#of course clancy is different. clancy dreams. and in every one he dreams of an animal in the shadows | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

e350tb · 6 years

Text

Steven Universe: Ruby Stars - Chapter Eight

(Special thanks to @real-fakedoors for proofreading this!)

Red Shift

Sadie stood in an enormous teal plane, surrounded on all sides by inky darkness. It swirled and rippling like a raging sea, and looking into it made her hair stand on end. She felt cold, but there was also a strange feeling of detachment - as if she was there, but she wasn't actually there.

She walked forward, travelling into the darkness for some time, but the room was so expansive and featureless that she felt like she wasn't moving at all.

"Hello?" she called, "Is anyone there?"

A tired, desperate voice called back from afar.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Sadie!" Sadie called back, "Where are you?"

The words tumbled from her lips before she could ask them to return with their own name, but then, she somehow felt like that question wasn't necessary. She knew who it was, like a fleeting dream beginning to disappear, if she just tried hard enough she might just grasp it...

The floor shook violently, and she fell hard on her back. Disoriented, she climbed to her feet and turned around - and jumped, startled, as she saw a figure that hadn't been there before.

She was blue and wore a dress, and she was suspended in the air by dark, warping cables. They seemed to shift and change orientation every millisecond - they made Sadie sick to look at them. It was as if they were a puppet's strings, shifting at phenomenal speeds to control the figure's every movement.

"Sadie..." the figure croaked.

"Who are you?" asked Sadie, "What's happening?"

The figure croaked out her name.

"Lapis… I'm Lapis… please, help me..."

Suddenly, and violently, Lapis was yanked backwards. For a moment, she reached pitifully for Sadie - then, with a despairing scream, she was pulled back into the swirling darkness. The floor gave way, and Sadie was falling, falling, falling...

Sadie awoke with a start, drenched in sweat.

She rubbed a hand over her forehead, panting. She'd had a lot of weird dreams over the last few weeks - the one in which she'd been a circus performer and Clancy had been the ringmaster had been particularly odd - but this felt different. It felt more visceral, more real - like she could feel the blue marionette's strings dance before her eyes, and Sadie was certain she could never have imagined that sort of desperation on her own.

Shaking her head, Sadie rubbed the lost sleep from her eyes and dismissed the silly illusions. Rubies - she didn’t have dream powers, and Steven hadn't turned up, so it certainly wasn't him. It was just a weird nightmare, nothing more.

She sighed and glanced at the dim illumination of time on the microwave, laying back on the couch. It read 1.05, and she had a sinking feeling that she probably wouldn't get back to sleep tonight.

"Alright, I'm teaching you today," declared Amethyst, "Shapeshifting 101, let's do this."

Behind her, Peridot wheeled up a blackboard.

Sadie stood in the middle of the Sky Arena. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and fluffy white clouds glided gently by. Behind her, Pearl and Steven watched curiously - the former's arms were crossed, and her mouth was set into a deep frown.

"Okay, so, shapeshifting," continued Amethyst, "Every gem can change their shape. Like this."

She glowed brightly and her shape changed. A moment later, a purple copy of Pearl was standing in front of Sadie.

Pearl narrowed her eyes.

"Good afternoon, my student!" exclaimed Amethyst, in an exaggerated impression of her fellow gem, "My name is Pearl. I use a sword, and I'm the most elegant dancer in..."

"If you start twerking, you're walking home!" Thundered Pearl.

Amethyst chuckled.

"Shapeshifting's the best, man," she continued, "It's gotta be the most useful power we have, 'part from maybe fusion. You get the hang of it, and you can become anything..." she turned into a border collie, "... and anyone..." she turned into Connie, "... you want."

"Within reason," added Peridot, "Changing your shape uses energy. That's why you can't just turn yourself into a giant rocket and blast yourself straight into the Diamonds' faces."

"I'm telling you, Peri, it'd totally work," said Amethyst.

"... Sure," grunted Peridot, "Your mass is also an important factor in shapeshifting. If you turn into something bigger than you, it'll take up a lot more energy - and if you transform too much or for too long, you run the risk of… incidents."

"Yeah, one time Steven turned into a ball of cats," chuckled Amethyst.

"And a baby!" Pearl added helpfully, "And one time he nearly died of old age."

Steven winced.

"The point is," said Amethyst, "Shapeshifting is fun and good for you - ugh, I sounded like Pearl there - as long as you're careful with it. Other than that, have fun with it!"

She turned to Peridot, who Sadie noticed had been carrying a CD player under one of her arms. She dropped it and pressed the play button as Amethyst shifted back into Pearl's form.

Loud, bassy music began to play, and Pearl immediately turned pale.

"Alright, watch me break it down," said Amethyst, changing her posture and poise to a more - ahem - suggestive position than would be typical for their Pearl.

"AMETHYST!"

"I'm really sorry you had to see that, Steven," said Pearl.

She still looked haunted, her eyes wide and somewhat unfocused as she scrubbed the dish in the sink - the same one she had been cleaning for ten minutes. Behind her, Sadie and Steven sat at the counter, finishing dinner.

Sadie finished her bowl of instant noodles and turned to Steven, holding up her hand.

"Okay, maybe I can do it this time," she said.

Steven nodded, turning to his friend.

The lesson had taken all day, but by the end of it, Sadie hadn't managed even the smallest bit of shapeshifting. Pearl had told her she wasn't concentrating hard enough - Amethyst had responded that she had been concentrating too much. Their teaching styles had clashed all day, and in the end Garnet had had to come out and break up a nasty argument between them.

"Okay, let's try… lizard fingers," said Steven.

"Lizards?"

"I dunno, I'm just feeling lizards. They're cool, you know?"

Sadie shrugged and nodded. She gazed at her fingers and concentrated, trying to visualize her fingers turning into lizards - part of her marvelled at how strange such a thing was.

She stared and stared, but nothing happened.

Steven, on the other hand, had sprouted a small collection of bluetongue lizards from his fingers. He laughed, rubbing one of their heads with a finger on his other hand.

"No shapeshifting at the table, Steven," said Pearl.

Steven gave Pearl a very scaly thumbs up before dunking his hand in his glass of water. The lizards turned back into fingers.

"I just can't get anything to happen," sighed Sadie.

"Well, Kay could have been an Era-2, like Peridot was," mused Pearl, "I never thought to ask her, myself. Maybe you simply can't?"

"Ooh!" exclaimed Steven, "Maybe you have metal powers instead!"

"No, no, you have fire powers," said Pearl, snapping her fingers, "They probably wouldn't have bothered giving Kay those if she was Era-2..."

Sadie released a low exhale and stood up. She knew Pearl and Steven weren't trying to put her down, but their discussion of what her powers might be had started to feel rather dehumanising.

"I think I need to get some air," she said.

"Oh, of course," nodded Pearl, "Oh, if you come back by eight, Steven and I will be making pancakes!"

"I know it's normally a breakfast food," added Steven, "But Peedee sent me a new pancake mix recipe and I wanna try it!"

"Yeah, I'll remember that," said Sadie absently, walking out the door.

It was early evening - the sun hung low over Beach City, and the sky was a vivid purple-blue. A gentle breeze blew over the beach as Sadie walked down the steps on to it, and despite herself, she couldn't help but smile. She sat down against the side of the temple and closed her eyes.

It had been a long day, and she'd gotten nearly no sleep after the strange nightmare she'd had in the morning. Part of her felt like she could have dozed off there and then - but she couldn't. She wondered if a walk might help - she knew Buck was helping his dad with something at the Big Donut, and decided to head that way.

Her face fell as she thought again about her failed attempts to shapeshift.

"Everyone else seems so good at it," she sighed to herself, "I mean, even Steven can do it, and he's half-human like I am. What am I doing wrong?"

She opened her eyes and gazed up at the clouds.

"Maybe I've just got too much on my mind," she mused, "It's just like what Pearl said - I've gotta clear my brain and focus properly."

She yawned.

"Yeah... just like Pearl..."

Buck Dewey stacked the last box onto the pile and walked out of the back room, finding his father trying (and failing) to open the new automated cash register. He beamed at his son as he approached.

"Bucky, my boy!" he exclaimed, "Can you use your powers of teenage technological wizardry to open this thing? I just can't make hide nor hair out of this..."

Buck wordlessly pressed a red button on the register. With a cheerful ring, the cash tray opened.

"... Ah," said Dewey, "Well, now I know. Thank you, son!"

Buck nodded. He gazed out towards the front window, and saw a figure approaching from the beach. His father saw it too - he gasped.

"The Hot One!" he exclaimed.

He licked his hand and rubbed over the patch of hair on top of his head, perming it back. He then turned to Buck and grinned.

"How do I look, son?" he asked.

"It's never gonna happen, dad," replied Buck.

"I know," sighed the senior Dewey, his shoulders sagging miserably.

The door chimed as it opened, and they both regarded the customer.

Despite what Dewey had thought, this was not Pearl. Her clothing was the wrong colour, and her face looked slightly different. Most strikingly of all, her hair was much yellower than normal.

"Hello Buck, hello ex-Mayor Dewey!"

Sadie's tone seemed much more formal than normal as she approached the counter.

"... Uh... Hi," said Dewey.

"You look a little different today," said Buck, "Little taller."

"Oh, it's probably just a trick of the light!" chuckled Sadie, "This planet's sun can do that! Now, let me see..."

She studied the board intently, rapping her fingers gently against the counter.

"Buck," Dewey hissed under his breath, "This is getting weird, say something..."

"So," said Buck, "How's living with Steven going?"

"Oh, it's been delightful!" exclaimed Sadie, "He's such a wonderful boy, you know? And the Gems have been so helpful - especially Pearl, if I do say so myself..."

"Are… you gonna order anything?" asked Dewey.

"Hmm… no, sorry, I couldn't possibly stomach eating," replied Sadie.

"You probably could," replied Buck, "Let your hair down."

"... Hmm... no, I couldn't, thank you," said Sadie, "Well, both of you have a pleasant evening."

She waved and turned for the door, muttering quietly to herself.

"Letting my hair down... Maybe I should..."

The door chimed as she left. For a long time, Dewey and Buck stood in silence.

"... Aaaare you gonna call Universe?" asked Dewey at last.

"Yep," nodded Buck, taking out his phone.

Greg walked down the boardwalk, talking on the phone with Andy. It was a lovely evening, and his spirits were high; he thought he might check in with Steven when he was done, and perhaps see if Sadie was alright as well.

"...well, good to hear you're doin' okay, even if things are a bit weird," said Andy, "You still on for coffee on Saturday?"

"Sounds great, Andy," nodded Greg, "I'll see you around."

"You too, Greg, stay safe. Bye!"

Greg hung up the phone, tucking it in his pants pocket. He closed his eyes, took in a deep breath and smiled. Yep, this was a just a perfect evening.

"Hey, what up Greg?"

Was that Amethyst?

Greg opened his eyes and turned around.

She looked a bit like Amethyst, certainly, but her hair, skin colour and much of her face exposed her as Sadie. She seemed to have taken on the quartz' form, from the long hair to the style of her outfit.

"Uh... Sadie?" asked Greg uncomfortably, "You practicing shapeshifting or something?"

"Nah, dude, I'm just letting my hair down," replied Sadie, "So, what's going on with you?"

"I... um... I was thinking of visiting Steven," said Greg, scratching the back of his neck, "He sent me a message earlier. Something about pancakes?"

"Yeah, good ol' Ste-man!" laughed Sadie, slapping Greg's back (he winced), "Speaking of pancakes, you know if Peedee's still open? I meant to pick up some eats at the Big Donut, but... eh, I didn't for some reason."

"...I think he is?" replied Greg, "Um... just a quick question, but are you okay? You seem a bit... well... off."

"Oh, come on," grunted Sadie, "First Buck, and now you? Why do you all think I'm acting weird or something? I'm fine, Greg."

"I just think you're a bit... uh..."

"Ugh!" exclaimed Sadie, "What is wrong with people tonight?!"

Greg swallowed.

"Forgot it," Sadie continued, "I'm done with this. I'll come back when you're a little less lame, man."

She stormed off down the boardwalk, muttering angrily to herself.

"... Nobody tells Garnet she's acting weird. That must be nice..."

She turned a corner and was gone.

For a few moments, Greg stared at the place she had been, utterly bewildered. Then he heard a familiar shout, and turned to see Garnet approaching, Steven riding on her shoulders.

"Dad!" Steven called, "Have you seen Sadie?"

"I... think so," replied Greg, "What's going on, Stu-Ball?"

"Buck said Sadie had turned into one of my moms," replied Steven, "And I think he meant Pearl, and it's weird because she couldn't shapeshift earlier and..."

"Pearl?" quizzed Greg, "She looked more like Amethyst when I saw her."

Garnet nodded thoughtfully.

"I have an idea of what might be happening," she said, "Greg, tell me where Sadie went..."

Peedee was packing up the tater tot stand. It had been a busy day - he'd gotten all of ten customers, and was therefore doing a roaring trade. But it had now gone six-thirty, and it was time to close up.

He was just cleaning the ketchup and mustard nozzles when he heard someone approach. He turned to the counter.

"Sorry, I've just..."

A tall figure towered over him. Her hair was a square afro, her eyes concealed behind a reflective visor. For a moment, Peedee thought it was Garnet, but on closer inspection, she had a striking resemblance to Sadie.

"... Closed," finished Peedee, gulping.

Sadie leaned over the counter.

"Give me the bits," she said stoically.

A chill ran up Peedee's spine as he saw himself reflected in her visor.

"... Ah-I-I-I-okay, I think I have some left, let me check!"

He ducked down, frantically checking the fryer for any remaining fry bits.

"Sadie!"

Slowly, Peedee peaked over the counter. Steven, Greg and Garnet were approaching - the latter did not look pleased.

Sadie nodded, emotionless.

"Garnet," she said.

"Sadie, what's happening?" asked Steven, "I mean, you can shapeshift now and that's great, but why are you acting like the Gems?"

"I'm not acting like anything," replied Sadie, "And I am not shapeshifting."

"You haven't even noticed?" quizzed Greg, tilting his head.

Garnet stepped forward.

"Sadie, listen to me," she said, "You need to turn back to your original form."

"I am in my original form," replied Sadie, "I-"

Garnet reach forward and yanked her visor off of her face, staring straight into Sadie's eyes.

Unlike Garnet, Sadie only had two eyes - the third was missing, replaced with a tuft of stray hair. That was not what struck Peedee, however. Looking closely, Sadie's eyes seemed somewhat dull and unfocused, and there were dark bags beneath them. She looked incredibly tired.

"Tell me what time you went to sleep last night," ordered Garnet.

Sadie narrowed her eyes.

"None of you understand," she growled, stepping back, "You all act like I'm acting differently. None of you accept that this is who I am!"

She began to glow, and her form shifted.

"Just accept me for me..."

The glow faded. Sadie was now much shorter, and her hair was styled into a tall, triangular shape. She wore a yellow visor and jumpsuit, with a small diamond on the middle of her chest.

"... The great and lovable Sadie!"

She ran off in the direction of the beach, cackling loudly as she went.

"... What?" said Greg, flatly.

Garnet straightened her visor, nodding.

"I know what's happening," she declared, "I've seen Amethyst do this before."

"Is it a new power?" asked Steven, "Maybe some kind of 'personality shifting?'"

Garnet shook her head.

"It's much simpler than that," she said, "Sadie's conscious mind is shut off, and she is being controlled by her subconscious thoughts and anxieties. Most human experience this periodically, as do gems that choose to sleep. Most of the time, the body is shut off while this happens, but in this case, her subconscious has managed to access control of her body and powers."

Greg and Steven glanced at each other, confused.

"So... what does that mean?" asked Greg.

A hint of an amused smirk crossed Garnet's face.

"She's sleepwalking," she replied.

"Oooooh!" said Steven, "So the way she's acting is like... her subconscious impression of us?"

"Good thing she hasn't done Ronaldo yet," Peedee grunted dryly.

Garnet nodded.

"We need to snap her out of it," she said, "I'm going after her. Follow on in the van."

She bounded off towards the beach, leaving the three humans alone. Peedee leaned on the counter and sent Steven a sympathetic look.

"So, family problems?" he asked.

"Yeah, you start to get used to them," replied Steven.

Night had just about fallen by the time Garnet found Sadie again.

She was pacing back and forth on the sand, a few hundred yards from the temple. She muttered angrily to herself, clenching her fists in a fashion appropriately reminiscent of Peridot - Garnet couldn't quite work out the words until she got closer.

"...stupid Garnet, stupid Greg, stupid Buck, they just don't get it," she growled, "They don't get the value I add to this town and to this planet. They need to appreciate me more..."

"Sadie," said Garnet.

Sadie ignored her, carrying on with her rant.

"... Who cares if I can't shapeshift? It's a waste of valuable energy anyway. No wonder they didn't give that power to Era-2 gems - I'm much more significant and important the way I am..."

"Sadie!"

Sadie stopped and turned to Garnet.

"What?!" she bellowed.

"You need to settle down," replied Garnet, "You're not in control of your actions."

"Not in control of my actions?!" thundered Sadie, "I'll have you know..."

She trailed off.

"... I'll have you... oh, who am I kidding?" she sighed, "I'm not in control."

She fell to her knees, her form glowing and shifting once more.

"I'm never in control."

Garnet's eyes widened behind her visor.

The new form Sadie had taken was tall and lithe, with a sleeveless, flowing dress. She looked deeply forlorn as she stared down at the sand - it was a posture and a form Garnet immediately recognised.

But this was impossible.

Garnet shook her head. She'd think about that later. For now, she had a job to do.

She walked over, sitting down next to Sadie and putting a hand on her shoulder.

"Sadie..."

"I don't even know who I am," said Sadie mournfully, "Mom lied to me, Clancy lied to me - even you lied to me. I thought I was Sadie Miller, but... but that's my dad's name, isn't it?"

"It's still your mother's name," reminded Garnet.

"Do I want mom's name? She knew who my real dad was and she was never gonna tell me!" reminded Sadie, "She denied me part of my identity! All the time I lived with her, I was trapped and I didn't even know it. And everyone tells me I'm still Sadie, but who even is that? Am I Sadie Miller? Sadie Killer? Sadie the Ruby? Am I supposed to be a Crystal Gem or a rock star or a donut girl or what?"

Her voice cracked.

"Just... who am I?"

Garnet rubbed her shoulder calmingly.

"You are you," she replied, "You aren't defined by where you came from or what people think you should be. You are your own person."

She smiled.

"And you are very tired."

She closed her eyes and began to hum softly. In her head, she heard Ruby and Sapphire sing the lyrics.

Take a moment to think of just...

Flexibility, love and trust...

Slowly and gently, Sadie's eyes closed. With one final glow of light, her form shifted back into her normal appearance, and she dozed off against Garnet's shoulder.

They sat there for some time, but eventually the silence was broken by a strange sound.

MAY-OR DE-WEY! MAY-OR DE-WEY!

The tater tot van rumbled down the beach, slowly pulling up in front of Garnet. Greg stopped the van and turned off the engine, and the obnoxious sound was silenced. Despite this, Sadie didn't stir.

"Yeah, sorry, I haven't worked out how to turn that off," said Peedee as he and Steven climbed out the back.

"Garnet!" exclaimed Steven, running over to them, "Did you find Sadie? Did you... aaaawww!"

He beamed, pulling out his camera and snapping a photo of the sleeping Sadie.

Sadie groggily opened her eyes.

She was lying on her side on the couch, buried under a couple of blankets. Cat Steven lay on top of her, snoozing peacefully. Steven, Amethyst, Pearl, Peridot and Greg were gathered around the kitchen counter, a large pile of pancakes next to them. She tried to remember how she'd gotten here - she was sitting on the beach, and then... vague memories of Buck and Peedee?

"Sadie!"

Steven stacked a couple of pancakes onto a plate and ran over to her, putting them down on the coffee table in front of her.

"How'd I get here?" asked Sadie drowsily.

"It's a long story," shrugged Steven, "But you shapeshifted! Also you sleepwalked a bit, but you know..."

"I was sleepwalking?" asked Sadie.

"Yep," nodded Amethyst, "And the moment you stopped concentrating so hard, bam! What did I tell you, P?"

Pearl crossed her arms.

"I still think my advice had merit," she grunted.

"No, Pearl, Amethyst was correct today," replied Peridot, "Maybe you can be correct tomorrow."

Pearl frowned.

Sadie rubbed her head, wincing. It throbbed slightly, and she was having trouble keeping her eyes open.

"How are you feeling?" asked Steven, concerned.

Sadie glanced at the pancakes and smiled wearily.

"...hungry," she said.

She and Steven exchanged grins as she picked up the plate.

Long, long ago, before they had re-met Rose and Pearl, Ruby and Sapphire had spent a winter in a small hideout they'd dug in the ground. Back then, they didn't know that snow was harmless, and had thought they'd needed to take shelter for their own safety. They'd long since learned, but every now and then they came back to this little den - it became a hideaway, and if things became to hectic at the Temple, they could retreat here to get their bearings.

Except the den was no longer in untouched wilderness. Two thousand years ago, an empire that was not unlike Homeworld arrived and built a town. Over the centuries, that town had grown bigger and bigger until it covered the whole landscape. In the past two hundred years, the humans had dug underground too, building a complex transport system to bring themselves closer together.

This was London, and Garnet's den now sat behind an iron door in a tunnel of the 'Circle Line'.

Garnet stood in the small, rocky room, studying a chart she had drawn on the wall long ago. It labelled the four diamonds - White, Blue, Yellow and Pink - with a few scribbles and notes about them and their courts. Pink was crossed out and labelled as shattered - perhaps it was wrong, but Garnet couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction about that.

More important were the big, simple words written under each diamond's name. The idea was simple - each diamond had control over one major concept. This was important, as Kay had come from the enigmatic White Diamond. Few had ever seen her - even Sapphire, who had been high ranking, had never so much as glimpsed this most powerful of being.

She read the chart again, frowning.

Blue Diamond - emotion.

Yellow Diamond - form.

Pink Diamond - life?

White Diamond - mind?

She'd heard rumours back on Homeworld about White's court - about a gem named Seraphinite, about strange methods of mental indoctrination, about how White kept her gems in line.

She hoped, for Sadie's sake, that those rumours weren't true...

#steven universe #ruby stars #sadie miller #lapis lazuli #amethyst #peridot #pearl #buck dewey #mayor dewey #greg universe #andy demayo #garnet #peedee fryman

6 notes · View notes

tomclancyselitesquadguide-blog · 4 years

Text

Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad Cheats

Tom Clancy's Elite Squad Guide

Tom Clancy's Elite Squad guide is a manual for a popular new sport. Finishing all of the goals, including the primary and secondary targets, will provide a wonderful praise to the participant. However, after completing the undertaking, the player's characters will should be handled if there are casualties. Due to this, gamers ought to complete quests with the bottom casualties for you to preserve on the next undertaking. The individual training in this game are many and varied in many different aspects, along with abilities and guns. Gamers can equip each individual with guns purchased from the store or received from loot boxes. This applies to each aspect without exemptions. Online gaming has turn out to be the today's fashion for rest. Although there is a hoard of picks available, we are still not sufficed as we constantly crave for some thing new. Being a commander and leading the elite soldier navy takes us returned to the royal times of kings and queens. Through Tom Clancy's Elite Squad, you can relive the imperial technology every time we play the sport. There are numerous who love villains similarly as heroes. With Tom Clancy's Elite Squad, it's miles a dream come actual for such folks who continually look forward to an opportunity to experience their favorite villains. The game is any other masterstroke from its figure ubisoft entertainment inside the sphere of online gaming. There may be nobody standard revel in for a game creator. I like to awareness more on man or woman improvement. I additionally enjoy playing android video games. We use cookies to make certain that we provide you with the great enjoy on our website. In case you hold to use this web page we are able to expect which you are happy with it. We as humans are by no means glad with what we have and continually look out for some thing new. You then use this squad to take on a selection of modes along with campaign, pvp, and guild-vs-guild battles. We don't want to name it tom clancy gacha, but it's kind of tom clancy gacha. Every of the characters you recruit also have their own skills, gear, and weaponry, in addition to a star score machine, and schooling ranges. This means, now not best do you want to liberate and equip the nice gear for each unit, but you also want to educate and acquire shards of each man or woman in order to cause them to greater effective. The sport has plenty of content material, and once you've been plugging away on the campaign for a couple of hours you'll be able to enjoy each day objectives, event missions, area pvp, be a part of a guild, and more, all with new gameplay possibilities. These games are designed to give you a laundry listing of responsibilities to do each day, and i may not lie, it does sense pleasant to log in and make a bit little bit of instant progress each day. That is best. Making development, powering up your team, getting new tools, and new infantrymen all feels good and pleasing, and while it's satisfactory to conquer the ones missions you have been struggling on, it still feels hollow, because you experience so disconnected. To live up to date with the modern cell gaming courses, information, and opinions, follow pocket processes on twitter. Sam commenced cell games journalism in 2016. beginning as a group of workers writer for steel media, he has given that written for pocket gamer, gamezebo, and acted as editor of droid gamers. Tom Clancy's Elite Squad, a loose-to-play military rpg coming to cellular devices, we could fans bring together a strike team from across multiple tom clancy's franchises - along with splinter cell, ghost recon, rainbow six siege, and the division - and command them towards other squads in real-time tactical firefights. I love the tactical gameplay of tom clancy video games and got the impression from the advertising and marketing that this would be an xcom-like cover-based totally strategy game. When i ultimately were given to play it, i realized that i were terribly deceived. Once you start a mission, there are handiest movements you can take during combat, referred to as "fight orders" if i recollect effectively, which you choose prior to the venture. These consist of factors like air moves and shields. Aside from that, you haven't any manage over the course of the warfare and no manage over your squad. You have to rely upon your air strike attack to take down experts (seeing that they are more likely to heal their allies and make the cutting-edge conflict closing even longer) and executives. You may always need to clear each campaign undertaking as fast as possible together with your whole birthday party intact so you can farm the ones missions soon after thru the auto-win mechanic (greater on that later). You'll be capable of do that on every occasion in case you frequently rely upon the combat order mixture we suggested right here. This sport will expand an independent plot for those characters and make themselves break away the original video games. Thru this sport, gamers will revel in completely new and precise gameplay as compared to other rts games. This game can even have hundreds of different functions for players to get the high-quality experience thru this game with pals. With a actual-time combating style, gamers should cautiously manage each group member and complete the assignment quick. The player's celebration will consist of as much as 5 extraordinary man or woman lessons with countless devices included. Each of the participant's five fighters is a person from ubisoft's sport library, which include sam fisher of the dormant splinter cellular series, gabriel logan of the syphon filter games, and more from ghost recon, rainbow six, and the department. Presently, android customers can pre-register for the game at the google play keep, and ios gamers can pre-order the game on the app store. Pre-registering ahead of release can net players rainbow six individual montagne's tier 2 semi-automatic pistol, the m1911, as well as a special man or woman from ghost recon: wildlands. Prepare, equip & enhance your military organization with an entire lot of diverse guns, from knives to assault rifles, and kit to unharness their complete capacity on the battlefield. Full the marketing campaign mode to restore all sequence of occasions that made umbra the big enemy of all of your favored heroes and villains and led to the advent of the elite squad initiative, the unconventional unit tasked to take down umbra. This 5v5 motion rpg recreation is free to obtain and free to play however some recreation gadgets will be bought for actual cash. Enfin, notre guide Tom Clancy's Elite Squad vous donnera quelques astuces et conseils pour bien débuter. Ubisoft has launched Tom Clancy's Elite Squad on 25th august and now it's available to download in android and ios devices. It was initially set to release on 27 august 2020 as announced in e3 2019 but ubisoft launched it two days earlier. Tom Clancy's Elite Squad is a free-to-play 5vs5 action mobile rpg that lets players form their own squad and choose the desired character of their liking. It features iconic heroes and villains like caveira, sam fisher, el sueño, and others from tom clancy's video games like ghost recon, rainbow six seige, splinter cell, endwar, h.a.w.x and the division.

#tomclancy'selitesquad #tomclancy'selitesquadcheats #tomclancy'selitesquadgold #tomclancy'selitesquadcheatsgold

0 notes

shinra-makonoid · 4 years

Note

I love Detroit so much. A game has never impacted me so much. Every section with Kara was so intense because I wanted them to live! Every section with Connor was also so ... I can't really put it into words! This whole dynamic with Hank is so perfect. And thats only thanks to the actors because David Cage intended their interactions a lot different. Marcus' was good but not as captivating :/ I wish they got deeper into that. I enjoyed Beyond though because it was my first decision based game ^^

I can’t make that ask spoiler free lmao Be warned!

Kara was a very powerful route, probably the most powerful for me, she has many totally different endings, and it was a whole ride. The first time I played, I managed to get the perfect ending (crossing to Canada by foot, with everyone) and so it was very rewarding, after all of this. I also, contrary to many people I talked to, can’t seem to hate Todd. The first scenes with him are triggering to me to be honest, and it was rough, but in the end, if you cross his path again, there’s really lots of hope for him. And you understand that he got hurt too and all, and that was such a greatly made character! Probably my favorite out of Kara’s route.

Bryan Dechart and Clancy Brown are jewels, and they really give it their best. I think Connor is the whole reason the game got so famous, both for the gameplay, the route and the actor. When I want to play Detroit, I usually want to play the Connor’s parts again because there are the ones that I most enjoyed. I would buy a DLC with just the two of them dealing with more cases, in a heart beat. I love the dynamic between them. When I made my friend play, she failed to get the appropriate level of friendship with Hank, and so I discovered, with horror, about the suicide scene, and it really broke me (another time I got trigger lmaoooo). And for my part in my first play, he died because machine Connor pushed him from the roof, but it was less sad, because he was fighting to survive at least you know? Hank is my favorite character overall, I think. Connor is important to me too because, at least the machine one, really talks to me philosophically. Also got real stuck on the actor of Dechart, and it was my first actor crush ever, which was weird af. It calmed down though, because I don’t like his character and I don’t like his streams. Still very hot though, except when he has a beard.

And Markus, I liked Markus. He’s actually the character with which I feel closer to emotionally. I like that you have this choice for him of whether he goes full against the humans lets his hate of them taking control of him, or fight the hate and tries to find common ground in peace with the people who hurt him. He’s inspirational on that way. There’s the dark and the light parts, and he needs to see them clearly and make the best choices and balancing them all the time, you can see it with the existence of North, Simon and Josh. There was supposed to be a romance between Markus and Simon at some point but it was aborted because it asked for too many layers of different actions (it’s not said it was with Simon, but I highly highly suspect it was). Choosing peace over battle was a thing that really cost me during the game when I played it. But it was worth it because that’s what saved the androids. My favorite character is of course Simon during this route, because he’s the nice one and I would do anything to save him lmao Markus also comes from a place of privilege, compared to other androids, it has that kind of otherness I feel sometimes. I totally missed the romance with North the first time I played too lmaooooo like damn I’m bad at this. I think what would be interesting with Markus is to have what happens next, because I would totally see him become a big person in the government but have the fear of breaking under the pressure and all.

So yeah… Told you I could spend my day talking about it lmao

I know it’s not really a decision based game the way Quantic Dream do it, but Dragon Age have that kind of spirit that I like where you choose your story too!

Thank you!

#anon #ask #detroit #spoilers

0 notes

elithianfox · 7 years

Note

💡3, 🎨6, 💖8, 🎵13

Meme

💡 3. Has creating a character ever made you realise something about yourself?

My characters are a gateway to exploring who I am without having any effect in the real world, so they definitely have. The years I’ve had my OCs have definitely been a journey for me; I would have been an entirely different person if they weren’t there for me to imagine different scenarios related to my life. They help me problem solve, imagine how other people live and struggle, and allow me to just see the best and worst happen without actual consequence.

The strange thing is that my characters can solve problems that I cannot. If I displace myself to be them instead, I sometimes reach conclusions and solutions that I would’ve never come to if I were just thinking on my own. So in a way, they made me realise that my brain is much stronger and more versatile than it lets on, but I gotta find that link to access the parts I need.

They also helped me place who I want to be in life. By creating people with problems, it becomes easier to list my own faults and flaws and by seeing the different ways they have of dealing with them I get to see how different options get me in different places.

So to put it short, my OCs have made me realise a ton about who I am and how I can live life!

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

Usually it’s the written concept. A big majority of my characters come to me when I’m blanking out while doing something (playing WoW, following classes, bathing. Seriously, so many characters came out of that bath) and by the time I decide I want them to be a character they’re already characterised. I have a vague idea of how they look but they’re just ‘people’ in my mind without a defined face or look, just a concept of ‘he’s buff’ or ‘she wears a mouth mask’.

Only for adopts does the design come first and the filling second, though sometimes I assign them to concepts too!

🎵 13. Do you create playlists for your characters?

Fear I don’t. I’d feel awkward making it, because I’d have a hard time unlinking the song from them. But I do link some songs to my characters because I got an ask on my OC blog asking me to link songs to my OCs (which I still haven’t answered, I am sorry anon-senpai)

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

Some of my characters can experience friendships without feeling bitter, which I wish I could do

Putting this under a readmore because there’s a pretty big list. See this as stuff I respect in my OCs that I can see as a potential in me, but that may or may not already be the case. In most cases not.

Garry knows where he wants to be in life when it comes to his own moral viewpoint, but he is capable of staying loyal to friends even if he strongly disagrees with them on certain topics.

A has the image of his future set in stone and works hard to go for it. He doesn’t let bad news hold him back for long and has found a way to hold on.

Altari has his heart in the right place. He genuinely wants his friends and family to thrive, even when in a fight with them.

Wes is a diligent optimist who strongly fights against conflict.

Levi defies the expected norm and is open to new things in life.

Seranet worked very hard to gain a high academic position, even if working hard at most times shattered him and made him wanna give up at nearly every point along the way.

Chiara knows chemistry. What the fuck. How? Only by hard work of course. She’s amazing at studying and can keep holding on forever to achieve her dream.

Neridan can combine crude humour with genuine caring about friends.

Francis has the character to change his entire life direction and defy his parents just to ensure the survival of a dear friend.

The Alchemist experiences everything in life as a joy, and where there is little joy he does whatever is in his power to create it himself.

Chris would give his life just to ensure his family’s happiness and safety.

Vohgan chooses for kindness where many before her chose for tyranny and an iron rule. She genuinely wants to help society’s outcasts and endangers herself doing so.

Quentin gets up every day and shows effort trying to harness his powers to become one of his species’ long awaited healers, even though his depression screams at him to just lie down and stop.

Andreas chooses to step into his father’s footsteps and go for kindness and anger management instead of following his mother’s unchecked hatred and self importance.

Markus learned to trust again after his was broken by an irreversible act.

Remco is independent enough to leave his hometown and venture into an unknown world to sate his livid curiosity.

Mr. Snuggles is a dog AND a dragon.

Clancy left behind everything and tainted his image to about everyone who respected him just to educate the world and assist in hastening the arrival of the age of enlightenment.

Cafun doesn’t let his disability hold him back, and he doesn’t bathe in the amazement people have for living his life the way that’s regular and easy to him.

Michael doesn’t just accept accusations made against him and actively works to prove his innocence in a case he’s basically already lost, but he is kind for more reasons than just to save his own hide.

Nelor is dead tired from thousands of years of torment, but giving up is out of the question. He will only rest when he has found his problem’s source and defeated it.

Kraye’s optimism thrives more than ever even after being killed. She can overcome her doubts to keep trying again at changing an impossible to change situation and fights for her rights.

Magali is a lonely extrovert but despite that never lets her previous experiences get in her way of trying again.

Florence wants to do what he likes and what captivates him even if people hate and shun him for his interests and skills.

Alena gave up her plans for her future to reunite with her long lost sister and make her moms feel whole again.

Vinnie breaks taboo and ensures he can never be safe again in the name of scientific discovery and medical advance, giving up everything for a better healthier future.

Seares cares for his friend even if everyone is against him and risks his own life keeping the innocent safe from judgement.

Bernard is a curious soul who listens to everybody’s story and gives out advice out of his own will

Wow, my characters are much better than me. Either way, hope this was as enlightening to you as it was to me!

#ask #answered #oc talk #elisrambles #business-penguin

5 notes · View notes

geekade · 7 years

Text

Before Their Time, Gargoyles

One thousand years ago, superstition and the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness. It was a world of fear. It was the age of gargoyles. Stone by day, warriors by night. We were betrayed by the humans we had sworn to protect, frozen in stone by a magic spell for a thousand years. Now, here in Manhattan, the spell is broken, and we live again! We are defenders of the night. We are GARGOYLES!

So begins Gargoyles, some of the best animation on television in 1994. I loved this show so much that when it finally came out on DVD in 2013 I was afraid to revisit it. After all, I remembered loving She-Ra: Princess of Power, jumped at the chance to rewatch it on Hulu, and regretted it almost immediately. Childhood is treacherous that way.

I’m happy to report that Gargoyles still merits a spot alongside Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men as a well-executed and rewatchable 90’s classic. In addition to complex characters and plot arcs, the series boasts terrific animation (including some killer fight sequences) and fabulous voice talent (an assortment of Star Trek alumni make appearances of varying duration). Gargoyles also represented my first encounter with a starring woman of color, more than one fully developed female character, and sympathetic villains. Of course, Disney cancelled it after only two seasons; ABC ran a third season called The Goliath Chronicles, but…let’s just say there’s a reason it’s not out on DVD.

The series premiered in 1994 as part of the Disney’s syndicated after-school cartoon block. It shared several writers and directors with Batman, including Michael Reaves, Brynne Chandler Reaves, and Frank Paur, and they brought a similarly brooding sensibility to Gargoyles. Like most of the short-lived shows I love, Gargoyles opened strong and just got better and better until its untimely demise. The pilot clocks in at five episodes, cutting between the gargoyles’ history in 994 AD and their reawakening in 1994. Considering it aired before DVR was even a glimmer in some startup’s eye, and that it couldn’t count on the character recognition of comics-based shows like Batman or X-Men, a five-episode pilot was pretty damn ambitious. As if that wasn’t daring (or dark) enough, Gargoyles opens with a genocide; before the show even gets going, its titular characters face a breach of trust that exterminates nearly their entire clan. The remaining gargoyles – Goliath (Keith David), Hudson (Ed Asner), Brooklyn (Jeff Bennett), Broadway (Bill Fagerbakke), and Lexington (Thom Adcox-Hernandez), along with watchdog Bronx (Frank Welker) awaken in a world ten centuries and an ocean removed from the one they knew.

Although the surviving clan from Goliath all the way down to Bronx get rich characterizations, histories, and performances, I was always captivated by three of the supporting characters, two of them villains. My favorite character was Elisa Maza (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), the NYPD detective who discovers the gargoyles while investigating a disturbance at Xanatos’ skyscraper. She guides the clan through the new world and protects them from discovery. Perceptive, resourceful, and trained in hand-to-hand combat, Elisa was the first major animated character I ever saw who looked remotely like me and the first heroine who did the rescuing.

The first person she saves our heroes from is David Xanatos. Jonathan Frakes voices him with an oily suavity that channels Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark but is more grounded, amoral, and dangerous than either of them. Xanatos understands that has earned a kind of medieval debt-loyalty for relocating and reawakening the gargoyles, and he wastes no time exploiting this for his own ends. When he can no longer use Goliath’s clan, he develops technology to replicate their abilities, forcing them to face off against a series of robots, cyborgs, and clones. His brand of villainy – elegant, elaborate, and nearly unbeatable – lends its name to the Xanatos Gambit.

Like I said, Tony Stark minus the alcoholism and moral compass. Riker wishes he was this cool. Xanatos reunites the clan with another member they’d believed lost in the sack of their castle: Goliath’s lieutenant and mate, Demona (Marina Sirtis). Demona possesses a Machiavellian single-mindedness; she resorts to magic, treachery, and brute force in the pursuit of her goal to exterminate humanity. Much like Magneto, she’s convinced that humans will never coexist peacefully with gargoyles, and once you’ve witnessed the distrust and cruelty that precede the destruction of her brethren, this logic almost makes sense. She’s gotten this far on a series of Faustian bargains and a heady cocktail of rage, survivor’s guilt, cognitive dissonance, and loneliness, but her conviction masks a longing for everything that might have been – for her, for Goliath, and for their lost clan. An object lesson in the dangers of revenge, Demona is no less tragic for being irredeemable.

Goliath, Elisa, and the clan battle Demona, Xanatos, and a series of other adversaries (not all of them dispatched by Xanatos) in sequences that showcase thoughtful character design. I love good fight choreography, and the hand-to-hand in Gargoyles never ceases to amaze me. The airborne combat sequences are particularly mesmerizing, combining dogfighting and midair grappling, but the earthbound stuff is no slouch either. Most kids probably wouldn’t have noticed if the gargoyles fought like large humans, but the animators make good use of their talons, tails, and wings, especially all the ways these things change the gargoyles’ relationship to gravity.

While the first season (13 episodes) follows the clan’s efforts to adjust to modern Manhattan, the second season (52 episodes) takes Goliath, Elisa, and Bronx on a “World Tour” which starts with a visit to the enchanted isle of Avalon. Referencing anything that happens after Avalon would be spoiling some neat surprises, but I can tell you that the series travels through a collection of places, times, and mythologies that would make Neil Gaiman blush. As you might have guessed from the introduction of Avalon, these episodes reference Arthurian legend and Shakespeare (mainly Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream) liberally, and I have to tip my hat to anybody who can make Oberon and Titania’s marriage make sense. Gargoyles united many of the elements that made Batman and X-Men so compelling, especially the darkness of the former and the xenophobia of the latter. But the show grew to more than the sum of its parts, its heroes and villains alike the products of complex and often surprising histories. If you loved it then, know that you can revisit it now without fear of disappointment. And if you’ve just learned about it here, know that Gargoyles is rendered beautifully, visually and auditorily. I defy you not to be seduced.

HOW TO WATCH: Seasons 1 and 2 are available on DVD. Season 2 is divided into two parts. All 3 DVDs are available on Amazon.

MUST WATCH: “Reawakening,” the final episode of the first season, features Michael Dorn as a resurrected gargoyle inhabited by three different souls. “Bushido,” the Japan episode of the World Tour, is a touching reintroduction of the trust between humans and gargoyles.

FAVORITE LINES: “Lot to go through for a piece of lawn sculpture.” “What are you doing here?” “Making sure you weren’t being ambushed.” “Man, you guys are paranoid even for New York.” “Someone had to make sure those comic book rejects didn’t find you.” “And they say the Middle Ages were barbaric.” “Flabby as I am now, I probably wouldn’t last a second in a Central American war.”

PAIR WITH: Jalapeños

LISTEN FOR: Everyone, but especially for anyone who ever starred in a Star Trek show. You already know about Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, but Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner, Kate Mulgrew, Nichelle Nichols, Avery Brooks, LeVar Burton, and Colm Meaney all make appearances. Notable non-Star Trek voices include Clancy Brown, John Rhys-Davies, Sheena Easton, Tim Curry, Diedrich Bader, Tony Shalhoub, Charles Shaughnessy, and Roddy McDowall. Seriously, everybody was on this show.

ODDS & ENDS: The magic spells sprinkled throughout the show are actually quasi-functional Latin. They are collected and translated here.

Gargoyles’ characters and plots mostly hold up today, but much of the first season’s storyline is only possible without cameraphones. Every time the gargoyles wind up in a populated area I find myself waiting for the cut to the YouTube footage.

Every gargoyle has a battle cry, equal parts growl, roar, and avian scream, which is as awesome and terrifying as it sounds.

It would have been more in character for Elisa to wear her hair short or tied back, but flowing Disney princess locks seem a small price to pay for being able to take somebody out even when you’re on crutches.

In closeup shots Xanatos appears to be rocking some serious guyliner; somehow this seems appropriate for a character voiced by Jonathan Frakes.

AFTERWARDS: The Goliath Chronicles are not available on DVD, and I strongly advise you to accept this as a sign from the TV gods, because ABC took over the show with an entirely different writing and animation staff, and it shows. Disney did approve two comic book runs, one by Slave Labor Graphics (SLG) and the other by Marvel. Both are out of print and I can’t vouch for either, but I do know that Greg Weisman, one of the show’s creators, worked on the SLG run, and that lots of fans consider it the canonical third season.

#TV #articles

4 notes · View notes

docayin-blog · 5 years

Text

How To Use Decoys To Fool Big Bucks

Many things aren’t quite as they seem. Flip through a fashion magazine and you’ll see how drastically someone’s appearance can be altered if enough time is spent and enough cash changes hands. From silkier hair to whiter teeth, fuller lips, thinner thighs and so on, the available tweaks are all but endless. Whoever first said life is but an illusion might have just laid down a copy of Vogue.

There’s also a lot of fakery in the hunting world. Generations of waterfowlers have tossed wooden ducks onto the water. And over the past few years, many hunters have begun using turkey decoys. Bird hunters regularly employ such fakes, in combination with calling, because their sharp-eyed quarry can be notoriously hard to coax into lethal range of a thimbleful of pellets.

Mimicking waterfowl and turkey sounds is something with which nearly all whitetail bowhunters can identify. Over the years, innovative deer calls for making grunts, bleats, snort-wheezes and even “roars” have become standard gear. Around the rut, few archers would think of heading afield without some sort of call in their packs. Being able to make sounds that lure bucks into bow range is often a huge advantage.

But what about the visual fakery? Where’s the deer decoy? Most bowhunters have heard of them, and even seen them used on TV hunts, but they aren’t using one themselves. If the thought of decoying has crossed their mind, it evidently was but a fleeting notion.

I don’t claim to be an expert on whitetail decoying. But maybe that’s why I’m pretty sure I can help you. Because while I don’t decoy that often, I’ve still had great success over the years. That tells me you could, too.

The Point of It All

Decoys work for different species for different reasons. Fake ducks and geese are effective because those birds are gregarious and associate other flocks with safe places to feed and rest. A migrating flock might never have seen the pond your spread is on. They’re relying on other birds to tell them it’s a good place to land.

Of course, with a turkey gobbler it’s all about reproduction. Come spring a tom wants to mate, and few things ignite his passion the way the sights and sounds of a breeding opportunity do.

What we’re looking to do with a whitetail decoy is much closer to a setup for turkeys than for ducks or geese. Even during the rut, when many bucks roam widely, they likely know where the food sources and bedding areas are. They don’t need other deer to confirm it. But they do keep their eyes open for other whitetails, whose presence might signal a chance to reproduce.

If you’ve ever had a 3-D buck target mangled by a yard-invading buck, you know how strong the visual attraction can be. When a feisty buck sees what looks like a rival, there’s potential for an aggressive response. What influences whether or not he comes all the way in is more complex. But you need not be a master decoyer to make it work.

As with most other whitetail tactics, entire books could be written on this one. In fact, my friend the late Gary Clancy did just that a number of years ago. But you can have fun decoying, and fill tags with good bucks in the process, if you follow a few simple rules.

OK, “rules” is too rigid a term. Let’s go with “guidelines.” Which means go by them, but be willing to amend or even ignore them as conditions dictate.

Guideline 1: Buck vs. Doe

You might assume that for a rutting buck, a doe standing by her lonesome, waiting for him to join her, would be the hottest ticket to success. Every nerd’s dream at the school dance, right?

That setup can work. In those rare places where the sex ratio is super tight, resulting in a short window of breeding, every doe is getting checked constantly. There, when the time is right a standing/feeding doe decoy is a real attraction. I’ve seen one of these work on mature bucks even without a buck decoy as part of the setup.

But a doe isn’t what I normally use. Most of the time, I feel, you’re better off with a buck decoy. Maybe with a doe in the setup, but often not. I’ll use a lone doe only if I don’t have a buck available.

The main reason I don’t like lone-doe setups is that real does don’t like them. Put a fake doe in a food plot or field and when the old herd doe arrives, she’s likely to freak out. She’ll often stomp around indignantly, then try to lead the rest of her clan back off the plot. If they don’t follow, she’ll become even more agitated. Prepare to listen to “blowing” for a while, as that doe prances around with her tail hairs flared. She just doesn’t like having a strange lady on her turf.

Replace the doe decoy with a buck and things tend to go better. Yes, it’s still a “new” deer, but the matriarch seems to accept that he’s an outsider just passing through. That sort of thing happens during the rut. In many cases, the boss doe quickly calms down and goes on about her business.

You might feel there’s no harm in letting that old doe lead her pack out of the area. You aren’t trying to shoot a doe anyway. But having live deer around can be helpful. They’re living decoys. Yes, too many does present can distract a buck that otherwise might have come to your decoy, but that’s when a little calling and/or rattling can come in handy.

So in most cases, I feel a lone-buck decoy is best. And in most places, a 30-day window starting around Oct. 25 often is the time to try it. After that the libido of most bucks begins to drop, with less aggression displayed.

I know of a few big deer shot over buck decoys right before velvet shedding and of a few others shot deep in the post-rut. I assume a blend of dominance and curiosity explains those approaches, as it’s unlikely they were related to breeding interest. But we can never be sure just what any buck is thinking.

Maybe because it’s often a chore to lug two decoys, few hunters use the deer equivalent of a “spread.” However, I’ve arrowed two bucks while using buck decoys standing over doe decoys. One of the fake does was a full-bodied model, minus legs and antlers, mimicking a bedded doe in heat; the other was a standing cardboard doe silhouette.

Guideline 2: Positioning Matters

Just sticking a decoy in front of a stand is a good way to educate deer. You’ll get educated too, but it could prove costly. So let’s try to get it right the first time.

Does it matter which way a buck decoy faces? I think so. Young bucks often sheepishly approach from the rear, but a big deer rarely will. He wants to intimidate this intruder, not simply gouge him in the ham. So most big bucks will come in from the side or swing around in front. Position the decoy so that either of these approach angles eventually will result in a close broadside shot.

I always have a buck decoy face me. Maybe not straight at me, but within 20 degrees one way or the other. While broadside can work, I’d rather not set it that way. One thing you’ll never see me do is face a buck decoy away from me. Again, I want to encourage a buck to see the decoy, swing around it to make eye contact with it and, in so doing, offer a good shot angle while looking away from me. Folks, that’s about as easy as bowhunting big whitetails ever gets.

How far? I like to put a buck decoy at least 22 yards out. If picking an ideal range, I’d say 25-27. But what matters most is that it be several yards inside maximum comfortable bow range. We can’t control from where a buck will come or which line he’ll take. If he goes a few yards behind the fake and stops, it might be the best shot you’ll ever get. Make sure that distance isn’t too far.

On the flip side, if the decoy’s too close to you, there’s not much room for a buck to get in front of it. If he starts in from somewhere beyond the decoy, with a tight setup he might never turn broadside until he’s right under your tree.

Be extra careful to avoid this “too close” error if you’re on the ground, as I often am on hunts for North American Whitetail TV presented by Quick Attach. Sure, I want a chip shot if I can get one — but at eye level with a mature buck nearly in my lap, all sounds and movements are magnified. I really don’t want him close enough to spit on.

In general, the more open the habitat, the better for decoying. A roaming buck might be hundreds of yards off when you spot him, and at that point he might not yet have spotted your decoy. You can rattle and/or call to get his attention and hopefully get him to see the setup. Once I know he’s seen it and is showing interest, I call very little, if any.

Don’t assume that because a decoy is easy for you to see, it’s just as visible to deer. Not only cover but also small humps or dips in the terrain can hide it from passing bucks. Even an alert deer’s head is much lower than a person’s. When in doubt, I often kneel where I’m wanting to set the decoy, then just look around. If I can’t clearly see a certain corner or other spot from which I think a buck is likely to appear, I’ll assume he couldn’t see my decoy, either.

Is there such a thing as too open? I’m not sure there is. Naturally, it can help to place the fake so a buck will feel secure in approaching. But I’ve seen how much trouble deer often have picking up decoys in timber or brush. And when their first glimpse is at close range, it can spook them. I’ve watched even big bucks bolt upon spotting decoys they felt were too close for comfort.

Setup and takedown can be tricky. If you put up a decoy long before daybreak, you risk having it approached, and even attacked, as you wait for light. This also can happen if you leave it up too long at last light. So I cut both ends of the hunting day as close as I can.

When decoying a field or plot, I’ll wait until right at legal light to pop my decoy into place, assuming no deer are in sight. In the evening, I’ll use the same approach. (Escaping any feeding area at day’s end is easier if a friend bumps deer away with a vehicle as legal light ends.)

Guideline 3: Scent Solutions

I’ve never found that big bucks insist on getting downwind of decoys, as many do when coming to rattling. Still, I often put scent on the ground, to reinforce the ruse. I’ve had great results with Evercalm, from Conquest Scents — but I wouldn’t hesitate to use an estrus scent or buck urine along with it.

Wildlife photographer Mike Biggs once told me that when he began using decoys in his photo setups, he couldn’t tell handling them with bare hands was a negative. He made no effort to keep his decoys clean and still got a lot of great photos of big, hunted bucks coming right up to them. My experience has been similar. Of course, there’s no advantage to pushing your luck on human odor. You can clean a decoy with ozone, a spray-on odor neutralizer or even a garden hose.

Guideline 4: Don't Overdo It

Next to spot-and-stalk, decoying is the most exciting archery tactic of all. Once you’ve seen it work, I think you’ll be hooked. But that’s why I must caution you: It can take serious self-control to keep from burning out a spot.

As with rattling and calling, constant decoying in one location tends to grow less effective. Yes, often we’re trying to intercept bucks roaming a wide area, and that can extend the life of a setup; the buck you fool today might have been two miles away yesterday. But over time, resident whitetails grow leery of seeing the same “frozen” deer standing in the same spot. The young buck you educate to a decoy in 2018 could be the giant that keeps his distance in 2020.

Last Nov. 10, I decoyed a big 9-pointer into crossbow range on my Missouri farm. He came in from an unexpected angle, and grass blocked any shot before he reached the Dave Smith Posturing Buck. He then bumped off a few steps but didn’t bolt. At that point I was able to get on him with my TenPoint, and within seconds it was lights out.

I doubt that buck had ever seen a decoy. Why? Because nobody had used one on the farm since 2009. The deer I shot hadn’t even been alive then.Find a place where deer haven’t been decoyed much. Should you have an encounter there but not fill your tag, maybe tweak the setup or move on to another group of deer. At a minimum, rotate stands often. Try to keep things as fresh as possible for as long as possible.

If you have a big piece of land to hunt, or a number of smaller ones, in theory you can decoy a lot. But if you’re hunting one small property, take care to limit the technique to the times, places and weather conditions in which you feel it’s really likely to pay off. That won’t be every day, and it won’t be every stand. But it doesn’t have to work every time.

In Conclusion

Some bowhunters still see decoys as gimmicks or too much trouble to bother with. But a decoy is a valuable tool. For the time, effort and dollars invested, no other tactic yields as many good shots. Around the rut, I’d far rather go bowhunting with one arrow and a decoy than a full quiver but no decoy.

Figuring out what the conditions call for is the art of all deer hunting, not just decoying. The details vary by time, habitat, weather, hunting pressure and more. But decoying isn’t just some fad. It works. So if you’ve been on the fence about trying it, hop over to the “unreal” side of whitetail bowhunting. See for yourself what all the buzz is about.

0 notes

entreprenergy · 5 years

Text

Ignore Everybody – by Hugh MacLeod

Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.

Good ideas come with a heavy burden, which is why so few people execute them. So few people can handle it.

1. Ignore everybody.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.

Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.

3. Put the hours in.

If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he works harder at it than you do.

4. Good ideas have lonely childhoods.

5. If your business plan depends on suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

6. You are responsible for your own experience.

7. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

8. Keep your day job.

The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task at hand covers both bases, but not often.

It’s balancing the need to make a good living while still maintaining one’s creative sovereignty.

The young writer who has to wait tables to pay the bills, in spite of her writing appearing in all the cool and hip magazines… who dreams of one day not having her life divided so harshly. Well, over time the “harshly” bit might go away, but not the “divided.” This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended. And nobody is immune. Not the struggling waiter, nor the movie star. As soon as you accept this, I mean really accept this, for some reason your career starts moving ahead faster.

9. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

10. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb. You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

11. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would seriously surprise me.

A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind. Which is why there are so many second-rate art directors with state-of-the-art Macintosh computers.

Successful people, artists and nonartists alike, are very good at spotting pillars. They’re very good at doing without them. Even more important, once they’ve spotted a pillar, they’re very good at quickly getting rid of it. Good pillar management is one of the most valuable talents you can have on the planet.

Keep asking the question, “Is this a pillar?” about every aspect of our business, our craft, our reason for being alive, and go from there. The more we ask, the better we get at spotting pillars, the more quickly the pillars vanish.

12. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

13. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

You’re better off doing something on the assumption that you will not be rewarded for it, that it will not receive the recognition it deserves, that it will not be worth the time and effort invested in it. The obvious advantage to this angle is, of course, if anything good comes of it, then it’s an added bonus. The second, more subtle and profound advantage is that by scuppering all hope of worldly and social betterment from the creative act, you are finally left with only one question to answer: Do you make this damn thing exist or not?

14. Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.

The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa.

Never sell something you love. Otherwise, you may as well be selling your children.

15. Dying young is overrated.

Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances. Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there’s a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work.

The bars of West Hollywood, London, and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. Meanwhile the competition is at home, working their asses off.

16. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not.

It is this red line that demarcates your sovereignty; that defines your own private creative domain. What crap you are willing to take, and what crap you’re not. What you are willing to relinquish control over, and what you aren’t. What price you are willing to pay, and what price you aren’t.

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.

When I see somebody “suffering for their art,” it’s usually a case of their not knowing where that red line is.

17. The world is changing.

If you want to be able to afford groceries in five years, I’d recommend listening closely to the (people who push change) and avoiding the (people who resist change).

In order to navigate the New Realities you have to be creative – not just within your particular profession, but in everything. Your way of looking at the world will need to become ever more fertile and original.

The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur. That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries.

They’re easy enough to find if you make the effort, if you’ve got something worthwhile to offer in return.

Avoid the folk who play it safe. They can’t help you anymore. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct; they are extinction.

18. Merit can be bought. Passion can’t. The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.

Part of understanding the creative urge is understanding that it’s primal.

We think we’re “Providing a superior integrated logistic system” or “Helping America to really taste Freshness.” In fact we’re just pissed off and want to get the hell out of the cave and kill the woolly mammoth.

19. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.

20. Sing in your own voice.

The really good artists, the really successful entrepreneurs, figure out how to circumvent their limitations, figure out how to turn their strengths into weaknesses.

Had Bob Dylan been more of a technical virtuoso, he might not have felt the need to give his song lyrics such power and resonance.

21. The choice of media is irrelevant.

My cartooning MO was and still is to just have a normal life, be a regular schmoe, with a terrific hobby on the side. It’s not exactly rocket science. This attitude seemed fairly alien to the Art Majors I met. Their chosen art form seemed more like a religion to them. It was serious. It was important. It was a big part of their identity, and it almost seemed to them that humanity’s very existence totally depended on their being able to pursue their dream as a handsomely rewarded profession.

22. Selling out is harder than it looks.

Diluting your product to make it more “commercial” will just make people like it less.

23. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

24. Worrying about “Commercial vs. Artistic” is a complete waste of time.

It’s not about whether Tom Clancy sells truckloads of books or a Nobel Prize winner sells diddly-squat. Those are just ciphers, external distractions. To me, it’s about what you are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. Different criteria altogether. Frankly, how a person nurtures and develops his or her own “creative sovereignty,” with or without the help of the world at large, is in my opinion a much more interesting subject.

25. Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

Find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long.

Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something.

Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough.

26. You have to find your own shtick.

Jackson Pollock discovering splatter paint. Or Robert Ryman discovering all-white canvases. Andy Warhol discovering silk-screen. Hunter S. Thompson discovering gonzo journalism. Duchamp discovering the found object. Jasper Johns discovering the American flag. Hemingway discovering brevity. James Joyce discovering stream-of-consciousness prose.

Somehow while playing around with something new, suddenly they found they were able to put their entire selves into it.

27. Write from the heart.

28. The best way to get approval is not to need it.

29. Power is never given. Power is taken.

The minute you become ready is the minute you stop dreaming. Suddenly it’s no longer about “becoming.” Suddenly it’s about “doing.”

You didn’t go in there, asking the editor to give you power. You went in there and politely informed the editor that you already have the power. That’s what being “ready” means. That’s what “taking power” means. Not needing anything from another person in order to be the best in the world.

30. Whatever choice you make, the Devil gets his due eventually.

31. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.

32. Remain frugal.

Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.

33. Allow your work to age with you. You become older faster than you think. Be ready for it when it happens.

34. Being Poor Sucks. The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.

35. Beware of turning hobbies into jobs.

James Gold-Smith once quipped, “When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy.” What’s true in philanderers is also true in life.

“Before, this man had a job and a hobby. Now suddenly, he’s just got the job, but no hobby anymore. But a man needs both, you see. And now what does this man, who’s always had a hobby, do with his time?” My friend held up his glass. “Answer: Drink.”

36. Savor obscurity while it lasts. Once you “make it,” your work is never the same.

if they were still “eating dog food” after a few decades, I doubt if they’d be waxing so lyrically. But as long as you can progress from it eventually, it’s a time to be savored. A time when your work is still new to you, a time when the world doesn’t need to be fed,

37. Start blogging.

38. Meaning scales

The post Ignore Everybody – by Hugh MacLeod appeared first on Entreprenergy.

from Ignore Everybody – by Hugh MacLeod

#Ignore Everybody – by Hugh MacLeod #Entreprenergy #Podcast #Andre Abi Awad #Entrepreneurs #Arab

0 notes

minhthangcoi9993-blog · 6 years

Text

Review Game Detroit: Become Human

It’s a testament to the breadth of Quantic Dream’s branching storylines that I felt terribly guilty as the credits rolled after my second playthrough of Detroit: Become Human, as I’d played against my personal moral compass to test how far I could push the story’s exploration of the morality of artificial intelligence. This was very much the opposite of my mostly peaceful first run, and Detroit obliged my wickedness to a surprising degree, leaving a trail of bodies of those who had previously survived in my wake. And while it never seems to know when enough heavy-handed expositional dialogue is enough, Detroit: Become Human manages to be a frequently moving melodrama that bends to your choices with meaningful results.

Each of those playthroughs took around 10 hours to complete, and during that time Detroit’s pace rarely lags thanks to the deft juggling act it performs, alternating between three android characters across multiple chapters: Kara, a housekeeper who must care for a little girl named Alice, Connor; a prototype police model whose assignment is to round up ‘deviant’ androids, and Markus; a carer model who believes androids should share equal rights with humans.

The trio of performances is excellent. Bryan Dechart is delightful as Connor thanks to his deadpan innocence, which makes for a great foil against the whirling dervish of his cynical partner, Clancy Brown’s Lieutenant Hank Anderson. Valorie Curry brings quiet strength to Kara, and excels at selling her love for her ward, Alice, who is quite possibly the least charismatic video game child to have ever existed. Jesse Williams employs all of his dreamy Grey’s Anatomy warmth as Markus and is never unlikeable, no matter how you choose to play him.

Based on your choices, you can change their personalities and the tone of their individual stories. In my first playthrough, for example, the relationship between a humble Connor and the android-hating Anderson played out like a knockabout buddy comedy. In my second, I let Connor’s ambitions take over, and his story was of a different genre.

Though Markus appears to fundamentally remain endearing no matter what you do (unlike Connor, who really can be played as a hero or villain), there’s a tug-of-war going on within him that throws up some of Detroit's most interesting moral quandaries. Kara’s story seems less tonally flexible but is the quietest and most intimate, which provides a welcome contrast to all the running and explosions you can opt into in the other two stories.

Play more Jelly Doods

Hot new 60 Second Burger Run

For the most part, supporting characters adapt to the way you choose to play, but there are occasional misfires. When I played as ‘nice’ Connor, for example, Anderson was far too aggressive toward him to be believable. When I played as ‘mean,’ or even ‘indifferent’ Connor, his fury made a lot more sense. At one point, Markus gained a lover very abruptly, and I felt I’d missed a slow burn somewhere. It’s noticeable when your choices feel they’re going against the grain of a more robust story.

I found all three of Detroit’s central characters to be dramatically interesting, which meant putting them in compromising situations – or worse, killing them – was a real fear throughout. It’s testament to the writing and performances that I found making decisions “just to see what would happen” teeth-clenchingly hard.

I'm a Real Boy

The backbone of Detroit’s story – meaning the one that’s relatively fixed in place despite the choices you make around it – is big, ambitious fun that takes Phillip K. Dick's question of whether androids dream of electric sheep to the nth degree. In doing so, however, it does suffer from a multitude of plot holes. Marcus appears to gain magical android powers when it suits him; Hank is impressed when Connor solves the most basic of mysteries; and one twist makes absolutely no sense if you look back on that particular storyline after having finished.

These were noticeable (and often pretty funny), but they weren’t deal-breakers for me. Detroit is audacious and silly as hell, but it’s got real heart to it. There were enough moments of quiet tenderness to keep me emotionally invested, and the stakes were suitably high - particularly in its final act - to keep me thrilled.

With this in mind, there is a lot of clumsy exposition and dialogue I was willing to forgive, as one would while watching a fun B-movie. But occasionally, Detroit ignores the standard writing rule of “show, don’t tell” to such an extent I was yanked out of the story. Bad guys spout monologues that spell out Detroit’s themes in capital letters. (There’s a compartment for androids on public transport, in case you didn’t get what Detroit was going for here.) Select side characters, like Hank’s harrowed police chief and the inexplicably wise and mystical Lucy - are loudly cliched, so we understand what their roles are without any real character development.

With the remarkable performance-capture technology – and performances – Quantic Dream has at its disposal, there’s no real reason for such heavy-handedness. Nor do I think Detroit is incapable of subtlety; some of the scenarios here are unusual and profound. But I wish its ideas had more room to breathe before being trampled by someone spelling out the meaning for us.

Characters are certainly capable of non-verbal expressiveness. The level of detail you can see in their faces is astounding; facial hair, blemishes, freckles, and moles are rendered in stunning detail, particularly in checkerboard 4K on the PS4 Pro. The animation is just as good; as Kara and Alice hurry through the rain on a freezing night, hunched over and miserable, I could have been watching two humans from the side-streets.

The world here feels very real, too, built with a sense of history. This is a miserable, dark version of a future Detroit where androids are so omnipresent that they’re old news, sold in chain stores for the price of a discount mobile phone. Little details from the sidelines tell the story of a burst tech bubble, like basements filled to the brim with discarded models or a street performer advertising the fact he is playing “human music.”

Though the path you are guided through in Detroit’s world is as linear as previous Quantic games, I felt like there was more time to enjoy these beautifully detailed environments. One of my favourite sequences involved chasing graffiti tags to find a particular location, which ended up being an eerie, silent excursion in a forgotten corner of the city. There’s also a marvelous scene in an abandoned amusement park which still creaked with enough life that I got a sense of what it might have been, once upon a time.

The way you interact with Detroit’s environments hasn’t evolved much from Quantic Dream’s usual formula, which is unobtrusive and mostly works. Action sequences are generally executed using timed button presses, swoops of the thumbstick, and occasional motion control, which evoke the action you are performing on a case-by-case basis. An android detective mode allows you to scan your environment to reconstruct crime scenes, and fast-forwarding and rewinding through these is a lot of fun, as is a new ability to ‘pre-construct’ scenarios before you execute them. I would have liked the opportunity to play around with the latter ability more than I was allowed to, in fact.

Like Beyond: Two Souls before it, though, Detroit: Become Human struggles to justify its multiple fight scenes with meaningful interactivity. Clicking on buttons at just the right time while struggling with an angry android encourages a welcome sense of participation in the fight, but you have to screw it up disastrously to fail. I understand that making combat a proper challenge runs the risk of introducing an immersion-breaking sense of trial and error, but I was left wishing the stakes were just a little higher after I ‘won’ each fight without really trying. Why make them interactive at all if the input feels so meaningless?

Of course, the way you play Detroit is primarily through the choices you make within it. While there’s that backbone of a story that can’t be shattered, which can occasionally result in frustration when it makes a decision for you to keep you from straying too far off the beaten path, I found its branching paths to be multiple and deep. Quantic Dream has been smart in making this multitude of paths transparent through flowcharts introduced at the end of each chapter, showing you just how differently it could have played out if you’d made another choice, enticing you to play through again.

Not every alternate choice leads to a drastically different story, but some will. Sometimes it might lead to the same result, but by a surprising new means. Sometimes it might change your relationship with another character and unlock a path that wasn’t there before. Sometimes it might result in death, whether that be of a supporting character or one of the central trio (they can all die at points throughout Detroit), or a dramatic action sequence with unexpected consequences. Comparing endings, not only between my first and second playthroughs but with other players, was astounding, particularly when I assumed everybody’s story had wrapped the same way as mine and found that nobody’s had.

For me, this is the biggest draw of Detroit. One playthrough really isn’t enough to see what it has to offer, and characters and world-building are interesting enough that it was a pleasure to go back to see what I’d missed in scenarios that are deceptively complex.

The Verdict

Detroit: Become Human is a poignantly pulpy interactive sci-fi drama where your choices can impact events to a greater and more satisfying degree than in most games of this type. Though I wish its story had been handled with a softer touch, especially considering the subtlety that can be conveyed through its tech and performances, its well-written and acted central trio were vital enough to me that I found myself feeling genuine distress when they were in danger and a sense of victory when they triumphed. Most importantly, Detroit offers a multitude of transparent branching paths that entice further playthroughs, and choices have a permanence that raise the stakes throughout.

0 notes

nikkifinnie-blog · 6 years

Text

Meet The Bolokos

The Bolokos are a punk band formed in 2009 in Goyave, Guadeloupe (F.W.I). They are composed of Océ Cheapfret (vocals, guitar, bombard, mandolin,) Edy Caramello (vocals, guitar, harmonica, bagpipes,) Mister Fridge (drums, vocals) and Ben O'It (bass, vocals). Pioneers of Punk Rock in Guadeloupe, the group started out playing small clubs on the island as The Sleepwalkers, but quickly renamed themselves the Bolokos. (More on what a Boloko is below!) The band is a fusion of punk, country, ska, Celtic and Creole music. They cultivate a particular style both visually and musically. In December 2014, they released their first single, "Love You As Before" on the Bokit Production label. The band is known to incorporate other instruments not commonly found in punk such as gwo ka, melodica, banjo, and trumpet. They are releasing their first LP sometime in 2018 produced by Martinican artist Kali. They are native French speakers, but wanted to do the interview in English and I found them to be a group of really funny, very independent and free thinking, extremely talented individuals. Read on! Photo credit: Lala Von Schwartz (L to R: Ben O’It, Ocè Cheapfret, Edy Caramello, Mister Fridge and Woody the bird!) Erin: Hi guys! My first and most pressing question is what the hell is a Boloko? Océ Cheapfret: Hi Erin, thank you very much for this interview! To answer your question, a Boloko is a creole term for someone with a completely extravagant odd outfit and rude manners. In the West Indies it’s a very pejorative term. He has no conscience about the lack of good taste or he simply ignores it. It’s someone who is daring and ignores fashion codes. I see him as an anti-conformist. Edy Caramello: Yeah, it’s kind of an insult. The closest thing I can think of that would translate into English, is a misfit or a bumpkin. When we began we had a different name but my eldest sister used to call us Bolokos because that’s what we were haha! So we finally changed it, thinking with a name like that it can permit us to do anything and everything. But it was a mistake, because at the beginning nobody wanted to hire us because of the name. Here we don’t have that culture of depreciating names for bands. Mister Fridge: We don’t care about what people think. Even if it’s a denigrating word in Guadeloupe, we choose to laugh at it rather than take it seriously. Erin: Tell me a bit about each one of the band members; where you are from, what made you want to play music, what instruments do you play? Mister Fridge: Let's start with the only woman in the group, Océ Cheapfret! She’s a bit like our mother, because without her we would forget a lot of things for concerts haha. But otherwise, it’s this unique, sincere, melodious voice that thrills the audience. An unforgettable character for the public, everyone remembers her. Then we have Edy Caramello, the first fan of punk in Guadeloupe, our songwriter without whom none of this would have been possible! Obviously, without us, it would be nothing, but he gave much of his persona for the band. And myself the drummer, the oldest, “el padre”. I originally come from Normandy. I have lived in Guadeloupe for 10 years. Music is vital for me. I also love trying new instruments. I literally live music, I beat the rhythm everywhere I can. Edy Caramello : Very poetic! For a shorter presentation, hum hum, I was born and grew up in Guadeloupe. I think it was listening to Bob Dylan with my father which really gave me an interest in making music rather than only listening or dancing to it. In the band I do some barking and play guitar, harmonica, bagpipes and banjo. Océ Cheapfret : I do lead vocals and play guitar, mandolin and bombard. Like Edy, I was born and grew up in the French West Indies (Martinique and Guadeloupe). After we completed our studies in France, we decided to reform our old band and spread the punk message louder than the first time. Punk rock in theWest Indies seemed a risky business at the time. You know zouk is the predominant music with dancehall and you have other Caribbean music which fills the empty spaces, so rock ‘n’ roll is nearly inexistent. But we really wanted to share this music which make us so happy and after a lot of gigs and perseverance the audience got bigger. Erin: When did you start playing music and when did you decide or realize music was the path you were going to take? Mister Fridge: I started playing music at 13 with saxophone, but I quickly changed to percussion and it has remained a passion ever since. Océ Cheapfret: My taste for rock music developed at adolescence with Californian bands like The Offspring and Red Hot Chili Peppers. I immediately wanted to play guitar. At 12, I got my first guitar from my uncle who previously got his first guitar from his uncle! It’s a kind of a family tradition! Punk music came later with more happy times. My friend Edy introduced me to this very particular scene. It’s with him that I learned how to sing when we started to play traditional tunes that inspired us so much. Edy Caramello : I was kind of late to start music compared to the other band members. I was maybe 14 or 15. I began with piano and my father taught me how to play the harmonica, but it’s Océ who taught me how to play the guitar. I don’t really know how to explain it because it’s a passion, you know? It’s when I see people dancing, shouting and singing our songs that I realize that it really worth doing it. Erin: Who are your major influences? What or who inspires you today? Océ Cheapfret: For me, traditional country music (Kingston Trio, Carter Family, etc.,) but the music that is inspiring me the most right now and makes me happy is ska! Bands like The Selecter and The Specials. Mister Fridge: I listen to a lot of Ska-P, The Offspring, but initially I'm a big fan of ska/reggae music like Toots & the Maytals or Jimmy Cliff. Edy Caramello: My biggest influence will ever remain Bob Dylan, but also The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, Hank Williams, Carter Family, Kali, D.O.A, Subhumans, UK Subs, The Damned, TV Smith, Goldblade and of course The Clash to name a few. They had a really huge impact on my musical path, and personnal developement. It’s the same people that I was listening to when I was a kid who still inspire my today but also new bands and but not exclusively in the punk scene. Erin: Living on an island, how do you think that affects your music and creativity? Do you feel isolated or are you better able to develop your own style of music and scene? Why? Edy Caramello: Very interesting one! I think living on an island (reminds me of the Cock Sparrer song!) influenced who we are because we don’t have the same culture and access to Western culture is sometimes difficult. But, Guadeloupian culture and Caribbean culture in general are dearly beloved by us. If we would have grown up in another country, we would probably never have started a band. One of the reasons we did is because nobody played the music we wanted to hear. There were some bands who played classic rock and the same boring shit we’d hear over and over again, but we wanted to hear bands like U.K. Subs or Sham 69! Sometimes we feel isolated, but we’re also proud to live here and who knows, without this distance maybe this conversation would have never happened! Océ Cheafret: Cultural mixing is very fascinating. It was very important to us to cultivate this very rich Caribbean culture and mix it with punk music. Though this association seems easy with ska, an adaptation like “Bel Aw,” was the occasion to really show our cultural plurality and give our tribute to traditional Guadeloupian music like Gwo Ka. Mister Fridge: I will add, that in Guadeloupe nobody had been as boloko as The Bolokos haha! So we try to surprise our audience at each show, change the set list etc. Erin: Do you currently have a record label you are signed with? Océ Cheapfret: No, we are a DIY band. We choose to produce ourselves. The inconvenience is we don’t have a lot of money, so things take time to happen, but the good part is we don’t have any pressure or someone who tells us what to do. Erin: Where in the world have you played shows? Edy Caramello : For now, only in the Caribbean islands, but our dream is to play at the Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, which we go to every year for our dose of punk rock! I think that after that I could stop making music and start raising chickens haha! Erin: What is the band currently working on right now? Tours? Albums? Videos? Océ Cheapfret: We are constantly playing gigs throughout the year where we can. The next one will be at a festival in Marie-Galante. We’re currently working on our début album which will be out by the end of this year. It’s already recorded, but now we have to do all the promotion ourselves until the outing. It’s times like these we realize that a label can be helpful haha. And we start filming a new video clip next week! Erin: Personally, which form of music does each member prefer? Vinyl, CD, cassette or digtal music? Why? Mister Fridge: Vinyl for the vintage side. Edy Caramello: I would like to say vinyl without sounding like a pretentious twat like Mister Fridge, but I do dig this format. It’s a sort of a ceremony when you are playing it. You’re really paying attention to what comes out of the speakers. Now it makes me sound more pretentious than him hahaha! I also still buy a lot of CD’s to support bands I like. I don’t use Spotify, Deezer or any digital platform. If I do it’s for pirating to discover bands, because I don’t have enough money to buy everything I like, but if I really appreciate them, I will buy their music in physical form. Océ Cheapfret: Vinyl has something magical and sounds alive. Although CD’s are still convenient (more choices,) and cheaper. Erin: Do you think the internet enhances or destroys the creativity of the mind? Mister Fridge: For me, it destroys the creativity of the mind. Internet influences us too much. Edy Caramello: I have a different take on this one. You know if the internet didn’t exist I would probably never had developed an interest in music, especially in punk, because we don’t have access to this music here on radio, in shops, shows, etc. But I get your point that sometimes we spend too much time on it and it can be inhibiting seeing people like a 4 year old little girl playing 1000x times better than you ever will in some YouTube video hah! Océ Cheapfret: The internet is an open door to the world and a source of inspiration, even more for us islanders. Its content can be a source of inspiration but it also can make you forget your singularity. When you look too much at the others, you forget to live and be yourself. Erin: What guitars/amps/pedals do you use? Mister Fridge: Mapex, Zildjian. Edy Caramello: I use an old telecaster that Océ’s uncle who lives in Lyon gave me few years back. (Thanks Gilles !) I’ve just replaced my first Fender amp I bought in high school with an Orange one but I don’t remember the exact model. I don’t really use pedals except for a tuner and a boost for solos. Océ Cheapfret: I’m currently using a not well known Canadian brand called Galaxy which was used by Joey Shithead for the last DOA album (last extravagant gift from my friend Edy.) So I couldn’t resist the luxury to play it with a good Orange amp! I haven’t used a pedal since, I just plug in and play! https://www.facebook.com/thebolokos/ https://www.instagram.com/thebolokos/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdKospwBCKc Read the full article

#punk #TheBolokos

0 notes

etechwire-blog · 6 years

Text

Detroit Become Human review: brilliant and flawed

New Post has been published on https://www.etechwire.com/detroit-become-human-review-brilliant-and-flawed/

Detroit Become Human review: brilliant and flawed

It’s no secret video games have long aspired to emulate the grand drama and theatre of cinema, but few developers have attempted to blur that line with quite as much conviction as Quantic Dream. Led by controversial studio head David Cage – a man who divides players and critics as much as the quality of his games does – its output certainly isn’t afraid to veer more into ‘interactive film’ territory than that of a traditional ‘game’.

That same ethos runs through the heart of its latest PlayStation 4 exclusive, and while it retains many of the issues that have dogged Cage’s titles for almost two decades, Detroit: Become Human is the studio’s most accomplished project to date.

It’s both brilliant and flawed, a technical masterpiece on a near five-year-old console where morality, duty and loyalty are all tested in equal measure. Even running on a vanilla PS4, this is one of the best-looking games on Sony’s hardware we’ve seen thus far.

Set in the titular Motor City in 2038, society has been transformed by the advent of technology. The creation of artificial intelligence capable of passing the Turing Test (whereby a machine is able to exhibit human-like intellect and behaviour) sees androids enter every avenue of life. They care for our children, clean our streets and even travel the stars on our most dangerous space voyages. They’re machines designed to serve civilisation, but it’s a civilisation that’s slowly realising these ‘plastics’ are more efficient than they ever could be.

With the environment now irrevocably damaged by an increasing population with a far longer lifespan, and Russia and America on the brink of conflict over resources in the Arctic, we enter a world seemingly on a tipping point.

As the story begins, you’ll guide the journey of three very different androids – Markus, a carer who is treated less like a slave and more like a person; Kara, a housekeeper re-entering a broken and abusive home; and Connor, an advanced model designed to investigate the rising numbers of androids rejecting their programming in favour of independent ‘deviancy’ – as they each attempt to forge their own destiny.

Disaster in Detroit

If you’ve played the likes of Heavy Rain or Beyond: Two Souls before, you’ll be familiar with the gameplay tenets Quantic Dream has stuck to with Detroit.

There are elements from myriad genres at play here – you’ll investigate crime scenes in search of clues, trade bullets in gunfights and solve environmental puzzles aplenty – and they’re all presented in a manner that’s both limiting and empowering. It’s a game that often forgets it’s a game, for better and for worse.

You’ll move each character on-screen with the left analog stick, much like a traditional third-person adventure, but there’s an almost stifling reliance on QTEs (quick-time events). Everything from clearing away dishes and preparing food, to searching for clues and platforming are all based on using a variety of analog stick movement and button combinations.

After a while, you realise you’re less of a player and more of a director as you guide each character through scenarios with multiple branching paths and divergent storylines.

It’s not necessarily a knock on Detroit – it’s no less of a ‘game’ than the likes of Until Dawn or anything Telltale has produced in recent years. But that tangible reduction in agency smacks of troubled fellow PS4-exclusive The Order: 1886.

However, while Ready at Dawn’s neo-Victorian adventure was ultimately sunk by the linearity of its story, Detroit at least spreads its narrative wings with a plot that evolves and transforms with almost every decision you make.

That also means that the game will move on, even if you make a catastrophic mistake. While many QTEs aren’t timed, there’s plenty that are, and should you run out of time or simply make a poor decision in the heat of the moment, it’s possible to kill off any of the three leads during the course of the story.

For the most part, these deaths are permanent too, with the story simply flowing on regardless. It adds a genuine sense of danger to every scene you enter, with some moments in the game reaching Telltale’s The Walking Dead or Mass Effect 2’s suicide mission levels of stress.

These stress-inducing moments aren’t particularly new to Quantic Dream’s output, but the introduction of replayable checkpoints and a storyline tracking system definitely are. The new Flow Chart might seem like sacrilege to purists, but simply being able to see just how many different paths the story has is mind-blowing in itself.

Decisions you make in one chapter can have huge consequences in the next, or one 10 chapters away, with some branching paths completely greyed off if you make certain choices.

Being able to see how certain paths and entire subplots lost can be lost forever makes for a great reason to replay Detroit multiple times. It’s also the kind of setup that will make this a far more attractive experience to those that may have avoided such games in the past.

More human than human

As you might expect for a game that’s so strongly driven by narrative, Detroit’s story is both its strongest asset and the source of its most consistent problems.

The concept of artificial intelligence gaining sentience and questioning its place in the universe is hardly anything new – in fact, it’s arguably had its best interpretations in the likes of Blade Runner and Westworld – but Quantic Dream manages to bring something relatively fresh to table, mainly due to its unflinching mission to include taboo subjects rarely covered in the medium.

Some are handled better than others, and it’s this inconsistency that makes Detroit such an inconsistent experience. The domestic abuse and drug addiction of Kara’s storyline – a subject that gained it and the studio a fair amount of criticism in the run-up to its release – are handled in a far more nuanced manner than previews may have led you to believe (although its a subject that also passes by too quickly to leave any tangible commentary).

But it’s the handling of the build-up to android revolution too quickly descends into tired cliches and melodrama, robbing it of the dramatic pay off it truly deserves.

The same duality pervades the game’s dialogue. Take the quieter and more mundane moments in the story, for example, because it’s here where Cage’s script and direction really come together.

Helping Kara connect with a detached and terrified young girl never feels forced or hackneyed (although this is also thanks to Valorie Curry’s heartfelt performance), while the interplay between the Data-esque Connor and grizzled cop Hank (portrayed by the wonderfully charming Clancy Brown) makes for the best of the three storylines thanks to their genuine chemistry.

It’s just a shame those nuanced moments are forced to coexist with painfully awkward scenes where the dialogue and character motivations suddenly descend into clunky cliche.

For instance, in one scene you’ll guide Connor as he’s questioning another character in an LA Noire-style interrogation, only for it to devolve into a standoff where a bunch of Detroit cops are suddenly drawing pistols at one another and throwing one-liners around like a straight-to-DVD action flop.

These eye-rolling moments don’t occur as often as they did in Beyond: Two Souls or Heavy Rain, but the fact they’re even present at all shows Cage and the rest of the team still have some way to go before the storytelling feels consistently matured.

Talking of Connor, his sections of the story offer the most ‘game’ for your buck. All three characters can scan their environment at any time to pick out points of interest’, but only Connor can scan objects for clues. Doing so enables him to ‘reconstruct’ specific moments based on key items of evidence, much like in the Batman: Arkham series, with highlighted areas offering further clues along the way. This in combination with those aforementioned LA Noire interrogation scenes mean you’ll often find yourself hoping the story will skip back to Connor whenever it’s with Kara or Markus.

The casting is mostly spot on for Detroit, with the exception of Markus. Considering the core of the story revolves around his decisions and the impact they have on the awakening of androids across the world, he ironically remains the most robotic of the three lead performances. Whether its the fault of the actor himself, the quality of his lines (which are, admittedly, the weakest of the three) or Cage’s direction, none of his divergent paths reveal anything other than an unremarkable character leading a worldwide revolution.

Verdict: play it

While it carries many many of the traits of that make a Quantic Dream game so different from the rest of Sony’s first-party exclusives, Detroit: Become Human is still a bold and accomplished experience that’s leaps and bounds away from its previous efforts.

At times it’s often more of a big budget visual novel than a full-on ‘game’, but, nevertheless, its themes, twists and ever-evolving character arcs will likely stay with you long after you put your DualShock 4 controller down.

#brilliant #Detroit #flawed #human #review

0 notes

hottytoddynews · 7 years

Link

By Clancy Smith. This story was originally published in the Summer 2013 issue of the Meek School Magazine and has been reprinted with the permission of its publishers.

Ole Miss alumna and news reporter Sharyn Alfonsi is on the move, specifically from the ABC network to join the team at “60 Minutes Sports.”

Alfonsi graduated from the University with honors in 1994 and has since worked for national networks CBS and ABC. She has reported extensively from war zones and was nominated for an Emmy for her “Made In America” series during her time at ABC.

Stories that Alfonsi has covered include Hurricane Katrina and the Virginia Tech Massacre. There have been so many that no one event stands out as a better reporting job than the others.

Danger has not been uncommon. Alfonsi experienced a very close call while covering the Israel-Lebanon War when Katushya rockets began pounding the bunker where she and her crew were hiding.

“I texted my husband that I loved him and good-bye,” Alfonsi admitted. “I thought that was it.”

Although she has been with two national networks, Alfonsi began her career working for a small local station in Arkansas after sending audition tapes to several small market television stations throughout the nation during her senior year at Ole Miss.

“Most of them rejected me immediately, citing my big hair and thick accent,” Alfonsi said, “but a few were kind enough to write back and give me critiques so I could improve the tape.”

After working several years for local stations, Alfonsi chose to audition for CBS. Her final interview for the job was with Dan Rather. Other reporters warned Alfonsi that he would want to discuss his favorite book, “War and peace.”

“I read ‘War and peace,’ all 1,400 pages of it, in like two days,” Alfonsi recalled. “I studied the Russian Revolution, Tolstoy, the whole bit, and I was ready, but he never asked me about the book! I was being hazed!”

Alfonsi said that moving to different networks can sometimes be hard after growing close to colleagues, but that change is good, too.

“I work really hard to maintain those friendships,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s all that really matters. your job, as great as it is, will never love you back.”

Alfonsi gives a great deal of credit to Ole Miss for helping her get where she is today. She notes that the classes and experiences she had in college taught her skills she needed in order to get a good job.

Alfonsi received her start at the campus news station, known at that time as Newscene 12.

“My freshman year, I did the weather,” she remembered. “I was awful, and my hair was so big it covered half the weather map, but I loved working there.”

Dr. Ralph Braseth, who served as alfonsi’s professor and adviser during her time at Ole Miss, says he always was impressed by the goals that alfonsi set for herself.

“You hear students say that they want to do a lot of things,” Braseth said, “but Sharyn would always say, ‘I just want to be a kick-ass reporter,’ and that really impressed me.” Braseth is quick to mention Alfonsi’s humility, integrity, and intelligence.

“Sharyn is sincerely curious about the world, and she loves to connect the dots,” he said. “She’s smart as heck, and she’s not going to be out-worked.”

Although she does not get to come back and visit Ole Miss as much as she would like, Alfonsi does have the chance to return to Oxford every now and then. Once, after an interview with the Prime Minister of Japan, Alfonsi introduced the White house press corps to the town and university.

“We spent the night hanging around the square, eating at City Grocery. they loved it,” she said. “No one wanted to leave.”

Alfonsi still manages to keep in touch with old friends from Ole Miss, especially the “journalism goobs.”

“They text and write me whenever I’m on tv,” she said, “usually to give me hell.”

Alfonsi says that it sometimes feels like she is dreaming and that she is convinced she is the “admissions mistake,” but Braseth says that he could not disagree more.

“She created all this for herself, and she doesn’t always understand that,” Braseth said. “Luck doesn’t just happen. What she has took a lot of hard work.”

In addition to her career, family is very important to Alfonsi. She has been married to her husband, Matt, for 18 years. she and her husband, a Naval Academy Graduate, met in Washington, D.C., during college through a mutual friend. They have a three-year-old son, Wyatt, and a one-year-old daughter, Flynn. Alfonsi admits that it is strange raising kids in New York.

“My son’s first word was ‘TAXI!’ but I have taught him ‘Hotty Toddy,’” she said. “Unfortunately, the only part he gets right is the ‘Ole Miss, by damn!’ part, which is always fun at Sunday School.”

During time off, Alfonsi enjoys cooking, having friends over, watching football, and playing with her children. She said she is happiest in chaos.

Braseth said he would not be surprised to find Alfonsi in the anchor chair of a major network one of these days.

“She knows the background, she knows the history, and she knows the world, and where she belongs is in the news anchor chair for the nightly newscast,” he said.

For now, though, alfonsi is excited to be a part of what she calls her dream job as a member of “60 Minutes Sports.” She said that her ideal interview would be to get the whole Manning family together.

“They’re so talented, generous, and funny, and the family dynamic is great,” she said. “of course, I may be a little biased!”

Her advice to college students working to achieve her level of success is simple.

“Work your tail off and be kind,” she said. “Good things will happen.”

In the time since this story was published in 2013, Alfonsi has gone on to become a contributor on 60 Minutes, she has anchored CBS This Morning, and has filled in as an anchor on the CBS Evening Show.

For questions or comments email [email protected].

The post Meek School Magazine: Sharyn Alfonsi Is On The Move appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

#hottytoddy #olemiss #oxfordms #oxford ms #mississippi #university of mississippi #the grove

0 notes

docayin-blog · 5 years

Text

How To Use Decoys To Fool Big Bucks

The Point of It All

Of course, with a turkey gobbler it’s all about reproduction. Come spring a tom wants to mate, and few things ignite his passion the way the sights and sounds of a breeding opportunity do.

OK, “rules” is too rigid a term. Let’s go with “guidelines.” Which means go by them, but be willing to amend or even ignore them as conditions dictate.

Guideline 1: Buck vs. Doe

You might assume that for a rutting buck, a doe standing by her lonesome, waiting for him to join her, would be the hottest ticket to success. Every nerd’s dream at the school dance, right?

Guideline 2: Positioning Matters

Just sticking a decoy in front of a stand is a good way to educate deer. You’ll get educated too, but it could prove costly. So let’s try to get it right the first time.

Guideline 3: Scent Solutions

Guideline 4: Don't Overdo It

In Conclusion

0 notes