#projects is both a noun and a verb

[onion-eyed]

Art Projects

This is the way it happens.

He makes you with the care of a watchmaker, the tooth of every gear clicking into place as if there was one place in all the universe for it to fit. It’s the same with you. There’s one place in all of creation you belong, and one purpose for which you are intended.

You are content. He hasn’t given you the ability to be otherwise.

-

This is the way it happens.

He carves you with a sculptor’s chisel, and every shaping blow shears away something that you might have been and now will never be. Once you are finished, you are so solid that surely you could never be any other way, but you remember how easy it was for him to chip away what did not please.

You are whole. For now.

-

This is the way it happens.

He cuts you out of the air like a suit of clothes, hellishly expensive and bespoke. Everything about you is made to exacting measurements, and he rubs you between his fingers, judging how you hang for him, how pointless you are until you are filled. Beautiful, he decides, but still he is unsure. Did he want you to be beautiful?

You’re gorgeous. That’s nice, you suppose.

-

This is the way it happens.

He draws you in lines of chalk and charcoal, and when he wants something more subtle, he smudges in the hollow of your eyes and the space behind your knees with his thumb. He’s going through a chiaroscuro phase, and your heart is all shades of gray. It pleases him to make you sly and ambitious, smart enough for some real fun.

You hide things from him. Really, he should have seen that coming.

-

This is the way it happens.

He loves you, because before the frustration and the balled-up sketches and the sleepless nights and the what am I doing, it always starts with love, doesn’t it? First, he loves you, and you’ll never be able to forget it. You can’t, and every part of you, every breath, every smile, every day, remembers how he loved you and how it changed you and shaped you like nothing ever could and nothing ever will.

You love him. You’re fucked.

[aww-canon-no]

Projects self all over Deaf Steve: 

He wants to be a writer, but after getting made fun of by his English teacher, he never tells anyone about this.

He was born Hard of Hearing with progressives loss.  By kindergarten he’s profoundly deaf, but crappy parents just stick him in mainstream school and hope for the best.  They live in a small town so resources are terrible and Steve scrapes by with his horrible bulky hearing aids until he just abandons them because being cool is better than sound anyway.

He learns ASL because he’s got one speech therapist who actually learned about the Deaf community, and it sits in his brain so much better, but it makes switching from ASL to English hard and everyone thinks he’s dumb.

His teachers have written him off.

He starts writing out of spite- learning to turn sentences into lyrical, poetic prose that feel like water rushing over smooth stones whenever he reads them.  But he doesn’t show anyone because when he goes over his work he still finds spots where he gets nouns and verbs swapped, and he drops articles and plurals are hard to remember, okay?  They just don’t make any SENSE in English sometimes.

And yeah his teachers were probably right, even if he never lets go of his petty dreams.

He gets a job working for his dad.  It’s all hearing people and it’s hard and the end of the day he’s exhausted in spite of the fact that it’s not hard labor.  He naps a lot.

He’s still close with the kids he used to babysit so on some days he goes to visit Mike’s house and annoy Nancy who pretends like she’s not happy to see him now that they’re just friends.  The kids have been MIA for a while and Steve finds out why.

He goes down to the basement and one of the prettiest men he’s ever laid eyes on is sitting on a makeshift throne with a book propped up in front of him.  Steve can’t see his lips so he can’t make out what he’s saying but whatever it is, he can tell the guy’s really into it by how the boys are really into it.

His name is Eddie and he talks with his whole body.

When he notices Steve, he also starts throwing in some signs which...

Steve will unpack that later.

Later, Dustin explains DnD to him.  It’s story telling, and it makes Steve feel things.  He’ll never admit to being interested.  Ever.

But he shows up more and Eddie invites him to sit and peek at his notes, and Steve starts making quiet suggestions behind the partition on his fingers once he realizes Eddie’s not fluent but at least conversational.  Eddie looks at Steve with big doe-eyes and an expression of wonder.

He personally invites Steve back.

Together they start planning a campaign and when it’s over--it lasts twenty-eight hours played over two weeks--Eddie cups his face and tells him that it was beautiful thanks to Steve.

At some point, they kiss, because they’re both so obviously in love there’s no point in hiding it anymore.

Eddie shows Steve his music, and Steve buys Eddie some really powerful ear plugs so Eddie can experience how Steve listens to it.

One day Steve suddenly feels like he can’t hide anymore so he shows up at Eddie’s house and dumps a thumb drive in his palm and tells him it’s stupid but he just wanted to share something.

Eddie disappears for two days, and Steve thinks yeah.  It was that bad.

Then Eddie appears with spicy chicken sandwiches in a greasy bag and throws Steve onto his bed and kisses the breath out of him before signing to him that his stories were the best things he’s ever read, and the world should probably know.

Steve doesn’t think he’ll ever actually pursue writing.  But he might write more for Eddie.

[eloquentcoconut]

TWST: 🤔 What Would They Name Their Child?

.‧₊˚ ⋅. ݁₊ ⊹

it's the infamous High School baby project

TWST does not care about verbs/nouns/gender when it comes to names, I'm only going to do 1 'gender neutral' name (in theory), in twst fashion. For instance, a boy has an equal chance of being named Sarah, Kart, or John and vice-versa for a girl. I'll be using a randomizer for the gender and number of children, you can decide on what gender the baby is (unless you comment which character(s) you'd like to know.)

.‧₊˚ ⋅. ݁₊ ⊹

🌹Heartslabyul

🌹 Ace - Stariya nn: Ari

If Thorn's eyes just so happen to match the name (starry) that's between Ace and himself. I just made up the name ^ ace/star are like synonyms.

🌹Deuce - Dawner

Dylla, Deuce, might as well have another 'D' name. I tried to make dawn sound more unique. Dawn represents 'new beginnings' since Deuce would want to leave that rebel past behind and step up to father a bag of flour.

🌹 Trey - Blithe

Trey and Blithe are both word names where I feel they're both so in use they don't conjure up an image. Blithe means happy/joyful. When scrolling through baby name websites I did see 'Almond and 'Nachos' listed, I need you to know this.

🌹 Cater - Dice nn: Icy

When making this I realized the characters aren't exactly named after games, sorry Uno, Scrabble, and Yahtzee - but parts of it, so Dice.

🌹 Riddle - Bridge

The card game bridge, he so would, but also a reference of Um from Umbridge. 'Rule' was listed as a baby name I--

🐾Savanaclaw

🐾 Leona - Folasade nn: Sade

(Based off my fav singer Sade ♡) I think Leona would like the meaning 'honor earns a crown; rule with nobility'

🐾 Ruggie - Junior

Thorn and Ruggie could not agree on a name - no the baby isn't Thorn jr or Ruggie jr, they're just Junior. Ruggie's name is a joke about his rugged life right? If he was based on a carpet his child could be Matti.

🐾 Jack - Gabrielle nn: Brielle/Gibby

Jack is one of few characters that has a common/average name - the child will need this stability in a place like twst! He's also a serious guy so it would be impossible to get him to agree on any name trends like alternate spellings/locations/words etc. Thorn finds a loophole with nicknames.

🌊 Octavinelle

Azul - Seren and Perle

I changed the spelling of 'pearl' and I keep debating if I should have or not. Seren is pretty close to siren, these names sound mermaid-y.

Jade - Nori

From the character Nori in Barbie Mermaidia, I think it means seaweed. Jade was nice enough to let Thorn pick out the name, and Thorn went for the first fictional mermaid that came to mind.

Floyd - Nike

Names from sneaker brands you could use as baby names and no on would know: Nike, Chuck, Chelsea, Taylor, Jordan, Mary Jane, Croc, etc.

💜 Pomefiore

💜 Vil - Liesel, Eden, and Hansl

I don't think Vil would be one of those celebrities parents that have all their children have the same initial, unique spellings, or invent names, or maybe he would? You know what? Having a common name would be a celeb niche in twst, he did not beat those allegations.

💜 Rook - Giselle

Is Rook French? bc I feel like he just uses French bc its trendy - he'd still pick a French/French influenced name though. Giselle is from the ballet 'Gisele' its romantic/dramatic/dark (quite sad really.)

💜 Epel - Ruby, Opal, and Jona

Part 2 of names from apples you could use and nobody would know: Crispin, Jonathan, Gala, Ruby, Opal, Ambrosia, Autumn, Rose, Granny, etc. When I realized I could make all their names 4 letters I had to take that opportunity.

🦜 Scarabia

🦜 Kalim - Salim

Derived from the Arabic expression 'salima' which points to something 'safe' and 'sound' Salim means peaceful/safe.

🦜 Jamil - Rana

Rana has so many meanings from around the world, in Arabic it means 'eye-catching' or 'beautiful' and in Sanksrit it means 'king/nobility'

🦋 Ignihyde

Idia - Raiden, Kaeya, Haruhi

There's no way Idia isn't naming his kids, real or not, after his fav characters. I settled on these names bc I was tired of thinking 😭he's a gamer and otaku and I could not think of anything niche or any deep cuts, they're all from Genshin Impact or OHSHC, lets face it, Idia wouldn't like the mainstream anything. Thorn was just trying to save these kids from a 'Bakugou Johnson' situation.

🍵 Diasominia

Malleus - Maenight and Twillian

(I invented these names part 2) Maenight is meadow + midnight bc no child of Malleus is mid 😤 and Twillian is twilight + lillian. Both kids are named after their parents initial and hobby: nature/night walks

Lilia - Garnet and Dove

Lilia has interesting naming conventions (Silver), so I tried to apply that here. Let's say child one has his eyes, so garnet, and child two has a calm demeanor, so dove.

Sebek - Amoret and Evermore nn: Ami and Ever

Sebek and Thorn have a book club so they'd pick literary names. Amoret is a character from the epic poem 'The Faerie Queene' by Edmund Spenser, and I think Sebek would like it. Evermore is from 'The Raven' a narrative poem by Edgar Allen Poe (there's a raven character that repeats evermore/nevermore) BUT if thats too dark there's also the Taylor Swift song 'Evermore' (which I feel has inspiration from 'The Raven')

Silver - Aurelia

Aurelia means gold, but I was trying to have Thorn and Silver apply their own meanings, aurora + starlight = aurelia. (Named after how their parents' eye colors are described)

.‧₊˚ ⋅. ݁₊ ⊹

(Should Ortho + side characters be included? Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see anyone else!)

[max1461]

Ok, I have a lot of people who read my blog and are (rightly) very skeptical of generative syntax. For my linguistics mutuals this is usually for somewhat subtler reasons, but for my non-ling-readers the reasoning is generally something like "well, it seems like a bunch of bullshit".

This is a very good instinct! I personally think that most of what gets published in generative syntax is a bunch of bullshit. There are very deep problems in the field, which basically everyone who is not a Chomskyan is in agreement on. But I do think people should understand, if they want to critique generative syntax well, what motivated the whole thing, what Chomsky was trying to explain, and why it's a genuine puzzle. Without that I think you're swinging blind.

I'm assume that anyone reading this will have at least some passing familiarity with the basic concepts of linguistics, but I'll try not to assume too much.

Right, so, one of the basic goals of linguistics, the thing you have to do before positing any deeper theory of the mind or linguistic cognition, is to be able to write down descriptions of existing natural languages. This descriptive task is where modern linguistics got its start. You want to look at a language, collect a bunch of data from speakers, and answer structural questions like "how can the words in this language be ordered? How can the sounds in an individual word be ordered? How do smaller pieces of words (morphemes) combine to make bigger words? Etc.". That first question, "how can the words in this language be ordered?" is the domain of descriptive syntax. Theoretical syntax (which really starts with Chomsky) attempts to find broader principles which govern the order of words in all languages, syntactic universals. Furthermore, the hope is generally that finding such principles will tell us something about the way language is generated and processed in the brain.

The first thing I want to talk about is, basically, what was already understood when Chomsky came onto the scene. I'll use modern terminology and notion (and bring a modern, computational lens to the question), but I'll describe the basic state of understanding at the very beginning of the generative project.

Let's get back to that original question, "how can the words in this language be ordered?". For the specific language we are trying to describe, let's take English. We know that some orderings of words produce valid English sentences: "the dog went to the store and bought a meteorite". We know that other orderings of words do not produce valid English sentences: "him the went dog store meteorite have bought". We would like to write down some rules or principles that characterize which sentences will be valid and which will not.

The first thing we can do is abstract away from individual words and start thinking about syntactic categories. We notice that certain words seem to be able to be swapped out for each other without affecting the validity of a sentence: if I can say "the dog went to the store", I can also say "they man went to the store". If I can say "I saw the dog", then I can say "I saw the man". Of course these sentences don't mean the same thing, but the point is that if one of these sentences with "dog" is valid, the corresponding sentence with "man" is also valid. We say that "man" and "dog" have the same syntactic distribution in English. The set of all words with a given syntactic distribution is called a syntactic category. In this case, "man" and "dog" are both nouns.

In school grammar, you might have learned that a noun is a "person, place, or thing". But in syntax, we want to understand a noun as a class of words with a particular syntactic distribution.

In fact, simple categories like "noun" and "verb" are too broad; in order to describe English grammar we need more precise categories than this. But we will keep running with these for now. If we want to be precise, we can think of "noun" and "verb" as classes of categories having similar-but-not-identical distributions. We're already at an important empirical observation—every language appears to have noun-like categories and verb-like categories, and this is interesting. But we won't dwell on this.

So we can view a sentence as a sequence of categories. "The dog went to the store" might as well be "D N V P D N" for all the syntactician cares. Here I'm using standard abbreviations for these categories: D is "determiner", N is "noun", P is "preposition", and V is "verb". I'll also use A for "adjective" later. But at this point we can abstract again. Look, there are two pieces of the above sentence that have the same shape: "the dog" and "the store" are both D N. Hmm. Let's look at another sentence. "The red dog goes to the store". Now here, the sentence starts with something shaped D A N, in place of that first D N. What about this: "the big red dog goes to the store". Now it starts D A A N. And we could have said "the dog goes to the big red store", D N V P D A A N. So it starts to look like anywhere a D N can go, a D A N can go, or a D A A N, or D [any number of As] N. These are sequences of words that have the same syntactic distribution as each other, and thus can be freely swapped out for one another. If we can describe the internal structure they have, and the positions they're allowed to go in, we can describe the syntax of the whole language.

Thus, the idea of describing syntax with trees. Sentences consist of parts nested inside other parts. These parts are called constituents or phrases. Each phrase has a particular syntactic distribution, just like individual words do. We can test what the constituents of a sentence are by trying to swap them out for one another (and for other things, like pronouns) and seeing if it works. Then we can diagram a sentence in terms of the way the constituents bracket: [[the dog] [went [to [the store]]]]. And we can represent that as a syntax tree, like this

I won't explain the concept of "headedness" right now, but the basic idea is that in some constituents, certain words play a special role, and these words are called "heads". A constituent whose head is a noun is called a noun phrase (NP), one whose head is a verb is called a verb phrase (VP), and so on. That's what the labels in the tree mean. The labels on the leaves of the tree refer to syntactic categories of individual words, and the ones up inside the tree are phrase types. The important thing is that each phrase is a subtree, and each phrase type has a specific syntactic distribution. Additionally, any individual word can be seen as a one-word phrase.

What we are building right now is called a phrase-structure grammar. If we want to describe the sentences of a language this way, we specify some abstract symbols for phrase types (NP, VP, N, V, etc.), and some rules that say what shape these phrase types can have. We know from the examples above that a DP can have shape D N (as in "the dog"), D A N (as in "the big dog"), etc. We could write this rule as DP -> D A* N. The "*" after A means "any number of As". Actually, that notation is not quite what a linguist would use, but I'm using "*" because I think it will be familiar to a lot of people already from computer science.

A phrase-structure grammar is a list of syntactic rules like this, that describe the valid shapes of different phrases. Once you do that, you need only specify what the different vocabulary items of the language are and what syntactic categories they're part of, and you've fully described the syntax.

But, wait... does that actually work? Can this system actually describe all of natural language syntax?

No!

Enter Chomsky. The term "phrase-structure grammar" was not around at the time, but diagramming sentences as trees in roughly the way shown above was not new. Chomsky wondered "is this sufficient"? In trying to answer that question, he came up with the Chomsky hierarchy. The Chomsky hierarchy is a hierarchy of different types of "formal language" (sets of sequences of symbols, like our sequences D N V P D N etc.). The hierarchy is ordered by what kind of computation apparatus you need in order to describe the given language type. Phrase-structure grammars like we constructed above are, mathematically, only able to describe languages at the "context-free" level in the Chomsky hierarchy. Are natural languages context-free languages, under Chomsky's definition? They are not.

Consider, for instance, English question words: who, what, when, where, how. Words of this type are known as wh-words, because most of them start with "wh" in English. Yes, that is as Anglocentric as it sounds. Anyway, where can they go?

Well, they usually go at the beginning of a sentence. "What did you see?", "How are you doing". Notice that in these sentences, there is something that looks like a constituent with a gap. We know already that English transitive verb phrases (VPs) have the shape V DP, where V is a verb and DP is a determiner phrase, described above. So verb phrases will be things like "saw the man" or "ate the rice". But in "what did you see", the transitive verb see doesn't have a DP after it. In fact, if you try to put the usual DP after it, then the sentence with what becomes ungrammatical: *"what did you see the dog".

(By the way, putting a "*" before a sentence is what linguists use to indicate that speakers judge it ungrammatical. Another helpful bit of notation: "?" before a sentence means speakers aren't sure if it's grammatical or disagree, the sentence is of dubious grammaticality.)

So, ok, you can put a DP after a transitive verb, unless the sentence starts with what, then you can't. Is that it? Well, not quite, but let's run with that for now. Check this out: the above rule still works no matter how far away the wh-word is from the DP gap:

"What did you see?"

*"What did you see the dog?"

"What did you tell me the man saw?"

*"What did you tell me the man saw the dog?"

"What did you tell me the man told you he saw?"

*"What did you tell me the man told you he saw the dog?"

This situation is called a long distance dependency, and it is impossible to describe them with the kind of context-free phrase-structure grammar we came up with above. Thus, context-free phrase-structure grammars are insufficient for describing natural language syntax.

So what do we do about it? Well, it's certainly the case that phrase-structure-grammar gets close to describing what we want. Lots of sentences can be diagrammed as context-free syntax trees just fine. And thinking about language in terms of constituency is very useful in a bunch of other contexts that I haven't mentioned here; phrases are the bread-and-butter of linguistic description. Chomsky's solution was to take a good old context-free phrase-structure grammar and augment it with a mechanism called movement, turning it into a context-sensitive grammar (a higher position on the Chomsky hierarchy, capable of describing long distance dependencies like that above).

There are a lot of different forms of movement, and proposals for what its limits should be, but the basic idea is that movement allows you to take something from one node in the tree and move it to another node, under some set of conditions. Generally the node it moves to should be empty; you sort of have to imagine trees like the one I drew above as having valid nodes at every possible location specified by the phrase-structure grammar, even if most of them don't have words in them. The ones without words are the empty nodes. Every syntactic theory with movement is based on some phrase-structure grammar, which determines what trees exist in the language. Movement is then allowed to apply to this set of trees generated by the PSG, shifting constituents from one node to another. In most theories, movement is only allowed to be upward (that is, things can only move to strictly higher positions in the tree). Other limitations may be put in place as well: heads may only move to other head positions, complements may only move to spec positions, movement cannot progress across certain barriers in the tree, etc. It all gets very technical.

The ideal generative theory is a PSG and a set of conditions on movement that allow linguists to describe all and only the possible syntactic structures of natural human language. This is where the term "generative" comes from: a grammar (of a specific language, in a specific theory) generates possible sentences, and a theory generates possible grammars. A bad grammar either overgenerates (predicts ungrammatical sentences) or undergenerates (fails to predict grammatical sentences). This makes it an insufficient description of the language. On a meta-level, a bad syntactic theory either overgenerates (predicts impossible grammars) or undergenerates (fails to predict possible grammars).

Anyway, back to movement. Why is it an appealing mechanism? Well, it unites a bunch of related phenomena under one description. First of all, let's notice something else about those long distance dependencies in English. There are a bunch of them: "what did he see", "where did he go", "how does he feel", etc. In all of them, the syntactic category of the gap corresponds to the question word you use.

"What did he see?" ↔︎ "He saw the dog" (DP)

"Where did he go?" ↔︎ "He went to the park" (PP)

"How did he feel?" ↔︎ "He felt good" (AP)

We might like to say that certain types of phrase are allowed in the highlighted positions in the sentences on the right, and this includes the corresponding wh-words. Then, the wh-word moves out of that position and up to the front of the sentence. This allows us to describe what sorts of wh-words pair with what sorts of constituents without having to "say the same thing twice" in the grammar. Many natural generalizations present themselves by simply specifying what is allowed to go in the position where movement starts, and then specifying where things can move to.

Here's another compelling reason to posit movement: sometimes, things don't move. Above, I said that it was a simplification to say that wh-word always show up at the front of the sentence. For example, when multiple interrogatives are present in a single sentence, only one of them can be fronted. If I say "Stacy went to the store and bought apples", and later you forget what I told you and want to ask about the details, you might say:

"Tell me again, who went to the store and bought what?"

Here, who has is in its fronted position but what is not (linguists call this wh-in-situ). Where does the in situ wh-word appear? It appears in exactly the position of the gap that must be present when it is fronted! This makes it very tempting to say that it "started there" and moved. This even provides a natural explanation for why it fails to move in the above sentence: if we suppose that words can only move to empty positions, then the position it would like to move to is blocked by the other wh-word who, and so it must stay were it is. This is fairly parsimonious.

Positing other limits on movement explains other phenomena. There are certain syntactic positions out of which wh-words can't move. Such positions are called islands. In English, wh-words are not just used for questions but also for introducing certain subordinate clauses, for instance "I know what the man saw". What if you try to move a wh-word out of a subordinate clause itself introduced with a wh-word? For example, suppose someone says "I know what Jim saw", and you later forget they were talking about Jim. You might like to ask who they were talking about. But you cannot say:

*"Who do you know what saw?"

This is an island. The most standard analysis of such islands follows from positing that movement must be local: items must always move to the closest valid syntactic landing site before they can move anywhere else. Our wh-word who would like to make it to the very front of the sentence. But that position is structurally identical to the one in the subordinate clause in which what already sits. This follows from the basic phrase-structure grammar: subordinate clauses are merely sentences-within-sentences. So, locally, the "front of the sentence" for who is the front of that subordinate clause. But what is already there! So it can't move, it can't get out.

Locality conditions and movement blocking explain a fair number of really weird, really arcane phenomena in natural language syntax, which is enough to make movement seem to me at the very least a compelling idea.

There are a bunch of other island effects that are difficult to even really talk about without the vocabulary introduced by generative syntax, at least, like subject islands:

"That John went home is likely"

*"Who is that went home likely?"

And left-branch islands:

"Susan likes Fred's hat"

*"Whose does Susan like hat?"

Which appear to be constraints on movement out of subtrees of specific shapes.

I don't consider these to be evidence for movement, but they are easy to phrase using movement, and they are essentially impossible to phrase without reference to tree structure and long distance dependency.

So, this is what the Chomskyans are seeing. There is a lot to be understood about natural language that you cannot even start asking about without looking in a pretty fine-toothed way at trees, natural language sentences, and the kind of rulesets that can generate them. I don't think there is a way to address these concerns without at least meeting generativism where it's at on some level, unless you are entirely disinterested in describing this aspect of natural language.

Where do I think generativism has failed? Well, I said that all these phenomena make movement a compelling idea, but that's a far cry from the generativists having a good scientific theory. And, in fact, I think that they don't. I think formal syntax research is marred by a thousand problems big and small that make it difficult to progress on turning their compelling ideas into good scientific theories, and I think Chomsky's personal approach to the research program has had a large hand in making things the way they are. But that's all a topic for another time. What I wanted to convey here is just... why, why are we talking about this? Why are these ideas important to think about to begin with? And I hope, even to the generativism-skeptical, that I've demonstrated that somewhat.

[redhotchilisimblr]

Building an Haitian-inspired save (cc-free, based in Sulani)

working on this side project has been sooo healing for me. as an haitian descendant, it's one of my dream to get my land back. but due to political/social issues, my family and I can't. lately, I've been very nostalgic of my island ; and because I can't go there, I planned to recreate some of my memories in the Sims instead.

i've started with the starters. this lot is for low-income residential rentals, called 'Villa Tripotay' ("Tripotay" in creole haitian means tattletale/gossips. So, if someone call you a tripotay, gurl, you are in trouble! Also, tripotay is both a noun and a verb). as for the sims created for this lot, i think about a looot of drama ;) i plan 4 small furnished houses (pink, blue, yellow and green). as so few people know and understand haitian culture, I plan to create sims and furnish all lots so you can have a glance on how people really live. keep in mind that Haiti is very different than what you can see on documentaries/news and despite its very bad reputation, this island is pure gold.

what i love about haitian architecture, its the diversity and the very unique and colorful materials. each house has its own palette ; also, we have a lot of fences varieties.

each porch area are dedicated to receiving visitors, so they are usually very well maintained. sometimes, you also have some game tables (like yellow house) or gardening. nature is a veryyy important part of haitian culture : most people tend to have fruits/vegetables or a shared garden somewhere (so yeah, its very rare in haiti to lack food in most area...). in this lot, the resident have their own corner, but I also plan to make common garden elsewhere.

i've put these 4 houses on each corner of the lot and the center is only a walking area we call "la kou" which is a place where people usually gather.

as for the interior, i've tried my best to recreate the vibe. i often share the pics with my sister to have her approval. so far, she says its very much look like it! if there's some haitian simmers out there, please, tell me what you think.

some rooms have curtains and the ones coming with the lovestruck EP are exaaactly the ones I'm looking for! on these lots, I've also added some cracks on the walls as the island is often subject to earthquakes and other natural disasters. but you know, haitian being so spiritual, they can overcome anything and, unfortunately, get use to it since birth.

as they're low income houses, they don't have much.. but Haiti being Haiti, the island of all paradox, be prepared for the luxurious homes too! there's plenty on the island, with amazing views. i think next lot will be a church as in Haiti our motto is "lekol, legliz, lakay" meaning "school, church, home" - pillar of the haitian mindset and values.

thanks for reading me and being around for so many years!

R.

[sentence-arborist]

what is a syntax tree and how did you construct that, that is fascinating

A syntax tree is a way of representing the constituent structure of a sentence (i.e. how it can be broken up into parts) as a graph. It's one of the most common representations used in contemporary syntactic theory.

As for how you construct it, there are various both general and language specific rules but the simplest explanation would be that you "split" the tree each time you reach a unit of syntax that could be replaced by a simpler atom.

For example:

The sentence "I knew that guy" can be split into a subject "I" and verb phrase "knew that guy", which you could replace with a simple verb (e.g. "I ran"), so you split these two parts into an NP and a VP (under an IP for complicated theoretical reasons).

"knew that guy" can be broken up into a verb "knew" and an object "that guy", which you could replace with a simpler noun phrase (e.g. "I knew him"), so you split these two parts into a V and an NP.

"that guy" can be split into a determiner "that" and a head noun "guy", both of which are substitutable ("the guy", "that dog"), so you split these two parts into a D and an N.

Add some extra details that are required for theoretical reasons that I can't easily go into here, and boom!

[ID: Syntax tree for the sentence "I knew that guy".]

Of course, nothing's ever quite that simple.

For one, substitution isn't really the only test that goes into making the divisions on the tree. For example, there's active debate among different syntacticians over whether you should split ditransitive verb phrases like "give me a cake" into [[give] [me] [a cake]] or into [[give me] [a cake]]. The substitution test I gave above would suggest the latter, but I personally believe the former is better suited to account for the data in object symmetric languages like the Kordofanian language Moro. So I would represent the verb phrase "give me a cake" with a trinary branching tree like below, but other syntacticians would hate this.

[ID: A syntax tree for the verb phrase "give me a cake"; it shows a trinary branching structure, where the V-bar node dominates a V node and two NPs.]

For another, almost any actual syntactic framework is going to require more in your trees than I'm including here. A proper LFG c-structure, for example, would require at least node annotations (and possibly lexical entries on the leaves), resulting in a tree that looks more like:

[ID: The same syntax tree for "I knew that guy", but now each node is anotated with an equation. Most nodes have an "up arrow equals down arrow" equation, but the NP node that dominates "I" has a "down arrow equals up arrow SUBJ" equation and the NP that dominates "that guy" has an equation "down arrow equals up arrow OBJ".]

And that's without getting into whatever the hell the cartographic Minimalists are off there doing with their hundreds of functional projections... But I digress. Main point being: a properly done syntax tree is much more complex of a beast than the instructions above would suggest, but they're still a good place to start!

[hiljametsa]

Proposal for Reconstructed English

The thesis at the heart of this proposed reconstruction process is as follows: The English language, in its earliest recognizably attested form, that is Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is a full and capable language, able to adequately and generally express the experience, internal and external, of its speakers and writers. It is fit for new life in the contemporary world. In the evolution of English, the language has lost much of its original lexicon and grammar. This is to be restored to it, according to its earliest attested meaning and usage. Orthography is to be formed according to what standards are discernible in Middle and Early Modern English, in order to increase legibility to contemporary speakers. Certain native letters (þ and ð) are to be avoided for this reason, but their usage may be preferential. Syntax is to be formed along the lines of original usage, but may be adjusted for legibility. Phonology will be largely untouched, as the vast chasm of English phonological diversity is now as frustrating to descriptive efforts as it has ever been in the past. This is not a second attempt at what has heretofore been called “Anglish”, which is in general a lexical swap-out project intent on the removal of Latin-derived words from the vocabulary of Modern English. In Reconstructed English, Latin derived words which appear in the language pre-1066 will remain firmly in the lexicon. Where native Old English alternatives exist for latinate words, the native will be preferred. Where this occurs with other Germanic languages (almost solely Old Norse), both the native and non-native will be equally retained. Primary lexical and orthographical preference is to be given to Old English and Middle English, with reference preceding thereafter to Old Norse and German.

Primary influential texts include: Beowulf, the Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Gospels, The Ormulum, Chaucer, and the Wycliffe Bible.

Example Text of Reconstructed English:

Our Fader, thou the eart in héavenum Thín Name béa yhalwed, Thín Rích become, Thín Will béa yworden, so on éarthen as in héavene. Yíve us today ouren daylían bréad, And foryív us oure gyltes, as we foryíveth ourem gyltendum. And ney ylæd us into costnungum, Ack aleís us from evile. Amen.

Example paradigms, noun, verb, and adjective:

Héaven - m. heaven, sky. From OE heofon. Sing., Pl. N. héaven, héavnes A. héaven, héavnes G. héavenes, héavena D. héavene, héavenum

Halwen - to hallow, make holy. present, past 1. ic halwe, halwed 2. thou halwest, halwedest 3. he halweth, halwed plr. halwíeth, halweden part. halwend, yhalwed sub. halwe, halwed halwen, halweden imp. halwe halwíeth inf. halwen halwene

Our - our, of or belonging to us. masc., fem., neu. N. our, our, our A. ouren, oure, our G. oures, oure, oures D. ourem, oure, ourem

Plr. N. our, our, our A. our, our, our G. oura, oura, oura D. ourem, ourem, ourem

[abidethetempest]

Hi, I've been offline a bit recently so please feel free to ignore this because idk what week it is but I don't think it's question answering week yet

What would the Eliksni word for a bakery, and its associated products, be? Such as bread, cakes, pastries, etc etc (or whatever the closest equivalent would be for them)

Thank you in advance ::3

This post is part of my ongoing project to create a language for the Eliksni! For more information check out my masterpost linked here.

Man, this one stretched my creative muscles! I had nothing related to this topic, and it wasn't one I had ever considered before, truthfully.

I had to do a lot of research into etymologies of the various words you requested in several different languages to get inspiration. I'll be a little more detailed in my thought process here since I had to make so much from scratch and want to talk about it in depth.

First, I made the verb "to bake", ordris. From there, I decided to create a noun ending that denotes "a place where an action happens". I derived this from the word for place, priist, and settled on pri. So "bakery" is ordrispri.

The words for baked goods were a little harder.

I made the word for a dessert, paf, and then decided that the word for any kind of sweet thing made in an oven is orrhapaf, lit. "fire-cake". The word for fire is orrha (fun fact: both the verbs for "to bake" and "to melt" come from this word). So both cake and pastry are covered by this one word. I suppose if you wanted to get particular about the difference between them (which I don't know off the top of my head lol, I can barely cook an egg), you could talk about shape or fillings or size, but for the purposes of this ask, I'll be leaving it there.

Bread gets its own word: chei. (second fun fact: did you know the etymology for bread is complicated and disputed??? i am confounded as to the linguistic origins of fucking bread. I think my word will be related to the verb for "to rise" in the sense of bread rising as it bakes.)

That was a lot! To recap:

To bake: ordris

Bakery: ordrispri

Bread: chei

Dessert: paf

Cake/Pastry/Any baked sweet: orrhapaf

Thanks for the ask and for indulging my rambling as always!

[0-eclipse]

Amayadori Illustrated Diary #022-#028

Alright, strap in, friends, this is going to be a long one.

Chapter 22 references a classic japanese tradition in which, in order to overcome the stress and anxiety that comes with standing in front of a crowd, one draws the character for "person" on the palm of their hands three times (hence why Atsu says "it's one too many") and pretends to gulp it down.

According to at least these two QAs i found, this practice comes from the idiom "人に呑まれる, to be swallowed up by a crowd". Seeing that the verb for "swallowing", 呑む, can be used in both the "swallow a thing" and "being overwhelmed by something" senses, the practice aims to ease the pressure put on an individual by reversing the situation, that is, the individual simbolically swallows the crowd instead.

The punchline of the chapter relies on the fact that Ame guides Sooda to draw the character for "Umbrella", 傘 instead. In Japanese, Kanji can be merged together in order to form other Kanji, and indeed, the Kanji 傘 is formed by four repetitions of 人, a "cross" (十, the number 10) and a "roof" (𠆢, doesn't really mean anything on its own).

Of course, seeing how it involves extreme wordplay with japanese characters, it was essentially impossible to localize, which is why i left the characters in the speech bubbles to see if I could still get it across.

On chapter 25, Atsu brings up various terms that refer to the blossoming of cherry trees under a rainy/cloudy weather, these are, in order of appearance:

• 桜雨, lit: Rain cherry blossoms, translated as rainy blooms, and 桜流し, lit: Cherry blossom wash/flow, translated as flowing blossoms. These are nouns made by joining "Cherry blossom" with other words, and don't have a direct translation or equivalent in english;

• 花ぐもり, lit: Clouds made of flowers, translated as clouds of bloom, is used when the flowers are blooming under a cloudy weather;

• 花冷え, lit: The cooling from the flowers, translated as petal breeze, refers to flowers blooming when the winds are chilly;

• 花風, lit: flower winds, translated as wind blossoms, refers to when the wind blows through the blooming flowers;

• 花嵐, lit: flower storm, translated as such, refers to when the blossoms are hit by a strong rain, scattering their petals around.

The punchline of the chapter comes from Sooda suggesting Mapo Glass Noodles, "麻婆春雨", the kanji for "glass noodles" is Harusame, "春雨", which also refers to the gentle drizzles of rain that occur during springtime. I tried my best to localize it but i found it very hard to get it across without leaning too much towards one meaning in particular, so i figured i'd make a note instead.

On chapter 27, Sooda says she bought the food from a デ��地下, which translates more literaly to "underground department store". From what i could understand, some department stores in Japan prefer to sell their perishables and other foods in an underground floor, however, over time, the term simply came to refer to the food sections in department stores in general.

The archive for their first live concert has since expired, however, the physical release for their 1st album, also titled "The Umbrella Folds Down", seems to still be up on the Findmestore. Alternatively, you may simply listen to it on streaming.

If you use LINE, you may also purchase their Sticker collection.

Read the originals:

Chapter 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28.

Comic by Fukasaku Emi: @ i_moni on Twitter

Amayadori Project:

@ amayadori_info on Twitter

@ amayadori_official on Youtube

Amayadori are Utaite Sooda (@ sooda_oda on Twitter and Youtube) and composer Mizuno Atsu (@ atsu361 on Twitter and Youtube)

[spaceorphan18]

Glee Musical Retrospective: Vogue (The Power of Madonna)

Sung by: Sue Sylveester Original Artist(s): Madonna

Okay... one of the most pivotal moments of the show -- right here. Look, while we'll get into the lose story connection in a minute, let's be real for a moment... The purpose for doing this is entirely for Ryan Murphy to be indulgent. This song really has no purpose except for the fact that Murphy wanted to redo an iconic music video in his own way.

And you know what? That's not a criticism. Glee is shedding its need to have the music adhere so close to the narrative and push in on doing things for the fun of it. Is that indulgence good all the time? No, not really. But this was such a fun, inspired, and brilliant performance, you can't help but smile at the ridiculousness of it.

This music video is a delight, and I'm glad that Glee just gave in to its creator's whim.

Story Analysis

The definition of the word 'vogue' is as follows...

Noun. popular acceptation or favor; a period of popularity; the leading place in popularity or acceptance Verb. to strike poses in campy imitation of fashion models especially as a kind of dance

The whole thing about 'vogue' is to be at the height of admirable popularity in the moment. Madonna was when she created the song. And Sue Sylvester wants to be in the episode. I also think there's a big fourth wall break, too, where the show was coming into the height of its popularity. It was very in vogue to be a Glee fan back in 2010 -- the show knew it was cool, and this was kind of capitalizing on that.

So, while this performance doesn't necessarily move any story beats along, it does make commentary on Sue and on the show as a whole.

I love the lengths the show goes to make this performance seem like it's something being done in the Glee world. It's Kurt's vision (with the help of Mercedes) to do a multimedia project. He has Artie direct it -- and my god, why didn't Artie put this on his resume?

(Fun fact - legendary director David Fincher did Madonna's original video, so Artie being able to recreate this is kind of amazing.)

And... it speaks to Sue's character. She wants to be the one admired, feared, loved, respected, empowered, revered, and anything else that keeps her at the center of the conversation. She wants to be the one in vogue. And I think in this meta moment, she is.

I have a few questions though --

Who thought of this song? Was it Kurt or Sue? Or even Artie? I think this song speaks to Kurt's story, too. The beginning of the song speaks to pain and heartache -- and letting it all go to enjoy the moment. I think this speaks to his personality, what inspires him, and what his aspirations are.

What were the in universe reactions to this? That's the thing about the song, though. As neat as it is to see -- there really aren't any direct story tie ins. Sue's story gets played out in other ways. And yes, this lets Kurt and Mercedes have an opportunity to join the Cheerios. But it's a shame that no one in universe even makes a comment about this video. Ah well.

The thing about this one, overall, is that while it's a big set piece of the episode, and while it does speak to both Sue and Kurt's character (and the show as a whole) - there isn't a whole lot to break down? It's funny, because I think this song is one of those things that Glee might be remembered for - but it's so kind of detached from the narrative, it makes it this interesting little side beat.

But - something to note - because this was such a hit, the show does take a turn into this direction. The show is going to push more into the spectacle of the song they've picked for better or worse, whether it's important to the narrative or not.

Technical Thoughts

Just gonna bullet point all of this...

They went out of their way to recreate the music video as much as they could -- watching the original video as they shot.

Jane does an excellent job with the song. You have to give her some bonus points, too, for making it funny on top of being an homage.

(Though if you notice - they do not make Jane do the heavy lifting dancing that Madonna does in her video. Probably for the better.)

The line 'Will Schuester - I hate you' and Kurt's reactions might be one of my favorite comedy bits from the entire show.

Speaking of Kurt -- the kid was made for this kind of classic Hollywood look. He's so good in this. (Sorry Mercedes - she's great, too, but Kurt just pulls so much focus.)

Fun fact - apparently, Naya and Heather did hand work in this, and Heather was the one in the cone bra.

They used their usual group of dancers -- and everyone in this video is just so good.

Hats off the the editors - they did a phenomenal job cutting this to be nearly identical to the original video.

I honestly don't have a ton to say about it -- it's a great performance, and you can see just how much the entire team put into making it something special.

vs. The Studio Version : There's an added two minutes to this version, though it doesn't really feel like it? The beginning is much longer, and the chorus is repeated a few more times, but that's about it.

vs. The Original Version : Well... now is your chance to compare and contrast! How did they do? Really well actually. ;) (Also - if you put it into youtube, there is someone out there who did a side by side comparison.)

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Although it shared many qualities with total institutions, the Gulag also differed in many respects from the average prison. The fusion of socialist ideology with corrective labor was perhaps the most significant distinction, as Soviet prisons were intended not simply for punishment but for reformation, not simply for retribution but for conversion. This was particularly true in the example of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, where the penal philosophy of perekovka (re-forging) held sway. This concept asserted that criminals could be crafted into socialist citizens through the moralizing power of hard labor and socialist education. Another characteristic feature of the Gulag was the strategic function of creativity, particularly at Belomor—it was not just labor that would set the prisoners free, but also the artistic articulation of their new selves. This adeptly encapsulated the creative/physical duality endemic not only to Belomor but also to Stalinist culture. While social mobility in most total institutions is severely restricted between inmates and staff, barriers among ranks were often porous in Soviet prisons. Sergei Alymov, a Belomor prisoner, participated in the publication of the official history of the construction effort with an editorial collective composed entirely of non-prisoners. Naftalii Frenkel’, the purported originator of the inhumane work-for-food system, was himself a prisoner at Solovki, one of the first camps in Gulag history, before he rose in the ranks of the regime’s administration and eventually achieved the title “Hero of Socialist Labor.” The reverse path was also possible: many of the most prominent figures in the canal’s administration were later purged from the Communist Party altogether.

The inherent industrial connotation of re-forging played a significant role in the creation of selfhood at the White Sea-Baltic Canal, and the close connection between industry and culture was ubiquitous in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. “Forge” serves as both a noun and a verb: it is both the fire in which metal is melted and the process of melting itself. The term perekovka, therefore, succinctly captures the perpetuum mobile of transformation at Belomor: the prisoners themselves produce the furnace in which they are to be smelted. The fiery heat of industrialization renders self-molding permanent, physical, and transformative. This identity conversion, like a metallurgical process, would be violent, and the Soviet labor camp was an ideal site for building the New Man.

The recasting of industrial processes as cultural constructs began long before the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal; it was a favorite rhetorical device of the Bolsheviks. In a 1924 speech by Leon Trotsky, workers’ clubs are cited as a “smithy” where proletarian culture is “forged.” In the violent and heady years following the Russian Revolution, a massive restructuring of culture and society occurred, one that was very often portrayed in metallurgical terms. The concept of smelting is apparent in other utopian visions as well. In Book Three of Plato’s Republic, the “myth of the metals,” a fiction assuring citizens that they all have a bit of metal from the earth in their souls—gold, silver, or iron/bronze, depending on their level in society’s hierarchy—is discussed in detail. This “noble lie” is intended to foster patriotism, as one who believes they literally come from the land will most likely be loyal to it. The prisoners at Belomor were encouraged to take pride in the canal project in a similar, fabricated fashion; since they are part and parcel of the industrialization plan—both metaphorically and literally—they must swear allegiance to the Soviet project. Many prisoner narratives, in turn, imagine the project as a homeland, as more dear to them than their families, or even as a romantic lover.

The violence inherent in the molding of prisoners’ consciousnesses— as well as the ferocity that characterized the Gulag more generally—cannot be underestimated. This was a characteristic feature of Soviet ideology."

- Julie Draskoczy, Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014. p. 24-25

[clowngames]

i’m a game dev student at an art school and i’ve been really struggling with finding my niche…. i LOVE being a environment/modeler/texture artist, and i want to have more skills in the design/tech side… but i’ve been struggling really hard with learning unreal engine 5 for my classes. do you have any experience in unreal5 blueprinting or just anything more on the tech side? i would appreciate some advice to get through these tough college quarters :’D

Whenever someone entering gamedev on the programmer side is struggling to figure it out, there are generally two reasons for this.

The first is that they're struggling to get into the programmer mindset. Blueprints try to bridge the gap, but code doesn't work like english. It doesn't even work like the human brain. When we think or talk we take shortcuts to formulate or convey ideas because we can trust that when it comes time to interpret those ideas another person (or ourselves in the future) will fill in those gaps. This is so intuitive to us that we don't even notice that there are gaps. Programming forces you to become aware of how many gaps there are and fill them, and quite frankly it's a humbling experience.

I'm probably not saying anything you don't already know, but I want to emphasize that the way coding works is unintuitive to most people and we need to retrain our way of thinking to get good at it. This is unfortunately not a fast process. It's very common especially for new programmers (though I'm not immune even now) to go "I'm a fucking idiot, I'm a fucking idiot, I'm a fucking--I'M A GENIUS" because of the cycle of shit not working for stupid reasons and then finally working.

The second problem is that they're unfamiliar with (and overwhelmed by) the library they're working with.

A "library" in a programming context is typically collection of functions and objects you can import into a project, but each game engine has its own built in libraries which the engines are built around. These are the verbs and nouns that aren't built into, for example, C++, but have been added by Unreal Engine to make it easier to make games.

The better the game engine, the larger the library. Unfortunately, the larger the library the more overwhelming it is because that's a lot of shit to learn.

In your case anon the "library" would refer to the different kinds of nodes you can add to the blueprint. When you're new to it, even an expert Unity dev will struggle in Unreal because they don't know what their options are to accomplish things.

Now the reason I break down the new-programmer hurdles into two distinct problems is because they often seem like one problem, which can make it hard to solve. Both get better with experience so sometimes slamming your head against a wall is a viable way to get through them, but it's not the best.

If you think your main issue is the first problem, you can work on it through "exercise." This can be in the form of taking programming courses on codecademy (I'd recommend C++ since you're using Unreal, though C# isn't a bad choice) or by playing a game by Zachtronics like Infinifactory or Opus Magnum. These games are "programming puzzle games" and I can personally attest to having gotten better at Infinifactory as I got better at programming.

If you think it's the second problem, the biggest solvent is curiosity. When I get into a new engine, I spend a bit of time learning how it works and then immediately try and figure out how to do dumb shit in it. I made an incremental game in RPG Maker just to see if I could. It wasn't good, but it was a fun educational experience. Sometimes I'll come across a function I don't understand, and I'll open the engine's manual and read about the function and use that as a jumping off point to dive into similar functions.

It doesn't feel good for my advice to be "read the manual" but genuinely there's a point where you realize that you're reading the manual instead of watching youtube videos and it's like, holy shit I'm a real programmer. It's a sign that you're getting comfortable enough in the role that you're learning what questions to ask to figure out what you need to know (youtube is still a great resource of course).

All of that said though, if your aim is to be an environment artist I think it's okay to be bad at programming. Survive college, of course, but if you're in a team with a dedicated programmer (which you will be if you are not the programmer) then all you need is to be able to understand how to communicate with the programmer. It's really beneficial to know enough about the fundamentals of what you're working in to know what info the programmer needs from you and what info you need from them, but you don't have to be good at it to do that!

[lamegtu-larsa]

Metokaīôn grew out of, and mostly subsumed, a novel I was working on for Nanowrimo. I started it to enrich the worldbuilding, which it certainly did, but gradually as I became engrossed in grammar and vocab building, it has become a project in its own right.

The world metokaīôn describes has flora and fauna largely analogous to Earth's Carboniferous period (coal swamps, early trees, giant amphibians - but humans too), while also being directly affected by the light of stars in sort of an astrology-meets-Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs way.

The language is SOV, lightly agglutinative especially in the verbs, and has two interlocking 5-part gender systems which mark both animacy and elemental identity of nouns.

[trans-mouse]

somebody should just commission me to actually finish literally any of my projects so i have a sense of urgency. here’s a list of projects in various states of completion:

Full games:

Weird Eusocial Kobolds: I actually have a plan for this now! with the year zero engine going open source, I’m gonna have a go at using that for this weird little reverse-adventuring RPG, that will someday get an actual name.

City of Names: Like half-finished? It’s an RPG about being trans and living in the woods as guerilla witches in the capitalist post-apocalypse. also about the power of naming yourself. (and carrying names that your friends give you) Also, this is the game that evolved out of my jokey system that I called “Lydia’s Intelligent RolePlay for Attractive People”

S/S/N/V: Stat/Skill/Noun/Verb, aka “I really love esoteric rules, and I think you should too!” This game will get an actual name, but it’s essentially a game about creative thaumaturgy, words like “conflagration” and “defenestration”, and using tarot cards in place of dice because it lets you do interesting things with results.

Casino Nights: An urban fantasy casino heist game in which you play blackjack instead of rolling dice! Features cool mechanics like counting cards, being a fucking dragon, and jokers up your sleeve!

Some kind of monster hunting game: A game that would probably look something like a cross between Monster Hunter and Bloodborne, with mechanics based on Slayers and Vaesen. You’ve been exiled to a cursed land to hunt monsters with ancient mystic relic weapons, for the good of all humanity.

Smaller Projects:

The Fly Gallery: A floating entertainment district designed for Slayers, but realistically usable for basically any urban fantasy campaign, featuring sewer monsters, acrobat pickpockets, and bonkers aerialist circuses.

Rockfall, Colorado: A setting for Changeling the Lost, set in a tiny town in the Rockies, where the freehold is based entirely around a diner run by an old changeling. So long as the diner never closes, nobody can be taken from the town, so of course, the fae prince that once took his prizes there wants it shut down.

Psion, Soulknife, and Psychic Warrior classes for 13th Age: I like 13th age a lot, I like psionics a lot, and I have pretty solid ideas on what each of these classes would and should do. (I actually have an outline already for PsiWar, I just need to mostly nail down numbers)

I’ll probably wind up remembering some other small projects I’ve thrown on the backburner at some point, but tbh, if anybody is interested in any of these and wants to kick some money my way to see them actually get made, I’d really love that. It’d be helpful both for money and for urgency lmao.

[unprocione]

Introducing the 'Sentinel Nine,' a fully customized handgun for tackling bioterrorism. It boasts both accuracy and versatility, making it a reliable choice. Not to mention the DSO emblem proudly adorns the grip! ( excerpt from the upcoming resident evil 4 remake deluxe edition. )

Sentinel Nine's origins lie with the Federal Bioterrorism Commission, who was behind the "Sentinel Project". Though handgun models such as the Samurai Edge showed some promise against bio-weapons, the FBC, with the budget of a small country, invested considerably in a dedicated anti-bioterrorism weapon. When the FBC shut down in 2005, the Sentinel was still in a prototype phase, and the project was left dormant until the founding of the DSO in 2011. At this point US agent Leon S. Kennedy took over as supervisor to the project, and made sure it fulfilled three criteria. The Sentinel 9's first on-screen appearance was in Resident Evil: Vendetta, in combat against the A-Virus (Animality Virus), and the Sentinel 9 was intended to be used by Leon in Resident Evil 6, but was replaced by the duel-wielded Wing Shooter handguns. * leon likely was supervisor to the "Sentinel Project" during his furlough in 2011, which was interrupted by the events of Resident Evil: Damnation. leon returned to his furlough afterwards, and the project moved steadily onwards into final stages. leon's main role was to test the project, offer consultation on the construction (for easy disassemble, reassemble, and cleaning on the field) and to advise on the most important features of use central to the Sentinel 9 in combat against bioweapons.

CRITERIA.

✦ VERSATILITY — The handgun had to be able to fire 9mm Parabellum rounds. This ammunition is commonplace, and can be easily obtained at a gunshop and, as 9mm handguns are common for self-defence, can be taken from the bodies of victims. * the 9mm parabellum rounds are one and the same cartridge as the 9mm luger. ✦ STABILITY — The handgun had to be resistant to rusting, weather damage, flooding and be hard to break. It also had to be resistant to acid which may be sprayed by a B.O.W. * most likely stainless steel alloy, which is resistant to sulfuric acids. ✦ CERTAINTY — The handgun had to be accurate and fast on close targets without significant effects from recoil. * influenced greatly from his experience with the plaga, you could even say the sentinel nine is specialized for dealing with plaga & plaga variant bioweapons, but still excels against other various bioweapons.

WHY "SENTINEL 9"?

DEFINITION OF SENTINEL - MILITARY & POLICE. noun - a soldier or guard whose job is to stand and keep watch. verb - station a soldier or guard by (a place) to keep watch.

DEFINITION OF SENTINEL - MEDICINE. noun - a thing that acts as an indicator of the presence of disease.

REFERENCE BACK TO "RED9" in RESIDENT EVIL 4. The RED9 is a handgun available for Leon to purchase from the Merchant in Resident Evil 4 during Chapter 2-2 (you can purchase it at the end of chapter 2-1 if you return to the underground tunnel before entering the Church), It takes up 8 spaces of Leon's inventory, making it the bulkiest handgun in the game besides Leon's own personal handgun at the time, Matilda. The Red9 uses standard .9mm ammo and does the most damage among all the handguns, but is outdone in all other areas, likely due to the difficulty in handling due to bulkiness in construction. Luis Serra uses this weapon throughout the battle at the cabin, aiding Leon. In my opinion, the RED9 is based in inspiration on a mix of the SIG SAUER P226 original in description of use difficulties, but in design mostly the Mauser C96, (often called "broomhandle", the 9mm Mauser variant is often nicknamed Red 9, due to the red 9 that was carved in the handle in order to differentiate it with other calibers) where as the Sentinel 9 is based on the SIG SAUER P226 E2. The Sentinel 9 is a revisitation on the RED9.

REAL LIFE INFLUENCE, SIG SAUER P226 E2.

Sentinel 9 is based on the SIG Sauer P226 E2, used by the Navy SEALs, which allows it to be fired accurately in extreme temperatures.

I spent an August afternoon shooting this pistol at an outdoor range in Florida. To suggest it was hot was an understatement. However, this provided an excellent testbed for the new grip texture. I was extremely pleased to discover that the aggressive grip texture was very effective at keeping the pistol from shifting in my hands, yet it was not abrasive on my hand. After about 400 rounds of ammunition, the pistol was still very comfortable to shoot. (source)

The texture is not so abrasive as to ruin any clothing, but you will definitely be able to hold onto this gun in the rain, mud, and blood. (source)

* another feature of the SIG Sauer P226 E2, is that compared to the SIG SAUER P226 original, the second edition is designed to address the issue of the size of the frame and provide an easier grip and fit to hand.

However, the size of the P226 frame was a problem for many shooters with small or even average size hands. The grip size will affect where the finger addresses the trigger. For someone with “stubby finger syndrome,” the original pistols were simply too large a frame for proper finger placement on the trigger. (source)

First, the most visible change is the gun’s grip. The area high on the backstrap appears to have been cut away and sculpted to allow the web of the shooting hand to fit more naturally into the pistol. This allows someone with smaller hands to better address the trigger. (source)

The new recess high on the backstrap also allows the hand to better mold with the gun, creating a feeling that the gun is an extension of your arm, not a tool in your hand. (source)

As many of you know, I am a full-time police officer in an urban area of Florida. My agency issues the original SIG SAUER P226, so I took the pistol in to get the reactions of other folks carrying the 226 for a living. I shopped the pistol around to 25 different officers of varying sizes and genders, and the overwhelming majority really liked the E2. (source)

Despite the pair never meaning in canon, I like to think that Leon contacted fellow ex-police officer of the Raccoon City Police Department, Kevin Ryman, during the initial testing of the Sentinel 9. A self-described "hell of a shot", Kevin Ryman had previously placed highly in a marksman competition held by the Raccoon Police Department, having won a trophy from the event. Kevin Ryman was intended to be Leon's partner and mentor, if not for the tragic events of the Raccoon City incident coming to pass.

Available first in 9mm, the P226 was later chambered in .40 S&W and .357 SIG. (source)

The Sentinel 9 was likely initially an exclusive firearm under a US military patent, and was not available to the public market until 2013. On release to public market, it makes sense that it was later chambered to provide use for a wider variety of rounds than 9mm alone. The .40 S&W cartridge, is a law enforcement cartridge designed to duplicate performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) reduced-velocity 10mm Auto cartridge, which could be retrofitted into medium-frame (9mm size) semi-automatic handguns. ( Hornady Handbook of Cartridge Reloading, Fourth Edition - 1991. ) The first Sentinel 9 capable of successfully firing .40 S&W cartridge was gifted to Helena Harper. The .357 SIG cartridge is used by a number of law enforcement agencies, and adoption of this cartridge would lead to the Sentinel 9 being intended and available for police-level use. The first Sentinel 9 capable of successfully firing .357 SIG cartridge was not gifted to Kevin Ryman, out of fear of it being used in a potential suicide attempt. It was instead gifted to Cindy Lennox, a friend of Kevin Ryman's, for her personal protection.

[sbrn10]

Semi shower thoughts one has while commuting (fuck going into the office when remote work is just as productive and I live 1.5 hrs away!!!): So most English words that can be both a noun and a verb tend to have different stress syllables (PROject vs proJECT, PROgress vs proGRESS etc.) as a differentiating point. Why do some words randomly not follow this pattern (process, access, license, etc.) and why does English suck.