#and so now I started to use this one and apparently it had a software update and in hindsight maybe I shouldn’t’ve tried to update bc like | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tbhimnoteasyonmyself · 2 months

Text

Who is White?

If it is not I, your friendly neighbourhood non-binary deranged literature major, once again to tell you about stuff that the voices™︎ have prompted me.

This time, let's talk about the elephant in the room, the odd one out: Mr. White, a.k.a the fandom's babyboy.

(me as Fluke in this GIF, walking in ready to dissect this bitch)

So, what do we factually know about this man?

From what we're directly told in the show:

He's Tee's boyfriend, at least, since 12th grade, meaning they have been together for about 3 years, maybe 4 (depending on when exactly we are in terms of time in the present and when exactly during 12th grade they started dating).

He's younger than the rest of them, according to Por and Top in episode 1.

He studied at a different school from the main gang AND from Phee (yes, despite the embroidery having a similar colour, the writings where the institution's name should be are nothing alike, thus, not from the same place)

He cares a lot about his appearance (he does skincare when Por is literally dying downstairs and he sees a rash on his body while under the effect of New's absynthe - idk if it's absynthe or not but my friends and I have been calling it that since we saw them drink the green drinks so it's absynthe for me and there's that).

He's generally a very respectful person (he always speaks formally and nicely to everyone, even when people are hostile to him, like Tee or Fluke).

His fear doesn't seem to paralyze him in high-pressure situations (he strikes people with a tripod twice to save himself and others when he thinks they're in danger).

Another source could be the Yearbook, which, now, we have to be a bit more skeptical about because, as seen in New's case, it's not 100% accurate. One can argue that it is accurate because the yearbook would have Tan's info, since that's who he's living as and no one knows any better than that, including the institutions and, sure, yeah, fair. But while we don't know that White is hiding anything from us as well, we can't be sure of it. So, take the following with a grain of salt:

(translated with Google Translate)

His legal name is Watcharin Siriphan

He was born on the 25th of February 2005 (which confirms what Por and Top say)

His blood type is A (which according to the Blood Type Personality Theory means he is shy, stubborn, a perfectionist, polite and hard-working, apparently. tbh this thing is super shifty, no source seems to agree on the meaning of each type and, of course, it's a pseudoscience and all, so... yeah. take it as you will)

He's studying Software Engineering

He likes cakes

He dislikes cockroaches

He plays games and programs in his free time

So... We don't know much. He's the most generic person ever. Like... I too, and half the world's population, like cake, dislike cockroaches and like to play games. It's not exactly very special. Which is exactly why he is so intriguing. After all, we had 5 whole episodes so far, which were just the backstory of the people we see together in the mansion in the present. We've seen their personalities, their qualities and flaws, what they did and what they didn't do. We've been given a reason as to why they're here. Not just in the more direct sense of "they agreed to come here for Jin's goodbye party" but of why exactly they needed to be put all together in these conditions for this story. All except White. White is just... Barely an afterthought. We're shown when he comes into this story for the group (when he becomes Tee's boyfriend), but we're not given a reason so far as to why the narrative wants him there.

Because, sure, IRL people sometimes end up in random places and things can be pretty meaningless but this is a work of fiction. One that, evidently, has been greatly focused on details (Non's framed apple picture and Phee eating an apple alone, for example, or the correlation between the group and the colour blue). So why would it just throw us a character that is, seemingly, irrelevant to the story?

And to this, there are 2 possibilities my friends: either White is a narrative tool to get to the audience or White is not who we think he is. So let's explore it, shall we?

White = Narrative Tool

Let's start by assuming, possibly the most likely outcome, that White is exactly just a guy who ended up there due to his connection to Tee. Why would this narrative need that character?

Glad you asked. Because he's the only person who's 100% innocent. If he's just some guy who, as we've seen, keeps being respectful and nice and trying to always do the right thing, then he's got nothing to do with the others who, in different degrees are all guilty of something. He's the odd one out.

Because, yes, this is not a show of villains (at least, not in which concerns the main characters). They're all morally grey. But they have some drop of black that makes them grey.

Por is arrogant and a liar and selfish.

Tee is aggressive and manipulative and a control freak.

Top is an overall asshole and a coward.

These 3 actively bully Non. Por steals his work. Tee and Top blame him for shit he didn't do which puts in the situation where he owns Por and they spy on him. Tee manipulates him into mafia money laundry and threatens him.

Fluke is selfish and refuses to take action even when he knows it's the right thing to do.

Jin's doesn't have the capability to realize that the peaceful passive way with which he normally carries himself with won't solve the issue. Plus he's overly emotional. And a bit selfish too.

They didn't help Non when it was their moral obligation to do so. And Jin records him being abused by their teacher and possibly posts it online (though that's still up for debate).

Phee is too stubborn and also overly emotional and even overly empathic.

New is obsessive and vengeful.

Phee never really helps Non because all the ways he offers Non help are the wrong ones. He almost tries to control him. And he fails. And then he tells him awful things and breaks up with him in a terribly vulnerable moment for Non. And even when he regrets it and tries to bring justice to him, he fucks Jin because he wanted to and tries to cover it up as if it was part of the plan. Sure, they were broken up, technically, but Phee himself seems to have had "take-backies" over that breaking up. So, in his mind, at least, it's fair to say he cheats on him, which is very hypocritical after how he reacts to Non being abused. And New... He tries to help sincerely because he feels guilty but he only makes things worse. Nothing is solved and their father curses them both before committing public suicide at their mom's funeral.

Non (which may be even more relevant if he's still alive) is overly independent and uncommunicative.

He doesn't tell Jin he has a boyfriend when it's clear Jin's trying to make a move on him, event though Non's not interested. He hides very important things from Phee. He commits fraud (understandably, but yeah). And yeah, he's justified in his rage and attack but... Does he ever think of how his actions affect other such as Jin, for example, who, in his eyes, is innocent? Not really.

"Oh but White won't die!", I hear you say. "The innocent people never die in slashers!! Only the people who did the killer wrong do!" And that's exactly where I have to disagree.

So, amidst a sea of grey characters, White is, funnily enough: white. He's just good. He's done nothing wrong. And the narrative needs him because, when the others die, we'll feel (to different degrees, sure, but still, we will) that there's a reason. Even if we like the characters, those deaths will make sense. But what happens when an innocent man dies? What happens when you kill the man who wasn't even supposed to be there (he joined the trip at the last minute)?

As @syrena-del-mar says in this post: "DFF is more than just a 90s slasher film imitation". It "sits at a novel intersection of genre: horror slasher on the one hand and BL on the other hand" as @brifrischu puts it here and, for that, it bends expectations and rules and subverts what are natural tropes and events of the slasher archetype. White dying is the sort of thing this narrative, and our inventive genius Sammon, would do. Because... Do you really think they're giving us grey characters instead of black ones because we're supposed not to question this revenge? Because we're supposed to be happy about this? No. Of course not. That would be dumb. If we're meant to 100% side with the killer, then why give us likeable characters as the targets? Because, and this is as much speculation as it is reading the room, we're not.

This story, I don't know how it will end, but regardless I'm pretty confident it's supposed to tell us something important about cycles of violence: that they're neverending until someone chooses peace instead. That aggression and bloodshed and revenge... They won't bring time back, they won't undo the mistakes we make, they won't restore that which is lost, they won't make the grief go away... That they won't make us feel better. More even: that they will only hurt more people, create more injustice and prompt more revenge. And, thus, perpetuate the cycle.

So what's White's role? Being the final drop into our collective cup of realization (and perhaps the characters' as well) that this revenge mission is pointless and won't solve anything. White's role is to die.

"Oh, but uncle Dang was also innocent! Is his death not enough??", I hear you ask. And well... Maybe, maybe not. I think, honestly, his death is too impersonal for us to feel too deeply about it. Like, sure, yes, it is the death of an innocent, but it's a distant innocent. It doesn't make our blood boil because we don't know shit about that man. But, for all we don't know of White's past, we've seen him cry, we've seen him scared, we've seen him fight for his life, we've seen him be a good boyfriend and a good friend. He might just be some dude but we like him. He's the fandom's babyboy, as I said. It is more impactful and it tells the story better.

But this is just a hypothesis. And it might not convince you. And that's fair. So, because I'm a persistent obnoxious fucker with a little too much free time, I'm bringing you a second theory. For this one, though... You might need a little tinfoil hat... Be prepared.

White ≠ Who He Says He Is

So, if you think just having a character be hollow and pure good in a show of very fleshed-out and grey characters is weird, even if he might be narratively relevant, then we can only assume there's something important to White's character we don't know about yet. (I'm adding this in retrospective because I forgot but this idea came to me partially from @yellingaboutkp and their great analysis of horns in the show that you can find here)

But what could that be? We've seemingly seen all the flashbacks we needed from everyone, White doesn't seem very relevant to anyone's storyline but Tee's but... We'd assume if there was something directly connected to Tee's actions and White that we needed to see, we would've. Admittedly, the next episode seems to be on its way to tell us what Tee knows about what happened to Non and Keng while they were captured by the mafia and he could be there but I think, honestly, that it goes deeper than that. And here's why: because there's a person who's even more of an odd one out then White: whoever Perth's character is.

Now, he would've been completely unsuspicious if it wasn't for one thing: Perth's presence in the promotion of this series. He's just... Always there, somehow? Like, his character has only really appeared last episode massaging Tee's uncle but he's constantly talking about this series. Plus, his name is very well credited. AND, the absolute cherry on top, his character appears in THIS poster:

Now, yeah, I understand Marketing and Publicity (it's part of my Master's, you don't have to explain it to me). So, I know this could very well just be a strategy to sell the series. After all, Perth did get a lot of attention after The Hidden Character, I know, I know. It's also a way to put his name out there for other future roles, kinda like a soft launch. Plus, this is the show that killed Us's character first when he was one of the most popular actors in the cast. HOWEVER, I'd argue that, considering the previously mentioned attention to detail, they would not have given one of their rising stars a role in this series if it wasn't important. Like... No other background character without lines (so far) was given an important actor to play it. So pardon me, but I don't buy it. Perth's character's gotta matter somehow. And, back to what I was saying, I think the next episode will be exactly where.

See, I made a poll here on the hellsite asking what y'all think happened to Non. It's this one. And it shows that, overwhelmingly, we all think Non is alive BECAUSE he was helped by the man himself:

"Okay, Dante, but, even if that's true, where does White fit in all this?" Glad. You. Asked.

Now, if we're assuming Perth's character's the one that's gonna help Non (and possibly Keng or maybe not, idk and it really doesn't matter for now), we've gotta assume he's a possible suspect for the murderer. And even more so under this optic that Non is alive. Who more than a person whose whole reality seemed to be the mafia and who might've escaped it would be okay with murdering people? Right? Or, on the contrary, that he took a liking to Non and is trying to prevent him from further digging himself a hole in life and is trying to save him from himself.

You see, I didn't watch The Hidden Character (and those who did apparently recommend it stays that way). I didn't know any of these people before except those who were in Kinnporsche. And you know what that led me to? Curiously enough, dear reader: confusing Fuaiz with Perth. So, yeah, you know where this is going... White and Perth's character might be related. Brothers, probably.

"All because you think they look alike?" Well, if you ignore the way I just explained how it would tie some very loose ends... Yeah, kinda. BUT, in my defence, it makes a lot of genetic sense.

See, no other characters in the show really look this much alike. Believe me, I tested it.

For this purpose, I tried many different sites but the one that seemed to give me the most reliable results was FaceShape. Most characters got no more than 10%, some even got 0% (e.g. New and Perth's Character). And you wanna know how much White and Perth's character got? Nearly 50%.

For comparison reasons, New and Non who are CANONICALLY brothers, got about 30%.

BUT, if this is not convincing enough, my sister and I (who share EXACTLY the same 2 parents) got lower than them.

(pls ignore the picture, I was trynna make it as accurate as possible so I took a front pic with a neutral expression. also, my sister is censored for privacy reasons)

Now... Will I claim this is irrefutable proof? No. Not at all, but think about it: if White and Perth are related that might maybe explain how Tee and White met. It might also explain that really weird scene in the pre-release trailer (albeit all scenes in that are rather odd) where White-

Yes, thank you, Obi-Wan. And Anakin Tee is looking up at him, as if White has more power than Tee does. Because then, it could probably mean that White knows something and is probably there to do something. What exactly? Idk, man. He could be there to ensure the group remains clueless/confused or that they remain where they need to be for things to work... Or he could be there to try and prevent stuff from happening much to the likeness of what I stated for Perth's character's case.

"Oh, but if he knows something, wouldn't he know what happened to Non? Why would he be curious to watch the recording??"

Well, not necessarily. We know Non is not communicative and that he doesn't typically share his problems with anyone (the exception being Keng, obviously, but then again, the exception confirms the rule). And sure, Keng might be more talkative but idk if he would say something if Non asked him not to. I have a feeling he probably wouldn't (since he has that weird thing JJ mentioned about how he "loves Non" and, therefore, even if he's an abuser, he doesn't perceive himself that way and wouldn't do something he actively thinks would hurt Non). So, while Perth's character would know what happened to Non while he was being held by Tee's uncle and even some things about why he is there, he probably wouldn't know the rest.

But then why would he date Tee? Well, this is a narrative so... Foils are something that can happen. Having White and his relationship with Tee be a parallel to that of Phee and Jin is not weird and, in fact, has happened in the very first episode when both couples arrive at the room where the singles are, in pairs. Therefore, it wouldn't be weird to think of White as someone who maybe also fell in love with the guy that was supposed to be a means to an end or, alternatively, and perhaps more interestingly, have White NOT be in love with him and actually succeed, unlike Phee. Thus, drawing the comparison that, while Tee and White are in a relationship, White didn't fall in love and, inversely, while Phee and Jin aren't in a relationship, Phee did fall in love.

And this would mean that all we've seen of White's fear might, in fact, be an act to throw suspicion off of him. Or even more justified because he knows exactly what's lurking in the woods... After all, why would he suddenly join Jin's goodbye party if he's not a friend of Jin's? What reason better than to tag along your boyfriend's getaway with his friends if not to protect him from the terrible consequences of his actions?

But I get it. It's an extremely convoluted theory and, in all honesty, maybe makes the show more dull and boring if it's true because... Why would they repeat this "secret brother" twist? Or the dating with second intentions trope? It could be a narrative parallel, yes, but I can also definitely see how people could point that out as uncreative or lazy writing.

Either way: these thoughts were circling around my head and, before the next episode confirms or destroys them, I wanted to get them out into the world for y'all to, maybe, hopefully, join in on the hype for it, as it's less than 24h 'till it airs. Hope in that I was successful, at the very least.

Anyway... As usual feel free to (politely) argue with me, tell me I'm wrong, tell me I missed this and that, add to it, etc... Because if there's one thing I currently love more than DFF itself, it's definitely the fandom and I want us to make the most of it!!

I'll see y'all tomorrow when we're freaking out about episode 10!!!

All the love! 💜💜💜

114 notes · View notes

things-about-cars-in-posts · 15 days

Note

what do you like about cars?

I think you knew, upon asking this, that I could only ever have answered with either an ironic one-liner or a dozen-part novel. And unfortunately, this is already the second line, so novel it is. So then, without any further ado than the literal half year that’s gone by since this was asked, let's go.

1. Engineering matters

At the end of last year (aka when I started writing this, yikes) my dear old iPhone 6S moved on to a new home because it simply wasn't keeping up with me anymore. (And again, I was using an iPhone 6S in 2023. If I say a phone is too slow, it's too slow.) I had plenty of criteria for the replacement: a smallish screen not overboard on resolution, ideally a physical media control button and/or vibration toggle, repairability, a FUCKING AUX JACK... Something like the Sony Xperia 10, whose only real issue is marketing so trash you've only just now learned Sony never stopped making phones.

And yet...

This fancy wallpapers-sporting foldable is a Motorola RAZR 5G, a phone whose too-big screen already broke (though at the edge due to adhesive issues) and those who dared try warn repairing it will be as hard as phone repairs get. Why the fuck did I buy this? Well, because it has something more important than the aux jack, proper sizing, and good cameras: it made me go “That’s so cool!”, and when’s the last time a phone made you say that? It's the cusp of a new technology, and whether it becomes the future of phones, a future of phones, or just a weird footnote, it is an island of interesting in a sea of boring. And sadly, even this island is rapidly sinking. The drive for new form factors has already boiled down to the same two phones and their evolution is sinking into the usual millimetric proportion tweaking, camera rearranging, touchscreen expanding, case material switching, fingerprint sensor moving, and spec improvements not even manufacturers can come up with use cases for. I mean, seriously, how does the iPhone 15 differ from a software-updated iPhone X (which is apparently not pronounced "x", so I guess the iPhone Twitter)? Nothing is new. Nothing is tackled differently. The user experience does not differ. And why should it, when iPhone users will get a new one out of habit anyway and many are so tech illiterate moving a button could hospitalize them? Five generation newer and 150% faster are numbers you basically have to trust, because they don't make a difference that matters.

But in cars? 150% faster will matter alright. Even just looking at it. Cars are a visceral experience to even witness, let alone ride in or drive, and the frantic engineering pursuits for performance and overall capability actually have impactful real world implications beyond "some pockets will bulge 1mm less". And their engineering involves so many fields that there’s always a breakthrough going on somewhere - which leads to another reason their engineering is so interesting: there’s simply so much of it that anyone interested in engineering will find something for them, no matter their level or sector of expertise! Interested in mechanics? Well, obviously you’ll have a field day! Aerodynamics? Don't even get me started! Electronics? You're getting more goods by the year! It spread from engine management to safety assists to infotainment to ergonomic adjustments to even suspension and aerodynamics! Sound design? Even just working on the way engines sound is a profession of its own, let alone making these barrels of metal and glass propelling themselves at triple digit speeds through hundreds of explosions a second things you can comfortably have a conversation in - and that's not even mentioning horns and chimes! Hi-Fi? We’ve spent most of a century trying to get concert hall sound from a tiny tin can where everyone sits off-center and everything bumps and shakes around and you have maybe room for two components* a third the normal size and speakers can only be in a handful of places you wouldn’t want them which may well be the next room over**!

And this is just engineering.

*Like everything in the car world, there are exceptions to that

**For those unfamiliar, subwoofers, the speakers dedicated to, indeed, sub-bass, due to their frequent humongousness are often installed in the trunk.

#stay tuned for part 2!#sony phones *are* great btw #they are sold in actual colors and they're full of cool features #their aux jack can double as a stereo input!!!

47 notes · View notes

stellaralignment · 3 months

Text

After reading @kira-serialfaggot 's post about inaccessible menus and @butterfly-sapphire post about non-customizable menus figured I now had sufficient excuse to rant about how I hate how every big restaurant's ""solution"" to these two problems is somehow always the worst fucking app I've ever had to use in my life.

So, to clarify real quick. I agree with both previous posts. Places that serve food should have their menu easily accessible somewhere if they have an online presence, and places that let you customize your order need to have that as a feature of any digital ordering solution they implement. Good? Good.

So, a lot of places I've seen (Wendys, Taco Bell, and McDonald to name a few) Have tried to get around how fucking horrible the DD app itself is by making their own apps with DD integration for the actual ordering/serving of delivery orders. Great, this lets them provide their own menu customization options, serve discounts/coupons, and generally have more control over the user experience. Fantastic. As a bonus, this usually also allows you to just look at the menu whenever you want.

Small issue. All of these apps were written by the worst fucking programmers I have ever witnessed in my life. I havn't gotten angry enough to de-compile or try to reverse engineer one yet, but my user experience has been so consistently bad and I've encountered issues that, as a software engineer, I honestly could not tell you how fucked their system has to be in order to allow that to happen.

Allow me to tell you the worst of these. I'm trying to order delivery from a store. It's late, like 7pm, but I know the place is open till 10. I can confirm this on their website (I do later for reasons that will become apparent) and google maps. So I punch in my address, make my order, and go to checkout. Unfortunately, the app tells me "Your payment method failed. Please select a new method and try again". Which was odd, but not unimaginable. I've had issues with my bank in the past. So I swap cards and try again, thinking nothing of it.

Except, my other card doesn't work either. Nor does using PayPal, or Google Pay, or any of the other payment options I tried. I'm getting desperate. I buy some games on steam just to make sure some of these are working, which they are. I was worried, but now that I've confirmed all my money hasn't been siphoned away somehow, I'm just confused and getting annoyed.

So I start going insane. I buy digital gift cards from several different sites and try using them. No dice, payment failed. I try using the website instead of the app, on my phone and PC. Payment failed. I boot up an android studio instance with a brand new virtual phone, install the app on it, and try to order. Again. Payment failed.

I'm starting to wonder if their servers are just completely down. A friend in a different state can order with no problems. A friend in the same town can order with no fanfare.

But my roommates can't. They have the same issue

Payment failed.

So. I'm going insane. I've now spent almost 3 hours attempting to order food, and I'm starving. It is at this point that my anger finally overcomes my social anxiety, and I do the one thing I never thought I'd do.

I call the store in question.

Now, in all of this there was one crucial mistake I made. See, that friend in the same town? Lived on the other side of town. And there's 2 different stores of this franchise in town. We didn't control for this, because the app doesn't let you pick a store anyways when doing delivery. It's hard locked to whatever one is closest, which isn't a terrible thing to do. You need to get the delivery address anyways, and you know where all your store are, so it cuts out a step for me. But having to choose a store might've clued us in to what was going wrong.

Because the store? Was closed. Not just closed, like mega closed. It was being shut down. It hadn't been open for two weeks, and would never be open again. The order was failing because they'd already taken all the computer systems out, and it couldn't confirm to have received the order.

So there was nothing wrong with the payment. Literally nothing I could have done about this. I am just barred completely from ordering because the app defaults to the nearest location for orders, and my nearest location didn't exist anymore.

And you'd think that there would be some way to communicate this to the user when making the app. But for reasons I can only assume are profit motivated (Though I have no idea how the fuck this is more efficient/profitable), the app just defaults to saying the payment failed.

Now, I wouldn't be this mad if this was just "oops edge case lol" where I suffered the unfortunate consequences of some procrastinator forgetting to do the thing that removes stores from the database. Unfortunate but not really anyone I can blame for it. But no. This is just the most extreme example, and it's not even confined to the one app.

Almost every single app like this I've used defaults to saying the payment failed and to try a new payment method when anything goes wrong. No drivers out on DoorDash to actually move the order? Payment failed. You're trying to order a seasonal item that got dropped today? Payment failed. The companies servers actually are down? Payment failed. You're not connected to wi-fi like an idiot and there's actually something you can do to fix the issue that's not related to payment whatsoever? Payment failed.

What the fuck is up with this lazy ass programming? I seriously doubt there's enough technical debt from these apps to justify not having a robust error catching system that communicates with the user what the issue is. By the fucking stars these people love collecting intrusive data, I'm surprised they havn't used this as an excuse to harvest everyone's fucking location at all times and send "error data" back to central.

But just don't tell me my debit card was declined when I'm trying to order a burger and you closed that store two weeks ago.

#journal #rant #i fucking hate food delivery apps #but i'm a poor bitch with no car #and I lived for 3 months off of a BOGO burger coupon once that just never fucking removed itself from my cart even after I ordered #so I continued to cash in on that one coupon for an entire semester #so like don't fix your apps #but don't tell me my fucking bank is broken when you just can't be bothered to update your fuckin store database

57 notes · View notes

pspkisser · 7 months

Text

⚙️ This laptop was saved from obsolescence! [10 mins of read]

Hello!! i am making this post here to raise awareness for PC and laptop upgrades, and how it should motivate you to do that same thing to preserve yours for longer or to give it the power you need! this will feature my history with mine, as well as the steps i took to be able to make him breathe life better! this is the story of his journey, and how it went to this current day.

his name is samuel, he is an asus fx570u and i bought him back in september of 2018 after i turned 13! he was brand new during that time and priced at 800 euros, offering only 6 gb of memory and an HDD as his specs. however he does have an 8th gen core i5 as his cpu and a geforce 1050 ti for his gpu. for something marketed as a gaming pc, it's pretty low and it wouldn't allow him to run fast enough, especially for highly demanding software and causing some compatibility issues. it wasn't severe, but as i was stuck with an hdd, that meant operating systems would run pretty slow on it, also leading to long software loading times. this is made worse by the fact that its bundled system, windows 10, isn't designed to work efficiently on hdd in the first place, but at least that means i have my hands on a windows key to be able to use some windows exclusive programs..

i mainly used him to be able to use advanced video editing software and customize the games i have on it for my own taste, because back then i loved making youtube videos and it was a passion i've had for years until i've partially retired from it. i rarely bought games on it and instead opted for free-to-plays, and overall had a good time with him.

unfortunately within only 3 months, his HDD broke down and i sent him to technicians for them to replace it with another one. it was a minor accident i've had but it formatted all my data, even though it didn't matter much since i uploaded most of it to the internet. i just had to be gentle with him by trying to not moving him around too much to stop that issue from persisting... but it was still low-end in terms of system performance. i finally used him for 1 year straight before moving on to a tower pc, feeling tired about his slowness and believing i couldn't do much about it.

i used that other (unnamed) pc for almost a year, starting from 2020! they seemed to work better since it had windows 7, but embarrassingly enough that version itself stopped receiving official security updates months before i started using it, even though i was careful while accessing the internet with it. its performances were also low, but didn't really matter much since i didn't take so much advantage from the power of samuel. suddenly, i had the foolish idea of installing windows 8.1 on the latter to try to deal with the performance issues on 10, but it led to even more compatibility issues since the drivers i used were meant to be for 10 only. only by early 2021, i got win10 back on him and started using him again to get more power again.

so the low-end performance persisted for very long. back then i never knew how to upgrade pcs, so i was only used to replacing devices with others which wasn't cost-efficient. after realizing i used windows for well over 10 years, i had the idea of switching to a mac and as a result, for xmas 2021 i got myself a cute yellow silicon imac, who goes by the name of sarah! but switching to macos posed new serious challenges, such as getting used to the lack of windows compatibility and the missing features that i was used to for a long time. most of the creativity i did with her was drawings with firealpaca and krita, and cgi with blender, which wasn't really much. still, she is pretty glossy and also powerful for many of the tasks i'm performing with her. originally i also intended to sell samuel, but that never happened (i low regret that decision so much i swear).

in late 2022, samuel's performance apparently had had a big hit... he now takes approximately 20 seconds to open any program and it seemed to me like something was wrong with him. at that time i also gained interest in linux since it's a libre OS capable of much more flexibility, essentially allowing it to revive old PCs. i finally decided to get linux mint to work on him via a dual boot with win11 (what was i thinking when i "upgraded" him from 10?). the performance seemed a little better from then, but programs still took very long to open. for that reason, he had often been collecting dust as he finally became unusable.

finally we've reached 2023. this is the year i decided to take on tearing down devices to learn how to examine problems inside of them. after checking samuel's performance again, i noticed that his HDD was having extremely low writing and reading speeds compared to my tower, which made me feel disappointed. but that's when i finally decided i could be able to replace his hard disk with an ssd, a new generation which is more durable, faster, quieter and energy-efficient...

but i still had a good wait until it was possible. suddenly with my money, i found an ssd which only costed €30, and it made me happy that this would be a quick way of healing up samuel! so i rushed to get it, and finally opened him to prepare everything... unfortunately, his keyboard has to be lifted up in the process, and there are flex cables connected between it and the motherboard. but taking out the hard disk thankfully only requires a few steps; removing some screws, then inserting the SSD inside of it. after that i quickly put linux mint back into him. SO SPLENDID...

for only the price of a high budget indie game, now he can open programs very fast, close to how fast sarah can do, and just about any task works perfectly well on him with way less bugs! thanks to that fast upgrade he's become viable for daily drives again, even though i don't have other desks suitable for pcs which makes me less motivated to use him. really wish id be able to since the architecture he has (x64) means he has a lot more software he's able to handle natively...

but then, i hadn't upgraded his ram. i said before that he only had 6 gb of it, and that meant he could only work with a few programs before becoming bloated. and as i like doing power tasks on him, that obviously causes problems. so one day, i went to a pc part store out of curiosity, and became shocked when i found small ram carts that could be compatible with my laptop. after some talk with the seller, i bought 2 ddr4 carts each containing 8 gb and clocked at 2666 mhz, more than double of what i used to have. after that it was time to take on a challenge to be able to insert them myself.

when the seller asked me if i needed assistance to have the carts inserted into my laptop, i giggled internally because of my past stories with learning how to open devices and trying to troubleshoot or modify them internally. i obviously declined it which saved me money, but also meant i had to do it all myself. after an hour of painful manipulations which required me to take out the entire motherboard from samuel, while that next step was also difficult i was finally able to insert the carts into it, before placing all his components back into place. and after such a long time of waiting...

i've finally done it!

Samuel is feeling very well right now!! despite his cpu and gpu dating from over 5 years, now he can do even more tasks at a time, while also being able to read them faster, a massive improvement compared to when it was stuck with an hdd and only 6 gb of ram. i'm guessing those low specs were for the purpose of saving manufacturing costs, but until you'd find use for the components that you'd remove, they'd end up becoming waste. and with a free os like linux mint, it adds up to an even more optimized experience than windows 10, which comes with so many unwanted stuff and can't be customized very well.

have you had a similar story to mine? did that pose you challenges? i took over 40 minutes to write this entire piece of text, but it should at least be very well detailed! on the best case scenario i hope it would inspire others to do some research on upgrading PCs to preserve their lives and especially save costs. Thank you for reading the entirety of it, don't hesitate reblogging it if you think it would interest your own audience! peace for all of you 💙

#pc #laptop #computer #computers #pc upgrade #objectum #gaming pc #linux #linux mint

115 notes · View notes

star-going-supernova · 6 months

Note

Security Breach prompt: Building on the "Vanny was a Terrible Killer" idea. Picture this: Vanny standing there, staring bewildered at an ajar "Emergency Exit" door because she forgot they exist and legally don't have locks.

Tumblr generated prompt number 42! Hoo boy, this was a lot of fun to write! It’s not connected to Critque because I had a different setup in mind, so this is a standalone. You get to decide what the situation with Vanny is, as it’s not specified or anything. The only warning on this one is for excessive italics, lol. She gets emphatic when she’s mad.

OSHA Compliant

Vanny had been searching for the brat for ages now, and there was no sign of him anywhere. She had long since lost her patience and had stopped skipping as her frustration grew. Her grip was tight on her knife, and any plans to toy with her latest victim had withered down to a desire to just stab the little menace to death.

None of the animatronics had seen him, not even the STAFF bots which were nearly impossible to avoid and should have caught him at some point in the last hour. Midnight had barely passed; she couldn’t be struggling this early.

Spitting and hissing, she stormed through hallway after hallway, banging open doors and frequently pulling up different security feeds on her tablet. Yeah, her tablet. She needed to use the cameras like a newbie. Over a dozen successful kills under her belt and suddenly she was fumbling like it was her first time again.

No, worse. Her first kill had gone much more smoothly.

To make matters worse, she was due to give him his first look at Vanny, so she was all suited up—and had been for far longer than was optimal. It was sweltering inside this wretched fabric-and-foam heat trap, and she was sweating all over. Her hair was plastered to her forehead; she’d look like a complete mess when she had to get out of costume. And she was pissed about it.

Honestly. This was absurd. The brat in question had certainly been sneaky in the lead-up to midnight, but he was still a snot-nosed, idiot child. How he’d gotten Freddy on his side was a mystery to her—one that she would be investigating thoroughly once this stupid night was over. That couldn’t be allowed to happen again.

Narrowing her eyes, Vanny swiped through the cameras for the nth time. There was a conspicuous lack of Freddy, even on the secret cameras she’d placed in areas the pizzaplex hadn’t. Impatiently tapping her foot, she switched over to the tracking software. It could give her a to-the-room accurate location of each animatronic, and it had never failed her.

[Glamrock Freddy :: Location Error]

Vanny unleashed a furious screech of anger. How the hell had the brat managed that?!

She jabbed at the location history, searching out Freddy’s last known whereabouts. It showed a random hallway.

Positively fuming, Vanny stalked halfway across the pizzaplex, halfway expecting to find Freddy beat up badly enough that his chip had short-circuited. Instead, she came to a sharp stop in the hallway in question and stared, disbelief and absolutely incandescent rage building up inside her like a volcano about to blow.

Staring her down was an emergency exit door. It wasn’t closed all the way. Freddy’s last registered location was on the inside of the door—and the tracking system apparently didn’t work outside the building.

Vanny took several long, deep breaths. She started to shake, fingers tightening around her knife and tablet.

Over a dozen kids murdered in the past six months. And not once, not once, had she—or, apparently, any of them!—spared so much as a passing thought for the emergency exits. The only-locked-from-the-outside emergency exits.

Foiled. Foiled by OSHA.

Blinded by wrath, she hurled her tablet at the floor, gaining momentary satisfaction from the shattering crash. She dropped her knife, tore off her suit head, and chucked it at the door, then started shrieking incoherently at the top of her lungs.

(Her rage was so great that it was heard throughout the pizzaplex—and below it. Afton stirred awake. Upon recognizing the bellowing as that of Vanny, he considered going to investigate but ultimately settled back in his shadows. He didn’t know what had set off his follower’s temper, but he would not be inviting her ire on himself tonight. He was smarter than that.)

(If only marginally.)

#i answered a thing #anonymous #fnaf fic #fnaf security breach #star's stories #life and times of star

34 notes · View notes

wildissylupus · 8 months

Note

So, I don't exactly know if you've discussed this, but I think it's clear about what this current season is going to lead up to, and why I think it's so important to be adamant and weary about Null Sector's plans.

The evidence is there, and the claim?

Null Sector is trying to start another Omnic Crisis.

However, this one is less 'a glitch in the system'

And more, 'hitting the factory reset button and installing a virus intentionally right after.'

Why?

WELL BUCKLE UP YOUR BAMF BELT KIDDOS CAUSE THIS IS A TRIP AND A HALF.

As we know from story missions, Omnics are being subjugated and indoctrinated across the globe, all at once, in almost every part of the world by Null Sector and those helmets that quite literally place them under a catatonic state and wipe the Omnic's memories.

Torbjörn's analysis on the helmet is very clear when he brings up a very important piece of information:

"I don't know...this device is a nasty piece of work. I think I can get it off, but the bigger problem is, I'm not reading anything in the Omnic's memory banks."

"He's still alive, but it's like the essence of who he is,...is gone."

Now, when we say essence, I'm pretty sure we're saying the Iris, or Aurora's essence that was implemented during the awakening. Now I get what you're thinking. 'Ok Anon #324, but if the Iris gets removed, then why is Ramattra talking about Iris? During the Toronto mission?'

And to you- I say- oh ho ho, my dear, that's exactly what we should be fearing. Let it tie into the fact that there's also one of these Voicelines from Ram when talking about his favorite animal:

"Ants. They build marvelous structures and cooperate when threatened. I find them... Inspirational."

Toronto mission, hell, even the humans are terrified. Everyone is swarming in groups. It's not just gameplay either, when Sojourn is directing the groups of scared Omnics onto the ferry boat, it only proves Ram's point more. People are scared, people are grouping together to fight back, hide, run, and that's exactly what NS wants.

Not only is Null Sector wiping the Iris and awakening out of the Omnics altogether, they're creating a brand new version of the 'Iris'...let's call it 'Pink Eye' cause from what I've seen it's highly contagious. Not only from wiping memories, but also using the memories of strong fighters as well. Human's memories. (*Cough Cough* Ana.)

Have you heard Ram talking during the Toronto mission? He specifically states:

"Together, our one minded purpose. We will make this world, our paradise."

"We welcome you into the Iris."

----------

You let me know what you think about this. I wanna hear some raw thoughts. Big brain mode, no idea is a bad idea. I'm hungry for knowledge.

All I know is that, a couple of things could happen.

If those helmets are taken off, someone is going to have to sacrifice their memories either to bring back the original Aurora awakening and reinstall essence to the Omnics. Wonder who.

If NS ends up indoctrinating a major part of the Omnic population, many will die when and if those helmets do something else. If they can send out a location signal, who knows what else they'll do.

If sentience is reestablished into Omnics and possibly other software coding, this'll be one hell of a trip for all those Null Sector bots.

Man you had a brain blast and I. AM. LOVING IT!

Honestly I love your theory and I don't think there is much to add! It also is a good way to bring in the Junkers cause apparently he found the secret to Omnic life in the Australian omnium-

That could be a way to bring all the omnics back, the Australian Omnium was the place where Aroura was built after all. They could end up brining a second awakening, some residual of Aroura left in the Omnium. It could also lead to the sentience of the Null Sector drones, specifically the bots that are based off of actual people.

Like the C-455 Sharpshooter, P-900 Warhead, S-900 Sentry, A-7000 Wargod and K-2000 Blademaster. If they all have the same glitch that A-7000 has them that is one hell of an identity crisis they're going to have.

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

All that aside, I want to present my own theory. A counter theory if you will.

And that is Ramattra doesn't know that those helmets are erasing Omnics, he just thinks they are in a catatonic state. There is no indication that Ramattra knows what the subjection helmets are actully doing to Omnics.

If you look back at Ramattra's short story there is no implication of Ramattra wanting to create a new Omnic society through hitting a reset button;

There is an indication of imprisonment, of taking away other Omnics choices in order to make them listen, but that is very different from hitting a reset button. Essentially killing the soul of Omnics. It's something I don't see Ramattra doing knowingly. However, there is a group of people who would not only do this, but has tried to do this before.

Talon.

Something I remember from the Story Missions is Torbjourn saying that the helmets put an Omnics mind in a loop. It's something I didn't think much about. Until I read "The Hero of Numbani".

In that book Sombra hack and installs a virus several Omnics around Numbani. A virus that locks Omnics in a constant loop, and gradually corrupts the Omnics memories.

Sound familiar? There is also the fact that a part of Doomfist's beliefs that are presented in that novel are anti-omnic.

Not only that but I always found it strange that Dommfist, someone who wants conflict, would help someone who has the motivation of "Peace at any cost". Ramattra goal has and still is, for freedom and peace. Something that if he were to gain, would go against Doomfist's want for conflict.

Unless Doomfist is just using Ramattra and Null Sector as a tool to create conflict, adding either an updated version of Sombra's virus (or what he thinks is an updated version), to remove Omnics souls and create a true Second Omnic Crisis.

Not only that but that could also lead into an explanation on what "The Conspiracy" is, maybe it's another God AI who wants to do what Anubis did but has learned from the mistakes of the first Crisis and is trying to make it so they are guaranteed to win.

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

Either way I am excited for both of these theories, with the first one it's going to be interesting to just explore that aspect of Null Sector, if they get Omnics back are they going to still have their memories, their souls? Are they going to resort back to their basic programming, are they going to go back to being under Anubis's control?

In the case of the second theory, how will Ramattra react if he truly doesn't know what the helmets are doing? Will he stop the invasion? Will he double down? Will he go after Talon?

It's all so interesting!

#overwatch #overwatch 2 #overwatch lore #overwatch headcanons #analysis #doomfist #akane ogundimu #akande ogundimu #ramattra ow #ramattra overwatch #ramattra #null sector #talon overwatch #talon

32 notes · View notes

inbabylontheywept · 10 months

Text

Too Confused to Interrogate, Too Confident to Question

When I started my first job in the DoD - in a facility where missiles components are tested - the address they gave me had some software glitches associated with it. If you put that address into apple maps, it takes you to the facility, which is at the end of this unreasonably long winding dirt road through the middle of farmland. It's literally ten miles from my job to the nearest gas station, and then another ten miles until you hit the city limits, and then three miles and I'm home. But if you put that same address into google maps, it takes you to the end of that road while it is still in the city limits. And that end of the road is another classified site, but it's for the IRS. I don't know why they put two classified facilities in the same tiny town in the middle of BFE. Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know why the IRS has classified facilities at all. Some kind of genetically modified accountant program? God help us.

Anyway, they didn't warn me about the directions bug so for my first day I showed up at the IRS building. They obviously had no idea who I was, but I told them that it was my first day and I didn't know anything about anything except that I was supposed to be there and that I didn't want to be late.

And they let me in.

Because I asked. Because I was that just right blend of too-confused-to-interrogate, but too-confident-to-question. I spent thirty minutes inside of this IRS building before realizing I was not supposed to be there. And instead of telling anyone about this, I just went back to my car and drove off. I have no idea what the consequences of this were. There probably weren't any. I could have stolen a whole filing cabinet of secret genetic templates for our modified accountant program and gotten away scot free. I then drove to the correct location. Apparently, under normal circumstances, I was supposed to be let in by another coworker but because I was late they were all already in the building so I had to call the guard shack on base and do the same song and dance again. The guards are not supposed to let people in. They aren't allowed to. Their sole job is to keep people out. But I did it again, that same superweapon combination of too-confused-to-interrogate but too-confident-to-question and they sent a guy out to get me in. When I arrived on site, I beelined to see my manager (who at that point had become slightly worried about my wellbeing - I was driving on dirt roads in the middle of snowfall after spending my entire life in the desert), and the first thing my manager asked me when I got to his office was

"How the hell did you get in here?" And then I got to explain to him how I had been illegally let into not one, but two secret sites in one day just by being extremely insistent. He was impressed. He was not pleased.

#autobiographical #funny story #confidence is key #too confused to interrogate too confident to question

32 notes · View notes

sixhours · 19 days

Text

Twenty questions for fanfic writers

Ermagerd I love talking fanfic, thanks @numinousmysteries!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

379,370

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The X-Files and The Last of Us so far!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

All X-Files fics:

A Boy and His Fox

Morning Sickness

Waking Hours

Remnants

We Aren't Meant to Sleep Alone

5. Do you respond to comments?

Most of the time, even if it's just a simple "Thank you!"

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

My Umbra Reverie series, by far. 😬 No regrets!

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

A Boy and His Fox or One Day at a Time. Two different fandoms, both baby fics. I originally envisioned One Day at a Time as a TLOU variation on A Boy and His Fox--a bunch of drabbles strung together--but it turned into a more cohesive story over time.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Sure! If it serves the story, I'll write smut. I'm not big on writing porn without plot because I don't think smut is my strong suit. When I do write smut, it's pretty vanilla, nothing too kinky.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I haven't, but I'm currently outlining a TLOU period fic that's based on Anne of Green Gables. Not quite a crossover, but boy it's fun to think about. 😆

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope, I'd be too afraid of letting my co-authors down. 😂

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Mulder and Scully are my OTP. ❤️

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

As of right now I don't have any. I tend to start fics with a lot of preparation, outlining, and research, and I usually wait until they're mostly finished to publish them. I also tend to work on one fic at a time and focus until it's mostly done.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I strive to make my characters as true to the source material and as believable as possible. I want the reader to be able to hear the character's voice in their head as they read, or be able to imagine them in a scene like it were on screen.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Editing while I write. 🙃 It's why I'm so slooooooow.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't speak any other languages and I'm uncomfortable leaning solely on translation software, but I'm not opposed to trying if it serves the story. My headcanon for TLOU is my Joel stays pretty true to the HBO series in that he's Latino, but he doesn't speak Spanish in regular conversation (I imagine he can, but he doesn't). (Trust that I noticed Tommy's "Adios, big brother" in episode 6, but then apparently Joel says that in the game, so...? I've thought about this too much.)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The X-Files, when I was 14. Those fics are still in .txt files somewhere on my computer. Someday I'll dig them out and have a good laugh.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Total recency bias, but The Ghosts of Babylon is my favorite right now. Mostly because I love the Reader character and it was my first foray into writing for a fandom other than The X-Files and I think I pulled it off. 🥹

🏷️ No pressure tags! Tell me about your fics! @frannyzooey, @wannab-urs, @bumblepony, @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin, @march-flowerr, @wildemaven and anyone else who wants to give this a whirl.

#fanfic #writing #fandom shenanigans

4 notes · View notes

bvannn · 4 months

Text

Weekly Update December 22, 2023

Still recovering from the semester, going very slowly. I’m trying to do stuff but mood and body are being volatile. Probably dread and anxiety leading up to the surgery next Tuesday, but I have been updated that most likely I will actually be able to leave on the same day after all because they moved it to 7:30 in the fucking morning. Convenient I guess but also going to be messed up that whole week probably.

I did a good few drawings yesterday. If I’m feeling up tonight I might do more. I’m trying to do more of the soft shading in addition to the hard shading, so the hard shading isn’t as harsh looking. Did it in my new pfp and it looks really good on the ghosts in particular. Has had more mixed results on the others but that’s probably due to my color choices.

Going to try fiddling with comic thumbnails as well, hoping it’ll be a larger project for next year. I’ve been drawing the characters for my secondary story a little more than I probably should so I’m going to hope inspiration hits for the O’Malley kids soon, since art block is kinda cropping up in that regard.

Music: the main song I’ve been working on is done instrumentally for now, soundfonts did in fact fix everything. Specifically the Touhou soundfont, because of course it was that one. I’m hoping if I get more energy tonight I can record pieces for the next song. I’ll still need to fiddle with outlining and lyrics for the first song, but I can’t progress much further on it until I manage to snag a vocaloid or utau (or synthV or cevio I guess, but idk or care much about those). Next couple ones I try to bite at are going to probably be instrumental. I might throw boards together for videos for them but that will be low priority until the songs are done done.

TRGA: so due to circumstance I haven’t really had as much chance to work on it as I thought. I did start cleaning up Tim 1-4, but not too much beyond that. Mostly because the time I set aside for it has been allotted to tending to my mood and body, so hopefully after some rest I can start taking bigger bites at it. If I get messed up on painkillers next week that is the project I will be most likely to work on, so I’ll try to get actual big bites out of it. If I get myself back to doing a schedule, I can probably get shots done faster than I have, which is good because admittedly I have been probably more proscrastinatey than I should be. Tonight I’ll try to continue on it, until I get Tim completely cleaned up, and potentially also get started on his face or hands.

Next week will be unpredictable, due to holiday and surgery. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get that computer I’ve been teased about so I can try to actually unload all my music making stuff, and get a good opportunity to reorganize my CSP brushes. I went a bit crazy on Black Friday this year since music software sites apparently just have 100% off sales on some of their cheaper items, and I got like $300 worth of stuff for free and then some. Haven’t been using it because of storage space. Whatever, bottom line is I can’t really predict next week but I can try to put a schedule together tonight and maybe abide by it as best I can. Whatever.

#weekly update

8 notes · View notes

fumblingmusings · 9 months

Note

Okay but this post when Eva/Evelyn just fucking decides she's had enough of her politicians, kings and queens and every other nation who is giving her headaches.

Just ... Fucks off to a secluded part of England, maybe where one of her homes use to be, and fucking decides to be a farmer kind of Barbie and the Diamond Castle style.

She doesn't tell ANYONE, just fucking disappears one day, and it takes everyone a while to begin worrying ab where their little European Island Nation has gone

"meetings have been calm and quiet recently", " yeah, you're right. ", "... ", "... " , " WHERE IS ENGLAND?! "

Which results in them just half-heartedly trying to find her, and only when something absolutely serious and possibly life threatening is happening in the UK do people actually start to worry

This woman has become a popularly known woman in the little village she's been hiding, for her gorgeous garden and her flowers she displays out of her home for people to take. Just living a relatively calm life under an alias name, tending to her flowers and veggies, walking down the streets and roads in the evening, feeding the local cats and dogs

And when they do find her and try to convince her to go back bc something they are too cowards to handle but a nation can do;happens, she just tells them to piss off.

"But you're our nation!"

"Never have you lot ever listened to me when it came to matters of my home, why should i help"

"Because it's your duty!"

"Not anymore, I'm a gardener, I sell flowers now, so either help me pick these tulips or bugger off"

"So you don't care about the economy or the people?!"

"No"

"..."

"please leave, you're stepping on my Lavender"

The life of a nation is to feel perpetually in the state of

at who's in charge you know?

But yes! I have a half written chapter that I don't really know what to do with, from 1948 where Evie has been quite settled living in the house Alfred bought her. She babysits for the woman next door and knocks on people's doors to give them the carrots and potatoes she's grown and, in general, is quite settled, making quilts and sewing Alfred new suit shirts because he's forever tearing them not paying attention. And then one day, Alfred is like, 'Listen, about Germany, I need you to come with me and help me fly food and coal over the Soviets heads...' and she's like Ah. Sounds fun. Always up for annoying the Russians. She needed a break, and she got one. Now, back to it.

I love the idea though that every nation has that moment where they go: 'you know what? I'm not doing this. fuck off. leave me alone. I don't get paid for this. you use me as a scapegoat. i am removing myself from the situation. which is healthy. apparently.'

I like to think some nations do thrive in their respective civil service. Maybe they really like it (cough cough Ludwig). Maybe other's fucking loathe it and would rather float around like a wisdom sprouting tour guide (Francis). Others take up odd jobs here and there, like Feli does art commissions maybe. Others live like college students (Alfred). Some maybe have genuine jobs (lol. get a real jobbbbb) like Estonia is a software engineer perhaps. Evelyn becomes a midwife. I like that for her. She's done it for hundreds of years and uses her hygiene knowledge, and it involves babies. She is content.

#q&a #fanfic ask

12 notes · View notes

malleleothreesome · 3 months

Note

Have you ever thought about making writing your new '9-5' job? Or is it just a passionate hobby for you?

AKIISAME I LOVE U SO MUCH THANKS FOR SENDING ME THIS FUN QUESTION, I'M SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO RESPOND!!!

Okay, first of all, I'm truly honored you think I could be a full time writer! I told my bff & coworker Emily, who is a professional copywriter, that you sent me this message and she basically told me to never become a full time writer because it sucks all the passion out of writing 😂

That being said, her job as a copywriter is a lot different than the job of like, a novelist or something, and I think writing books could be really fun! I know some fanfics get turned into novels, and that is a very exciting prospect for me, but I'm not sure how I would actually feel about that when it came down to it, or if it something I would want to do.

This year, one of my goals is to write a novel-length fanfic inspired by this idea.

I mostly write in second person, which is apparently not a very marketable perspective for books. One of my greatest joys about what I do here is that I am able to create a story that you all can fully immerse yourselves in and have a deeper connection to. The only reason I started writing in the first place is because I had such an overwhelming love for Malleus and Leona, I needed a medium to express that love through. If I were to actually write a novel length fanfiction that was successful enough to get picked up as a book, I'd have to change so many details to avoid copyright, and I'd have to choose an actual descriptive MC... If it came down to it, I don't know if I would turn down such an offer, but I would certainly have to think through all the pros and cons. The main goal of making profit off of this would be so that I could continue to write fics and pursue other artistic endeavors that would bring me endless joy and fulfillment in my life. Regretfully, I don't have any other book ideas besides things that are inspired by TWST, since MalleLeo occupy too much space in my brain to make room for OCs or other arcs.

Unfortunately, I feel like writing is a lot less profitable than art. I wish I could sell my fanfics in cute lil hardcover books in a similar vein to how artists sell keychains of their faves, but I don't even know if thats something people would want. It would be uncharted territory and D*sney would probably try to take me out.

Another concern is AI and the uncertainty of what the art industry is even going to look like in the next few years... I am lucky that AI writing is not currently very good, but who knows how that is going to change. Before I became a writer and started writing fics, I used to be a lot more concerned for my friend Emily's writing career. However, now that I truly understand what it means to write, I feel a bit more secure against the AI. Line by line, every word I choose to speak, every concept I choose to employ, every direction I send the story in is meticulously crafted... an Erica Original™️. The computers can steal my writing style, but they can't steal my thoughts and my brain... at least not yet (knock on wood). I mean, with writing, there are only so many combinations of words and phrases that you can use. What matters is now is how I, a human, choose to use them. Right now, AI just does what is predictable. I could have a tender moment happening one second, and choose to send Malleus flying off a cliff the next second—and I'd still create a cohesive story that kept y'all on the edges of your seat.

Last but not least, I am a Software Engineer, and I also have a mortgage... the mortgage makes it harder for me to take financial risks, and I would need to make close to how much I'm currently making in my job to feel comfy switching careers... 😅

#if anyone is considering going into the computer science field #feel free to ask me questions or come to me if you need advice #im always happy to help others on this career path #‧͙+ ̊*・༓☾ Erica Answers ☽༓・* ̊+‧͙

6 notes · View notes

supercupcakecollector-love · 9 months

Text

one thing that I don't understand about the Witcher fandom is their apparent dismissal or even hatred of the original author, Andrzej Sapkowski, painting him as a grumpy old miser who doesn't care about his work at all

Usually, whenever there is a fandom that was originally book based the fanbase is very positive toward the author and what they have to say ( provided they are not bigots spreading a hateful message like Orson Scott Card or J. K. Rowling)

im going over a couple of reasons why I think this has happened and debunking them,

this isn't really related to the controversy but I think these two statements likely went against the rhetoric that some fans were spreading

Creators of adaptations of literature works for other media have the right to be sovereign creators, with unrestricted right to creative freedom. However in the particular case of this adaptation, their ideas can be different than mine. And even when some of their ideas are different than mine, so what? My books are not the Bible.

That ‘slavicness’ is rather something akin to a myth, by which my works were overgrown – and I myself too. The label of the ‘Slav’ was given to me and it stayed like that. Why? That Geralt sounds more Slavic than Conan? That I worked something Slavic-alike into onomastics? My first stories strictly adhered to the canon of fantasy – I’m thinking about the world’s canon here. Well, then the translations came and the world’s fantasy industry had to accept a Pole in whose works every smarter readers could spot some ‘Polish’ or ‘Slavic’ [phrases].”

which likely rubbed the “we say accuracy and wanting it to stay “slavic” but we really mean a white supremacist dog whistle’ gamer bro crowd the wrong way

He never criticized the games, he said that he had no opinion because he had not played them and would not because he just isn't a gamer (so Idk how you expect him to praise something he won't play) but that he was sure that they were great. What he complained about was his editors, who used game art on his book covers against his wishes. People took it out of context and started to demonize him, probably due to the fact that the article was most likely poorly translated from Polish into English

But probably the thing that he gets the most criticism for is the “Lawsuit” against CD Projekt Red, there's a lot of misinformation about that “lawsuit” as well.

First of all he never directly sold the rights to CDPR, he sold them to a small company with about 20 employees called Metropolis Software all the way back in 1997, before the book series was even finished, which would later be bought by CDPR, the pc gaming industry was not the multi-billion dollar industry it is now much less in Poland at the time. it is absolutely absurd to think he could have predicted how successful the franchise became in the 2010s, its like criticizing someone for not buying Apple stock in the early 80s

He also never sued anyone, his lawyers just sent a letter requiring more money based on a Polish law source explaining the law (presumably to treat his son's cancer, who died this year) that got blown out of proportion (Sapkowski himself said so), and they resolved it out of court. CD Projekt Red' and him are on good terms now so there is no reason to bring up old conflict

#the witcher #andrzej sapkowski #the witcher books #misinformation #the witcher games

8 notes · View notes

hasufin · 2 months

Text

Internal

Many, many moons ago I worked at a very shitty helpdesk job at a hospital system.

An awful lot of this was supporting patient charting systems. Since patient charting systems contain patient information and I was not clinical staff, I could not access these systems.

Yes, this was inherently stupid.

I spent a LOT of time asking people to read off things on the screen, and having them tell me "It says a lot of tech stuff"; I would then have to convince them that the tech stuff was actually important and that no, they could not stop in the middle of reading it because it was hard to understand, I needed to know what it actually said. Yes, all the words. Also all the letters and numbers. Yes, i had a lot of conversations which went:

"Okay, I need to know the serial number of this printer so I can put in a ticket."

"oooookkaaayy.... um... uh... I don't see it."

"It's a big label on the front of the printer."

"Oh! There it is! Right on the front! It says S..... slash.... N.... then two dots [a colon]... and then a whole bunch of letters and numbers."

"Yes. I need to know what those letters and numbers are."

"Let me find it again. Where did you say it was?"

Anyway.

One of the most frequent things I would get calls about was the "Productivity Tool".

Now, the thing about the Productivity Tool is, it didn't exist. At least, not in any way which was relevant to me.

You're probably imagining some kind of time tracking or scheduling software. And yes, I think that's what it was used for. But "productivity tool" is the absolute most anodyne name for a piece of business software. You can't even look it up.

What it actually was, was an Excel spreadsheet someone had made years ago (at the time; I'm honestly pretty sure they're still using it, so we're talking decades now) with thousands of rows and columns and all kinds of custom formulae. It was on a share drive and the nurses at this one hospital used it to keep track of who would be doing what. It was apparently Very Important for their jobs.

And this ran into two problems.

First, it was Not My Problem. You wanna roll your own, fine, but you're responsible for what you roll. I was neither required nor able to support this spreadsheet. My limits were "Is your computer working?" "Can you connect to the network?" "Do you have access to the network shares to which you're supposed to have access?" "Can you open Excel?". If the Productivity Tool started chanting in Enochian and summoning Knar'lyzoth, Demon of Bedpans and Phlebotomy, well, that's a you thing.

But, point the second, the users who would call me had no idea about any of this. They would be given the vague direction "look it up on the Productivity Tool" and no direction on things like "How do you access this tool?" "How do you use this tool?" or "What is this thing even?". So of course they'd call the Helpdesk, who wasn't trained on, or even told about, this tool because it's not one of ours.

And if there's anything I really took from this, it's that you really need to stop giving weaksauce meaningless names to things, and you ALWAYS need to be asking "What does this look like to someone who is coming in cold?". So much frustration could have been avoided if only someone had actually just told the new nurses "Oh yeah, this is the Hospital's Scheduling Spreadsheet. We use it to keep track of who is taking care of most of our tasks. It's on this share, you ask Claire for access to it, and if you have any trouble Jenny is the person who fixes it." Just a couple of sentences, but soooo much better than throwing new hires to the wolves.

2 notes · View notes

laniemae · 2 months

Text

SIDE ORDER HYPE THEORIES PART 1

An extremely incoherent dump of side order theories and thoughts!

Now uhh side order wild right apparently it’s tomorrow???? I completely misjudged I thought it was this weekend. But ok I don’t even know how to start it so I’m just gonna go wild.

Now let’s address the elephant in the room: is side order a virtual world?

So there is lots of imagery to imply this. A huge number in side order’s aesthetic is digital and glitching aesthetics. The first instance of this sort of imagery appearing was in the first trailer for side order, where in one of the static images shown Marina had some glitching effects. Now that we have more context on the situation (not really? Just a truckload of more digital motifs) I still don’t know what to think about it lmao. The background may look like it’s in the square but I’m not sure. And currently we’ve only seen Pearl drone and 8 there. But even so it looks like concept art so I don’t know how much we can infer from that.

In the second trailer things becoming more apparent. In the scene where the jeletrons (I think that’s what they’re called?) appear there are some glitching blank spaces, like the reality is glitching apart.

And I was just thinking, what if side order isn’t a virtual world but had kinda fake virtual elements??? I don’t exactly know how to explain it but think of something like security breach ruin. Everytime 8 goes into a level a bunch of yellow code reveals the surroundings. Side order is a rougelike and I think it’s said that every level would be unique so perhaps there’s an in universe explanation for that. Perhaps some sort of tech that “loads” the level through code and constructs the surroundings based on that, without necessarily being in a virtual world.

Interestingly enough even outside of the sprite there appears to be some rouge code, surrounding the spire specifically. And when you first wake up in the game the entire place loads in like the levels, implying it’s some sort of construct. But inkoplolis square and deca tower exist in the real world so what’s up with this? Putting that into consideration it wouldn’t make sense why whoever wants to enforce order would create an entire virtual world as that would be redundant. Perhaps going into the theory that lots of the stuff we see is a digital construct perhaps they remodelled the square using this.

But this brings up the question, how would they have this technology and have we seen anything like this before? The closest thing I can think of is octarian technology, but they don’t exactly have this level of stuff here otherwise octarian society wouldn’t be as ruined as it is if they could create stuff from thin air with code. There is some stuff that could come somewhat close to this with the floating error screens in Alterna but it’s nowhere near this level. But there is something notable that comes to mind. In Octo expansion, when you splat any of the sanitised octarians they glitch out instead of explode, and all have distorted voices that sound like they’ve been compressed through some software. This could very much be some aesthetic choice but this strange real-world glitching motif isn’t seen anywhere else in the game, but everywhere in side order. But despite this, the enemies you splat in side order don’t have the same glitch effect, so what’s up with that?

Again this could be some design choice and not actually important but aside this Acht/Dedf1sh’s appearance in this definitely hints to some connection to Octo expansion. Acht was the composer for the songs that play throughout Octo expansion and appears to have done something for octoplush in Alterna as well, implying at some point they might’ve found their way in the area. Acht is a sanitised Octoling who still has some sort of free will/consciousness left and thus can interact with 8 and Pearl like this. This aspect of them is probably how they managed to escape the deepsea metro facility in the first place, perhaps following some time after agent 8 managed to escape from there.

The deepsea metro is directly connected to inkopolis with a pathway leading to it underground. This is perhaps how Acht ended up here in the first place, and got caught up in whatever’s going on, perhaps putting a dent in the virtual world theory.

But that also brings up the question, was Acht in the splatlands? As they seem to have composed a song for octoplush and have their signature on the signature board in splatsville. They probably wouldn’t have to have traveled much due to the train that was built from inkadia to the splatlands but this implies they escaped before whatever happened to inkopolis square happened.

So in conclusion to this part of my ramble I think that side order may perhaps not be a virtual world, but there’s some sort of technology that can use code or whatever to materialise locations and objects. Perhaps using some sort of biological mechanism with microorganisms? Yes I bought this up out of nowhere lmao. There’s also one thing I wanna bring up but don’t know where to put it is that it seems the first thing that’s gonna happen with side order is seeing neo 3 asleep on a train, and having the screen glitch out and transition to inkopolis.

The infinite cycle of order

So the most recent trailer for side order focuses a lot on a cycle. A cycle of advancing through floors, using colour chips and completing objectives. This and the whole thing of the game being an infinitely replayable thing makes sense because it’s a rougelike, but I want to discuss the story implications here.

Already the motif of infinity and cycles is hugely present. Just about everywhere you can find the infinity symbol. It’s present everywhere in levels, on the technology, the 8 ball which is now an infinity ball, the currency, the palette, basically it’s as prevalent as the Alterna and Kamabo co logo, which makes me think it could play a role like those. Alterna was a long lost human civilisation and didn’t exactly have a driving force in the story in its own, rather on how it was used by others.

Kamabo is interesting though. As it was the company Tartar set up to run the test facilities in the deepsea metro while convincing its subjects that if they pass the tests they’ll enter the promised land, but actually just killing them. Lots of the facilities used the original metro to get around and was entirely under the control of the kamabo corporation. So basically, it was a major antagonist force.

So what does this mean for the infinity thing in side order? When I first saw it I suspected it was something like Kamabo, an evil company controlled by the main antagonist that sets up facilitates, but it’s definitely different than that. The infinity thing seems to have control over the weird code and glitching thing that I mentioned earlier might be manifesting objects in the world though technology. But once again how did this facility get hands on tech so advanced we have never seen before? The octarians didn’t even have stuff on this level and all the crazy tech stuff we have seen are still in the realm of stemming from octarian/human tech but this is completely new.

It’s hard to think about how they got this but since this is side order and perhaps this has something to do with order losing to chaos in the splatfest, it could be some sort of counter measure to the more chaotic inkling society has become, and trying to make everything some perfect semi virtual world, but this is a little off track.

Going back to the theory of the role of the infinity thing in the story, one thing that really sticks out to me is off the hooks involvement in it. From the beginning it seems that the infinity thing is some sort of antagonistic force, the one behind this nightmare of order. But looking at the back of the Pearl drone it has exactly the same logo as we see everywhere. And it doesn’t just stop there. The special cans that resemble marina’s hyper bombs have the same logo, and the pop up screen that shows in the trailer when she’s hacking into the system to give agent 8 more lives.

So what’s going on here? Why are off the hook associated with this infinity thing which is likely the one causing this? There’s a lot of ways this could go. Perhaps they’re not affiliated with it specifically and are using technology that was from the code or whatever I was going on about with that theory. This approach could mean that at some time perhaps the Pearl drone could get hijacked and someone pretending to be Pearl could misguide you. There’s also perhaps that off the hook is somewhat actually working for the villains (assuming the infinity thing is villainous). I don’t know why they’d side with it especially that what they’re doing goes entirely against their whole attitude towards the final fest but this is interesting to think about. Perhaps instead of willingly joining they were coerced into bringing 8 into this mess? As 8 seemed to wake up with no idea how they got there.

So that’s kinda the whole deal with what its involvement in the story could be but I wanna go back to my point of infinity/cycle symbolism. As I said the trailers make a big deal out of repeating a cycle to ascend the spire of order. Perhaps this cycle could be symbolic of something and by perpetuating this agent 8 could be doing more harm than good, getting stuck in a vicious cycle of order or whatever’s going on. The philosophical implications for this are really interesting. And this could’ve been already bought up before as the creatures that reside in the square that we see are describes to be “like cogs in a machine to create a far more complex cycle of social order.” So perhaps they’re stuck in some stagnant cycle as well, unable to escape from this world that was built for them. And maybe agent 8 is getting manipulated into this same cycle by ascending the tower, and perhaps the only way we move forward is to break the cycle. I’ve always found breaking out of stagnation and cycles and stuff to be an incredibly interesting storyline so I’m really exited for this.

Some other things I want to point out that is that in the very first trailer we see multiple Octolings standing on some sort of thing. It’s concept art so I don’t know if it’s outdated or whatever and I kinda forgot why I even bought this up in the first place but perhaps it could be of some sort of relation, although that’s just vibes for me.

So basically I think a whole cycle of infinity and

repetition is going to become important from all the infinity motifs we’ve seen so far and the gambler focus of a cycle. And wondering what this infinity thing is and if it plays an antagonistic force in the story and why off the hook are involved.

gonna make a part 2 to this soon post was getting too long

#Splatoon #splatoon 3 #side order #splatoon theory #You can clearly tell I did not plan this at all #Just vomit everything in my brain onto here #No cohesion or whatever just a bunch of random side tracking

2 notes · View notes

randomvarious · 1 year

Audio

Next Evidence - "Dune" Stockholm Mix Sessions 2 by Jesper Dahlbäck Song released in 1999. Mix released in 2000. Deep House

It's kinda strange how you can't find a proper bio about this French deep house duo anywhere. You'd think that when an enormous major label like Capitol/EMI puts out someone's album, it'd help to generate some kind of fanfare for the artist, but it doesn't really appear to have done so in the case of Next Evidence; at least not to the point where some professional music writer publishes a few sentences online about what the duo does and where they're from. All we really have to go on here is a poorly written, unverified thing from some last.fm user. Crazy.

But allow me to piece together a narrative here that differs slightly from that last.fm entry. Next Evidence was made up of Maxime Cohen and Michael Tordjman. In '97, while they were both in their mid-20s, the pair put out their debut record, and in '98, they started their own small record label, Basic Recordings, which ended up releasing material from a handful of house talents, including Julien Jabre and Dennis Ferrer.

The following year, with five releases solidly under their belt as a duo, Next Evidence put out an EP called Sands on the Paris-based Versatile Records. And it's on that little EP that you'll find a deep house banger of theirs called "Dune."

Now, what appears to have sonically set Next Evidence apart from most of their fellow deep house peers is that they had a special affinity for African percussion. While most deep house makers were just using standard drum machines or software to construct their backbeats, these guys were on some different shit, making sure that just the basest parts of their own productions were unique enough to catch and then captivate one's ear. And that approach, when it comes to just the music itself, will definitely give you a leg up on your competition, because at jump, when all you've really introduced is your drums, you're already putting out something that doesn't sound like most of what else is out there, and your tune’s barely even gotten started yet! And that's not to say that others weren't also using African percussion in their deep house at the time, but it definitely wasn't nearly as commonplace as other methods of crafting a backbeat.

So, next, you add some space-dubby synth-work to the track, and then by making some slight alterations here and there, you can just coast on that combo for as long as you'd like and you'll still have a mighty fine track, right? Well, yeah, you could do that, but Next Evidence had other ideas, because just as you really start to sink yourself into this groove for the long haul, they decide to unexpectedly seep in some fantastically sex-wet jazz sax, courtesy of some French dude named Denis Guivarc'h, who'd apparently been lending his talents to records for years before this one and still does to this day. He's doesn't appear to have ever released anything on his own, but you can hear his exploits on a sizeable chunk of releases that have been coming out since the early 90s.

And then after Guivarc'h finishes his part, a new top layer of percussion suddenly arrives, courtesy of a guy named Nicolas Krassilchik, who provides an awesome solo on timbales, further enhancing this experience even more. According to Discogs, this was only Krassilchik's second-ever appearance on wax, but it sure as shit doesn't sound like it, because his contribution here is simply electric. And Krassilchik is another guy who's never released anything on his own either, although he was a member of a group called 26 Pinel, who ended up putting out a couple albums in the mid-2000s.

This fully-packed track is amazing. Like, I would've totally dug it if it was just only made up of those drums and synths; it was that good already. But then Cohen and Tordjman decide to bring in those back-to-back sax and timbales solos, and the song just ascends to another plane 😌.

What a superb tune from this duo who you can barely find anything about online, even though they've had a major label album release!

#deep house #house #house music #dance #dance music #electronic #electronic music #music #90s #90s music #90's #90's music

13 notes · View notes