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pateldevs · 3 years

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Hi! I hope I'm not bothering you, but I love your mood board edits and was wondering if you could explain how you go about making/colouring them? I see lots of places to find gifs but turning them into a set is so hard. Thank you in advance!

hi! first of all thank you so much and second of all it’s not a bother at all! i am happy to give some of my own tips even if my explanation probably isn’t super helpful. i won’t give like a ps tutorial but below the cut (since i included example gifs, it’s VERY long) is my process for my latest jily aesthetic:

i keep track of all my ideas/sets in a spreadsheet (which i won’t show bc there’s a lot of info i’d have to blur/black out) but i always have a list of what scenes i need to gif/what gifs i’m editing and where i’m getting them from. i also include a couple extra ideas in case the gifs i have planned end up being too hard to color or don’t fit in the set. i’ve found it’s best/easiest to start w the list bc there is literally nothing worse than spending hours on a set and then not being able to complete it.

as for actually finding the material, i have a pretty healthy number of scene packs saved in my giffing folder, esp. for things i know i will gif frequently. most of the time i will peruse youtube, vimeo, and instagram for any aesthetic scenes. i also have a lot of gif packs saved specifically for the purpose of making mbs (usually i mix my own gifs w gif packs), if you msg me i’m happy to direct you to some gif packs i use regularly or you can check my #resources tag. a couple tips for finding material:

always opt for download when possible, i used to screen record and the difference when i switched to downloading was astronomical. (it’s easy to lose quality and esp if you’re on mac, quicktime duplicates frames so either you have to manually delete those extras or you get sort of choppy gifs when you load them into ps.)

always use 1080p or better, 720p will work in a pinch for 268px or 177px gifs since you can make up some of that resolution loss with sharpening, but don’t go any lower than that, just love yourself.

for pale sets, look for the right colors. i tend to look for scenes w high color contrast especially if it features poc so it’s easier to color without whitewashing, ie if the subject is a person then i look for light colored or blue/green/violet/white backgrounds. it’ll make your life wayyyyy easier. this also means if you’re making a set try to find scenes with already similar lighting bc you won’t have to work so hard to make it look cohesive.

here’s a quick rundown of what i do before coloring:

import all frames and save all the files in a folder together!!

play around with frame delay so all the gifs are moving at about the same speed, usually keep it between 0.03-0.05s

crop and resize gifs (i use 268x145 most of the time)

convert to timeline

when it comes to coloring it can be really hit or miss, i’ve recently gotten back into my groove but i was having sooo much trouble earlier this year. in general, don’t stress yourself out!! sometimes it’s easier to just find a new scene/gif (hence my list of extras!) than to try too hard to fit a gif into your set. i color all my gifs by scratch (ie no psds) but i tend to follow the same pattern, i’ll explain using these gifs/psd as an example since then i can also explain how to fix white-washing:

first off when you’re coloring gifs with poc always always always make a layer mask so you can compare the edited and unedited skin tones directly! i use the marquee tool to make a selection in the middle of the character’s face, select the folder of my adjustment layers, and hit ‘add vector mask’ (the third button from the left on the layers panel, it’s a white rectangle with a circle in it).

i almost always begin by using hue/saturation layers to highlight and delete certain colors. here i highlighted red and raised the lightness on yellow by a lot since it’s a very yellow scene. then i use a combination of brightness/contrast, levels, and curves layers to brighten the scene. here’s what i have now:

i add a gradient map set to black/white, change the blending to exclusion, and lower the opacity to between 5-10% (depending on the scene) to lighten the contrast further:

then i add back a little depth with selective color in neutrals and blacks:

now i have two main goals: 1. add contrast between the background and the subject, and 2. brighten the scene into a pale gif. to do this, i use color balance to tweak the color of the background, taking out the yellows. this step works best if there’s at least some shade difference between your subject and background, otherwise isolating the two will be impossible. here’s what i have after adding color balance:

i use hue/saturation to selectively highlight the background color. in this case i chose to adjust magenta and used the color picker (the first eyedropper on the left) to identify the exact shade i wanted to lighten. now i have a fairly neutral background and a colorful subject, which gives a sort of pale effect:

and now i use a curves layer and a selective color (white) layer to brighten further:

before i go further, i start fixing white-washing. keep in mind that some variance is normal since you are naturally changing the lighting of the scene; this gif shows it rlly clearly bc of how yellow and dim the lighting is, so some lightening is to be expected. however, both because the vector mask shows a lot of whitening and because i’ve giffed dev patel before and have a general idea of what he looks like in this type of lighting, i know what needs to be fixed, so i go back in under the psd/adjustment layers with a combination of selective color (red and neutral) and hue/saturation layers to darken his skin again:

now that some more contrast has been added in, i can go back to working on the psd and use curves and selective color to play around with the background again:

i use another hue/saturation layer and a black/white gradient to tone down oversaturation:

usually i leave those layers on top, so if i want to make any adjustments (like lightening the background more), i go in under those two. in this case i tweaked the whites and reduced the contrast a little to get this:

again, you can see his skin tone has changed from the original, but variation is to be expected given how much brighter the room is, the fact that i took out a lot of yellow lighting, and the brightening effect of the computer screen in front of him. some other things to keep in mind when coloring:

when you add layers to correct white-washing, you’re likely to end up with overly red/orange skin tones (red-washing). this can be fixed by upping cyans in the reds, desaturating/darkening the reds, or adding b/w or desaturation later on.

when in doubt, it’s better to be darker than lighter (the issue with white-washing is that it promotes colorism, and there is nothing inherently wrong with a darker skin tone) but really. just put in the effort to color poc correctly.

when changing the lighting a lot it helps to look at pictures of the subject in natural/bright lighting, since you get a better idea of what their normal skin tone is.

don’t try to squeeze all your selective color layers into one. you’ll get less grainy gifs if you separate them out and work one by one.

TURN OFF NIGHT SHIFT/NIGHT MODE! yes i KNOW it’s bad for your eyes (especially if you’re like me and gif at night, when the lighting outside isn’t changing every 20 seconds) but your gifs will look VERY different under f.lux or night mode compared to daytime screens. especially if you’re giffing at different times of day, blue light filters can really change the way your coloring appears. best to keep it consistent.

my sharpening settings vary depending on what i’m giffing but in general i do two layers of smart sharpen (500% with radius between 0.2-0.4, 10% with radius at 10px) and then gaussian blur at 2.5px and adjust the opacity so it’s somewhere between 15-20%. i try to strike a balance between smoothing out the graininess from selective color, and sharpening details like clothes and hair. here’s what i ended up with for the gif above:

then i rinse and repeat for the rest of the gifs in the set! i tend to start with the gifs that i know will be hardest to color, which is usually the darker ones (coloring is limited by how much i can brighten the scene) and those that include poc (again, limited by how much i can brighten and adjust the scene’s lighting without white-washing). then i check set cohesion as i go, using those first few gifs as benchmarks. once i have all 8 (or 9 or 10) gifs, i play around with composition and try to balance and vary the subject, colors, and composition of gifs next to each other. i go back and make a couple of adjustments here and there according to what i observe and what i think might improve the overall appearance.

and that’s pretty much it! i hope this was helpful, if you have other questions feel free to message me and i’d be happy to help/troubleshoot. happy giffing!

#Anonymous #*#resources #answered #sorry this was sO long but i hope it helped on the coloring end #tbh i exceeded my own expectations with the dev gif lol #yeahps #completeresources #chaoticresources #tutorial #coloring tutorial

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bard-llama · 3 years

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Nilfgaard and International Relations

I’m in a rambling kind of mood, so I’ve decided I want to talk about Nilfgaard and part of why I think Emhyr did what he does. So, first off: this post will DEFINITELY have some spoilers for, in particular, How to Fluster an Elf, but it’s also my general canon for what’s up on the continent (except when it’s convenient for the plot that it be different lol)

So, first off, here is a map of the continent. I’m sharing this both because I’ll probably talk about some details with borders, but also because, as you can see, even before the Third Nilfgaardian War (the one that starts at the end of W2 and ends at the end of W3), the Nilfgaardian Empire is MASSIVE. And that’s important, because the more land and people you manage, the more work you gotta do to ensure that they can eat and prosper. (Like, seriously, I would NOT want Emhyr or Ciri’s jobs.) Additionally, every part of the Empire has its own culture and potentially language (I’m not sure who speaks Nilfgaardian vs ‘Common’ vs their own regional languages. Not every author can be Tolkien and develop an entire thesis on the history of language in their world lol).

Now, this part is just a headcanon, but I LOVE the idea that the warming and cooling cycles of the globe are triggered by events like the Conjunction of the Spheres and the White Frost (and, to a lesser extent, Ciri using her powers). Now, what am I talking about re: warming and cooling periods? Specifically, I am talking about glacial and interglacial periods (not the same as ice ages, which might happen within those periods), which are basically two parts of a cycle that changes over thousands of years. On Earth, we are in an interglacial period (which literally means that the glaciers are retreating) and the last glacial period (aka glaciers expanding and covering more land) ended 15000 years ago. So like, we are very much talking about change over time.

Why is any of this important? For two reasons:

The transition between periods is marked by climate extremes. As we’re discovering in reality, this can be really damaging - too much rain kills crops, too little kills crops. Unstable weather conditions tend to lead to storms, which can do a great deal of damage. Both temperature extremes can do their own damage as well. People can dye of exposure, but on a larger scale, crops and water access very much depend on consistent weather patterns. Additionally, these conditions are ripe for the spread of disease, which can devastate kingdoms and populations. tldr: the climate gets very unpredictable over the course of many years (like decades, not like centuries or millenia) and this leads to extreme weather events, famine, plague, drought, etc.

Once the changes settle, then, generally speaking (and pls note: i am not a scientist, this is stuff I learned from research and interpreted myself) - warming/interglacial periods can lead to population booms and expansion, because the glaciers withdraw, which means new land is available and habitable. When a society has a surplus of resources, it expands. When it doesn’t, when there are limited supplies and everyone has to fight over them, population decreases, because there isn’t enough to go around and because birth rates tend to be lower (at least, in a world with accessible birth control where people can choose if they want to have a child or not). Warmer temperatures also means that more diseases can thrive, so it’s not like interglacial periods are automatically paradise. But, typically speaking, interglacial periods are associated with more land and more food, which leads more people.

On the flipside, a glacial period (i.e. glaciers expand across the land) is associated with more limited resources and less habitable land (because it’s covered by glaciers).

Now here’s the really important thing. These periods (interglacial and glacial) are correlated with the earth’s tilt and orbit. Which means that while the northern hemisphere (i.e. Cintra and north thereabouts) is experiencing one thing, the southern hemisphere (i.e. Nilfgaard and all it’s conquered lands) is experiencing the opposite.

So how does any of this connect back to my headcanons for the Witcher? Well, I like the idea that the Conjunction of the Spheres triggered a glacial period in the north and an interglacial period in the south. I’ll go into more details under the cut, but the follow up to this is that the White Frost that Ciri defeats in the game triggers the change over again. And what did we say happens when one period transitions into another? Weather instability and all of its effects.

What does this mean broadly? Well, really it means two major things:

The actual transition from glacial to interglacial (for the north) and interglacial to glacial (for the south) would be marked by extreme climate changes, which leads to political unrest because crops are ruined and people starve. For both the north and south, this is bad news, but probably the north would be affected worse, simply because there’s already famine.

After the transition, the north would theoretically prosper as new land becomes available and more resources are found. The south, on the other hand, would lose land and resources as glaciers extend.

Now, all of this is significant because we KNOW that Nilfgaard studies science differently than the north. They know that the earth revolves around the sun. Do they also know that the orbit affects the climate? Maybe. If they don’t their elven ancestors probably did, simply because they live long enough to experience these changes (in my canon. Sapko’s elves only live a few hundred years, I think). The point is - Emhyr appears to be pretty well-studied (despite spending his formative years as a hedgehog), so when he starts seeing the extreme weather affecting the south, he could put two and two together and decide that he has to conquer the north, because the north has resources! And if a HUGE portion of his empire is experiencing extreme weather that destroys their crops, then he NEEDS the North’s resources! Which, yes, is ironic, because his invasion causes famine, but he probably dismisses that as the ‘casualties of war’.

Another factor is that Nilfgaard drafted pretty much every able-bodied man in the empire to serve in the war. Which is great, because numbers do make a huge difference in war, buuuuut it’s also bad, because now... who’s gonna harvest all the crops? Who’s gonna sow the fields for next year?

I feel like I was gonna say more, something about supply lines and Nilfgaard’s expansion plans, but I don’t really remember. The point is - Emhyr acts like he’s working on a deadline. Some of that is probably because of the political enemies he has back home (you know, those he didn’t murder and dance over their graves), but I wonder if some of it might not be because he sees the change coming and he wants to set up Nilfgaard to survive. And to do that, he needs the resources the north has.

Okay, here’s the part that’s a spoiler for How to Fluster an Elf - okay, so Ciri is Empress and Nilfgaard now owns 80% of the continent east of the Blue Mountains. But even with the resources from the war-torn north, I doubt it’s enough to keep things from getting... difficult. But here’s the important thing - Ciri is not Emhyr. So when Ciri sees what’s coming and worries about how to feed her people, her response isn’t “let’s conquer others who have food”, it’s “let’s ask for help and work together”. A novel idea, isn’t it? Actually ASKING for HELP. But you know what? Once that ask is out there, the rest is diplomacy. And diplomacy isn’t easy, but it’s sure as hell less costly than war (though ultimately may lead to war itself). I don’t know if Ciri would make a good war commander. But I do know that she could make an excellent diplomat if she tried. Because she’s been exposed to a LOT in her life and has learned how to accept people without trying to change them and how to see the world from their point of view. And honestly, that’s all diplomacy really is - figuring out what drives each actor and working on a compromise that meets as many of those needs as possible.

Anyway, this is a really long post basically saying that global change is on the horizon for the continent and it has and will continue to affect the decisions rulers make. Because a good ruler looks after their land and their people - which means feeding their people.

Plus, you know, armies also gotta eat.

#the witcher #nilfgaard #international politics #global climate periods #headcanons

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userpoe · 3 years

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alright so I've used the tag 'poe dameron and the no good, horrible, awful, terrible bad week' frequently on this blog regarding the events of tfa/tlj but I've never really expanded on this and usually when I see people mention Poe's trauma, it's usually only the fact that he was tortured (valid). So, without further ado, let's take a look into the amount of trauma my poor kid went through in the span of like...a week and a half (if I had to hazard a guess).

Almost dies pulling a ridiculously dangerous stunt to escape the Colossus with Kaz (Resistance)

Finds the remains of an outpost destroyed by the First Order, is the one to find a tooka doll in the wreckage (Resistance) and realizes what happened

Has to watch Lor San Tekka (a man Poe has spent a long time looking for and greatly admires) be brutally murdered.

Is frozen with the Force and roughed up by some stormtroopers who take the advantage of the fact he couldn’t move

Is taken captive and has to watch as another outpost full of civilians be slaughtered - unable to do a damn thing about it but cry out “no”

Is taken aboard the Finalizer where he is confronted by the fact that the First Order is more powerful/has more resources than he realized

By my estimate, he’s held there for a couple of days: it’s nighttime when he’s captured and we see Rey go through two days on Jakku in between scenes with Poe. So, I reckon he was tortured for most of the first night/most of the next day. His wounds suggest physical torture (bruising around his head, bunch of cuts on his cheek/nose and a busted lip) and the Poe Dameron Flight Log also states that he was tortured by an interrogation droid who was given orders to use any methods available to get him to talk, including neuroshocks (yay). The droid apparently asked Poe where the map/Luke was 813 times and he never broke.

By the end of the second day is when Kylo comes in. As far as I’m aware, there’s no detailed explanation of what Poe sees when Kylo goes through his head but I think it’s safe to assume from what we saw of Kylo doing the same thing to Del in Battlefront II that Poe likely to relive some of his pre-TFA trauma while Kylo searched for the location of the map.

Poe is actually unconscious by the time Kylo leaves the room.

In the Flight Log and in the Poe comics, it’s revealed that Poe believed he was a) going to be killed, b) thought he’d doomed the Resistance and the Galaxy.

It’s day #3 that Finn comes to break him out. Poe’s so out of it still that he looks like he’s barely conscious when Finn comes to collect him. Obviously, things don’t go well and they crash.

Mid-crash, Poe ejects Finn out of the TIE Fighter, but is unable to eject himself out because his flight jacket got caught on the mechanism. He’s thrown out of the TIE Fighter (more physical injuries, yay), and stays unconscious for the rest of day 3.

Wakes up that night and wanders by himself for the night and some of the next day before he meets a scavenger who begrudgingly helps him out. Poe makes his way back to D’Qar, where he informs Leia of all the dozen ways he feels like he’s failed the Resistance, her, and the galaxy

(he never tells her who tortured him, though)

The New Republic is then destroyed. This is the government Poe believed in, served for years. It’s incredibly likely that Poe probably lived on one of the planets that was destroyed during his time in the fleet, and even more likely he lost old friends when it was destroyed.

Despite undergoing several days of torture + duress, Poe is sent to Takodana. When everyone returns to D’Qar, we see that it doesn’t appear he’s even visited a medbay at this point: he still has a busted lip and a lot of bruising.

When Starkiller sets its sights on D’Qar, they have to come up with a plan quickly. The Resistance is noted several times in the Poe comics to only have a handful of pilots: hell, there’s only about 400 people to evacuate in TLJ. They are officially the only people standing in between the galaxy and utter tyranny: no pressure or anything.

Since the bombing squadrons are out on a mission, the Resistance has to send twelve fighter pilots to take on a planet.

Only seven out of those twelve make it back alive (that shot of Poe growling mid battle? Yeah that’s after one of his pilots is killed).

Poe then discovers that Finn was gravely injured - Finn, who Poe probably feels a lot of responsibility for, since he’s there because of him, and who Poe already cares for a lot.

Not necessarily trauma related but it makes me emotional thinking about it: he hesitates long enough to make sure Rey is physically okay before taking off after Finn (you can spy Jessika and Snap watching after Finn worriedly in the crowd too!), and we later don’t see him leave Leia’s side: likely, he’s trying to keep an eye on her since he knows she’s grieving.

The Resistance doesn’t get very long to celebrate, though. Shortly after Rey leaves for Ach-Too, they discover the FO has already recovered enough to launch an attack on D’Qar.

As the Resistance discusses how to evacuate, Poe offers himself up as bait - knowing full well he could die by doing so. He’s scared, and Leia is too (we see this in TLJ, she’s actively nervous while on the comms with him). We even see him trying to calm himself down before he engages (”happy beeps”) once he has a moment to himself after calming Leia and BB-8 down (”c’mon buddy, we’ve pulled crazier stunts than this”).

Gets to listen to Hux threaten Leia, who Poe has spent the last sixteen years admiring and is one of the most important figures in his life/a surrogate mother figure. Literally, Hux calls Leia “[his] precious princess”

(maybe if you’d kept your pasty mouth shut you’d still have a dreadnaught, Hux).

It’s worth noting that almost everyone Poe has loved and lost has died in a space battle, including his mother. The entire Resistance, everyone he has left, is currently vulnerable to dying a similar death.

Poe strapped on a pair of experimental boosters to Black One, knowing full well that they could possibly kill him: they’d never been tested before. In fact, the blow back when he does activate them is so bad, he’s almost knocked unconscious in the TLJ novelization.

Rounding back to Starkiller for a second, it’s easy to see why Poe misjudged the Dreadnaught situation: they managed to take down a freaking planet with twelve starfighters and a ground team of five. A dreadnaught should have been nothing in comparison (and his line of thinking is very similar to Lu’lo’s, the man who helped raise him after Shara died, who’s loss catapulted Poe from being cautious into more freely engaging with the First Order).

Instead, he loses....a lot of his pilots. It’s stated in Spark of the Resistance he was friends with Paige, who - you guessed it - he’s on comms with when she dies. They take out the Dreadnaught, so he tries to focus on that instead - but it’s obvious that it’s eating away at him.

He’s then demoted but barely gets time to process that because then the FO finds them. He offers to go “jump in an x-wing and blow something up” but instead arrives in the hanger just in time to see it go up in flames...with a bunch more of his friends (pilots and techs who were already there) dead. To make matters worse, he was on the comms with Tallie when she died. Please give him a break.

Immediately after this, all leadership is killed in an attack. Poe, Kaydel and Finn are watching from a window when Leia pulls herself back to the Raddus: which likely means they were staring in horror before Leia ever came to. He’s the first one to catch Leia when she reaches the airlock, and doesn’t leave her side until he has to, to attend the meeting with the surviving members of the Resistance.

He then has a CrisisTM when he mentally freaks out, wondering if Leia still left him in charge because he knows she’s been trying to mold him into her replacement (although he believes he’s not worthy and is just a soldier/pilot, nothing more). Look at his sigh of relief when Holdo is called instead! He was terrified.

Kind of thrown by her speech, which I reckon reminded him a lot of the officials he dealt with in the New Republic Navy. [smash cut noises] in Poe Dameron #14, after Lu’lo dies, Leia grounds Poe so he has time to process his grief instead of just throwing himself into the next mission because “Everything’s easy for Poe Dameron, right?” I imagine that’s why Poe was immediately at Holdo’s side: looking for something to do, something to distract him from his own regret, grief and fear. However, it doesn’t work, and he’s again reminded of the things he hasn’t time to process: namely, his demotion -- which likely bothers him less than the fact that it reminds him that the last conversation he had with Leia, she was disappointed in him and it was...essentially an argument.

However, when Holdo makes it clear she doesn’t want his help...Poe backs off. He listens to her, and finds something else to do.

Which is keeping an eye on Leia, apparently, since the next scene we see him, he’s in her quarters. I’m guessing he stopped long enough to get dressed after the meeting, and immediately went to go keep an eye on Leia after this.

After Finn and Rose detail the plan to him, he takes a moment to himself to hold Leia’s hand: no doubt trying to gather up the courage to step into a leadership role. This plan is exactly the kind of thing Leia has come up with for Black Squadron, which is probably why he agrees to it. He’s pulled stunts like this before, this should go well, right?

(Spoiler Alert: no one has any luck in this movie so It Does Not Go Well)

BB-8 goes with Finn and Rose, which leaves Poe on the Raddus without any of his usual support system. Black Squadron is on a mission to gather allies, so he officially has no one to talk to or lean on at this time. He’s utterly alone and the cracks start to show.

(TLJ Poe is a Poe very close to losing hope for the first time. He’s desperate and scared)

In the TLJ novelization, Poe helps evacuate the medical frigate before Holdo grounds him from aiding in future evacuations (??? for reasons never explained). Despite his own growing concerns, Poe greets all the newcomers and spends his free time trying to raise spirits around the Raddus.

After seeing so many of his fellow Resistance members so desperate and without hope, Poe starts to worry everything Leia built is going to be destroyed. He even tells Holdo this, and her response is literally “Captain Dameron. If you’re here to serve a princess, I’ll assign you to bedpan duty.”

which...nice ableism there.

The Day Just Gets Worse and Worse and Poe has absolutely Nothing To Do with no idea how to help, and just a lot of waiting, and he hates that, he hates not being able to actively do something to protect the people he loves so he just gets more and more agitated until he eventually has a meltdown on the bridge.

Despite ALL OF THIS, he doesn’t even want to mutiny. It’s an attempt to buy Finn and Rose a little more time, it’s a last ditch effort, one that he doesn’t Remotely Look Happy About, and was never originally part of the plan.

He then hears Finn and Rose (over the comms, hooray I’m sensing a pattern) be found aboard Snoke’s ship. He realizes they didn’t make it, but doesn’t get time to focus on that because Leia shows up and stuns him.

He wakes up in a panic aboard the ship and (imo, because fellas I’m intimately aware of what one looks like) has a panic attack when he realizes they’ve abandoned ship. At this point, he doesn’t even know there’s a nearby planet to go to (Crait is uncharted), as far as he’s aware, the escape would’ve just been to drift in the weaponless (?) shuttles until they ran out of fuel again. Leia calms him down from it and gently explains the plan to him.

He gets to watch several other shuttles be destroyed, and tries to find out if theirs can go any faster (Leia’s on the ship with him). He then gets to watch Amilyn sacrifice herself and is the first to realize what she’s doing.

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this but his line “Finn! Rose! You’re not dead! Where’s my droid?” yeah, Poe had no idea they were even alive, he probably thought they were immediately killed or died when Holdo did The Thing.

When they realize they’re trapped, the camera pans up on a worried looking Poe. Just before it cuts away, he’s starting to smile: he’s already prepping for a inspiring speech, despite his own fear. He doesn’t get a chance though, because Finn beats him to it: and then we get the heart eyes shot from Poe, because he realizes he isn’t alone any more (no this isn’t trauma related it just Gets Me In My FinnPoe feelings so)

They begin their run on the battering ram canon. After losing more pilots, Poe orders them to fall back, but Finn disobeys him in a direct parallel to Poe at the start of the film. This move is largely considered a suicide run on Finn’s part...[coughing] maybe the start of the movie was too [coughing]

Poe continues to get everyone to retreat and is the last one back on base. He runs with the medic team to check Finn and Rose, and also bolts to Leia’s side when Luke is fired upon to comfort her.

He panics again when he realizes they can’t get through the only other exit, but luckily they’ve got Rey on the other side.

Shortly after all this, Poe has some drinks with Finn and Rey on the Falcon. He’s still mulling everything over and admits he wishes they’d all met earlier and wonders if things would’ve gone differently if the three of them met after Takodana (Poe Comics)

After Finn asks Poe what happened after the TIE crashed in TFA, Rey encourages Poe to tell them his story as she thinks it would be a “good distraction” from everything else. Poe hesitates, but goes through and literally retells a very traumatic series of events that’s barely a week old, so they have a distraction from everything. He plays it all off light-heartedly, cracking jokes (even says he went through a “little light torture”).

It isn’t until Rey mentions that Kylo also tortured her that Poe treats it a little more seriously “he did that to me too!” and holds his drink up for her to cheer with him and calls them “torture buddies” because he’s Poe Dameron and trying to cheer people up is what he does.

Finn even calls out Poe’s insistence that everything will work out several times in the few issues set post TLJ. He can’t believe Poe has so much faith, but honestly? As much as Poe keeps saying everything is gonna work out, I wonder if he’s trying to convince Rey and Finn or himself.

Finn then asks Poe to catch him up on what happened while he was unconscious post Starkiller.

Let me reiterate that Poe literally just retold with some ease being held captive for three days to distract them.

But after he tells Finn he offered himself up as bait, Poe skirts around the rest of the story with a “well you know the rest!” He can’t even bring himself to talk about the Dreadnaught run. Talking about Kylo running through his head is easier for him than that.

He then receives a recording from Jessika retelling the events of what Black Squadron was up to during TLJ. When he starts the video, he almost immediately pauses it and asks Threepio how it ends. Poe admits he doesn’t know what he’ll do if the video ends with Jess going up in a fireball. Luckily, it doesn’t end that way, but he still has to watch the videos with no idea what happened to his closest and oldest friends.

All of this happens in, like, a week at the most. This doesn’t even BEGIN to touch on the trauma Poe goes through in the Poe comics or even Freefall, but if we did want to touch on that, I’d say that a lot of the events in TFA and especially TLJ probably triggered some bad memories for him. Poe Dameron deserves nothing but fluffy things and also a lot of hugs.

#tegan speaks #i've read/watched every piece of poe media i can get my hands on since 2015 and like. SURE he gives me seratonin #but i now also have a very intense file in my brain of all the trauma he's gone through and how that impacts his every decision and #how events in the films almost definitely remind him of said trauma and it Makes For A Very Depressing Time #i'm sure there's probably more trauma in resistance reborn but i got too mad at the book to try and finish it so i just included #the comics. i'm pretty sure this is everything but I may have forgotten some stuff #long post #sorry mobile users

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kreuzdrache · 4 years

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LONG RANT/REVIEW ABOUT TERRARIA 1.4

Long post ahead lol

I beat finally beat Moon Lord a few days ago on Master Mode, so I figured I can finally drop some thoughts about the update as a whole.

For the most part: I love it!

Like, previously mentioned, I enjoyed the new content added to the game. Admittedly I did not use a lot of the new items, due to them being outclassed by the time I did found them, but they were still nice to have.

The two new bosses: Queen Slime and Empress of Light were also a welcomed addition, and finally makes the hollowed biome feel more complete. Queen Slime was a bit more chaotic than I would have liked, but it was not a big deal breaker. Empress of Light on the other hand was perfect for the most part! Her attacks easy to see and easy to understand, as well as being a pretty spectacle to behold. Might take a few times to understand her patterns, but her summoning item spawns fairly commonly in the hollowed biome in the outer 2/3rds of the world, so you will have plenty of chances to practice against her without spending too much time and resources.(Unlike Moon Lord............) She is definitely my new favorite boss(and Terrarian waifu...).

The new music themes added were also great. They even included the option for the Party Girl NPC to switch out the Terraria soundtrack with the Terraria Otherworld soundtrack after you go talk to her in a world generated with the seed “05162020 “. These tracks are also very good! Although, Otherworld’s Night theme does feel a bit out of place with terraria:

youtube

Seriously, this is terrifying! I thought I was playing a crafty sandbox game, not survival horror! Then again, Terraria does have the Blood Moon enemies, the entirety of the Crimson biome, and Wall of Flesh; so perhaps it is not all out of place.

Little things like the bestiary, the updated backgrounds and trees and flowers swaying may not be be needed, but they are nice and help enrich the experience of the game. I really like reading through the bestiary just to see why the descriptions are for some of the enemies. I especially love how the backgrounds show little details, like shooting stars in the sky, an Eye of Cthulhu floating in the mountains, birds flying in formation, clouds forming various shapes, and even a large meteorite falling in the sky.

Pylons...I like them, but I do have issues. They do cut down having to travel across the map as well cheap and easy to set up. All these do come with drawback though, compared to to making a more traditional network of teleporters. You cannot use them during some events, like invasions or lunar events(This is a big one.) If your housing npcs powering the pylon dies, then pylon doesn’t work, until you replace them or the died ones move back in. BIOME SPREAD CAN AND WILL MESS UP YOUR NETWORK. Whether it be through displacing your npcs or because biome is different from the placed pylon. You can also only have one of each pylon, so no two cavern pylons or ocean pylons for fast travel. You can buy a universal pylon though, after filling out the beastiary 100%, which also works for any area and does not require npcs near it, so that’s useful.

NPC Happiness, I was kinda disappointed. On one hand, I like that they are not super demanding: Just pair them up with npc they like and place them in biome they like and they become happy and lower prices of their services. On the other, I was kinda expecting more challenge: Like, the nurse npc greatly prefers crystal furniture, or the Witch Doctor npc wants his house built with Rich Mahogany instead of normal wood, as ideas. But again, this probably for the better, cause it makes things much more easier to work with.

Luck. OOH BOY, I do not get the inclusion of luck. Yes, I know they got rid of bad luck from the code, but I still think luck is pointless in the game. Luck is a hidden mechanic that is not really explained well at all, apparently affects your loot drops, finding bounded npcs like the Wizard, Stylist, ect, rare spawns like golden critters and Pinky, gaining healing hearts from downed enemies, ect ect. I do not know how accurate the wiki page is but reading it is not exactly instilling me with confidence on how useful the stat really is if you go all in. Like, I would do easy stuff like slapping down biome torches and garden gnomes in my arenas, but I would not bother waiting till lantern nights and making luck potions. By the way, luck potions require pearls, and those are fished from the desert biome and are rare from oysters, especially the pink ones that give you best luck potions are the rarest at around 1/125 oysters. Yes, you have to depend on luck, to gain a temporary buff to make you lucky in game. Silly, I know. Its a lot of effort for a small increase, I just do not think it’s worth it. If the goal was to help players with making better drops rates, why not just make better drop rates for the items, instead of making the player jump through so many hoops??? Or make an accessory or even an armor set that makes drop rates better, or something, I dunno. This mechanic just feels so unnecessarily esoteric, and for little benefit too.

Master Mode: I already mentioned in previous posts, but I disliked it. Greatly. I love Terraria, but it is tedious game. Master Mode cranks up that tedium by a lot, due to higher spawn rates enemies, higher damage from enemies, losing all your carried money on death(But thats not that big of deal, especially when you get the piggy bank), and more enemies have more hp. It is just not fun to deal with. Especially when doing lunar events, those are especially hellish in Master Mode.

Journey Mode: I do not get it. “Its creative mode with extra steps” as said by a youtuber is the perfect explanation. Why make the player go through all the trouble to unlock infinite copies of items by making them play through the game again? Honestly, if I knew how much I was going to dislike Master Mode, I would have skipped that and made Journey Mode character and world instead. I will most likely still play through journey, but having to go through all the same game to unlock infinite copies of items is still going to be tedious, even with god mode on.

That is my big issue with Terraria 1.4, nothing really seems to address the tedium issue. I am not asking for all good loot to get handed to me on the first kill a mob, but would it really affect the game negatively if stuff like biome keys, rod of discord, or even silly things like the jellyfish necklace were a little bit more reasonable to farm for? Perhaps make the whole lunar event a little less tedious, by cutting down the required amount of kills before you can turn off the pillars’ shields? And/or give us more fragments so we can craft more Sigils if we fail the event and just want to farm Moon Lord? Did Revear Shark really needed to get nerfed? Were explosives for harvesting meteorite too good? I dunno.

Despite my negativity, I am still actually largely positive to the game and I would still recommend it, either if you have not played the game in while or if you have yet to play the game even. Its on sale on steam right now for 5 USD or 10 USD through GOG. Even if you do miss out on the sale, it is still VERY worth the 10 dollar price. Also the soundtrack is still rocking.

#long #long post #rants #terraria: journey's end #terraria #terraria 1.4

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decaffs · 5 years

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university note-taking 101 ~

one of the hardest things parts of adapting to life in university is finding a note-taking method that is efficient and easy for you and your learning style.

it took me 18 months at university, experimenting with different note-taking styles, to settle on a few that work best for me. i thought i’d share all of the different methods i tried and the pros/cons of each & hopefully it’ll help you land on some note-taking styles quicker than i did! :-))

SO...i’ll start by saying obviously not all note-taking techniques are going to be included in this post because i’m just one person and these are just the styles i’ve had personal experience with and not everyone will like or dislike the same methods, it will take a little bit of trial and error to find your perfect style :-))

i’m going to split the different methods into 3 separate sections (and i’ll highlight my personal favourites):

⇢ handwritten

⇢ ipad/tablet

⇢ macbok/laptop

starting with what we all know and (kind of) love! we’ve spent the majority of our school education making handwritten notes for high school so it makes sense to start here.

1. basic handwritten notes

this type of note-taking is the most basic of all basic note-taking techniques and it’s probably what you’re used to. it involves any kind of paper - lined, squared, plained, whatever you fancy - and a single pen or pencil.

all this involves is writing down everything important you think is being said or discussed by your lecturer or your classmates! there’s nothing fancy involved, it’s all about getting down the most important points.

pros:

- you’ve already been doing this for years

- no time wasted doodling or highlighting

cons:

- can be time consuming if you’re not a quick writer

- if you’re writing on loose paper, it’s super easy to lose

- not easy to work out what notes relate to what slides / what comments were being made

- you may end up trying to write down everything on the lecture slides - waste of time when you can view them at home and you might miss important adlib!

2. annotating print-outs (*fave*)

this is a technique i adopted in second year of university! all you have to do is print out your lecture slides beforehand and bring them along with you. you can write at the side of slides or right on top of them.

pros:

- less likely to repeat what is said on slides so you can spend time listening for the nuggets of gold from your lecturer

- having slides prepared before a lecture means you can read them and familiarise yourself with some content

- easy to know what notes relate to what specific slides

- super quick to make important and accurate notes!

cons:

- it can be expensive to buy a printer/ink or to use your university’s printing facilities

- again, you can easily lose loose paper if you’re not careful

- your lecture slides may not always be available beforehand

3. cornell note-taking

cornell note-taking is something you’re probably already aware for those who don’t know - it’s a note-taking system devised in the 40s by a cornell professor.

cornell notes have to look a particular way in order for them to work (see here) and they’re geared towards helping you pass your exams.

you do your main note-taking in the right-hand box - these notes should be brief but include enough detail to act as a revision source. take these note in lectures or in classes and make sure to note down and highlight anything your lecturer emphasises.

use your left-hand column to write down potential exam questions you could be asked regarding the notes you’ve written on the right. these questions should act as test questions when you’re revising!

finally, in the bottom box you should summarise the key points to take away from that page of notes.

pros:

- excellent note-taking method for exam revision

- can be super efficient once you’re used to the style

cons:

- can take a while to set up pages if you’re doing it by hand

- can take some time adapting to this new way of note-taking

- not a flexible note-taking system, no person wiggle room

handwritten notes general pros and cons:

- hand writing notes is the most reliable way to remember important information

- you can use personal abbreviations and symbols to make your note-taking quicker

- you might lose papers here and there meaning your notes are incomplete or totally make no sense anymore

- it can be time-consuming trying to decide what is the vital information and getting it down before the topic of discussion changes

1. goodnotes for set reading annotations (app link here) (*fave*)

goodnotes is an app designed specifically for taking efficient and nice-to-look-at-notes! i personally use it for note-taking and annotating set readings at university.

i create a checklist on the first page of each module’s notebooks and write down each research paper or journal article i have to read so i don’t lose track. i then important PDFs straight into the notebook and annotate and highlight over the top of them.

pros:

- it’s super easy to have all of your reading notes and annotations in one place

- no risk of losing papers as everything is stored electronically

- the app uses icloud to sync your notes across all your devices make everything super accessible

- you can quickly share your notes with anybody through email/airdrop/imessage/pretty much anything!

cons:

- you do have to pay for the app (but it’s cheaper than printing out all of your readings)

- can be difficult to navigate at first

2. onenote for in-lecture notes

onenote is a microsoft app that lets you type and draw in one place! it works in a similar way to goodnotes.

i used onenote in first year to take in-lecture notes because it also allows for audio recording (DISCLAIMER: DO NOT RECORD YOUR LECTURES WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM YOUR UNIVERSITY AND LECTURERS) and it was super handy to have my notes and audio stored in the same file.

pros:

- super versatile and allows for many note-taking method in one app

- syncs across your devices (if you have onenote downloaded)

- allows you to collate different methods of note-taking in one place

cons:

- can be hard to organise your information! pages are blank and there’s no end to them, there’s also no grid for your items to snap to so it gets messy very quickly

- i’ve experienced personal issues with the syncing feature

ipad tablet/notes general pros and cons:

- tablets are generally really lightweight and easy to carry around - making them preferable over heavy notebooks or laptops

- having access to the internet makes note-taking super easy when you need to search terms or find photos

- you do have to make sure your tablet is fully charged if you’re taking it onto campus

- tablets can be super expensive

now for my holy grail - taking notes on a macbook or (insert laptop of choice here)!

1. brief in-lecture notes (*fave*)

i use microsoft word or pages to take most of my in-lecture notes and i fleet between using my ipad and macbook - i’m sticking it in this section because 9/10 i’m using my macbook.

with these kind of notes i set myself a specific structure and carry that out through the whole module!

first i lay my title across the top of my document - i usually just use the title of the lecture / general lecture topic. I then use my first indentations for the titles of each individual slide and bullet points for important comments made about each slide i also note particularly interesting things written on the slides themselves!

i stick to one font and one size to avoid wasting time on formatting!

i usually print out these notes so i can annotate them with any research i’ve found so it helps with my finalised notes.

pros:

- super quick if you’re a fast typer

- easy to correct notes or go back and add more detail at a later date

- easy to share and sync between devices

- simple format makes it easy to follow and a good revision resource

cons:

- notes can look a little boring and uninviting

- not easy to use abbreviations or symbols because of autocorrect!

2. extensive revision notes (*fave*)

i also use my macbook to create my finalised notes that i use to write my essays and revise for exams.

these notes take more time to make because of the formatting but they’re super nice to look at and make a wonderful resource at the end.

for these notes i start by picking a colour scheme (usually one within microsoft word) and i stick with this colour scheme for a whole module. i allocate one colour to research names and dates, one colour to titles, one colour to highlight key information with. i also use a variety of fonts! i typically use 4 fonts: one for the title of the lecture, one for subheadings, one for researcher names and dates and one for the main body of text - the main body font is usually a standard Helvetica or Arial!

i really take time to flesh out these notes so they reflect all of my learning - lectures, seminars, set reading, extra reading and knowledge i already had! i print off the notes and stick them in a ring binder and this becomes my bible for the semester!

pros:

- really inviting to look at so it makes revision a bit more enjoyable

- gives you time to show off your knowledge and create an extensive revision resource

- easy to share with friends or lecturers to get feedback

cons:

- can take a while to make these notes

- if you’re printing, this can cost quite a bit!

3. mind-map notes

finally! mind-map notes.

i use SimpleMind Lite to create mind-maps as the last part of my learning. each lecture gets its own mind-map and the nodes represent the key themes within the lecture!

it’s super important you don’t just use slide titles for your nodes as your mind-map will get crowded easily and you won’t want to use it as a revision resource.

keep your branching-off nodes short and sweet - think of them as knowledge cues! by the end of your learning you should be able to look at a node and remember the information regarding that point. these cues are also easier to remember and jog your memory in exam settings.

pros:

- good to see information presented in a new way

- you can use bright colours to make it more exciting

- great way to prep for exams

cons:

- hard to print also your canvas within the app is endless

- can be hard to share with others

macbook/laptop notes general pros and cons:

- can help you create a wide variety of notes - from short and sweet to fleshed out and fuuuuull of all the detail in the world

- allows you to correct, add to and print off your notes however many times you’d like

- you do have to make sure your laptop is always charged / you always have a charger!

- laptops can be heavy and impractical to carry to university

- if you’re not saving to a cloud you could lose some of your work (don’t be silly like me, use an external hard drive or dropbox!!!)

you made it!!! congrats :-))

hopefully i’ve given you a good idea of some of the note-taking methods you could use in university and you fancy trying a couple out!

if you have any questions or note-taking tips yourself, leave a message in the replies below.

decaffs x

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darkwritingsnshit · 4 years

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Fallen Stars

Please disregard my bad writings. This has been on my laptop for months and I wanted to get it off my hard drive. We’ll see where this goes honestly.

Warnings: This will probably be a dark fic with dark characters, noncon elements, smut and death. Please o not read if you are under 18 or uncomfortable with above mentioned plots.

The blaster shots glanced by your head as you shoved your guard Nele into a thicket of trees. Though it was her job, you weren’t about to let her die for you, not today.

“My queen!! We must fall back and regroup, there are too many of them!” Your commander’s voice was panicked and strained, you could tell even through the static against your ear that her words were laced with real fear.

Fall back, regroup, outnumbered, how had this happened? For a thousand years, your family had led your planet, passed mother to daughter, a matriarchal system that ensured the safety and wellbeing of each and every one of the millions of lives that dotted your planet. Now you were covered in dirt and blood and would be lucky to make it out of these woods alive.

The peace and booming trade economy that you and your mother fostered, helped by elected leaders of the people, had brought three entire systems to center their economies and influence upon your planet. What had started a thousand years ago as an emerging planet of peace and growth, had transformed into a beacon of political power and a center of influence across the close by systems.

Not only did you have a planet to look after, but whoever wore the crown and commanded the on-planet senate held the power in all three surrounding systems. Your planet’s largest moon held one of the most impressive and beautiful governing halls since the fall of the Republic. Less grand than it had once been with parts of it bombed down, system leaders still met with you among the standing halls and brokered deals, made laws, fortified trade and ensured protections for all three systems.

Your planet and system had opposed the Empire and had yet to give into the First Order. Politically, it was a death sentence to endorse your support for the Rebels, and it was becoming harder and harder to keep the First Order from extending their arm’s reach into your system.

In court your mother only openly supported the rights and liberties of her people, she would often raise a toast when the rebels scored a large victory. As a leader, she called it a rightful expression of the people; the people had asked for redress from the First Order and were met with a crushing fist.

When you were alone together, she would tell you of how she had once met Princess Leia Organa on a Rebel base when she was younger. The great queen strong, and her softness for the Rebellion known, your planet indeed housed many Rebels; it was even said to have been one of the last places the Old Republic Senators had ever met as a governing body.

You were a child when the Empire fell, young but still old enough to remember seeing the last few battles, watching men and women leave your hangars, never to come home. You remember your mother’s ever present fear, could nearly taste it. You remembered that she dressed in all black and was armed at all times, that she taught you to wield a blaster. You saw the celebrations that screamed across the galaxy, the weight lifted and the freedom in the air.

Over and over, you heard the chants of people in the streets, the jubilation and joy from being freed from the oppressor of the galaxy. You could remember them cheering, screaming through the streets “Never again!”. Never again. Here you were. What had happened?

_______________________________________________________________

“Supreme Leader, with the submission of-” General Hux knelt with a bowed head in front of a man held together by darkness and evil energy he could feel radiating from every particle.

“Don’t you see?! It does not matter how many simple, puny planets are crushed into submission. This planet has held the influence of three systems for a thousand years! As long as she stands opposed to the First Order, there will be rebellion in not one, but THREE star systems!!” Snoke’s rotting skin seemed translucent in the lights from the ship, his gold cloak doing nothing to hide the lacerations along his throat.

“It would be simple to destroy, Supre-” Started another well-meaning officer from behind General Hux.

“NO! Does no one listen? The destruction of this planet leads the systems against us in open warfare! Should this planet fall under our thumb, so do all three systems; without a body count and without losing valuable First Order time and resources.”

“Supreme Leader. I have some information that may serve you well.” Kylo Ren stepped forward from the shadows hiding him along the wall, holding in front of him a small square data chip. “From this new information, it seems like the conflict among the planet’s rulers may have swung in our favor.”

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

Under the cover of dark you and your guard Nele made it to a rendezvous point and were able to get medical care and some rest. You saw to it that Nele got enough to eat before finding your general for an update.

“What’s the status on your front?” General Lin flinched as you stepped out of the shadows, General Mar smiled, though it was short lived.

“Casualties were high in the pass, your stepbrother’s men had the high ground.” Lin’s grim face was dirty, uniform covered in dark stains.

“There may be better news from the left right flank your highness.” Mar stepped forward with a smile. Good news? Anything, you would be grateful for any advantage now.

“It seems your stepfather doesn’t know about the old battlements below the cliffs.” Your general stepped forward with a map of the area, you all drew forward around her.

General Mar traced a finger over the path down the Cyone Cliffs to where they led to the tucked away cove below. You smiled at your general, grateful for her years of service to your family. There were secrets unbeknownst even to you hidden in your new kingdom. Both generals had served your mother for years; you were learning so much from what they passed on to you.

“Below the cliffs is a stone fortress with rations, a ship and supplies. It’s hidden by the foliage and angle of the rock, with tunnels creating access points to the hill above.” Mar, Lin and the arranged officers turned to you.

“It’s not fortified enough to be a base, but it’s a place to lie low and regroup. Let’s get the ship up and running, we can meet the rest of the royal army on the other side of the continent.” There was a murmuring of agreement before you dismissed them and spoke closely with Lin and Mar.

“What do you think? Really?” At that moment you weren’t a queen standing before your generals, you were a young adult begging for help from her nearly dead mother’s trusted advisors.

“It’s alright wildflower, we aren’t losing ground, you’ve made the right decision.” Mar’s hand on your shoulder was comforting, you closed your eyes and breathed deep. Lin smiled at you and took your hands.

“Your mother is proud of you, little wildflower.” Her eyes were the same color as your mother’s. “You are fighting for your people, and we will not give up. We will win for them, for all of our people, understand?” You nodded your head.

“Thank you both, your advice and words of comfort bring me more strength than you can believe.” Mar and Lin had stepped back and gave you approving looks.

“Get some sleep, my queen.” Mar called after you as you made your way to your sleeping pad for a few hours of rest.

Sleep did not come easy; the casualties of the battle weighed heavy on your mind, as did the weight of the decisions on where to move next.

Your stepfather didn’t know your planet like you did. Of course he didn’t, he and your stepbrothers came to your planet when they were grown. Your mother had agreed to marry your stepfather to incite peace and new trades. Your stepfather came from a family with wealth around the system, though he had none of his own. A marriage to a well-respected queen brought your stepfather and older stepbrothers to your prosperous, blooming planet.

You could remember bits and pieces of your real father, but he had died when you were young. There were whispers of him being a secret rebel who died in one of the last battles, though your mother shushed such rumors. When you were a child you would memorize each detail of their wedding photos, and each memory of him that the elder women would tell you.

After the remarriage, your new stepfather pushed your mother to change the line of succession, and have his sons take the crown when your mother was to pass. Your mother’s anger echoed through the halls that day, you remember smiling when her shouting echoed off the stone walls around the palace. All efforts of your stepfather trying to finagle his way into your crown seemed to have stopped. Until at least, your mother got sick.

Just over six months ago, your mother had begun to feel ill. At first it was nausea, cramping and stomach pains, her throat turned and stayed sore, and eventually her heart began to beat irregularly. In shock and horror, you watched your perfectly strong, regal mother deteriorate in the span of months, until she slipped into the comma, she remained in.

As soon as your mother had been too ill to attend meetings, your stepfather had immediately seized control of the crown. For a thousand years, the crown had passed, mother to daughter, and it wasn’t until your mother was non-responsive that your stepfather officially declared himself king of your planet, no matter anyone’s protests.

A King on the Queen’s throne of Galia did not sit well with most of your planet. Nevertheless, taking advantage of your mother’s severe state, your stepfather had taken over the royal palace with the help of his sons and their armies, and you were forced to flee and regroup with those who were still loyal to you.

There were few who were loyal to the new King of Galia, those that did were paid men or your stepbrother’s armies who had never been on planet. It angered you to see so many innocent lives lost, so much of your planet destroyed over a crown, over a throne.

Truthfully, you cared not for the crown or a palace to overlook the hills, you cared about the people living in those hills, the wellbeing of the children in the fields and if everyone in the village had enough to eat. Your stepbrothers would call you a wildflower when they saw you running through the streambeds, down dusty roads barefoot. When you would run to your mother and complain, she would laugh, and ask you why you would be upset that someone had called you something as lovely as a wildflower.

Wiping nostalgia back from your brain, you pictured topographical maps and battle lines drawn across them. With any luck, you would be able to overpower, outmaneuver and take back the palace within 30-35 rotations. You were in a bad position now, but with your general’s knowledge of the land and the base on the other continent, you would be safe by this time tomorrow.

_________________________________________________________

“Ships are closing on the planet sir, we’ll send stormtroopers planetside once we arrive.” Standing on the bridge, a man read off his data pad and tried not to make eye contact.

“Thank you Major, that will be all. Deploy three battalions to the palace and wait for myself and Ren to arrive.” Hux glanced at him and continued on his data pad until the Star Destroyer came to a halt in front of a blue and green swirling planet.

The information that Ren had brought forward gave insight to an unbelievable situation. The Queen was near dead, her husband took the throne and the princess was in exile rallying troops. Snoke had insisted they pounce on the situation, taking the opportunity to give full support to the dying Queen’s husband. If the new King were only in power because of the First Order, he would be easy to control. Control the planet, control the system.

Hux’s data pad lit up when the battalions were leaving the docking station and he took his greatcoat from where it was hanging and prepared to arrive on Galia. Captain Phasma and Kylo Ren met Hux on the shuttle, an admittedly tense but short ride.

Stepping onto the planet, Hux realized that he was overdressed, as heat and humidity washed over him. The palace itself was grand as he expected; a thousand years of architecture and design had gone into a beautiful white stoned palace that seemed to be rising out of the sea and growing from the mountainside it was built on. From what Hux had gathered, there were several decent sized continents, but the rest of the planet was a warm archipelago.

Troops and ships were deploying around them as two men that Hux didn’t recognize came hurrying up to the approaching soldiers. Ren waved down the troopers that drew weapons at the approaching men. They raised their hands, showing they came unarmed, and walked towards the generals and their men.

“We received your offer of assistance and are more than grateful to you!” One man shouted from a few feet. He held up a holodisk that Ren snatched from his open palm using the force. With a click, the disk lit up, an older man dressed in finery spoke to the generals.

“It is with great thanks that I, King of Galia received the First Order’s offer of assistance. We welcome you into our palace upon your arrival and will be happy to get you and your troops anything you could need. My messengers will bring you to the palace for your reception.” The holodisk went dark in Ren’s palm.

“Please gentlemen, have your men follow us to the palace where our King will be happy to make accommodations and arrangements for everyone.” The other of the two messengers spoke. Ren nodded his head once, motioned two fingers foreword.

“Lead the way.” Came Ren’s masked voice, already following the two men towards the palace.

The First Order’s procession of troops and tanks made way to the shining palace, finding more soldiers wearing different uniforms standing in formation, awaiting their arrival. Three men stood before rest, the generals and Captain Phasma crossed the rest of the path to meet them.

“Esteemed guests, welcome!” Your stepfather stepped forward to greet the First Order at his palace gates. “Please come inside, we have so much to discuss.”

__________________________________________________________

Sleeping little, you rose before dawn to oversee everyone’s preparation to evacuate. You wanted to make sure that all your soldiers and supporters got out safely before you did. You were the one making the plans, you had to make sure that those who were following your orders would be safe.

“We’ve got soldiers moving down the cliffs already, your highness, they’ll be getting the ship and communications ready to go.” General Mar was at your right shoulder, watching you strain to see through the dark.

“That’s a relief, we’re going to be vulnerable and at a disadvantage climbing down the cliffs.” You hadn’t been down them before but weren’t picturing the best fighting position.

“We will be under cover of foliage for most of the journey. We will leave food supplies and unnecessary equipment hidden here. We won’t take anything with us besides weapons, droids and the electronics we need to make a safe departure.” Mar looked to the suns that weren’t yet illuminating the horizon.

“It seems you’ve thought of everything General. I’m thankful to have you by my side.” Words wouldn’t ever let her know how much you needed her.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else, wildflower. Lin has the maps and oversees communications. You will find her at the tent down to the right. When you are close enough, you’ll see it.” Mar gave your shoulder a squeeze and pointed you in the direction of General Lin.

It was hard to see in the dark, though the sky was slightly lightening, you could hear the hushed whispers and were able to see a makeshift tent in the grass. Picking out the general’s whisper from the others, you found Lin directing her soldiers and scanning maps. From what you could see, about a quarter of your company was already on the cliffs or below, and secure communications seemed to be up and running. You were always impressed by what she was able to pull together.

“We are working to hurry the progress my lady, we know that with every minute we stay is a minute in your stepfather’s favor.” Lin whispered across the table.

“I am beyond impressed by your operations here General, I am forever indebted to you and your soldiers.” You whispered back, near silent operations swirling around you.

“Your highness,” Lin began, “you are indebted to no one. You are our Queen, and we have pledged our lives and loyalty your mother, to you and any children you may have. We are proud to serve you, to fight and die for you because of all your family has done for our planet and our people.” Sincerity laced every one of her features.

“Thank you,” you managed, blinking back tears you wouldn’t let spill. “Please don’t let me hold up your operations, I will ready my ladies to go.”

The dawn was about to break; you were fighting the suns as you ran across the grass. You insisted on being among the last of your soldiers down the cliffs. Your generals had been against it, but there had been no trace of movement from your stepbrother’s army and they didn’t have the manpower or knowledge of the terrain for an effective pursuit. You wanted to make sure all of your women were safe and ready to evacuate before leaving your position.

“Final squad, three minutes incoming,” you breathed over the transmitter to Mar.

“Copy that; shuttle is prepared for departure, awaiting your arrival. I want to take off the second you’re aboard, come down the dock running your highness!” Mar barked.

Truly the cliffs that overlooked the sea were a breathtaking sight. If you could, you would sit back and admire the suns beginning to shine across the sparkling water, turning the world before you to a sea of sapphires dotted with emerald islands as you looked to the east. In too much of a hurry, you and your guards focused on getting down to the ship and to safety.

The trail was easy enough; able to walk three across it was nicer than many hiking trails you had been on. General Lin had done a wonderful job clearing it in the night, you could see stumps where trees had grown across and layers of foliage tossed to the sides that had been hiding the old war paths. Mar told you this particular trail hadn’t been used for nearly a hundred years, and the maps your stepfather was using had no record of the old trails.

“The fool has no respect for the ways of our planet, the ways of our people. If he does not read the histories, he will be blind to the futures.” Mar had expressed to you in exasperation one night.

“Two minutes and closing, ready the ship for takeoff,” you called over the radio, wanting to be gone from this part of the planet so securely under your stepfather’s control. Still moving, you heard only static.

“Repeat, one minute 45 seconds and closing, what’s your status?” Still nothing. “Mar? Lin?” you had radio silence.

“Stop.” You held your hand up and your company came to a halt. Staying still, you listened but heard nothing. Birds screamed above your head, the wind shifted, and you tasted salt. If you stayed where you were, you had nowhere to go. Sending a silent prayer that there was something wrong with the transmitter, you tried again.

“Mar, what’s your status?” You and your soldiers were silent, the only sounds coming from the wind, waves, and birds.

“Your highness,” It wasn’t general Mar who you expected, but Lin who sounded breathless.

“Lin what’s going on?” You still held your hand in the stop position, every one of you were watching the transmitter with bated breath.

“The- one of the engineers thought there was a problem with a fuel cell…” Lin’s voice cut out before continuing. “We’ve prepared for takeoff your highness.”

Nele, your personal guard shifted beside you, concern written across her face.

“It’s supposed to be Mar,” Nele shook her head and shifted closer to you.

“What do you suggest, Nele?” You asked her in a whisper. All of the women around you looked uneasy. There was a murmur among them but Nele again shook her head.

“It’s up to you, my queen. But from where I see it, there’s nowhere to go but forward. There is nothing left for you on this side of the planet.” Nele gripped her blaster closer.

“You’re right, Nele.” Something felt wrong, but you squared up your shoulders. “One minute 45 seconds and closing, be ready for takeoff.” You motioned with your hands and your party continued forward with you.

“Copy.” Was the only response from Lin as you hurried your way down the cliffs.

“Thirty seconds Lin, I don’t hear the engines you need to be ready!” You and Nele were almost sprinting the last few meters before the trail would open up into the loading dock.

“We’re ready,” came Lin’s reply over the transmitter you clutched opposite your gun.

Company in tow, you and Nele made the last turn before skittering to a halt, Nele stepping her entire body in front of yours and backing you behind your approaching soldiers. You found yourself in the middle of a company of your closest soldiers, blasters drawn, completely unprepared for what faced you.

_____________________________________________________________

General Hux was loathe to admit when something had upstaged his expectations, but the royal palace of Galia was too stunning to hold grudges against. Even the foundations of the palace were impressive; inlaid with stones that held fossils of ancient creatures from the depth of Galia’s oceans.

The library and data catalogue were something else altogether. Hux had only seen this much data and information in highly secure military bases, and from what he could gather, most of it was open to the public. Thousands of years of information were behind two doors that seemed to never close.

After Captain Phasma had been dispatched to organize and prepare all the troops, Hux sent a tactical droid to learn as much as possible about any and all battle stations, bases, and war intel on the planet in the last three hundred years. It would transmit the information to Phasma so she could better her battle plans.

In the brief meeting Hux had surmised that the new King of Galia was an insufferable idiot. This would be too easy. Should the exiled princess be captured, any rebellion would be short lived. With the king under the influence of the First Order and the princess at their mercy, the planet would have no choice but to crumble to the First Order. Rejoining the king and Ren, Hux was fairly confident with their mission.

“General.” Captain Phasma strode forward, the din of the army faint behind her. “Based on the king’s information of their last battle, and maps compiled by the tactical droid, I believe we’ve pinpointed the princess’s location.

“She’s no princess!” The king spoke up from beside the general. “She’s a traitor to the crown and has been removed from any chance of succession. She is no princess on Galia.”

The general chose to ignore the king’s outburst, wanting more information.

“Show us where, captain.” Came Ren’s deep voice came before Hux had the chance.

Captain Phasma held up a holodisk that showed a piece of land, with terrain and trails marked across the landscape.

“Based on the information your sons have given me about the last battles and where they would have a chance to regroup, the only place they could seek refuge would be these old battlements on the Cyone Cliffs.”

The king balked at the captain’s maps. “Those old maps and trails haven’t been used in a hundred years, there’s no way they would even know about those battlements.”

“You assume too much.” Ren’s voice made the room drop in temperature, the king pall. “You underestimate the princess and her support.”

The king didn’t answer but shifted uncomfortably and grumbled.

“Captain,” began Hux, “how sure are you of the princess’s position?”

“If the information I’ve been given by the king’s son is correct, there’s nowhere else she could be, general.” Phasma answered.

“She’s there.” Came Ren’s clipped tone, he was already striding from the room towards his shuttle.

“Move the troops out Captain.” Hux told Phasma before turning to the king, looking smug. “We will retrieve the princess and return to the palace shortly.”

General Hux left the king looking rather speechless in his own hall. Truly the general had no care for what the king thought. He had invited the First Order to Galia with open arms, Hux would be damned if this old man got in the way now.

Flying over yesterday’s battlefield Hux saw bodies smattered across fields, dark stains against trampled, emerald green grasses. Following Phasma’s coordinates, the ground dropped off beneath the shuttle to sparkling water beneath. Turning and flying low, close to the blue water, Hux watched white cliffs pass before his eyes. Still descending, the shuttle nearly touched the water before a dock came into view, with a shuttle for 100 powered up and preparing for takeoff.

“Fire on that ship. I want it grounded not destroyed, the princess may be inside.” Hux instructed an admiral before him. Within seconds the back half of the shuttle was in flames, people running to evacuate.

“Phasma, land your troops and contain the solders. Kill anyone who isn’t an officer of higher ranking.” Hux watched as his three airships landed, troops pouring out and surrounding the shuttle and soldiers who had been preparing it for takeoff.

Meeting Ren on the dock, Hux watched as chaos ensued around him. Women being knocked down to their knees, the smell of burnt flesh rising as firing squads made bodies drop. Within minutes there were but five left alive, being shoved towards Hux and Ren at the end of Phasma’s blaster.

“We’ve identified three rebel officers and two generals, general.” Phasma reported, the five women surrounded by twice as many guards.

Looking over the group they were raggedy indeed; blood, sweat and singed clothing, matted hair, he saw scared soldiers who had watched all their friends and sisters die. There were two who stood out, one who seemed to hold no fear, the other gave away her position by monitoring the officers too closely- they were her responsibility.

“Where is the princess?” Came Ren’s modulated voice, a cold feeling creeping into the bones of those surrounding them. When he got no response, he lifted a hand and brought all the women to their knees, holding their throats.

“Stop!” One of the women spoke and raised her hand to Ren.

“Where is, the princess? I won’t ask again.” Ren had released the soldiers, the one who had spoken standing to face him.

“We have no princess on Galia, this army is loyal to the Queen, who is safe.” The woman’s voice was steady, her eyes did not betray the same fear that was written on her fellow soldier’s faces.

A blaster shot sounded, one of the soldiers dropped dead behind the woman speaking. A scream came up from the others, but the woman held steady and stared at Ren unflinchingly.

“I see you’re prepared to die for your queen.” The chill was still palpable in the air. “Let’s see if your soldiers feel the same way.” Ren nodded to Phasma who pushed forward the second women who seemed more and more concerned for the three other soldiers.

This time it was Hux who stepped forward, pacing around the woman with fear written in her eyes.

“If you don’t tell us where the queen is, I will have my captain dismember each of your soldiers in front of you until you are so inclined to give us her position. Do you understand me?” He came to a stop before her, she was glancing between her soldiers and the other woman who had spoken to Ren. To prove a point, Phasma sharply kicked a soldier to her knees, eliciting a cry of pain. The woman before Hux dropped her eyes to the ground.

“She’s not here yet.” She spoke softly, as if she was trying to keep her soldiers from hearing her admission.

Hux nodded sharply, then motioned to Phasma. “Take them away.” Phasma marched the remaining three soldiers away, leaving two before Ren and Hux. “When will she be here?” Hux spoke directly.

“She won’t come until she has confirmation from us.” Eyes still downcast, voice still soft.

“Then I suppose it’s up to you to give her that confirmation.” Ren spoke again, his helmet turned towards the first woman, her calm upsetting him.

“I can’t do that.” Was the even reply that came from her. With an angry yell and a sweep of his arm, Ren sent the woman flying across the landing dock, her body hitting the stone cliff and falling to the ground.

Like two wolves closing in on dying prey, both Ren and Hux turned towards the last woman standing before them.

“If you want your soldiers and your queen to die, put up a fight. We have you surrounded. If you feel so inclined to save a life today, you’ll give us what we need and you’ll give it to us now.” Hux had a blaster trained on her and was close enough to intimidate the smaller woman with his height.

The woman glanced around, taking stock of the troops of First Order soldiers and aircrafts closing in on the space above.

“I’ll help you, if you can insure the safety of my queen and her escort.” Was her reply.

“We can talk about your requests once you’ve done your part.” Snarled Hux, taking her by the arm. “What signal?” He shoved her towards the communications panel. Hux set the channel to 732 after a grumble from the woman and waited for a transmission.

“Two minutes and closing, ready the ship for takeoff.” The station crackled to life, both Ren and Hux turning to the woman expectantly. Looking jumpy, the woman struggled to take the transmitter and respond.

“Repeat, one minute 45 seconds and closing, what’s your status?” A crackle. “Mar? Lin?” The transmitter lit up with each word.

Looking panicked, the woman turned to Hux with wide eyes. “I’m not the one who’s supposed to be answering.” She whispered

“It doesn’t matter, just get her here.” Hux hissed out in annoyance.

“Mar, what’s your status?” This time she gripped the transmitter and was able to speak over the radio.

“Your highness,” the woman spoke

“Lin what’s going on?” The breath was quick coming from the other end, winded.

“The- one of the engineers thought there was a problem with a fuel cell…” She let go of the button and let out a long sigh, looking between Ren and Hux. “We’ve prepared for takeoff your highness.”

“One minute 45 seconds and closing, be ready for takeoff.” From the sounds, whoever had the transmitter was on the run.

“Copy.” Was the terse reply. Hux, Ren and the woman waited as troops formed up around them, facing the trail that the queen would be coming down withing minutes. Hux felt almost unable to control the delight at capturing someone who could bring so much of the galaxy under the control of the First Order. And it had been too easy.

“Thirty seconds Lin, I don’t hear the engines you need to be ready!” Again, came the voice over the transmitter.

“We’re ready.” Sounding dead, the woman responded to the transmission with closed eyes.

“Hold formation!” Hux yelled and his soldiers snapped to position, waiting for whoever was going to come out of those trees.

#star wars #dark writings #My writing #my works #bad writing #hux x reader #not canon #au #ignore me #hux #armitage hux

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vroenis · 4 years

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When The Best You Can Do Is Shoot A Gun

The Animal Crossing / Doom Eternal Covid19 launch coincidentally seems to be related to this discussion, even tho I’d say Doom Eternal has an excellent combat system and isn’t really relevant to what I’m going to bring up. I don’t have a problem with shooty-shooty, I have purchased, played and will continue to purchase and play plenty of video games that engage with firearm violence. There are plenty of discussions about how intelligent, consenting adults can do this without any problems and I won’t retread them here. Doom is simple game themed vaguely around demons; demons bad, player protagonist good, good player shoot bad demons - OK you got it, apply an incredible movement system into that and enjoy.

What I want to discuss involves of-course that pesky word and idea nuance, which annoys the shit out of more people these days, for its applications and misapplications - fingers-crossed I don’t fuck it up, but first I want to bring up Ubisoft and systems, so now’s as good a place as any for a stolen picture from the internet.

As far as concept art goes, that’s actually very representative of the final product in-game.

Ubisoft appear to have a long-term open-world tech development objective. I believe at some point very soon, these individual objectives will converge into one single middleware product with a mandate to producce retail licenses that combine what each of these individual franchises have been testing and achieving in isolation, those being;

Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint: 3rd person Load-On-Demand

The Division: 3rd Person Cover and interactivity

Assassin’s Creed: Environmental mapping and interactivity

Starlink: Scaling Load-On-Demand

Far Cry: First Person implementation of various combinations of above

I’ll put it another way;

Ghost Recon: Load everything

The Division: stick to everything

Assassin’s Creed: climb everything

Starlink: scale everything

Far Cry: do it in first person perspective

It looks like all of these games are running in Ubisoft in-house proprietary engines. Ghost Recon and Assassin’s Creed are running in Anvil, developed for the very first Assassin’s game and in which the Prince of Persia 2008 and Forgotten Sands also ran in. Oddly, (Rainbow Six) Seige, Steep (lol) and For Honor are also running in Anvil.

Both Division games and Starlink are running in Snowdrop and this appears to be due to The Division having come from Massive Entertainment. I’ll be honest, from the perspective of a consumer (read: punter) and someone with extremely minimal 3rd-hand development experience, The Division looks far more impressive than both the Ghost Recon and Assasin’s games, and former Massive brand and art director Rodrigo Cortes has said of the engine that it was design to “do things better not bigger” and I think it shows. Anyway, it was still developed with Ubisoft so as I understand it, they own it. Massive is a Ubisoft subsidiary, their studio based in Sweden.

Far Cry is going to be a little different, being a little older and having its roots slightly before... what shall we call this mess... the cynical age? The microtransaciton age? Anyway. The first game used the CryEngine developed by Crytek. At some point, Ubisoft seemed to develop an offshoot of the engine called Dunia because the CryEngine was licensed and clearly lucrative, I think. I’m not entirely sure, but Dunia does appear to remain in-house and under the auspices of Ubisoft Montreal. Where am I going with all this?

Starlink was “toys to life” a-la Skylanders but way too late, combined with No Man’s Sky-lite, but the game itself other than being overstuffed with Ubisoft copy-and-paste template-quests is an excellent proof of concept.

I do need to say that in general, I don’t have any particular affinity for Ubisoft. So I am yes, absolutely fascinated with something I do think is happening as far as tech goes and now I’m writing about it in this piece, and yes you can tell I’ve played and even enjoyed some of the games they’ve produced and published, but there’s a lot not to like about many of their practices, the least of which is the overbearing sense of cynicism pervasive in many of their games.

I played Far Cry 3 long after it released and got perhaps 20% thru the campaign before giving up entirely. For starters, nothing about how it controlled felt right and I appreciate that’s purely a personal preference. Being a Battlefield player, there’s something about DICE’s sense of locomotion that is perfect to me, even tho it varies from title to title from Bad Company 2 all the way to V most recently. Other things about Far Cry bother me tho - if there’s wildlife around, it always attacks the player, guaranteed. Everything about this game seems to be designed to force the player into engagement, to provide you with materials to collect, craft or sell, but also to run you short of ammunition to either scrounge for more or have to buy it because *surprise* - it prompts you to purchase ammunition for real-world money. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Fuck off. I uninstalled the game immediately. I can deal with ridiculous AI with magical aim and irrational scripting. I can deal with absurd narrative for the sake of reading (and roasting later), but the entire package culminating in purchasing more ammunition was otherworldly, it was truly bizarre. To this day, I don’t understand what world Ubisoft inhabits that this is something that makes sense to anyone in management or marketing, and yet there it is and there are consumers that not only accept it but embrace it. No doubt there are metrics from the mobile industry that support it and dear lord the capitalist apocalypse is upon us.

What will Ubisoft do when they can merge these technologies? They definitely want to and likely already have in-house, they just need the engine to run client-side for the Consumer. You and I and Inside Gaming are all laughing it up at Stadia right now, but we’re at the wrong end of the business. For Ubisoft, they can ignore the faltering at the start, it’s the long-term they focus on. The pittance Google are losing now, even if they end-up shuttering the project will be meaningless if they end-up getting the hardware to work, even if the end-result is the hardware sitting in a box in the consumer’s home in 10 years. Sure, that’s a long loop, but the journey still doesn’t matter, only the eventual ROI.

If this piece hasn’t gotten boring for you yet, it’s about to because you’re probably excited for what Ubisoft will do with this impending technological power and development and I rally am not. What will Ubisoft do with it? Probably just more Assassin’s Creed, except you’ll be able to snap to cover and have a fully mapped country. Probably more The Division, but you’ll have a fully mapped city that you can also climb on the outside of buildings and then enter them without any loading. Probably more Far Cry but with bigger maps and more interactivity and less loading. The next generation of consumer hardware consoles from Microsoft and Sony are upon us and as much as PC enthusiasts hate to admit it, the consumer market is largely gated by the generational hardware stepping of these platforms. That may change after this era depending on how Google, Amazon and indeed Microsoft and Sony go with cloud computing, but for the moment the status-quo will remain as alternative products develop. Bear in mind with Covid19, climate change and the general sustainability and ethical standards of working and living being under growing scrutiny the world over, things are changing more each day, our technology development may change in ways we don’t expect so who even knows what’s in store for the future.

So What Do I Actually Want?

Good question. NB: before you ask, Animal Crossing isn’t my thing. I played it years ago on Gamecube. It’s cute, it’s fine. I’ve no interest in it. I’m writing this note in retrospect because I realise you may say “Just play Animal Crossing or The Sims but hopefully I can illustrate by neither of those games is what I’m after, nor do I just want to build a house in something like No Man’s Sky and fill it with crap. Let’s see if I get there... A few weeks ago I wrote about how the best thing Naughty Dog did with Uncharted 4 was Elena and Nathan’s domestic spaces. I did purchase The Division 2 on the cheap a couple of weeks ago and I’ll be honest, there’s a lot about it that I’m enjoying quite a bit. For a start, visually it’s stunning. The art team have done an excellent job of both filling the world with immense detail, but also making every area of Washington unique and distinct which is a huge feat given the total space covered. Thus far, I’ve spent a whole lot of time just walking around and gathering resources, in part just to sightsee and explore without any particular objective in mind. After a while, I got the impression that the map was a bit flat, but the more you explore, the more you find places where you get verticality, and then doing missions always adds verticality and variety in environmental and art design, it’s a marvel to see.

Apologies to James and Thomas (above) for ripping these images, but I’m glad your names are in frame so you have direct credit - outstanding work. The art in this game is without question its strongest element.

And that’s just the thing - The Division is an interesting game in that what I enjoy most is the sense of walking around exploring, gather resources and helping people. I’m not here on an anti-violence kick - I play Battlefield, I actually don’t mind the shooting in The Division, it’s fine, whatever, I’m not going to justify that. What I’m saying is that it gets boring.

THERE ARE A LOT OF GAMES ABOUT SHOOTING.

Like... a lot. More than enough. There will always be a lot of games about shooting and that’s fine. I think I’ll always play them. Hey, I even play games about shooting *in very specific ways* - it’s not like I don’t care about the shooting, I’m playing The Division with only a bullpup DMR and shotgun combo, plus I’m trying to use my sidearm when traversing the streets as much as possible so don’t at me, I’m in the game.

But we seem to mostly get high detail assets in games with guns because shooty games get all the money. I get it - shooty games get all the sales because we as gamers like to play them - sure, I’m one of them, but I didn’t buy The Division until it was under AUD$30 because gotdam the shooting is so boring and even now yes, it really do be just more boring shooting, just like it’s boring in Uncharted, just like it’s boring in Ghost Recon (my goooooood so boring), just like it is in Destiny, and the umpteenth shooty mcshooty game. I’m getting too old for this.

Uncharted 4 had an opportunity to do something more and it almost did. For many players, it probably achieved enough of what I was after by those two visits to the Fisher and North residences but I wanted so much more of that. I want to see Sully’s house or houses, more of his life. I want to know where Chloe’s life is at. I want to know of their lives and emotional engagements outside of the frankly stupid narrative I have no interest in because it’s clearly stupid and an excuse for running and jumping that other games have since done better. If Uncharted as a whole was a subtext for character, then by the fourth game, the focus should have been the characters that carried the series thru to the end - no disrespect to Tom Baker - not the heretofore unrevealed older brother.

For Years I Didn’t Know “Walking Simulator” Was A Pejorative

I think this is why I replayed and continue to replay Dear Ester so much. I remember laughing my ass off at YouTubers making videos about how it wasn’t a game and that it didn’t have objectives. Yet there were still threads and might still be on reddit or Discord wherever gamers congregate these days - about “virtual tourism” and “just chillin’ in place x because it’s so awesome” etc. It’s fine, each generation will rediscover virtual tourism again and again and we can’t denigrate anyone for doing so, it’s certainly nothing we invented given it comes from literature and oral tradition before that, but it’s remarkable that there’s this resistance to experiences crafted purely for the purposes of being immersed in them.

I adore Dear Ester and Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. Absolutely loved What Remains Of Edith Finch and only if you have already played Edith Finch, because it’s full of spoilers but also its own spoiler warnings, I heartily recommend Joseph Anderson’s outstanding video The Villain of Edith Finch. It’s a 53 minute watch so I won’t embed it, and he has a certain style of presentation that won’t gel with everyone, nor do I always agree with everything he says which should go without saying but at some point folks, you have to stop pursuing art, criticism and media that just wholly aligns with your own views. That said, I generally do find most of what he says agreeable, innit. Anyway he’s great and the video is great.

While Dear Esther is more surreal and Rapture and Edith Finch are in part slightly more fantastical than the real-life settings of Uncharted 4′s home and Division’s post-apocalyptic cities, they all visually represent dense, very human object-rich spaces that to me are quite interesting to explore. Dear Esther might be a little more rooted in nature but its human elements tie-in to its narrative in an extremely interesting way. Each game offers different levels of interaction, some that serve the narrative directly, some as subtexts and others quite mildly in the periphery.

I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself but I remember seeing a promo for Battlefield Hardline coming off the back of Battlefield 4 and the ridiculous marketing phrase “levolution” - the term they coined for large-scale environmental destruction (please take the keys away from the marketing department). I remember seeing video footage of a large construction crane falling in a level and thinking

“All this intelligence, all this tech, and this is what we do with it? Is this all we can achieve? This is it?”

That’s how I feel about this emerging technology. Somewhere out there (on YouTube, to be fair), there’s all this footage buried of the Beyond Good And Evil sequel that to everyone’s knowledge is still in development. I’d put my money on that being the first project built in Ubisoft’s convergence engine that they hope successfully implements everything that each of these games executes individually. I know the BG&E fans are frothing for it and when I saw those early demos, what I interpret of the tech did blow me away, but from an experience perspective, I did still think the same thing...

“Is this it?”

Because of-course, a huge part of the new game is going to be combat. I just - don’t - care. When I think about what was lacking in Uncharted 4, what I wanted more of, it was intimacy. What didn’t I like about the conversation and resolution between Elena and Nathan? About the tours of their homes, the little time spent playing as Cassie, the few insights into Sully as a character, the absence of Chloe who was such a great contrast to Nathan, Elena and Sully all-together... it was intimacy. Yea oroight, so I don’t exactly mean the type of real-life intimacy between lovers, do I - that much is clear. But if I don’t mean shooty because there’s enough of that, and I’m leaning into domestic detail and emotional exploration and reflections of that in objects, spaces and interactivity, then that’s what I mean.

Tho I’m loath to bring it up, I feel like in the worst possible way, David Cage is right on the periphery of this discussion (and for that reason, I ain’t tagging him or his games in this entry, get fucked). He has the most vague notion of trying to ground his games in the intimacy of human experience, so he tries to tie human locomotion and objects to the digital representations of interactivity. If we take those as perhaps the worst possible examples and then come back to some really good examples in Uncharted 4 so I can stop whipping it - I maintain that the house tours are strengths and the high-points of the game, and then look at something like The Division and consider opportunities for more complex interactivity centred around helping people and emotional engagement, I feel like that’s what I’m after.

Which is impossible, right? No-one’s going to make a game even a quarter of the scope of The Division, with all that amazing dynamic lighting, with all those awesome textures and mapped objects, animations, rigged character models, complex scripting and AI, interactivity, load-on-demand tech and full voice-talented support, just to be a game about exploring, sightseeing, meeting and learning about people and helping them? Because who would play that?

I would, for a start.

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mediaeval-muse · 4 years

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Video Game Review: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft, 2010)

Genres: action-adventure, third person, open world

Premise: Picking up where Assassin’s Creed II left off, Ezio Auditore is back, this time working against the Borgia family to destabilize its hold on Rome. In the present day, Desmond Miles continues to struggle when differentiating the past from the present.

Platform Played On: PC (Windows)

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

***Full review under the cut.***

I am evaluating this game based on four key aspects: story, characters, gameplay, and visuals. I will not be evaluating the multiplayer mode because I don’t like playing video games with other people.

Content Warnings: violence, blood, misogyny, attempted rape, incest, torture

Story: The main premise of Brotherhood’s story is that following the opening of the vault, Ezio and his family are attacked at Monteriggioni by Borgia forces. They manage to escape, but Ezio is wounded and Caesar Borgia steals the Piece of Eden. Ezio awakes some time later in Rome and must fight the corruption that results from the Borgia’s influence while hatching a plan for retrieving the Piece of Eden. The decision to focus more fully on the Borgias was a good choice - they’re perhaps the most notorious family from Renaissance Italy, so the plot about combating Templar corruption fit right in. Plus, it made for a more consolidated narrative and a single antagonist.

I also think Brotherhood improved on Desmond’s story. At first, it’s not much different from the main purpose of the frame narrative in ACII: Desmond and the present-day Assassins, led by Lucy Stillman, set up a new safe house in modern Monteriggioni, where they continue to use the Animus to track down the Piece of Eden using Ezio’s memories. But there are some nice moments that make the frame shine: Desmond and Lucy have to work together to explore the underground tunnels of Monteriggioni, and their banter really game me the sense that they were bonding.

The main things I didn’t like about these narratives are relatively small. In addition to the ending feeling rushed, I think the game could have done better regarding its female characters. In Ezio’s world, a side mission reveals what happened to Cristina, Ezio’s sometime lover before he became an assassin. On the one hand, it was great to see a more personal plotline that delved deeper into Ezio’s emotions. On the other hand, these flashbacks had moments that made me squirm. The plot details how they met, which basically consists of Ezio following Cristina home and saving her from being raped by an acquaintance that “refuses to wait for her to open her legs on her own.” Later, Cristina is killed and dies in Ezio’s arms. Likewise, Lucy meets a tragic fate in Desmond’s world, and though it’s less fridge-y than Cristina’s death, I was just personally not a fan.

Characters: Ezio, our protagonist and player-controlled character, is as charming as ever. He’s a little older and wiser in this game, which was pleasing in terms of character development. He’s still a bit of a flirt and womanizer, which I personally don’t really like, but to each their own. Leonardo is also back, albeit more sporadically, and I loved seeing their friendship continue.

The major supporting character in this game is Niccolo Machiavelli (yes, really). He appeared briefly in the previous game, but he has a much larger role this time around. He’s a bit grumpy and stuffy, which is understandable - Ezio allowed Rodrigo to live at the end of ACII, which threw a wrench in a lot of plans. Still, I liked how Ezio’s more playful characteristics played off of Machiavelli’s sternness.

Desmond also continued to grow on me. I liked that he had more confidence in his assassin abilities and how he seemed to be fully part of Lucy Stillman’s team, and yet, the game did a good job tempering his badassery by decreasing his ability to differentiate the present day from his ancestor’s memories. It’s one of my favorite tropes, though, so I may be a bit biased.

The Borgias were also very compelling villains. I liked Cesare’s intensity and lust for power, as well as Lucrezia’s balance of loneliness and loyalty to her family. I also think their incestuous relationship was handled well in that it wasn’t treated as the sole reason why these characters were evil; rather, to me, it read as a manifestation of the characters’ obsession with their own family, not as something “edgy” to put in the plot.

Gameplay: A lot of the mechanics that formed the basis of ACII reappear in Brotherhood. There are armor and weapon upgrades, treasure stashes, puzzles, and the like. Instead of upgrading the villa, however, players are given the opportunity to make improvements to and stimulate the economy of Rome by repairing and investing in tailors’ shops, blacksmiths’ forges, art merchants’ stalls, banks, stables, medicine stands, aqueducts, and many other things. I found the investment system to be interesting, but a little confusing - it’s dependent on how other players interact with the stores in the game, so I didn’t quite get why it’s included in story mode. I think I could have done without it or at least made it dependent on other factors that are more useful to those who don’t necessarily care what a larger Ubisoft “community” is doing.

In order to unlock all the public works projects, players have to free areas of the map from Borgia influence. To do this, players complete assassination missions in which you kill the captain of the guard responsible for overseeing a Borgia-controlled tower, then you blow it up. These missions vary in difficulty, and each one has a unique setting with different kinds of environmental challenges, so I was pleased by the level of variety.

Players are also given the task of doing “shop quests” in which Ezio collects rare valuables (like ambergris, diamonds, etc.) to unlock additional items in the shops. For example, completing the art shop quest unlocks additional treasure maps. I found this interesting yet irritating, since I wasn’t quite sure how to get these rare items aside from stumbling onto them randomly or investing in businesses smartly (smart investments yield high rewards, sometimes). Along similar lines, Ezio can complete guild challenges, in which he performs various combat or stealth maneuvers as well as assists courtesans, thieves, mercenaries, and assassins to gain additional XP as well as discounts when enlisting any of the guilds to help.

In terms of the combat and stealth aspects, most of the mechanics are the same. You’re given a crossbow in this game, which is fun, as well as a parachute for gliding, but other than that, there’s nothing vastly different. I actually liked the continuity, since it meant I could focus more on the new things and not learn whole new ways of moving around. I will say, though, that the glyphs were a bit more annoying in that I couldn’t use my keyboard to turn things around - I HAD to click on arrows on the screen. It was tedious, but I got through it.

I also liked the introduction of assassin recruits. Players get to recruit citizens to Ezio’s cause and level up their XP by sending them on missions across Europe, kind of like the war table missions in Dragon Age: Inquisition. These recruits can also be called upon during combat to help Ezio fight off enemies, though they need some time to “recharge” after each use. It was kind of fun to manage a team, and I did like the options it afforded for gaining resources and completing missions.

I will say, though, that I absolutely detested the missions or challenges in the game that were timed. Timed activities stress me out, and I’d rather have the option to do something well rather than fast. I also hated the introduction of “complete synchronization.” Basically, each mission is accompanied by a condition - such as avoiding detection, using a specific weapon, or completing a task in a certain amount of time - that will grant players 100% synchronization of Ezio’s memories. If you don’t meet the condition, you can still advance the plot, and you can go back and replay the mission for 100% sync, but honestly, I didn’t find this mechanic fun. Some of these conditions were tedious or so challenging that in order to meet them, you have to play through long scenarios without skipping to certain checkpoints multiple times. For experienced gamers, these conditions might offer some additional challenge to a video game that otherwise doesn’t have easy/moderate/hard modes, but I personally didn’t find the 100% sync rewarding, and I was constantly stressed about missing something due to lack of syncing.

I also had some problems with the camera and controls. In several missions where time was a factor, it was frustrating when the camera would whip around and controls would change to accommodate the new angle. I hated this, because it caused me to fall and desynchronize a few times, as well as cause me to lose my target.

Visuals: As with ACII, the visuals of Brotherhood were stunning. I loved seeing the aerial views of Rome from the high vantage points, and I loved the rendering on Ezio’s assassin armor. I don’t think there was a major, noticeable difference in the quality of the visuals between the games - maybe a few more smooth animations, some more believable/realistic rendering. It was certainly appreciated. I could look at this game for hours.

Recommendations: I would recommend this game if you’re interested in the Italian Renaissance, the history of the Borgia family, stealth, action-adventure games, and parkour.

Final Verdict: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is a charming follow-up to Assassin’s Creed II, balancing familiarity and novelty in the gameplay to keep the player both engaged and grounded.

#video game review

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sluttyopinions · 5 years

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Difficulty in Dark Souls and Why We Can’t Live Without It

April 6, 2019

Written by Samantha, Slutty Opinions

The debate on the role of difficulty in video games seems to, never actually end. It feels like something people talk about literally every year, and for some reason, Dark Souls (and the many games that have followed in its influence) is always the target. It feels like something that doesn’t need much debating in my opinion, but it gets brought up often regardless. For some reason, this topic gets me really riled up and I have a lot of strong opinions on it. It feels like I’m ready to go into a tirade any time I see it, and lately, I’ve been seeing it way too much. This article is kind of my own way of venting, as well as collecting all the arguments I’ve found in favor of how necessary challenge is, primarily in the new generation of From Soft and Hidetaka Miyazaki games. I think it’s important to address why this issue is truly a non-issue, why it came to be an issue in the first place, and why I even care. For the purposes of this article and keeping it simple, I’ll mostly be referring to one of my favorite games,

Dark Souls isn’t about being really hard

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to Dark Souls being, pretty damn hard. It’s well above average in the department of making me constantly die and wince and feel tense. It’s not the type of game you can just pick up on a whim and breeze through, yet some people clearly want that experience from it or else I wouldn’t be writing this. For some ungodly reason, Dark Souls, or at least most of Miyazaki’s action games since Demon’s Souls is ALWAYS at the center of these discussions. Dark Souls has been the go to analogy for “hard game” for most gaming writers and journalists for YEARS now to much criticism and booing all around.

It’s hard to blame people who haven’t been exposed to the actual games for having this thought process. When Demon’s Souls first came out, it was a breath of fresh air for many in a time when games were getting more and more “dumbed down” across the board. Bandai Namco, the publisher for Dark Souls, decided to use this reputation to its advantage in advertising, calling the definitive edition of Dark Souls the “Prepare to Die Edition”. Streamers caught onto the game quickly as a very easy way to get views because seeing people die and struggle can be, well, fun!

Despite all this, that’s not even close to all there is to Dark Souls. The reputation can be a bit misleading, and it feels like a lot of the easy mode begging crowd knows not much else other than this reputation when it comes to the game. Probably the absolute best aspect of the way Dark Souls was made was its world. The map design is impeccable, it’s very very difficult to find a map more lovingly designed than Dark Souls 1’s. It has so many interesting rewarding shortcuts, feels completely logical and real in the way it was designed despite being in a fantasy world, feels extremely fluid, and is loaded with detail and character. If I were to recommend Dark Souls to someone, I would start with how much I love the world itself in all its aspects. The narrative, the characters, the detail, the risk and reward. I would never even think of telling somebody “It’s really hard and makes you feel cool at the end” (even if there is truth to that statement).

Nonetheless, Dark Souls wouldn’t be worth playing without challenge

I may have said that Dark Souls cannot be reduced to simply “hard game”, but, without being hard, it wouldn’t be a game I would recommend to anyone. All the goodness and enjoyment you can find in the depths of the game is built around the base of it being not an easy time. As I hinted at in the last section, the world design is very risk-reward in nature.

You often encounter forks in your path where you must decide which path is closest to the next checkpoint, or if you want to risk your current experience for more experience and treasure on the more dangerous route. Finding your way around this fluid map wouldn’t feel like much anything without the risk involved. The reward is only rewarding because you banked your skills on that risk. On an easy mode, any path you take would feel the same. Sequence breaking into a much higher level area would not have the punishment it contains to make the rewards worth it if you could waltz into those higher level areas.

The bosses are designed around persistence and patience. The reason the bosses are interesting is because they are something you learn. Many action games are built around reflex as well as training but Dark Souls’ philosophy of design is around dying as a teacher. Not only the bosses, but you advance slowly but surely through levels each time you come back. You win some, you lose some. Enemy placement is designed in a way so that each time you memorize them more, and in a sense, the game then becomes easy. That is the end goal of your adventure, at least, mechanically speaking. Easiness would strip that functional identity from it.

An easy mode would strip Dark Souls of its narrative identity as well

The idea of people asking for an easy mode so they can see the world and story without having to put in the time shows me that those asking don’t really know a lot about Dark Souls to begin with. As I already said, mechanically, the world would become uninteresting without the risk and reward. The writing of the game also revolves around this risk and the concept of persistence I described earlier. All you’d be doing on an easy romp is looking at a lot of brown stuff and reading cryptic item descriptions. I can’t comprehend wanting to pay for an experience like that and not just watching videos about it all that you can do for free. VaatiVidya has some great ones seriously, you don’t even have to have played the games to enjoy the videos. But, it would certainly help a lot.

The entire theme of Dark Souls is, patience and persistence. In the world your adventure is set in, humans are cursed to be undead and revived again and again. Miyazaki loves making gameplay have as little conflict with the narrative as possible, which is part of what makes his works so unique. This dying and reviving you do in game is what most people in the world around you do. However, most npcs have, limited purpose. Being a shopkeeper, being a warrior, a scholar, maybe even a cynic. Once their “purpose” they have sought out to find has expired, or they have lost confidence in it, they lose their very minds.

Your duty as the player character is to find the First Flame. Not important what that means for the sake of this article, just, your goal. The goal of many others in this world who are just like you. Because the player character is an extension of yourself, your will to find the ending, to find the flame, is imposed upon your avatar. You deciding to get up and give it another go at your true goal is like your character giving life another shot. Even in a cold, nihilistic world like that of Dark Souls, humans can find purpose and determination. Hope and patience are virtues in human beings, and they can allow us to surmount anything. That determination can even surpass the might of the gods themselves. The will to get up after being knocked down a ridiculous amount of times is what makes humans good and what makes life worth it. If you could run to the ending in 5 hours, you would not have gotten anything out of the writing in the game. All the character arcs, the crushing despair around you, the theme itself, gone. Someone could explain it to you as I am now, but that simply isn’t the same.

As I said earlier, a Dark Souls without challenge is a game I would simply never want to play. Miyazaki didn’t choose to make his games hard so tryhards and elitists could masturbate over their digital accomplishments. He makes them hard because that’s the way he feels he could make his art mean something. The way he could use the medium and the art form to the full advantage of his work in every dimension. It’s insulting to imply nothing would change with an easy mode added. I wouldn’t trust anyone who played the game on a setting like that to be able to give the game a proper analysis or review, especially not a journalist who is supposed to convey the core experience to an audience who doesn’t know what it is yet.

Dark Souls difficulty is overblown and overhyped

The reputation preceding Dark Souls is somewhat a false one. As I had previously said, saying it’s an easy or even moderate experience would be a lie. Dark Souls is definitely a hard experience, and one that serves it well as a piece of art. However, it being the “only hard game ever” as it seems to be conveyed in pop culture is a little ridiculous.

There are, a ridiculous amount of difficult games out there in the market. Many of which are much more difficult than Dark Souls and its sequels and much less forgiving. Many of which also do not have easier modes. Dark Souls gets an irregular amount of attention in the public eye and especially to lazy journalists for not much reason.

The game design in Dark Souls is built off pure willpower and the willingness to retry, not often reflexes and exact timing. It is designed in a way so that every death contributes to your end goal. Maybe on one run you opened a shortcut that makes your route easier, maybe you cleared out a miniboss that won’t respawn. Or you mastered your way around a specific enemy. There is no “game over state” in Dark Souls, and what you lose can easily be won back. The game design is punishing, but it gives you the resources to make sure you’re not losing progress or just going insane in general.

Let the artist decide their own art: Not all media has to be for everyone

In the end, an artist has the right to decide how they create, and what they create. As consumers, we reserve the right to get or not get a piece of work as well. If we feel something just isn’t good, or it isn’t accessible to us, or even just not our style, we don’t have to get it or consume it. Of course, this doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to complain about something. I complain about entertainment all the time and always make sure my thoughts on something are fully voiced even if my wishes are unrealistic.

Sometimes though, a piece of entertainment can, thoroughly not be your thing. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was poorly made, at times far from it. A personal example would be I did not like Zelda: Breath of the Wild as much as most. It was enjoyable, but more on an “average” level of enjoyable for me and I left frustrated not wanting to pick it back up, and just missing the older Zelda formula. While I do have specific critiques of the game and things it could have improved, I don’t think it’s a “bad game”. It’s amazingly made and there was a lot of love behind it. It’s just the exact adventure it was going for was not the adventure I was looking for, and that disconnect pushed me away from it.

I’ve seen people on the other side claim the statement of “not all entertainment is for you” is on its own elitist and gatekeepy but, it’s only an undeniable truth about the world. This statement doesn’t even have anything to do with the difficulty. If you REALLY REALLY didn’t enjoy Dark Souls no matter how many times you tried, making it easier wouldn’t change that. Maybe you disliked the tone, the aesthetic, the characters, the feel of the combat. All of that is valid because not everyone has to like everything. Changing some stats like health pools or damage won’t change the game design (The funny story is, I really didn’t like Dark Souls when I first tried it. I tried it maybe 10 times before it clicked, and now it’s my 2nd favorite video game franchise of all time.)

Comparing Dark Souls to other video games is quite honestly, a dishonest debate tactic. Trying to claim that “X hard game has an easy mode so, so should Dark Souls” is not very fair to it as a piece of art. Art is not homogenous or standardized, it’s art. As I explained very thoroughly before, I feel Dark Souls would be butchered had it had its challenge removed, even optionally. Some games even if designed with being very hard as its normal, can get away with easy settings for a variety of reasons. The story can be viewed through interesting dialogue and cutscenes that someone with less patience and time would want to see, it can offer a fun exploration of the mechanics in a way that makes you feel like you’re on a power trip versus on an uphill battle, etc. That choice is up to the individual game and the creator. It is clear Miyazaki and team have no interest in changing their art for the masses, and I can easily see why.

The claim against easy modes is not inherently elitist

People who stand up for my argument or parts of my argument are often targeted for being elitist gatekeepers trying to keep their precious game away from the masses. Making it easier would allow others to play it without struggling the same as the veterans, which would make the veterans insecure enough to fight against it. They earned their pointless digital trophy already and they want to keep it, all to themselves. Or at least, that’s what the people saying this stuff would have you believe.

“If the easy mode is optional, how does that bother you? You already finished the game, and now more people can play it! It’s a win-win. I can’t imagine a reason for fighting that concept other than to maintain your secret club and the status of it.” The truth is, Dark Souls fans (For the most part at least. I won’t deny elitists exist) desire more people to play their game with them, and will help anyone who seeks it. We just don’t want people playing a bastardized version of the game which as I explained, I wouldn’t recommend to basically anyone. It would be like discussing an entirely different game with people who think there is no difference. It’s not because they’re “weak” or “uncool” for choosing a hypothetical easier setting, it’s because that experience would not carry even near the same identity.

I cannot overstress the fact that Souls fans absolutely love to help. It is possibly one of the most guided games ever made. Video guides, written guides, guides of all types for all different people. The fandom is one of the surprisingly nicest, funniest groups I have known which is surprising due to how toxic the nature of fandoms tend to be, and how dark and lonely the concept of Dark Souls is. I guess this loneliness inspires people to band together in the real world, and try to make things light to contrast the nihilism often found in the world of the game? Just me throwing out crazy theories a little.

I would personally love to help anyone who wanted to try the game, the way it was designed to be played that is. I would sit beside any friend who wanted to get into it and help them until it clicks, if it ever does. The experience requires a lot of dedication and patience, so I would help teach that to others. Honestly, if it weren’t for friendly people in the community and the wonderfully put together internet guides, I never would have gotten into this series. The truth is, Dark Souls doesn’t have a magical barrier keeping gamers from playing it. The barrier is your own determination. Everyone is encouraged to try, and every single one of us as human beings have the potential to overcome it and learn it. It’s not that some people “can or can’t” play Dark Souls. It’s that some will, and some won’t. And any won’t can become a will. It’s an equal opportunity beatdown.

This argument is not actually about accessibility

Strange I had to wait until the end to get to this, since this is what the argument seems to revolve around the most. Is keeping Dark Souls as purely a difficult experience physically preventing disabled gamers from playing it? The journalists and pundits who advocate for the easy mode would like all of us to believe that. Kind of funny how little if any of those advocates are disabled or understand what disability means.

Accessibility is how, well, accessible, something is. It’s a really stupid statement but I can’t think of a better way to word it. Access is if a person can get their hands on something and experience it to the end like the rest of their peers. Is being simply, not easy, an accessibility issue? In my opinion, no, not at all. Accessibility issues include things such as good controllers, customizable visuals and user interface, customizable button mapping, fair game design, etc. None of these categories has anything to do with difficulty. Implying disabled gamers can only play point and click games is kind of insulting in my personal opinion, not that I am disabled myself so forgive any assumptions I may make.

The truth is, disabled gamers CAN play Dark Souls and similar games. As I have basically beaten to death already, the core game design of Dark Souls is patience, and determination. It’s about basic learning and trying, a very human instinct that all of us have and can use or weaponize. The gameplay is fair, and somewhat slow, and more punishes you for not being prepared or for lapses in judgement than simply not being able to press the buttons fast enough. If a gamer has the tools needed to physically play the game in as comfortable a way they can, how hard the game is shouldn’t change their access.

Difficulty, at least in a fair game, is only a test of how many times you are willing to get up and face adversity, a lesson Dark Souls tries to impart in its own story. If anything, disabled people all over the world know this lesson by heart already. It doesn’t matter how unfair the cards you were dealt are, or how oppressive your surroundings are. If you want to keep moving, and if you have reasons to keep moving, you can find, purpose. Regardless of how you were born or what life has done to you if you continue to get up you can essentially win. Dark Souls is easier than life in that way since it does have a definitive “end state” to it. An end that is accessible to anyone of any standing given the patience and drive, and resources to experience the world.

This whole debate is manufactured to an extent

The reason this debate even arose again to begin with, and why it keeps showing up over and over again is you guessed it, games journalists. Even though by writing this I’d consider myself a journalist as well, I don’t hold much high regard for the field as a whole which is not a very unpopular opinion and hasn’t been for quite a few years. The easiest way to get clicks on anything, video game news or news news, is to get people angry at what you’re writing. Hate clicks generate easy revenue. If someone sees something they agree with while scrolling, they may nod and keep going. But if they see something that makes their blood boil, they’ll screenshot it and read it to make sick burns against it and show the mess to their followers.

Of course then that starts a cycle of people pulling said article up over and over and it generating an internet hate storm with people now defending the original point. This whole mess was the internet falling hook line and sinker for some poorly paid overstressed sap’s click scam. Probably multiple scams coalescing into one bigger mess. I admit I in writing and publishing this have fallen for it, but hey, I enjoy doing what I do, and I feel it’s worth sharing my side.

Another possible motivation for manufacturing petty crises from a journalist’s point of view as I’ve seen many point out is the simple fact that journalists face deadlines. It is a very and I mean very stressful part of their careers, and for game journalists, their deadlines are based on when they can finish a game. It’s why a lot of lengthy rpgs don’t get treated very fairly or have entire sections excluded from review, and why now these same people are begging for notoriously difficult games to be easier. The sooner they can finish it, the sooner the stress is gone and the sooner they can be paid. Having the responsibility of your paycheck based on your patience when you don’t have much time for patience can cause some to snap and write what they wrote. In the end though, I just pray I never have to read reviews of journalists reviewing a From Soft game on easy mode, because that wouldn’t be much of a review at all.

Why I even care

For those of you still reading, thank you, so much. From the bottom of my heart. It may have become clear in reading why I put so much time into this, or why I get so angry every time I see this argument come up, but it may not be. I’d like to make it very clear why. This game series is very close to my heart, and seeing people act all-knowing about it when it’s clear they haven’t touched it at all or for at most 5 minutes makes my blood boil.

On top of pretending to know game design on a game they know nothing about, they resort to cheap tactics such as guilt tripping and shaming. The whole “elitist” route trying to make the opponents seem like pretentious asses is not very mature for starters, and trying to shift the fact that they lack patience or simply don’t like a game onto being about the rights of the disabled makes me angrier than anything. I have seen many many disabled gamers become furious at these people and for good reason. I have been furious about this for a very long time now, and I hope putting my thoughts to paper will calm me, even if only for a little while.

I sincerely hope my thoughts gave you a new outlook on something or other. That is the most I could ask for as a writer. If not, and you still read this far, I hope I made your day brighter.

#dark souls #essay #article #easy mode #difficulty #gaming #journalism #sekiro

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realstraykids · 6 years

Photo

One of the most frequent asks I get is “how do you make your gifs?” Previously I had just linked my FAQ where I have some resources on how to gif listed, but I figured to (hopefully) stop receiving the same ask over and over, I’d just make a tutorial on how I personally gif!

* Please note that everyone has different giffing styles and settings preferences, so the following is just how I make my gifs. Other people are likely to do things differently!

This post will be a comprehensive guide that includes details about DOWNLOADING VIDEOS, USING VAPOURSYNTH TO MAKE GIFS, USING PHOTOSHOP TO MAKE GIFS (+ a blurb on TOPAZ), and COLORING.

This post was last updated on July 30, 2020. Keep reading to get started!

DOWNLOADING VIDEOS

I use a number of sources to download videos/get video clips, depending on the origin of the video. In general, I try to gif from videos that are at least 1080p - the higher, the better. It’s almost impossible to make gifs look high quality if they don’t originate from a high quality video! Below are the sources I use:

TS files: kpop24hrs (you need an account), kpopexciting, occasionally torrent links from Google or download links from Twitter (search the group name + date in YYMMDD format + .ts)

Youtube videos: 4K Video Downloader

Vlive videos: Soshistagram

Twitter videos: Twitter Video Downloader

Instagram videos: Dredown

Long videos: If I don’t have the space (or patience) to download a certain video, or if it’s not a downloadable video (e.g. Fanship, paid online concert, etc.) then I screen record with Quicktime Player

(Side question: what’s a TS file? A TS file is essentially a very high quality video that you can find for live show performances and aired music show interviews! TS files are generally 60fps, so they’re how gifmakers can make those super clear and smooth live performance gifs. If a TS file is available for what you want to gif, use it.)

USING VAPOURSYNTH TO MAKE GIFS - OLD AND NEW VERSION

05/2020 update: I have re-installed Vapoursynth to its latest version, so I am including updated instructions/screenshots for both the old version (that I downloaded ~mid-2018) and the latest version.

After I’ve downloaded my video, I use Vapoursynth to crop, resize, sharpen, and denoise gifs. Vapoursynth is like Avisynth in that both programs can be used to crop and resize gifs without losing video quality, but VS has the added capabilities of sharpening and denoise. VS is the reason I don’t need to use Topaz on any of my gifs! You can install Vapoursynth here.

First you drag your video file to the Vapoursynth app installed on your computer. You’ll be prompted to enter a start timestamp in HH:MM:SS format (so if you want the video to start 5 seconds in, you would enter 00:00:05). Then you put the encoding duration also in HH:MM:SS format (if you want the video to be 8 seconds long, you would enter 00:00:08). Generally I’ll look for the exact moment I want to gif and enter the start timestamp 1 second earlier and have the encoding duration be between 3-5 seconds.

After you’ve entered this, a resizer.html window will automatically pop up. Below are screenshots of examples of my normal settings for my performance gif 4sets (ex. here or here) for both the old and new versions of Vapoursynth.

Old version:

New version:

Below is an explanation of the parts:

GIF Size | The gif widths (the first number) recommended for Tumblr:

1 gif per row: 540px

2 gifs per row: 268px

3 gifs per row: 177px

You can use any height, but these are the ones that I tend to use:

1 gif per row: 243px or 300px most frequently, but sometimes I’ll do 220px/201px/400px/450px/540px depending on how large or small I want them

2 gifs per row: 350px

3 gifs per row: 300px, occasionally I’ll do 375px or 400px if it’s a very long video (e.g. some fancams)

Opacity | Don’t worry about this; it just changes how you view the video in the window.

Preprocessor | This refers to how the video will render! Super important because you’ll be given the option of 60 vs. 30 - these numbers refer to frames per second. For live performance gifs, I always use qtgmc 60 fast (slow in theory gives you better quality gifs but I’m far too impatient for that). For all other gifs, I do not use any preprocessing method. A basic rule is that if you’re using a TS file, you should preprocess it because it’ll de-interlace the file. If you’re using an mp4 or mkv or any other file, you don’t need to preprocess.

Extra Sharpening/Sharpening | Pretty self-explanatory. You can move the slider up or down depending on personal preference! I try to keep the sharpening low unless the video quality is especially bad. In the new version, I use FineSharp over VCFreq because I find the latter a little harsh for my tastes.

Denoise/Denoise Filters | Will help remove noise from gifs. In the old version, I almost always used the Light setting unless the video is super grainy, and then I might have chosen Medium instead. In the new version, I use KNLM at its lowest setting. I’ll only bump it up if the original video is quite grainy.

Once you’ve configured all your desired settings, you can copy & paste the output in the resizer.html window to your Vapoursynth editor file and enter the beginning and end frames.

The editor file for the old version:

The editor file for the new version:

To make the gifs in the old version, just save the file and then wait until everything finishes processing! In the new version, you have to go to Script > Encode video, and then under the gif preset click ‘start.’ Wait until it finishes encoding. On my laptop, this takes anywhere from 20 seconds to 3-4 minutes, so sometimes you have to be patient. This is the end of the Vapoursynth portion of gifmaking.

USING PHOTOSHOP TO MAKE GIFS

To create gifs in Photoshop, go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers and then select your video file/output file from Vapoursynth (output.mov). These are my settings to create the frame animation:

Once your frames have been imported, you can delete frames and add a coloring psd on top of all your layers.

Photoshop is also where you adjust the timing of your gif. In general, these are my settings:

30fps: 0.04/0.05

60fps: 0.02/0.03/occasionally 0.04 if I want it to be super slo-mo

Honestly, just use whatever timing setting that looks good to you! Some prefer faster gifs, others prefer slower, so just do what you like and things will be okay.

Save through File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) with these settings (you can play around with selective vs. adaptive or diffusion vs. pattern; they all have slightly different looks, but 256 colors is a must):

Make sure your gif is under 8mb - to decrease a gif’s size, I usually delete frames and/or use selective color to increase the black percentage for whites, neutrals, and blacks.

After you save, you’ll have your gif! Below is the same moment giffed in different ways to illustrate how much a difference that file type + giffing style can make. You can tell that the TS file is higher quality and less grainy than the mp4 file, but it really isn’t unless you use Vapoursynth that the gif becomes super sharp and smooth. This is because if you import a TS file straight into Photoshop, it will only import at 30fps because the video itself is interlaced. You have to run it through a de-interlacer (like VS) to actually get a 60fps clip.

With regard to TOPAZ*, I mentioned above that because Vapoursynth has sharpening and denoise functionalities built into the program, I no longer use Topaz. However, if you do not have access to Vapoursynth, then I highly recommend downloading Topaz (download links can be found through quick searches on Tumblr) and using Denoise and Clean to adjust your gifs. A warning: Topaz can take a long time to process and many gifmakers have a love/hate relationship with it, so be prepared for that. The way you apply Topaz is to select all your frames and layers, then do Filter > Convert to Smart Filters. Add the Topaz/smart sharpen adjustments, then Flatten Frames Into Layers. Once that has happened, hit Convert Frames > Flatten Frames to Clips and then Convert Frames > Make Frames from Clips.

COLORING

I get questions a lot on coloring and the truth is that coloring is an art - I by no means consider myself an expert, but I do experiment a fair amount with different settings and layers so I at least have a decent understand of what’s possible when it comes to coloring.

A few tips I’ll give:

Everyone has different coloring preferences! Whatever coloring you like may not be what others like, and that’s okay. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

PSDs are good for learning how to color - download premade ones and look at how other people made them: what layers did they use? in what order did they put them? what blending mode? at what opacity? These are all questions you’ll need to ask yourself when you create your own PSDs. (Remember not to edit others’ PSDs if they do not allow it, and given them due credit when necessary. Also don’t claim as your own!)

Tips to bring out idols’ natural tan/unwhitewash: increase vibrance, decrease brightness + increase contrast, use selective color and decrease cyan and increase black on the reds channel, use a gradient map that goes from a black/dark red to light pink/coral and change the blending mode to soft light or decrease opacity of the layer to 20-40%.

Below are some examples to show how much a difference coloring can make. I’d consider a basic PSD one that has less than 10 coloring layers/doesn’t make much change to the actual coloring of the gif besides lighting adjustments. More complex PSDs generally have 15 or more layers (the ones I used below in have 16-25+) and drastically change the colors in the original gif. You can also mix PSDs too - for a lot of my performance gifs, I’ll first add a basic PSD that increases the contrast of a gif to make the skin glow, and then I’ll add an additional PSD that adjusts colors and other various lighting aspects.

You can see just how much of a difference coloring makes:

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different layers/styles! Everyone has individual preferences for how they like their gifs to look, and in a sense, coloring is the main way you can make gifs “yours.”

FINAL NOTES

Giffing is hard and requires a lot of patience - you definitely won’t be able to make amazing gifs right when you start! Even though I’ve been giffing for close to a year now, I still dislike many of the gifs I make and think that I can definitely improve. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other gifmakers for advice and help - 99% of the time, they’ll be happy to answer your questions!

I have posted a sped-up version of my gifmaking process here that you can also use as a resource!

Please let me know if I’ve missed something, and feel free to reach out if you still have questions. Good luck!

#gif tutorial #this tutorial also took way too long omg #*text #*gif #*mine #ps #*gif tutorial

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holy-mountaineering · 5 years

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This spread is for @draugadottir

Thanks for the donation, as always!

Tonight you’re getting the full Qabalistic Tree of Life Spread that I do and here you are. What I’m going to do is go through and briefly explain each card, its position on the Tree, and then I’ll give you a summary/synopsis of the spread as a whole.

Think of this spread as a sort of quantum map, or even the land of a regular map, everything is happening at once, in each place. It’s important to think of yourself as moving “through” the map but you are also simultaneously everywhere at once. For the sake of this specific experiment, think of this as a map.

Where we’re starting the journey from is Kether, the monad, the first sign of creation. We’ll call this your hometown, since it is where you’re from originally. Here we have the Ace of Disks, the root power of Earth or the material.

This is the foundation which all your solid structures are and will be built on. This is the very root of your real world/material life situation.

While this doesn’t mean you must tear everything down or that there is nothing in your material world that you've built, it does mean you must look at the source from which you've built your material and everyday world. If you have no foundation you can have no structure. If you have a shoddy foundation, you'll have a shoddy structure. Look to what things were like where you are before you began building. Is there sand beneath you? Are you in a swamp, building castles of stone that will bind to the mud and be pulled down much sooner than later? Did you account for the raise in elevation when you laid your foundation? Look down to the base of what you've made and what you've made it upon.

This is an engineering job, you’ll need tools to measure and level everything out. The occult might not be the best place to find these tools and it is possible that you have issue much more base than you're willing to cop to. There are many tools you can use to look at your foundation provided in psychology and meditation from other sources. The Universe throws us extreme situations and more often than not, this is the only way people see their basest of instincts and behaviors really act out. If you can, take a look at what connects you and what you’re building to the Earth before an earthquake, tornado, volcano, or other act of G-D forces you to pray everything was fine. Check the strength of your foundations before the strength of your foundations are checked.

Get down to the base fundamentals of what is going on in your material (things, money, living situation, literal stuff) and build from the ground up if you must.

In Chokmah, which is like your freeway getting you out onto the road out of your hometown is Prince of Swords, the airy part of Air.

This is pure mind, “reason run amok.” The entire card is made up of strange and fragmenting geometric shapes like the prince’s world is coming apart at the seams. The humanoid creatures pulling his chariot have no fucking idea what they’re doing and the prince himself is in an awkward pose.

Don’t think yourself into discord. Sometimes when you look too deep at unnecessary or mundane details you’ll fucking lose your shit. Furtherly, focus on doing one thing, stay with that single thing until it is done. I suggest breath work and controlling breathing specifically.

In Binah, which is ruled by Saturn and for the sake of this reading we will call the first stop on your roadtrip. You haven’t really arrived anywhere but you’re stopping and getting a chance to repack your car in a more efficient way. Sitting in Binah is the 3 of Swords, Sorrow.

This is the first shape the suit of Air takes in 2 dimensions and it can be a bit disappointing. Your structure and order (Saturn) needs balancing (Libra) to be blunt. You must let go of your ideas of how things were going to be because now they are the way they are. Just because what you have isn’t what you thought you wanted doesn’t mean it’s not good.

Try to get your mind around what you’ve learned and and how to form it into a useful basis to move on from. Do not continue to focus on how you thought it “should be”, nothing is ever as pure or awesome as we idealize it. Sorting out your mind means actualizing some of the things you’ve been thinking about instead of not doing it because it isn’t perfect in the way we thought it would be.

In Chesed which is ruled by Jupiter and again for the sake of this experiment we’ll say involves your influence and benevolence in your current trip is your center! XIX The Sun, Resh, Sol.

The Sun is The Lord of Light and Life, the center of our little Solar System. Everything in the fairly large gravitational pull of the Sun is affected by it which pulls everything to it. If it weren’t for The Sun, nothing in our Solar System (named after Sol, The Sun Himself) would be where it is or nearly as well lit or full of life.

This more or less self sufficient little nuclear reactor in space gives life and light but also pulls small things which cannot maintain an orbit around it in for the final burn. bright and full of life and light but deal not with bullshit trifles.

Center yourself but be aware of what you effect and how. Keep pumping out the power but make sure it’s that good good renewable energy.

Across the Tree in Geburah, which is Mars Town, where you find your drive and what you’re trying to accomplish/conquer is the Prince of Disks, the airy part of Earth or thinking about what’s going on in the material/normal-ass world.

This prince is a map maker, an amateur cartologist. Holding his globe, he is pulled along by the sturdy bull of Taurus who is familiar with the terrain so the prince can gaze down and take note of where he is, where he’s been, and where he might be going. In other words this is learning about how to navigate life.

Pay attention to where you are and what you’ve been doing. Take notes. Have you been here before? Do you know where this leads? If not, mark it out in your globe so you know if you ever get there again.

In Tiphareth, the Sun and center of gravity holding all this in place, the heart pumping the blood through this, your heart is the Queen of Disks, the watery part of Earth or how you feel about what is going on in your material world of normal life stuff.

This Queen is above the landscape observing the river create life in the desert. The Queen of Disks is meditative and calm. She sees creation and is a part of it without getting her hands dirty.

This card shows what you feel about what is happening in your everyday “real world” life. The ideal here is to get out of the messy bullshit of “normal” stuff, get higher beyond mundanity, and look back down with new and more complete perspective.

Get above your situation so you can see more of the landscape, you don’t have to be intimately involved in everything going on for things to happen.

In Netzach, Venus town, where you have the realization about how this is going to change you as a person with a personality is 8 of Swords, Interference.

Ideally, this is using both sides of your brain to keep down negative (mathematical negative which takes away) thoughts in order to maintain balance. Is something weighing on your mind that is useful or is it just detracting from what you’re trying to do? In this card we astrologically see the expansive quality of Jupiter here expanding equally each way in the twins Gemini.

Unfortunately, this can also be using the concept of “order” or duality to thwart creative thinking and hold back mental progress.

Use your mind to filter out shitty thoughts and negative ways of thinking but don’t block out creativity. Use reason and feeling to practically analyze your thoughts.

In Mercury Town Hod-ville, where all the Universities are and everyone has real intellectual shit going on is the Princess of Wands, the earthy part of Fire.

This is the material substance that comes from fuels action. Think of this: you have to make a fire because it is cold. You have a set amount of wood. You can make a big ass, bright ass fire that will leave you cold later that night when you’re out of wood, but jazzed while it’s happening. Or you can make a smaller, less exciting fire that will keep you warm all night.

There is also a message about the last step in any action is really to become the actions and to let them become you. When your very Earthly substance is in it, you are no longer doing you just are.

Don’t burn yourself out and exhaust your resources on what you’re tackling in life right now. Do this and you shall live to dance and party another night.

On the Moon in Yesod, the receptive and reflective place that is alot about the feelings that you’re picking up from all this is the Ace of Cups, the root powers of water which is emotion, connectedness to living things, and intuition.

This is the geyser of the aspects of water exploding into existence. The Ace of Cups can be like the yearly floods on the Nile was to ancient Egyptian/Kemetic people that once a year had their fields simultaneously wiped out and fertilized. There is great danger in unbound Love, it tends to get consuming and people fear being consumed. There is a secret meaning to the joining of two to make none, but this isn’t really the place for that.

The uncontrolled waterfall of feeling, it can flow and be a clearing force or flood. If you’re not prepared for such water, you might get washed away, if you are it might wash away the cobwebs and your stagnancy.

Down here in Malkuth-istan, the everyday life mundane, waking up pooping, and going to work world is III The Empress, Daleth, Venus.

Daleth is the open door, like you’d leave your bedroom door unlocked if your lover were coming over, you want them inside (pun sort of intended). This is not passivity but waiting for the spring (or Aries her partner IV The Emperor) to energize what you have. Like the symbolic Pelican (phoenix also) spitting its breast open to feed its young, or like a pregnant person, the brunt of the responsibility for your future growth lies in you.

Be ready and prepared for new growth like springtime, but remember, this all hinges on you and your openness to growth.

So, you gotta get back to the basics of you and who you are and what you have, stop fucking getting lost in your head and all the (bad) possibilities of what could happen and make the thing happen however the thing can happen. It might not be awesomely pretty but it will work if you just fucking DO ET.

You can make things happen, YOU. And if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, ask, and take notes because you’re gunna be learning this shit as you’re going through it, but your best bet on not getting caught in the proverbial quicksand is to not get yourself wrapped up in every aspect of everything. Back off, delegate tasks and let that stuff play itself out and don’t think of every bad thing that popped into your head as “totally going to happen” just because you thought of it.

If you wanna grow, again, allow shitty thoughts to rise to the surface and then destroy them utterly. You don’t need to spend half your day thinking about shit that could kill or ruin you when that will take away energy from what it is you’re really supposed to be doing. Bring in that which shines in and through you and washes away your worries. You’re in a place where a good tsunami might do ya well.

And this is all going down whether you like it or not. You can prepare yourself for this energizing change or you can be one of those folks in Florida that doesn’t leave during a hurricane evacuation. It depends on how you approach it.

Ta Da!

You know the deal, holler with any questions, qamments, qabalistic queries, or anything else!

#tarot #divination #cartomancy #occult #magick

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notpreparedblog · 5 years

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Introduction and Story

The Fire Emblem series, for me, has been one of those things that’s always been in my peripheral, but never really close enough to gain attention. I knew of a slew of characters from the Smash Brothers series, that it was a tactics style RPG, had knights, and horses, and magic…and that’s about it. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the first traditional Fire Emblem game on the Nintendo Switch, and the first game of the series I sought out.

After just finishing my first play through of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I really didn’t know how to review this game. I typically like to delve into each major mechanic and give insight into how it all ties together, but the idea of touching on everything is daunting for this game.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is massive. I was initially amazed at how little I actually did after playing for three and a half hours.

Your three choices, Claude in the yellow, Edelgarde in red and Dmitri in blue.

By nature, there’s three different story line routes for you to take, each with their own twists and turns; The Alliance with Claude, the Empire with Edelgarde, or the Kingdom with Dmitri. There is a mid-point of the game where decisions must be made that drastically impact the rest of the game and splitting off into different forks. For that main reason, you will absolutely need to (and want to) play through multiple times.

With the branching story, each path you take gives you a different experience. My first go around was with Edelgarde and the Empire. I felt that some of the story beats were visible from a mile away, but they were never unsatisfying, and the characters actions in-story always made sense.

There’s a rich history in the world of Fódlan where Three Houses takes place, and I felt the game does a great job in reinforcing that, and making the world feel lived in.

Gameplay

At the start of the game, you’ll be met with a few different difficulty options. First, you have the option of choosing hard or normal difficulty, which is self explanatory. Second, you must choose between classic and casual. Classic means that when one of your character perishes in battle, they are lost forever. Casual means that they more so retreat from battle when defeated, giving you access to them again the next mission.

I originally wanted to go for casual just so that playing the game felt less stressful, because I definitely wouldn’t be able to let one of my students die throughout the game, but I’m happy I didn’t. Going with classic made me rethink how I was going to utilize my team. If there is no risk of permanently losing a member of your team, all you have to do is throw characters at enemies without repercussion and overpower every battle. Part of the fun is treating the battlefield like a chessboard and trying to make smart decisions for that particular round of moves, and a few in the future.

Rhea, Archbishop of the Church of Seiros as well as her second in command, Seteth.

I also went for normal difficulty, but I felt that it was a bit too easy. I never did any grinding and completed all of the story, auxiliary and paralogue battles that popped up. With just that situation, I was consistently over leveling missions I was participating in. It wasn’t until the final two battles that I felt the difficulty spiked.

Aside from difficulty, the gameplay of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is split into a few distinct sections; character development and the actual battles.

The overall template of Fire Emblem: Three Houses ends up feeling like the following; Begin month, instruct your students, build support and relationships between your students and other inhabitants of Garreg Mach, complete quest/auxiliary/paralogue battle, repeat the previous steps 2-3 times per month then complete the month with a story mission between weeks three and four.

You take on the mantle of professor after arriving at Garreg Mach Monastery, choose a class of students to oversee, build relationships with them through different actions that you take, then lead them on the battlefield.

With that in mind, don’t come into the game expecting endless battles and action. Battles become more fun because of the investment you put into your students, your team and goals in terms of selecting future character classes for them to excel at, and eventually become.

Battles

Speaking of battles, the real action in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, comes from the different battle types. If you’ve never played a tactics-RPG game, battle fields are broken down into a grid system similar to a chess or checker board. Each battle has rounds where your team, allied teams and enemy teams are able to move all of their units once. During these rounds is when you would attack, use items, heal team members and so on.

General battle map view, showing you the grid, obstacles, enemies units and more.

Story Battles: These battles, which usually occur once a month in-game, progress the story and usually offer the player the most unique setups. They feature more named characters, which are typically deadlier and require more thought on how to approach them, and more unique side objectives other than ‘rout the enemy’ or ‘defeat the enemy commander.’

Paralogue Battles: These battles hold the best content other than your basic story battles and are always character driven, with a particular conflict or goal in mind. One may require you to block four escape routes for thieves while another has draw bridges in the middle of the map that need to be re-taken. Many of them also reward you with one of the heroes relics and are always worth doing.

The unique aspect of this paralogue battle puts you in the middle of a battlefield with fog of war surrounding you. You can seek out enemies in the fog, or act defensively and wait for them to come to you.

Auxiliary Battles: These battles also soak up a battle activity point and are a step up in difficulty from basic battles. Many of them include rare beasts and reward you with various meat or resources to continue upgrading or repairing your weapons.

Quest/Basic Battles: Throughout your time at Garreg Mach Monastery, you will get a number of quests that involve a battle, many times rewarding you with another gambit battalion. There’s nothing much else to say about them. They are usually uninteresting and just require you to defeat a number of non-threatening enemies.

Basic battle list along with activity points on the top of the screen.

The downside of this aspect of the game, is map variety. Too often is a story map revisited for a paralogue battle or vice versa. The auxiliary battles or basic battles also pull from the same pool of maps. There were multiple times that I played through the same map two or three times in a row just completing quests, paralogue’s or even story missions. It would have been nice to have a larger map selection pool so that battling becomes less dull outside of the over-arching narrative.

The Monastery

Garreg Mach Monastery acts as the central hub for most of Fire Emblem: Three Houses and feels like a character on its own. During the story, you’ll slowly unlock areas of the monastery to explore, and subsequently, give you more to do.

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On top of leveling up your characters in battle, you’re really expected to invest equal time during the following activities to better improve overall.

Professor Level: The professor level allows you to do more actions during the explore phase of the monastery, and gives you more battle points for when you decide to battle instead. You increase this by participating in extracurricular activities that I’ll talk a bit about below, building relationships and completing quests.

Training Grounds: Houses a tournament every month featuring a different weapon type. You choose a character to enter into the tournament. Winning nets you gold, an item and experience towards increasing your professor level.

Dining Hall: Various options available to sit down with other characters and build your relationship with them. A sound strategy would be to eat meals multiple times on the same day to increase the motivation of your students, so when you go to instruct them, they gain greater experience towards the selected skills.

Fishing Pond: Exactly what it sounds like. You use your bait to catch fish to use for meals at the dining hall. Each successful catch nets you a small amount of professor level experience.

Greenhouse/Harvesting: You have the option to plant seeds and cultivate them. Doing this will yield more seeds, items and again, professor level experience.

Tea time is another activity you can use to build bonds between yourself and the others at the monastery.

While overall I like the idea of the monastery, it’s design really leaves something on the table. I really don’t care much about having the best graphics, but environments look very blocky and outdated next to the detailed and interesting character models. Everything has a jagged edge, sort of like it was out of the N64/PS1 era, except with better textures.It’s a strange contrast that’s very noticeable.

Characters

One thing I was not expecting, I guess being a newcomer to the series, was how large the character roster is. At first, I was worried about this because how is it possible to get really in depth with everyone and have it not feel superficial? There are always some characters that are developed more than others, and some that are forgotten. This really isn’t the case with Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

I really am blown away with how much personality each character is packed with. The house I chose for my first go around was the Black Eagle House. By the end of the game, following these same characters for nearly 50 hours, I could correctly answer any question they had, have perfect ‘tea times’ every instance, answer their queries correctly in the church and more. I felt that the amplified feeling of knowing they can die in battle also helped me get more attached to them. I never left a character to die, it just didn’t feel like an option.

Couldn’t help but think of animated Link saying ‘Excusssse me Princess Zelda.’

Aside from each character having distinct personalities, the voice acting is also superb. I usually read quickly and scroll past text but here, I waited and watched every conversation because of how much I enjoyed the voice acting.

Support Conversations: The more two characters get to know each other, the better their relationship gets. When that happens, support conversations unlock between those two characters, and they are lengthy. I started getting in the habit of waiting until I was eating breakfast to start activating these support conversations because they took so long to go through. At times, I would sit for 30-45 minutes strictly just listening to characters build relationships with one another. It sounds boring on the outside, but it really was a nice change of pace sitting back and enjoying these conversations.

The main growth of a character besides straight leveling up and support levels, are leveling skills and becoming classes that excel at those skills. This is mostly all done during the classroom sessions that you will be setting up for your team. Classes are all visible from the outset, so you can, and should to a degree, plan ahead for certain characters and see what you’d like to be.

An example of instructing a student on a particular set of skills.

If you really want a Dark Knight on your team, you really need to select an appropriate character, then focus on Reason, Riding and Lance skills. The same goes for any of the other few dozen classes that are obtainable. It’s really an open book, and although certain characters clearly excel at certain skills, you’re never truly bound to those skills. Get creative, and work on what fits your style as a player.

Other Points

Cutscenes: I really enjoyed all of the cutscenes I’ve seen in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. They stand apart from the rest of the game, enacting a more anime style than what is presented elsewhere. Many of them included some unsettling images that reminded me of the feeling I have watching titans contort in Attack on Titan, or even some of the imagery from Berserk.

There are some unintentional comedic elements as well. One cutscene in particular shows three armies rushing towards each other for this grand battle. When it’s over, you head to the battle screen and everyone is standing around waiting for their individual orders.

The animation is top notch whenever given to the player. Unfortunately, cutscenes are sparse.

Online Recon: Another addition to Garreg Mach is online recon. When unlocked, an NPC as well as four other characters from other players appear. They each sell you one item at a small discount from just purchasing it in store, and you have the option of doing a mini-game with them. The mini-game scatters them across around half the monastery, and you have to find all four of them within 90 seconds. Rewards for completion include basic food items and one time, a battalion. It’s just strange and super laggy whenever you get near that section of the monastery.

One of the online recon travelers from other players games.

Pacing: The pacing of the main story can feel awkward with the system they have built. They really want to do one main mission every month, with you as the professor, teaching, battling, exploring and everything else during the same month. This is fine for the first half of the game where you are teaching students, and as a class, are being assigned one major mission per month, but the same is not the case for the latter half of the game. I don’t want to go into spoilers, but I felt the system faltered a bit later on and pacing seemed either too rushed, or too slow at times.

Final Thoughts

I’m happy that I took the plunge into the Fire Emblem series. Outside of enjoying the board game/tactics play style, I’m a veteran RPG player, so those long conversations or bonding moments between characters are very welcome and I got just as much enjoyment out of character development as I did actually battling.

The downside, is that map variation was rather boring outside of unique ones used for story or paralogue missions. Graphics are also blocky and seem out of place for this generation of consoles (characters models were a different art style and looked fantastic).

There are three distinct paths for you to choose in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. While the first half of the game may largely be the same for all three choices, the second half is drastically different and you’ll want to check out the other paths.

As long as you aren’t expecting a visual spectacle or non-stop action, you’ll find the same enjoyment that I did with Fire Emblem. Now, onto the second playthrough…

Review: Fire Emblem: Three Houses #fireemblem #threehouses #nintendo #nintendoswitch Introduction and Story The Fire Emblem series, for me, has been one of those things that's always been in my peripheral, but never really close enough to gain attention.

#anime #attack on titan #berserk #fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #nintendo #nintendo switch #rpg #tactics #three houses #turn based

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gamearamamegathons · 6 years

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Dragon Warrior II: Double Peace

Circe here! I've done it. Finally: I, personally, have brought peace to the land, twice. But okay, let's start from the top. Admittedly, the deeper I got into the game's tangled line of quest items, the more I forgot what all does what where. Following a guide doesn't help, since it's easy to forget stuff I was just following step-by-step rather than putting together myself. But I'm glad I did, because I was really running out of patience for this game. In the end, though, I managed to find the jailor's key and the watergate key, open the path to the moon tower, get the moon fragment, open the path to the sea cave, find...uh...something there...the Eye of Malroth? And also scrape together the five crests and bring them to a single tile in the middle of nowhere in which I can find the dwelling of the wizard Rubiss and get his charm.

The *important* part is that with the Eye of Malroth and the Charm of Rubiss, I can now enter the final phase of the game. The sprawling overworld quest, eventually, funnels down into a single ominous final path: the Cave of Rhone. I knew the cave was bad, because while digging for info on the game and how to continue, I saw a lot of players complaining about how difficult it is to get through. And they're not kidding. At this point I'd long past given up on mapping the dungeons, so I was just following the guide to the letter to get through. But even then, the encounters are brutally punishing. I'm starting to notice a concerning trend, and it's apparently not just localized to the first Dragon Warrior: the final 20% of the game or so is made up mostly of miserably difficult and unfair encounters. Saber Lions became one of my least favorites, having physical attacks powerful enough that a group can rip through a single party member. I'd gone remarkably long in this game without any deaths, but now my characters were dropping like flies, and that's a serious problem in a game where revival is very, very limited.

So getting through the Cave of Rhone basically boiled down to luck and running, a lot. The more I bump into this kind of problem, the more I feel like 'running' as a mechanic is a serious, gaping design flaw, even among the already fairly flawed games of the early console RPG era. See, if you just don't want to deal with encounters because they're sapping your resources every fight, you have two options every turn: fight or run. Fighting is a surer thing, but it's definitely going to cost you. Running, on the other hand, gives you a chance to escape scot free, but if it fails, you have gained exactly nothing and taken a ton of damage. What's more, fights against strong enemy groups are generally survivable by whittling down their numbers. A couple turns of failing to run will likely leave your party in such bad shape that if you decided to fight after all, you'd be starting from way behind and likely end up just getting killed. At that point, all you can really do is keep running. Even though a lot of run attempts succeed on the first try, I didn't find it that rare at all to find myself failing to run three, four, five times, knowing that I'd wasted that many turns where I could've at least been taking down some of the enemies and leaving myself with a more manageable encounter that I could probably defeat. This kind of dynamic is a recipe for misery, and I mean it -- trying to get through the Cave of Rhone marks the first time in this marathon that I had to physically step away from my computer and take a breather because I was so frustrated.

There is, fortunately, a reward of sorts at the other end of the cave. You emerge into Rhone itself, a mountain-ringed landscape with a unique snowy tileset. The monsters here are brutally powerful, but if you can make your way to the monolith, you'll find perhaps the single best thing in the game: free healing, free revival, and a save point, all rolled into one. Welcome, this monolith is going to be your home for a while. See, you're probably far too weak to beat Hargon right now, but monsters in Rhone give absurd amounts of EXP. In a matter of a few hours of grinding, I was able to leap forward 11 levels before I finally got bored. My guide recommended beating the game at level 30, but I went all the way to level 35 because fuck this game's idea of a fair fight.

There are problems in Rhone, though. For one, you get to see two new delightful spells that enemies can cast: Defeat and Sacrifice. Defeat has a low chance of killing any one of your party members, and one of the monsters, Blizzard, likes to cast it a lot. There's nothing you can really do about it. If they're dead, they're dead, and even after Glynn learns Revive, he can only cast it out of battle. Sacrifice is the real nasty one, though. Golden Batboons will rarely cast this spell, which destroys the user in order to kill all targets. Yes, that's right. If any enemy casts this spell in a battle, you TPK instantly, no resistance, no saves, no nothing. Why this monumentally bad idea exists in the game at all is considerably beyond me. However, if you're chilling in Rhone, you probably don't need the money you lose from dying anyway, so anytime you return to the monolith, either from travling back yourself or from a party wipe, you just pick yourself up again with the free heal and go back out. Unfortunately...no matter how leveled up I got, it didn't feel like the hits I was taking from enemies got any lighter. I was getting a lot more HP and MP though, so that's a plus.

Still, I'm not gonna lie. Traveling through Rhone and Hargon's castle was about as miserable as the Cave of Rhone, with the main difference being that it was shorter. When you reach Hargon's castle, you find a replica of Midenhall Castle. The trick is that the Charm of Rubiss lets you see through the illusion, so when you use it, you get to see the true nature of Hargon's castle, which of course is filled with flaming souls, damage tiles, and demons. Then you have to make your way behind the throne and use the Eye of Malroth, which takes you to the dungeon proper. Here, you meet the, uh...first bosses in the entire game, I think. First you come across three forced encounters as you make your way up the castle: Atlas, a recolor of the giant enemies; Bazuzu, a recolor of the batboon enemies; and Zarlox, a recolor of the demon enemies. They're all fairly unremarkable as bosses -- the game's fights are more interesting than Dragon Warrior's, but there's still a pretty predictable range of what enemies can do: cast the same spells as you and breathe fire, pretty much. The big sticking point, though, was Bazuzu, who inexplicably can cast Defeat *and* Sacrifice. Yes, a mandatory boss battle can end with the boss just instantly wiping your party with nothing you can do about it. And don't think 'sacrificing' himself means he's gone, either. That doesn't count as him being defeated, naturally.

After that, you make your way to Hargon, an angry-looking wizard guy. He's basically Dragonlord 2.0, more or less. The most dangerous spell at this point is Explodet, which deals massive damage to the whole party, so he's got that, of course (Illyth learned it too, which is pretty cool, although basically all enemies at this point in the game have a chance to resist damage spells). But he's not too tough to beat -- an important detail is that enemy HP caps out at a single byte (255) so even the final boss is limited when I can do upwards of 50+ damage per hit with my main hero. After Hargon goes down, he's followed by Malroth, a character with no dialogue whose existence is only lightly alluded to before he suddenly attacks you. Suddenly this is starting to feel like Final Fantasy... Anyway, Malroth's big downfall was the innocuous Defence spell, which lowers enemy defense. By hitting him with this spell repeatedly I was able to make him very vulnerable to physical damage while spending relatively little MP, which is good 'cause I didn't have much left at this point. Thanks to hitting him for like 90 damage a pop, he eventually went down, even after he'd managed to kill off Glynn.

With the evil defeated, I'm now free to walk over the overworld unimpeded, letting me make my way back to Midenhall to receive congratulations and ascend to the throne. Happy ending, credits, a surprisingly detailed ending screen, and that's done. So...how was Dragon Warrior II? Well...I can say that it's a huge improvement over its predecessor. A proper party, bigger fights, more monsters, a bigger world, all the good stuff you'd want to put on the back of the box. But the cracks that were there in Dragon Warrior start to show through as the game gets bigger. Fights are draggy and slow, the overworld is sprawling and hard to navigate, and the devs seeming obligation to make your life hell for the last several hours of the game persists. These games are under pressure to impress with sheer numbers and size, but the game design model they're built on isn't sustainable in that way. The fatigue of navigating a huge world just piles on, especially when there's little escape from the oppressively high encounter rate.

I think that's really the big sticking point. Navigating the world might've been pleasant, but the game can't let go of its instinctual drive to be antagonistic to the player, and that's really what wore me down. If I could've stopped encounters while I was sailing, if late-game encounters weren't so frequent and oppressively difficult, the game would've been fine, and I might've even figured everything out on my own. The game's deepest flaws really come down to tuning, and this one is tuned like, well, an NES RPG. But there are still big parts of it I enjoyed, even though I don't think I'd ever play it again.

However, we're not done with Dragon Warrior II yet. Reconstructing my save data awakened in me a desire to dig deeper into the workings of the game and maybe break things a bit. Join me next time in my final, technical post about Dragon Warrior II where we will seek to answer three big questions: What all really is in the save data? Can we sail off the edge of the map? And how the heck *does* Repel work?

#marathon #circe #dragon warrior ii #dragon quest

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clearpeanutcollector · 3 years

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Bets College Homework Mac App

College isn't all fun and games (unless you want it to be.) Don't sweat it, though. Take a look at these 25 apps — they'll give you a smoother college experience by helping you study smarter, connect with new people and wake up in time for your early lectures.

Jul 06, 2020 BET+ is a premium online streaming service with over 1,000 hours of your favorite Black content from the best Black creators. Now, you can stream Black culture: the movies you remember, the TV shows you love and the new series you can't live without. And they're all in one place, commercial free. Everything from classics like Martin and House of Payne to modern favorites like Bigger and Carl. The best part about this app is that the students can opt for one-on-one interaction with a tutor and clear their doubts instantly. Download: iOS. Student Agenda. This homework app offers a free planner and diary that is designed by the students for an uncluttered usage.

Your university probably has its own app, too — download it. It will provide you with a more tailored breakdown than a national application.

See also: 12 Things Students Should Never Do on Social Media

Any helpful ones we missed? Let us know in the comments!

1. BenchPrep

Image: BenchPrep

BenchPrep is an interactive course library with all the graduate and professional exam study material you can handle. It includes hundreds of practice questions, flashcards, in-app purchases and almost 600 study lessons. Go ahead and pick your poison: LSAT, MCAT, GMAT.

Available for free on iOS and Android devices.

2. iStudiez Pro

Image: iStudentPro

iStudiezPro keeps track of your deadlines, grades and more across all Mac devices — all you need to do is plug your class schedule into the app. It comes with both Cloud syncing and iCal integration.

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Available for $2.99 for iOS. The free iStudiez Lite version limits the number of classes you manage, but it's useful nonetheless.

3. Evernote

You've probably heard a lot about Evernote, and yes, you should try it. What have you got to lose .. your homework? The app syncs all your stuff — text, audio, photo, video — to an online account, so you're always connected with resources to study.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by Evernote's many features, check out this comprehensive beginner's guide.

Available for broke college students (read: free) for iOS and Android devices. The premium version is even more useful, at $5 a month or $45 a year.

4. StudyBlue Flashcards

Flashcards are an effective way to memorize information, but making them is a headache. With StudyBlue, use text, pictures and audio to create the perfect stack of (digital) flashcards; or, search the massive database to borrow someone else's.

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Available for iOS and Android devices.

5. RealCalc Scientific Calculator

Did your little brother steal your calculator once you finished AP physics? Use RealCalc for serious computing — it's a perfect alternative for the calculator-less.

Available for free for Android. If you need a heavy-duty upgrade, try RealCalc Plus for $3.49.

6. Engineering Professional

More than 650 chemical, civil, electrical, environmental, hydrology and mechanical formulas are updated in Engineering Pro — so don't worry about buying multiple formula apps. Save or Favorite the formulas you need most often.

Available for $11.99 for iOS.

7. EasyBib

Image: EasyBib

EasyBib generates citations in MLA, APA and Chicago style wherever you are — just scan the book's bar code or enter the title. The app also lets you easily email and export the bibliographies to yourself. Using this, you have no excuses for putting off that term paper.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

8. Notella

Image: Notella

Some professors drop the most important bombs when you least expect it ('Have a good spring break, everyone. Oh! One more thing: We're having an exam worth 60% of your final grade the day you get back. See ya!').

Don't miss a thing with Notesdeck. This super-fast note-taking app opens to a new note by default, lets you create custom hotkeys and syncs notes from other apps — iCloud, Evernote, Simplenote and Dropbox. You can even search within those other apps from one search bar.

Mac map mouse button app download. Feb 06, 2007 Question: Q: Mouse Button Mapping More Less. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations. May 28, 2012 ‎Joystick Mapper is an application that allows you to configure your joysticks or gamepads to simulate keyboard keys/mouse movement/mouse click/mouse scroll, so you can control any app or game using them, even the ones without built-in support. It also lets you remap the Scroll Wheel Button to some useful functions like Mission Control and it features a refined Smooth-Scrolling algorithm, which I think strikes a great balance between fluidity and control. Mac Mouse Fix is very light on system resources and it's a System Preferences Plugin so there's no status bar item. X-Mouse Button Control by Phillip Gibbons (Highresolution Enterprises) is a free application that can help you customize the functionality of your mouse buttons (set new functions to mouse buttons). Sadly, there is no version of X-Mouse Button Control for Mac available for download, but there are other tools that can help you change the.

Available for $2.99 for iOS.

9. Wolfram Alpha

From thermodynamics to baseball, the Wolfram Alpha reference app uses its supercomputing Cloud to quickly generate answers — across thousands of domains — to all your research questions.

Available for $2.99 for iOS and Android devices.

10. Dictionary.com Mobile

With more than two million definitions, synonyms and antonyms, Dictionary.com's fast and user-friendly mobile app will decode that confusing media law textbook in no time.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

11. Babylon

Whether you're a Spanish lit major or just looking to finish your general education requirements, Babylon provides comprehensive dictionary results and translations for dozens of languages. With pasteboard integration and access to more than 1,500 glossaries in 75 languages, you'll never struggle to find an accurate definition for your foreign language presentation again.

iBabylon is available for free for iOS; Babylon Translator is available for free for Android.

12. Jumpcut

You have better things to do than copy and paste all day. Make light work of data entry assignments with Jumpcut: copy as much text as you want, one after another, and paste using simple keystrokes.

Available for Macs only.

13. Dragon Dictation

Ever wish you could type faster? Dragon Dictation uses accurate voice recognition software to let you speak and instantly see your words in text. Dictate statuses to your social networks or pretend you're talking to someone if you're trying to write a speech — even send statuses straight to your social networks. Try this if you're in a time crunch and really need to churn out an essay; or, if you're just someone who prefers speaking over writing.

Available for free for iOS.

14. SelfControl

Image: Flickr, jonas maaloe

It's finals week. You have a huge essay to finish .. but then there's Reddit, emitting its bewitching siren call. Every. Damn. Time.

SelfControl lets you set a period of time to block certain websites or mail servers by adding them to a 'blacklist.' It's too bad if you finish your work early — restarting your computer or deleting the application won't negate the timer.

Available for free for Mac OS X.

15. Studious

Avoid interrupting class and getting on your professor's bad side with Studious. Once you input your class schedule, Studious will silence your phone during those hours.

Available for free for Android. Upgrade to Studious+ for $1.99 to bypass the ads.

16. Circle of 6

Ever feel uncomfortable when it's dark and you're in a new part of a city — or even campus? Circle of 6 won the White House's Apps Against Abuse challenge. It helps you stay safe by connecting you to six trusted contacts, whenever and wherever. Use the pre-programmed 'come and get me' message with your GPS location, or easily call national and local emergency hotlines in critical situations. It's a fast and discreet way to put your safety first.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

Addendum: You don't actually need six people if you want to double up on contacts.

17. Skype

Image: Skype

Hi!The last days I've noticed how every time I start Safari everything freezes (finder included) for a couple minutes. Macos bitcoin miner in mrt.app. Then I can write something in the search bar, and then it freezes another time!

Video interviews are not going away any time soon — so you might as well get a heads up now. Microsoft's Skype is a reliable way to connect with faraway family and friends via text, voice and — of course — video.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

18. LinkedIn

LinkedIn and all its nifty mobile features makes connections a breeze — for better or worse, college is a time of both personal and professional connections.

Available on the web, of course, but also for free for iOS and Android devices.

19. Twitter

Don't be the only person in class who isn't up-to-date with world events. Use Twitter to keep yourself in the loop in both the academic and social aspects of your life. In today's contemporary classrooms, you may even be asked to participate in class discussions via Twitter.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

20. Sworkit

There are a lot of things to do in college. Exercising isn't always one of them; especially when there's socializing and studying to be had. Sworkit's greatest asset is its ability to let you choose your exercise time allotment in five-minute increments — starting at, yes, the very low threshold of five minutes. Doable, right?

It also boasts an extensive list of work out routines.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices. Sworkit Pro comes with advanced features and costs $0.99 for iOS and Android.

See also: 10 YouTube Channels That Will Make You Smarter

21. Mint

Club fees. Books. Tuition. Food. College adds up — quickly. Mint is a web and mobile app that helps you keep track of your spending. Plus, it's never too early to start cultivating good credit.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

22. Sleep If U Can Alarm

Bets College Homework Mac Apps

Come on, you lazy bum — you're paying for these early classes, remember? Nicknamed the 'world's most annoying alarm,' Sleep If U Can gives you two options to silent the alarm: 1) Shake your phone; or 2) Physically go the place shown on your screen (see: the bathroom sink in the video) and take a picture.

Available for $1.99 for iOS and free for Android.

23. Pocket First Aid & CPR

Mashable composite, images: Pocket First Aid & CPR

While it's not the sexiest app to have at your disposable, you never know when it might come in handy. Along with clear and concise CPR instructions, Pocket First Aid and CPR contains 34 videos and 46 high-resolution illustrations.

Available for $1.99 for iOS and Android devices.

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24. Between

Attempting the long-distance relationship course? Kudos — that's no small task. Relationship app Between can help ease the separation anxiety by letting you send messages, voicemails, memos and photos. A private timeline makes it easy to reminisce about the good old days with your significant other(s).

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

25. TED

Image: TED

In an environment often congested with bad influences, a heavy dose of genius goes a long way. TED Talks give you instant access to the biggest thought leaders of our time.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

Image: Mashable, Meghan Uno

Whether you're taking the first step towards school or passing out of the college, your life can be a total mess including assignments, surprise tests, homework, examinations, attendance and so on. All you do is wake up early, go to school and come back. That becomes your routine cutting out the quality time to spend with your family and friends. How disheartening is that? With such a busy schedule and a massive number of deadlines to fulfill, it becomes quite challenging to keep track of homework or anything that has to be submitted on the next day. In such circumstances, a homework planner or organizer could be reliable to oversee and update you regarding the assignments, homework and other deadlines. Of course, it's a daunting task to look out for a suitable homework planner who can assist you with your regular tasks.

Top 5 Homework Planner Apps for College Students

Because it is a tedious job, we have come up with the best homework planner apps for students that will help them to do their tasks without any hassle:

1. School Planner

School planner is a full-scale homework planner app that is designed mainly to pay attention to students so that they are well focussed about their career. This app has a pile of features ranging from simple features to ones that you can think of. Besides your homework and timetable, school planner app assists you to keep track of your attendance. You can also add your teachers' contacts on the list, combine recorded lectures which could be beneficial during exams and add multiple planners too. Initially, it is a tedious job to use this app as you have to enter all your details in a form. In addition to your details, you must enter your teacher's details, timetable, and other college details. But once that's done, you're good to go! The app also supports backing up all the data that you feed in via Google drive, calendar, etc. This app does not fail to give you weekly reports, give reminders on the day of submission of assignments, attach snapshots to any reminders. Although the school planner offers a lot of features, it has the best performance with a beautiful framework. In case of your research paper you can use Edusson at affordable pricing.

2. Istudiez pro

Istudiez pro is yet another student-friendly homework planner app and probably the oldest app when compared to all of the mentioned apps. Like school planner, this app also offers a wide range of features including grading, attendance and subject wise organization of activities. It is way easier to set up when compared to a school planner. But the prominent feature in studies pro is that it is integrated with Google Calendar which gives you all the details like holidays, exam schedule, daily routine and so on. Not just that, it is also supported in all operating platforms like iOS, Mac, and windows. All the apps sync well and therefore you can operate this homework planner anywhere anytime on your laptop.

3. My study life

The next homework planner app for college students is My Study Life. The best thing about this app is that it has its web app which makes it unique. The web app can sync well(mostly on Android) therefore making your data accessible from any remote location using your device. Make sure that you've got a web browser installed in your device. This is a goal-oriented app and keeps reminding you about how much is completed and how much is left to achieve the goal. In addition to that, the calendar feature keeps track of all the important dates, it could be deadlines or project submission dates. The only con of my study life is that it is quite lengthy to set up. Once it is correctly done, you're all set!

4. ChalkBoard

One of the smartest homework planner app for students is a chalkboard. It is pretty quick regarding its features and subject wise allocation of teachers on the app. When you open it for the first time, it prompts you to fill the name and subjects of all your teachers along with the timetable. Cool, isn't it? Although the setup process is a tedious job, it is entirely reliable and smooth. The amazing part is you don't have to memorize your timetable as you can see the upcoming classes on the home screen. Not just that, you can also find pending assignments and other tasks on the screen making your job way too easy. Features like these make this app stand out when compared to other homework organizer apps and gives you a great overall experience. This homework planner app would have been much more superior if it had a calendar feature in it.

5. Egenda

It's quite easy to set up Egenda when compared to others. All you need to do is, add the subjects and classes that you have. Once that is done, you have the choice of adding any homework, deadline, project or test. The pending tasks can be seen in the form of cards and have to be swiped away once it's completed. The best part about this homework planner app is that it keeps you updated, could be regarding the upcoming assignments, tasks or competitions. This will help you plan ahead and complete the job on time. Unfortunately, the app doesn't have a timetable feature. But in its latest update, you will find a calendar that can assist you in keeping track of dates. Backup option not available in this app, therefore data can't be recovered once you lose it.

Final Words

So these were some of the coolest homework planner apps exclusively for career-oriented students who want their tasks to be completed on time and who do not wish to struggle till the last minute to meet the goal. We genuinely understand your problem and these apps are going to be of great use to you!

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