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fallout-lou-begas · 4 years

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Questions for OC Creators

Shamelessly stole this from @tarberrymentats‘ post because I’m always a sucker for behind-the-scenes character inspiration and meaning stuff, so if you steal this in turn, feel free to tag me!

(I’m also stealing Halk’s usage of lovely art by @yesjejunus for this one 🖤)

Agnes Sands, Courier Six of the Mojave Express

A) Why are you excited about this character?

Agnes was an opportunity to create what felt like a very unorthodox OC, and it’s an opportunity that has certainly paid off. She’s not young, and she’s not a particularly pleasant or easygoing person to be around, but she’s also not the endearingly tragic loner type or a badass army-of-one. She’s not “spunky” or “fun” and isn’t the kind of Fallout character who’s necessarily motivated to do every quest, meet every companion, accomplish every thing. She’s not an important person; being an important person is anathema to her, and the looming, overarching themes of It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’ are these ideas of the hard limits on unlikely heroism, and how you really can’t fly that far on circumstance and luck. I’m very excited for everyone to see how it goes when the going gets tough.

Furthermore, the design and writing process for Agnes was very informed by finding justifications, reasons, and origins for all of her personality traits, skills, and various hang-ups. The result is a character that feels, to me, so deeply real and well-rounded and alive, that Agnes is a person who has lived every one of her 34 years of age, and that in each of those years were key developments that molded her into the person she is. When I write her, I feel like I know her because of how intimately I’ve researched and come to understand the life she’s led. I don’t want to say it comes effortlessly, but there’s a very genuine, sculpted depth to her character that I’m proud of, and it forms the bedrock of It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’.

It is also very important to me that Agnes is a trans woman, and is a trans woman who looks the way she does with a strong jaw and a big nose and long face and a wide body and hairy arms and so many other “masculine” features, because I wanted to create a character with a very real, visceral, visible transness to them, and for this transness to be a meaningful part of her character that informs her relationship to other people and the scarce world of the Mojave Wasteland instead of just an auxiliary character trait. She is no less of a woman for existing the way she does, but I simply wasn’t interested in creating a character or interpreting the Mojave Wasteland in a way that wouldn’t meaningfully grapple with what it really feels like, to me, to be a trans woman.

B) What inspired you to create them?

Many of Agnes’ character traits actually come from mechanical and specialization decisions that I play in game. I often joke that Agnes “just plain sucks,” but it’s true that in my Fallout: New Vegas game, I have encumbrance set to a measly 25 lbs without backpacks (necessitating her shoulder-slung duffel bag), use a directional flashlight instead of the Pip-Boy light (necessitating the shoulder-mounted flashlight), play with dramatically decreased total S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and skill points per level (which is why she’s so bad-to-average at most things except key specialties), and so on. This was the most obvious level of inspiration, and much of Agnes’ personality and backstory is reverse-engineered to justify the aspects of her character suggested and represented by her mechanical stats.

C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?

Epiphanies have come over time, but ultimately I more or less hammered out Agnes’ whole “story” upfront. I have a detailed character bible saved away that covers not only her entire life pre-courier, but the story beats of her experience as the courier thrown into the center of the events of Fallout: New Vegas and the seismic geopolitical power plays leading up to the second battle of Hoover Dam. So, uh, stay tuned for each new issue of IKROAH!

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?

I wouldn’t say that I’ve meant to meaningfully change her appearance over time, but as I’ve been working on the comic, I’ve simply gotten better at drawing and the result has been an Agnes that more consistently looks like how I want her to look. One deliberate change to her appearance has been that her hair is a lot fluffier and voluminous than it used to be, just because a few other peoples’ fanart of her would be like that and I really liked how it looked.

E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?

Hard to say. Agnes has such a defensive, prickly, and particular personality and is so shy and anxious that she’s someone very hard to get along with in general, regardless of who you are. Cass could only ply her through a combination of drunken genuineness and total embarrassment that razor-cut right to her trauma. I don’t think I’d have the...audacious wherewithal to be that blunt with her if we’d just met. The best case scenario is that she imprints on me as a younger trans woman and feels compelled to look out for me because if there’s one soft spot she has, it’s that.

F) What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?

Pride at the amount of work I’ve put into developing her and crafting her story so far, pride at how it’s been such a rewarding and enjoyable vehicle for getting so much better at art and writing since this summer, and occasionally sadness just because, man, I really let her fucking have it sometimes, huh.

G) What trait of theirs bothers you the most?

Her solitary lifestyle made it necessary to find a way to write Cass into the story, just so that there would be some more dialogue while she traveled. She has a lot of interpersonal flaws, her habit of going from totally reclusive and private to hollering mad with no steps in between would certainly be off-putting to me especially. She gets a bad, sad, crying kind of angry, and she doesn’t get there quick but she goes get there suddenly.

H) What trait do you admire most?

She has a dedication to her and a commitment to what she’s good at. She understands the value of stability, good work and a good job. Sometimes this value is so much to her that it keeps her stagnant, and she’s very much a person who’s stuck in their ways in so many regards, but there’s a resilience to her that may not be obvious at first, but that she simply wouldn’t have gotten this far or survived without.

I) Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe?

Agnes’ story is so tailored to the source material of Fallout: New Vegas that I thought that transplanting her into other AUs would be difficult, but it’s actually been pretty seamless inserting her into the a modern AU with a few friends called Courier House, where instead of being a courier, she kept up her medical training and works as an EMT. That also spun off into a modern zombie AU, which is just fun and tragic in a lot of juicy ways.

I also have a lot of thoughts on an AU in which she makes it to the Commonwealth, in which she’d become Nick’s partner at the eventually-renamed Valentine and Sands Detective Agency, helping to solve cases of burglary and theft, B&E, and advises on various security concerns. She’d also get extremely invested in tracking down missing children. There are a lot of parallels and dramatic development potential between Agnes Sands and Nick Valentine that I’d kill for more time to explore one day.

J) Did you have to manipulate or exclude canon factors to allow them to create their character?

I didn’t have to, no, but I chose to and at least filled in some holes. My theory on transitional health care in the wasteland is all my own (the Followers are the primary manufacturer and distributor of hormones, which can be inefficiently synthesized from Auto-Docs so they’re not impossible to find but are considerably rare) and I’ve taken some liberties in the IKROAH canon so far for convenience, such as Primm never getting taken over by convicts and the Cassidy Caravans buyout offer being a letter at the Mojave Express instead of something she’d have had to get personally from Alice McLafferty later on. Expect a lot more little twists like this in the future.

#agnes sands #ikroah meta

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apricitascosplay · 3 years

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Deputy Casey Reeves

Name: Casey Lawrence Reeves

Age: 27

DOB: May 27th

Gender: Cis Male

Height: 5′8″

Weight: 145lbs

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Eyes: Green

Hair: Dark Brown

Sexuality: Gay

Early Life

Casey was born and raised in Butte Montana to an extremely religious family.

He spent most of his earlier years rebelling against them and their ways, until he finally came out as gay and was ultimately disowned. This eventually led to him running away to live with an older slightly romantic partner. Somewhere down the line Casey became dependant on several vices, drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. After rock bottom and a near death overdose, Casey decided it was time to get his life back on track.

Edens Gate

Casey was not rescued by Dutch from the crash, instead he washed up the shore of the Henbane in Faith's region. This was his first encounter with bliss, it went horribly, as he has actively avoided most of his vices up until then. Faith did her best to console him, in her own way, as well as manipulate him into trusting her and the bliss. Eventually he woke up in the county jail, a few bumps and bruises, a heavy disdain for the bliss, distrust of the water, and a strong motivation to find and save Faith.

Home

Casey lives alone in a 2 bedroom apartment that is slightly too big and too lavish for one person. It's filled with the bare minimum. He owns one pet, a gold fish, named Fish. A pet was recommended by his therapist, though Casey didn't think himself capable of that kind of responsibility, so he settled on a goldfish, something simple that likely wouldn't live long. When the fish didn't immediately die, Casey eventually grew very attached, though having never given it a real name. He arguably takes better care of Fish than himself.

Relationships

Joseph: Casey is terrified of Joseph, deep down he fears that Joseph may be right. Though he struggled internally with being gay and what his family put on him religiously while growing up. He hasn't spent much time with Joseph and from what he has, he is greatly unnerved by him.

John: Unsurprisingly, Casey also dislikes John, greatly. Casey is quick to submit, surrendering without a fight, in exchange for not using bliss bullets on him. He is also quick to 'confess his sins' with John, as again, he has been raised under the belief that being gay is a bad thing. John finds they have some things in common, what with both their addiction addled pasts. Being even remotely compared to the man fills Casey with despair.

Jacob: Casey doesn't feel much for Jacob, of course he dislikes the man, but has had very little interaction with him. Jacob saw him as weak and useless. He did not go through any trials and was quickly assumes wolf/judge food.

Faith: After the initial arrest attempt, Faith was his first actual interaction with the family. He was blissed out of his mind, freaked out, lost, and she was somewhat comforting. He sees a lot of himself in Faith and desperately wants to save her. He's blinded to the poyysytuysibility that she may not actually be as innocent and brainwashed as he thinks.

Parker Cooper (My IRL partner's deputy): upon first meeting Parker, Casey had mild gay panic, which only grew over time. He finds him to be reckless and goofy, but also admires him greatly for being all around good. Parker is only Casey's second ever relationship and the only good one.

Ashe Bell (My IRL partner's deputy as well): Casey isn't particularly close with many women though Ashe is definitely his closest friend. She's hard on Casey and constantly poking fun at him, though they both know it comes from a good place. She is one of the only people he trusts unconditionally, he spends his bad days with her over anyone else.

Whitehorse: Casey see's Whitehorse as somewhat of father figure, especially since his relationship with his actual father is so bad. Whitehorse is a positive role model and influence on his life. He is also considerate of Casey's past.

Nick and Kim: at first Casey had a mild crush on Nick, but quickly moved past it in respect for him and his marriage. He holds both Nick and Kim in very high regards and would do just about anything for them, if needed. Absolutely cried upon meeting baby Carmina.

Sharky and Hurk: Casey doesn't dislike either of the two, though he moreso tolerates them due to their close friendship with Parker. That and he knows that despite the chaos and jackass-ery, they are both genuinely good men.

Grace: He holds a great amount of respect for Grace despite being intimidated by her. Though this doesn't stop him from enjoying her company, he finds they share a comfortable and compatible silence together and appreciates her efficiency with a gun.

Jess: Neither of them spend much time together, as Jess is far too brash for Casey, and he himself, is far too timid for her. There are no hard feelings between the two, they simply aren't compatible.

Adelaide: Adelaide makes Casey rather uncomfortable, what with always speaking her mind and oversharing. He likes to imagine she's what an overly supportive and nosey and somewhat embarrassing aunt would be like if he had one.

Love Life

Casey has been single and avoided intimacy with anyone since becoming sober for personal reasons. He's an expert at turning people down and not responding to advances or any attempts at flirting.

Since starting at the station, Casey quietly crushed on one of the other deputies, Parker Cooper (my irl partner's deputy). He never acted on it, until the events of fighting the cult. They get together shortly after and remain together throughout the events and the collapse.

Other Fun Stuff!

Casey does not cook, he lives mostly off of take out and leftovers. His fridge is very poorly stocked. He drinks entirely too much coffee for someone with permanent bags under their eyes. He sleeps on his couch more often than in his own bed. His apartment is scarcely furnished, having only the bare minimum. Most of his free time is spent binge watching anything and everything on netflix and other streaming sites and occasionally reading anything that looks interesting.

He is very sardonic and all around hard on himself, though he cares very little if others dislike him or mock him. He can come off as very disinterested and possibly even rude to those who don't know him. He's generally pretty easy to get along with once you get past that, though actually getting him to be social and spend time with friends outside of work is difficult.

Casey has one small, relatively crappy tattoo on his inner ankle, though he has long since stubbed many cigarettes out on it in a somewhat successful attempt at ruining it. He has a few other cigarette burn scars, some done on purpose, others from simply being careless (he's fallen asleep smoking multiples times before). He has the faded scars of track marks on both arms, though keeps his uniform sleeves rolled down enough to keep them covered.

If asked, Casey would describe his parents as somewhat akin to the American Gothic painting. He hasn't had communication with them or any other relatives since leaving home. Though he soon finds that his overly religious folks have joined Eden's Gate, seeking safety from the collapse.

Art by Myself, Minilev and Misclae!

#mine #my art #farcry #farcry 5 #far cry 5 #deputy OC #far cry deputy #OC #Original character

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eyesaremosaics · 7 years

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The days flip by like pages in a book. They slip through my fingers in an endless procession of empty movements, before I am able to fully understand the totality of one day.. It has already bled into the next. I am so thankful for the family I work for. If I didn't have them, I would really have nothing, and no one. That's not an exaggeration. I have friends, but they are more like... Warm acquaintances, or utilities. The kids are my best friends now. Thank god for for them. I am very grateful for the amazing job I have. Also, I have been working at Speakeasy, Nick is writing a character in for me... Taking acting classes again to sharpen my auditioning skills... Trying to stay busy and positive. Yet it's hard to stay motivated. I'm super lonely. Insulating myself with bread and cheese searching for some sort of comfort. Totally disgusting. No wonder I can't lose any weight. I don't want to eat healthy. I'm so depressed, I don't even want to drink or take drugs. I literally work all day, from 7am-7pm and then I come home. Cry for an hour or so, stare off into space, think nothing, just feel my insides dripping black oil, and fall asleep before 10. I'm a night owl, so the fact that I pass out before the double digits every night and the fact that I sleep every opportunity I get, is a little troublesome. I can turn the charm on like a switch. Yet it's disturbing how quickly it fades from my features and countenance as soon as I am by myself. This healing is not complete. I'm doing it wrong, it shouldn't feel this sad at night. I am so lonely, so deeply lonely. I need connection desperately, and when I feel it (even briefly) with a person, I treasure it. Yet I fear happiness now because--it never lasts. Anything that makes me feel good/happy--I distrust. If it tastes good, it must make me fat. If the sex is good, they will treat me like dirt. If I click with a person and we have a special friendship, they will ultimately betray me somehow. If I work with up and comers, soon they will surpass me, if I like someone they won't return my feelings etc. etc. Nothing gold can stay, the transience of things disturbs me. So I don't invest anymore. I don't connect. It's not safe, and I want to be safe. Closing off gives me a sense of control. The psychic was right, that part of me is not getting better. It's just getting worse. Yet strangely enough, I am okay with it. Though I am lonely, it's a controlled loneliness. Most of the time I'm so busy that I forget my sadness. It only catches up to me every once in a while, like now for example. I just hope things are turning around. I'm really trying to be more understanding, more stable, more reliable, more considerate. I'm trying to be the person I want to be with, maybe that's why they're not here yet. Because I'm still in the chrysalis stage. Not yet whole, still morphing and melding into this new person I am becoming. My hope is that this class will be exactly what I need to move forward in life. Time to get serious about my career and throw myself into it 100%... I just need to feel more confident. Booking a lot of modeling gigs, but I feel weird about it. That's not where my passion lies. I just get asked and offered money, so I do it. Yet I feel like a vain vapid creature the whole time. My body goes rigid and I feel tremendously awkward. I love the photographers/artists and some of the models I work with... But I feel... Like a phony up there doing what I'm doing. I only feel like my real self on stage. Only when I'm pretending to be someone else. Or caring for someone else. Or holding space for other people's pain or emotions. The big personality that lived inside, has grown meek and muffled. Unsure. I just want to be whole again.

#me

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jayfitzmaurice · 7 years

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6. When creating a character, do you come up with the visual concept or the written concept first?

A younger me would usually go for the visual first, and then the written. At most I would decide what the character would be (Anthro/Human, Fe/Male, Big/Small - basics), and then put them to paper, and establish a broader personality from there.

Back then I was also creating characters like someone going through a bag of potato chips - I had a ton and always wanted to create them to flesh out visuals that I didn’t already have in my character roster.

These days, I’m more particular and less of a machine with character creation. I focus more on the written: who is the character, what are they like, what do they do? I find this tends to work better because answering those personality/life questions really helps shape what they do look like, where as in the past, I’ve had to tweak designs because I realized later that my visual concept didn’t match the written that came later.

8. Is there a character that embodies your good traits, or traits you wish you had?

Absolutely. Re: my potato chip comment above, I’m not sure at all where I’d start... There’s a little bit of me in every character I have, good and bad (see below).

Across my favorite characters (Nick, Austin, Jenna, etc), Confidence is a trait they have that I aspire to. They’re forward characters who chase what they want. A lot of them enter rooms like they own them, tackle situations head-on without hesitation, and are generally the opposite of “shy”.

To be perfectly honest, a lot of my characters have been, and sometimes still are, my role models. For comparison’s sake with question 9, Nick has always been my sort of “pedestal” character and the one I most aspire to be like.

Nick doesn’t back down from a challenge, and he handles discomfort easily. If someone doesn’t like him, he either 1) doesn’t give a fuck, or 2) winds up changing their mind. He’s not afraid to talk to people or to get what he wants. Anything he doesn’t know, he figures out. “Impossible” isn’t in his vocabulary.

9. Is there a character that embodies your bad traits? Several characters? Which ones and what traits?

Absolutely, per above. Not even just with my more villainous characters; plenty of good/”good” characters have my bad traits. A good portion of them tend to have these traits with the volume turned up to put consequences into perspective.

For example, Nick can be an angry character. An extremely angry character. He holds a grudge and can become the epitome of letting your anger poison and ruin you. While this usually benefits him on the side of justice, I’ve written some Alternate Universes where he shoots himself in the foot. And then the leg. And higher. I’ve made myself extremely sad writing some of his angrier moments, because he doesn’t know how to let go, and it’s hard to watch someone ruin themselves.

Sven is an example of my more “tame” bad traits. He can be overly logical and rational, to the point that he seems cold and thoughtless. He’s not terribly considerate of people’s feelings because these are things that just don’t occur to him. In the same vein, he’s not very good at talking to people - about their lives or his. He’s a good person, but his thoughtful moments are very specific.

20. Do you ever plan to do anything (comic, animation, etc) with your characters? Or are you just happy to have them?

I don’t currently have any plans that are worth discussing, but don’t we all have that pie-in-the-sky? That novel we want to write, comic we want to draw, animation we want to create?

I have longstanding wishes to write a novel (or more), but beyond that, nothing in particular. That said, I do hope that changes, because I’d like to share my head space. It’s vast and multifaceted and something I think people would enjoy, if I could get around to sharing it more frequently and/or in a better medium.

I’m also very happy to have them. (:

~ J. Fitz

#Jay Fitzmaurice #J Fitz #Rehgan #character questions #6 #8 #9 #20

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eddiecowell · 4 years

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MAGENTO COMMERCE EXTENSIONS – TOP 10 BEST FREE: WHAT DID USERS SAY?

In this day and age, e-commerce development is a must for every business that wants to take benefits from the rise of the Internet. Magento – one of the best e-commerce platform, is a wise choice that should never be overlooked. However, to make a website really become “your website”, you need to build it base on your requirements, which can be satisfied by adding Magento commerce extensions one by one.

In this article, CO-WELL will summarize users’ reviews about top 10 free Magento commerce extensions that rated by users. They can be free, but we are sure that they work.

1. Why Magento commerce extensions?

As we have mentioned, Magento extensions are essential if you want your website to meet the demand of both your company and your customers.

The word “extension” itself expresses that it can “extend” or add extra functions to your e-commerce store. From reminding about abandoned carts to calculating sales tax, extensions are indispensable elements to boost your online business.

2. Top 10 free Magento commerce extensions for different areas

a. Marketing

Yotpo review

Developer: Yotpo

Particular purpose: Customer relationship management (CRM)

Yotpo helps brands easily collect and leverage customer reviews and photos throughout the buyer journey to increase trust, social proof, and sales. With Yotpo, businesses can collect user-generated content and use it to build a stronger brand and better customer experience.

How it works:

First, Yotpo enables customers to write reviews, ask questions, and upload photos in the customer journey. Then, businesses display that content on-site, establishing trust and increasing conversion rates. And finally, businesses use customer content to boost search their ranking, enhance paid ad performance, drive traffic from social networks, and more.

Pros: According to a user’s comment on Magento Marketplace, Yotpo is:

“+ Easy to install

+ Optimize For Mobile: All of Yotpo’s features are mobile-friendly. When businesses send review requests, mobile users can leave reviews without ever leaving their email app.

+ Nice design: Customization of widget onsite, you can input your exact color to use for the text, review title, etc. You really can make the widget fit into the theme of your store.

+ Notification: About customer notifications, customers can set how many days post-order they would like before Yotpo auto-sends an email to the customer requesting a review. The customer can complete their review right within their email without having to go anywhere else (they can if they choose to). And about admin notifications, when a review is left, you receive an email notification. From there, you can click within the email to “Publish to My Website” (one-click) as well as to “Push to Social” (one-click) which will auto-post it to your Facebook or Twitter accounts per your settings. (Note: these posts as well have a default template you can then edit however you’d like your post to appear)

+ Supportive: “I did have issues on my first day, which appears to have been when they had a planned system outage for some updates (bad timing); either way, every single one of my 4 rather redundant support requests was answered (within 24-hours generally) and addressed professionally.”

Cons:

+ Yotpo has both free and paid versions, though free version seems quite enough for almost requirements, it is not flawless. “It has a very, very clean layout and is very easy in use. But, the free edition lacks a few ‘simple’ features – like commenting on a review. If you want these extra options, you pay a high price. A very high price. Most of the business wouldn’t be able to spend +300$/month only a review extension (not profitable).”

+ This runs with Java script, “so only our developers can do to speed load times.” Loading time is not really an issue with Yotpo, however, if you want it to work completely smoothly, developers are required.

Abandoned cart email

Developer: CO-WELL Asia

Particular purpose: Email marketing

Nowadays, people have many reasons to leave e-commerce websites while online shopping resulting in a large number of pending orders caused by unwelcome interruptions. In order to help lock-in those deals and reduce shopping cart abandonment, that’s why Abandoned Cart Email extension was built.

How it works

Automatically sends emails to customers who accidentally forgot their selected products based on shop owners’ set conditions such as the number of items in the abandoned cart, value of the order and quantity of selected products in stock. Customers will then receive messages about their abandoned carts, encouraging them to come back to the online store and finish their orders.

Pros:

+ Boost revenue for sellers as the buyers are encouraged to complete their shopping process

+ Improve shopping experience as the buyers feel valued.

+ Highly customizable: This extension allows you to design email templates, set schedules and make your own rules as well as support you to manage the history of sent emails effectively

+ Easy to use with a premade template

Cons: Beneficial as it is, this Magento commerce extension pre-made templates are not diverse and well-designed so users need to design or code them.

b. Content & Customization

Drupal Integration

Developer: CO-WELL Asia

Particular purpose: Product content

Drupal is an open-source CMS (Content Management System), which offers a solid platform to create highly advanced websites, while Magento is leading E-commerce platform which has a great reputation for its excellent scalability, features, SEO friendliness, and other market-leading attributes.

Drupal Integration is the ideal solution to capitalize on the power of both Drupal and Magneto in the fierce competition among E-commerce businesses.

How it works:

Drupal Integration allows you to operate your Drupal site as the back-end and a Magento site as the front-end of your E-commerce platform.

All the data in the Drupal site will be automatically transferred to the Magento site, including images, text, and articles related to the products. The data transfer process is achieved in just a few clicks with easy-to-follow guidelines.

Pros:

+ Data utilization to reduce development time

If you’ve got some experience in developing a website, then building an entirely new site in a couple of days is totally possible. This means you’re spending less time on the actual implementation work of the site, allowing you to spend more time being creative with your designs. This helps you stand out from the rest of the competition.

+ Organize Content Easily

One of the difficult parts of many CMS tools is the ability to organize your content for later use and recall. Drupal allows you to categorize your content through path URLs, create custom lists, associate content and create defaults. This structure helps you to organize, structure, search, find and reuse content.

+ It fits within your ecosystem: Standing out from other Magento commerce extensions for providing sophisticated content management and digital marketing capabilities, Drupal also enables data modeling and integration with an endless variety of applications and services, which makes it easier to adapt within an organization. This gives organizations a great opportunity to implement functionality in the most appropriate technology and then simply connect to it via web services or other means.

+ A huge community:

With a community of thousands of users that always can report bugs and security threats in a nick of time, security will not become your issue anymore.

Cons:

+ Compatibility: Since this extension has plenty of new solutions, if you are used to an older system, getting used to its script could take some time.

Nosto Personalization

Developer: Nosto

Particular purpose: Personalization & Experience Management

Nosto, a Magento Premier Technology Partner, analyzes hundreds of thousands of data points across your store in real-time, to help you go beyond the numbers and see the individual. Designed for ease of use, Nosto enables marketers to build, launch and optimize powerful 1:1 multi-channel marketing campaigns without the need for dedicated IT resources.

How it works:

Nosto’s patented technology combines proprietary algorithms and big data analytics to automatically predict the best products and offers for each individual customer based on a moment-by-moment analysis of their unique user behavior.

Pros: According to users’ comment on Magento Marketplace:

“+ User-friendly: “The site personalization for Magento is fairly easy to use – and it gives our webshop some great options so that customers have better and more relevant product suggestions. You can add rows of recommendations like: “You previously viewed…”, “Customers who looked at this also looked at…”, “Top sellers in this category…”,…. The blocks of recommendations can be modified to fit your shop’s needs, avoid duplications, be relevant to the customers, etc. It does take some thought and consideration before making changes to be sure that the recommendation will do what you want, but Nosto is very eager to help, and to make sure you don’t make any mistakes.”

+ Easy retargeting ads on Facebook, e-mail followup, “We miss you” e-mails,… all with customization options that are easy to set up. Pop-ups are another great feature – we use discount codes to encourage newsletter subscriptions. And the folks at Nosto are very helpful with new ideas, downloadable documents with suggestions, timely hints for improved holiday sales and more.

+ Supportive: “The Nosto team is also very helpful. Unlike may web-based services, with Nosto I have a contact person with a name and a personal e-mail address. This person is proactive, checking in with me periodically about how it is going and what I can do better – and she answers my e-mails within minutes.”

+ And finally, from one small business owner to another, once you get the Nosto recommendations set up and running the way you want them to, you can sit back and focus on other things. The recommendations and other features run in the background and tick along all by themselves. The reporting is clear, and you can see what works – and then just let it run.”

Cons:

“Nosto is overall a great tool for a Magento webshop, BUT it’s not really working. During the creation of an account it fails, during installation from backend Magento, it fails and so it continues…

I’ll probably get back to this extension later on, but for now, it has way too many bugs.”

“This is a very good add-on but unfortunately it’s not compatible with the new Magento 1.9.2 .”

c. Shipping & fulfillment

Global postcode finder

Developer: CO-WELL Asia

Particular purpose: Address verification

This extension helps to enhance the shopping experience by reducing checkout time. Reports show that customers are more likely to abandon orders at checkout if there are too many information fields to complete. This Magento e-commerce extension helps improve sales performance by simplifying the checkout process.

How it works:

Global Postcode Finder supports an improved experience for both sellers and buyers. When a customer enters a postcode, several suggestions will be offered, allowing the customer to choose their address, then simply add details such as the house number or building name. Shop owners can use the same function to edit customers’ information.

Pros:

+ Simplify the checkout process

+ Minimize abandoned carts

+ Reduce manual intervention by administrators

+ Simple installation

Shipstation

Developer: Shipstation

Particular purpose: Order Management

ShipStation leads the e-commerce world with web-based software designed to make e-commerce retailers exceptionally efficient at processing, fulfilling, and shipping their orders from all the most popular marketplaces and shopping carts using all the top carriers.

How it works:

Save time and money with efficient shipping. Sync all your orders from Magento and wherever you sell and start printing labels from all the major carriers with a few clicks.

Shipping can be unnecessarily complicated and inefficient. This Magento commerce extension makes it easy for Magento users to scale their businesses by eliminating those complications. When you install and connect the extension, ShipStation imports your orders. Process your orders with automation rules and flexible workflows and ship them out with the best carrier, service, and rates to fit your needs.

Pros: The most out-standing pro of this Magento commerce extension is that it is time-saving:

+ Time saving: “This shipping program is really amazing. I have never before witnessed one program like this being a deal changer for our online store. Order processing is so fast that we have completely restructured our online business to utilize these time-saving abilities! And there is so much more built into the program, too, like custom sales reports, a stamps.com account, among other countless added features.”

“Shipstation has been a massive time saver for us, as we are a small business with few employees. It is a very intuitive application that allows us to attach weights to all of our products and it will do the math for us while shipping.”

+ Supportive: “ The support is very friendly and knowledgeable. They have got us up and running in no time at all. I highly recommend this great product. You will not be let down!”

“+ Shipstation is an excellent feature to streamline the shipping process for our orders. It automatically imports orders, provides options for the cheapest shipping providers and has the ability to note what shipping method the customer selected. It has amazing automation features, presets and many more.”

Cons:

+ Cost issue: “I had to pay a coding team to install ShipStation and getting their help wasn’t cheap. I attempted to do it myself and try to work with the resources on ShipStation and that was too intimidating for a non-developer like myself.”

+ Bug issue: “Shipstation has a major bug with Magento. When a partial order is shipped, Magento shows the ENTIRE order as being shipped even when this is not the case. This bug has been reported to Shipstation and they keep promising to fix it. Unfortunately almost 1 year with no solution.”

d. Accounting & pricing

TaxJar

Developer: TaxJar

Particular purpose: TaxJar helps eCommerce businesses save time on sales tax by automating the hard parts of filing a sales tax return.

It helps taking all the complicated math and calculations out of determining what you owe and even automatically filing your return for you if you want to. This is called the AutoFile.

How it works:

TaxJar helps you save hours by automating sales tax calculation, reporting, and filing for your store. Magento customers can enjoy TaxJar Reports that break down the sales taxes collected and owed by the state, county, city and other taxing districts so your sales tax filings are all ready for you. TaxJar Reports can also accommodate any of the other channels you sell on, too (Including Amazon, eBay, and more).

Pros: This Magento commerce extension become many businesses’ first choice is because it helps to save their resources

+ Labor-saving: “It makes us legally compliant, keeps us up-to-date and saves us from hiring an additional person.”

+ Time saving: “We have been using this tool now for several months and it is saving us a lot of time and headache by keeping things simple.”

+ Supportive: “The support by the TaxJar staff is excellent – they reply quickly and they’ve helped us with some issues we encountered. It is drop-dead simple to set up and use. Highly recommended.”

Cons:

Need backing up the website: “Do not try and install this without backing up your site first. It totally hosed our website after throwing a bunch of errors when installing through Magento Connect. Nice concept, but definitely not a stable release. Proceed with caution.”

eBridge Connections ERP Integration

Developer: eBridge Connections

Particular purpose: Enterprise resource planning (ERP) & Accounting

eBridge Connections delivers powerful, cloud-based ERP and accounting integration solutions that automate vital business processes and eliminate the need for manual data entry. The eBridge universal integration platform supports over 30 ERP and accounting systems including products from Sage, Microsoft, SAP, NetSuite, Epicor, and Intuit QuickBooks.

How it works:

Accounting system and ERP integration by eBridge Connections allow Magento store owners to automate orders, inventory, tracking information, customer data updates, product data and pricing and inventory levels, and more between their back-office accounting/ERP system and their Magento eCommerce store.

Pros:

“We have an old Sage system Mas 200 v4.4 and needed to integrate Our M2 Site and Amazon store with Sage.

We chose E-bridge and couldn’t be happier with the results. Now that we have the integration set up, all orders from our M2 site and our amazon store come into Sage sales order module so we don’t have to manually add them via hand typing.

Pros Huge time saver.

Implementation went very smooth, which from my experience is rare for technical projects of this nature.

The cost was very reasonable. Better than the other quotes we received from competitors.

E-bridge connector works via cloud, so you don’t need to set up hosting for the connector software.

Customization – Software allows for logic rules/customization so you can get everything mapped up just right.”

e. Payment & security

Signifyd

Developer: Signifyd

Particular purpose: Fraud

This Magento extension solves the challenges that growing e-commerce businesses persistently face: billions of dollars lost in chargebacks, customer dissatisfaction from mistaken declines, and operational costs due to tedious, manual transaction investigation.

Signifyd’s guaranteed fraud protection is supported by a full-service cloud platform that automates fraud prevention through real-time, machine learning, allowing businesses to increase sales and open new markets while reducing risk.

How it works:

When a customer places an order with your Magento store, Signifyd automatically reviews the order and tells you whether to ship it or not. Signifyd’s guaranteed fraud protection covers merchants against chargebacks associated with fraud or unauthorized charges.

Pros:

+ Time-saving and money-saving: “Signifyd has saved us both time and money. Whenever we used to get large orders with different billing and shipping we had to contact the customer and make sure the order was legit and that took a bunch of time. No more of that. With Signifyd you get approved quickly and if the payment is disputed, they pay you back. Their service is great and highly recommended”

“It was a serious pain having to sift through international transactions and call banks to verify names and addresses. With Signifyd, it becomes a very easy process and with one click you can submit any transaction to be guaranteed by Signifyd against chargebacks. Great tool considering the amount of false credit card charges being made online. Easy to install and use, great customer support and follow up from their team”

+ Supportive: “Not only is the extension great and super easy to use, but the support that comes with it is efficient, reliable, and friendly. If I have an issue, I just pick up the phone and help is just a few minutes away.”

Cons:

“Signifyd doesn’t work with Magento cloud. If you have a bunch of e-commerce stores running on a single Magento instance it will NOT work. It only works with a single instance. So if you have 10 different stores for your clients running on a cloud, you have to have 10 different Magento instances running.”

Braintree payment

Developer: Paypal

Particular purpose: Payment Integration

Braintree helps businesses of all sizes, from small to large enterprises, accept and process payments to help maximize business opportunities and revenue growth. Companies around the world benefit from the technology and support of Braintree coupled with the scale, backing, and confidence of partnering with a PayPal service.

How it works:

This is an official Braintree extension built in collaboration with Gene Commerce. This extension updates and extends the core Braintree functionality that comes shipped with Magento 2. This extension takes advantage of the latest version of the Braintree SDK and it is strongly recommended that all Merchants using Braintree upgrade to this extension in order to benefit from many improvements and additional features such as Apple Pay and PayPal Credit.

Pros:

+ All mobile payment methods in one: “Great to have an extension with all mobile payment methods in one! We had one minor issue with Apple Pay showing up in the cart but this was linked to some CSS in the template which the developers quickly helped us identify. Great extension…it just works!”

“Great extension, exactly what Magento 2 needs, love the fact it has the latest PayPal smart buttons and all the mobile payment methods in one. Easy to set up and configure…thank you.”

Cons:

“We integrated this with 2.1.16 and found out only AFTER that the Kount fraud service we had with Braintree doesn’t work with our version and only works on the 2.2 or 2.3 versions. We have fraud orders flying through and can’t do anything to block emails, IPs, ship-to address, etc. Our sales team/support integrator and account manager take turns replying every few weeks. So if you want something that is basic, has little to no fraud filters and can’t get a reply from anyone there, pick this solution.”

“For some reason that they cannot explain, anytime an order is made the customer is charged the subtotal (even though the confirmation reads the grand total). This means that shipping and tax aren’t reaching Braintree.”

3. CO-WELL Asia – A supreme e-commerce development service provider

There are millions of things to do when you start your e-commerce business (shipping, managing payment, improving sales,…), which can be either overwhelming or ineffective to do on your own. That’s why having outsourcing IT companies should be considered if you want your business to run smoothly and effectively in the long term.

With significant experience in building enterprise systems which manage more than 200 stores, over 20 million products and handle around 10000 orders each day, CO-WELL Asia offers consulting and development services for all levels of e-commerce systems.

We have developed the following Magento e-commerce extensions to functionally enhance our customers’ website: Abandoned cart email, Global postcode finder, and Drupal integration.

These are unbiased reviews that we have summarized from Magento’s users. Despite some of the mentioned flaws, Magento e-commerce extensions are improving.

Bài viết MAGENTO COMMERCE EXTENSIONS – TOP 10 BEST FREE: WHAT DID USERS SAY? đã xuất hiện đầu tiên vào ngày Cowell Asia.

source https://co-well.vn/en/tech-blog/magento-commerce-extensions-top-10-best-free-what-did-users-say/

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dyancano9368-blog · 6 years

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Going Out Of A Small Footprint In The World.

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neptzfix · 6 years

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Renick

Both Renee and Nick work in the SPD as detectives but in different fractions. Both are by the book detectives and are similar in the fact they adopt a tough act, refusing to let people in. They have come across each other around the precinct, have heard of each other and know of one another’s reputations due to the fact they’re both kind of top of their class in their own departments within the building. They are put onto the same case, a Mafia homicide type of murder, and initially, they don’t get along that well. She thinks he’s too entitled and he doesn’t trust her. Over time, they start to work better together and learn to respect each other and actually have conversations that aren’t directly related to the case they’re working on. There would be some late night researching which is when they might share some stuff about themselves with each other. Soon it becomes evident that they’re dealing with a Mafia situation which brings back memories for both of them due to their pasts (Nick with his friend Aiden and Renee with her parents). Eventually, after a long time, they manage to track down and arrest the people responsible for the murders but due to crooked cops covering up and stating that there is a heavy lack of evidence, the culprits get away scot free which neither Nick nor Renee is thrilled about. Thus, the two separate and handle their annoyance in different ways.

Nick decides to do what he does best and go after them while Renee attempts tailing them and is adamant to get something to nail them with this time. Without neither knowing the other’s intentions, Renee stumbles upon discovering Nick has caught up to them before she has and is slightly confused by his methods. She would snoop and peek behind a door to see where he is going with it all and the instant she’d see him take a gun out, she’d be alarmed but lay low still until she realizes he’s gonna pop a cap in the dude and she’d go into instant freak out mode and like the annoying pain in the ass that she is, she’d probably bust in and Nick would be low key annoyed at her for ruining his entire operation. He would ask her to walk away like, “let me kill this bastard because we both know the law won’t do shit about it” and even though she’d be against it, she also wouldn’t wanna just walk off, so she’d let him do his thing even if she didn’t totally agree. Because she wouldn’t walk away, or try and stop him or arrest him, she’d be like his literal partner in crime because she hates the Mafia guys and she kind of agrees with the whole law not doing jack squat so deep down she’d be more alright with Nick killing him in the end. It would have been too late for her to just walk off because she was already involved and now she’s technically an accessory to murder. She’d probably stay in the vicinity as he kills him but she’d look away etc. and then instantly afterward she’d freak out about the lack of remorse Nick shows and how he is being calm af about it so she would be in panic and confront him about it and he would be like girl chill tf out and definitely go with the whole “listen it is the only and you know it was the only way to stop it.” She would insist it was wrong and that she shouldn’t have let him do that and he would ask her not to tell anybody, insisting she needs to calm the heck down before they leave the scene of the crime.

Even though Renee would low key agree with Nick in some ways, she would still feel bad about it and a wee bit sick considering she’d never been involved with something like this before. But she’d also be curious as to why he didn’t feel even remotely bad about what he’d just done. She’d be flailing around like a panicked duck and he’d be like eyeroll chill bruh but when he tells her it was the only way she would go quiet while she contemplated what he was saying. Then she’d feel inclined to shut up and keep his secret because A. he’s too highly respected and who would believe her allegations against someone like him? B. He actually is her superior and C. Over their time working together she’s developed a respect for him she wouldn’t wanna betray. He knows he is able to trust her to keep his secret, but she would still be in her own conflict and wonder if it was the first time he’d ever done something like that considering how calm he was and how good he was at it. Thus, she’d look into other cases he’s worked on and then discover the criminals in his cases wound up dead in a similar way to how he killed the Mafia guy so she would put two and two together and be like oh damn, this guy is some Dexter type shit and I’ve been working with for a long time and never knew and not to mention she’d grew to have hella respect for him She’d probably wonder if she should confront him about what she’s found out or keep it to herself because the case is now closed and they’re no longer working together. She’d battle with herself over what to do for a few days until she eventually decides to just storm into his office one night and throw the files she’d uncovered at him like all sassy and angry like “explain this!!!” And Nick is all like shrug nonchalant and doesn’t admit it nor deny it and she’d get all annoyed at him and be like “you’re crazy, you real life Dexter” and then she’d probably feel inclined to give him a speech about what happens if he gets caught or someone else finds out what she did just by going through files etc. She’d probably scold him against her better judgment and tell him he needs to be careful and not get caught and like when she’d finish her little lecture, he'd be chill about it like u done?? and she'd be all sorry because she just told off one of the most well-known detectives in Seattle and usually people don’t speak to him like that at all yet here she is and he’s letting her.

It all starts with professional infatuation, turning into “oh shit I am going to get caught too if he’s going to get caught, I probably shouldn’t be anywhere near this person” going to “let me just check up on him. Is he still killing people?” turning into “why is he doing what he is doing? He must have a good reason? Is he capable of caring and love? Does he ever regret what he does? Would he hurt an innocent man to get through someone?” until it would be “oh shit. I don’t want anything happening to him. He shouldn’t be alone. He is not a bad person, he is just bad at being a person sometimes.” While for Nick it is more like “she’s a means to an end but at least she’s a good detective” to “well oh shit I got caught but I hope she’s going to keep her mouth shut, I only allow her to lecture me to see if she’s keeping her mouth shut” followed by “she keeps coming around, giving lectures but at least she hasn’t gone to anyone about it or is she just saving her own ass?” before it is “does she actually care about me? Wait, am I kind of admiring her?”

Eventually, they might end up in a tough situation where Nick is killing mobsters and Renee suddenly appears and he ends up taking a bullet for her, saving her life instead of completing his mission. This would not only prove to Renee that he’s not all bad or a rotten guy with his twisted justice, but to him it would also show that maybe he does, in fact, care more about her (the person he’s realized to see something in him) than actually killing all of the bad mobsters around him. They would see each other as colleagues, then as people who share a dirty secret and are kind of stuck with each other before they would realize over time, there’s actually some caring underneath all of the lectures and check-ins. He hasn’t been cared for in a long time, he kind of sees himself as someone hollow with only his own criminal justice as his purpose, but then she’d start showing consideration and caring towards him, and he would start noticing that it is actually not that bad to be feeling that again even if he’d try to deny that at first, he’d start admiring her and probably reflect all of the good that there’s about her and in a way he would probably begin to feel like there’s more to him as well than just his mission and being alone, so it would slowly melt his walls away while he’d begin to view her in a different life over time. Plus, when her guilt about covering for him would drive her to her old habits of substance abuse, he would be there to kind of help her through it because maybe he’d feel a bit guilty because he’d feel partly responsible for sending her over the edge with his expectations of her keeping his secret but also maybe because somewhere deep down he’s allowed himself to kinda care for her and of course, she wants to keep his secret because she cares for him also.

Renick headcanon foundation:

gifset based: Renee would get caught in the middle of a bloodbath (a mission gone wrong, something of the likes), and Nick would literally (since they have already grew closer and maybe have those wee feelings already crealed out) be there to clean it ALL up and bath her.

#renick

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iaincblog · 7 years

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Music for New Times

Sometimes marginal music communities do RnD for the culture industry as some commentators have suggested. The Belville Three in Detroit develop techno and within a decade or so capital has invested in global superclub brands and star DJs.

A musical ecology like that one uses ideas from a number of sources. Besides content ideas there is the technique of DJing, the large sound systems, the crowd management including H&S, security etc. All these different areas combine to make substantial investments deliver a return.

There can be other examples of musical ecologies .It has been suggested that the modern mind suffers in various ways because modern labour markets make people feel worthless. Big pharma develops pills to make them feel better and it is also suggested that they rig the diagnostic categories to favour their solutions in effect creating a market with peoples’ unease. An English Prof at Stanford suggests that the this system leaves something out concerning the content of peoples’ lives. Art moves into the vacant space - she cites various artists who illustrate her theory.

As far as music is concerned, we might well have an ecology where alienated and marginalised young people use music as some sort of emotional tool to provide content missing from their work and non-work lives. You can get this far and then take an optimistic or pessimistic turn. Pessimism says it is the system maintaining and reproducing itself. Optimism starts with the thought that art promises something better and indeed may do more.

Different social ecologies will use music in different ways.

If the avant garde does RnD for the culture industry is it only servicing a cycle of fashion? In the Fashion System Barthes provides a model of fashion change. In Anglosaxon terms his model is that fashion doesn’t concern attributes but the only the values of attributes. Take skirts - these entities have attributes including length. The values of that attribute include short, long, medium, ankle length etc. Barthes model says that modifying these values in a systematic way is a method of signalling social prestige.

This Barthes Fashion Semiotics makes no claims to progress. There are simply ever lasting modifications , early adopters, the mass, late adopters etc. Pop music can easily be fitted into this ecology. There is always something hot and new - just read the current NME.

Andy Powell producer of the first two Kate Bush albums was at the same college as Ian MacDonald who amongst other things wrote Revolution in the Head about the Beatles, a biography of Shostakovitch and articles about Laura Nyro and Nick Drake.

When Andrew Keeling was writing his book about the Court of the Crimson King he asked me for some research given I knew one of the musicians just before the album was made, a different Ian Macdonald. To avoid confusion lets call the Rev in Head one Imac.

I considered the long first chapter of Rev in Hd and decided I disagreed with a key element. Imac argues that the Beatles career is more than part of a fashion system - the classic pop model. There was genuine progress. I think many people would agree that there was serious progress from album to album. To parody Imac he saw that the Beatles lost the plot when they plugged into the US avant garde particularly in the Apple phase.

From this distance it is easy to frame a counter - in terms of pop development along the series of Beatles albums.Then King Crimson from 1968 picked up many different sets of ideas including some of the avant garde and put them into albums. King Crimson were obviously harnessing tremendous momentum as Ian Macdonald went from thirty quid gigs at the Middle Earth to global touring in about a year.

Apple is a complicated case. A coincidence made me think of this recently. James Taylor was the first artist signed to Apple and I found a wonderful half hour interview where he reflects on the whole experience. By chance in the nest day or so I went to a concert recording of the BBC Singers performing works of another Apple artist - John Taverner. I think a proper appraisal would have to consider a lot of fantastic content including Taylor and Taverner plus not least the film of the Beatles playing live on the roof.

The Beatles lost their manager and were looking for an alternative way and so Apple was formed. There were also increasing personal tensions. I think it is over simple to see Yoko as bringing the poison of the US avant garde into the Beatles development and stopping it with modern foolishness. She was I agree a major carrier and developer of the avant garde ideas of John Cage and his circle.

Imac’s career is covered in Nick Kent’s autobiography. He and Imac formed part of a new journalistic era at NME which in simple terms was based on more serious writing and longer articles. This era was replaced by punk and especially T Parsons and J Birchell who in the spirit of punk despatched their elder brothers pretty quick and took over. There is a good film on Amazon Prime which looks at the whole development of serious journalism about rock in the 1970s - the NME tale is part of this.

The narrative of progress gets much harder to map in the 70s, but arguably in doesn't disappear - considering Steeley Dan John Martyn Television Little Feat Hall n Oates D Bowie etc - but it certainly becomes more complicated.

Punk has to be fitted in obviously. I think this has to include France and Situationist ideas, and both UK and the complex US story from News York Dolls and Patti Smith to Lydia Lunch and No Wave. Not for this article. Nor a consideration of Simon Reynolds’ detailed account of UK post punk in his big yellow book. Then there is the recent Goldsmiths reappraisal of post-punk as well. I think onemight get a narrative of progress up to the mid 80s and the financialisation of culture. Perhaps the Smiths are the last gasp of pop progress?

The pop fashion cycle based on Barthes semiotics doesn't go away - because there are always new generations of teenagers seeking to be different and they want new values for existing attributes.

When the Stones brought out their much praised blues album I went back and looked at their career. There is an interesting multi episode film biography on Amazon Prime. Their great period is seen as the Mick Taylor era from the Hyde Park Concert where KC broke through to his still mysterious decision to leave in the mid 70s. (Incidentally there is a narrative of progress to weave around the succession of Clapton Beck Page Green and Taylor. Compare live Beck with live Clapton these days.)

Ronnie Wood gave the Stones a new foundation on which to work and some decent albums resulted but this was followed by Jagger-Richards warfare in the 1980s which impacted the group output as solo projects became priorities..

It seems to me that financialisation took over the Sones music ecology. They became a cash generating global brand monetising a great back catalogue and using the Situationist idea of the grand spectacle. In the 80s and 90s Stones touring represented a new level of spectacle - lots of new technologies had to come together and large financial investment was need. It was genuinely new, there was a lot of risk and it must have worked. When B Wyman left they brought in Miles’bass player Darryl Jones - must have cheered Charlie up!. Jones was in Miles comeback band in the early 80s - he went on to be in Sting’s band before joining the Stones.

The upshot of the Jagger-Richards wars was that they realised they had a fantastic creative base. Some insight into this is available through Godard’s film of them making Sympathy for the Devil just before B Jones left.Many of us have been in bands which have trashed their core creativity but various people mistakenly thinking we were the magic and we could go it alone. The Stones nearly fell down the same hole. Did this keep progress on track?

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getseriouser · 7 years

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20 THOUGHTS: Referees Upon Request

RIGHT, so how about that? Who would have thought that the Will Schofield report would not only not be the most absurd tribunal case of the year but not even the most absurd case of the week?

We’re off tonight, back to the Tribunal, after the AFL for the first time appealed a ruling, the severity or lack thereof for Bachar Houli’s striking charge.

We’ve had staging claims, fuzzy medical reports, character references from the highest of profiles and we all feel considerably dumber for it. And there’s been some footy in and amongst it too.

Let’s get our heads out of the sand then.

1. Firstly, Clayton Oliver and Will Schofield. We are glad Schofield got off, I think this idea that his clenched hand contacted Oliver’s jaw is ridiculous. You can then make your own rational conclusion about Oliver’s reaction. Sure, teammates may leap to his defence but it’s hard, especially with the Tribunal’s findings to think anything else.

2. As for Houli, the idea that character references from the PM and a Gold Logie winner, people who have nothing to do with football is very dangerous territory. The act is worth four weeks. I admire the person Houli is, his leadership in the community and the work he does with reconciliation around cultural diversity, absolutely, but good people make mistakes, and good records are one thing, maverick character references are another.

3. Lastly, how we can continue with an MRP who sees and does one thing, and a Tribunal doing another is even worse. Either scrap the MRP or get the Tribunal to be dependant of the MRP, an extension of it, so we can get somewhere near the postcode of consistency, right now it’s insane, glaringly preposterously wrong. I expect tonight’s appeal to right the wrong.

4. Onto the footy itself, and what a season we are having! Already the most 1-3 point games in one recorded season and we’re roughly two thirds of the way through. The results last week were phenomenal and you can attribute equalisation, the rule changes, the evolution of the game, whatever, it’s all positive. No-one really knows what to expect anymore, far more teams are competitive than ever before and everyone will watch and continue to watch which keeps bringing in the mega dollars.

5. Let us get the Dees out of the way up front, and deservedely so it’s been a great narrative. In a season, an open season, where sure, the GWS and the Crows look like the yardsticks thus far, even those sides at times show the flag is far from a narrow race. And when you look at how the Demons are playing, you look at the talent at their disposal it’s hard to discredit their chances, now, for top four, and from there, who knows. Great stuff.

6. Further to that, until last week they were doing all this without their best player, Max Gawn, such an integral part to their game in the ruck. And don’t dismiss the impact a tall forward, or two, will have come September. Jesse Hogan will return and offer a substantial target inside 50 and should they look into it Sam Wiedeman is in great nick in the VFL kicking a bag of six last weekend. This is enormously positive.

7. Jack Viney had such a monster game. The sheer contested ball he won in the first quarter and then critically in the final term was inspirational. It’s the likes of he and fellow co-captain Nathan Jones that can take this team deep.

8. We know West Coast can’t travel, but if you’re going to drop even a few games at home as well, the Eagles don’t deserve to make the eight over sides like the Bulldogs, St. Kilda, etc. We looked set to have two WA teams make September, now they’ll be lucky to get one. Things are not right for Adam Simpson’s men.

9. For Richmond, the skeletons of finals past will linger but as it stands, in sixth, their path to greatness is as lenient as they come. If the first week of finals started this week they’d face the Eagles at the MCG in an Elimination Final, the dream result. Once the monkey is off the back, they’d come up against Geelong in an MCG Semi Final, and who’d begrudge the Tigers’ chances in that, followed by a Preliminary Final appearance at Spotless against the Giants. Tough test but the Dogs showed no fear twelve months ago, and the lure of a Grand Final appearance the week after would likely be against the travelling Crows. Look, all hypothetical and by no means predictive, but it shows that this year can/could be the year it finally falls differently for the Yellow and Black.

10. How good are Port Adelaide? If you like the way Nathan Buckley judges footy, as opposed to his coaching abilities, then they’re really good. The Pies have not faced Adelaide yet but according to the Pies’ coach the Power are the best team in it. Percentage doesn’t lie, they have such a nice makeup on paper and who knows in a season like the one we’re having. Money on SA teams to go deep is money well invested at the minute.

11. As for Collingwood, super quick on the next three weeks. After the loss on the weekend, one they would have, well, ‘liked’ to have banked internally, they now face a really critical moment. The Pies have the Hawks this Sunday who will fancy their chances, an emerging Essendon the weekend after too will be tough to beat. Should both games be losses, they’d be mathematically ruled out of the finals should they lose to Gold Coast, up there, the week after. Ask Brett Ratten how losses at Metricon go down. Long story short, from something reasonably optimistic pre-Queen’s Birthday, watch this all become mega hot within three weeks.

12. Dogs and North, what a two game series they’ve had. Three points in the bumper, inaugural Good Friday clash, then a solitary behind on the weekend. Great stuff. The Dogs find themselves in ninth, still hanging around to make the eight, from there who knows, as for the Roos, sadly, second to last. And such is the closeness of the season, had those two results hypothetically reversed, North would be in 12th with a bullet right now, and the reigning premier would be languishing in 14th – staggering.

13. Shout out to the North fans this week, one of the better second to last seasons we’ve seen. We like their kids, they’ve had four losses under a goal, it’s been tough. Now, who’s to say if they can’t get Dustin Martin on board with a tonne of cash that they can’t win 12 games at least next year – not ludicrous. Remember, this team resoundingly defeated Adelaide by ten goals this season, they aren’t too bad the Roos.

14. We also are liking the Swan’s resurgence. From 0-6, they are now hammering down on a September appearance. This column subscribes to the gauge that percentage gives us, and now, as we approach the critical period of July-August, Sydney possesses the seventh best percentage – that is key.

15. Still not sure on Geelong. Great win, inspiring win on the weekend, but how much does that say about Fremantle really? Had the Cats on toast, and on the bench in tracksuits, yet stumbled under the heat. Would the Cats have won injury-free anyway, most probably. But when they finish the season something like 16-6 or 17-5 and the bookies want to offer mega short prices for another Geelong flag, just say no. Two wins by two points, one by one point, and the Demons properly stuffed their Round 3 game up completely. This is a 7-6 team, maybe even a 6-7 team to be frank.

16. Scott Thompson, remember him? Not the North defender, the Crows onballer. He has been stuck in the SANFL all year, yet to play a senior game. Got 33 touches and kicked two on the weekend for the Crows reserves, sure, old, not in Don Pyke’s plans, but in a premiership year, in a side that went super hard after Bryce Gibbs, could the 307-gamer be that extra piece that solidifies the Crows’ chance of a third flag? This column says definitely yes.

17. Quick young player debate – Clayton Oliver or Ryan Burton? Numbers say its the Demons’ midfielder, but gee the impact Burton is having goes a long way in making this close. Oliver is doing supremely well, influencing games, in a good midfield for a good team. But playing in the backline for a third-to-last side on the heavy downward spiral after years of dominance, and to be as good as he has been, must be considered. Averaging 21 touches, six marks, four rebound 50s a game, the South-Australian goes close to matching Oliver at the minute..

18. Onto some footy this weekend and we start with Friday night, Melbourne taking on Sydney. Some key outs for the Dees might hurt but this is set up for them big time. The Swans are a force all of a sudden, the hottest team in the league, but at the MCG there are, nor should be few sides that could concern the up and about Demons. Melbourne wins, on the big Friday night stage, it’s just more puff in their sails. A loss, they might just be another team in the pack, and last year’s runner up is a legitimate threat to do the unthinkable and make amends from last year all of a sudden.

19. Geelong travel north to take on the best side in the comp. Simply put this is a game they should not get close in. But it is a funny season like that. The Giants need to swat them away, do the business and win well, showing that the Cats are not at their level despite their win-loss record. The visitors could use an impressive win on the road to address the sceptics, because we’d need to see it.

20. And lastly the bumper Saturday night game in Adelaide, Richmond taking on Port Adelaide. This column gives the Tigers a chance, weirdly, good form and good momentum will stand for a fair bit on their travels. We aren’t a million percent bought-in to the 2017 Power yet and this is the kind of game a stumble could occur. But, and for those who really rate their body of work thus far, this is set up for a repeat of the last time Richmond went to the shores of the River Torrens in Round Six – ambitious going in but ultimately thumped by the home side. Port aren’t far off Adelaide at their best, so they’d want to flex their muscles against a fellow top-eight side.

(originally published June 29)

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