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skinsort · 1 year ago

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I don't think I have a ton of followers, but for those who are here, below the cut is basically a very long think piece on jcink skinning that will probably offend a lot of people, but it's my honest take and I'm willing to hear other people's constructively expressed criticisms, and am very open to revising my opinion. I just was surprised by the SOPs I found in the jcink rpc when I started writing this skin and was doing research into whether I wanted to try selling it or not. For anyone wondering about the future the TLDR is as follows: I will probably make another skin and sell it as a multisale and see how that goes. This will probably happen a long time from now. I will probably never take custom commissions. I will probably charge more than people would like for my skins, but I think I have good reasons for that. More below the cut on the actual thoughts.

There were a few obstacles that became immediately obvious when beginning to work on a jcink skin for the first time.

First off, jcink is imo fundamentally bugged.

It has a slow initial load time even on the default skin, always over a second, usually over 2 in my testing. Industry standard is .5, and php (the backend language of jcink's templating system, and i assume the databases), though old, is perfectly capable of meeting that threshold. I personally find this an infuriating fact about jcink, especially since I can do nothing about it.

There are two distinct skins on any site by default, neither of which are responsive. Responsiveness basically refers to whether or not a website looks good regardless of screen size. It's a universal concern in any modern tech company. I understand that when jcink was first written, a lot of what's possible today wasn't available, however we are long since past the time (in my opinion) that it would have been simple for John to reskin the default view of jcink to be responsive and provide that as an alternative to the og defaults. If nothing else, this would provide a better standard for what a 'functional' skin might look like, and maybe even a baseline for people to build off of. Instead we have tables which are generally unusable in modern web design.

Jcink is also not terribly accessible by default. I found text labels missing in several places (for screen reader users), no keyboard accessibility on a few default functions (for people who can't use a mouse), and of course, nothing in the docs to remind people to keep what features there are in the default skin.

Then we have the added complications of the jcink rpc community, the skinners and coder in general within the space. I think I can break down my thoughts on this into three main categories: Price, Product, and People. I have a lot of thoughts about these topics, so bear with me.

Price

Look me in the eyes. Not one single skinner I could find was charging a market rate for front end web development. The most expensive person I could find wasn't even asking for 25% of the money a front end website developer would make for a skin professionally, and I found them because people were putting them on blast for charging as much as they did. The jcink rpc has been getting bargain basement prices on code for EVER, and seems to have NO concept of the time and complexity of writing actually good code.

I have mixed feelings on this.

I have not seen a professional grade skin in the wild, not once, not even my own. The css on my skin is sloppy. There are areas I got a serious case of the fuckits on and wrote some ugly code. There's at least one info page on my site that looks weird af on mobile and I have no intention of fixing it. I say this with love, compassion, and appreciation for everyone who codes for this community. Not one single jcink skin I have ever interacted with would constitute a professional level of work in my field. No one whose work I have interacted with (again, including my own!!) should be charging a fully professional rate.

This is a hobby. We do this for fun. We shouldn't be in an arms race for the prettiest skins, but we are. People like nice interfaces, it will affect their decision to consider or nope out of a site. So, we're in a situation that for a 'not boring' skin, custom skinning has become much more of a norm. In order to have a successful site, admins generally need to invest in a decent skin. With a custom skin, you can easily get to $250 in cost, and I've seen it go quite high from there. That's a lot of money for a site which may not survive. That's a big fuckin' deal. Some people are serial site starters so if one fails, that's fine, the skin can be reused, but I personally have not adminned a site since 2016 until a month ago. If I had sunk $250 into a skin, plus $80 for jcink premium for a site that never took off, suddenly my 'free' hobby becomes quite dear. I think it's only right that there be a certain degree of friendliness in the community when it comes to pricing because of this, even for truly professional coders (again, of which I've seen zero). Skinners are part of the ecosystem and deserve to be properly valued. Admins shouldn't have to pay out the ass just to have a better chance of their site taking off.

There's a great deal of risk involved in most skinning transactions I know of. First off, unlike the real world, we often don't know each other's irl identities. This makes a situation rife for scammers on both ends of the transaction- from skinners not getting paid for delivered work, and customers not getting the product they asked for, if they get it at all. This rightfully affects both parties' feelings on how to adjust pricing to account for risk. If you're a coder, prices should be higher, if you're an admin, prices should be lower. This has been more or less solved for multisales with payhip etc, but custom skins are still fraught, and in a world where plenty of players won't consider a site if they've seen the skin too much, that is still a significant chunk of the activity at play.

So do I think skinners should be paid fully professional rates? No. From what I have seen and learned, absolutely not. It didn't occur to me to track the time spent on my skin until quite late in the process, but if I had to guess I'd put it at about 40 hours worth of work. I'll talk more about this in the product section if that seems like a lot of time to you. I'll throw out a very loose figure and say that $50/hr is about right as a figure for what a professional developer would make doing this kind of work, after tax etc. If you're being responsible about the IRS, it would bump significantly higher. If you multiply that by the 40 hours I spent on my skin, we're getting into multiple thousands of dollars for a custom skin if people were charging professional rates. Now it's very possible that if I made skinning My Thing, that I'd build up a library of components I could pull on to make skins much more quickly. I know for a fact that many skinners do. But even if we say I halve my time on my second skin (optimistic but v possible), we're at $1000 if I was charging the prices I charge my employer to keep me on board. That is CLEARLY unsustainable for a hobby centric community where money never gets involved. So what should pricing look like? I really think that depends on the product.

Product

So. I think there's some room for honest reflection in jcink skinning communities about what is being sold. To contextualize this, I have to lay out the basics of what my general mindset is around what makes a website good for its users.

The obvious one, and the one that I think gets the most attention in jcink skinning is aesthetics. How a site looks, whether it's pretty, etc. I think this is important, I care about things looking good, but out of these five concerns, this one is frankly last on my list of what's important.

UX Design/Functionality. No, this is not the same as aesthetics. Is a site easy to understand, use and navigate. Does it make it seamless for a user to get where they want. Does it provide the contextual information they expect from the page they're visiting. These questions are fundamental for me, and I'd rather have a well designed user experience, than a well designed asethetic experience on a site.

Accessibility. Is a site readable. IS A SITE READABLE. IS A SITE READABLE. Is there enough contrast on a page that a colorblind user could read it? Can you navigate it with a keyboard? How about a screenreader? Is the text large enough for standard screen sizes. Does it stay large enough across devices?

Responsiveness. If someone on a phone visits my site, will they have a good experience in every view? Will they have the functionality they need? What about a tablet? What about someone with a small desktop screen, or a huge one? If I have hovers somewhere on my site, is it still navigable on mobile, or is it now an unintuitive situation? Phones take way longer to load than most computers, do all the assets (gifs, images, multiple fonts, etc) on my site make it frustrating for a mobile user to visit my pages?

Performance. When I said jcink is bugged earlier, performance was one my complaints. The base page load time of jcink is shitty. However, what's worse is when a skin takes a baseline of 2 seconds for pages to load, and bumps it up to 5, 8 or (the worst I've seen) 13 seconds to load after someone tries to visit a page. I have not seen a single jcink skin (aside from my own), which adds less than a second of loadtime to jcink's default performance. Again, in an industry where the basic standard is under half a second, jcink skins do not perform to a professional level.

If a website fails along these metrics, it cannot be considered professional for general public consumption. The problem is, everything except aesthetics requires a considerable baseline of knowledge and practice to do well. These are problems that many fortune 500 companies have not figured out (that's because their execs are dumb dinosaurs, but still). So when it comes to the question of 'how much should a skin cost', I think a skinner is obligated to consider their product. Is it aesthetically pleasing? Is it functional? Is it accessible? Is it responsive? Is it performant? For most skins, the answer to at least three of these questions is NO, and I think that pricing should reflect that. In my opinion, I think most skinners do well with asethetics, some skinners do well with functionality, and I have yet to see any truly accessible, responsive, or performant skins in the wild. When it came to writing mine, I think I needed about 5 hours to get familiar with how jcink worked, and then if I only wanted my site to look good on a desktop monitor, I probably could have spent 10-15 hours to write my skin as a noob having to look up every php variable John uses in jcink's terrible docs. That is not what I did. My skin is fully responsive, it is fully accessible, it is to my personal taste aesthetically, and is very performant (on average .25-.35 added seconds to my load time) despite having piles of functional scripts (all of which i wrote myself) on several pages. I also wrote several things that make my life and my member's lives easier. I have a member directory and face claim that require no work on my end past sorting an accepted character into the right member group. I have an autotracker built into member profiles so people can keep track of their threads. I have a button which allows members with lower end computers to turn off most graphics on the site so their computers don't sound like airplanes taking off. I have a light mode/dark mode switch that guests and members can both use. Personally, I would not feel like a freak for charging $1000 for a custom skin of this caliber. It's half what I would earn normally (using the $50/hr figure from earlier), and it lives up to all my standards for what professional code ought to do for its users vs. one or two. The css is not my best work, but I can say without undue arrogance that it's far and away easier to touch without breaking things than any other skin I've looked at, and the actual interface that people see and interact with is great. Again, the aesthetics are simple and to my taste, but it makes sense and has lots of quality of life bits and bobs in it. I'm proud of it. I understand if that entire paragraph read wildly, but I don't say any of it lightly or with the intention to belittle anyone. I'm trying to contextualize how I think about how price relates to what is actually being delivered. But even though I genuinely feel $1000 would be an excellent deal for the work I have done on my skin, I could not possibly stomach charging that much money to a single person for this skin, which (in addition to me using it on my own site) is why it is not going on sale.

To be honest, I have NO idea how much time a typical skinner spends on a custom skin. My approach is different from most people who do this for the community, and I also do adjacent work professionally and have for many years. I suspect that if asked to achieve all 5 of the above criteria, I would be able to do that significantly faster than most skinners. That said, I have no library of components I can turn to, and I hate a lot of the standard choices in building skins and would rather write my own. Isotope, cfs, etc can burn, they're bad code. There's tradeoffs to how I'd do things and how others would, which have significant impacts on time spent, but also on the outcome. Generally however, when it comes to jcink pricing, and how much people should charge or spend on a skin, I think the above 5 things should be the primary metrics. I made my own because I couldn't find a single skin that was truly accessible or responsive, and because I know how the sausage is made I simply couldn't stomach it. I can't really tell you how much you SHOULD pay for a skin that only does Aesthetics and Function, or only Function and Accessibility or any other combination. It's really not my place. I have thoughts on what I would charge, trying to be fair to myself and others if I were to make a multisale. But that's for a different post.

People

And then there's people. I touched on this earlier with some talk about scamming. I have heard horror stories on both ends of this interaction, and I think, simply speaking, it has created a lot of distrust around something which is a core decision for a lot of boards- which skinner to work with, what standards to set, how much things should cost, how to arrange payment. Payment structure has to take care of both you and the commissioner, but it also has to take into account that lots of people are gonna drive you up a wall, go ten rounds on their requirements, and then expect finished work two weeks after they finally got back to you about a core feature. With all due respect, clients who know NOTHING about tech and still have a lot of opinions on exactly how things should be done are my personal nightmare. I have not figured out any good way to account for this. I think custom commissions can be great for both the coder and the customer, but it's a total crapshoot as far as I can tell with no solve that I know of. I think there is also greater than average honesty and flexibility required from both parties in a non-professional setting(like jcink coding is) where money is still being exchanged. I think skinners have to be honest about their capabilities, their timeline, and how they want to work with customers. I think customers have to be honest about their expectations, their priorities and their consistency (are they going to change their mind frequently). I think both people need to be willing to find compromise. Since NO ONE is producing professional products and NO ONE is paying professional prices, there needs to be an understanding that sometimes things need to adjust. But, with custom skinning, it's often a lot of money for people. 250+ is a significant chunk of change. It feels wild to pay that much and not get exactly what you want. However, exactly what you want may be outside the skillset of a hobbyist, or it may simply be difficult or tedious or finicky, even for a professional. You want me to do custom svg clipping all over a skin? I'd rather die than do that during my free time. Furthermore, no skinner is being paid to do EVERYTHING that a professional site might demand. Being unhappy that you didn't get every concern addressed is not reasonable with the rates getting paid right now. There's ground to give on both sides. Flexibility is key, and it gets hard when there's money on the line.

Okay but so what?

Bish i don't know!!! Skinning is difficult niche stuff, especially if you're actually meeting any kind of professional standard. It's really easy to do badly. Paying for products where there is literally no professional available is always complicated. Idk what to tell you man. I'm just saying that I don't think anyone is getting paid a rate they deserve relative to the time they put in (probably), and simultaneously people don't get a product that lives up to the rest of the web right now because there's no real industry level professionalism available. And what's worst is that it's nobody's fault!! It's a tough spot to be in as a community! As for me, I'll probably do multisales in the future, and I'll probably charge significantly more than others because I'll be delivering significantly more. I am simply incapable of coding something that isn't responsive and accessible and performant if I'm going to charge money for it. It simply shan't happen, which means my time and skill will be reflected in the work and ergo the price. As for commissions, other people's taste irritates me too much to willingly get into typical freelancing in any capacity (affectionately, i will never be doing certain aesthetics unless people are willing to pay me my full rate, which no one should lol). I will almost certainly never do fully custom commission work. It is simultaneously not worth my time to do it for the rates offered by the jcink rpc, and it's not worth a commissioners money to pay for my skills when people are well used to skins that don't rise to professional standards anyway. Since I've finished my skin I've started posting some of the scripts I whipped up on caution. You can scroll back in this blog and find some of them. I'll probably continue to do that with anything I think another skinner could use. I will probably also start posting tutorials for discrete components so people have some examples of what responsive coding looks like. It's a tough nut to crack if you've never seen it up close before! If I'm really going to be a good member of the community I should probably start posting those here too more regularly. I basically just really want to help people out with their coding and contribute to the overall health of jcink skinning without undervaluing myself or gatekeeping good code. I will probably post my thoughts on how I'll be structuring the pricing for upcoming work in the next week or so. Expect updates after the holidays on upcoming skin ideas. Most of them have to do with implementing fun design stuff I never get to do at work- parallax effects, color manipulations, funky shapes, abusing css filter rules. I'd love to hear what kinds of things people would be excited to see first!

#jcink coding #jcink skins #thoughts on coding in the rpc

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bardic-inspo · 2 years ago

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🌞🤗🤩

Thanks friend!! :)

🌞 Do you have a preferred time of day to write?

It's not always what's available in a given week, but my favorite writing times are probably Saturday/Sunday mornings or early afternoons, especially if I don't have other weekend things going on or if I feel I can block a large chunk of time without distraction. I feel like I've become a pretty slow writer, and having that dedicated time where I feel like I can sort of "warm up" into writing, and then not have work or other things already filling my brain from the day, just usually makes for a more enjoyable and productive writing time for me. 🤗 What advice would you give to new fanfic writers that are just getting started?

Please for the love of god(s) throw away any notion of needing to be "good" or meet any sort of standard (even and maybe especially your own inner critic's). Be cringe and be free. Or just be free af and know you're not cringe at all. You'll learn through trial and error and experimentation and improve over time whether you realize it or not, and letting your inner critic (or any outer bitches) take center stage will only kill your joy. Chase your joy above all else.

(And maybe I could stand to repeat this to myself, even not being a "new" fic writer anymore) 🤩 Who is your favorite character to write?

Ahh it's a hard toss up between MacCready and Deacon! I love writing Mac's irritability, and the way he just throws himself behind his feelings. But I do personally identify with an Anxious Deacon and find him somewhat easy to write when he's feeling particularly worrisome.

#ask memes #writing #megh fights the page

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captainsspnanon · 3 years ago

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C2E39 - Temple of the False Serpent - rewatch

As of me starting this, it has been 20 days since my last C2 reaction. I have no excuses. (that is a lie, I have all the excuses, with most of them being I’m burned out as fuck and the world is on fire and I just can’t handle anything anymore including entertainment) (22 days as of date of posting)

BUT I’M BACK, BAYBEE. (and holy shit this got long as fuck)

I’ve had this tab sitting open for 20 days, looking at me all accusatory. And the worst part is that I KNOW I will enjoy watching this (even though I know it’s gonna open with combat), but I just haven’t been able to start. I’ll only be able to watch an hour or two tonight, but AT LEAST I WILL START.

Matt looks adorable AF this episode, and I feel like it’s 50% the hair

OH GOD THIS IS THE FACEPAINTING SAM BIT

Oh man, this actually was a good idea for him to do I think, I forgot this ad read had a lot of info to get through, so him just reading it while the others goofed off probably made it much more easy for him to get through, rather than to try one of his more complicated bits.

Lol at Matt announcing the wrong AWNP by announcing the one that’s a week ahead XD They very rarely goof of the actual announcements themselves, it’s fun when they do!

Oh hey, it’s Laura’s one shot ‘next week’! I’ve seen….half of it? The first time I tried I stopped while they were still in the classroom, the second time I think I made it to around the chess game…. I can’t say why or why not I can and can’t get through certain one shots. *shrugs* I’m not going to try to look for a deeper meaning, they either hold my attention or they don’t. And honestly? It’s RARE for me to rewatch a one shot. I might watch clips from one, but even for ones like Critmas which I really enjoyed, I can’t sit through it a second time, and I’ve tried. Couldn’t say why.

The 80s intro is fine, but I am looking forwards to the animated intro. When I first saw it, I told myself I’d never skip it, and then I ended up skipping it most times XD Haven’t skipped the C3 one because I watch them on twitch on Fridays typically, so it’s not worthwhile to try. We’ll see if I actually don’t skip the C2 one this time around, or if I will.

Aw, Caleb didn’t get his Slow spell off. Also, hello wooden mug again! Is it just for the pirate arc? Is it a standard Caleb mug? I swear I don’t remember this! ...I’m going to have to go back to pre-pirate episodes and see what mug he was using. (also Liam spit something back into his mug? Gross)

Okay, spot checking episodes – he was using a darker and smaller mug in the early episodes (3, 11, 22). In 32, he’s using a tea mug it looks like. 33 is the first episode with the wooden mug, which was also when they were in Nicodranas! As of 45, he’s back to the mug he was using at the beginning. Can’t really get a sense for when the switch back happens as I’m not easily seeing the mugs at a glance. I will honestly be fucking impressed if Liam is using a MUG as part of his RP what the fuck. (I mean, more likely than not it’s just switching out a mug, but you never know!)

You know, as much as I’m enjoying the C3 PCs (still won’t spoil it here!), I do miss Marisha playing a monk. In her PC classes, I think this is the one that I enjoy seeing her to the most, even though she clearly enjoyed being a druid and enjoys being a [redacted], which she’s being doing quite well might I add. Something about monk just seems to fit MARISHA so well. Eh, it’s probably just C2 bias.

Ah, “Yasha” flirting with Beau through Travis. Delightful, but completely non-canon, imo. It’s a bit of in game fanfic.

Travis is FLUSTERED after the nasty attack that took Beau from full to 12.

Also, whether or not it’s true, I feel like Matt usually doesn’t target Ashley’s PCs as much when she’s not there. To be fair, Pike was rarely jaegered, but I feel like he’s a bit more reluctant to target them when the player can’t be there for it, which I actually appreciate.

As someone with casual knowledge about the balance of dnd, I feel like hold person and hold monster should be the same. There are few spells split in that category, if I recall.

I’m very sad that I read a fanfic a few months ago (or at least some of it, I ended up not finishing it ‘cause I wasn’t feeling it) that ended up going through what we’ll be seeing for the next few episodes. I probably would have remembered next to none of this, but now I know/remember about the fountain and blood trees and the drug fruit and the puzzle and the eggs and the whole hydra bit. :( It’s weird, it feels like I got spoiled for something that I already knew? So hard to explain.

Oh FUCK Caduceus going for a Cure Wounds when the priestess slit her own throat! Also being intimidating with the Decompose… it’s odd, I don’t remember him being a super intimidating PC? A lot of his ‘intimidation’ seemed to come from his perception, rather than these subtle threats (‘respectfully, I hope someone will mourn you’ comes to mind). Either I’m forgetting and I’m going to get to relearn a bunch of bad ass Caduceus, or Taliesin still hadn’t fully sorted his character out yet and softened the intimidation going forwards. Like, this from Cad seems more like it could come from Caleb, you know? Just the …. the scary quiet intimidation without really saying anything? (Fjord’s intimidation is both awesome and hysterical at the same time, he doesn’t go for the quiet level so much). I wonder if maybe this IS Cad, and I just forgot it because of the fact that basically all the PCs hit intimidation quite a bit, so he got overshadowed? LEARNING POSSIBLY NEW THINGS ON A REWATCH, YAY!

Ugh I miss this top table SO BAD. The C3 seating combinations are good, don’t get me wrong! But I just MISS this top table with all my heart. And I hate that the pandemic took away a good 40ish episodes of top table. :(

Caleb poking Beau with his foot! MY HEAAAART

Cad coming up with the idea to shove the arms of the bodies in the holes to plug them feels much more like Cad. A quite reasonable but also somewhat morbid way of solving things!

Huh, Beau still has the disease. I thought this was the episode where it got corrected, maybe that’s next episode?

I FORGOT AVANTIKA WASN’T HAVING CURRENT VISIONS!!! ‘a few years, about’ HOLY FUCK

I’m a little sad we ended up not getting a huge amount of Marisha/Taliesin interaction in C2, especially once Molly kicked it. They were great in C1, I’m looking forwards to seeing how C3 turns out, and C2 WAS going to have them with a pretty strong relationship clearly, but then it ended up veering away. But Beau leaning into the horror movie tropes with temples and graves, Cad immediately shutting it down by talking about how grave stacking is in fact common and practical, and Beau just bitterly saying “my parents fucking lied to me” is pure gold.

I’m entertained with how frequently Matt is bringing up Zehir, the Cloaked Serpent in this episode, considering it’s a god from the pantheon that is just so little utilized during the campaigns that I always forget it. What are the gods that are actually in my head? Sarenrae – the Everlight, Pelor – the Dawnfather, Erathis, which I think is the Changebringer?, Tharizdun – the Chained Oblivion, the Raven Queen (seriously do not like “Matron of Ravens”), Melora – the Wildmother, Kord – the Stormlord, Lolth – the Spider Queen, Ioun – the Knowing Mistress, Bahamut – the Platinum Dragon, whatever Tiamat is called (the Scaled Tyrant, I think?), the Moonweaver, Corellon – the Archeart, I don’t think I can think of any others. That’s 13! I’m actually impressed with how many I know! But I think it’s mostly the ‘good’ ones. But like, Zehir is not on that list at ALL. Outside of this episode, I don’t think I think of him at all.

Yup, searching the transcripts, he’s only mentioned in 37 BRIEFLY, 38 during Matt’s ‘last time’ summary, and then 39 and briefly in 40 and then NEVER AGAIN.

Ooo, searching the transcripts, AVANDRA is the Changebringer, Erathis is the Lawbearer. There’s the Allhammer as well! Allhammer is in transcripts 52 times, you’d think I’d have remembered that one! XD

Ah, here is Matt correcting his Lessor Restoration mistake! I thought this was a chat/social media correction, but it looks like it’s an in game correction. :) I do like moments where it’s clear that Matt isn’t infallible. I feel like part of the internet seems to think he can do no wrong ever (while the other part hates him without or with minimal reason).

Jamedi is way more awesome than I remember him being. I wonder if he’s a ranger, maybe?

Lolling at Fjord snapping at Nott to not eat the fruit. We’re just about hitting the turning point of their relationship soon, which I’m looking forwards to. From the start through now, Fjord’s treated Nott as someone younger, that he almost has responsibility towards. VERY SOON, in a few episodes I think, the relationship changes to this ball busting mutual bickering. Honestly, I enjoy both flavors of the relationship, especially because it’s another one where the GROWTH of the relationship is very important to how it ends up. I feel like the biggest change is around the ‘buttonbeard’ conversation, maybe because that’s when Nott starts lashing back a bit, and that has the dynamic shift. They walk a fun fine line of actually fighting versus playful bickering in a very different way than the Beau/Caleb relationship. I think because the affectionate aspect is much more buried and couched in the bickering, whereas Beau and Caleb frequently have sincere moments in addition to their own type of bickering.

Man, seeing the Fjord/Caleb relationship with the knowledge of how the campaign goes actually makes me a little sad? Because WOW their dynamic is good! Not even the Widofjord aspect of it, but just the mutual respect, combined with the small amount of still not fully trusting but moving into trust (*Caleb pushes Fjord off* “I should have known!” *Caleb casts Feather Fall* “...that you had everything under control”) is so fascinating! To be fair, they don’t lose the relationship entirely, but it ends up getting overshadowed by the other relationships taking more screen time. Man, every time I watch C2 it just reminds me why I love C2 so much. (I cannot WAIT until three years from now when I start doing a C3 rewatch and see all of THAT with hindsight!) (Honestly? After I finished C1, I said I’d never really watch it again, but with this, it’s making me wonder if I’d appreciate it more during a rewatch. I’d already known a ton of spoilers for it, but maybe it’d give me more appreciation? ...We’ll see how it goes once I finish this rewatch. I’ve got a LONG ways to go)

Ah, the revelation that Nott is now tripping balls.

Didn’t mention it before, but the lighting is much better this episode. I no longer feel like Taliesin is less lit than everyone else.

Beau/Marisha being VERY smart and testing if Nott being high would let her see anything special on the walls. 100% not something I would have thought of!

I love that they force Caleb to eat the fruit and Matt confirms immediately after that Nott’s drawings were good enough to read XD

Oh hey! Blueberry! The literally only time he calls her this! Oh, actually I think the only time he uses a nickname for Jester ever. Just checked the transcripts for “Jessie”, and he only calls her that out of character three times, never in character. (It sucks trying to check nicknames for him, because he calls Beau “Beau” out of character a lot, and I’m not individually checking all 117 times to see if/how many are actually in character. He says Mr. Clay or equivalent 7 times total, mostly upon first meeting him, “Cad” looks to be always out of character.) I do love that Vax was nicknaming EVERYONE to the point where at times I was annoyed because it felt forced, and then Caleb nicknames NO ONE AT ALL EVER. (*waves a sad goodbye to all the schatz and leibling in fanfic*)

Full kudos to Sam “I am trying to cast Teleport. I do not have Teleport. I’m trying to cast it anyway”

LOL firebolt or fireball??? I think this is the only time that there’s the confusion, but it’s fun seeing the horror on Matt’s face

THE CAPTIONS SAY (panicky drug trip groan) I LOVE IT

(I was planning on finishing this and posting it today, but my internet started being a butt an hour and a half ago, just around the start of the vine fight. Seriously, it is SO fucking slow right now)

I was going to make a comment about how Cad not immediately healing Nott after combat ended felt REALLY out of character, and then I remembered that he already stabilized Nott and then it made sense.

Oh ffs. I’ve been reading through the articles on critrolestats in line with the episodes (which I am enjoying a lot!) and can see that the hydra fight is this episode. 1) that means I need to deal with some Liam bullshit this episode (I had issues with the argument with Matt, but at least he acknowledged after the episode that he was in the wrong), and 2) that means there is THREE combats this episode! Almost the entire episode! Blaaaagh. I thought this was spaced over two. Then again, the pirate arc has a lot of combat in it. ...well, the campaign has a lot of combat it in. Just sometimes it feels like it flows more smoothly and other times it feels like it overloads.

Hmmm, I wonder if the Fjord/Nott dynamic actually does change this episode, it feels like it’s shifting a little bit. It’s the snarkiness.

Not particularly a fan of Caduceus taking fruit, mainly because it just seems like all of Taliesin’s PCs want to do drugs. Percy, Molly, and Cad have all been for altering substances, even if Cad doesn’t drink, and his C3 PC I feel would go for it as well. And really, if anything, I’d feel like he could have gone to make Cad a fully sober PC. (to be fair, I don’t think Cad ever actually eats the fruit, but him still taking it feels off. It fully feels like a taking-drugs-for-later situation, rather than any sort of curiosity about the fruit itself)

I genuinely don’t get how Marisha and Laura (mostly Laura) have dice that go on crazy dice roll journeys. Maybe it’s just how I roll my dice, but they land on the number really quickly, whereas it seems like Laura’s dice will roll for like 5-10 seconds before landing. I’d think even if her tray was full of dice, that would make the rolled die stop even sooner!

I don’t mind Avantika, but she certainly doesn’t feel as strong of an antagonist to me as she is plot-wise. I’m not sure why. She’s certainly intimidating, but I feel like sometimes it and her bad ass coolness end up feeling … staged, almost? Presentory, rather than natural? It’s absolutely my own interpretation, and I’m sure I’m MISinterpreting it at times! I can’t remember how I viewed her during my first watch through. I know undead!Avantika was awesome. I’m not saying she feels bad by any means! But instead of rating her like a 9 out of 10, I think I’m rating her more like a 6.5 out of 10. Maybe it just feels slightly too cliché? *shrugs* ...also wtf LibreOffice Writer. You added the thingy over the ‘e’ in cliché, but you’re also giving the squiggly line that it’s spelled wrong, and suggesting it without the thingy. Go home, you’re drunk.

“It’s almost like he’s meditating, like I did that ONE time” ILU Beau

FLUFFERNUTTER

Okay, Fjord and Nott arguing over fluffernutter 100% feels like their snarky bickering relationship, so I guess this is the shift. I LOVE IT. Also, Travis calling Tal “Molly”. It’s episode 39. It’s been...10ish weeks since you’ve been playing with Cad. I feel like that should have been long enough to prevent flubs. XD

Jester succeeded in Inflict Wounds!!!! That almost never happens XD Also I love that she’s thinking of Vex being able to use the assassinate ability. You are not a Rogue/Ranger anymore, my dear.

I still feel like the shuriken should be allowed to be flavored daggers rather than flavored darts. Matt could have increased the cost for them accordingly.

Hydra comes out and Sam shouts “that’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen!” Just like my first watch through where I took his comment about not knowing how to use spells seriously and then found out he was full of it after watching C1, I took this seriously during my first watch through, and now I KNOW he’s full of it. The kracken? Fucking THORDAK? Get outta here

...screw it. I’m not feeling like more combat today. WILL WATCH THE LAST HOUR AND HALF TOMORROW.

Sometimes I appreciate Tal’s rules lawyering and other times I don’t. They’re debating whether or not Jester would have cast her 3rd level if she couldn’t have moved her duplicate, but it’s a situation where it’s already been a full round of actions and it’s back to her turn, and they wouldn’t be debating it if she had succeeded in the Inflict Wounds. I like it when Matt likes them fix mistakes within a round, but after the round, let it lie no matter what. Matt does it all the time for the enemies, or lets a moment go through that technically shouldn’t have from the PCs.

They do actually have fluffernutter work at some point, don’t they? Ugh, search the transcripts doesn’t show at a glance which ones (if any) actually worked. Looking at damage or rolls on critrolestats doesn’t seem to show. The wiki says it succeeds once (probably next episode) when they’re running away, shows the creation of more, but doesn’t say if they’re actually used. Transcripts says one is used against Trent, I feel like that one worked? Hard to tell looking at the wiki.

Speaking of rules lawyering, I noticed no one remembered that Beau should have been stunned for a round because Caleb dropped Haste. (not really bothered by this – stuff like this happens all the time, but considering the multiple arguments/debates that happen during this combat, just a note that they don’t worry about the one that would impact them negatively)

Ah, the Slow debacle. Aka – Liam 99.9% in the wrong.

1- Caleb casts Slow, does not specify targets. So far so good, though specification would have solved the whole issue. However, by saying that he does the ‘same thing again’, it’s implied to target both. 2- Matt rolls for the abomination. The 0.1% that I can say is Matt in the wrong is that Matt rolls the d20 and then says “for the abomination”, then adds Bane, remembers it doesn’t have Bane. Now, Matt rolled for the abomination first the first time as well, so I do believe that he always intended it. But one could maybe argue that he rolled low and therefore called it for the abomination rather than the hydra. 3- Liam does not say anything, meaning he is fine with the abomination getting Slowed. 4- Matt succeeds with the hydra. 5- Liam now argues that he only targeted the hydra because the abomination was already Slowed.

No Liam. No. If you only would have targeted the hydra, you should have spoken up AS SOON as Matt said he was rolling for the abomination. It wasn’t super quick either! He rolls, says it’s for the abomination, rolls Bane, says ‘no the abomination isn’t Baned’, and then says 12. Then he rolls for the hydra, laughs, and says the hydra got a nat 20. THAT’S when you started fighting. This was very much an argument where Liam just wanted to succeed, and was stretching/bending/breaking rules to try to get it. I was not happy with him first time around, and am still not happy with him now. To be fair, I don’t think he’s necessarily lying about his intentions, but I think he just needed to accept that he failed. And he did at first! He brought up the comment, got shut down, and agreed. Had it ended there, I would have been fine. It would have been a normal level of back and forth which they always do. But then he just goes back INTO it. Especially because he even brings up the fact that it would go with Matt’s initial dice roll of 12! Which I STILL disagree with, because that was the roll for the abomination! (A little nasty part of me wishes that Matt said “Sure. The hydra rolled a nat 20, and now the abomination isn’t Slowed either because you didn’t target it”.)

Luckily, after the episode aired, Liam did either tweet or post on reddit (I forget which, I only saw it way later), that he was completely in the wrong but was caught up in the heat of the moment. Doesn’t make this easier to watch, but at least he fully acknowledges it.

...huh. Actually, you know what does make this easier to watch? The fact that it’s actually way shorter than I remember it being. Maybe the first time I saw it I was so uncomfortable with it that it felt like it lasted forever, but it’s over and done now. With only a bit of back and forth. Like, Liam was still in the wrong, but it’s definitely not as bullshitty long ‘fighting with the DM’ as I remember. Sometimes trainwrecks are only fender benders.

I forgot how many of their attacks missed!! AAAAGH!!! They are lucky that no one died, omg!

(also Liam’s back in good mood, joking about getting his own hydra mini and throwing it in the neighbors yard. Memory really did make the argument worse than it actually was)

I do love that the hydra fight ends up making it into the animated intro. It’s just so fucking badass.

Have I mentioned how much I miss them pulling out the camera and us seeing the table back overview at the end of the episodes? Only like 100 times. But I will keep mentioning it, I miss it so much.

I WILL TRY NOT TO LET ANOTHER 20 DAYS PASS BEFORE MY NEXT EPISODE!

@suicidallyreckless

#critical role #the mighty nein #cr c2 rewatch #spoilers for c1 and c2

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sugar-petals · 4 years ago

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Bts voice analysis anon here! I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to respond ❤ it made complete sense why yoongi is the deepest I kinda feel bad for him everytime he wants to sounds cheerful or speak in a way so people can hear him he strains his voice

lot to talk about, i’d like to expand on this. especially what his voice being the deepest means for bts’ songs. plus, where his undiscovered vocal talents are, and in what manner his voice will not strain.

that he’s very introverted contributes to what you say, but yoongi is certainly the odd one out voice-wise, such low baritones hardly sound upbeat. similar to how taehyung being the odd one out in the vocal line whose head voices are literal superpowers. i really respect him for singing with jin and jimin who can climb one octave higher than him, up to C#5! and with jk who has the best technique and breaks into the 6th octave if he goes on like that.

it’s very much like yoongi who probably has to mix their tracks back and forth to fit his parts with hobi (who is a tenor as a rapper! — very uncommon) and namjoon who raps in several modes. very low, very high, very impactfully. he’s the most full-bodied baritone in the group even if he’s only the third-deepest. the tone is just so rich. both hoseok and RM are extreme vocal chameleons on top of that. in speaking and in their music you can hear the difference to yoongi all the time. they don’t suddenly drop in pitch and they’re vocal acrobats.

hobi in particular, this guy can do anything. the sheer agility my god, he connects his registers. he can go up and down, impersonate and do a million effects, adlibs, you know the drill. it’s him who actually owns the “cheerful/loud and clear” brand you mention. which is good if not fantastic for yoongi’s production endeavours, the group mood, and how bts cannot be ignored — but tough for yoongi’s voice and comparison thinking, and when he tries to make a point in interviews. maybe it’s not bad that bts have to slow down sometimes to let yoongi speak, but his tone is drowned out (not intentionally of course) in other occasions and he wakes up hoarse often as we saw. which might sound hot, but it’s not good for him as you say.

to be clear. i wouldn’t chalk down his more monotonous and silent tone as a weakness, it’s just outside of bts’ other vocal variety. he makes up for it with speed and good lungs anyway. we just have to listen more closely to him in talks/episodes/conferences but i think he shouldn’t worry about it either or try to sound more enthusiastic, the fans love his soothing speech for its pure sake. he does change it regardless to be more poignant and blend in. it has pros and cons but it wears him out.

yoongi’s voice is under that strain not just in conversation but also in the studio if he wants to bring connection to the rap line parts instead of having 3 songs in 1. which usually ends up happening anyway. that’s also why the cyphers (!) switch genres mid-song so often: their voices are all strong in different registers! yoongi the lowest, joon midrange, and hoseok up high.

that’s why cypher pt2 is a HUGE stunt and production masterpiece: hoseok’s part is tuned differently, then other instrumentals start with namjoon. and you can literally hear, okay alright a deep voice is coming! from there it just gets deeper and deeper until yoongi is just rapping over a bass guitar (every baritone’s best friend lmao!). god, please give yoongi a big bassline for his every part. “ugh” is the exact opposite: yoongi has to start too high and namjoon also has problems with the key, only hoseok can fully take off after 1:50 with perfect vocal stability. guess which song is autotuned: it’s not cypher pt2! a 3 in 1 song fuels the rapline in a way where they are most comfortable. it’s crazy how far apart they are among each other vocally and it has to be considered.

it’s a dilemma but also why bts’ rap line can tackle any song with at least one member suiting it. they complement each other, every register (except the rare whistle register, aka what mariah/ariana do) is covered. i think that contributed to bts’ fame, it’s so important. however usually, the song caters to hoseok since tenors are preferred in kpop music, or it caters to RM as he’s the central songwriting entity even if mind you, he always thinks about all the members and works closely with yoongi.

but even with joon’s support, it doesn’t work if yoongi is caught in his wish to be a tenor. we’ve seen how much the guy talks about wanting his range to become wider and how he even tried singing quite high for his standards on d-2. he goes as far as collabing only with sopranos to help him achieve that pitch. yoongi is invested to pretty much change his entire vocal type 🙁because the environment simps for high notes so bad (which is fair, falsetto is related to releasing certain happy hormones and highlights parts in songs, but still).

... he actually can’t, unless he wants to damage his throat. that’s the last thing we want. a listener can get the serotonin from a very deep voice equally if they got good taste.

thing is. you cannot morph yourself into a different vocal type and shift your range to the opposite of your comfort zone unless you’re whitney houston. even one in a million tenors like baekhyun can’t make themselves a baritone. his lowest notes are less clear no matter how hard he practices, even if his chest voice is almost operatic and his technique excels. meanwhile, chanyeol (who’s a lyric baritone and exo’s deepest voice) effortlessly hits them without (!!) that kind of decade-long training. have baekhyun or jimin been called bad singers for not being able to cover the other end of the spectrum? nope. so: why would yoongi be a bad vocalist who needs autotune. with lessons, oh man, he could do a lot and many things he dreams of. he has a very unique timbre and enough musical knowledge to do so.

so, we see the magic of your natural supported range. it’s simply given to you. imagine that: if you know you’re not a tenor, you could sort of outsing jungkook — obviously not by technique, but projection— as long as the song is tailored to you and the notes are low enough. yep, jk’s lower register is not extremely forward. each note is perfectly sung because he’s jk, but his power vocals are settled much higher. joon/tae/yoongi would sound much fuller with huge oomph in those lines. that’s where yoongi would be much more clear-sounding to us. a lot of baritone rappers in kpop would be damn good singers.

that’s why it’s good how a lot of rappers produce solos on their own so they can try it out.

you just have to respect that your range usually (not always) goes in one direction. once yoongi rightfully decides to abandon his high note fantasy and goes lower just for fun, we are not safe anymore lmao! exception for range: female singers have an advantage there. trained mezzo-sopranos have great access to the head voice and lower registers since they’re in the perfect middle of the scale. but the guys, forget it, even the baritenors. yoongi’s fullest voice will always be coming from a chesty depth and we love him for it. guy just needs to realize.

that’s why his real challenge is rather somehow tweaking the rap parts so his voice finds good resonance like in “혼술” or even “ddaeng”. where his voice is strong, relaxed, and full and flowing. ddaeng — “boy with luv”, too— is ironically in a very high pitch and again caters to hobi’s tone the most, but: yoongi just scales down to his own octave and it still fits, so — great key choice and musicality! and adaptation. it’s not easy to do. you can tell he plays piano.

he either becomes less easy on the ear or has to autotune himself entirely if he works against his voice. or: goes on a track way outside his supported range (dynamite, WOW). it’s a shame. “daechwita” and “agust d” are such a case: both go into the head voice where your resonance should show the most aka the chorus. there are aggressive belts/snarls/shouts that make more sense for higher, trained voices. yoongi is most famous for raps that are literally designed to fuck up his vocal cords 😷that he’s so skilled as a rapper prevents him from that to a degree, but it’s still not healthy. he adapts a lot to bts’ overall delivery but he doesn’t have to, in fact: he could go in the other direction and it would work even better.

the reason for the title track issue: they are the most energetic. in k-pop, energetic means amping up the pitch. and that’s probably a logical choice and a natural human association. if you make a baritone kpop track with a lot of energy, it probably becomes pretty creepy, uneasy, film noir. but i think that’s exactly yoongi’s thing: to unsettle and critique and rage. i think it could work out. lil nas x is a baritone pulling it off. he achieves energetic title tracks, he honors his vocal type well imo. his live singing is cool af, i need this so hard in the rap landscape. so, it’s not impossible to do.

the trick is probably setting everything to minor key. surprise... yoongi’s challenging title tracks are all in major key. boy with luv: minor key, interesting. the former are extremely difficult for him to do so hats off. “shadow” is more suitable for his baritone as is “burn it”. it needs a very heavy, dark track. which is why it’s good that yoongi has that kind of public image. a baritone’s best genre is not super light and whimsical. that’s why all of our baritone faves are not main vocalists but main rappers. kai, taehyung, jaehyun: low voices in vocal lines are soldiers.

---

now a note on yoongi’s best method of singing since it reflects his voice type and brings out the fullness of it. as in, how does it crack and strain less? guess why “사람” is yoongi’s favorite d-2 song to sing. it’s ALL his comfortable range and the singing — very beautifully done — is in mixed register (= head + chest)! which imo might be his secret weapon. it allows him to do what he longs to do successfuly without going extremely high. bingo.

because: even with baritones, the golden middle is still important. they’re not as deep as a bass, after all. that’s why their voices are so honey-laced in the mixed range and it sounds amazing. heaven, their timbre sounds so seductive. so, it’s wonderful when they find their middle and dare to sing.

i wish yoongi gets/makes more tracks aimed at just that. in “outro tear” he has to go both too low and too high so it takes a lot of production effort to patch it together. the rapline is doing god’s work to make all their voices sound cohesive without being trained singers. it’s always a trade-off and risk, an immense balance act. “paldogangsan” is hard on yoongi’s voice but works as a whole plus it caters to namjoon to carry the song’s message. the cyphers are chopped up and not chart-friendly but each member is in their comfort zone.

PS: i said bts’ rap line covers all registers except one. i think that jin is the one to complete bts’ entire spectrum coming from the vocal line. i’m no whistle note expert but dionysus went pretty high up there, i think he might be able to do it. it’s very impressive, even jungkook and jimin probably don’t have access to that register. so, another point for bts being a very ‘complete’ group.

#anon #ask #cub mail 🐆#vocal analysis #yoongi #suga #bts #baritones #tenors #mixed register #long post

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sims2squared · 3 years ago

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Pleasant Hills v3.0 Progress

Well.. that was a lot of posts, wasn't it? In total, 16 neighbourhoods and over 40 sims spruced up in the matter of days! Whew!| This morning my computer even rebuked the amount of work I've been doing... seems that dying RAM was causing me more issues than I thought (crashes, slow downs... the usual). This is why I always have 32GB or more of RAM (one set in is always newer than the other)... so when a stick dies I'm are still left with decent RAM for things like playing sims! Anyway, I'm really keen to have this version of the save file looking & operating exactly how I want it to... so I don't have to touch it again for a very long time. I know game and mod updates may change things over time, but the bones of the save will be very solid and hopefully easy to hop in and make small updates to. I have 2 more big things I want to do before releasing: - Checking all clubs to ensure their club hangout location is correct, as I have changed out a number of community lots - Checking club outfits for clubs headed by homeless sims (2T4 sims' clubs already done) Unfortunately, doing those 2 things means there probably won't be many posts on progress until I'm totally finished. Not much to take pictures of when I'm just in and out of club cas.... The question I have is: There is some speculation that the wedding pack that's coming is going to have a new neighbourhood.... do I wait and do updates for that hood (provided there actually is one) before putting v3.0 out?? Finally, have you seen the change log so far? I'll pop it below a cut:

Simply living lot trait removed from most lots (found to be too much for rotational play), now restricted to most of Brindleton Bay and Henford-on-Bagley with some exceptions

All community lots have received trait updates and now have more than 3 traits! Most community lots now have traits from LMS' Auto Employees, LMS' Gender and More Not Allowed, and some others (will be noted on the mods list)

Some community lots replaced with lots that I liked better

Serviced Apartment lot trait added to dorms in Britechester (via a mod), as townies are messy AF and having a housekeeping service is standard at every college dorm where I live

Ages for all housed 2T4 sims and non-NPC 2T4 sims fixed to accommodate a new ageing system (includes using PreTeen mod)

TO FINISH: Outfits for a lot clubs fixed/added, mostly adding outfits in categories other than everyday

TO DO: Clubs gathering places for all clubs checked as some community lots have changed

Likes & Dislikes redone for all housed 2T4 sims, including likes & dislikes from mods (PreferencesPlus, BetterSims, The Hobby Mod, etc), based mostly on information from the sims 2 wiki entries

Personality trait from Slice of Life added to all housed 2T4 sims, and select SOL packs turned on

PreferencesPlus' preference archetype chosen for all housed 2T4 sims

Auto-generation of BetterSims traits and preferences individually disabled for YA/A/E 2T4 housed sims as they already have fully fleshed out profiles and BetterSims was generating too many traits/preferences

All cc nail polished changed to nail polish from the Spa Day patch

Redone traits from the Talents & Weakneses mod for housed 2T4 sims and non-npc 2T4 townies

BetterSims secondary aspiration trait added to all eligible housed 2T4 sims

Better Babies and Toddlers trait added for all housed 2T4 sims and non-npc 2T4 townies

Lothario household: Don's clothing updated to better match clothing from TS2

Goth household: Mortimer & Cassandra's clothing updated to better match clothing from TS2, Kaylynn has been hired as a maid (club), Bella Goth redone so that she does not show as a playable ghost in the manage worlds menu

Caliente household: Nina & Dina's clothing updated to better match clothing from TS2, adjustment to Nina & Dina's body types and skintone, Michael Bachelor created and made Dina's deceased spouse, Michael Bachelor's urn added to lot

Broke household: Brandi's age fixed, Brandi's pregnancy tied to (a new) Skip Broke, Brandi's pregnancy no longer paused on start, Skip Broke added as Brandi's deceased spouse, Skip Broke's (new) gravestone added to lot

Dreamer household: Darleen Dreamer added as Darren's deceased spouse, Darleen Dreamer's gravestone added to lot

Burb household: John, Jennifer, & Lucy's clothing updated to better match clothing from TS2, changed owned business

Curious household: Pascal's age fixed, Pascal's pregnancy tied to Alien Pollination Technician #3, Pascal's pregnancy no longer paused on start

Beaker household: Updated Circe & Loki's traits to better align with wiki information, updated outfits for Circe, Loki, & Nervous

Specter household: Ophelia's parents fixed and gravestones added to lot

Grunt household: Lyla and Buzz's relationship status fixed, Lyla's gravestone added to Specter lot

Singles household: New looks for Erin, Chloe, and Kristen; some trait adjustments

Langerak household: Removed maid outfit from Kaylynn's everyday category and added it as a club outfit for all the maid clubs instead

Vu household: Crystal flagged not to be married off by MCCC, moved into Henford-on-Bagley

Landgraab household: Malcolm flagged not to be married off by MCCC, moved into Brindleton Bay, owns the mall

And that is all on top of the work I did on previous versions. Go me.

#Pleasant Hills Progress #Pleasant Hills save file #peppermintbluesims save file

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jellyluchi · 3 years ago

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Get to know me

Thank you for the tag @evrxx !!

Tagging: whoever would like to do this!!

What day is your birthday?

march 11

What is your favorite color? pastel

pastel pink, blue, PURPLE

What's your lucky number?

idk???

Do you have any pets?

nope

How tall are you?

5'1 (152 cm? I can't tell if it's 5'0 or 5'1)

How many pairs of shoes do you own?

me who wears the same addidas every time I go out: like..... a few? couple?

Favorite song?

At this very moment... I can't pick oof

Favorite movie?

UHM.. in recent memory maybe into the spiderverse?

Who would be your ideal partner?

Someone who is genuinely supportive and encouraging! I enjoy relationships where people grow and prosper together and learn a lot from each other. Of course someone kind and caring and honest too. But mutual support is most is most important to me!

Do you want children?

hmmm probably? maybe?

Have you ever got in trouble with the law?

thankfully not lol

Baths or showers?

showers bc we don't have a bathtub that facilitates baths smh

What color socks are you wearing?

not wearing them it's hot af also i dont wear footwear at home

What type of music do you like?

pop, r&b, 80s/70s are the big ones but I like others too!

How many pillows do you sleep with?

What position do you usually sleep in?

side ways leg up LOL

What you dont like when sleeping?

any form of loud noise or light

What do you typically have for breakfast?

depends, sometimes leftovers sometimes cereal sometimes oatmeal sometimes bread with jam and juice sometimes paratha sometimes roti with aloo or some chicken curry or sometimes omurice or fried rice sometimes coffee n croissant? like it's all over the place

Have you ever tried archery?

nope

Favorite fruit?

mangoes!!!

Favorite swear words?

bitch lol but i do say fuck a lot.. so fucking bitch I guess

Do you have any scars?

acne scars on my face I guess? but on the body mostly stretch marks than scars

Are you a good liar?

depends, I could lie to strangers pretty easy

What is your personality type?

? if this is about myers briggs then infp

What is your favorite type of girls?

soft girls with airy laughs who keeps journals and wear pretty dresses (not that I wouldn't like the opposite but I just love cute girls!!!)

Are you an innie or an outie?

innie I guess??

Left or right handed?

right

Favorite food?

fuck uh.. desserts?

Favorite foreign food?

sushi! but I also like Chinese, Korean, Mediterranean, Italian cuisines too!

Are you a clean or a messy person?

messy...

Most used phrase?

perhaps 'lol'

How long does it take for you to get ready?

if its like for a walk or grocery's then like 5 mins but any higher effort than that is like an hour or more

Do you talk to yourself?

yup!!

Do you sing to yourself?

yahh but only in the shower

Are you a good singer?

hmmm idk

Biggest fear?

like academic or career wise def failure but also like insects and like being in a lot of pain

Are you a gossip?

kinda yeah ksjdbsd

Do you like long or short hair?

both but personally keep it short bc its hard to maintain

Favorite school subject?

english literature

Extrovert or introvert?

Introvert

What makes you nervous?

anything with social interaction but also public speaking

Who was your first real crush?

honestly i think some guy in 6th grade when I was in 5th grade we never even spoke LOL

How many piercings do you have?

0 lool

How fast can you run?

not fast at all like.. pretty slow and i get tired fast

What color is your hair?

black

What color are your eyes?

dark brown

What makes you angry?

unfairness or double standards, being perceived wrong, anything that makes be a bit impatient like waiting in line sometimes

Do you like your own name?

hmmmmmmmmm kinda no.. idk i have a weird relationship with it

Do you want a boy or a girl for a child?

1 boy 1 girl would be perfect lol

What are your strengths?

optimism and quick turn around! I like to see the good and bright side of things and quickly go from gloomy to feeling better again

What are your weaknesses?

self-doubt, socially anxious, overthinking

Color of your bedspread?

pink and blue - pink and white bedsheets and my 2 duvet / comforter things are pink and blue

Color of your room?

white? its painted

#taha talks #tag game #thank you!!!

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coyotelena · 4 years ago

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Shirai Ryu Warrior Headcanons

With the clan being rebuilt, now composed of anyone who needs a home with a sense of justice and a good heart, I feel like there’s plenty of potential for some awesome unique Shirai Ryu characters but we hardly see any??? So I made up some random people that might be in the clan lol

The Drill Sergeant

My thoughts are that with the clan getting larger and larger, Hanzo doesn’t have time to train everyone. He’s awesome, but he just can’t. So he appoints those of high skill, those who are nearly as good as he is, to help train groups of ninjas

Enter this hardass

He’s pretty much second only to Hanzo himself when it comes to skill level. Minus the netherrealm fire powers obviously.

He’s strict and he’s scary. If you’re stuck getting trained by this guy you know you’re gonna be sore af the next day. His students are the best because they are held to high standards.

Doesn’t talk much but loud af when he’s giving orders

Doesn’t seem to be very well liked from the females in the clan because he either a. yelled at their sons during training or b. were advised by the women whose sons were yelled at not to talk to this guy

Due to this he’s in his early 30s and still has no wife, which is a bit unusual for Shirai Ryu men

If a woman were to show him some affection despite his scary demeanor he would probably be smitten immediately

If his person of romantic interest were to watch him give lessons, that would be one of the few times he makes mistakes-- due to being nervous as hell. Getting his chain tangled, hitting his own face with it on accident etc. Hanzo notices this one day and is confused af until he realizes what’s going on.

Is touch starved

If he ever found a partner he would probably be super protective. Like seriously he’ll kick someone’s ass. Nobody wants to fuck with his partner cuz he’s scary.

The Cocky and Energetic Student

This guy is a student who is excelling at his training, and he knows it

Takes every damn opportunity to show off

If he has a love interest he will probably show off to them even more than usual

You want to see tricks that aren’t conducive to fighting at all? He has them.

God forbid if his love interest is a nurse. He will pick fights on purpose to have an excuse to see them. Then brag about his battle wounds.

Will get his ass handed to him eventually

The Skilled Female Student

I have no idea if Shirai Ryu take female warriors? I know the Lin Kuei does but not sure if Shirai Ryu is the same

If so I always imagine a female student who is super fast and acrobatic . . rarely can other students hit her when they are sparring. She’s like a squirrel. A ninja squirrel.

She’s introverted and not arrogant about her skills-- she simply holds herself to a high standard and works hard

Probably has a ton of crushes on her, but all are too afraid to make a move.

Is very compassionate if broken through her hard exterior

The Not So Skilled Female Student

Since the Shirai Ryu now take in anyone who needs help or needs a home, I’d imagine not anyone would be good at fighting

Enter this poor thing

She sucks. She tries her best. She really does. But she’s just not good at this.

Slow reaction times and goes down easily

Despite this she is one of the most positive members and keeps trying, as to not be a burden to the clan

Eventually other members feel pretty shitty about hitting her during sparring

They try to hit her as lightly as possible and let her get a few good hits in. It’s worth it-- she feels really happy when she feels she’s making progress

The cinnamon roll of the Shirai Ryu

#mortal kombat #mk11 #shirai ryu #scorpion #mk headcanons #hanzo hasashi

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arthurs-wife · 6 years ago

Note

Can I make a request for young Arthur x f reader where she’s been a part of the gang for a little while now and Arthur hasn’t exactly warmed up to her yet (because he’s been going through shit with Mary & Eliza) but on her birthday he gets her her own horse as an official initiation into the gang? I think it would be cute af

(anon youre great thank u for the prompt but also help im kind of in love with this AU now????)

You ran a hand through your hair, shorter than it had been since you were a toddler. The barber held a mirror in front of you and you grimaced at your reflection. At least you didn’t have to look at it for long.

The hot summer sun beat down on your face as you exited the Saloon in Tumbleweed. You wished to shit you had a horse so you wouldn’t have to trek your way back to camp in this damn hellstorm.

It was two miles back to camp and you settled in for a walk. Part of you hoped someone would come looking for you, but you knew they were all back at camp getting hammered. After a dry spell, Dutch had taken to spending most of his time in his tent, ignoring everyone, including his lover Annabelle. You only knew about this because you were the only one who would listen to her drunken tales of how Dutch just didn’t care anymore.

Hosea and Bessie were often found in a corner of the camp, whispering excitedly at one another, occasionally throwing up their hands and walking away. You had grown quite fond of Bessie, looking up to her like a mother. Bessie had shown you most of the skills you held today, including sewing a button to your coat, skinning a deer, and shooting a man through the skull.

Arthur.

You let out an audible huff at the mere thought of the man, scaring a poor blue bird from a tree.

In the 18 months you had known the man, he had said a total of five words to you. Probably more, honestly. You had a habit of over exaggerating things, which was one of the habits he seemed to like the least about you. Not that it seemed like he enjoyed anything about you. Just before you joined the gang, he had lost his son and former lover, something you could not comprehend, so you kept your distance.

You thought maybe it was because he just didn’t want to get close to anyone, but several months after you joined, he met a woman named Mary. She was beautiful, funny, and wormed her way into Arthur’s heart immediately. There was something off-putting about her, but of course you kept your thoughts to yourself. You had aligned yourself with Arthur’s late wife and son, not trusting of any new person to get in the way. It seemed the rest of the camp agreed with you silently.

“It ain’t right for a woman to come in benefittin’ off a man’s sufferin’ like that,” Bessie had confessed to you over snapping beans one evening. You nodded your head but kept your mouth shut.

You were so caught up in your thoughts you didn’t notice the clopping of hooves behind you.

“Hey! Y/n!”

It was Arthur, damn it. Truth be told, you had found yourself drawn towards him, as surly and cantankerous as he could be. He slowed his horse and trotted up to you, standard grimace taking residence on his otherwise gorgeous face.

“Where the hell have you been?” he shot at you.

“Town,” you sniped back, “that okay?”

He grumbled, “of course it’s okay. Just need you to be back before nightfall. Dutch wants us to stay low.”

You look around, holding out your hands and looking pointedly at the sun.

He rolls his eyes and holds out a hand.

You take it and head on his horse’s back, crossing your arms because you were actually twelve years old and couldn’t just talk about your emotions like an normal person. Arthur spurred his horse and headed to camp.

“Did you have a good day, Arthur?” you ask, attempting a modicum of normalcy.

“Yeah,” he said, eyes on the road. Perhaps he really just didn’t like you.

The trip to camp was in silence, like it usually was.

Miss Grimshaw met you both at the outskirts and helped you down.

“Where have you been dear?” she asked, fussing over you. It was sweet but you wish she wouldn’t sometimes, it made you feel like a child again.

“Just up in town,” you brushed off, “had to get out for a bit.”

“I understand,” she clucked, brushing some hair out of your face, “I like what you’ve done with your hair.”

“Thank you,” you smiled as Arthur walked past you both wordlessly.

“And hello to you too, Arthur,” she called after him. He held up a hand. “He just hasn’t been the same since Mary left,” she shook her head at you, leading you to the kitchen wagon, “good riddance she may be.”

“He seemed happy when she was around,” you pointed out, as much as it pained you.

“It’s better he greive on his own,” she said, pouring you out some soup, “without the aid of some woman coming along thinking she could fix him.”

You nodded and started in on your soup, looking across the camp to where Arthur sat nursing a beer. Did you think you could fix him?

____________________

A clear blue sky greeted you in the morning. You stretched out and threw your sleeping cover off of you and turned over to face the campfire.

“Ack!”

Arthur was two feet away from you, holding a cup of coffee and nursing one of his own.

“Get up.”

“I was getting up,” you said groggily, pushing yourself to your feet, “until someone interrupted that process and now here we are-”

“Shut up,” he grumbled, holding out a cup of coffee to you.

“What do you know,” you said, sipping your coffee, “it can be nice it if wants.”

“Take a walk with me.”

“Are you gonna shoot me out back?”

“What? No,” he shook his head and started out of the camp, “just come on. Damn fool of a woman.”

You walked for a bit in silence, no one in the camp was up yet. It was serene, listening to the birds and watching the sun rise higher and higher into the sky.

After a while you finally spoke up.

“Are we heading into town?”

“Yeah.”

“What for?”

“I figure it’s about time I put my grievances aside and speak with you,” he started, “one adult to another.”

You were shocked.

“W-what do you mean?”

Arthur tapped the brim of his hat and looked at a loss for once.

“Ever since Eliza and my boy,” he started and shook his head, “ever since then I haven’t been able to cultivate relationships right with people.”

“Arthur,” you stopped him, “you don’t have to explain yourself to me. What happened with them was a tragedy, one I have no business commenting on.”

“Be that as it may,” he went on, “you’re here with us now and you’ve proven yourself time and again. It’s time I start showing you the respect you’ve earned.”

Town was in sight now, the early morning risers beginning to stir in the streets.

“Well I appreciate it Arthur,” you said finally, hoping that this could be the start of some kind of relationship with the man. You weren’t picky.

“Come on,” he pointed, “over here.”

He led you to the stables where three horses were lined up in their stalls, a Tennessee Walker, an Apaloosa, and a beautiful Grullo Dun Mustang. You were instantly drawn to her.

“Hi-ya Arthur!” the stableman greeted, “this your friend you were talking about?”

“Mornin’,” Arthur raised a hand, “this is y/n. Y/n, meet your new horse.” He pointed to the mustang and it took every ounce of strength to not squeal wildly.

“My new horse?” You asked, cautiously approaching the animal.

“It’s been more than long enough,” Arthur shrugged as if he wasn’t presenting you with the most amazing thing in the world, “started saving up months ago when I saw her.”

“This beauty will stand up to just about anything,” the stableman said, bringing out a worn saddle and strapping it onto the horse’s back, “just give her a name and she’s all yours.”

He led the horse out by her reins and brought her to you. You held a hand out and let the horse come to you. The horse nuzzled her nose into your palm and you felt true love, right there.

“Calliope.”

“Calli-oh-what?”

“Calliope,” you sighed, moment broken, “the Greek muse of beauty and song?”

“Well I don’t know nothin’ about that,” Arthur gruffed but looked pleased all the same.

The pair of you waved goodbye to the stableman and led your horses outside. You turned to Arthur and hugged him tightly, receiving a hesitant pat on the back in return.

“Thank you Arthur,” you said, mounting your horse and setting off on a trot to match Arthur’s speed, “really, this means a lot.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, “well Happy Birthday anyway.”

Color you just the damned most breathless thing on earth.

“How did you know?”

“I’m not as oblivious as I look,” he said, grinning at you from the brim of his hat, “and your hair looks nice too.

You were in a lot of trouble.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x female reader

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pennyfynotes · 6 years ago

Photo

8.2.18 // 4:30pm // school subjects and AP exams oh my

so i recently (ok not so recently i’m sorry super busy rn) got an ask from an anon about subject specific tips and ap exams. this is the masterpost i told you to look out for ;). there are no ap exams in college, but some of the stuff is still applicable. i did my best to be as comprehensive as possible and dump everything in one place. hope this is helpful! xoxo, m ps. guess where the actual tips are? if you said “under the cut” then you’re right bc i’m predicable af

tips by subject:

languages (i took spanish): 1. flashcards are your friend. i don’t care if they’re digital (would recommend quizlet or studyblue) or paper, but they help immensely with either vocab or things like remembering literature.

2. charts are also your friend. conjugations giving you a hard time? write out a chart of the different tenses and the conjugations for each subject. put down some of the irregulars too.

3. acronyms/pnemonics are also also your friend. a lot of these already exist, you just have to go find them. i’m pretty sure i still remember what “wedding” stands for for the spanish subjunctive.

4. it’s ok to start over. it’s easy to start a sentence based on what you’d say in english. you’re doing fine until *bam* you hit that word/phrase you really need but you have no clue how to say it. whether it’s an oral or written exam, take a few seconds to think about it and, if you can’t figure it out, just back track. restart the sentence and rework it. better to do that than to lose all your time thinking of one word you may or may not know.

5. skirt around things. if you can’t remember how to say fridge but you really need to say it for something, just say “machine that keeps food cold” or something. it might sound silly, but it gets the point across and removes the road block.

6. make a list. no, not a to do list. if there’s phrases you find yourself reaching for all the time, but you can never remember, make a list of them and their translations. it might be because its a phrase/part of a sentence structure you use a lot in your native language or whatever. make that list and drill just those few phrases into your head. it’s helpful

english/language arts: 1. proofread. i guarantee you’ll find a mistake, a sentence that makes no sense, or one that just sounds cringy. thank me later.

2. have a damn thesis. its ok if you just need to write and spit words/ideas out for a while to figure it out. but figure it out.

3. conclusion ~= introduction. for those of you who didn’t get the tilde, it means not. yes, they both tie your points to your thesis but they are not to same. do not just reword the same information in the conclusion. push your ideas just a little further. i usually like the push them a little bit outside the realm of what i talked about in my paper. for example, if i focused on the first 5 chapters of the book in the rest of my paper, i’ll expand the ideas to the rest of the book. or if i’m talking about female characters and focus on just one or two, i’ll use the conclusion to potentially connect it to another.

4. have favorites. pick a few fav transitions, sentence structures, and fancy vocab words. basically build a toolbox. this way you won’t have to think as hard when you want to “spice up” your work.

5. summaries only go so far. once you get to higher level english classes, there will be a lot of analysis of specific imagery, or wording, or dialogue. reading cliff notes is only going to give you the plot and none of this. if you don’t have time to read and you’ve been assigned a pretty standard english novel/play/whatever, take the time to look up some famous quotes or symbols. they’ll probably come up in discussion and this will help you look less unprepared.

6. have on question/comment ready. if your teacher/prof is into discussions and grades on participation, it’s handy to write down one (or a few) things. it’s easy to forget what you were going to say while you follow the discussion and it sucks to get docked points for not saying anything. even if it’s just a thoughtful question, jot it down.

history: 1. lol prob my weakest subject, just go see the apush (ap us history) section bc i don’t have much more for you than that.

science: 1. back to basics. i say it all the time, i’ll say it again. really understand basic concepts. they will come back. i’m serious.

2. pattern recognition. science problems are often times about recognizing patterns. once you identify the type of problem it is, even if you’ve never seen the exact one/something similar before, solving it becomes way easier.

3. make a recipe book. tied to the last one, but once you recognize a type of problem, you need steps to solve it. go through any practice problems you’re given to determine all the “types” of problems. once you’ve categorized them, make yourself a step-by-step guide on how to solve.

4. flashcards. you’ll have to know polyatomic ions or random biology facts. see languages tip #1 for more.

5. note your errors in lab. if you do something wrong, don’t just try to brush it under the table and forget about it. not that it’s a big deal, because its not, so don’t freak out. they’re just great opportunities to note sources of error. i mean obviously dont write in your lab report that you weren’t paying attention and mixed the wrong chemicals, but something like “we may not have waited sufficient time for the product to dry” can explain why you got 800% yield.

6. have a toolkit. kinda like a recipe book, but just a collection of straight facts that come up often. knowing common molecular weights and chemical properties (is ammonia acidic or basic?) will make things go faster. like i said earlier, polyatomic ions are also great.

7. brush up on some simple arithmetic. similar to the tool kit, this will just make things go faster. being able to quickly add things and calculate easy percentages (ex: 30%) will make things like hw and exams go faster. i’m of the opinion it’s always good to know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide w/o a calculator (on paper, not all in your head)

bonus: math #5 and #7

math: 1. see science #1

2. see science #2

3. see science #3

4. see science #4. see a pattern here? you might wonder why you need to flashcard math, but it’s good for learning equations or the names of certain techniques. if the prof asks you to solve something using X technique and you don’t know what that is, that’s gonna pose a problem. also good for the unit circle (don’t get me started)

5. figure out your speed. this is applicable to most everything, but i find it most relevant for math. is it better for you to speed through the whole exam and then do it all again/check it over 2x? or for you to take it slow so you know you got everything right the first time? personally i use the first approach, but i’m a fast taker and prefer to have time to process between repeating problems instead of staring at it forever once and never looking again.

6. science #7. a lot of teachers will expect you to be able to do this.

7. go over the material a couple times. also applicable to everything. i find it’s easier to remember things when i know that concepts are connected. you might have learned X 3 weeks before Y, but if you go back over, you might realize they’re closely related. this will help you if you’re not sure on a test because you can reason through things using the connections you’ve drawn

tips by ap course (obv look at the subject above bc i will be giving *really specific stuff* here that i’ve gathered from experience. they’re also ordered by when i took them, sorry it’s not super logical but i didn’t want to forget one)

general ap course/exam tips: 1. practice exams. you need to be familiar with what will/will not show up. you don’t always need to simulate and real testing situation, but i’d recommend doing at least 1-2 that way. also *know how many questions they’re are you so can pace yourself!!!!*

2. college board is pretty good about giving topic breakdowns. use those. go through and figure out what topics you’re solid on and which need more work. the above tip is to help decipher what the topics actually mean bc it can be confusing.

3. give the free response a quick flip through. do the ones you’re confident on first.

4. make sure you know the policies/what you can bring. don’t want to forget something. also once our test administrator tried to stop us 10 minutes early, but we were on top of our shit and all gave her a death glare bc we knew when we were supposed to finish.

ap chemistry: 1. polyatomic ions and molecular weights. know them

2. chapter/section reviews (in addition to class notes) and how-to guides. my teacher made us make them and let’s just say your girl did *really* well (and i’m damn proud of that one)

3. do a quick skim of the free response. applicable to most exams but, the year i took it, they’d just remade and re-curved the exam and put *way* too many free response. like no one finished them. if that’s still the case, make sure you do the one’s you’re confident on. also, i did not get to like 3 questions and still got a 5. they may have fixed this idk. (sorry this is redundant but i wanted to give this ap chem exam specific info)

ap environmental science: 1. there is a lot of damn information here. i would use chapter outlines and pick out key terms, policies, and events etc. treat this like a history class.

2. for the exam, use common sense. most of the time, the most environmentally friendly answer is the right one. if you just have a general gist of the course and its topics, but don’t know a lot of details, go with your intuition and you should be fine. i didn’t have a lot of time to study for this one and this method worked for me.

ap calc bc: 1. memorize standard derivatives. power rule, sin and cos, chain rule. that’s important.

2. similarly, memorize standard integrals.

3. don’t forget +c for indefinite integrals. just don’t.

4. similarly, if it’s definite, don’t forget to evaluate at the end! super easy thing to do, but also super easy way to lose points if you forget.

5. if the integral looks complicated, that probably means there’s a “trick” involved. u substitution, integration by parts, trig substitution. something like that.

6. memorize some standard series’, operations, and types (arithmetic, geometric etc)

7. if you’re looking at a word problem, understand what is dependent on your variable and what isn’t (in other words, what’s a constant). for example, if it says the water flows into the barrel at 50 mL/s and flows out at 1/5 times the volume, that translate to F = 50 - (1/5)V. don’t make things more complicated by trying to write everything in terms of V (in this example). also, your equation might just be a constant term or just a variable term doesn’t have to be both.

8. know what your derivative is with respect to/what it really means. aka if your problem is talking about flow and volume, how are they related to each other? flow is the change in volume *with respect to time*. so if i differentiate volume with respect to time, i get flow. if i integrate flow with respect to time, i get volume. this also helps you make sense of word problems.

*disclaimer*: it is been 5 years since i took this class and i have taken quite a few math classes after. i apologize if i introduce anything that is a little irrelevant.

ap spanish language: 1. flashcard. like seriously. there’s gonna be vocab involved.

2. understand what’s asked. for the persuasive email. *be persuasive*

3. toolkit. i mentioned this before but this was probably the most useful for this class. our teacher gave us a bunch of fancier words to use instead of causar (to cause) because that was a word we’d need a lot. the one that still sticks with me 4 years later is fomentar. have a few alternatives for these kinds of super common words, a good greeting and closing for your email, and a set of good transitions. *make sure you know how to use them properly*

4. write stuff down during listening. you can either answer questions during the first listen, then take notes the second to catch stuff you missed or vice versa.

5. it’s ok to backtrack in the speaking. don’t let yourself get stuck and just not say anything. it’ll freak you out for the rest of the exam and will rob you from showing off what you know. also take notes of things you want to mention based off cultural knowledge of the situation related to the dialogue.

6. don’t zone out. with everything going on and all the stress, it’s easy to zone out (esp during the conversation). don’t do it or you’ll have a hard time responding and freak yourself out (again)

7. don’t lose your place in the convo! they give you a sheet that shows you how many times the other “person” will talk. i lost track and said goodbye one segment early. it was bad ok. all these conversation tips are from personal experience.

ap statistics: 1. know the different kinds of tests inside and out. know the differences and the conditions. if you’ve got that, you’re like 75% the way there.

2. be familiar with sample vs population. it’s a bit confusing, but take the time to understand.

3. ok sorry i really don’t remember anything else. this exam really isn’t that difficult (in my opinion), you’ll be ok.

ap physics c: 1. free body diagrams. understand how to draw them *and draw them*. they will carry you through mechanics. draw gravitational force, normal if there’s a surface, and then any other given forces.

2. basic equations. you get an equation sheet, but knowing the equations means you know the concepts and the relations between them. big ones are f=ma and the equations relating position (x), velocity (v), and acceleration (a). also friction f=uN.

3. *normal isn’t always the opposite direction of gravity!!!!* gravity is straight down. normal is perpendicular to the surface.

4. vector components. please don’t just add vectors. break them down into components and then add or you are so fucked.

5. get familiar with triangles. this will help with the whole component thing.

6. kirchoffs rules are so helpful. know them.

7. understand the relations between voltage/potential and current in terms of the properties of circuit elements. that means the equations for resistors, capacitors, and inductors.

8. know how to add in parallel and series. it’s important. also! if the circuit is drawn “weird” a good way to know series vs parallel is that parallel elements share two nodes and that series circuits only share 1.

9. sorry i kinda blocked out E+M bc i didn’t know what i was doing (or so i thought). i still got a 4 tho so that curve is generous.

ap us history: 1. chapter outlines. pretty self explanatory.

2. make a timeline. put important events, sentiments, policies, and presidents. if you can associate these things together into time periods it will be easier. most of the time, any one question (esp long response or whatever they’re called) will only focus on 1 time period.

3. sentiments are important. if you know nothing else, know these bc they will help guide you through questions by reasoning even if you know nothing else.

4. gilder lehrman (or similar us history summaries). these are tailor specifically to apush bc they are organized by period (i think that’s what they were called?). i actually fell asleep listening to these bc i didn’t have time to study. they were mildly helpful, but every little bit helps right?

ap psychology: 1. chapter outlines/flashcards. this course is based heavily on key terms and less so on larger concepts.

2. ok sorry i took this online i remember literally nothing except how annoying my teacher was and that the exam was easy. if you know terminology i think you should do fine.

ap biology: 1. there is a lot. go through all the topics and make sure you’re solid. start with the big picture, then think about narrowing down.

2. know how charts work. things like pedigrees, punnet squares, and evolution trees (that’s def not the right term). some of the exam will just be interpretation of this.

3. i am so sorry i remember nothing else.

ap spanish literature: 1. flashcards. title, author, time period, short summary, key elements (a line, character, symbol). this is *so helpful*

2. think about the works in relation to each other. you might be asked to compare them. even if they ask you to compare something on the reading list with something new, you’ll be familiar with the points you might talk about.

3. know the lit terms. more flashcards. associate them with a particular work if you can/need to.

4. don’t freak on the listening. a lot of the recordings are old and shitty quality. take a deep breath and try your best. know that the rest of the test takers (excepting maybe natives) are experiencing the same thing.

5. use that tool box. see general spanish and ap spanish lang.

this is so freaking long and i think the moral of the story is that i blocked out my senior year ap exams. i hope this was helpful and, if you have more questions, or want more stuff like this, let me know!

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tartareus · 6 years ago

Text

RULES

the blog:

here you will find my rules; please make sure you read them. should any doubts arise, don’t hesitate to hmu and ask about them.

I. this is an independent multifandom multimuse roleplaying blog for various muses from many franchises. as stated pretty much everywhere in this blog, my interpretation of my muses is mine alone; although i try to keep it as close to the canon source material as i possibly can, there will be cases in which i will diverge from it && take a whole new turn with the characters, hence why it is mandatory that you read each file.

I.I. please, do not reblog my headcanons/solos/metas. as much as i love seeing how people might like them, they are not for public use. I.II. i simply love duplicates ! i try to consider them as friends, however i will never push an interaction with someone; that being said, if you are a duplicate of any of my characters, let me know if you are down to interact with my version of the character, the possibilities are endless and i cannot wait to interact with you.

II. the standard roleplaying etiquette applies to this blog — basically? don’t be a jerk. hate, godmodding, forced ships, ooc drama and other shit like that are highly frowned upon here.

II.I. i acknowledge that i may write dark/toxic topics every now and then, and i try my best to do so as respectfully as i can. please, if something ( anything ) on my blog triggers you/disgusts you/annoys you/makes you uncomfortable let me know and i will create a special tag so you can easily block it. II.II. i have received hate for writing fictional things that are deemed as dark and i will not stand for it any longer. i am extremely shy but i will always prefer to talk in private rather than vague post about someone, it is only fair i receive the same courtesy.

the mun:

you can call me nox, short for noxtromun. i used to go by another pen name that i no longer feel it suits me. although i was born ( and usually identify myself as ) female, i prefer they/them pronouns. i have been roleplaying for over 7 years and as of now i am in my early 20s and live on the countryside of brazil. that being said, if you are a fellow brazilian/portuguese speaker and want to write in portuguese with me, hmu --- i will be delighted.

III. be aware that usually do not interact too much oocly — i’m a mun with social anxiety and it’s really hard for me to connect with people, no matter how much i want to, both irl and online. if, for whatever reason you might have, you want to know more about the queer behind this blog, please check my author’s note page.

III.I. also, for personal reasons that i’d rather not say, certain plots i will only roleplay with close friends of mine; people i trust and that i care for. the point is, all you need to know about me, check the mun page.

IV. i try to tag everything — really. triggering themes WILL be found here and shall be tagges as “ tw; triggering example” and nsfw will be tagged as “ nsfw ” so you can easily blacklist these tags and not see them. if you’d like me to tag smth for you, feel free to approach me via IMs or ASK.

V. unless asked otherwise, all asks will be published. if you’re messaging me for plots, i encourage you to do so via IMs.

shipping && smut:

as most people here, i too enjoy some shipping and, occasionally, smut. if you are interested in shipping with me please, respect these rules and be honest, contrary to most people i do not mind if someone approaches me for a ship; just keep in mind some character development will be necessary.

VI. i am a ship hoarder— HONESTLY ! but that doesn’t mean this blog focuses only on that. chemistry is your best friend. VI. I. most of my muses are either bi or pan — ‘boundaries’ of gender are nothing here VI. I.II. however, when a charater is listed as gay/lesbian or straight, please respect that. do not push a ship on me. VI. I.III. although most muses are of age, some are not and therefore shipping will most likely to happen in their older verses — that are in fact my default ones so yeah. VI. II. if you want to ship our muses, please, don’t hesitate to ask. i probably want too. VI. II.I. feel free to send me a shippy meme — even if we haven’t written before. i love memes, do send them.

VII. if you feel uncomfortable/troubled with fictional incestuous / consanguinamory / toxic and/or unhealthy ships then this might not the right blog for you. VII. I. i acknowledge that by writing such relationships i may trigger some people, so here’s your warning. LET IT BE KNOWN that i, by NO MEANS condone such things irl — i just am an adult that is very capable of separating fiction from reality. VII. I.II. as a general rule of this blog, i encourage you to unfollow/block me if whatever fictional work here offends you; basically, IF YOU DON’T LIKE A CERTAIN CONTENT, DO NOT CONSUME IT.

VIII. it should go without saying but no, NO SMUT WILL BE ROLEPLAYED WITH MUNS / MUSES THAT ARE UNDERAGE. pls, don’t lie about your age, i’ll be mad af. VIII. I. no, there are NO exceptions of this rule.

interactions, formatting edits && speed:

as most of you, i have a life outside this hellsite. that being said, do not expect me to be around everyday,all day, 24/7. roleplay is a hobbie, not a job or an obligation, keep this in mind.

IX. i am SUPER friendly — honestly. i’m just too shy. please, don’t ever feel anxious before approaching me ( ic or ooc ) interacting with me is easy ; i’m here to have fuN. IX. I. yes, if you’re an oc i’ll rp with you, i love ocs / mumus / female muses. come @ me and lemme love you ; but only if you provide enough information about your muse/s. IX. II. i don’t care much about formatting - all i do is lowercase, small font and icons i made - but if you do, fine! as long as i can read it, i’m cool with anything.

X. i am an extremely SLOW REPLIER; i’m sorry, but i promise i’ll be on as much as i can. i’ll never pressure you to reply and expect you to return the favour. if i ever need to drop a thread, i’ll IM you. every now and then, i like to make edits and sometimes i am not in the mood for writing.

extras:

i make my own icons, using the lovely psds of @kingsleigh and border. some of my edits are ok to reblog, others are not, i will always let you know if thats the case.

#mobile navigation.#mobile navigation; rules

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thehappymessproject · 6 years ago

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34/100 - On honouring our pace

My main struggle lately has been to respect my rhythm. Accept that I can’t do all the things. And I can’t just change how I feel or how my body feels because I don’t like where I am at. Even if my head tries to make me act as if I actually have control over those things.

That problematic is again, very human. I keep seeing it appear over and over through my patients journeys, my friends and family’s stories, I can guess it reading social media through countless strangers’ words...

We are living in such a paradox. On one hand, media, advertising and what is often called common sense (even when it’s nonsensical AF) are mostly pressing us to DO DO DO. Do more, do better, be productive. On the other hand, like anything in the Universe, we have an inner rhythm. Actually we have many inner rhythms. And when we don’t respect them, we make it really harder for ourselves.

I’m not talking about biological and physiological rhythms today. I’m talking about our personal and unique rhythm of growing and healing. We can’t rush recovery, or growth, or grieving, or any human process. We can make them as brief as possible though, but never through rushing or doing way more than we are able to do in a loving way.

We have to do the work and give ourselves love and time to make change happen.

So today, I thought I might share a few tips that are so helpful for me when I feel like I am not doing changing quickly enough.

1. Forget about ‘standards’ : a lot of us think we should “get over” a painful break-up in a couple of weeks or the death of someone we loved very much in a few months. The same way, for a lot of reasons, we tend to think that we should feel healing or growth progress almost immediately. The exact same way there’s no way in hell we are going to get ripped after our first abs exercise or lose weight after one heathy meal, or a broken bone won’t heal after one day in a cast, it just won’t happen. Besides, by expecting an actual end of such processes, we are talking about something you probably won’t ever feel. No one wakes up one day thinking “Aaaah! Finally I’m healed!” or “Finally, I’m over my grief” and stay at that point forever. That’s a cinematographic trope. Real healing happens in tiny sliding moments of “Oh shit! that’s how I am reacting/feeling now? Mmh... ok! That’s pretty cool. What’s next?”. And those moments need at least a few weeks to start to happen. And a few months to be regular and more frequent than the opposite. Count 1-2 years (at least) and a lot of focused and loving work with yourself to see the big changes you so desperately want to see in the beginning, but also to stop thinking in terms of finishing the process.

2. Systematically switch from “I’m not going quick enough” to “Am I doing the right things?”. When we feel impatient, big chances are, we are trying to find short cuts to not do the actual work but actually get results... Losing a lot of time and making the process longer than it needs to be. (see? again with the paradox) “Right things” in terms of growth and healing have a few commonalities : They are generally tiny things to do as often as we can. They are usually slow-paced (little immediate gratification), They don’t make us feel anything specifically (=won’t always feel good), rather they help us feel what we already feel but are resisting, so they can bring up quite painful and frustrating emotions. They work best through consistency and discipline. When repeated, they become more powerful. Their power and our ability to keep going depend a lot on how you see them : do them as chores, waiting for time to pass by and they’ll seem basically useless (even if they’re not). Practice them almost religiously, as if they are some kind of magical ritual, use them to practice presence and self-love as priorities and they feel actually feel magical, unfolding their true potential.

3. Go back to basics : start with the Sacred pause and simple breathing exercises as often as you can, ideally at least once a day. If you never take time for yourself, even one minute of pause and breathing everyday can soon feel very powerful. Breathing deep activates or calms down our nervous system. As little as 3-5 breaths already have an effect. It may seem like nothing, but it really isn’t.

4. Speaking of basics, find ways to trick your brain into practicing presence. Step one is to stimulate your senses : go to places where the smells, what you see, what you touch, what you taste make you slow down. Do more often activities that make you feel like you’re slowing down. Cardio physical exercises can help slow down the raciest minds, think about all those writers and artists that are daily walkers. A stuck mind HATES any kind of movement. Other calmer activities can be so helpful : over the years, I’ve seen cooking, reading, knitting and alike, painting, drawing, taking photographs literally change lives. I’m not talking about “OMG they started as hobbies for them and now it’s their phenomenally successful career” change of life (spoiler alert: I’m NEVER speaking of success in terms of money and fame, or career for that matter) but more “OMG I feel like a new person just by doing that a few times a week”. If that’s too hard, I share the smallest steps I can take when really down in 8/100. If you are already doing such things and want to take it to the other level, try out the trifecta of practicing presence, self-love and acceptance : meditation, journaling and yoga.

5. Have breaks : down time, alone time and fun time. All 3 are absolutely necessary, wether it’s for growing, healing, or just having a serene and content life. As usual, start from where you’re at. I had people telling me they didn’t have 10mn in their day to do that. That’s very concerning to hear mental health wise, to be honest. And usually untrue when digged a little deeper (like : if you have time to watch TV or Netflix, or scrolling on social media, you have time to spare). BUT I’m also absolutely believing them. So I start by prescribing 10mn of any of the mentioned breaks. 10mn is 1% of our day. Only one tiny percent. If it still feels impossible, no excuse, start at 5, or 1 even. But start taking breaks and taking better care of yourself.

A few reminders too : Resistance is normal, but should never be listened to too seriously. It’s a coward with no care for your furture happiness, only for your present pseudo-comfort. Progress is NEVER linear. Absolutely never. When it comes to change, we have to choose between fast and superficial and slow and solid. There’s no too late or too soon. When in doubt, go slow. You deserve good things. You are allowed to dream big. Don’t quit, learn to rest.

See you tomorrow, Love, L.

#encouragement #mental health #perseverence #inner pace #inner rhythm #counselling #therapist #writer's block #100 days project #100 days of writing #the happy mess project #psychologist #depression #anxiety #growth #growth hacking

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annieboltonworld · 3 years ago

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Juniper Publishers-Open Access Journal of Environmental Sciences & Natural Resources

Ecological and Potential Health Effects of Hydrocarbon and Heavy Metal Concentrations in the KoloCreek Wetlands, South-South, Nigeria

Authored by Ezekwe IC

Abstract

This study evaluated the Impact of oil pollution on Kolo Creek wetlands by examining the concentration of hydrocarbons and heavy metals in the ecosystem. Standard methods for investigating environmental quality were applied in this study using surface water, sediments and biota as proxies. Three sites (A, B, C) were chosen for this study. Significant pH and high regional salinity values, especially in Site B, were found. Also, PAHs, BTEX and most metals were absent in the water column apart from cadmium which occurred above acceptable standards for both aquatic ecosystem and livestock feeding. In the sediments, BTEX were not detected while low concentrations of naphthalene (0.01 and 0.1 mg/L) were found. Lead, zinc, chromium and nickel had low levels although zinc showed a higher level in the site directly impacted by oil spill. Concentrations of Cr, Pb, Ni, Mn and Zn were at levels where no harm is expected; cadmium was far above the PEC limits, and Potential Ecological Risk Index (PERI) showed that the wetland is at an ultra high ecological risk level. Index of Geo-accumulation calculation revealed that the swamp is very highly polluted by manganese. While Nickel, chromium, cadmium and lead were above permissible limits in fish, only cadmium was above allowable limits in the water snail. PAHs also occurred in biota at a level where only 1 in 10,000 or fewer persons will be exposed to cancers. We also found that there is no statistically significant difference in contamination levels among the three study sites and that the wetland ecosystem does not meet the standards for a healthy ecosystem. Continuous and stringent monitoring of the environment; control in the discharge of solid and liquid waste especially upstream of the wetlands are among recommendations.

Keywords: Clarias Macromystax; Ecological Risk, Niger Delta; Oil Pollution; Parachana Obscura; Pi!a Ovata; Sediment Quality; Water Quality

Abbreviations: PERI: Potential Ecological Risk Index; PAHs: Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons; BTEX: Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene and Xylene; AAS: Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer; SQGs: Sediment Quality Guidelines; TEC: Threshold Effect; PEC: Probable Effects Concentration; CBSQG: Consensus-Based Sediment Quality Guidelines; SEL: Severe Effects Level; PEL: Probable Effects Level; ERM: Effect Range- Median

Introduction

Oil has been produced from the Nigeria's Niger Delta area since 1958 when oil was discovered in Oloibiri in present Bayelsa State two years earlier. The Niger Delta covers 20,000 km2 within wetlands of 70,000 km2 formed primarily by the deposition of sediments by the River Niger and her distributaries and other adjoining river systems like the Orashi, New Calabar, the Imo, Qua Iboe and Cross River systems. The Niger Delta of Nigeria is the largest wetland and maintains the third- largest drainage basin in Africa. The region is experiencing a wanton destruction of her wetland ecosystems due to the carelessness of the oil industry. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had stated thus as far back as 1983: "We witnessed the slow poisoning of the waters of this country and the destruction of vegetation and agricultural land by oil spills which occur during petroleum operations. But since the inception of the oil industry in Nigeria, more than twenty-five years ago, there has been no concerned and effective effort on the part of the government, let alone the oil operators, to control environmental problems associated with the industry" [1-5].

Wetlands are areas where water is the force controlling the environment and associated plant and animal life. They occur where the water table is at or near the surface of the land, or where the land is covered by shallow water and includes "areas of marsh, fen, peat land or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres". This "may incorporate riparian and coastal zones adjacent to the wetlands, and islands or bodies of marine water deeper than six metres at low tide lying within the wetlands". The greatest threat to the benefits and services of the wetlands in the Niger Delta of Nigeria is oil pollution [6]. Oil pollution from the exploration and exploitation activities of multinationals and currently the activities of oil thieves is destroying vast areas of the Niger Delta environment. Oil exploitation and exploration activities prevalent in the upper and lower reaches of this coastal ecosystem have caused untold environmental damage to the Niger Delta area. This has led to species extinction, biodiversity loss and threat to very existence of man in the study area through the introduction of dangerous chemicals and elements into the ecosystem which ends up being up- taking by man through bio-accumulation in the food chain.

The Kolo Creek area has played host to oil exploration and exploitation activities since the 1950s. Today it is one of the areas endemic with oil production facilities including flow lines, gas turbines, numerous oil and gas wells, oil manifolds and pipelines. Pollution by oil and gas production includes deliberate discharge of drilling wastes including cuttings, waste water, drilling mud, cement slurry, acid stimulation residue, oil-water separation effluents, sewage effluents, waste crankcase oil, leaking pipes, vessels, fuel tanks, oil blow-out, gaseous effluents into the environment [7].

As a result of oil exploration activities in the area, drilling fluid, oily wastewaters and spilt oil at various times which contain many potentially dangerous pollutants are discharged into the environment. Such pollutants include heavy metals and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene) which are carcinogenic in nature which ultimately finds their way into surface waters that are used by man and are natural habitats for biota (ASTDR, 1995). The Kolo Creek oil fields around Imiringi in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State (Figure 1). Nigeria is a vast freshwater wetland providing several services and livelihood opportunities to inhabitants ofthe area including fishing, farming, palm wine tapping and collection of timber and non-timber forest products. This area also suffer incessant oil spills which not only affects ecosystem services but may also influence the health of the inhabitants who depend on these polluted wetlands for fish, food and other consumable forest products [8-10]. Only recently (April 2015), an oil spill occurred in Imiringi swamps from an oil facility along the Yenegoa-Imiringi Road discharging unknown quantities of hydrocarbons into the wetland system and destroying vast areas of the freshwater wetlands. It has become expedient therefore to not only investigate the extent of damage to this ecosystem but to ascertain the levels of dangerous elements and chemicals in the environmental segments of the Kolo Creek wetlands through proxies of water, sediments and biota. This has informed this study.

Study Area

Location and Economic Activities

The Kolo Creek area as defined by this study included all those communities around the Kolo Creek where oil exploration and exploitation activities are ongoing in the Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State Nigeria (Figure 1) It is located within longitudes 4 55 52.25 N and 4 55 31.92N and latitudes 6 20 11.94 E and 6 24 50.70 E including the towns of Imiringi, Otuasega, Elebele, Orom and Ayon. The Kolo Creek oil and gas field is located within Imiringi town area and situated about 10km east of Yenagoa, the capital city of Bayelsa State. The major economic activity in the area is related to the oil industry business which is operated by SPDC. Kolo Creek flow station is the major oil and gas facility in Bayelsa State, which uses about 30% of its associated gas to generate electricity in the state [11]. The Kolo Creek Field hosts some oil facilities including 46 oil wells, one flow station (Kolo Creek), one manifold and one SPDC camp site. The other economic activities include subsistence agriculture, artisanal fishing, palm wine tapping and processing and basic commerce.

Temperature and Rainfall

The area lies within the rainforest belt of the eastern Niger Delta of Nigeria. It is within the tropical wet (Af) climate classification of Koppen. The area is characterised by sustained high temperatures and rainfall. Average temperatures are usually greater than 18 degrees Celsius while annual precipitation is greater than 1,500 mm. Precipitation occurs all year long although; there is a slight reduction in precipitation in months of August each year and between the months of December and February. Monthly temperature variations in this climate are less than 30C [12]. Daily high temperatures of up to 320C are common while night time temperatures average 220C.

Soils, Vegetation, Relief and Drainage

The Kolo Creek area is characterised by tropical rainforest and freshwater swamps that are usually flooded in most parts of the year, especially between May and November. The area is characterised by seasonal flooding and marsh forest vegetation permanently swampy and mostly flooded by fresh water. The primary vegetation in the study area is the raffia- dominated freshwater swamp vegetations while the major soil types in the area are young, shallow, poorly drained (inceptisol Aquepts) and acid sulphate soils (Sulphaquepts) [13].

The soils here may have been created by the meandering of the Kolo Creek and Elebele systems which have created silted river belt soils characterised by peaty clay water bogged soils inundated by water for most of the year. The study area is a low-lying flood plain environment with heights not more than 7 metres above sea-level. The Kolo Creek area derives its name from the Kolo Creek which is a distributaries of the Orashi River and forms the major water and material sink for the study area [14]. While the Kolo Creek occupies the flanks of the study area, the Elebele/Ekuruba stream runs through the centre of the wetlands under investigation. It forms the main discharge channel for the wetlands during the short dry season between November and April. The area is also surrounded by other natural and artificial water bodies including lakes, ponds, borrow pits and small channels that empty into the Kolo Creek or the Elebele/Ekuruba stream.

Materials and Methods

Sample Sites

of Bayelsa State Nigeria. Site A (4°54’28.04”N; 6°21’23.10”E) is an un-impacted site upstream of the Elebele/Ekuruba stream. Site B, 700m from Site A (N 4°54'9.72” N; 6°21'24.36” E), is a crude oil impacted site in the middle of the Elebele/Ekuruba wetlands located along the Agip pipeline and just a few metres behind the SPDC Manifold and pipelines. Site C, 1KM from Site A (4°54'1.37”N; 6°21'9.46”E) is a point (downstream) of the Ekuruba stream where the Agip (Nigeria Agip Oil company Ltd) pipeline crossed the Elebele/Ekuruba channel. Surface water and sediments were sampled from each site, while biota was caught randomly from the wetlands [15,16].

Methods of Data Collection

Surface Water Sampling and Analysis: Water sampling and handling followed methods established by the American Public Health Association for water and wastewater analysis. Surface water samples were collected with pre-rinsed 1litre plastic containers for the analyses of physic-chemical parameters while water samples for heavy metal analyses were collected with nitric acid pre-rinsed 1litre containers and treated with 2ml nitric acid (assaying 100%, Trace Metal Grade, Fisher Scientific) before storage. This was done to stabilise the oxidation states of metals in water. Surface water samples for oil and grease content were collected with broad-mouthed 500ml glass bottles fitted tightly with aluminium foil to prevent contamination of the samples [17-20]. Glass bottles were used in such sampling for analysis because hydrocarbons (oil) interact with plastic containers. Surface water pH, temperature, salinity, conductivity, total dissolved solids were measured by the direct method using LaMotte pocket instrument.

Determination of Heavy Metals in the Surface Waters

Surface Water Samples, previously acid treated and preconcentrated was sub-sampled for the determination of metal content by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry using the GBC Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS) with detection limit of 0.05 mg/l. prior to the analysis, calibration was done with standard of known concentrations. All manipulations were done under controlled conditions to avoid contamination [21]. Dissolved metals were determined by aspirating a portion of the filtered sample (without pre-treatment) directly using the AAS. Concentration of metals were ascertained from the data generated by the AAS and expressed in mg/l. Lead, zinc, chromium, cadmium, manganese and nickel were determined using the ASTM D3559, ASTM D1691, ASTM D1687, ASTM D3557, ASTM D858 and ASTM D1886-14 respectively (Plates I-IV).

Sediment Sampling and Analysis

Sediment samples were collected by the grab method using Eckman grab samples from the 3 locations, representing approximately 2-3cm of surficial bottom sediments [22]. The samples were put into sterilized bottles and stored in the sample chest with ice, thereafter, transported to the laboratory and analyzed.

Determination of Heavy Metals in Sediments

Sediment samples for heavy metal analyses was thawed and air-dried at ambient temperature and pulverized. Two grams (2g) of air-dried sediment samples was weighed using a high precision micro scale (Tecnovetro) for each sampling site, moistened with water and put into a 50ml conical flask. To each weighed sample, 10ml of concentrated nitric acid and 2ml of concentrated perchloric acid will be added and heated with a water bath to near dryness [23]. The solution will be allowed to cool and then filtered into a 50ml volumetric flask. The solution will subsequently be made up to mark with distilled water and the concentrations of selected metals: Cd, Cr, Pb, Ni and Zn determined by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry using Buck Scientific Model 200A Spectrophotometer.

Ecological Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Sediments

The Potential Ecological Risk Index (PERI), a diagnostic tool suggested Hakanson for the analysis of contamination in lakes and coastal systems was used to calculate an ecological risk index for the Ekuruba wetlands ecosystem [24-28]. PERI is formed by three core modules: Degree of contamination (CD); toxic-response factor (Tr1); and potential ecological risk factor (Eri). The first module of PERI corresponds to the estimate of the degree of contamination (CD). The CD is expressed by the sum of the contamination factor of each metal (Cf i) as:

Where, CfI am the mean metal concentration (Ci), divided by the pre-industrial concentration of the substance :

According to Hakanson, the potential ecological risk index (PERI) is defined by:

Where; RI is calculated as the sum of all risk factors for heavy metals in sediments; Erl is the monomial potential ecological risk factor;tr1 is the toxic-response factor for a given substance (e.g., Cr = 2, Mn = 1, Pb = 5, Ni = 5, Zn = 1, Cd = 30) [29].

Cf,Co,Cn and are the contamination factor, the concentration of metals in the sediment and the background reference level, respectively. International background values for metals in sediments (shale) include 0.22 mg/kg for Cd, 39 mg/kg for Cu, 68 mg/kg for Ni, 120 mg/kg for Zn, 0.85 mg/kg for Mn; 60 mg/ kg for Pb and 90 mg/kg [30].

Also proposed the following values to be used in the interpretation of ecological risks in sediments:

a) RI <150, low ecological risk for the sediment;

b) 150≤ RI <300, moderate ecological risk for the sediment;

c) 300≤ RI <600, considerable ecological risk for the sediment;

d) RI ≥600, very high ecological risk for the sediment.

In order to assess the intensity of metal contamination in the sediments of for the Ekuruba wetlands ecosystem, the geochemical accumulation index was calculated using equation 5 as proposed to quantify metal accumulation in the sediments, and represent their contamination degree [31].

This index is expressed as follows:

Where,

Igeo °9 n concentration of metal n in the silt/clay fraction, Bn is the geochemical background value of element n and 1.5 is a correction factor due to lithogenic effects, The Igeo classification entails seven grades (0 to 6) of pollution, ranging from no pollution (0) to very high pollution [32].

Biota Sampling and Analysis

Biota sampled and analysed in this study include the water snail (Pila Ovata); the catfish (Clarias macromystax); and the snake head mudfish (Parachana Obscura) as identified by Utibe (personal communication) of the department of Animal and Environmental Biology, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. All Matrices sampled initially were stored below 4OC before analyses in the laboratory (APHA, 2005) to avoid the degradation of the samples. The biota in this study was used because of their feeding habits which cut across the various tropic levels of the wetlands environment and their importance as sources of protein to the inhabitants of the study area.

The West African Clariid, Claries Macromystax (Plate IV), Gunther, 1864 (Osteichthyes: Clariidae) is a freshwater; demersal; benthopelagic (bottom dweller) and potamodromous (freshwater migratory) fish that dwells more in swamps and floodplains other than rivers and open channels. Primary food items include fish, insects, fruits and seeds, crustacean's plant detritus and mud. Even though the diversity of insects in the diet was more than that of fish, the latter contributed to the diet in more months (9) than insect [33]. The African obscure snakehead (Plate IV) is also a benthopelagic and potamodromous fish and thrives in harsh environments, including muddy waters. This fish lives in streams, ponds, rivers, lakes, marshes. Swamps, lagoons and floodplains, especially in waters greater than 20°C. The obscure snakehead is also known as the “sleeping fish”, as it spends much of its time motionless among the aquatic vegetation. The Obscure snakeheads are highly predacious, extremely voracious carnivores feeding on large aquatic animals such as frogs, other fishes and even aquatic snakes [34]. Adults feed primarily on other fish up to half their size, while juveniles feed on insect larvae, insects, prawns and copepods.

For the water snail (Pila Ovata) (Plate V), is found in the bottom of streams, pond, lakes and wetlands. They feed on algae and plant detritus. Ezekwe, et al. [35] had stated that the Pila ovata has been used severally and successfully in environmental monitoring studies. These snails constitute an important source of diet for most villagers especially the rural dwellers, in Africa and elsewhere in the world. Apart from serving as a source of protein, they are also used for medicinal purposes. The Pila ovata is an aquatic and their ability to bio accumulate heavy metals from algae, sediments and vegetal matter therefore makes them very good indicators of environmental quality [36].

Determination of Heavy Metals in Biota (Fish and Snail)

Fish and snail samples for metal analyses were dehydrated to a constant weight using an oven (Technicolor) at 50OC and the two fish samples (whole fish) and water snail were pulverized separately. Two grams (2g) of ground oven dried total body weight were weighed using a high precision micro scale and put in a digestion flask and digested with a mixture of 10ml of concentrated nitric acid and 2ml of concentrated perchloric acid [37-40]. The contents of the flask was, for each case, digested gently and slowly, by heating in a water bath until the contents got to near dryness. It was then set aside to cool. The digest was filtered into a 50ml volumetric flask, made up to mark with distilled water and the concentration of selected metals was determined by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry using Buck Scientific Model 200A Spectrophotometer

Determination of Hydrocarbons in Water, Sediments and Biota (Fish and Snail)

10ml of 5% Sodium Chloride and 30ml Ethanol were measured and added to 5g of gill and muscle samples of fish and tissue samples of snail respectively. Each mixture was refluxed for one hour, and then allowed to cool. The refluxed sample was later transferred into a separating funnel. 20ml of dichloromethane was added and shaken for 30 minutes in a mechanical shaker The mixture was allowed to separate out, and the lower layer was of the dichloromethane extract was received and used for GC- MS analysis. The standard procedure as described validated and recommended for Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons analysis was followed [41-43]. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons was extracted from the surface waters following liquid-liquid partition with dichloromethane, sediments by Soxhlet extraction with dichloromethane and fish, crab and snail by digested alcoholic solution of Potassium hydroxide and extraction with 1,1,2-trichlorotrifluoroethane (TCTFE). The extracts will further be purified to avoid interferences by aliphatic hydrocarbons using alumina as an adsorbent in and subsequently eluted with hexane to remove aliphatic hydrocarbons. A second eluant was benzene, was used to remove the aromatic components with sufficient purity for the Capillary Gas Chromatographic analysis.

BTEX was analysed using the USEPA 8260 Method (GC/ MS). 10 ml of sample was placed in a clean VOA vial. The vial was fitted to the Agilent head space sampler and purged with the purge gas into the Agilent 7890B GC-MS for analysis. The concentration in mg/l was deduced from the calibration graph. Data collected from the field and laboratory analysis were presented using descriptive statistics, tables and charts [44-49]. The data was also subjected to critical statistical evaluation for hypothesis testing using the Friedman's Test statistics which is the non-parametric alternative to the one-way ANOVA of the sites while the Wilcoxon sign test which compared the average of the two variables (contaminants in environmental segments and international quality standards), is the non-parametric alternative to the dependent samples t-test. All statistical analyses were done using SPSS 10.00 All statistical analyses were done using the IBM SPSS 10.00 software (Plates V & VI).

Results and Discussions

Results

The results from the sampling and analysis of water, sediments and biota for this study are presented in (Table 1) (Plate VII) while sediment quality guidelines are given in (Table 2). Surfaces, or iron-stained water and Oily looking bacterial surface scum (differentiated from a hydrocarbon slick of similar appearance) [50].

Physico-Chemical Parameters of Surface Water

The pH levels of the three sites showed a high degree of acidity ranging between 4.8 and 5.86. Lowest pH levels were found at Site 2 and these fall within unacceptable limits for freshwater fish development. The salinity of the Ekuruba wetlands is also problematic, ranging between 65.8 and 125 mg/l. This is far higher than that of the neighbouring orashi River system (40mg/l) and the 40-60mg/l range of the Kolo Creek system. The rest of the physico-chemical parameters (conductivity, temperature, TDS and dissolved oxygen) were within acceptable ranges (>Table 1) [51].

Hydrocarbons in the Ekuruba Wetlands

Of the sixteen polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons analyzed in the water samples from the three sampling sites in the wetlands, none was present. The same also goes for the BTEX indicating that the wetland as at the time of this study was free from any worrisome presence of dangerous hydrocarbons in the water column. This is not surprising because an initial clean up of petroleum impacted sites was carried out by the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, the operator of the Kolo Creek oil and gas fields [52]. Also, PAHs and BTEX are known to be easily degraded under well oxygenated and high nutrient conditions. The dissolved oxygen levels in the water column ranged between 7.96 and 8.12 mg/l and the high level litter characteristic of these types of tropical wetlands including high temperatures and rainfall could have led to an enhanced biodegradation of spilled oil in the swamp.

BTEX was below detectable limits (< 0.001 mg/L) in the sediments. Although BTEX and PAHs were absent in the water column, low concentrations of naphthalene ranging between 0.01 and 0.1 mg/L was found in the sediments with Site B having about ten times the concentration of other sites. This may be due to oil pollution impact and the fact that due to their hydrophobic nature, PAHs entering the aquatic environment exhibit a high affinity for suspended particulates in the water column. As PAHs tend to sorbs to these particles, they are eventually settled out of the water column onto the bottom sediments. Thus, the PAH concentrations in water are usually quite low relative to the concentrations in the bottom sediments.

From (Table 1) we realized that although naphthalene was found in all the sites, highest concentration (0.1 mg/kg) was found at the petroleum impacted site which is below the TEC level (0.176 mg/kg) of the CBSQG. Naphthalene is an organic compound with formula C10H8. It is the simplest polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, and is a white crystalline solid with a characteristic odour that is detectable at concentrations as low as 0.08 ppm by mass. It reacts with alkali metals (sodium and potassium) to form dark blue-green radical anion salts such as sodium naphthalenide. This may be the reason for the unusually high salinities (by regional standard) characteristic of the Ekuruba wetlands (Figure 3) shows the concentration of pollutants in fish and the water snail and its comparism with international food safety standards [53]. While BTEX were absent PAHs occurred at a level where only 1 in 10,000 and 1 in a 100, 000 persons will be exposed to cancers.

Heavy Metals in the Ekuruba Wetlands

All the heavy metals tested where also largely absent in the water column apart from cadmium that occurred in the three sites at almost the same level of concentration (0.62 -0.64) indicating either natural sources or widespread pollution in the wetlands. In the sediments, Lead also had very low levels ranging between 0.831 and 0.962 (Table 2). There were however significant concentrations of Zinc (23.6-59.9); Nickel (11.112.948); chromium (23.929-24.388); Cadmium (62.28-63.05) and Manganese (27.96-64.17). While chromium, nickel, lead and cadmium had almost uniform concentrations in the sampled sites, zinc and manganese showed a high level of variability among sites. While manganese increased progressively and linearly from upstream to downstream, zinc showed a higher concentration in the site directly impacted by oil spill. Zinc concentrations may therefore be a valid indicator of oil pollution in freshwater wetlands. (Figure 3) shows the concentration of pollutants in the sediments of the Ekuruba wetlands. Contaminant levels in the sediments of the study area were compared with the consensus- based sediment quality guidelines (Table 2).

Cr, Pb, Ni, Mn and Zn were therefore at concentrations below TEC, while cadmium levels were far above the probable effects concentrations-PEC (5.0 mg/kg dry wt) of CBSQG. The PEC is the concentrations above which harmful effects are likely to be observed. In fish, Nickel, chromium, cadmium and lead (EC, 2006) were above permissible limits in the fish samples while only cadmium (EC, 2006) was above permissible limit in the water snail (Table 3) while PAHs also occurred at a level where only 1 in 10,000 and 1 in a 100, 000 persons will be exposed to cancers.

Discussion

Ecological Importance of Water Quality

The usual range of pH for streams and other aquatic ecosystems is between 6 and 8. An increase in acidity results in a lower pH and the greater the deviation from the normal range, the less life the water can support. Maintaining a stable, moderate pH is critical for wetlands because they serve as fish and amphibian breeding grounds (NDES, 2011; Juanita College, n.d). The acidity of the Ekuruba wetlands may not be unconnected with an actual acid sulphate soil situation. Conditions indicating acid sulphate situations in tropical freshwater wetlands were fully described in Doer (2006). These include:

a) Water of pH < 5.5 (and particularly below 4.5) in surface water bodies, drains or groundwater (this is not a definitive indicator as organic acids may contribute to low pH in some environments such as Melaleuca swamps).

b) Unusually clear or milky blue-green water flowing from or within the area (aluminium released by ASS acts as a flocculating agent).

c) Extensive iron stains on any drain or pond surfaces, or iron-stained water and ochre deposits.

d) Oily looking bacterial surface scum (differentiated from a hydrocarbon slick of similar appearance).

A closer look at plate II and especially plate VII reveals conditions described by DoER 2006) for surface waters or freshwater wetlands affected by acid sulphate soils. Although, these levels of salt concentration is within the tolerable limit of most freshwater fish increasing salinities will adversely affect riverine ecosystems in many different ways. These can include changes in community structure (i.e. loss of aquatic biodiversity), breakdown in food webs, shift in community composition to more tolerant species, alterations to normal ecosystem function through reduction in nutrient cycling and metabolism resulting in changes to the physical and chemical parameters of waters. It should be noted that salinity increased from local ranges in Site A to abnormally high concentrations in Site B in the middle of the swamp where oil spills had occurred through to the channel outlet downstream.

According to UNEP cadmium sulphate and cadmium chloride are quite soluble in water, whereas elemental cadmium, cadmium oxide and cadmium sulphide are almost insoluble. Cadmium complication with chloride ion increases with salinity until, in typical seawater, cadmium exists almost entirely as chloride species. The complication of cadmium with chloride in seawater has been shown to significantly influence its bioavailability and hence toxicity to marine organisms. It is most probable that chloride complication is responsible for the reduced cadmium accumulation and toxicity in a variety of organisms observed with increasing salinities. Cadmium mobility in aquatic environments is enhanced by low pH, low hardness, low suspended matter levels, high red ox potential and low salinity. In natural water bioavailability of cadmium is reduced through sorption on suspended particles so that biological responses occur at higher cadmium levels. In aquatic systems, cadmium is most readily absorbed by organisms directly from the water in its free ionic form while river water contains dissolved cadmium at concentrations of between < 1 and 13.5 ng/L while high fractions of dissolved cadmium are found in acid waters. Low pH levels, low suspended matter in freshwater forest water and probably high red ox potential could have concentrated cadmium in the Kolo Creek Wetlands system.

Environmental and health guidelines and standards for cadmium for freshwater is 0.2 ng/L. or 0.0002 mg/L and 0.01 mg/L for livestock drinking water. The water in the Ekuruba wetland is therefore dangerously contaminated with cadmium above acceptable standards for both the aquatic ecosystem and livestock. This poses a great danger to the aquatic environment, animals and man. It is important to state here that herdsmen were sighted during the fieldwork taking their herds to the wetlands for grazing and drinking water. It has also been reported that at concentrations as low as 0.01 mg/L cadmium inhibits ion transport systems and induces metallothionein synthesis in freshwater fish at concentrations less than (<) 0.001 mg/L. Cadmium toxicity has been found to be variable in fish, with salmonids being particularly susceptible to cadmium. Sub- lethal effects in fish, notably malformation of the spine, have been reported. The most susceptible life-stages are the embryo and early larva, while eggs are the least susceptible.

Ecological Importance of Sediment Quality

According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources-WDoNR, these guidelines are the most recent development in Sediment Quality Guidelines (SQGs) since it combines the geometric mean of several sets of SQGs to yield a consensus based lower (Threshold Effect-TEC) and an upper (Probable Effects Concentration-PEC). Although, these values may not predict toxicity related to specific contaminant levels in the gradient between the TEC and the PEC, they are valuable in predicting the absence or presence of sediment toxicity at concentrations that are lower than the TEC or greater than the PEC values. The TEC and PEC values in the SQGs define three ranges of concentrations for each contaminant (> TEC; < TEC but < PEC; and > PEC). In assessing the reliability of comparing these values to incidence of toxicity to sediment dwelling organisms, it's been shown that there is a consistent and incremental increase in toxicity with increasing chemical concentrations. The TEC part of the Consensus-Based Sediment Quality Guidelines (CBSQG) was derived by combining the lowest effect level, LEL, threshold effect level, TEL, the effect range- low, ERL and the chronic equivalent partitioning threshold, SQAL- sediment quality advisory level, of previous studies. The PEC part on the other hand was derived by combining the Severe Effects Level- SEL, Probable Effects Level-PEL, Effect Range-Median-ERM and the toxic effect threshold, TET of other studies.

From (Table 1), we realized that although naphthalene was found in all the sites, highest concentration (0.1 mg/kg) was found at the petroleum impacted site which is below the TEC level (0.176 mg/kg) of the CBSQG. Naphthalene is an organic compound with formula C10H8. It is the simplest polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, and is a white crystalline solid with a characteristic odour that is detectable at concentrations as low as 0.08 ppm by mass. It reacts with alkali metals (sodium and potassium) to form dark blue-green radical anion salts such as sodium naphthalenide. This may be the reason for the unusually high salinities (by regional standard) characteristic of the Ekuruba wetlands.

Exposure to cadmium could induce the synthesis of a low molecular weight protein called metallothionen, which can then bind with cadmium and decrease its toxicity. This generally takes place in the liver of fish and humans. But if the cadmium concentration is high, the metallothionen detoxification system can become overwhelmed and the excess cadmium will be available to produce toxic effects. The effects of cadmium on aquatic organisms can be directly or indirectly lethal and can impact populations and ecosystems as well as individuals. Skeletal deformities in fish can result in impaired ability of the fish to find food and to avoid predators; hence, this sub lethal effect becomes a lethal effect. Cadmium impairs aquatic plant growth. This affects the entire ecosystem because green plants are at the base of all food chains. When aquatic plants that are exposed to cadmium do not grow normally, there will be less food available for aquatic animals. Cadmium effects on human health include skeletal deformities and bone loss, kidney damage, and generalized pain.

Potential Health Effects of Contaminants in Fish

The following ecological indices were derived for the wetlands:

Potential ecological risk for the wetland was derived as follows by calculating Degree of contamination

And Potential Ecological Risk Index (PERI)

Therefore the sediments of the Kolo Creek wetlands pose an ultra high ecological risk level to biota in the ecosystem. Also, calculating the Index of Geo-accumulation for the wetland returned the following indices: Zn = 0.0391; Ni = 0.05; Pb = 0.016; Cr = 0.046; Cd = 0.13 and Mn = 5.572. Therefore using the geochemical accumulation index as proposed, we conclude that the wetland is very highly polluted by manganese and unpolluted by other metals. This disparity between the various ecological risk indices calls for a review of these indices, also, it goes to show the importance of synergy in not using only one index. Applying the Geoaccumulation Index helped us to discover serious manganese pollution in the wetlands. Although literature on the toxicity of manganese to aquatic biota is scarce, the WHO opines that high frequency of blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) with shell disease (lesions) in a metal- contaminated estuary was ascribed to manganese toxicity, and the deposition of manganese dioxide on the gills of Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus) gave rise to a brown or black discoloration of the gills and black corroded areas on the carapace following hypoxic conditions in the southeast Kattegat, Sweden. Increased mortality of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) at a hatchery was found to be positively correlated with manganese concentration (<0.5-1 mg/litre). Acid precipitation has caused acid episodes and elevated levels of metals. Cage experiments with yearling brown trout (Salmo trutta) showed that pH of 4.5-5.4 (which is similar to the pH of surface water in the wetlands of our study area) and the concentration of labile inorganic manganese (0.1-0.4 mg/litre) explained all of the observed mortality in the specimens.

Hypothesis Testing

Two hypotheses were tested in course of this study and they are stated in null form thus:

H0: There is no statistically significant difference between polluted and unpolluted sites in the Kolo Creek wetlands. H0: The wetland ecosystem does not meet the standard for a healthy (Table 4) was derived by a combination of all the contaminants in the water column and sediments of the three sites as variables and analysing for difference. The Friedman's Test statistics revealed that there is no statistically significant difference in contamination levels in the three locations, x2 (2) = 0.581, p = 0.748. Since the p value (0.748) is bigger than a (0.05) we ACCEPT the null hypothesis of no difference. Table 5 shows the concentration of different contaminants in the various segments of the environment and the environmental standard values they are compared with while Table 6 shows the Wilcox on sign test which compared the average of the two variables. The test statistic simply proved that the wetland ecosystem does not meet the standard for a healthy ecosystem (Z = -785, p = 0.433). Since the p value (0.433) is bigger than a (0.05) we accept the null hypothesis that the wetland does not meet the standards for a healthy ecosystem.

a. Friedman Test

Recommendations

This study hereby recommends continues and stringent monitoring of environmental segments in the wetlands; a need for control in the discharge of solid and liquid waste especially upstream of the Kolo Creek wetlands; application of international environmental standards in the sitting and management of the oil production facilities in the study area and community environmental health education on the dangers of consuming fish and other products from the wetlands.

To know more about Juniper Publishers please click on: https://juniperpublishers.com/manuscript-guidelines.php

For more articles in Open Access Journal of Environmental Sciences & Natural Resources please click on: https://juniperpublishers.com/ijesnr/index.php

#juniper publishers journals #Juniper Publishers Review #Environmental Chemistry #Microbial Ecology #Waste Management and Disposal #Molecular Ecology

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technophiiliac-blog · 6 years ago

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Do clintsharon for the meme

ULTIMATE SHIP MEME!

Send in two (or more) names and I’ll fill all this out about the ship || accepting

@xmarksthescott

General:

How long will they last? - they are endgame and you can’t tell me otherwise

How quickly did/will they fall in love? - it was pretty slow burn

How was their first kiss? - adorable af

Wedding:

Who proposed? - clint

Who is the best man/men? - clint wrestled sharon for custody of steve

Who is the braid’s maid(s)? - idk like nat or bobbi or jess or smth??

Who did the most planning? - tbh probably clint. he hasn’t had an actual wedding, so he’s getting excited

Who stressed the most? - probably sharon

How fancy was the ceremony? - Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big.

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? - she wouldn’t let barney come

Sex:

Who is on top? - i wanna say clint but we both know it’s sharon

Who is the one to instigate things? - clint

How healthy is their sex life? - Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now

How kinky are they? - Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don’t go into the sex dungeon without a horse’s head

How long do they normally last? - idk 20ish? smth like that?

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? - def do, it’s part of the unconditional love thing they’re trying

How rough are they in bed? - Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed’s shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it’d make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall’s so weak it could collapse the next time they do it.

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? - No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory.

Children:

How many children will they have naturally? - um, i don’t think sharon can have kids and after both of them having miscarried children they’re not eager

How many children will they adopt? - probs none

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? - clint totally would be tho

Who is the stricter parent? - sharon

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? - sharon. clint is way too reckless to yell at them for it

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? - sharon. she let clint do it once and he was found asleep on the kitchen floor with a piece of bread covered in mustard on his face

Who is the more loved parent? - probably clint cause he’s way more fun... and by fun i mean reckless

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? clint. he’s way too good at the domestic parent thing

Who cried the most at graduation? - neither of them really? maybe they both got a little teary

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? - both of them, they have so much pull in shield

Cooking:

Who does the most cooking? - probably sharon

Who is the most picky in their food choice? - also likely sharon

Who does the grocery shopping? - sharon. last time she let clint do it he came home with 30 microwavable Salisbury steaks and no vegetables

How often do they bake desserts? - maybe like once a month

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? - meat def. sharon has to keep reminding clint vegetables are needed

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? - oh def clint. he’s surprisingly good at cooking, even if she doesn’t believe it when he says so

Who is more likely to suggest going out? - also clint. usually when sharon is tired and he thinks he needs smth nice

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidently while cooking? - probably clint, not that he’ll admit it

Chores:

Who cleans the room? - sharon is forever cleaning up after human disaster

Who is really against chores? - clint

Who cleans up after the pets? - clint cleans up after lucky

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? - also clint

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? - probably clint. he doesn’t know what’s acceptable by normal not messy standards

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? - sharon is always finding clint’s missing money

Misc:

Who takes the longer showers/baths? - probably sharon, but not by much

Who takes the dog out for a walk? - they both go in a cheesy romantic movie montage in central park

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? - clint gets way too into holidays

What are their goals for the relationship? - um get married and be happy??

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? - clint. always clint.

Who plays the most pranks? - also clint.

#they're so cute #lia send help #xmarksthescott #( looks like you need a hero \\ answered )

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countessofsnark · 7 years ago

Text

Snarky Recap - Thunderbirds: ‘Brink of Disaster’

The One Where Neither Reckless Speed Nor Petty Crime Pay Off.

This opens with a shot of Parker having an h’off duty moment. And what would an off duty moment be without some beer and a cigar, eh? (PSA: smoking is bad for you, please consider stopping or simply not starting this nasty habit)

Unfortunately for Parker, a car pulling up near the house means his little moment of me time is over. Indeed, ‘a butler’s work is never done.’ I must go, my people need me.

Now excuse me Mr Fancy Pants, you’ll have to wait for her Ladyship, because she appears to be fashionably late.

Mr Grafton: ‘From what I’ve heard she’s certainly ah worth waiting for.’

EXCUSE YOU, SIR. We don’t talk about her Ladyship that way. And certainly not in this ‘ouse. And kindly keep your hands and other appendages where they belong.

Switching to Penelope driving FAB 1 in a fabulous outfit that would definitely look great on her TAG counterpart too. So badass I can’t even.

There’s staying calm in a stressful situation and then there’s Penelope Creighton-Ward calm while being shot at during a car chase.

Taking out the trash, Penny style.

Back at the Creighton-Ward mansion, Mr Grafton goes from creep to overdressed burglar in 0.5 seconds. See, I knew there was something fishy about this man.

Oh he’s a businessman now is he? And a monorail, you say? Requiring money to get the project off the ground, no pun intended? And just as the conversation turns to a suspicious breakdown of Penelope’s financial means, Parker walks in carrying tea and a message for her Ladyship.

IT’S A TRAP!

Penny is smart enough to know that this Grafton fella can’t be trusted so she sidetracks the conversation to setting up a meet up with a wealthy friend of hers who happens to be very interested in projects of the technological kind.

Meet your new sugar daddy, Mr Grafton.

Fast forward to a New York boardroom, where Grafton and his Pacific Atlantic Monorail Corporation buddies are having a Investment Dick Measuring contest.

A little while later, Grafton is being roasted by his guests aboard the mono train. What about safety measures? Oh not to worry, we’ve got heli-jets on constant patrol.

Jeff: ‘Unless something went wrong with the heli-jet.’ THIS, BASICALLY.

Well don’t you hate it when Murphy’s Law has a field day?

Grafton: ‘So you see, Tracy, in the standard coaches we can pack in 500 people.’

Jeff: ‘Pack in is right.’

Your marketing spiel sure could use some polishing up, Mr Grafton.

Grafton then proceeds to show his distinguished guests the power unit. ‘The greatest junk of engineering genius in land travel history.’

Jeff: ‘Well it’s big enough anyway.’

It’s not size it’s what you do with... ah never mind.

Back at the bridge, Joe and Stan are doing a whole lot of talking back and forth until one of them finally decides to radio the mono train.

Jeff has already figured out that Grafton is way more interested in money than he is in passenger safety.

‘His type usually end up in one place: jail.’

And that’s exactly where our Bonny and Clyde are going if they think they can steal from Lady P and get away with it.

‘Grafton fixed the alarms. All we gotta do is press a button and we’re ok.’ Right, and Rome was built in one day.

A butler’s work is never done. Except when he’s snoring like an intoxicated elephant.

Grafton heads back to his guests to tell them they’re heading for trouble - ‘and I mean trouble!’ Well, good thing you’ve got heli-jets on standby, don’t you? Oh, wait. OOPS.

Jeff is doing a fabulous job staying calm and composed while the monorail is speeding up and out of control.

Grafton, when asked how long it’ll take until they reach the damaged part of the track: ‘I’m not sure. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty maybe more... I don’t know!’

Jeff: ‘Thanks. You’re a great help.’

Not sure if sarcasm or reassuring or both. *squint*

Back at the mansion, our burglar buddies did manage to sneak inside undetected. For now...

The damaged part of the bridge is STILL exploding. Like, seriously, was this episode co-produced by Michael Bay? *more squinting*

Jeff has worked out a plan to secretly contact the boys. Until then, Obi-Brains, you are our only hope.

Leave it to John to awkwardly intercept the call.

Jeff: ‘Make it snappy, we’re running out of time.’ YOU BETTER HURRY UP, MY WOEFULLY UNDERAPPRECIATED SON.

A few moments later, on Tracy Island, John transfers the message to the boys.

Scott: WHAT THE FUCK.

Virgil: ‘We’ll never get there in time!’ No, not in your slow ass bird you won’t.

Scott: ‘Well we can’t just sit here.’

Virgil: (suddenly forgetting all about the dramatic remark he made seconds ago) ‘Right. Come on!’

Our bandit buddies manage to open the jewel vault but unfortunately for them, this also sets off an alarm that wakes up both Penny and Parker

Penelope: ‘Parker? Are you awake? It appears we have visitors.’

Ah yes. ‘Visitors.’

‘Parker, they’re going to take my jewels.’

‘That would seem to be the intention, m’lady.’ Such sharp observational skills, Parker.

Our jolly bandits think they can get away with their loot. But just as they’re about to take off in their getaway car...

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals. And a happy New Year.

Shooting the tyres doesn’t stop these guys though. They make the horrible mistake of trying to steal FAB 1 next. Penny activates the remote control and has the car spinning circles around the driveway fountain. Case closed. LOL.

You spin me round baby right round like a record baby right round.

Joe and Stan continue to provide ‘useful’ commentary regarding the bridge situation without actually doing anything about it. Good job, Captains Obvious and Obviouser.

Brains’ plan seems to be working but the train is still speeding along the track.

Grafton: WE’RE STILL GOING TOO FAST OH GOD OH GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE.

Jeff: OH SHUT UP.

Attaboy, Jeff.

Tin Tin, meanwhile, is seeking comfort in Daddy Jeff’s arms. Well well well, guess she likes her men the way some people like wine: vintage and full bodied. If Alan were here he would probably spontaneously combust.

‘They’re going too fast!’

YOU DON’T SAY.

But just as the train reaches the end of the line, it slows down enough to execute a full stop. SUCCESS!

Jeff: ‘Easy now, Tin Tin. It’s all over now.’

Yes, my dear girl. We all act on our deepest desires when we think the end is near. Don’t worry, Alan need not hear a word of this. Unless you want to break his poor fragile heart. *grins*

And that’s when Appreciated Son Number One arrives at the danger zone, while Appreciated Son Number Two is still six minutes away. Good job, boys. You didn’t exactly sit around but you didn’t exactly contribute to the happy ending of this situation either.

Scott: ‘International Rescue here. You guys are still in danger. The tower behind you is gonna collapse any moment.’

Well good thing you fellas are here then, eh. Bring on Thunderbird 2 for some heavy lifting.

Grafton: ‘Say, what goes on? Are they trying to murder us or something?’

No, you dick. It’s called rescuing people from a nasty situation that was created by idiots like yourself.

Scott and Virgil safely deposit the section containing Jeff, Tin Tin, Brains, and Grafton and then fly off, heading back to Tracy Island.

Tin Tin is still shook af and Jeff is trying to *cough* comfort her *cough*. Oh boy if only Alan were here to see this.

Jeff warns Grafton that his next holiday will be spent behind bars. Grafton is not impressed.

Cut to Grafton and buddies in jail. Nice outfit, lads. Keep on dreaming, that’s the spirit. LOL.

Ahhh this was such a little gem. Thank you for the request, @undercoverchikin and @madilayn

#snarky recap #thunderbirds #request #brink of disaster

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