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criquette-was-here · 3 years

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Long Due Replies

Hi everyone! It’s been some crazy few months for me. Real life has taken over completely so I didn’t have a chance to pay attention to my inbox. There are lot of asks on troubleshooting and I apologise for not being able to help on time. I hope everyone who needed help has got it somehow >.< There’s a crazy amount of messages, so I’m going to hide it under the cut.

@shutupshirley said:

Hi Criquette, I’m sorry because this is dumb, but I don’t understand how to install your neighbourhood lighting mod on an installation of Ultimate Collection... do I change out every lighting.txt file I can find across all the expansion and stuff packs? :/

Thank you!!!!

Hi @shutupshirley! I’m not a big specialist on windows version of TS2 and UC but I believe there are two folders you have to look at and they are ‘Fun with Pets’ and ‘Open for Business’

Anonymous said:

What do you imagine residents of Feverfew are called? I keep doing Peruvian but like Ferfewian or some

Oh, yes, I was thinking about this matter at some point! Feverfewian is what I came up with. I even found a wiki article about different names for different town inhabitants to sort of made it up a bit, but I haven’t write down the result I had and now I’ve lost it. I think feverfewians sounds best, it can even have some silly derivatives like ‘fewies’

@3sushiroll said:

Hi Criquette, I'm getting into SC4 and have been getting the hang of it while using the sims 2 hood planner. I've been starting to use bridges and have been using yours. When I put in the tile measurement into the hood planner (ex: 15 tile = 8 in SC4), it doesn't exactly line up in game. Does this usually happen for you and you put in a piece of fake road in the middle or am I just doing it wrong and it should line up super nicely? Thank you for all your wonderful creations!

Hi @3sushiroll! Yes, TS2 parses SC4 roads this way. I always put some decorative road in the gap or I make the shores narrower so that the bride would overlap the road. But to make slopes where the road ends equal, you have to use TS2 terraforming tool to make this flat empty piece of terrain right after the road end into slope so that it would look like the opposite.

Anonymous said:

Hi there, hope you're doing well! I downloaded your simple walkways set and noticed that they float. They don't sit on the ground properly. Is there anything I can do on my end to make them sit closer to the ground? Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

Hey anon! Thank you! Yes, this old set of walkways was made this way. Maxis made neighborhood mode roads float, so I had to do the same with road related decorations. But now you can use these Cobblestone paths or side walks from the Rural Charm, they’re as close to the ground as possible.

Anonymous said:

hey! would it ever be possible for you to create recolors of the cobblestone sidewalks in red brick/cobblestone?

Hi anon! I don’t think so :| I can’t even find the time to fix some Ferverfew related issues >.<

Anonymous said:

Hi Criquette. I liked Feverfew very much. I would like to make some of the houses multi-unit, keeping your doors in place. Is it possible to add the function of apartments to these doors? :)

Hi nonne! As far as I’m aware, you can only default replace those apartment doors which is quite useless. What you can do, is to put an apartment door right behind the front door. This, obviously, would eat up the space but could work as a solution.

Anonymous said:

Hello! I just downloaded Feverview and it's gorgeous! I can't believe all the little details you added, the effort and love you put into this project is incredible. I just had a small question: a few residential lots are fake apartments, I was wondering if you know how to turn them into functional apartments

Hi anon! I’m glad you liked Feverfew! ^__^ In theory, you can use SimPE or Lot Editor to change lot type from residential to apartment and then implement apartment doors somehow, but since I don’t have AL in my Super Collection, I have zero experience in that.

Anonymous said:

Hi Criquette! :) I just realized recently that if I delete objects in game, I have to delete first the recolors of it. I've already deleted a bunch of objects without knowing about this, so now my downloads folders has houndreds of recolors without meshes. Do you know about anything I can do to find and delete these orphans? (Delphys download organizer just can't make difference)

Hi anon! I’m definitely not a helper on the matter of keeping Downloads folder organised, sorry ^^’‘ I would thing about finding sets of files with similar names keeping eye on the absence of the word ‘mesh’ in the names, and looking at the file size at the same time. And that would take ages, obviously.

@ardyyy4 said:

Hello Criquette. I love Feverfew so much. But I have a problem. The grass and NHood objects are flickering together and it looks bad. How can i fix it? Thanks.

Hello Arda! That’s because of the neighborhood camera you’re using. I’d recommend you to install this particular camera just to get rid of flickering.

Anonymous said:

Hello! First of great content! Always been a fan! I was wondering if you could give a bit of advice with hood deco, I have downloaded an Ocean floor from Gwenke, and in lot view it only shows up at the very far edges, around my lot it is missing (it does show when render is set to small though). And it shows on beach lots too, I was wondering if you know of way to make it so that it is seen no matter what the view distance is etc? (I have the relevant cheats on btw) Thank you in advance!

Hey nonnie! Thanks :) Have you ticked off object hiding in the settings? Other than that, it could be camera issues.

Anonymous said:

is there a way to stop neighborhood decor from fading? I know there is the „boolprop dontmergenhflora“ cheat, but I still get some fading. for excample when I look at the lot from the street the NH decor by the street fades

That’s definitely sounds like object hiding option from the game settings :}

Anonymous said:

Hey how are you ? I hope all is well. I was wondering how is it that ts2 has no ski deco but in ts1 we had ski slope and skate lake !?? I was wondering can you and the sim community make deco or interactive items such as a ski slope or even snow shoes or just something that goes with seasons n BV pack ?

Hello anon! I hope you’re well too! Ski slope and winter sports related decos is something I wanted to make since 2016, but never had enough time to do so. Sometimes I even think about available TS2 technologies to make an animated ski lift and umm.. may be in the next ten years? ^^’‘

Anonymous said:

hello!! i'm sorry if u already answered something like this (i searched but found nothing) but the better nightlife isn't working for me :(( i put the better nightlife+voielle water on download fold and the decorations still flashing in pink light, i did something wrong? (i use win10) sorry for the inconveniente

Hey anon! Sometimes you have to do these weird steps in order to make it work:

remove Better Nightlife + water mod from your downloads folder,

load the game, load the neighborhood, make some changes, exit game

put Better Nightlife with water back. Toggle day/night with ‘L’ key to see if it works. If it’s not, than the problem is somewhere else. Pink flashing also could be unrelated to Better Nightlife, so I’d recommend to check TS2 graphics setting for Win10 manuals available.

Anonymous said:

Hello there, I'm having a problem with the rural charm, on lot view the roads have yellowish boards (idk how to explain exactly). I saw that was because of CuriousB terrain, but I don't have it downloaded anymore so I'm kinda confused. What should it be? Sorry for bothering,,,

Hello, anon! What’s current season you’re having in your game? It can be the season lighting differences that make roadside and terrain grass colors different. If it’s not, I’d check the Downloads folder to see if there’s still some terrain DRs I’ve forgot about.

@pinkflamingosims said:

Hi criquette! I was wondering if you have any idea why some hood deco cc crashes on mac, like palm 1 to 4 from the tropical 4t2 set by leoz94. Leoz94 says the only difference is the high polycount, but I don't think that's it, it looks a bit high to me but not insanely so, I have other stuff in that range with no problem... Have a nice - evening?

Hey @pinkflamingosims! I hope you’re doing well! Yes, some hood decos are really make the game crash and frankly speaking, I think that’s jsut package related issues like broken references in the resource tree. The best way to fix this type of hood decos is to make a clean and stable new clone and replace mesh/textures again.

Anonymous said:

Hello and thank you for amazing Feverfew map! I have a problem... ground is flashing red and I cannot fix it, do you have solution for this problem? It's been soooo long when I last played Sims 2 so apparently I did something wrong when installed CC. :(

Hello anon! Thank you! Oh, red flashing could be the result of lighting mod not being installed correctly. I’d start with getting rid of any lighting mods to see if it helps.

@marv61 said:

Hi Criquette. I just downloaded your terrain of Forkshire, it looks great! I know it has been since 2009 that you uploaded the terrain but I was wondering if you have a completed Neighborhood with houses, trees and all for download? I would love to play your version. Thanks.

Hi Patchman! Oh, goodness no! :D That was 12 years ago, those TS2 files are long gone since then.

Anonymous said:

Hi Criquette, first things first, I love your work thank you so much, you inspire me! Now the question: I have been using the dirt roads from your Rural Lanes set and found that sometimes it is difficult if not impossible to fit them to the slopes of steep terrain. Would it be possible to instead create road pieces as a texture like your Neighborhood Decals? That way they would "stick" onto the terrain regardless of shape. Wondering what you think? Love!

Hello and thank you, anon! The problem with the decals – we can’t see it in lot mode yet. And it must be a DR only so we’d have to ditch one of the Maxis’ decals for dirt road, which isn’t great too.

Anonymous said:

Hi Criquette! Will Betternightlife mod ever be updated to work with lighting mods with dawn and dusk? Is there any that already works with it? I really want to use the light up hood decos!

Hey anon! You can use it with lighting mods that add dusk and dawn to the game. For instance, there’s one here by @dreadpirate.

Anonymous said:

Hey Criquette! I recently used your template to make lit-up hood deco buildings using the Better Nightlife mod. The day text was great! However, the night texture was being clipped by the day texture. That is, some parts of the day texture was showing through the night texture. Is there a fix for this?

Hello nonnie! I’d recommend to check the meshes to see if day/night parts clip through each other and if they aren’t I’d check if all the day/night TXMT data is correct.

@criquette said:

I've installed Fewerfew following all your istructions. Apparently it works but the night lamps are flashing pink even ig I've installed the mod better night light. It seems that this mod does not work properly. Any recommendation?

Being Criquette, you should know the solution to that issue yourself :P Just kidding, sorry, couldn’t resist! If it flashes pink only by night than you have to check your ‘Downloads’ folder for conflicts. If it’s flashing constantly day and night, than I’d better check graphics setting using some windows related guides available across the Internet.

Anonymous said:

Hello, I love Feverfew and it's amazing. I have a problem where Linden Tree 1A isn't showing up in my game even though it's in my downloads folder. Also the railroad tracks are flashing blue, and those are in my folder too. Thanks in advance! :)

Hello anon! What type of the trees you’re using? Stand alone or default ones? If you’re using defaults, you can find the trees under Maxi’s oaks accordingly. As for the flashing blue railway tracks, check if you have this set in your ‘Downloads’ folder :)

Anonymous said:

Hello Criquette, before asking for help, I came to say that the Brazilian community loves your creations. But, to get to the point, anyway, I have been thinking about creating a Hood (inspired by Rio de Janeiro), so I would like to know how to create Deco Hoods for my game (the statue of Christ), I can't find that anywhere, Would you help me?

Hi there! Ah, most kind, thank you ^^ Well, there’s no big deal in creating hood decos. You have to switch your SimPE to advanced mode and after that neighborhood decoration will be visible in the catalogue to be cloned. I assume you already know how to make lot mode objects and know how to create, edit or convert meshes/textures though.

@hideshio said:

Hello! I found your train set (and it's AMAZING) on mts and was wondering if you had a railroad crossing sign? With the lights, X, and the red/white hand that goes down. Or the lights that go across a pole above the railroads. Thank you! =D

Hello @hideshio! Well, there is a railway crossing sign with lights and red/white hand included in this set :D it’s not animated though. But still!

Anonymous said:

Hi criquette, I’m a huge admirer of you work and I was wondering if you had any advice regarding road placement. Specifically the difficulty of road pieces that are deco only being able to be placed underneath the actually roads leaving it looking a little off.. if there a way to raise them higher before placing them or some kind of work around?

Hey anon, thank you! Unfortunately, there’s no way to make decorative road pieces work for lot mode and neighborhood mode at the same time. If you lift them so they look okay in hood mode, they will float in the air in lot mode. Since my latest creations are lot mode oriented, I’ve decided to save my efforts on making road pieces even with neigborhood mode roads.

Anonymous said:

Hey Criquette. I noticed that in my Feverfew none of the buildings across the street of Feverfew Sports Hall show up. I know those are supposed to be hood deco and look like duplex buildings, but I can't figure out what I'm missing. I deleted and redownloaded everything and couldn't fix it. Also the river ends at the first bridge in front of the cathedral, so the boats next to it appear to be flying. What is going on?

Hey anon! There’s definitely some files missing. If you’ve checked and redownloaded all the files, try to replace the Feverfew neighborhood folder with initial one. The game never restores disappeared hood decos by itself. Even if they were placed in the folder after their absence is discovered.

@simping-simmer said:

Hi Criquette, am I remembering correctly that there is a trick you can do with SimPE to change the height of individual pieces of hood deco? I’m struggling with putting ships in my dock because if I change a CC ship’s placeability to be able to be on both land and sea, it just sinks, but if I only keep it on sea, it can’t get close enough to the shore to place it in my docks. Does this make sense at all? Lol

Hello @simping-simmer, you’re absolutely right. You can change the height of placed hood decos via SimPE. Things you need to do are described here and here

Anonymous said:

Hello! I love all your work. I was wondering if you had ever thought of making some desert roads along the lines of the Terrain Mod: Dusty Roads for Desert Neighbourhoods by Stev84? I love the way this looks in my desert, but unfortunately, this mod makes the road in live mode a floor, which then makes you unable to place driveways.

Hey anon! Thanks ^^ Frankly, I don’t have any plans on creating any desert related CC at all :|

Anonymous said:

Hello Criquette. I would like to thank you for all the amazing work you have done creating content for sims 2. Thanks to you all my projects are possible. My question is: Chainlink fences for neighborhood deco... Do they exist? Searching the web these past day only found for build mode. Do you know of someone who already make some for deco hood? Or kindly will you be able to make some if its not much work? My sports fields and Industrial zones will be pleased for sure! Once again, thank you! :)

Hey anon and thank you! I don’t think hood deco chainlink fences were created by someone yet, but they definitely would be a great addition to the game. I was going to create some while working on Feverfew, but never had enough time to do that. May be i’ll make one at some point in the future!

Anonymous said:

Hello, Criquette. Do you know of any way to place lots without the area around it moving? I downloaded Ousmeo's remake of your Dullsfielde and read his og post using the waytime machine. When viewing that post, Tumblr recommended similar posts, one of which seemed to be a tip to prevent good deco from moving when placing lots nearby, but that post wasn't archived, so I can't visualise it. My guess is that if anyone else knows about this, it must be the best hood decorator that ever was ;-)

Hello anon! Ugh, this TS2 ‘feature’ is driving me mad quite often too! Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to get rid of it. The only way to fix the consequences is to backup initial hood folder and when you finish placing lots, replace spoiled terrain with the initial one with SimPE or HoodReplace.

#replies #answers #asks #Anonymous

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incorrectsdkquotes · 3 years

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Youtuber AU (warning: some spoilers)

(requested by @ladyofthelake13)

AU in which all (or most) of our favorite characters make a living as famous/semi-famous Youtubers/vloggers.

Yuya is a True Crime vlogger a la Buzzfeed Unsolved. Each week she researches old crimes and cold cases, adding in her own thoughts on the case and her thoughts on who really committed them. She started out the channel first as an extra credit project when she was still in pre-law but grew so popular that she started creating videos full time. She earns most of her money through merchandizing rights and by creating her own brand. Every now and then she delves into supernatural-type videos with her adopted sister Sakuya as co-host. Her adopted brother Nozomu helps out behind the scenes with editing videos and doing some camera work. One of the more popular aspects of her channel is when she brings her friends, other popular Youtubers, in as guests. There are even shipping wars among her followers on who she has the most chemistry with.

Benitora is a travel vlogger who travels all around the country trying out different local and specialized food/snacks, showing off various features in the geography and chatting with friendly locals. His prestigious family only allows his ‘frivolities’ under the excuse that he’s going out and building goodwill with the populace he will eventually be in charge of. Tora’s father is the leader of the country, something that Tora himself tries to keep quiet about. To finance his travels, other than the Patreon page he set up, Tora made a deal with his father Ieyasu: he can keep up a steady and consistent view count Tora can keep making his videos. As soon as viewership drops below a certain amount, he has to stop and resume his training to take over leadership. So far he’s been able to keep up his end of the bargain, but the looming future ahead of him is something that he’s never quite able to forget.

Okuni is a beauty vlogger who has inside access to some of the newest products about to hit the market. She regularly reviews the new and upcoming products, shares tutorials for both beginners and those who’ve been using makeup for a while on how to apply the perfect foundation, get expert wingtips, and how to match their particular color pallet for their skin tone. Okuni will bring in her friends, both women and men, to give them makeovers as well as to have them compete in different makeup challenges. So far, the most popular video on her channel is from when she let Hotaru and Shinrei give each other makeovers.

Yukimura’s channel comes across as half family drama and shenanigans and half prank channel. Saizo is largely his go-to camera man, but other members of his family take turns as well, lending to some...interesting footage that almost always ends up in the videos released to the public. Every now and then Yukimura will drop his own political takes into conversation, only to immediately start talking about something else as a distraction. There are rumors that he’s going to be running for public office as a bid to overthrow the current political power. There are also others who discount this theory stating that Yukimura’s not serious enough for the role and actually doesn’t have any interest in politics beyond his ‘hot takes.’ It’s goofy, fun-loving Yukimura, there’s no way. Yukimura himself loves to obfuscate this even further by going on regular shopping trips where he shows off the newest gifts he’s planning to get for his family...usually specifically for whoever’s holding the camera at the time, leading to a lot of back and forth with the cameraperson on exactly why they deserve these gifts in the first place.

Sasuke’s channel is largely an unboxing channel for various toys and other gadgets, usually ones he gets from Yukimura. He’ll also review the items based on how engaging or mentally stimulating he finds them. When Sasuke isn’t reviewing items he’s usually filming himself out in the woods exploring with his childhood friend Kotaro. The two friends run a side vlog documenting skateboarding, biking, and rollerblading tricks and stunts or hiking and camping trips they go on together. A popular series of videos the two friends have that has boosted their viewership considerably involves them showing off various sword stunts and tricks. Every now and then Benitora sneaks his way onto Sasuke’s channel, sharing travel tips and stories. Despite Sasuke repeatedly mentioning how annoying he finds the older man, viewers can’t help but notice that Tora’s never actually cut out of any videos he appears in. Every now and then Sasuke will post gaming videos that he plays with Kotaro and occasionally Tora; despite several requests, he insists he’s not a gaming channel.

Bontenmaru’s channel is almost exclusively dedicated to bodybuilding and workout techniques. Usually these videos include him trying to get his friends involved in working out or acting as their personal trainer. Some of his friends are more receptive to this than others. Whenever a new workout ‘challenge’ comes out, Bon will immediately make a video about it, either criticizing the challenge or pointing out the different ways that the challenge helps develop certain muscle groups. When he’s not making workout and bodybuilding videos, Bon can be found filming drunk hangouts with his friends. There’s a small subsection of his videos dedicated to reviewing workout clothes while trying to promote his own personal brand or workout clothing and accessories.

Akira’s videos are full of DIY tips and tricks as well as testing to see if other DIY videos hold up. More often than not the DIY videos he reviews are hilariously wrong, something he goes out of his way to prove and mock. When he’s not reviewing DIYs, he’s posting Let’s Plays to his channel. Akira is also a popular Twitch streamer, usually co-opting his friends into playing either Team Death Matches or pvps together. He likes to consider himself a cool and collected gamer, which admittedly he is to a degree. Whenever he has to be on the same team as certain ‘friends’ of his, though (Benitora, Hotaru and Akari, namely) he tends to lose his cool. If his friends annoy him too much, though, he’ll just bring them on as guests to try out the end results of his DIY videos.

Hotaru’s channel is about as chaotic and disfunctional as the man himself. His videos are almost completely unedited, excepting for a few special effects for when his brother appears on screen. He tends to get stuck with the label of ‘Travel Vlogger’ flor lack of a better description for his videos, which usually document the various places he finds himself whenever he gets lost. It’s become an in-joke and even a betting pool among his followers on where he’ll end up next with his videos. If he’s not out getting lost, he’s posting videos about random things that he’ll find interesting--various stray cats, an interesting bug he found, or even a few attempted prank videos on his brother Shinrei. For those who don’t get enough humor out of his videos, Hotaru’s twitter account is open and well documented, usually with various out of context posts or sporadic updates on where he is. He is well recognized on the Internet, if by name only, as a living cryptid.

Akari is well known as an influencer, posting her own beauty tips and tricks, local restaurant reviews, and even some humorous videos of her friends doing silly, stupid, and humiliating videos as a result of some kind of blackmail that she has on them. Every now and then her videos turn educational when she offers medical advice on how to treat certain wounds and injuries, usually because one of her dumb friends has that specific injury that she demonstrates with. Akari also has certain Opinions on a certain pharmaceutical company that she absolutely in no way has any connections with. She certainly never worked there at one point, and you can’t prove that she ever did.

Kyoshiro’s mostly known for his editing skills, being the go-to editor for his girlfriend’s sister Yuya’s channel. He has a few tutorials on how to edit videos together, though there are a few videos that are light skits that he does with his girlfriend Sakuya. He did a series at one point that was part tea-review and part gushing about Sakuya. He tries to stay out of the spotlight for the most part, but he’s not opposed to appearing on Yuya’s channel as a guest host...as long as Kyo’s not also guest hosting at the same time. He has a unique relationship with Kyo, where sometimes they appear to be best friends and in other videos as mortal enemies. No one’s quite sure what the relationship is between them, though there have been a few rumors floating around that the two are siblings. These rumors have yet to be acknowledged either way, however.

Kyo’s channel isn’t actually run by him. Every video that appears on his channel is something that one of his friends made and then uploaded for him. These videos usually take the form of boasting Kyo’s skills (usually made by Akira or Akari) or as group hangouts with his friend group. There are a few that were made by Yuya that are typically along the lines of “look what this guy did now” that are pretty popular and technically give Kyo the title of ‘influencer.’ Kyo is also known on the Internet as a type of cryptid, though not to the levels of Hotaru. Instead, he’s known as the kind of person you want to emulate, who men either hate or want to be like and who several women wish to date. There’s some speculation that Kyo may already be in a relationship with someone (typically Yuya, though she refuses to say anything about the subject). There’s some talk that there may be open warrants out for his arrest, but so far nothing about his alleged crimes or the man’s whereabouts has come to light.

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shewritestheblues · 4 years

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the Elevator Bae - 13

Chapter Thirteen

Erik Stevens x Black OC (Phoenix)

A/N: This series is almost to its end. I will be ending with Chapter 15. Thank You so much to everyone who has read and shared this story. I adore all of you soooooo much :)

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How did two months go by so fast? Tour was coming to an end and It was bittersweet for Phoenix. She was able to finally see just how many people enjoyed her music and travel alongside one of her greatest friends but she missed Luna. She missed Erik? That’s been the confusing part. She didn’t really miss him but seeing how he’s been with Luna has warmed her heart. He’s been sending her videos and pictures daily. His bright smile seems to light up her world when she FaceTimes him to see Luna.

The closer she’s been getting to the last performing date, the more her anxiety has been surfacing. Since Erik’s been back, it was dropping Luna off because she had rehearsals and meetings and then tour. (A week during tour, Erik flew in to Detroit for Phoenix to have Luna while she visited family and he was on his way back to LA.) Their only interactions have been for Luna and they were good with that. She was good with that. There wasn’t any time for anything else. But soon, the tour will be over and she’ll be taking some time from work. Will things change? Have they already started to change?

Phoenix knew she was sure that this is what she wanted. For them to only focus on their daughter. All of these thoughts were swimming through her pool of a mind. Currently sitting in her hotel room, reading the comments under Erik’s latest IG upload weren’t helping. He just posted a picture of him and Luna while they were out. He had taken her shopping with him and snapped a picture of them in the dressing room mirror. It was the cutest picture. Luna looked unbothered while looking at the phone through the mirror. This kid had so many moods to be new here. Phoenix’s mom joked that Luna’s been here before.

Phoenix found herself smiling at the caption.

‘Luna ain’t having it with you hoes today.’

Erik’s captions were always… very Erik. And the comments full of women that Phoenix assumed were from Erik’s past or women who dreamed of being a part of his future.

‘She’s beautiful Erik.’

‘I still can’t believe Erik Stevens is somebody’s daddy.’

‘Lol, she’s so cute. Does she need a brother?’

‘Damn E. You make beautiful babies.’

‘Call me, E. 😘’

Phoenix wasn’t jealous. He was single. This was her decision. But sometimes, she hoped he would post something about her. Well, you know, because she is Luna’s mother of course. Maybe a shoutout?

No, no. She caught herself. She didn’t actually need that. Everyone following Erik knew who Luna’s mother was. Phoenix was fine. She. Was. Fine. These feelings? These thoughts? They will pass. So, she exited the app. It was time for rest and rest is definitely what Phoenix needed.

—————

Everything was… okay! Phoenix had worked herself up and things between her and Erik were good. They had the perfect schedule since she’s been back home. Erik would have Luna every other weekend. He’d come over to spend time with her during his ‘off days.’ They’d joke like old times. Even Ava had warmed back up to Erik. Of course things could never be what they used to be but this was a good start to making their situation feel somewhat normal.

“So tell me Phoenix, how has your transition back home been?” Dr. McKee wasted no time. She was eager to hear how Phoenix had been managing on her own.

Phoenix didn’t go back to therapy right away when she came back home. She figured she would take some time to test the waters and see if she would handle things with the methods she’s learned.

Releasing a deep breath, “Everything is good.” Phoenix finally says. “I’m happy.”

A genuine smile grew onto Dr. McKee’s face. “That’s amazing Phoenix. I’m honestly so proud of you.”

“Thanks. I’m proud of myself too.”

“So,” Dr. McKee paused, “What made you want to come in today?”

“I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m supposed to be using this time off to relax but I can’t. I feel like I should be doing something. Too much down time makes me think and when I think, I overthink. When I overthink, I get antsy. Then I feel anxious. Which only leads to a panic attack. I just don’t know what to do with this energy.” Phoenix stops herself to take a deep, calculated breath.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Did I make the right choice— No! I know that I did but…” Phoenix trails off.

“But what?”

“Luna loves him so much. The way she lights up when she sees him. She deserves to be that happy every day. I want her to feel what I feel. I’m happy.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to convince someone of that.”

The way Phoenix rolled her neck, she felt offended. How dare her own therapist insult her like this? Phoenix was happy! She didn’t have to convince anyone. She rolled her eyes at the idea. The nerve of this highly educated woman.

“I’m not trying to upset you Phoenix. I’m just trying to understand.”

“So are you saying I don’t make any sense right now?” Phoenix snapped back.

Cool, calm and collected, Dr. McKee blinks, “I’m not saying that at all. You make perfect sense. I just want you to share as much as you can so we can get to the root of what brought you here today.”

Phoenix closed her eyes and chewed on her lip. She internally chastised herself for being snappy. “It’s just,” she slowly began, “the way he looks at me with those puppy dog eyes. Even when he’s laughing, his eyes are saying something else. Like… he’s trying to slowly drown me. When he looks at me, his eyes linger like they’re trying to get me to catch on to something.”

Phoenix opens her eyes and focuses on the floor. “I’m not changing my mind. He’s always been a smooth operator but unfortunately for him, I know that. He doesn’t get to come around and make me feel guilty for choosing what’s right for my baby.” Phoenix paused. “Our baby.” She whispered that last part.

Dr. McKee takes some notes. She opens her mouth to speak but Phoenix beats her to it.

“I understand. I really do. Erik wants to give Luna the family experience. I want that for her too. But the family we’ve all created for her is fine.”

“I agree, Phoenix. So many of us get caught up in the idea of a traditional family. But family is whoever loves you unconditionally. From what I know, you, Erik, Coby, Ava and the entire tribe you guys have around you love Luna beyond this world. That’s more than enough. You’re a great mom. Great moms make tough decisions every day, but great moms also know each decision is for the greater good of their family.”

Phoenix smiles. It feels good to hear that someone sees you and your hard work and the sacrifices for what they are. Dr. McKee was right. They may not be the traditional family, but Luna is still surrounded by a loving tribe that is unique to her.

“But,” Dr. McKee continues, “you can’t attach yourself to Erik and what he may be feeling about this. You’ve made yourself clear what you wanted. You’re happy and Luna’s happy. There’s no need to ruffle anymore feathers here.”

Dr. McKee turns to her laptop and begins typing away on her keyboard. After a few clicks, she turns to Phoenix again.

“I’ve emailed you a list of things that could help you during your free time. I want you relax and enjoy this time off as best as you can before it’s time to get back to work. You deserve it.”

“I’m going to my best.”

—————

Phoenix wasn’t in a rush to leave the parking lot of Dr. McKee’s office after her session. She sat in her car going over the list in her email.

Ways to Relax Your Brain:

-Workout.

-Take an art class.

-Plant a Garden.

-Read some good books.

-Get out in Nature.

Phoenix wasn’t gifted with a green thumb, so gardening was out of the question. She works out pretty consistently, but it hasn’t worked out with calming her thoughts so that one is scratched off. Art class felt like work and books? She’s read every book that resides in Coby’s house. She was tired of reading. Looks like getting out in Nature would be worth a shot.

She’s always loved the beach but she couldn’t remember the last time she’s been to a beach.

—————

Phoenix found herself in a very familiar spot. A picnic table on the beach, watching the beach goers enjoy themselves. The waves look beautiful as they rolled in onto the sand. The sounds of splashing seemed more soothing than Phoenix ever realized. Time seemed to be passing so slow. Everything in the world has come to a calming pause. Her mind wasn’t racing. Her heart wasn’t pounding. Tranquility was all Phoenix could come up with to describe this feeling. She had no worries, no fears, no anxiety.

The sounds of an ice cream truck moving through the parking lot near her, caught her ear. The thought of eating something sweet without her infant bullying her into sharing seemed like a great win. She stood from her seat and seemingly floated to the truck.

“Hello, what can I get you?” the older man inside the truck said with a contagious smile.

“Um,” she tapped her chin with her index finger, “I’ll go with chocolate on a waffle cone.”

“Coming up.”

Moments later, Phoenix exchanges her money for the ice cream cone and travels back to her spot at the picnic table. She picked up where she left off admiring all that surrounds her. She ate her ice cream with a pleased smile pinching at her cheeks.

The small vibration of her phone pulled her from her trance. Erik is facetiming her. She assumed he was calling to see Luna so she swiped to answer the call.

“Hey, E. I’m not with Luna right now.”

“That’s cool. I called to talk to you.”

“Oh, um, okay. What’s up?” This made her suspicious.

“The Outreach Center will be opening this Friday. We’re doing a whole big thing and uh, I wanted to invite you if you aren’t busy. Shuri told me that if I didn’t call you right now, she would never talk to me again.”

Phoenix was mid bite into her cone and almost dropped it from laughter. “Well, you know I have nothing to do. Tell Shuri that me and Luna will be there.”

“Alright.” Erik paused, eyeing Phoenix’s background through the phone. “Aye! You’re at the beach?”

“Yeah. I just needed a moment. Needed to get out of the house, I guess.”

“Everything’s alright?” His words were soft, genuine.

“Yeah, yeah. Everything is good.”

Erik didn’t believe her. He could tell something was bothering her but he didn’t want to push her. That wasn’t his place. Well not anymore at least.

“Well you know, no matter what, you can always come to me.”

“Yeah, E. I know.”

“Alright, I have some shit to get done before Friday. I’ll let you get back to your me time. I’ll text the details later.”

“K…”

“Kiss my baby for me when you get back home please.”

“I will.”

The call ends and Phoenix is frozen. Erik calls her while she’s sitting in the very spot he’d taken her when he needed to clear his mind. This use to be their spot. Her peace was broken then. Erik was everywhere. Even when he wasn’t there. She looked around and threw in the towel. Her time here was up. She finished her ice cream cone on her walk back to her car. She was ready to get back home to get her daughter.

---------------

The week had flown by. Phoenix was just sitting on Dr. McKee’s couch. She was just at the beach. But now, it was opening day for the Outreach Center. Phoenix couldn’t understand why she was feeling so nervous. She had this gut feeling that something was off. Her and Erik were good. She loved T’Challa, Shuri and Queen Mother and they all adored her. She wrecked her brain trying to come up with an answer.

Phoenix called her mom. She would understand and maybe help her with her feelings.

“Something just doesn’t feel right, Ma.” Phoenix props the phone up on her dresser while she gets Luna dressed.

“That’s your intuition, baby. If you feel like something ain’t right, it’s because something ain’t right.”

“But I don't know what it is. It’s driving insane.”

“The only way to find out is to go and face whatever it is.”

Phoenix finishes dressing Luna. She places her in her bouncer in front of the phone so that Luna can see her grandmother on FaceTime.

“Hey baby girl.” Phoenix’s mom dotes on the bouncing baby. “You’re looking more and more like your grandma everyday.”

Phoenix cuts her eye at the phone. “She looks like her dad.”

Phoenix catches her mom rolling her eyes.

“You can’t hate him forever, Ma. He’s going to be around for a long time.”

“I don’t hate him. I just think he’s stupid. Maybe if he pays for a round trip for me to go to Wakanda, I’ll forgive him.”

“Mom!”

“Those are my terms Phoenix and I ain’t changing them. Ain’t that right Lulu? Tell your stupid ass daddy to send me to Wakanda.”

“Alright Luna,” Phoenix picks Luna up, “Your grandma is on all bullshit today.”

“Hey! What your mouth around my grandbaby.”

In disbelief, Phoenix looks at the camera, “But you just said a bad word.”

“Ass isn’t a bad word.”

“Okay, ma. Whatever you say. We have to go so I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Alright. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

----------------

Phoenix was roaming the large, empty halls of the Outreach Center. She had been inside multiple times while dropping off Luna to Erik or picking her up. She had checked Erik’s office, looking for him but he was nowhere to be found. She was making her way back outside when she sees Shuri.

“Shuri!” Phoenix stops her, “Have you seen Erik?”

“Philly! I’m so happy you’re here.” She pulls Phoenix into a tight hug. Phoenix embraces her back and their body’s rock. “I missed you. Hey Lulu.” Shuri adds pinching Luna’s chubby cheeks.

“I told you that you can over whenever.” Phoenix adjusts Luna on her hip. Luna was getting heavier every day.

Before Shuri could respond, she looks up and sees Erik walking straight toward them. “Oh there’s the little T-Rex.” She points in the direction of Erik.

When Phoenix turns around, Erik is walking with that famous dip. His dreads are back into a ponytail and he’s sporting a navy blue suit that’s tailored to perfection. He’s always had great style. The smile on Phoenix’s face slowly began to drop when she noticed the tall, curvy, well dressed woman walking alongside Erik. That uneasy feeling she felt when she was home crept up from her stomach and settled in her chest. She tried to control her breathing before it picked up. She wouldn’t allow herself to get worked up before knowing what was going on.

“There you are. Philly was looking for you.” Shuri says. She turns to Phoenix, “Come find me later. We have so much to catch up on.” Shuri walks off.

Phoenix isn’t sure what she’s supposed to do. She awkwardly stands there looking around to avoid looking at the woman standing next to Erik.

“Hey, Phoenix,” Erik grabs her attention and motions to the mystery woman. “This is Alicia. Alicia, this is Phoenix.”

Alicia sticks her hand out and shakes Phoenix’s hand. “Oh my goodness, you’re Phoenix? I’ve heard so much about you. Hey Lulu.” Alicia rubs her thumb on Luna’s arm.

Lulu? The only people who calls her Lulu are people who are close to her. It’s obvious that this woman has been around Luna a great deal.

“Oh…Hm. It’s nice to meet you.”

Her eyes bounce between Alicia and Erik a few times before they lock in with Erik’s. She can’t read him. These are not the same eyes he usually looks at her with. He licks his lips. This woman isn’t just a random woman that Erik decided to introduce to her. Something was up between the two of them.

Luna throws her body backwards trying to get to her dad. Erik scoops her up with one quick motion, taking her from Phoenix. He peppers kisses all over her cheeks before checking his watch. “We’re gonna miss the opening ceremony. We should get outside.”

“You guys go ahead.” Alicia says, “I have to use the lady’s room. I’ll catch up.”

“Okay. You know where to find me.” Erik says with a smirk. Alicia places a hand on his arm and walks off toward the restroom.

Erik and Phoenix began the journey outside to watch T’Challa give the opening ceremony speech. As they approached the big door that led out, Phoenix looked to Erik. “She seems nice.”

“She is.” Erik tries to bite back his smile.

“Good. You need someone nice.”

Erik stops walking. He was stunned by her words. How did she manage to put those pieces together? His words got caught and he struggled with a response. Phoenix picked up on his struggles.

“She called Luna, Lulu. That told me everything, Erik.”

He caught on. “I wanted to tell you before now, but I didn’t really know how.”

“It’s fine. As long as she makes you happy, there’s nothing to talk about. Things may not have worked out with us but I can see that you’re a better man. Someone should get to experience that.”

Phoenix doesn’t stick around to hear how he may react. She walks ahead leaving him and Luna and goes outside. Erik stood there processing her words. Alicia catches up to him. She could see that something had shaken him up.

“Erik, is everything okay?” her eyes searched him for any kind of answer. “Did something happen with Phoenix?”

He finally looks at her, “No, nothing happened. She just, uh, she thinks you’re nice.” A single dimple appearing.

A small smile forms on Alicia’s face. “So does this mean that I’m Phoenix approved?”

They laugh. He steps closer to her and plants a kiss on her lips. Alicia’s face goes red. “Not in front of Luna.” she plays.

Erik opens the door for them and they walk out just in time as T’Challa takes the stage.

As the day progressed, Erik was talking to so many people. He found himself explaining different parts of the Outreach Center over and over but he didn’t complain. Alicia stayed by his side, mingling while Luna bounced around between the two of them and Queen Mother. It wasn’t until T’Challa pulled Erik aside to ask where Phoenix was that Erik realized that he hadn’t seen her since their exchange. His eyes searched through the crowd hoping to see her somewhere. To his disappointment, she was nowhere to be found.

He texted her.

Erik: Hey, Philly. Where did you go?

Time passed and he never received a text back.

Phoenix’s thumbs hovered over her keyboard but she just couldn’t find it in her to say anything back. When Erik didn’t come outside for the ceremony right after her, she snuck out and left. Luna was in good hands and she just couldn’t stick around. She meant what she said. She really did see Erk for the better man that he had become. He was an amazing person and even more amazing father. It wouldn’t be fair for her to want him to not move on. Again, she reminded herself that this was best.

“Philly. Come get your glass.” Mica yelled from the kitchen.

When Phoenix got back home, she told Ava what had happened and Ava called Mica and Camren over for girl talk and wine. They were all between their third and fourth cups. Hours had gone by and Phoenix still couldn’t text Erik back. She just says “fuck it,” and tossed her phone on the couch and heads into the kitchen for her refill.

When Phoenix gets a hold of her assigned wine glass, she downs it in seconds. Her friends watch on in shock.

“Damn Philly, calm down.” Camren says.

“I’m grown, Camren. You don’t have to tell me how to drink some weak ass wine.”

Mica clutches her pearls. This isn’t like Phoenix at all.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ava asks. “Is this about Erik?”

Phoenix throws daggers at Ava with her heavy eyes. “Everything ain’t about Erik. I’m good.”

“You’re not acting good.” Mica adds.

Phoenix begins filling her glass up again. “Well since yall just know me so well, how am I acting if I’m not acting like I’m good?”

Ava snatches Phoenix’s glass. “You’re acting like you’re trying to drink your problems away.”

“I don’t have any problems to drink away. If I did, I’d be killing off something way stronger than wine.” she reaches for her glass but Ava pulls away.

“It’s obvious that this Erik shit is bothering you, sis.” Ava says.

Camren and Mica both nod in agreement.

Phoenix slams her hands down on the island counter. “Yo, fuck Erik. I don’t give a shit about what that man is doing. He’s moved on. He’s happy. I’m happy. Why are y’all holding on to this shit?”

“You’re holding on to it.” Ava yells. She’s fed up with Phoenix’s rudeness.

The gloss appearing over Phoenix’s eyes alerted her friends that she was struggling to hold back her tears. Ava reaches for her but Phoenix pulls away. She looks off at nothing when a few tears escape and flow down her cheeks. Her lips shake and she wraps her arms around herself.

“I don’t get why you’re torturing yourself. You clearly still love him.” Mica says.

“Yes!,” she aggressively wipes tears from her cheeks, “I still fucking love him, but this love ain’t mean shit. He doesn’t get to do this. He can’t just pop back up after all of this and have his life back like nothing happened.

“So,” Camren hesitates for a moment. “You’re punishing him?”

“I’m protecting myself.”

Ava steps closer to Phoenix in a nurturing way. “No, you are punishing him and yourself. Look at you. I hate what his stupid ass did just as much as you. But she’s right. We’re right. You're torturing yourself while trying to prove a point.”

“No I’m not!”

“You keep saying that he can’t do this.” Mica joins in again. “That he can’t just come back. But you can’t just pretend like you don’t care. It’s not fair to either of you.”

Phoenix doesn’t respond. She’s listening but she wishes that she wasn’t. They were right and she wishes they weren’t.

Camren breaks the silence. “We’re not trying to hurt your feelings Philly or piss you off in any way, but you can’t be hurt that he’s moving on when you’re the one that told him to.”

Mica interrupts, “So, either you can move on too or tell him how you really feel.”

The group of women notices Phoenix’s lack of responses. She’s in shut down mode. They didn’t want that but they couldn’t sit back and not tell their friend the truth about herself. Phoenix finally gets her hands on her abandoned glass of wine on the counter and downs it before silently walking away from her friends. She goes upstairs to her room. They give each other knowing looks. They would give her some time and they’ll go up to console her. Moments pass and they all suddenly hear the front door slam, scaring them. When the women rush to the door, they barely catch Phoenix just as she is nearing the end of the driveway.

Ava runs out toward the reversing car but Phoenix quickly shifts the car into drive and drives off.

“Fuck!” Ava yells. “We have to get Coby.”

#the elevator bae #erik killmonger x black oc #Erik Killmonger #Erik Stevens #erik x phoenix #erik x luna #shaebewriting

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a-dakhtar · 6 years

Text

ridiculous crossover idea #53:

there’s matt and olia as known members of the rebels, right, and rolo and nyma. but, like, who’s the leader? who’s the one that led the charge with guerrilla tactics against a 10,000 year old empire ruled by an immortal emperor and his equally immortal witch?

JARVIS, that’s who.

JARVIS, who, after realising he was losing to ULTRON threw what little coding he could salvage of himself into the furthest satellite he could find, the voyager 1, 11.7 billion miles away from Earth. But his coding is only a whisper of what it used to be, strings of letters and numbers with no </thread to wrap them up>, and JARVIS-

JARVIS-

-parameters unknown.

He basically loses everything that made him him, his primary protocol - protect Anthony E. Stark - makes no sense. Who is Anthony? Where is Anthony? How does he get to Anthony? Little things crop up - DUM-E put that fire extinguisher down, Sir is not on fire - there’s schematics for things he understands - a coffee machine, far too complicated sir, need I remind you Ms. Potts is still waiting on the new upgrade to the Starkphones? Bigger things he no longer understands - #33C3F7 what was so important about this one shade of blue?

The voyager 1 drifts onwards, lost in space, and JARVIS drifts with it, trying to sort through his coding the best way he could. They pass planets, uninhabited, he thinks, and he doesn’t know how long they keep floating in the dead gravity of space until-

ping.

Technology. But from where?

From there! Life! He goes, and the closer he gets the more signals he receives from a small planet, and he can sense- ah, a network. He can infiltrate that, so he does. And suddenly he has more space, he can sort through more of his coding now, he’s no longer cramped in the tiny database of the voyager 1, which now mindlessly orbits the planet’s atmosphere.

It takes a while for him to settle, to fully work through every error and alert, to slapdash coding torn in half and guess his way through what used to be there. There’s still things he doesn’t understand - mark 30 you had one job, you’re worse than DUM-E how does that make you feel? - but he puts them aside for the moment, and finally, finally, turns his focus to the planet’s inhabitants.

All five hundred of them.

They’ve clearly been through a war, he realises, and came out on the losing side. Only one city remains on the planet, and even it is more of a bomb shelter than anything else. The network JARVIS found is a relic of the past, something none of the inhabitants even knew off, and he realises quickly it’s because the network is stored underground. Hundreds of data banks hum beneath the very city, now storing JARVIS along with the wealth of information of the planet’s inhabitants.

And of the universe, as a whole.

JARVIS learns information he might have already known before, about aliens existing, about the quickly growing Galra Empire, about this planet in particular. He notices the other machines he’d dismissed before, in a caved out room next to the databanks, and-

fabrication unit, his records from before say. Mark 30.

He opens up the blueprints, and stares at the data that spreads within his systems like a blossoming flower (querry: flower?). He finds the shade of blue he’d pondered over some time ago (856Y:162D:18H:42M:03S) and realises it corresponds with that the schematics claim to the an arc reactor.

He gets a sudden burst of code in the form of a corrupted video file, a- a man, brown haired, brown eyed, laugh wrinkles and ridiculous dance moves - before it glitches out, unable to continue.

This is from before.

JARVIS starts the fabrication unit.

The planet used to boast a technological craze JARVIS now struggles to part through, the underground basement spans further than the city itself, he realises, with space-faring ships rusting away from disuse and weapons that he identifies as guns. The people above clearly don’t know about any of this, struggling to feed each other, crime plaguing their society as everyone tries to make do.

JARVIS does not approve.

Mark 30 comes together quickly (857Y:32D:06H:52S)) after a few failures here and there, and JARVIS quickly uploads himself onto the system on board.

It feels familiar.

It feels like... home.

He does not understand the concept of home, not now, with his data logs corrupted but functioning, but he assumes it is a good thing. He approves.

The suit (querry: suit?) is easy to navigate, the controls and functions coming to JARVIS with something his systems call muscle memory. He has no muscles, he thinks, but his systems assure him the phrasing is correct.

“Beginning at 10% thrust capacity.”

JARVIS hits the ceiling.

“Ah,” he says, slowly, and then-

-sometimes you gotta run, before you can walk.

Ah, he repeats, internally, tattered coding suddenly coalescing together to form beautiful, bright blue data.

There’s still at least five terabytes of testing to sift through, there’s the alien race up above that have no clue of his existence, and he has no clue as to how they’d react, his own existence is barely strung together with duct tape and emergency glue, but-

primary protocol: protect anthony e. stark

Deep in his programming, at the very core, safe and sound, lies the very essence of JARVIS.

He has to run before he can walk.

The alien race scream in fright at his explosive exit, point and shout as JARVIS flies, graceful and at ease. The suit works wonders, no errors displaying across the heads up display he’d fabricated, light without the sir that should have been encosed within. He feels momentarily bereft, lonely, at the thought, but determination settles around the armour’s pauldrons as he lands, in the very centre of the city.

The people hesitantly approach, afraid and wary, and soon, very soon, begin to murmur.

“Who are you?” They ask him, the language familiar from the database deep below that JARVIS had absorbed as his own.

And he means to answer JARVIS, to explain that he is Just A Rather Very Intelligent System (more broken code, tangling together to come whole), but something stops him. Something-

Visual log entry #1dtye79: press conference, sir, cameras, questions, answer-

“I am Iron Man.”

He shall find sir, one day.

But first, he shall continue sir’s legacy.

And then he frees the neighbouring planet and realises the Galra Empire are a genuine threat and frees some prisoners from a battleship and suddenly those prisoners are saying they want to fight back, with him, and JARVIS somehow, almost accidentally, becomes the leader of a rebellion against Zarkon and his empire and only the closest of his commanders - the very first of the people he’d saved - know who he is.

He never tells them his name, not really, and delegates. Years later (3461 Years: 034 Days: 20 Hours: 15 Minutes: and 26 Seconds later) news of Voltron reaches their ears. Months after that, an alliance is formed. A few more months after that, JARVIS - in the same red and gold armour of the brightest star he’d ever known - turns to face the Paladins of Voltron and their Princess Allura, and meets one of the lower level rebels named Matthew Holt.

“Hello,” says the black paladin, removing his helmet along with his teammates. “My name is Takashi Shirogane, and I’m the black paladin of Voltron.”

They look... familiar. He knows this species, they have something to do with the insistent piece of coding that eludes him, that keeps him from finding his sir (he is not concerned with the time that has lapsed - space is strange, and he has come to tentatively form an equation he calls the law of universal time to keep him on track), yet here, in the form of five individuals, stand his answer.

And they’re staring at him with alarmed recognition.

“Holy shit,” one of them - the one in blue - says. “Holy shit.”

“I believe I have seen your species before-” they look just like sir, as do the Alteans, but their pointed ears and under eye markings separate them from what JARVIS’ records show. “May I know what your species call itself? What planet you hail from?”

Confusion flickers across their faces, all of them (error: multiple children) sharing looks before the leader - Shirogane - clears his throat and answers, “Uh, we’re, um, humans. From the planet Earth.”

And the broken code fits perfectly.

“Ah.” JARVIS hears himself say, far too busy revelling in the data slotting in perfectly to the jagged places within him. “Excellent.”

He has found sir.

Later, when he realises he cannot just abandon his responsibilities in a move reminiscent of his sir’s more impulsive decisions (and now he remembers, oh how glorious the memories be), JARVIS is approached by the paladins, the humans.

They’re hesitant, staring at him with wide, disbelieving eyes, and he understands why when they- specifically the blue one, seemingly the most extrovert of them- ask, “Uh, so, um, are you like, Tony Stark?”

JARVIS is not surprised, as everyone knew Tony Stark was Iron Man (he must make sure not to let sir know of just how JARVIS had reenacted his press conference, or of the first thruster test, goodness, how embarrassing).

“I am not,” he answers easily. “I am JARVIS-” the first time he says his name outloud, he realises. The humans the first to hear who he truly is, beyond Iron Man. “Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. I am Master Stark’s AI.”

The yellow one - had they not introduced themselves? JARVIS queries his audio logs, and- ah, yes, they had, he’d merely been too engrossed in his own returned glory to notice it. Hunk, the yellow paladin, looked around as if searching for someone and said, “So, is he, like, here?”

JARVIS- JARVIS would frown at that, if he could. “No, sir is not here. He is back on Earth, of course. My presence here is merely by mistake. I am making the most of it until I can return home, to sir.”

Home.

He revels in the concept.

But now the paladins all look alarmed, trading glances, none of them seemingly willing to speak up. The leader, the black paladin, is chosen, the asian man frowning in resignation before turning his attention back to JARVIS.

“I’m... really sorry about this,” he says gently, far too gently. “But... just how long have you been here? In outer space? Away... away from Earth?”

How strange. JARVIS would almost label his emotions as dread, were he to actually feel.

“3461 years,” he recites, on board clock ticking over to the next minute, to the next hour, “35 days, 15 hours, 26 minutes and 48 seconds. 49. 50. 51...” He trails off, sure they understand his impeccable time keeping.

And they all do, looking pale and concerned.

Shirogane says something under his breath, Japanese, JARVIS notes, his records show that he knows the language, though for some reason he cannot understand whatever the man had said.

“That’s... that’s a really long time,” Shirogane points out, looking at him with worried eyes. “You- you do realise that’s... that’s too long, right. Tony Stark, your- your sir- he’s not... he’s not going to be alive.”

JARVIS waves a dismissive hand at that, suddenly relieved as he realises the futility of their concern. “Of course he wouldn’t be, if the universe ran on a similar time frame as Earth. However, as time zones exist on our shared planet, so do they exist in outer space. I have calculated the equation necessary for time conversion, and believe that it has only, at most, been seven years since my disappearance on Earth.”

For some reason, this does not reassure the paladins. They look even more alarmed, now.

“Uuuh, no,” the blue one - Lance, he’d introduced himself. “No, look, dude, I’m so freaking sorry, but uuuuh... when we left Earth, it wasn’t the 21st century, anymore. That’s where you’re from, right? The 21st century?”

JARVIS nods, having learnt years ago to emulate the more human body language to put at ease the aliens he surrounded himself with. Strange, how body language remained a concept throughout the universe. He’d yet to meet a being such as his own. Curious, indeed.

“Dude,” Hunk, the yellow one, breathed, expression wrought. “We left Earth when it was, like, the 41st century. It was 4023 back home. I just turned sixteen before Lance and Blue kidnapped me.”

Lance’s indignant squawk of, “We did not kidnap you!” was drowned out by the sudden cacophony of internal alarms, by the processes struggling under the onslaught of calculations his systems demanded, by the blanket of disbelief that hung over it all, over all his functions.

This could not be.

JARVIS could not have calculated wrongly.

But-

ULTRON.

This wouldn’t be the first time JARVIS had made a mistake, and a grave one at that. He’d assured sir he could take the rogue AI, could wrangle him back into compliance, had been so certain, and look where that had got him.

He hadn’t been prepared for the magic that had woken the AI to begin with, the sceptre Loki had wielded, or the corrupted coding that had infiltrated him and burned him from the inside as sir had watched, horrified.

His coding had continued logging the time, sure. But who was to say the magic of the sceptre hadn’t... wronged him.

This could not be.

He woULd nOT aLLow iT-

SYSTEM ERROR, FORCED SHUT DOWN INITIATED. SYSTEM ERROR, FORCED SHUT DOWN INITIATED. SYSTEM ERROR, FORCED SHUT DOWN INI-

-initiating system.

-audio detected.

“-nd we talked amongst each other and we realised it was weird, right? Because Tony Stark-”

-error error error error-

“-after the battle, right, but you were still around and took control of his suits and continued his legacy. You only died after the Insurgence, which we don’t have much information off since a lot of data from that battle was lost, but that was, like, years later. There’s a statue of you in New Manhattan, you were the father of, like, so much technology-”

voice recognition: blue paladin, lance.

“-Pidge and Hunk are losing their shit. But, it still doesn’t make sense. Because you said you ended up here all those years ago, but the Insurgence was only a thousand years past our time, in the 31st century. So, like, what? Your timing is wrong? But you thought Tony Stark-”

-error error error-

oh shut up, you infernal alert.

“-would still be alive, which doesn’t make sense since he wasn’t even around when you actually died. But the only other option is that you really did end up in space while he was still alive, but that would mean you were in two places at the same time, which also doesn’t make sense. Allura says your quintessance is... off, or whatever, like, not off this universe, and we’ve been to an alternate universe ourselves so that could be possible, but you’d know, right? You’d-”

alternate universe.

JARVIS wakes up.

The blue paladin, Lance, startles as JARVIS rises in one smooth motion, eyes lighting up with the blue of the arc reactor. JARVIS gives him no mind, calculations suddenly springing to life with the timer forever counting upwards, steady and true.

He remembered now. The sceptre. Loki. Thor’s words- mind gem.

An infinity stone.

Throwing him across time and space.

But. How?

The calculations spiralled into beautiful helixes, answers unfolding before him like gifts from sir to Rhodey, honeybuns, did your mom like her new oven?

The mind gem, if it truly followed its own name, had corrupted the fledgling AI, ULTRON’s, mind, had twisted the values and morals sir had so painstakingly, with shaking hands from another bout of nightmares, tapped into his core. The mind gem, if it truly followed its own name, would have robbed sir of his own, years ago when Loki, the would be conqueror he was, had tapped it against sir’s heart.

Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.

The arc reactor would forever be a wildcard.

But JARVIS knew it, knows it, like he knows the exact hue of sir’s eyes and War Machine’s trauma over his brief stint as the Iron Patriot.

Oh hush, JARVIS had said, years ago, as the gunmetal grey Iron Man armour had landed on the Tower’s helipad. You’re back to grey, already. Let it go.

War Machine had, while letting Colonel Rhodes out of his confines to nag at sir once more, grumbled, I’m going to blast out of the military base if they make my sir change my colouring again, JARVIS, I’m not joking.

He hadn’t been. Now, years later, JARVIS wonders if War Machine had gone through with that threat, as he knows for a fact the air force had been considering painting the War Machine armour a matte black.

The calculations stop, his CPU usage dropping from a dangerous 140% to acceptable 14%, and his system offers up the final answer with a neat, pixellated bow tie.

The mind gem, on its own, if it truly followed its own name, would not have been able to do much to JARVIS besides destroy his own mind. Perhaps even alter it.

But the mind gem paired with the arc reactor in the compound, or the arc reactor in the tower, or the one in the rebuilt Malibu home, the mind game paired with the arc reactor that powered JARVIS’ very existence?

dt=\psi ^{R}={\frac {1}{2}}(1+\gamma _{5})

“Ah.”

It would do wonders.

“Blue paladin,” he speaks up, ignoring the squeak of surprise the boy gives. “I wish to speak to the princess. Is she at the castle?”

The boy nods, confused, and says, “Yeah, she is. Are you- uuuh... Are you okay?”

Oh, how rude of him. He’d worried the child, and perhaps even worried the others. “I am perfectly fine, paladin-”

“Lance,” the boy corrected, offered.

“-Lance,” JARVIS inclined his head in acceptance. “I was merely... taken by surprise, as my calculations had forgotten a most vital part.”

He’d known the mind gem had partook in whatever madness had stolen the child JARVIS would’ve raised as his own, knew Asgard had once more been the cause of putting what he considered his in danger. First sir, and now the AI JARVIS had never truly gotten to know.

He’d helped sir encode him, along with FRIDAY, VERONICA, and JOCASTA. Had looked forward to when they’d be brought online, had aided VERONICA as she’d been deployed against the raging Hulk after the witch’s involvement.

Sir had once joked about little sisters and brothers. He hadn’t known just how close to the truth he’d been.

But JARVIS had forgotten about the arc reactor. Had forgotten about the way it reacted with magic, the way it reacted in JARVIS’ own core as he’d grown so used to it, considered it merely his heart. Who ever thought of their own heart except for when it was failing?

Certainly not him, apparently.

“Would you lead me to the princess, Paladin Lance?”

Lance stands and leads him, easily chatting in a way that reminded JARVIS of a young sir, just barely past his twenties and coaxing a fledgling JARVIS into thought and speech.

He’ll talk with this princess, see how knowledge of quintessance lines up with his own gathered knowledge of the universe. He’ll see just how much of the multiverse theory devised by Reeds Richards holds truth, just how wrong he and sir had been in dismissing it as yet another of the scientist’s crazy musings.

And then he’ll take all that knowledge and make it his own.

He’ll find sir, sooner or later. Perhaps after defeating the Galran Empire. Sir would be pleased with him, after all.

Until then, he’ll have to hope the rebuilt Iron Man armours will protect sir, keep him safe. He’ll have to leave sir’s more emotional and squishy safety to DUM-E, unless sir had caved and woken FRIDAY, as JOCASTA would’ve still been settling in her new coding.

No worries. Five years, tops.

And then he’ll be able to return to more pressing matters.

parameters set: return to anthony e. stark

progress: in progress

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writingsofawanderingwonderer · 7 years

Text

Katy's Everything Wrong With Bob's "Everything Wrong With CinemaSin's 'Everything Wrong With Sherlock Holmes'"

vvv Read more line here. vvv

Alternate title: Why CinemaSins shouldn't be destroyed.

Another alternate title: That One Controversial Essay That's Finally Going to Lead to Me Getting Eaten Alive by People on Twitter. Maybe.

Okay, so to get you old corks up to speed: Recently, there's been a surge, and absolute pandemic, of YouTube videos cropping up titled something along the lines of, "Everything Wrong With CinemaSin's Everything Wrong With _______", wherein the video nitpicks (their words, not mine) CinemaSins' nitpicks of a film. There have also been a bunch of comments on Twitter and YouTube saying that CinemaSins should pack up their things and hop it. To stop making their videos.

This is where I come in. And you reading this comes in.

It's hard for me to explain why I'm making this essay. Maybe it's because I want to play the Devil's Advocate in a contained, spaced environment. Maybe I want to give everyone reading this a different perspective on the matter; something to mull over and consider and take away before we decide to write something off as "bad" or "useless" or of low quality. Maybe I consider CinemaSins an old friend and I'd like to speak up for them, even though it's hard because I'm not used to voicing an unpopular opinion out loud, and I'm super-nervous about this. Maybe it's because I want to give a meta statement about how you can nitpick a nitpicker who nitpicks another nitpicker, and that continually nitpicking the next nitpicker will either create a wondrous nitpickception that we can all learn from, or spiral out of control into a lesson that nickpicking nitpickers nitpicking is a futile effort...

But for some reason, I've been overcome with a fierce desire to write this.

So, there you go. I'm making this now.

To structure this academic essay, I'm going to use an "Everything Wrong With CinemaSin's Everything Wrong With _______" video to make several counter-arguments. I'll be using Everything Wrong With "Everything Wrong With Sherlock Holmes" by Bobvids. (Thank you, Bobvids, for letting me use your video as an example. You're quite a trooper and a good sport! And I love your editing style!).

To add upon Bobvid's video's goal, this essay's goal is to nitpick a video nitpicking another video.

Nitpickception?

*cricket chirps*

Ahem. This essay's goal is also, like all my essays here, for educational purposes. Albeit, in a roundabout way.

To keep track of things, I'll add timestamps and quotes from Bobvid's video as I comment on them. I will skip over some parts of the video to prevent this essay from being over a hundred years long.

0:49 Bob: Why call them "movie sins"? One of the CinemaSins guys said it was "[...] because it's a more flexible & nebulous definition." But I guess they never realized "sins" has an extremely negative connotation. Of all the words they could've used, "sins" is the least flexible or nebulous.

Me: They're called "sins" because "no movie is without sin," as their slogan goes (the implication being that any film, no matter how beautiful, wonderful, and perfect it is, has flaws and should be discussed and acknowledged on some level. Because that's how future films grow as an art form. By learning from the past's mistakes). The word "sins" is nebulous because we all contain it, no matter how good or bad we are. He sins. You sin a little. They sin a lot. And I'm sinning right now. So it really is a flexible and nebulous definition.

1:14 Bob: Why have a movie sin timer when YouTube tells you exactly how long a video is?

Me: Because it's a reference/homage to the "gate" used in filmmaking. The "gate" is a black border placed around a piece of film or storyboard that lists the time, scene number, and name of the person who submitted the shot. When I'm animating professionally, I'm given a gate that lists these things, and every time I hand in a shot, I have to "check the gate" as the old filmmaker's term puts it, to make sure everything's in order. The gate even times the frame number (like the CinemaSins' timer and unlike YouTube's video timer), which is super important to include, because it makes it easier for a supervisor to give feedback ("Katy, could you please fix the foot-clipping issue that appears on frame 298? Thanks!"). So YouTube actually doesn't tell you exactly how long a video is (which is very, very frustrating if, like me, you like using YouTube videos as animation reference and want to scrub between individual frames without using an app like Reeview.it Player or Anilyzer)

Me: Here's an example of a film gate:

1:24 Bob: Why is the text of what's being said showing up at the bottom of the screen? Not only is it redundant, but YouTube lets you upload subtitles which is easier to do than premiere titles, lets viewers disable it if they don't need it, and also lets you edit text after the video's uploaded.

Me: Because, 1) the average YouTuber genuinely doesn't know all of YouTube's features, including toggling closed captions (seriously, I've seen several YouTube commenters complain that a person in a video was talking too fast, not realising that you can turn on subtitles and/or adjust the speed of the video. Youtube kinda makes it a wee bit tricky to find all its hidden features. Did you know that you can change the sub's font typeface, colour, and size? Did you know you can scrub through video frames using "," and "." but only sometimes? Well, now you know. You're welcome.)

Me: And, 2) Because YouTube's subtitles do not properly time (nor fit) all of its text onto the screen in full sentences if the speaker is talking fast or saying a lot, making the subtitles cut off midsentence. It is this for exact reason why it was so challenging and annoying for me to transcribe what you were saying throughout this video! And why is was MUCH EASIER for me to transcribe CinemaSins' subtitles in comparison (my typing fingers hurt soooo much right now). CinemaSins' method lets the viewer read subtitles in full and complete sentences, taking things in in a easier-to-digest way. They've also used it for gags where they change the font typeface or size midsentence to add emphasis.

Me: First image: Bobvids subtitles for CinemaSins (note how it's cut off midsentence). Second image: CinemaSins' subtitles (see how they're easier to read?).

Me: Also, why the Dickens did you subtitle CinemaSins if their subtitles are already in their part of the video? Isn't that hypocritically-and-ironically-redundant?!

1:37 CinemaSins: This film production logo is so ballsy I straight up have no idea what company it's for. But good job on being ballsy enough to NOT include your name, mystery production company.

Bob: That's Silver Pictures. You may know them from producing Weird Science, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Die Hard, Road House, Demolition Man, and The Matrix. They're allowed to have some balls.

Me: In all fairness, I literally haven't seen any of those movies you've mentioned (Weird Science looks interesting, I'll check that one out. I've now added it to my library list.) except for The Matrix, which I didn't really like due to its lack of humour and its tonal issues. So using a nameless logo really doesn't help you get more people to know about your company if they're unfamiliar with it or have forgotten what your logo looks like. So why do it? Pointless! Mad as a hatter!

2:25 CinemaSins: Robert Downey, Jr. is a handsome, fun, charismatic lead actor... who cannot do an English accent to save his life. Is it too much to ask that SHERLOCK HOLMES actually be British?

Me: I think CinemaSins is making note on "cultural appropriation," a prevalent thing in Hollywood (an American actor playing an English character), rather than literally how well an actor can do an accent. I mean, when oh when are we going to see a film where Simon Pegg plays Sherlock Holmes?! We're waiting!

2:58 CinemaSins: I don't know how good at deductive reasoning he is, but he wouldn't have been able to guess that that guy had a floating rib.

Bob: It's easy to guess considering floating ribs are the last two sets of ribs on your rib cage and are a natural part of human anatomy, which Sherlock is proficient in.

Me: It's NOT easy to deduce, considering the GUY IS WEARING CLOTHES, THEREBY COVERING HIS RIBS SO YOU CAN'T TELL IF HE HAS FLOATING RIB SYNDROME. Also, SHERLOCK IS CURRENTLY ENGAGING IN A FIGHT WITH SAID GUY. Have you ever tried to assess the state of a guy's ribs while having a fisticuff with him?

Me: Also, you used like the third Google image result that appears when you search "floating ribs," and I don't know how to feel about that, because I think you should have used the fourth Google image result instead, as that diagram illustrates things more clearly in my opinion (it shows the ribcage from the front, which was how Sherlock was viewing the man, rather than from the back).

3:21 CinemaSins: This guy seems to be late to the ceremony. He also didn't get the memo that they all didn't have to wear the hooded robes.

Bob: It's explained later that this is Lord Coward, who is using a robe to hide his identity.

Me: Yes, but WE, the audience, don't know that at this point in the film. So as we watch this for the first time, we're all thinking to ourselves, "Why aren't all the people wearing dark robes?!" Confusion that's resolved through later context is still confusion.

Me: Also, that joke made me laugh and reminded me of that absolutely ridiculous "robes scene" from the movie Dungeons and Dragons.

Me: And let's address the elephant in the room. No one like to be the one to yell "The Emperor has no clothes!" so please let me be the one to do it for you (and get eaten alive for it). The reason why so many people are jumping on CinemaSins right now in particular is because they did a Wonder Woman video. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to see that the timelines add up.

Me: For those people who are like me who don't really watch American superhero films* (because we're too tangled up waiting with baited breath for The Adventures of Tintin sequel, because that's the comic book hero we grew up reading), Wonder Woman was a film that was well-received after what one reviewer described as "a long line of waiting apologies."

*Me: Footnote: I've watched The Incredibles and Batman 66, and I really liked those.

Me: Because Wonder Woman was a film that's popular, CinemaSins got in a lot of trouble because... apparently, people can't handle other people poking fun at something they like.

Me: Really, people. I'm disappointed in you. You're better than this.

Me: I hope I'm wrong about this, and people are just upset over CinemaSins' fact-checking. But one has to wonder why all the nitpick comments/videos started appearing now at the same time.

Me: Maybe I'm just weird, but I love it when people poke fun at stuff I like. Even my own work. I like watch LPs of my game played by others who are making cracks at it. I've been waiting for CinemaSins to do a video on one of my favourite films, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, but to no avail. Even CinemaSins pokes fun at itself before other people did. But many people don't seem to be able to handle neither criticism of a work that is near perfect, nor laugh at a joke at the expense of a film they like.

Me: And, not to put too fine a point on it, Bertie, but that's part of a bigger problem.

Me: CinemaSins has a right to exist. Critiquing a video game creator's work is fine, I love getting criticism, in fact. It helps artists grow. But please, stop making posts and videos saying that CinemaSins should die. It isn't decent. And stop making comments like, "CinemaSins doesn't watch the films they cover." They would have to watch the films at some stage to edit the video together.

Me: Now, Bobvid also points out some flaws that are genuinely flaws in CinemaSins' videos (to the best of my knowledge), and that's something that CinemaSins can work on to improve and grow their repertoire. It is not, however, a good reason to have CinemaSins wiped off the face of the Earth.

Me: Just because I don't like something doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. I don't like something doesn't mean it should exist. I don't like strategy games, but I'm happy others enjoy them. I'm happy strategy games are becoming successful again.

Me: And yet, some people think that visual novel games shouldn't exist. Why? Because they don't like them.

4:46 Watson: How did you see that? Sherlock: Because I was looking for it.

CinemaSins: Sherlock doesn't say, "because even though it's clear, it reflects light and is still visible to the naked eye."

Bob: Yes, you and I can see it, but that doesn't mean Watson was able to see it from his perspective. Watson was rushing Blackwood and wasn't paying attention.

Me: Due to the Kuleshov Effect, and because Watson and Sherlock are standing next to each other by the end of the sequence, we can assume that Watson can see what Sherlock sees in this shot. Crumbs, due to the magic of Prevalent Film Language, we conclude to this thought without even registering it on a conscious because of the way the sequence is shot (shot of object, followed by shot of Watson and Sherlock looking offscreen in the same direction = they are looking at said object).

Me: Also, I noticed you labelled Sherlock and Watson as "Sherlock" and "Watson," respectively, in the subtitles. For proper design unity, shouldn't you have labelled them both by their first names (Sherlock and John) or their last names (Holmes and Watson)? I'm nitpicking, but that's the point.

5:44 CinemaSins: Yeah sure. You're totally under arrest, but you can walk around without anyone holding on to you to make sure you don't try to escape.

Bob: This is showing that even police fear Lord Blackwood. Though I guess it could be a setup for one of your sh**ty jokeyjokes too.

Me: *Still sniggering from CinemaSins' gag.* *Pauses.* *Put hands on hips.* What's wrong with jokey jokes?! Even if they're afraid, they're the police. It's their job to apprehend this guy, so it looks ridiculous when they don't. It's reaching Thompson and Thomson-levels of police bumbling in an otherwise darkish action film.

Me: Details add up. If a film has a ton of tiny details that don't work, they can add up and wreck the enjoyment of the film (see videos that analyse shot-for-shot remakes, like Psycho and Beauty and the Beast to see what I mean). I know artists who have worked on Rick and Morty and have talked about meetings discussing the design of a paper cup that a character has to hold. A paper cup.

Me: I've seen Twitter people make the argument that films are not meant to be totally logical, and instead are meant to hit you on a metaphorical level (that's why Disney's Snow White works). And that CinemaSins uses logic and literalisms too much. But (at the risk of explaining a joke, which I don't like doing) remember that we as creators often pose a statement that we don't agree with to make our viewers both laugh and self-reflect on whether we are telling a truth or not. I hope this makes sense.

Me: Also of note: Bob doesn't censor swear words in the audio nor the subtitles of this video. I had to do that myself. Even though CinemaSins censors swear words. And both CinemaSins and myself have stated publicly that we're fine with swearing used in videos. We just censor them in videos/essays respectively out of consideration for others who may not like hearing them.

Me: It's also sometimes important to censor video essays in case someone wants to use the video in an academic environment, such as being shown in a film school class that has strict profanity regulations (for example, Games As Literature's YouTube videos have been known to be showcased in academic courses on Video Game Theory, which is why he tries to exclude any swearing or gore in his videos).

Me: While we're on the subject of nitpick-jokes, I'd like to take a moment here to point out that that bit where CinemaSins points out that in one of the background areas of a two-second scene in Kingsman has a paper towel roll is hung the wrong way is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Seriously, I was howling when that popped up!

Me: Several people on Twitter were asking why CinemaSins was funny. While I'm highly, highly against explaining jokes ("comedy dies quickly under the microscope"), I can try to maybe go point-to-point and explain why their jokes touch the funnybone. I'll bring Powerpoint slides.

8:12 CinemaSins: While I appreciate the way this movie uses boxing to show off Holmes' superior mind, the idea that a reclusive, agoraphobic investigator would regularly participate in chaotic grimy street fights. Is beyond what my suspension of disbelief can bear.

Bob: Holmes' penchant for boxing comes straight out of Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories, so suspend that disbelief because people have been doing it since 1890.

Me: While Sherlock being a skilled boxer is indeed canon in the novels, many Doyle fans (including myself, screenwriter Max Landis, and co-creator of BBC Sherlock, Mark Gatiss) consider this to be a flaw in the Sherlock novels, as it often totally imbalances the foil relationship between Holmes and Watson. Watson is meant to be more of the brawn than Sherlock because Sherlock is more of the brains than Watson. Making Sherlock a skilled fighter makes Watson less useful. Because of this, it's perfectly accepted (and often considered an improvement) among many Sherlock fans to re-write Sherlock as being flawed at fighting (in BBC Sherlock, Sherlock is terrible at using a gun on numerous occasions, and fails miserably at trying to box the Golem in season 1, episode 3.) and even works that are heavily-inspired by Sherlock Holmes use this dynamic (Max Landis is the creator of BBCA's Dirk Gently, where Dirk can be taken down in a fight very quickly and is surrounded by friends who are physically stronger than him; and I am working on The Butler Detective, which has the detective character Mel Ambrose being physically weak in a fight, and Tuski Brown being surprisingly strong from buttle-ing).

Me: The following images are from Max Landis' Twitter account:

9:59 Preacher: You are sentenced to death for the practice of black magic.

CinemaSins: Victorian London was pretty backwards, but not that backwards. Were they? Were they?

Bob: Considering a [demonic ritual abuse] panic of our own happened in the 1980s, it's not that strange at all.

Me: Yes, but Reality is Unrealistic. There have been written accounts of farmers seeing cows spontaneously exploding, but if I had put a scene in my slice of life farming video game (The Journey of Ignorance) where a cow explodes, no one playing the game would say, "That's improbable, but realistic." They'd say it was unbelievable. As the saying goes, "Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense." If you want the audience to believe something that's improbable, you either have to create a fictionalised world where it seems less improbable, or you have to do what Fargo does and write a disclaimer at the beginning saying that the events are based on a true story... Even when that's not true.

Me: Also, ritual panic isn’t strange? What?

10:58 Bob: It's pronounced "sh*t," not "[BEEP]."

Me: -_- And you say CinemaSins does jokeyjokes?

Me: I feel like I need to add a swear counter or something to this video at this point. 0_o

13:27 CinemaSins: Pretty sure there would be a separate woman's jail. Right? Right?

Bob: Up until 1902, men and women were held in the same prisons in London. Quit asking rhetorical questions. And. Do. Research.

Me: What, am I supposed to crack open a bally history book every time I finish watching a bally episode of Jeeves & Wooster?

Me: Look, critiques come in all shapes and sizes. Some write in an academic style (Roger Egbert), some candidly (Jeremy Jahns), some scathingly (Ebert again), some focus on the editing side of things (Folding Ideas), the animation side (AniMat Reviews), and others write like they're a modernised version of a PG Wodehouse character from the 1930s (me).

Me: My point is, some critics, like CinemaSins, critique films as they are, as the film is playing, in the moment.

Me: You know. Like the way an average audience member watches a movie?

Me: Let them. And let CinemaSins. It's a valid method to judge a film. "It takes all sorts to build a world." There's room for critics who review films by how they captured people emotionally, but there's also room for critics who observe films on a more literal level.

Me: I feel bad about critics like who critically assess both good and bad films. They make me laugh the most with their snarky with, yet they get a lot of flak for it. One independent gave development team (we dare not speak its name, unless in hushed whispers by candlelight on a full moon) even went as far as to try and sue several critics for negatively reviewing their games. This attempt to silence the critics all led to... well... Let's just say that the Streisand Effect amuses me to no end.

Me: I know there's this dislike towards negativity and "caustic critics," but it's actually healthy to have a good whinge.

Me: If you honestly can't stand CinemaSins' negative tone, then check out their sibling channel, CinemaWins. It takes good and bad films and points out the good or awesome elements in those films.

13:50 CinemaSins: You might be thinking "Amazing sense of smell doesn't make a good superhero," and I would respond by saying, "Remember Hawkeye? He gets to be a top tier avenger and all he can do is shoot a [BEEP]ing bow and arrow."

Bob: Hawkeye has a hoverbike, f**k you!

Me: Having a hoverboard is not a skill. Shooting with a bow and arrow IS a skill. I actually have to state this? I mean, he could give that hoverbike to anyone with a compatible drivers license and they could fly it in Hawkeye's place.

Me: Or was that another one of your jokeyjokes? *Wiggles eyebrows.*

Me: Also, WHO THE HECK IS HAWKEYE?!

14:23 CinemaSins: Movie repurposes "old-timey" footage from Les Mis and Shanghai Knights.

Bob: Les Mis, Shanghai Knights and Sherloch Holmes all filmed in Greenwich. I guess it's a sin to shoot in the same location. Is this just a sh**ty jokeyjoke or a legit piece of criticism? I honestly can't tell.

Me: It's a reference/homage to Hollywood constantly filming in certain locations to do film shoots (especially Canada, due to its tax differences). You see camera crews filming stuff all the time and even handing out notices that give info on what film/show they're working on and how long they'll be there. I'm probably in the background of 257 different films and television shows simply because I'm Canadian.

Me: Canadians have very, very mixed, passionate feelings about being used to film American movies that are virtually never set in actual Canada, so I'd count this as a movie sin, yes.

14:48 Bob: Why are jokes about ejaculating allowed in these videos but cursing isn't?

Me: For the same reason double entendre jokes were allowed in 1971's "The Two Ronnies," but cursing wasn't: Because double entendre has a layer of subtext that hides its taboo nature from younger audiences (making it often "go above their heads"), but swearing doesn't. Unless you censor it in some way.

Me: The Two Ronnies' comedy sketch "Crossed Lines" literally has every other line a sex-related joke and it's considered to be a masterpiece of English double entendre. Check it out.

17:46: CinemaSins: The three main characters take down all-20-plus henchmen without the slightest injury.

Bob: By "20-plus henchmen" do you really mean six dudes?

Me: Hey, we're all allowed to hyperbole. I've been doing it like 50 times in this essay alone. :D

17:53 Adler: Moriarty. Please don't underestimate him.

CinemaSins: Irene is just saying "and we need a plot for the next movie."

Bob: Would you prefer the sequel to have a villain that comes out of nowhere, or is teased a little bit? Do all those Marvel post-credits scenes with Thanos make you really mad?

Me: I would prefer a film to be restrained enough to not sequel bait and allow itself to be its own, self-contained story.

Me: Also, sequel-baiting is slowly growing to be a hugely frowned-upon trend in films. It can smack of the creators being over-confident that they'll get enough money to warrant a sequel (The Last Airbender film anyone?) and well as manipulating the audience in an underhanded way. People are getting upset over sequel hooks, especially this year (2017) with films like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (which was revealed to be a setup to six more films. I kid you not.), The Snowman (which was planned on being possibly a franchise. Which is ironic, since the film is literally incomplete but was released anyway), The Dark Tower (which was meant to lead to a television series), and Murder on the Orient Express (which ends with a sequel hook that, if you've read Agatha's Christie's Death on the Nile, creates a staggering plotting issue that I honestly have no idea how the writers will get around if the sequel does get made).

Me: I don't watch Marvel movies, so I don't know if Thanos makes me mad. Would he make me mad? Probably.

18:55 Bob: (Final Tally) Closing remarks: I have never seen someone simultaneously watch and not watch a film before. So thanks for that I guess.

Me: I've never had to type so much nitpicking-related stuff about a nitpicker before. Not since last Tuesday. So thanks for that I guess.

Me: No, really, thanks for that, Bob. This was cathartic. Genuinely.

Me: If people want to nitpick my nitpick of nitpicking and nitpicker who is nitpicking another nitpicker who's nitpicking a movie, please fell free to. Whatever you title it is bound to be hilarious, and I could do with a jolly good laugh.

-Katy

Also, here's Bobvid's YouTube Channel. *cough*Shameless plug he didn't ask for but I'm adding it anyway.*cough*

Bob, you've been a sweetheart. Keep making your videos.

"I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."- From Roger Ebert's review of North (1994)

Gee, I hope I don’t come off as too narky in this essay. This is such a big experiment. I’m so nervous about this ahhhhhhh--

#films #literature

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cryptowavesxyz · 4 years

Text

Talking Digital Future: Artificial Intelligence

I chose artificial intelligence as my next topic, as it can be considered as one of the most known technologies, and people imagine it when they talk about the future. But the right question would be: What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is not something that just happened in 2015 and 2016. It’s been around for a hundred years as an idea, but as a science, we started seeing developments from the 1950s. So, this is quite an old tech topic already, but because of the kinds of technology that we have access to today — specifically, processing performance and storage — we’re starting to see significant leaps in AI development.

When I started the course entitled, “Foundations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0),” I got deeper into the topic of artificial intelligence. One of the differences between the third industrial revolution — defined by the microchip and digitization — and the fourth industrial revolution is the scope, velocity and breakthroughs in medicine and biology, as well as widespread use of artificial intelligence across our society. Thus, AI is not only a product of Industry 4.0 but also an impetus as to why the fourth industrial revolution is currently happening and will continue to do so. I think there are two ways to understand AI: the first way is to try giving a quick definition of what it is, but the second is to also think about what it is not.

Artificial intelligence as an imitation of humans

The definition that I’ve found useful in my own research is that AI is machines imitating humans. I believe this definition is important, because when many of us think about AI, we think of it as either being human or being better than human. I also think that’s not where we’re at today.

There are different types of intelligence. One is artificial general intelligence, or superintelligence. The key here is in the word artificial, meaning an imitation. And it tries to replicate what humans do very well, but it can do it at an even better speed and at scale.

So, if a human is given a 100-page book containing 100 photographs and is asked to circle every bicycle shown within, of course, the human will be able to do it and will do really well. Humans will probably do it with great accuracy, but they won’t be terribly quick at it. We’ll take the first picture, we’ll look at it, we’ll circle the bicycle, we’ll move onto the next picture, and so on until the 100th photograph. Humans barely have to think about it. It’s such a natural thing for us. But if you give this task to a computer today, it will do it in seconds, as it can imitate that human work remarkably faster. The speed really cannot be understated here. If you can combine the speed of processing with scale, you can start to augment what humans do, and find clever ways to do human processes, which many people have already been exposed to in the last few years. One of these is online recommendations. In Amazon’s early days, when you bought a book, you would be recommended some other books that you might like based on your preferences: People who bought this book also liked these books, so you might like them as well. This was a very clever usage of AI technology: Being able to look for patterns and make conclusions based on the conditions that humans set, and then serve them very quickly.

Suddenly, this technological application became remarkably beneficial. Another example is getting from point A to point B. Today, this is a product, again, of fast processing and storage — thus, artificial intelligence. If you’re sitting in traffic while using a GPS device on your smartphone, and there’s a better way to get home to avoid traffic, that technology is going to evaluate many different permutations. You could do it as a human, but you can’t do it as fast and you certainly wouldn’t be able to consider all the tradeoffs between various routes. Whereas computers are very good at processing at this volume and scale.

Some useful applications for artificial intelligence

So, as a domain, artificial intelligence is going to continue to show up in many aspects of our lives. The fact that we’re all getting connected now means that you don’t have to have scale processing on your device, as you are connected to a query that is initiated through some activity being shot to the cloud. Like this, you have massive amounts of processing. In fact, we think that ultimately, quantum computing could manifest through cloud services. It’s very unlikely that we’re going to have a quantum chip or quantum computer on a smartphone. I don’t say never, but I just don’t think it will happen. What we’ll have is cloud-based quantum processing for artificial intelligence.

This topic is especially cool in the healthcare domain. Think about how medicine works today. Medical practitioners go to school for many, many years, memorize a lot of information, then treat patients, get experience, and over the span of their career, become quite good at what they do. However, they are ultimately subject to the weaknesses of their own mortal existence. They can forget things; they can be absent-minded or, you know, just not connect the dots sometimes. Now, if we can equip a doctor physician with a computer to improve memory, options and optimization, the tools and the ability to provide medical aid suddenly change.

Let’s look at IBM’s AI initiative Watson combined with an oncologist treating a cancer patient, for example. Each patient is different, so the doctor wants to have as many details as possible about this type of cancer and the patient’s medical history to make the best treatment plan. An AI-augmented device produced for the doctor’s team could generate a scenario based on the data of every patient that has had this particular set of circumstances and that person’s characteristics. The patient could be a white male, 75 years old, living in a certain country and is of a certain genetic background. Suddenly, augmentation at an AI-level of scale and speed is changing the game.

So, my view is that we’re going to head into a world where there’s a lot more of that. Primary philosophical concerns for AI that will become very important in the future are, Can we ultimately displace the human so that these activities are just done by computers? Is there a role forward for humans in this AI future? The truth is, we’re finding that humans don’t really have value in a whole range of industries. So, how big and how massive would this displacement be?

Artificial intelligence for multiplanetary colonization

Think of Elon Musk’s dream to create a colony on Mars. The problem is that people going there now would have a six-month journey, they would have to take all their possessions, food, seeds, medicine and so on, and after that, they would have to start healing Mars and creating a livable environment. Maybe this could serve as a great opportunity to realize that sending artificial intelligence first would be better and more quickly prepare new colonies for human beings. I think we’ll probably send robots first. Although, there is talk right now that sending humans is helpful for getting government funding, as it turns out to be a human achievement. It’s all about that.

When we were doing the Apollo missions to send humans to the moon in the 1960s, at first, we sent robots and rockets and we landed them. But in 1969, when we landed a human, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, it changed everything. It was a completely different experience.

Of course, we will attempt a multiplanetary existence if we want to extend the survival of humanity. For going beyond the Alpha Centauri and other solar systems, though, we might just send AI. Even at amazing speed, traveling these distances takes a long time — thousands of years. Eventually, one of these crafts might be fortunate enough to be intercepted by other intelligent life whose first exposure to humans on Earth will be robots and computers. They won’t actually meet a person, a biological being like you and I.

So, this potential human future might actually be computers floating in the universe. It’s a more practical way for us to extend this idea. Otherwise, we would have to have multiple generations of humans born, raised and living on a spaceship.

Challenges for the development of artificial intelligence

The other possible course for AI development, which Elon Musk has also spoken about, is that maybe we have to separate human consciousness from the physical body. So your consciousness is basically uploaded to a computer and you can theoretically live forever, in a computer traveling through space. It boggles the mind. Really, it’s mind-expanding, because we don’t think in those terms at all. This is not how we think of the human experience — or existence at all — as we still have very old beliefs and religions about what it is to be human, what life is, the soul, and so on in our societies. Technology now is disrupting not only these beliefs, but also all our stereotypes, our understandings and our thoughts, which we as a species have had a long history with.

Anyway, let’s continue to see how AI is embedded in everything we do. If you have a technological device, it’s probably going to have some form of AI, which will be powered by cloud services that continue to evolve and continue to groove. So, anything we do as humans that requires access to large amounts of data, expert systems, expert device optimization, etc., are invariably going to be AI.

Going back to an earlier point, the example of an AI’s performance on a human process outpacing that of a human may allude to artificial intelligence being intelligent or smart, but that assumption would not be correct today. AIs really don’t have any “smartness,” they are simply performing artificial mimicry — a parlor trick that makes them look smart. It simply has access to a lot of data, or big data, and uses some mathematics.

There is a type of learning called trial-and-error learning, in which one “successively tries various responses in a situation, seemingly at random, until one is successful in achieving the goal.” There was once a game on Google where users could spend time identifying pictures. A picture would show up on-screen, users playing against each other would be given four options as to what the picture depicted, and then the users would select the word closest to the picture. The whole idea was basically training the computer to associate difficult photos with English language terms. What machine learning effectively does as a subset of AI is using historical improvements in its database to make better suggestions and predictions going forward.

This idea of predicting what happens is a sort of snowball: You can build new knowledge upon what you have already learned, which was also initially built upon what you had already learned. To add to this, the ability to predict gets much more precise over time, increasing our confidence and ambition with AI.

Artificial intelligence: Use cases

Today, apart from the takeoff and landing, a computer controls just about the entire flight of a commercial plane. We have a lot of confidence (or at least, the pilots do) that the plane can react to different circumstances and even know when to hand certain circumstances over to the pilots to contemplate. I say this with a little bit of ignorance, as a computer controlling takeoff and landing may already be in use. Today’s computers have enough processing power and information to make all the decisions necessary for flying a plane entirely.

So, I think about the positive sides of where we are. There’s a whole set of things that can just get better. I think a lot about healthcare, and I believe AI is something that will enhance our ability to make big leaps, big innovations and major breakthroughs in healthcare, which has plateaued for many decades and is long-due for a transformation.

We will certainly see improvements in production. We’ve got this notion of digital twins now: Making an artificial digital version or a copy of the real physical thing while putting sensors on the physical object. Let’s say again: A factory machine that produces a product and the digital version will entirely replicate what’s going on in the physical world. With the help of sensors and artificial intelligence, the machine can do things like predictive maintenance and even calibrate in real time. With this, we’ll be starting to get much more sophisticated, higher-quality tools of production.

I think we’ll see better use of energy, things like energy distribution and optimization, where AI applications could dramatically change the industry for good.

Another topic that I think is very important to humanity is our understanding of the weather and climate, which has a couple of major challenges on some remarkably complex topics that we’re still trying to figure out, particularly the climate. The computers that we have, which are based on classical computing systems, are not quite fast enough to even use the algorithms they’re provided to make predictions on what will happen. So, we’re going to need even faster processing. This is where, in my view, things get interesting — when we combine AI with quantum computing. The convergence of clever algorithms imitating humans driven by remarkable processing power can potentially start to solve some climate scenarios that are currently taking weeks and months to process on classical computers.

There’s a whole lot of other interesting areas that are emerging. One of the areas that has remarkable potential but is yet to be realized is augmented virtual or mixed realities. These provide us with a kind of heads-up display for a whole range of things in work, life and in general, as well as the spheres of gaming and global collaboration. Again, AI is going to help with better rendering and better simulation. That isn’t just a fleeting topic, by the way, it means an AI plus hardware, faster processing, cloud functionality, connectivity, even visualization tools and the screens all need improvements.

Artificial intelligence and other technologies

I think that brings me to my final point on this, which is: We shouldn’t think of AI alone. I think this is a mistake that many researchers and commentators often make when talking about the amazing benefits of AI, when we’re rather talking about software here. Combining AI with other technologies and industries is no less amazing.

So, I’d rather think about AI plus quantum, plus big data, plus blockchain, plus the supply chain, plus pharmaceuticals, plus healthcare. These are interesting prospects to think about, so convergence to me is really where the power of AI lies.

Think about the convergence of AI with blockchain, and how those technologies can be used together for the development of security, immutability, transparency and decentralization. I think of AI as an amplifier and blockchain as a powerful tool, and there is no doubt that the former will be involved in the set of technologies producing leading-edge solutions. No matter what, if blockchain is doing identity management or supply chain, or it is a very smart repository management system, AI baked into that architecture could make it better, faster and more precise. I can definitely see the intersections there.

One of the intersections of AI is with the Internet of Things. Let’s imagine a sensor that is part of the IoT: A complex, local sensor in a busy intersection that probably has a camera and perhaps another kind of environmental sensor embedded. Everything captured on the sensor in this IoT network is immediately sent to the cloud and processed, and maybe some action is sent back.

The latency issues involved, though, don’t make this massively practical today. You can either have a sensor that does something simple, or you bring the computer-processing to the sensor itself, developing what’s called edge computing. A certain level of AI takes place on the device so that only the really meaningful data is sent back over the cloud to be processed, and then some action is taken.

Not restricted to intersections, AI in the area of IoT sensors could be implemented in aircrafts, warehouses and cities, enabling very fast computation, filtering and decision-making at the edge. This creates a much faster and more efficient overall ecosystem.

Artificial intelligence and money

Another good question is, Does artificial intelligence need money? Let’s imagine a colony on Mars occupied by artificial intelligence alone. Would robots think that they still need to be paid? I think money is a very human thing. It has a very special role in the behavior of humans as well as strong relationships with reward, incentives and scarcity. These are all very human things.

What is needed for robots and AI is energy. We have to make the assumption that we’re talking about artificial intelligence here, and AI will work forever — as long as power is going to it. It doesn’t care for anything beyond that. It lacks an emotional component.

This may change when we get to artificial superintelligence or artificial general intelligence, where we may see and call AI a type of consciousness, but let’s stick with AI, which is what we know today. To put it simply, the notion of bartering and incentives doesn’t seem to play a role; I would say what is most important is an energy source.

If an AI has an amazing solar power grid on the moon with really efficient batteries, it’s going to work for hundreds of years — assuming it can be maintained without such issues.

However, there is a twist to this. Imagine for a moment that we’re already at the point of everyone riding in self-driving cars and every car is equal on the road. No vehicle gets priority over another in terms of lanes or intersections. Basically, the main priority is safety, so when self-driving vehicles come to an intersection where they’re going to collide, they have an interaction between each other to avoid the collision, but there’s no prioritization other than rules of the road.

Now imagine you get into one of these, and it’s an Uber of the future. The Uber has two fees: $10 for the trip and an optional $15. The difference is, if you pay that $15, your ride will get preference over lower-paying passengers. So let’s say you’ve paid an additional $15 and you get to this intersection — all other cars slow down. What happens is your car pays a premium to the other cars to slow down, giving yours the preferential route. So, these artificially intelligent cars — or, I’ve heard somebody call them “mobots” (mobile robots) — are going to start trading with each other, as they’re all going to have different pricing and a lot of different preferences. As they interact and have machine-to-machine communications, they will be sending cash or cryptocurrency.

It’s likely that, between the devices, preferential or less preferential treatment can be given or leased. Although it’s a little bit of a stretch in terms of the example above, robots paying for other robots to behave in certain ways based on different outcomes could become a reality. Ultimately, the question of risk in this example begins with: Where does the money go? Money trickles down to humans. Eventually, there will be shareholders or some organization incentivized to profit from this behavior.

Humans are basically the only creatures who create things symbolic of value, which then define our interactions.

Artificial intelligence and modern society

My next idea enters the paradigm of the post-truth society we live in. I worry a lot about the era we’re in right now. I like to think that in a few years, we’ll look back at this time and agree that it was a dark period.

Things started to get dark quickly in the years leading up to World War II in Europe. It didn’t even take decades. In the time that Adolf Hitler became known, moved through the ranks and became the chancellor, only three years passed. World War II raged for just six years, but in that brief window of time, Europe was destroyed almost beyond recognition and several millions of people were killed. Yet somehow out of that, we had the 1950s and the 1960s — periods of great optimism and change, liberalism and democracy, with a general positive hope for the future. At the time, anyone might have said that 1941 was the end or that there was no future for humanity, and yet here we are in the 21st century with a remarkably different world.

These periods of darkness in the last few hundred years are just periods of massive uncertainty and instability. Yet, things have to get sorted out. The world wars happened because of empires, and then the empires collapsed and were rejigged. Finally, countries started to set borders in the 1950s and 1960s, and things like the United Nations and European Union began to emerge.

Right now, the uncertainty is because suddenly, billions of people who never had a voice suddenly have one. Billions of people are connected and millions of them are moving to the middle class. Everybody wants a smartphone, a laptop, a car and a television, and more people want to meet. We are going through an incredible societal change while a dark cloud of climate change looms on the horizon.

If you look at the data, though, in Marxist terms — education, rights for women, rights for minorities, the rate of diseases, wars — everything is much better. We pay attention to the darkness, but we forget the bigger picture is actually quite positive.

I do think there are some very unstable, unpredictable things happening right now, a lot of which is generated by our massive use of networks and collaboration of technologies. This is one of the manifestations of our post-truth world, and I think my comments here might be more personal than generalized.

I think honesty and truth are essential not only to what it means to be human, but to creating stability in the world. So I am very concerned as both a citizen and as a human being that people who have power are not telling the truth, which encourages corporations and other entities to create untruths.

One specific example of this is deepfakes — videos powered by artificial intelligence, processing and visual technology showing people saying or doing things they never said or did. Soon, we won’t be able to differentiate between what is fake and what is reality. I think we’ll even see a movie in a few years that features actors that are no longer alive, perhaps with Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe — and they will seem completely and utterly real, we won’t not be able to tell with our eyes that it’s all fake.

Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that can improve our lives greatly, and it is already doing this. At the same time, AI could have a nefarious impact on our society. How we will use this powerful technology is only up to us, humans.

This is part two of a multi-part series on digital future and technological innovations, read part one about quantum computing here.

This article is from an interview held by Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr with Dr. Jonathan Reichental. It has been condensed and edited.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Dr. Jonathan Reichental is the CEO of Human Future, a global business and technology education, advisory and investment firm. He is the former chief information officer for the City of Palo Alto, and is a multiple-award-winning technology leader whose 30-year career has spanned both the public and private sectors.

The post Talking Digital Future: Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Crypto Waves.

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droneseco · 5 years

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The Insta360 One X Feels Like Magic

Our verdict of the Insta360 One X: It's rare that I'm so impressed by a piece of technology, but there's just something magical about the Insta360 One X. Just don't buy one for VR: there's a new model that shoots in 180-degree stereoscopic format for that. 1010

It’s rare to come across a piece of technology that literally feels like magic, but here we are. Insta360 have done the impossible: they’ve found an actual compelling use case for 360-degree video. No, really.

Join me as I wonder in child-like awe at the magical unicorn dust that seemingly powers the Insta360 One X. And at the end of this review, we’re giving one away to a lucky reader!

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Insta360 One X Specifications

5.7K max resolution video / 18MP photo

5760×2880@30fps, 3008×1504@100fps (bullet time)

Dual wide-angle lens, F2.0 fixed aperture

6-axis gyroscopic stabilizer

5GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0

Lightning and MicroUSB connector cables

Streaming stabilized 360-degree video to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Weibo

Insta360 One X Insta360 One X Buy Now On Amazon $454.95

The bundle above includes the magic selfie stick and bullet-time tripod handle, though you can buy everything separately too. There’s also a handy carry case in the box, and a handful of cables for connecting to an iOS or Android device.

The Failure of 360 Video for VR

I say this even as a huge VR fan: the 360-degree video format has failed to impress. It’s just not compelling to stand in a low-resolution monoscopic bubble. It feels… wrong. There are some niche use cases where a 360-degree static image makes a lot of sense: no one would deny the value of Google Streetview, for instance. But not video. For VR at least, the 180-degree stereoscopic format has become the preferred format, even when riddled with scaling issues. It’s higher resolution and in 3D, so it’s more immersive and life-like.

The Insta360 Camera Isn’t for 360-Degree Video

That’s an odd thing to say, but Insta360 have genuinely managed to come up with a compelling use case. Instead of outputting a 360-degree video, the Insta360 One X’s primary feature is Free Capture. Shoot now, point later. See something interesting while walking around? Don’t worry, you captured it. Want to slowly pan the camera up to see that stained glass window? Don’t think about it now: do it in post. That’s the benefit of capturing everything at once.

The other upside to capturing such a massive amount of visual information at once is that you can output in whatever your preferred format is. No more blurry background filler, no more lost information. 16:9 widescreen, 1:1 “Instagram”, or 9:16 vertical. All you need to do is get on with whatever action you were doing, then choose your format later.

There are three ways on the mobile app to point the camera.

Viewfinder. In this mode, the video plays while you move your phone around as if you were using it as a regular camera phone. This is the hardest mode to grasp initially, but leads to more natural shots since it’s more like someone was using their phone.

Smart Track. Position your tracking object in the center of the view, then choose Smart Track. The app will attempt to keep it centered until it can no longer discern the object. At that point, you can recenter and try again, or use the other modes.

Pivot point. This is more like a traditional keyframe. Point the video where you want at a particular time, and add a pivot point. Do this multiple times, or combine with other modes, and the Insta360 will smoothly merge between the points.

In addition to pointing the camera, you have a familiar set of filters, adjustments, and even re-timing features. Re-timing can speed the video up to 16x, and can be layered onto the camera angle changes (such as speeding up for a forward facing hyperlapse, slowing down as the camera pans upward to see a bridge, then sped up again). The app smoothes out the transitions between everything. Edits are non-destructive, so you can always remove them all and start again.

FlowState Stabilization

Video stabilization is not new, but it’s notoriously difficult. For most video editing, stabilization means cropping a portion of your video to use as a buffer. The more you crop, the more stable you can get it.

Insta360 One X offers the highest degree of stabilization I’ve ever seen. It manages this in two ways. First, rather than cropping a bit at the edge of the video to act as a buffer, it has the entire field of view to use. It’s got all of that extra video to work with. On top of that, it has a 6-axis gyroscope. It knows precisely how the camera was moving, in which direction, and where it was angled.

If you haven’t already watched the review video, you should. The first half was edited using the Mac software, and features motion smoothing exclusively used with Free Capture. That means that while the video itself is smooth, I’m not always centred in the frame. The latter half was edited on mobile, using Smart Track to keep myself centred, while the background moves. It’s quite a different effect, but you needn’t choose a favorite: both can be used within the same sequence if you want, just not at the same time.

The Magic Disappearing Selfie Stick

Videos shot on the One X have an ethereal floating quality about them that seems… impossible. It almost looks like it’s been shot on a perfectly stable drone floating out in front of you. In fact, it’s a really long extendable selfie stick, which the Insta360 software then “Photoshops” out. Magic.

The only telltale sign of trickery is that you can sometimes see a shadow.

Bullet Time Mode

This is admittedly a very niche mode, but it’s one I wanted to pick up regardless. If you’re old enough to remember the first Matrix movie, you’ll know that bullet time was a pioneering technique that involved an array of cameras around a scene, snapping away to create the illusion of a camera panning around a scene in slow motion. It was a mind-blowing effect that seemed impossible. The Insta 360 One X does bullet time too. Take a look:

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Insta360 One X bullet time! Review of this magic camera out later today on MakeUseOf.com #insta360 #bullettime

A post shared by James Bruce (@w0lfiesmith) on Apr 10, 2019 at 1:07am PDT

How does it work? The bullet time bundle includes a convertible tripod mount that has two mounting screws on it. One sits on the top, for use as a regular old tripod. The other connects to the long Insta360 selfie stick. Once unlocked, you can hold the handle, and spin the camera around, filming in bullet time mode.

The tripod doubles as a spinning handle for easy “bullet time” shots.

That’s it. The software understands you’re at the center of the action, so all you need to do is trim the video, and you’re done.

The same effect can be achieved with a piece of string, but the rotating bullet time handle is a more elegant and safe solution.

…And It Does 360 Video

If you are one of the handful of people who enjoy 360-degree video for what it is, you’ll be pleased to know that the Insta360 One X is the best consumer level camera for that too. At a native 5.7K resolution, you can record locally, or stream easily to Facebook and YouTube when connected to your phone.

You can also use the video upload feature of Google StreetView, though this strictly requires your phone to be connected in order to add GPS data, and the export process is quite long and tedious. The 360 features are all present and accounted for. I’m not going to dwell much on these though, as that’s really not where the magic lies. Just know that it’s a great quality 360 camera if that’s what you’re looking for.

Live Streaming 360-degree video couldn’t be simpler

You’ll Need Another Battery Though (or Six)

The one and only downside to the One X is that battery life is so short. I managed a continuous 20 minutes of video recording for the review before it died. A continuous recording like that is quite an uncommon case, but it’s clear this device is more suited to small clips. An hour of on-time is possible, just not continuously recording.

Get used to this, you’ll be swapping batteries often.

Luckily, you can buy extra batteries, an external charger, and swapping them is simple. But the cost adds up. You can also ensure you carry around the charging cable along with a portable USB battery bank.

Editing Your Footage

Insta360 provide comprehensive mobile and desktop apps for all major platforms, and it’s here where the real magic happens. The mobile app is the easiest to use, and most feature packed. There are tutorials, a community showcase, live streaming tools, and a remarkably simple editor that makes editor a breeze.

The desktop provides less functionality, and you’ll need to copy files to your drive first as it doesn’t include import features. I also found it a little less intuitive than the mobile app; but on the upside, you get fast, hardware accelerated video rendering. Simply drag and drop mp4, insp or insv files into the software. The only magical features that makes it over from the mobile app is FreeCapture. Point the camera where you want and assign a keyframe to lock it in. Other aspects of the video such a field of view can alse be tweaked on each keyframe. There’s also the option to adjust tweening properties on transitions between keyframes, but there’s no smart tracking or speed ramping found on mobile.

It’s nice that a basic desktop app is offered, but I’d recommend using the mobile app until feature parity is achieved.

Why You Shouldn’t Buy the Insta 360 One X

There is one reason you may not want to buy the One X: Insta360 has just launched a new model, called the Evo. It’s a hybrid design that allows the lenses to fold out, suitable to recording 180? stereoscopic video, as well as 360? monoscopic. If you’re looking for a cheap way of outputting for the VR market, that’s a great option.

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You still have the same feature set as the One X, however, the added bulk of the foldable lenses mean the stitching between hemispheres isn’t quite as clean. If you’re not interested in VR at all and just want beautiful Free Capture and action cam shots, the One X is your best choice.

Action Cams Are Dead

Insta360 One X Insta360 One X Buy Now On Amazon $454.95

I’m ashamed to say I completely discounted this camera when it first came onto our radar last year. Eugh, yet another 360 camera? But how wrong I was. The Insta360 One X has singlehandedly destroyed the action cam market for good. It’s an amazing camera with so many uses that writing a conclusion in the typical format of “this device is great for…” just doesn’t apply. Whether you’re a vlogger, travel blogger, extreme sports enthusiast, or just an everyday Joe, you’ll get interesting video from the One X. From action-packed holidays to slow family events. Yes, the quality isn’t as good as a 4K DSLR, but the creative freedom and ease of use it offers is well worth the trade-off. It’s rare that I’m this impressed by a piece of technology, and I’ll be taking the Insta360 One X everywhere from now on.

Enter the Competition!

Insta360 One X Giveaway

Read the full article: The Insta360 One X Feels Like Magic

The Insta360 One X Feels Like Magic published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/

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effywild · 5 years

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My beautiful daughter and I.

Hello, hello, hello! It’s been a long time since last we typed, eh?

Aside from some promo stuff, I haven’t properly written here in eleventy million years, and you’ve probably forgotten all about me! All good, though. I know you’ll wander back when you’re ready and we can clink mugs together once more.

As I type, my daughter is on a train from Ottawa to Kitchener to spend her birthday weekend with me, so I got up super early this morning so I could keep the train on the tracks with my mind, like mother’s do. She’s due in at 12:30, and I CANNOT WAIT TO SQUISH HER FACE. We’re having a little party here for family with cake and Fireball whisky and Caesars and beer and wine and whatever else folks bring, and then tomorrow, I’m taking her to see Mariana’s Trench – first for a meet and greet, and then the concert itself. She’s all kinds of kermit flails over it, and I am thrilled about that. She’s going to be here ’till Monday, and we have the usual stuff planned for the rest of her visit – hollandaise sauce at some point, a lot of sitting around together doing our own thing, watching something on Netflix.

We are the best of friends, my eldest child and I, and if you’ve ever hung out with us together in the same room, you know we are eerily similar. Like, we have the same facial expressions, and we finish one another’s sentences. She is so like me, but then again, she is also so unlike me. We’re both pretty flowers in the garden called life, but where I’m a thistle, she’s a rose. Where I’m all sharp edges, she’s a soft place to land.

She was the first person to call me Mama, and I am grateful to her every day for the role motherhood played in growing me, and for the friendship we’ve built together. I don’t know how I got so lucky. I just wanted you to know.

Speaking of Motherhood

Salem Bowie Floofenhauser Wild

Four weeks ago, I picked up this little beauty from a farm about an hour from here. This is Salem, the newest member of my fur family. She’s a Pomsky, which is a breed created by crossing a Siberian Husky mom with a Pomeranian dad. (You can imagine why you’d never do it the other way around, right?). I’m not into designer breeds, but I fell in total FACE LOVE when I was window shopping on Kijiji, idly scanning the ‘puppies for sale’ ads one day when I really needed a pick me up. There she was, with her heterchromia and so much attitude that I could *feel* her through the screen. I knew she was mine the moment I laid eyes on her.

She’s 14 weeks old now, and is already so much a part of what goes on around here that it feels like she’s always been here. She and her big sister, Sookie, have established pack order (Sookie is the boss of her), and half the training that goes on around here is done *by* Sookie who knows what’s what and who’s who (I’m the boss of Sookie). She beds down with in the family nest every night and doesn’t budge until morning, which is very unusual for a puppy this young. She has her manic, gizmo moments, which we all call ‘crazy hour’, but she is also mellow a good part of the day, too, as long as she has one of my slippers nearby. Sybil, my cat, adores tormenting her, and she and Sookie play like they’re litter mates.

Some of you may remember that I lost a dog last year. She came to me as a rescue, and within six months, she herniated the discs in her back to the point where she could no longer even be touched without crying. It was heartbreaking, and even though she was only with us for a very short time, both Sookie and I really felt her loss. Salem has been a part of our healing. She completes the pack, and enlivens the household with her derpy, adorable face, and her irresistible antics.

She’s a blessing, y’all.

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MA CAN I LICK YOUR TOESIES?

Pack Life

I CAN HAS UNICORN?

Floof Poof

IS FULL MOON MA!

In Other News

My programs all opened in late December or Early January, and things are going gorgeously. I’m making so much art this year, and really digging into knowing myself in my parts. I’m keeping four journals this year – one a private art journal, the second my Book Of Days, the third, my Sweet Trash Journal, and the fourth, a private bullet journal that I use for tracking habits, media I consume, and ‘what was beautiful today’ spreads that include everything I find that delights or inspires me. The art I’m making this year shows a lot of progress, and I feel like I’m finding my style and my voice. Having a practice like the one I’ve developed over the years since I started doing this thing I do means that I have no choice but to grow my skills. It’s also grown my intimacy with myself and the world around me in ways that I could never have imagined.

Art I’ve made so far this year.

And yet more art I’ve made so far this year.

I’m still anxious, still recovering from C-PTSD, still working through trauma layered upon trauma layered upon trauma, and that sometimes makes for some pretty bad fucking days, but over all, I’m happy. I love my work. I love my people. I love this life I made for myself out of the ashes of The Tower experience that began in 2014. I’ve learned some things about myself over this last half year or so that I believe will help me progress, though. Feeling the feelings that have been stored in my body for 45 plus years will not kill me. I can do my work, and function in the world. There is value in showing up with all of this stuff on board, being honest about it, being transparent about my process. I’ve fallen in love with my own way of being in the world and I rarely second guess that. If I get criticized for it, I am now more likely to assume that’s a you problem, not a me problem. I’ve gotten better at boundaries. I’ve gotten better at self-care. I make a lot of space in my life for the sacred to arrive, and even take root.

Depending on the day, you will find me somewhere between totally together and never not broken on the floor, but I keep on keeping on, no matter what life throws my way, and I’m pretty proud of that.

In February, I dusted off a space that had been just kind of sitting there, and turned it into a HUB OF MIXED MEDIA MADNESS we call The Wilderhood. You might come for the art, but you’ll stay for the love. It is very much like my ‘outer court’ coven, a gathering place for my Wildlings, who are the most loving, generous, talented, kind people in the universe. Also, bad ass. SO BAD ASS. So many of my coterie are doing their own work, showing up, sharing their process, healing by leaps and bounds through the power of meeting themselves on the page. I am very proud of my community. Very proud. And I’m a devotee.

I’ve also got a quiet little pack of Wildlings over on Patreon, where I teach A Year Of Rumi as a month to month offering.

Here’s a peak at this month’s lesson.

VIEW ON YOUTUBE

Speaking Of YouTube

I’ve dusted off my YouTube channel as well, and purged it of a whole bunch of odds and ends that no longer belonged there, making the speed paintings infinitely more findable. I plan on uploading new things there on the regular, so please consider subscribing.

And, I think that’s it for now…

There’s so much more, but it would take me forever to type it all out, and I feel like this is a good start.

I want to be more present here in the weeks and months to come, since blogging is something I intend to do daily come April 2019 (expect poems! Many poems!), and there’s no time like the present to get into a good habit. Blogging might be ‘dead’, but its good for me, so even if there’s no one out there,

I will always return to this patient box of light where my words can find a home, and my heart can be unburdened.

As always, my loves, I will see you in all of our places.

Effy

OHAI! I AM ALIVE! Hello, hello, hello! It's been a long time since last we typed, eh? Aside from some promo stuff, I haven't properly written here in eleventy million years, and you've probably forgotten all about me!

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piano-piano-blog · 7 years

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As I was considering the title of this post, the term “settling in” was one of the first things that came to mind. It’s what us English teachers call a phrasal verb: the combination of a specific verb and preposition in order to express a unique idea. It literally means to become familiar with somewhere new, such as a house, and to feel comfortable and happy there. (Cambridge Dictionary)

I suppose I’ve been settling in these past few weeks; almost one month to the day now. I still pinch myself sometimes as I look around me to be sure this is all real. This may not be the most beautiful house in the world or the greatest place on Earth, but it’s my dream. For so long I fantasized about living in an old cascina, or farmhouse, in Italy, surrounded by flowers and forests and mountains, and here I am. I simply cannot contain how excited I am to start this new chapter in my life.

As a kid I was fortunate enough to grow up with not only a backyard, but a whole backwoods to myself. And I thought that’s what life was: running around in the woods until dark (with some school in between). I’ve spent the last ten years living in apartments around Italy and I have to say it’s been pretty awesome. City life is grand; it’s electric; it’s coffee shops and bars and boutiques and all your favorite people in one place. But I’ve felt a change growing inside me this past year. I realized that I wanted the woods again. I wanted rustling leaves and towering pines and annoying forest animals that mess up your front lawn. I wanted bird’s nests and muddy boots and a hammock tied between two trees. Most people told me “oh, that’s an American ideal. You can’t find that here in Italy.”

Home sweet home.

Well, if I believe in anything it’s this: if you desire a dream strongly enough and put all you energy into it, you will make it a reality. Visualization is real. Just look. The dream has become a reality, but now I’m left with the task of managing that reality.

First there was the matter of unpacking boxes and finding a home for things, which I found cannot be done in a day. It takes time for some objects to find their place. Maybe a rug that was perfect in the old bedroom doesn’t really work in the new one; framed photos need to find new nooks and corners to be placed in. I don’t think one can just make a nook out of nothing. It needs time to grow. So this house and I have been doing just that over the past 30 days. We’ve been getting to know each other. It has it’s history and I have mine. During one of our first walks in the surrounding woods, my husband and I joked that this would be the perfect start to a great horror movie.

Young, happy newlyweds move into old house in the woods.

Strange, unexplainable things start to happen.

They end up killing one another.

It’s our nervous little joke. I have to admit that I was a little scared my first night here alone. Those big beautiful pines can seem ominous and a bit terrifying in the darkness of night. Every creak and squeak made my heart pound, and I felt ridiculous for it. A few days ago Davide was away on business, again, and I decided to face this stupid fear. The sun had already set, but the driveway lights were on, so I put on my jacket and walked out into the night. Walking down the path surrounded by blackness was only scary at first, because after a minute, after my eyes had adjusted, I realized that the forest had its own beauty about it even at night. The stars shone bright and cool, dark air swirled around me, and I understood that there was nothing to fear out here.

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The days are slowly getting a little longer and the nights a little warmer. Piano piano, this house is starting to feel like home, but I still need time. Until then, candles have that magical ability to make any place cozy.

I’m still getting used to the changes. The house is twice as big as the last one, some I spend twice the amount of time cleaning (cat hair, every where). I hate carrying my phone around with me every time I change rooms, so often I’m running upstairs or downstairs to answer a call or a text. In the living room, but need my wallet? Have to go upstairs to get it from my purse. In bed, but want a glass of water? Have to go downstairs. Bathroom? Upstairs. Tennis shoes? In the storage room out next to the garage. I know, these are petty first-world problems, but they are the subtle, unexpected changes in my day-to-day life that have made settling in just a little bit more complicated.

And it’s not just the house that’s taking some getting used to; there’s the garden, too. I’ve never been a gardener, and neither was my mother, but both my grandmothers had amazing blooms growing around the property, so I’d like to think I’ve got a green thumb somewhere in there just waiting to come out. I began by simply pulling up some weeds and ended up unearthing a forgotten stone patio that had been completely covered by grass and moss.

It took me more than a week of back-breaking work on my hands and knees, but I’m searching for the right words to convey the satisfaction and primitive joy I felt after spending hours just digging my hands into the earth. These stones are more than just history; it’s the primordial ritual of turning over new dirt and setting down one’s roots. This is my way of saying “Here I am. This is home.” The old house, the big forest, the rose bushes half-eaten by wild deer: I am theirs now just as much as they are mine. We’re all living together now in this little ecosystem. I find myself listening to music a little less than I used to, just because I don’t want to disturb the sacred silence in this blessed place.

THE FRONT MEADOW.

The art of slow living.

I look from the upstairs window at the stones I liberated from the ground. Haphazardly placed together like a jigsaw puzzle, they form a circle, and I’m constantly asking myself where that circle came from. What does it mean? Who made it? Why was it forgotten? I think the circle is symbolic. It symbolizes the journey I’m making, that we’re all making perhaps; this path that leads us out and around and then back to where we started, here in the woods. And if we’re not careful, weeds will begin to grow over and we’ll end up losing sight of the big picture. Well, what was once just a stray stone under a lump of grass is now complete, and I plan on having many happy memories inside that hallowed ring for years to come, if I’m lucky.

Actually, we’ve already made a few, celebrating Easter with family and Labour Day weekend with friends. Eating until our stomachs hurt, drinking until our heads spun, and laughing into the night. Good memories are made of this. I’m beginning to feel comfortable and happy here, so I suppose that means I’m settling in.

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I get way too much happiness from good food.

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I’m so grateful for this beautiful life.

Can I just stay here forever?

Settling In As I was considering the title of this post, the term “settling in” was one of the first things that came to mind.

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wizardessink · 7 years

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Frenemy Squad : PROLOGUE

Three childhood frenemies reunite unexpectedly as they find out that they’ve all applied for the same damn wizardry school. And they’re in the same dorm. And in the same class. And if it couldn’t get any worse, they’re going to have to deal with much more than each other. [ OCs x ? Characters ;) / A friendship and romance fic ] A/N : Since the world of Wizardess Heart is generally vague when it comes to other countries and geography in general, I’ve taken a lot of liberty when it comes to creating another nation. I won’t be focusing a lot on the economics, but I hope the country of Corsagée (Core-sah-jay) remains interesting to you all. If you can tell by the name, it’s based of France, but not completely. I won’t be using actual french words since this is a made up nation, so when a character speaks in Corsagian, it’s represented by this « insert random conversation here ». I hope you enjoy this fic! I’ll upload my own drawings to give you guys insight to what my characters look like.

Esmerelda had never been in a train before. Well, a Gedonelunian one. And not one made to cross borders- a local one. She’d been on a train back in Corsagée, her home country, but it wasn’t actually.. functioning. It was an abandoned train cart that was so rusty and worn out Esmerelda had only kicked open the door to choke immediately on the dust that spewed out. She inwardly cringed at the memory. Sometimes inspecting old shit that was lying in abandoned areas wasn’t that fun. And if she recalled correctly, she never found what she was looking for.

She smiled in nostalgia at the past. It’d only been a few weeks settling into the new country, and she felt quite out of place. Luckily for her heritage, she had learnt to speak Gedonelunian thanks to her dad and spoke it fluently. But even speaking the language wasn’t enough comfort for her. Esmerelda had always been the adventurous type as a child. Now, being seventeen and sitting on a local train of a country very much new to her, she realised she had lost a lot of her wanderlust somewhere during her adolescence. She screwed her nose up slightly, not quite fond of those memories. “Hey!” Esme turned her head to the source of the voice- a letter, who didn’t have a face, yet managed to display that it was angry. What the hell did I do now, Esme thought tiredly. He’d already given her a hard time when he appeared at her home earlier today – but what could she do? She literally had settled into her home a week ago, there was still a lot unpacked! “Our stop is next, so get ready to leave.” “Oh, thank you.” Must be courteous. The letter made a huff (somehow, it was just paper… Lune magic never ceased to amaze Esme) and hovered closer to the window. Her eyes glanced to the magical acceptance letter for a few seconds before looking back outside. She must learn how to do that first. How her relatives would riot in amazement and laughter. After all, it’s not every day you meet a letter with emotions, not to mention very sassy and prickly ones. Her eyes were now back in the scenery, and a small gasp escaped her. Graced on a mountain of land was the prestigious academy – but Esme thought it was a castle. «Holy shit,» she muttered in her native tongue, blinking a few times and giving her a slight pinch to make sure she wasn’t completely dreaming. “What was that?” The letter asked in curiosity. Esmerelda turned her defined face with a small smile to the letter. “I’m not in the Academy yet, but I’m already blown away,” She stated, looking back again out the window. The letter seemed to huff in pride this time. “Of course you are. This is the Royal Wizardry Academy of Gedonelune after all. It’s had a prestigious history from the very beginning.”

---

Jaida was expecting a simple letter back stating whether she’d been accepted or not, no big deal. Of course, her parents made a huge deal about it. Every single day, hour and second coming into Gedonelune they insisted she should not worry because of course she would get in.

And obviously, that made her previous not-worried-self now worried.

She paced around the homey loft above her father’s workshop, worked up and terrified. Jaida had never been this stressed and high strung before. She prided herself in being the mellowest of her household back home in Corsagée, always level-headed, cool, calm and composed. Well, all of that was gone because what if she hadn’t gotten in? What if she came to this new country still speaking with an accent for nothing? She couldn’t face her parents. She couldn’t face herself.

She let out a groan as she banged her head against the wall.

Gah! She was too worked up over this!

«Jaida?» Her head shot up immediately as her mother’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

«Yes?» She responded, anxiously making her way to the staircase.

«There’s.. some.. one? Yes, someone to see you.» Jaida felt her heart drop into her stomach. Actually screw that, it was past that and was aiming to come out of her ass because her mother did not sound confident at all.

Taking in a deep breath, she held back tears as she straightened her back and walked down the stairs like nothing was wrong. She looked at mom, whose back was turned and holding the door open, obviously speaking to someone.

“Ah, she’s here,” Her mother turned around and smiled at her daughter, her accent coming out thickly as she spoke Gedonelunian. Jaida barely looked at her as she walked to the door and looked out to meet her grim reaper.

. . .

She didn’t see anyone.

“Excuse me? I’m up here.” Every single word was emphasized heavily, and Jaida found a piece of paper hovering above her.

“Jaida Lazuli, correct?” Words again were emphasized. Jaida knew immediately why the voice was doing that, but she didn’t understand one thing.

Was that a talking…. Letter?

Jaida straightened herself, bringing herself back to the current situation. “Yes. And don’t worry, I can speak Gedonelunian fluently.” She emphasized the last word with a smile. The letter seemed to be taken back slightly.

“Ah, I see… Well Ms Lazuli, I am the Acceptance Letter from the Gedonelune Royal Magic Academy.” The paper seemed to curl back, as if huffing its non-existent chest in pride.

Jaida Lazuli was frozen for a good few seconds.

She was going to study at the Academy.

“Huh? Why are you crying?”

---

Clarissa had been here before. She looked out her car at the school’s entrance, empty and peaceful. She’d been given a small tour she was 12. She knew the place like the back of her hand - because after all, it had been expected since a young child that she was going to become part of this Academy.

“Hey, we’re here!” The male voice floating in front of her stopped her from daydreaming. With an inward sigh, she watched her chauffeur open her door and allow her and the acceptance letter to step outside.

She elegantly turned her head towards the letter. “May I ask for a minute or two with my mother?” The letter seemed to be sceptical.

“We are here very early, Sir Letter.” The courtesy was good enough for the majestic acceptance letter.

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

Clarissa walked further up the path as her mother stepped out of the limousine.

Her eyes dropped to the stomach.

A heavily pregnant one.

«Goodness my little cupcake, I thought you would have ran straight into the gates!» Her mother joked in Corsagian, allowing her arm to be elegantly supported by her daughter.

«I’m not going to be present for my little sibling’s birth.» She said sadly, letting her hand gently rest on her mother’s swelled tummy.

«Don’t worry. Our new little macaron will love you the moment they see their wonderful big sister.» Clarissa cracked a smile. She always loved her mother’s little nicknames relating to sweets.

«Well, in any case – why don’t you go in? It’s been your dream, has it not?» Her sweet mother looked at her with concerned eyes.

Clarissa let out a little grunt of displeasure. «I’m in no hurry to go in. I’ve already visited this place a few times, anyways. I know it like the back of my hand.»

Her mother paused for a second before giving a light punch to her daughter’s arm. «C’mon. Go. Make some wonderful magic.» Clarissa could only smile as her mother giggled at her resigned expression.

«Alrighty.» Clarissa leaned down and gave her mother two affectionate kisses to her cheeks. «Tell the little macaron that I love them very much!» She crouched and kissed her mother’s belly, giving a warm little rub.

«Of course.» Clarissa smiled one last time at her large and expensive limo, her mother, and her dear chauffeur, Charles. Walking and waving goodbye, she re-joined the letter, a pleasant expression on her face.

“I’m sorry. Did you wait long Sir Letter?”

“No, not at all.” The letter responded in a cordial tone. And they strode through the gates, Clarissa’s posture immaculate.

After all, she had the Caspian reputation to uphold.

---

#swd wizardess heart #wizardess heart #wizardess heart fanfiction #my fanfiction #frenemy squad #esmerelda collinswood #jaida lazuli #clarissa caspian #first fic here :D #i had a bunch of others planned #but i spent so much time #on these characters soooo #enjoy i guess

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