#i hate sales but I love doing it digitally where I get to just do the fun parts (making things and saying silly things)

[mokeonn]

Since I found out steam does a year in review (I had no idea until this year) I have decided that I must play video games more and play every game in my steam library so that my year in review is 100% accurate next year and I don't get told that my top 2 games were Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3 because I would Hyperfixate on one game for a whole month (or three) and play nothing else, and still have my genre graph have nothing to do with those two top games and instead have "cats" as a genre while calling me a fag

#simon says #I need to play more games anyways since I have like 80 games in my library but I have only played like... 30 #so I'm already working on adding more games I would enjoy to my wishlist and installing games I've been wanting to play but haven't yet #i know the counter doesn't start until jan 1 but I'm having fun already #my spider graph needs to be SO much more accurate #I played ONE cats game and ONE cooking game and it said my most played genre is city builder?? #bitch just because my third most played game is city skylines does not mean that's my main genre #i do lean towards simulators and puzzle games though #it's on the right track #but I don't think steam understands that my favorite games are games with beautiful and interesting art styles #games with wonderful narratives #and games where I get to own a funnie little shop and manage stuff #management should be my number 1 genre lmaooo #I do so many simulator games because they're just so fun like yeah I DO wanna make a little zoo or a little potion shop or a pizza place #i hate sales but I love doing it digitally where I get to just do the fun parts (making things and saying silly things) #and puzzle games. I'm a fuckn puzzle master #so yeah my goal is to play just... more games that I own and get more games that look fun #and also more rpgs. i need to play more rpgs #i am making an rpg I need to get some INSPIRATION #anyways that's my rant for now #I'm super sick right now so I don't have much to do besides eat sleep and game #I'm doing pretty well mentally though so I'm excited to feel better and start working on projects and whatnot soon #i also updated my icon recently #i changed my fursona #i will make a post about it later #I'm keeping the calico boy as an oc and also a sona of some sorts #so don't worry about Sock #but i wanted to be a tiger :3 #i love tigers :3 #also I got a book of dinosaurs so i wanna make a dinosona soon

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An interoperability rule for your money

This is the final weekend to back the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, The Lost Cause. These kickstarters are how I pay my bills, which lets me publish my free essays nearly every day. If you enjoy my work, please consider backing!

"If you don't like it, why don't you take your business elsewhere?" It's the motto of the corporate apologist, someone so Hayek-pilled that they see every purchase as a ballot cast in the only election that matters – the one where you vote with your wallet.

Voting with your wallet is a pretty undignified way to go through life. For one thing, the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes, and for another, no matter who you vote for in that election, the Monopoly Party always wins, because that's the part of the thick-wallet set.

Contrary to the just-so fantasies of Milton-Friedman-poisoned bootlickers, there are plenty of reasons that one might stick with a business that one dislikes – even one that actively harms you.

The biggest reason for staying with a bad company is if they've figured out a way to punish you for leaving. Businesses are keenly attuned to ways to impose switching costs on disloyal customers. "Switching costs" are all the things you have to give up when you take your business elsewhere.

Businesses love high switching costs – think of your gym forcing you to pay to cancel your subscription or Apple turning off your groupchat checkmark when you switch to Android. The more it costs you to move to a rival vendor, the worse your existing vendor can treat you without worrying about losing your business.

Capitalists genuinely hate capitalism. As the FBI informant Peter Thiel says, "competition is for losers." The ideal 21st century "market" is something like Amazon, a platform that gets 45-51 cents out of every dollar earned by its sellers. Sure, those sellers all compete with one another, but no matter who wins, Amazon gets a cut:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Think of how Facebook keeps users glued to its platform by making the price of leaving cutting of contact with your friends, family, communities and customers. Facebook tells its customers – advertisers – that people who hate the platform stick around because Facebook is so good at manipulating its users (this is a good sales pitch for a company that sells ads!). But there's a far simpler explanation for peoples' continued willingness to let Mark Zuckerberg spy on them: they hate Zuck, but they love their friends, so they stay:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

One of the most important ways that regulators can help the public is by reducing switching costs. The easier it is for you to leave a company, the more likely it is they'll treat you well, and if they don't, you can walk away from them. That's just what the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau wants to do with its new Personal Financial Data Rights rule:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-rule-to-jumpstart-competition-and-accelerate-shift-to-open-banking/

The new rule is aimed at banks, some of the rottenest businesses around. Remember when Wells Fargo ripped off millions of its customers by ordering its tellers to open fake accounts in their name, firing and blacklisting tellers who refused to break the law?

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/07/497084491/episode-728-the-wells-fargo-hustle

While there are alternatives to banks – local credit unions are great – a lot of us end up with a bank by default and then struggle to switch, even though the banks give us progressively worse service, collectively rip us off for billions in junk fees, and even defraud us. But because the banks keep our data locked up, it can be hard to shop for better alternatives. And if we do go elsewhere, we're stuck with hours of tedious clerical work to replicate all our account data, payees, digital wallets, etc.

That's where the new CFPB order comes in: the Bureau will force banks to "share data at the person’s direction with other companies offering better products." So if you tell your bank to give your data to a competitor – or a comparison shopping site – it will have to do so…or else.

Banks often claim that they block account migration and comparison shopping sites because they want to protect their customers from ripoff artists. There are certainly plenty of ripoff artists (notwithstanding that some of them run banks). But banks have an irreconcilable conflict of interest here: they might want to stop (other) con-artists from robbing you, but they also want to make leaving as painful as possible.

Instead of letting shareholder-accountable bank execs in back rooms decide what the people you share your financial data are allowed to do with it, the CFPB is shouldering that responsibility, shifting those deliberations to the public activities of a democratically accountable agency. Under the new rule, the businesses you connect to your account data will be "prohibited from misusing or wrongfully monetizing the sensitive personal financial data."

This is an approach that my EFF colleague Bennett Cyphers and I first laid our in our 2021 paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly," where we describe how and why we should shift determinations about who is and isn't allowed to get your data from giant, monopolistic tech companies to democratic institutions, based on privacy law, not corporate whim:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

The new CFPB rule is aimed squarely at reducing switching costs. As CFPB Director Rohit Chopra says, "Today, we are proposing a rule to give consumers the power to walk away from bad service and choose the financial institutions that offer the best products and prices."

The rule bans banks from charging their customers junk fees to access their data, and bans businesses you give that data to from "collecting, using, or retaining data to advance their own commercial interests through actions like targeted or behavioral advertising." It also guarantees you the unrestricted right to revoke access to your data.

The rule is intended to replace the current state-of-the-art for data sharing, which is giving your banking password to third parties who go and scrape that data on your behalf. This is a tactic that comparison sites and financial dashboards have used since 2006, when Mint pioneered it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/mint-late-stage-adversarial-interoperability-demonstrates-what-we-had-and-what-we

A lot's happened since 2006. It's past time for American bank customers to have the right to access and share their data, so they can leave rotten banks and go to better ones.

The new rule is made possible by Section 1033 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. Chopra is one of the many Biden administrative appointees who have acquainted themselves with all the powers they already have, and then used those powers to help the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

It's pretty wild that the first digital interoperability mandate is going to come from the CFPB, but it's also really cool. As Tim Wu demonstrated in 2021 when he wrote Biden's Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, the administrative agencies have sweeping, grossly underutilized powers that can make a huge difference to everyday Americans' lives:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: Steve Morgan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._National_Bank_Building_-_Portland,_Oregon.jpg

Stefan Kühn (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abrissbirne.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 - 

Rhys A. (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhysasplundh/5201859761/in/photostream/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #cfpb #interoperability mandates #mint #scraping #apis #privacy #privacy without monopoly #consumer finance protection bureau #Personal Financial Data Rights #interop #data hoarding #junk fees #switching costs #section 1033 #interoperability

[silky-silks]

Went to a festival lol

Hey guys so I went to a festival last evening, had tons of fun and took a lot of photos.

I spent time contemplating where I should take my art, and I think I should take it out to public and not advertise it much on the internet.

Well for sale wise.

I got to interact with some fun people, people even impressed by my skills and other artist too. And April 27th they are having a dragon boat race and I really want to set up a vendor there with all my digital art pieces and new ones (maybe not my fanart ones)

With all these more public events I decided hey I should go outside more; so for two weeks I’ll be busy trying to set up a vendor as well as art examples.

Not sure if I really wanna post them on here as I tend to get this anxiety how many people will notice them or not.

But yeah, I really want to do that as the place in live on now has tons of art opportunities for me; and while I met cool folks on the internet that made me happy and proud; the internet or media is kinda like a lottery to me in some senses.

And I wasn’t that lucky one; or I was 800 years late to the party. I don’t like having to make constant fandom art just to get attention, I love fandom stuff but I hate doing it on a consistent basis.

(lol more duck pics I took)

I kinda really want to be more original so I am hoping this makes me show some more of my own ideas and gain some rep and communication. I hate being at home stuck up in my room and my art is hidden in the shadows. I at least want to be noticed and tell other people out there my crazy ideas.

It’s just not the same on the internet I guess, and while I do have people I do share my weird ideas with,

I want to see more people. I want to see people ACTUAL walk up to me and be like “ooh what’s this?” Or “hey this is pretty interesting. What does it mean?”

Ah I rambled on again, but that’s my plan for these two weeks. So I will be more focused than ever as well as trying to finish my school presentation.

To be fair I DO NOT want to mess this up or throw it away. I’m 100% fully on head about doing this. But yeah that’s my time at the art festival so erm…don’t mind my rambling haha…

#welcome home #spooky month #silky silksong #my art

[king-shango-the-great]

Shango's Thoughts:

Sex work, or Sex Wack?

Incoming unpopular opinion:

I'm not paying for "content". Not at all.

You can get mad or get glad.

I see absolutely ZERO reason to pay for something that A) shouldn't be for sale, & B) can be found ANYWHERE online for absolutely free.

Miss me with Only Fans. That's a site where women have $5 subs (like really? That's all yall feel like yall are worth??) to watch beat faced "content creators" with BBL's & fake boobs do basic, bland, & boring stuff. We can watch those same women "twerk" (is it me, or is twerking played out now? I guess I been watching African & Caribbean women wine up their waists for so long, that twerking just seems like an underachievement 🤷🏿‍♂️) on Tik-Tok for free.

All most of yall have done is add to the monotony of it.

I just feel like society has overestimated the value of sex these days, while simultaneously devaluing it, to the point that everybody & their mama (& sadly, thats not an over exaggeration) feels the need to finger themselves to trashy rap music & charge the public for it.

Especially when much better porn (depending upon what your idea of "much better" is) can be found on Porn-Hub (& the dozen-plus sites like it), for absolutely free.

For that matter, I can just scroll thru Tumblr, where I've seen the insides of women's anuses, without even have to search for it. Again, for free. Some people here even claim that Tumblr was made for that very reason.

Don't get me wrong; I don't have a Puritan view of sex whatsoever. I'm as unapologetically dirty/nasty/freaky as they come. And beyond that, I LOVE looking at women. Especially beautiful, natural BLACK women. And as a currently single man (who does not go around using up bodies as I go along thru life), I also enjoy watching the visual aspects of sex. But I'm not paying for any of it. I'm not paying for strippers, or hookers, or porn stars, or "content creators", or "heauxs" or any other kind of "sex worker" (ughh, & all these names & titles that people create in order to make it sound more dignified 🙄.... Are you trying to convert your practice into a 501C3🤔 ?).

I never have, & I never will.

Don't get me wrong; I believe in & respect the laws of equivalent exchange, but not for a stranger, & not for empty sex..... Especially when everyone else has seen/experienced from you, exactly what I would have from you. Imagine going to a restaurant, & paying full price to eat a half-eaten plate of food. Nothing about that is special, let alone Sacred. My Future Wife/Empress/Goddess & I will enjoy our exchange in our Sacred bond.

I've talked at length about my views on the Sacredness of Sex on here in the past; see my other posts on the subject under "#Shango's Thoughts". So there isn't a contradiction here; just a different level of understanding.

And let's be clear: whatever monies women (especially Black women & WOC in general) are making from this, you're being digitally pimped. Dirty, scuzzy white boys who A) are racist as fuck, & B) literally HATE women own these sites that you are promoting your "content" on for pennies on the dollar, while they go on to make BILLIONS. It always amazes me that most of yall are blinded by A) your desperation to make money, & B) your desire to "feel empowered" (or whatever logic that is used) to see it.

Don't believe me? Look up the owner of Only Fans. Dude is a bastard of the highest order. I wouldn't sign up for OF, based on that alone. This just shows that the sex industry is just another arm of WS & patriarchy (& historically always has been), that most of yall will claim to hate so much. You think you're "liberating" yourself, but you're really not.

I'm sure there will be people who read this, & who will think "oh, he's a slut-shaming hypocrite".... And that's fine if you feel that way 🤷🏿‍♂️. Just like it's fine for me to feel how I feel. If my POV triggers or sways you, then that's your journey. If thats what you took from this (& Im sure that will be the case for quite a few who read this,) then so be it.

You're free to do whatever you want with your life & body. If I wanted you to stop, there's a single question that I could ask, that would create the greatest internal conundrum for you. But I won't ask it. At least, not right now.

Im not even here to tell other men not to pay for it either. Yall are free to do whatever you want with your money (even tho spending inordinate amounts of money for what amounts to a few moments of pleasure, when we could be spending that money to build up our communities 🤷🏿‍♂️), but that doesn't mean that I or anybody else has to agree with it.

Think better, know better, do better, live better.

#Unpopular Opinion #Shango's Thoughts

[scolek]

alalright time for dhbat songs reactions

found osaka first so theyre going first. im not sure its a good idea to name a song comedian rhapsody. you obviously invite comparisons to bohemian rhapsody which. u sure u wanna do that. what i want to compare it to is torima get on the floor though. similar vibes. my opinion on torima has HAD TO PAUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SONG BECAUSE GRANDMA HAD A PHONE QUESTION GDI anyway. my opinion on torima has become far more positive since it came out, so this is a positive comparison. god this chorus kills. makes me want to get up and dance.

under sail. what does this mean, well i wont find out for a bit bECAUSE ITS LOWES COMMERCIAL. oh boy labor day sale. i never wash my clothes in hot water so this tide commercial is losing me. oh boy this third commercial is trying to destigmatize the word pubic. girl help.

OK song time. the beat on this one another good one. theres never been a bad dh song. not sure about these yeah yeahs tho. p good. i dont think itll ever like. overtake own stage.

count the money is a fantastic title. yen yen bills and whatnot. this one is vibes. v good.  ooh whats this bridge here? lol mai waifu. OH KEY CHANGE!!!! just when i think i’ve got this songs number it reveals another digit! alright damn thats pretty stellar

fuck another lowes commercial. isnt this just riveting liveblogging content. i hate spotify. its just radio now.

aight hitoya’s up first for some reason. if i follow my heart. dig the title. dig the woodwind. ok he’s quieter than the woodwind, thats not good. HITOYA HONEY SPEAK UP. OK OK THATS. YEP THANKS. this is what the kids call a jam. but will it surpass its initial vibes? ok we’ve switched out for a lil electric keyboard. this is-- oh no the woodwind is back. mixed feelings on this woodwind now. i have a sneaking suspicion--OH SAX SOLO????--i have a sneaking suspicion. WHY IS THE SAX SO LOUD-- i have sneaking suspicion that the lyrics are gonna fuckin kill me. this sounds like a song where that would happen. so far all im being killed by is THE FUCKING MIXING WHO WAS AT THE BOARD FOR THIS.

young gun of the sun. this is a... not a cover? but he’s rapping over an existing song. so its not a sample either. i’m familiar with this comcept tho, heard other rappers do it. and kuko’s a known fan of punk rock so it makes sense. like i know these aren’t necessarily diagetic but i can so easily see him like, finding the instrumental of a song he likes and freestyling over it. this is what this feels like. what he does in his bedroom the second his dad leaves to run errands. also i love every part of this.

UGGGGHHHHHH MORE ADS FUCK YOU SPOTIFY this is why i barely use you anymore.

violet masquerade. first off the title rocks. but i wasn’t that impressed by the preview. not too into the. discordant carnival music vibe. and boyy the first verse is discordant. the chorus is decent but...? yeah no this is not doing it for me. as a jyushi lover this pains me. but compare it to moonlight shadow. moonlight shadow makes me cry. moonlight shadow is So Important. this is just. a song that exists

well, normally, i would say bat supremacy, but. well. they got smoked out by osaka man. that’s all i can say. happy 5th, hypmic.

#survival of the illest

[monimolimnion]

Hullo again and thank u for ur reply! 🤗 I bought Affinity Publisher since it was on sale :) I was wondering though how u were able to do single pages and double pages on your PDFs? I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a PDF like that. And Google isn’t helping 😨😢 Thank u again!

Hello again Anon! I'm so glad!! I hope you and Affinity get along 🙏

I'm not 100% sure what you're asking, so I'll just cover a few things:

To switch between double and single pages for the whole document, you'll want to go into Document Setup and switch from Facing Pages to Single pages.

As for in zines where I use single pages for the fics and single-page art, but "double" pages for spread-sized art, I made a little hack for myself >;3c

(I probably didn't invent this, but I've never seen any other zine layout do it, lol)

The "double" for the spread art is literally just a single page, but with its size changed to be as tall and wide as two regular pages side by side. (You don't want to do this for a print copy bc of bleed and stuff, but it's OK to change sizing around page to page for a purely digital zine, and it makes it much MUCH easier to read on mobile! Since all zines I do layout for usually include alt text/hyperlinks/other digital enhancements, I redo the page sizing as well when I create the digital PDF from the PDF we send to the printers. Because it's important to me that the digital product have just as much love in it as the print copy. I hate it when I buy a digital zine and it feels like an afterthought, like they just threw out the same file from the printer bc the digital copies aren't as important, y'know?)

Anyway </soapbox> lol, to achieve this you'll just want to set the whole document to single pages, and make a few different Master pages - one for your fic layout, one for your regular sized art, and one double-sized Master page for the big spread art.

You can change the page size for this last one in Document Setup, it's a little fiddly - make sure only the one master page is selected, and then double the width of the page (the smallest number).

Then apply your Masters to the actual pages of your zine, using only the one with funky sizing for the pages you want to appear as "two" pages/ a spread. (A dialog box will come up like 'im scared the sizes are different!!!!' just hit yes and let it resize em)

Ta-da! Fake 'toggleable' facing pages, without using actual facing pages because I hate them ♡ I hope this was helpful!!!

#if you need more help feel free to message me!! it's easier when you can attach screenshots and things #im happy to help ♡ #ask #zine stuff #described

[shop-cailey]

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THEIR - HISPANIC - BABYSITTER AS

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NO - WATER - GIVEN - CHICA - SO

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CHICA - 36 LBS - RESTRICTED BREED

ALWAYS - LICKS - MY - LEGS - HAND

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NATURAL - SPRING - WATER

RAIN WATER

WHAT - WILD - AND - DOMESTIC ANIMALS

DRINK - FEEDING - FAUCET - WATER - OR

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BOTH - THIS - WATER - AND - FOOD

POISONS - THEM

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FOOD - GIVEN - 2 - SMALL - DOG - BRAND

IMPORTANT - IS - OKAY

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THEY - WILL - HUNT - AND - TAKE - HENS

ROOSTERS - IN - THEIR - MOUTH - AS THEY

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U - CAN - CUT - THEIR - HEADS - OFF - KICK

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TRANSFER - NOT - ALLOWED

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NOT - TOWNS - OF - FLORIDA - AS THE

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THEY - ALLOW - CRUELTY - 2 - ANIMALS HENS

DOGS - THEY - DON'T - FINE - NO - CLEAN

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WATER - MUST - B - VISIBLE - CLEAN - EA 24/7

24 HRS - NOT - ONE - HAS - THAT - SHOWCASED

NO - TICKETS - GIVEN

ASK - SMALL - DOG - FOOD - OR - LARGE - DOG

FOOD - NO - ONE - ASKED

NO - MIAMI - POLICE - SURRENDERED - DOGS 2

ANIMAL - SHELTER - CAN'T - TURN - DOWN ANY

FOOD - IS - RELAXED - OUTDOORS - 4 - SMELLY

AND - ANTS - ANTS - LOVE - LOVE - DOG - AND

CAT - FOOD - SO - FULL - OF - ANTS

SO - MIAMI - POLICE - THEY - WANT - 2 - SHOOT

HOMELESS - MALE - NURSES - 2 - GET - THEIR

KIDNEY - BLADDER - $9,000 - EACH - THEN AS

THEY'RE - BURNT - IN - LITTLE - HAVANA MIAMI

HOUSES - REPOSSESSED - HOUSES - $10 - $1 SO

LOVED - BY - MIAMI - POLICE - AND - AFTER THE

EVICTION - POLICE - GET - APT - JUST - FREED

WITH - NO - DEPOSITS - REAL - EVIL - HUMANS

POLICE - 'WE - DON'T - INTERFERE - WITH - YES

EVICTIONS' - SOCIAL - SECURITY - SAYS - SAME

4 - THEIR - BLIND - SSI - DISABILITY - 4 - THE PC

SAYS - SOON - 2 B - AVAILABLE - SECTION 8 HUD

FREE - ELECTRICITY

EVIL - HUMANS - EATING - SOON - THEN - WILL

GIVE - KCM.ORG - OFFFERING - AT - LEAST - $1

HIS - DECEMBER - BIRTHDAY

DR JERRY SAVELLE - 24 DEC - HIS - BIRTHDAY

STARS - IN - USA - KOREA - ACTORS - ACTRESS

THEY'RE - LISTED - IN - GOOGLE - SEARCH

YET - THESE - PASTORS - SPEAKERS

DR JERRY SAVELLE

DR JESSE DUPLANTIS

JOEL OSTEEN

JUST - EXAMPLES

NOT - LISTED - BIRTHDAYS

KIDS - MARRIAGE - SPOUSE - PARTNERS

SO - WHEN - THEY - DIE - U - HAVE 2 YES

GUESS - THEY'RE - WONDERING - WHY

THE - HAVE - 2 - PRAY - PRAY SO HARD

2 - GET - MONEY - THEY - NEED

YET - STARS - USA - KOREA - LOTS OF

JOB - OFFERS - MAJOR - REASON

BIRTHDAY - HEIGHT - AGE - LISTED

GOOGLE - SEARCH

THEIR - FILM - CREDITS - TV SHOWS

THEIR - QUOTES - SAYINGS

CHARITABLE - ORGANIZATIONS

MINE - ST JUDE CHILDREN's - RESEARCH

HOSPITALS - FREE - 4 - THEM - CANCER

USUALLY - ALL - FREE - EVERYTHING - 2

THUS - AFTER - LUNCH - HERE - MAIN

LIBRARY - FORGOT - SPLENDA SUGAR

AND - CHLOROX - SCENTIVA - NEW

GRAPEFRUIT - AND - ORANGE BLOSSOMS

FORGOT - FEW - THINGS

JUST - ECKEL - WATER - BEST - EVER NEW

MARUCHAN - ROASTED - CHICKEN

LOWEST - CALORIES - 280 - NOT 290

BEEF - BEATEN - SO - GOOD - $0.95

ARMOUR - VIENNA - SAUSAGE - REDUCED

SODIUM - I - HAVE- MY - NEW - ROSS - YES

CERAMIC - 4 - NOODLES - SOUPS - NEAT 2

EATING - THAT - SOON - TRYING - BOILED

WATER - ADD - 2 - NOODLES - SOUP - SO

WARMER - CAN'T - WAIT - LATE - LUNCH

THEN - LA FITNESS - TREADMILL - THEN

SHOWER - CAN'T - WAIT

LOVE - LOVE - NEXXUS - 4 - COLORS

MAGNIFICENT SCENT - SOFTEST YES

HAIR - SPECTACULAR - LOVE - THEIR

CONDITIONER - SCENT - MY - HAIR IS

SOFTER - RATED - NO 1 - INCLUDING

COST - CHEAPEST - AMAZON - PRIME

OVERNIGHT - FREE - DELIVERY - CAN'T

WAIT - 2 - TRY - MY - STICK - ABOVE - 4

HANGING - THEY - SHOULD - SAY - THE

PHOTO - LARGER - THAN - IN - REAL US

LIFE - SHOWERING - AT - LA FITNESS

MARY - BRICKELL - SIGNATURE CLUB

CLOSES - 10P - WEEKDAYS

EQUINOX - 5A - 11P - MON - THURS

POOL - AT - ROOF - INTENSE - BOXING

MARTIAL - ARTS - CLASSES - PILATES

HOPE - MARTIAL - ARTS - NOT A JOKE

OR - VIOLENT - BUT - 10P - FRIDAYS

OVER - $300 - MONTHLY - EXCHANGE

CAN'T - CALL - 555 - 4 - EMERGENCY

SO - NEXT - COURSE - DIY - WOMEN

NEIGHBORS - 2ND - FLOOR - 2 - ITS

MASSAGE - ENVY

DAILY - 9A - 10P

EVERYDAY

MEMBERS - $50 - MONTHLY

1 HR - MASSAGE - $50 - ADD - TAXES

4 - ABOVE - BURN - CALORIES - THIS

WAY - SHOPIFY - FUTURE - DAILY 1 HR

MASSAGE - LOOSE - WEIGHT BETTER

TIPS - PLEASE

CAN - B - TAX - DEDUCTIBLE

BETTER - HEALTH - THAN - MEDICATION

BETTER - THAN - ACUPUNCTURE MIAMI

STUDIO - D - ACROSS

HAIRCUTS - $45 - STARTING - WITH YES

BLOW - DRY - AND - MORE

NO - SEOUL - SCALP - TREATMENT 1 HR

LEAST - GETTING - THAT - SEOUL PARIS

HAPPY - HOLIDAYS - EVERYONE

SLIGHTLY - CHILLY - SOFT - TIGHTS YES

NAVY - AFTER - SHOWER

LA FITNESS - THEN - COMING - BACK

FINISHING - BOOK - NICHOLAS SPARK

MAYBE - VETERAN - US ARMY - BANNED

FR - LIBRARY - 6 MONTHS

ILLEGAL - LIBERTY - BY - FEDERAL FUNDED

MAIN - LIBRARY

14TH - NO - STATE - CAN - MAKE - OR CREATE

LAW ... $500,000 - FINE - AND - OR - PRISON 2

JESUS - IS - LORD

SEASON's - GREETINGS - TUMBLR - US KOREA

[mikey-media-society]

Introduction

My name is Michael McGoldrick. I am a half-Irish and half-Italian American born and raised here in New York, my parents were raised here as well. The main benefit of being half-Irish and half-Italian is that I am entitled to both the Irish and Italian goodbye, which comes in clutch in plenty of situations. The origin of my name is simply because my Mom passed out after giving birth and my Dad rushed to give my name, I'm assuming there was a big football game that day to inspire my Dad's hasty decision. If I could change my name to any fictional character, it would probably have to be Charlie Brown. I basically have the same luck as him, so why doesn't my misfortune and misery entertain people worldwide and give me millions of dollars? I can't say I remember much of high school, despite my inability to get my head out of the past sometimes. However, throughout my time there and school in general, I pretty much lied low and didn't make much of an impact. I guess I was the student almost everybody knew by name, but not by association. I wouldn't even say I was at the bottom of the barrel of the high school social status, I was more likely the guck you'd find sticking under the barrel. With that being said, the last year and a half did pan out for me through the BOCES digital filmmaking program, the best time of my life as this is being currently written. Unfortunately, my time there was cut short thanks to the COVID pandemic, so I never got closure from the program or from high school much, really. My favorite day would probably be any time I had spent in that program, it acted as a safe haven from all the crap I had to go through on a daily basis, and the first and only time I felt like I really thrived socially in a public setting. No candidates really stand out for the worst day at high school, even then, I'd take any time I spent in the classes I hated most like Algebra and Economics over what I've gone through since my time out of high school. But that may just be the self-deluded nostalgia talking. I don't think there's nothing much I would change from my time there, I don't think any personal changes would really have changed my outlook on the place and I only got screwed over because everybody else did with the pandemic turning me and thousands of people into house hermits with even more regressed self-esteem. I am a New Media major and the reason behind that is filmmaking is the only thing to ever grab my attention in my lifetime. Ever since I can remember, I've been in love with film and television, particularly the animation medium has consumed my entire life and is probably my defining interest. Ideally. I want to be a screenwriter for animation in particular. And that is a pretty niche role in the industry, especially for a writer with minimal artistic abilities. Yeah, a guy who can write cartoons but can't really draw them is like a fisherman who knows how to operate a boat but doesn't know how to cast out to sea. Either way, I devoted a lot of time to drawing and I just realized it wasn't for me and I had a much better time doing writing since I was always more into the storytelling aspect anyhow. But regardless, I just want to try to be self-sufficient as possible by acquiring as many skills you can have in a field where thousands can do what you do, some better, some worse, so it evens out. And writing is the one thing I've ever felt good at, and in a world where you have to work more and more just to survive, it's important to do something you love. At the moment, I'm not really involved in any kind of school activities. Most of the stuff I've taken up is on my own, outside of the online indie animated projects I've contributed to whether through freelancing or volunteering. Aside from that, I'm a carny at LegoLand. Which is way better than being stuck behind a cash register. Being a carny is like being in sales but fun and you also learn all the tricks of the carnival games, so it's a win-win. Some interesting hobbies of mine is that

I do some voice acting, auditioning only for projects that really stand out and roles that seem catered to me and for interests, I'm pretty obsessed with the obscurer side of media. I can ramble on and on about the short-lived adult animation that was on MTV in the late 90's and early 2000s -- but my objective is to encourage you to keep reading this. What motivated me to pursue voice acting was being inspired by some of the online talent I collaborated with and as for an interest in obscure media, I often find that content is always up my alley in terms of story direction.

The last movie I watched was Chasing Amy and the last show I watched was Beavis & Butt-Head. I guess those two pieces of content can probably sum what kind of stuff I like. In terms of TV shows, I recommend Downtown, a short-lived and under-appreciated animated gem from the late 90's produced by MTV, it's a dialogue-driven show, typically centered around banter but still uses the medium to its fullest and I think can be very relatable for people in their early twenties. You can find all the episodes free on YouTube since MTV has zero interest in ever acknowledging the show's existence again. There's not a lot of media that I hate. If I see something I don't like, I typically brush it off my shoulder and move on with my life instead of berating those who enjoy something I didn't online. Hard to believe, I know. But I guess I'd have to say that the new Velma show did a good job at getting on my nerves, especially when it mocks the source material and acts that it's the best the franchise can offer -- when it's not. That's Zombie Island. Another recommendation. Currently, all of my projects are in the works. I have a 2-minute animated short film called "The Dream Team: A Team Divided" that I'm co-creating, directing, writing, producing, editing, and voice acting in (Image 1). And there's also Dull Point, which is a 5-minute limited animated pilot I have in the works that I'm co-creating, co-writing, co-directing, co-producing, editing, and voice acting in as well (Image 2). I can't really say too much about these projects since they mean the world to me but telling that I worked nearly 60-hour work weeks to make them happen, should tell you more than enough.

And finally, what would my last meal on Earth be and why? Buffalo wings with a side of french fries, but it is mandatory that they are cajun seasoned because that's the best way to eat them.

[the-orangeauthor]

Guys I hate to do this but I'm running out of options here.

For the last 2 and a half months my dad has been complaining of severe breathlessness and we figured his asthma was just no longer being controlled by his normal medicine, that and he also had a chest infection over Christmas. We took him to the hospital on Sunday and they said that it's not his asthma that's causing these problems but his heart. They said he has atrial fibrillation, a condition that causes the heart beat to be fast and irregular, and it doesn't really have an exact cause. He also has a fluid build up that they're going to initially try and solve with medication.

Of course, while he is being tested and treated he's not going to work and he is pretty much the main bread winner in our house. Since I'm in my final year of university I cannot get a full time job right now but there are other things I can do flexibly from home and I would really appreciate the help.

I have an account on fiverr (@ anml13) and I'm offering editing services on their either for essays of manuscripts. I also offer digital book covers.

I have a Patreon where I post chapters of the wand and the wolf as early access material (compared to the Royal road schedule) as well as short stories from Raynor based characters.

Additionally - I have a self published book on Amazon - Daughter of the Dragon. However, amazon takes 60 days to process the royalties you earn from their sales so I am looking for a different way to distribute it with a shorter processing time.

I am a tutor, I have almost 3 years experience of private tutoring 1 on 1 and doing small group tuition. I am UK based so I work mainly with GCSE science students! I am more than happy to hold online tutoring sessions on weekend mornings for those who want tutoring (it can be a one off thing or a regular thing).

I also have a PayPal pay me link for small one off contributions.

Most of the links are in my bio, please let me know if they're not working.

Please share/reblog this post if you can. I am pretty desperate. If my dad's condition doesn't approve I'm also considering deferring my masters for a year (or more if needed) as my mum is looking for work but also not fit for many jobs because of her own health conditions. I may make individual posts on each of these things later but I kind of need to just get this out if my system before I chicken out and delete it.

Meanwhile I am applying for other jobs but because of my lack of clinical experience I am being rejected from most places.

Thank you guys for any and all the support you can give, I love you all ❤

#anmol speaks #idek what to tag this with #support #work from home #writeblr #sciblr #studyblr

[bybdolan]

i can't find your ramblings on swifties, but I'd love to read it if you want to elaborate here, or screen shot it? i feel like it's been building since the yntcd mv to miss americana doc period of time. the disappointment of her aligning herself as lgbt in the mv, the song comparing her haters to suffering homophobia, the lack of blm effort after her apparent political awakening... that development was when i started to notice it on tumblr, at least

The word "ramble" was maybe a bit overstated, given that it was more or less just me pointing out that it's a thing that happens, but I am very glad you are asking me this because I have a lot of thoughts! If nobody else will write an essay on this, it might as well be me.

I think the groundwork for the fandom crumbling was already laid in rep era – not because of anything Taylor did, but because of the fandom: Every small criticism of Taylor was called "hate" and I think the idea of "good" vs "bad" fan really developed during that time. And the protectiveness makes sense after everything that happened during 2016 and it only increased after Taylor went more in-depth on her mental health struggles during Lover promo, but it also created a big divide in the fandom and made it a fairly hostile place.

Speaking of Lover: I agree with you that that was the era where a lot of people fell out of love with her a bit. From the lead single to whatever YNTCD was, to her "political awakening" shtick: There were a lot of things going on in that era that people found questionable, and this lack of general hype for the album led to even more fandom fights (I will keep bringing up the fandom because I think it's an extension of the artist and very connected to how we view them). I think what you said about the political aspects of that era is 100% accurate – it's ironic that fans critizised her more for little political action after Miss Americana than most of them did when she wasn't political at all, but it also makes sense: if you make being politically outspoken a huge part of your marketing and therefore profit off of it and then don't do much in that regard, people are going to call bullshit. To be fair to her: She didn't do nothing and a celebrity of her caliber has to rethink every move in that regard, but I think the frustration is justified, ESPECIALLY when Taylor is quick to tweet about problems concerning herself (see: that Ginny and Georgia tweet, which I don't want to talk about much because it makes me sigh – but as a side note: The fandom can be vicious and racist and homophobic and I think Taylor not commenting on that has upset people). And what I said about celebrities rethinking every move gets a bit sour to me when remembering that she is in a movie with that O'Russell guy. Very defensive fans have a point when they say that people expect a lot from Taylor, and obviously she can't be perfect, but Taylor did feed into those expectations when making a documentary about not feeling muzzled anymore etc. (There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen.) A rich white lady shouldn't necessarily be looked at for political guidance, however, she has power and her using her voice has proven to be very effective, and I think fans are disappointed she doesn't use it more often (+ for causes not benefiting herself).

Which brings us to her "capitalist girlboss agenda" that some people take issue with and that I already touched on: Taylor is very proud of her marketing strategies and knowing how to make money. She loves being a businesswoman, and it is admirable that she has been so active in her own management since she was very young, but it's something that clashes with her authenticity and accessibility a lot of fans cherish. I think we all know why she cut out her fan interactions and I personally think it is for the better, however, the tactics that took the place of those interactions are a bit "uuuh" to many. I think this is also where the generation gap of the fandom comes in: Taylor has fans her age that grew up with her, but she also has very young fans and the marketing strategies aimed at the latter don't necessarily go over well with the former. But this just as a side note. I think the introduction of Easter Eggs is a noteworthy moment in fandom history given how big of a part they now play in interacting with Taylor. And it's a fun idea, but there is the issue of the fandom taking it very far and Easter Eggs not leading to anything (1989 TV says hi). It's frustrating to many to not know when a single or an album will be released, and it is tiring to not be able to view anything she posts normally because most likely, it's a hint to something, or at least fans will act like it is. Fans are always used to drive up sales and engagement, as are personal instagram posts, but it is jarring to see it become so overt. I do genuinely believe the Easter Eggs were supposed to be fun for the fans at first, as are the vault thingies, but with the level of marketing and self-mythologization attached to it, it feels cold and sterile. Add that to the insanely high prices for boring merch and debacles like the "digitally signed" CD and you have yourself a recipe for fan disappointment. Taylor has branded herself as her fans' best friend for long, and because she is quirky and weird and often not too polished it worked – but it's not what she wants anymore, and she deserves nothing more than her privacy, but a fan used to genuine engagement with her is going to be taken aback by the new marketing strategies. There ARE ways to be private while still feeling personal in your branding (see Lorde's emails) but Taylor's team didn't want to go down that route apparently.

With all that being said: Taylor's happiness and her being content with her life is more important than whatever I get out of her and her music, and she remains one of the greatest songwriters of our generation – nobody can take that away. And I am sure that many fans will roll their eyes at this post because they still love her like they did when they first discovered her, and I am very happy for them and happy that Taylor has fans that loyal, but this post serves as an attempt to analyse shifts in the fandom that I have noticed over the past few years. I also think it's worth noting that once you start focusing on the negative aspects of something those negative things start jumping out to you, and it's important to maybe step back and focus on the good aspects once in a while – a lot of which I didn't mention because this is not what this post is about. But they are there, and I think the love for Taylor's music can easily sustain even when interest in her as a person fades.

#sorry this got. long. #I do not agree with everything here but it's what i have seen #anyway. stream folklore #ask #anonymous

[likeawildthing]

Not to be morbid on main, but everyone dies and people are rarely prepared for it. It’s so much easier when you know your loved one’s wishes. So even if you’re a teenager or twenty-three and healthy, I hope this helps you start thinking about end-of-life wishes, because it can happen to us all (both the dying and, rudely, being died upon).

Cremations are an affordable way to subvert the funeral industry, but going this route puts the burden of “the little things” on the family. I’ve learned a lot in the last 36 hours and wanted to pass those things that weren’t on any checklists, because the burden is on you to navigate the process.

Putting this under a cut because it’s so long (although not comprehensive). Obviously some of this is altered because COVID and some is meant to be applicable in some distant, theoretical future when we can go out to lunch again.

Before you die

Think about it, talk about it, write it down

Think about what kind of rememberance you want, if any. If it doesn’t matter, tell people that so they don’t fret about it and grieve in whatever way works best for them.

Communicate now to save your family and friends angst later.

Build an “in case of death” binder, zip drive, google doc with links, etc. Make sure your passwords are up to date so that’s not an administrative nightmare for your loved ones.

Advanced directives. Here’s a great article explaining the types of medical advanced directives and decisions to make before an accident or illness happens, including whether you want to donate your organs.

We lost grandma for about twenty minutes yesteday because we couldn’t find the paperwork and grandpa couldn’t remember where they signed up for services. Death. Binder. Have a death binder/folder/zip drive so no one loses grandma.

Insurance. 

You likely have insurance through work, so consider that. It will also expire if you leave your job.

You can usually get, with minimal fuss, a 10- or 20-year term policy with enough to cover your arrangements and debts for less than $20 a month. Death expenses are anywhere from $5-$20k, conservatively. 

Talk to your auto insurance agent and score a multi-line discount.

Body snatchers. 

If you want to be cremated, talk to a local crematory beforehand and give them your basic information. It can be paid out of your estate (i.e. by your family or a life insurance policy) when it happens. 

Most funeral homes (I believe) require pre-payment. It’s super morbid but there are TONS of heavily discounted grave sites for sale on Craigslist if that’s the route you want to go. 

Here’s a list of certified green burial sites in the US.

Donating your body to science 101.

Memorial service. 

The idea of a “proper” funeral is more or less out the window, especially in the time of COVID. Celebration of life? Religious ceremony (or not)? A picnic at your favorite park? Anything goes, so figure it out now. 

When my sister-in-law died, we had a celebration of life at a non-profit who donated the space and had a poker tournament with her ash tin (she lost). 

Whether you have strong or no preferences, write that down to guide decision-making. 

Memorials. 

Traditionally people would donate money in the event of a death to a charity, foundation, or family account, or flowers to a funeral home or church.

 Family accounts (like for children) are traditionally done in care of the deceased’s bank but online fundraisers are a thing. 

If you have a particular charity you love, add this to your list of wishes.

Food. 

Before COVID it was pretty typical for there to be some kind of meal after a funeral. Will this be a restaurant? 

This is ultimately up to the family but if you have strong preferences (i.e. no church or Italian food), tell people now.

Obituary. 

Writing down the basic facts of your life, hobbies, and accomplishments you want included in your obituary means your family doesn’t have to do a guessing game. 

Plants, animals, stuff, etc.

Do you want your clothes to go to a specific charity? 

Do you NOT want your stuff to go to a specific charity? (Goodwill is terrible!)

Who will get your car (person, donate, sell)? Want to have your record collection to go one sister? Obviously family will divvy up stuff how they like, but write down any special considerations.

Have a plan for your pets (insurance, vet info, guardianship).

Please organize and digitize your photos if they aren’t already.

If you lose someone close:

Identify the primary griever

Support that person/those people by providing feedback when solicited, running errands as needed, and running interference so they aren’t inundated with all the little things.

Notifying people

Use the phone tree method. Great Aunt M will be happy to help by calling your cousins. Your boss, coworkers and HR. Your mom’s best friend/your adoptive aunt, your mom’s bunco group. 

Ask that family not put anything on social media until the principal people are informed. I found out my grandpa died on facebook!

Esp these days, set boundaries for visits (who, where, and in what capacity).

Designate one person to be the primary contact for extended family to keep the burden off the primary griever(s). 

Give this persons’ information when the first phone calls are made. It also makes sense for this person to be the travel coordinator. 

This person should have a good handle on family dynamics (i.e. my aunt is flying in and would drive my grandma nuts so she’s staying with Mom). 

This should be their only task because it’s time consuming.

Food

When people die, people gather, even in the time of COVID. Be responsible but expect a ton of drop by food. Clean out the primary griever’s fridge in anticipaton.

Organization

Start a shared family Google doc or sheet. Consolidate to do lists, anecdotes, important contact information, questions and inquiries, etc. 

Pay to have the houses of anyone hosting (gatherings, people coming in from out of town, etc.) cleaned. Or, delegate. This can be an act of service for someone who wants to help and doesn’t mind doing the work. 

Find the death binder (hopefully), legal documentation, etc. Get a folder or binder for papers if one doesn’t exist. And start a shared google doc for loved ones to track everything.

Delegate

I know I have said this three times, but it’s important. If you’re a primary decision maker do not be the primary do-er. My mom is the primary decision maker so my sisters and I are doing literally everything else. 

Say YES when people ask if they can help you. Look at your running list of to-dos and say yes.

Pay to have the houses of people who are hosting cleaned. It will seriously be such a life saver, or this can be an act of service for someone who wants to help.

Social media

You will need to decide what to do with a person’s social media. Do you start a tribute page? Turn their facebook (if they’re old) into a tribute page for a time? Indefinitely? Things to think about. 

Thank yous

Keep a running list of people to thank after via hand-written thank you notes. The link includes guidelines on 

who should receive a thank you note (gave flowers, brought food, made donations, helped with arrangements or the service(s), did readings, or went well out of their way to warm your heart or show up)

when to send them (ideally 2-3 weeks after the funeral)

here’s how to write them (it doesn’t matter if you buy fancy, ones or dollar store ones, make sure they’re hand written).

Receipts. 

Don’t be the petty biatch your cousins hate, but do save significant receipts to be reimbursed by the estate. (I.e. catering hundreds of dollars of food, paying $250 for programs and thank-you cards like I just did, etc.)

Service.

You will have a million decisions to make including

what kind of service to hold, if any

where to hold it

costs

hymns, readings, and anecdotes to share

who will be pall bearers, readers, vocalists, and give eulogies

Crematories handle cremation only, not the service details. 

you will need photo boards (Hobby Lobby has nice black foamcore ones) or a powerpoint (and a way to display it depending on the venue)

a guest or memorial book

a card basket,

memorial cards, possibly programs, and thank you cards 

Officiants, musicians, religious institutions, etc. all need to be paid (and tipped) for their time.

If we ever wrangle this pandemic, donating funeral flowers to a nursing homes is a fantastic way to brighten residents’ days. 

Obituary.

Obituaries are expected, but traditionally costly ($200-$800). As part of the publishing fee, most newspapers keep the obituary on legacy.com indefinitely.

A funeral home will assist you with this, but the burden will be on you and your loved ones if using other methods. 

These take hours to write and many hands does not make light work. Keep it to 2-4 key people. Having the facts laid out will help, and so will looking at other obituaries. I read a great tip which was to write about your loved one in present tense first, then change the tense before submission. 

Newspapers will update your spelling and grammar but that’s about it. Cheaper alternatives: 

Death notice which gives age, date and location of death, and who is handling funeral arrangements. Our crematory put in the death notice for us because they had her body, but the requirements on this likely vary state-to-state. 

Here is a place to put a free online obituary.

Plants, animals, stuff, etc. 

Save the plants and pets. 

Household misc. are usually not dictated by the will, except in special circumstances or contested items. Closest members will go through possessions first. Voice early if you want something in particular, but understand that you may not get it. That’s ok. 

Going through someone’s life is an overwhelming process. You may be repulsed and sad and overwhelmed and amused, all at the same time.  

In deciding what to keep, as I’ve now cleared out three houses, I’ve found that quality over quantity is the way to go. The sweet spot? 1-2 sentimental + useful things. My great grandmother’s thimble and juicer? Use them all the time, and I remember her lemonade. 

It’s okay to throw away some keepsakes and let things get thrown out or donated, depending on the thing. 

Don’t give into guilt if you don’t want the china your Aunt Karen is pressuring you into taking when she doesn’t want it either.

Legal stuff. 

If someone dies, there will be all kinds of legal things you will need to do (bank accounts, utilities, debtors, education, etc.), investments or 401k, etc. 

This varies too much by state and circumstance to talk about in depth but there are guides to specifically help you.

If someone you love has lost someone they love

Do not give platitudes or ask if they’re ok

Don’t expect a response from someone grieving

Do send a card! It’s so thoughtful. I keep a stack of blank condolence cards and a set of forever stamps in my closet. It doesn’t have to be a $20 card to be special.

Don’t judge someone by how they grieve

Offer specific, actionable help if you’re close enough to give it

I am going to come over and clean at 10, leave the house unlocked

I’m at the store and am going to buy cheap vodka unless you tell me what kind of wine you want

oops I got you an uber eats gift card in your gmail sorry/not sorry

Buy thank you cards with stamps as a condolence gift, depending on the person and situation

Send a plant instead of a bouquet of flowers

Make a donation in the loved one’s name if you have the funds

If the grieving person is someone super close (best friend, sister, etc.) add the date in your recurring calender so you can check up on them this day next year with a card and/or phone call

#cw death #grief #end-of-life decisions

[nancydrew428]

Game 34

As of yet, there’s no proof that there’s going to be a 34th game. Her Interactive has answered a few fans and said that they were working on a game, but who knows what that really means? To get a semblance of an idea, let’s do a deep dive.

Starting with the past couple of weeks, HeR is selling all of the physical copies of their games, as well as some other products (like their physical puzzles). I watched a YouTube video that said that while this may seem like a bad sign, it might not be. For starters, many of the physical games have been sold out for literal years because they only make a set amount of physical copies. When they run out, that’s it. So this isn’t a completely new thing. However, they are doing a mass sale. On the one hand, it could be a last ditch effort to get whatever money they can before calling it quits. But on the other, it could mean that they are trying to make the best financial decision that they can think of. Story Retold (LJ), on YouTube, works for Her Interactive and commented on that video in early April.

The most accurate explanation is that we at HeR Interactive wanted to celebrate the month of April as Nancy Drew’s anniversary. 💜 We made it themed as collectibles but yes, once the physical units sell out, we don’t make anymore. :(

I personally don’t believe that that is the only reason. It makes sense that they want to honor Nancy Drew’s anniversary (the first book came out in April 1930), so maybe that’s why they chose this month? But I feel like that can’t be the only reason.

I agree with Nancy Drew Walkthroughs on YouTube that Her Interactive probably has to pay for storage to keep physical items, so by selling the games, they won’t have to pay for the storage. They’ll also be making money off the games that they otherwise would not be making money from. As we have learned with the pandemic, and as marketers have known for decades, having people panic is a really effective way to sell something out. It’s why so many websites will have flash sales, the biggest words will be “for a limited time only,” and sometimes they’ll tell you how many copies of the product there are left, how many people have it in their carts, or they’ll say “hurry now, less than 50 left!” Even if you realistically had a long time to buy that product or the company actually has a lot of the product left, they create artificial scarcity and manufacture panic so that you’ll make impulse purchases. While it feels kind of slimy, it is effective when done right. And, correct me if I’m wrong but, I don’t think that Her Interactive has really done this before. So it seems like they might be stepping up their marketing which could be a good sign for the company.

I think this could be the company taking a step in the right direction to make everything digital. Although I absolutely love having physical copies of the games and other memorabilia, I also think that we are living in an increasingly digital world, and it only makes sense for them to get with the times. Go digital, spend less money on making physical games, etc. So many laptops these days don’t have CD/DVD drive, so many of their older games (and their newest game) have issues which can be especially hard with a disc, and so many stores don’t sell the physical games anymore. With a smaller, probably not very wealthy, company, it makes no sense for them to waste money on this. Like I said, I love collecting the physical copies, but I don’t really use them, and younger people coming across the games will probably go for the digital version, probably even buying it directly from Steam. (Which kind of a side note, kind of related, this article on Her Interactive is really interesting. It mentions that HeR kind of fought putting their games on Steam, because Steam took too big of a cut of their money. But I do think that that’s better than not having any of your games sell. And if they’re going completely digital, and almost all of their games are on Steam now, it seems like maybe they’re modernizing and progressing.)

While this could be a bad sign and I don’t want to get my hopes up too high, I do have some hope that it might actually be a good sign that they are finally getting smart.

Another thing that could either be worrisome or a good sign is that they changed offices. In another video from that same YouTuber, he talks about how Her Interactive still has the address that they’ve had for years on their contact page, but on their privacy policy page, they changed their address to a PO box. Plus, there’s a listing for their old office.

Obviously, this could be a bad thing, because they no longer have an office, and that just doesn’t sound good? But this also means that they’ll be saving money by doing so. During the pandemic, they’ve probably had to work at home anyway, so why pay for an office that no one is going to be in? It also makes sense, because at this point, they probably are not the ones making the games. They’re a marketing team who gives the Nancy Drew name to other companies to make the games. All of this can be done from home. LJ also commented on this video in early April, saying:

As far as I know, we are NOT going out of business. 😋 We are all remote working now, since our team (including a male) is all over the U.S. Our work is digital, so it’s an easy change.

Something else that he talks about in that video is that they changed the layout of their website. He points out that it costs money to pay someone to change a website, especially where it seems like multiple details have changed. Hate it or love it, you have to admit that the website is more sleek, modern, and just a different vibe to what it was before. Why would they put in the money for a website and company that’s going to be dead soon?

Lastly, he discusses the company’s change in advertising. I hadn’t even noticed the change (mostly because I don’t look at what they post; I only come across it if it’s posted by someone on here), but when he pointed it out, I did see the difference. The picture advertisements that they post are better quality (not necessarily in content, but in size and resolution). They’ve also changed the font that they use, they’ve ditched the logo, and they use random pictures as well. Regardless of whether it’s good or effective or not, it is a change. Here are two examples (one, two) from the past two years, and here are two examples from the past two weeks (one, two).

This change in marketing is also in line with their Facebook posts. Facebook is the social media that they are most active on when it comes to engaging with fans, at least from what I have seen in the past. But at least since January, they didn’t respond to any comments until they announced that they were selling out all of their physical copies. They didn’t respond to too many questions, but they responded to a few, for the first time in literal months. If they were shutting down, why would they start caring about answering fans’ questions now?

I also found information about some of the stuff that HeR has been doing in the past 2 weeks. I don’t have an account on the website so I can’t see all the information, so I don’t know what was blurred out. I also can’t see any other “scoops” about them, so I don’t know what they’ve done in the past, and I don’t know if this amount of activity is normal or more or less than they usually have. But the company has been doing a few things here and there, so as I keep saying, maybe this is a good sign.

With all of this being said, it seems like Her Interactive might not actually be going under. We can’t be sure, but we can have a little bit of hope. But even if that is true, just because they’ll still be a company, does that mean that they are going to make any more games?

I honestly don’t know. There isn’t much information out there about game 34,  but I will still compile the information that I’ve found here. Unfortunately, it gives us nothing other than them maintaining that there will eventually be another game.

(Timeline) TL;DR: I think that the key points are that they started saying that they were working on the game in December 2019 (as far as I can tell), but since then they’ve also said that they were planning the game. To this day, they are saying that they can’t give out any information regarding the new game yet and can’t make guarantees as to when they can release any information, let alone the game itself. The only thing LJ has seemed to say with certainty is that the next game will be made on Unity. They also have confirmed that there will be some improvements from MID, but it will be similar.

Some other tidbits from this that sound promising but probably don’t mean much: they have said that it shouldn’t take as long for future games as it did for them to make MID, they’ve mentioned that there are plans for multiple more games, that we should subscribe to their newsletter to stay up to date with any new information regarding anything (game 34 or otherwise), and LJ hopes to share news in the near future.

And other things that they’ve said that I’m 99.99% sure don’t mean anything at all: Nancy might potentially someday go on a boat in the future, LJ likes jump scares too “😉,” and Bess and George might appear in future games. (The first two are probably just jokes and fun, but the last one seems like it could be true, just because they’re in most of the games in some way or another.)

Lastly, some speculations: the next game might take place in Austria, and they might address the drama between Nancy and Ned.

Now here is the timeline.

On May 8, 2017, someone from Her Interactive said: "Yes we plan on making a 34th ND game. No is hasn’t been designed yet. Yes there will be a teaser at the end of MID, but no, we haven’t decided on what that teaser will look like yet." Obviously, it’s been years and plans can change (proven by the fact that there was no trailer at the end of MID, lol).

In December 2017, Her Interactive posted a letter about why MID was taking so long to come out. Here was the most important part:

As you may recall, we are moving to a new engine to be able to develop a game not only for PC/Mac but also for tablets, consoles, and now for the increasing popularity of augmented or virtual reality. Very exciting!  Part of us going down this path was to ensure that we have multiple platform options for future Nancy Drew titles so that all Nancy Drew game fans and those new to our games could play these amazing games no matter what their preferred device or platform.

This versatility means that the design and development of our games are even more complex than in the past. Our PC/Mac game design will work for players on the go with tablets and possibly for players that may want to immerse themselves in the mixed reality world. We are also constantly evaluating new technologies and trends in the game industry. Consequently, this is why it is taking much longer to develop this title than previous ones. This thoroughness will put HeR Interactive in a better position for the future while providing us with the tools necessary to continue to deliver amazing experiences for our fans.

On January 2, 2018, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hello Carmen! South America is always a possibility for future game locations. However, we haven’t planned that yet. MID will be available for PC as well.”

On July 21, 2019, a Reddit fan posted a response they got from Her Interactive. They explained that they lost trust in the company and would not be preordering the game. They responded with their reasoning for the game taking so long and how it won’t happen in the future.

We are moving to a new engine to be able to develop a game not only for PC/Mac but also for tablets, consoles, and now for the increasing popularity of augmented or virtual reality. Very exciting! Part of us going down this path was to ensure that we have multiple platform options for future Nancy Drew titles so that all Nancy Drew game fans and those new to our games could play these amazing games no matter what their preferred device or platform. This versatility means that the design and development of our games are even more complex than in the past. Our PC/Mac game design will work for players on the go with tablets and possibly for players that may want to immerse themselves in the mixed reality world. We are also constantly evaluating new technologies and trends in the game industry. Consequently, this is why it is taking much longer to develop this title than previous ones. This thoroughness will put HeR Interactive in a better position for the future while providing us with the tools necessary to continue to deliver amazing experiences for our fans.

On October 1, 2019, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “Hello Grace, the consistent schedule back then was on a system that never changed or upgraded with the times. Once we get the structure of this upgraded game done, the future games will not take 4 years to make.”

On October 2, 2019, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “The frustration is understood. We hope to be more accurate in the future, and to regain our players' faith in the next game release.”

On October 4, 2019, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “Hello Lisa, we understand the frustration and loss of trust in us. Since this game was designed from the ground up, we have certainly learned a lot and will be applying our lessons to the future games.”

On October 4, 2019, they responded to another fan on Twitter saying, “Hi highly doubt the next game will take this long - since we had re-designed from the ground up in a new system this time. We apologize for lengthy delay. :(”

On November 6, 2019, two users on Gameboomers made comments:

One said that LJ said there wouldn’t be a trailer for the next game after MID, but “she did say that there were some ‘early ideas’ floating around for the next game.”

The other got an email from Her Interactive that said, “We will absolutely be releasing more games after Midnight in Salem. We cannot commit to a release schedule as of right now since all of our focus is on MID. It will definitely not take us as long for the next title to release. Four years is not the new normal.”

On December 3, 2019, Midnight in Salem was released. The end of the game didn’t have a trailer for the next as is the tradition for Nancy Drew games, but there seemed to be some drama between Nancy and Ned, and she mentioned wanting to go to Austria. A user on the Her Interactive message boards pointed out that the game was outsourced to an Austrian company so that might be the reasoning. But maybe it could be the plan for the next game.

On December 3, 2019, an article came out about the company that said, “Her Interactive has already developed a Nancy Drew VR proposal based on one of the books with a Spanish director, but it's more likely an AR project would come to market first.”

On December 17, 2019, a user on the Her Interactive message boards said that they emailed Nancy’s new voice actress who confirmed that there will be more games where she will play Nancy.

On December 29, 2019, they responded to a fan’s DM on Instagram asking if they were going to make another game to which they said. “Absolutely!  We’ve already begun!”

On January 7, 2020, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hello Oona! Yes, we are planning on more Nancy Drew games. Can’t say when the next one will be released, yet. 🙂”

On January 8, 2020, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hi again Jillian! I’m not sure on the release month or year just yet, but I do know it will not take 4 years to make. 😉”

On January 10, 2020, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hello SWhite5052! I’m not sure what the intent from our designers is for poor Ned. I’m a big fan of Nancy’s boyfriend, and I do hope we get to have him in-game someday, be Nancy’s hero and also take her out on a romantic date. 😉” I don’t think this really means anything, but I hope it means that she has hope that there will be future games.

On January 28, 2020, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “Yes, there are plans for more Nancy Drew games. :)” Plural?

On February 3, 2020, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hi Jam5022! We do not have any news to share yet, but we are working on the game. 🙂”

On February 11, 2020, LJ responded to two comments on the blog:

“Hello felicity18! Glad to hear you enjoyed Midnight in Salem! The leads didn’t add a teaser to the end of the game per tradition since we are secretly working on the next one, and haven’t put together footage to share or tease on it yet. Stay tuned for future updates!”

“Hi Madi! Ship of Shadows was shelved, meaning we stopped working on it. At this time, we are only focusing on the main mystery adventure line.”

On February 20, 2020, LJ responded to two comments on the blog:

“Hi Sarah! Yes, the next game will be made on Unity. 🙂”

“I hope so, Nicole! I always like having Nancy’s best friends on the case with her! No promises just yet, but it’s likely for a future game. 🙂”

On February 25, 2020, they responded to a fan’s DM on Instagram saying, “New game info coming shortly. Stay tuned!” This didn’t happen.

On April 13, 2020, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “Hi Anna! When we have news on the next Nancy Drew game, we will be sure to share it! #NancyDrew”

On May 22, 2020, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “No news to share yet, but we are working on it!”

On September 13, 2020, someone on Reddit said that there was an untitled 34th game on Wikipedia. As they pointed out, anyone can edit entries on Wikipedia. But almost 7 months later, it hasn’t been taken down.

On November 29, 2020, someone on Reddit posted LJ’s response to a YouTube comment. “Game 34 is in the works. That’s all I can say for now. :)”

On December 1, 2020, LJ responded to some comments from October 2020 on a blog post:

“Hello! Game 34 is in the works. Stay tuned for future updates and be sure to subscribe to the newsletter for when we announce news. Glad you liked the graphic!”

“Hello! No news yet to share at this time, but that we are working on it. Keep an eye out in future newsletters for future bits of information. 😀”

“Sadly, I do not have anything to share about the next game. 🙁 I hope to be able to tease out clues in the future, though!”

On December 4, 2020, LJ responded to some comments from October/November 2020 on a blog post:

“Hello, beka! Sadly, I do not have any new info to share about the future game at this time. 🙁 I hope to share news with you in the future!”

“Hi Stephanie! It has been a while, hasn’t it? Sadly, I do not have any news to share at this time. As soon as I have some that I can share, I will!”

“Hi Natalina! It has been a while since we have had a Twitch stream. Sadly, we do not have any news to share yet about the next Nancy Drew game. Stay tuned!”

“Hello Foundation2430, things have certainly changed since Sea of Darkness. I am limited to what we can share behind the scenes, but once I have things I can share with you about the current and future games, I will. I don’t think the next game will take 4 years. 🙂”

On December 11, 2020, LJ responded to a comment from a blog post saying, “Hi ali! We are working on the next game, but we do not have a release date for it just yet.”

On January 6, 2021, LJ responded to a comment from a blog post saying, “Hello Natalina! Sorry, I do not have any news to share about new Nancy Drew games or projects. 🙁”

On January 8, 2021, LJ responded to two comments on the blog:

“Hi Aly! The next game is indeed in the works. Sadly, I cannot share anything about it at this time. 🙁 But I do hope you have a great new year as well! I hope to share more secrets with you in the future!”

“Hello Sanjeet! Happy New Year! We do have game 34 in the works, but I cannot share anything with you at this time. 🙁”

On January 28, 2021, LJ responded to a comment on a blog post saying, “Hi Cleanna! I think Nancy spending time on a ship is a great idea, too. Hopefully, she will get to do that in the future!” I doubt that this will happen, but she didn’t have to answer it this way. I guess it was probably to create some hope.

On February 2, 2021, LJ responded to two comments on the blog:

The first response was to a fan who talked about VR where she said, “Hello Madi! Thanks for sharing your concern. We have seen others comment their worry about the graphics since they get easily sick from motion as well. We are keeping this in mind for our future games. 🙂” I don’t think that they ever really planned to do VR, but she didn’t have to add that last part. Again, I’m guessing it was to create some hope.

The second response was to a fan who asked a question on January 15th where she said, “Hi Jessica! I do not know when the next game will be released, but once I have info, I will be sure to share it!” She answered this a few days after she answered the first question, when this was the first comment on the post. I wonder if she didn’t skip it, but rather waited until she could say the right thing.

On February 15, 2021, LJ responded to a few comments on a blog post:

The first comment asked if they’ll share any information on the game this year to which she responded, “Hi Rach! I do not know when news will become available to share. Sorry!” I understand this because MID was a hot mess where they kept giving dates and time frames that they couldn’t keep. But if they’ve been supposedly working on this since November, a year should be plenty of time for them to give some information, right? That they’ll keep the same voice actress for Nancy, part of the plot, who a phone character will be, the state or country it will be set in, or something super simple. Yet she couldn’t even say that she’d give any information this year.

She also responded to someone saying, “Hi Sarah! I cannot say exactly, since the behind-the-scenes work is top secret. I hope to share news in the near future when I’m able to!” One minute she couldn’t say whether they’d give out any information this year at all, the (literal) next minute she said she hopes to share news soon.

On March 3, 2021, LJ responded to a few comments on a blog post:

“Hi Lindsay! There are plans for the future. Stay tuned for news when I am allowed to share it!”

“Aw thanks for sharing! We are indeed working hard behind the scenes here. 😉”

On March 10, 2021, LJ responded to a comment on a blog post saying, “Hello Rishi! I would love to share information about our next game, but sadly, I cannot at this time. All I can say is that we are indeed planning another game. 🙂” So they’re still in the planning stage for the next game?

On March 30, 2021, LJ responded to a few comments on a blog post:

“Hi Becca! Jump scares are my favorites, too. 😉 Sadly, I do not have any news or even a date when we will share news about the next game. 🙁” (I kept the first part, because she didn’t need to put a winky face. I’m sure this is just wishful thinking, but maybe there will be a jump scare in the new game? Lol. But she doesn’t even have a date for when she can even share news about the game.)

“Hi Grace! We are indeed working on another game. I do not have any idea when we will be sharing news about it, though.” Pretty much the same, generic response.

On April 5, 2021, Her Interactive responded to a Reddit fan on Instagram about the future game saying: “Hello lorichelter! The next game will have some improvements but will be similar to MID. We’re glad to hear you enjoyed the game! Also, future games will be Mac compatible, but unfortunately we do not have plans to remaster the old games at this time. :( If we ever find a workaround for the Apple restriction of 32-bit games, we will quick to share that trick.”

#her interactive #nancy drew #clue crew #video game #video games #timeline #info #game 34 #post #mine

[booksbabybooks]

The Old Guard comic and killing what you love

I see so much excitement on here about the Old Guard comic coming out in April, that I kind of feel like a buzzkill bringing this up and I'm sure I'll get hate for this but: some of you at least are going to have to buy the damn thing.

Because we all know what's going to happen. Days after it comes out, the whole book will be scanned and online. Blogs will share the whole thing page by page. You'll know where you can download an illegal PDF. And most of this will be done from no more malicious reasons than love and enthusiasm. And in doing so, you pretty much guarantee that there won't be another comic after it.

There's a real culture online - especially on Tumblr - of feeling that all creative products should be free, and that by making them freely available you are doing an uncritical good, and sticking it to the system while you are at it.

Some of this comes from reasons it's hard not to have sympathy with: a screw you to the system, a 'fuck it, Disney can afford it', or genuine poverty / lack of access to a legal version of it.

Less attractively - not to be your salty aunt here, but it's true - it stems from an entitlement, a belief that you should be able to consume any art you want, free, immediately and without ads. (And often with no sense of irony or awareness: the same people who will RAGE against people liking but not reblogging fan art are happy to share a link where you can download books for free.)

But artists need to eat. They need to pay rent. And in almost every creative industry, the vast majority of people do not earn enough to live off. I don't have the exact figures to hand (you can get them from the BPI / Society of Authors websites if you are intetested) but something like 90% of musicians earned less than £200 from streaming last year. A similar percentage of authors earned less than £1000. This likely includes some of your favourites. Some people you view as successful. Some people that, if you took a moment, you'd be heartbroken were harmed by your actions.

(I work in the creative industries and I can tell you: they don't make many people rich. I have friends who are best-selling authors who survive on teaching gigs. And while it is about the money, it's not just about the money: I've seen comics artists deeply upset because a day after a book landed someone has uploaded the last five pages onto their blog as a "tribute".)

So pirating isn't a victimless crime, however easy it is it to pretend otherwise. (Also, it's not without risk: 'but I love them, your honour,' isn't actually a viable legal defence for copyright infringement).

But it also sends a message to the companies (including those who, yes, probably do deserve to be robbed) that IT'S NOT WORTH PUBLISHING THIS ART.

No publisher ever thought, it got a load of hype even though sales tanked, so let's publish another one. No film studio thought, ticket sales suck but illegal downloads were high so it's a win.

And it's especially important if the art you want to consume challenges the existing narrative of what sells. The companies that create these things - that pay the artists and writers and filmmakers - will continue to believe that nobody wants a queer superhero / Black romantic lead / disabled central character until the bottom line proves otherwise.

(Not to also point out that if you don't believe creatives should be paid, you encourage a system where only rich people get to make art, or at least get to decide who makes art).

So: if you possibly can, buy the damn book.

Club together with your mates to buy it.

If you can, double what your money does by buying from a comics store or indie bookshop.

If you are broke, order it from your library - most libraries stock graphic novels now and also offer digital lending. Remember, authors get paid for every loan out.

I'm sure there are some people for whom these are impossible options - this being Tumblr, I'm sure many people are already frothing to tell me how privileged my viewpoint is. And it's not like I don't know comics are expensive, or that not everyone has a local library.

But a lot of you do. So it's to those people I'm saying:

You want more of these books to come out? You have to support them.

EDIT: While I am here saying pay for your art I would remind people that my 2020 Kindness project is giving away my stitches to good homes for free so if anyone wants these Joe and Nicky stitches they are still available. HMU. (UK only due to postage, sorry)

#the old guard #joe x nicky #nicky x joe #graphic novels #graphic novel #artists need to eat #it's all fun and games until somebody loses a publishing contract #pay your artists

[slade-neko]

Saw this video game tag thing pop up on my dash a few days ago. Wanted to do it.

1. First game you played obsessively? Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I believe I was 5yo. Still waiting on that FF7 Remake treatment.

2. A game that has influenced you creatively? Writing, drawing, etc. Well if I play a game and like it, then I'll create sims of it. Does that count?

3. Who did you play with as a kid? My brother from the day I was born.

4. Who do you play with now? My brother FROM THE DAY I WAS BORN.

5. Ever use cheat codes? I wasn't lying when I made this post. {link}

6. Ever buy strategy guides? Yes! Mainly to look at the artwork though. (Don't need no guide!)

7. Any games you have multiple copies of? Lots of games, most being Left 4 Dead with 6 copies (3 Xbox 360, 1 PC case, 2 PC digitally.) What can I say, its a GOOD GAME!

8. Rarest/Most expensive game in your collection? Gold cartridge Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (maybe that's rare?)

9. Most regrettable purchase? I don't regret my purchases, but I have received games I have never played like Cubix (PS2) no clue where that game came from, but I have it somehow. Madagascar (Xbox 360) came with my Xbox 360, never opened it from its case. And Monsters Inc. Scream Arena (Gamecube) or something... it was a gift.

10. Ever go to a midnight game release or stand in line for hours? No, because then I'd have to interact with people.

11. Have you ever made new friends from playing video games? I'm only friends with people BECAUSE of video games, so yes.

12. Ever get picked on for liking games? No, that'd be ridiculous.

13. A game you’ve never played that everyone else has? Probably a lot, I'd say Call of Duty, but I technically played CoD 1, 2, and 4. The campaign mode was alright, but I don't really care for CoD games at ALL.

14. Favorite game music? Koji Kondo and Grant Kirkhope are two BIG ones.

15. If it was a requirement to get a game related tattoo, what would you pick? Triforce is the most basic option, but I'd rather not get a tattoo.

16. Favorite game to play with your friends IRL? Super Smash Bros. Brawl with hacks, but that was over a decade ago.

17. Ever lose a friend over a game? No, that'd be ridiculous.

18. Would you date someone that hates gaming? No, that'd be RIDICULOUS.

19. Favorite handheld console? PSP. 3DS is great, but PSP Monster Hunter has ALL of my portable gaming memories. Like playing in school after End of Grade tests with my friend.

20. Game that you know like the back of your hand? Sims 4 I like to think I know everything about Left 4 Dead. Quite a bit about Monster Hunter, more so of a series though than a specific game.

21. Game that you didn’t like or understand as a kid but love now? I'd say Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. I loved it as a kid, but had a lot of complex pen & paper RPG mechanics that I never understood. I understand a lot more of it now, but its still complex as all heck. I just know you hit things, they die.

22. Do you wear game related clothing/accessories? That's the only thing I wear.

23. The game that you’ve logged the most hours into? Not sure so I'll list a few. Sims 4, Smash Bros. Brawl, Monster Hunter (its a series though), or Left 4 Dead

24. First Pokemon game? Leaf Green

25. Were you ever an arcade game player? No, don't like paying to play.

26. Ever form any gaming rivalries? No.

27. Game that makes you rage? I don't get mad at games, but I had a custom modded Hard Eight mutation in Left 4 Dead that is absolute bullsh*t!

28. Ever play in a tournament? No, because then I'd have to interact with people.

29. What is your gaming set up? A giant wall of video game consoles spanning from NES to Switch, 4 TVs, but I sit at a desk with a PC.

30. How many consoles do you own? "I own every console that's ever existed." - I Don't Play Games When I Play Games (My STRENTH) original song by Smooth McGroove BUT no seriously I own 32 consoles including handhelds.

31. Does the 3DS and/or Virtual Boy hurt your eyes or give you headaches? Yes. 3DS gave me headaches though I only really played with the 3D feature in Ocarina of Time 3D. I think my eyes broke because I couldn't get my 3D to work very well after.

32. Did you ever play a game based on your favorite show/cartoon/movie/comic? Sure I play games based on a lot of things. Literally any anime game. If I had to pick Dragon Ball Xenoverse is kinda like a dream Dragon Ball game. Oh, Attack on Titan 2 is pretty neat too!

33. Did you ever have any bootleg games or plug-n-play games? Some SEGA plug-n-play thing once. Played it like once and now its lost to time (or my closet.)

34. Do either of your parents play video games? Yes. Mom and Dad played NES Super Mario Bros. My Dad went HARD at that game until he saved the Princess. Then he quit forever.

35. Ever work in a game store? Or do you have a favorite game shop? "Hi. Welcome to Gamestop!"I never want to hear that again, but it was my main store until I went full digital/ online orders.

36. Have you ever shed actual blood, sweat or tears over a game? No, I don't tend to get upset or emotional, but Bill dying in Left 4 Dead made me pretty pissed.

37. Have you played E.T. for the Atari 2600? Do you think that’s the worst game ever, or do you have another nomination? Never played it. I don't really play "bad" games, but maybe Sims 4.

38. A game you’re ashamed to admit that you like? The Sims 4

39. A sequel that you would die for them to make? Dragon's Dogma 2 WHICH I think is actually in development, so I'd have to say Fallout New Vegas 2. C'mon Bethesda you cowards, hand the keys back over to Obsidian so they can make another good Fallout game!

40. What to you think of virtual reality headsets or motion controls? Two part question, two answers. VR Headset to immerse in world, yes. Motion Controls, no.

41. A genre that you just can’t get into? MOBAs and MMOs. I don't like paying to keep playing.

42. Maybe it wasn’t your first game, but what was the game that started you on your path to nerdiness? Nintendo 64 opened me up to what video games could be as a kid. Sad to say my parents' NES didn't really do that for me. And years later Fallout 3 was a big game changer for me too.

43. Ever play games when you really should have been concentrating on something else? Every day of my LIFE.

44. Arcade machine that has consumed the most of your quarters? None. I'd rather emulate.

45. How are you at Mario Kart? Pretty dang good. 3-STARS MARIO KART WII, BABY!

46. Do you like relaxing games like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon? Yes, both of those. I preferred when Animal Crossing had more character to it. New Horizons looks so pretty, but feels so bland compared to classic AC.

47. Do you like competitive games? No. Not really. Usually amongst friends or if I can get competitive against AI Bots. I love my machine bot friends cause they don't cry like 10 year olds when they lose.

48. How long does it take your to customize your player character? Too long. I've seriously restarted games because I wasn't happy with my character's appearance.

49. In games where you can pick your class, do you always tend to go for the same type of character? Yes, I am always the magic man, my brother is always brute warrior, and my friend is the ranger.

50. If you were a game designer, what masterpiece would you create? I don't really know. Honestly, I'd rather mod already good games to make them better than create something completely new.

51. Have you ever played a game for so long that you forgot to eat or sleep? No, that'd be ridiculous. But I've had a friend fall asleep playing games at my house 3 different times and currently dozes off during our Minecraft sessions. So, maybe that's not a completely ridiculous thing after all.

52. A game that you begged your parents for as a kid? Kirby 64 apparently. My brother tells me we had to count out pennies to buy it. I must've been too young with no recollection, but I believe it.

53. What’s your opinion on DLC these days? It's good if its not in the game's files from the beginning and is actually developed AFTER launch... and pre-order bonuses should be standard DLC a month or two later. Some games have content lost to time because of that pre-order bullsh*t.

54. Do you give in to Steam sales? Of course. If you want a game and its on sale then why not? I typically wait just for Steam sales to get games.

55. Did you ever make someone you hated in the Sims and did mean stuff to them? No? I typically make people and characters I like in Sims. I've made villains like Dio, but he's an anime villain and I don't really HATE him despite the horrible things he's done.

56. Did you ever play Roller Coaster Tycoon and kill off your guests? No. Never played that game.

57. Did you ever play a game to 100% or get all of the achievements? I try to for all the games I really like.

58. If you can only play 3 games for the rest of your life, which ones do you pick? The Sims 4, Skyrim, & Fallout: New Vegas. Mods make them live forever. Left 4 Dead and Monster Hunter are good choices too.

59. Do you play any cell phone games? Those aren't games.

60. Do you know the Konami Code? No? But I'll take a guess. Is it make an IP and forget it exists?

61. Do you trade in your games or keep them forever? Keep forever... even the bad ones.

62. Ever buy a console specifically to play one game? PS4 Pro for Monster Hunter World. It was basically for early access since the PC version was being developed and releasing after PS4, but I don't like waiting.

63. Ever go to a gaming convention or tournament? Sort of. Been to anime cons and walked into the gaming tournament rooms only to walk out less than 10 minutes later.

64. Ever make a TV or monitor purchase based on what would be best for gaming? No, but I'm going to be doing that soon, hopefully.

65. Ever have a Game Genie, Game Shark or Action Replay? Did it ever mess up your game’s save file? GameShark for N64, PS2, Gameboy, and Action Replay for Gamecube, DS, 3DS. And no not really, I would cheat responsibly... but there was this one time at school my friend and I borrowed another friend's Gameboy game, loaded it up with my Gameshark, tried playing, it crashed, loaded it back up, save file corrupted... we just stared at each other jaws dropped, "Here's your game back, dude. Make sure you don't play it til you get back home!"

66. Did you ever have have an old Nokia with Snake on it? No, but I remember seeing them on billboards in the game DRIV3R on PS2.

67. Do you have a happy gaming-related childhood memory you want to share? Every game I play is filled with happy memories (mostly.)

68. Ever save up a ton of tickets in an arcade to get something cool? These tiger plushes. My brother got white and I got orange. They were the coolest. Got a butt load of tickets from some jackpot spinning light game thing as I was good at the timing with repeated jackpot hits.

69. In your opinion, best game ever made? I've played quite a few masterpiece games, but to pick one, I'd say Fallout: New Vegas

70. Very first game you ever beat? Super Mario 64. I was a mere child on a Sunday morning and ate celebratory pancakes made by my Dad.

Wow, that was long... I get the feeling this was supposed to be a "send me ask with numbers" thing, but answering all at once is more fun.

#personal #video games

[ot3tropetober]

Eliot and Hardison are travel journalists for rival publications who keep showing up in the same places 

Fic for this (~3500 words) is below the read more! Some notes: 

[backstory on why Hardison is writing these comes from this post]

[Eliot, Parker, and Hardison are all commenting on this document, think of it like the chat in Google drive? In-document comments from Eliot are italicized, from Hardison are in bold, and from Parker are plain text] 

By the time Will Coffey stepped off the plane in Dallas, all he wanted was a nice long shower and to sleep in his own bed for once. Being a travel journalist for a leading travel magazine had its perks– a month-long trip across Mexico, for example, all expenses paid or at least reimbursed – but after a month on the road he was dead tired and ready to be home. 

Is this supposed to be me? Why am I living in Dallas? 

Yes, and also, you don’t actually live in Dallas, Eliot, you live here, in Portland, with us. 

I know that, I just– you know what, never mind. 

Well, Will Coffey likes Dallas. 

I am Will Coffey!! 

That’s the spirit. 

The other thing about being on the road for a living was that sometimes it felt kinda lonely, and as relieved as he was to be home, the first couple of minutes after he walked in, turned on the lights, and looked around at an empty place, that was always a little bittersweet. But the only other person he’d really seen in any kind of serious capacity the whole time he’d had this gig was a fellow traveler who spent just as much time on the road as he did, so it just kinda was what it was. He set his keys and his bag down and headed to the kitchen for a beer, but he hadn’t even opened his fridge when his phone buzzed a couple times. It was a text from Sarah, his editor. He’d known her forever– they shared a couple classes in college. Now they shared the stress of managing a print publication in an increasingly digital world. 

“Did you see this?” she had written. There was a link in the next message. “How does this guy get this stuff up so fast?“ 

Will already knew what he was gonna find before he clicked the link, and sure enough, it directed him to a popular travel blog called The Travel Geek, which was a ridiculous name for a travel blog but people absolutely went wild for it. Will liked it too, not that he would ever really admit it, but that probably had more to do with the guy who ran it than anything else. They had…not a thing, exactly? It was hard to explain whatever was going on with Jeremy Edwards, who by rights Will should probably hate for stealing his stories and his audience. But the problem with that was mainly that the guy was so goddamn likeable. 

I’m guessing that’s you. 

You would be correct. 

You think I think you’re likeable? 

No, I know it. 

he is pretty likeable

Yeah, yeah. 

Will had met Jeremy a couple of years ago, right when he was just starting out with his blog. Jeremy said he’d been reading Will’s stuff for a while and would love some advice from a pro. It wasn’t like Will didn’t know it was a little bit of flattery, and it wasn’t like he didn’t know it was a little bit of flirting, either. It also wasn’t like Jeremy was bad to look at. So Will said sure, he’d be glad to, and they were in Belgium, so they shared some beers, ate fries from a baraque at one in the morning on a park bench, shoulders pressed together, while Will tipsily rhapsodized about gaufre de Liège while Jeremy laughed and laughed. 

I have never *rhapsodized* about anything in my damn life. 

Have you heard you talk about food? This is not a criticism. I could listen to that all day. 

Nothing really happened, in the end, just a good conversation and the promise to keep in touch. That turned out to be easier than it should have been, because they started covering the same damn things, all the time. One big world, and somehow they were always sharing part of it: Will was in India on a camel safari through the Thar Desert, and Jeremy was there, keeping Will up at night tappity tapping on his keyboard. Or Will was in Oatman, Arizona, for a piece on Route 66, and there was Jeremy, taking selfies with the wild burros roaming the streets of the town. Or Will was traveling around Japan, doing a feature on onsens, and Jeremy was there, too, acting like he wasn’t looking in Will’s direction while they sat, very naked, in the soothing hot water. It went on like that for a while until finally one night in Barcelona, in front of Sagrada Familia, he looked at Jeremy, tall and handsome in this absurd brightly patterned scarf, and said, “This is ridiculous, man,” and pulled him in for a long, lingering kiss. 

Do you honestly think it would have taken me that long? 

I don’t know, baby, it took your cowboy ass five years in real time, so Will’s doing a lot better than you. 

OoooooooOooo 

We had a lot goin on!!! And what is that supposed to be, parker? are you some kind of ghost? 

it made more sense in person 

I’ll take your word for it. 

It wasn’t a relationship, exactly. It was just something they did, sometimes, if they happened to run into each other on the road. It wasn’t like he was getting invited home for the holidays, or anything, and he was fine with that, really. The long and short of it was, they’d basically been circling each other for years now, professionally, personally, whatever, but the professional stuff was definitely getting in the way of anything else. Because Will would sit down and write out his long, detailed articles with carefully selected photographs that would look just right on the page, while Jeremy had already turned out quick blog entry after quick blog entry, listing off places people should visit with witty little one sentence summaries, and people just ate it right up with a spoon while Adventure., Will’s magazine, slowly saw its sales circling the drain. It stung a little. Maybe more than a little. It wasn’t like he could say the guy wasn’t working hard, but damn. Hell, the best selling issue they’d had in a couple years was the one where Sarah had masterminded a collaboration between Will and Jeremy. Blogging was definitely here to stay. 

That night in Belgium was five years ago, and at the time it seemed impossible that the internet would ever really fully overtake print. But bloggers and phones had both gotten smarter over the last five years, and now everyone wanted their news in little chunks that they could read on a screen during their commute, so travel blogs were the hot new thing. Will grimaced as he looked at the blog entries Jeremy already had up from Mexico, where they’d run into each other at least half a dozen times. 

Five Reasons You Need to Visit Mexico City Right Now; What You’re Missing Because You’re Not in Monterrey; Everything You Wanted to Know About Agave But Were Too Afraid to Ask 

“You gotta be kidding me with this,” he muttered, staring at his phone and thinking about the half-written article he had saved on his laptop detailing the history of agave and how to experience Jalisco as more than just the birthplace of tequila. 

He pulled up Sarah’s number and dialed. 

“I don’t know how we can compete with this,” he sighed, when she picked up. 

“We’re going to have to adapt,” she said. “You know that. I can hear you making a face." 

"I don’t want to blog,” he complained. “I like print." 

"I know,” she sighed. “I’m working on it. Anyway, I’m glad you called, I was going to call you. I need you to go to Italy. Flight leaves tomorrow." 

"No way. Not interested,” he told her. “I just got back to my apartment, Sarah, I’ve been in Mexico for a month. I’m beat." 

"It’s not my fault that you spend half your time on extracurricular activities,” she teased. 

“You can just say sex,” he said. “I won’t be offended. And it’s not half my time. Like, maybe twenty-five percent. Anyway, I get the job done." 

"Yeah, and you’re very good at it, which is why I need you to go to Italy,” she said. 

“I’m not saying yes,” he told her, “and I’m not interested. But what’s in Italy that’s so important for me to get to?" 

"You’ll love this one,” Sarah promised. “It’s a food festival." 

Okay, maybe he was a little interested. "Oh?”

“Yeah,” she said. His phone buzzed in his ear. “I just emailed you the details. Including your flight info." 

"Dammit, Sarah–" 

"Oops, emergency, the printer’s on fire, gotta go!” she chirped, and the line disconnected. 

Yeah okay that’s Parker huh

Yep!

I do know y'all a little bit. 

“Dammit,” Will said again, and opened Sarah’s email to read up on his next destination. 

+ 

The food festival turned out to be a week long international celebration of local food from around the world. It only happened once every few years in October, when a world of people descended on the city of Torino, and more specifically the park by the River Po, where they set up tents and stands and served pretty much every kind of food you could imagine, and Will loved food and could imagine a lot, so that was saying something. It was pretty cool, seeing all these people from all over the planet showing off food that was important to them, sharing it with strangers. It really was the whole planet, too, the way the park was set up you could walk through a continent at a time, with all the countries on it represented at their own space. He figured he’d pay his respects to the hosts first and start with Italy, which was definitely the largest section. Halfway through the displays he found a stall with some folks from Campania selling fresh mozzarella di bufala the size of his fist for a Euro. It was speared on a stick like a candy apple so he could walk around with it, nibbling on the sweet cheese as he checked out the festival’s other offerings. Aged cheeses covered in mud and straw from a little town in France. A swanky tent with wood plank floors where the Filipino agriculture offices had a set up with big displays dedicated to traditional food and heirloom crops. Six different kinds of wild rice were layered in a glass display bottle in the booth dedicated to Indigenous agriculture in North America. There were folks from the Yucatan peninsula displaying cured meats and wild honey. There was a whole series of displays about preserving, protecting, and raising Maasai red sheep, from Kenya. The whole event was really impressive, actually, and even though his body had no idea what time zone he was in, he didn’t feel too tired– although that might have been more because he’d been downing every cup of coffee from anyone selling it. 

Okay, this actually sounds pretty cool. But now you gotta fake a whole food festival like this if we ever use these aliases. 

I don’t have to. That’s a real thing. Happens every couple of years. I was gonna ask if you wanted to go to the next one. Parker can probably find us a job after, anyway. 

I’d love– like that. 

Hardison. HARDISON.

Why isn’t this deleting the things I tell it to delete??? 

Ooh, forgot to tell y'all, this chat records your keystrokes? You know. Just in case you happen to type something sappy about how much you love me, and then delete it before you send it in the chat. Pretty much exactly what just happened. 

Dammit Hardison I’m gonna delete YOU

Baby, that doesn’t even make any sense. 

im w hardison on this 1. it’s ok if u love things eliot. especially food . or us 

Just let me finish reading Hardison’s make believe story so I can get back to dinner prep, ok? 

(he loves us) 

I know :) 

Will strolled around the park, snapping photos here and there, jotting down notes. He talked to folks from all over who came here to run their country’s booths, locals who had come out to enjoy the day, and people who had traveled long distances to be there. After a couple of hours and a really good lunch, he found an unoccupied bench near the river and posted up there for a while, notebook open next to him as he flipped through photos on his phone, the story he could tell about this event already starting to take shape in his head, and he had to admit, at least to himself, that Sarah had been right about this one. Nobody else on their staff knew food enough to get this right. But even though he had a good idea where to start, he couldn’t help feeling a little overwhelmed, too. You could spend two weeks here and still not talk to everybody, and it seemed important to try, somehow. 

“Well, well, well,” said a voice, and Will looked up from his phone and his notes to see the tall form of none other than Jeremy Edwards. 

“Dammit, Edwards,” Will swore. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Again?" 

Yeah it’s pretty much EXACTLY like that every time

Mmmhmm. You talk a big game, man, but no one here believes you. 

What he said ur like that stuff u put on the dessert u made 4 us last wk

Stuff on dessert– the Italian meringue? You really comparing me to Italian meringue?! 

Is that the stuff that was kinda hard and crunchy on the outside but actually really soft and sweet inside? 

Yep that’s the stuff

This is the worst conversation we’ve ever had. 

It’s weird how I can hear you smiling right now, though.

Shut up, Hardison, I’m reading.  

Got him! XD 

"Looks like it,” Jeremy said. He took a seat next to Will on the bench, despite the fact that Will had absolutely not fucking offered it to him. He grinned. Will looked back at his notes before he smiled back. “We’ve really gotta stop meeting like this." 

"Yeah, well, trust me, I’m working on it,” Will grumbled, and risked a look at Jeremy again. Still handsome, and still smiling, unfortunately. He thought about the blog a little and made himself frown. “So, you’re here to blog about this, huh? How many blog posts have you done already?" 

"None so far,” Jeremy said, scratching his chin, “but I am working on one right now. Tentative title, How to Tell The Guy You’re Casually Seeing And Have Been Chasing All Over the Globe That His Boss Sent Me Here To Work With Him." 

Well, there was a lot of information there, but Will decided maybe sticking with the professional stuff was better for now. "I’m sorry, you’re here for what?" 

Jeremy shrugged. "Sarah really liked that collaboration thing she got us to do last year, I guess, wanted to try it again for this. I said yes. It’s good for your magazine and it gives my blog some credibility with all you snooty print folks." 

"We’re not snooty,” Will said, although that wasn’t exactly true. Maybe they were, a little. He unlocked his phone and saw the email from Sarah, the subject line of which read: “DON’T ARGUE IT WILL BE GOOD FOR YOU/US/THE MAGAZINE.” He sighed and looked back at Jeremy. “I can’t believe she sent you to a food thing." 

"I’m offended,” Jeremy said, although it didn’t much sound like it. “I know food." 

"Oh really? So last year when we were in Beijing and you were looking for a McDonald’s that was just you knowing food, huh,” Will drawled.

“Sometimes you just really want a Happy Meal,” Jeremy joked, and Will just shook his head.

“I guess we should figure out what we’re doing, then,” he said, and Jeremy raised his eyebrows. 

“About the story,” he said, “right?" 

"Yeah, about the story,” Will grumbled. 

“Whatever you say,” Jeremy said affably, just like always. 

+

It was actually pretty easy to figure out how to cover the festival now that he had a partner in crime. They worked out a plan that afternoon, sketched out a couple of pieces, a collab for Adventure., a short guest piece for Will on The Travel Geek, and a short story in the magazine for Jeremy. Sarah signed off on everything from afar– “What time is it where she is? Does that woman ever sleep?” Jeremy asked, as they both got email after email. “I don’t think she does, man,” Will laughed– and they got to work pretty quick. There was plenty to do and they were both here for a few days, so they wandered through the park as they worked, stopping occasionally to sample food or take photos.  Eventually they walked all the way out of the park and into the city, up to a big plaza, Piazza Castello, in the center of the historic part of town. They got gelato from one of the many carts set up nearby for the festival, and sat outside, eating and talking as the sun set. 

It was nice. It was always nice, when they ran into each other. That wasn’t the problem. But they’d been stuck in the same routine for years now: they’d find themselves in the same place, Jeremy would laugh, Will would pretend he was annoyed, and then they’d spend a good chunk of their time together enjoying each other’s company in as many ways as they could find, and then they’d head to the airport and go their separate ways. And that was that. This shouldn’t be any different, but somehow it was. Maybe it was the sunset lighting up Jeremy’s skin, or maybe he’d just been lonely too long, but maybe they needed to figure out what they were doing with more than just the stories they were here to tell. 

“You wanna get dinner?” Will said, before he could talk himself out of it. 

“Yeah,” Jeremy said, smiling again, and this time Will let himself smile back. Just a little.  

They asked around for recommendations and ended up at a little restaurant in the city, a few blocks from the Piazza. They split a bottle of wine, a margherita pizza, and some perfectly fried fish, and they didn’t really talk about work at all. 

“You know,” Jeremy said, about halfway through the wine, “not for nothing, but I’ve gotta say, this looks and feels a lot like a date." 

"I wasn’t under the impression that you’d be opposed to that,” Will said.

“Oh, I’m not opposed,” Jeremy told him, “I’m just a little surprised you’re asking. I figured at this point it was gonna have to be me who said something." 

Will eyed him carefully, thought back to a lot of nights on a lot of trips. "How long exactly have you been waiting around?" 

"I mean, don’t get the wrong idea, here, I haven’t been pining away for you like some Victorian in a bad novel,” Jeremy said, and Will snorted. “But yeah. I played a long game, man. I gotta say, though, after that fishing boat incident in Guyana I really thought you figured out we had a thing." 

"Yeah, well, I didn’t have time to notice, I was too busy taking pictures of you hiding behind that skinny British guy when that big old fish jumped out of the water,” Will snickered. 

“Big old– that thing was two-hundred and thirty-four pounds of ichthyological torpedo headed straight for yours truly,” Jeremy said, and Will chuckled. “Big doesn’t really describe it.”

“Hmm. It was kinda wild he thought we were gonna get in the water with it,” Will mused.  He winked. “Glad you finally remembered you owed me dinner for keeping him from pushing us into the river." 

"Ha. You know Sarah wants us to work with that guy again, right?" 

"Aw, hell,” Will said. “Really?" 

"Yeah,” Jeremy confirmed. “She said she was gonna talk to you about it when we got back from this. Canada this time, so when Mister Fisherman tries to throw me in the water at least the hypothermia will probably get me before the monster fish does." 

"Nah,” Will said. “Don’t worry about that. Nobody throws you off a fishing boat. Except maybe me. No. Well. Maybe. No,” he concluded. 

Hah. I mean, okay, that does sound like me. 

Oh, I am aware, trust me. 

“Sarah maybe also mentioned we might do a few more of these little…collaborative things,” Jeremy said, drawing invisible circles on the table. “Maybe even in a more formal capacity." 

Will raised his eyebrows. "No way she talked you into giving up the blog." 

"Oh, definitely not,” Jeremy said. “But funnily enough, people keep sending me emails about wanting a print version of some of my photographs? But I don’t really have the publishing connections. A magazine, though…” he shrugged. “Me and Sarah figured we might come to some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement, somehow. Might be seeing more of you, is what I’m trying to say." 

"Can’t say I mind that,” Will said, and reached out across the table to cover Jeremy’s hand with his. 

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Jeremy answered, and this time Will didn’t try to hide his smile. 

/end 

Okay? 

Okay, what? 

Well where the hell is the rest of it? 

What rest of it? It’s clearly implied that they’re dating now. They’re dating, they’re happy, they’re gonna work together for real, happily ever after, et cetera. 

they should have at least kissed. i would be into that 

This is what I’m saying. Where’s the resolution, here? 

Baby, anytime you want a kiss, you know where to find me. 

What I want is for you to take this seriously since you’re making us read all of it. 

Wow, okay. Here: 

They walked around the city for a long time after dinner, still holding hands, and the kiss they shared later under the moonlight felt like a promise. The Actual End. 

Y'all happy? 

too sappy 4 me but idk what eliot thinks

Not your best work but it’ll do, I guess. 

Are you still in the kitchen? 

Yeah, why? 

I’m gonna come give you a demonstration of my best work, that’s why. 

Bring it on, man. 

do i get a demo too

You know it.

#author: coffeesuperhero #leverage ot3 #parker x hardison x eliot #hardison x eliot #leverage #ot3tropetober #submission

[autoplaysdigimon]

Character Analysis: Mimi Tachikawa and Palmon

When I was a kid, I had some weird ideas about gender.

I fully bought into that “not like other girls” thing. I wasn’t interested in makeup, or clothes, or boys in the same way that the other girls seemed to be (HMMM). I didn’t like shopping, I didn’t care about being pretty, and I preferred being friends with the boys because they were doing fun things like playing Pokemon, and that’s for boys because the Pokemon toys are shelved in the boy’s toy aisle. When I was a kid, there were only two kinds of girls: those who conform to femininity entirely, and those who reject it entirely. In my mind, the spokesmodels for these two types of girls were Mimi and Sora.

This led to a whole Thing where I figured that femininity is terrible and weak and I shouldn’t strive to be like that at all. My friends, the Boys, don’t like feminine things or feminine people, and I wasn’t like that, I was cool, like them! I played Video Games and didn’t wear nail polish! I didn’t always want to gossip or go clothes shopping! In the cast of Digimon, I very much hated Mimi, and wanted to be Sora. I hated pink, I hated fashion, I hated her. 

For the longest time, I tried to get into sports. Mostly it was soccer, because that’s what they play on Digimon! (Alright, it was because that’s what Davis plays specifically. leave me alone) And it killed me that I wasn’t good at it. I didn’t understand the rules even though when I joined up they told us they’d explain the rules and they didn’t (>:[) and I wasn’t fast at running, or competitive enough to be any good. Also I was hit by the ball a lot and developed a fear of it. It ate me up for the longest time, because if I wasn’t good at sports, I must be girly, and I can’t be that, I’m not! I play the Games and everything!

It took me a long-ass time to unlearn all that gender fuckery. I embraced being girly somewhere in the teens I think, and look what happened - I’m unathletic, I like shopping (but will only barely tolerate it if it’s clothes shopping), I’m taking more of an interest in changing my appearance, sometimes I will put on A Make-up, I fucking love pink, I’m a gossipy little bitch, and I never stopped playing video games. Hell, if you’d told me as a kid that I’d end up running a blog about video games, I’d probably ask what a blog was, but I’d be proud of that. I still am.

And rewatching this series, I’ve decided that Mimi and Palmon are my favourites from this season.

Everything that irritated me about her, back then and now, is the fault of the dub writers. Every time they wanted to fill in a dramatic silence with her complaining about missing sales or chipping a nail or ruining her complexion, every time she was silly and vapid and stereotypically girly, it was unnecessary. While the others were trying to find shelter or food, she’d say something that implied that her priorities were about her appearance, not survival. The dub writing really did her a disservice, and that’s a real shame because she’s such an interesting character. There are also a few times where Mimi or Palmon are the butt of an undignified joke, and it’s pretty cool. Not every feminine character gets that!

Was she really representative of Sincerity, or should they have left her as being Purity, like in the original? I think Purity as a concept is very different outside of Japan, so they were probably not going to be able to leave it the way it was. She seemd to be sincere in the same way that Applejack is about Honesty, in that she just has a hard time lying. Is she sincere in a positive way? Eh, sure, she’s good at apologies.

I like seeing characters who exist on a spectrum, instead of being written as a list of aspects. Mimi’s was always about her selfishness and self-preservation instincts against her opposing desire to see everyone safe and happy. She never really wants to fight, hence her splitting from the group in the last arc. Typically, her complaints that aren’t about surface-level things are about why it has to be them, why her. She doesn’t want to be saving the world, she’d just much rather have the world not need saving in the first place. In a way, you could say that her complaints about how much her feet hurt and how she was going to mess up her hair are what she chooses to focus on, rather than air out her real concerns. Plus, she does grow up at least a little during her time in the Digital World.

But occasionally, she’s a girl of Action. When she really needs to, she can be a badass, and that’s everything every girl needs to see. Stereotypically feminine and not put at odds with her competence!

(And let’s be real here for a second, if I was a Digidestined kid, I would ABSOLUTELY be Mimi. I’d complain about getting dirty, about hunger, the heat, having to fight, just the same as her. Hell, she was my avatar for the longest time because I almost physically resemble her!)

(Also because, when that shot came up, I was also playing with my hair in the exact same way. It’s a sign!)

Her relationship with Palmon is interesting. In the first episode, when the In-Training Digimon fail to take down Kuwagamon as they are, all of the Digimon are physically struggling against their partners to get back to the fight except Tanemon, and Mimi merely asks her if she feels the same as the others. Does this speak to Palmon sharing Mimi’s preference for non-violence, or did she pick up on this trait of Mimi’s this early on? In the second episode, Palmon asks...

...which, okay that’s a pretty obvious trait of Mimi’s, let’s be fair. But it does show that Palmon has been analysing Mimi at least a little.

Palmon was very often on the same wavelength as Mimi. She cried when Mimi cried. When Mimi was upset at something, no matter how small, Palmon at least looked to be sad as well, possibly just out of wanting Mimi to not be sad. The biggest rift between them was in the Princess Karaoke episode, where Palmon’s eventual disapproval of how Mimi was acting was the final straw in convincing Mimi that she was in the wrong. It took Palmon a long time to figure out that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t the good guys in this situation. The Japanese version has a throughline where Palmon tells Mimi that she hates her, tells her again in her dream, and then tells her that she loves her at the end of the episode, which is exactly what Mimi needed to hear every time. (The dub doesn’t have this, but it does have Palmon telling Mimi that she’s a spoiled brat instead, which is still pretty heckin’ harsh.)

It could have been any of the pairs in the situation of the final episode, where one doesn’t want to say goodbye so they run away, deciding to just never see them again. It could have been Kari and Gatomon, not wanting to say goodbye so soon after meeting for the first time. It could have been TK and Patamon, because they’re the Young Ones who don’t know how to face their emotions yet. It could have been Tai and Agumon, because shows like this like to have the important events happen to the front-line main characters. But it wasn’t any of them, it was Palmon who couldn’t face saying goodbye, and Mimi who nearly didn’t get a proper sendoff for closure.

Palmon and Mimi’s relationship was shown to be very strong, very trusting. For Palmon’s words to be the point where Mimi realised that she was being selfish, she must have valued Palmon’s opinion of her a lot more than she realised. She was happy enough for Joe, Tai and their partners to think that she was selfish, but Palmon was where she drew the line and snapped out of it. The fact that Mimi was inconsolable in the final episode when she (nearly) didn’t get to say goodbye just shows this further.

I think my favourite thing about Palmon is that she Digivolves into Togemon. She’s this cute little flower girl, and then she’s a fucking huge cactus who’s ready to throw down in every way imaginable and will punch a dude in the face. Also dumb plant jokes. And she’s a little bit dumb of ass, but that’s okay.

I don’t know, I just like them both. They’re also #aesthetic goals, if I’m honest. Palmon’s an adorable little fucker, I had to restrain myself from posting every Palmon face I thought was cute. I’d go ahead and say that she’s in my top 5 favourite Digimon. While Mimi’s voice acting was pretty good, Palmon’s was fantastic, and I could listen to her talk all day. She had random voice cracking moments and that one time she laughed I physically made squeeing noises. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, she is PRECIOUS.

Plus, Palmon wearing Mimi’s hat? ADORABLE. I like to think that, after the hat fell off the tram at the end, Palmon found it and kept it.

The last thing I want to say about Palmon is that is her name derived from Palm, like palm trees? Should it be pronounced that way???? They don’t in the dub, but they alsy like to pronounce “Dramon” very wrong, so maybe we shouldn’t take their word for it. Maybe it’s correct anyway, because she is, indeed, a pal.

TL;DR GIRLS GOOD

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