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reachfolk · 3 years

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1-5 for the character development questions for Alexandria!

💛 from @korvanjund

this took forever to write cause of course i had waY too much to say omfl, but it was super fun!! tysm for the ask darlin <3

what (or who) would your character die for? live for?

family, family, family!! literally everything for alexi goes back to family. she may be on bad terms with her father's side (understatement of the century, but that's for question 3 lmao), but she would do literally anything for her siblings. protecting them is the main reason she's willing to overcome every fear in her fight against alduin. of course, she's also just as close with her aunt ursula. and she may have... a complicated relationship with her mother and father, she loves them and would do anything to keep them safe.

as for what she'd die for, she's just as dedicated to the cause of freeing the reach from nord control as most reachfolk. it's largely because she sees the reachfolk as an extension of her family. the reach is her home and she's so unabashedly proud of that. granted, she isn't as extreme in her views as the forsworn, but we're not gonna get into the highkey racism in the way bethesda wrote that whole faction lmao.

who (or what) does your character love most in the world? why?

this is such a hard question to answer cause like *slaps roof of alexi* this sweet girl can fit so much love in her. if she like, absolutely HAD to pick a handful of people, it would be her siblings (no, she couldn't pick between them even with a gun to her head, and tbh neither could they). i could literally go on for HOURS about her siblings and why they're all so close, but the tldr is that they're really the only people in the world that Get her. their social standing has always been in a really precarious place given how drastically different their mother and father's backgrounds are, and so they never particularly fit in with most kids from their social class. but they also didn't get very much of a chance to connect with their reachfolk heritage. i won't go so far as to call them outcasts, but they were definitely seen as... different, and there weren't many opportunities for them to feel like normal kids except for when they were with each other. but the other people alexandria is closest to are her aunt ursula, bothela (vanilla npc, the lady who runs the hag's cure), and ophelia from her coven.

that covers it for people, but the thing she loves most in the world is easily alchemy! it literally shows in every part of her mannerisms and shapes the whole way she looks at the world. a huge part of why she's so connected to namira is because she's so drawn to even the most grotesque things in the world, because there's opportunity in all of them to create something new and helpful. it's why she got so close to bothela, bc she's the one that trained alexi in alchemy since she was a kid.

who (or what) does your character hate most in the world? why?

this is ironic considering the first question but literally it's her uncles, thonar and thongvor silver-blood lol. i'm sure anyone who's been in markarth knows that they aren't exactly stand up dudes, but after the whole issue with the forsworn conspiracy came out, she probably had to be physically restrained by her companions to keep her from killing them then and there. she spent a huge part of her childhood knowing there was a target on her back and the backs of her parents and siblings, because there's nothing thonar and thongvor want more than to get rid of them entirely. despite the fact that she had such a fancy upbringing, her uncles were the reason none of them were ever given a real chance to rest. and then there's sooo much to say about how that exacerbated isobel's anxiety issues, which all of her kids including alexi later inherited. alexi literally carries that pain in her genes and she's never been able to get away from it no matter how hard she's tried.

again, this is one of those things i could talk about for ages, so if u wanna hear about one of the many times her uncles actively made an attempt on the lives of her parents and siblings, feel free to send me an ask abt it i'll happily tell u everything. there's like a 30k fic idea there but i have the gist of it all written in my drafts lol.

on top of all of that, she definitely has a LOT of issues with everything they do in the reach. like, ulfric stormcloak gets an honorary mention for this question, and the fact that they support him sure as fuck doesn't help. and considering the fact that she's been sent to cidhna mine and often helped out in the warrens, she's seen the worst of what the silver-bloods did to her people.

what is your character's main goal? does this goal change, or does it remain consistent throughout the story?

tbh this one is also hard to answer bc the game devs of bethesda are COWARDS and they didn't give us this option in the game even though all the pieces were there, but i feel like alexi would almost inevitably join the rebellion to liberate the reach. when she left home, she was still trying to make sense of things, and she just needed to put some distance between herself and all the things tearing her in different directions. she'd spent so much of her life trying to placate everyone that she couldn't figure out what her goal is until she was in a place where she didn't have to think about everyone else.

but no matter what, i think all roads lead to home for her. she may have had a strained relationship with the forsworn (esp when madanach was in prison and working for her uncles in secret), but she'd join when madanach is given free reign to control the rebellion as he sees fit rather than have to bend backwards to satisfy thonar. i personally hc that after that, the forsworn's actions are more controlled and they start to operate less like a disjointed faction of bandits and more like, yknow, people fighting for an actual cause. once she rebuilds her faith in the rebellion, she'd definitely join up.

does your character achieve their main goal? if so, does achieving this goal satisfy them?

again, hard to say since there's no in-game way for this to happen bc the devs were weak, BUT in my heart of hearts i like to pretend that there was a proper questline where u join up with madanach and retake the reach. after everything they've been through, i really hope it'll be canon that they finally are able to liberate themselves. i do think alexandria and her siblings would all do their part to help the rebellion, and their auntie was probably a proponent of the forsworn's rule during the great war, so they're in the clear. i'd imagine the situation is more complicated with their parents.

regardless of whether or not the forsworn are ever able to retake the reach, alexi definitely spends most of her life running around skyrim with the hope of fighting against people's prejudices against the reachfolk. (in the verse where she's the ldb) she kind of understands her role as an essential figurehead to the movement and how she's key to earning the nord's respect. i mean, it'd be hard to argue that they're evil savages when one of their own literally saved every single mortal soul on nirn. so, yeah, i think she feels pretty satisfied with that lol

#tes #tesblr #cozy answers #oc: alexandria silver blood #can u tell i get overly excited to talk about lexi??#skyrim oc #reachfolk

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1949coupe · 3 years

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Originally posted by a House Cleaning Worker at Walter Reed Hospital

Trump’s housekeeper at Walter Reed

Trump’s housekeeper at Walter Reed has a story to tell about Trump and his stay during his COVID - 19 bout. It really speaks volumes about him and his hypocrisy. “Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, is a world-class facility dedicated to caring for those who bravely sacrifice and serve this country. When President Donald Trump entered the hospital earlier this month to be treated for COVID-19, he was greeted with a team of world-renowned doctors ready to provide him with gold-standard medical care, experimental vaccines and all of the resources he needed to recover. He stayed comfortably in the hospital’s presidential suite, equipped with a kitchen, living room, conference room and dining room with a crystal chandelier. My co-workers know these rooms well, as they were tasked with cleaning the president’s suite. I’ve worked as a contracted cleaner at Walter Reed for 16 years, scrubbing toilets, floors, windows, ceilings, walls, countertops and more. I am blessed to have my job. But here’s the thing. Within the walls of Walter Reed, there is a tale of two pandemics. The president received the best medical attention that taxpayer money could buy ― to the tune of over $100,000. But as the housekeepers, janitors, cooks, security and other service workers at Walter Reed, our experience with COVID-19 has been nothing like Mr. Trump’s. I had COVID-19 earlier this year, as did several of my colleagues. We all have had several friends and family members pass away from the virus, including nearly 140 members of my union, SEIU 32BJ. We did not have the benefit of being rushed to a hospital with a team of doctors devoted to us. All we could do was isolate ourselves at home and do everything we could to beat it on our own. We were told to only go to the hospital if we had trouble breathing because, thanks to the Trump administration’s failure to control the pandemic, our health care system was too overwhelmed to care for us. Health care workers were left to frantically triage patients into tiny hospital rooms and hallways packed with beds. There were not even enough ventilators to go around, a shameful reality inside a first-world nation. Like millions of Americans, I had to deal with the uncertainty that comes with this virus. After seeing so many people in my community and inside Walter Reed face it, testing positive was one of my deepest fears realized. Would the side effects suddenly get worse? What will I do if I have trouble breathing? I reckoned with the chance that I could die. Who would provide for my family, and what kind of a future would they have without a mother? Unlike the president, I had no professional care to reassure me or treat new pains or changes in my condition. I took care of myself drinking home remedies, alone in my bedroom. I tried to stay calm and reassure myself that I’d fully recover. I did everything I could not to expose my family. Unlike the president, I am a devout Catholic who believes that life is too precious to do anything that might cause someone harm. As is always the case, my faith in God helped me get through from one day to the next. When I recovered, I quarantined for two weeks, and I continue to wear a mask whether I’m at work or outside. I always stay away from groups of people. The insulting irony is that the president ignores every guideline that we faithfully follow. My co-workers and I have taken every step possible to avoid spreading this virus for months. We have always worked hard to maintain high standards, but now our work can be a matter of life or death for us, our families and those who’ve sacrificed for this nation. The pressure of knowing that a single mistake could get you or someone else infected is ever present, even when you go home at night. We disinfect everything. We wear masks, gloves, PPE and wash our hands religiously to avoid getting others sick, a basic human decency. That’s why it’s so hard to believe that our own president not only downplays the virus, but has also been reckless in handling his own COVID-19 infection. Minutes after returning to the White House, he took off his mask and walked inside, exposing anyone nearby to this potentially deadly illness. He continues to spout complete lies and headed back on the campaign trail, only a week after his hospital stay. His rallies of maskless supporters packed shoulder to shoulder expose his staff, Secret Service agents, local communities and health care workers. His superspreader events are perpetuating sickness, death and economic hardship for American families. He ignores social distancing guidelines and rarely wears a mask ― and the worst part is that others follow his lead. It especially angers me to watch as he campaigns to win over Latino voters, while Black and Latino people are roughly two to three times more likely than their white counterparts to contract the coronavirus, roughly four times more likely to be hospitalized and nearly three times as likely to die from the virus that the president has failed to contain. Every person who cleaned Mr. Trump’s suite at Walter Reed was Latino. He does not care about us ― he cares about himself and his wallet. I will never forgive the president for putting so many lives in danger when his job is to protect us. It fills me with deep sadness. I cried for the White House housekeepers who got infected and were directly impacted by his dangerous behavior and arrogance. We’ve been bearing the brunt of this crisis physically and emotionally, while the president continues not to take this pandemic seriously. His administration calls us essential, but no one recognizes our hard work or pays us what we deserve. In these painful times, I dream of having a competent and honest leader in the White House who recognizes our sacrifice. Joe Biden has promised to treat us like the essential workers we are, by giving us paid leave, hazard pay, free testing, affordable treatment and expanded unemployment. Doing all that we can to save lives must also include voting for change.

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sights-on-the-scifi · 5 years

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FALLOUT 4 and the regression of the thematic purpose and visual design of ghouls.

The following is a restored post.

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion on the effects of atomic war on the human body, visuals included. And spoilers for Fallout 1, 2 and 3.

Most modern fallout players have never touched the original games, which is a shame because they are missing out on a lot of what made the series so special. For those who have played the first two groundbreaking titles the dilution of the design, thematic and narrative qualities of the series become apparent in more ways than one.

Ghouls in FALLOUT have had a unique role to play in the franchise, for they are not just supposed to be this acceptably deformed looking zombie species with human minds and qualities, as they are depicted in the most recent Bethesda fallout titles.

They are simply human beings. Victims of the terrible circumstances that result from radiation or the long term survivors of the complete and utter destruction of a bygone era. The fallout universes’ alternative history, where the cold war never ended and the cultural standards of the 1940′s and 50′s were never moved past.

Ghouls in the original FALLOUT games were deformed in a variety of ways be that through the destruction of the ear and nasal cartilage, the atrophy of or complete loss of muscle, loss of fat and skin, even the loss of hair.

These rotting features while exaggerated in fallout both in the narrative and design are actually calling specific attention to the real examples of the devastation caused to the human body as a result of a nuclear attack.

Wax figure representations of the suffering victims of the atomic attack on Hiroshima 1945.

These wax figures show survivors wandering aimlessly as their skin, fat and even muscle falls off their bones.

The ghoul’s horrifyingly graphic visual representation is entirely intentional.

What makes the ghouls so sympathetic is how their humanity and character shines through the rotting appearance, how their spirit fights on despite their “eternal” lifespan and the fact they are constantly on the verge of completely falling apart physically or simply just rotting away until they can no longer function. Harold, in particular, is a great example for his decay is established in FO1 and continues all the way to FALLOUT 3 where the tree growth mutation completely consumes him and makes him immobile.

They are human beings, doomed to a painful existence within a slowly rotting body. Plagued also with radiation mutations.

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Ghouls who have lived well before the bombs fell are also similar in addition to the insight they offer on the lost world. Articulating regret, critical nostalgia, and experience of the tragic events. Even culture, politics and society of the old world.

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FALLOUT 3 for all its faults understood this.

But… in FALLOUT 4 that all changed drastically.

Some key features of the thematic purpose of ghouls remain in this newer depiction, though mostly… It used as a medium to dish out stupid jokes and absurd stories usually involving the 200 year time period between the atomic war and present-day wasteland world that resulted from it…

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Yes, that’s right! The terribly stupid, laughing stock moment in the critically panned movie Indiana Jones and the crystal skull made its way to fallout but not as an easter egg, rather a fully fledged quest we are expected to take completely seriously and not question.

…Bethesda, in an effort to make the ghouls more appealing, acceptable and “cooler” to the gaming audience consuming their titles, completely altered the original design of ghouls in the franchise. They are no longer all that is described above and they actually don't at all look too bad for survivors of a friggin atomic war and being 200 years old, with the extent of the damage being a loss of nasal cartilage and melted ears. Complete often with a full head of intact hair.

I call them “pretty zombies” This new appearance was immediately adopted by the fallout 4 fanart community, as it offered a chance to further romantic pursuits and make the characters look more attractive Hancock being an obvious example. Which is fine… But it runs completely contrary to the original purpose of ghouls in the world of Fallout.

This follows Bethesdas overall more light-hearted, positive and retro-nostalgic take on the post-nuclear role-playing experience and its just not compelling to me in the slightest.

I hope you can see based on all the examples I just gave above, why this is fundamentally disrespectful to the original ghoul designs not just visually but also in terms of themes and story.

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This concludes my analysis.

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screechinginternetcloud · 3 years

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Reget For Mac

Many authors have written eloquently at great length on the horrors of war. Ulsterman writes equally eloquently, but much more succinctly, on the same subject in 'Mac Walker's Regret,' a story that will stay with readers long after they finish it.

After you've chosen a name for the disk after it's erased, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the dropdown menu and click Erase. (If you want to encrypt your disc for extra security.

Regrets

ReGet Junior is a download manager created especially for novices. You don't need to configure anything, the program will automatically detect settings for. Enter to Search.

By Bernadeen

A/N: Thanks for your reviews. Here's the last chapter.

Chapter 7

Harm continued to recover at an amazing rate. When Mac went to see him the next day, he was out of ICU. The following day he was sitting in a chair when she entered his room. They joked and flirted, almost like old times, but both knew a time would come to talk about this new closeness.

Two weeks later, the doctors told Harm he could be go home if someone was there to look after him. When the news was conveyed to Mattie, she immediately said she would stay out of school to take care of him. Harm made it clear that Mattie was not to miss school on his behalf. In the end, Mac was able to clear her schedule and persuade the admiral that she should be with Harm during the day. The doctors expected that Harm wouldn't need help for more than a week.

A routine was established wherein Mac arrived at Harm's just after breakfast. Coates would take Mattie to school while Mac took over 'Harm watch' for the day. Harm didn't really need physical help – it was mostly to ensure that he didn't overdo things, to pick up groceries or prescriptions since Harm wasn't allowed to drive yet, and to keep him from going stir crazy in his apartment.

At first, they were slightly awkward with each other, but Mac was determined that nothing would slow up Harm's recovery. Therefore, she was persistently cheerful and ready to help Harm in anything he needed, almost before he knew he needed it. In fact, it was Mac who sometimes felt a bit stir crazy since Harm's recovery included long naps during the day. She brought files with her so that she was able to feel productive both as a friend and as a lawyer.

Near the end of the week, Mac drove Harm to Bethesda for a follow up doctor's appointment. The doctor was pleased with Harm's progress. He no longer needed someone with him in his apartment. The doctor scheduled another appointment in a week, but expected that if Harm's recovery continued at the current pace, it was likely that Harm would be cleared for limited duty after that.

When Mac and Harm arrived back at Harm's apartment, both were in a thoughtful mood. Mac tried to sound cheerful as she said, 'Well, I guess my temporary assignment is finished. You'll be glad to have you privacy back, I expect.'

Reget For Mac Os

Harm gazed at her with sadness and longing. 'I was getting used to having you around… I liked it.'

Mac's almost made some flippant remark, but stopped herself in time. Instead, she thoughtfully returned his look. 'So did I,' she said honestly.

Harm stepped closer to Mac and raised his hand to touch her cheek. 'Mac, I don't want to go back to where we were before I got shot. I know we've both hurt each other a lot lately, but … can we just go on from here? … I don't want to lose your friendship again.'

At Harm's first words, Mac's heart began to race. Finally, they could be honest in their feelings. Then his last words dealt her a discouraging blow. He only wanted friendship. She hesitated a few seconds before responding, needing to control her disappointment. She wasn't quite successful as her voice trembled slightly. 'I don't want to lose your friendship either,' she agreed but didn't quite meet his eyes.

Instantly Harm knew he had made yet another mistake, but wasn't sure what it was. This time, though, he wasn't about to back down. 'Mac, talk to me. I know I just said something wrong, but I don't know what. I don't understand.'

'No, you didn't,' Mac tried to speak convincingly. Harm didn't need the added stress of knowing how she felt and feeling guilty for not being able to return her love. Besides, her self-preservation was beginning to kick in. She continued with more confidence, 'I value your friendship more than you'll ever know, Harm.' Then she grinned. 'And I'm looking forward to kicking your butt in court again.'

'Oh, no, you don't. You're not getting away with that diversionary tactic this time. Tell me why you looked so sad just then. Please?' Harm's instincts told him they needed to be honest with each other now or it might never happen.

Mac sighed and turned away from him. She paced across the room, turned back and stopped a few feet away, as she gathered her strength around her. Drawing a deep breath, she took the plunge, 'I was sad because you only want my friendship while I … I want your … love.'

Harm could hardly believe Mac's words. His heart began to beat harder and faster, causing a dull pain in his still healing chest. When, by reflex, he brought his arm up to cover his chest and went slightly pale, Mac felt a stab of terror and instantly regretted her words.

'Harm .. Harm, are you all right?' She moved quickly to take his arm and lead him the couch. 'God, I knew this wasn't the right time to get into that discussion. I am so sorry.' She sank down beside him, slipping an arm around his waist.

Harm was slightly short of breath, more from excitement than from any pain. 'Mac, I'm fine. You just caught me off guard.' He turned to her and again lifted his fingers to her face. His voice was like a soft caress, 'you have my love, Sarah, don't you know that? You've had it for very long time.'

Mac could only stare. No words would form in her brain so she simply leaned forward, sliding both arms around Harm and holding him tight. His strong arms answered her embrace. They just held each other as both of them soaked up the new feeling of knowing each was loved. After a few minutes they drew back far enough to confirm the knowledge as they saw the love and longing in their gaze. Almost reverently they shared their first kiss as lovers, a kiss that quickly became urgent with need. Mac's lips parted as she invited Harm's tongue to explore, then she took her turn tasting and caressing. As their embrace escalated and threatened to become out of control, Mac finally drew back. 'Harm, slow down. I don't want you to overdo things. You're still recovering.'

Drawing a deep, calming breath, Harm loosened his embrace. 'The way I feel now, I'd chance it, but you're probably right. I love you and I've waited a long time for you. I don't want to wait a second longer than necessary, so the sooner I'm healed, the sooner we can continue this, right?'

Mac smiled shyly, 'I love you, too.' Her smile became more sly. 'And we can practice a little more each day, just to build your strength.' As she gazed into his eyes, her smile faded and she became more pensive. 'When I thought I was going to lose you, I didn't know how I would live without you. You've been in danger so many times, and each time I've been terrified. But afterward I could never bring myself to tell you how I felt. I thought you only wanted to be friends. And I wanted so much more. That night as I waited to learn whether you would live, I had so many regrets – regrets for a lost friendship, regrets for not trying again to tell you how I felt, regrets for the promise of a baby that might never be conceived, regrets for so many lost opportunities. We've waited so long and we still have some things to work out, but this is it, isn't it, Harm? .. what we've both always wanted? '

Harm drew Mac back into a strong embrace as he answered, 'Yes, my love. This is it.' And he proceeded to show Mac a glimpse of their future.

End

Post #1,000 on this blog. Fitting that it’s Python nerd shit, huh?

I needed a way to search for MAC addresses, which are unique identifiers for networking hardware. For example, if your computer has a built-in Ethernet port, as well as wireless capability, then it has 2 MAC addresses. These are always 6 groups of 2 hexadecimal characters (0 through 9, and A through F). E.g., a valid MAC address would be: 01:98:DF:9E:10:37. Theoretically, every MAC address on every computer in the world will be unique, as the naming scheme provides over 281 trillion possible combinations (281,474,976,710,656).

Canonically these groups of 2 hex digits are separated by a colon, but many people record them with hyphens instead. So I needed to search for this particular pattern of characters amid a potentially-vast amount of text. Enter regular expressions (which I totally suck at using).

The regex I came up with is:

Going through it, piece by piece: [a-fA-F0-9] = find any character A-F, upper and lower case, as well as any number [a-fA-F0-9]{2} = find that twice in a row [a-fA-F0-9]{2}[:|-] = followed by either a “:” or a “-” character (the backslash escapes the hyphen, since the hyphen itself is a valid metacharacter for that type of expression; this tells the regex to look for the hyphen character, and ignore its role as an operator in this piece of the expression) [a-fA-F0-9]{2}[:|-]? = make that final “:” or “-” character optional; since the last pair of characters won’t be followed by anything, and we want them to be included, too; that’s a chunk of 2 or 3 characters, so far ([a-fA-F0-9]{2}[:|-]?){6} = find this type of chunk 6 times in a row

Let’s give it a shot.

First, a list of strings… e.g., a row from a comma-delimited file (returned via the csv module):

Run it:

Reset For Macbook

Next, a string:

Run it:

Reget For Macbook

Fuckin’ bickety-bam, the whole stage comes crashing down.

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wisewellness · 4 years

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taffytrotski · 7 years

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It's Cold Enough Out There

This photo was taken on the coldest day and night of that February, two years ago. I had gone to Burlington, KY to spend a few days with Sami Bisharah and on the second day I bundled up to venture out into the single digit temperatures to take some photos of his wooded hillside property covered with the sugary chrystaline snow from a storm two nights previous. After an hour out there, despite the fact that I was sweating as much as I would on one of those late July Ohio Valley afternoons at 95° and 95% humidity, all motor control in my hands had come to a state in which my fingers were operating with all the dexterity but even less articulation than a Barbie doll’s legs, and feeling as if they were at a searing temperature sufficiently hellish to transform those perfectly and impossibly shapely doll legs into the puddle of molten plastic they would be as it reaches flash point, begins flaming and regains the blackness of the sludgy, cloying state that it held as petroleum buried deep in the earth for many, many millions of years. Let me explain. On the afternoon of Christmas 1977 I got on my bike, heading to the home of the Hanson family(Jenifer Hanson). That day it was unseasonably warm, in the high 50°s and I was anxious to get away from my home where the holiday was that year (most years) driven by the dysfunction of an alcoholic, abusive father and a mother who, though physically impaired by a serious and painful injury, was perpetually holding onto all she could; house; kids; cars; even husband, as every case of beer and bottle of licour he consumed threatened to wash it all away into an abyss that she had been raised in but managed to escape and was determined never to return to. Add to that less than idyllic household my homosexuality as a third, or possibly sixth elephant in the room and you should understand why after the chain broke on my bike a scant quarter mile out, even after I struggled unsuccessfully to fix it in the rapidly falling temperatures, I chose to tarry on as an Alberta Clipper of phenomenal and now legendary force delivered it’s unexpected and massive cargo of sub-zero white Canadian inconvenience. By the time I had reached the outlying, houseless streets of the undeveloped part of the Glenn Lakes subdivision I had been walking against the storm or attempting to repair my bike for over two hours. As I walked past a short cul-de-sac I stopped, marvelling a beautiful swirl of drifted snow about four feet high that had formed there, and thought I should lie down and rest. I had been enveloped by an ironic warmth and a heavy eyed sleepiness that implored me to curl up in that soft blanket of snow bank, but as I tried to put my bike down, I couldn’t release the handlebars and noticed that my fingers had become as white as the snow. That is when I realized something was seriously wrong: I shouldn’t feel that warmth; white immovable fingers is only a good thing when one’s hands were feminine and the stars of an Ivory dishwashing liquid commercial; I have icicles clinging to my fourteen year old’s wispy mustache and my eyebrows and oh, wow, my hair! I have no idea how long I stood there, more than three times talking myself in then out of the deadly respite I wanted to take, but I do know that I left my home at 3pm and arrived at the Hanson’s at 6pm. After peeling my pearly fingers from the icy glaze that had formed over them as they grasped in determination to keep that bike in the afterlife, I rang the doorbell , and a depricating dread washed over me as I stood waiting, thinking how I was going to ruin Christmas for this family that I had come to treasure for its welcoming and loving normalcy that for someone like me was elusive as Bigfoot in the untethered social upheavals of late 1970s America. In a display that heralded the lack of dysfunction and endearing charm of the Hanson family, all six children, ages six to seventeen, and Mom and Dad answered the the door, ready with a good natured, teasing joke about the cold and snow, but their smiling faces were replaced by ones of shocked concern as the gravity of the falling mercury pulled all the levity out of that moment’s orbit and was sufficient, ans cause time to slow and allow me a front row seat to the consequential fallout of the poor judgement of a teenager. Finally Matt, who was seven or eight broke the spell by saying with a humorously candid aplomb “Oooh! His hands are all white!” and this family of eight individuals went into action, leaving behind the dismayal that rang their doorbell on that Christmas evening, so they could attend to the boy whom it had escorted and from whom it needed an immediate intervention. They did so with a precision that dysfunction would have stalled, or worse derailed when presented with such urgency. This is when things become clouded in my memory. I know that Jen called the hospital and relayed the instructions to put my hands under cold running water while Christine assisted me at the kitchen sink, but as the icy cold water ran over my hands, awakening nerve cells that had shut down along with capillaries as the skin cells in my hands had begun to rupture under the expansive preasure of the water inside as it had turned to ice, making it feel as if she had thrust them into fire, and then I passed out from the pain. With little regard for the Winter Storm of the Century that was raging, Jack and Shirley Hanson got me to Bethesda North Hospital while either Christine or Jen held me in the back seat of their car, waiting with me until my parents were able to get there. For several weeks my hands were useless due to pain and the dead skin turning a dark blue, thickening and stiffening before pealing off. To this day I lose feeling and blood flow below 50°, my hands turning that same ghostly white, then as temperatures approach freezing the burning sensation returns, although only to a ghostly degree of what it had been that Christmas night in 1977 when I got frostbite. That afternoon, two years ago at Sami’s house, I came in from the cold, spending the time it took for the burning to abate and the color of life to return to my hands, relating that story as he prepared a dinner of stuffed Arabic aubergines and the two of us drank one of those red Zinfandels with a flavor so big it was practically chewable. With the wine in full effect and dinner settling into our bellies for a along Winter’s nap, we reminisced about the first of many Christmas parties he had hosted after being back in Greater Cincinnati from his native Kuwait. My ex and I along with another friend had spent the night at Sami’s while a snow storm and an ill prepared Kentucky Department of Transportation stranded us and hundreds of travelers just four miles north of us at the Ohio border, far to the south at the Tennessee border hundreds more, and an estimated 10,000 on the Commonwealth’s Interstate Highways. As the evening proceeded and we became as stuffed as those aubergines and were satededly regaled by reminiscences of the early days of our neer twenty year friendship we listened obediently to the truth in the wine as it reminded us that this night the temperature would be dipping to -16°F, making it one of the coldest nights since the Winter of 1977-78, and therefore one best spent protected by a thick layer of blankets and the distractions of dreams. We said our goodnights then he went to his room and I to mine at opposite ends of the house. Within an hour a pain that had thrice before vexed me over the same number of years had me writhing and moaning as it’s severity grew progressively intense. Just two weeks before, in similar circumstances, had I suffered for twelve hours as I waited unnecessarily for a call from my doctor’s office that the naïveté of a fifty-one year old with health insurance for the first time in his adult life (thanks to the ADA) erroneously had me thinking was prudent and requisite. By the time I received that call the pain had passed making it unlikely that the suspected cause of gallstones would be detected but I was told to not hesitate going to hospital emergency should it return. In 1996 I was diagnosed with a disease that is manageable with expensive medications, though without those medications most die within five years of diagnosis, and because that diagnosis resulted in an ineligbility for insurance coverage, I had spent the preceding thirteen years knowing that this disease was ever increasingly likely to bring about by death. Every illness, major and minor, skin blemishes, periods of lethargic exhaustion, for more than a decade seemed a plausible harbinger of my impending demise. I began having fevers monthly, then weekly and finally after three years of this, every few days. Though none were that grim herald, the physiological and psychological impacts of living with such uncertainty, for such a long time, had compounded the then undiagnosed CPTSD I have been treated for over the past two and a half years. What happened next is the linchpin around which these recollections hinge, and that door to which those hinges are affixed opens to a greater sense of humanity. I woke Sami up on what was indeed the coldest night since that long ago Winter and he drove me to University Hospital in his Chevy Suburban with an interior so roomy that after the 45 minute drive the temperature hadn’t climbed much above 0°, though when the nurse at the hospital took mine it was 94°. Once there I had the wretched remains of my badly diseased gallbladder and the single, fist sized gallstone that had been precipitating the plethora of symtoms that, because of the inaccessibility of medical treatment, were attributed to the manageable but deadly disease of which I had been aware. The surgery with complications that directly resulted from the dysfunction of living for such a long time with a badly diseased organ, and a two day hospital stay did not incur a bill that would have been impossible for me to pay, and soon after, for the first time in my adult life my physical and mental health began to improve. When confronted with crisis, the dysfunctional will more often than not become distractedly mired by considerations and worries, some germane most not so much, until the crisis is no longer the focus of action, allowing the impact of that crisis to compound. When confronted with the same crisis those not impaired by dysfunction readily and with the barest modicum hesitation, necessitated by mindful assessment, then immediately following will seek resolution to that crisis, eliminating or working around any impediments. Although far from perfect the ADA sought to eliminate many of the barriers to resolution of the crisis in health care that the dysfunction of American society had allowed to snowball as market forces were given deference over humanity. I will fully admit that health care is not a right under our great Constitution but it is a dysfunction of our society that with the third highest per capita economy in the world; the strongest most sustained economy of the modern era, that such a crisis has perpetuated for more than a century, despite the mission of the government, clearly stated in the Constitution to “promote the general welfare”. Sad.

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delcanprobably · 7 years

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In game mouse cursors

A ramble on mouse cursors that gets a little over technical in bits, and is really just me stating an opinion on how all game devs should do them, even though I’m a tiny little developer who doesn’t deserve to have a say in the matter.

I’m not sure on my opinion of in game mouse cursors. If you don’t know, most triple A game developers (It’s in Dishonored, DOOM, basically every Ubisoft game) don’t actually use the system cursor. Instead, they get the position of the mouse, stick a UI sprite in that position, then make the mouse invisible. They also often move the image based on the mouse’s momentum (I’m looking at you Bethesda). “Why would you do this?” I hear you ask, and to be honest, there’s no catch all answer. Maybe it’s so you can do more complex mouse animations? Maybe it’s because some engines don’t change the mouse cursor visibility particularly well, so instead they just disable and enable a sprite? I don’t know, but the point is, it’s usually a disadvantage. In Dishonored, the mouse cursor never changes, let alone play an animation. Same goes with Ubisoft’s games. The best you can do with an ingame mouse cursor is a single frame delay. So in other words, moving the mouse takes a 60th of a second to actually work, assuming you’re running at 60fps and excluding hardware based delays (wireless signal transimissions, monitor update rate, etc).

If you didn’t know, I’m making a game. In the main menu, I made it so clicking things applies a cinematic-bloom-lens-flare-fish-eye-thing, as seen in this video;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W26w9E9Nntg

Now, I decided that it looked a bit jarring to have the cinematic-bloom-lens-flare-fish-eye-thing (hereby named the CBLFFET) happen when the mouse was just sort of there. When using the system cursor, you can’t apply any sort of gamespace animations to it. You can change the sprite the cursor uses, but you can’t actually animate it in the way you can animate the rest of the menu. So what I did was, I made the simplest possible in-game mouse cursor I could. I got the mouse’s location, got that relative to the canvas, and moved an image to the location of the mouse. I also changed the anchor point of the image so it’s origin (the spot where it’s position actually relates to) was at the tip of the cursor. This results in the best in-game cursor you can get - the one frame delay cursor. This means that I can apply the CBLFFET to the mouse. This is what it looks like;

(mp4 version)

This looks pretty good. It’s hard to see from the gif how smooth it is, but please look at the mp4 to see the higher framerate. This doesn’t actually move the mouse, so you can spam a button and not have to worry about realigning afterwards. Because of this, I decidesed to set up whole number sliders (sliders that click into different options, i.e. an Antialiasing slider which just goes 0, 2x, 4x, 8x, as opposed to a sensitivity slider which goes into 8 decimal places on the backend.

I then figured, if you’ve got a low framerate, the mouse is going to move jittery and sluggishly, which overall just provides a painful experience as you go through the options and turn everything to bare minimum. Of course, this shouldn’t be a problem on the main menu with no 3D rendered stuff, but preparing for the pause menu is probably a good idea.

So then I figured, maybe that’s not enough for some people. Maybe there are people who, unlike me who simply has mixed feelings and doesn’t really care if a cursor is ingame or not, actually have severely negative opinions on it. Perhaps a childhood incident causes ingame cursors to trigger flashbacks of the war. Point is, I put a button on the options screen to allow people to change it. Case in point;

(mp4 version)

You can see here that when the system cursor is on, it’s a bit more convienient to move the cursor out the window. I have set it up so the cursor reappears outside of the window, but in Unity itself this doesn’t work well. I’ve also set this button up so it saves a registry key so the game remembers what the player has set this as. Video games provide this wonderful thing called choice, use it. This (this being the button) was unbelievably simple to code. There’s no excuse why big game companies need to omit such an option from the menus, nor is there a reason why big game companies need to make the cursor be ingame anyway with the way they use it. I decided to show what having an ingame cursor can actually do aside from the style of animation I’m doing;

(mp4 version)

Okay, so maybe not the most useful thing in the world to have the mouse cursor spin, but how about this;

(mp4 version)

It’s simple, it’s smooth, it’s informative, it’s plain, and most importantly, it’s actually using ingame cursors in a good way. Without an ingame cursor here, you’d need to make a frame for every shade of red you want the cursor to be. So if you’re running the game at 60fps, you’d need to have 30 frames of this 64x64 image minimum (white to red, then play in reverse to make it go back to white).

With an ingame cursor, I needed to make three frames. Keyframes though, not normal frames;

Then all I needed to do is loop the animation, a task not made as simple as you’d think with Unity’s mechanim (instead of just making the animation end and loop, Unity think “Oh, why don’t we make a transition so it smoothly changes from white to white!”).

There’s not just aesthetic things you could do with this. You can also use this to make the mouse cursor actually effect things. You could give the cursor a collider, move it into a 3D environment, and have it physically move objects. You could make a game out of a similar concept. You could make clicking an item in an inventory disables the system cursor and just moves the item, making it much smoother and fluid to drag and drop items. You could do more advanced aesthetic changes like, for example, applying vector based motion blur to the cursor.

Or you could do what I did and put it behind a 3x3x3 cube array, applied some TAA, Depth Of Field, and a twist distortion, and ended up making the user experience generally unenjoyable;

(mp4 version)

Point being, if you’re going to use an ingame cursor, use it well (oh hai Pony Island).

#gamedev #game devlopment #gamedevelopment #game design #ui

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