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thinkingisadangerouspastime · 4 years ago

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do you think zuko treated mai fairly? i mean... why didn't he trust her to tell her his deepest thoughts when he abandoned her in the fire nation? i know he loved her but i don't understand why he didn't just tell her instead of hurting her unnecessarily. they're cute but i find it so hard to get past this, i would be so hurt if my bf didn't tell me something so important. and then mai just. forgives zuko so easily even after he locked her in a cell still not trusting her. mai deserves better :(

It’s kind of funny you ask this, because I lowkey have a lot of feelings about the phrase “x deserved better than y”. For one, I’m always cautious around it, because in the A:TLA fandom I’ve seen it thrown around in two main ways:

“Katara deserved better than Aang!” followed by the most ridiculous slander labelling Aang as abusive, toxic, manipulative, etc. (Funnily enough, though, a lot of those people will also go and ship T.aang. Like T.aang is an Excellent ship, do not get me wrong, but it’s clear they just say ‘Katara deserved better’ because they hate K.ataang and don’t necessarily care one way or the other about Aang.)

“Zuko deserved better than Mai!” followed by the most obnoxious bullshit also labelling Mai as abusive, toxic, manipulative, etc. and even - I kid you not - saying she’s “too ugly” for Zuko. At worst, racist; at best, shallow. (And again, funnily enough, a lot of them will then ship M.ailee, again proving they don’t really care one way or another about Mai, they just hate M.aiko.)

Now, I’m not getting into the K.ataang vs Z.utara vs M.aiko ship wars, lmao, but those are the two primary ways that rhetoric is used. It’s kind of embarrassing, tbh, how fandom tends to use the phrase to discredit pairings and demonize characters instead of… you know. Moving on with their lives, lol.

But your ask fascinates me, anon, because you bring up the point of Zuko not trusting Mai, thus leading to the conclusion of “Mai deserves better than Zuko.” Which is interesting, because as I just mentioned, for most people who follow the “x deserves better than y” phrase, it tends to be used the other way around!

Firstly, however, I want to say that you don’t have to ship Maiko. You can read my explanation and walk away still feeling exactly the same way about Mai and Zuko’s relationship (love it, hate it, indifferent to it, all that jazz), and that’s totally okay! But I’m going to do my best to explain what’s off with the rhetoric of “x deserves better than y,” specifically regarding Maiko. My thesis, as it were?

It’s not about “deserve.”

Disclaimer: This obviously does not refer to genuinely unhealthy/abusive relationships. I shouldn’t have to say that, but we all know how Tumblr is. I digress.

Love isn’t about “deserve.” At first glance, that’s kind of a confusing take, isn’t it? Don’t we all “deserve” someone who will respect us, appreciate us, and treat us well? Of course we do! But those are just qualities of any healthy relationship. When I say that love isn’t about “deserve,” I mean that love can’t be simplified quite so easily. Here is a definition of “deserve”:

“do something or have or show qualities worthy of (reward or punishment)”

How do we make ourselves “worthy” of love? I (an optimist) don’t think we do. Love isn’t about worthiness; I believe we are all “worthy” of love simply by existing. Instead, I argue that love is about openness. It’s not about if we “deserve” love or not, but rather if we allow ourselves to be open to it.

All of this is to say that it’s not about whether or not Mai “deserves” or “deserves better than” Zuko; it’s that she is open to receive love from him, and he from her. She wants to love and be loved by Zuko. No one else. She says it to Azula herself: “I love Zuko more than I fear you.” Mai chooses Zuko, full stop, just as Zuko chose her by a) doing everything in his power to keep her out of his betrayal of the Fire Nation (why would he risk putting a death sentence on her head, too?) and b) reuniting with her happily at the end of the show (i.e. he didn’t brush her off; he smiles his widest smile in the entire show during that scene!). So it’s not about “deserve.” It’s about these two kids loving and finding love in one another. A Shakespeare quote is particularly relevant here:

“Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.” (Twelfth Night – Act 3, Scene 1)

We are all looking for love, be it romantic or platonic or anything in-between, and there is no better feeling than we receive love even when we feel we don’t “deserve” it. Mai is willing to work with Zuko to make their relationship work despite his mistakes, because it’s not about if he “deserves” her, but because she knows he is willing to grow and improve (and she is, too).

Also, within the series of A:TLA (specifically towards the middle-end of Book 3), it can be concluded that Zuko believes that he is no longer “worthy” of Mai’s love. That he doesn’t “deserve” her love because of how he abandoned her (and she is the only thing about the Fire Nation he regrets leaving behind). Mai disagrees with him. She is open to a relationship with Zuko because she loves him for an infinite number of reasons (one being that he does what is right, including going against the Fire Nation, even if she did not at first understand). When Zuko realizes this by the time the finale comes around, they reconcile in a tender embrace.

And what reason are we ever given to doubt Mai regarding whether or not she “deserves” better than Zuko? Mai is perfectly aware of her own worth. She breaks up with Zuko in “The Beach” because his behavior is inexcusable and she knows that she doesn’t have to put up with it. Even in the comics, which are handled poorly, I don’t entirely hate the Maiko breakup because again, Mai knows that she does not have to be responsible for Zuko’s well-being. She loves him, she loves him so much, and she tries to help him, but she is not his therapist. So again, why should we doubt Mai? Going back to the A:TLA finale - Mai knows what she “deserves” and what she doesn’t. She knows what she will and what she won’t put up with. And after everything, she is still open to a relationship with Zuko. Because love isn’t about “deserve,” and it never has been.

To address your other questions:

why didn’t he trust her to tell her his deepest thoughts when he abandoned her in the fire nation? i know he loved her but i don’t understand why he didn’t just tell her instead of hurting her unnecessarily.

You almost answer your question yourself, anon. “[H]is deepest thoughts”? Who tells anyone their “deepest thoughts”? We actually talked about this in my Shakespeare class (I know, right? lmao). A very common trope in Shakespeare’s tragedies is a lack of communication. We all read Romeo and Juliet and Othello and were like “dude, if they had just talked to each other, none of those bad things would have happened!!” (and thus those tragedies might have been comedies).

My professor agreed with us. Then he asked, well, why do you think Shakespeare doesn’t have anyone communicate?

One brave soul said, “That’d be too easy.”

Which is… almost right. Perhaps, narratively, it would be too easy. The plays would definitely be resolved much faster. But the truth? It’s too hard. People don’t communicate clearly in real life. They hide certain things because they’re embarrassed, they’re ashamed, they’re afraid. Even couples who’ve been together for years will admit that they don’t tell each other everything, for whatever reason. People are imperfect, and thus their relationships are, too.

(Slightly amusing sidebar: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are actually an example of a perfect couple, because Macbeth confides everything to Lady Macbeth in Act 1. And, well, we all know how that went down[hill], lmao.)

So why didn’t Zuko tell Mai the truth when he was leaving the Fire Nation? He was afraid! He says it himself in “The Boiling Rock”: “Everyone in the Fire Nation thinks I’m a traitor. I couldn’t drag her into it.” Zuko is afraid of what might happen to Mai! He knows the Fire Nation now has a price on his head - why would he wish that on Mai? It’s bad enough that she’s the (former) girlfriend of a traitor! How much worse might it have been for her if she’d been associated with him after he’d threatened the Fire Lord’s life*? I’m not saying this to excuse Zuko’s decision, because perhaps Mai would have agreed to join him (although we cannot conclude this with total certainty), and I certainly think breaking up by text letter was a pretty crappy way to go about it, but all the same, he was trying to protect her. When Mai realizes this, what does she do?

Saves his ass from Azula and utters one of the most iconic lines in the entire series.

*Also, a kind of interesting parallel presents itself between Zuko and Hamlet here, lmao. One interpretation of Hamlet’s “get thee to a nunnery!” scene with Ophelia is reading it as him trying to cut ties with her in the cruelest way possible so she wouldn’t try to follow him and possibly get hurt as he killed Claudius (aka regicide, the highest crime in Denmark). While it’s arguable that Zuko isn’t quite so perceptive, lmao, there is the possibility that Zuko thought breaking up with Mai in such a callous way would help prevent her from remaining attached to him and thus getting mixed up in his mess (killing the Fire Lord, aka the A:TLA equivalent of regicide, the highest crime in the Fire Nation). Just something to ponder!

and then mai just. forgives zuko so easily even after he locked her in a cell still not trusting her.

I don’t know if I’d call her forgiveness “easy.” Making the decision to betray Azula? That’s hard. Mai was signing herself up for a death sentence, because Azula doesn’t take prisoners (Aang can testify to this, lmao). If Ty Lee hadn’t been there, Mai almost certainly would have died. So yeah. I wouldn’t call her forgiveness “easy,” anon. I think it’s one of the scariest choices she ever made.

Of course, one can argue that Mai’s true forgiveness of Zuko actually came later, which I don’t necessarily disagree with. I think Mai’s initial instinct was to trust Zuko because she knows him better than perhaps anyone (thus she realizes he wouldn’t walk away from the Fire Nation without true cause), hence her betrayal of Azula. When she survived because of Ty Lee’s chi-blocking (since honestly, Mai probably didn’t think she’d get that far) and was ultimately imprisoned, I bet she had plenty of time to think about Zuko and her relationship with him. Working on that presumption, again, I don’t think I’d call her forgiveness “easy,” because she likely took several days if not weeks to process everything.

Also, you say Zuko doesn’t trust her because a) he didn’t inform her of what he was doing when he left the Fire Nation and b) he locked her in a cell at the Boiling Rock. I understand that perspective, but again, I go back to this line: “Everyone in the Fire Nation thinks I’m a traitor. I couldn’t drag her into it.” Does that sound like someone who doesn’t trust Mai? I think the better description is that Zuko feared for Mai, as I mentioned earlier. Did he lock her in a cell because he thought she’d betray him, or because he thought it was the last thing he could do to protect her when everything went to shit as he, Sokka, Suki, and etc. were all escaping from prison? Could it have been a little bit of both? We can’t say for sure, of course, but given how happy Zuko was around Mai in “Nightmares and Daydreams,” I think his love for her ultimately outweighed his worries about Mai’s ties to Azula, which leads me to conclude his locking her in a cell was less about distrust and more a final, last-ditch attempt at keeping her out of his mess.

Plus, Zuko has issues. Mai knows this. She loves him all the same for it. As I said earlier, she is open to giving love to and receiving love from Zuko. I think it’s a bit of a discredit to Mai’s character to assume she forgave him easily. And besides! She told him herself: “But don’t ever break up with me again.” Mai implicitly tells him hey, don’t pull that BS again, and Zuko gives her an embarrassed smile before they hold each other in a gentle, loving embrace. It’s not a direct statement, and maybe that puts some people off from it, but Mai is firmly implying that she wants him to trust her more, and Zuko acknowledges this (and he’s rightfully a little embarrassed that he kept her out of it, since hindsight is 20/20 and he now understands she probably would have gone with him; do remember, of course, that he had no way of knowing that initially).

do you think zuko treated mai fairly?

Well, how do we define “fairly”? I guess the short answer is no, he didn’t, but what other choice did he believe he had at the time? Answer: none. It was either keep Mai out of it and guarantee her safety or drag Mai into it (which Zuko likely saw as a selfish option, i.e. what right did he have to pull his girlfriend into treason just because he didn’t want to lose her company?) and risk losing her. As viewers, we know there’s more to the situation than that, but Zuko doesn’t have our luxury. So his decision to keep Mai out of it and thus try to protect her? I would call that a “fair” assessment, yes.

And besides, anon:

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Act 1, Scene 1)

Mai and Zuko chose each other. Who are we to deny them their happiness?

#yes i WILL quote shakespeare 24/7 and what about it?#maiko #mai #zuko #avatar the last airbender #atla meta #atla #atla mai #atla zuko #atla analysis #the boiling rock #amy answers #amy analyzes #anon #adding line break after i post btw!!

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azurite-writes · 4 years ago

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Problem One: The Screen(s) and Digital Workspace

Part one of my multi-part doc about what I learned from doing online college at a non-online institution. This chapter: my Desktop as a Desk

Highlighted points: learning styles, work type/function in relation to the computer

My biggest problem with being pushed online after being at an in-person institution was, and still is, my forced reliance on the computer. I have to sit in front of it for hours: attending classes on Zoom; checking email every three hours; accessing Moodle pages for class and out-of-class work (Moodle is what my institution uses, other web management/e-learning software platforms include PowerLearning, Blackboard, and OU Campus, among others). And the work itself can be watching documentaries, watching seminars, accessing ebook/PDF documents, annotating documents in online portals… it's a lot. People have talked at length about "zoom fatigue," as well as the eyestrain headaches that can come with staring at said screens for hours at a time. I'll talk about my own lessons learned about that later.

The assumption among the administrators and (some) people of older generations than those currently in school seems to be that working online with computers and smartphones is more efficient. That isn't necessarily true; it all depends on the type of task and the person being expected to complete it. In my case, I cannot, for the life of me, focus on dense sections of text presented on a backlit screen. Thus, reading and answering emails is okay, but downloading scanned textbook pages to be read on a laptop screen (along with trying to highlight and annotate them) is hell on earth.

Why is this? Different reasons for different people, but in my case it's because reading/"writing" on a screen interferes with my learning style(s), which are visual/spatial, audio, and kinetic. Audio doesn't come into play for reading on a screen, but seeing words physically in a certain location relative to other words on a page is very important to my memory of the material. Computer screens can display pretty much anything at any given time; book pages can only display whatever was permanently printed onto them. That is, the content of a book page in physical space will always be the same unless you, the reader, manipulate it; a computer screen can have any type of content displayed as long as its pixels can light up and process the information. And for me, that's a problem because I don't have any physical space to relate the information to, plus I don't get a sense of how long the document is. Recalling a passage in a printout, for me, goes like this: "I remember it was on the top-left of a page towards the beginning, the shape of the paragraph was funny too… ah, there it is." Recalling a passage on a digital scan of the same document is much harder for me by contrast: literally any of the paragraphs could have made its way to the top-left of my computer screen, if I moved the window around or zoomed in to better read the text; documents are an endless scroll upward or downwards, with (maybe) a sidebar to tell me what page I've landed on. All of my "landmarks" are functions of the program I am using to access the document. They're static and contained to a window... that can show up anywhere on my computer screen. Not conducive to the way I learn at all.

My kinetic learning style comes into play with the computer, too. Annotating a document? In the physical world, a pen on the document itself does the trick; going through the physical movement of circling a word or making a note are things that solidify the information in my mind. Annotating a PDF document? First of all, it's difficult to do with a mouse (and God help you if you have a trackpad), and it's highly dependent on the program that the user selects to open the PDF. I could connect a drawing tablet, if I have one, but they're very expensive and their use is, again, dependent on the compatibility with whatever reader program the user selects. All this to say: annotating on the computer doesn't work for me, either. My kinetic and visual learning styles come together with note-taking. My memory is highly dependent on seeing words as they are formed by my own hand, processing them, and connecting meaning to them as they sit in a specific place on the page (am I over-explaining this? Basically, writing notes by hand and seeing where those notes are on a piece of paper help me remember them). Typing notes isn't a replacement for hand-writing notes for me; while I'm busy fixing my typos (on words I would never misspell on paper, usually, since my fingers are just moving weirdly over the keys), the professor moves on, and I'm not listening well enough to catch the fact that I've missed new information.

The takeaway here is figure out your individual types of work relate to being on the computer. As I said, the computer hinders many aspects of my learning when it comes to memory and efficiency. As a creative tool, however, it has almost the opposite effect; writing assignments for fiction, poetry, and screenwriting classes are much more efficient on the computer. From creative thought to keystroke, I have less time to second-guess or forget my ideas, and both the immediacy and changeability of word processing programs actually works in my favor for those sorts of things.

What I did differently from first online semester to second:

1) I figured out which materials helped me remember my notes the best. Honestly, I wasn't even doing this when I was at in-person college, and to my detriment, but I couldn't get away with it at all once I went fully remote. Think back to when you were in lower levels of school: were there certain types of materials you gravitated towards in the classroom? Did you like basic composition notebooks with faint blue lines? Wide-ruled or college-ruled paper? Did you discover that graph paper just worked really nicely with all notes besides math, or that blank pages were less busy for your eyes? When you used pens, did you prefer blue or black ink, or did colored ink help certain things stick? If you can control what materials you use to take notes with, consider using ones akin to those from a class you either a) remembered the most fondly or b) remembered the most information from. Scour your memories of class experiences for anything, no matter how small, that may have made your life easier. Equally, take note of what tasks actually worked well digitally. Adjust accordingly.

(Personally, I found my magic formula was a 1-subject memorandum notebook — marginless, with very narrow line rulings; while I hesitate to direct you to Amazon, they are hard to find at a decent price otherwise, and you can get a 12 pack for just over $40 from them — with black ink from a 0.38-size gel pen (I used a basic Pilot G2 pen until it ran out, then bought ink refills in the smaller size). To "highlight" my notes, I circled or underlined information with a blue gel pen of the same variety. Keep in mind again that I'm learning to be a translator; this is just what works for me.)

2) If I needed to print something out, I printed it out. Environmental guilt is something I struggled with a lot, and there was always something about staying on the computer that convinced me I was being "less wasteful" by staying digital. But with how much time and energy I ultimately saved reading a printed document that can be recycled vs the electricity I ate up spinning my wheels in front of the ebook… to me, it was worth it. If you find that helps you, too, don't be ashamed to print certain things out.

(If conserving ink and paper is a concern to you, it is possible in some viewing/editing apps to remove or cover images, either with white squares or by taking the images out completely. I have an old MacBook Pro and on current versions of Preview, one can draw shapes and fill them in white to cover parts of the scan that would eat up ink, such as blurred black borders and scanned images. For documents in a word processing program like Microsoft Word or Pages, it may also be possible to print the documents out at a smaller size, allowing more text or even multiple pages to show up on a single sheet of paper.)

| In the coming days/weeks I hope to be posting more content about how I tried to adapt to fully remote learning and the things I’ve learned along the way! Follow for updates ♥︎ |

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lovecolibri · 3 years ago

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SaL anon here and honestly hesitant to post because trust me, I'm soooo ready to roll around in the salt too. But when you're ready to come out, or just take a break (not really expecting it today) let's talk about Seven. Admittedly this is more a song for Malex fans than Malex because WE ARE READY!! But also we know once we get past the first few episodes with Forest we WILL see Malex moving toward each other, not "sinking when I'm standing in one place". Possibly weirdly cheery considering.

Okay, so I do have A LOT of salt (there is a particularly high-sodium m*ria post that's been in my drafts for ages that might see the light of day after some of the takes I've seen today 🙄) but I am excited for Malex and OMG you picked the PERFECT song. I was listening and reading along with the lyrics (not sure why this isn't in my rotation ALL THE TIME because it's so good, but I subscribed to the Atlas project while it was in process and got the songs emailed to me and I may have missed downloading this one or at least moving it to my iPod?) and it's SOOOOO GOOD for Malex! (sidebar I have quite a few friends who are sevens so this made me double smile today, so thank you.)

So, lest anyone think I'm not super excited along with being worried and salty, lets talk about some JOYFUL MALEX REUNION! This song is so bright and bubbly and happy and so hopeful about looking forward and I am HERE for these vibes today!

how nice it’d be if we could try everything. i’m serious, let’s make a list and just begin. “what about danger?” so what. “what about risk?” let’s climb this mountain before we cross that bridge! ‘cause i’m restless, i’m restless, i’m restless for whatever comes next.

Right away, this is (as we always say) the energy I want to manifest for Malex at some point this season. Especially loving the "what about danger/risk" thing because that's what's been holding Malex back, is them both being so in love, but so afraid after getting burned that they won't admit to their true feelings, leaving them BOTH thinking the other cares less than they do. CLOWNS, I tell you! But it's time to say enough! and stop borrowing trouble. We NEED to see them talking this season and I am ready. I also love this idea of being restless for whatever comes next because for so long neither had much hope looking toward the future. Alex went from an abusive household to living in active war zones and nearly died at least once that we know of. And being enlisted, his life isn't ever really his own. And Michael, after not taking that college scholarship kinda resigned himself to sticking around to care for Isobel (and wait for Alex to come back) but that glimmer of hope he had at the end of season 2 was nice to see, no matter how I feel about the scene as a whole, because it means he is ready to start working for the life he wants. I'm ready for them to be restless to move forward.

how wonderful to see a smile on your face. it costs farewell tears for a welcome-home parade. a secret handshake between me and my one life: i’ll find the silver lining no matter what the price. ‘cause i’m hungry, oh i’m hungry, i’m hungry for whatever comes next.

Oh man, when this verse came on I was like, are you KIDDING ME?! It's just, so on point for them I squealed a bit! (It's been a long day, I might have started drinking already, and seeing Alex and Michael on screen again just kinda broke my brain okay?) It's no secret have mixed feelings about jealous/pining Michael, but honestly most of that stems from being Tired(TM) of people being excited to see Michael hurting and want him to grovel and be miserable, while propping up f*rlex the same way m*luca was touted as a "breath of fresh air" (that phrase is ruined for me forever now) but I think it's actually so on brand for Michael as a character but the season 2 writing was so god awful that getting it now doesn't really fit. But I'm more than happy to leave season 2 rotting in a morgue because seeing Vlamis with the glassy eyes? *chef's kiss*. THE POINT IS, I want to see Michael putting on that brave face and being excited to welcome Alex back. (BRB, sobbing about "it costs farewell tears for a welcome-home parade) The "silver lining" makes me think of Alex so much and I'm excited to see where this season takes him and to see him and Michael both starting to have that little bit of shy hope and excitement about where they are headed. But when they kiss? Oooooh, when they kiss, they are going to be "hungry for whatever comes next"

let me tell you another secret of the trade- it feels like sinking when i’m standing in one place. so i look to the future and i book another flight. when everything feels heavy, i’ve learned to travel light.

Oh man this gives me such Alex feels with the way he has always been running, been moving, trying to escape from the grip his dad had on him. But this season really feels like we are going to see both Alex and Michael (who is tired of stagnating) looking to the future and what it can bring. Here's hoping for a lighter story for the love moving forward. Even if everything else is heavy, I want them to be able to rest and recover and find peace in their love.

but i want to be here. truly. be. here. to watch the ones that i love bloom. and i want to make room to love them through and through and through and through the slow and barren seasons too.

It's time for Alex to stop running and I am HERE for it. He stuck around all last season but...the less said about last season the better. And now we know he left again but is coming back and Michael is excited about it (which means he knew Alex was coming back and has been waiting for it!!) plus, Michael looks good so I think he's ready to start living more in the present than stuck in the past like he has been, same with Alex.

i feel hope deep in my bones tomorrow will be beautiful and i’m ready, God i’m ready, oh i’m ready, restless and hungry, but i’m ready for whatever comes next.

This is the energy I want for Malex this season and I am actually really hopeful we are going to get it! Excellent choice today, Nonnie! This was exactly what I needed!

youtube

#my sweet nonnie friends #sleeping at last anon #roswell nm #alex manes #michael guerin #sleeping at last #seven #ooooh i am feeling the hopeful malex vibes today!#i can be salty and excited at the same time #it's called multitasking #but this was actually the perfect call today nonnie!#trust your instincts!

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sharkflip · 4 years ago

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Scenes from the CHAZ

I visited Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone this afternoon to show solidarity with occupiers and residents, to see for myself, and to share photos and impressions with y’all. Reminder: myself and Spouse are white cishet thirty-somethings living in North Seattle who believe that Black Lives Matter and agree with the broad set of civic action summarized by “Defund the Police.”

Short version: this is the calmest, quietest event I’ve ever attended on Seattle’s Cap Hill, which is known for big loud music festivals and nightlife and Pride and such.

Six pm on a Thursday night held a decent meandering crowd. We saw lots of street art (different from graffiti; see photos), a couple organizers with megaphones reminding people to keep up the movement, an amplified Black Lives Matter podcast, and generally people hanging out. There was a shrine (for lack of a better word) to some recent victims of police brutality, with “say their names” and their names on signs, candles, and an icon-style painting of Dr. King. I did not take a photo of that out of respect; instead, I read their names and tried to feel their loss.

There were several well-stocked med tends and co-op tents, with lists of what supplies were needed and also Venmo addresses for cash donations. We brought two cases of bottled water and two bulk-sized bottles of sunblock to donate to the cause, but the med tents were already so well-stocked that we just added the bottled water to a pyramid built by similar-minded folks. There was also a handful of sort of alt-vendor tents, most notably (to me) one with two white girls and a screen press with a sign saying “we’ll print ‘black lives matter’ on anything!” and doing just that. They were using black ink and I was wearing a navy-blue top, otherwise I’d have had them print my tank for me. No prices, no mention of money, which was slightly disorienting to since Seattle has so many open-air festivals and markets with a vendor row. One of the co-ops with food and supplies had a “free sticker if you put them in public places” bin in front of it, which I rifled through.

All the “barricades” at the street entrances were construction barriers and concrete barriers placed on the asphalt. One or two of them also had a car parked across the street as well. NONE of them had ANYTHING even resembling a checkpoint. People “staffing” the checkpoints were chatting with each other and passersby. Neither Spouse nor I interacted with anyone at any of the barricaded streets, and none of them had any kind of visible weapon or anything. They were just people who happened to be chilling by a concrete or plastic construction barrier.

The East Precinct Police building was boarded up and surrounded by a chain link fence, which, sidebar, is a very common sight in Seattle, with all the new construction going on these days. There was some graffiti and some messaging on the fence, but most of the activity around it was people like me: taking iphone photos of this “abandoned” police precinct. Incidentally, this was where I decided to leave my grocery bag full of sage cuttings I brought from my garden (because what do you bring to celebrate a neighborhood milestone? I hope some people make smudges from it and some people make sauce from it and some people put a sprig in a vase because the purple flowers are pretty). I stapled two signs to the bag, one reading “we see you, we hear you, #blacklivesmatter” and the other reading “hello from [tiny neighborhood], please enjoy this fresh organic sage from my garden,” and just left it by the fence there by the boarded-up police station. Spouse didn’t get it, and all I can say is that it felt right to bring something I grew, and let people take it to do what they want with it.

The crowd in general was what I typically expect from Cap Hill: mostly twenties to forties, mostly white, lots of potheads, lots of calm dogs on leashes. The covid “sanitary” cloth mask compliance was higher here than in most other public spaces I’ve been in recently, with people trying to maintain that six-foot courtesy/transmission space. Most people “featured” -- those painting street murals, those with megaphones -- were POC who looked like they were of majority African descent. Most people staffing the different booths (med tents, co-op tents) fell into the general category of white, and much of the observing crowd were also white, which again, is about the racial proportions I usually anticipate from Cap Hill and Seattle north of Downtown. Proportionately few rainbow signs/iconography present, other than the rainbow crosswalks that a previous mayor had painted in this weird publicity stunt thing. The feeling I got from it was that the LGBTQIA+ pride crowd was deferring to/supporting the BLM crowd, in force, but I can’t speak for them.

What was surprising to me was how... safe it felt. This part of Cap Hill (the southwest corner, closest to downtown) has a reputation for being a little sketchy sometimes, but today it felt... “welcoming” is the wrong word, and “standing in solidarity” is too profound for what could be called a protest tourism visit on my part. There’s a different post I want to make about “’high crime’ areas actually equal high police response to incidents that would better be handled by a social service team, so is it really a ‘high crime’ neighborhood or is it just a neighborhood that needs more help?” so just stick that in your mind for now. But Spouse actually went to high school about two blocks downhill from the CHAZ, and he too said it felt safer than usual. For reference, Spouse is not a crowd person and is a little paranoid about personal safety, and both he and I were surprised that he was getting that vibe.

In particular, there was one “crazy homeless dude,” who was sort of dancing around shouting nonsense, which is unfortunately common. But rather than feel scared by him -- and those of you who have been following me for long enough may recall when I was literally punched in the face by a “crazy homeless dude” hard enough to shatter my maxilla and result in a second-degree assault charge -- and it was just like “well, this dude is doing his thing, and if he gets violent, we’ll handle it, but right now, he’s doing his thing.”

So, there’s some kind of planned protest/showing/whatever the current term for these things is tomorrow night, which I plan on attending, and I’ll tell you about that, too.

#Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone #Seattle #Politics #CHAZ #sharkflip rants about current events #blacklivesmatter

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janesmithsix-blog · 3 years ago

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Bluehost Web Hosting Reviews: It Is Cheap, but Is It Good?

Bluehost Hosting: It Is Cheap, but Is It Good

Bluehost is one of the most popular and, at the same time, most affordable web hosts on the market. In this Bluehost hosting review, we take a look at what’s under the hood, how good the platform really is, and whether it’s the right solution for your next website project.

Here are the things we’re going to cover:

• Types of web hosting that Bluehost offers

• Features and pricing

• Ease of use

• Performance and load times

• Customer support

• Pros and cons of Bluehost hosting

• Conclusion – should you use Bluehost?What is Bluehost and what type of hosting it offers?

Over the years,Bluehost has grown to be one of the most popular hosting companies out there, especially for WordPress sites.

Just glancing at their homepage and all the different products that Bluehost offers tells you a lot about why it’s won so many users over. First off, Bluehost has numerous different hosting products in their portfolio – not just simple website hosting.

Second, their prices are really, really affordable. Plus, you also get a handful of bonuses thrown in for free. This makes your overall cost of launching a site much lower vs what you’d have to pay with the competition.

But let’s start at the beginning. Here are the different types of hosting that Bluehost has in store, including one that is likely going to be the pick for most users.

Let’s divide the list into a couple of categories:

1. Entry-level web hosting

This is the budget solution in Bluehost’s portfolio of web hosting. These plans are usually chosen by users who are new to the concept of owning a website and needing web hosting to make it happen.

Bluehost has two main offerings that fall under entry-level hosting:

• Shared web hosting

• Basic WordPress hosting

While it may seem like the latter is better if you want to use WordPress as your website engine, in reality, both are the same product. From what I’ve seen, this is simply a different marketing framing, but the elements on the inside are the same.

2. Managed WordPress hosting

The basic WordPress hosting plans mentioned above are just that – basic. However, Bluehost also offers a more advanced package called

Compared to the basic offering, the managed variety takes care of all the technical aspects of the hosting setup and Managed WordPress.

In other words, when you’re on managed WordPress hosting, you don’t have to worry about anything related to keeping your site operational. Instead, you can just focus on creating content and promoting your site.

Managed plans also give you more power under the hood 💪, which is important for sites with an established position in the market that receive more traffic.

Bluehost also has a tailor-made offering for WordPress websites running WooCommerce – for eCommerce stores. Those plans come with some WooCommerce-specific elements pre-installed (WooCommerce itself, an optimized theme, payment processing tools, security, extras).

If you’re looking for a host because you are indeed going to be launching a WooCommerce store, this is probably the solution for you.

3. Professional hosting

The last tier of Bluehost hosting is what we can call professional-level hosting. Two main products here:

• VPS hosting

• Dedicated servers

The former is a very interesting concept that’s built around hosting virtualization. VPS stands for virtual private server. What you’re actually getting here is access to a web hosting setup that runs as a virtual machine on a bigger, physical server. It’s a setup beneficial when building web apps or other types of web-based products that are not necessarily standard websites.

If you do indeed need a whole physical machine at your disposal, that’s what dedicated servers are for. This type of web hosting is usually the most expensive and powerful hosting option available with most companies.

Bluehost hosting review: features and pricing ⚙️💸

As you read above, Bluehost has many different hosting plans and tiers available, and each of them delivers a slightly different set of features.

For the purpose of this Bluehost hosting review, we’ll look at the entry-level plan called Basic Web Hosting

It’s the most budget-friendly solution in the lineup and, for that reason, also the most popular one among customers.

Here’s a snapshot of the pricing page at the time of writing:

As you can see, Bluehost has a very affordable offering that starts at just $2.95/mo. However, the first thing you must know about this price is that you have to sign up for a three-year contract in order to get it. It is also paid upfront, which means that you do have to shell out $106.20 on day one.

There are options to begin with shorter contracts, but the prices grow with those a bit. Here’s the full picture:

36 months: Basic $2.95/mo, Plus and Choice Plus $5.45/mo, Pro $13.95/mo

24 months: Basic $3.95/mo, Plus and Choice Plus $6.95/mo, Pro $15.95/mo

12 months: Basic $4.95/mo, Plus and Choice Plus $7.45/mo, Pro $18.95/mo

Bluehost doesn’t offer month-to-month payment options

Okay, but what do you get for these prices?

Overall, Bluehost focuses on delivering two things:

the basic set of features and server capabilities that most users will need,

making those features easy to use and accessible.

All the entry-level plans are very similar on paper, but there are a couple of fine differences.

First of all, none is “more powerful” than the other. Speaking in terms of computing power and the “scale of website,” they can all handle the same load. The differences are mainly in the size of website and number of websites you’re allowed to run.

On the Basic plan, you are allowed only one website. Your disk space is also limited to 50 GB.

All the other plans let you run unlimited websites and consume unlimited disk space while doing so.

This is great because what it means in practice is that if you want to build 2+ websites, Bluehost will only charge you $5.45/mo for that.

Here’s what else you get.

The Basic plan:

24/7 customer support via phone and chat (more on the quality of that later in this Bluehost hosting review),

access to custom themes from within the Bluehost panel,

a free domain name for the first year(!) plus access to a domain manager,

email hosting – albeit it’s kind of hidden in the panel,

a $100 Google Ads credit and Google My Business integration,

free CDN integration – a “content delivery network” hook-up means that your website’s data is served from multiple servers across the web instead of just one machine; this improves your site speed a lot,

free SSL certificates.

The Choice plan throws in a free Office 365 subscription for one month. The Choice Plus gives you additional access to free domain privacy (so that no one can check your personal data associated with the domain name) and free automatic backups. Lastly, the Pro plan offers an additional dedicated IP address (important when building web apps/tools, not so much for standard websites).

Overall, there really is nothing here that’s missing. Bluehost has put some real thought behind what the essential web hosting features are and then put them all together in this offering.

The free domain is a huge deal in particular! You’d usually have to pay around $15 for a new domain name registration. While it’s not a lot, it still adds up to your overall website launch bill. The fact that Bluehost throws that in for free is great.

⚠️ Note. Mind the renewal prices. Bluehost, like most hosting companies, will charge you a different amount when first signing up for their service vs renewing after a while. Those renewal prices are higher. Take a look at that pricing screenshot above one more time. See the crossed off price below the main price? That’s the renewal price – it’s what you’re going to pay after your initial contract is up.

Bluehost hosting review: ease of use 👐

Bluehost does a lot to make the signup and website launch process as smooth as possible. They realize that whoever’s choosing the entry-level plan probably doesn’t have a lot of experience with web hosting. Bluehost tries to make it possible for that user to configure everything on their own without outside help. All within the Bluehost hosting interface.

Once you get through the purchase process on Bluehost’s website and finalize everything, you’ll be invited to your new user profile page.

Right away, Bluehost will ask you how you want to go about building your website and if you want to have WordPress installed on your setup. They will even ask you whether you want to work on your site in the classic model (by picking a theme and modifying it) or use Bluehost’s new builder interface.

I went with the first option since it’s more common for WordPress users to do so.

Next, right in the main dashboard, you get a couple of suggestions as to what you should do to make your site better:

You can log into your WordPress site directly from the dashboard as well – just click the Log in to WordPress button in the top right corner.

If you take a look at the sidebar to the left, you’ll find links to other useful sections:

Home. It’s where you are right now.

My Sites. Since you can have more than one site on most Bluehost hosting plans, this is where you can see them all.

Marketplace. Bluehost makes it easy to integrate your site with other third-party tools, add-ons, and also upgrade your hosting tier if needed. This section is where you can purchase and install those integrations with a couple of clicks.

WordPress themes and plugins. This is a subsection under Marketplace, but I feel I should highlight it here. Bluehost gives you access to custom WordPress themes right from the dashboard. It also hooks up to your site directly, so that you can purchase and install those themes all from the Bluehost interface. This can be a huge timesaver.

Email & Office. Bluehost gives you an option to integrate your site with hosted email via Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. This is where you can enable everything.

Domains. This is where you can manage your website domain(s) and purchase new ones.

Marketing Tools. This section is all about making it easier to integrate your site with popular marketing channels such as Google Ads, Google My Business, and others.

Advanced. Go here if you want to access cPanel (if this doesn’t sound like English, then Advanced is probably not a section for you).

Let’s look into what’s possible when managing your site, since that’s what most of us will want to do.

When you go to My Sites and select your site from the list, you’ll see the following panel:

This is a nice view of your site’s status all in one place. From here, you can access the themes you have installed, your plugins, and even oversee your marketing promotions, backups, user accounts, security, and more.

What’s great here is that everything is presented nicely, and you’re spared all the server lingo. You don’t have to be a pro to know what’s going on.

And I remind you that we are dealing here with basic, entry-level hosting setup that did cost a mere $2.95/mo. So…impressive.

Bluehost performance and load times 📈

Okay, so we know that Bluehost is cheap. But is it fast? There has to be a trade-off somewhere, right? Is it performance?

Let’s find out:

We did a very simple test. We set up a site using Bluehost’s tools, published some dummy content on it, added images, picked a theme and configured it, and basically made the site look real.

Then, we also added a couple of plugins for good measure, like WPForms, Yoast SEO, Jetpack, and a couple more.

I have to give it to Bluehost…considering this is budget hosting, the results are more than impressive!

Going below one sec for US traffic is pretty much all you can ask for with any hosting platform – even the more expensive ones.

Bluehost hosting review: customer support 🚑

Bluehost offers 24/7 phone and live chat support. Apart from that, there’s also a knowledge base where you can find tutorials and answers to the most common questions people have about Bluehost’s platform.

You can access the support chat from the main contact page on Bluehost’s site.

Bluehost asks a couple of questions to identify you as a customer, and then gets you through to a support agent.

From our experience when writing this Bluehost hosting review, a support agent got to us pretty much immediately after starting the chat.

The interaction was positive, the agent offered advice and was willing to help. However, we seem to had hit a wall in terms of what they’re actually authorized to do.

Granted, I did ask him to do a fairly specific thing.

Pros and cons of Bluehost hosting 👍👎

Before we give you our final rating in this Bluehost hosting review, let’s look at a quick list of pros and cons.

Pros 👍

The entry price is more than affordable ($2.95/mo).

They give you a free domain for the first year.

The setup is really easy to do, especially if you want to use WordPress.

The user interface is great, making it easy to do simple modifications and/or maintenance tasks.

The load times are really impressive, managing to go below the one-second mark.

The support is quick to respond.

Cons 👎

The renewal prices are much higher than the entry-level ones. That’s why you’re better off going for the max-term contract right out the gate.

While you can set up hosted email on the platform, it’s a bit hidden. You have to go to the cPanel view and set everything up there by hand.

The reviews on the web are mixed. Some users seem to be having issues with their setups. However, many of those reviews are from a while back.

Bluehost hosting review conclusion: Why use it over another host 💪

At the end of the day, Bluehost looks like a great solution for the budget-minded person who wants to launch a new site as quickly as possible and also fairly cheaply.

Bluehost has all the basic hosting features you might expect, and the performance isn’t lacking in any way either.

Granted, the tests we did haven’t been carried out over a long period of time, so you’re mileage may vary, but the early indicators are certainly more than positive!

👉 Go to Bluehost

⚡ Pro tip: If you’re looking for a host to take care of all your new website ideas in one place, consider the $5.45/mo plan at Bluehost. It’s the first hosting tier that Bluehost offers that allows unlimited websites.

#hosting #bluehosts #webhostingsites

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claraxbarton · 6 years ago

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MCU Bucky Barnes

So here’s the thing.

I’m a costume designer by trade, and one thing that I actually really love about Captain America: The Winter Soldier (okay, among the things I love) is the costume design and the rhetorical value given to the clothes and, well, costumes in this movie.

For example - when Sam and Steve have their heart to heart on the bridge that ends with Sam saying “but he doesn’t even know you” and Steve saying “he will” before going to steal his old uniform - the one Bucky last saw him in when he was Bucky. There are some other great costume points in this movie, actually a LOT of them (costumes, not wigs, don’t at me because I KNOW).

But one thing that has always stood out to me, and not in a good way, is the “I’m with you til the end of the line” flashback.

Now, here’s the thing, it’s not JUST about the clothes. We’re in MCU verse, so it’s MCU canon - obviously, the Steve and Bucky duo is drastically different in Marvel comics canon so - and Bucky starts this scene by saying his folks wanted to give Steve a ride to the cemetery.

Which is super cool and nice. So one, we know Bucky’s dad is still alive - and his mom, but two, we know they have a car.

So this is supposed to be when Steve is around 16? So it’s... 1936 (according to MCU wiki it totally is)

So cars.

Crazy popular ever since they started having closed bodies and all that. BUT, were they crazy popular in CITIES in 1936? Especially in the middle of the Great Depression?

There’s some evidence that actually no, that car ownership in a city like NYC was something like 1 car per every 43 people. Then again, looking at the NYC.gov 2015 Mobility Report we see that the population of NYC in 1936 is something like 7.2 million, and the number of registered vehicles in 764,000... or roughly one per every 9.4-ish persons. Which is a pretty drastically different number. This doesn't, of course, account for taxis or fleet cars being registered - so the number might seem inflated. I still think it’s probably something closer to 1 car per every 20 than every 43 but... I’m too lazy to dig that much deeper at the moment. Plus I'm sick, which is fueling this in the first place.

So, anyway you slice it, Bucky’s family was in 11%, 5% or 2.33% of New Yorkers who own cars in 1936. Which says something, I think, about Bucky Barnes that we don’t always - ever? - think of in fandom.

I’m not going to say that Bucky Barnes was loaded. Maybe his family owned a garage or a grocery store or a delivery service or a funeral home...?? or something. So, the vehicle could be occupational as opposed to private usage - but either way it’s a statement. Bucky’s family has money and/or Bucky’s family has steady employment.

I’ve been there. I’ve read the fics where Bucky works at the docks to put Steve through art school and get him his medicine. I love those fics. I love that head canon.

But I... don’t think it’s realistic in light of some evidence showing us that, actually, Bucky wasn’t doing too badly for himself.

Let’s now actually look at CLOTHING. Here’s the whole scene via youtube, if you want to follow along with what is about to get RIDICULOUS.

Actually, before I dive in, who is the costumer for this movie? And should I be like... reading into all this as much as I am?

Judianna Makovsky - fellow New Jersey..Ian?ite?no clue - 3 time Oscar nominee and designer of 5 MCU films and a lot of other big budget movies, including quite a few period pieces dealing with issues of race and class (The Legend of Bagger Vance, Seabiscuit, The Little Princess.. and also like Harry Potter and The Quick and the The Dead.) So, should I have some faith in Judianna Makovsky’s designs? I’m gonna go with yeah, yeah I should.

So, back to the movie. The scene.

This is post funeral. We’re in 1936. As a general rule, the dress, colors and style of mourning wear was pretty much formalized in the early Victorian era. There was a great - read PHENOMENAL - exhibit at the MET a few years back on Mourning-wear and I’m still reeling from how lovely everything was - but the gist of it is this: you wore black when someone died. If you were a lady, and especially if you were a rich lady, you then went through a few different colors (dull black to SHINY black to purple/mauve and gray and white and then back to color within six months to one year). By the 1930s only the really rich were sticking to the actual rules of mourning - or like, really old people. And, of course, really old rich people. Really old rich WHITE people. Because it needs to be said: these are WHITE customs. I'm not saying people of other ethnicities didn’t follow them, but these are basically British Victorian practices that were assimilated into American culture.

I’m not going to go off on a huge sidebar about American fashion following in French dressmaking and British tailoring, but I need to say at least that much. Everyone who was anyone knew you got your dresses made in France or in the French style and you got your suits made in England - Savile Row in specific. I am NOT implying Bucky’s got himself an English suit, fyi. I just... have to be thorough.

BACK TO THE SCENE:

We’ve got our boy Steve. STEVE. Who just buried Sarah Rogers and what is he wearing...?

For starters, he’s wearing a windbreaker, check out the 1933 ad below, he’s the guy almost giving us the Fonz finger gesture, or maybe guy in the fedora on the end.

This thing isn’t falling apart at the seams, but it’s a very nondescript not really gray, not really blue - maybe was at one point. It also doesn’t FIT Steve. It also, in the ad above, would cost about $165.40 in today’s money.

My guess? It’s Bucky’s old windbreaker. Because it’s not cheap and because it’s just a bit too big on Steve.

He’s also wearing a shirt that is maybe tan? And a brown tie and maybe - MAYBE black trousers. And if those trousers are black, it’s the only black thing he’s wearing. Not even a black tie, or a black arm band (which I’m pretty sure - but also pretty aggressively atheist so I don’t know - the Catholic Church would have provided for chief mourners and pall bearers right?). We also have our depressing as all shit Depression surroundings to clue us in: Steve Rogers ain’t loaded. Steve Rogers is poor as dirt. Side note: boys. Hiding a key under the ONE FUCKING BRICK on a walkway is not like... a smart idea???

So we can guess a few things here, we can guess that Steve and Sarah were really struggling - this checks out with the rest of MCU canon (wearing newspapers stuffed in his shoes, even when he had nothing he had Bucky, etc.) - and that all money probably went towards Steve’s numerous ailments, food and then the TB medication or treatment, as it was, that was available to Sarah.

We can maybe guess that Steve and Sarah weren’t very religious -but I don’t feel qualified to impart anything except my own agenda here so I’m not taking that stance. But like, real talk, not even an arm band??

But, well, let’s move on to the point of this whole long ass thing anyway?

Then we go to Mr. Barnes, looking dapper AF. Also, hey, check out this ad from 1933 featuring... pretty much exactly what Bucky is wearing down to the god-damn two-tone shoes:

If you’re curious, yeah $24.98 in 1936 is $475.44. I'm not suggesting Bucky Barnes went out and bought a brand new suit for Steve’s mother’s funeral - for one thing, this ad is from 1933. BUT, that suit fits Bucky. Quite well, and it’s in good shape. He’s also sporting that super stylish mid-late 30s into 40s deeply angled collar shirt - as is our dude up in the ad - and so we know these clothes are at least new-ish. We also can see that the suit is definitely of the mid-30s moving into the boxy silhouette of the later 30s and early 40s and NOT the look of the 20s and early 30s, which has an almost bell-bottom fullness to the legs instead of our straight-leg here (though we can debate nuance if you want to hit up my DMs.)

I should note, Bucky’s shirt is not bright and pristine white - it’s kind of grayish? And I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be an old-timey sepia thing or an indication that Bucky can’t afford to... bleach a white shirt? So that’s an odd choice for sure because we’re still in an age when a crisp, white collar shirt means something (Hey, if you want to hear me go on about the democratization of men’s fashion via shirt collars and 19th century Victorian suits, let me know because I am READY).

All this is to say: I don’t think Bucky Barnes is a poor dock worker. I think Bucky Barnes of MCU canon. Okay, so the MCU wiki on Bucky/The Winter Soldier is an actual mess (because it tells us that Sarah died in 1936 and that’s FINE but I’m not going back to change my math because I’m SICK so just... I went back and changed it. She died in 1936. Fine. The damn wiki also says that “a year later, during their art class, Barnes and Rogers found out that the United States of America had joined World War II. Which, like, I’m sick, but there are a few years between 1936 and December 8 1941... just... I’m no rocket doctor but...

ANYWAY. Bucky is a three time YMCA welterweight boxing champion by this “year later”/ 1941-1942. He and Steve are also in an ART CLASS together. Bucky also trained Steve in boxing at Goldie’s gym before the two of them went to enlist - Steve rejected and Bucky, again quoting MCU wiki, “drafted” (which I'm gonna take to mean he didn’t try to enlist when Steve got rejected, they went home and Bucky got called up later but... hey, who knows?!).

So, I can’t easily find the prices of gym memberships in NYC in the 1930s right now because I don’t feel like wading through all of the articles complaining about Equinox pricing in 2019. But I do know that part of Roosevelt’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) building projects included building more public gyms - as well as libraries, auditoriums, pools, parks etc. Check out your local public buildings - if they are WPA projects they will have a cool plaque like my local NJ library does! All that is to say, there were free or very cheap PUBLIC options where Bucky could have trained Steve.

Bucky trained Steve in a private gym. Do I like to think that this is the same gym Steve and America’s ass are working out in in The Avengers? Yes, Yes I do. Do I like to think that Steve likes to box because it reminds him of Bucky? Yes, yes I do.

But moving on: it’s another sign of wealth.

So is this “art class.” Whether we are in 1937 or 1941 - we’re still in the Depression. Steve still has all of his health issues and presumably accompanying “medication” (wanna talk 1930s medicine? Again, slide into my DMs or shoot me an ask). So Steve either has a side job making enough to cover all of that, rent? and enrollment in an art class.

OR maybe Steve is teaching the art class and Bucky is his model for life drawing instruction (yeah, it’s a fic bunny I’m sharing with the world).

OR maybe... Bucky is paying the rent and other things or Steve is living with Bucky and can afford the class and meds... somehow or...

OR I'm not saying that Steve is Bucky’s kept man because Steve Rogers would punch anyone who dared to say such a thing.

All I’m saying is, Bucky Barnes was not a poor dude. Bucky Barnes... had some money.

And also I’m about to be late for my doctor’s appointment so I gotta run.

At me with your thoughts!

#Bucky barnes #James Buchanan barnes #winter soldier #Steve rogers #captain america #marvel #mcu #meta #head-canon #costume design #character thoughts

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gingersnapwolves · 5 years ago

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highlights from my Family Day yesterday, hosted by my venerable brother, now that my parents have moved to the same state (God help us all)

Was told there would be lunch so came at around 12 without eating first. Lunch was leftover Chinese food from the previous day’s dinner. There were four main dishes, all of which were at least half gone, six dumplings, and a small portion of wonton soup. This was to feed five adults and two children. None of it was stuff I liked. I had toast.

Asked whether or not anyone had notified my sister of this gathering

my dad: I figured she wouldn’t want to come, she’s always tired on the weekends

me: I mean, she is, but she still might like to be asked?

Spirited discussion over whether or not the “got any grapes” video is in fact the most obnoxious video known to mankind

Yes. Yes it is. I will die on this hill.

told the story of having to pay $14 to take a Lyft 1.2 miles to get my car after the snowstorm

my dad: how can they justify charging so much?

me: it’s called surge pricing, the more demand, the higher the cost

my dad: isn’t that called price gouging?

me: yes

my dad: you should file a complaint

me: ........with who?

Mom then asked if I hadn’t realized ahead of time that my apartment was street parking only. I told them I had but it was the only place we could afford, especially because we were moving right around the same time that Amanda’s disability had been denied for the second time. Mild surprise.

On that cheerful note, my parents’ house is selling for a lot more than they expected! They’ve gotten themselves a really nice apartment that costs twice as much as mine and plan on buying a new house, in conjunction with my brother, a nice big place that has an in-law apartment and is probably worth like $700K!

Sidebar: I know, know, know that it is not my place to tell my parents or my brother how to spend their money, but boy does it suck sometimes watching them fling money around the hemisphere when I’m broke as shit

I played robots with my ten-year-old nephew for half an hour. Hands finally got tired. Went to get some cider and sit down with my parents. Took him literally less than two minutes to start complaining that he was bored and why couldn’t we do what he wanted to do?

Spirited discussion of whether or not my brother should be stopped from putting coriander in his spiced cider.

Yes. Yes he should. I will die on this hill.

Nephew had earlier that day lost screen privileges.

His mom: we’re putting on Frosty

His dad (my brother): okay

My mom: ......didn’t he lose screen privileges for the day?

My brother: Yes but apparently [SIL] has decided that enforcing that isn’t worth the tantrum it would cause.

Me: ?!?!? That’s .... not how punishments work????

That little exchange sums up basically everything that has gone wrong with my nephew, who can be a genuinely sweet kid but is also a spoiled monster.

Christmas is gonna be a blast this year, I can tell.

#just rambling #feel free to ignore #personal

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encyclopika · 5 years ago

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Sneak peak of Missing Out Chap 4 - Home

Saw the work in progress Wednesday thing and...yeah, I owe a sneak peak. I haven’t been able to write for a while - a combination of computer issues and lack of inspiration has left me dry. Nevertheless, I got a whole scene done the other day. This isn’t all of it, and it’s probably not final, but you’ll just have to wait for the rest! Read Missing Out on AO3

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There was that word again - “feral”. I've heard it all my life, here and there and more once I entered the underworld of villainy. It's a word to mean “person with an animal quirk”, and although it's not meant to be a slur, it kind of is. People let it slip from time to time. The human race has always craved an “other”. You would think with the advent of quirks that the uniqueness of every individual in the world would stop that bullshit, but you would be wrong.

Quirks are about as varied as there are people. Flight is boring as fuck compared to what some people have packing. Some people can make bubbles, others can summon camera lenses from their skin, some people can set themselves on fucking fire. And, hey, Ai could bring people back to life like they were never dead. But even with all of that crazy shit, there's just something about animal quirks that rubs people the wrong way. Something just clicks in people's heads that there is something fundamentally different about us. Something inhuman. And when you're not human, you don't get to pretend that you are one.

I left the scene of multiple crimes that night to follow the rest of my pay down the street. Flying all of a sudden became more of a pain than it usually was, and my side hurt like hell. I'd have to limit my time in the air. Landing on another roof closer to the murder warehouse, I listened for them.

Now, I know what you're thinking – damn, Asuka is such a dumbass going after the guys that just beat the shit out of him. And, yeah, I was fifteen. Spare me the logic. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I figured I had the upper hand now. The guys thought they left me crumpled in the alleyway; they wouldn't be expecting me at all, kinda like that bear trap dick. The darkness is my element and I work best in the cover of night when I can blend in. They'd never see me coming.

But listening for them was easier said than done. Between my side aching and the warehouse still spewing out the agony of death in all its putrid slender for my nose to catch, my other senses really weren't getting equal access to my brain. As I got closer, leaping to the next rooftop, my quirk took over, and I could tell multiple bodies were piled up in the murder house. It had to be, but at the time, my quirk wasn't developed enough yet to get an accurate count. That's actually a skill UA helped me to hone.

(A sidebar – when UA says it will nurture young heroes into capable pros, they really aren't kidding. Search and rescue drills are tweaked with my quirk in mind. They actually put dead rats - the kind you get to feed pet snakes or use for class dissection or what have you - into the dummies we have to find. My classmates get so pissed because I can do the entire operation more efficiently than any of them with my eyes closed. It doesn't help that I went into first year an empty husk of myself, but still tried my best to go through the motions and amount to something, anything at all. I came in with a prior knowledge of how villains worked and how to fight, even if it was dirty, and ended up breezing through most classes with a look of boredom. I guess after a while they just chalked me up to being the “silent but still a douchebag” type. When I woke up in second year, they had already determined I wasn't a class friend, but the class rival. It was like junior high all over again. God, I can't wait to just graduate and never see those fuckers again.

Anyway! Back on topic...)

I wasn't concerned with the warehouse, though my curiosity was growing. When I finally spotted my prey, they had stopped to rest and count their earnings under a security light in an alleyway right next to that warehouse. Giggling to each other about how they easily duped me, they leafed through the cash and determined the prices they could bargain for the parts they stole. You know, under my watchful eye. The alley they sat in meandered through to the next street, which meant they had two avenues of escape if I were to jump them. There were also two of them, and I could still feel one their fists in my stomach. Swooping down behind the entrance wall, I watched them and planned my course of attack.

I'm a quick fighter – if I can knock out an opponent, then I will opt for that over a drawn out scuffle. I can be as muscular as I want but that won't ever save for the fact I have hollow bones and weigh a lot less than you can imagine. The club of bone at the wrist of each wing is my best weapon, so the plan was to smack that shaved head as hard as I could with one, steal the money in his hand, and fly away from the cyclops with haste.

However, before I could work up the nerve to actually do that, a fog bank rolled in from the opposite street. The thick mist flooded the alleyway and covered my enemies, reducing them to silhouettes under the bright security light. Out of no where, a third shadow appeared. In the next instance, he moved in, his hand clutching a blade that was followed by a waterfall of blood from the neck of the taller cyclops. The cyclops gurgled, his hands going to clutch his neck as he crumpled, leaving the guy with the shaved head to suffer the same fate. The ghostly apparition seemed to teleport in front of him, another cascade of blood following a lightning fast movement across the neck. The body fell, and that was the end of them.

In the next blink of an eye, I was staring down into Karma's serious face, his eyes wide with adrenaline, but his mouth in a thin, diagonal line of frustration. Oh, and his knife was a centimeter from my jugular.

“Birdy, birdy, I almost killed you!” he said with that sing-song in his voice, even though he seemed mad and still hadn't dropped the knife. “What are you doing here? Over here?”

I pushed his arm down, lowering his weapon as I answered, “Those were my targets. They didn't pay me-”

“Oh!” Karma cut me off. “Snooze you lose, I guess.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, it really doesn't matter. They have cash on them. You can have it.”

“You bet your ass I can have it! I'm takin' it! Not for birds, anymore,” he said, whipping his knife so the blood splattered against the brick wall to my right. He sheathed it in its holder, and I could hear it sharpen as it slid in. “Now, gotta find a nice dumpster to hold the funerals.”

Karma's fog bank still hadn't cleared, although it became thinner now that the attack was over. He kept the air space over our heads thick, shielding our identities from the security camera that hung off one of the roofs. He was very in tune with his hunting grounds – he knew where every security camera was and knew the layout of the downtown area better than most people knew their ass from their elbow. His methods were known throughout the underworld. Most villains didn't make it out of his killing sprees, and so his reputation was built up like a legend. No one had ever seen him, but the results of his punishments were sometimes left in conspicuous places, and so the legend propagated. It felt like I was the only one in the world who knew Karma was just a crazy dude and not, like, a creature from another world. The first time I saw him cut someone down, it had been after a job just like this one. Karma had been hunting my customer for a long time, and decided he didn't want to cut me down, too. Instead, he explained himself, got me to cough up the details of my situation, and I guess he took pity on me. He said he wasn't a fan of killing kids, and so said he'd help me. And here we are.

“You might not have to,” I said as I approached him. He had knelt down to claim the couple hundred thousand yen my customer had just been counting some five minutes ago and stuffed it into the ratty pockets of his well-worn purple-striped pants. “Another villain was also on a murder spree tonight.”

Karma paused for a moment before asking, “How do you know that, Bird?”

“Kicked his ass about a half hour ago...he was chasing some kids down the block,” I explained, but Karma only studied me more. I sighed, trying to cover for myself. “You don't smell that? They came out of this building right here.”

I pointed up to the warehouse in front of us. It was getting hard to ignore the strong signal of death that wafted over me as thickly and ominously as Karma's mist, beckoning me towards the single metal door off to the side. A shiver ran down my spine, the feathers there standing on end. I didn't know for sure if it was safe, but if Karma was going to follow me, I figured we could take whoever was down there if it came to it. I really couldn't stop myself from investigating, the curiosity pushing me further down the alleyway to that door. I needed to know what happened; the thought that I could be next was a subconscious feeling that planted itself in my mind and refused to leave.

The metal door was unlocked and opened with a whine as I pulled it open, revealing a set of stairs that descended into a very dark basement. There was a dim light on somewhere down there, but otherwise, it set the perfect mood for a horror movie. The urban tomb was open now, and its contents sent a very strong message to my quirk that felt like someone stuck a flamethrower up my nose. I almost smacked myself with how quickly my hand raced to close my nostrils.

“It doesn't smell that bad,” Karma murmured as he dragged the bloodied body of the guy with the shaved head past me and sent it rolling down the cement stairs into the basement. “Then again...then again, maybe I'm just used to it.”

#my hero academia oc #oc: krow #my hero academia fanfiction #villain to hero #hero origin story #murder #sneak peaks #Missing Out #encyclopika art

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suburbanmetaldad · 5 years ago

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What can I do for you?

Here, friends, is my super power:

I can create an entire book — a good one — quickly, with very little help.

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Get on the schedule while you can.

Following are more details about me and my work.

Follow are links to different things D.X. Ferris makes & does.

I am D.X. Ferris.

I grew up obsessed with music and reading. I went to school for writing. At the time, I thought I couldn’t create things. I didn’t know it yet, but I was wrong. I tried to quit. Writing wouldn’t let me. It kept pulling me back in.

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I have written/co-written nine books. My personal record is four new books in 16 months.

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I have been to the Pentagon and National Air & Space Museum on business. I have been backstage at the Vans Warped Tour on business. My body of work includes book-length oral histories.

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I am a 33 1/3 author. An Ohio Society of Professional Journalists Reporter of the Year. And a third-degree black belt (in Taekwondo). Also a 32° two-time WM/PM.

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Click the following links for my...

Good Professional Wrestling: Full Contact Life Lessons From the Pinnacle Performance Art The Good Advice From... series is now officially a franchise. Volume II features a foreword by Diamond Dallas Page, motivational icon, founder of health & wellness movement DDP Yoga, and WWE Hall of Famer. Professional wrestling is the toughest business. It is a form of competition built on collaboration and cooperation. Every successful wrestler has a diverse skill set that can help you get over too, no matter what your business or lifestyle. Filled with short chapters and useful advice, this browsable motivational manual features inspirational quotes from dozens of wrestling icons. Each is followed by easy-to-read analysis and actionable tips that can turn a life around.

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Co-author of motivational/how-to Masonic leadership manual

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I am the most prominent, prolific non-marquee contributor the music-writing/music journalism textbook How to Write About Music, from the brain trust running Bloomsbury/Continuum’s 33 1/3 series. TECHNICALLY, I AM ON THE SAME LABEL AS NEIL GAIMAN. This is one of two or three books on this topic. Note to self: Write your own.

Wrote the official book with Donnie Iris and the Cruisers For my money, Donnie Iris & the Cruisers are the best-kept secret from 80s rock radio. That had not one, but seven hot 100 hits. The bandleader/songer penned an enduring disco hit. AND he worked with three Rock Hall of Fame artists. The band have a continuous near-40-year run. During this epic tale, they work with a young Trent Reznor, Kiss, Breathless, Cinderella, Sam Kinison, Gamble & Huff, the Jaggerz, Wolfman Jack, and bunch of others. The book is a painstakingly researched oral history that plays like a mix of the four-hour Tom Petty documentary, the movie That Thing You Do!, and the American Hardcore book. Coffee-table book, 464 pages, 102 images, 308 endnotes, 8.5x11″.

Wrote two books about thrash-metal icons Slayer

One is part of 33 1/3, the vanguard series of music-related writing.

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Publisher of 6623 Press, home to creator-owned, useful, reasonably priced, unconventional books about popular culture, success, and other cool stuff. People like them.

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Do you have book in you? We’ll get it out.

Worked for Rolling Stone, the no. 1 music & culture magazine ever.

I’ve been writing for Alternative Press — America’s no. 2 music magazine — off & on since 2002. More recent pieces are here. Older material is here.

Wrote for alternative newsweekly Cleveland Scene, in various capacities, for 8 years. Won numerous awards for news reporting, business reporting, arts reporting, commentary, feature writing, personality profiling, and sports reporting. Click here for profiles, business features, columns, reviews, and more.

I think this piece about Cleveland’s LeBron James banner won me the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists’ Best Reporter award: Literally the entire city was looking at an iconic, massive piece of public art/advertising — and I was the one person who looked behind the scenes. For alt-weekly Cleveland Scene.

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This kind of piece is a specialty. For Alternative Press, I interviewed an infamous punk musician about his friendship with the late, great Anthony Bourdain. I supplied many conversation prompts, transcribed it, then edited his answers into one continuous narrative, while I remained invisible in the piece. If it looks like I didn’t do much, then that was the entire point.

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I visit a business, describe the experience, and research how a controversial industry works. For Cleveland Scene.

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While the rest of the rock-journalism world were writing SOPA stories (Summarizing Other People’s Articles) about a developing story, I dug deep, excavated some court records, and wrote an informed summary. For Metal Sucks — for my money, the best metal news & views site.

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Cover story/feature profile of the president of a local university — and how his work has helped shape the city. It’s pretty whitebread and dry, but I can work in that style when I’m not writing about raging hellions. For Cleveland Magazine, the city’s upstanding guide to what’s happening and who’s doing it.

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News interview with Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cavaliers and Quicken Loans. For Scene.

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I am totally into the Misfits/Danzig/Samhain, and wrote a bunch of stuff about this record-setting continuum of ground-breaking musicians

I wrote things for Metal Sucks

Guest on heavy metal podcasts, and bloggage about it all

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Annotated both versions of “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” at Genius

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Tweet too much, but it’s healthier than taking cigarette breaks.

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The goat had it comin’. I swear.

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membemis-blog · 5 years ago

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Wealthy Affiliate Review - Is WA The Real Deal

This is my Wealthy Affiliate Review, I am supposed to say something catchy. Something to get you hooked into reading my Review. My first paragraph is in bold are you hooked yet? Lets save you some time and reveal my opinion right here in the

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thathomestar · 6 years ago

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A Somewhat Comprehensive List of Good Old-School FPS Games, Where To Get Them, & How To Get Them Working

I love old FPS games. The action is fast, the levels are explorable, the guns are powerful. Whether you’re tired of modern FPS games or just waiting for some new hotness to come out, there’s a lot of these old games you can play! This list will cover a lot of the old classics and how to get them running on modern hardware (assuming you’re on Windows. Some of these work on Mac/Linux though).

Of course, what defines an “old-school” game from something more recent? Well the way I see it, there are FPS games before Halo, and FPS games after Halo. Halo was such a landmark game that it shifted the entire genre, hell even the entire video game industry. So I’m going to keep this list to pre-2001 games for the most part.

STUFF TO KNOW

Before going into this wholesale, I need to say a couple of things. These game are old. They are most likely not going to work out of the box and will need some tweaking on your part. Most of the non-3D games on Steam and GOG come with DOSBox wrappers. This can be fine for some games, but often times fans have created patches and their own engines/source ports for these games that work better than DOSBox emulation.

PC Gaming Wiki is an invaluable resource when it comes to finding patches and fixes to common problems. I will also point out any fan patches or source ports for the games as I go. On Steam, the curator page Sector Effectors has brief overviews on the functionality of games so you know what you might need before you buy.

A lot of games on Steam and GOG come in bundles that have the entire series in one at a markdown price, so it’s usually cheaper to just buy an entire series than each individual game. I can link to bundles on Steam but not on GOG; those bundles will be on the sidebar underneath the button to buy the game. In the case of games (like Doom on Steam), you have to buy the bundle to get the mission packs, whereas stuff like this is typically included with the game already on GOG.

Make sure you check through the options menu of each game and make sure everything’s set up to your liking, whether it’s video options or your actual controls. The default settings for this kind of stuff in these games are tend to be really weird and outdated, so it’s something you need to check every single time.

Most if not all of these games include various difficulty modes, so whether you’re a badass coolguy like me or someone fairly new to PC shooter games, you’ll be able to play these games.

id SOFTWARE

While they didn’t invent first-person shooter games, it’s undeniable that id Software made the genre as popular as it is today with the games they made.

WOLFENSTEIN (1992/1993/2001)

Wolfenstein was originally an adventure game for the Apple II, but the boys at id wanted to put their own spin on it. What we got was intensely fast Nazi slaughtering action, chock full of gore to spill and gold to swipe. You play as B.J. Blazkowicz, a POW hellbent on escaping Castle Wolfenstein and blasting any Nazi who gets in your way.

Wolfenstein 3D - GOG / Steam Wolfenstein 3D: Spear of Destiny - GOG / Steam Return to Castle Wolfenstein - GOG / Steam Steam Bundle

Wolf3D has a source port called ECWolf, which natively supports most popular OS’s, has widescreen support, and adds an auto-map feature which is immensely helpful for getting through the maze-like levels. At full speed, Wolf3D might make you motion sick, just a word of warning.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein has a 1.42d fanpatch (second from bottom) that adds proper widescreen support. This game has some weird difficulty spikes. Grey Matter Studios, the team that made RtCW, were later absorbed into Treyarch, who later went on to make Call of Duty: World at War and most of the other good CoD games.

Call Apogee, Say “Aardwolf”!

DOOM (1993/1994/1996)

This just might be the best game ever made, though I may be a little biased. Doom was a landmark title in the video game industry, to the point that FPS games were all called “Doom clones” for a while. The last alive in your squad of space marines, it’s you versus the legions of Hell as they take over Mars and invade Earth. Try to make it out alive!

Ultimate Doom - GOG / Steam Doom II: Hell on Earth - GOG / Steam Final Doom - GOG / Steam Steam Bundle (includes Master Levels for Doom II)

Doom has a huge number of source ports, but the most notable ones as of right now (in my opinion) are GZDoom (modern features + mod support), prboom+ (vanilla-style with modern features), and Chocolate Doom (vanilla-accurate). There’s many more though, which I’ve written about extensively here. Disregard Doom 3: BFG Edition, it edits the base data files and makes them incompatible with a lot of custom content.

If you play with a gameplay mod before you’ve beaten the games, I’ll slap you.

Eat leaden death, demon.

QUAKE (1996/1997/1999)

Wolf3D and Doom were pioneers for their own reasons, and Quake’s claim to fame was its fast 3D graphics, full use of the mouse to look up, down, and all around, and intense deathmatch multiplayer. Whether you’re battling it out with Lovecraftian monsters in Gothic castles, waging war against the alien Strogg, or simply blasting opponents in the Arena Eternal, there’s intense action to be had.

Quake - GOG / Steam Quake II - GOG / Steam Quake III Arena - GOG / Steam Steam Bundle

Quake 1 has a few notable source ports. For singleplayer, Quakespasm (John Romero approved!) and Darkplaces (not updated anymore but still works great) are the go-to. I don’t really play Q1 multiplayer so I can’t recommend anything on that end. This Steam guide has some good info on Quake source ports regardless.

Another thing of note with Q1 is that the Steam version does not come with the CD audio. Short of putting a Quake disc in your computer to get that CD audio, you can download this ZIP file I put together. This page has more info about the Quake 1 soundtrack. The GOG version comes with the CD audio, but in the format of a disk image, which can be a pain to get working.

Quake II has an unofficial 3.24 patch (third from bottom) as well as source ports like Yamagi and kmquake2 (top one). Q2 also has the same problem Q1 has, in that the Steam version doesn’t have the rockin’ CD soundtrack. I put together a download for the Quake 2 soundtrack here.

Quake III Arena should just work out of install, though on Steam you might need to disable Steam Overlay as it can screw up the visuals. Outside of that though, there’s a 1.32e fanpatch and the ioquake3 source port. Unlike the previous two games, Q3A is primarily a multiplayer game, though it does have a botmatch campaign that’s fairly fun. The music should work in this one.

Shub-Niggurath awaits you...

RAVEN SOFTWARE

For a while, Raven were kind of a sister studio to id. A lot of Raven’s early games are on id Software game engines. Luckily, this means some of these games can work on source ports for the games listed above!

HERETIC & HEXEN (1994/1995/1997)

Heretic and Hexen run on the Doom engine, and actually added features that Doom originally didn’t have, like being able to look up and down, having an inventory system, having a class system, and being able to jump. Hexen itself plays fairly different from Doom, with much more focus on exploration, puzzle solving, and melee combat, with the ability to backtrack between levels.

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders - Steam HeXen: Beyond Heretic - Steam HeXen II - Steam Steam Bundle

Being Doom engine games, Heretic/Hexen can be played using source ports like GZDoom and Chocolate Doom with little to no extra hassle. Hexen actually has a CD soundtrack much like Quake, but without a CD you get the MIDI versions of the music instead, which is fine by me since the MIDI tracks are great. If you want the CD music, you can run this WAD when you run Hexen. Check my Doom guide for info on how to do that.

The version of Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel on Steam is actually the original buggy version with no music. Download this version of it instead for working music.

Hexen II uses the Quake 1 engine, but has it’s own source port called Hammer of Thyrion. Unfortunately, like Quake 1, the Steam version does not include the CD audio. You can download the soundtrack here. Hexen II on Steam also does not include the Portal of Praevus mission pack; you can download that here.

There is actually a Heretic II but it’s third-person and not sold on digital stores due to licensing issues. It’s okay, and more of an early look at a much bigger game Raven Software would make four years later.

Evil grows darkest in the shadow.

APOGEE SOFTWARE/3D REALMS

Apogee was both a developer and publisher for PC games, popularizing the “shareware” model of distribution where a sizable portion of the game would be put out for free, and people could pay for the rest of the game. Wolf3D was actually published under Apogee, but id went solo when they made Doom. Regardless, they made some very notable FPS games.

RISE OF THE TRIAD (1994)

Made on a heavily modified Wolf3D engine, Rise of the Triad was made after Tom Hall left id since Doom’s development went in a direction he wasn’t interested in. It’s much less technically impressive than Doom, though you can choose one of five characters to play as, as well as look up and down and even bounce off of bounce pads.

Rise of the Triad: Dark War - GOG / Steam

There is one RotT source port called WinRott (and a more modern version called WinRottAPI). However, it has numerous problems and frequently crashes, making the standard DOSBox version you get with GOG and Steam the more appealing option.

Ludicrous gibs!

DUKE NUKEM 3D (1996)

The first of the Big Build Engine Three, Duke Nukem 3D is the third game in the series, the previous two being sidescrolling shooters. Alien bastards have invaded Earth once again, and Duke Nukem takes it upon himself to blast their asses out of the galaxy, cracking one-liners along the way.

Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour - Steam

Atomic Edition is the original “all-in-one” package that includes bonus campaigns which was sold on GOG, and Megaton Edition was a modern rerelease of Atomic Edition on Steam. However, these versions of the game were ripped off of digital storefronts due to Gearbox Software acquiring the Duke IP. The only version of Duke3D to buy right now on digital stores is World Tour. It does not include the original bonus campaigns, but it has an all-new 5th episode where Duke Nukem says “Bazinga”.

Honestly, just have Atomic Edition. This is the version I had before it was taken off GOG. I don’t care. Don’t give Randy Pitchford your money.

The most notable Duke3D source port is eduke32, which adds a lot of modern bells and whistles as well as some fancy new visuals. I’m not sure it’s compatible with World Tour though.

Those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride!

SHADOW WARRIOR (1997)

The second big Build Engine game, Shadow Warrior is fairly similar to Duke3D, albeit with a (slightly racially insensitive) Asian theme. You play as Lo Wang, chopping and blasting your way through demons and monsters to stop a corporate overlord from taking over Japan, cracking bad puns along the way.

Shadow Warrior Classic (1997) - GOG / Steam (free!) Shadow Warrior Redux - GOG / Steam

The Classic version of Shadow Warrior is just the original game running in DOSBox. It works pretty well, and for the low price of free it’s worth a play! The Redux version is essentially an official source port, like what Megaton Edition was with Duke3D. It does cost money, but it runs great.

There were a couple of source ports, but the Redux version basically invalidates them.

Who want some Wang??

BLOOD (1997)

The third big Build Engine game. Blood was made by Monolith, more well known these days for F.E.A.R. and Shadow of Mordor. Blood’s a bit of a weird one compared to Duke and Shadow Warrior; its setting is ambiguous and your main melee weapon of choice is a pitchfork. Caleb is an undead gunslinger who’s on a revenge quest, slaughtering cultists and monsters along the way while cracking snide comments.

Blood: One Whole Unit Blood - GOG / Steam

Blood is in a weird situation, where it likely would have had a rerelease similar to Duke3D Megaton or Shadow Warrior Redux, but Atari has a stranglehold on the rights and refuses to do anything with it, even release the source code.

Despite that, Blood does have a couple of source ports of sorts, the standout being BloodGDX. It’s a bizarre reverse-engineered piece of work that runs in Java, but it’s probably the most accurate version of Blood you can play besides the DOSBox version. On the downside, it doesn’t display the pre-rendered cutscenes. The alternative is BloodCM, which is based on eduke32.

There is a Blood II but it’s poopy.

I live... again!

BUNGIE

A lot of people forget Bungie made games before Halo existed. This is because most of the games they made before Halo were for the Macintosh. While Doom dominated the IBM PC market, Bungie decided to carve out a niche on a competing platform, and it worked.

MARATHON (1994/1995/1996)

The guys at Bungie thought Wolf3D and Doom were pretty cool, and they wanted to put their own spin on it. The pace is a bit slower than it’s contemporaries, but Marathon’s focus is instead on exploration and story, which is told through computer terminals. Aliens attack your colony ship, and the onboard AI start to go a little haywire. It’s up to you, a lone security officer, to beat back the Pfhor and prevent Durandal from... oh never mind, there he goes.

Marathon - Free Download Marathon 2: Durandal - Free Download Marathon Infinity - Free Download

The Marathon Trilogy in it’s entirety was put up for free by Bungie, source code and all. The main source port for it is Aleph One. It should just work after install, though you might need to fiddle with the in-game options to get it to how you want it.

All three games come with hi-res texture packs that are based on the Xbox Live Arcade version of Marathon 2, and they kinda don’t look so good sometimes. You can turn them off in the Plugins menu under Environment options to get the authentic aesthetics. The Field of View of the Marathon games is a little low by default, but you can copypaste a script from the PC Gaming Wiki page to remedy that. I played with 100 FOV personally.

Make liberal use of your automap, but conservative use of your ammo. You can only save at designated save stations. Marathon 1 has background music but the other two games don’t. Marathon Infinity’s plot includes timeline hopping. Have fun!

Frog blast the vent core!

EPIC MEGAGAMES & DIGITAL EXTREMES

Before Fortnite, before Warframe, before Gears of War, there was Unreal. Epic Games is most known for the Unreal Engine these days, but there’s a game series behind that name, and it used to be Quake’s biggest competitor.

UNREAL (1998/1999)

Like most games here, Unreal was made to be a technical showcase for the engine it’s running on. This is important because visual fidelity was pretty much the game’s main selling point, and it worked. People were really impressed with how it looked at the time. You play as a escaped convict from a prison ship that crash-landed on a mysterious alien planet, simply trying to find a way to escape.

Unreal Gold - GOG / Steam Unreal Tournament GOTY - GOG / Steam Steam Bundle (includes later Unreal games)

These games should just work out of the box, but you can install the Oldunreal fanpatch to make them more compatible with modern systems and resolutions. Make sure you download the one for Unreal Gold, otherwise it won’t let you play the expansion. Unreal Tournament has a couple of patches that are needed if you want to play it online these days, as well as this fix for sound and some of the graphics.

There is an Unreal II but it wasn’t made by Epic or Digital Extremes, and it’s kind of poopy.

From where many have died, you have escaped.

VALVE SOFTWARE

Before the rise of Steam, Valve used to make games. While they don’t really do that anymore, their back catalog of developed games is impressive and impacted the industry in more ways than one.

HALF-LIFE (1998/1999/2001)

Valve’s aim with Half-Life was to make an immersive world that told a story, while also having Quake-style action as it’s main gameplay. Half-Life got a lot of praise for not only telling a decent little story, but for letting players keep control the entire time and never forcing people to watch a single cutscene. A research facility accidentally opens a portal to a border dimension, from which an alien invasion pours out. It’s up to Dr. Freeman to fight for his survival, as an all-out war commences.

Half-Life - Steam Half-Life: Opposing Force - Steam Half-Life: Blue Shift - Steam Steam Bundle (also includes Team Fortress Classic)

Half-Life is still somewhat regularly updated by Valve to keep it compatible with modern systems, so the game should just work after install. That being said, Xash3D is a reverse engineered version of GoldSrc that aims to remove some limitations and restored cut features from the original engine, though it’s not necessary to play Half-Life or it’s expansions.

There exists Half-Life: Source, which is HL1 straight ported to the HL2 engine, but it sucks. It was so bad, fans created Black Mesa, a full HL1 remaster for the HL2 engine. Black Mesa is great, but don’t play it until you’ve played the original.

They’re waiting for you, Gordon. In the test chamber...

COUNTER-STRIKE & TEAM FORTRESS

While these are strictly multiplayer-only games, I would be remiss to not include them. Counter-Strike and Team Fortress’s impacts on the world of competitive multiplayer gaming is extremely important and is worth checking out at least once.

Counter-Strike - Steam Team Fortress Classic - Steam

The original Counter-Strike should work out of the box and is still actively played by quite a number of people today. Team Fortress Classic still has a playerbase, but not as much as CS. The newest versions of these games, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2, are still incredibly popular to this day.

Enemy spotted.

LOOKING GLASS STUDIOS

I personally don’t have much experience with Looking Glass and their legacy of games, but it just wouldn’t be right to not mention them considering how important they were to the growth of the first-person genre of games. Not strictly shooters like Doom or Quake, these games pioneered the “immersive sim” subgenre with heavy focus on exploration and story over blast-up-your-ass gunplay. If you prefer a slower pace and some actual story to sink your teeth into, look no further. Though, be prepared to wrestle with some of the controls.

ULTIMA UNDERWORLD (1992/1993)

Ultima was primarily a top-down RPG series, but Underworld takes that formula and puts it in the first-person perspective. The game pioneered many advanced features not seen before in video games, and heavily inspired games like The Elder Scrolls, Bioshock, and even Wolfenstein 3D. You play once again as The Avatar, thrown into the Great Stygian Abyss to look for an ungrateful baron’s kidnapped daughter.

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss - GOG Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds - GOG

There does not exist any source ports or fan patches for this game, so DOSBox is all you get. It seems that the GOG versions has a few issues, but they have fixes.

You see a rat. You see a rat. You see a rat. You see a rat. You...

SYSTEM SHOCK (1994/1999)

Video game stories about AIs going rouge and wanting to become gods seems to be a common theme in 1994. System Shock 1 and 2 are considered masterpieces by classic PC game enthusiasts. You play a cyber-hacker in the future and some corporate executive guy asks you to hack his space station’s AI to give him full control over it, in exchange for cyber implants. You agree, you do it, and as you wake from the implanting operation, the AI has pretty much killed everyone aboard and is planning on blasting major cities on on Earth with the station’s mining laser.

System Shock: Enhanced Edition - GOG / Steam System Shock 2 - GOG / Steam Steam Bundle

Enhanced Edition, much like some of the rereleases for the Build Engine games, is geared to make the game playable on modern systems, in more ways than one. For instance, in the original game, you cannot use the mouse to look around. Enhanced Edition lets you do so. It also comes with the original version of System Shock running in DOSBox, if you’re so inclined to play it.

System Shock 2 has a whole slew of mods and patches, too many for me to discern and sort through. Maybe I’ll update this once I actually play the game so I can put up only the worthwhile fixes and mods.

Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?

THIEF (1998/2000)

A bit of a departure from most of the games on this list, even other Looking Glass games, Thief is primarily a stealth game, focusing on moving quietly and discreetly while swiping rare artifacts and precious heirlooms. Though Garrett, the player character, often finds himself in much darker conspiracies throughout his adventures.

Thief: Gold - GOG / Steam Thief II: The Metal Age - GOG / Steam Steam Bundle (includes Thief 3 and the crappy Thief reboot)

Thief Gold has a patch called TFix that helps the game run on modern systems. Thief II has a similar patch called Tafferpatcher. Both games use the same engine, which was also used for System Shock 2.

Some people in The City are too rich for their own good. Lucky they have me to give them a hand.

ION STORM

Ion Storm is kind of weird to look back on in hindsight. John Romero was essentially forced out of id Software after Quake came out because he spent too much time goofing around and not actually working, so he got back with his buddy Tom Hall, and they formed Ion Storm. They managed to bring in Warren Spector and some other talent from Looking Glass as well.

DAIKATANA (2000)

Okay, I’ll be honest, this is not that good of a game, but it has historical significance so I’m including it. Mr. Romero was feeling a bit big in his britches and wanted to make the best game ever. This game would be Daikatana, featuring quite possibly the most infamous and aggressive marketing campaign in gaming history. You play as Hiro, and along with your allies Superfly and Mikiko, you must fix the timeline and prevent the evil Mishima from rewriting history and becoming ruler of the world.

Daikatana - GOG / Steam

Daikatana runs on the Quake 2 engine, which is fairly flexible and should run out of the box. Romero put out the source code for the game a year after release, and from that we got the 1.3 patch, which is still being maintained by the few fans this game has.

John Romero’s about to make you his bitch.

DEUS EX (2000)

While the Dallas studio was plagued with problems of ego, Ion Storm Austin diligently worked with Warren Spector to create the cyberpunk Deus Ex. The themes and topics in this game are honestly more relevant today than they were when the game released. You play as JC Denton, a cybernetically enhanced anti-terrorist agent who gets caught up in a web of conspiracies involving organizations like the Illuminati.

Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition - GOG / Steam

Deus Ex runs on the Unreal engine, so it should just work. The Steam version has a bug where music is accidentally omitted from a level, but this is fixed in the GOG version. There are some fanpatches as well, though I dunno which ones are good or necessary.

There’s a Deus Ex 2 but it’s poopy.

My vision is augmented.

OTHER NOTABLE GAMES

There’s still a lot more old-school goodness to play, even though they may not be as big as the ones listed above. They may also deviate a little from definition of “old-school FPS”.

STRIFE (1996)

Even the Doom engine got an immersive sim game. Strife is a fantasy-based adventure FPS where you work with rebels to overthrow The Order. Not to be confused with Strife, the MOBA.

The Original Strife: Veteran Edition - GOG / Steam

This game was in abandonware status for the longest time before Night Dive Studios managed to find the licenses and release this modern version. It uses a fork of GZDoom and comes with a whole host of snazzy features like bloom and anti-aliasing. It even comes with the original files if you just want to play using Chocolate Doom or whatever.

DARK FORCES (1995/1997/1998)

LucasArts were famous for their adventure games, but they wanted a piece of that FPS pie too. Star Wars was and still is the hottest series in sci-fi, so it’s no surprise it had its share of games. The Dark Forces games haven’t aged quite as well as most other games on the list, but if you’re looking for that Star Wars flavor, this is it. You play as Kyle Katarn, an Imperial-turned-mercenary working for whoever forks over the most cash. The cowards at Disney retconned these games with Rogue One.

STAR WARS Dark Forces - GOG / Steam STAR WARS Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - GOG / Steam Steam Bundle (includes the Jedi Knight games below)

The Steam versions of these games are outdated and many aspects of them just don’t work, like the music. The GOG versions are leagues more functional. Jedi Knight comes with Mysteries of the Sith, which runs on the same engine.

There are no fixes or patches for Dark Forces. XL Engine is the only source port that exists but development on it has been seemingly abandoned, and it remains buggy and unfinished. I can’t even find a proper link to a download, everything keeps 404ing.

Dark Forces II has an unofficial patch and a laundry list of various fixes on its PC Gaming Wiki page. Mysteries of the Sith is much of the same.

JEDI KNIGHT (2002/2003)

Made by Raven Software, who previously made Heretic/Hexen, Jedi Knight continues the adventures of Kyle Katarn, as he obtains the powers of the Force and wields a lightsaber. Shooting sections are in first person, but lightsaber combat is in third person.

STAR WARS Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast - GOG / Steam STAR WARS Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy - GOG / Steam Steam Bundle (includes the Dark Forces games above)

Both games run on the Quake 3 engine, so they should just work fresh from install, though you might need to mess with config files to get proper widescreen resolutions. Jedi Academy still has an active playerbase for its multiplayer!

DESCENT (1995/1996/1999)

Are you sick of being limited to running around on the ground? Then Descent might be for you! Piloting a space ship, you’re given “six degrees of freedom” to bob and weave your way around enemies! You play as a merc hired by a mining corporation to investigate and destroy a computer virus that’s hijacking their mining robots.

Descent - GOG / Steam Descent II - GOG / Steam Descent 3 - GOG / Steam

There are a couple of source ports for Descent. DXX-Rebirth seems focused on maintaining the vanilla feel of the original, and D2X-XL is more focused on adding modern features, like OpenGL rendering. Both of these should work for Descent and Descent II.

Descent 3 does not have any source ports and might require some work to get running.

REDNECK RAMPAGE (1997/1998)

While Duke, Wang, and Caleb stole the show with the Build Engine, Redneck Rampage is still a favorite among some fans. Includes a booze-o-meter!

Redneck Rampage Collection - GOG / Steam

The collection includes all three games in one package. Redneck Rampage is also on Steam but the quality of that version is so poor that you’d be better off just buying the GOG version. One source port exists but is extremely buggy, so you’re better off just playing it with DOSBox.

TUROK (1997/1999)

Most commonly thought of as Nintendo 64 games, Turok did make its way to PC. Turok is a little more arcade-y than most other games of its time, using a checkpoint save system and lives instead of just restarting the level over again like other games. Commit dinozoid genocide as Turok, Son of Stone!

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - GOG / Steam Turok 2: Seeds of Evil - GOG / Steam

These versions of Turok are remasters done by Night Dive Studios, so they should just work with no issues. N64 soundtrack best soundtrack. They’re drum-tastic!

SERIOUS SAM (2001/2002)

Out of Croatia comes Serious Sam. Including Serious Sam as an “old-school” FPS is pushing it, considering the series was actually made as a throwback to old-school FPS. At this point, it’s done its best to keep old-school traditions alive, so it deserves inclusion. You play as “Serious” Sam Stone, traveling through time to thwart the evil alien Mental.

Serious Sam: The First Encounter - GOG / Steam Serious Sam: The Second Encounter - GOG / Steam

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter - Steam Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter - Steam

Croteam remade TFE and TSE in a newer version of their Serious Engine, and while the HD versions are the ones I’d personally recommend, the original versions still work great and some people still swear by them over the HD versions. It’s up to you and your preferences.

LET’S WRAP THIS UP

Obviously this list is not the end-all-be-all of EVERY first-person shooter that’s considered “old-school”. There’s pre-Wolf3D stuff like Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D. There’s stuff during the mid-late 90s like Blake Stone, Soldier of Fortune, SiN, and Tribes. Hell, there’s even stuff like Rainbow Six and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, which paved the way for Call of Duty and the rise of modern military FPS. I never promised a full comprehensive list, just stuff I think is notable and fun. Though if you think there’s something vital that’s missing, let me know and I might add it!

If you need help getting some of this stuff to run, I will help if you shoot me a message, but please actually Google your problems before coming to me. Other people have this stuff figured out pretty well, and I will pretty much Google your problem if it’s something I don’t know.

Regardless, please check out these games and have fun! Each one has its own quirks. And remember:

#doom #quake #wolfenstein #unreal #fps #ths writeups #long post

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thessalian · 6 years ago

Text

Thess vs Dump Stats

I can’t stay on the computer long because pinched nerve in shoulder (afuckinggain), but one thing I wanted to get down before I forgot was a thing about dump stats. You can tell a lot about a person and the character they are playing by their dump stats. I mean, best stats just show you their class. Dump stats, when a group’s as awesome as mine, say a lot more about who the character is than what the character is. So:

Darvin Taylor, Bard; Ava Vanedar, Ranger: STR

Okay, this one’s a more classically min-maxy sort of choice, because very little a bard does has to do with strength (unless you’re multi-classing as bard-barian). Same with Ranger - they want Dex and Wis, mostly. But that says a fair bit about both players and characters, mostly in how the dump stat is justified. They’re noble-born, both of them; they weren’t out in fields working, because that was commoner shit. Of course, with @fauxfire76, there just isn’t a modifier at all, whereas Marion ended up with a -1 on her Strength, but even that speaks to their backstories. Darvin’s father wasn’t a noble, and maintained his business even when he married up, so Darvin (back when he was Reginald) probably helped in a fetch-and-carry capacity to try to get him into the ‘family business’. Of course, then he hit his teen years and was sneaking out to seedy taverns and probably had to punch his way out of trouble once or twice. That would probably at least not let him grow into a total weakling. Ava, meanwhile, learned to hunt with the bow but was a full-on noble lady being prepared for advantageous marriages, so she really wasn’t going to be running around doing anything that gives anyone a Strength score worth a shit.

Remi Crestwind, Paladin: INT, DEX

Poor @hyperewok1 - while he didn’t roll any negative modifiers, he did end up with very little middle ground between ‘nothing’ and ‘WOW’. The no-modifier stats for Remi make a certain amount of sense; a baker’s daughter probably isn’t going to get that much in the way of an education - not that Remi was particularly interested in the academic anyway. As for the dexterity ... mostly I think we can attribute that to her almost never being out of full plate; I know you can do some pretty impressive shit in full plate, but it still limits your range of movement compared to, say, leather or cloth, so any dexterity she had probably kind of atrophied. Small price to pay when you consider how much that armour has saved her ass, though.

(Amusing sidebar - Remi’s NPC girlfriend, whose life progression went “street rat / northern barbarian / prostitute”, is smarter than Remi is, with an INT score of +1.)

Hazel Hearthheart, Cleric; Froseth, Monk: INT

So @miaaoi and @true0neutral picked INT as their ‘dump stat’ (at a straight-up 0 for both) for much the same reasons. They’re not stupid; they’re sheltered and inexperienced. Hazel’s a farmer’s daughter who was way more into “smite the evil, heal the good” than any academic reading when she trained at Mount Pelor, and Froseth in his isolated little monastery didn’t get a whole lot of acclimation to the outside world beyond what he could glean from listening to dwarven merchants in the courtyard from time to time. Which is how he learned dwarven ... and why he knows so many dwarven swear words.

(Ironically, these two have comparatively low INT but exceedingly high WIS.)

Nai Vanimar, Warlock: WIS

Poor @sfwarlock - he rolled pretty poorly compared to the rest of the group. Everyone else got at least a +3 in something, and everyone currently in party has their lowest stat at either 0 or, at worst, -1. Nai has nothing above a +2 with a -2 in Wisdom, and while his skills do pick up some of the slack there, that WIS score is low enough that he has actually taken to rolling a d20 to figure out if he has the wisdom to think of that solution / say that thing / not say that thing etc ... just as a matter of roleplay (because the player’s wise enough to think of it, but the character, not so much). And the reasoning? “Yeah, the deal got me out of a potential eternity of torture but making an open-ended deal with not one but two archfey without even asking terms first is probably not the act of a wise man”.

(Amusing sidebar: Nai’s WIS score is exactly the same as a certain half-orc Pact of the Hexblade Warlock as played by one Travis Willingham.)

I think what amuses me is the fact that, apart from Darvin and Ava, everyone else in the party picked one of the two mental stats as their dump stat. It’s a sensible thing to do, as I think @fauxfire76 has been discovering; if he had picked Wisdom as his dump stat, some of the stupid shit he gets himself into would make a lot more sense on paper. As it is, we’re having to say that Darvin is growing into his wisdom to explain the sheer number of times he’s put his foot in his mouth over the course of the campaign. Basically, everyone else seems to have gone, “Well, this will at least explain all the stuff I don’t actually know, or when I do something stupid because I missed a key piece of information!” It makes my job easier, actually - it generally keeps me from having to say, “There is no way your character is dumb enough to do that” ... too often, anyway. Because frankly? Most of them are.

#Thess RPs #Critical Tumbl

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anamartinezblogs-blog · 6 years ago

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Internet Safety

The internet is a source for thousands of things. It is a source for information that you didn’t know, school work, work in general, and even just to watch funny cat videos to pass time. You even use it right now to read this blog! Anyways, we all know all the great things about the internet, right? Well, its time for me to open up your eyes and tell you all the dangers and precautions you should know about using the internet. In this blog, I will tell you what online scams are, different types of online scams and how to avoid them, how to stay safe on social media, and finally some fun facts. Hope you enjoy!

Online Scams

With the internet constantly growing and changing, a LOT of people are starting to use it in their everyday lives. I hate to break it to you, but not all of these people use the internet for good. Sometimes, people use it to get money from others or to trick others into doing something. This is what you call an online scam. An online scam is a scheme online that tries to trick people into doing things that can benefit the tricker and/or harm the victim. There are MANY different types of online scams, each getting worse and worse. There are prize scams, money scams, friendship/romance scams, and lastly fraud scams. It’s a bit overwhelming seeing all these types of scams that you’ve never heard about before, so I’ll now explain what each of those is and give some advice about how to avoid them.

Prize Scams- When using the internet, you may come across a sidebar or an advertisement saying that you won something. Prize scams include online lottery scams, scratchie scams and travel scams. These scams inform you that you have won a prize (eg. a large sum of money, shopping vouchers, a free holiday or travel related products), and to claim it you are asked to send money or provide personal information. You may be excited to win something, but beware! 99.999% of the time, these “prizes” aren’t even real! The whole trick is to make you want the prize, and then to make you give them your address. That is a HUGE no-no because by giving them your address, you are now vulnerable for your home to be reached by any random person online. You can avoid this type of scam by simply not believing that you won anything unless you hear it from a source you know for A FACT is legit.

Money Scams- Sometimes when you are online shopping, you come across a website that has exactly what you want and a great price. You might think “wow! I can’t believe this is so cheap and convenient! I’m definitely going to buy this!” However, that’s exactly what the scammer wants you to think. The whole point of the scam is so that you put your credit card information on the website thinking that it will buy you what you want, but then next thing you know the things you bought never show up and you are missing hundreds of dollars! These scammers trick you into putting your credit card information, meaning they can now buy anything they want with it. Scary right? Well, there are many ways you can avoid this. You can make sure that it is a legit website with reliable customer reviews, and always shop from places like Amazon or eBay that you know are not a scam.

Friendship/romance scams- Have you ever went online and found someone really cool to talk to? Maybe you even wanted to meet them in real life and start a relationship with them, whether it’s a romantic one or a friendship one. Well, I’m sorry but that is one of the most dangerous things you can do in your entire life! On the internet, you never really know who is on the other side of the chat or what they really want to do with you. Even if they tell you that they are who they say they are or even send pictures, never ask to meet them or tell them any personal information. Try avoiding online chats with people you don’t know in the first place, but if you do come across one, make sure you know the motto “Stranger danger!” and never send out any personal information. It may actually save your life.

Fraud Scams- This is a big one. Everyone in their life has come across a fraud scammer some way or another. A fraud is someone who pretends to be someone else, and they don’t say who they actually are. There are many different types of fraud scams on the internet. I actually have some experience dealing with this kind of scam. One time, I was online looking for a babysitting job, and some lady contacted me saying she has 2 kids that need babysitting. She then sent me a $2000 through the mail saying I was getting “pre-paid”, but then told me that I needed to send her 1500$ online. She did this because once you send money online, it immediately becomes available. Guess what though? THE CHECK WAS FAKE!! She was about to earn 1500$ and rid me of $2000 (that I didn’t even have)! Now don’t worry, I knew this was a scam so I didn’t follow along with it, but it still could have ended badly. These types of scammers do this to a bunch of people every day online, and my story was just a little something so you would know what it would be like. Never trust someone online when it comes to money!

Fraud scams continued- That’s not the only type of fraud scam. The first type was people pretending to be someone else trying to get your money, but the second type I’m about to explain is when scammers don't try to get your money, but they pretend like they already have your money. Say you’re doing something online, and somehow someone out there has access to your credit card and ID. With access to these things, they could literally pretend to be you and use all of your money! Anyways, you can avoid these types of scams by NEVER letting anyone online see any of your property that proves who you are (such as passport, ID, credit card etc). Scams like this easily ruin people’s lives, and you don’t want to be one of those people, do you? Follow my tips and you won’t be!

How to be safe on social media

Now that I’ve covered the main issue on online scams, it is time to talk about something we all know a lot about. Social media! These days, people of all ages have many social media accounts. It is a great way to stay in touch with friends, look at trendy things, and see some celebrities around the world. Social media is great and all, but I think we all need to be educated on how to be safe when using it. In this section of my blog, I will tell you some tips about using social media and how to be safe with it. Enjoy!

Instant messaging- Always make sure that you are talking to who you think you are. You want to avoid any fraud scams (people saying they are someone else). Always be careful about what you send someone else because if it gets in the wrong hands you could get into some serious trouble. There is a little rule I like to follow, and I hope you’ll follow it too. It goes like this- “if you wouldn’t want your parents, teacher, or priest to see what you are sending, then don’t send it!”

Posting Pictures- When you are posting a picture online, remember to make sure you know that basically anyone can see this picture. This means that you can’t have any personal information showing, such as your address, phone number, credit cards etc. Also, keep your pictures appropriate for all audiences. It’s better to make your account private so that people you know can see this, and not just random strangers.

Using Strong Passwords- This should go without saying. If someone hacks into your social media account, then they can post anything they want and send any message they want pretending to be you. This can really harm your reputation and may even be dangerous to you because of how much personal information is on your account. Just use a strong password no one can guess and you’ll be fine.

Know who is on your account- Always know who is following you and who can see the things you post. If it is someone you don’t know, block them. If it is someone you do know, talk to them in person about it to confirm that it is their real account and not a fake one. It is very important that you are aware of who can see who you are because it is very dangerous to be vulnerable to strangers. It’s best to have a private account and closely manage your followers.

Fun Facts about the internet

There are currently seven people who hold the key to the internet. In the case of any event which makes the internet shut down, these 7 people have a key to reboot its internal part.

All of us are familiar with browser names like Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. But the very first and popular web browser was known to be Mosiac which started its services in the year 1993 and was a major part of internet till 1997.

The Internet has gained about 5 million users in just 5 years. It took 13 years for TV to gather these many users.

There are over 1 billion internet users today which is about 20% of the world’s population.

An average surfing session lasts about only 51 minutes.

Sweden has the most number of internet users across the world with about 75% of the population using it.

The satellite-based internet availability has made it possible to access the internet all over the world. Still there are certain countries like North Korea and China who are denied access by the government.

It is estimated that people who use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are likely to spend their 10% of a lifetime on it.

Asia is a continent with the largest number of internet users.

19% married couple meets online, making it a suitable marriage bureau.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog and learned something about the internet and how to be safe with it. Remember the information about online scams and social media so you can stay safe on the web! Thanks for reading, and good luck out there on the web!!

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ericlwoods · 6 years ago

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Not sure how to start this write up. There is some hesitancy on my part, but not for the usual reasons.

Not for fear of Leica adherent backlash. I am a casual member of the same. Very much enjoyed a brief Leica film dalliance I fully understand the Leica allure.

https://flic.kr/p/26omc7J

And I loved what the Leica M3 (KEH Blog Post here) could do.

https://flic.kr/p/YPNiHi

What happened? As much as I loved the M3 functionally it was a dead end fiscally.

Body: I would rather in body metering. But that means a film M6 (M5 also technically) which currently goes for more than a few brand new full-frame digital cameras.

Lens: Had and loved the Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5. But why not a proper Leica? They are quite expensive, especially when you go wider than f/2. Multiples of the cost of the M3 body alone used in fact.

Media: An M mount digital Leica was beyond my reach. The cost of moving to a digital M mount was a hard proposition for me personally.

Sidebar: Not saying digital M mounts are not worth the price. They are. Simply a matter of them costing more than I am willing or able to spend.

What did I do next? I already enjoyed Voigtlander lenses so I went for a less expensive Voigtlander Bessa R2 that has in body metering.

https://flic.kr/p/261676d

Perfect for my purposes for much less spend. So it looks like I dodged the Leica bullet. What happened? Put simply the Q happened.

As soon as it was released back in 2015 I knew the Q would haunt me. Some scoffed at such an expensive all in one camera. Not me. Without knowing anything more the mere fact that this was a camera with:

An AF Summilux lens included where a manual focus M version would cost more alone.

No rangefinder, but zoom and peeking aids like those I grew to appreciate on other mirrorless cameras.

Full frame. As much as I appreciate the Leica name I would not purchase a less than full frame lens Leica product.

I stopped reading further. Knew I was in trouble. A close encounter with a Q in the wild proved problematic as well. On a local photo walk accomplished photographer Edde Burgess took what is still to this day my favorite portrait of me.

Edde took this with his Leica Q that I tried not to look directly at during the walk for too long. In short, I had a medium format film camera in hand and a bag full of digital gear, while Edde was rolling with one self-contained wonder. Still, I resisted.

Then after some years went by…

A Q showed up at my local camera shop recently.

Dang it.

Took it in hand and told myself not to look at the price on the bottom. I looked. Was initially stunned by, but not really surprised by, the price. Holding its value better than I had hoped.

Went home and looked at the prices of examples online and realized the Q really holds its value. This local example was very much priced to move. If I ever was going to get one this would likely have to be it. Dang it.

Went on to finally read and watch the reviews and deep dive into the specs I had all avoided all of these years. Hope was that these would back me down. Snap me out of it. Sheesh. A rare consensus. Praise after praise. And the specs listed features I did not expect of any all in one camera, especially a Leica.

OIS

Found this particularly surprising. My one real bogey, the RX1, does not have this feature. Digital stabilization does not count. Having long become spoiled with OIS it is now a must-have feature.

Macro

So avoided early reviews and specs that I had no idea that it had a macro function. The party piece is the shifting distance markings. Amazing bit of engineering and design that actually works.

Leaf shutter.

Silent shooting with physical shutter up to 1/2000s and flash sync up to 1/500s. Will not ever likely use flash, but the silent shooting is a definite plus.

E-shutter.

Up to 1/16,000s shutter. What? This means completely silent stills in daylight with the aperture wide open without an ND filter any time I want.

WiFi/NFC.

Well implemented remote control and file transfers by all accounts. I see you Leica.

10fps… 10fps!

3 years old and bests the rightly highly regarded newbie 8 fps A7iii (No ding intended. Love that camera. Just facts.).

AF.

Fast and accurate AF on a full frame Leica. That is a ‘take my money’ sentence.

Direct manual focus.

With assists. WIth hard stops. Focus tab with an ingenious AF/MF switch built in.

Not drive by wire. With zoom and peeking. No. it is not a proper rangefinder, but it more than makes up for it with it’s well thought out and elegant implementation.

Face detect AF.

Another ‘take my money’ feature.

Touch screen with touch focus.

Greatly helps to mitigate the omission of a tilt screen for me.

AF Tracking.

Actually works.

Favorites menu.

Most recent firmware I installed added a favorites menu where you can choose what comes up first. Found the menus already to be intuitive and quick to navigate, but this is even better.

User profiles.

Quickly switch between my favorite self defined configurations (B&W/High Speed/Street/Normal) just like I have set on all of my other cameras.

Video.

Not pro grade. No mic jack. Not 4K. But AF tracking is good and more than serviceable for the few occasions I would want to capture video.

Decided a test drive was in order. Does it add up? Have been disappointed in the past when real life experience does not match the hype and/or spec sheet. Not the case here.

Lower price non Leica comparisons.

Having owned and tried many digital cameras (Sony RX1 line, Fuji X100 line, Ricoh GR line and the like) I can honestly say that this camera is greater than the sum of its parts. It is not about capability since any number of cameras can produce excellent images. But even if you took the word Summilux out of the equation this camera matched or bested every camera listed above ergonomically in my book. I spent near no time staring at the camera wondering how to change setting X or Y. Switch to MF? Move the focus wheel on the lens away from AF. Change the aperture manually? Move the dial on the lens off of A. Change the shutter speed manually? Move top plate mounted shutter dial off of A. Change the ISO? Press button on the back marked ISO and turn the wheel. Hey, what is this unmarked dial on the top do? What do you know it adjusts the exposure compensation. All this in the first few moments after having picked up the camera without ever picking up a manual or visiting Youtube. Your mileage may vary, but add the Summilux name back in on top of that (and my notes below) and it is a no brainer for me.

Higher price Leica comparisons.

Leica M acolytes look away until the next paragraph. Nothing to see here… Seems absurd to say, but at the Qs price point there is value to be had here. To achieve the equivalent Leica M specs of this lens and body combination one would need to spend many thousands more for a digital 24MP M 240 body (new or used) or Summilux lens (any focal length used or 28mm new). And I did say ‘or’ not ‘and’. Combine the two and you easily surpass what I paid for my dadmobile daily driver on up into five digits. Some would say that an M advantage is that you can change the lens. Moot point for me. Truth is that if I ever did buy a comparable M lens and body there would be no budget left ever for another lens. And no AF at that price. Tell me of a less expensive AF true Summilux full frame experience anywhere and I am all ears. Not arguing worth. Stating what I am personally willing to pay.

But both comparisons ultimately miss the point. To say the most cliched of cliched things you have to use it and evaluate the results for it to make sense. Hard to relay in words, but since we are here let me try. Imagine if you combine:

Summilux.

I.E. outstanding sharpness wide open, class leading sharpness stopped down a little, great focus fall off, great contrast, creamy bokeh, and wonderful colors. Best lens I own hands down is permafused to this camera.

Near DSLR speed swift and accurate AF acquisition.

Even in low light. How they did this with contrast detect AF only I have no idea. Some Panasonic partner magic perhaps?

10fps.

With useable AF-C tracking in a pinch. That bests all of my other quite capable interchangeable lens cameras.

Best of the best mirrorless manual focus implementation.

Utterly silent shooting.

Best of any digital I own 1/16,000s shutter speed available.

Not to be used for panning/fast moving objects or it will distort, but fantastic in relatively static brightly lit conditions. 1/2000s leaf shutter available if need be for motion.

24.2MP.

This the goldilocks MP count for me. Any less is not enough of a post crop detail safety net for my liking. Any more eats into archive RAW archival storage space quickly and noticeably impacts the speed of my post processing workflow.

Full frame.

Some of my favorite work ever was done in MFT. APS-C is just fine for most all purposes. But if available I prefer full frame.

OIS.

Mentioned above, but deserves mentioning again.

Time lapse, panorama and other scene modes.

Have not gotten around to using any of this yet. But glad it has them.

Macro.

Mentioning again, because this is not just macro writ large on a non macro lens, but actual fast AF wonderfully implemented real deal macro capabilities.

EVF.

Best EVF I have ever used. And I have used a lot of EVFs.

In body 35mm and 50mm field of view crop.

May seem silly since you can crop after the fact. Made more useful since the images are so sharp that cropping still leaves plenty of detail.

Great for sharing real time with the Leica app. Crop while you shoot instead of after the fact.

If you shoot RAW and JPEG like I do it is the best of both worlds since RAW files are not cropped.

Monochrome JPEGs.

There are other JPEG settings, but this is the only one that matters to me.

Small.

No, not as small as the also full frame RX1 line, but tried it and that camera is too small for my beef mitts. Bought and sold two RX100 cameras for the same reason. For me there is such a thing as too small. A nice size with half case and hood, but remove both and I am able to get this camera into a jacket pocket. Plus more compact than a similar M set up. And far more compact than a similarly spec’d A7III and lens. I believe this may be the most compact brighter than f/2 full frame digital camera and body combination on the market currently.

Summilux, summilux, and in conclusion summilux.

But not so fast. There have to be minuses, right?

Focal length.

This was one potential demerit that concerned me. As I have pointed out ad nauseam my usual go-to prime focal length is 50mm or thereabouts. But in use, the 28mm focal length has not proved to be an issue at all. It has forced me to move in to get the shot sometimes, but this is where the small, silent, and quick nature of this camera pays dividends. So far I have thoroughly enjoyed taking shots while in the fray rather than having to back up and away. Has proven handy with environmental candid shots also. And if I do need to step back the bright aperture, ample MPs, accurate focus, and very sharp lens means that cropping is no issue. I should not have been surprised since two of my favorite all in one film cameras are 28mm.

Lack of weatherproofing.

Would have been nice. But not really an issue for me. Some of my cameras are weatherproofed technically and they all get put away at the first sign of rain regardless.

Saved the most biased, eye roll/cringe inducing, subjective assessment for last.

Fun.

Fun to use. Fun to review the results. A highly technical and very capable contraption that is simple to use for any situation that does not require a superwide or telephoto lens. I have cameras that have high keeper rates. The Q is the rare camera that has a high “wow factor” rate. And the only one I own film or digital with that “wow factor’ that does not have some usability compromise involved.

So much so that I have gone from carrying a gear bag everywhere to just carrying this camera. In fact I have already traded quite a bit of the gear the Q displaces without hesitation to partially fund this acquisition.

But lastly it has been out so long you might mention. True. But I know of no camera released since that tops this camera. Some mentioned a Leica Q 2 one day, but why? In my humble opinion there is little that would improve this camera.

So in case you were still wondering I like it. A lot.

Here are some sample shots below and here is a link to an ongoing gallery.

Happy shooting.

-ELW

The Leica Q 4 years on: An amazing camera still. @leica_camera #leicaq #leica #leicaqtype116 Not sure how to start this write up. There is some hesitancy on my part, but not for the usual reasons.

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