Axes are one of Hubert’s weaknesses, but at this point he should have built up his rank in them and in heavy armor to make this more manageable - but since these are far from the only axe classes heavy armor is the bigger priority along with lances, bows, and riding. Dancer seems rather random here, but I looked ahead to which run needed an extra and it’s a pretty flexible class anyway requiring effectively only 8 CHA (or 13 in some cases that will never apply to Hubert). Consider it one last chance along with hero for him to work on swords. And now for the last one.

Fighter

Brigand

Brawler

Warrior

Grappler

Wyvern Rider

War Monk

Wyvern Lord

War Master

Flying is Hubert’s other weakness, but as with axes he shouldn’t be starting from scratch with them. He might be with brawling, but he’s neutral in that skill and has lots of opportunities here to work on punching people to death. I wouldn’t recommend war monk/cleric to do any more work with his faith however, as both it and trickster have halved spell uses which makes them highly inefficient for raising magic levels.

That, by the way, is just one way to go about building these class sets. I went back and forth on a few of my own choices as I was writing that up. The thing about classes in Three Houses is that they don’t flow smoothly into one another, so there’s a lot of room for experimentation with different paths and a lot of variance based on each unit’s strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, a note on adjutants. Smart use of adjutants substantially increases overall unit development as it effectively doubles the amount of skill and class EXP your army can gain from each battle. Units who have 1) maxed authority and 2) are not in danger of falling behind the pre-30 leveling curve (units receive less regular EXP in the back) are prime candidates to be adjutants, and in later runs as more units finish authority it will become more common to have characters who’ll spend the majority of their time in the back. Of course you’ll always need two or three solid frontliners to actually complete the battles, but this is a useful way to play around annoyances like the bad movement of armors or the limited spell lists of most physically-oriented characters.

So About Those Spreadsheets

I know this is a ton of information to handle, and the game offers only the bare minimum for cross-run organization. This is where developing your own system comes into play if you’re aiming for a quick 100%. Personally I decide which set of units I’m going to be actively using on a given run, then plot out and write down which classes each is going to master and which skills they’re going to work on. I also note what skills classroom units will be building, and I keep separate track on overall maxed skills and mastered classes so I’m not dependent on the in-game journal to do that for me.

How rewarding is all this? That depends on how much you enjoy breaking down a game like this and really wringing the most of its mechanics to reach entirely personal goals. Just writing this guide has inspired me to attempt a 29 run 100% sometime in the near future, and it would be interesting if anyone else were to take on this excessive, overly meticulous process. I know there are other ways of approaching this concept, and even some things I could afford to improve myself especially for earlier runs as the first time I did this I was still getting a feel for the game and wasn’t playing at anywhere near as optimal a level. All the better for all the plot and characterization discourse I’ve gotten involved in over the past year, naturally, but there’s room to better my game.

And with that I am done...hmm, do Tumblr text posts have character limits? Only one way to find out, I suppose.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses

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this-is-a-podcast-fanblog · 5 years ago

Text

Juniverse Retail AU

this post was too good not to turn into a fic, so I got permission from @acadieum and @rae-kl and went off.

~~~

He’s at that point in his shift where nothing is real, his feet have lost feeling, and every single soccer mom with fake blonde hair has decided to descend on his location at once.

“No,” exclaims the woman in front of him, rapping her long-nailed hands down onto the counter, “I told you, I can only use products that are gluten free, vegan, free of dyes and parabens, free of natural pigments, and lack fiber.” Her roots need to meet this perfect touch-up Juno just got in stock. He could give her so much help if she’d just be nice and let him.

“Yeah, lady, this is a Sephora.” Juno rubs his eyes and resists the urge to look at the clock. “Everything we’ve got in here has dye or natural pigments. If you don’t like what we’ve got, check Lush at the other end of the mall.”

The woman huffs, props up her sunglasses. “I want to speak to your manager.”

“I am the manager.”

She storms out, already whipping out her cellphone to give his location a bad review. Juno doesn’t care. He honestly doesn’t care about anything at this point.

“Cheer up, boss!” says Rita over the Rita-sized box she’s carrying to the dumpster. The front reads Unleash Your Inner Artist palettes. “We only got two hours left!”

Juno huffs. “Yep. Two hours.” He can see someone winding through the aisles towards his help desk. Instantly he is awash with that rush of overwhelming rage that fills him whenever he has to actually do his job and assist someone. I am so not paid enough for this. “Hey, how can I.... help you...”

The person standing in front of Juno’s counter is the most beautiful man he’s ever seen. His dark brown eyes are expertly framed with green eyeshadow, his full lips lined with a matte color just a few shades darker than his tan skin. He arches one stunning brow and Juno almost melts. “Excuse me,” says the man. “Do you happen to have this foundation in shade 290?”

It’s the most seductive thing anyone’s ever said to him. “Uh, uh maybe,” stammers Juno, “Let me check in the back?”

“Thank you. I would appreciate that.”

Thank you, I would appreciate that. God, his voice is so hot. Juno grabs a bottle from the back room and brings it back. “That’s $35,” he says.

“Alright.” The man reaches into his purse for a credit card but doesn’t hand it over just yet. Instead, his eyes sweep once over Juno’s face. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” he says.

“Yeah, uh, I used to be one of the makeover artists, but just got moved to manager, not sure how.” He laughs and then wishes he hadn’t. A blush creeps over his face, but the man is smiling.

“I see. Are you here every day?”

“Pretty much. We’re short on managers right now.”

“Ah.” He hands over his card. “Well, maybe I’ll see you again sometime...” His eyes dart down to the nametag. “Juno.”

Juno is as much of a mess as a red lipstick spilled in a white Valentino bag. “Uh, uh yeah! Maybe! That’d be great, so here’s your receipt, have a nice day? Have a nice day.” He drops the receipt. “God, I’m sorry. Hey, uh, what’s your name?”

“Call me Rose.” Rose picks up the receipt and tucks it neatly into his bag. “All my friends do.”

And he saunters away, taking most of Juno’s heart with him.

Rose visits again a few days later. He says he’s just picking up a bottle of nail polish, but ends up standing by the shelf as Juno restocks. They chat for half an hour. After Rose is gone, Juno realizes he must have counted inventory wrong, because the shelf he just filled with what was supposed to be twenty blending sponges is only nineteen blending sponges.

But he thinks nothing more of it after he gets another sponge from storage, and the next day Rose visits again. And again, a few days after that. They talk about makeup at first, but then about themselves, and the things they like, and the way they live.

“I’m just doing this to pay rent, save up some cash.” Juno explains. “I wanna go back to school, get a degree in criminal justice.”

“I didn’t take you for a lawyer.”

“I was thinking more like a detective, actually. Private investigator or something. How about you?”

“Oh, I’m between jobs at the moment.” Rose doesn’t quite meet his eyes on that line. He’s a man of mystery just as much as he’s a man of glitter highlighter. And damn he kills that glitter highlighter.

It’s nice, for a while, having someone to visit him at work and someone he can flirt with when shifts get slow. But then a few problems arise.

The first is that Juno gets distracted by Rose, and doesn’t service his other customers as well. Which is fine, because he has other employees and, thank god, he has Rita, and all of them are very capable of handling the store without Juno. But they complain about it plenty.

The next problem is brought to his attention by Rita herself: “Boss, have you ever noticed that this tall guy uses a new credit card each time he comes in here... an’ none of ‘em have the name Rose?”

And once he notices that, he notices another problem: makeup goes missing when Rose visits him. Like, a lot of makeup.

“That’s nice eyeliner you’ve got today,” Juno tells Rose. “It’s Maybelline?”

“Maybe.”

“Neat. On a totally unrelated note, half of our Maybelline shipping vanished last week.”

“Hmm, how unusual,” muses Rose with a straight face. “You know Juno, I’ve been thinking...”

He doesn’t get to say what he’s been thinking, because at that moment a screaming toddler smashing up the perfume aisle demands a manager’s attention.

The next time Juno sees Rose, he’s wearing dark red nail polish the same color as the ones Juno was reshelving last time they spoke. But he’s brought Juno a smoothie from the mall cafeteria, and there’s a smile on his gorgeous face, and Juno decides to let it slide.

“I’ve been thinking,” Rose says. “Perhaps one day we could meet up outside of your work.”

Juno’s heart flip-flops. “Oh?”

“Certainly. I could - well. Buy you lunch, for example - because you see, Juno...” He fidgets with a spare thread on his jacket. “I’d like to spend time with you, somewhere that isn’t also full of flouresents and stress.”

Juno laughs a little at that. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “I’ll think about it.”

Rose grins, those sharp teeth flashing behind black lips. Juno’s pretty sure he’s just signed up for a date with a criminal.

“May I ask you something?” asks Rose one day while Juno’s filling in ledgers. The store is closed, but Juno can’t bring himself to kick Rose out.

“Shoot.”

“Do you like working here?”

He snorts. “Want the honest answer or the cute one?”

“I’d hope you can always be honest with me.”

Juno thinks about that for a moment. He sets down the pen and turns his head to see Rose’s eyes better. “I don’t like it,” he says, “that the only way I can pay my rent is to come to this store and give up a small piece of my humanity. You know?”

Rose nods, like he really does know. “I...I may have an idea,” he says. There’s caution in his words. “In my line of work, I’m, shall we say, self-employed. Reliant on myself for financial stability. But recently I’ve begun to consider taking on a partner. I wondered if you would be interested.”

It’s all he can do not to say “Hell yes” and sign up there on the spot. Instead he ducks back to the ledger to hide his blush and says, “Oh yeah? What’s your line of work?”

“I suppose I can tell you more when I take you out to lunch.” And Rose winks with his eyeliner wings sharp enough to cut.

They don’t end up going out to lunch.

“Did you hear?” asks Rita as soon as Juno walks into the door for his shift the next day. She drags him to the back room, practically bouncing foot to foot; and once they’re out of earshot of the customers, she says, “Your friend Mistah Rose got ARRESTED!”

“Wh-what?”

“Yeah! Mall cops nabbed ‘im with five thousand dollars of designer merch after he left visiting you yesterday! An’ you wanna know the real kicker?” She leans in closer. “He got away. No one knows where he is now!”

“Oh.” Juno’s not entirely sure how he’s supposed to process all of this information at once. “That’s... I wish I could say that’s surprising.”

What he means is, he wishes he could say he isn’t crushed.

He was right about Rose, but it’s worse. He might never see Rose again. And it’s still worse: they came so, so close to having something, it’s just so unfair.

“Anyway, I’m gonna go tell the others!” Rita skips off, leaving Juno alone with his emotions, office files, and a clutter of still-boxed makeup. He sits down at his desk, just to think for a minute before going onto the floor.

And that’s when he sees the note.

“Juno:

By this point you’ve likely uncovered the truth. What you haven’t surmised from the security footage and accounts of your workers, I will trust to your inner detective to piece together.

Where do I begin? You are wasted as a makeup manager. The world deserves to be seen by you, and suddenly I wonder if I could be the person to show it to you, even if I am no longer the person you think I am. If you still want to take me up on my previous offer, hold out hope. I’m sure we’ll meet again.

I’ll be counting down the minutes until we do.

Signed,

Peter Nureyev

Master Thief.”

And sealed with a red lipstick kiss.

#if i wake up tomorrow and my inbox is full of angry james charles fans i'm throwing myself out a window #all of the brand and trend teasing is meant to be lightly poking fun #there are so many makeup jokes in here #props if someone understands literally any of them #the penumbra podcast #juno steel #peter nureyev #rita #jupeter #au

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damdahdi-studies · 5 years ago

Text

exam season

the last 2 weeks have been exam season. leading up to exams i ran week-long blocks of distracting websites on my mac, so I haven’t been able to get on tumblr.... so finally updating now: (more like ranting.)

one math exam left, on thursday morning

exams so far have been.... okay. none of them i feel particularly good about, but overall i think i managed to deal with the stress/anxiety better this semester than last, just a little bit

some nice things that happened before exams:

100% in Chinese speaking mock exam, listening and writing section of written mock exam. i didn’t really realise it until i looked back on my old posts and read how i felt after first set of exams just now, but i have come ... maybe not a long way, but some kind of way :] at the time i was very insecure about just myself and barely believed i could improve on my own; yet i did to a standard i never could’ve dreamed even start of this year.

somehow obtained 90% in an oral presentation i made about The Crucible by Arthur Miller. i still don’t know how I did it, but I’m glad i improved from the 60s i got last semester in presentations. public speaking still felt like hell though

top female scorer in my state for some maths competition. also have no idea how i did this, i thought i would get distinction at best.

changed piano teachers (previous teacher recommended the new one)

dress for year 12 ball next year arrived. it’s a soft grey pretty thing

my birthday was during exam season :/

also first set of my own prayer beads arrived. have been using them daily since

reflecting on each subject: (so I can read back on this after i get my marks back and be like haha.... you fool.)

Literature: better than last time is all i can say... it was okay (still felt like hell during the exam because it’s Literature) managed time during exam slightly better, I didn’t panic as much, but that’s about it lmao i’m crossing my fingers for a low 70s and double crossing for an A. i wasn’t able to or simply didn’t contribute much effort/time to literature this semester, so a B wouldn’t really be a fuck-i-tried-so-hard-why-did-i-get-this-grade kind of punch in the gut, but it would be really nice to not break an all A streak... but I highly suspect I will get a B

Methods (maths): exam was harder than i expected. hoping for a 90s though, a mark that wont bring my average down. i think i was best prepared for methods compared to other subjects, emphasis on COMPARED to other subjects. -_-

Physics: ahh physics. a whole debacle happened during the exam, please see below. other than that the exam was... kind of expected difficulty? which is difficult, but it wasn’t terrible-terrible. i’m hoping for an 80s. i really can’t hope for much, i was probably delirious half the time. i did manage to ‘finish’ (attempt every question) though i wish i got more time... i couldn’t double check many questions and there was this one question i wanted to spend more time on but oh well...

summary: i threw up once before the exam, twice during.

ate a blueberry bagel with cream cheese, with some salmon on top for breakfast. looking back, it was probably the salmon.

didn’t feel good after. got to school feeling pretty sick in the stomach and a pretty bad headache.... which escalated to one of the worst headaches ive had in the last 3 years in 20 minutes

at this point i could tell something was wrong and that i was about to throw up

went to the toilet, tried to throw up whatever was causing pain to my body, but couldn’t. only ended up scaring away some poor kid in the next cubicle

FIRST TIME: left toilet. sit still for 10 minutes outside, feeling progressively worse. go back to the toilet, then throw up a lot. gargle, wash face, go back to find everyone filing into the exam room.

feeling slightly better at this point since ive thrown up (i thought i had emptied most of my stomach by then. spoiler alert: no) and decide internally to just do the exam. (if i don’t, then i would have to fill out some form, probably do the exam way later. too annoying)

SECOND TIME: so i sit the exam. 5-6 minutes into reading time, i feel another wave of throwing up coming. i raise my hand, i’m at the very back of the hall, so examiner takes a bit to notice. my brainwashed ass brain thinks i can’t stand up and leave without the examiners spoken permission, so i persist in sitting in my seat for around 10 seconds until she’s there, i’m already throwing up in my mouth at this point. finally something snaps and i make a break for the toilet, but it’s too late and i throw up all over the floor. in the exam hall. Fuck. i immediately apologise on the spot.

examiner leads me to toilet. i throw up some more. gargle, wash face. she asks me to step outside for a couple of minutes for fresh air and i do. 5 minutes later she comes back and asks me if i want to continue the exam. i say yes. we go back in, the vomit is gone from the floor. she moves my seat closer to the exit, and tells me i can bolt out whenever i need to throw up. i sit the exam.

some time after this, the other examiner leaves a vomit bag next to me just in case

THIRD TIME: an hour in? i feel another wave coming. i grab the vomit bag, make a dash for the toilets but the stupid old door won’t open properly. the examiner helps me open the door and i throw up in the toilets, in the vomit bag this time. it’s not as much as the previous two times. tie up the bag, throw it in the bin, gargle, wash face.

instinctively i feel that this is the last time i’ll throw up, that i’ve truly emptied everything from my stomach this time. headache is way weaker at this point.

go back in and examiner asks me if i’m really sure i want to continue the exam, whether or not if i want to fill in a form excusing myself from the exam. i say no.

about an hour left in the exam, which i sit in utter peace

didn’t get any extra time.

apologised to some people around me after the exam while filing out of the hall... i suffered but they did too.

went home and drank some stomach soothing tea. slept

ate porridge for the next 2 days.

Chemistry: it was.... okay. i did finish and attempt every question. there were a couple of questions in multiple choice i was iffy about and a question in short answer i was like um... what? to, but other than that it was.... eh. i didn’t study much for it, so whatever mark i get i deserve. if i do defend myself it was 3 days after the shit show that was the physics exam, and i felt sick for at least a day after.... but yeah. should’ve tried more.

during reading time, the examiner who saved my life put the vomit bag on my desk in the physics exam came and asked me if i was feeling better

i said i’m feeling good thanks : )

like an hour later? i feel sickness coming. not stomach this time, just general sickness. somehow i get a fever and subsequently, the FLU in the middle of the chem exam-

i highly suspect i got it from the examiner

come back home to find out that i really do have a fever

this was yesterday. yes i’m sick now. like, more sick.

Chinese: this was today. i’m still kind of too traumatised to reflect on it properly. Chinese is the only subject that ive studied the yr 12 course for this year, so this exam really counts. like 35% of my final grade counts kind of counts. and i did pretty bad. like pretty bad. it was definitely more difficult than the mock exams, and the recordings in listening section were quicker than previous years. the writing section was... traumatising while writing i kind of had a wave of anxiety/panic hit me? i could feel my heartbeat my face was burning and i started sweating ;-; and even the reading section, which is usually okay, was a bit hard. i’ll get the marks back and my final grade for this subject in December - we’ll see until then. got a slightly overdue birthday present before the exam tho :)

So yup. that’s my exam season. i’m typing this instead of studying for my maths exam day after tomorrow but hey, i’m sick and need rest, right?

overall, these exams i managed to keep control of my stress a bit better, i wasn’t so overwhelmed like last time. last semester i could barely live, literally. this time i made the habit of living at the library which i found really helpful and comparatively productive, i’ll definitely be using that strategy more often. i’m just glad i managed to study SOMETHING or prepare for exams explicitly this time, because i was simply too overwhelmed to do that last time. i improved. maybe not by much, maybe it doesn’t seem like much, but it’s better than none...

i’m not saying i don’t have regrets or shortcomings in these exams. i definitely do. DeFinITEly. but doesn’t mean i didn’t improve. i did improve. just, maybe not as much as i wanted.

i really learned to the bone this time that learning during the semester is so, so important. i think that’s just a wisdom i’ll have to carry through the rest of my academic career.

wish me luck for my maths exam on Thursday

my friends and ive already planned an outing for after the exams :)

also getting overdue birthday presents next monday! :D

#exam #high school #student #exam season #exams #study #studying #studyblr #chinese #sick #mental health #stress #overwhelmed #anxiety

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wrsethngs-blog · 6 years ago

Text

uhhh i’m gonna finish this at some point but i have work at 8 am and an exam tomorrow so i’m bailing. y’all enjoy this 1k word sneak preview of my dr oc please

asahi keeps his head down during the trials, hair tucked into a flat cap to keep it out of his eyes while he writes -- and there’s always something to write, especially at these trials that will determine the outcome of their lives.

whenever he does look up, it isn’t to check his surroundings but because he wants to bear witness to this moment in history -- to these final hours before a group of future greats could very well meet their untimely demise.

what a delight it is, to know that history is happening before your very eyes.

trial - hope’s peak academy.

date - unknown ; circa 5 nov - 11 nov ?

time - 2:30 pm

the trial over aimi’s death has gone on for just over an hour. we have determined very little. blunt force trauma from behind, a nighttime murder, and a bunch of other details that are too vague to determine anything from.

everyone shouts over one another. it is impossibile to distinguish who says what, but that doesn’t stop any of them. è un pandemonio.

he looks up, as if seeing the pandemonium will make it easier to keep track. it isn’t important who says what here, anyways. if anyone says anything particularly important, he will record it, and it will be a quote taught in classes for hundreds of years. he is very good at determining what is important.

shigeru brings everyone down, back into a real discussion, and asahi stands with his pencil poised.

aimi was una ragazza molto gentile. we all want to know who would do something like this.

here are the opinions expressed, all by a number of my classmates:

-whoever did it is deranged. -she would’ve been easy enough to trick. -that makes things even worse.

sono propenso a essere d'accordo.

maaya suggests that aimi got tricked into meeting with the killer, or she was possibly ambushed. this seems likely, but it also makes it più difficile to determine who the murderer was. any one of us could’ve tricked her.

aimi was very near to my heart, but to call her intelligence notable would be to misrepresent her, and i don’t aim to do that.

2:35 pm, masumi brings up the murder weapon, a blunt object not found at the scene. whoever killed aimi must’ve had some level of strength, since the m.onokuma file states she died instantly.

the space between his shoulders aches. hunching over a notebook all his life has done very little to help his joints. his arms are burning, too. he looks forward to visiting a chiropractor when he gets out of this place.

he straightens his back and stretches his arms over his head. in doing so, he makes eye contact with hanabi, who has been assigned a spot directly across from him. it certainly doesn’t upset asahi.

2:41 pm, hanabi speaks up. la sua voce è adorabile, and his hair falls across his face like painted by artisti del Rinascimento. he stares at me when he speaks. it is incantevole.

hanabi: maybe she wasn’t ambushed at all. they could’ve just asked to see her. that’s possible.

he addresses me. i was her friend, did aimi mention meeting anyone?

she didn’t.

“i met with her last night. credo she would’ve told me if she planned on seeing anyone else. it seems more likely that someone just caught her off guard. possa riposare in pace.”

“you met with her? that totally makes you suspicious!”

“not really. they were friends.”

2:44 pm, they’re arguing over whether or not i’m suspicious. i’m not concerned. they always come to the right conclusion eventually. and if they come to the wrong conclusion today, well, at least i’ll have witnessed the class end. i suspect whoever escapes this place will take my journals with them.

i stop the argument. “i met with her long before the murder. someone would’ve noticed if i was coming and going all night. her room is pretty far from mine.”

“you don’t seem very upset. if i were getting accused of killing my friend, i would be sobbing my eyes out.”

asahi shrugs. “it is my business to observe. of course i’m upset, but someone has to make sure everything is recorded, sì?”

“still...”

he wonders when future historians will realize that he has not only recorded history, but in fact written it.

“look, this is super easy to resolve. asahi would’ve recorded everything aimi did at that meeting. just read what you have so we can move on.”

he clutches his journal. “what would that prove?”

“that you aren’t suspicious.”

he pauses to record.

my journal saved me from suspicion at previous trials. i am thankful for my own foresight.

2:50 pm, i read to the room my passage from -- he flips back to check -- page 107, concerning my meeting with aimi on the previous night.

he hasn’t read, yet, but he is going to. one can fudge a little bit here and there.

“aimi and i discuss some of the other students. we talk about hanabi, mostly, and aimi embarrasses me thoroughly, as if i haven’t gone through that enough. the dorms are quiet, but it isn’t late enough for people to be asleep. we discuss this quietness next.”

hanabi pouts, no doubt expecting those embarrassing comments that asahi had been forced to read out loud in the first trial.

asahi knew better than to put that down in this passage. he left out the italian, too.

“what time was that meeting, again?”

“scusami?”

“the meeting, what time was it at?”

“ah, um...” he flips back a page, stares at the words i am suddenly very nervous about what is about to happen. “9:32 pm. i left shortly before the nighttime announcement.”

“huh?” maaya looks up. “no, i was speaking to aimi then. she came into the dining hall to get a snack.”

asahi coughs. “are you suggesting i recorded something incorrectly?”

“no, but--there was a clock in the dining hall. and i told shigeru about the meeting during the investigation.”

shigeru nods. “what did you have recorded before and after that? we can see where it sits in the timeline.”

see page 101-6 and page 111-20.

“i didn’t take notes during those times. i was alone. i don’t write notes about myself.”

#tbt.

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stone-man-warrior · 4 years ago

Text

January 28, 2021: 7:38 pm:

===================================================

https://twitter.com/zachjourno/status/1354832760498761738

It’s about her coat. Has a lapel radius where the center is way to the right out of view, off of the coat, however, Nancy’s right breast (money) is located about one quarter of the circumference of the radial measurement of the lapel towards the outer part of the radial line. That arranges the third button down located at about nipple central of the left breast.

Here, below, we see the contact person for whatever money is to be doled out from Pelosi’s backdoor. Quarterflash on the pull down of the Zack Purser Brown Twitter mention, and you have “Right kind of love, from the Brown Backdoor Purse”.

(Use “Breast Preference Perspective” to know left from right on this one, as a guide in dark places)

Quarterflash: Right Kind of Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms3D5UnYu-I

youtube

Quarterflash

Right Kind of Love

Babe, your love surrounds me but never gives me half a chance I need a little heart and affection ‘cause love needs a little romance And we’ll never ever make it if you’re pushin’ me You gotta back up baby or I might leave You gotta show me, hold me, and let love breath tonight Give me the right kind of love, baby Give me the right kind of love Give me the right kind of love And I’ll be yours tonight I’ll be yours Baby, you want some kind of promise, well, nothin’ is forever these days Lovers come and go, friends bought and sold, everything blows away You know everything is changin’, baby, overnight You gotta hold on to love but not too tight You gotta see it, see it’s not so long but alright Give me the right kind of love, baby Give me the right kind of love Give me the right kind of love And I’ll be yours tonight I’ll be yours Just tell me that love is right and look me in the eye I’ve gotta know your heart tonight before I give away a piece of my life Oh! Give me the right kind of love, baby Give me the right kind of love Give me the right kind of love, baby Give me the right kind of love Oh! Give me the right kind of love, baby Give me the right kind of love Give me the right kind of love, baby Give me the right kind of love Give me the right kind of love, baby Give me the right kind of love Give me the right kind of love, baby Give me the right kind of love . .

Bonus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaTA_PoayFc

youtube

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Look on Twitter over the past three to five days on major network and government accounts to see more introductory set-up work done that leads to “Guardians of the Gallaxy” for feeding the baby that is the Canadian terror army led by SAG from US congress, and look on Twitter today for “Mom” stories that are there to help guide terror funding accountants to where the Breast is at.

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I am being prevented from making these important additions to this terror comm

There was a Tweet from BBC news UK news UK about an archbishop Martin. The tweet is gone from Twitter and the stole screenshot during the hack session, so, I was referring to a BBC news tweet there, I can‘t show you because there is no one watching the baby, and no help has come.

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9:54 pm:

I am being throttled. Very difficult to post this information.

Tenth try:

Hacker deleted the screen shot that goes here, it’s gone.

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1-29-2021: 12:10 am:

https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1354956015620542467

There is the missing tweet from BBC news UK.

I still don‘t have the screenshot I made while being hacked in effort to preserve the work I had done to make the additional information in the Pelosi Breast Fund information.

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It’s taken more than an hour to arrange this post, and try to get it posted while the Centurylink hacker is there live preventing me from making the posts.

You should be seeing some Twitter stories, all have airplanes or a baby, and explanation of Gas Money in the photos above.

That little blue “Save” button was being made not to work. The contents of my screenshot folder was going all kinds of crazy while attempting to put the information that was lost back together with screenshots made before I had to turn off the computer and do many scans with Norton that does not work.

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10:50 pm:

Please refer to previous post from the past day or two featuring Mitt Romney and something I described as a “Two-Pointer” for finding more information about where this sudden influx of Democrat terror funding money may have been sourced.

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10:56 pm:

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1354862075311497217

“Boris goes to Scotland”

There are some videos of this event where Boris is featured wearing a “nanny apron“ and is all adorned in protective wear.

What you need to see, or imagine to make the communication heard, understood, is that he is at the Boutique where the nitrous and other poison gasses are being made. He is symbolically “holding the baby”, the one that is going to poop once that money gets used the way he and his US Congressional cohorts are arranging that it will be used, for making poison Corona gasses.

He is prepared not to get shit faced when the baby finally does go.

OSHA approved nanny wear.

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11:06 pm:

Today’s computer hack came with a new pop-up window, a small one, (not shown), It was too scary, I deleted it fast.

About 2 inches wide, 1 inch tall, was there on that desert scene covering the hills.

It demanded that I “Activate Cloud Backup”. There was an “Activate Cloud” button, and there was a “X” to close the window, so I used the “X”.

That one happened twice today, and was accompanied by that other, bigger pop-up that says “Create strong passwords”. I closed both, and ran some scans, but the software is fake, it never finds anything wrong with the computer. Twenty years and it has never once solved a security issue, always says “no threats detected” after a scan.

The Symantec company has been hijacked by the same people who took over Centurylink Internet and Telephone company.

no one is safe to use the internet, the software only keeps the computer working so that the terror army can manipulate and control the users, and to collect as much personal information as is possible, while hunting down everyone’s contact lists, or email recipients when we send notes to bosses, family, and friends.

The hacker tonight was inside of my screenshots folder at the same time I was in my screenshots folder, I could see the files as they were being moved around inside of the folder as the targeted screenshots were deleted. I estimate the bastard erased three to five of the screenshots I had made within the immediate time prior to seeing those screenshots all move around inside the folder when the Tumblr “Save” button would not function, and I was trying to piece the information back together.

Please send help.

The poison gasses are more powerful than they have ever been. The gasses make it nearly impossible to stay awake, eyes are very heavy, want to sleep all day, and that is what happened, I slept all day mostly.

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11:27 pm:

Also, the makeshift blue tooth meter I made a few years ago makes some noise every day, usually in short bursts that last about a half hour at a time, but today was a solid high reading on the meter... it does not do much, it can show intensity of a signal is all it can do, today was intense on the meter all day. It’s quiet right now, only a small beep every once in while.

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11:35 pm:

I have story about a communication device I found many years ago. It was a small thing, about the size of a walnut, was a shape like almost a lima bean, and lt looked like a small rock. That thing I kept until it was stolen by terror intruders who found it on my desk. But I had it for a couple of days about in 2006. The sounds that came of that were of a group of people who were trapped, and sceeming. I heard one person describe what was happening, and the description was of a roofers hot tar trailer, the kind that has wheels, and there is hot tar in the bucket. The description was that there was a man standing on the bucket, while some people where on the ground around the trailer, leaning against the trailer of hot tar as the man was on top of it. They were saying that small amounts of the tar were spilling, or being thrown onto those people who were on the ground. That was the screaming that was coming from that communication device that looked like a small rock. I was glad that the terror bastards stole it because the sounds were horrible for those few days. There was no way turn it off. I have seen two of those kinds of rock kidney been shaped things, but not lately.

0 notes

prorevenge · 6 years ago

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Manager stealing candy and medication from my desk, did you know they made chocolated laxatives?

Like most 9-5 cubicle prisoners, most people kept Tylenol and candy in our desk drawers. The company had a policy that any medications either prescription or not had to be locked in the drawer when you were not at your desk. Fair enough and this keeps your candy safe as well!

Well one issue with that is the manager has a universal key for the desks for managerial reasons. Often times we had to have someone's desk opened to get out files and what not, and it was never an issue until the manager started just going through the desks at random and taking what she called "Candy Taxes". She would take her favorite things and leave the rest, now taking one or two pieces wouldn't become an issue however she was filling the bowl on her desk every few days by pilfering everyone else's.

Another large issue was a few people had prescription painkillers and during "Candy Taxes" some people thought some were missing. HR and legal got involved and suddenly policy was NO MEDICATION in the office, had to walk all the way to your car to take meds. Great, one manager obviously stealing meds and candy but everyone gets punished. There was a memo about asking before taking candy, but that's it.

So everyone is pissed off now at the manager because some people have actual medication they need to take for various things. For 2 months we decide to pretty much do nothing in an attempt to get her fired, our productivity dropped around 70%. When we had to speak to HR about it we told them she was continuing to steal candy and that she's making it impossible to work effectively but nothing happens.

A handful of us were tired of this and started applying to other jobs and were very obviously taking half days to interview. Then several people put in their notices at the same time, same meeting. A team of around 35 people just had 8 people put in notice, this continued for the week with 19 people total putting in two weeks notice during the same work week.

Well a few of the people on the way out decided it would be great to get her back for all the stealing and just being terrible. Here comes Chocolated Laxatives, everyone involved emailed her directly and saved the emails telling her to not take any form of candy or anything out of their desks. Then we all went to a long lunch for out last day in the office since Friday became our last day for a good number of us.

Our lunch started at 1 and we didn't show back up until 4. She was no where to be found upon returning, we assumed she was going to try and get the last word in and try and harass us for taking a long lunch on our last day and refusing to finish up the things she needed done. We head to our desks and apparently the emails we sent to cover our own asses was taken as a challenge. She stole literally every piece of candy and laxative we had in our desks.

A few people that stayed and worked through lunch told us what happened, almost immediately when we left she grabbed her keys and started looting our desks and went back to her office to sit there happy with herself and eat a bunch of the candy she had just stolen.

Well about 45 minutes to an hour later she headed to the bathroom in a hurry and never came back, we finished up our last hour and headed to HR to turn in our keys and badges. A few of the HR people knew why we were all leaving and wanted a final exit interview so they could document her. We do just that and hold nothing back, somehow nearly half of the department putting in two weeks notice didn't cause issues until the day we were leaving.

Monday comes along and a few of us are at the same company starting and at about 10AM we begin getting calls from our previous companies HR department. Wouldn't you know it, little miss thief reported us to HR for having medication in our desks but here's the kicker. She admitted to stealing the "candy" and showed HR the emails we sent her. Apparently telling her NOT to steal our stuff "set her up".

In conclusion previous HR just wanted the facts, then she was fired and escorted from the building.

(source) (story by thrown82626728)

#prorevenge #story #by thrown82626728 #last10 #revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro

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thewidehelp · 5 years ago

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How To Get Refund on Etsy | 1-833-200-4456 | Etsy Customer Service

Both shoppers and retailers want to recognize Etsy refund policy if they desire to avoid disagreeable surprises. Yet the system is immensely complicated, filled with one what-if after another. Who needs to spend hours analyzing through each and every detail?

We decided to spend the time reading how Etsy refunds work so you don’t have to. Here’s the short version:

How Big Are Etsy Refunds on Returns?

You can nearly usually get a correct refund on an item you return to Etsy. However, returns are difficult earlier than we even get into the refund process. I advise analyzing our Etsy return policy article first.

Returned on Time and As Received

Good news: You will normally get a full refund for items returned on time and in their authentic circumstance (as in, you did not open the box).

Bad news: You may also need to pay the return shipping, maybe alongside a restocking price and taxes.

“Etsy Return Policy Explained” covers how long you have to return an object to Etsy—usually 30 days.

Returned Late and As Received

It’s no longer always the quit of the world if you’ve long gone previous the return window. If the object is still in precisely the situation you acquired it, you might also be capable to return it for 80% of the price.

Returned Opened

Physical copies of movies and music (such as documents or DVDs) can be back for a 50% refund. When you add in the cost of the shipping, restocking, and so on, this refund can be too small to be really worth it. The lesson: don’t strive to use Etsy like it is Netflix in 1997. We have streaming now.

If you open software or a video game, you will get no refund at all, even if you return it. Make certain you take a look at these system requirements first!

For insurance policies on other opened items, see our Etsy returns article.

Returned Damaged or Used

Etsy will supply you with a full refund if they are at fault for any damage to an item. If you’re at fault, though, then you’ll get no extra than 50% of what you paid, and frequently less. This applies to whatever that you’ve in reality used or that has lost parts.

For more information, see Etsy’s About Refunds page.

How Do Third-Party Seller Refunds on Returns Work?

If the object you sold came from a third-party seller as an alternative than Etsy itself, then the seller will have to supply at least as suitable a refund as Etsy would. However, they can figure out to provide better return coverage than Etsy’s if they want.

Always contact your vendor first. They can also determine to give you a full refund barring requiring a return or in any other case makes the method simpler for you.

Note to sellers: Providing a satisfying refund coverage is an excellent way to get a superb Etsy seller rating. Having simple policies will also reduce the time you spend on consumer carrier nearly as successfully as integrating Etsy with an expert helpdesk.

When Will I Get My Refund?

You have to wait through three steps before you'll see your cashback: shipping, Etsy processing, and price processing.

1. Shipping

Etsy normally does not start processing the refund on a return until they have acquired the item. How lengthy that takes will rely on shipping. In most cases, they should acquire your object inside 2 weeks.

Exception: Instant Refunds

Some gadgets qualify for instant refunds. These refunds can be provided as present card stability immediately. Alternatively, if you used a credit card, you can get the quantity again on your card in three to 5 days, barring ready for the item to get again to Etsy first.

2. Etsy Processing

Once Etsy receives your return, it typically takes them three to 5 business days to method the return and provokes a refund.

3. Payment Processing

You may now not get the money as quickly as Etsy sends out the refund. Your financial group (such as your savings card provider or bank) may additionally take its candy time registering the cash as returned.

Credit Cards

If you made your buy the usage of a deposit card, it can take between 3 and 5 enterprise days for your card provider to manner your refund and display it on your account. That is until you used a pre-paid savings card. It can take up to 30 days to get your money returned on one of those!

Gift Cards

Etsy gift card refunds are instant and provided as a present card balance.

Combined Credit Card and Gift Card Payment

If you made the fee partly with a savings card and partly with a present card, you can have it all refunded right away as a gift card balance.

Alternatively, you can cut up the refund. The unique present card quantity then gets refunded at once as a present card balance. The quantity you paid with the savings card must show up on your card account in 3 to 5 business days.

Checking Accounts and Debit Cards

It can take up to 10 business days for your bank to procedure a checking account or debit card refund.

Reward Points

If you use Etsy's Shop with Points program to make purchases with points from your savings card or any other reward program, the refund will be furnished as the identical sort of reward points. It takes up to 5 business days for the factors to grow to be available.

So, How Long Do I Have to Wait?

Combining a minimal of 2 days of transport with the processing times for Etsy and your monetary institution, here’s how long it may want to take you to get a refund from the time your return enters the mail machine to the time the money seems again in your account:

Instant refund (bypass wait for return transport and Etsy processing):

Gift card: zero calendar days.

Credit card: 3–5 calendar days.

Standard refund:

Gift card: 5–21 calendar days.

Reward points: 5–28 calendar days.

Credit card or gift/credit combination: 8–28 calendar days.

Checking account or debit card: 5–35 calendar days.

Pre-paid credit card: 5–51 calendar days.

How Will I Get My Money Back?

You can nearly always have the cash despatched lower back to the method you used to make your purchase. You can also choose to have it credited to an Etsy present card in many cases. In fact, Etsy will often default to presenting the refund as a gift card, so be certain to alternate this if it’s now not what you want.

What If the Seller Makes a Mistake—or I Do?

In addition to refunding returns, a vendor may additionally cancel an order and refund you immediately. Here are a few conditions in which that may additionally happen:

The object you ordered is out of inventory or them in any other case can’t ship it to you.

You request that the vendor cancel an order before they ship it.

You enter an invalid address.

What If the Seller Really Screws Up?

This third-party seller sent solely one of the two items I ordered, however, gave me a full refund for the lacking object when I contacted them.

What if the seller makes a mistake and your order arrives broken or incorporates the wrong item? What if they never even ship it to you or lie about its condition? What if you ship the item back and they in no way give you your refund?

Don’t sweat it. In these cases, you’re included beneath the Etsy A-to-z Guarantee.

If you come upon any problems like these with something eligible for Etsy, then their customer service crew will take care of your situation directly. This is because they had been in charge of transport and returns. My personal experience has been that Etsy handles these conditions extraordinarily properly and you have to have no trouble getting your cashback.

In order to file an A-to-z Guarantee claim against a third-party seller, you should first contact them and supply them a threat to redeem themselves. You can then file the claim if they don’t respond to you within 2 days or they refuse to clear up the problem.

Learn how to file an A-to-z Guarantee claim here.

Summary

Etsy refund policy has masses of the great print and can be hard to absolutely recognize if you’re no longer a lawyer. However, the great majority of transactions will observe the policies mentioned here. Only request refunds when it’s lifelike to do so and you have to in no way have any trouble getting your cashback.

#etsy refund #etsy customer service #etsy Phone Number

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thechasefiles · 5 years ago

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The Chase Files Daily News 29/11/2019

Good Morning #realdreamchasers. Here is your daily news cap for Friday, November 29th, 2019. There is a lot to read and digest so take your time. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS), Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Weekend Nation Newspaper (WN).

HERITAGE BODY: DEVELOPERS MISLED US – The Government’s advisor on the preservation of places of historic, architectural and archaeological interest has withdrawn support for construction of the Hyatt Hotel Resort based on its latest design. An upset President of the Barbados National Trust (BNT) Peter Stevens is accusing the developers of misleading the trust into believing that once additional land space was acquired by Government the height and overall scale of the hotel would be reduced. Stevens said the trust had therefore agreed to the construction of the revised Hyatt based on those objectives, only now to find his organisation had been “railroaded”. He said the BNT, which also advises Government on places of ecological importance or natural beauty, is also retracting an earlier statement of support for the demolition of the Liquidation Centre – a listed building – to provide an additional 30,000 square feet of land. “The trust now feels we have been in a sense, railroaded into believing this was going to produce a lower height. Instead, the main structure, the bulk of it has been broken into four towers. One of those towers is taller than the previous Centric Hyatt, now at 196 feet,” he told Barbados TODAY. The BNT head also described the new design as boring, stating that the developers failed to do their homework. “It is like a bunch of 1970s offices that have been put together. It provides no architectural progress to Bridgetown. Yet we are told the design is reflective of the architectural heritage of Bridgetown; and my staff and a bunch of other people cannot see this. There is nothing to recommend the architectural style. The previous Centric was much better,” he declared. Stating that while the national trust can only make recommendations to Government and had no legal authority to force its hands, he is warning that the present design of the Hyatt – if approved – will privatize certain portions of the water with the construction of piers for restaurants. He also said that the revised Hyatt will dominate the sky scape of Bridgetown by even overwhelming the Central Bank, the Treasury Building and the old National Insurance Building. Stevens told Barbados TODAY the BNT had been willing to sacrifice the Liquidation Centre in order that the planned 19-storey Hyatt could be reduced. “But the developers have now decided that having been given a larger plot, they are going to build a bigger hotel. Not only that. They have gone from an open-type operation…they decided to go to the Ziva type which is an all-inclusive…and in the Barbadian point-of-view, all-exclusive,” he stressed. Stevens expressed concern that the all-inclusive would cut out many local residents or small businesses and prevent them from benefitting from the hotel’s operations. He is also worried that even though the beach would not be privatized, it would become uncomfortable for ordinary Barbadians to use it as a result of “these big businesses” that are set near the sea, The national trust boss revealed that his organisation has submitted its recommendations to the Government placing on record its opposition to the construction of the revised Hyatt which he said are now being assessed. Efforts to reach developer Mark Maloney tonight proved futile. (BT)

D-DAY COMING ON SANDALS – The $840 million Sandals Beaches Resort development at Heywoods, St Peter, remains stalled, but Minister of Tourism Kerrie Symmonds hinted on Wednesday this would not continue for much longer. Government and the developer reached a stalemate over the issue of exclusive concessions granted for the project. While delivering the Budget last year, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley had said: “We have reached a difficult moment in the negotiations. Barbados welcomes the Beaches project, but it cannot be at any price.” In a statement from Sandals Resorts International, chairman Butch Stewart said in response that the stalling of the Beaches development was “equally disappointing for us”. “We wish to clarify that we were not asking for anything more than what was promised,” he said. “The Beaches project . . . would have represented not only our largest single one-time development but also the largest long-term hotel project in Barbados.” (WN)

BUY IN BIM, RETAILERS TELL SHOPPERS – Praising Government’s announcement of a $1,300 reverse tax credit for people earning less than 25,000 a year, the former chamber of commerce president and Managing Director of Abed and Company Limited, said the measure is only fair considering the increased burden placed on taxpayers. Abed said: “I understand the rationale behind it. “The cost of living has increased because of added taxes on petrol, land and water rates, which are all indirect taxes. “Government recognises that it has a responsibility to persons earning under a certain threshold that they are no worse off with the introduction of these new rates as they were prior to it. “From my perspective as a retailer, it comes at a great time, where there is more disposable income in the marketplace and no different to my competitors, we are hoping that a lot of that remains here and is spent in the local market place.” Abed said the months of October, November and December account for 70 per cent of retail income nationally and indicated the next few weeks would be critical. He added: “I don’t have to tell you if we have a good season, how well that will be reflected in 2020 and equally if we have a poor season, the ramifications as we go into 2020. “So it is an important time of year; there’s no question.” The businessman is among dozens of others who are preparing or have already started offering massive sales for Black Friday, which traditionally occurs on the Friday after the North American Thanksgiving Holiday. Having adopted the tradition retailers offering clothing, electronics, appliances and even vehicles have lowered their prices, extended their opening hours, beefed up security and launched large advertising campaigns ahead of the event. Abed explained this year is his company’s third year participating in the craze. “Generally speaking, Black Friday has become a very important part of the calendar, the lead up to Christmas, and consumers expect savings because it is so heavily advertised on cable TV. In addition, retailers want every opportunity they can to offer their merchandise to consumers in a way that resonates with them, which can obviously translate to sales,” Abed said. Some sales extended throughout the week leading up to black Friday, while other retailers simply could not afford to offer the massive savings for longer than two days. “These events have taught us that three things are very important. We need to advertise in a manner that reaches as many consumers as possible. We use every media including social media that is available to us. We need to ensure that the safety of our staff and our customers is met at the highest level. We need to ensure consumers are given as much time as possible to enjoy the savings. That’s why we go into two days, do the extended opening hours and we do it again on Sunday,” explained the businessman. (BT)

EMIRATES AIRLINES IN TALKS WITH GOVERNMENT – Barbados has begun talks with several African and Middle Eastern airlines in a bid to bring travellers from fresh markets year-round, Minister of Tourism and International Transport Kerrie Symmonds has said. While divulging few details, he identified the Dubai-based Emirates, ranked by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) as the world’s fourth-largest airline by scheduled revenue passenger-kilometres flown. It’s the second-largest freight carrier based on scheduled freight tonne-kilometres flown. He declared he intends to travel to Africa as part of an effort to diversify the base from which the island currently draws its visitors, suggesting that this was one way of making Barbados an all-year destination. He said: “In January of next year I will be in Africa because we are trying to break new ground into certain strategic targeted areas in Africa.” The Minister promised more information at a later date. The discussions were currently with “many” airlines at this stage and officials were still in the process of coming up with likely routes, he added. Symmonds said: “A part of the reason I am going to be in Africa next year is because we are finalizing the logistics for a route that will take us to Ghana and also Nairobi. “But I can tell you the people who have expressed interest. “The Kenyan Government has expressed interest and they have their own airline. “Equally, we have had discussions with Qatar, which is an ongoing process and I really don’t want to make announcements, but there are discussions with Emirates at the same time so that we have to see where this goes. “So we are seriously interested now in supporting the increasing demand for the Barbados experience and the Barbados products and opportunity for business, by having an airport that can lend capacity.” Acknowledging that the aircraft would need to be filled on both legs for any scheduled or chartered flights, he said it was possible then for Barbados to be a hub by “taking along the rest of the Eastern Caribbean with us on this journey” thus making it easier for the two-way traffic. Currently, the UK makes up the bulk of the tourists visiting Barbadian shores, accounting for about 35 per cent of total arrivals. This is followed by the US at 30 per cent, Europe and Canada together representing 20 per cent, and the remaining 15 per cent is shared between CARICOM, Latin America and other markets. Pointing to Brexit developments in the UK and European markets, Symmonds said international events could easily send the island’s bread-and-butter industry into turmoil, and therefore there was an urgent need to ensure new markets were secured. He also disclosed that the twice-weekly COPA Airlines flights between Bridgetown and Panama City could soon be increased to three. Symmonds said: “Based on current trends, we believe that we can move to thrice weekly in short order.” “We have been doing rather well out of Panama. We feel there is a lot of traction to be had for a number of very good reasons. “The major one is the heritage aspect of it felt on strongly on the part of Barbadians because a lot of Barbadians can trace parts of their family going to Panama to work on the Panama Canal, and equally there is a heritage aspect on the other side because a lot of Panamanians are very keenly aware of the contribution Barbados and Barbadians made. “So there is mutual degree of interest.” He said it was with this in mind that his ministry would be working closely with other ministries to find ways of “deepening the interest” through “sporting and cultural exchanges”. Symmonds said the We Gatherin’ 2020 would also serve as a gateway to encourage Barbadians living in Panama and Panamanians to come to Barbados more frequently for business and leisure. He added: “We have people from Panama who have expressed interest in coming to Barbados because it is kind of a reunion with family. So that is the reason, looking at the current volume of traffic, it is a likelihood we can make a compelling case for there to be a third flight.” Symmonds, who pointed out that people were also using the Bridgetown to Panama City route “strategically” to get to other countries and avoid going through the usually busy Miami airport gateway. (BT)

MORE TANKS COMING TO BWA – Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams said Government was in the process of acquiring five custom-built water tank trucks that should be on island by the end of April 2020. He said the trucks were being paid for by grant funding from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), at a cost of over US$350,000. The cash-strapped BWA currently has ten operating trucks. “We have five tankers coming early next year, [between] March and the end of April next year. These things have to be purpose-built,” Abrahams told reporters on Thursday during a media conference at the Ministry of Water Resources on Country Road, St Michael. An apologetic Abrahams said he understood the challenges being faced by residents as the island continues to witness drought conditions that had been compounded by recent water outages. He said it was therefore more critical that the BWA has additional water trucks to adequately meet the needs of residents. He explained that some of the BWA’s current trucks are problem-plagued because they were not built for the “bumpy and rough” roads in Barbados, making it very difficult for them to even get to some areas and critically those areas more in need of water delivery. “The trucks have to be a certain size to get in certain areas, so you are having problems with a number of the trucks so these [custom-built trucks] have to be spec properly,” he said. “We have some older trucks that have been working perfectly. So we have gone back to the manufacturer of the older trucks and we have asked them to build some with the same specs for us,” he said, adding that Government was not after a “quick-fix” that would then result in another replacement in the short-term. He said the BWA’s board was also in the process of sourcing some “stand-in trucks, whether it is by rent, gift or swap, in the interim, from other Caribbean countries that may have some redundancy”. Without giving details, Abrahams also gave an indication that Government was on the verge of reaching a deal with Innotech, who had provided services to the BWA under a special water tank programme, starting several years ago. “We are about to close off our negotiations with Innotech that stock up a number of things including the tank programme,” he said. “As part of the settlement with Innotech, we are going to have access to two desalination plants – one is going to go in St Lucy and the other in the area of Joe’s River – to try to put some more water into St Joseph,” said Abrahams. However, he made it clear that it was not an ideal situation to rely on majority desalination plants for the island’s water supply since these would cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars per year to operate. He also pointed out that work was ongoing to get additional water supply from Groves, St George to a new reservoir for storage in Stewart Hill, St John, which will then be used to supply parts of St Andrew and parts of St Joseph. At the same time, Abrahams is urging residents to install water tanks and store the commodity. “When we ask you to store water we are not talking about filling up the lemonade jug or the mauby bottle. You need to be thinking of five gallons per person, per day, and you should ideally have a supply for seven days during the hurricane season,” he warned. “The things we can control we are trying to fix. We are trying to fix pipes. We have ordered more water tanker trucks. We are going to go with the personal tank programmes, but at the end of the day if the rain continues to not fall what happens thereafter is outside of our control,” said Abrahams. (BT)

PUMPING STATION STILL UNDER REPAIR – Residents of St Philip and several parts of Christ Church can expect more disruptions in water service next week as the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) continues repair work at the Hampton Pumping Station in St Philip that was crippled by recent power outages. The BWA suffered extensive damage to its equipment last week following an islandwide blackout that caused further disruption to the water supply. Yesterday, Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams told the media all ten pumps and the attached variable frequency drives (described as the brains of the pump) at Hampton went down as a result of the outages. He revealed that it would cost $200 000 to $300 000 to replace all the damaged equipment. He added ten new variable frequency drives had been ordered. In terms of seeking compensation from the Barbados Light & Power Co. Ltd for the damage, Abrahams said Government had not yet discussed that. (WN)

COSTLY REPAIRS NEEDED AT PUMPING STATION – Two days after reporting that its Hampton pumping station was back on line, the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) says it will have to spend some $300,000 in equipment to restore the facility, which it says was damaged mainly as a result of the power outage experienced last Monday. At the same time, officials say they are unable to give any guarantee that those who have been experiencing water outages for the past ten days would not continue to, leading up to the Christmas period.During a media conference at the Ministry of Water Resources’ Country Road, St Michael office on Thursday, officials said that when the island-wide blackout happened on Monday all ten of the pumps at the Hampton pumping station went down. From left, Director of Engineering Charles Leslie, Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams and BWA General Manager Keithroy Halliday. Six variable frequency drives (the brains of the pumps) and two pumps were eventually repaired by basically carrying out patchwork, taking parts from one piece of equipment to fix another. And while this has made the pumping station operational, producing the usual six million gallons of water, it is now doing so without the redundancy (extra capacity). Director of Engineering Charles Leslie said further repair work would have to be done in the coming days, starting Saturday. “We still have some damages to repair at the Hampton pumping station. We have a cable to replace, we have a spare pump to install at the facility and we have two additional drives that we have to repair as well,” Leslie told reporters. “I have not done a calculation of the cost, but my estimation is that is between $200,000 and $300,000 in equipment and parts that we have to replace at that facility,” he added. He explained that contact was made with the Brazil manufacturers of the equipment and they have agreed to make engineers from Panama available to help since the instructions for the equipment are all in Spanish. That technical team should be in Barbados by Saturday and would immediately start to work. “So it will be over the course of the next week we will be doing periodic shut offs to do the repairs to the station and try to get it back up to full capacity,” said Leslie. He explained: “We anticipate that on Monday we will do a shut down to do a replacement of the (160 ft) cable that we have not been able to replace, as well as to replace a pump in that well so that we have some sort of redundancy.” That station pumps about 50 per cent of the island’s water supply, and supplies water to Christ Church and most of St Philip. It will “take some time” before the Hampton facility is operating at full capacity, officials have pointed out. Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams said the situation, which was compounded by a collapsed floor at the Hampton station last Thursday and ongoing drought conditions, caused “a world of problems” for the utility. Apologizing for the “hurt” that people were experiencing, Abrahams said the BWA was doing all it could now to address the problem. He said ten new variable frequency drives were ordered because “we don’t intend for this to happen to us again”. Abrahams said the BWA has not yet estimated the impact the electricity outage had on its operations, and a decision on whether it would be seeking any compensation from the electricity company was not yet made. “Right now our main focus is to restore normalcy to the situation. We have not discussed the issue of liability at this point . . . My principal focus at this point is to get the Hampton back up to capacity,” he said. “As a result of outages all ten of the pumps and variable frequency drives at Hampton went down. Even when the electricity came back up they had some issues with tripping at the pole, so not related directly to the outages, and that cost some violent surges which knocked out the equipment again, causing major damage,” said Abrahams. (BT)

UNION WANTS ANSWERS ON FIRED SSA WORKER – The National Union of Public Workers is demanding urgent action from management of the Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) to reverse what union leaders believe is the unfair dismissal of an employee who was on remand at Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Dodds. And, amid ongoing tension over the terms and conditions under which SSA employees are being asked to work, the NUPW’s Acting General Secretary Delcia Burke has cautioned Government against using deceitful tactics to restructure the company. On Thursday, Burke told Barbados TODAY a man employed as a lorry loader at the SSA was placed on remand by the court, after being charged with a criminal offence. As such, his lawyer notified the employee’s direct supervisor at the SSA. But when he reported for work after being granted bail some months later the employee was verbally informed that his services were no longer required because he was not at work. The union leader told Barbados TODAY the NUPW has since challenged the decision based on previous court decisions, which determined that if an employer is informed that an employee has been incarcerated and could not attend work, they could not be dismissed. “He was just terminated by word of mouth. They told him to collect the green paper to take to the NIS [National Insurance Scheme] and he did not take it and so they posted it. It did not have any reason for dismissal. That part of the form remained blank. It did not say why he was dismissed,” Burke explained. Minister of the Environment and National Beautification Trevor Prescod told Barbados TODAY he was not in a position to address the matter. However, after a month of continuous attempts to secure a meeting to hear the man’s case, Burke said it appeared the NUPW was receiving the run around from Government. “We received a letter from Sanitation informing us that our correspondence is with their lawyer. Nobody has been following any steps and it has been so long since this man has been dismissed without any charges and without a hearing,” she said. When asked to disclose the nature of the criminal offence that the ex-employee is accused of committing, Burke would only describe it as a private matter, which “could not interfere with his ability to perform his duties at the SSA”. Burke said Government may be attempting to prove a point regarding the extended deadlock with workers over proposed changes to their workweek. “I don’t think this is only about this one man. There is a grievance procedure and a disciplinary procedure at the SSA and it has not been followed,” she added, while saying that Government would be given another week to address the matter before the union engages its membership. “We are giving them enough time; the letter is with their lawyer for their lawyer to tell them what the position is. This has been about three weeks the letter was with their lawyer and they are supposed to get back to us. By the end of next week, if we don’t have a meeting then we will meet with our members and engage them on it,” she said. (BT)

LAWRENCE T GAY CLOSES AGAIN – Mystery still surrounds the source of the environmental problem that caused the Lawrence T. Gay Memorial Primary School to be closed for the third time this week. Yesterday, the Spooner’s Hill St Michael school was closed within an hour of the bell ringing to start classes. It also ended early on Monday and Wednesday. In a statement, the Ministry of Education said the school was shut down due to a low turnout of teaching staff. It remains closed today to allow a strong odour affecting students and staff to dissipate over the next three days. The ministry explained that the odour, emanating from outside the compound, had been a discomfort to several people in one section of the school on Wednesday and classes were halted early. Officials from the Ministry of Labour, the Environmental Health Department and the Warrens Polyclinic visited and engaged staff and students who complained of itchy skin and burning eyes. (WN)

TEACHER, STUDENTS FIND FREDERICK SMITH RESUMPTION ROUGH – The return to classes at the Frederick Smith Secondary School has been difficult for management, teachers and students at the institution. And, since the stabbing death of student, Temario Holder in early November, some teachers are reportedly still on sick leave, says Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union President Mary Redman. Redman indicated she met with teachers earlier this week and they are still trying to restore a sense of normalcy to the institution. “It’s not easy at all but this is all a process. Everybody is trying to find a way to deal with it at all different levels. It is new and very difficult at the same time,” said Redman. She added: “Some teachers are still on leave. I can’t say definitively how many…but the ministry has been cooperative with those who are not ready to return. The Minister made it clear that those who need extra time will be accommodated.” And, as life at the school returns to normal, the BSTU President said the union is not resting on its laurels. Earlier this week, the president delivered a list of short and medium term recommendations, which she hopes education officials will use immediately in the fight against school violence. The 34 recommendations from the BSTU, include 22 suggestions, which were submitted to former Minister of Education, Ronald Jones. The other 12 were agreed on during a union meeting on November 12th and submitted in a letter to the ministry dated 22nd November. “Both the short and medium term recommendations need to be thought through and things put in place because we don’t have any long term. There are all things that a process can start to address. Some of them have already been addressed to some extent, because some were submitted almost two years ago,” Redman told Barbados TODAY. Some of the more revolutionary changes include demands that students who commit offences under the Offences Against the Person Act be taken to court immediately. It also calls for serious penalties for gambling on school premises, assaulting teachers and requires mandatory reporting of incidences of violence to the Ministry of Education. (BT)

MURDER #44 - Thirty-nine-year-old Ken McDonald Yearwood of River Bay, St Lucy died after being shot in the head police said. Police public relations officer Inspector (ag) Rodney Inniss confirmed that the man was shot around 12:55 p.m. He was pronounced dead by medical personnel at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. This incident brings the tally of murders for the year to 44. (WN)

ST. JOSEPH MAN WARNED TO STAY AWAY – A 38-year-old man was granted $5,000 bail in the Bridgetown Magistrates’ Court today. There was no objection to bail when Pedro Lamar Caddle, of Bissex Housing Area, St Joseph appeared before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant. Caddle pleaded not guilty to threatening Michael Hinds on November 22 allegedly with the words “If I had my gun I would blow off you head and I waiting for the right place and time to shoot you.” The accused, who is represented by attorneys-at-law Angella Mitchell-Gittens and Martie Garnes, secured his bail with one surety. He returns before the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court on April 8, 2020. In the meantime he must stay away from Hinds and report to the District ‘A’ Police Station every Monday before noon with valid identification. (BT)

GUILTY OF MANSLAUGHTER – Ryan Omar Samuel has been found guilty of killing Charley Dume. While the 12-member jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on murder after over four hours of deliberations, ten jurors agreed that Samuel, of Grape Hall, St Lucy was guilty of manslaughter, in the shooting death of 25-year-old Charley Dume on April 26, 2014. “We the jury find the defendant guilty of manslaughter,” the foreman informed the No. 2 Supreme Court moments after lengthy deliberations. The 10-2 majority verdict which was delivered around 7:44 p.m. brought to a close the month-long trial. Justice Randall Worrell then summed up the evidence over two days and handed over the case to the jury for its deliberations around 3:46 this afternoon. The three men and nine women returned around 6:02 p.m. and informed the judge that they had yet to reach consensus on the murder charge. Justice Worrell gave them directions on the majority verdict for manslaughter and again explained that all 12 jurors had to agree or disagree on the charge of murder. The jurors retired to their room for a second time around 6:09 p.m. Thirty-five minutes later – 6:44 p.m. – the court marshal approached the judge with a note prompting the call for the jury to return, which they did at 6:53 p.m. It was then that the foreman informed Justice Worrell that they needed more time to deliberate and wanted a read over of the evidence in chief given by lead investigator Sergeant Michael Ifill, especially the parts from when Samuel was picked up from the Bathsheba beach house and before he was questioned at the District ‘A’ Police Station. However, before doing so the judge informed the jury that they had reached the three hours of deliberations mandated by law. He explained that to go forward the majority of the jurors had to consent. The foreman responded saying all the members of the panel wanted to continue. Following that process it took the judge around seven minutes to read over the requested part of Ifill’s evidence before again instructing them on their duty and requirements for a unanimous or majority verdict. Samuel who was dressed in a checkered blue and white long sleeved shirt, folded to his elbow, and khaki trousers was escorted to the holding cells once again as the jury retired for a third time around 7:09 p.m. On their return, around 7:41 p.m., the foreman informed the sitting which included Samuel’s defence attorney Mohia Ma’at and the prosecutor, Principal Crown Counsel Alliston Seale that he and his members had failed to reach a unanimous verdict on murder but had reached a majority on manslaughter. A report on Samuel was then ordered in preparation for sentencing as a records officer revealed that the convicted man had one conviction for possession of cannabis. Dume was killed at Coyote’s Den Bar located at the corner of Nelson Street and Wellington Street. During the trial the pathologist who conducted the postmortem revealed that Dume’s body had seven “entry” wounds and five “exit” wounds which were consistent with gunshot injuries. Death was due to multiple organ failures and hemorrhagic shock due to multiple gunshot wounds. The sentencing phase of Samuel’s case continues on February 7, 2020 before Justice Worrell. (BT)

PAYNE WANTS CHANGE IN BCA FORMET – Long-standing coach of relegated Elite Division side, Crane Resort St Catherine, Thelston Payne, is calling on the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) to restructure its domestic season. The former Barbados and West Indies wicket-keeper/batsman urged the BCA to end the promotion-relegation system, play the Elite Division competition earlier in the year during the drier months and abandon the bonus batting and bowling points. Payne made the suggestions after St Catherine lost their fifth match of the season, but insisted his remarks were not sour grapes following the demotion of the Bayfield, St Philip side for the first time since they were promoted to the then Division 1 competition in 1978. “I want to say that this promotion and demotion needs to stop because at the end of the day, some clubs are going to cheat in terms of preparing poor pitches, making declarations to prevent you from gaining bonus points or not cutting the outfield if you are batting in order to gain an unfair advantage and to get through all the time,” he told Weekend Sport. (WN)

CHAMPS BAYLEY’S IN FINALS AGAIN - Champions A-Class Battery Services Bayley’s survived a scare before reaching their fifth straight final with a close 10-run victory over last year’s losing finalists, Jordan’s Supermarket Good Shepherd, yesterday. Batting first in their semi-final at the Maurice King Sports Complex, Briar Hall, Bayley’s were dismissed for 101 in 23.4 overs with only captain Damarko Wiggins, who made 21, getting into double figures. In reply, Good Shepherd, after seemingly well placed at 50 for one in 12 overs at the water break, were eventually restricted to 91 for five in their allotted 25 overs by Bayley’s, whose last defeat in the tournament was in the 2015 final against Wesley Hall. Captain Rashad Allman tried valiantly to get his team past Bayley’s score but they were stifled by Bayley’s spinners, especially Wiggins, who came from behind the stumps, to deliver two maiden overs and take one for 11 off five overs. (WN)

BELGRAVE MAKES HISTORY WINNING ROAD TENNIS TITLE – Grantley Prescod Memorial Primary’s seven-year-old road tennis sensation Kenoja Belgrave became the youngest boy to capture the Cave Shepherd, KFC, A1 Supermarkets National Primary Schools Road Tennis Championship today. Playing at the Rubis Hardcourt located on the Mighty Grynner Highway, the talented right-handed Belgrave, son of Kent Brathwaite who also plays road tennis, emerged victorious 21-16, 21-17 over St. Stephen’s Primary Class Four student Dakari Smith in the two best of three sets encounter. Only in Class One, Belgrave exhibited lots of patience in his approach to Smith and showed aggression when it was time to attack. He played several masterful strokes that had one of Barbados’ top female players Kim Holder cheering from the sidelines. Kenoja Belgrave of Grantley Prescod Memorial Primary is the new king of the 2019 Cave Shepherd, KFC, Carlton A1 Supermarkets National Primary Schools’ Road Tennis Champion. (Pictures by Morissa Lindsay). In the girls’ championship match defending champion Solange Holford of West Terrace Primary had an early scare but stayed calm to weather the storm 2-1 against Kezia Blunt of St. Martin’s Mangrove Primary. Blunt won the first set 21-14 against Holford, who was way too passive in her approach and tried numerous backhands that did not work in her favour. However, a more settled Holford showed up in the second set and showed more fighting spirit. She won the second set 21-5 to tie the game 1-1 and force a third and decisive set as she had a psychological effect on Blunt who made several unforced errors. Solange Holford of West Terrace Primary came from behind to defend her crown at the the 2019 Cave Shepherd, KFC, Carlton A1 Supermarkets National Primary Schools’ Road Tennis Competition. The third set was much closer, and at 17-17 Holford took the lead and served her way to a hard-fought 21-17 victory in her final year at West Terrace Primary. In the girls’ bronze medal match, Shaziya Scantlebury of Grazettes Primary played like a professional and showed she is one for the future comfortably winning 21-13, 21-15 against Taja Carrington of Deacons Primary. It was an all St. Cyprian’s affair in the boys’ third-place match as Aidan Moore, a promising young track and field athlete, defeated fellow schoolmate Javier Norville 21-9, 21-12 to finish in the top three. Grazettes Primary had a reason to smile when Shaziya Scantlebury won bronze in the girls against Tara Carrington of Deacons Primary. The boys of St. Cyprian’s then went on to claim the gold medal match in the team event 2-0 over Deacons Primary. Played in a shotgun format, Kymani Jones trounced Jashawn Bovell 21-10 in the opening game. Aidan Moore then came out on top 21-11 against Javon Gill to ensure his team came out as team champions. Westbury Primary secured third place when they emerged 2-1 winners over Eagle Hall Primary, which actually won the first game 21-15 thanks to Jahmali Scott’s victory over Asa Skinner. That early momentum by Eagle Hall Primary was in vain though, as they lost the next two games. Westbury’s Kazeon King defeated Kezaria Agard 21-6 to tie the match and teammate Reishanne Griffith finished it off with a 21-10 demolition of Shaunico Jordan. (BT)

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scullys-right-eyebrow-txf · 7 years ago

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The Only Choice - Chapter 35

Previous chapters can be found on A03.

Thanks to all of those who have been sticking with me through this story. I’m out of work due to Irma again tomorrow so maybe I’ll have another chapter soon!

Set during the months of Mulder’s ‘death’ during the events of ‘DeadAlive.’

Chapter 35 – Back to Normal?

Scully was surrounded by life-size pictures of pregnant women. Smiling, happy pregnant women.

She hated them all.

Knowing that if she saw another smiling face she’d scream, Scully kept her eyes trained on the rack of clothes in front of her. She mindlessly shifted through the hangers filled with ugly maternity blouses and concentrated on her breathing. It wasn’t going to happen here; she refused to have a breakdown in the middle of this store.

It had been two weeks since Mulder’s funeral. Some days were okay and some days were not. Today had started out alright, but was quickly descending to not-okay status.

There had been days when Scully felt like an approximation of herself again. Days where she would shower and dress, sit on the couch and make polite conversation with her mother, and maybe even venture out for a walk around the block if she was feeling adventurous. But then there were also days where her one accomplishment was simply getting out of bed.

There were also times where she went from perfectly calm to full out emotional breakdown in no time flat. It happened once while watching ‘The Price is Right’ of all things. One moment she was simply remembering that Mulder always over-bid on the prizes and the next she was hyperventilating, overcome with thoughts about how scared he must have been, how much pain he must have experienced. Had he called for her? How had he felt when he realized that she wasn’t going to save him? Did he die painlessly or was he screaming in agony? That little episode earned her a house call from her therapist.

But today had seemed tolerable so she had given in to her mother’s requests to go shopping for maternity clothes. She wouldn’t be able to wear stretched out sweatpants for the remainder of her pregnancy after all.

So they shopped. Maggie was still handling her daughter very delicately, and being sensitive to her emotional states, she could tell that Dana was quickly becoming overwhelmed.

“Ok Dana, we’ve got you a pair of black pants, a skirt, a pair of jeans, a few tops, and a couple of bras. I think it’s a good time to call it quits,” Maggie said, taking her daughter’s arm and pulling her toward a row of chairs. “You just sit for a minute while I check out.”

Scully only nodded, her eyes downcast but still feeling the taunting smiles of the models upon her. She didn’t even argue when Maggie paid for the purchases herself. They quickly left and were home in no time.

After a light dinner, Scully decided to go straight to bed. It was still early but she had done something productive with herself and now she was physically and emotionally exhausted. As she shut her eyes, she focused her thoughts on his face and pretended that his arms were wrapped around her in sleep. She listened to herself breath in and out, synching her breathing to his phantom breathes. She let sleep slowly take her as she mentally checked off one more day that she had survived without Mulder by her side.

Days passed much like this. She gave herself one task to accomplish each day, and for the most part she was successful. Then she moved on to two and three tasks. She finally came to the realization that although her heart was broken, she was becoming a functioning member of society again, and with that realization came a need to return to work.

“Dana, I think it’s too soon,” Maggie stated emphatically after hearing of her daughter’s plans.

“Mom, it’s been three weeks since the funeral. I’ve run out of bereavement leave and I’m now using my sick days which I think I should be saving in case I need to take extra time off when the baby comes. And truthfully, sitting at home all day isn’t helping me anymore. I need to work. It will help to be busy and get my mind off everything. And I’ve already talked to Skinner and he said that I can start with only half days.”

Maggie sighed, “Well I can’t very well stop you once you’ve set your mind to something. Maybe you’re right, maybe it would help to have something to do. It did for me.”

Scully reached over and wrapped her arm around her mother, giving her a squeeze. “If you’re willing to continue staying with me through the first week until I get used to everything again, then I think I’ll finally be ready for you to move back home. We both know that you can’t stay here forever.”

Maggie rested her temple against her daughter’s. “I could if you needed me to, but you’re much too independent for that.”

Scully offered her mother a small smile. “Or maybe just too stubborn. But thanks for being here, Mom. I don’t think I would’ve made it without you.”

“When will you start back?”

“Monday,” Scully answered, already anxious about the upcoming week.

*******************************

Scully looked herself up and down in the full length mirror one more time. She was wearing a pair of black maternity pants but had opted for a slightly oversized sweater rather than one of the maternity blouses that made her condition way to obvious. Her matching blazer struggled to button, but she preferred to wear it open as it helped disguise her small baby bump.

She knew that she wouldn’t be able to disguise it for much longer, but she just wanted to make it at least a week before the rumors switched from the return of poor Mrs. Spooky to knocked up Mrs. Spooky.

Perching on the side of the bed, Scully took a deep breath and reached over for the framed picture on her bedside table. The photo had been among those found by her mother in Mulder’s junk drawer. It was she and Mulder on the beach at Martha’s Vineyard. It had been early, just after sunrise, and their eyes were tired but happy. She was standing in front of him, incased in his warmth and her head leaned lazily against his neck. His arm that wasn’t holding the camera was wrapped around her stomach and his unshaven cheek was pressed to her temple.

They had been so happy then. They thought that they had all the time in the world.

Scully looked at the photo for just a minute more. There were days that she stared at it for hours, nights that she slept with it clutched to her chest, but not today. Today she had to step back into her “Agent Scully” persona, if only for a few hours.

With a sigh she replaced the photo and gathered her things. After giving her mother one last assurance that she would be fine, Scully got in her car and drove to FBI headquarters for the first time in a month. Skinner met her in the parking garage and walked with her to the basement. Scully kept her gaze down, unable to meet the eyes of her fellow agents, and she was relieved once they reached the safety of the office. She had every intention of secluding herself down there for as long as possible; for the next four months if possible. She knew that it wasn’t healthy behavior, but she just didn’t know if she could handle the stares, the assumptions, or the pity.

“Agent Scully,” Doggett said, standing as she enters, “it’s good to have you back.”

“Thank you,” she replied quietly. “It was time.”

After a short chat with both men, Scully settled in at her desk, Mulder’s desk. Her breath caught as she felt movement deep inside her. Although she had been feeling the baby move more regularly, it never ceased to surprise her, and she pressed her hand to her stomach tenderly.

‘This is where I met your Daddy,’ she thought to herself, tears filling her eyes. She hastily wiped them away before Doggett could see, but one glance his way told her that she had been caught. He offered her a sad smile before turning back to his paperwork.

With a sigh, Scully turned on her computer, intent on catching up with a month’s worth of emails, hoping they weren’t all condolences. As the machine booted up, her eyes took in the office. Mulder’s basketball was still on the top shelf, his poster and newspaper clippings still hung on the wall, and if she dug deep enough she might just find some of evidence of his most unsavory habit buried in desk drawers.

And on his desk, the picture of Samantha remained. She was so young, her smile so innocent. She was the reason for all of this. Most of their cases brought more questions than answers but they had helped people, they had saved people, and she was the reason for that. The photo remained and so would Scully. She didn’t know how much longer she would be on the X-files with the baby on the way, but for as long as she was there she would work to help people. For Samantha. For Mulder.

#my fic #Mulder and Scully deserved better #sorry for the angst #It will get better eventually #msr fanfic

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fromtheground39-blog · 5 years ago

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10 Years of Gaming PCs - 2015 - 2019 (Part 2)

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ah PC gaming in one way or another. It'S provided countless hours days weeks, even years of entertainment to generations of enthusiasts around the globe or discs, as it were. These last 10 years have been something of a roller coaster, ride for enthusiasts and novices alike, and today we begin our story, one of sloth and greed, of loss, rebirth and a never-ending thirst for more so make yourself comfortable. As we take you back in time and celebrate PC gaming in the only way, we know how I feel like a bunch of gaming PC's, it's gonna be fun. You ready, oh, and it's brought to you by actually powered by C sonic and brought to you by LG's ultra gear. Ultra wide gaming displays yeah any news crew ever to the first chapter of our story begins way back in the long long ago, time known as 2009, the 44th President of the United States of America was inaugurated. The Twilight series made its debut and James Cameron's Avatar became the highest-grossing film of all time, depending on your take on those events. It was either a great year or one that you'd rather forget but fear. Not 2009 was a pretty good year for PC gaming. We got Borderlands, Batman, Arkham Asylum left, 4, dead, 2 and Dragon Age Origins just to name a few to run those games Intel had just launched the core. I series as a replacement for the core twos that had gone toe-to-toe with AMD in the years prior. As a result, while the Linfield core i7 handily outperformed its core 2 quad predecessors, the price for those older chips fell steadily as the new platform found its legs and they remained a highly popular choice for builders, especially with early ddr3, costing a pretty penny and not Significantly outperforming the outgoing ddr2, so our build then is equipped with everything we need to make a great 2009 gaming machine, a Core 2 quad, q96 50 with gorgeous Zellman flower cooler on it, 4 gigs of ddr2, 800, dual Radeon, HD, 59, 70s in crossfire and, of Course, Windows 7, all for just under 18 hundred US dollars at the time, so I was actually pretty into both of these games. I guess I'll go with Dragon Age. It'S probably the more graphically demanding of the two and a have. You actually tried these games. I loaded them up to make sure they launched in that they're in the right resolution. But aside from that, Oh nope, you're, gonna, have to create a character and everything I actually probably don't have to do that I could. I could remote into my computer at home and load up my safe. I think I still have it alright. So, theoretically, I've thrown my old save file for a lira in here, but I don't know vps hosting seattle if it's actually gonna work. There'S a previous folder that has like a portrait stuffin, it man. I remember this. Alright, let's see if it's in their caverns whoa. Actually that ain't bad. I think I was kind of an evil character, which is why my face ends up looking kind of like scary and stuff arcane bolt winters grasp slowdown, you hoser finding the controls a little clutch in it in this after this. After so long, all right, obviously don't know any of my my binds here. Oh it's immune to fire, not that makes sense how about some lightning for you there. You know it's funny new games or they definitely look better, but this looks all right. Doesn'T it yeah? I mean like most of the graphical fidelity is made up in the lighting. I think, because the textures don't really hold up very well today, no they've aged for sure that was definitely a trip down nostalgia Lane. But one thing I won't miss is how loud gaming machines were back then and how bad the cable management options were. This case sucked the following year, saw Bioshock 2 hits Steam libraries along with Battlefield, Bad Company, 2 sip 5 Mass Effect, 2 and Starcraft 2 wings of Liberty. Carrying on this pattern of sequels AMD's new Phenom, 2 X, 6 offered more threads than the core twos did at a price much lower than the core AI series, particularly when it comes to the supporting hardware. This made it a favorite among enthusiasts, looking for something better than a Core 2 quad and a multi-threading workload without breaking the bank, because, while it was slower per thread, it held its own in most titles, wider availability of ddr3 made for a lower early adopter tax. Although ddr2 would remain much less expensive for some time to come, our 2010 gaming PC, therefore, is equipped with a phenom, 2, x6 10:55 T 4 gigabytes of ddr3 1333 and twin Radeon, HD 6970 s still rocking Windows, 7 or again just shy of 1800 dollars in 2010 well remember when you could right-click on Network crap in the bottom right and then you would well ok when it wasn't broken like that yeah and then you could just go to your network configurations. I did do that all right. So what are we trying to run out here again, 34, 40 by 1440, so full ultra wide. As you can see, it doesn't exactly scale the intro graphics, very well. No, but once again the textures are a little rough and a mocap technology definitely had a long way to go back then, compared to now you can definitely tell when things like godrays are hard-coded versus dynamically generated by the engine by the light sources. Yeah in this case, if you removed all the geometry in the scene, those godrays would still be there. He looks like he just smelled something bad, so this game apparently scales to ultra wide by narrowing your vertical field of view. That'S not a great gaming experience. Ultra wide support has definitely gotten a lot better over the years, so our number 10 bulb is actually cut off, and so is our point decrease button here. Well, I'm not sure how to proceed from here. To be honest, wha-wha 2011 brought us a huge number of hot titles like portal to Sky roll. Oh, that's! A pretty dead beam, sorry Skyrim, deus ex human revolution and everyone's favorite masochism, simulator, Dark Souls but 2011 was also a dark year for AMD. With the release of Sandy Bridge and Intel's new consumer LGA 1156 platform, until not only had a very fast line up of CPUs at their disposal, but a cost-effective one at that, AMD's response in the form of bulldozer failed on all counts, giving them a reputation as The cheap option that would take years to overcome now because in the early days hyper threading had a tendency to negatively impact gaming performance. There was very little reason to go with the high end core i7 2670 500k with 4 gigs of ddr3 ram, whose price had come down a fair bit since 2010. Now, this time around, we've gone green team for our graphics card, because in videos, GTX 590 outperformed AMD making it the goat card for over-the-top monster machines. But it was also around this time that enthusiasts began to shy away from dual GPU solutions due to the prevalence of micro, stuttering. The GTX 590 would be among the last such consumer cards from Nvidia this year we picked up check this link right here now an SSD for the first time, bumping our total build price to nearly 1,900 dollars, and that SSD option is something we'll be keeping in. All future builds unlike Windows, 7. For which, sadly, the road ends here, one thing that was a big deal that we didn't cover in the blurb for this year is that the define was pretty much the defining case of this time. Unlike the p180 series from an tech that preceded it, it was actually affordable, so you could get a nice looking quiet, discreet case. Without now I actually never actually played Skyrim when I was big into oblivion, but I never played this one. This is the one that everybody played. I know right, I got ta say the texture quality, even just in the loading screens, is feels more than a year ahead of what we were just looking at. That'S a huge difference, and this is even without the modding community. Coming in and fixing it for us yep, however, the 8k texture packs that were available for this wasn't actually 8k, but you know: should we just jump to one of the towns sure you watch out boom yeah you like that boom right fist, let's just oh he's, Got a sword boom, wow, wow, wow, oh great, a sword. Go nice, just got a knife or maybe he only had a knife in the first place. Wow. Oh, I have an axe. How do I equip it? Let'S go axe, some shiz lightning axe, oh wow! This is how waiting works in this game, yeah that is so ugly and unnecessary wow. This is really a much much better looking game, though it's still, it still doesn't hold up that well compared to modern stuff, like you can really tell a lot of the assets and the trees are obviously reused. Shadows are very lifeless feeling mm-hmm. It'S a shadow map. The trees don't move, you know, yeah no breeze, but one of the things that was really great about this game was draw distance like you could really look out into the distance and feel like you were in an immense world. Well, the world didn't end in 2012. It wasn't an outstanding year for gaming as a whole, either standouts include far cry 3 XCOM enemy, Unknown Borderlands, 2 and csgo. The CPU world, meanwhile, arguably came to a halt. Ivy Bridge was a modest tick to Sandy bridges, talk representing a die shrink and not much else. Pci Express 3.0 became a thing and they updated the integrated graphics and improved quick sync support, but neither of those things were earth-shattering at the time. Still, as gamers moved on to the new architecture, the lessons of the previous generation carried forward to this one to so many went with the core i5 this time around, and so did we, the 35 70k powers, our rig this year, along with 8 gigabytes of very Inexpensive RAM and the Radeon HD 7970, which, despite its slightly lower performance out of the gate, mostly kept pace with Nvidia's Kepler and eventually I performed it in the long haul, thanks to its larger frame buffer. At least this build costs less than last year's at just over 1,800, but we're now also running Windows 8, so have fun. With that, I never actually played Far Cry 3, even though I played the first one and loved. It played the second one and literally had my save game tanked because it had autosave and then it auto saved when I was too far from anywhere to recover from some poison or something oh, tennisforum.com/members/346995-routerhost.html?simple=1#aboutme the malaria yeah. So I couldn't I couldn't do anything so my save game got played. This is a crappy game anyway. So yeah didn't bother with this one, even though it was supposed to be good yeah, they skewed a little bit less towards the realism aspect of this one. You know, as far as I know, I was the first North American retailer to bring in the define r2 really yeah. We brought in almost a container of them at a time when they were basically a completely unknown brand. It was like a huge gamble for me as a product manager. They had their issues. I remember there was a big scandal where there learn the facts here now their front USB was like wired up wrong or something Oh, and they had to send us a bunch of like replacement USB harnesses, and I was like what am I gonna do with these, like. You expect me to have someone go in the back and replace all your stupid front panel, cabling literally open every case. I guess they expected them to like be shipped with the cases or something that was ultimately the solution making the customer deal with it, but it was not a good time. People were not happy. Facial animations have come a long way in even just a few short years now. They'Ve come a long way further. Since then, these releases here with specular, highlights, are much better than previous. Yet like we're getting to the point now where I'm not gonna play this game and go oh there's a little yeah see the highlights on those packages yeah, and you can see them in people's eyes too yeah the eyes, especially it gives them a lot more Life vegetation still looks pretty static. Mutants on this is pretty good as well, but I can tell that, like it kind of cuts off around there part of it too, is that they've also applied a depth of field effect. That was something that didn't come into play until around this time. Yep 2013 brought comparatively few, but major releases like battlefield, 4, dota, 2 and Saints Row. 4 AMD wasn't having much fun, though, and their desperate attempts to compete by both lowering their prices and increasing their clock speeds and therefore power consumption never quite managed to break them. Free of the rut they found themselves in has well, then, was the next talk, and this time around, we actually did get a bit of a performance boost, even if it was a single-digit one. Thanks to a move to Intel's 22 nanometer FinFET manufacturing process, hyper-threading also became more useful this year. As the concept of streaming your gaming began to take off in earnest, and the core i7 4770k was also clocked higher than the core i5 variant. So that's what we went with along with 16 gigs of fast ddr3 ram and a geforce gtx 780 Ti Kepler. Second outing certainly did a lot better than the first and unfortunately, for AMD. Radeon, still to this day, hasn't made a return to the top of the benchmark chart. This year, windows 8.1 made its debut, but I don't know that anyone actually cared outside of the fact that it was a free upgrade for Windows 8 users which I guess might have helped a little with the ballooning prices of enthusiasts PC hardware. This build all told commanded, a total of just over 2,100 u.s. dollars now. This is where we get into the games. That really make me say, is this even that old like I could play this game today, and it would be perfectly fine. This is battlefield. 4 textures look freakin, awesome, high res lighting. Reflections are handled differently depending on the type of surface that the light is hitting can actually see objects that move into the god rays, get illuminated by them. Like my gun. A lot of the improvements here aren't even just in technology they're, also in style like you, can really just tell how much more attention to detail is put into mocap yeah character models. These are so detailed compared to the ones that we were looking at at the beginning hall that bloom, yeah and lens flare love it like a really complex lens flare to the final year, represented in this first part of our series is 2014, which was another relatively Light year for high-profile releases with Dark Souls, 2 alien isolation, shadow of Mordor and The Sims 4 representing as for hardware and it's Ivy Bridge all over again. But worse. Tik-Tok and boars law largely fell apart this year and instead of a new microarchitecture or anything of substance, we got Haswell refresh literally just the core clock, improvement and, admittedly much needed more efficient Tim. We did get a new chipset to go with it, though, which, for the first time implements nvme support, not that anyone had any use for that at the time. But hey a features, a feature. So we went with a core i7 4790k, along with 16 gigabytes of ddr3 just like last time, but now we're dropping our hard drive in favor of a faster large SSD. The other main difference is in Nvidia's Maxwell based GTX 980, a complete rework of Kepler that improved efficiency and overall performance to running on the same process. Node. That was a pretty impressive feat and AMD wouldn't release their response until the following year. Mercifully, total cost is down significantly this year, and this will also be the last year that we build with Windows 8.1 with that said, I'm sure that there are still some fans of it out there somewhere. So this is alien isolation and yeah. One of the things that you'll notice - it's got Medicaid, yes, yeah, that's kind of the aesthetic of this, but it was also something that kind of became popular in around this time. Right. Real-Time Instagram filters yeah. So, as you can see, it's like fine when we're looking right at it, but if we move the camera yeah you get that red fringing on it yeah. I think I'll go green over here. That'S cute, yep lighting effects are so natural and it's amazing how much of a difference that makes I mean the graphics card manufacturers are constantly talking about how lighting is such a key component to making a game look more natural and more immersive, but, as we've gone Through this six years of gaming PC's, it's like yeah, certain things have improved like textures, but lighting is definitely the one that has been the most game-changing pardon, the pun, yeah and, like this watery effect here, the way the light plays off. Of that. That'S something that just didn't happen in previous generations, so much subtlety to it like just areas on the carpet that are more lit, like we've, got actual light, bounces yeah. So as we come out here, we can see that you know the carpet here. Well, it's not really carpet but like it's way less well, you lost shiny than this. This trim is yeah. It used to be that, like going back to really old games like doom three, just like the entire environment felt shiny if they wanted to have light reflecting off anything like they elect subtlety yeah, Full Article and in this case you can kind of see here like the way They did with the bump mapping here yeah. It looks shiny, but also greedy at once, which is a really difficult thing to pull off on previous generations. I remember it being a big deal to even be able to reflect the environment scope before this. Oh yeah yeah used to be like he was read an orchestra. You could have something that was either like a static scope or you could have a low resolution or a high-resolution reflection yeah, and there was a significant performance penalties for enabling it. It was a discrete menu option. Man, this the steam effects here, looked great yeah. The fact that, like when you go by them and the the light is no longer I mean it's that's kind of a screen space thing, but it kind of also works because it no longer is in your your field of vision. So it kind of just fades out so this first half of the last decade represented a steady decline in hardware improvements in innovation year over year. But somehow, on the software side of the gaming industry, they still managed to squeeze far more realism and image quality out of said hardware. Now some believed that this decrease in performance improvement would continue ad infinitum as a result of the death of Moore's law and the future. Indeed looked pretty dim. In 2014, it seemed as though PC gaming would begin to drop off, along with the decline in PC shipments. In general, but stay tuned folks, because for part two, where we go from 2015 all the way up to today. Well, let's just say if you're new - and you don't already know how this ends, I think you're gonna be surprised at where things go from here. What will be a surprise is this segue to our sponsors for today's video, LG and C sonic, who provided these monitors and, of course, literally powered all of our systems here? So if you guys are looking for a great gaming experience, LG's Ultra Gear gaming monitors are a fantastic choice. We'Re gonna have those linked in the video description and also down. There is gonna be some c sonic power supplies, no matter what kind of a rig you're, building small form-factor large power, sipping power, chugging, doesn't matter see Sonic's got you covered. So thanks for watching guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do, but it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also link down, there's our merch store, which has cool shirts like this One and that one and that hoodie and our community forum, which you guys should totally join

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businessguide12-blog · 5 years ago

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35 mobile photography tips for taking better smartphone shots

New Post has been published on https://businessqia.com/awesome/35-mobile-photography-tips-for-taking-better-smartphone-shots/

35 mobile photography tips for taking better smartphone shots

Originally published: Feb. 12, 2015; updated/ re-published May 7, 2019

Main photo credit: Sigrid Buene

At 500 px, we securely believe that your tools are just that–tools. Whether you shoot with a Canon 5DS R or an old iPhone 5s, a great photographer can attain beautiful photos employing any device capable of capture images.

Now, let’s get practical. Want to take better photos with your smartphone? Great! We asked four talented 500 px photographers to share their tips-off for building the most of your phone’s camera.

So if you want to start capturing smartphone photos like the ones above, get out a pen and paper( or, more likely, a text file on your laptop ), and is fully prepared to take notes :P TAGEND Darja Bilyk’s mobile photography tips

1. Be ready!

I always maintain my phone in camera mode so that when I unlock it, it’s ready for take pictures. A good moment is so easy to lose. There can be no excuses such as,” Oh, my phone is somewhere in my purse ,” because we are talking about mobile photography. Your phone should be in your hand.

It may be an obvious thing to say, but nevertheless, you should remember to charge your phone and to keep your lens clean. I carry a charger with me most of the time to use, for example, if I’m having coffee in some nice coffeehouse, but the charger won’t save me in the forest.

I also often switch my phone to airplane mode. Not only does it help save the phone’s battery, but it also eliminates distractions and forces you to focus on photography.

2. Don’t think twice, take paintings whenever you want and of whatever you wish!

If you doubt whether to take a picture or not–take it! Snap it! Some moments will not be repeated. If you don’t like your picture, you can always delete it, but if you lose the moment, you wouldn’t be able to turn back time and catch it. Don’t overthink and hesitate, because there’s nothing to lose.

3. Light is the answer!

Let’s not forget that photography is all about use sunlight. Even the most boring composition will be saved by the good sun , no matter if it’s day or evening.

4. Learn the technological oddities of your phone camera

Find out the strong and weak sides of your phone. I know that my iPhone isn’t good at night photography. The images are noisy and blurred. That’s why I try to use it merely in the daytime.

Don’t be lazy, read the manual and make sure you’re using your phone in the most efficient circumstances. We may be self-confident and think that we know it all, but sometimes little tips-off in the manual can help us improve our photos in a big way. Learn how you can control the exposure or focus on the objects better, for example.

5. Don’t use zoom!

I think this is the first step towards taking a bad smartphone picture. If you want to zoom in on something, use your legs and move! Don’t forget that this is just a phone, and its capabilities are generally not the same as a DSLR lens.

6. Select and retouch!

Be selective! Try to choose merely very good images and then edit those.

There are many apps that will help you to do this, and while we can’t understate their help in creating beautiful images, don’t try too hard. You should remember that sometimes a painting is much better without filters.

It’s also worth mentioning that there is no ” magical ” application. Sometimes a scene can not be saved and instead of ” torturing” it, you’d be better off taking another photo. Try to use fewer filters and more individual adjustments that you can apply–each of of your photographs is different, so take an individual approach to editing them, too.

7. Choose unique angles

Try shooting from the dog’s view–this will construct you look at the objects from a new perspective. Also learn to use the grid, and then, just as importantly, learn to do without it.

8. Make your pictures come alive!

Print your paintings, send them as postcards, give them to your friends, hang them on your walls. Holding your scenes in your hands is such a lovely feeling, and it can’t be compared with looking at your paintings on a smartphone screen.

9. Don’t try to stick to one style!

I see a lot of people nowadays trying to shoot in one style, or even the same exact colors–don’t do this! Remember that versatility is great and showcases your creativity.

Who said that you can only be interested in landscape photography? If you feel like taking a portrait of someone, then do so. Don’t pigeonhole yourself. Be eager and don’t stop shooting. Your own unique style will develop!

10. And last, but not the least…

– A warm breakfast tastes better than it looks … put your phone away and feed the damn thing.- Don’t cross the road while editing paintings.- Love what you do and don’t let the critics get you down too much.- Don’t sit at home. Explore!

Darja Bilyk, 26 years old, was born and raised in Moscow. She works as an English teacher at school( teach kids from 8 to 18 years of age) and dedicates her free time to photography and traveling. She believes that a good photographer should be able to capture good photos of anything–landscape, portrait, or just some family album pictures–regardless of what equipment one possesses. The things that she looks for most in images are atmosphere and mood.

Find more of her work on 500 px, her website, or on Instagram.

Tony Antoniou’s mobile photography tips-off

Starfish Sunset by Tony Antoniou on 500 px

1. How to get more stable shots

Although the iPhone 6 Plus has optical image stabilization built-in, I find I get a better, sharper image by holding the telephone with both hands, much like I would hold a traditional camera.

The key for me here is to then not use the “software” shutter button, but instead to use the physical volume buttons that act as your shutter, eliminating camera shake and giving you sharper images. I am often surprised by the number of people who are unaware of this feature. The added bonus is that if you use your headphones that came with the phone, you can also use the buttons on that as a cable release and not have to touch the camera at all.

One more thing: hold down the shutter button and you get 10 fps burst mode so you don’t miss the action.

2. Keep your lens clean

A simple but important point: As we tend to keep our phones in our pockets or bags, give your lens a quick wipe before you shoot. It is a lint and dust magnet!

3. Download a better camera app

It’s true that the most built-in camera apps have improved over time, and they’re great for your median user, but us photographers who require a little more control over the settings should turn to others.

There are numerous third-party apps that you can download to give you all the control you would want. I personally use Camera +.

Editor’s Note: As of this last update, you can also use the 500 px iOS app to take and edit your images!

Blue Hour Posts- iPhone by Tony Antoniou on 500 px

4. Post-process your images

The reality is that you’ll need to process your images to get the best possible final photos.

Lightroom is my first choice if I want to do this on my computer, as it enables me to tweak the image to match my creative vision. Fortunately, there are also some great apps available, too if you wanted to do everything on the one device.

I use the free app from Google called Snapseed, although the latest version of iOS has much better built-in options than previous versions.

5. Never, ever use the digital zoom

If you want the best-possible image from your phone, forget about using digital zoom. The answer is simple: simply zoom with your feet. The added effect of doing this is that it really improves your compositional skills.

Tony Antoniou is a photographer and digital artist based in Surrey, UK. Together with his business partner, he runs f1 1 Workshops, a photography workshop and training company. Not only does he take some beautiful smartphone photos, many of the assets in his composite images are shot with an iPhone, too.

You can find more of his work on his 500px profile or by following him on Facebook.

Michael Kestin’s mobile photography tips-off

winter walk by Michael Kestin on 500 px

First off, it’s fun to take paintings with a mobile phone. The phone is always with us, always ready to shoot, and I have my studio to edit with me. Even better, I can share my images immediately.

It’s another kind of workflow, and a useful alternative to my big camera. Here are some tips-off :P TAGEND

1. Light

It’s all about light. Light surrounds us everywhere. See the illumination, get the shadows too.

light and shadow by Michael Kestin on 500 px

App use: Leme Cam

2. Focus

What’s your topic? Try to select only one topic for each shoot, and let it guide you. Stop for one second and think about whether you want to capture the picture in front of you. Need to zoom? Move yourself!

landscape by Michael Kestin on 500 px

App utilized: Leme Cam

3. Perspective

Get down on your knees, lay down on the ground, climbing a tree: there are hundreds of possibilities for capturing another point of view of the same subject. Try as many of them as possible.

harbour crane by Michael Kestin on 500 px

App use: Leme Cam

4. Reflections

Mirrors are everywhere: glasses, puddles, smooth and glistening surfaces. Use these to your advantage and detect other, more-unique views.

5. Black and white

Focus on forms, structure, textures, surfaces. Light shapes things, try to capture that!

regionalexpress by Michael Kestin on 500 px

App use: Leme Cam

6. Simplicity

Less really is more. Use empty spaces, the sky, uncolored surfaces, and focus on details.

two people by Michael Kestin on 500 px

App employed: Leme Cam

7. Apps

Feel free to change moods and colorings to add parts to your photos. Editing apps can assist you in build your pictures much better, or at the very least, more interesting.

columns by Michael Kestin on 500 px

Apps used: Leme Cam and Distressed FX

8. Moments Always try to catch the best moment. Feel any moment worth capturing.

winter walk by Michael Kestin on 500 px

Apps utilized: Snapseed, Mextures, Distressed FX

9. Shadows

Mother nature paints with light. When the sun is glistening, shadows help create lots of interesting scenes for you to capture. Look around and you’ll see that even mundane scenes can be captured in a special way.

shadows by Michael Kestin on 500 px

Apps utilized: Leme Cam and Mextures

10. Storytelling

Take a few images and build collages. This is a simple way to use your photos to tell a story.

places by Michael Kestin on 500 px

Apps use: Leme Cam, Distressed FX, Pixlr

Apps I often use for editing my photos:- Snapseed- Pixlr- Mextures- Distressed FX- Mattebox

Michael Kestin is a musician and interior designer who also works as a photographer and visual trainer devoting workshops in visual thinking and mobile photography that focus on visual spaces.

You can find more of his work on his 500px account, Steller, his website, and Facebook

Leslie St. John’s mobile photography tips-off

Evening Sun by Leslie St. John on 500 px

1. Clean your lens

I know it audios obvious, but your mobile spends its day with whatever is in your pocket or handbag. You will never take great images with pocket lint or greasy thumbprints on the lens…

This is a really easy issue to fix, but if you ignore it, it will limit you before you even start. Also, try not to keep your phone in your pocket or suitcase with things that might scratch the lens, like coins, keys, and the like.

2. Learn to read light

Lighting makes an image great, whether you take it with a Nikon D4 or a mobile phone. If you know what stimulates great light you are halfway to making great photographs.

Sunset by Leslie St. John on 500 px

3. Forget about flash

If you are out in a bar with friends, by all means, flashing away–but as with point-and-shoot cameras, the lighting is going to be flat and prone to redeye. You get much better images if you can use the room light.( see point 2)

4. Take lots of pictures

As a professional photographer, I almost never take one picture. The final image that the customers ensure is almost always the result of an iterative process.

Take a shot, critique it, then take another shot. Change your angle, alteration your distance to the subject, alter your exposure. Almost always, the end result is better than your first image.

5. Get a good telephone for photography

I often joke that, with my Lumina 1020, I bought a great camera with a built-in phone. I wanted to get a camera for the times when I was out with their own families or just out and about without my pro gear. I bought my phone with a specific eye on the camera. If you want to be serious about mobile photography, you need to have the tools for the job.

6. Learn to step out of auto mode

If you follow the advice in step 5, you probably have a phone that allows you to take some control of the exposure. One fault that many novices construct is to presume that the camera will always take the best picture.

The camera runs an algorithm that outputs a general result–it has no artistic judgement. The more control you take of the process, the more you will be able to express your artistic judgement, and the more likely you are to get outstanding pictures.

7. Shoot RAW( or at the least DNG)

The ability to shoot DNG files is one of the main features that describe me to my Lumia, since then I’ve seen this ability show up on other ecosystems. DNG files will retain more highlight and darknes detail than a. jpeg, and also give you more leeway in extreme lighting situations. But the best thing about DNG files is that they give you better material to work with for my next two tips.

8. Learn to edit

Learn to edit your scenes. As a pro, all of my pictures are edited. The same applies to mobile phone pictures. And by edit, I do not mean slapping an Instagram filter on a painting. Learn about brightness, contrast, and saturation. I use Fotor, Adobe Photoshop Express, and Lumina Creative Studio on my phone.

9. Really learn to edit

This is where DNG files genuinely shine. To get the best results, I import the DNG files into Lightroom and Photoshop to edit them there. The power of these programs and the control that comes from inducing penalty adjustments on a really big screen are what will attain the best possible use of your image.

10. Have fun!

At its heart, mobile photography is about fun. The exhilaration of having a camera available at those moments you want to keep is what it’s all about. The best way to improve is to have fun and to enjoy the process of doing better than what you had done before.

Leslie St. John is a Barbados-based bridal photographer who also shoots interiors, architecture, and the occasional commercial job to keep life interesting.

You can see more of his run or hear more from Leslie by visiting him on 500 px, checking out his website and mobile photography blog, or dedicating him a follow on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.

33 #2014/ 365……… :). IPHONE by unai momoitio on 500 px

Hopefully you’ve learned a thing or two from the skilled photographers featured above, and are more determined than ever to go out and shoot something great with your telephone!

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