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thosearentcrimes · 1 year

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a lot better than Dracula. The flow of the text is better, it's more fun to read, the themes are more subtle and interesting. Perhaps a better work to compare to would be The Vampyre, a work which arose from the same impromptu writing circle as Frankenstein, and which apparently introduced the vampire into anglophone literature in a form recognizably similar to that which appears many decades later in Dracula. However, I have read Dracula, and so have many others, and I have not read The Vampyre.

By way of example of the superiority of Frankenstein, consider the use of the epistolary device. Dracula retains it throughout the narrative, in which it interferes constantly, to no appreciable benefit. The rapid shift from narrator to narrator is not accompanied by significant insight into their character and internal world, as the characters are in fact precisely who everyone else takes them to be. By contrast, Frankenstein also begins with an epistolary introduction, but then transitions reasonably cleanly into narrative. The epistolary device is not used to much greater effect, but less of a bad thing is still an improvement.

The writing of these letters is remarkably bad. I understand that tastes change, but the letters (including those cited in the non-epistolary section) consist largely of people telling each other things they clearly already know, for the benefit of the reader. Surely there is no point in writing letters into the story if they're not going to make sense within the narrative? Additionally, both letters and dialogue are all rendered in the same voice.

On this note, while Shelley has gone to great lengths to justify the eloquence of the monster, and this eloquence does in fact serve a worthwhile thematic purpose, the effect of it is reduced somewhat by every other character being bizarrely eloquent as well. Additionally the mechanism by which the monster is rendered eloquent is quite frankly a long series of plot holes. As appropriate as it is for the monster to reference Paradise Lost, it is quite inexplicable for a French-speaking monster in 18th century Germany to have found a copy of it (and some other books) in the first place, let alone been able to read it, for starters.

Some of the character introductions, especially but not exclusively those done by way of letters, are a bit too obviously utilitarian. I rather prefer it when the author either sets up all the characters and plot points in such a way that the reader cannot tell that they serve a specific narrative purpose later, or that they simply introduce them when they come up. A character brought up with no immediate motivation a chapter or two before they become narratively relevant is like a recognizable big-name actor in a police procedural, it gives the game away. I wonder what happens in a couple chapters with this tragic innocent in this gothic horror novel!

Despite all my criticism, I quite liked Frankenstein and I think it is not only worth reading but additionally a good book. The story has relevant themes, ably explored, without letting them get too far in the way of a gripping narrative. The philosophical points it sets out are still valid and relevant today, and not in a facile way. Merely substitute "life" for "intelligence", which in any case is really a substitution of synonyms as far as the general form of the argument goes, and make other minor adjustments as necessary, and you get a more intelligent analysis of AI than almost any I have read in the press or in blogs, though that speaks more to the miserable state of that discourse than anything else.

Easily the most affecting part of the book is the narration by the monster himself, and really the book improves as it approaches this point, and deteriorates as it departs. Some decontextualized quotes that particularly stuck with me: "I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him", "My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor", and best of all "I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me; for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess."

#book report #Frankenstein #Mary Shelley #I should come up with a tag for books I liked

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fnlrndcllctv · 3 years

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THE YEAR IN FIGHTING GAMES: 1994

As the original release of Street Fighter II turns 30 this year, we are taking a look at the landscape of fighting games between 1991 and 2021 on a year by year basis!

This week, Shaun Eddleston takes a look at 1994…

1994 was an eventful year for video games.

Nintendo was starting to wind down on its production of NES games, while celebrating the success of games such as Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo. SEGA’s Sonic The Hedgehog series was going strong with Sonic The Hedgehog 3, and games such as DOOM II and Warcraft were making their way onto computers all across the world.

It was also a year where Germany placed Mortal Kombat II on its index of media works deemed harmful to young people by Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons effectively banning the game from sale in the country (and remained that way all the way up to 2005!).

Let’s take a look at 1994 in fighting games...

One of the more obscure Neo Geo titles, Aggressors Of Dark Kombat (known as Tsuukai GANGAN Koushinkyoku in Japan) was an interesting title that felt like a bit of an experiment in the genre. The game’s movement feels more like it would fit into your standard beat ‘em up game such as Final Fight and Streets Of Rage, and even drops weapons into the stage for fighters to use.

The game also includes a fun comeback mechanic, the “GAN GAN attack”, which kicks in once a player’s health bar drops below a certain point, and their power bar is full. Once one of these mega attacks connects with an opponent, the player automatically wins the round.

Art of Fighting 2 continues the story that kicked off in the previous year’s entry, as we immediately learn that the identity of Yuri’s kidnapper, the tengu masked Mr Karate, is none other than Takuma Sakazaki, Yuri and Ryo’s father. This is all part of a much bigger criminal plot that ends up being spearheaded by a certain young crime lord from another popular SNK fighting title…

As for the game itself, almost every aspect of the Art Of Fighting experience was rebuilt and polished. The character sprites and stage art looked better, and a new “Rage” gauge mechanic was introduced into the mix. All of the game’s characters are immediately playable in arcade mode, and each have their own specific dialogue when interacting with other fighters.

The first 3D weapons-based fighting game was also one of the earlier releases on the Sony PlayStation, and was poised to be the game that would “outshine” the impressiveness of Virtua Fighter’s groundbreaking graphics.

While it didn’t quite beat out SEGA’s franchise, Battle Arena Toshinden still had a couple of interesting aspects to it that are still worth mentioning today.

First of all, it is arguably the first “true” 3D fighting game, as it included the ability to side-step or dodge roll during a fight. This meant that the act of avoiding projectiles now had more options outside of blocking the hit or jumping over it, giving the game a little more depth (both mechanically and visually).

Thanks to the newly opened up 3D movement, ring outs are also possible in the game, where players can lose a round by simply falling off the side of the stage. This is an element that many gamers see as a bit of a cop out during a fight, but I personally see it as a fun way to humiliate opponents and even bring overly confident fighters back down to earth.

Capcom’s massive success with Street Fighter II was one of the most important moments in video game history, and the game was still going incredibly strong since its release 3 years prior (including this year, which we’ll touch on later in the article). There was a big question that lingered though; what non-Street Fighter fighting game would Capcom bring to the table next?

That game was Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors.

Darkstalkers wasn’t a million miles away from Street Fighter II in terms of gameplay. It utilised the same six-button L/M/H attack layout, and even used a Super Gauge that would be shared with the series.

The main strength of Darkstalkers that set it apart from its more famous older cousin, and that was its characters and theme. Instead of a tournament of worldwide fighters that many 2D fighting games utilised, Darkstalkers took inspiration from classic horror movies from the Universal era and offered a cast of 10 fighters that range from werewolves, sasquatches and vampires to Egyptian mummies, zombies and a Frankenstein’s monster for good measure.

A spooky cult favourite!

1993’s Fighters History was a controversial entry in the fighting game genre. Not necessarily because of any violent content or especially iffy storyline, but for just how similar the game was to Street Fighter II. It was so similar, in fact, that Capcom attempted to sue Data East for just how much of a shameless ripoff the game was.

Capcom wasn’t successful with the lawsuit, and Data East went forward with a sequel, Fighters History Dynamite.

The game, perhaps more commonly known in some places as “Karnov’s Revenge”, added more characters (including the game’s boss fighters, Karnov and Clown) to the playable roster and spruced up the game's stage backgrounds.

Other than the slightly expanded range of fighters, and a hilarious hidden character to discover, not a lot else has changed from the first title, and still feels like it can’t shake off the original comparison that it got into trouble for.

Many 2D games up to this point were trying to mimic Street Fighter and Fatal Fury’s cartoonish graphics, there wasn’t really anything outside of Mortal Kombat’s digitised graphics that truly felt “next-gen” going into the middle of the decade.

Enter Killer Instinct.

While Rare as a developer was having a fantastic year already, with the success of Battletoads and Donkey Kong Country leaving long lasting impressions on the industry, their fighting game was a revelation in arcades, bringing a mix of 2D gameplay on 3D stages, strong bloody violence and a ridiculous new combo system to the table.

The characters were memorable, the animated FMV sequences were jawdropping to watch, and witnessing the game announce blare out “ULTRA COMBO!” whenever someone nailed a particularly savage sequence of hits just felt right.

Why not check out our thoughts on the game’s “killer” soundtrack?

Inspired by the popularity of Ryo Sakazaki (Art Of Fighting’s main protagonist) and his appearance as a guest character in Fatal Fury Special in 1993, SNK decided to go all out and start a crossover fighting series that brought together characters from their library of past games.

The game, named after the fighting tournament in Art Of Fighting and Fatal Fury, allows players to choose from a selection of 3-member teams that have been designated to different countries of the world, and matches revolve around an elimination system. In addition to a selection of original new characters, KOF ‘94 mixed together the Ikari Warriors, Psycho Soldier, Art Of Fighting and Fatal Fury franchises to fill out one of the largest fighting game rosters around at this point.

The game’s music is the subject of our very first entry in the Soundtrack Sunday series, so check it out!

Of the slew of games that took direct inspiration from Mortal Kombat, very few actually left a lasting impression.

One of the exceptions to this was Primal Rage, which saw stop motion dinosaurs and prehistoric apes duke it out for supremacy in the new “Urth”.

The game, which also took inspiration from Taito’s Dino Rex from 1992, caused its own controversy with one of its fatalities. In 1996, a woman from Arizona said that her 11 year old son had bought the game, and used a strategy guide to execute the “Golden Shower” fatality (in which, as the title suggests, the character Chaos urinates all over the corpse of an opponent). She flipped out and started a grass-roots campaign against Primal Rage, which resulted in some US stores withdrawing copies of the game, including the already-censored SNES version, which didn’t even contain the offending move.

The game was also successful with its merchandise, and saw a line of toys and a board game to accompany it.

The first Samurai Shodown game was, and still is, one of the finest fighting games of the early 90’s, so SNK had a huge task on their hands when it came to creating a sequel.

With Samurai Shodown 2, they absolutely knocked it out of the park in pretty much every aspect. All of the sprites of the characters who reappeared from the first game had been completely remade, a bunch of new characters had been added in, everyone got amazing new moves and a number of new game mechanics were also introduced to make the game feel much more balanced and fun to play.

One of these new mechanics was the “Weapon break” system, which meant that if a player got hit with a particularly powerful attack, there was now a chance that it would knock their weapon clean out of their hands, leaving them unarmed until it was recovered. The sheer panic of scrambling to pick up your sword while the opponent is slashing away at you is a thrill that still feels as effective today as it did back then.

Street Fighter II’s reign as king of the arcade fighting games was starting to wind down by 1994, so the game saw a final upgrade in the form of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which added more game speeds, new animations and moves for all of the characters, a new “SUPER” gauge system and the introduction of a hidden character that would quickly become one of the franchise’s most recognisable fighters; Akuma!

While many more casual players may not have felt the real impact of these changes (this was the third update in as many years since the original release), it remains as the “definitive” version of Street Fighter II, and is still used in tournaments to this day.

Developed by Namco (and ported to PlayStation in 1995), Tekken took the 3D fighting style that was pioneered by 1993’s Virtua Fighter, and added its own spin on things in regards to the control system.

Instead of using the traditional fighting game inputs that corresponded to the strength of the attacks, Tekken utilised a system that dedicates a button to each individual limb of the fighter. In doing this, the game became more of a learning process for players that wanted to do special moves and combos. This departure was so innovative, that experienced players could now figure out special moves by studying the fighters limb movements during their animations.

Known briefly as “RAVE WAR” during its beta test stage, Tekken quickly found itself as one of the most popular PlayStation games in history, and became the first game to sell over a million copies for the console.

Take a look at our thoughts about the game’s soundtrack!

Virtua Fighter was an incredibly important moment in gaming, so following up with a sequel that lived up to its predecessor was absolutely vital for SEGA.

Luckily, with Virtua Fighter 2, they managed to not only surpass the first game in the way it looked, but how it played too. Improved movesets ramped up how authentic each individual martial arts/fighting style felt, and with things running at 60FPS in the arcade version, the game felt like it was miles ahead of its competition.

The third entry in the World Heroes series was yet another improvement on the games that preceded it, but considering the sheer amount of solid competition it was facing in 1994, it still fell to the wayside.

The game added two new fighters and added a brand new boss to face off against, but things were starting to feel somewhat dated with the series now, and it suffered as a result.

While there were many action-adventure and side-scrolling beat-’em-ups based on characters from the Marvel universe, it wasn’t until the early 90’s until we got a fully fledged fighting game. It only made sense that Capcom, one of the heaviest hitters in the genre at the time stepped forward to fix this.

Released in arcades in late 1994, X-Men: Children of the Atom established what would become a beloved and fruitful relationship between Capcom and Marvel, and laid the foundations for the successful “Vs.” series that fighting game fans have played for nearly 25 years now.

The game is loosely based on 1993’s “Fatal Attractions” storyline, in which Magneto and his Acolytes return to confront the X-Men, tempting Professor Xavier to cross a moral line to stop them. It’s a pretty insane storyline with some fairly gnarly imagery (one such example sees Wolverine getting the adamantium ripped out of his skeleton!), and the good vs. evil dynamic lends itself perfectly to the setting of an arcade fighting game.

1994’s entries in the genre saw developers starting to take full advantage of the new 3D graphics that SEGA introduced with Virtua Fighter in the wake of a new console generation, while 2D fighting games kept on coming hard and fast to try and best Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat’s popularity.

Join us next week as we take a look at the games of 1995!

Did we miss anything from 1994 that’s worth mentioning?

Let us know in the comments below!

#Aggressors Of Dark Kombat #Art Of Fighting 2 #Battle Arena Toshinden #Darkstalkers #Fighter's History Dynamite #Killer Instinct #The King Of Fighters '94 #Primal Rage #Samurai Shodown 2 #Super Street Fighter II Turbo #Tekken #Virtua Fighter 2 #World Heroes 2 Jet #X-Men: Children Of The Atom #Capcom #Namco #SNK #1994

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bran-writes · 5 years

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Writeblr Changes aka The Blog Formerly Known as The Ollinshist

Sorry in advance for the long post- I have some things I really need to get off my chest!

So I’ve made some pretty big decisions in regards to both my writing and my writeblr. If you remember me as The Ollinshist, then you might remember my 2 WIPs. I’m basically deciding to put those aside, for now at least.

Farmboy Blues was a sci-fi detective neo-noir detective story. I didn’t have anything up for that other than a few asks regarding my MC for those short stories, Sunny Wyler.

From the Void was my YA cosmic/supernatural horror. I had some character profiles, chapter snippets, and an intro for it. It was cobbled up from many different ideas over the years and had gone through a drastic change right before I made this writeblr. It was basically a Frankenstein story, not that you’d know from looking at it lol. I love those characters to death. Kwin, Jonah, Gabi, Zig-Zag, Holly, Harlo, Bridger, Cal. They’re my babies. They weren't the problem. Basically, I had characters I loved, but I didn’t have a story for them. I had an idea, but nothing that excited me enough to actually work on it. I admit that it as probably because that massive genre change from sci-fi to supernatural horror. I had a different beast on my hand with no idea how to even visualize it properly.

After a lot of thinking, a lot of cigarettes and cups of coffee, I finally decided to set both those projects to the side. I pretty much had to.

Cause all that time, there was another WIP I’ve had on my mind and somewhat on paper for years, and that’s Frontiersman.

This concept really started way back when I was in the 4th grade. I remember sitting in my room late on a Friday night, alone(being pretty much an only child at that point). I was playing with my Dragon Ball action figures and watching the new DBZ episode on Toonami(simpler times). After that episode went off, a new show premiered. That show was Outlaw Star. That episode blew my mind and it was the moment I fell in love with sci-fi. It wasn’t Star Wars or Star Trek or Halo. It was this anime airing for the first time and it was awesome. The characters, the amazing art and environments and the lore just pulled me in and held me there.

I was a 9 year-old boy, following along these adventures in space with these characters I fell in love with and laughed with. The show was about Gene Starwind, an outlaw, and his partner, Jim. They traveled back and forth across the galaxy getting into all types of shit just trying to make a buck and gathered a small crew around them that I really friggin loved. It gave me something to look forward to every week when I’d stay up late on a Friday night and grab some popcorn in my big bean bag chair. I’ll admit, I was a lonely kid. Most of my happy childhood memories come from time spent with one or two friends I had because it meant I wasn't alone and I had somebody to talk to. But when I had Outlaw Star to watch, I forgot all about that and got sucked in for the 30 minutes it was on.

The show came to an end after 26 episodes, and the last shot of that finale haunts me to this day lol.

I’m not gonna lie, while that show was on and I got to follow Gene, Jim, Suzuka, Aisha and Melfina on those adventures, I felt like a part of me was there with them. Not to be too melodramatic but watching that final shot sort of felt like the Outlaw Star was lifting off without me this time. I waited for years to hear anything about a second season, but of course it never came.

I said all that to say, what I did take from Outlaw Star was inspiration. From the 4th grade on I carried around these ideas in my head. My own characters going on their own adventures. It was only a matter of time before I started to write them down. That’s where the Frontiersman concept was really born. It’s been with me this whole time from 9 years old to 28 years old. It was with me in middle school when I lost my best friend and I had to find something to take my mind off the pain and sudden return to loneliness. It was with my when I spent three years away from home in a foreign country. And of course, it’s been here with me now.

I knew I wanted to write these stories in space. I knew I wanted to show people the same universe I’d been escaping to for as long as I could remember. So, while I was living in Germany, I started to fill notebooks with what I’d come up with already as my “universe bible”. I had galactic timelines, alien cultures, planets, systems, governments, religions all created for this universe and I went wild with my imagination in making this feel like a living breathing universe. My goal was to be able to pick a spot on this star map I’d made and come up with a good story to tell there. And one day, if others wanted to create new stories and characters in that universe, I’d have that encyclopedia to help them tell the stories they wanted to tell.

But of course, I never actually got around to writing those stories. My main excuse was “Oh, it’s not ready yet, I haven’t done enough world-building.”(How many times have people tried to tell us to avoid that trap smh) which was quickly followed by, “Well, I’m working on this book while I’m world-building Frontiersman in the background”. The problem was, none of those other WIPs ever worked out and I never felt fulfilled or satisfied because I wasn't actually writing what my heart was really calling for. But now that I am, I feel like I’m finally home.

So if you’re still reading this, thank you. I mean it, I really appreciate it! As far as those other WIPs, I know there’s at least one or two of my mutuals who really liked those, but I have to go with what I need, what I’ve been putting off for far too long. And I’m really sorry! But hey, Farmboy Blues is just on hiatus and who knows, in the midst of writing in the Frontiersman universe, those From the Void characters may actually find a home they deserve!

Until then, I’m going to kick Frontiersman into full gear and put it first on my priorities. I want to write a universe that people enjoy, that they feel like they can dive into and live in. I want you guys to get excited for new entires, to think about who you'd want to be in the Frontiersman universe. Where would go? What would you do? Frontiersman, at it’s core, about giving people a place to call home, inclusive and hopeful and just filled with mysteries and adventures that can take your mind off everything even for a little while. But it’s also about all those times I looked up at the night sky and wondered what was out there, all the times I wished there were other cities and space stations I could visit to just get away, for all the times I wished I could just hop in a ship and cross that blank space out there to find some adventure myself.

It’s about time I did that.

Special thanks to some writeblrs out there who inspire me- if not from your tips and support, then by your absolute love and excitement for your awesome WIPs: @the-violet-writer @ps-nippets @writerinafury @sad-witchy-writeblr @neirawrites you’re all pretty amazing. Thanks and keep it up!

#writeblr #writing #sci-fi #writers of tumblr

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bluesrrgents · 7 years

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Hi!! I was just wondering - do you have any good andreil fic recommendations?? I ADORE lessons in cartography and wanted something like that. I'm sorry to bother you if you don't read FICS!!

i haven’t yet read lessons in cartography i’m sorry :( i’ve been told there aren’t any other fics quite like it but i’m still willing to make a list of andreil fics to recommend!! thanks to all my friends who gave me more recs

* a star just means i haven’t read it but it’s been recommended to me

sky blue sky by jaylocked

Neil collects the cup a moment later, almost absently, as he thinks back to the nightmare that had started his day. He takes a sip, planning to turn away, and is almost assaulted by the sheer quantity of sugar in his drink. Who knew coffee could taste that sweet? It’s disgusting.

Neil looks back to Andrew, who is once more leveling a blank gaze at him, hazel eyes deeply unimpressed. Neil quirks an eyebrow, confused. It’s definitely not worth it to say anything. After all, it’s been engrained in him not to draw attention to himself, to order whatever is blandest and least interesting, to get in and out best he can.

He can feel the weight of Andrew’s gaze on his back as he leaves the cafe, but he tries to ignore it.

this one is 2 parts, about 3k each but it’s cute

*light fires at night (to push back the void by inthesea

The first time Andrew realizes he wants to hear the words, Neil isn’t even doing anything. He’s just sitting there, staring at the horizon with that stupidly dramatic faraway expression of his, and letting the cigarette burn down between his fingers all the way to the filter — an outrageous waste of good nicotine, if you asked Andrew.

(Or: 20+ times Andrew and Neil say I love you, and one time they say it out loud.) (61k)

this one seems to be the most similar to lessons that can be found so i put it at the top :) the rest are ordered based on word count

*your crown of thorns holds roses by quensty

Three days after he signs his death sentence to Palmetto State, five after Andrew Minyard sends him flying breathless to the ground, Neil’s gaze snaps to the locker room mirror and stares, frozen, at the word threat scrawled along his spinal cord in terrifying, heavy bold.

All in all, he isn’t thrilled about the situation this puts him in, but, based off the negative connotation, it isn’t one-sided either. On the bright side, at least this means his soulmate doesn’t harbor any grandeur delusions about him. (4.4k)

*missed call by badacts

There was one thing Nathan had always stood by, his personal code – if you were going to go after someone, you went after them. Not their dog, not their parents, and definitely not their partner. He might not have managed to teach that to his henchmen, but he clearly succeeded with his son.

That, and ‘a head for an eye’. (5.7k)

*now i’m covered in the colors by alaynes

Nathaniel Wesninski is six years old when his first soulmate mark comes in. (9.7k)

*be neither fish nor fowl by Saul

They found it in the locked room of a Royal Navy’s vessel, The Fox waiting to take her crew and their new spoils across the deep blue.

It was beautiful. It was rarer than any diamond.

“A mermaid,” Dan laughed, taking a step back and sweeping her hat off her head to hold to her chest. “They were transporting a mermaid.”

It was going to make them rich.

( wherein the Foxes are pirates, Neil has gills, and no one quite trusts the magic.) (26k)

this fic has three parts!!

*latchkey child by Saul

The segment’s title declared EXY’S DARLINGS - WHERE WILL THEY GO FROM HERE? in a yellow banner along the television screen’s bottom. It was a spotlight feature on where Kevin Day and Riko Moriyama were planning to go after their high school graduation. Of course they were expected to join the best, but a few reporters speculated on favoritism from the Raven’s coach if they signed on at Edgar Allan, and if that’d impact the Exy prodigies’ relationships with their potential teammates.

Usually his mother would box his ears for looking at anything Exy-related, but he changed the channel long before her shower finished, the black ink on a younger Day’s cheekbone haunting him worse than the date in the corner.

( Neil wakes up seven years younger, and, slowly, takes matters into his own hands. ) (31k)

*and in a flash, it’s gone. by Idnis

‘I wouldn’t associate with Andrew anymore, nor with any of the others. You can’t trust foxes after all.’The man’s fist connected precisely where his head wound was, and then Neil Josten was gone.

Neil loses his memory and has to somehow make sense of the pieces of his past and present. And Andrew. (36k)

*die young by moonix

Ever since the violent death of his mother Neil has withdrawn completely from the outside world. He lives with his Uncle Stuart and barely ever leaves the house. In order to help him overcome his anxiety, Stuart hires his favourite waiter, Nicky, to befriend him. With Nicky come the rest of the Foxes, and Neil finds himself being reluctantly adopted into a much bigger family, reconnecting with an old friend, and developing a crush… (41k)

*dangerous magics by SashaSea

“What if evil doesn’t really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?” -Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

(urban fantasy/Celtic legend AU) (52k)

on the impossibility of reality by defractum (nyargles)

“Inception,” says Ichirou Moriyama.

‘You’re crazy,’ Neil does not say, but it’s a close thing. “It can’t be done,” he says instead, after a too long pause.

An Inception AU. Kevin is the best extractor in the game, Neil spends too much time pretending to be other people, and Andrew? Well, Andrew knows all about inception. (56k)

*grey zone by maydaykevin

Neil’s frown deepened as he stared at the card he was holding.

'Camp Half-Blood, Half-Blood Hill, Farm Road 3.141Long Island, New York 11954’

“You’re telling me this is my only chance at survival?”

“The only one you’ve got left kid.”

A Percy Jackson/Foxhole Court AU (57k)

*to know a man by moonix

In which the Foxes all work at a coffee shop run by Wymack, Neil is their newest recruit with a dark past, Andrew is obvious, Neil is oblivious, and everyone ships it apart from Aaron, who just wants to study in peace. With guest appearance by a stuffed jellyfish called Josephine. (58k)

*claw marks by flybbfly

The Foxes are an underground resistance group in a dystopian near-future. Neil is the shady new recruit.

Part 1984, part “The Lottery,” part “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” part V for Vendetta. (70k)

fear in a handful of dust by flybbfly

“I need to talk to Minyard,” Neil says, sipping at a soda. “How do I make that happen?”

Kevin chokes on his whiskey. “You don’t.”

In which Neil doesn’t have Kevin Day to convince him to play, so he becomes a sports journalist; Andrew is a keeper in more ways than one; and Quidditch is the sport du jour. Featuring a frankensteined team, eternal roommate Matt, and hawkish sports section editor Dan. Oh, and Andrew has a shady past (present? future?) that Neil can’t quite figure out. But that’s nothing new for Neil, who is constantly hiding everything about himself anyway—this time with magical abilities greasing the way. (104k)

*armies by nekojita

Upon Mary Hatford’s death, Nathaniel Wesninski makes the call to his uncle Stuart rather than continuing on the run and ending up in Milport, Nevada.Upon graduating university, Andrew Minyard turns down all offers of a professional Exy career and muddles through a 'normal’ life, until the boredom and inanity of it all wears him down and he accepts an offer of a break to spend some time with his cousin Nicky in Stuttgart, Germany.There he meets Abram Hatford, a handsome and broken young man who has more in common with Andrew than he suspects, and nothing’s normal anymore. (341k)

WIPS

sickeningly sweet (like honey) by broship_addict

Andrew Doe is twelve years old when he walks into Fox’s Sweets Shop. Somehow, he leaves with three friends and all of them are Exy-obsessed losers.

Also known as the kid AU in which the Foxes are happy children and Andrew has a crush. (22k)

*the bodyguard by bourbon

“Hello, you’ve reached the homosexual agenda, how may I help you?”

“Nicky.”, Andrew growled.

“Oh, my favorite cousin! I would ask you to join our cause but it seems you already did.”

Or where Neil hires Andrew as a bodyguard but ends up (fake) dating him instead. (43k)

*dog in the manger by Saul

It’s 1922, and rumor had it Wesninski’s son wasn’t so dead after all. A sudden upheaval crumbled the Butcher’s empire almost over-night; in his place, a scarred and terrifying man threatened to set Baltimore alight.

Four years later, Aaron Minyard receives a call from a brother he hasn’t spoken to in a decade, sweeping him into a whirlwind of corruption, homicide, and exhausted, tremulous trust. (52k)

*a hole in the world by lscar123

An accomplished FBI agent. A young runaway who is more than he appears to be. A serial killer that’s haunted both of them for years.

The City of Angels just got a lot more interesting. (132k)

doe & josten: deductionists by SpangleBangle

Andrew Doe, rude but brilliant consulting detective, thought he had no need of a partner as he worked slowly away at dismantling the largest crime family in the country, helping out with other cases on the side to relieve the tedium. That was, until a scruffy runaway with a stupid amount of secrets stumbled into his life. Or, more accurately, broke into his kitchen. (152k)

ok i’ll stop myself, i hope you find some you love!!

#andreil #fic #fic rec #aftg fic #aftg fic rec #andrew minyard #neil josten #all for the game #the foxhole court #masterpost #zoe.txt #ask #tfc #tfc fic #tfc fic rec

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wizardhq · 7 years

Photo

EVENT #35 { WIZTOBERFEST & HALLOWEEN } – MANDATORY

“LISTEN! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves. We have had our summer evenings, now for OCTOBER eves!”

Wiztoberfest is about to be back again in Hogsmeade! There’s butter beer, Northern European cuisine, and merry making all around for the entire month. There’s always something fun going on, like Butterbeer Drinking Competitions, Wizardoake Night, Shopping Experiences, Games, and so much more! On top of that, word has gotten out that Hogwarts will be hosting yet another Halloween Fair much like the one that occurred last year! The day and night of all Hallows Eve is looking to be the most fun of all. With it also being an open event for all who wishes to attend in the Wizarding Community, anyone can show up from all walks of life, though never fear– there will be chaperones making sure that the students safety remains a top priority. So, bring on the costumes and butterbeer, and let the games begin!

WIZTOBERFEST ACTIVITIES:

During Wiztoberfest, fourth through seventh year students will be allowed to attend the festivities after classes are over for the day during the week ( extracurriculars like clubs, quidditch, etc permitting! ) though first and second years will only be allowed to attend on the weekend when designated chaperones are walking the Wizarding Village. All of these activities take place everyday, but for writing purposes so everyone can continue to write threads without any rush, there’s going to be a designated event each week that you can write your character participating in aside from the general things listed below. Please keep in mind student curfews: 9PM for first through third years, 11PM for fourth through sixth years, and midnight for seventh years.

OCTOBER 1ST-7TH: Witching Hour. (description: butterbeer drinking competition. you must take a shot of the liquid every minute of the hour, or else you’re disqualified. those who manage to do it win prizes. while humans can’t get drunk from just the butterbeer itself, people are known to spike their shot with something else to make things interesting. )

OCTOBER 8TH-14TH: Wizardoake Night. (description: instruments will be on a stage, waiting to be charmed by the participant that will play whatever song they’re singing, with a charm consistent to cantis. the lyric charm will also be in use so they don’t forget the words.)

OCTOBER 15TH-21ST: Farmers Market. (description: vendors selling all kinds of goods line the streets of hogsmeade. you can find just about anything from the witches, wizards, and wix’s. it goes without saying you should be careful, unless you want to be swindled. )

OCTOBER 22TH-29TH: Haunted House Experience. (description: one of the cottages in the wizarding villages has been charmed with scares that would make even the toughest wizard pee his robes. those who get through it without shedding a tear receive special prizes. )

EXPECTATIONS: Students are expected to be back in their dorms by their curfews. Any later will result in detentions being issued for the parties involved. The staff fully expects for their students to be on their best behavior, and if they aren’t, detentions will be issued appropiately for that as well. Students are expected to attend their extracurriculars and not skip them in favor of Wiztoberfest. Due to Wiztoberfest itself not being a Hogwarts sanctioned event, a lot of typical rules are irrelevant, such as outfits of choice, though it’s frowned upon if students don’t represent Hogwarts appropiately. Prefects and Head Boy and Girl also do not have to consider themselves on duty while attending– though it is also frowned upon if they see another student in trouble and don’t assist.

Food: Due to the nature of the event, there will be a lot of Northern European treats, predominantly from germany, being served at different locations in Hogsmeade. Along with them, the usual wizarding treats will be available for consumption.

Costumes: Everyone at Wiztoberfest always dresses in costumes that represents different countries and places overall in Northern Europe. Attendants are encouraged to dress up and enter the Competitions for prizes.

Music: There will be different wrock bands and wizarding artists making appearances and performing.

Games: There’ll be a lot of different games occurring, such as stein hoisting, keg stacking, carry the wench, tug-o-war, grain sack toss, corn hole, frankenstein bowling, candy corn witch pitch, bingo, poppin pumpkins, skeleton pumpkins, and more!

**Please note that you don’t have to strictly write what is above. You’re allowed to have your character mention any Northern European food you can find, or if you want to make up a wizard game to write that’s fine as well, etc.

HALLOWEEN ACTIVITIES:

On October 31st, the usual Hallowe'en Feast will be occurring. It is festooned with candy-filled pumpkins, apples, black cauldrons of big lollipops, carrot cake, bats, orange streamers, and all sorts of Hallowe'en-related decorations. There is always some entertainment at the end, with the Hogwarts Ghosts popping out of the walls and doing formation gliding. It’ll start at 5PM, and end at 7:30PM. Afterwards, the student populace will head to Hogsmeade for the fair. The fair itself will end at 1AM for the students, though it will continue well into the morning hours for the adults present. There will be no classes the following day, but they will resume Wednesday.

EXPECTATIONS/NOTICES: Everything except for the unique shopping experience for students is free. All students are expected to be back on Hogwarts grounds and in their dormitory by 2AM. Prefects and the Head Boy and Girl are expected to make sure this process runs smoothly. All students are expected to not take advantage of the fact they’re allowed to come costumed as what they want, and the staff expects no one to show up in anything inappropriate or offensive. Any student who becomes publicly intoxicated ( drunk and disorderly ) will be escorted back to Hogwarts and receive detention– it will be tripled if they aren’t of age to be drinking anything that should cause the effect.

Crazy Amusement Rides: EX. roller coasters without tracks, trained dragon and hippogriff rides, etc. (let your imagination run free!)

Typical wizard treats: EX. (Animal crackers that make the eater make an animal noise, X, (foods can be found here if you need ideas, X sweets), X (only sixteen and older can purchase alcohol, third years and up can purchase butter beer due to it’s almost non existent alcohol content.)

Shopping: Unique shopping experiences from wizard world vendors.

Catch the snitch: in temporary glass dome, faster the time caught bigger the prizes.)

Whack-a-Dementor: use a hammer to whack the dementor doll that pops up for prizes.

Risk A Pint: butterbeer with enchanted effects. each one gives the drinker a hilarious, non-harmful reaction that can be just about anything.

High Striker: just like the muggle game, except you choose a spell to cast that will cause the scale to fly up as high as possible for a prize.

Great Balls of Fire: There are teams of four, and each person gets two balls. You have to throw the balls into a fake dragons mouth, and if you get enough balls in, it breathes fire and the team gets a prize. Caution: you can get burned.

Dunk stand: with Hogwarts Faculty. Sans Snape.

Pie throwing: at Hogwarts Faculty. Sans Snape.

Fortune Telling Booth: self-explanatory.

Aguamenti Race: you shoot water into a hole, just like with the muggle water gun race games, except you use the water spell. Whoever gets the most water in first wins a prize.

Sculpt the Gargoyle: the gargoyles faces changes into different animals and you have to match the right nose with it, and if you get five in a row correctly, you win a prize.

Ride the Hippogriff: just like riding a bull stands.

Oppugno Pursuit: use oppugno darts to pop a certain amount of floating balloons above them per player. Some of them have great prizes inside, others not so great (like earwax, general sludge, etc.)

Haunted House Experience: self-explanatory.

Haunted Maze Experience: self-explanatory.

Dance Floor featuring a DJ: self explanatory. DJing services will be from WWN, Wizarding Wireless Network, and will be blasting both Muggle and Wizarding tunes. The host will be Glenda Chittock of the Witching Hour.

***Please note that since it’s Halloween, everything will have a little bit of a twist, but that’s up to you. Also, feel free to make up anything you think would be there if it isn’t already here.

IMPORTANT OOC DETAILS:

Wiztoberfest begins OCTOBER 1ST and ends OCTOBER 30TH at 12AM EST. ( it also starts October 1st / ends October 30th ic. ) The Halloween event will begin on OCTOBER 30TH and end NOVEMBER 3RD at 12 AM EST, leaving ample time for everyone to get as much writing in for both as possible. For Wiztoberfest, please tag all posts (including any private thread starters, pictures, anything related at all) under wizard:wiztoberfest88, and tag everything regarding Halloween and the Fair as wizard:allhallowseve88.

Alumni characters are allowed to volunteer to be chaperones for the younger years on weekends, as well as for Halloween, but they can also just attend as a partygoer since it’s open to the Wizarding World.

Wiztoberfest is moderately mandatory for student and alumni characters, meaning you should be participating in it at some point during the month. However, you’re allowed to write it off and on as you please. You should still be writing the month of October outside of it! The Halloween event is mandatory fully, meaning if you’re on the dash, your character(s) have to be participating in some form or another. The main will message you if you’re online and not participating in the event at all.

POSSIBLE HOUSE POINT OPPORTUNITY: Each time your student character hits 25 points on a starter, they will have earned 50 points for their house. Please inform the main throughout the month each time this happens regarding Wiztoberfest and eventually Halloween, so the house cup page can be updated.

Yes, I loosely based this around Oktoberfest ooc, in case anyone was wondering! Just like Oktoberfest, Wiztoberfest is an event in Hogsmeade that dates back centuries and is hosted by the town.

Please like this post after reading it.

If you have any questions, please feel free to message the main!

#wizardevent #****

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silenthillmutual · 5 years

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12, 17, 22, 41, 44, 86, 119, 149, 150

12. What are your 5 favorite songs right now?

Talk About You - MIKAKlefi/Samed - Hatari & Bashar MuradCounting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drum - A Perfect CircleRadio-Friendly Pop Song - Matt FishelBustin - Neil Cicierega

17. Do you think there is life on other planets?

Yeah. Probably not on any planets near us, but I believe it exists.

22. Where would you like to travel?

Germany, Canada, I’d like to go back to Scotland, Japan, Ireland.

41. Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance?

Hm… I believe that everyone deserves a chance to grow, to change, to become better as a person.

But they don’t deserve that chance with you. By all means, I think even the worst people deserve the chance to fix their mistakes, but they don’t deserve that with the people they’ve hurt. Someone who’s cheated on you might be able to change but they are not entitled to that second chance with you. Maybe people who are abusive can unlearn toxic behaviors. But they don’t deserve a second chance with the people they’ve abused and have no right to demand it.

44. Trip to outer space or bottom of the ocean?

Bottom of the ocean. I’m not sure what the actual risk assessment is with them both but for some reason the ocean feels slightly less terrifying? Less time to get there, at least.

86. Favourite character from Finding Nemo?

It’s been so long since I’ve seen that movie that I don’t really remember any names. I also…admittedly was not that big a fan of it.

119. Favourite book?

Ugh… I don’t know. Probably something predictably boring. I really liked Pride & Prejudice and Frankenstein. I guess… Mask of Shadows was up there, though? Since my URL was a reference to it for a while. And I liked the book version of The Shining much more than the movie.

149. Do you believe in ghosts?

Yeah. That’s Virginia culture babey!

150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line

‘There is quite a lot going on,’ said Merry; ‘and even if we tried to be quick, it would take a long time to tell.’

The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien…so this was actually page 455. It was either this or my Kindle edition Good Omens, which I did not want to try and flip through and risk losing my place!

Honesty Hour asks

#i'll actually answer these all day if anyone's interested #about the blogger #gaytarokujo #answers.txt

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eurovisiondivision · 5 years

Text

Who’s who in the Second Semi-final of Eurovision 2019?

Once again, Europe is readying itself for making an important choice. Tonight, we decide which 10 acts round out the line-up of this year’s Eurovision final. There are only 26 spots in total, with six of them taken by default by host country Israel and the “Big Five” (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK).

If only we could have all 41 of this year’s countries in the grand final. Alas, on Tuesday we said goodbye to Portugal, Poland, Finland, Montenegro, Hungary, Georgia and Belgium. Tonight there are 18 countries ready to fight, which means eight of them will end up being sorely missed.

This second semi-final is a bizarre creature. On the one hand, a few of the absolute favorites make their appearance, but on the other hand, those favorites are performing alongside some of the most excruciating, borderline non-existent songs that I’ve ever seen at Eurovision. It’s going to be a wild ride, let’s leave it at that.

Armenia goes first. It takes about two minutes for the edgy “Walking Out” to get going, because the Frankenstein-esque bolt of lightning this song desperately needs to live, only comes when Srbuk screeches into a key change after the bridge.

Mind the lyric: “First you said, you would die for me/But in the end I was the one/Bleeding all alone” Srbuk sings about a toxic relationship that she’s ‘walking out’ of. And it doesn’t seem all that hard to do for her. I mean, sure, she suffered a lot, but all of that’s just something she needs to shake off! The crown-metaphor that seems so popular in this year’s songs is also present here: “You’re no more a king, ‘cause I was your crown.”

After that it’s Ireland’s turn, performing second. Sarah McTernan is bringing us “22”, which was written by three Dutch people. Sarah has been dealing with a tooth infection for the past week, so we’re secretly hoping she can just return home tonight to get that looked at.

Mind the lyric: Sarah’s song is about an ex-lover, and how she keeps thinking about him. And apparently, the number 22 keeps showing up in her life, because that appears to be her trigger: “I dream about the street where we kissed out of the blue/It’s your house, number 22.”

Would you look at that! I’ll be damned if the third act isn’t Moldova! They selected Anna Obodescu as their representative, and saddled her with a song that was likely unearthed from a dusty attic where someone had hidden it in 2004 like a Jumanji-board to prevent it from ever seeing the daylight again. “Stay” is riddled with clichés - a stomp-stomp-clap bridge, a key change, and the lyric “forever’s here to stay”. I just can’t get enough! Speaking of classics, this song has so little identity, that they decided what it needed was the exact same act that Ukraine gave us in 2011. Sand artist Kseniya Simonova helped them get a 4th place with a dreadfully mediocre song, so it might not even be a bad strategy.

Mind the lyric: “Stay/Until I find a way/To be together/Forever’s here to stay/No matter what they say.” Pay attention to the first chorus, and by the end of the song you could effortlessly take Anna’s place on stage.

Fourth up is Switzerland. The bookmakers saw potential in Luca Hänni, at least, they did before his first rehearsal. “She Got Me” is an energetic song with some pretty skeezy energy, that reminds us of what Cyprus served up last year (and this year). You can move to it, that’s something, but it didn’t really manage to impress me at any point. Luca appears in a sleeveless top in front of a red backdrop, which reminds me of Imri Ziv’s appearance for Israel in 2017 with “I Feel Alive”. If you hadn’t noticed: I don’t find it terribly original.

Mind the lyric: “She got me dirty dancing!” I do hope Luca has the time of his life tonight. Unless something goes miserably wrong, this should be the first certain qualifier of the night.

Nice to know: This song was co-written by Laurell Barker. Other than this track, she wrote on the songs for the United Kingdom and Germany (which you will both be hearing a snippet from tonight when voting lines close).

You’d better stay in your seat for song number 5, because if you decide to take a bathroom break now, well, you almost certainly won’t get to see Latvia this year. Carousel is something of a background bluegrass band, and “That Night” is pretty monotonous. Inoffensive enough, but a minute and a half are enough to get the song. Unfortunately, there’s another minute and a half after that, which is just a bit too much.

Mind the lyric: “It was a lonely night.” It might be interesting to know that this is the only song where the song’s title (“that night”) is never sung at any point.

Ester Peony starts a fire for Romania. As sixth in the running order, she performs “On a Sunday”, and the most amusing thing I can say about it is that the Romanian national selection (which in a stunning display of practicality is just called “National selection”) was also on a Sunday! Unfortunately for her, it is currently Thursday, and that’s got to be a bummer. In true Romanian fashion, Ester has committed to a sort of undead aesthetic.

Mind the lyric: “Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay. Loving you is a hard price to pay-ay-ay-ay-ay.” I really don’t have anything to say about this song.

By contrast, I do have things to say about Denmark. That said, I’ve heard it said that if you have nothing nice to say, it’s best to say nothing at all. The seventh performer is Leonora, who won the Danish Melodi Grand Prix with the excruciatingly innocent “Love Is Forever”, an ostentatiously cutesy tune that attempts to combat cynicism, but only makes mine stronger. Her wide-eyed stare at the camera makes me thing that she’s afraid the camera operator will turn against her at any second because he really can’t take a second longer of this miserable song.

Mind the lyric: “The world has had enough/Don’t get too political!” No, you know who’s had enough? Me. The Eurovision is taking place in Israel, you silly goose. Anything you do has political implications, and it’s childish and irresponsible to sit on a high chair and dangle your legs while pretending that you’re setting any sort of example. But hey, follow her example. Act like nothing’s going on. Plug your ears. You won’t have to hear this song and you’ll comply with Leonora’s centrist agenda! It’s a win-win situation!

Sorry, folks, I don’t know what came over me. Luckily, Sweden is there to set things straight with song number eight. John Lundvik wants to know if it’s “Too Late for Love”. To help him convey the message, he is backed up by a gospel choir of four lovely ladies. This is another song that takes a while to get going, but once it has, it’s hard not to move along. In Sweden, it was good for a resounding victory. With the maximum score from the juries and a massive televote, it was actually an even bigger victory than the one Loreen had in 2012. But can he replicate that in Tel Aviv?

Mind the lyric: “Hey/How’ve you been?/I wonder, do you ever think of me?” The lyrics aren’t earth-shattering, but the story is clear: John’s trying to reconnect with a past love and is cautiously building up to the big question, to ask them if there is any chance, any slim chance at all. And then he starts complimenting himself somehow: “I could be the sun that lights your dark!”

Nice to know: John Lundvik’s betting on two horses this year. He also wrote the entry for the United Kingdom (which you will be hearing a snippet of after voting).

Austria made an internal choice with Paenda, pseudonym for singer Gabriela Horn. The song she performs in slot number 9 is called “Limits”. It’s a delicate, intimate little song that allows her fragile voice to be the center of attention. That and her blue hair, of course. This is also one of the few acts to make excellent use of those triangles that the Israeli broadcaster has suspended above the stage.

Mind the lyric: “So I smile for a while/Let the torture begin/The pressure on my chest/Becomes almost routine.” Okay, that’s a little intense, lady.

In Croatia, they held a national final, and believe it or not, it was won by Roko. Our tenth song is called “The Dream”, and was penned by Jacques Houdek, who brought us the seminal “My Friend” as a duet with himself in 2017. The English lyrics were taken care of by Charlie Mason, the songsmith who also wrote the words to “Beauty Never Lies” (Serbia 2015) and “Rise Like a Phoenix” (Austria 2014).

Mind the lyric: “I dream of love/You dream of love/Angels of God/We all dream of love.” Rarely is God mentioned so candidly in a Eurovision song. We instantly think of Aisha’s “What For (Only Mr. God Knows Why)”, which represented Latvia in 2010. That said, Roko is one of His angels, so he has permission. No, truly, the boy is actually wearing a pair of golden angel wings. The Lord could no say no to a vision like that.

Performing eleventh is Malta. In spite of the Song Contest’s popularity in this island state, they have never managed to bag the trophy. They’ve done a good job at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, though - with their most recent Junior winner Destiny Chukunyere providing backing vocals for this performance. Trying to take the trophy is Michela Pace, winner of the Maltese X-Factor. She injects “Chameleon” with infectious, youthful energy, and gives us an unabashedly bright performance.

Mind the lyric: “Give me water, I’m a swimmer/Give me fire, I’m a fighter/Give me love, I’m your lover.” This is a fun game to play when you’re sitting at home on the couch and you don’t know what to do: come up with new lyrics to the Maltese song! Like, for example: “Give me pillows, I’m a sleeper, give me a goal, I’m a keeper” or “Give me money, I’m a young person who worries that they’re never going to be able to buy a house”. Something like that. Just a fun little pastime.

Representing Lithuania, it’s Jurij Veklenko. That he would win their preselection was something unexpected. You see, “Run With the Lions” kind of slipped under the radar. It really, actually is a very nice song, and when he sings it, it really is perfectly nice to look at, but it’s not the kind of song that demands attention. And that’s exactly how no one saw it coming and he slipped through the cracks to perform as twelfth tonight. His falsetto in the build-up to the chorus is nice, and the way he rolls his r’s is too. You know, if I could think of any other word than “nice” to describe this song, that’d probably be nice too.

Mind the lyric: “If you want a voice, just open your mouth.” Hey, Jurij, sorry, buddy, but I tried doing what you said and then a fly flew into my mouth, so, never doing that again. If you have any advice like that again, maybe keep it to yourself, alright? 0/10, doesn’t work, Jurij.

Is it lucky number thirteen for Russia? They drafted mega star Sergey Lazarev, who had a turn on the Eurovision stage before in 2016 with “You Are The Only One”. He won the televote, but ultimately finished in third (behind Ukraine and Australia). This time around, he is performing “Scream”, a dark ballad with musical theatre tendencies. Wherever you look, you’re going to see Sergey, because the act has him on stage with holographic copies of himself. There’s a sense of drama, that’s for sure, with the bridge of the song as a strange sort of moment where you wind up holding your breath and getting involuntary goosebumps.

Mind the lyric: “Tears aren’t quiet things/They scream!” Sergey wants it to be clear that there’s no need to suppress your emotions, because this man can hear it when you cry. Allow yourself to be taken along for the ride, and you might end up buying it.

Albania is our fourteenth entry. Sometime between Christmas and New Year’s, they selected Jonida Maliqi as the winner of their own Song Contest Festivali i këngës. She brings us “Ktheju tokës”, which means as much as “return to your land”. It’s a call for everyone of Albanian heritage in Europe, and simultaneously for every refugee who feels lost in an unfamiliar environment, to remember where they came from. Even without understanding the lyrics, the passion is palpable in her desperate plea. Much like Serbia on Tuesday, this is a dramatic ballad in a native language, although this time the drama really does make it feel as if lives depend on it.

Mind the lyric: “Një ditë jeton/Në tjetrën vdes/Sa mall, pak shpresë/I vetëm, pa identitet” or: “One day you’re alive, the next you’re not. So much longing and so little hope. Alone and without any identity.”

Our fifteenth entry is the kind of thing you wouldn’t find anywhere else but at Eurovision. That’s reason enough to grant Norway a spot in the final, but there’s plenty more. The trio KEiiNO consists of Tom, Alexandra and Fred-René. The latter of the three is Sami, the indigenous nomadic people of Scandinavia. In “Spirit In The Sky”, they combine a whole lot of Eurovision clichés with pseudo-spiritual lyrics about faeries, demons and, of course, spirits - all with Fred-René adding a layer of what the Sami call “joik”, a particular style of singing. At the very least it’s a unique spectacle. I would add that by sending this into Eurovision, the song has become part of the Norwegian cultural heritage.

Mind the lyric: “He-lo e loi-la/Čajet dan čuovgga,” sound the choruses. That first part is merely a meaningless melody, but the second part means “see the light”!

Sixteenth are the Netherlands. It was Ilse De Lange (who came second as part of The Common Linnets in 2014 with “Calm After the Storm”), who heard her young protegé Duncan Laurence’s song, and passed it onto the Dutch broadcaster. She was his coach on The Voice of Holland, and was impressed by “Arcade”. And she wasn’t the only one. This modern, intimate pop ballad quickly came to be one of the year’s most well-regarded tracks. In spite of all the difficulties they’ve had during the past week of rehearsals, they never had to give away their number one spot with the bookmakers. But is the hype real?

Mind the lyric: “Small town boy in a big arcade/I got addicted to a losing game.” The eponymous arcade is a metaphor for the kind of relationship that doesn’t stand a chance, the sort of thing you put way too much time and effort into without getting anything back for the emotional labor. He pushes the metaphor a little too far in the second verse (“How many pennies in the slot?/Giving us up didn’t take a lot”), but the kid is so likeable that we can forgive him for that.

Penultimate in the running order is the inaugural entry of North-Macedonia. Well, alright, until last year the country participated as “the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, and we’re mourning the fact that we’ll never hear that said at Eurovision again. So, even if Tamara Todevska manages to make the final with “Proud”, she’ll now be doing that for North-Macedonia, country 17. The woman exudes elegance, and she’s a darn good singer. Much like Serbia on Tuesday, vocals could impress, and with her singing in English, she might have a leg up on Albania.

Mind the lyric: “Shine your light/Go and break the rules!” is sort-of the high point of the song, right before Tamara bursts into the second chorus. The rest of the song presents itself as words of encouragement for young girls, trying to inspire them to be confident, strong and proud. In order to get to that point, though, she first has to remind us about the many ways in which the world is unfair towards women, all of that with a mournful violin underscore.

Azerbaijan is the final act of the night in spot 18, with a high tech spectacle consisting of two robotic arms performing open heart surgery on singer Chingiz. “Truth” is a danceable pop song with some ethnic instrumentalization and a whole smattering of vocal flourishes by the artist. Although it’s all meant to be deadly serious, the technological vibes feel ironic, because the perfectly rehearsed act also has its moments of feeling like it was assembled in a factory. When Chingiz makes eye contact, there’s the distinct sense that he has to, much less that he wants to. Mans Zelmerlöw’s charisma is a far cry, but still, we do have to admit, the guy is not terrible to look at.

Mind the lyric: “It’s been so hard to hear/So shut up about it!” Chingiz croons about some kind of cheap floozy who keeps seducing him, but never stays with him for long. Before he knows it, “she’s on to the next”, and he’s back in his own bed, crying, presumably shirtless, trying to forget about it.

And that’s 18! Unfortunately only 10 can make it to Saturday - so who will be those lucky few? Tune in tonight to find out!

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petalbursting · 4 years

Text

GET TO KNOW THE BLOGGER.

can be used for RP && non-RP blogs to get to know a bit about the person behind the screen

1. FIRST NAME : amanda

2. STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF : i ate grass as a kid once, unprompted. we were pretending to be horses or deer or something and it just seemed like the natural thing to do. i committed but it wasn’t great 0/10 wouldn’t recommend grass

3. TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON : i don’t really pay attention to physical stuff much ?? honestly the first thing that attracted me to my fiance was his voice... but i also like eyes too i guess ? they don’t have to be super unique or anything, i just like eye colors a lot. and uhhh... hands? to hold?

4. A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF : chicken. just any iteration of chicken

5. A FOOD YOU HATE : brussels sprouts. i know that’s super cliche but i will literally eat SO MANY veggies and that one just... nothing can doctor it enough for me to eat it. not lathering it in bacon or butter or frying it or ANYTHING i just HATE that shit

6. GUILTY PLEASURE : ship talk, probably. i’m more open about it than i used to be but it’s still not something i used to do a lot bc i was... a serial blog floater --- i never felt like i was on a blog or in a fandom long enough to be a ‘reliable’ ship partner.

7. WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN : usually just a t-shirt. i’ll wear bottoms to lounge around the house in, but i usually sleep in a t-shirt and that’s it

8. SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS : sir this is a wendy’s and i’m getting married

9. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE , WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE : there’s things i would change but i’d rather not get into them bc they’re personal/trauma-related --- but on a less serious note, i’d try to hold on tighter to my connections with people instead of isolating.

10. ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON : yeah, but only when i’m comfortable with someone. i kinda had to... learn to be affectionate ?? so i still worry it comes off as awkward or too clingy or too much

11. A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN : young frankenstein, christmas vacation, & dogma --- the unholy trinity.

12. FAVORITE BOOK : bro you can’t just ask someone w/ an english degree that my concentration was literally literature

13. YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE : at this moment in time i’d take any animal --- a dog, a cat, a bunny, a ferret, anything. it sucks being alone at night man

14. TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS ( IF YOU ARE AN RP BLOG , YOU CAN USE YOUR OWN SHIPS AS WELL ) : just basing this off my top five ships for rubes uhhh ---- rosewater obviously holds a special place in my heart, even if it’ll never fucking happen in the show. after that there’s ladybug, nuts & dolts, whatever ship name she and sun might have, whatever ship name she and nora might have, and honestly some decent fucking therapy & self-worth

15. PIE OR CAKE : mmm cake

16. FAVORITE SCENT : roses, sandalwood, coconut. not necessarily all together, just --- those’re my top three

17. CELEBRITY CRUSH : i dont really have one i just see a hot celeb with a range and i stan

18. IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO : i’ve already been to london and paris, but i would love to visit the less touristy places in both countries ! also would like to revisit london, go to germany’s christmas markets, uhhhh... spain, scotland, the med in general... i’d love to travel in theory, i just hate flying bc the ocean scares me and i’m sick for weeks after i fly.

19. INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT : introvert. i was an extrovert once, then the ptsd came and i’m still not great at keeping up social stuff

20. DO YOU SCARE EASILY : i am the designated ryan bergara in any friend group, the only people more ryan bergara than me are my sister and ryan bergara

21. IPHONE OR ANDROID : iphone

22. DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES : not as much as i used to, but i do enjoy them!!

23. DREAM JOB : to just edit people’s writing and make them happy and read their books/papers/published works from the comfort of my own home with a corgi curled up on my lap

24. WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS : get us a house, give a huge chunk to my sister, get a couple dogs, pay for my wedding, pay off my debt, and if there’s any left over i might fuck around and get the ac switch

25. FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE : arobynn hamel from throne of glass. hate that fucker

26. FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER : remember earlier when i said i was a serial blog floater ? i’m a serial fandom floater too --- i used to be pretty consistent in the persona fandom, but i’ve fallen out of there so i guess that one ?

tagged by : i stole it, with love,

tagging : you too may lovingly take it off my hands

#* : MEME FRIDAY.#* OOC : wuby wose says bi rights.

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page88mcelroy-blog · 6 years

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Destiny 2 Assessment Has Bungie Done Enough For Extended

A Destiny 2 free trial weekend for the PlayStation 4 will commence this weekend as Bungie is attempting to attract players who have never ever tried playing the game. We pay a visit to four brand new regions: what appears like post-apocalyptic Germany a lost human city on the stormy seas of Titan the mysterious Vex-infused Nessus and the sulfuric yellow moon, Io. The story, which is let down by some Syfy z-movie Destiny 2 pc download dialogue and a handful of other, more forgettable characters, at least has its starting, middle and finish in the correct order. Destiny 1's frankenstein plot could not even manage that. The gameplay in basic and the thought of the game mechanics is brilliant. Even if only in terms of futuristic first particular person shooter. The story mode as effectively is continually entertaining. The game managed to grab my interest, leaving me usually wanting a lot How to Download Destiny 2 more. online element are all outstanding with this game. 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The AO technique utilised and the good quality of the implementation affects destiny 2 pc download the shadowing's accuracy, and whether or not new shadows are formed when the level of occlusion is low. Without Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, scenes can look flat and unrealistic, and objects may possibly appear as if they're floating. On top of that, we also know that there are a lot of players who genuinely want Destiny to be a hobby. We've absolutely heard loud and clear that they want endgame challenges, more Exotics, more loot. So rather of performing the content material drops that have that cinematic concentrate on that campaign that players may possibly only play when, we want to lean into that Escalation Protocol-variety encounter that the genuinely devoted endgame players are craving, and genuinely deliver those much more typically. 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Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris is out in the wild on all platforms, giving players new story missions, strikes, and competitive multiplayer maps, but it is what the expansion took away that disappointed players. Vanilla” players who booted up Destiny 2 identified How to Download Destiny 2 a number of activities were no longer accessible without having purchasing Curse of Osiris, and Bungie has changed the method in response to fan outcry. The other casualty of this adjust was Destiny's PvE game modes. Even if you take the multiplayer balancing argument as written, the adjustments are universal meaning PvE players are lumbered with it too. Decreased destiny 2 pc download free imply destiny 2 pc download decreased gameplay possibilities and given the repetitive nature of Destiny's PvE content material, these modifications only serve to homogenise the expertise. There is an even bigger content material drop coming in September. Though there's no official name for the new expansion just but, fans are expecting it to do for Destiny two what the excellent "The Taken King" expansion did for the very first Destiny game in 2015 — namely, to make it really, really Destiny 2 pc download good. Anticipate a massive new story, a lot more special activities with special rewards, a lot more tweaks to how the game plays, and more incentives to in fact play the game.

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attendantdesign-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Attendantdesign

New Post has been published on https://attendantdesign.com/andrew-adonis-a-one-man-tuition-fee-twitter-storm/

Andrew Adonis: a one-man tuition fee Twitter storm

We’re given into Andrew Adonis? The former Tony Blair guru, now a Labour peer, has spent an awful lot of his summer time having a cross at higher schooling, and mainly vice-chancellors, attacking them on Twitter, and everywhere else he can, for their “greed”, for strolling a “price cartel” and for leaving students with a “Frankenstein’s monster debt”. He’s requested the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to research why fees are so excessive and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to look at governance at the University of Bath, where the vice-chancellor earns extra than £450,000 12 months. In any spare moment, he tweets the quantity of university personnel at character universities on annual salaries of more than £100,000, or the six-discern income of managers of the Universities Superannuation Scheme recently revealed to have run up a deficit of £17.5bn.

I think it’s far a true scandal what has passed off to top pay, and that would now not have occurred however for the expenses bonanza

Asked why the surprising campaign, Lord Adonis, tripping over one of the many papers on his office floor, spills reasons almost quicker than even he can articulate.

“I’ve long past in pretty strong as it’s were given to be clean than the modern-day machine isn’t sustainable,” he says. “And certainly one of the things will show up – both the vice-chancellors will lead reform themselves, or it is going to be achieved to them.” Failure to behave, he indicates, will convey “huge austerity, and they will have no one guilty however themselves”.

On one day in July, he did a string of 27 tweets listing high college salaries. He joked: “There’s a university lobbying organization referred to as MILLION PLUS which all of the vice-chancellors are becoming a member of because it’s their new earnings target!”

It become when fees went up to £9,250 related to RPI with 6.1% hobby that he felt impelled to speak up. “I just notion this has were given totally out of hand.” He argues there’s “a huge, huge class difference” between costs of £three,000 12 months repaid with no actual rate of interest – the scheme he helped device in 2004 – and the contemporary system. Particularly annoying, he says, is that the high interest price way individuals who earn enough to pay all their costs back, however no longer enough to pay them off early – such as instructors and medical doctors – will end up paying a ways more than the ones on massive salaries, together with bankers, able to dispense with the debt in some years.

Internationally, the fashion is for expenses to go because they have turn out to be electorally impossible, he says. Fees were abolished in Germany – “I’ve usually taken the view that if Germany is doing some thing you should take virtually serious observer” – and in New York kingdom.

He has philosophical reasons too. The idea of the price device he helped introduce changed into that it changed into purported to realize the truth that each the state and the man or woman benefited from better education so each need to contribute. “What happened in 2010, which I suppose changed into one of the aspects of excessive austerity, became that we moved in a single day to a gadget wherein the kingdom withdrew and the individual turned into anticipated to make the entire contribution. That has become, in my opinion, essentially unfair.”

Britain couldn’t depart the unmarried market if it attempted

Andrew Adonis Read greater But what has truly set him going over the last few weeks is looking into what universities had been doing with the price cash. “I assume it’s miles a genuine scandal what has befell not simply to vice-chancellors’ pay but to pinnacle pay, and that would not have happened however for the costs bonanza,” he says.

It could also be substantial that Adonis’s two children are about to start university – one next time period, the opposite is within the system of applying. He doesn’t want to go into this beyond the reality that he’s been attending a variety of open days, which, he says, “has helped me see things – advantageous and negative”.

Responses to his campaign have ranged from the supportive to the livid. But it already appears to be having some impact. While the CMA declined to interfere in placing costs, the universities minister, Jo Johnson, has informed vice-chancellors they should justify high salaries via high-quality overall performance.

And Hefce, the colleges’ investment council, has announced it’ll be investigating governance on the University of Bath in mild of Adonis’s worries. Adonis, a former journalist for the Financial Times after which the Observer, is pleased at this, which he sees as a large tale: “It’s the first time I’m aware of that Hefce has investigated the governance of a university in admiring of salaries.” Actually, he appears thrilled along with his marketing campaign altogether – “the Sun did a whole two pages on it …” – and vows to preserve talking (and tweeting) fact to energy.

It’s no longer that he’s quick Andrew of other things to do Twitter man

. As properly as his role in the Lords, he spends 3 days every week as chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, for which he earns – “whole transparency” – £eighty five,000, the pro rata fee (£142,000) of an everlasting secretary, similar to his desired profits for a vice-chancellor.

Nor does he accept as true with better schooling the most urgent trouble going through the United Kingdom. This definitely is Brexit: he’s due to supply an e book on how to forestall Brexit subsequent month. He was asked to do one at the future of better schooling but isn’t always positive that he could have the time. But he does appear to be relishing his danger to disenchanted the education status quo.

Dear Lord Adonis, the summer time is for operating Athene Donald Read extra Adonis, who became a councilor for the SDP after which the Liberal Democrats earlier than joining Labour, turned into promoted to the peerage with the aid of Blair in 2005 and became a training minister after heading the No 10 policy unit. He describes Blair as “an especially herbal baby-kisser” – they’re nonetheless in ordinary touch. By evaluation, he has not spoken to Jeremy Corbyn for 10 years. But he helps the Labour chief in speak me up for college kids, admires the manner he has to reduce via with the general public and might sincerely see no prospect of another political birthday celebration being released within the UK. “The SDP became a failure. And the lesson I take from the failure changed into which you need to work from within the existing birthday party gadget in case you want to change the USA, now not engage in political fantasies of recent events.”

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