#60 active hours I’ve spent on this…

[ailous-arts]

~ Till Death Do Us Part ~

Love me some ghost angst, baby, yeahhhh.

#pokemon maxie #magma leader maxie #pokemon archie #aqua leader archie #Hardenshipping? #hardenshipping #why not #team magma #team aqua #Guile Hideout #I should’ve redrawn Guile tbh but idc atp I started this in July #I love you very much Guile Hideout #Never expect anything better than this from me #60 hours #60 active hours I’ve spent on this… #I just realized I should’ve shown Maxie’s sleeve torn whoops

[tbhsohn]

P1Harmony ~ Their Favorite Moments Together

~ P1Harmony Hyung Line x gn!reader

~ Genre: Fluff, and like a teeny weeny bit of angst in Jiungs

A/N - I’m not quite sure if i’m going to like this format too much, but we’ll figure it out. I also haven’t written in forevverrrr so i gotta get my mojo back.

~ Keeho :)

In the first few months you two had been dating, Keeho was always taking you to new places. He would always do research and pay close attention to activities you talked about enjoying; even if just a brief mention.

When he got a few days off from schedules, he remembered a mini golf place you two had passed a few weeks prior. He was determined to make the date a a surprise however, and asked Intak and Jiung for help. Jiung was responsible for helping Keeho plan, and Intak was instructed to keep you busy for atleast 2 hours so Keeho could reserve the place so it could be private.

Intak had texted you asking if you were busy for a couple hours in the afternoon, you agreed to hang out and told Keeho you’d be busy for a little while. As far as he knew, his plan was working out. Intak decided to take you to a nearby arcade, hoping it would keep you from finding out about Keehos “Super Secret” plan.

After about an hour and $60 wasted on the claw machines, Intak got a text that the place was reserved and he could bring you over. “Are you ready to head out, Y/N?” “Yeah let’s go, if i waste anymore money i might lose my temper” You both laughed an headed out. Intak headed towards the mini golf spot, leaving you confused. “Where are we going now?”

“Don’t worry about it, you’ll see.” He smiled, and you looked at him a little weird in return. He pulled into the parking lot, which in return looked empty and a little sketchy. “Intak what are we doing here?” You questioned. He had a mischievous smile and told you that it was a surprise.

Stepping out of the car you were met with Keeho standing behind one of the storage sheds holding to mini golf clubs with a very very proud smile. “I remembered you said this place looked cute a couple of weeks ago, i figured it would make a cute date.” He was very clearly shy, and that made your heart flutter.

“You’re too sweet Steph.” You leaned in to leave a kiss on his cheek. “Thanks for keeping them busy for a little bit Intak.” Keeho smiled, and handed you your club. “No problem dude. You two have fun.” Intak left with Jiung and you two had the place to yourself besides a few employees.

After finishing the course you two retreated back to his car. “How was your time at the arcade?” He questioned. You ears turned red and you got slightly embarrassed. “I spent all my cash trying to win a stuffed cat.” You sheepishly admitted. He turned his head towards you and laughed. “I take it you didn’t win it?” He asked.

“Didn’t even get close once.”

~ Theo <3

Theo never really considered himself one to faithfully enjoy baking, or cooking for that matter. But it seemed whenever you were bored, you had to look up a new recipe of some sort, and destroy the kitchen while making it.

Theo sat watching you intently from the couch, struggling to measure out the right amount of flour for a cake you had seen on the internet. Repeated the same process of measuring it, dumping it back into the bag it came from, and getting frustrated cause in your mind it looked like too much.

Theo rise from his spot on the couch and made his way over to you. “Would you like some help?” He chuckled at your clearly distressed state. The ingredients scattered all over the counter, and the textures of whatever you had been mixing all over you, made for a very stressed you. Theo took notice and pulled you into a hug, expecting you to either cry, or get extremely mad at the situation before you.

“I’ve never had this much trouble before.” You despaired claim was muffled by his hoodie, but he could tell it was really taking effect on you. “Sit at the counter, and i’ll take over. Let’s see the recipe.” His caring tone and smile never faltered. You handed him your phone and went to go sit down. He washed his hands and went to take his place where you previously stood. He got to work and soon enough he had finished what you thought was going to be a disaster.

Pulling the cake from the oven. Theo stood proudly in front of you, displaying the cake like it was the best thing he had accomplished. Your mouth was agape as Theo, your non chef Theo, made a cake that looked (almost) like it was made by a professional. “You’re ridiculous.” You smiled at him, and his creation. “I’m gonna make you do all the baking for me now.” You continued.

“Maybe you just need to grow a little more patience.” He returned.

~ Jiung :D

You knew from the moment you and Jiung had started dating, that he could become very dedicated to his work. He was a perfectionist in most aspects, and could tire out very quickly if he didn’t give himself a break.

You conversation over text had came to a sudden halt with Jiung, after an all day conversation about things you two hadn’t caught up on in a while, he stopped responding. You knew he had been at the company most of the day, and figured he just got a little caught up with something. A couple hours had passed and you still got no response from him. You called him a couple times since it was getting late, and you wondered if he was going to make it home for dinner.

You opted to just bring him some food that you had made, instead of staying up waiting. After packing up the food and making your way over there, you walked into his studio; and we’re met with a sleeping Jiung. Slouched over on top of his keyboard, and lightly snoring. You sat the food on his desk and lightly shook him awake. Once he adjusted to his surroundings and noticed it was you, his gaze softened. “Why are you here?” He asked. “I figured you fell asleep and I wanted you to get some food before i went to bed.” He pulled you in for a hug and sighed. “I love you lots.” He smiled into your torso.

“I get worried about you sometimes. You never rest.” Your hand went to his hair to run through it. “I never have the time. I wanna make sure things are perfect so I don’t have to come back and do them again.” He voice got quieter and you knew he was getting exhausted. “We’ll talk about it more later. Eat up so we can go home and you can rest. You can finish your work tomorrow, love.” Jiung didn’t fight back, he was too tired to protest; and deep down he knew you were right.

“You’re too good to me.” He smiled

#kpop imagines #p1h #p1harmony imagines #p1h imagines #p1h jiung #p1h keeho #p1harmony reactions #p1h theo #keeho x reader #jiung x reader #theo x reader #p1harmony x reader #k-pop #p1harmony #piwon #p1harmony keeho #p1harmony jiung #p1harmony theo

[athousandmorningss]

this version of me.

the celibacy thing is a big, intentional and deliberate choice. it’s born of the fact that it could be, and often is, easy to shift all blame on to y for the dynamics of our marriage. what i have begun to really take stock of and consider is who *i* was before i met him. what were the patterns of my life that laid the foundation for me marrying him?

what i am realizing (and it is very painful to admit) is that i’ve spent my entire adult life engaging in all manner of self-harm that outwardly could be perceived as pleasurable activity. i have had *so* many relationships with men--many of them long, all of them unhealthy. i’ve had a lot, a lot, a LOT of casual sex with men. many of them did not like me, or care for me. some of it was fun, but most of it was me putting myself in volitional situations because i needed male attention and because i wanted to hurt myself. i have put myself in situations in which i could have been harmed, or kidnapped, or seriously hurt. i have caused harm to my body because i did not care about my body, and because i’ve spent the entirety of my adult life wanting to die. but because i cannot actively commit suicide (i have cats, after all), i looked for other ways to cause myself harm. i drank. and i drank. and i drank. i had an eating disorder for years and refused myself food. i was a shopaholic: actively choosing to spend my money on clothing before rent. there was a span of a few months when i risked being kicked out and homeless because i was just...so unaware and uncaring about my money. i had no boundaries with friends and would befriend anyone. i so badly wanted to be liked that i would forgo my inner instinct that told me when i was uncomfortable around someone: because to be with anyone was better than to be alone. i have been self-harming my entire adult life and created patterns of chaos in the way i’ve conducted myself. i was not well when i met y, and i knew he had abusive habits, and i named them when we were “dating,” but i still chose to marry him.

--

here’s what i’m also coming to terms with. never in my life have i been given a foundation in which to love, care or respect for myself. my childhood was fraught with abuse, neglect, trauma, death, violence, addiction. i’m going to put some of the details under a cut so those that want to skip over it, can:

my parents were drug and alcohol addicts. i lived with them til i was six. during that time, they would either a) be engaged in serious arguments in front of us or b) leave us alone so that they could go to the bar. for hours at a time. i have a memory of walking barefoot and a stranger pulling glass out of my big toe. i also have a memory of being SA’d as a child by an older adult male who was my babysitter, which my mother later verbalized (in a backhanded way) that she knew was happening.

when i was six (and my sisters seven and eight respectively), the cops picked us up off the street because we were walking alone down it. this spurred the decision that my grandmother would adopt us. she was in her like late 60s or some shit when she adopted us, and i learned recently from my uncle that she was a serious alcoholic but got sober before taking us in. she was very emotionally abusive, particularly to me, and also hugely overprotective: she would swear at me all the time, call me a bitch, yell at me, tell me i’d end up being a stripper because i liked to dance etc etc. but also wouldn’t let me do anything--no outside activities after school. and so i spent a lot of my time alone as a kid: reading, by myself, under trees, taking walks.  a lot of this behavior has continued into adulthood.

other shit happened. one of my uncles was an addict and drove himself into a tree and died. he was my favorite uncle. my other uncle got cancer, had a protruding tumor, and slowly died while we cared for him (eventually taking him into hospice care). one of my cousins murdered someone during christmas, and when his parents got the call, we went to the house and picked him up and drove around with him-while he was blood-covered- trying to figure out what to do (WILD shit, he did go to jail though). ETC etc.

my parents (both of em) are now dead, one of my sisters is addicted to crack, the other is...not well and i can’t have a relationship with her. i have no family that i speak to, except an uncle and a cousin i’ve started to communicate with in the last year.

point is. one doesn’t go through all of that with a well developed sense of self-regard or self-esteem or self-image. i’ve wanted my whole life to have healthy relationships, to be well-regarded and respected by others, and to experience peace. but it has been very difficult to love and care for myself when everyone in my childhood was abusive or neglectful to me, and i have continued that pattern into adulthood.

i think that the best version of myself is an intuitive, kind, gentle, appreciative and thoughtful woman. it takes very little to bring me joy. i notice everything: i talk to the pigeons and leave them nuts; i love deeply; i am trying to be a good friend. i am moved by poetry; i deeply want to believe in human goodness and kindness; i want to help others and do small goods. i want to be self-aware. i do not want to hurt myself anymore. i do not want to die anymore. i want to respect myself and to urge that others respect me. i want to be discerning. all of my ability to enact these changes stems from disrupting the patterns of my past behavior. so yeah, i don’t want to have sex with anyone, because that’s what the old version of me would have done. and it could be so, so easy to resort back to that: to feel the serotonin hit of being desired, and I *have* been desired by others of late but the answer is no. no. no. no, thank you.

so yeah, the celibacy thing is a big deal. it’s about honoring this version of me. and i’m real proud of her.

#divorcin' diaries #tw abuse #tw SA #posted last night then set to private #but these are important things to name #again if you don't want to read these things as i work through my divorce #please unfollow me

[highlyflammablebark]

Actively in a nursing clinic getting broad spectrum antibiotics via IV for a major cellulitis infection in my leg (keep your injuries clean kids, no matter how minor. This is from a bug bite I scratched too much) In the past week, I’ve been to the ER, two separate doctors offices, and this public health centre several times. I’ve been prescribed oral and IV antibiotics. I’ve had my wound and my PICC line dressed and changed by multiple professionals. If I’d waited another few days, I probably would’ve lost my leg. If I hadn’t had access to this incredible network of healthcare workers, I almost certainly would have lost my life.

If I’d had to spend time worrying about paying for this, I’d be crippled or dead.

Doug Ford wants this network gone in order to pad the pockets of businessmen and private clinics, and he’s perfectly willing to line those pockets with our blood.

He blames nurses and doctors and hospitals for long waits while slashing their funding and closing their doors. I spent 10 hours in the ER waiting room before I was treated. It was miserable. It was unbearable. It was unacceptable. It saved my leg and my life. No one deserves to die in a wait room just because they have less pieces of coloured plastic than the guy who went to the private clinic next door.

Fight back. Fuck privatization. Fuck Ford.

Info on Ford’s Bill 60

https://opseu.org/news/bill-60-what-you-should-know/193003/#:~:text=Bill%2060%20will%3A,Practical%20Nurses%20and%20Registered%20Nurses.

Tell your MPP

#ontario #health #healthcare #doug ford #canada

[karasa]

The Philosophy of Doing; How the Girl Scouts Saved My Sanity

Originally Published April 9th, 2021

The Philosophy of Doing; How the Girl Scouts Saved My Sanity

To do is to be. Be active, be respected, be wonderful. To do anything is to commit yourself to what you’re doing, whether you care about it or not. I’ve never been much of a do-er.

Maybe, yes, I did a lot and arguably too much in high school, I do extracurriculars and I do my homework on occasion. But it never felt like Doing Anything. It’s always felt like work, like a chore. I wasn’t really doing anything persay, but rather I was on autopilot, doing what others told me, but not necessarily doing for myself.

This feeling of inadequacy, of lackluster personality traits and hobbies came in strong during the period of time I’ve been social distancing. It pushed me to ask: what do I do? My partner frequently goes out for bike rides or roller skates around the neighborhood, he holds meetings with group members to finish up assignments, cooks me dinner when he finds a good recipe, and talks to his friends everyday. I can’t say I’ve ever felt as fulfilled as he does at the end of the day, because I don’t do much. After classes I’m in bed for at least 2 hours, scrolling through twitter with a Youtube video in the background and a snack within arm’s reach.

I used to paint with my friends when they invited me to, host movie nights or dinner parties, help my friends with their various helping hand chores and go out to the club almost every weekend. But without friends to do anything, I realized that I don’t really do much at all.

I’ve always been an ambitious person, with my life plan mapped out by 7 years old and still following the plan as I turn 24. I’ve dipped my toes into a few different ponds along the way: graphic design, costume design, pastry arts, spoken word, film critiques, activism, education, drag…. The list stretches for miles in all of the things I’ve tried to do. But have I ever succeeded?

Without knowing what I do on a daily basis, I instead turned my attention to the question, “what can I do?” I was disappointed at the results. While I *can* do a number of things, My self-confidence in these fields is low, because I’ll never be able to convince myself that I can do any of them particularly well. I don’t do anything because I’m afraid of not doing well enough.

Enter: the girl scouts.

Many of the memories I have from elementary school draw up scenes of seeing my teacher at the grocery store, and feeling the same feeling of embarrassment and nerves when I ran into one of my classmates behind a girl scout cookie booth. While this quiet judgement manifested itself into me seeing the Girl Scouts as a child labor cult until rather recently, I’ve always felt envious. All of those girls who meet for snacks and seminars on Thursday nights, they’re doing something with their life. They have a journey set out in front of them, everything that they do is geared towards making them a better person. And so in April I realized: I can probably do that too.

A lot of my friends during this time in isolation are venturing on things they’ve never done before: writing more, baking bread, cooking meals, spending $60 to be in debt to a raccoon. But at first, not much for me had changed. I was still in school, still in a relationship, still spent at least 3 hours after classes in bed. I tried new recipes and enjoyed posting them on Instagram, but after one of my close friends passed, my inspiration was lost to continue that. And it never felt substantial anyway. Working for 3 hours to post 1 picture does not come with a satisfaction guarantee. While my partner shoots into the kitchen for seconds, I can’t help but judge what I’ve made as not good enough.

I started thinking about different hobbies I could do that wouldn’t take up a lot of space or cost too much. Because of all of the changes that have affected me, I’m having to pay rent without a job, and my partner and I have stuffed our lives into a bedroom that we can lay down in and touch each of the four walls. I stumbled across an old page of notes from a seminar I attended in the fall titled “Goal Setting” and I thought about how difficult it is to follow through with passion projects. That dream that we have one night that kicks us out of bed and onto the workbench fades over time. We forget details of our vision, we start to prioritize other things. Soon enough the project gets shoved into the corner while other things in life take charge, and once that happens, I can’t say that I’ve ever had the willpower to go back.

The girl scout idea came to me when I thought about one of the first and most relaxed grocery trips I’ve had in Ohio. A harrowing mirror of my elementary school days, there was a girl scout with her mother standing right in between the entrance and exit of the store. Her mom waved us over, promising that they took all methods of payment including venmo, and the little girl smiled as she started to stack up our cookies.

“What’s your favorite badge?” I smiled. I kind of hate kids but my partner really wants them in our future, so i’m trying to get better at relating to the youth.

“This one.” she pointed to a circular badge with a rocketship on it.

“Cool! Is it your favorite because of how you earned it, or because of how it looked?”

“It looks really cool. But my favorite thing to do was this one!” she spun her sash so we could see another intricate badge on the back.

“Woah! That's awesome.” I was ready to ask her more questions, about how she got it and what else she liked to do in Girl Scouts. But our transaction was complete, and while I’m proud of myself for actually holding a conversation with like, a 9 year old, I suddenly felt red in the face for being so interested in something made for little kids.

We thanked the duo and continued into the store, but for some reason I haven’t stopped thinking about that conversation.

So I got curious. After not really doing much for 6 weeks, I hopped onto the girl scout website. They had all of their badges on a neat little pdf, where I could see all of the hardwork it takes to rise up the ranks and continue to be a part of this organization. To my surprise, only a few of the badges that you’re able to earn are about the cookie sales. I started perusing the badge explorer page, and found that some of the badges are kind of badass. Without even realizing it, I started taking stock of all the badges I’d like to complete. Some are fitness focused, which makes sense because I’ve been putting off getting in shape. Some are focused on Financial Literacy, and encourage researching smaller things that we were never really taught throughout life. I jumped out of bed and raced to my partner. “I’m going to be a girl scout.” I beamed, full superman pose with no pants on. “You’re non-binary.” he replied, barely looking up from his sandwich. “Then I’ll be a Star Scout.” I shot back. He smiled.

“Good Luck!”

I’ve never felt such a ferocious drive for a project, and perhaps that’s because I’m well aware of the fact that I can go at my own pace. My goal is to earn 23 badges by the end of the pandemic. I created a task list for each badge I want to earn, which equals out to about 99 tasks that I expect to complete. Having this task list feels so much more empowering than the 3 to-do lists I keep for school, for housework, and for my personal life. I don’t need to worry about the deadline, I don’t have anything to prove to anyone. The only thing I have to do is Do.

My motivation levels vary. With bipolar disorder, it happens frequently that my drive for something can run so rampantly that I forget to sleep, while other times i can barely manage to eat something that doesn’t come straight out of a box. There is a task for every energy level I may have. Everything that I am planning to do is something that I want to do. I would like to write a screenplay, I want to break a bad habit, I would very much like to know how to make a first-aid kit. All of these tasks are such wonderfully simple things that I don’t wake up feeling stressed about what I have to do, but instead I wake up, go to my checklist and say “what do I get to do today?” the feeling is indescribable. It’s comfort, it’s accomplishment, it’s pride, it’s Something. Honestly, I can’t judge myself for not doing well enough because it’s so absurd to begin with. I personally can’t tell you how many 20-year olds are scrolling through the girl scout’s website after a couple margaritas, and I don’t care. This isn’t a contest with my peers. I don’t have to worry about not doing as well as someone else, or not doing well at all, because I make my own rules! Hell, I’m the one who's gonna be embroidering the damn badges for myself, so I better feel like I’ve earned it before I put in that work!! The tasks aren’t graded. They’re not meant to prove anything to anyone aside to show you a new side of life and show that you’ve learned something from your experiences. Already, I’ve learned so much, even if it is just how to take the first steps towards writing something I’ve always wanted, but have never known how.

It’s always felt silly to worry about what the future will be like 10 years from now, but I can never help but wonder. Would my life be different if I went to grad school? What if I get divorced? Am I still going to live in the United States? It feels like I’m already so sure that my life will be full of regrets, because my expectations will never match reality. I can ponder and hypothesize all I want, but I will never know what 2024 is like until I’m there. I doubt that 7 year old me would’ve expected me to join the scouts after all this time. It’s a hard truth that I often have trouble facing, but I know that as long as I do something, I’ll be doing the right thing. Consider this your sign: If you wanted to do something but you weren’t sure about it; do it. Be active, be respected, be wonderful. You can do it! I believe in you.

#words #pandemic diaries #personal growth #girl scouts

[umichenginabroad]

Sorrento Weeks 6 & 7: Food, Relaxation, and Museums

Ciao!

I’m back with another blog post. I’ve decided to combine weeks six and seven into one blog post because I got sick with a cold for most of the week and didn’t do a whole lot other than relax and recover. It’s also been so hot that doing things after class is getting difficult.

To celebrate the fourth of July, my friends and I did an “American Dinner” complete with burgers, potato salad, coleslaw, watermelon, and brownies! I decided to make potato salad and coleslaw because I was really craving potato salad. It was a fun experience trying to find all the ingredients as mustard and pickles aren’t really a thing in Italy. I was luckily able to find some in Dodeca, the largest grocery store in Sorrento, but it took some hunting. I’m super proud of how they turned out and it definitely satisfied my cravings. I think it’s important to note that Italian grocery stores are much, much smaller than American ones and things don’t last as long (especially bread and fruit) so I often end up shopping nearly every day. That being said, groceries are also super cheap here. I cook most of my meals and have been able to spend about 50-60 euros a week on groceries which includes my splurges on things like candies or interesting ice cream. The key is to try and think of dishes ahead of time and know what you have so you don’t buy duplicates.

Some hamburger buns I found at Dodeca with very Americanized packaging (left) and our Fourth of July Dinner (right)

I spent most of my time these last few weeks relaxing and recovering from two weekends of heavy travel as well as a cold I caught. It’s also starting to get to the time of year where going outside after like 1pm is a miserable experience so I spend a lot of time reading (I’ve been enjoying checking out ebooks from my local library) or watching TV just to beat the heat. The dorms, luckily, have great AC so you don’t have to worry about it being too hot inside. Some tips I have, besides just avoiding the sun, are to wear a hat to help shade your face, drink plenty of water, and try your best to avoid shopping at midday (try to go in the evenings or mornings). CIS Abroad planned a beach day one day where they reserved some lounge chairs at one of the beach clubs which was a fun and relaxing experience. Beach clubs are expensive (but come with sun loungers and umbrellas) so it was nice to not have to pay extra to go to one and enjoy the breeze as it was cooler than on the streets.

Photos from the beach day

This weekend, I decided to go to the Naples Archaeology Museum because it’s where many of the famous frescos and statues from Pompeii are held. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve always been interested in Ancient Greek and Roman history and savor every museum I visit. It’s also a great activity because it’s out of the blazing sun. I bought tickets ahead of time to see both the museum and the Magna Grecia special exhibition. Getting to the museum was super easy as I just rode the train to Naples and hopped on the metro line 1 and got off at the Museo stop which put me right at the Archaeology Museum. The museum itself was so cool! I had all the original mosaics, frescos, and statues from Pompeii and Herculaneum as well as some artifacts from Ancient Egypt and many pieces of Greek pottery. A lot of the museum was focused on the history of settlements in the Campania religion which was really interesting to learn about. I spent four hours just wandering around and seeing all it had to offer. It was also nice because it was inside and out of the heat. It's definitely worth a visit just to see all the splendor of Ancient Rome.

Various photos from around the museums including some amazing frescos, beautiful architecture, and a gladiator helmet.

I’m excited because I’m headed to Rome to meet my friend next weekend and I have a bunch of field trips planned next week. I’m also sad that my time in Sorrento is coming to an end as it’s been a really great experience.

Ciao! Reganne Watts Aerospace Engineering Engineering in Sorrento, Italy

#umichenginabroad #ipesorrento #ipesummer23 #regannewatts #italy

[alsjeblieft-zeg]

226 of 2023

Reblog | Answer Honestly;

Out of all 24 hours, which one is your favourite?

Morning hours.

Have you ever been in a lighthouse?

I’m not sure.

What are the names of the neighbours to your right?

Arno and Ekaterina. He’s Belgian, she’s Russian.

Left?

I never remember his name, but he’s currently in jail, so who cares. He’s Dutch anyway.

When’s the last time you actually sat down and watched the sun set?

Maybe last summer, I don’t remember.

Are you on a lap top or desk top?

Laptop. The only desktop PC in our house belongs to my husband’s son and I don’t use it. This laptop is entirely mine.

Do you ever make your own surveys?

No, I don’t. I’m not creative enough.

What colour is your shower?

Like... silver or so?

Where do you order your pizza from?

Either Domino’s or Pizza Hut.

When is the past time you had a serious talk with someone?

Last week, I think.

What time are you planning on going to bed tonight?

Pretty soon, that’s for sure.

How old are you, your parents and your siblings combined?

33 + 28 + 60 + 70. Simple math , it’s 191.

The last time you went out of town was?

Last Friday.

And where did you go?

Antwerp. This city is a state of mind, but at least they have a beautiful railway station.

Have you ever been bit by an animal?

Yeah, by my younger cat. But only playfully.

Where is the person you miss the most right now?

Somewhere abroad.

Have you been paying attention to the Olympics much?

Not at all.

How often do you take naps?

Never. It’s a waste of a day.

I know you don’t wanna talk about it, but when do go back to school?

I graduated school in 2010, and I’ve made a university degree then.

Did it rain today?

It didn’t, which I’m shocked about.

What was the name of the last dog you pet?

I don’t pet dogs, I’m allergic to them.

Do you find that you have a certain meal you eat every time you go to certain restaurants?

Yeah, indeed. Autism traits :P

Are you constantly judging people?

No, I never do it. Before you judge someone, first walk a mile in their shoes, is it how the saying goes?

Have you ever had anything stolen from you?

Yeah, but nothing really valuable.

Think back to your freshman year in high school, what was the first class period on your first day of school?

Who remembers that, besides our education system doesn’t work like that.

What colour is your bike?

One is black and red, the other one is silver.

What word can you not stand to hear people say?

Anything offensive towards others.

When was the last time the power went out at your house and how long was it out for?

Never happened, really. Not even during a storm.

What room of your house are you in?

Living room, but soon it’s gonna be bedroom.

When there’s a full moon, does it make your room really bright for a few days?

Yeah, it does. I kinda like it.

What is the temperature in your city right now?

7°C, according to the forecast.

Which would you rather, a snowy day, sunny day, rainy day or cloudy day?:

Sunny day, hands down.

How long have you ever spent away from home?

Two months or so.

Ever had to get any stitches?

Yeah, had a brain surgery. One time in the past I cut myself a bit too deep, too.

When did you last use a post-it-note?

Yesterday.

Would you ever want to own your own restaurant?

Nah. I’m not good at managing the business.

Do you have a fan in your bedroom?

I do, but it’s nothing built-in or whatever.

Have you ever seen the White House?

Never been to the US.

How about Niagara Falls?

Isn’t the answer obvious now?

What about the four corners, have you ever been there?

Never heard of it, WTF is four corners??

Have you ever played any variation of the padiddle game in a car a night? If not, you should wikipedia it and play it. It can be fun with the right people?

...what. There’s no such thing as “should”, I live in a fkn free country.

The most recent staircase you went down, what did it lead to?

Our living room because our bedroom is upstairs.

Have you ever thought about what life would be like if we all slept during the day and were active at night?

Some people are like that already, so.

What colours are the counter tops in your kitchen?

Counter tops, lol. Our kitchen is too small even for this.

Has your luggage ever been lost at the airport? Did you get it back?

Never been at any airport.

Which major body of water do you live by?

The North Sea.

Who is the last person that you took a picture with?

Probably Stephanie while we were at that Chinese restaurant with five people.

What type of food do you eat the most?

Vegetables.

When is the last time you were stuck in a fairly long traffic jam?

Long ago, but traffic is normal in my city. Especially during peak hours.

Do you have certain friends that you hug every time you see them?

Yeah, 99% of them.

What do you enjoy most about your life?

Being alive. And travelling. And having a loving husband.

When was your most recent trip to an aquarium?

Never?

What do you like in your salads and what dressing do you prefer?

Veggies and who cares about dressing.

Last time you changed the light bulb to the lamp that you use in your bedroom?

Two years ago. It still works.

Does sleeping past 12 or 1 in the afternoon make you feel like you’ve wasted a lot of your day or do you enjoy the extra hours of sleep?

It’s definitely a waste of day for me.

What is your state most famous for?

What state? I don’t live in any state. Never did.

What was the last thing you signed your name in cursive on?

Health insurance document.

How many times in your life have you seen a shooting star?

Three or four, I never really counted.

Have you ever witnessed a tornado?

No, never.

How many times a year do you go out of state?

I’m European. We don’t have states in my country.

Has your best friend ever moved away?

Yeah, in kindergarten.

If it has one, do you ever use the notepad function in your phone?

Nah. I use it in my laptop, though.

What website do you visit the most often?

priyom.org and sigidwiki.com, these two.

How good would you say your memory is?

My long term memory is brilliant, but my short term memory is shit.

About how many times during the night do you wake up from your sleep?

Once or twice. Typically for pee.

Are there any air fresheners in your house? What kinds?

Only a spray one from AVON and one from Stradivarius.

What scent of candle do you burn the most?

I don’t.

For what reason did you last cry?

I don’t cry.

What’s one thing you’re glad you’ve done recently?

Visited various Belgian cities.

How long have you been taking surveys?

Quite long. I’ve had another blog, but I deleted it.

What kind of surveys do you wish there were more of?

Europe-centered surveys, definitely.

#survey #q&a survey #random survey

[botwstoriesandsuch]

OK SHUT UP SHUSH SHUT THE FUCK UP IT’S 1AM BUT SHUSH LISTEN! HEY, LISTEN!

I AM GIVING YOU THE TOOLS TO FIND THE EXACT DISTANCE OF ANYTHING ANYWHERE IN HYRULE, CUSTOM MAKE YOUR FIC JOURNEYS TO THE METER, FIND THE AREA OF ANY TOWN OR LANDMARK, OR JUST FIND OUT HOW BIG (or small) HYRULE KINDGOM TRULY IS ONCE AND FOR ALL SO GO AHEAD AND SAVE THIS POST TO YOUR DRAFTS CAUSE YOU MIGHT WANNA SEE IT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

 Ok so this all starts with THIS

FEAST YOUR EYES LADIES, LADS, AND GENTLEFOLK ON THE ONLY PIECE OF INFORMATION IN ALL OF HYRULE CONCERNING DISTANCE AND TIME. 

[Image ID: A screenshot from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, depicting a picture of Ash Swamp hanging in Impa’s house. The dialogue box from Impa reads, “Does it look familiar? From this village, you should be able to get there in a half day’s time.” End ID]

Impa states that it would take you half a day, about 12 hours, to travel from Kakariko Village to the depicted 13th memory, which is at Ash Swamp by Fort Hateno. 

Now here is where I took this information. I took it to

objmap.zeldamods.org

A fantastic online Botw map resource with tons of features like finding specific objects, and highlighting areas, and placing pins, and the basics of showing the locations of everything like shrines and korok seeds and all that. 

BUT the thing that we care about today is this ability, here:

DRAW!

With those widgets on the right, I can specifically mark lines and shapes and the website will give me the distance of it in meters!

“But Kip, if the map already gives you the distance of anything you want then isn’t this entire post pointless?” Ashshshshshhshh no, shut the fuck up, shush shut, no, stop, silence, I am high on caffeine and I haven’t slept for two days. No. 

As great as the map is, the exact ratio isn’t the best. Like, it tells me that the length of Hyrule is only 10km, or 6.2 miles. 

I wager that realistically, Hyrule would be a bit bigger than that. And THAT, is where I come in. Or, more specifically, Impa.

Impa states that it takes 12 hours to travel from Kakariko to Fort Hateno. (I am saying Fort Hateno and not Ash Swamp because I am going of the nearest prominent landmark location near the 13th memory, and I highly doubt that Impa knew the exactly square foot patch of dirt that Link needed to stand on to activate his memory)

According to Google, it takes around 10 to 12 minutes to walk a kilometer. (I am assuming Impa was referring to walking and not riding, because I feel like she would have said, “You should be able to get there in half a day’s ride” or something of the sort. So, walking it is)

So: 

12 hours divided by 12 minutes 

(Which is 720 minutes / 12 minutes)

gives us

60

The distance between Fort Hateno and Kakariko village is 60 kilometers.

Badabing badaboom, great job! We did it. BUT NOW this is where our handy dandy online object map comes in.

[Image ID: A screenshot of the Breath of the Wild map showing the area of Kakariko Village and the plains in front of Fort Hateno. A blue line highlghts the path from the village to a marker on Fort Hateno. The line reads “1.89km.” End ID]

[Image ID: A screenshot of the Breath of the Wild map showing the area of Kakariko Village and the plains in front of Fort Hateno. The blue line from the previous image is still there, however, there is now a more prominent yellow line. The yellow line runs from Kakariko village, but ends at a marker point at the location of the 13th memory at Ash Swamp. The yellow line reads “1.55km.” End ID]

So while this map doesn’t give me distances that are exactly to my liking, it DOES give me a measuring means that will stay consistent. SO! As you can see, the map says Kakariko to Fort Hateno is 1.89km. (And just to be safe, I also did the distance exactly to the point of the 13th memory as shown in Impa’s picture, which came out to 1.55km. But! It’s doesn’t matter anyhow, because) We’re going to round this to 2km for the sake of my sanity because surprise surprise! I actually suck at, and hate, math. 

So the map says Kakariko to Fort Hateno is 2 kilometers, but we know that in real life, the distance is actually 60 kilometers. So, if you want to use this object map effectively, you have to make a means of converting the “false” measurements, (which I will be refering to as “zelda” (kilo)meters, or zm/zkm) from the actual ones. 

So THIS is what I fucking did oh my god help me it took me way too long even though it was really simple in hindsight I was just stupid and spent two hours trying to get the ratio equations right when really all I had to do was divide, it was a whole thing, anyhow, read away. 

[Image ID: A screenshot of MATH oh my god it’s fucking math...BUT it’s kinda color coded so that’s nice. The top left of the page depicts text. In red text reads “zkm (Zelda km) = per the measurement on the objmap.zeldamods.org” and below that, in black text, reads, “Kakariko to Fort Hateno = 1.89 zkm ~ 2zkm,” which is underlines in yellow. Another line of black text reads, “Impa says it takes half a day’s time to travel from Kakariko to the 13th memory location AKA 12 hours.” Another line of black text reads, “It takes about 10-12min to walk a kilometer,” which is underlines in green.

Handwritten in blue ink is the equation, 

“12 hours = 720 min

720/12 = 60″ 

The 12 is highlighted in green, and the 60 is underlined. In green text, below it, reads, “It takes 12 hours to walk 60 kilometers.” In black text under this, it reads “So Kakariko to Fort Hateno is 60 kilometers.” Another line of black text under this reads, “So based on that, we can find the actual values of a zkm (Zelda kilometer).” 

Handwritten in yellow ink is the equation,

“2zkm = 60km

1km = 30km” [typo, I meant 1zkm = 30km]

The 60km is in blue, and the equation 1zkm = 30km is circled. 

To the right of everything, in bigger, yellow text, reads “So: 1zkm = 30km 1zm = 30 meters

The map of Hyrule measures roughly 10zkm (length) by 8zkm (height) [typo, I meant width] giving it an area of 80 square zkm.

Therefore, the “true” size of Hyrule Kingdom os 2400 square kilometers.” End ID]

SO ARMED WITH THIS NEW KNOWLEDGE, you can now use this map to measure whatever you want, and by converting 1zm to 30 meters, you can get accurate result as to what that distance is. 

Chart the roads, measure the rivers, the map even gives area tools for polygons, squares, and circles! This entire post was born out of a desire to see how long the characters in my fic should rest for when travel between different stables. 

Now before anyone asks, yes! 2400 square kilometers is fairly small. That’s around 930 square miles. I believe even Wales is more than three times bigger than that. BUT! Considering Hyrule is a medieval kingdom that’s actually pretty sizable considering the average size of a Kingdom was 100 to 900 square kilometers. 

And juuuust to double check, I ran the size though a Medievil Demographics generator, and 2400 (under the conditions of Fertile Land with 64% of the land being arable since I figured roughly 46% for lakes, the ocean, plus unusable land was more than enough to cover the Hebra, Death Mountain, and the Gerudo Desert. Which honestly is even MORE generous considering there are races that occupy these areas, but I digress) This still gives Hyrule Kingdom a good population of 108,000 people! Before the Calamity when all of its villages were up and occupied, of course. So the area is definitely more than enough, and can still give Link a more realistic amount of time to travel between areas (when you add eating and rest of course. Don’t make my guy walk for 10 hours straight from the Great Plateau to Hebra D: plz)

TL;DR: Hyrule is 2400 square kilometers; use the map, plus the conversion 1 zelda meter to 30 meters to measure anything you want; I am tired

Quick Edit: Please note that this conversion is for the purposes of people out there who need more realistic means of measuring distances for larger scale travel and such, like for writing fic journeys, or dnd campaigns. This conversion isn’t the best for smaller scale measure like buildings and such (EX: I’ve checked with buildings in Castle Town and the Coliseum, and they come out much too big, just a symptom of game design ratios not being perfect since it’s hard to balance consistent measurements and the immersion and plan a creator has for their game world!) So if you are measuring those smaller entities using the linked map, just stick with the given zelda meters! (EX: The Coliseum radius in zelda meters matches up nicely with the real world Roman Colosseum, beating it out by a few dozen meters!)

Also if you are a true believer in the interpretation of Impa’s dialogue as “half the amount of daylight hours,” see the reblogs!

#botw theory #cause it's technically a theory i guess #botw reference #botw #breath of the wild #legend of zelda botw #loz botw #if my math is wrong just shoot me on the spot ok #loz #legend of zelda #hyrule

[writingwithcolor]

Rebellion in Ojibwe Society: Considerations for Pre-Contact Indigenous Peoples

@raconteuse3​ asked:

Hi! I'm writing a fantasy story with an Ojibwe-like culture, and I'm wondering what rebellion/counter culture would look like in a tribal culture pre-contact? One of my characters has a rebellious spirit, but I keep writing her in a very ... American-teenage-rebellion way, which I know isn't a phase of life in all cultures. To rephrase in snarky terms, "what were Ojibwe punks up to 500 years ago?" I haven't been able to find any helpful information, so I thought I'd ask here! Thank you!

Traditional disclaimer: not raised under traditional parenting techniques, not from that nation, this is primarily pointing out structural differences in Indigenous society vs Western from a reconnecting person.

Teenagerhood as we know it is modern

When it comes to the concept of rebellion, there is one very important thing to keep in mind: how recent and privileged the concept of “teenagerhood is a sheltered time you figure yourself out” is. In a lot of traditional societies, you started helping doing the adult work in childhood alongside your parents. By teenage years you were a pretty valued member of the community, and were beginning to work on adult honours, were looking to get married, etc.

Pre-contact parenting traditions exists in modern day, too. You can absolutely look at very modern, very connected Indigenous societies and notice the way they structure work and parenting is different. Parenting traditions are going under a huge revival as communities heal from residential schools, and these traditional techniques are being preserved.

So what is she even rebelling against? She’d be in a world where she’d be granted a lot of autonomy, be able to do basically everything an adult could by this point, and would have been guided by people working alongside her. The traditional avenues of rebellion like “you don’t know what it’s like to grow up now” and “I’m not a kid stop treating me like one” are harder to rely on.

It’s really primarily an industrialization invention to have teen years be the “in between” years we know them as today. In modern times, teenage years are considered the years you focus on your education to eventually get started as an adult in your 20s, once you have a job that is in a separate institution to your family.

In non-industrial societies where the primary work available is what keeps the community running, and extra time is spent creating beauty (art, stories, music), or advancing our understanding of the world (medicine, scientific experiments). There is far less need for a period of being sheltered where all you do is educate yourself in order to be an adult; I’d assume the primary structures of teenage years would be based around helping teach emotional regulation.

A note: the average hunter-gatherer, according to anthropologists, only “does work” (to survive) about 20 hours a week. There would be plenty of time to do fun things in society. 

And I’m sure somebody in the notes will mention it: yes, the fact that the average age was closer to 60-70 instead of 80-90 like we have in industrial society is part of it. But elders could and did live into their 80s pre-contact, so the point is less salient than you’d think.

Environmental controls didn’t exist

The other important thing to keep in mind is: there was only so much rebellion you could do before you ended up dead from the natural world.

Elders were those who had survived and whose wisdom you could use to help everyone’s survival. Counsel and collective leadership were often prized, along with young experience. Humility was often taught as a virtue because pride went out and got you killed, and greed would render the land uninhabitable.

So really, the likelihood of having her be rebellious in any way we’d recognize is slim to none. Traditional Indigenous parenting techniques are worlds different than American parenting techniques, and anthropologist after anthropologist has noted that kids in Indigenous societies—when those societies don’t have massive traumas that come from, say, residential schools and parents never being able to learn Indigenous practices—are way more well adjusted than Western teenagers.

If you’re dead set on having her be rebellious in some way: my biggest suggestion would be to read ethnographies of the Ojibwe that described their cultural practices and see if there were any social norms discussed around teenage rebellion; you could get lucky and find a gem of rebellion actively described, or you might have to read through a bunch and piece together a cultural context from them. 

But you need to do this research anyway, so look for particularly thick and comprehensive tomes. As I said, this can be found in modern day, so you’re not super limited by time period. If you really want to focus on “as it was”, you’ll be looking for writings between 1850 and 1930.

(I’ve read one ethnography that mentioned an avenue of rebellion among the Omaha, written in 1911. It described how arranged marriages for teenage girls were common, but if the girl could get her chosen husband’s family to treat her as his wife, then the father couldn’t force her to marry the guy he chose. But that relies on a patriarchal society, even if the idea of a patriarchal society would have looked different at the time)

Look for things published by universities; those will have the best academic rigour. I’m not super well versed in the modern anthropology programs because my education stopped right before I got to that point, but an edu with a heavy involvement in the tribe will be the best.

Historically your best sources, or at least a place to look for sources, are those who had close connections with the tribe and lived there for extended periods of time, or even better had tribal co-writers. An example of the former would be Margaret Mead, who wrote Coming of Age in American Samoa, and she kind of single handedly brought breastfeeding back to American society. Her work is highly debated, but the Samoans she worked with loved her; she lived with them for most of her life, from her 20s to retirement. An example of the latter is Alice Fletcher, who co-wrote The Omaha Tribe with Francis La Flesche.

Ojibwe, please comment: What does “rebellion” look like to you?

~ Mod Lesya

#Asks #ojibwe #fantasy #parenting #parents #rebellion #native american #Teenagers #worldbuilding #family #Family Life

[kindcaptivity]

Sick!Stupot Headcanons

Hello, I am back with more headcanons that no one asked for, but I always wanted to write a post about this, so here we are.

I’ve been on uppers and downers (mainly uppers) and Stu seems like he does downers—just vegging out on Codeine

I would bet that a good amount of insensitive, charismatic, and philosophical stuff that he says is him blitzed on endorphins

Not to be horny on main, but Stu and Murdoc definitely have more quality time when Stu’s whole body is tingling from opiates 

He would buy the sweet medicines for toddlers and nothing else because he’s a picky eater who has (er, had) a sweet tooth

His yellow teeth are exclusively from “medicine,” The Sugar Diet, and never brushing because “why bover?”

Stu and Murdoc justify their habits as “just rock ‘n’ roll, innit” or “trying to find a good dose” for Stu

Stu’s prone to lay and watch the sun slip by on binges

He’s stuck in his head usually, prefers it, and has to try not to be

Screwing up step-by-step hand-eye co-ordination (e.g., tying his shoelaces or plucking strings or doing his belt)

Getting up and staring at the mirror, not sure if he is seeing himself, aware that the holes in his brain are taking who he was

Writing down things for fear of losing them

Relies on muscle memory, so he stays awake, thinking about how he would become financially dependant without music

Fluids and walking around in only pants—only Murdoc is grubbier and he never runs out of bawdiness when he does care

This is projection, but Stu has weird, esoteric, hackneyed knowledge of anaesthetic ointments out of pure necessity

Taking pride in anything medical because mum was a nurse (I’m not sure if this is a popular headcanon or a part of Gorillaz canon) and Murdoc using it as an excuse to not take any responsibility for enabling him

Stu having to do his bandages and being proud, thinking that he looks well fit (Murdoc also thinks so, but that’s not unusual)

Likewise, that G-Bitez storyboard where Stu’s in a full-body cast (Unrelated, but he would ask birds to sign it as a pick-up line)

This is a headcanon that no one is going to have, but I just think that Murdoc likes watching Stu walk about blitzed

It’s usually Murdoc who’s hammered, holding onto the floor to stop the world from going off of its axis (but he seems to enjoy it)

Murdoc will slink into the kitchen, rummage in his pocket, and produce a Potion of Instant ER Visit like, “Look what I found”

I go back to Plastic Beach too much, but it’s perfect for alone time, just the two of them, GHB, Stu curled up, walking about, nothing to do (Murdoc maybe in charge of looking after him)

I am just attached to Stu and Murdoc always hanging onto each other even if they were penniless and sucked at music

Murdoc has a lot more knowledge of medicine from simply living with Stu for decades, but he doesn’t particularly want to

On that note, Stu always smells a bit sick and often walks with a limp, but it’s the type of sweet, sugary, acidic sickness

Murdoc is inspired by Keith Richards, but Keef’s character arc about being looked down upon over missing teeth screams Stu

Murdoc compares Stu to Keef to make him feel better, but Stu is a synth boy. So, he’s like, ‘Wot did you say?’

Obligatory “8th grade piano skills, 8th grade reading skills”

As soon as the pain starts flaring up, Stu is tetchy and out-of-commission for 3 hours—he’s in bed, being sick, cheers

Honestly, Stu “feels out” dosages now that he’s not on a schedule and will 100% overdose 60% of the time, but he has spent most of his childhood on medication, so he is completely over it now

I love that Stu has crowded, yellow, and missing teeth and seems to actively not care when he’s asked about it

Stu and Murdoc are the ‘problematic’ mentally ill people who say, “Right, I’m not retarded” and fight The Man by refusing help

Especially in the first phases, Stu is so slow that Murdoc usually ignores him or is unbearably twee about it to be annoying

Murdoc has an unhealthy obsession with Stu’s “rugged missing parts” and attaches it in his brain to their codependency

Stuart does uppers less than Murdoc because he tends to become anxious rather than manic and feels the world closing in

I think that Stu hurts himself a little when the frustration and shame get to be too much

It is easier for Stu to do downers and help nick drugs than to give a voice to the shame and loss and silence between them

#stuart pot #murdoc niccals #2doc #studoc #2d (gorillaz) #gorillaz #headcanons #stuart pot x murdoc niccals #2d x murdoc niccals #edit: #i imagine that the roof of stu's mouth is always sticky #and he's so buzzed after being sick he forgets how annoying he was

[lettheladylead]

i finally got myself a physical copy of Solving Mysteries and Rewriting History! and its a lot smaller than i expected. i dont know why i thought itd be big but i just did

anyway i also finally read the whole thing instead of just the parts about Goldie, so here’s some stuff i wanted to make note of

- Scrooge sees a doctor named Dr. Quackenbush

- According to Webby, Scrooge regularly breaks into museums

- Scrooge about Webby: “Not sure where she came from”

- Scrooge invested in both the Titanic and the Hidenberg

- Scrooge says “I’ve spent long enough trying to make things right!” about his relationship with Donald lol

- Scrooge spent a summer “among the mermen of Bermuda” (not to be like sounds gay but. well)

- Duckburg origins: Fort Drake Borough in the 16th century when owned by the British. Renamed Fort Duckburg during the Revolutionary War.

- Scrooge used to store his money behind Mona Lisa paintings to the point where his office has 30 different Mona Lisa paintings

- Originally the Money Bin was gonna be surrounded by a moat filled with crocodiles but animal rights people protested him lolol

- Mallard Lake is a lake in Duckburg that Scrooge privately owns

- Scrooge specifically says he conned Granpappy Beagle out of the stolen deed to Duckburg

- Scrooge thinks he’s good-looking

- Scrooge about Webby “Not a member of the family, but sometimes I wish she were!”

- Scrooge listed a bunch of ways to enjoy dining out and one of them is two-for-one deals heheh

- Scrooge talks about Mount Neverest and once again says 75 years ago but it still doesn’t make sense chronologically. I mean he also lies CONSTANTLY in this book so. Yknow how it be.

- Scrooge had a very...interesting relationship with the Abominable Snowman. Named Archibald. They met in 1952 in the Arctic Circle and I think they’re fwbs

- Scrooge once ran a Northern Lights Tour business

- When Scrooge made his first million he bought himself a new tie.

- When Scrooge made his first billion he bought himself another hat.

- When Scrooge made his first trillion he took a 2 hour lunch break (and then took no lunch break the next day)

- When Scrooge made his first quadrillion he tried to get the government to make a quadrillion-dollar bill. They did not

- When Scrooge made his first “incredibillion” he rebuilt the Money Bin.

- To be clear I think all of these are blatant lies based on how he writes them

- Scrooge “Things I’m better at than Zeus” one of the options is “killing unkillable creatures”

- Scrooge claimed to be involved in the creation of this race: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_Rally

- Scrooge was apparently rejected by this race: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Yacht_Club so he started his own race called Scrooge’s Cup and no one else entered

- Scrooge lost this race: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail_Trans-Atlantic_Air_Race

- Scrooge accidentally entered the first Tour de France on July 1, 1903. He wasn’t in the race, he was on a bicycle-built-for-two date and then racers sped past him and he joined in. His date did NOT like this and they had no second date

- Scrooge says Ronguay’s (which he misspells as Wronguay lol) Fountain of Youth is easy and cheap to get to. Which means he’s used it before!

- Scrooge talks about actively stealing from Demogorgana and Pandemonium but it’s fine, Goldie’s the thief

- Scrooge has won a bet against Old Man Time??

- Scrooge and Beakley met in 1968 (I thought it was earlier in the 60s lol)

- Scrooge helped finance the Wright Brothers

- List of some things in Scrooge’s garage: Triceratops skeleton Caveduck skeleton Chupacabra skeleton Stone Scrooge statue Gong of Pixiu Medua Gauntlet Cursed Chest of Captain Peghook, the Scourge of the River Styx The Deux Excalibur Saddle of the Headless Man-horse Jewel of Atlantis Druid Cup Khopesh of Toth-Ra

- Scrooge ancestors: 946: Eider McDuck 1057: Quackly McDuck 1066: Murdoch McDuck 1189: Stuft McDuck 1205: Roast McDuck 1220: Swamphole McDuck 1440: Black Donald McDuck (invented golf) 1500: Simon McDuck (stole Knight's Templar treasure 1675: McDucks lost their castle 1727: Seaform McDuck 1800s: Silas McDuck 1800s: Dirty Dungus McDuck 1800s: Fergus and Downey McDuck

- "If you aren't Clan McDuck, you can't wear Clan McDuck tartan. Period." i can’t believe scrooge adopted drake immediately before letting him wear his tartan

OK that’s everything I’m done now. Here’s some pics

#ducktales #scrooge mcduck #timeline

[felassan]

DA4 Lead Producer Scylla Costa’s BIG Festival talk, “Challenges of Dragon Age production during the pandemic”, can currently be rewatched on YouTube here starting roughly at timestamp 8:57:02 after a lil presenter blurb/intro. It’s 1 hour long. When it was streamed live, there was an English translation ‘voiceover’. There isn’t in this vid, however I want to post the link for Portuguese speakers, and also it’s neat for everyone to be able to see all the slides he presented with for themselves in context.

I don’t know if an English-language version will get put up so I’m sharing the notes I took during the talk below, in case anyone’s interested and because I might as well since I wrote them. The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

Edit: Found a place to re-watch the English version of the talk

(Quick note: I didn’t note down everything, mostly things that caught my interest, so this isn’t exhaustive, and when I was watching I was real tired, so pls bear that in mind and don’t take these notes as bullet-proof 100% accurate gospel or direct quotes. If you watched it and think I’ve written down something wrong/misunderstood, let me know and I’ll fix. Also if you’re a Portuguese speaker and I’ve gotten something incorrect or missed something important etc, again just let me know.) **

** Edit: I’ve now gone through my notes while watching the talk again. I’ve filled in some of the gaps (although they still don’t cover everything said) and so forth, and now I’m no longer worried about there being possible errors in this post.

-----

For some context, this slide contained the breakdown of the talk’s structure. Bear in mind there are other slides present in the talk than the ones I’ve posted here, I didn’t include caps of all of them, just ones which were of note to me.

In the talk, chief Producer Scylla goes over challenges of DA4 production during the pandemic. He discusses the adaptations - necessary skills and learning from remote work - and he ponders on the future of teamwork.

After the launch of ME3 he became a producer, all his MMO and other experience helped a lot. He was on DAI for 3 years and MEA for 9 months, then Anthem. Today, on DA4, Scylla and another Lead Producer were the heads of the whole project, and there is his boss is the Executive Producer Christian Dailey. 

^ the usual AAA game development cycle (brief introduction)

AAA games are games that are launched for several platforms simultaneously. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase of the game development cycle can have from 5 - 30 people, and up to almost 60 people when they’re just about to go through the gate to production. 

In the pre-production phase, they go through the game’s concepts and prototypes and start developing systems. They seek the game’s concept and focus, and its key features. They do lots of market research. In the case of BioWare, all their games are strong in narrative, so they have lots of tools related to game narratives and supporting the development of a narrative (cinematic design, dialogue system etc) that get focused on in this phase. Other parts of the team such as writers and cinematic design need these systems to do their own roles. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase through to launch can take 4 - 6 years, but it does depend on the size of the team during development.

With regards to Dragon Age 4, they were coming close to the time when they would shift from pre-production to the production stage when the pandemic hit.

During the production phase is when the development of content and features takes place, with the systems mostly already existing from the pre-production phase. A few new systems may be developed in this phase. In the production phase is when things start escalating, and the team really starts growing, to like 2- or 3-fold the prior pre-production phase size. 

(DA4 is currently in the production phase.)

In the alpha phase, features have to be fully implemented and systems all have to be running / working. All the game features should already be in the game by now. They test from pre-production onwards, but this phase is when they run heavy technical tests with lots of players trying to play at the same time. In the beta phase, the idea is that you should now have full content and that now you’re balancing it and running more and lots of different tests with players before launch. There are final tweaks and then the final launch, when in the weeks prior to launch, all the different business units and areas e.g. marketing team, technology team, publishing team, get together once a day and all of the game’s issues are reported and brought to the table to be prioritized. Then they decide the next steps re: these issues (this is known as ‘the war room’).

After the launch there are usually patches like day zero patches and other patches, this being standard industry practise. The last stage is the new content stage where there are DLCs and a game with more content.

On March 12th 2020, the team gathered to review the DA4 story in the new office. Everyone was very excited. (They had spent over 10 years in their last building and had noticed that with the team growing they needed more space. In August 2019 they found the new studio in the city center.)

Anyway that evening, they got an email from the CEO which contained instructions and said that due to the pandemic, they should from now all start working remotely. They had known that this happening was a possibility so they had been planning on how to have all the devs working from home, but initially less than 50% of the devs were able to work from home successfully/efficiently due to various issues e.g. you need a VPN to be able to log in remotely to do your job normally, varying home office setups. The day after this, the office was basically deserted, except for Scylla, the IT infrastructure people and one or two odd devs.

Scylla was part of the team that was working on allowing the devs to work from home. They first started looking at the short-term changes they needed to make to allow this.

“First, take care of our developers”. 

When the pandemic first hit, their and Scylla’s [as Lead Producer] first priority was to look after the devs. Many of them are parents (schools and day-cares were shut, children were studying from home), others have relatives living with them, others have other personal circumstances which of course need to be taken into account when it comes to assessing what needs to be taken into consideration for this new scenario. So, they looked at each dev on a case-by-case basis in order to evaluate, speaking to each one and asking them what they could do to support them.

One of the first changes/adaptations they could implement was flexible working hours and flexibility around deadlines. Generally speaking the devs got a lot of support, EA was really good and really supported the devs especially in the first months of the pandemic (and they are still supporting them). Initially not all devs had suitable office spaces at home, some were working from the living room from laptops or at the kitchen table. The whole covid situation basically just happened over night and nobody was really ready to deal with that change. So their first step was to enable their devs to work remotely. As a producer, Scylla’s main task is to communicate with the team such as via a number of daily meetings. He doesn’t depend so much on powerful hardware.

“Enable developers to work remotely”.

This slide shows some of a BioWare audio team. Different teams have varying and specific needs in order to do their jobs and therefore in order to do them remotely. For example, the audio team need good-quality speakers and amplifiers, while the lighting and art teams need other specific equipment such as tablets and large screens. So there was a lot of work they had to do to go through each dev to understand their individual needs and what needed to be done for them. ‘Could they download the builds? Did they have the right performance [tech-wise]? Could they submit their changelists, their codes to the server?’

Some devs needed a more powerful internet connection as it would take 6-8 hours to download a build (some devs live rurally). Some needed a lot of cable, as they were working far away from their routers (sometimes up to 50m). As time went by things got better and better. 

The chair devs work from is also important; a kitchen able chair etc is not suitable to sit in for long-term desk work, possibly leading to health issues like back ache and blood circulation problems in the legs.

Every 3 months they had money given to help devs buy new mice, keyboards, monitors - anything they needed really in order for their office setting at home to be improved. For a while, because lots of people [generally, in society] were needing and buying them, it was quite hard to buy things like webcams and microphones.

On mid- and long-term changes:

In terms of DA, we have to look at this from 2 perspectives, the change in the personal and the professional environments. 

As a consequence of working from home, people tend to be less active during the day (even in an office, you go between meeting rooms, up and down stairs etc). Physical activity supports life quality and therefore work quality. Scylla noticed that he began to feel listless and such, and found that he needed to change his routine that he had initially developed when he started working from home, for example; having a normal start time (as in, have a semblance of structure in your day as if you were still working in the office site), get dressed at the normal time, not having meetings over lunch etc. This wasn’t just him, lots of other devs encountered this and had this experience too. Devs which adapted faster had better productivity and became more productive faster.

Scylla bought a stand-up desk which he can raise up and down, and at meetings he would be delivering a talk while standing or even while walking on a treadmill. Other devs also got stand-up desks. He tracked his body’s data on a Fitbit. These sorts of things helped improve physical and mental wellbeing. Other devs did similar things, like starting going out for jogs or began practising yoga. Essentially, everyone needed to make changes to their daily routine in comparison to what they had been doing prior to the pandemic. 

The pandemic has been a thing for over a year now. In their location, every couple of weeks a new restriction is put into place or a rule is changed, and every two weeks there’s a new thing that you can and can’t do. Scylla also started moving around his property. He worked on his desk, fixed it up and painted - taking up a new hobby. Other devs picked up new hobbies too. These are good ways to be active and also to be somewhere else, i.e. to break up the working day and not be spending it all in one home office-type location. Scylla found that when he made these sorts of changes to his routine to improve his lifestyle, the data output by his Fitbit as indicators of his health/wellbeing etc improved, e.g. number of steps taken in a day, heartbeats per minute while at rest. As stated many of the other devs went through a similar process.

On the professional side of things:

They had to improve remote delivery of builds. Accessing things from home as a dev requires a VPN. They need to download a build every day and then upload it to the server after making their changes to the game. They had to work with infrastructure and research other tech, such as streaming tech to allow remote console access, in order to better facilitate this process. For remote access, they also had to work on adapting communications channels.

“Adapting channels of communication.”

In this slide, the team are working on the storyboards. Before you can implement motion capture & performance capture, you have to ‘run the storyboards’ like this. These are small illustrating drawings which reflect the drafts and are meant to quickly reflect the intention of the scenes that are to be built. Before the pandemic, the team would go to meeting rooms like this, sit down, talk and interact in person. After the pandemic, the question became ‘How do you do this over Zoom?’ You can, but it’s not quite the same; it’s harder to see peoples’ expressions, some people are embarrassed speaking over Zoom etc. Therefore they had to adapt their communications systems, and unlearn the ways in which they developed before in order to relearn and learn new ways of communicating.

Slack was a tool that they adopted on this front. Communications channels can be confusing on Slack, so there was a need to develop structure. For example, how quickly should someone reply (as a recommended convention for the purposes of work)? They had to define the process/procedures for the channels so it was clear for the team as a whole how it would all flow (this is important especially if you have a team with say 30 people or as a whole hundreds of people). Before the pandemic, they had stand-up meetings where they’d go around in a circle every morning and talk about their activities - what they’re going to be working on, any roadblocks they had encountered etc. The question arose ‘How do you replace these?’ They ended up doing Slack messages at a certain time of day and updating their statuses with some details on what they’re working on and color-coding (green - fine, yellow - need help, red - busy/blocked out).

Another issue that they faced was unforeseen - the number of meetings that devs were having really shot through the roof. When there wasn’t a good structure of communications channels, any conversation would become a meeting. Everybody began scheduling meetings left and right, and at the end of the day they would have little time left in which to actually work on their to-do lists. Hence, they had to work with the team to really analyze and be very pragmatic. ‘Which meetings needed to happen? Which didn’t? Is a specific meeting really necessary? Which meetings should be recurring? What can be done over Slack?’ This guideline had to be given to the team to help, and it improved things a lot. The number of meetings decreased a lot and they got more effective. For example, by making sure to set an agenda for meetings beforehand, and by having meeting notes (then a dev who didn’t really need to be at a meeting could skip attending and just quickly review the notes output after instead). They also decreased the standard length of meeting times from the default Outlook blocks of 1 hour and 30 mins to 55 mins and 25 mins respectively. This 5 minute change gave devs time for things like bio breaks (also 4 hours in a row at a computer in a home office with one meeting after another just isn’t good for a person).

“Adapting p-cap and mocap”.

On content:

From a content point of view, the most difficult thing in terms of the pandemic was adapting p-cap and mocap (performance capture and motion capture). They hire actors and it’s a large studio. The pandemic meant big limits to what they could and couldn’t do. The actors had to be masked and 5 meters apart in distance (although it doesn’t look like it in some of these shots due to angles). Also there could be no other person around in the studio - only the actors. The directors instead would ‘patch’ in remotely on big screens (you can see this in the second photo in the top right). 

Before the pandemic, they felt that they wouldn’t be able to do p-cap or mocap properly remotely, as the directors would usually stand right next to actors giving guidance on their performance. The techs would also usually be near. But they adapted! The keyword is adapting, changing process. It’s harder and it’s different, but it is possible, and people start rethinking what is possible. What was said to be impossible before now is possible.

P-cap differs to mocap in that it also captures voice and facial expressions.

On the future of work after covid:

There will probably be more working from home and more flexibility for workers e.g. being able to work say 3 out of 5 days from home. It does depend on what a dev’s specific job is however. For example, the audio engineers require lots of specialist equipment and said equipment is of higher quality and quantity in the office. So, depending on role, devs might be working more often or less often from home.

Another development is that lots of devs are moving house. In lockdown etc people started reassessing what’s most important in life. Some are moving further away from the studio to get a cheaper rent or for example couples who both needed an office space to work from home from but their current place only had one area. Others are moving closer to nature for a better quality of life, and still others have other different reasons for doing so. Over 10 devs that he knows in fact have recently moved, including Scylla himself.

The pandemic changed certain skills being used by people on a daily basis. Scylla used as an example of this one of his soft skills, being able to tell from looking/interacting in-person with someone if they are stressed out. Obviously it’s less easy to tell if someone is stressed out when you’re remote, so you adapt different ways of checking in with people in the new situation. To continue carrying out his role as Lead Producer, he began checking in with his team pro-actively on the new comms channels and asking how they were doing.

Also, now that companies are more open to working remotely, there is going to be increased competition for hiring devs. They saw both sides of this coin at BioWare. They were able to hire devs from many places that they couldn’t hire from before e.g. Montreal, Vancouver, the US, as there’s less need for devs to relocate to Edmonton or Austin. This opens up opportunities to hire really intelligent and skilled people that they would not have had access to before.

Question and answer segment:

The pre-production phase has been concluded. They’re in the production phase.

They are not giving out a lot of details yet but Scylla is really excited as a big fan of the whole series. He thinks that with DA4, they will have the opportunity/possibility to launch the best story out of all DA games. He feels that the characters they’re making are amazing. He’s dying to say more but can’t. 

When you work from home you need to keep your team as productive as possible. During the pandemic, when people started working from home, they noticed that some people became more productive and some people became less productive. They were analyzing it on a case-by-case basis so as not to make assumptions. They were interested in seeing what they could do to help. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were looking at the devs as people and seeing what they needed.

Production of DA4 still needed to continue during the pandemic because they want to be able to launch the game.

This slide shows a writer. Writing is an example of a role which is more able to work from home easily.

Their productivity did go down in the first month of the pandemic. After adaptations, some people then became more productive than they were before (this was role and personal situation-dependent, examples of this being artists and coders who were able to art and code at home without being interrupted, thereby being able to produce more). Covid has affected productivity in general, but this is part of our new reality. They have adapted and adjusted some deadlines. They have enough data (Scylla LOVES data) now to understand how long it will take them/how long they’ll need to launch the game. They have always had historical data for this purpose, but they’re doing more of this sort of thing now to ensure that they are doing things at the right time.

Remote hiring opens up the door to more talent joining, so if someone has talent geography will hold them back less. Some companies though may choose not to hire people from other countries due to labor issues, cumbersome legal aspects, time zones. But even in such cases there are activities for example that can be carried out while the rest of the team is asleep such as testing or working on the build, or there are cases where those companies still will want to hire a specifically/highly talented person even in spite of the potential legal aspects and so on.

On mental health: People were affected. There is the mental, physical and social impacts of the pandemic situation on people. EA supported them during the pandemic in terms of their mental wellbeing, there are specific companies (services offered, speaking to a therapist) that they can contact if they need something or help. EA had always been good at supporting them with this sort of thing but this has improved further during the pandemic. Another change was that they could/can take a couple of days off if they needed/need to because of the pandemic e.g. to take care of children, who were obviously not at school at the time. As a producer he had to be very mindful of all of this. How much they were monitoring peoples’ wellbeing really went up during the pandemic.

A question that was asked - in terms of DA4′s storybeats, is there anything in there that they decided to change due to the pandemic as it wouldn’t be sensitive or appropriate to include anymore, for example a plague plotline or something? Scylla’s answer is that DA and ME are games in which they try to have narratives that are relatable, which include things which people will identify with, so that players understand what characters are going through etc. Nothing in DA4′s plotline/storybeats has been changed (in the frame of this question, relating to the pandemic), as it didn’t have anything in it that could be specifically or a directly connected to a pandemic-type situation or anything. Of course the DA story has Blights and the Taint, but these are different & fantastical things and existed long before the pandemic situation. So this wasn’t the case with DA4 and there was no need to change anything, but this has happened to other games where they decided to change a storyline due to a strong correlation with something in the real world.

There were then concluding/closing remarks. The message he wants to send is that a crisis will always spark opportunities. Look at a crisis and try to see how you can grow.

-----

[☕ found this post interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #covid mention #long post #longpost #wanted to write these up properly and post them yesterday but wasn't able to #mass effect #anthem

[thedreadvampy]

talking to my mum last night and getting fucked up about the degree of trauma my grandparents' generation faced and how. unwilling and ill-equipped the care system is for the obvious fact that there's a huge incidence of PTSD and complex lifelong mental health issues in those generations

grannie was 17 when she became a nurse and she was working immediately in London at the height of the Blitz. her first day she saw blown apart children and had to comfort their parents. she was almost hit by a rocket cycling home.

grandpa spent the whole war in labour camps before being trapped behind the Iron Curtain in the ruins of Dresden, almost dead from starvation from the camp, for another 3 years before making it back to Blackpool to find out his parents had died in his absence.

granny got radiation sickness at 13 from being put under an X-ray with no protection and forgotten about for hours; she lost all her hair and developed chronic pain and health problems. after years of severe physical, emotional and sexual abuse from her family and the men around her, she got engaged to an American pilot who was shot down and killed in the last month of the war. her former boyfriend came back a dissociative shell of his pre-war self and she ended up trying to raise three small children on her own, with her family at the other end of the country and her husband often having violent flashbacks and outbursts of rage. she was suicidal and had violent psychotic breaks and got institutionalised and medicated on and off her entire adult life.

like. it isn't just the war. people born in the early-mid 20th century, especially women, have been subject to so much sexual trauma, domestic and social violence, bigotry, and grief on grief on grief.

with my granny, it's entirely understandable that she was 'mad'. when I knew her, she was on heavy daily dosage of lithium - she stopped because it was destroying her gut after 30 years and she became violently aggressive, vindictive, scared, psychotic, paranoid, frequently delusional and extremely abusive. She was terrified of doctors because of her repeated experiences with medical abuse, she was furious with everyone around her, she coldly hated her husband and seemed actively happy when he died, and the thing is all of that makes perfect sense because she was profoundly and repeatedly traumatised for at least the first 50-60 years of her life.

but the thing that worries and answers me is that the elder care system and the mental health system are completely unwilling to engage with the fact that many many many old people have severe pre-existing mental health conditions. after all, how many of us have PTSD or psychotic episodes or bipolar or BPD or special care needs related to autism or OCD or ADHD or whatever? those don't just Cease To Exist after a certain age. and our parents and our grandparents grew up in times with much less support for mental health and much less awareness of trauma. granny's early traumas were familial but she was institutionalised repeatedly and treated appallingly throughout her life and that's in itself traumatic.

when granny was 82 and she stopped taking her lithium, she was frail, ill and a danger to herself and others.

they put her on a dementia ward when she was sectioned because she was Old, and Old Mad People Are Demented. but she didn't have dementia! she had chronic PTSD and paranoid delusions but she knew who, where and when she was and she was perfectly sharp, she just wasn't coping. when we went to visit her she'd say furiously 'they think I'm like the other people in here but I'm not, I'm not losing my marbles, I've always been this way'

none of us got any support looking after her while she was in hospital or after she left the inpatient ward - nobody checked in on grandpa while she was in hospital or on weekend release, and after she was released Dad looked after her single-handed while trying to deal with his dad's death. (she may have murdered grandpa while on weekend release, or he may have died of heart failure - either way when she went off the rails after 20 years stable, he gave up on life and I me and my sibling (for the record we were 10 when she left hospital) listening to her trying to continue unpicking her past trauma was I think the most therapy she got after she left.

she couldn't go into a regular elder care home because she was too unstable, she needed specialist mental health care and she sometimes needed to be constrained for her own safety and that of other people. residential mental health care facilities weren't equipped to deal with her needs as a woman in her 80s. she couldn't go into dementia care, which is about the only residential care available for old people with serious mental health needs, because she didn't have dementia and it would have been utterly inappropriate and harmful for her and the other residents. she lived to 93 and for the last 11 years of her life it was up to Dad and us to look after her in her home because there was simply nowhere else for her to go.

and what really fucks me up is that she wasn't past help. a lot of people thought she was but when she left hospital she was trying really hard to continue therapy on her own without a therapist, she drew and wrote about her life and memories and she used to sit opposite me and open up in a way I now utterly recognise as trauma therapy, she would try to find ways to talk about what had hurt her and state into the middle distance for tens of minutes trying to get it together enough to continue. she wanted to do the work. but the only people there for her were her son who was shellshocked from losing his dad and traumatised from effectively losing his mum again and who was spending all his energy just trying to get through work and home and get her physical needs met, and a couple of preteen children who had the will but not the capacity to help. we were barely holding ourselves together (mum drove granny places but mostly her capacity was being spent being about the only support Dad or us could get) and we just couldn't meet the work of a trained therapist. and eventually she gave up on getting better and got angrier and more bitter and more abusive to everyone. but she wanted to feel better. she wanted to deal with her shit. but there was no support.

and there must be thousands of people like her. older people with lifelong trauma and mental health issues who are too mentally ill for elder support and too old for mental health support. and the MH system doesn't think they're worth the resource cost because after all they're old, they'll die soon. but where are they meant to go? and how much harm does unsupported home care do to the person in need of care and to the people carrying for them? it just multiplies trauma down the generations. you can't just expect mental illness to only affect the young when the old have been just as traumatised and you can't treat them as separate issues when old people need carers who are qualified to deal with both their age and their mental health issues.

like yes many people develop late life mental health issues like Alzheimers and dementia, just as many people become disabled for the first time by age. but a lot of people are disabled or mentally ill for decades before they reach anything approaching elderly, and those things don't suddenly go away and don't have the same support needs as late-life issues.

idk. I'm very angry. if there was recognition of the need to support older people with lifelong trauma then my grandpa wouldn't have died hopeless and unsupported, my granny might have got her life back and got some healing after 80 years of living in fear, my dad wouldn't have had his own mental breakdown and slide into paranoia and conspiracy theory, and me and my siblings wouldn't have lost our whole adolescence trying to shore up two badly neglected adults' catastrophic mental health while under constant fire.

literally a ten minute weekly phone call with grandpa while granny was in hospital and weekly follow-up talk therapy for her after she was discharged could have made so much difference but nobody fucking cared. because she was Old. she was in the hospital because she was a danger to the people around her and they discharged her for the weekend as a trial run and her husband died suddenly while she was in the house and she seemed totally unbothered and they still. let her out for good two weeks later with no followup care or therapeutic follow-up and no support or advice for Dad on looking after her. they started talk therapy in hospital and then dropped her abruptly and left her raw and cracked open without any way to put herself back together. and she isn't unique it's just. Careless. and so destructive.

[muffinrecord]

Support Point Farming

Updated: November 10, 2021

Want to farm some Support Points in hopes of getting some delicious random four-star memoria? Well, here is a quick guide!

When To Farm?

The best time to farm for Support are during events where costs for battles is halved and the Support Point reward is doubled. You can check the news for when these events are being run; here is the banner you should look for:

You can generally you can expect this banner to occur during new chapter releases (for the Main Story only), during Anniversaries, and during very special Events such as the New Years Celebrations. You can also occasionally see this pop up during “_____ Days Since Release!” Campaigns (example here).

If you want a better idea of when to expect a Halved AP / Double Support event to occur, please check out the valuable resource that is Kamihama Clock Tower. This site has timers which show the duration of current events, when new events are expected to start, when Anniversaries will begin, and when a login event can be expected to occur.

It’s not recommended to farm for Support points outside of this. Instead, you should plan on saving your AP potions with the intent to spend them for big events like this.

Where to Farm?

So you’ve got a Halved-AP/Double Support Campaign going on! Now what?

It’s time to farm of course! However, the first step here is that you should decide is what kind of farming you’re going to do. Here are the options:

Farm for Materials: You’re choosing specific battles with the goal of getting more Sheep Horns alongside getting those valuable Support Points. The bonus here is that you’re gathering material you might need for your units (or might need in the future), but the problem is that this isn’t the most efficient way of getting that tasty SP.

Farm for Shards: You’re choosing low-AP battles to farm SP and also for the smaller Shards.

Farm for SP: You’re choosing low-AP battles with the sole purpose of getting Support Points. All you’re going to get here are a thousand+ Aqua Orbs+.

I’m going to cover the third option. The fastest options for farming SP would be either:

1-1-3-4 (fight a single Yachiyo)

or

1-2-1-4 (fight a single Rena)

The second option is slightly faster, as Rena has a shorter intro fight animation than Yachiyo does. Note that these will be for Arc 1 and are not Challenge mode fights.

What Character to Use?

If you’re doing the third option, then use whoever you want. Even Konomi Haruna can one-shot Rena or Yachiyo here. 

Additionally, turn off the options for using your skills/connects (like this)

Just remember to turn these features back on when you’re done!

Choosing A Support

The support you use should ideally have high damage, but the most important thing is to make sure they are a mutual. That means you have the blue icon, as shown above (near where you see the +60 Support Point notice). 

This whole activity is pointless if you don’t use a mutual-- otherwise, you’re no longer getting 60 Support Points per battle...

...but 20.

That’s worse than when you use a mutual without a Double-AP Campaign bonus. So make sure you’re always using a Mutual for this!

Lastly: AP Pots and Blue AUTO

The last thing to note here is that you can use a bunch of AP potions in preparation for your farming. Just keep drinking those pots until you can’t anymore:

You can see I was able to get to 528 Action Points there^

Pick a good Support and then use the Blue Auto button and leave your game in a nice place while you busy yourself for the next hour.

Last Minute Thoughts

If you have an old phone (like I do) then it’s gonna suffer through this and it’s a really good battery drain. I like to set the screen brightness to the lowest it can go so that it doesn’t completely die on me.

There is no pity system for the Support Gacha. I’ve spend 50 full AP pots before and got nothing except for crappy gems and pitiful 1* memoria-- and conversely, I’ve spent one AP pot and gotten three four-star memoria in one pull. It’s all based on luck. Additionally, you can get a four-star memoria but there is no guarantee it’s a four-star memoria you actually want. This is something to do if you just want more four-star memoria or if you want to collect some personal memoria (again, with no guarantee that you’ll get any or even get what you want). Don’t feel like you need to do this, especially if you’re low on AP pots. It might be wiser to save those for future events, especially if you’re the kind of person to do everything last minute.

You can use characters who need Episode Level XP, but I find the return you get to be extremely low. Personally, I’d rather use a character who kills things faster and use the Clear Albums to level girls-- but there’s nothing wrong with trying to maximize the amount of stuff you accomplish while farming!

Conclusion

I think that’s about everything? I apologize if I wrote a guide that no one needs (or if there are multiple errors in here, I haven’t slept in a while [again]). If you have a correction or a suggestion, please leave a reply or reblog this post and I’ll edit it in later!

#Muffin Record #Magia Record #im posting this and going #to go fuck off the internet and do stuff irl #Long Post #I'm not sure if this will go into the tag #due to all the images and the links #MR Help

[ofhouseadama]

could I dm you this? yes. but also asks are fun even though this question is mean so. how do Ed and Lorraine react to the Vietnam war?

Okay so my Ed and Lorraine are absolutely Kennedy Democrats, are both very excited and enthusiastic about the first Catholic president, but both are against the Vietnam War and US military intervention from the start. Ed's already fought in one imperialist proxy war, he's got the PTSD to prove it, and Lorraine just is truly repulsed by violence of any kind.

And also like, to go completely left field for a minute -- I've been thinking a lot about how teenage Lored were effectively trapped at 17-19 years old. Mostly financially, and in different ways. in 1951, Lorraine wouldn't have been able to have her own bank account. Women wouldn't have the right to open their own bank account until the 60s or have a credit card until the 70s -- her money would have been her father's, effectively. and while probably not maliciously, since she was a young woman she likely wouldn't have had much access to her pay checks unless she was cashing them directly. Ed, meanwhile, while trying to survive a negligent/abusive household, absolutely would have been spending money on things most teens wouldn't have to in order to survive... and that's before getting the draft notice from the Selective Service, which took away even more control of his own life.

So I see Ed and Lorraine getting married young (even for the 50s, they're a few years younger than the median, though the war was actively driving that age down) mostly out of making the most out of what they could together. Ed putting Lorraine on his bank accounts and asking her actively to manage them while he's away, and her depositing her paychecks into his account would give her more financial control in her life than most women of the era. Lorraine's engagement ring (the size of that goddamn rock) is even an insurance policy most women her age and demographic didn't have -- often when women fled marriages, it was only with their jewelry to sell. It's half about Ed's possessive streak, half him showing he's not afraid to give her the money to run, if she needed to.

Anyway -- the trauma of their late teens and early twenties is entirely rooted in the rising Cold War anxieties and the locus of harm done to women in the 50s and I fully see their pursuit of demonology and the supernatural as something Lorraine initially started while working as a secretary for the Diocese, something she did to stay late at work and help people she could physically reach while Ed was away at war. She initially started staying late on the days she knew Father Gordon would be bringing in a scared family or terrified couple or frightened soul in through the back door hours after everyone had left, staying to pray and keep herself nearby, to be an observer to a fight she could be party to. Father Gordon figures her out quickly, of course, asking what interest she has in demons and exorcisms, and figures out she's clever with records and archives, almost to an uncanny degree.

And then figures out to exactly what uncanny degree.

After Ed came home and became the husband instead of the boyfriend, it turned into something Ed could throw all his metaphorical demons onto and a healthy way to exercise his control issues and fear and anxiety that doesn't (generally) affect Lorraine because she's fighting with him side by side in this, when before they were separated by thousands of miles -- the beginning everyone's favorite Catholic battle couple very much rooted in Ed and Lorraine parsing out who brought home metaphorical demons from the war, and who brought home literal ones, and bringing them to Father Gordon when necessary. Rooted in Ed needing to be useful, to dusting off his Catholic school Latin and reading everything he could get his hands on so that he could continue to help, continue to fight.

Lorraine would have been pregnant with Judy during the heightening tensions with Cuba and as Kennedy is sending more and more military "advisors" to Vietnam and Cold War tensions flared the hottest they'd get in the 1960s and I can just see both of their control issues revving up, especially with a few-months-old baby in the mix. Just the two of them laying bed, looking down at their three month old baby girl, wondering if they'd all get nuked tomorrow. If war would be declared tomorrow. If they'd all be dead, if they brought her into the world just to die violently. It's like taking guns off the street. They can't control the White House, or the Soviets, or Cuba or China or or or -- but they know about demons, they know about spirits, they know about taking these bombs off the battlefield, in the war of good against evil, and this is a war they can be foot soldiers in together.

Lorraine would get a bit of relief in the March of '63 when Kennedy dropped married men with children to the bottom of the draft pool, and then dropped the age of the draft pool to 26, aging Ed out of the Selective Service entirely. And then in November, JFK would be assassinated, and the photo of Jackie Kennedy covered in blood, leaving the hospital hand-in-hand with RFK, would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country. It would be a jolt for both of them -- but it wouldn't fully hit Lorraine until seven years later, when she'd have her first vision of Ed's death and fully understand Jackie Kennedy's weary, "I want them to see what they have done to Jack."

After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August of 1964, they fully throw themselves into taking cases almost full time. As the war heats up, Ed pulls back from teaching art classes at the VA. If he spends too much time there, he has to face how pointless the violence has been. If he spends too much time there, now, he has to face that he still doesn't know why he survived. Why he lived, and everyone else on board the ship with him died. Because he still doesn't know, he still is fighting to make his life matter in a way that makes sense to him. All he has is his sense of duty, a couple of college credits, and his hands. On good days, he knows that he's loved -- that Lorraine loves him so much it makes it hurt to breathe, that he's a good father to his daughter, who will never be afraid of him.

Ed has a complete PTSD relapse in 1966, with the beginning of the ground war and the full-throated resurgence of the American propaganda machine and military recruitment. He's back in the guilt spiral, the "I never had it that bad, I was only in the Navy for two years, I never had it that bad," just feeding into "why did I live when everyone else I fought with died," back and forth until he can't sleep, can only sleep when Judy sleeps, accidentally ends up adapting himself to her nap schedule and has to sleep with his hand on her chest, feeling her breathe.

Lorraine calls in Chief, after Ed can't get out of bed for 72 hours and misses mass for the first time in his life. Chief, who comes up from Brooklyn to remind Ed of the time their entire ship exploded and Ed treaded water for eight hours and everyone else died. How they spent the next six months getting drunk whenever they weren't on duty and picking fights they couldn't get out of, and that one time they got thrown in the brig because Chief struck a superior asshole and Ed just followed him into the fight. (No, Lorraine does not know about that time Ed and Chief ended up in the brig. She will never know about that time. Judy will at some point in her early 20s learn about that time, when she needs to learn about how her parents are people, who have absolutely made mistakes in their lives.) "You and I spent six months drunk," Chief says, bouncing Judy on his knee in the kitchen over a cup of coffee, Ed refusing to look at him as he deep cleans the stove. "And then your dad died, and your sainted wife handled everything for you, and we realized we couldn't send you home to her like that."

"I still don't know why I lived."

Chief shrugs. "It doesn't matter why, son. The same reason any of us live, and any of us die. It doesn't matter. You have a little girl now who depends on you. She matters more than any goddamn reason -- you live for her, and your saint of a wife, and for all the people that you help. So that you can look them in the face, say you've been down in the hole that they're in now, and you know the way out."

Lorraine calls in Chief, because she absolutely picked a fight after mass that day without Ed, with Judy on her hip. Overheard Dorothy O'Malley running her mouth in the pew in front of her sounding like a national security ghoul and didn't even think before she opened her mouth and unloading the full force of her anxiety and anger on her. Only stops because she feels a gentle hand on her shoulder and Father Gordon murmuring in her ear, "Okay Mrs. Warren, you've made your point," while leading her away. It's the "Mrs. Warren" instead of the familiar "Lorraine" that jolts her back to herself, kissing Judy's head as she tries to shake herself out of it.

"Thank you," she tells Father Gordon, defeated.

He shrugs. "You don't come to confession until before Friday night prayer service. I didn't want you stewing on this all week." Pausing, he takes a moment to fondly tug on one of Judy's pig tails, making her laugh. "If Ed's not... feeling well, I know about that."

Lorraine bites her lip, knowing full and well that Father Gordon served as a chaplain in World War II. That seeing the violence of the Nazis firsthand is what convinced him that the Devil was more than a metaphor, that evil truly walked the Earth. Sent him on his own path, chasing darkness.

Lorraine nods.

"I could talk to him," Father Gordon says. "But it would likely come better from someone he served with."

When she gets home, she finds Chief's number in their phone book, and calls Brooklyn for the first and last time. He comes up the next day, and shoos her out of the house to do something for herself for the first time in months, telling her that he's more than equipped to look after a single three year old.

Ed goes back to teaching at the VA a few months after that, teaching art to the new round of mentally scarred children returning from war. He concedes to group therapy, and a few sessions with the VA psychiatrist to get something to take the edge off. He teaches at the VA until the troop withdrawals in 1970, reducing his class load as he and Lorraine take on more and more cases -- verging towards a hundred a year -- for the Catholic Church, and the media attention that comes along with that, the publicity engagements that help keep their bills paid, the articles and academic talks.

Even still, Ed occasionally brings home someone for dinner, just to make sure that they've only brought metaphorical demons home from war with them, not literal ones.

Sometimes it's literal ones.

#ask #rikertroi #otp: i forgot my pills #emily watches the conjuring #i cannot believe that Sam was just like #''I am going to give Emily an excuse to use her degree and hurt people'' #this got... so very long

[twiststreet]

New favorite purchase in a while:  my copy of OffGrid magazine (or “recoil offgrid...?”)  that I bought at the Sacramento airport because I missed what magazines used to be:  little short opportunities on the most casual possible basis to find out about a world not your own, paid attention to with scrutiny but some editorial distance, I guess is how I’d put it.  The last days of magazines were a while ago (and the heyday was before I was alive, the heyday was the 60′s)-- and the internet’s attempts to do magazines all seem to have failed, RIP Grantland or whatever.  But it was an hour long plane flight and I didn’t want to read the novel I brought with me, so.

OffGrid seemed like it’d be a fun one-- I mean, that jacket.  What’s going on with that guy’s life that he was like “I need to wear this jacket?”  How much time got spent posing that collar.  Why is he in using a laptop in the woods...?  You can’t see what’s on the bag to his left but it’s the words “Mystery Ranch.”  I wanted to solve that mystery!!!

Plus: for a good solid moment, I was like, “Man, what if I had a DIY Junkyard Knife Project.  What if that’d be good for me, like, as a new thing?  What if immersing myself into high-end artisnal shivs could become a fun side hustle?  I could sell my bespoke shanks at Guns and Knives Shows.”  My whole thing lately has been trying to pivot and all, so.  You know: dreams; aspirations; etc.  (Bladeshow West is on October 8-9 in Long Beach and has the “West Coast Flipping Championship”, but I’m out of town).  

So I open it up on the plane-- inside front cover is a photograph of a socom 16 cqb, opposite a photo of a man holding the rifle. The man’s beard is exactly what you’re imagining.  Most of the ads are for guns or night vision shit (one ad is for Gatorz sunglasses, though-- “the world’s best eyewear for mission driven people”).  Besides that, it’s a normal-looking magazine, albeit not a particularly inspired one on the design side, but.  There’s a gear section like men’s magazines always have, but for the “ultimate go bag”, bikes, “urban use” hiking boots, dinner sausages, thermal optics, knives, and a book called “The Ninja Wilderness Survival Guide.”  Ninjas were big outdoorsmen.  You know: so far so good-- exactly what I wanted.  It’s a magazine for MEN in all caps so everything being sold  is exclusively black or grey or grey-brown.

And it’s got that sort of “we’re a magazine” tone to the prose, like there’s a certain style of writing that magazines always have-- it’s such a narrow band of style that people are okay with reading... but like from the survivalist sausage review:

“As much as we fancy ourselves survivalists, not all of us are going to take down a buck, field dress it, and haul it back to home base during a weekend camping trip with the family.  Sometimes we just ilke to chill and and make s’mores.”

That sort of performance of humility that magazines have.  “We’re all just people here.  Now here’s our review of a $90 hatchet” (‘perfect for batoning wood.’).  Part of me wants to live in the world of magazines...

But then you get to the Good Part-- the article “What If Your Privacy has Been Compromised by Internet Doxing” by ... “Recoil Offgrid Staff.”  Ohhhh, I see what they did there. You’re not going to dox the person who wrote this article, folks.  (Except the names of staff are all listed in the magazine credits, so not the tightest op-sec I’ve ever seen, but okay).

This article kind of catches the eye because of the extremely specific hypotheticals.

Because it’s an article about what to do about internet doxing but it begins with a section called “The Setup”, laying out a scenario that YOU, the READER, might have to worry about, a situation where you might very well get doxed and then what???  Here’s that part of the article:

The Setup: imagine you attended a city council meeting to express your concern about the side effect of a growing homeless population in your area.  You plan to voice your concern for your famliy’s safety after witnessing an increase in drug sales, sexual assaults and public defecation.  [...] Some activists who attended this meeting did so in an effort to retaliate against residents who were speaking out against the homeless problem.  [..] An  online petition appearing to solicit residents to push for legislation that imposes tougher penalties against homelessness had recently been started.  [...] Everyone who’d signed up had been catfished. [...] Now, hostile notes are being left in your mailbox, harassing calls and texts from blocked numbers are coming in and you genuinely fear that the reprisals will become physical.”  

The entire premise of the article is that you say something so hateful at a city council meeting about “how we need to punish the homeless” that the internet causes you to fear for your safety!!  Your A+ plan to **have the same decrepit bureaucracy that’s allowed a homeless crisis to just terrorize people because they can’t pay for basic survival** is so despised that you need to read a magazine article urging you to (and this is a quote) “decide whether to stay at my residence, leave my house temporarily, or permanently move.”  

(The worst doxing I ever saw was because women went near video games, but).

Just this ultra-specific hypothetical!  There’s a real “office staff” 10000% got made fun of on twitter for yelling some dumb shit stink to the proceedings from, ike, paragraph 3 on.  And if you were wondering whether the article would complain about vaccines later, you betcha.  In a later section, the article warns you to obtain situational awareness and not engage with internet crackpots, but the hypothetical example they give is “Did that person actually say they believe that anyone who’s hesitant to be vaccinated should be compelled to do so or be banned from participating in any social activity?”  Use your situational awareness!  Stay away from that person online but insist on coughing around them socially!  They can dox you just for trying to negligently murder their immuno-compromised grandpa!!  Here’s an ad for a gun.  

Here’s a drawing that comes with the article:

The reader is being asked to relate to the person looking at the phone!  “That’s probably what you look like.”  I mean... seems fair?

The next article is with a veteran of the IDF.  There’s an article about hiding secret messages in memes (the example is a meme of a dog that say “love is in the air or is that bacon?”), which suggests you hide images in “raunchy images” since casual onlookers may click away from those faster... on the internet... where raunchy images are frowned upon??  There’s an article about how to escape if you’re ever tied up with duct tape (i’m going to live forever).  There’s an article about the kinds of reptiles you want to hunt when you’re trying to survive that tells readers not to hunt crocodiles, and stick to snakes and lizards-- there goes my weekend.  

But I just love that at the very core of this, that they say the quiet part out loud, that the reason you need all this survivalist knowledge and tactical gear is... because quote “self-proclaimed social justice” people out there don’t want to hear your A+ super-good ideas about society.  A young person called me a Mayonnaise-Turd for refusing to be vaccinated and coughing on all the produce at Krogers.  What’s the best tactical knife I can buy?  Waaaah.  Just the constant fear that drips off of these morons, because they live in a world where they get called stupid finally with the regularity they’ve long deserved. Just the most scared fucking cowards-- they need night vision goggles to fucking go to Dave & Busters, because these stay-puft marshmallow men think that AntiFa is going to bumrush the Dave & Busters for their skeeball tickets.  

I love anytime you scratch away at Real Masculinity and find the throbbing, wet Hyperemotional Pussy underneath that’s there like at least 7 out of 10 times.  That was basically the premise of the entire early 00′s in comedy, and I had a really good time, but then woke comedy-scolds made them stop and then ended comedy and replaced comedy with Bo Burnham filming himself crying while waiting for Door Dash in his mansion.  I don’t understand the world anymore!  I wish I’d owned a PFC9 Compact pistol with aggressive slide serrations when children killed bromance comedies!!!!  Jason Segal and Paul Rudd haven’t made a movie together in years-- time to go off the grid! 

#Civilization is Doomed.