Name in symbols generator for text msg
People Fucking Dying
2015.12.30 18:37 PUSClFER People Fucking Dying
Videos and GIFs of people (figuratively) fucking dying.
2009.11.01 00:31 Math Homework Reddit
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2008.10.03 17:04 Magic: The Redditing
A diverse community of players devoted to Magic: the Gathering, a trading card game ("TCG") produced by Wizards of the Coast and originally designed by Richard Garfield. Join us discussing news, tournaments, gameplay, deckbuilding, strategy, lore, fan art, and more.
2024.05.19 17:42 WorldGoneAway Weekend at Harvey's
(TL;DR - I run a module written by a DM from another group, it goes off the rails, I allow it, we have fun, and the other DM completely loses their shit on me when they hear about it a few years later.)
This one is hopefully going to be fun, the original event happened a number of years ago, and the end of the event is fairly recent, so a lot of the earlier details are a little bit fuzzy but I can definitely relate the story.
Back in my game store days, I was the DM of one of two consistent Dungeons & Dragons groups at my LGS. The other DM and I really weren't friends, and I can't say we even actually liked each other, but we had a mutual respect and we had a few common players in our respective games.
One day the other DM approached me with a folder of papers. He said he had written a module that he was thinking of publishing and he wanted to have other DMs run the game with a few different groups at the same time so that he can have usable feedback. I told him I would read it and then I would try running it with my group.
It wasn't bad. Not exactly the best writing, there were some small spelling and grammar mistakes, but not anything incomprehensible. The plot basically involves a corrupt treasurer of a merchant guild blackmailing the player characters into doing a long series of side quests because he could very easily frame them for an event they witness.
The thing about this was that the writer spent a considerable amount of effort in writing contingencies so that the villain in the story could not be killed too early because it would ultimately result in the players getting framed for the event anyway. Kind of heavy-handed railroading, but I would give it a shot.
The corrupt merchant guild treasurer was Harvey. He was a smarthy middle-aged half-elf with what was described as a "manipulative personality"; None of that is actually relevant to the story.
My players decided that instead of trying to investigate the potential murder of another merchant guild office holder, they were going to try to loot Harvey's office before meeting him.
While the players are looting, Harvey walks back into his office after paying for the hit on the other office holder, one of the party members panics and wins the initiative before Harvey can even speak. Two natural 20s later, Harvey is dead.
Well shit.
The thing is, the way the module was written, every opportunity the players would have to kill him early, there would be witnesses and contingencies. This particular event did not, and wasn't exactly planned for in the original writing. When the players characters search him, and find out who he is, the players collectively panic and try to find a way to get out of the situation without having the whole town after them.
So after about 30 minutes of in and out of character discussion among the players, they eventually came to an agreement...
They were going to try to keep up a charade where everybody in town thought Harvey was still alive and that they were his best friends looking out for him enough for the events of the story to resolve themselves.
"Hold on, you guys are going to actually try to do a Weekend at Bernie's on this?"
"Well, what other options do we have? We are in big trouble otherwise! "
Every single time something like this happens, I am famous for saying four very specific words…
"Okay, roll for it."
Potentially 15 sessions worth of dark political conspiracy then proceeded to turn into 22 sessions of black comedy gold.
Finally at the end, one of the other merchant guild office holder storms into Harvey's office while the players characters are in the next room trying to explain to a town guard that the reason Harvey is slumped in his chair is because he's drunk. In full view of the party and the guard through an open dividing wall, the other merchant proceeds to start stabbing Harvey multiple times. The other merchant guild member is promptly arrested for Harvey's murder, and the players are praised for being true friends to Harvey and the town, and are invited to his funeral.
The hilarious thing is that this end result was in fact one of the possible endings that the original author had written into the module (merchant guild member murders Harvey and frees the PCs of the blackmail). My players just had a really messed up way of getting there though.
I went back to the other DM, handed him back the folder, told him that the players loved it, we took a few liberties, but they ended up getting what he called "Ending C" in the DM notes. He asked me for constructive criticism, and I gave him the pretty basic stuff but also mentioned a couple extra contingencies to try to keep the plot from being too inflexible.
We didn't talk about this for a few years, then I bumped into his game group when I came back in to browse the scene at my LGS a couple of weeks ago. DM greeted me and explained that the group was playing the revised version of his module for the fourth time with different characters, trying to get each of the different endings. While we were talking I ended up letting it slip just how off the rails that module got when I ran it.
I didn't think it was a big deal, But that DM proceeded to get fairly angry and offended. He asked me specifically what happened and I explained that they rather accidentally killed Harvey at the very beginning of the module and pretended he was still alive for 22 sessions just so that they would not get arrested. Two of the players at the table started to laugh hysterically, one of the players looked genuinely horrified and the DM got pissed and raised his voice.
"YOU ACTUALLY LET THEM DO THAT!? THAT'S NOT HOW THE TONE OF THE STORY IS SUPPOSED TO GO!"
I tried telling him it wasn't a big deal, told him it was just a game and that the players had a blast, but he wasn't having any of it. He told me if I was going to "defile" his writing, I should at least keep the tone consistent with the original work and tell him when it happens. I apologized, but he demanded that I leave the room. I just turned and left.
Over the ensuing week I heard from a couple of different people that this guy was cursing my name left and right and how in someway I betrayed his trust by letting the game get that way. Worst yet he somehow found my number so that he could bombard me with angry text messages about the subject. Tried to text him an apology and an explanation, but I'm pretty sure he blocked me. Haven't talked to him since.
I understand that it was his brainbaby of sorts, but I can't help but feel like this is a complete overreaction. Not to mention he clearly had it edited such that he was happy enough to run it four times and was satisfied with it. I wouldn't personally hold this kind of thing against anybody that did this very thing with one of my games. What do you guys think?
submitted by WorldGoneAway to rpghorrorstories [link] [comments]
This one is hopefully going to be fun, the original event happened a number of years ago, and the end of the event is fairly recent, so a lot of the earlier details are a little bit fuzzy but I can definitely relate the story.
Back in my game store days, I was the DM of one of two consistent Dungeons & Dragons groups at my LGS. The other DM and I really weren't friends, and I can't say we even actually liked each other, but we had a mutual respect and we had a few common players in our respective games.
One day the other DM approached me with a folder of papers. He said he had written a module that he was thinking of publishing and he wanted to have other DMs run the game with a few different groups at the same time so that he can have usable feedback. I told him I would read it and then I would try running it with my group.
It wasn't bad. Not exactly the best writing, there were some small spelling and grammar mistakes, but not anything incomprehensible. The plot basically involves a corrupt treasurer of a merchant guild blackmailing the player characters into doing a long series of side quests because he could very easily frame them for an event they witness.
The thing about this was that the writer spent a considerable amount of effort in writing contingencies so that the villain in the story could not be killed too early because it would ultimately result in the players getting framed for the event anyway. Kind of heavy-handed railroading, but I would give it a shot.
The corrupt merchant guild treasurer was Harvey. He was a smarthy middle-aged half-elf with what was described as a "manipulative personality"; None of that is actually relevant to the story.
My players decided that instead of trying to investigate the potential murder of another merchant guild office holder, they were going to try to loot Harvey's office before meeting him.
While the players are looting, Harvey walks back into his office after paying for the hit on the other office holder, one of the party members panics and wins the initiative before Harvey can even speak. Two natural 20s later, Harvey is dead.
Well shit.
The thing is, the way the module was written, every opportunity the players would have to kill him early, there would be witnesses and contingencies. This particular event did not, and wasn't exactly planned for in the original writing. When the players characters search him, and find out who he is, the players collectively panic and try to find a way to get out of the situation without having the whole town after them.
So after about 30 minutes of in and out of character discussion among the players, they eventually came to an agreement...
They were going to try to keep up a charade where everybody in town thought Harvey was still alive and that they were his best friends looking out for him enough for the events of the story to resolve themselves.
"Hold on, you guys are going to actually try to do a Weekend at Bernie's on this?"
"Well, what other options do we have? We are in big trouble otherwise! "
Every single time something like this happens, I am famous for saying four very specific words…
"Okay, roll for it."
Potentially 15 sessions worth of dark political conspiracy then proceeded to turn into 22 sessions of black comedy gold.
Finally at the end, one of the other merchant guild office holder storms into Harvey's office while the players characters are in the next room trying to explain to a town guard that the reason Harvey is slumped in his chair is because he's drunk. In full view of the party and the guard through an open dividing wall, the other merchant proceeds to start stabbing Harvey multiple times. The other merchant guild member is promptly arrested for Harvey's murder, and the players are praised for being true friends to Harvey and the town, and are invited to his funeral.
The hilarious thing is that this end result was in fact one of the possible endings that the original author had written into the module (merchant guild member murders Harvey and frees the PCs of the blackmail). My players just had a really messed up way of getting there though.
I went back to the other DM, handed him back the folder, told him that the players loved it, we took a few liberties, but they ended up getting what he called "Ending C" in the DM notes. He asked me for constructive criticism, and I gave him the pretty basic stuff but also mentioned a couple extra contingencies to try to keep the plot from being too inflexible.
We didn't talk about this for a few years, then I bumped into his game group when I came back in to browse the scene at my LGS a couple of weeks ago. DM greeted me and explained that the group was playing the revised version of his module for the fourth time with different characters, trying to get each of the different endings. While we were talking I ended up letting it slip just how off the rails that module got when I ran it.
I didn't think it was a big deal, But that DM proceeded to get fairly angry and offended. He asked me specifically what happened and I explained that they rather accidentally killed Harvey at the very beginning of the module and pretended he was still alive for 22 sessions just so that they would not get arrested. Two of the players at the table started to laugh hysterically, one of the players looked genuinely horrified and the DM got pissed and raised his voice.
"YOU ACTUALLY LET THEM DO THAT!? THAT'S NOT HOW THE TONE OF THE STORY IS SUPPOSED TO GO!"
I tried telling him it wasn't a big deal, told him it was just a game and that the players had a blast, but he wasn't having any of it. He told me if I was going to "defile" his writing, I should at least keep the tone consistent with the original work and tell him when it happens. I apologized, but he demanded that I leave the room. I just turned and left.
Over the ensuing week I heard from a couple of different people that this guy was cursing my name left and right and how in someway I betrayed his trust by letting the game get that way. Worst yet he somehow found my number so that he could bombard me with angry text messages about the subject. Tried to text him an apology and an explanation, but I'm pretty sure he blocked me. Haven't talked to him since.
I understand that it was his brainbaby of sorts, but I can't help but feel like this is a complete overreaction. Not to mention he clearly had it edited such that he was happy enough to run it four times and was satisfied with it. I wouldn't personally hold this kind of thing against anybody that did this very thing with one of my games. What do you guys think?
2024.05.19 17:42 UberEpicZach Dragon Development Diary #4: Hatching and Cradling
 | Hey Everyone! Uber here again with the third of our Dragon Development Diary! submitted by UberEpicZach to CK3AGOT [link] [comments] We now know the Dragons' Vision, the Anatomy of a Dragons Portrait, and even all of what makes a dragon unique in type and personality. Today, we are going to dive into everything about Hatching, cradling, egg laying and 'Dragon Blood'. I'll be joined by one of our scripters, Typical. Heyo, I’m Typical, one of the Advanced Scripters on the team. You may remember me as the guy who created the Faegon Invasions and or as a general onion fanatic on the main server - as Uber mentioned, we are going to go over hatching and more, which is a lot of what I had worked on for this update, so without further ado, let’s get to it. Bringing them back and Dragon LoreFor nearly a hundred years, as seen in the main series of books and our current bookmarks, dragons have been believed to be extinct. All that remains are dragon bones, eggs, and numerous written accounts. From the eyes of your average ruler, you must read over these accounts and use your best judgment. To bring dragons back, one must undergo the dangerous ritual known as the Hatching Ceremony.The Hatching Ceremony is a new activity in development. Through the choices the character makes and the pursuit of luck, you might hatch a dragon. This activity is very much based upon the attempts of numerous Targaryens in our histories, specifically, the rumours surrounding the Tragedy at Summerhall and our interpretations of that event in our Nine-Penny Kings Bookmark. To start your adventure into Hatching, you must select an egg and than choose where you want to hatch the dragon egg. (Note all following images are WIP; and art is underway progress) https://preview.redd.it/rk4czf9cfe1d1.png?width=943&format=png&auto=webp&s=015ec8f4b33e3ab6f484ccb08cf884497d0f7272 https://preview.redd.it/4onh3phdfe1d1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=675a8c1b3230fab1bb88b858ac1bfba1f58c453d But even before doing that, I would recommend gaining as much dragon lore as possible, or else you shall meet the same fate Aegon the Unlikely did. To learn Dragon lore, you must explore places with significant dragon history, learn about the history of the place, and gain a broader picture of what a dragon really is. You may plan ahead and travel to some of these sites as part of a grander trip, twisting your travel plans to go out and hit these Points of Interest. https://preview.redd.it/yohi8hzufe1d1.png?width=1377&format=png&auto=webp&s=43b6807caacfce1440d3f317c9c62af26ae6643f https://preview.redd.it/mxos0uvwfe1d1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=ffb3317a4eb7f5a3a1bf0ecbaec952e1d1c5ac6a Hatching PreparationsOnce you've chosen the egg you want to hatch, you face the most challenging part of the Hatching Ceremony: selecting the proper method. There are two main types of the Hatching Ceremony: Knowledge Hatching and Esoteric Hatching. As the names suggest, Knowledge Hatching involves using willing maesters and other wise men to hatch the dragon through ‘Maester facts’ and logic. In contrast, Esoteric Hatching relies on a character's belief in faith, using both ritual and help from the faithful to bring the dragon to life.https://preview.redd.it/62efeoc1ge1d1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=e091b379c688b685d4547cd9c70e85486d9016f1 Next, you need to select who will be participating with you; options are the following:
Soon after your choice, the ceremony will commence, https://preview.redd.it/0blc2m1ege1d1.png?width=1831&format=png&auto=webp&s=7207cbb4ad68352d6e30a094e1a8aba4f65180ee The CeremonyWhen the ceremony starts, you can either continue or fold and end the ritual. This choice remains available until the very moment of hatching. You never know if you have unleashed dragons anew in the next moment, or uh….. It's a complicated risk overall.https://preview.redd.it/zqa09kzhge1d1.png?width=820&format=png&auto=webp&s=978cecdbf7a93d3793ab130d80ff8994591ac168 In the next event, you'll be given several options for hatching the egg. While the chance of success is random, it's weighted by your actions and attributes. For instance, someone with extensive dragon lore and Valyrian blood will have a higher chance of success than an onion farmer with no dragon lore or Valyrian blood. https://preview.redd.it/4x8exihoge1d1.png?width=1788&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d8ea0bfab220bbccd95ba1b140003fdff7c60e0 Should you Succeed, the newborn dragon shall be born, and the dragons shall return to this world; if you fail, the consequences will be dire for both you and all participants in a botched attempt unless that is if you wanted that. Yes you heard me right, the activity has 2 intents, suicide by hatching and hatching a dragon. The funny thing is that if you fail in your suicide and actually hatch a dragon, you will get a nice 2 levels of stress for that. https://preview.redd.it/djkqc5uuge1d1.png?width=1806&format=png&auto=webp&s=6008d58c022cec26d95884273af0dbb6c80c9ff0 https://preview.redd.it/x73w5ufxge1d1.png?width=522&format=png&auto=webp&s=68ac63b08423e915ecc11b151f64fbdc83f7ad42 Or the Alternative…. https://preview.redd.it/96rw8ap3he1d1.png?width=592&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6582ad9fc137be58207c1ceeefcdd773d61cf71 The Hatching Ceremony is still possible to do once the dragon is back in the world of the living since not every egg will hatch a natural way, and there is also the fact that non-Valyrians will need to take part in this dangerous procedure to be able to cradle eggs in the future. On the subject of cradling eggs, Cradling EggsOnce dragons have returned to the world. In the chance you get an egg you will be able to hatch it naturally via the new cradling mechanic. Cradling and Hatching are similar in the sense that they can end up with a hatching dragon, but cradling is, first and foremost, a much safer and lengthy procedure. While you may hatch an egg via a Hatching Ceremony over the course of a month, hatching an egg via cradling might take years; As to Cradle an Egg to hatch, one needs first to build a bond with the egg.To start cradling an egg, as with hatching an egg via ceremony, you must select the egg via character interaction. On that note, you can also gift an egg to one of your family members and tell them to start cradling an egg or give an egg to one of your courtiers and order them to start cradling, with the caveat that they need to have dragon blood. What is dragon blood? Don’t worry about it. I will explain it just past the cradling segment. https://preview.redd.it/vrulxacdhe1d1.png?width=780&format=png&auto=webp&s=afdd08ab56565c583f81f39b632f422a8b3a77c5 https://preview.redd.it/4eltxm7fhe1d1.png?width=1065&format=png&auto=webp&s=f947f109a70ac06be0655a29275a7f70bf2202bb After selecting one of the mentioned interactions, the whole process starts. After this, Players and Ruler AI can get a chance to increase their bond with an egg by selecting the new “Spend time with Egg” decision & random events. Non-ruler AI characters can increase their bond within the same range once at the beginning of each new year for performance reasons. https://preview.redd.it/jkntgxguhe1d1.png?width=1160&format=png&auto=webp&s=4ba077d5a28e719161a2ed4f4428a78c3dddf296 https://preview.redd.it/ymvicfewhe1d1.png?width=1448&format=png&auto=webp&s=3561fe5022cedbdd38cf587490d966125c7dffe1 Every year, there is a growing chance that, based on your bond with the egg, it will hatch. There is also a chance that after 10 years of not hatching, the egg will end up being a dud, forcing you to hatch the egg via ceremony. That is basically all in regards to Cradling. https://preview.redd.it/b5618qlyhe1d1.png?width=834&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b5a84a6fb5b010c90acdf94f10370a610f98d99 Dragon BloodDragon Blood is a mechanic that defines who can cradle an egg; By default, only Valyrian Cultures (High, Essosi, Westerosi Valyrian, Tolosi and Mantaryan - and derivatives) can cradle an egg. Houses such as House Targaryen, or any house that successfully becomes a dragon-riding house with the Hatching Ceremony - will be valid to Hatch, Tame and Cradle Dragons. Lastly, anyone with a blood connection up to three generations to someone with Dragon Blood is also considered valid. That is to say, be careful how you marry and grow your family, let alone sleep around; you wouldn’t want too many bastards running around 😉. This mechanic also has a set of game-rules to switch through.https://preview.redd.it/xkblxvz2ie1d1.png?width=569&format=png&auto=webp&s=8114d7355e1e35b6e108df43a1b013a12649554f Egg LayingYour dragon can lay eggs, and every year, there is a random chance they will lay one or more eggs, with a slight preference for laying one egg over multiple ones. However, what's important is that dragons age differently and thus have different times when they are more or less fertile. Depending on their age, you might get more or fewer eggs. If your dragon lays multiple eggs, the amount is weighted randomly based on factors such as your bond with the dragon, whether they have a mate, traits, and age. There is also a significant chance (base 30%) that your dragon has left at least two eggs before their passing, in which case you will get the eggs they left behind.https://preview.redd.it/892wlymake1d1.png?width=2212&format=png&auto=webp&s=dfc239b5daa4ef94564acfd7d77c3cd552db6337 That is it for today's diary, I hope everyone has enjoyed reading it all! Dragon Development Diary #1: The Vision Dragon Development Diary #2: The Anatomy of the Dragon Portrait Dragon Development Diary #3: A Dragon's Character |
2024.05.19 17:42 HumanityFirstTheory [Case Study] GPT-4 succeeded on a coding project, while GPT-4o and Claude 3 Opus both failed
I had to build a simple Node.js application, I asked Claude Opus, GPT-4o, and GPT-4 to build it. I used the same exact prompt for all three.
Background Info:
I design websites for clients, and lately I've been feeding the entire text copy of sites into LLM's for new copy inspiration and to give LLM's an idea of what the business is about (to do things like sitemap optimization and creating new information architecture).
But, it's a time-consuming process to manually go in and update all the information. I decided to see if Claude 3, GPT-4, and GPT-4o could build a simple node.js app that would take in a sitemap and then create a full transcript of all of a website's copy, which I could then copy-and-paste into GPT or Claude.
The Prompt I Used:
Discussion:
Despite trying to nudge both Claude 3 Opus and GPT-4o in the right direction by telling it what was going wrong, both did not fix their errors and instead introduced more errors.
GPT-4 was the only model that got everything right from the first-go *and* made some changes to the code base successfully when I asked it to (I wanted it to exclude all blogs from the final transcript).
I really hope that they do not remove GPT-4 and force GPT-4o on us.
I also used Claude 3 Opus when it first came out and I swear they did something to it to make it worse. I remember it being much more competent at code. I built an entire template showcase marketplace for a popular website builder platform with Claude 3 Opus when it first came out.
Curious to hear what your experiences are.
submitted by HumanityFirstTheory to ChatGPTCoding [link] [comments]
Background Info:
I design websites for clients, and lately I've been feeding the entire text copy of sites into LLM's for new copy inspiration and to give LLM's an idea of what the business is about (to do things like sitemap optimization and creating new information architecture).
But, it's a time-consuming process to manually go in and update all the information. I decided to see if Claude 3, GPT-4, and GPT-4o could build a simple node.js app that would take in a sitemap and then create a full transcript of all of a website's copy, which I could then copy-and-paste into GPT or Claude.
The Prompt I Used:
I'm a web designer working on redesigning several sites for my clients. I need to generate a full text transcript of all the H2's and paragraphs used on their existing sites, but it is time-consuming to manually visit each page and copy + paste the content. Please build me a node.js app that will scrape the entire sitemap of a website, and then extract headings and paragraphs of each page, and then compile it all in one text document. The sitemap will be located on the /sitemap.xml page. On the results page, you should list the entire content in the left hand column and then have a button that says "Copy App" which will copy all the results into the clipboard. Include all H2's and Paragraphs from each page you crawl in the final transcript. Thanks!The Results:
| Model | Result | Did it fix its code when fed the error message? |
|---|---|---|
| Claude 3 Opus | Failed, code did not work. | No, despite being fed the console error numerous times. |
| GPT-4o | Failed, code did not work. | No, despite being fed the console error numerous times. |
| GPT-4 | Succeeded from the first attempt. | - |
Despite trying to nudge both Claude 3 Opus and GPT-4o in the right direction by telling it what was going wrong, both did not fix their errors and instead introduced more errors.
GPT-4 was the only model that got everything right from the first-go *and* made some changes to the code base successfully when I asked it to (I wanted it to exclude all blogs from the final transcript).
I really hope that they do not remove GPT-4 and force GPT-4o on us.
I also used Claude 3 Opus when it first came out and I swear they did something to it to make it worse. I remember it being much more competent at code. I built an entire template showcase marketplace for a popular website builder platform with Claude 3 Opus when it first came out.
Curious to hear what your experiences are.
2024.05.19 17:40 QuietAdvance9603 Brother got 3rd OWI and rest of family doesn't know yet
This is not my main account because friends and family know of that. Also, I'm new to Al-anon. I have never written a post this long in my life and I just kept typing. Thank you to anyone who reads this or responds.
TLDR: Estranged brother got 3rd OWI, will be going to jail, and will have a felony in his record. My parents and other brother don't know about it yet but my husband and I do. I don't know what to do.
My younger brother (31), let's call Alex, and I (33f) used to not get along very well as kids - we have loving parents but they were emotionally immature (still are) and dealing with their own generational trauma. In our early 20s, we worked through a lot and became best friends. Fast forward a few years, he got an owi. He told everyone he was at a party, his drink got spiked and he didn't know what to do so drove home. Something about the story didn't sit well with me but I ignored it at the time.
About a year later, due to several reasons, I offered for him to move into my house - most notably it was supposed to be for about 6 months so he could save money as I wouldn't charge him rent. At first things seemed to be normal. He worked odd hours while I worked 8 to 5 so we didn't see each other a lot. It was clear he was depressed but he didn't want to talk about it and I didn't pry - I suggested therapy, we hung out together more, and I assured him that I was here for him any time, night or day. We started having friction when he kept coming home loudly on weeknights between 2 and 3am, waking me up. At first I asked him to be quieter and when that didn't work, we had a meeting and set some house rules - if coming home on a weeknight, park in the driveway and enter the house through the basement (my house has a walkout basement and he lived in the basement).
Things were okay for a while. Alex decided he wanted to wait another year before going to grad school. Since things were going better, I offered for him to stay with me until he figured out what he wanted to do.
Fast forward a year, Alex had no plans of leaving and I started seeing my now husband, let's call him Ryan. Ryan got along with Alex wonderfully as well as the rest of my family. Around this time, Alex kept forgetting to use the basement entrance. One night when I heard him coming home, I went downstairs (to the first floor) to talk to him. Alex was very, very drunk. I was furious and yelled at him asking him what he was doing driving drunk. I did not handle it well. He mumbled and gave excuses and said he never did this and it was just an odd circumstance. He opened up about some of his traumas and that he was going to get help. I believed him. The next morning he acted totally normal and claimed he didn't remember any of our conversation. This was followed by many more encounters exactly like that.
I went to my parents with my concerns about Alex. Their response was very much that I was exaggerating that Alex was coming home drunk or had any problem related to alcohol. They basically said that he was an adult and could make his own decisions. I went to my older brother who basically had the same response butadded he'd reach out to Alex and check in on him.
One night, I went out with Ryan to a bar, started getting a migraine and went home early. Ryan ended up coming back to my house several hours later. He woke me up and said he had run into Alex who was incredibly drunk. I texted Alex to see if he needed me to get him an Uber or come pick him up. Immediately he texted back as saying one of his friends who was sober was about to drive him back to the house and crash in the basement for the night. About an hour later I got a phone call from Alex. He was very upset and very drunk as he explained he got a flat tire and didn't know what to do. When I get there, there is no 'friend' and the flat tire wasn't a flat tire, the tire was sideways (parallel to the ground) on the rim. I put him into my car and drove him straight to my parents house while he babbled about how he hit a curb before changing the story to say it was his friend who hit the curb then Alex called an Uber for the friend so said friend wouldn't have to wait around while the car got sorted. We got to my parents, I explained the situation and that very clearly their son is drunk, drove drunk again, and that they can handle him. Dad and I sort out the car and he drove it back to his house. The next morning, I get a call from my parents explaining that Alex wasn't drunk last night but was dealing with shock from hitting the curb. In not my best move, I erupted which resulted in me going low contact with my parents.
Things continued going downhill between Alex and myself. I started to avoid my house and spent most of my non working hours at Ryan's house. It got to the point that we only interacted when the house was trashed with garbage and moldy dishes (he stopped cleaning up after himself) or I tried to talk to him about his drinking which resulted in empty promises.
At this point, Alex gets another OWI. I tell him he needs to move out, that I can't enable his behavior and that he needs help and it's not something I can fix or change, that he has to be the one who wants to change. I tell him I would do anything for him and I love him but until he is ready to make changes I can't there for him. He moved out.
Many things happen in the next two years, most notably I almost died (surgery and several extended hospital stays) and I got married to Ryan (quick courthouse ceremony). Not a word from Alex throughout all this time. Ryan and I decided to have a wedding reception. My parents brought up inviting Alex to our reception - Ryan and I talk about it and decided Alex could attend if (1) He doesn't drink any alcohol (2) he takes accountability for his actions. We give Alex 8 months to do (2). He didn't. My parents tried to manipulate the situation once the time expired (a couple weeks before the reception) but Ryan and I stood very firm on our boundaries. Two days before the reception I received awful texts from Alex about how I'm the worst, how could I do this to Mom and Dad, and if I cared about our family at all, we would allow him to come. Again, we held our boundaries which caused a lot of friction with my parents and older brother but it was absolutely the best decision for me.
Once again fast forward months to 2 days ago. I've had no contact with Alex. My mother and I were hanging out and she drops a bunch of information about Alex - he is apparently doing even better with promotions at work, seeing a therapist, and is in a happy relationship. I wanted to believe this with every fiber of my being. I don't exactly know why but I had a strong feeling which led me to looked up Alex on my state's online court system (public court document system, if you search by first and last name, any legal proceeding a person is/was involved with shows up). And that's how I found out he got a third OWI (and a driving with a suspended license) in April followed by a search warrant that was executed at his apartment a couple weeks after that. His court date is this coming week. For the third offense, he will be going to jail for at least 30 days and lose his license for years. The 3rd offense is a felony. My parents and older brother do not know what is going on, it's very clear based on how they're acting and the future plans they've been making.
I am profoundly sad. My husband and I have discussed it and we think we are not going to say anything to anyone. The truth is going to come out but after the last several years, I don't think it should come from. I don't know what to do. I feel guilty that I didn't do enough and that I'm at fault.
submitted by QuietAdvance9603 to AlAnon [link] [comments]
TLDR: Estranged brother got 3rd OWI, will be going to jail, and will have a felony in his record. My parents and other brother don't know about it yet but my husband and I do. I don't know what to do.
My younger brother (31), let's call Alex, and I (33f) used to not get along very well as kids - we have loving parents but they were emotionally immature (still are) and dealing with their own generational trauma. In our early 20s, we worked through a lot and became best friends. Fast forward a few years, he got an owi. He told everyone he was at a party, his drink got spiked and he didn't know what to do so drove home. Something about the story didn't sit well with me but I ignored it at the time.
About a year later, due to several reasons, I offered for him to move into my house - most notably it was supposed to be for about 6 months so he could save money as I wouldn't charge him rent. At first things seemed to be normal. He worked odd hours while I worked 8 to 5 so we didn't see each other a lot. It was clear he was depressed but he didn't want to talk about it and I didn't pry - I suggested therapy, we hung out together more, and I assured him that I was here for him any time, night or day. We started having friction when he kept coming home loudly on weeknights between 2 and 3am, waking me up. At first I asked him to be quieter and when that didn't work, we had a meeting and set some house rules - if coming home on a weeknight, park in the driveway and enter the house through the basement (my house has a walkout basement and he lived in the basement).
Things were okay for a while. Alex decided he wanted to wait another year before going to grad school. Since things were going better, I offered for him to stay with me until he figured out what he wanted to do.
Fast forward a year, Alex had no plans of leaving and I started seeing my now husband, let's call him Ryan. Ryan got along with Alex wonderfully as well as the rest of my family. Around this time, Alex kept forgetting to use the basement entrance. One night when I heard him coming home, I went downstairs (to the first floor) to talk to him. Alex was very, very drunk. I was furious and yelled at him asking him what he was doing driving drunk. I did not handle it well. He mumbled and gave excuses and said he never did this and it was just an odd circumstance. He opened up about some of his traumas and that he was going to get help. I believed him. The next morning he acted totally normal and claimed he didn't remember any of our conversation. This was followed by many more encounters exactly like that.
I went to my parents with my concerns about Alex. Their response was very much that I was exaggerating that Alex was coming home drunk or had any problem related to alcohol. They basically said that he was an adult and could make his own decisions. I went to my older brother who basically had the same response butadded he'd reach out to Alex and check in on him.
One night, I went out with Ryan to a bar, started getting a migraine and went home early. Ryan ended up coming back to my house several hours later. He woke me up and said he had run into Alex who was incredibly drunk. I texted Alex to see if he needed me to get him an Uber or come pick him up. Immediately he texted back as saying one of his friends who was sober was about to drive him back to the house and crash in the basement for the night. About an hour later I got a phone call from Alex. He was very upset and very drunk as he explained he got a flat tire and didn't know what to do. When I get there, there is no 'friend' and the flat tire wasn't a flat tire, the tire was sideways (parallel to the ground) on the rim. I put him into my car and drove him straight to my parents house while he babbled about how he hit a curb before changing the story to say it was his friend who hit the curb then Alex called an Uber for the friend so said friend wouldn't have to wait around while the car got sorted. We got to my parents, I explained the situation and that very clearly their son is drunk, drove drunk again, and that they can handle him. Dad and I sort out the car and he drove it back to his house. The next morning, I get a call from my parents explaining that Alex wasn't drunk last night but was dealing with shock from hitting the curb. In not my best move, I erupted which resulted in me going low contact with my parents.
Things continued going downhill between Alex and myself. I started to avoid my house and spent most of my non working hours at Ryan's house. It got to the point that we only interacted when the house was trashed with garbage and moldy dishes (he stopped cleaning up after himself) or I tried to talk to him about his drinking which resulted in empty promises.
At this point, Alex gets another OWI. I tell him he needs to move out, that I can't enable his behavior and that he needs help and it's not something I can fix or change, that he has to be the one who wants to change. I tell him I would do anything for him and I love him but until he is ready to make changes I can't there for him. He moved out.
Many things happen in the next two years, most notably I almost died (surgery and several extended hospital stays) and I got married to Ryan (quick courthouse ceremony). Not a word from Alex throughout all this time. Ryan and I decided to have a wedding reception. My parents brought up inviting Alex to our reception - Ryan and I talk about it and decided Alex could attend if (1) He doesn't drink any alcohol (2) he takes accountability for his actions. We give Alex 8 months to do (2). He didn't. My parents tried to manipulate the situation once the time expired (a couple weeks before the reception) but Ryan and I stood very firm on our boundaries. Two days before the reception I received awful texts from Alex about how I'm the worst, how could I do this to Mom and Dad, and if I cared about our family at all, we would allow him to come. Again, we held our boundaries which caused a lot of friction with my parents and older brother but it was absolutely the best decision for me.
Once again fast forward months to 2 days ago. I've had no contact with Alex. My mother and I were hanging out and she drops a bunch of information about Alex - he is apparently doing even better with promotions at work, seeing a therapist, and is in a happy relationship. I wanted to believe this with every fiber of my being. I don't exactly know why but I had a strong feeling which led me to looked up Alex on my state's online court system (public court document system, if you search by first and last name, any legal proceeding a person is/was involved with shows up). And that's how I found out he got a third OWI (and a driving with a suspended license) in April followed by a search warrant that was executed at his apartment a couple weeks after that. His court date is this coming week. For the third offense, he will be going to jail for at least 30 days and lose his license for years. The 3rd offense is a felony. My parents and older brother do not know what is going on, it's very clear based on how they're acting and the future plans they've been making.
I am profoundly sad. My husband and I have discussed it and we think we are not going to say anything to anyone. The truth is going to come out but after the last several years, I don't think it should come from. I don't know what to do. I feel guilty that I didn't do enough and that I'm at fault.
2024.05.19 17:35 VeterinarianNo2256 [M4F] The College Roommate Mishap
Please be literate, descriptive and over the age of 18 (preferebly 24+) There was a mixup with the paperwork and our characters end up as roommates in college. If you have any questions or if you're interested in this plot, feel free to send me a message.
The young man named Aaron walked down the bustling college campus, he couldn't help but feel a mix of excitement and nervousness coursing through his veins. This was the beginning of a next chapter in his life, where he aimed to meet new people and to learn a vast majority of knowledge from his teachers. With each step he took towards his new dorm room, his heart pounded with anticipation, and his mind raced with thoughts of what lay ahead.
Eventually, he reached the building that housed his dormitory. As he entered the hallway, the smell of fresh paint hit his nostrils, a sure sign of recent renovations. The walls were adorned with motivational quotes and colorful posters, creating an inviting atmosphere for the students. With his backpack slung over his shoulder, he followed the directions on the piece of paper that one of the faculty members gave to him.
Arriving at room 202, he paused outside the door for a moment. Taking a deep breath, he inserted the key into the lock and slowly turned it. With a gentle click, the door swung open, revealing his new sanctuary for the next academic year.
Aaron stepped into the room and was impressed with how clean and organized the room was. The room was comprised of two single beds tucked against opposite walls, each defined by their own corner. A large, sturdy wooden desk sat against the window, which gave off a lot of natural light that streamed through the slightly dusty glass panes.
Taking a moment to scan the space, he noticed the pristine white walls, no doubt most people would cover these bare walls with posters and pictures to give the room more personality. There was also two spacious closets, complete with sliding doors that would accommodate all his belongings.
His phone began to vibrate loudly in his back pocket. No doubt one of his friends was texting him to come see their dorm room. Aaron stuffed his hand into his pocket and pulled out his phone to respond to his friends text message.
"Hey, have you seen your dorm room yet?! They are awesome, aren't they? You should come over to mine."
"Can't. I'm still unpacking."
"Still?! You're so slow, Aaron. Text me when you're done and we'll go cause some havoc in the school."
"lol"
Aaron tossed his phone onto one of the beds. He noticed the meticulously made twin-sized mattresses, adorned with fresh sheets and fluffy pillows. Thankfully the beds were comfortable, almost as comfortable as his own bed back home.
His gaze then shifted towards the large window, framing a picturesque view of the campus. From here, he would witness countless sunrises and sunsets, changing seasons, and the ebb and flow of campus life. He imagined himself sitting there, coffee in hand, taking a moment to appreciate the beauty and serenity that each day would bring.
From outside his dorm room he heard the footsteps of someone coming closer and closer. Aaron assumed that this individual was most likely going to be his roommate for this school year. He didn't want to just awkwardly stand in the middle of the room when they walked in so he began to empty out the contents of his backpack onto his bed.
submitted by VeterinarianNo2256 to Roleplay [link] [comments]
The young man named Aaron walked down the bustling college campus, he couldn't help but feel a mix of excitement and nervousness coursing through his veins. This was the beginning of a next chapter in his life, where he aimed to meet new people and to learn a vast majority of knowledge from his teachers. With each step he took towards his new dorm room, his heart pounded with anticipation, and his mind raced with thoughts of what lay ahead.
Eventually, he reached the building that housed his dormitory. As he entered the hallway, the smell of fresh paint hit his nostrils, a sure sign of recent renovations. The walls were adorned with motivational quotes and colorful posters, creating an inviting atmosphere for the students. With his backpack slung over his shoulder, he followed the directions on the piece of paper that one of the faculty members gave to him.
Arriving at room 202, he paused outside the door for a moment. Taking a deep breath, he inserted the key into the lock and slowly turned it. With a gentle click, the door swung open, revealing his new sanctuary for the next academic year.
Aaron stepped into the room and was impressed with how clean and organized the room was. The room was comprised of two single beds tucked against opposite walls, each defined by their own corner. A large, sturdy wooden desk sat against the window, which gave off a lot of natural light that streamed through the slightly dusty glass panes.
Taking a moment to scan the space, he noticed the pristine white walls, no doubt most people would cover these bare walls with posters and pictures to give the room more personality. There was also two spacious closets, complete with sliding doors that would accommodate all his belongings.
His phone began to vibrate loudly in his back pocket. No doubt one of his friends was texting him to come see their dorm room. Aaron stuffed his hand into his pocket and pulled out his phone to respond to his friends text message.
"Hey, have you seen your dorm room yet?! They are awesome, aren't they? You should come over to mine."
"Can't. I'm still unpacking."
"Still?! You're so slow, Aaron. Text me when you're done and we'll go cause some havoc in the school."
"lol"
Aaron tossed his phone onto one of the beds. He noticed the meticulously made twin-sized mattresses, adorned with fresh sheets and fluffy pillows. Thankfully the beds were comfortable, almost as comfortable as his own bed back home.
His gaze then shifted towards the large window, framing a picturesque view of the campus. From here, he would witness countless sunrises and sunsets, changing seasons, and the ebb and flow of campus life. He imagined himself sitting there, coffee in hand, taking a moment to appreciate the beauty and serenity that each day would bring.
From outside his dorm room he heard the footsteps of someone coming closer and closer. Aaron assumed that this individual was most likely going to be his roommate for this school year. He didn't want to just awkwardly stand in the middle of the room when they walked in so he began to empty out the contents of his backpack onto his bed.
2024.05.19 17:33 InotiaKing Who Knew Statues Could Be Such Divas? (Act I)
 | https://preview.redd.it/1oqpqpbe8e1d1.png?width=1914&format=png&auto=webp&s=e6dd9d42e82c0db0924cf6d712f582db77d8ba97 submitted by InotiaKing to GenshinLorepact [link] [comments] What's up guys! It's your friendly Genshin overthinker Inotia King. As always before we begin I just want to make sure new readers have checked out my first topic which is the basis for all my theories. So if you haven't checked that out yet please click here. The new story's come and gone now and it seems to just be a reinforcement for what we've seen previously. We did already know that Remus tried to pull a Deshret but now we're seeing how far people go to achieve this flawed idea. Both Remus and Deshret before him realized just a little too late that preserved eternity was never going to work and dissolving everybody's consciousnesses into a collective goo was a bad idea. The Golden Slumber didn't save anybody and neither would melting people into Ichor, shoving their bodies into statues and then shoving them into a magical musical score. Ei lucked out in this sense. She had Yae pulling out all the stops to prevent it, using the Traveler to push Ei into place for Makoto to finally show her what she'd learned herself. So while it isn't groundbreaking to know that Boethius was wrong just like Rene would also be wrong centuries later I think this quest series gave us a few more details and showcased more of the research the miHoYo devs do for these regions. Therefore just like I did last year with Farakhkert I want to discuss a few of them. https://preview.redd.it/3et7oxo79e1d1.png?width=494&format=png&auto=webp&s=044bdf3b50882942127e2457a31d3298f8edc333 https://preview.redd.it/y1qe7t1x8e1d1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=670151ea2bada74662e50f24ed78a153e73d8887 We've actually known about this city (town?) for a long time. I think it's actually the first Fontaine city we learn about, all the way back when Inazuma first released. I don't think anybody really thought too much about it either but now it's name really makes sense. Petrichor is made from the two Greek words petr and ichor so in terms of Genshin it's very on the nose. Remus literally turned his people into ichor by dissolving their Oceanid bodies with the Primordial Sea and then shoving the resulting goo into statues, the petr or stone. In real life petrichor is just the smell of rainwater on dirt and the word ichor is actually what the Greeks called the blood of gods. From a Genshin perspective it was in a way what Remus intended the Ichor to be, a way for humanity to break free from fate which they believed was the power the gods had over them. But what is actually new is where Petrichor is. Previously we didn't even know that Fontaine was on an artificially raised platform so there was no reason to believe Petrichor would fall into some weirdly separated space yet still be called part of the region. Our oldest information about it was just that it's waters were very pure and it was beautiful. Yeah that's pretty much all of Fontaine though. In fact we knew so little about Petrichor back then that even by v4.3 Xavier, who is a local never talked about how it wasn't actually located on the Fontaine plateau but rather some separated area where even the drown-proof aspect of Fontaine's waters didn't reach. So what is this area of Fontaine called? Nostoi which is Greek for "return." In our world it was part of the story about the Trojan War, preceding Homer's the Odyssey and acts like a prologue for that part of the story, the return of the Greek heroes besides Odysseus back from the war. (There's an "Ajax" who dies in this story though he's not the same Ajax that Childe is based on.) Side Note: This timeline placement might also be important but that's a topic for another day. There's actually a French connection to Petrichor too probably to justify it's inclusion in a French region lol. If you talk to Xavier's childhood friend (and girl next door) Goldoni, her possessing Remurian tells you about Petrocorii a territory of Remuria that fell to barbarians. In our world the petrocorii were Gauls that opposed the Roman Republic during Caesar's time. Unlike petr-ichor, petro-corii is Gallic for four (petro) armies (corios) with corii acting as a common suffix for their tribes. Actually this connection to Gauls keeps going. In the same dialogue that Goldoni tells us about Petrocorii she name drops Lucius Septimius Sebelius which is a reference to Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus. (Sebelius is likely just an intentional bastardization of Severus but Sebelius is a real surname too.) Severus is notable for being the founder of the last Roman Dynasty before the Crisis of the Third Century, when Rome was temporarily defeated by the Gallic Empire. I actually brought up this part of Roman history in another topic about something that should have been totally unrelated lol. It was about how religion was historically tied to currency on our side of the world. Side Note: Goldoni herself may be a reference to the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni. I bring this up because it's a common theme when it comes to Remuria but that's also a topic for another day. Finally when possessed Goldoni calls Xavier, Xaverius. This is a reference to Franciscus Xaverius or Saint Francis Xavier, the first missionary that went to Japan before it went into Sakoku. The name Xavier is interesting by itself though. It actually predates most of these references because it's a Latinized version of the Paleo-European (Basque) surname Echevarria meaning new house. The Basques are the last surviving ethnic group native to Europe (current Europeans are all some form of Indo-European, including the Celts, Romans, Germanics) and their modern populations are located in Spain and France, influencing both nations over time. Who knew our engineefilmmaker would be such an interesting reference to his hometown which also is a preceding ancient culture that heavily influenced the modern French-inspired one? Side Note 1: After completing the Remuria World Quest it's discovered that Petrichor is stagnating. The elderly are increasingly closed off and the young find the town boring and are starting to leave. This might be a reference to the Vatican which has the world's oldest median age. As the headquarters of Catholicism it's also very traditional and young people have been leaving it too, though part of the reason is disillusionment of religion over the many scandals plaguing the church. (That said the young Petrichorians might wanna stick around. If Mecantre and Babisse are brainstorming what I think they are then Petrichor might become really interesting one day.) Side Note 2: Geographically Petrichor would more likely be based on Corsica but there is no shortage of self-importance as a stereotype of the Corsicans. No young people are going to ditch that town anytime soon. It was the birthplace of Napoleon after all. However that could actually be the link to Petrichor, to the pre-World Quest version where everybody is a proud Remurian. According to a friend I have who is part French, as arrogant as the rest of the world see the French, the French see the Corsicans. And certainly that was the vibe we got upon speaking to all of the Remurians. https://preview.redd.it/1jm7n40dee1d1.png?width=494&format=png&auto=webp&s=3747aeab86048a6a0dbc56f2f210c44a40d40f9b https://preview.redd.it/25piz3xdee1d1.png?width=1758&format=png&auto=webp&s=146010da267fa6b19482b04f3d7d8a709cedacdf Yes the previous section was just the name of the region and all the stuff we can gather from just that. That's how miHoYo's devs do things haha Now for a speed round. Hortus is the Proto-Indo-European for garden while euergetis is Greek for a worker who does good work. Together it probably means Garden of the Good Worker. However Euergetis can also be a title applied to good leaders specifically female leaders of the Hellenistic world. (Euergetes is the masculine form) Cleopatra III was also called Cleopatra Euergetis for example. The "garden" can only be reached by doing the World Quest so it's likely this garden honors Sybilla who does have the merits to justify the title. With Caesareum Palace I'm pretty sure miHoYo was going for the specific Caesareum of Alexandria so they mean a temple but that's not was Caesareum actually means. It just means Julius Caesar who of course doesn't exist in Genshin. (although going off of Rene's Root Cycle stuff he's supposed to show up sooner or later lol) Collegium Phonascorum is probably the easiest to match with the theme. It's just a group of music teachers. Since the whole thing was getting people ready for the Grand Symphony it makes sense to have some teachers teaching the music stuff. That said it's not actually a group at all. It's the name of a place and that makes sense with its real name 谐律院 or Courtyard of Harmony. Actually 谐律 is really fitting. The term does mean harmony but in both the sense of being united in peace and in terms of musical harmony, being in tune with each other. It's a very nice allusion to what the Grand Symphony was meant to do. That said Phobos is such a red flag lol! Phobos aka phobia is the God of Fear. (alongside brother Deimos) No wonder this genius plan failed. https://preview.redd.it/k2lmfvgafe1d1.png?width=1364&format=png&auto=webp&s=bd55e79583981fdd6931c63f78390870e79fedf2 Wasn't Fortuna the man's boat? Can't have a physical device double as an abstract concept my friends. That said if Fortuna actually means fate then it fits even better with the Stella Fortuna thing Ashikai came up with before, but she'd have to forego the connection with sun gods. Sebastos is the Greek version of Augustus. But I don't think Sebastos Remus is correct syntax. If this was Latin then honorifics come after the name so Remus Augustus. It would be just like the Guuji Yae issue. In English the localization team went with Guuji Yae but Raiden Shogun. Raiden Shogun is correct but because of that the correct syntax would be Yae Guuji, surnames followed by titles. In Greek we have Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannus so the titles do come after the name and therefore it should be Remus Sebastos. But I read somewhere that modern Greek puts the titles first like keerie Remus would be Mr. Remus and not Remus keerie. If there are Greeks reading this please advise thanks! Osse the cat first named himself Ouranides of Ouranopolis. Ouranides is just the name for the first generation of Titans because they were the children of Ouranos. I'm not sure what that was trying to reference for the game. Ouranos would be Saturn so he's one of the Classical Planets that have come up before. It is interesting to note that the children of the sea, the Oceanides were the second generation of Titans. Maybe Osse was trying to suggest that Remurians were the first generation of Fontainians while the ones we know of today (the former Oceanid humans) are the second? Anyway Ouranopolis is a real place or it was. It's just south of Macedonia. Today there's a small town there called Ouranopoli with a very lovely beach. Pretty sure that's not what Remus was going for when he called it the city of the future. And of course we learn that our keerie Ouranides is really Cassiodor based on Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus who was born in Scylletium. Probably just a cute reference. Scylla himself is a reference to a monster from the Odyssey sometimes described like a hydra. (S)he was the lesser of two evils because the seemingly weaker Charybdis sucked up water and anything that happens to be floating on it. We have a reference to Charybdis too all the way back in the Narzissenkreuz World Quest when we go to Fort Charybdis Ruins. Anyway Cassiodorus was a contemporary of Boethius and actually replaced him as magister officiorum when he was accused and executed for conspiracy against Rome. Gee if only Remus had let Romulus run things huh? The Romurian Empire would've seen Boe-boe coming a mile away. That said his charges were trumped up. Real life Boethius was a good guy. He was trying to reunite the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. (albeit it probably wasn't going to happen since the "Western Roman Empire" we're talking about is Germanic Rome and even today we have trouble accepting that Rome.) Cassiodorus himself lasted much longer probably because he was stationed in the Eastern Roman Empire and became more focused on education than politics. Finally, he would retire to Castellum not a golden castellum but a monastery where he continued supporting education. Before we dive into the Faded Castle part there are NPCs that are also significant. First you have Contarini Tiepolo a cop whose name is actually made up of two surnames from important Venetian families. She interpreted some of her lingering memories from being possessed as the Liliacruces Ordo. This is another fiction actually. The Liliacruces Ordo is based on the Narzissenkreuz Ordo and was popularized in Fontaine's mystery novels that Paimon likes so much. Her father Tiepolo is the Doge. It's not bit currency but Italian for the Latin Dux or leader. It was a title used in the Republic of Venice and he's actually based on the first Duke of the city-state, Jacopo Tiepolo. Duke is also a form of Dux. https://preview.redd.it/wmrqpr1rge1d1.png?width=494&format=png&auto=webp&s=c698b4b939e1f17e689557259a88af8e50722dc7 https://preview.redd.it/utbsvbprge1d1.png?width=1912&format=png&auto=webp&s=875aac379c99d89c07c190a0e2e0a22786fc1168 We already knew Cassiodor was a Harmost but now these Remurians are calling him Dominus. Harmost is Greek, specifically Spartan for a military leader. As it relates to what Remus did during his conquests the Spartans used the Harmosts to undermine Athens push for democracy with the Delian League. Similarly Dominus is a title used by Roman Emperors only after the Crisis of the Third Century when it started declining and becoming more authoritarian. Dominus actually translates to head or master like that of a household. For instance Roman slaves addressed their masters as Dominus. And it's the household thing that plays out in the next term: Domus Aurea or the Golden House. (A dominus is the head of the domus.) It's cute to think this is some kind of link between Remuria and Liyue. Ashikai would love this kind of detail for her God King theory. But I don't think it's what it is. The Golden House in Liyue is literally just the Golden House 黄金屋 whereas Domus Aurea was 黄金的大宫. 大宫 is much more glamorous than 屋. For example the White House is 白宫 and 故宫 is the Imperial Palace. The real Domus Aurea relates more to that latter example. It was Nero's second home after he supposedly burned down Rome in 64AD just to have it built. Sounds about right with who we're dealing with in Genshin's version. Side Note: Actually could that be why there's a Caesareum Palace? I mean Caesar did burn down Alexandria. And then after he died Cleopatra built the Caesareum to commemorate him. So it could relate to Nero and then our Remus. What do you guys think? To get to Domus Aurea we're told we need to breach the Initium Iani. Initium means entrance and in the original Chinese it's door which actually works really amusingly with Iani or the Roman god Ianus because he's the God of Doors. Well pretty much all definitions for initium parallel what Ianus was so we could translate Initium Iani as the Doorway of the God of Doorways, Entrance of the God of Entrances, Transition of the God of Transitions, etc. The point was that Ianus represented a change in something like when you change rooms by going through a door, the changes in season every year or changing of the guard between historical periods. It's like the miHoYo devs just wanted to throw in a cute easter egg only nerds would get, the doorway to end all doorways lol Side Note: Also because their names are so close to each other apparently Janus (alt spelling for Ianus) got mistaken for Juno (Iuno is the more accurate spelling*) sometimes confusing which god represented which month. It's funny because I had previously brought up Juno (and the Golden House actually) in that totally unrelated topic about the Gauls and the history of currency. Again this is all probably just coincidental. I just found it funny. \or* Yuno for us anime fans. Rome's version was probably more stable though. Then again she is based on Hera so.... https://preview.redd.it/fu82a3crie1d1.png?width=494&format=png&auto=webp&s=447a161bd6c1adea6908d93765ac861528fa6373 And that was all the references I found interesting from the new quest. It's really long so I think I'll leave it at that and save the lore deep dive for next time. |
2024.05.19 17:33 InotiaKing Who Knew Statues Could Be Such Divas? (Act I)
| | https://preview.redd.it/pkcgps4c8e1d1.png?width=1914&format=png&auto=webp&s=312db7fe238952a8655cc950fee2efcea965aeb4 submitted by InotiaKing to GenshinImpactLore [link] [comments] What's up guys! It's your friendly Hoyoverse overthinker Inotia King. As always before we begin I just want to make sure new readers have checked out my older topics which my newer theories are built upon. So for the Genshin ones you can click here. And for the Honkai related ones you can click here. The new story's come and gone now and it seems to just be a reinforcement for what we've seen previously. We did already know that Remus tried to pull a Deshret but now we're seeing how far people go to achieve this flawed idea. Both Remus and Deshret before him realized just a little too late that preserved eternity was never going to work and dissolving everybody's consciousnesses into a collective goo was a bad idea. The Golden Slumber didn't save anybody and neither would melting people into Ichor, shoving their bodies into statues and then shoving them into a magical musical score. Ei lucked out in this sense. She had Yae pulling out all the stops to prevent it, using the Traveler to push Ei into place for Makoto to finally show her what she'd learned herself. So while it isn't groundbreaking to know that Boethius was wrong just like Rene would also be wrong centuries later I think this quest series gave us a few more details and showcased more of the research the miHoYo devs do for these regions. Therefore just like I did last year with Farakhkert I want to discuss a few of them. https://preview.redd.it/artw51tn8e1d1.png?width=494&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e61c4a97f75fe96cbea3e2a7e1da3031bb91e08 https://preview.redd.it/qme302ih9e1d1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=4c5cd8cc8e95d4b374c26dc3a5eb294a5af2ab5d We've actually known about this city (town?) for a long time. I think it's actually the first Fontaine city we learn about, all the way back when Inazuma first released. I don't think anybody really thought too much about it either but now it's name really makes sense. Petrichor is made from the two Greek words petr and ichor so in terms of Genshin it's very on the nose. Remus literally turned his people into ichor by dissolving their Oceanid bodies with the Primordial Sea and then shoving the resulting goo into statues, the petr or stone. In real life petrichor is just the smell of rainwater on dirt and the word ichor is actually what the Greeks called the blood of gods. From a Genshin perspective it was in a way what Remus intended the Ichor to be, a way for humanity to break free from fate which they believed was the power the gods had over them. But what is actually new is where Petrichor is. Previously we didn't even know that Fontaine was on an artificially raised platform so there was no reason to believe Petrichor would fall into some weirdly separated space yet still be called part of the region. Our oldest information about it was just that it's waters were very pure and it was beautiful. Yeah that's pretty much all of Fontaine though. In fact we knew so little about Petrichor back then that even by v4.3 Xavier, who is a local never talked about how it wasn't actually located on the Fontaine plateau but rather some separated area where even the drown-proof aspect of Fontaine's waters didn't reach. So what is this area of Fontaine called? Nostoi which is Greek for "return." In our world it was part of the story about the Trojan War, preceding Homer's the Odyssey and acts like a prologue for that part of the story, the return of the Greek heroes besides Odysseus back from the war. (There's an "Ajax" who dies in this story though he's not the same Ajax that Childe is based on.) Side Note: This timeline placement might also be important but that's a topic for another day. There's actually a French connection to Petrichor too probably to justify it's inclusion in a French region lol. If you talk to Xavier's childhood friend (and girl next door) Goldoni, her possessing Remurian tells you about Petrocorii a territory of Remuria that fell to barbarians. In our world the petrocorii were Gauls that opposed the Roman Republic during Caesar's time. Unlike petr-ichor, petro-corii is Gallic for four (petro) armies (corios) with corii acting as a common suffix for their tribes. Actually this connection to Gauls keeps going. In the same dialogue that Goldoni tells us about Petrocorii she name drops Lucius Septimius Sebelius which is a reference to Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus. (Sebelius is likely just an intentional bastardization of Severus but Sebelius is a real surname too.) Severus is notable for being the founder of the last Roman Dynasty before the Crisis of the Third Century, when Rome was temporarily defeated by the Gallic Empire. I actually brought up this part of Roman history in another topic about something that should have been totally unrelated lol. It was about how religion was historically tied to currency on our side of the world. Side Note: Goldoni herself may be a reference to the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni. I bring this up because it's a common theme when it comes to Remuria but that's also a topic for another day. Finally when possessed Goldoni calls Xavier, Xaverius. This is a reference to Franciscus Xaverius or Saint Francis Xavier, the first missionary that went to Japan before it went into Sakoku. The name Xavier is interesting by itself though. It actually predates most of these references because it's a Latinized version of the Paleo-European (Basque) surname Echevarria meaning new house. The Basques are the last surviving ethnic group native to Europe (current Europeans are all some form of Indo-European, including the Celts, Romans, Germanics) and their modern populations are located in Spain and France, influencing both nations over time. Who knew our engineefilmmaker would be such an interesting reference to his hometown which also is a preceding ancient culture that heavily influenced the modern French-inspired one? Side Note 1: After completing the Remuria World Quest it's discovered that Petrichor is stagnating. The elderly are increasingly closed off and the young find the town boring and are starting to leave. This might be a reference to the Vatican which has the world's oldest median age. As the headquarters of Catholicism it's also very traditional and young people have been leaving it too, though part of the reason is disillusionment of religion over the many scandals plaguing the church. (That said the young Petrichorians might wanna stick around. If Mecantre and Babisse are brainstorming what I think they are then Petrichor might become really interesting one day.) Side Note 2: Geographically Petrichor would more likely be based on Corsica but there is no shortage of self-importance as a stereotype of the Corsicans. No young people are going to ditch that town anytime soon. It was the birthplace of Napoleon after all. However that could actually be the link to Petrichor, to the pre-World Quest version where everybody is a proud Remurian. According to a friend I have who is part French, as arrogant as the rest of the world see the French, the French see the Corsicans. And certainly that was the vibe we got upon speaking to all of the Remurians. https://preview.redd.it/e9ofcf17ee1d1.png?width=494&format=png&auto=webp&s=e9190ca1982f1a26a5da9cddd8d0ab759021f829 https://preview.redd.it/3hszv0d9ee1d1.png?width=1758&format=png&auto=webp&s=b8834124768ced11508cd89137bab9521ccec2d2 Yes the previous section was just the name of the region and all the stuff we can gather from just that. That's how miHoYo's devs do things haha Now for a speed round. Hortus is the Proto-Indo-European for garden while euergetis is Greek for a worker who does good work. Together it probably means Garden of the Good Worker. However Euergetis can also be a title applied to good leaders specifically female leaders of the Hellenistic world. (Euergetes is the masculine form) Cleopatra III was also called Cleopatra Euergetis for example. The "garden" can only be reached by doing the World Quest so it's likely this garden honors Sybilla who does have the merits to justify the title. With Caesareum Palace I'm pretty sure miHoYo was going for the specific Caesareum of Alexandria so they mean a temple but that's not was Caesareum actually means. It just means Julius Caesar who of course doesn't exist in Genshin. (although going off of Rene's Root Cycle stuff he's supposed to show up sooner or later lol) Collegium Phonascorum is probably the easiest to match with the theme. It's just a group of music teachers. Since the whole thing was getting people ready for the Grand Symphony it makes sense to have some teachers teaching the music stuff. That said it's not actually a group at all. It's the name of a place and that makes sense with its real name 谐律院 or Courtyard of Harmony. Actually 谐律 is really fitting. The term does mean harmony but in both the sense of being united in peace and in terms of musical harmony, being in tune with each other. It's a very nice allusion to what the Grand Symphony was meant to do. That said Phobos is such a red flag lol! Phobos aka phobia is the God of Fear. (alongside brother Deimos) No wonder this genius plan failed. https://preview.redd.it/0jlk5qv7fe1d1.png?width=1364&format=png&auto=webp&s=d8fe58f58d7b768153daa7568573b3b3fa008410 Wasn't Fortuna the man's boat? Can't have a physical device double as an abstract concept my friends. That said if Fortuna actually means fate then it fits even better with the Stella Fortuna thing Ashikai came up with before, but she'd have to forego the connection with sun gods. Sebastos is the Greek version of Augustus. But I don't think Sebastos Remus is correct syntax. If this was Latin then honorifics come after the name so Remus Augustus. It would be just like the Guuji Yae issue. In English the localization team went with Guuji Yae but Raiden Shogun. Raiden Shogun is correct but because of that the correct syntax would be Yae Guuji, surnames followed by titles. In Greek we have Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannus so the titles do come after the name and therefore it should be Remus Sebastos. But I read somewhere that modern Greek puts the titles first like keerie Remus would be Mr. Remus and not Remus keerie. If there are Greeks reading this please advise thanks! Osse the cat first named himself Ouranides of Ouranopolis. Ouranides is just the name for the first generation of Titans because they were the children of Ouranos. I'm not sure what that was trying to reference for the game. Ouranos would be Saturn so he's one of the Classical Planets that have come up before. It is interesting to note that the children of the sea, the Oceanides were the second generation of Titans. Maybe Osse was trying to suggest that Remurians were the first generation of Fontainians while the ones we know of today (the former Oceanid humans) are the second? Anyway Ouranopolis is a real place or it was. It's just south of Macedonia. Today there's a small town there called Ouranopoli with a very lovely beach. Pretty sure that's not what Remus was going for when he called it the city of the future. And of course we learn that our keerie Ouranides is really Cassiodor based on Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus who was born in Scylletium. Probably just a cute reference. Scylla himself is a reference to a monster from the Odyssey sometimes described like a hydra. (S)he was the lesser of two evils because the seemingly weaker Charybdis sucked up water and anything that happens to be floating on it. We have a reference to Charybdis too all the way back in the Narzissenkreuz World Quest when we go to Fort Charybdis Ruins. Anyway Cassiodorus was a contemporary of Boethius and actually replaced him as magister officiorum when he was accused and executed for conspiracy against Rome. Gee if only Remus had let Romulus run things huh? The Romurian Empire would've seen Boe-boe coming a mile away. That said his charges were trumped up. Real life Boethius was a good guy. He was trying to reunite the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. (albeit it probably wasn't going to happen since the "Western Roman Empire" we're talking about is Germanic Rome and even today we have trouble accepting that Rome.) Cassiodorus himself lasted much longer probably because he was stationed in the Eastern Roman Empire and became more focused on education than politics. Finally, he would retire to Castellum not a golden castellum but a monastery where he continued supporting education. Before we dive into the Faded Castle part there are NPCs that are also significant. First you have Contarini Tiepolo a cop whose name is actually made up of two surnames from important Venetian families. She interpreted some of her lingering memories from being possessed as the Liliacruces Ordo. This is another fiction actually. The Liliacruces Ordo is based on the Narzissenkreuz Ordo and was popularized in Fontaine's mystery novels that Paimon likes so much. Her father Tiepolo is the Doge. It's not bit currency but Italian for the Latin Dux or leader. It was a title used in the Republic of Venice and he's actually based on the first Duke of the city-state, Jacopo Tiepolo. Duke is also a form of Dux. https://preview.redd.it/gvsq8yjlge1d1.png?width=494&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d9cf8a593be810b6c1f09a94878311c0740f06c https://preview.redd.it/es9h30umge1d1.png?width=1912&format=png&auto=webp&s=b4840644e1d63c375239b43cccb7063649fdcbb0 Once we dive down it turns out that the little harp thing we grabbed was part of a series that tells Remuria's history in the Ancient Autoharmonic Music Box. The first piece of this melody is the Locus Amoenus or lovely place in Latin. The rest though are actually part of the Sequentia section of Mozart's Requiem which is of course a musical piece to honor the dead and also how we stop the Phobos. Sequentia is followed by the sinners being saved and brought to salvation in Offertorium, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei. (Agnus Dei is an allusion to Jesus and there's another really obvious one in this quest too.) Mozart actually didn't complete his Requiem and died while only completing the introduction. Joseph von Eybler is the one that actually finished the Sequentia parts and then a guy by the name of Franz Xaver Süssmayr finished the salvation portions. Franz Xaver. Hmmmm. Yes Franz is Germanic for Franciscus or Francis and Xaver is the Germanic for Xavier. Cute that one of our first Fontainian NPCs and also a native to Petrichor has such a large role in its history, at least in real world references. Before heading into the painting portal thing to get to memory world Remuria we can find a few choice books in this castle. I'll get more into them later but for now there was one term that's interesting. Cunicoricus is the predecessor to Erinnyes of Aremorica. In real life he's Welsh and the adoptive father of King Arthur in local legends. Last week I brought up Clervie and Crucabena who are also Welsh (and Irish) characters and King Arthur has been referenced a few times now with relation to Khaenri'ah. https://preview.redd.it/yfit75i9he1d1.png?width=1908&format=png&auto=webp&s=56556c8d13132fec87e7d29600de5d3ec7300d4e We already knew Cassiodor was a Harmost but now these Remurians are calling him Dominus. Harmost is Greek, specifically Spartan for a military leader. As it relates to what Remus did during his conquests the Spartans used the Harmosts to undermine Athens push for democracy with the Delian League. Similarly Dominus is a title used by Roman Emperors only after the Crisis of the Third Century when it started declining and becoming more authoritarian. Dominus actually translates to head or master like that of a household. For instance Roman slaves addressed their masters as Dominus. And it's the household thing that plays out in the next term: Domus Aurea or the Golden House. (A dominus is the head of the domus.) It's cute to think this is some kind of link between Remuria and Liyue. Ashikai would love this kind of detail for her God King theory. But I don't think it's what it is. The Golden House in Liyue is literally just the Golden House 黄金屋 whereas Domus Aurea was 黄金的大宫. 大宫 is much more glamorous than 屋. For example the White House is 白宫 and 故宫 is the Imperial Palace. The real Domus Aurea relates more to that latter example. It was Nero's second home after he supposedly burned down Rome in 64AD just to have it built. Sounds about right with who we're dealing with in Genshin's version. Side Note: Actually could that be why there's a Caesareum Palace? I mean Caesar did burn down Alexandria. And then after he died Cleopatra built the Caesareum to commemorate him. So it could relate to Nero and then our Remus. What do you guys think? To get to Domus Aurea we're told we need to breach the Initium Iani. Initium means entrance and in the original Chinese it's door which actually works really amusingly with Iani or the Roman god Ianus because he's the God of Doors. Well pretty much all definitions for initium parallel what Ianus was so we could translate Initium Iani as the Doorway of the God of Doorways, Entrance of the God of Entrances, Transition of the God of Transitions, etc. The point was that Ianus represented a change in something like when you change rooms by going through a door, the changes in season every year or changing of the guard between historical periods. It's like the miHoYo devs just wanted to throw in a cute easter egg only nerds would get, the doorway to end all doorways lol Side Note: Also because their names are so close to each other apparently Janus (alt spelling for Ianus) got mistaken for Juno (Iuno is the more accurate spelling*) sometimes confusing which god represented which month. It's funny because I had previously brought up Juno (and the Golden House actually) in that totally unrelated topic about the Gauls and the history of currency. Again this is all probably just coincidental. I just found it funny. \or* Yuno for us anime fans. Rome's version was probably more stable though. Then again she is based on Hera so.... https://preview.redd.it/aqnfnffnie1d1.png?width=494&format=png&auto=webp&s=2f786562b452b0c8ef56ee70a658ca4c5c67ce5e And that was all the references I found interesting from the new quest. It's really long so I think I'll leave it at that and save the lore deep dive for next time. |
2024.05.19 17:31 nvrgetusdtopple Why You Should Be Bullish on STYLE Protocol
About STYLE Protocol
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Why I am Bullish on STYLE
There are several reasons to be bullish on STYLE Protocol:- Usability of NFTs in Virtual Environments: Convert NFTs into practical in-game items like avatars, skins, and weapons.
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Conclusion
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2024.05.19 17:26 Ufonauter In 1979 a Puerto Rican man would observe an abduction event while simultaneously being mocked by one shark-toothed grey alien
 | The following account comes from the magazine Evidencia OVNI (No.1) by way of Puerto Rican ufologist Jorge Martin, and was later translated and published in the 1997 V42N4 issue of Flying Saucer Review. The text below is the back and forth interview conducted and translated as it appears in the FSR edition. Note: The comments 'G.C.' within this post refer to FSR editor Gordon Creighton. submitted by Ufonauter to HighStrangeness [link] [comments] We learned recently from a Sr. Luis T., Rodriguez of Sabana Grande that, according to an informant known to him, this informant had witnessed the kidnapping of a man near Tallaboa, between the towns of Ponce and Peñuelas, in the southern part of the Island of Puerto Rico. This informant, named Héctor Maldonado, a resident of Ponce, was a night-time employee of a local firm. After very great difficulty, due to his pronounced evasiveness, I did finally manage to contact this man Maldonado (aged 39, resident on Calle Isabel, Ponce), and gradually extract from him the details of his story and get him to take me to the spot where it had happened. It had been at about 9.00 o'clock one morning in November 1979, and he was out jogging near the saltings and mangrove thickets of Ponce Salt, near Tallaboa, and right by the sea, on the southern coast of Puerto Rico Island. He said: "I chanced to turn round suddenly, and there were five or six strange beings there, between 5 ft and 6ft tall, thin, with bald, biggish heads, big almond-shaped glowing eyes - just as though lit up with bright lights - not in the slightest bit normal! It was broad daylight, so it was not a case of some sort of light reflected in their eyes in the way it is at night with animal eyes. That light came from inside their eyes!" (He does not give the actual colour -G.C.) "They had thin necks and long arms, and long hands and fingers. I didn't note how many fingers - I was too shaken to notice it. The strangest thing was that their skin was a greyish-blue colour. I couldn't see any clothing on them - unless that greyish-blue stuff was itself something that covered their entire body, but to me they looked naked. I spotted no sign of any genitals at any time, though to be honest I didn't fix my attention specially on that.“ "The astonishing thing was that they had got hold of a man and were taking him off. He was a human, olive-skinned, about 5ft 9 in height, with lank black hair, and apparently unconscious. He looked as if he were petrified, with his eyes closed, and they had got hold of him by the armpits. They appeared to be very strong, because two of them were lifting him off the ground with ease. He wasn't even dragging his feet; I didn't get a clear view of his face, because I could only see him from the side. "Behind the beings, above the sea, a bit beyond the mangroves, there was a machine hanging stationary in the air. It looked more or less oval in shape, with a cupola on top, and its sides sort of fluted or grooved, and on the top it had a narrow, curved, projection with lots of lights - just like a garland of lights that you see at Christmas time. The thing was of a silvery metallic colour, and big - really big. And just hanging there in the air, not making a sound." "Suddenly one of them, who had been kneeling and seemed to be looking at something on the ground, got up and signed to me, and then I felt something as if it were inside my mind, like a voice, - but a bit strange - different from that - coming seemingly from that being. And I heard him say jestingly to the others: 'LOOK AT THAT ONE - HOW HE'S RUNNING'." (The eyewitness had in fact not stopped jogging). "AND THEN THE BEING HIMSELF STARTED RUNNING, AND MAKING FUN OF ME. Then I got the impression that he said: 'Now - just look how I run,' and he started moving at a quite fantastic speed. Then he halted beside the others, and in my mind I heard him say to them 'WE'LL TAKE HIM TOO. The others replied something like: 'Not him - leave him alone'. ... Something like that. When he was mocking me he had got great big teeth - and pointed ones — like a shark's teeth.” (See the sketch based on the eyewitness's description). https://preview.redd.it/fgti6imvge1d1.png?width=530&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ecbf2a0e06353959b28acd3c29f31dfd6aab54c "Next", he said, "That one that had laughed at me and wanted to take me, gestured towards me with his hand and threw something like a great big drop of some sort of cold liquid, which hit me on the chest. Where that had hit me, I at once began to feel very queer - as though my body was swelling up and I was feeling stiff. Like a sort of cramp. But I was so scared that I forced myself to keep on running. And, as I went on, that queer feeling began to lessen, and so I was able to go on.” "And when I did look back, I saw that they were taking the man towards that craft. I just carried on running, and didn't want to look back, and when I did finally look back next, the craft, and they and the man were all gone. And I just carried on running until I'd got right away from there. "I was terrified. And I didn't tell a soul about it. I was so scared, and felt sure that nobody would believe me. Who was going to believe a story like that? They'd say I was mad, and I wasn't going to expose myself to that, No Señor!" We asked Maldonado to give us more details of the man they were carrying off. He said: "Well, he was olive-skinned, with black hair. I don't think he would have been more than about 30. Slim. He was wearing a two-piece suit, with a check pattern, and of a creamy sort of shade. But I didn't get a clear view of his face because - as I've told you - he was sideways on to me all the time. And yes - the man was unconscious or dead. I imagine unconscious". We asked: "Didn't you notify the Police about what you had seen?" "No", he replied. "As I've already told you, I was very scared. I didn't think they would believe me. For a long time I have felt bad about what might have happened to that chap that they were taking, because I've no doubt whatsoever that they were indeed taking him. But my fear was too great, and I did nothing. For a long time I carried in my mind the scene of what happened. I couldn't stop thinking about it. But bit by bit I got control of myself and was able to bear it". I asked: "Did you continue to go jogging at that place?" He replied: "For a long time I didn't go back there, but after three years, when I was feeling calmer, I did go back there. "One day, I was running there again, on that same sector, and I fell down suddenly, because there was a change of level in the soil there. And when I looked to see the cause, I perceived that the soil there had sunk, forming a perfect circle about 100ft. in diameter. It looked just as though something large and heavy had rested there. I was astonished to see that, but I also noticed that over on the further edge of the circle some individuals with a red minibus belonging to the Civil Defence Dept. were checking the circle. That was around 1982 or May 1983. It's near the place on the salt-flats where they spread out the shrimps in the sun.” "After that, I lingered there for a while, and talked to those people, and to others, all of whom had seen UFOs thereabouts. "Furthermore, when I read of other things that you had investigated and that you had published previously in the review ENIGMA, showing more or less similar beings that have been seen in the Island and in other places, by other people, then I realized that I wasn't the only one to have seen them.” "It's true, and for some reason the Governments hide it and cover it up. But as I see it, there's far too much going on, and in the end they are going to have to give some sort of explanation and say what it is that is going on." https://preview.redd.it/st1yxeg0he1d1.png?width=362&format=png&auto=webp&s=950d230625ca99797ef79b953933234588e79caa |
2024.05.19 17:26 Ufonauter In 1979 a Puerto Rican man would observe an abduction event while simultaneously being mocked by one shark-toothed grey alien
 | The following account comes from the magazine Evidencia OVNI (No.1) by way of Puerto Rican ufologist Jorge Martin, and was later translated and published in the 1997 V42N4 issue of Flying Saucer Review. The text below is the back and forth interview conducted and translated as it appears in the FSR edition. Note: The comments 'G.C.' within this post refer to FSR editor Gordon Creighton. submitted by Ufonauter to aliens [link] [comments] We learned recently from a Sr. Luis T., Rodriguez of Sabana Grande that, according to an informant known to him, this informant had witnessed the kidnapping of a man near Tallaboa, between the towns of Ponce and Peñuelas, in the southern part of the Island of Puerto Rico. This informant, named Héctor Maldonado, a resident of Ponce, was a night-time employee of a local firm. After very great difficulty, due to his pronounced evasiveness, I did finally manage to contact this man Maldonado (aged 39, resident on Calle Isabel, Ponce), and gradually extract from him the details of his story and get him to take me to the spot where it had happened. It had been at about 9.00 o'clock one morning in November 1979, and he was out jogging near the saltings and mangrove thickets of Ponce Salt, near Tallaboa, and right by the sea, on the southern coast of Puerto Rico Island. He said: "I chanced to turn round suddenly, and there were five or six strange beings there, between 5 ft and 6ft tall, thin, with bald, biggish heads, big almond-shaped glowing eyes - just as though lit up with bright lights - not in the slightest bit normal! It was broad daylight, so it was not a case of some sort of light reflected in their eyes in the way it is at night with animal eyes. That light came from inside their eyes!" (He does not give the actual colour -G.C.) "They had thin necks and long arms, and long hands and fingers. I didn't note how many fingers - I was too shaken to notice it. The strangest thing was that their skin was a greyish-blue colour. I couldn't see any clothing on them - unless that greyish-blue stuff was itself something that covered their entire body, but to me they looked naked. I spotted no sign of any genitals at any time, though to be honest I didn't fix my attention specially on that.“ "The astonishing thing was that they had got hold of a man and were taking him off. He was a human, olive-skinned, about 5ft 9 in height, with lank black hair, and apparently unconscious. He looked as if he were petrified, with his eyes closed, and they had got hold of him by the armpits. They appeared to be very strong, because two of them were lifting him off the ground with ease. He wasn't even dragging his feet; I didn't get a clear view of his face, because I could only see him from the side. "Behind the beings, above the sea, a bit beyond the mangroves, there was a machine hanging stationary in the air. It looked more or less oval in shape, with a cupola on top, and its sides sort of fluted or grooved, and on the top it had a narrow, curved, projection with lots of lights - just like a garland of lights that you see at Christmas time. The thing was of a silvery metallic colour, and big - really big. And just hanging there in the air, not making a sound." "Suddenly one of them, who had been kneeling and seemed to be looking at something on the ground, got up and signed to me, and then I felt something as if it were inside my mind, like a voice, - but a bit strange - different from that - coming seemingly from that being. And I heard him say jestingly to the others: 'LOOK AT THAT ONE - HOW HE'S RUNNING'." (The eyewitness had in fact not stopped jogging). "AND THEN THE BEING HIMSELF STARTED RUNNING, AND MAKING FUN OF ME. Then I got the impression that he said: 'Now - just look how I run,' and he started moving at a quite fantastic speed. Then he halted beside the others, and in my mind I heard him say to them 'WE'LL TAKE HIM TOO. The others replied something like: 'Not him - leave him alone'. ... Something like that. When he was mocking me he had got great big teeth - and pointed ones — like a shark's teeth.” (See the sketch based on the eyewitness's description). https://preview.redd.it/68y8l2ewfe1d1.png?width=530&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e332c151ac69bbe43b0ba1f43dca2bd3585d36c "Next", he said, "That one that had laughed at me and wanted to take me, gestured towards me with his hand and threw something like a great big drop of some sort of cold liquid, which hit me on the chest. Where that had hit me, I at once began to feel very queer - as though my body was swelling up and I was feeling stiff. Like a sort of cramp. But I was so scared that I forced myself to keep on running. And, as I went on, that queer feeling began to lessen, and so I was able to go on.” "And when I did look back, I saw that they were taking the man towards that craft. I just carried on running, and didn't want to look back, and when I did finally look back next, the craft, and they and the man were all gone. And I just carried on running until I'd got right away from there. "I was terrified. And I didn't tell a soul about it. I was so scared, and felt sure that nobody would believe me. Who was going to believe a story like that? They'd say I was mad, and I wasn't going to expose myself to that, No Señor!" We asked Maldonado to give us more details of the man they were carrying off. He said: "Well, he was olive-skinned, with black hair. I don't think he would have been more than about 30. Slim. He was wearing a two-piece suit, with a check pattern, and of a creamy sort of shade. But I didn't get a clear view of his face because - as I've told you - he was sideways on to me all the time. And yes - the man was unconscious or dead. I imagine unconscious". We asked: "Didn't you notify the Police about what you had seen?" "No", he replied. "As I've already told you, I was very scared. I didn't think they would believe me. For a long time I have felt bad about what might have happened to that chap that they were taking, because I've no doubt whatsoever that they were indeed taking him. But my fear was too great, and I did nothing. For a long time I carried in my mind the scene of what happened. I couldn't stop thinking about it. But bit by bit I got control of myself and was able to bear it". I asked: "Did you continue to go jogging at that place?" He replied: "For a long time I didn't go back there, but after three years, when I was feeling calmer, I did go back there. "One day, I was running there again, on that same sector, and I fell down suddenly, because there was a change of level in the soil there. And when I looked to see the cause, I perceived that the soil there had sunk, forming a perfect circle about 100ft. in diameter. It looked just as though something large and heavy had rested there. I was astonished to see that, but I also noticed that over on the further edge of the circle some individuals with a red minibus belonging to the Civil Defence Dept. were checking the circle. That was around 1982 or May 1983. It's near the place on the salt-flats where they spread out the shrimps in the sun.” "After that, I lingered there for a while, and talked to those people, and to others, all of whom had seen UFOs thereabouts. "Furthermore, when I read of other things that you had investigated and that you had published previously in the review ENIGMA, showing more or less similar beings that have been seen in the Island and in other places, by other people, then I realized that I wasn't the only one to have seen them.” "It's true, and for some reason the Governments hide it and cover it up. But as I see it, there's far too much going on, and in the end they are going to have to give some sort of explanation and say what it is that is going on." https://preview.redd.it/5usbfn65ge1d1.png?width=362&format=png&auto=webp&s=09e7e338d35c3740844c39d17d2f08e218703b19 |
2024.05.19 17:26 SmoothBarnacle4891 "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER" (2022) Commentary
During the height of my high regard for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), among the movies of which I had been a major fan were the Captain America releases. At least two of them. The third film in this mini franchise - 2016's "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR" proved to be a major disappointment for me. However, when I heard that Disney and Marvel Films had plans to air a miniseries about the characters Sam Wilson aka the Falcon and James "Bucky" Barnes aka the Winter Soldier, I must admit that I felt a renewed interest in the franchise again.
When I said a renewal of the MCU franchise, I meant it. Aside from a few movies like "ANT-MAN", "BLACK PANTHER", "CAPTAIN MARVEL" and "ETERNALS"; the MCU had become a major disappointment for me ever since the release of 2015's "THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON". One might ask . . . what about the MCU television productions that aired on the Disney Plus streaming channel? Aside from one production that I somewhat liked and one that I loved, most of them have been disappointing to me. Unfortunately, I have to include this follow-up to the Captain America movies, "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER".
Set six months after 2019's "THE AVENGERS: ENDGAME", "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER" followed former war veteran/Avenger Sam Wilson, who has resumed working the for the U.S. government, while using his role as the Falcon. When the government recruits Sam to track down and deal with a group of enhanced anarchists known as "the Flag Smashers", former World War II veteran/HYDRA tool/Avenger James "Bucky" Buchannan aka the Winter Soldier decides to join Sam in his mission, due to his lingering guilt as a former HYDRA assassin and their shared experiences as Steve Rogers' close friends and battling Thanos and his army.
Since "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER" had aired on the DisneyPlus channel in six episodes, I had seriously considered ranking the episodes. But like Season three of the Marvel Netflix series, "DAREDEVIL", the more I watched "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLIDER", the more it disappointed me. Aside from complaints about its pacing, the limited series had received a great deal of praise from critics and fans alike. Because of this, I believe it was one of the most overrated productions in the MCU history. People had seemed so focused on little moments and scenes that very few had noticed how the series' narrative seemed to be all over the map. For example:
~\Sam Wilson~* - This limited series is supposed to be a follow up to the events of "ENDGAME" in which Sam had received the Captain America shield from an aging Steve Rogers, a sign for him to take up the latter's costumed role. Was this an attempt by Marvel Films/Disney to make Sam a more relevant character? If so, why? Why did a MCU character have to replace Steve as the new Captain America to be more relevant? Why not allow Sam to continue as the Falcon, only push his role to the forefront as one of the franchise's new leading characters? Some might accuse me of not wanting a black man as Captain America, a topic that was brought up in the series. Frankly, I never wanted another character - regardless of race, gender or ethnicity - to become the new Captain America. That includes Bucky Barnes. Allow Steve Rogers to fade into the background and let Sam (as the Falcon) shine as one of the franchise's new leads. However, the die has been cast. One can only sit back and see if moviegoers are willing to accept Sam as the new Captain America.
Perhaps the MCU had to make Sam the new Captain America in order to make him more relevant. Why would I say that? The showrunner for "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER", Malcolm Spellman, came dangerously close to shoving Sam into the role of the second lead or worst, a role he has been since his debut in 2014's "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" - a supporting character. During the series' first three or four episodes, someone other than Sam (either Bucky Barnes or Helmut Zemo - two white men) made decisions that allowed the plot to move forward, not Sam. He was simply regulated to being an observer or reactor. The series even managed to undermine Sam's decision not to support the Sokovia Accords in "CIVIL WAR". In thee 2016, Sam became the first Avenger to speak out against the Accords and declare his intentions not to sign it. Yet, according to Bucky in this series, Sam had merely followed Steve's example in rejecting the Accords. And Spellman did nothing to allow Sam to correct this misconception.
~\James "Bucky" Barnes~* - One of the few aspects of "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR" I found enjoyable proved to be the interactions between Sam Wilson and Bucky Buchannan. Despite their lingering jealousy and competition over the role as "Steve Rogers' best friend", the pair's interactions proved to be very entertaining, thanks to the screen chemistry between Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan. Unfortunately, Mackie and Stan could not save "CIVIL WAR" for me. Nor could they save "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER", due to its problematic writing. A good deal of that writing surrounded Bucky's character. I have so many questions about his role in this series. For example:
-Why would any official of the Joint Counter Terrorist Center allow Bucky to visit and question Helmut Zemo, the man responsible for the U.N. conference bombing in Vienna, in "CIVIL WAR"? That made very little sense to me. Surely the JCTC authorities remembered how Zemo managed to brainwash Bucky into making his own prison break in "CIVIL WAR"? Also, Bucky was on parole for his activities as a brainwashed HYDRA assassin. Yet, the JCTC had allowed him to visit Zemo? Surely, the showrunner could have allowed Sam, who was serving the U.S. government again, to be the one to visit and question Zemo?
-How on earth did Bucky managed to evade being arrested and charged for helping Zemo escape from the JCTC? The U.S. and other governments should have been suspicious of Bucky after learning about his visit to Zemo.
-Bucky came off as an arrogant school jock, who thought he was entitled to get his way - especially in his interactions with Sam. I found it hilarious that many fans had criticized John Walker aka Captain America aka U.S. Agent for such toxic behavior. Yet, they had turned a blind eye to Bucky's own behavior. And so did the series - up until the last two episodes. Why did the showrunner allow Bucky to get away with this behavior toward Sam for so long without any complaints from the latter?
-I did not care how Bucky had bullied his way into Sam's mission without the latter's consent. What I found even more annoying was the U.S. government's decision to allow Bucky to join Sam's mission after that ludicrous "therapy session" they were forced to attend together.
~\Racism -~* A good number of MCU fans had complained about the inclusion of racism in "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER". I had no problems with this direction, considering the story was about Sam, an African-American man, becoming the new Captain America. However, I had a good deal of problems with how the production explored the topic of racism.
The story of Isaiah Bradley, Marvel's second Captain America, had originated in the comics. In the MCU, he was a Korea War veteran whom the United States Army used as one of several unwilling African-American test subjects for their version of the Super Soldier serum. I realize that both Marvel Comics and the MCU had attempted to use Bradley's experience as a metaphor for the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The problem is that I cannot see the U.S. government and the Army - both racist organizations in the early 1950s - be willing to risk the possibility of creating a non-white super soldier. Despite the recent desegregation of the Armed Forces in the late 1940s. And both the government and the Army had been more than willing to use white soldiers in other experiments.
After saving a group of black American super soldiers from a prison camp, Bradly was imprisoned by the U.S. government for thirty years. I saw nothing wrong with this twist in the character's narrative, until I remembered two things - Bradley had been able to free his fellow soldiers without anyone's help; and nearly sixty years later, Steve Rogers managed to break into the Raft and free those Avengers who had refused to sign the Sokovia Accord. Why was Bradley unable to free himself from prison? This is the man who had defeated the Winter Soldier by breaking the latter's metal arm. And he was not powerful enough to make a prison break, let alone evade capture?
I had assumed Sam's difficulty in becoming the new Captain America would stem from the government's reluctance to recruit a black man for the position. That would explain their decision to recruit the blond-haired John Walker instead. But the series never really made it clear whether political racism had played a role in Walker's recruitment. The series also had James "Rhodey" Rhodes had paid Sam a visit, emphasizing the importance of the new Captain America being black. As it turned out, Sam's own insecurities about becoming Captain America had more to do with him not initially assuming the role. There was also that interesting scene outside Bradley's Baltimore home where the police arrested Sam during verbal argument with Bucky. Although the cops backed away when they recognized Sam as an Avenger, they ended up arresting the parolee Bucky for missing his required therapy appointment. This scene was supposed to be a case of racial profiling. But . . . we might as well be honest. In the real world, the police would not have backed down from hassling Sam. What I found more disturbing was the production's handling of Bucky's arrest. Once the police discovers that Sam was an Avenger; they turned to arrest Bucky for failing to show up for his missing his therapy session. Not only did the police arrest Bucky with a more gentle behavior, they did so, accompanied by Henry Jackman's mournful score, something that did not accompany the moment of Sam being arrested. Were the audiences expected to notice the hypocrisy and racism in the police's handling of the two men? Expected to feel sympathy for Bucky? Or both?
The last episode featured a scene of two black kids playing with toy Captain America shields. Someone had commented that the shields (especially in the hands of non-white children) represented hope to the future of race relations in the United States. Why? How? This country had a biracial president for EIGHT YEARS. Yet, U.S. racial policies have remained problematic even to this day. I can say the same for other countries. The so-called symbolism of this scene only reminded me of how human beings put so much faith in imagery and symbolism. And this strikes me as a FALSE FAITH. Why was taking up the mantle of a costumed hero that had been previously occupied by a white man, the only way for Sam Wilson to become relevant within the MCU franchise? What was wrong with him being "the Falcon"? Sam becoming the next Captain America was not going to save the U.S. in regard to race relations - not in real life and not in the fictional world of the MCU. Looking back on the series, the series' only scenario that seemed to expose racism in a realistic manner, proved to be Sam's failure to acquire a bank loan for his family's fishing boat in Louisiana.
~\Sharon Carter~* - I am certain many MCU fans are aware of this. One of Marvel Comics' most iconic couples happened to be Steve Rogers aka Captain America and Sharon Carter aka Agent 13. She also happened to be the great-niece of Peggy Carter, Steve's love interest during World War II. Portrayed by Emily VanCamp, Sharon was first introduced as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" as a potential love interest for Steve. Despite Sharon's appearance in the following Captain America movie, "CIVIL WAR", their romance never really developed. Many blamed the lack of chemistry between VanCamp and Chris Evans. I never had a problem with their screen chemistry. I had a problem with the lack of relationship development between Sharon and Steve. And I blame Kevin Feige's decision to transform the third Captain America film into a third (and badly written) pseudo Avengers movie. The change in the film's narrative, along with Sharon's failure to appear in "THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR" and "ENDGAME", left no opportunity for Sharon and Steve to become the romantic pair they had been in the comics. Instead, Sharon became a fugitive from the U.S. government after helping Steve and Sam hunt down Bucky, moved to Madripoor, a city-state with no U.S. extradition and became an embittered criminal known as "the Power Broker".
After "CIVIL WAR", nearly five years had passed before Sharon appeared in another MCU production - namely this series. And what happened? The franchise, with Spellman, ended up completely destroying her character by transforming her into the villain known as Power Broker, the criminal leader of an Indonesian city-state called Madripoor. After helping Steve and Sam acquire their suits and equipment in order to go after Bucky in "CIVIL WAR", Sharon lost her job with the C.I.A. and became a fugitive. She eventually moved to Madripoor, a city-state with no U.S. extradition, to evade capture, survived Thanos' Snap and became an embittered criminal nicknamed "the Power Broker" in order to survive the new world.
What really pissed me off about Sharon's arc between "CIVIL WAR" and "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER" is that her development into a major villain all happened OFF SCREEN. Off screen. Apparently, screenwriters for "INFINITY WAR" had written a draft that included Sharon in the movie. But according to Christopher Markus, he and Stephen McFeeley could not imagine scenes featuring Steve and Sharon trying to make it work in an apartment, because the 2018 movie did not have time to focus on their personal life. Why did Marvel simply fail to allow Sharon to be part of Steve's vigilante team - like Sam and Natasha Romanoff? I mean . . . good fucking grief! And why did Malcolm Spellman believe the only way Sharon could be interesting was to become a villain in "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER"? This was his idea of improving Sharon's character?
~\Helmut Zemo aka Baron Zemo~* - Why did Malcolm Spellman, Kevin Feige and the MCU thought it necessary to bring back Helmut Zemo, the Sokovian-born villain from "CIVIL WAR"? What role did he play in "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER"? I realize that Bucky, of all people, visited the incarcerated Zemo to acquire information on who had created the super-soldier serum that empowered the Flag Smashers. But why did he believe Zemo could provide the answer? Because he thought HYDRA was involved? Bucky or Sam could have searched for information from sources other than Zemo, who had been incarcerated for . . . what? Eight years? Eight years. Zemo managed to become something of a crowd-pleaser, thanks to Daniel Brühl's performance. Otherwise, I found his presence in this series unnecessary.
~\The Big Bad~* - Why on earth did it take this series so long to finally reveal the main villain's identity? At first, the series hinted the Flag Smashers, led by Karli Morgenthau. However, the series tossed other potential candidates for the Big Bad before viewers - John Walker, Helmut Zemo and yes, Sharon Carter. But in the end, Morgenthau and her group proved to be the main villains.
The Flag Smashers were a group of empowered people who believed the world was a better place between Thanos' Snap and the Blip (resurrection of those who had died during the Snap), when Humans around the world managed to unite and form a borderless society, one in which people helped others without any thought to nationalism and bias. Thanks to the Avengers, the world resumed its conflicts between nationalities and other groups. In other words, the borders returned.
Frankly, I have nothing against this ideal. Only Ms. Morgenthau and her followers resorted to violence and terrorism to achieve their goals. Does this sound familiar? It should. The Flag Smashers proved to be another example of characters with a progressive goal, resorting to extremism and becoming villains. This seemed to be a growing trend within the franchise, which I believe began with Erik "Killmonger" Stevens aka Prince N'Jadaka in 2018's "BLACK PANTHER". Since then, the MCU has not looked back at its growing roster of progressive villains. Perhaps I should not have been surprised. The franchise's ambiguous portrayal of an unconstitutional document like the Sokovia Accords, should have been the wake-up call. It seemed as if Kevin Feige, Marvel Films and Disney Studios had finally exposed themselves for the faux progressives they pretend to be. Frankly, this form of villainy has become tiresome to me.
After writing this article, I had considered ranking the six episodes featured in "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER" anyway. But I decided against it. My dislike of the series made it impossible for me to even bother. Being a fan of the first two Captain America movies, I had truly hoped this series would redeem the franchise. Unfortunately, it proved to be just as disappointing as "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR". Pity. Perhaps the fourth film, "CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD" will do the trick. I hope so.
submitted by SmoothBarnacle4891 to u/SmoothBarnacle4891 [link] [comments]
When I said a renewal of the MCU franchise, I meant it. Aside from a few movies like "ANT-MAN", "BLACK PANTHER", "CAPTAIN MARVEL" and "ETERNALS"; the MCU had become a major disappointment for me ever since the release of 2015's "THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON". One might ask . . . what about the MCU television productions that aired on the Disney Plus streaming channel? Aside from one production that I somewhat liked and one that I loved, most of them have been disappointing to me. Unfortunately, I have to include this follow-up to the Captain America movies, "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER".
Set six months after 2019's "THE AVENGERS: ENDGAME", "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER" followed former war veteran/Avenger Sam Wilson, who has resumed working the for the U.S. government, while using his role as the Falcon. When the government recruits Sam to track down and deal with a group of enhanced anarchists known as "the Flag Smashers", former World War II veteran/HYDRA tool/Avenger James "Bucky" Buchannan aka the Winter Soldier decides to join Sam in his mission, due to his lingering guilt as a former HYDRA assassin and their shared experiences as Steve Rogers' close friends and battling Thanos and his army.
Since "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER" had aired on the DisneyPlus channel in six episodes, I had seriously considered ranking the episodes. But like Season three of the Marvel Netflix series, "DAREDEVIL", the more I watched "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLIDER", the more it disappointed me. Aside from complaints about its pacing, the limited series had received a great deal of praise from critics and fans alike. Because of this, I believe it was one of the most overrated productions in the MCU history. People had seemed so focused on little moments and scenes that very few had noticed how the series' narrative seemed to be all over the map. For example:
~\Sam Wilson~* - This limited series is supposed to be a follow up to the events of "ENDGAME" in which Sam had received the Captain America shield from an aging Steve Rogers, a sign for him to take up the latter's costumed role. Was this an attempt by Marvel Films/Disney to make Sam a more relevant character? If so, why? Why did a MCU character have to replace Steve as the new Captain America to be more relevant? Why not allow Sam to continue as the Falcon, only push his role to the forefront as one of the franchise's new leading characters? Some might accuse me of not wanting a black man as Captain America, a topic that was brought up in the series. Frankly, I never wanted another character - regardless of race, gender or ethnicity - to become the new Captain America. That includes Bucky Barnes. Allow Steve Rogers to fade into the background and let Sam (as the Falcon) shine as one of the franchise's new leads. However, the die has been cast. One can only sit back and see if moviegoers are willing to accept Sam as the new Captain America.
Perhaps the MCU had to make Sam the new Captain America in order to make him more relevant. Why would I say that? The showrunner for "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER", Malcolm Spellman, came dangerously close to shoving Sam into the role of the second lead or worst, a role he has been since his debut in 2014's "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" - a supporting character. During the series' first three or four episodes, someone other than Sam (either Bucky Barnes or Helmut Zemo - two white men) made decisions that allowed the plot to move forward, not Sam. He was simply regulated to being an observer or reactor. The series even managed to undermine Sam's decision not to support the Sokovia Accords in "CIVIL WAR". In thee 2016, Sam became the first Avenger to speak out against the Accords and declare his intentions not to sign it. Yet, according to Bucky in this series, Sam had merely followed Steve's example in rejecting the Accords. And Spellman did nothing to allow Sam to correct this misconception.
~\James "Bucky" Barnes~* - One of the few aspects of "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR" I found enjoyable proved to be the interactions between Sam Wilson and Bucky Buchannan. Despite their lingering jealousy and competition over the role as "Steve Rogers' best friend", the pair's interactions proved to be very entertaining, thanks to the screen chemistry between Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan. Unfortunately, Mackie and Stan could not save "CIVIL WAR" for me. Nor could they save "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER", due to its problematic writing. A good deal of that writing surrounded Bucky's character. I have so many questions about his role in this series. For example:
-Why would any official of the Joint Counter Terrorist Center allow Bucky to visit and question Helmut Zemo, the man responsible for the U.N. conference bombing in Vienna, in "CIVIL WAR"? That made very little sense to me. Surely the JCTC authorities remembered how Zemo managed to brainwash Bucky into making his own prison break in "CIVIL WAR"? Also, Bucky was on parole for his activities as a brainwashed HYDRA assassin. Yet, the JCTC had allowed him to visit Zemo? Surely, the showrunner could have allowed Sam, who was serving the U.S. government again, to be the one to visit and question Zemo?
-How on earth did Bucky managed to evade being arrested and charged for helping Zemo escape from the JCTC? The U.S. and other governments should have been suspicious of Bucky after learning about his visit to Zemo.
-Bucky came off as an arrogant school jock, who thought he was entitled to get his way - especially in his interactions with Sam. I found it hilarious that many fans had criticized John Walker aka Captain America aka U.S. Agent for such toxic behavior. Yet, they had turned a blind eye to Bucky's own behavior. And so did the series - up until the last two episodes. Why did the showrunner allow Bucky to get away with this behavior toward Sam for so long without any complaints from the latter?
-I did not care how Bucky had bullied his way into Sam's mission without the latter's consent. What I found even more annoying was the U.S. government's decision to allow Bucky to join Sam's mission after that ludicrous "therapy session" they were forced to attend together.
~\Racism -~* A good number of MCU fans had complained about the inclusion of racism in "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER". I had no problems with this direction, considering the story was about Sam, an African-American man, becoming the new Captain America. However, I had a good deal of problems with how the production explored the topic of racism.
The story of Isaiah Bradley, Marvel's second Captain America, had originated in the comics. In the MCU, he was a Korea War veteran whom the United States Army used as one of several unwilling African-American test subjects for their version of the Super Soldier serum. I realize that both Marvel Comics and the MCU had attempted to use Bradley's experience as a metaphor for the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The problem is that I cannot see the U.S. government and the Army - both racist organizations in the early 1950s - be willing to risk the possibility of creating a non-white super soldier. Despite the recent desegregation of the Armed Forces in the late 1940s. And both the government and the Army had been more than willing to use white soldiers in other experiments.
After saving a group of black American super soldiers from a prison camp, Bradly was imprisoned by the U.S. government for thirty years. I saw nothing wrong with this twist in the character's narrative, until I remembered two things - Bradley had been able to free his fellow soldiers without anyone's help; and nearly sixty years later, Steve Rogers managed to break into the Raft and free those Avengers who had refused to sign the Sokovia Accord. Why was Bradley unable to free himself from prison? This is the man who had defeated the Winter Soldier by breaking the latter's metal arm. And he was not powerful enough to make a prison break, let alone evade capture?
I had assumed Sam's difficulty in becoming the new Captain America would stem from the government's reluctance to recruit a black man for the position. That would explain their decision to recruit the blond-haired John Walker instead. But the series never really made it clear whether political racism had played a role in Walker's recruitment. The series also had James "Rhodey" Rhodes had paid Sam a visit, emphasizing the importance of the new Captain America being black. As it turned out, Sam's own insecurities about becoming Captain America had more to do with him not initially assuming the role. There was also that interesting scene outside Bradley's Baltimore home where the police arrested Sam during verbal argument with Bucky. Although the cops backed away when they recognized Sam as an Avenger, they ended up arresting the parolee Bucky for missing his required therapy appointment. This scene was supposed to be a case of racial profiling. But . . . we might as well be honest. In the real world, the police would not have backed down from hassling Sam. What I found more disturbing was the production's handling of Bucky's arrest. Once the police discovers that Sam was an Avenger; they turned to arrest Bucky for failing to show up for his missing his therapy session. Not only did the police arrest Bucky with a more gentle behavior, they did so, accompanied by Henry Jackman's mournful score, something that did not accompany the moment of Sam being arrested. Were the audiences expected to notice the hypocrisy and racism in the police's handling of the two men? Expected to feel sympathy for Bucky? Or both?
The last episode featured a scene of two black kids playing with toy Captain America shields. Someone had commented that the shields (especially in the hands of non-white children) represented hope to the future of race relations in the United States. Why? How? This country had a biracial president for EIGHT YEARS. Yet, U.S. racial policies have remained problematic even to this day. I can say the same for other countries. The so-called symbolism of this scene only reminded me of how human beings put so much faith in imagery and symbolism. And this strikes me as a FALSE FAITH. Why was taking up the mantle of a costumed hero that had been previously occupied by a white man, the only way for Sam Wilson to become relevant within the MCU franchise? What was wrong with him being "the Falcon"? Sam becoming the next Captain America was not going to save the U.S. in regard to race relations - not in real life and not in the fictional world of the MCU. Looking back on the series, the series' only scenario that seemed to expose racism in a realistic manner, proved to be Sam's failure to acquire a bank loan for his family's fishing boat in Louisiana.
~\Sharon Carter~* - I am certain many MCU fans are aware of this. One of Marvel Comics' most iconic couples happened to be Steve Rogers aka Captain America and Sharon Carter aka Agent 13. She also happened to be the great-niece of Peggy Carter, Steve's love interest during World War II. Portrayed by Emily VanCamp, Sharon was first introduced as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" as a potential love interest for Steve. Despite Sharon's appearance in the following Captain America movie, "CIVIL WAR", their romance never really developed. Many blamed the lack of chemistry between VanCamp and Chris Evans. I never had a problem with their screen chemistry. I had a problem with the lack of relationship development between Sharon and Steve. And I blame Kevin Feige's decision to transform the third Captain America film into a third (and badly written) pseudo Avengers movie. The change in the film's narrative, along with Sharon's failure to appear in "THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR" and "ENDGAME", left no opportunity for Sharon and Steve to become the romantic pair they had been in the comics. Instead, Sharon became a fugitive from the U.S. government after helping Steve and Sam hunt down Bucky, moved to Madripoor, a city-state with no U.S. extradition and became an embittered criminal known as "the Power Broker".
After "CIVIL WAR", nearly five years had passed before Sharon appeared in another MCU production - namely this series. And what happened? The franchise, with Spellman, ended up completely destroying her character by transforming her into the villain known as Power Broker, the criminal leader of an Indonesian city-state called Madripoor. After helping Steve and Sam acquire their suits and equipment in order to go after Bucky in "CIVIL WAR", Sharon lost her job with the C.I.A. and became a fugitive. She eventually moved to Madripoor, a city-state with no U.S. extradition, to evade capture, survived Thanos' Snap and became an embittered criminal nicknamed "the Power Broker" in order to survive the new world.
What really pissed me off about Sharon's arc between "CIVIL WAR" and "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER" is that her development into a major villain all happened OFF SCREEN. Off screen. Apparently, screenwriters for "INFINITY WAR" had written a draft that included Sharon in the movie. But according to Christopher Markus, he and Stephen McFeeley could not imagine scenes featuring Steve and Sharon trying to make it work in an apartment, because the 2018 movie did not have time to focus on their personal life. Why did Marvel simply fail to allow Sharon to be part of Steve's vigilante team - like Sam and Natasha Romanoff? I mean . . . good fucking grief! And why did Malcolm Spellman believe the only way Sharon could be interesting was to become a villain in "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER"? This was his idea of improving Sharon's character?
~\Helmut Zemo aka Baron Zemo~* - Why did Malcolm Spellman, Kevin Feige and the MCU thought it necessary to bring back Helmut Zemo, the Sokovian-born villain from "CIVIL WAR"? What role did he play in "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER"? I realize that Bucky, of all people, visited the incarcerated Zemo to acquire information on who had created the super-soldier serum that empowered the Flag Smashers. But why did he believe Zemo could provide the answer? Because he thought HYDRA was involved? Bucky or Sam could have searched for information from sources other than Zemo, who had been incarcerated for . . . what? Eight years? Eight years. Zemo managed to become something of a crowd-pleaser, thanks to Daniel Brühl's performance. Otherwise, I found his presence in this series unnecessary.
~\The Big Bad~* - Why on earth did it take this series so long to finally reveal the main villain's identity? At first, the series hinted the Flag Smashers, led by Karli Morgenthau. However, the series tossed other potential candidates for the Big Bad before viewers - John Walker, Helmut Zemo and yes, Sharon Carter. But in the end, Morgenthau and her group proved to be the main villains.
The Flag Smashers were a group of empowered people who believed the world was a better place between Thanos' Snap and the Blip (resurrection of those who had died during the Snap), when Humans around the world managed to unite and form a borderless society, one in which people helped others without any thought to nationalism and bias. Thanks to the Avengers, the world resumed its conflicts between nationalities and other groups. In other words, the borders returned.
Frankly, I have nothing against this ideal. Only Ms. Morgenthau and her followers resorted to violence and terrorism to achieve their goals. Does this sound familiar? It should. The Flag Smashers proved to be another example of characters with a progressive goal, resorting to extremism and becoming villains. This seemed to be a growing trend within the franchise, which I believe began with Erik "Killmonger" Stevens aka Prince N'Jadaka in 2018's "BLACK PANTHER". Since then, the MCU has not looked back at its growing roster of progressive villains. Perhaps I should not have been surprised. The franchise's ambiguous portrayal of an unconstitutional document like the Sokovia Accords, should have been the wake-up call. It seemed as if Kevin Feige, Marvel Films and Disney Studios had finally exposed themselves for the faux progressives they pretend to be. Frankly, this form of villainy has become tiresome to me.
After writing this article, I had considered ranking the six episodes featured in "THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER" anyway. But I decided against it. My dislike of the series made it impossible for me to even bother. Being a fan of the first two Captain America movies, I had truly hoped this series would redeem the franchise. Unfortunately, it proved to be just as disappointing as "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR". Pity. Perhaps the fourth film, "CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD" will do the trick. I hope so.
2024.05.19 17:22 stepan-civin Creality Print 5.0 question
Hi, I started using creality print 5.0 after using the old verision with blue UI for cople months and the only think I like is the option to have multiple print plates and to paint supports (even though i have to print the rest of the part red for it to generate supports only where i want to)
There are a lot of bugs I have found, especialy with saving filament profiles and Process profiles (I save a profile as a profile that i already created and it just creates a new profile with same name and when i try to delete a profile it deletes completely different one then i have selected...)
Also i dont get why some settings are where they are, for example why cant i set the line width for a new nozzle profile in the nozzle profile... Now i need to change a nozzle profile, filament profile and a process profile when i want to change from 0.4 nozzle to 0.2 nozzle...
the old creality print was much more simplier while having much more settings to choose from, but i hope they manage to fix the bugs and change some of these things so that the slicer makes sense.
What is your experience with the new slicer???
submitted by stepan-civin to Creality [link] [comments]
There are a lot of bugs I have found, especialy with saving filament profiles and Process profiles (I save a profile as a profile that i already created and it just creates a new profile with same name and when i try to delete a profile it deletes completely different one then i have selected...)
Also i dont get why some settings are where they are, for example why cant i set the line width for a new nozzle profile in the nozzle profile... Now i need to change a nozzle profile, filament profile and a process profile when i want to change from 0.4 nozzle to 0.2 nozzle...
the old creality print was much more simplier while having much more settings to choose from, but i hope they manage to fix the bugs and change some of these things so that the slicer makes sense.
What is your experience with the new slicer???
2024.05.19 17:21 Altruistic_Fig7430 Should I “19F” end things with my bartender boyfriend “23M” out of lack of trust?
My boyfriend and I have been together for a year. I’m 19 “19F” and he’s 23 “23M” and we got together when I was 18 and he was 22. A few months into the relationship he got a job as a bar back. He loves it and he loves his coworkers and I was happy for him in the beginning! He recently got promoted at as a full-time bartender and will start in about a week. He typically stays late after his shifts and says that he is hanging out with his regular “Mark” after work. He’ll be off his phone for hours after he gets off and I trust him that he’s at the bar hanging out with Mark.
However, a few days ago we were in the parking lot of his apartment complex and a girl comes up to us. She says “hey neighbor” to him and completely ignores me and my boyfriend does not introduce me to this girl who clearly knows him. At the end of the brief encounter she said to him “well if you ever want to talk or hangout you have my number” to which he said “yea for sure”. Also she was wearing a transparent shirt so I could see her nipples. I felt uncomfortable and thought it was weird that he agreed to hangout with another girl (who I felt was clearly asking him out and blatantly ignoring me) right in front of me, didnt introduce me as his girlfriend, and he had already given her his number. The next day I was ignoring his texts and he called me 30 times. I just told him how am I supposed to trust that he can say no to drunk girls who will be flirting with him at the bar if he can’t say no when I’m standing right next to him? Am I being dramatic?
Also one night later we went to a concert for his coworker and one of his coworkers asked me if my name was “wren” and said she thought my boyfriend was dating a girl named wren (which my boyfriend- when I asked him about it later- claims to not know any wrens) and she kept telling me how much she LOVES my boyfriend. She said it three times. Another one of his coworkers was showing my boyfriend nudes of some random booty call he had. I explained to my boyfriend that I didn’t really feel like his coworkers were respectful of our relationship. He apologized for their actions but still talks about them a lot and how funny/cool they are when I feel that they have just been rude to me. And honestly I’m concerned because my boyfriend looks up to these people and admires them as people, I just don’t want him to be easily influenced/ tempted. Also all of his coworkers are single and in their late 20- early 40s.
I also found a pair of furry handcuffs in his nightstand a few months ago (that we have never used together) and when I asked him about it he threw them away. This was probably 9 months into our relationship… why did he still have them?
Should I end things with him out of lack of trust? Am I thinking too much into things? I want to trust him but after all this stuff has gone down and after he said yes to hanging out with his neighbor (when we’ve established that neither of us are comfortable with the other hanging out with someone of the opposite gender one on one) I honestly don’t know anymore.
TL;DR: My boyfriend said yes to hanging out/ talking to another girl right in front of me, he had already given her his number, and didn’t introduce me as his girlfriend or mention me at all. He said he’s sorry and that she’s crazy and that he was never actually going to hangout with her but still. I felt invisible and now I feel like I can’t trust him. Should I break things off?
submitted by Altruistic_Fig7430 to relationships [link] [comments]
However, a few days ago we were in the parking lot of his apartment complex and a girl comes up to us. She says “hey neighbor” to him and completely ignores me and my boyfriend does not introduce me to this girl who clearly knows him. At the end of the brief encounter she said to him “well if you ever want to talk or hangout you have my number” to which he said “yea for sure”. Also she was wearing a transparent shirt so I could see her nipples. I felt uncomfortable and thought it was weird that he agreed to hangout with another girl (who I felt was clearly asking him out and blatantly ignoring me) right in front of me, didnt introduce me as his girlfriend, and he had already given her his number. The next day I was ignoring his texts and he called me 30 times. I just told him how am I supposed to trust that he can say no to drunk girls who will be flirting with him at the bar if he can’t say no when I’m standing right next to him? Am I being dramatic?
Also one night later we went to a concert for his coworker and one of his coworkers asked me if my name was “wren” and said she thought my boyfriend was dating a girl named wren (which my boyfriend- when I asked him about it later- claims to not know any wrens) and she kept telling me how much she LOVES my boyfriend. She said it three times. Another one of his coworkers was showing my boyfriend nudes of some random booty call he had. I explained to my boyfriend that I didn’t really feel like his coworkers were respectful of our relationship. He apologized for their actions but still talks about them a lot and how funny/cool they are when I feel that they have just been rude to me. And honestly I’m concerned because my boyfriend looks up to these people and admires them as people, I just don’t want him to be easily influenced/ tempted. Also all of his coworkers are single and in their late 20- early 40s.
I also found a pair of furry handcuffs in his nightstand a few months ago (that we have never used together) and when I asked him about it he threw them away. This was probably 9 months into our relationship… why did he still have them?
Should I end things with him out of lack of trust? Am I thinking too much into things? I want to trust him but after all this stuff has gone down and after he said yes to hanging out with his neighbor (when we’ve established that neither of us are comfortable with the other hanging out with someone of the opposite gender one on one) I honestly don’t know anymore.
TL;DR: My boyfriend said yes to hanging out/ talking to another girl right in front of me, he had already given her his number, and didn’t introduce me as his girlfriend or mention me at all. He said he’s sorry and that she’s crazy and that he was never actually going to hangout with her but still. I felt invisible and now I feel like I can’t trust him. Should I break things off?
2024.05.19 17:21 Ok-Echidna-3337 What’s the plan?
 | Let’s all agree that we’re behind this stock because we know it’s sound as an investment. It’s an investment in our futures as much as it is in a clean healthy future for our children and their children. Generational wealth and generational health. It’s an investment into the market AI EV market, which is 100% the future of the automotive market. submitted by Ok-Echidna-3337 to FFIE [link] [comments] We’re all innovators here. Inspiring the early adopters. Pushing through social media, texts, and chats. Thats great! We need it! Not to mention the overwhelming investment support that you have all shouldered! The next step is to forebear the planning for the early adopters to jump the chasm to the early majority. It’s statistically the hardest hurdle and it’s still over a week away ime. Let’s allow some space for you innovators to take the lessons of prior pioneers and bring this stock to the masses! What should we be doing to push this where it belongs? Give us something other than social media and friends and family plays. Take the space to make the plan! |
2024.05.19 17:20 snapeyaoilover You want drama? I'll give you drama
Came here due to following The Click on YouTube LOL so I'd try my luck posting. Might be a bit long, so TLDR at the bottom. Technically I posted this before on pettyrevenge, but my friend told me that I should also post a copy here, so here we are. And as a side note, I'm not from the US, so yeah.
This happened during my college days in the 2000s. I majored in Business Admin and one of my classes we had to take for the core subjects was Business Management, which I shared with a few of my friends who took the same major and a few other acquaintances who were in a different major but took them as part of their elective courses.
One of the acquaintances, whom I'll call Gina (not real name) was one of those that really had to stick her nose into other people's businesses. If she sense someone talking about something juicy (in her eyes), she would quickly insert herself into the conversation and insist the person to spill the tea for her, regardless if she knew the topic of discussion or not. Not only that, she has absolutely no inside voice whenever she joins a conversation. She adopts this "loud and proud" attitude and would just talk and respond loudly during the conversation that you can sometimes even hear her outside of the room.
Even when the topic in question is just a general discussion of a course subject that she didn't even take the class of, she'd insist on joining the conversation and either 1) spout out absolute nonsense and be completely oblivious that she had said anything wrong or 2) steer the conversation to finally talk about something she is familiar with. Not only that, she's the type of person who has to one-up you at any topic, e.g. "You got a Nobel prize? I got knighted by the Queen!" type of attitude.
It got to the point where she sometimes try to butt into private conversations or people talking about personal matters and insist on hearing about it and also give unsolicited advice even though she knows fuck all about the issue, and if you try to dismiss her, she will loudly chastise you for not including her into the conversation and not being a good friend for doing so. As an Asian ingrained in polite Asian culture (remember, I'm not from the US), we would either just smile and nod and tolerate her presence or try to make an excuse to leave the room to continue our discussion elsewhere away from her earshot, and our dear ol' oblivious Gina would move on to the next grapevine to grab the next gossip.
One day, I was talking to one of my friends Jordan (who takes the same major as me, also not real name) about a family crisis at home. IIRC, I think it had something to do with their father facing possible jailtime for embezzlement and that they might face potential dropout from college because their father was the main breadwinner and the one paying for college tuition and their mother might not be able to cover it in the future once their father is officially convicted. As usual, Gina saw how intense our faces were while we were talking despite us using hushed tones, and plopped herself next to us to get the scoop.
I tried dismissing her, saying that this is a private matter and that she shouldn't get involved. But of course, she took offense and loudly chastised me in front of the whole class for being "anti-social, leaving her out, that's not what friends do, all I want is to help, I just want to know, what's so wrong about that?" Everyone heard her but decided not to interfere (again, polite Asian culture), but we could still see that all eyes are on us to see how this drama unfold and how we're going to deal with her. Jordan's face became visible distraught and uncomfortable both by the prying eyes and Gina's endless loud chastising, and it was obvious if Gina didn't shut up, all hell would break loose.
Then it suddenly clicked to me on one of Gina's quirks: she was the type that had no patience for foreign films or TV shows. She would only watch movies or TV shows if they were in English, Mandarin or Cantonese (like famous Hong Kong movies and/or TV shows). Anything other than those three languages, she would NOT touch them, even if the show comes with subtitles, because she doesn't have the brain capacity to read subtitles AND watch the show at the same time, and even more so when it comes to anime.
During that time, the Three Kings of Anime (Bleach, Naruto and One Piece) were the rage and while I'm not a die-hard fan, I'm kept up to date with the storyline thanks to being a backseat audience whenever my now husband (then boyfriend) watched those three shows every week when it came out. And we knew for a fact that she actively avoids anything to do with anime because she has no patience to watch them and is completely ignorant of anime fandoms, and from there, the nerdy gears in my head turned the cogwheels to sprout out my demon horns into imaginary existence.
I gave my friend a "I got this" look, pretended to sigh in defeat and said, "Fine~ We were talking about how we could get our hands on the One Piece."
"One Piece?" Gina's eyes began to show intrigue, and a bit of smugness thinking that she had wore me down.
"Oh yeah, didn't you know? It's a family treasure heirloom in Jordan's family for generations!"
I proceeded to basically tell Gina the plot of One Piece anime, but replacing the anime characters' names with Jordan's and their family. How Golden Roger was their ancestor who used to be a pirate in his heyday and had kept a stash of treasure hidden somewhere in the far corners of the Earth, and that a treasure map has become Jordan's family heirloom and passed down from generation to generation, and now that Jordan's grandfather had recently bequeathed the map to them in his will, they were trying to discuss with me the best way to travel to find this One Piece. I spun tale after tale (may have even included Naruto and Bleach plots into the mix) to keep her intrigued, all the while everyone in the classroom (those in the know, anyways) were just trying very hard to keep a straight face at my fanciful tale. Even Jordan played along and added their own spin into the plot to keep the conversation going, and dear ol' oblivious Gina just lapped it all up.
We kept it up for almost 2 weeks as Gina kept coming back for more of Jordan's "family lore", in which we kept feeding her more anime plots (at the same time, it gave Jordan a bit of stress relief and distraction from their own real family crisis). Until one day, at the campus cafeteria, we saw Gina with another group of her friends about two tables away from us and we could hear her talking in her usual loud self about Jordan's "family lore" (yeah, if a story is juicy enough, she would tend to spread around to anyone who would listen; another bad habit of hers).
One of her friends, whom we know is an anime fan, suddenly called her out, "Hey! I thought you said you don't watch anime!"
Gina, with an obvious disgust on her face, said, "Of course not. I wouldn't touch them even with a ten-foot pole! Don't lump me with your lot."
"Really? Then why does your story sound like the anime plots of One Piece, Bleach and Naruto?"
Gina went dead silent for almost a full 2 minute to let everything sink in before she VERY SLOWLY turned towards us sitting two tables away and gave us the world's deadliest death stare, in which we just grinned and comically shrugged at her before walking out of the cafeteria laughing our heads off.
We're not sure how, but she soon realized on that fateful day when we started telling her the "family lore", everyone in class was in on it because no one came forward to stop or correct us. She completely stopped talking to everyone in class and no longer butt in on conversations after that because she couldn't trust anyone at that point, and by mid-semester, she dropped out of this class altogether. From what I heard, she picked a different elective class to go to because she was so traumatized with paranoia by the fact that "if OP lied about her conversation with Jordan, what else are others lying about in their conversation??" in her mind.
Eh, good riddance either way.
TLDR: Entitled classmate wants in on everyone's drama regardless of their privacy or relevance, so I gave her fictional drama to stew on, and she got embarrassed for being told the drama ain't real.
P/S: If The Click sees this, that'll absolutely make my day LOL
submitted by snapeyaoilover to traumatizeThemBack [link] [comments]
This happened during my college days in the 2000s. I majored in Business Admin and one of my classes we had to take for the core subjects was Business Management, which I shared with a few of my friends who took the same major and a few other acquaintances who were in a different major but took them as part of their elective courses.
One of the acquaintances, whom I'll call Gina (not real name) was one of those that really had to stick her nose into other people's businesses. If she sense someone talking about something juicy (in her eyes), she would quickly insert herself into the conversation and insist the person to spill the tea for her, regardless if she knew the topic of discussion or not. Not only that, she has absolutely no inside voice whenever she joins a conversation. She adopts this "loud and proud" attitude and would just talk and respond loudly during the conversation that you can sometimes even hear her outside of the room.
Even when the topic in question is just a general discussion of a course subject that she didn't even take the class of, she'd insist on joining the conversation and either 1) spout out absolute nonsense and be completely oblivious that she had said anything wrong or 2) steer the conversation to finally talk about something she is familiar with. Not only that, she's the type of person who has to one-up you at any topic, e.g. "You got a Nobel prize? I got knighted by the Queen!" type of attitude.
It got to the point where she sometimes try to butt into private conversations or people talking about personal matters and insist on hearing about it and also give unsolicited advice even though she knows fuck all about the issue, and if you try to dismiss her, she will loudly chastise you for not including her into the conversation and not being a good friend for doing so. As an Asian ingrained in polite Asian culture (remember, I'm not from the US), we would either just smile and nod and tolerate her presence or try to make an excuse to leave the room to continue our discussion elsewhere away from her earshot, and our dear ol' oblivious Gina would move on to the next grapevine to grab the next gossip.
One day, I was talking to one of my friends Jordan (who takes the same major as me, also not real name) about a family crisis at home. IIRC, I think it had something to do with their father facing possible jailtime for embezzlement and that they might face potential dropout from college because their father was the main breadwinner and the one paying for college tuition and their mother might not be able to cover it in the future once their father is officially convicted. As usual, Gina saw how intense our faces were while we were talking despite us using hushed tones, and plopped herself next to us to get the scoop.
I tried dismissing her, saying that this is a private matter and that she shouldn't get involved. But of course, she took offense and loudly chastised me in front of the whole class for being "anti-social, leaving her out, that's not what friends do, all I want is to help, I just want to know, what's so wrong about that?" Everyone heard her but decided not to interfere (again, polite Asian culture), but we could still see that all eyes are on us to see how this drama unfold and how we're going to deal with her. Jordan's face became visible distraught and uncomfortable both by the prying eyes and Gina's endless loud chastising, and it was obvious if Gina didn't shut up, all hell would break loose.
Then it suddenly clicked to me on one of Gina's quirks: she was the type that had no patience for foreign films or TV shows. She would only watch movies or TV shows if they were in English, Mandarin or Cantonese (like famous Hong Kong movies and/or TV shows). Anything other than those three languages, she would NOT touch them, even if the show comes with subtitles, because she doesn't have the brain capacity to read subtitles AND watch the show at the same time, and even more so when it comes to anime.
During that time, the Three Kings of Anime (Bleach, Naruto and One Piece) were the rage and while I'm not a die-hard fan, I'm kept up to date with the storyline thanks to being a backseat audience whenever my now husband (then boyfriend) watched those three shows every week when it came out. And we knew for a fact that she actively avoids anything to do with anime because she has no patience to watch them and is completely ignorant of anime fandoms, and from there, the nerdy gears in my head turned the cogwheels to sprout out my demon horns into imaginary existence.
I gave my friend a "I got this" look, pretended to sigh in defeat and said, "Fine~ We were talking about how we could get our hands on the One Piece."
"One Piece?" Gina's eyes began to show intrigue, and a bit of smugness thinking that she had wore me down.
"Oh yeah, didn't you know? It's a family treasure heirloom in Jordan's family for generations!"
I proceeded to basically tell Gina the plot of One Piece anime, but replacing the anime characters' names with Jordan's and their family. How Golden Roger was their ancestor who used to be a pirate in his heyday and had kept a stash of treasure hidden somewhere in the far corners of the Earth, and that a treasure map has become Jordan's family heirloom and passed down from generation to generation, and now that Jordan's grandfather had recently bequeathed the map to them in his will, they were trying to discuss with me the best way to travel to find this One Piece. I spun tale after tale (may have even included Naruto and Bleach plots into the mix) to keep her intrigued, all the while everyone in the classroom (those in the know, anyways) were just trying very hard to keep a straight face at my fanciful tale. Even Jordan played along and added their own spin into the plot to keep the conversation going, and dear ol' oblivious Gina just lapped it all up.
We kept it up for almost 2 weeks as Gina kept coming back for more of Jordan's "family lore", in which we kept feeding her more anime plots (at the same time, it gave Jordan a bit of stress relief and distraction from their own real family crisis). Until one day, at the campus cafeteria, we saw Gina with another group of her friends about two tables away from us and we could hear her talking in her usual loud self about Jordan's "family lore" (yeah, if a story is juicy enough, she would tend to spread around to anyone who would listen; another bad habit of hers).
One of her friends, whom we know is an anime fan, suddenly called her out, "Hey! I thought you said you don't watch anime!"
Gina, with an obvious disgust on her face, said, "Of course not. I wouldn't touch them even with a ten-foot pole! Don't lump me with your lot."
"Really? Then why does your story sound like the anime plots of One Piece, Bleach and Naruto?"
Gina went dead silent for almost a full 2 minute to let everything sink in before she VERY SLOWLY turned towards us sitting two tables away and gave us the world's deadliest death stare, in which we just grinned and comically shrugged at her before walking out of the cafeteria laughing our heads off.
We're not sure how, but she soon realized on that fateful day when we started telling her the "family lore", everyone in class was in on it because no one came forward to stop or correct us. She completely stopped talking to everyone in class and no longer butt in on conversations after that because she couldn't trust anyone at that point, and by mid-semester, she dropped out of this class altogether. From what I heard, she picked a different elective class to go to because she was so traumatized with paranoia by the fact that "if OP lied about her conversation with Jordan, what else are others lying about in their conversation??" in her mind.
Eh, good riddance either way.
TLDR: Entitled classmate wants in on everyone's drama regardless of their privacy or relevance, so I gave her fictional drama to stew on, and she got embarrassed for being told the drama ain't real.
P/S: If The Click sees this, that'll absolutely make my day LOL
2024.05.19 17:17 LegalBeagleEsquire Harry's in-law and felon King Oba Abdulrasheed Adewale Akanbi who crowned Meghan accused of rape.
 | https://preview.redd.it/i4u7uhj4ee1d1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d961bfbd571a34d7ccfea7bd9f9cefb49aa73ba4 submitted by LegalBeagleEsquire to SaintMeghanMarkle [link] [comments] Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi Multiple felon banned from the United States accused of rape, violent abuse, coercive control, and being a deadbeat dad by ex-wife. He always carries a tape recorder. The Daily Markle barely mentions the rape accusation. https://archive.md/2024.05.19-011930/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13433635/Nigerian-king-Harry-hailed-one-new-laws-conman-twice-deported-America-criminal-record-murky-past.html#selection-1381.39-1381.71 Video Of Crowning A 5 minute google search of his ex-wife's name brings up some wild interviews. https://archive.ph/KNjlN https://archive.ph/PYQWa Just a few of the tidbits: "She added that after talking to Oluwo at the party held in Ikeja, she retired early to her room because she had too much to drink. But she woke up at 3 am to find the Oluwo on top of her in her room, with her clothes discarded.She said she told him “no no no. Get off me.”According to her, Oluwo told her that he is a King and that once he “extends his leg” to her, she can’t refuse him, adding that Oluwo decided to compensate her with marriage after raping her.“Tell the people that you raped me the first night you met me." "I was actually begging and prostrating (myself), telling him not to destroy our family. While I was begging, he had a small tape recorder he always carried in his agbada (flowing gown). He always used it to record things. He recorded me apologising to him." "He has six personalities. When you wake up in the morning, you don’t know the kind of personality that will greet you. And I have names for them. The one that is violent, I call it Dexter. The one that is nice, I call Paul. The one that is sensationalist, I call it Jerry. " "He just woke up, saw the message on my phone and shouted that I had a boyfriend and I should leave. The policemen were standing over me while I packed four years of my life. I had one hour to pack four years of my life. The policemen were standing there to ensure that I did not pack any of my clothes or wigs or my child’s toys. He said when an Olori leaves, he leaves everything for the incoming Olori and that it is the culture." "We did not even have a generator. It was a senator that donated a Mikano generator to us. What we had before was a small generator that we could only switch on at 6pm and the only things it could power were the televisions, bulbs and the fan. You could not turn on the fridge or freezer or air conditioner. This was what I went through whereas he was busy ‘forming’ (pretending to be living) a life of luxury." "I believe there are six of us and I am the fourth wife. When we met, I asked him to tell me the number of children he had, but he didn’t (tell) me the truth. He did not say 10 or even five. Our relationship was built on the foundation of lies. It was not until my son was six months old that I saw a blog post from one of his past wives, showing the names of all his children, wives and the ages of the children." "She then narrated how she was taken to Iwo the day after the alleged rape and her shock when she arrived.She said: “The next day, he said to me, ‘we’re going to the palace, we’re going to Iwo and I’ll make you queen.’ So I went with him.“The very next day, when we got to Iwo, there was no palace. The palace didn’t even have a roof. " "From the day we left the palace, he has not given one naira to my son. He does not know how my son eats or where he sleeps at night. He does not care because my son is number 10. My son is three years old and has never been to school. He went to the primary school at Bowen University, Iwo for only two days. That was in May 2019. He withdrew him from the school and said he was popular and famous, and that they would kidnap him. He said, ‘You don’t know Africa, kidnapping is a big business. Do you have N20m to pay as ransom? I will tell them I don’t know you!’ " Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi (far right) |
2024.05.19 17:16 atra55 Unmatched potential, Chapter 11
first previous next
Essemi chapter
The Defender of Virtues was … Well, at least it was capable of moving around, which was rather impressive considering its age. It was built during the Aviel succession crisis, more than a century ago. It was, at the time, a brilliant display of engineering.
To be honest, its sheer size was still impressive, and it was probably better to command it than a smaller, more recent ship. Its shape was a classic example of the later Altirian period, a sort of arrow as the main body, with two smaller one attached to the sides. On the side the artificial gravity considered the “top”, there were building-like structures, resembling a city.
The whole thing looked like it was built for atmospheric flight, which was very much not the case, considering it was more than 800 meters long, and as such would probably fall apart under the forces applied. But it was definitely stylish, even if a little outdated, and still very practical.
There were worse ships to be stuck on for months for sure, and the crew was pretty nice too, barring the exception sitting in front of me. Of course, I was the one who needed to manage Commander Zedbi for the foreseeable future.
“I have come once again to make my complaints heard, Captain.”
“Commander, it’s much too late for me to go back on my decision, even if I wanted to. Complaining now will accomplish nothing except waste everyone’s time.”
“Well, perhaps you should have thought about that before limiting me to bringing only three servants on board. Someone of my status needs at least five, even in special circumstances.”
“Commander, this is a long-term mission. Anyone we bring will be a significant strain on our precious resources. I consider three servants to be more than sufficient for our officers.”
“Yes, I guess you wouldn’t understand who would need more personnel than your mother was ever able to afford. Then again, you only have one butler on a captain’s salary. Guess the Temidian blood runs strong in your family.”
“Enough, Commander. Go back to your post or this conversation will be reported to high command on our return.”
“You wouldn’t dare! They’ll know I’m right!”
Curiously for someone so sure of his righteousness, he still left the bridge, letting me concentrate on the maps of what was known on Terra space. The answer was resoundingly ‘not much’. But we could speculate on what systems would be the potentially juiciest to settle for them, considering what we knew.
I was busy planning the best potential routes for our operation, when the absolute darkness I could see through the glass bay suddenly filled with stars, and the main alarm began blasting.
“We left FTL”, screamed a Licam operating the propulsion system.
“I can see that,” I mumble. “Cut the alarm and send everyone to their combat position. Every officer on the bridge. We need to assess the situation.”
I was already thinking. We were five days of travel away from Earth. We had just encountered an FTL disruption field. What could that mean? Well first of all, the map the sensors were building around us didn’t detect any significant body or hostile vessels nearby, which meant… The disruption field filled a significant part of the system!
For what purpose? It was obvious: traversing it without distortion would take us months. It was a wall. I quickly went over the implications. A disruptor station had to be manned, or at least, maintained. That meant they needed ships travelling for months at sub light speed to resupply these stations! That was quite the commitment to prevent us entry. Fortunately, we could easily turn back to exit the field and go back home, which is exactly what I ordered.
Then, something impossible happened. A ship appeared on the radar, as if it had just exited a jump. But it had done so in the disruption field. Even worse, the gravitational wave detector spiked, like we were now almost right next to the disruptor.
I realized that it was the case: this ship could ignore the disruption field, and as such it had no problem having the disruptor on board.
We began blasting at it with our energy weaponry, to no avail. They were essentially teleporting after each time they fired, always being gone by the time our rays reached their position.
After of few minutes of that pointless exchange of fire, were our weapons never hit and theirs did barely any damage, twelve new signals appeared on the screen coming towards us at a terrifying speed. Missiles! No, the way they maneuvered to escape our point defenses ruled that out. Strike crafts…
The Terrans were hopelessly outmatched in firepower, and elven of the strike crafts were destroyed. But the last one managed to slam in the left “secondary hull”, destroying it almost entirely. We could survive without it, but I doubted that was all the Humans had in stock. We needed to get out now, but how? We were in the middle of a light-hour wide disruption field, that our enemy could somehow ignore! But that gave me an idea. If it didn’t work, we were dead anyway.
“Activate the disruptor!”
My subordinates didn’t understand why I would do that when the enemy was clearly immune to it, but they weren’t paid to think, and they knew it! (Those who were paid at all, that is.)
as soon as our own field reached the enemy ship, they became a lot less jumpy. I was right, they could jump in the field they generated, but ours could still pin them down!
“Fire a relativistic missile at them and cut the field so that they can jump a second before it hits them!”
If we destroyed the main craft, I had no doubt the strike crafts would avenge it. If they fled, however, we might have a chance. Of course, the most logical course of action for them would be to dodge and finish us of, but I hoped one second would be a short delay enough to overwrite rationality in the brains of our opponents.
And I was right. After a few hours, when the enormous disruption field had completely dissolved, our enemies still hadn’t returned, and we were able to escape.
If Commander Zebdi had not met his demise during the battle, (a tragedy that took me several seconds to recover from), he would have probably pointed out that that we should have destroyed the ship at the cost of our lives in the name of honor.
I, however, was certain that the intel we were bringing back would be a more devasting blow to humanity than the loss of any ship could be. The fact that it allowed us to remain alive was merely a pleasant side effect.
submitted by atra55 to HFY [link] [comments]
To be honest, its sheer size was still impressive, and it was probably better to command it than a smaller, more recent ship. Its shape was a classic example of the later Altirian period, a sort of arrow as the main body, with two smaller one attached to the sides. On the side the artificial gravity considered the “top”, there were building-like structures, resembling a city.
The whole thing looked like it was built for atmospheric flight, which was very much not the case, considering it was more than 800 meters long, and as such would probably fall apart under the forces applied. But it was definitely stylish, even if a little outdated, and still very practical.
There were worse ships to be stuck on for months for sure, and the crew was pretty nice too, barring the exception sitting in front of me. Of course, I was the one who needed to manage Commander Zedbi for the foreseeable future.
“I have come once again to make my complaints heard, Captain.”
“Commander, it’s much too late for me to go back on my decision, even if I wanted to. Complaining now will accomplish nothing except waste everyone’s time.”
“Well, perhaps you should have thought about that before limiting me to bringing only three servants on board. Someone of my status needs at least five, even in special circumstances.”
“Commander, this is a long-term mission. Anyone we bring will be a significant strain on our precious resources. I consider three servants to be more than sufficient for our officers.”
“Yes, I guess you wouldn’t understand who would need more personnel than your mother was ever able to afford. Then again, you only have one butler on a captain’s salary. Guess the Temidian blood runs strong in your family.”
“Enough, Commander. Go back to your post or this conversation will be reported to high command on our return.”
“You wouldn’t dare! They’ll know I’m right!”
Curiously for someone so sure of his righteousness, he still left the bridge, letting me concentrate on the maps of what was known on Terra space. The answer was resoundingly ‘not much’. But we could speculate on what systems would be the potentially juiciest to settle for them, considering what we knew.
I was busy planning the best potential routes for our operation, when the absolute darkness I could see through the glass bay suddenly filled with stars, and the main alarm began blasting.
“We left FTL”, screamed a Licam operating the propulsion system.
“I can see that,” I mumble. “Cut the alarm and send everyone to their combat position. Every officer on the bridge. We need to assess the situation.”
I was already thinking. We were five days of travel away from Earth. We had just encountered an FTL disruption field. What could that mean? Well first of all, the map the sensors were building around us didn’t detect any significant body or hostile vessels nearby, which meant… The disruption field filled a significant part of the system!
For what purpose? It was obvious: traversing it without distortion would take us months. It was a wall. I quickly went over the implications. A disruptor station had to be manned, or at least, maintained. That meant they needed ships travelling for months at sub light speed to resupply these stations! That was quite the commitment to prevent us entry. Fortunately, we could easily turn back to exit the field and go back home, which is exactly what I ordered.
Then, something impossible happened. A ship appeared on the radar, as if it had just exited a jump. But it had done so in the disruption field. Even worse, the gravitational wave detector spiked, like we were now almost right next to the disruptor.
I realized that it was the case: this ship could ignore the disruption field, and as such it had no problem having the disruptor on board.
We began blasting at it with our energy weaponry, to no avail. They were essentially teleporting after each time they fired, always being gone by the time our rays reached their position.
After of few minutes of that pointless exchange of fire, were our weapons never hit and theirs did barely any damage, twelve new signals appeared on the screen coming towards us at a terrifying speed. Missiles! No, the way they maneuvered to escape our point defenses ruled that out. Strike crafts…
The Terrans were hopelessly outmatched in firepower, and elven of the strike crafts were destroyed. But the last one managed to slam in the left “secondary hull”, destroying it almost entirely. We could survive without it, but I doubted that was all the Humans had in stock. We needed to get out now, but how? We were in the middle of a light-hour wide disruption field, that our enemy could somehow ignore! But that gave me an idea. If it didn’t work, we were dead anyway.
“Activate the disruptor!”
My subordinates didn’t understand why I would do that when the enemy was clearly immune to it, but they weren’t paid to think, and they knew it! (Those who were paid at all, that is.)
as soon as our own field reached the enemy ship, they became a lot less jumpy. I was right, they could jump in the field they generated, but ours could still pin them down!
“Fire a relativistic missile at them and cut the field so that they can jump a second before it hits them!”
If we destroyed the main craft, I had no doubt the strike crafts would avenge it. If they fled, however, we might have a chance. Of course, the most logical course of action for them would be to dodge and finish us of, but I hoped one second would be a short delay enough to overwrite rationality in the brains of our opponents.
And I was right. After a few hours, when the enormous disruption field had completely dissolved, our enemies still hadn’t returned, and we were able to escape.
If Commander Zebdi had not met his demise during the battle, (a tragedy that took me several seconds to recover from), he would have probably pointed out that that we should have destroyed the ship at the cost of our lives in the name of honor.
I, however, was certain that the intel we were bringing back would be a more devasting blow to humanity than the loss of any ship could be. The fact that it allowed us to remain alive was merely a pleasant side effect.
2024.05.19 17:16 DaenerysMadQueen S8 events according to the consensus
 | "In the space of a single, terrible day and night, all your fighting men were swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis likewise was swallowed up by the sea and disappeared." -Plato submitted by DaenerysMadQueen to naath [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/yrf5bahjcd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=bb50bb535a8f7aacc2a6fd5aa289f18540e2de3d Winterfell The first episode of the final season begins, echoing the atmosphere of Robert Baratheon's arrival at Winterfell in the series' premiere. What a lazy screenwriting move for fan service. Jon discovers the secret about his mother and his heritage, in front of his father's crypt. Ned Stark's promise was fulfilled, a stroke of luck for D&D. "You gave up your crown to save your people. Would she do the same ?" https://preview.redd.it/ty7em5xhfd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=0805b98f56f68dd0afc88b28bf3bc3b4cb639eac A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Then comes episode 2, where the heroes discuss future stakes, preparing for the Long Night, and what comes after the battle if it happens. Jon reveals the secret to Daenerys, who doesn't seem pleased to hear it. In short, nothing happens in this episode, it's boring. "All my life, I've known one goal: the Iron Throne. Taking it back from the people who destroyed my family, and almost destroyed yours. My war was against them. Until I met Jon. Now I'm here, half a world away, fighting Jon's war alongside him. Tell me, who manipulated whom ?" https://preview.redd.it/2z99qqywgd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6b9c1889e4dbb53b15c9a27c81c83c4edfdf3c7 The Long Night Finally, the famous battle of the Long Night. We just see the Dothraki charging with flaming swords into the darkness, and then nothing. Everything is dark. We can't see anything. Maybe Daenerys at some point tries to roast the Night King, but it's unclear. Everything is black, everything is darkness and gloom. "- I'm going now. - Go where ?" https://preview.redd.it/3t64jmj1gd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=652abdf4a4074091b91976ace33da8b1a4d911bb "Nymeria, it's me, Arya. I'm heading north, girl. Back to Winterfell, I'm finally going home." The Last of the Starks After the credits, Jon Snow is giving a heartfelt speech for the fallen in the battle. Since we didn't see anything I suppose they won, probably because Jon finally killed the Night King and they are celebrating, but Daenerys is visibly disappointed that Arya is the hero of Winterfell, and she's upset that Jon refuses to cuddle with her because of the secret. She doesn't want Jon to talk about the secret because she doesn't want people to know they're engaging in incestuous cuddles. I think. "Even if the truth destroys us ?" https://preview.redd.it/6qvracdcjd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=f50da19f55d66cf2c388752d71df673152780fc2 Anyway, it's very disappointing that the war against the zombies is already over; we should have had a whole season of the Long Night, in darkness and gloom, with an episode solely focused on strategy and the use of trebuchets. And then, when the heroes finally set out to take down Cersei, Daenerys falls into a lame, obvious, and avoidable ambush. Rhaegal dies stupidly, and Missandei is captured, then executed. Tyrion fails to save her, Cersei wins the final Lannister duel, and she angers the Dragon Queen enough to push her over the edge. In short, all of this was rushed and poorly written, nothing makes sense, I am shocked and angry. It's unfair. It's not right. "If you want justice, you've come to the wrong place." https://preview.redd.it/ua493n4cgd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=6d4937e7b8a327f11fc7fa094a84d227623b72a3 The Bells https://preview.redd.it/3w4ate9tyd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=be32819c3eda6b9a7026bb2b300cf8abe22da9af The penultimate episode of the series begins with a letter. Varys wants to inform that Jon is the heir to the throne; he betrays the queen. In mourning, with Tyrion, Daenerys only talks about the secret about Jon. It's the end, Act V of the play, the young tragic princess is lost, and the comedic archetype can't help her, it's too late, it doesn't matter now. "- Yes, she trusts you. She trusted you to spread secrets that could destroy your own queen. And you did not let her down. - If I have failed you, my queen, forgive me. Our intentions were good. We wanted what you want. A better world, all of us. Varys as much as anyone. But it doesn’t matter now. - No. It doesn’t matter now." An extremely poorly written dialogue, obviously, probably one of the worst-written dialogues in the history of theater, cinema, and television. In my opinion, far too convoluted and boring, far too tragic for a TV series. https://preview.redd.it/uo5f4s43jd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=4757e00b2c3f01680bca09125dc998be02af7196 Then the Unsullied come to arrest Varys, and he is sentenced to death. "The Supreme Lord said: I am mighty Time, the source of destruction that comes forth to annihilate the worlds. Even without your participation, the warriors arrayed in the opposing army shall cease to exist." -11.32 Bhagavad Gita https://preview.redd.it/s11lnvojjd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d3c760dc6f0f263f6c2004855c67eb8f3819032
https://preview.redd.it/zmehvnu0md1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=d1fe51dec443496ded16e9ac3e15c7a812be39f0 "The things I do for love."
https://preview.redd.it/v9z7c47ekd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b1234cd9bab5380176c292c380ab375b83ee9c0 "When you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die. There is no middle ground."
https://preview.redd.it/wjp0lq1pkd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=a4cceb3ac14c2ee57f0b30ab2c5cbf623f2758de "You know what’s wrong with honor ?"
https://preview.redd.it/lrs1bxftkd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=b310d8131ca0607b5e54c47d90ed8ce580f4afe3 "Fire !"
https://preview.redd.it/i7c44r95ld1d1.jpg?width=3733&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e8e7bb5d1dc502a5bdbe44f7d5bca5b1946c78c "Go home, girl."
https://preview.redd.it/fx5t65gpld1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=71f173f409f518e1cf211c9c85c62725c0bbe8b1 "There's plenty of pious sons of bitches who think they know the word of god or gods. I don’t. I don’t even know their real names. Maybe it is the Seven. Or maybe it’s the old gods. Or maybe it’s the Lord of Light. Or maybe they’re all the same fucking thing. I don’t know. What matters, I believe, is that there’s something greater than us." The Iron Throne https://preview.redd.it/q937d04dvd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=3853c2cf88e2ef52f55128bf61bb0f6d23a5bba3 The last episode, after the bells. So this is how it ends. Daenerys has triumphed, Tyrion has realized his mistake, is imprisoned again, and makes Jon understand in one final conversation that he must choose, between his sisters and Dany, between the Starks and the Targaryens, between love and duty. It's all so tragic. Daenerys finally came home, the legend has triumphed, the dream has become reality. And then the prince steps forward, still plagued by doubt, imploring the young princess to cease her quest for power, to forgive. And Dany's words have meaning, echoing those Tyrion spoke to Jon. The fallen hero then understands that he cannot save both the world and the princess. The long tirades echo high in the halls of the kings who are gone, and the fallen hero murders his lover, not out of ambition for the throne, not out of anger or vengeance, but out of love for his sisters and the people. The tyrant is dead, sadly concluding the dramatic journey of a young innocent orphan that no hero could manage to save. "When I was a girl, my brother told me it was made with one thousand swords from Aegon's fallen enemies. What do one thousand look like in the mind of a little girl who can't count to twenty ? I imagined a mountain of swords too high to climb. So many fallen enemies, you could only see the soles of Aegon's feet." https://preview.redd.it/vi818cdw0e1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=f4732894d0f9b43b9bae3629cc102fb25abfda69 Jon left the throne empty, accepting his judgment and the punishment of the dragon. Thus were extinguished the last Targaryens, in front of the object of all conflicts, high under the sky, above mortals, together. But Jon has a hero's shield too, so I imagine there's a chip scratching Drogon behind a wing, and thus he misses his shot and destroys the walls. And then the chip jumps onto the throne, so Drogon destroys the throne and the chip but he was too tired for Jon afterwards. Such lazy writing, utterly senseless, just for the symbolism of the dragon destroying the throne, the object of all the passions and dramas of this world, a satire of power and conclusion of the story. "I told you it's difficult to explain." Obvious fanservice, nothing complex or mysterious. But we don't know where Drogon is taking Daenerys, she has no mortal tomb. The mystery completes the legend, this girl was a shooting star until the end. "I have been sold like a broodmare. I’ve been chained and betrayed, raped and defiled. Do you know what kept me standing through all those years in exile ? Faith. Not in any gods, not in myths and legends, in myself. In Daenerys Targaryen." https://preview.redd.it/s3jmmuohzd1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=4007c56afdc01347bcc0770f9e7618b07eee3073 And to conclude, the council scene, a calm yet very rushed and poorly written moment, as everyone knows. It's certainly officially announced by professionals somewhere. Once again, the creators understood nothing about the story and the audience's expectations. Nothing funny, nothing complicated, nothing secretive, but the worst part is Bran's choice, it's not good, it's illegal, he cheated. Then the beautiful visuals, the surviving Starks, and Ramin Djawadi's magnificent music for the last five minutes and the final credits, pure happy ending, pure fanservice, it's an absolute failure, the worst series finale in history, it's obviously a dox..., sorry, a well-known consensus. It's all a mix of fan service, bad writing, and being rushed, extremely well-balanced. GRRM would certainly have wanted at least three more seasons to properly tell the final scene between Jon and Daenerys. So much wasted potential, D&D sacrificed the ending of the greatest series in history for Star Wars contracts they didn't even get. It's a scandal. Thankfully, no one talks about GoT anymore since that ending, except to reminisce about the golden age of season 4 and the seasons before. Everyone agrees, it's a fact. It is known. GoT's ending is a beautiful disaster. ... "- It's a long story. - If only we were trapped in a castle in the middle of winter with nowhere to go..." https://preview.redd.it/qifnbl7w6e1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=11319c6b58f55cd52f14bd161c25ef8d633b4c8e ... "Be with me. Build the new world with me. This is our reason. It has been from the beginning since you were a little boy with a bastard's name and I was a little girl who couldn't count to twenty. We do it together. We break the wheel together." https://preview.redd.it/b5i39z5s2e1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=f1704cefcfd8876db60ddc018306883e99760062 "You are my queen, now and always." |
2024.05.19 17:14 DocWatson42 Anime That Deserve a Remake/Should Be Remade/You Want Remade
My lists are always being updated and expanded when new information comes in—what did I miss or am I unaware of (even if the thread predates my membership in Reddit), and what needs correction? Even (especially) if I get a subreddit or date wrong. (Note that, other than the quotation marks, the thread titles are "sic". I only change the quotation marks to match the standard usage (double to single, etc.) when I add my own quotation marks around the threads' titles.)
The lists are in absolute ascending chronological order by the posting date, and if need be the time of the initial post, down to the minute (or second, if required—there are several examples of this). The dates are in DD MMMM YYYY format per personal preference, and times are in US Eastern Time ("ET") since that's how they appear to me, and I'm not going to go to the trouble of converting to another time zone. They are also in twenty-four hour format, as that's what I prefer, and it saves the trouble and confusion of a.m. and p.m. Where the same user posts the same request to different subreddits, I note the user's name in order to indicate that I am aware of the duplication.
Thread lengths: longish (50–99 posts)/long (100–199 posts)/very long (200–299 posts)/extremely long (300–399 posts)/huge (400+ posts) (though not all threads are this strictly classified, especially ones before mid?-2023, though I am updating shorter lists as I repost them); they are in lower case to prevent their confusion with the name "Long" and are the first notation after a thread's information.
See also The List of Lists/The Master List of recommendation lists.
submitted by DocWatson42 to Recommend_A_Book [link] [comments]
The lists are in absolute ascending chronological order by the posting date, and if need be the time of the initial post, down to the minute (or second, if required—there are several examples of this). The dates are in DD MMMM YYYY format per personal preference, and times are in US Eastern Time ("ET") since that's how they appear to me, and I'm not going to go to the trouble of converting to another time zone. They are also in twenty-four hour format, as that's what I prefer, and it saves the trouble and confusion of a.m. and p.m. Where the same user posts the same request to different subreddits, I note the user's name in order to indicate that I am aware of the duplication.
Thread lengths: longish (50–99 posts)/long (100–199 posts)/very long (200–299 posts)/extremely long (300–399 posts)/huge (400+ posts) (though not all threads are this strictly classified, especially ones before mid?-2023, though I am updating shorter lists as I repost them); they are in lower case to prevent their confusion with the name "Long" and are the first notation after a thread's information.
See also The List of Lists/The Master List of recommendation lists.
- "If you could have any remake, what would it be?" (anime; 28 September 2012)—long
- "What's an old series that is screaming for a modern remake/new season?" (anime; 24 June 2014)
- "Which old anime you think deserves a 'brotherhood' style remake?" (anime; 23 June 2015)—huge; animated prematurely (before the source material was finished)
- "What anime needs a remake?" (anime; 29 December 2014)—long
- "What remake do you want the most?" (anime; 19 October 2015)—long
- "In your opinion, which anime needs a remake ala Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood?" (anime; 12 Aprilish 2016)—long
- "What anime deserve a remake?" (anime; 12 July 2016)—long
- "If you could have a different studio remake an anime, what anime & studio would you choose?" (anime; 20 October 2017)—long
- "Anime reboot/remake" (anime; 25 January 2019)
- "You are given an infinite budget to fund an adaptation/remake of any manga/anime you want. What are you making?" (anime; 2 October 2019)—long
- "Anime that deserves/needs a remake?" (anime; 16 November 2019)—longish
- "With all these remakes/new seasons coming out, what's an 'old' anime you'd like to see renewed?" (anime; 26 June 2020)
- "What anime you want a remake to? Old manga you want an anime adaptation?" (anime; 20 October 2020)
- "What Anime Do You Think Deserves a Remake / Remastered Version?" (anime; 1 April 2021)—longish
- "Anime that need a remake" (anime; 24 March 2022)—A redditor's personal list
- "what Anime u want to have a Remake?" (anime; 25 May 2022)—huge
- "Anime that deserve a remake" (anime; 8 February 2022)
- "What old anime would you like to see get a remake?" (anime; 5 June 2022)—longish
- "What anime do you want to remake?" (anime; 22 August 2022)—longish
- "What anime do you want to see a remake of and why?" (anime; 16 December 2022)—longish
- "What old anime would you like to see get a remake or get rebooted?" (anime; 22 December 2022)—longish
- "What anime would you like to see get a remake or reanimated?" (anime; 9 January 2023)—long
- "what anime do you think is ripe for a reboot or remake?" (anime; 11 January 2023)—long
- "What anime needs remakes/reboots?" (OPost archive) (anime; 15 February 2023)—Title- and video-only post
- "What Anime Need Remakes?" (YouTube; 10 January 2017)
- "What series do you want to be remade?" (anime; 13 April 2023)—longish
- "I don't see a next season or a remake" (anime; 21 September 2023)—longish
- "What anime do you wish could get a reboot or more seasons?" (anime; 22 September 2023)—huge
- "What are the Anime, that in your opinion, deserves a remake or a sequel?" (anime; 26 September 2023)—extremely long
- "Name 5 or more 'unfinished' anime that definitely need a reboot" (anime; 13 November 2023)—huge
- "What's an obscure or really old anime that you hope would get a remake?" (anime; 19 December 2023)—long
- "Animes that deserve a remake?" (anime; 29 December 2023)—huge
- "Old animes you wish that were remade for newer generations?" (anime; 21 January 2024)—longish
- "Which anime deserve a remake?" (anime; 31 January 2024)—longish
- "What's your favorite show that got cut off early? Do you think a remake would be good for that show?" (anime; 26 March 2024)—longish
- "If you had infinite budget, which anime would you have a remake for and why?" (anime; 5 April 2024)
- "Which animes deserve Remakes the more ?" (anime; 9 April 2024)—longish
- "If you could choose an anime to get a better adaptation what would it be?" (anime; 18 May 2024)—extremely long; this list's inspiration due to reminding me of one, two, or three of the most recent (as of this thread) preceding threads
- "If you could choose to adapt, remake or continue any manga you have ever read into an anime, which would it be?" (anime; 13 September 2015)—longish
- "Anime that DOESN'T need a remake" (anime; 13 November 2021)—longish
- "You gain the ability to give any anime series a new season OR a remake - Your goal is to the create the most chaos possible among members of the anime community. What do you choice to do?" (anime; 14 April 2022)
- "What are some animes you wish would never get a reboot vs animes that you wish would get a reboot" (anime; 7 October 2023)—very long
- ["what's an anime that did not need a revival/reboot at all?"(https://new.reddit.com/anime/comments/191cpxy/whats_an_anime_that_did_not_need_a_revivalreboot/) (anime; 7 January 2024)—huge
- "Top 10 Anime That Should Definitely be Rebooted!" (YouTube; 15 February 2023)
2024.05.19 17:09 StonedApeDudeMan I think I know what's going on - OPENAI has had AGI once November 2023
God, there's so much evidence of this it's ridiculous. This all lines up perfectly.
OpenAI had a massive breakthrough and has been utilizing that breakthrough to accelerate their workflow. They got AI working on its own development on top of their team. And that's why they haven't released GPT-5 yet, despite it being well over a year since GPT-4. We all know they have it—training finished ages ago, and there's no good reason for them not to have released it yet. They just keep doing iterations of gpt4 over and over, and then on the side they just dropped these ridiculous updates...
Then, we suddenly get this demonstration, and have been getting demonstrations ever since, showing the Sora Video Model, and it's stupid good. Like, light-years ahead of the competition. It's straight-up magical at this point, so far beyond our understanding of what's going on with this stuff. Sora, unveiled February 15, 2024, it's so far ahead of everything else that it's very mind-boggling how they ever could have possibly gotten to that point so fast. It's so fucking good..
And that is exactly what is freaking all of them out big-time. Except not Sam Altman at first—he saw some amount of opportunity for humanity, mixed with seeing the power to be had, and how massive it would be if he came out the other side as a savior for humanity. So he embraced the breakthrough and kept going full force ahead. And he wasn't wrong to do that—it's his Oppenheimer moment.
China is going all in on it, that's for damn certain. Which means we have to go all in on it, safety and precautions be damned as they slow the development of AI down. Falling behind to China could potentially be catastrophic; we need to stay ahead. So of course the Pentagon got involved, working on a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with OpenAI announced on January 31, 2024, to leverage AI for defense purposes. The military saw something that triggered them to get involved, and while they're helping with cybersecurity, you can bet your ass they're leveraging AI to the fullest extent for all their warfare. They kind of need to, or else we're going to fucking die.
Sam Altman has been looking pretty exhausted and always tired during that entire stretch. Now their safety department has completely disbanded. This just happened, and they all got hit with NDAs of one year on their way out, meaning none of them can talk about it or they lose their stocks in the company. So, Sam Altman, instead of recoiling in fear and horror during the lifting of the veil that they were witness to behind closed doors sometime shortly before his ousting, he went the other direction instead and embraced it and was excited for the prospects. That is all because they discovered AGI sometime around the middle of November 2023. And while some of the employees for deeply troubled by all of this and Disturbed and scared perhaps, Altman showed excitement and exuberance over it, hence the entire ousting of Altman in November 2023. And because he showed excitement, I understand why all sides felt as they did and they are rightfully justified. Just before his ousting, Altman mentioned in an interview how they were witnessing significant advancements and saw it as a momentous period in AI development, which he felt honored to be part of: "I can't imagine anything more exciting to work on, and on a personal note, just in the last couple of weeks, I have gotten to be in the room, when we sort of like push the sort of the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward and getting to do that is like a professional honor of a lifetime. So, it's just so fun to get to work on that"
With the last update we got, it is very clear that they aren't showing us everything. The products are not quite what we were hoping for, but they are insanely good and enough to keep people happy. The shit they can do with the voice now is getting released to the public next month. It can sing, change vocal expressions, and do all sorts of crazy shit that nobody else is near. We all come to find out later that that was just the beginning of all these updates, we have 3D model generation coming, the dolly image generation that's integrated into it is phenomenal and can do consistent characters and it can do text like nobody's business, it's so fucking good, and then we have insanely fucking fast speeds for these models, you're able to speak to these models and get responses like right away just as fast as a human will respond it's not faster and that it's able to do that it's just so mind-boggling. Just think, you have like a fraction of a second for it to go and like break down everything that you said so have that all transcribed and then take that and then crap the response and then say that out through the audio model. And they're doing this all at insanely fast speeds the text generation is so crazy fast and it is now only half the price of what it was before. This type of progress is nuts, what other industry or what other time of history have we seen progress being made at this pace, there's no comparison this is batshit crazy. And it feels off because things don't quite add up as far as what they are giving to the public and what they very obviously have or should have AKA gpt5 something that is multimodal and is an agent that can go out and do everything.
For them to have all of that and yet not have a model significantly better than GPT-4 from a year ago is silly. They have a model, and it's GPT agents set up to code really well. They can tell these models to go and do things on the internet like creating various accounts, setting up the accounts with APIs, codes, and all of that, and then downloading all the necessary things and setting it up in whichever program. It's like these super assistants that are insanely smart. That's what we should have out there. If Sora is out there, then 100% we should have that, and that is AGI. It can do shit on its own and follow up with tasks and goals in mind. It's wild.
So, this next section is borrowing heavily from this Reddit post that was from February of 2024 in which much of this was predicted to a T. This post is so spot on, here's a link to it on an archive site
https://archive.md/rtZHg
It's like the methods magicians use to figure out other magicians' tricks. You look for what is required to be there and is (like the magician's hat on the table), and what is not required to be there but is anyway (like the curtain covering the space under the table).
But then there's the misdirection—the bullshit and distractions. A company with AGI is going to want to feed it as many GPUs as possible while delaying the AGI announcement. They'll throw smoke bombs, release amazing new products, and make cryptic statements to keep people guessing. Their actions will seem more and more chaotic and unnecessarily obtuse. Customers will be happy but frustrated.
They'll start releasing products that are unreasonably better than they should be, with unclear paths to their creation. There will be sudden breakdowns in staff loyalty and communication. Firings, resignations, vague hints from people under NDAs. And then, the military will suddenly take a huge interest, and all PR from the company will go quiet.
That's when you know it's real. When the curtain comes down, everyone stops talking, but the checkbooks keep opening wider than ever, with investors and state departments pouring in resources. Bottlenecks will be reached for multiple industries. A complete drought of GPUs, etc.
And I'm telling you, with everything we're seeing from OpenAI, it's looking more and more like AGI every damn day.
submitted by StonedApeDudeMan to u/StonedApeDudeMan [link] [comments]
OpenAI had a massive breakthrough and has been utilizing that breakthrough to accelerate their workflow. They got AI working on its own development on top of their team. And that's why they haven't released GPT-5 yet, despite it being well over a year since GPT-4. We all know they have it—training finished ages ago, and there's no good reason for them not to have released it yet. They just keep doing iterations of gpt4 over and over, and then on the side they just dropped these ridiculous updates...
Then, we suddenly get this demonstration, and have been getting demonstrations ever since, showing the Sora Video Model, and it's stupid good. Like, light-years ahead of the competition. It's straight-up magical at this point, so far beyond our understanding of what's going on with this stuff. Sora, unveiled February 15, 2024, it's so far ahead of everything else that it's very mind-boggling how they ever could have possibly gotten to that point so fast. It's so fucking good..
And that is exactly what is freaking all of them out big-time. Except not Sam Altman at first—he saw some amount of opportunity for humanity, mixed with seeing the power to be had, and how massive it would be if he came out the other side as a savior for humanity. So he embraced the breakthrough and kept going full force ahead. And he wasn't wrong to do that—it's his Oppenheimer moment.
China is going all in on it, that's for damn certain. Which means we have to go all in on it, safety and precautions be damned as they slow the development of AI down. Falling behind to China could potentially be catastrophic; we need to stay ahead. So of course the Pentagon got involved, working on a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with OpenAI announced on January 31, 2024, to leverage AI for defense purposes. The military saw something that triggered them to get involved, and while they're helping with cybersecurity, you can bet your ass they're leveraging AI to the fullest extent for all their warfare. They kind of need to, or else we're going to fucking die.
Sam Altman has been looking pretty exhausted and always tired during that entire stretch. Now their safety department has completely disbanded. This just happened, and they all got hit with NDAs of one year on their way out, meaning none of them can talk about it or they lose their stocks in the company. So, Sam Altman, instead of recoiling in fear and horror during the lifting of the veil that they were witness to behind closed doors sometime shortly before his ousting, he went the other direction instead and embraced it and was excited for the prospects. That is all because they discovered AGI sometime around the middle of November 2023. And while some of the employees for deeply troubled by all of this and Disturbed and scared perhaps, Altman showed excitement and exuberance over it, hence the entire ousting of Altman in November 2023. And because he showed excitement, I understand why all sides felt as they did and they are rightfully justified. Just before his ousting, Altman mentioned in an interview how they were witnessing significant advancements and saw it as a momentous period in AI development, which he felt honored to be part of: "I can't imagine anything more exciting to work on, and on a personal note, just in the last couple of weeks, I have gotten to be in the room, when we sort of like push the sort of the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward and getting to do that is like a professional honor of a lifetime. So, it's just so fun to get to work on that"
With the last update we got, it is very clear that they aren't showing us everything. The products are not quite what we were hoping for, but they are insanely good and enough to keep people happy. The shit they can do with the voice now is getting released to the public next month. It can sing, change vocal expressions, and do all sorts of crazy shit that nobody else is near. We all come to find out later that that was just the beginning of all these updates, we have 3D model generation coming, the dolly image generation that's integrated into it is phenomenal and can do consistent characters and it can do text like nobody's business, it's so fucking good, and then we have insanely fucking fast speeds for these models, you're able to speak to these models and get responses like right away just as fast as a human will respond it's not faster and that it's able to do that it's just so mind-boggling. Just think, you have like a fraction of a second for it to go and like break down everything that you said so have that all transcribed and then take that and then crap the response and then say that out through the audio model. And they're doing this all at insanely fast speeds the text generation is so crazy fast and it is now only half the price of what it was before. This type of progress is nuts, what other industry or what other time of history have we seen progress being made at this pace, there's no comparison this is batshit crazy. And it feels off because things don't quite add up as far as what they are giving to the public and what they very obviously have or should have AKA gpt5 something that is multimodal and is an agent that can go out and do everything.
For them to have all of that and yet not have a model significantly better than GPT-4 from a year ago is silly. They have a model, and it's GPT agents set up to code really well. They can tell these models to go and do things on the internet like creating various accounts, setting up the accounts with APIs, codes, and all of that, and then downloading all the necessary things and setting it up in whichever program. It's like these super assistants that are insanely smart. That's what we should have out there. If Sora is out there, then 100% we should have that, and that is AGI. It can do shit on its own and follow up with tasks and goals in mind. It's wild.
So, this next section is borrowing heavily from this Reddit post that was from February of 2024 in which much of this was predicted to a T. This post is so spot on, here's a link to it on an archive site
https://archive.md/rtZHg
It's like the methods magicians use to figure out other magicians' tricks. You look for what is required to be there and is (like the magician's hat on the table), and what is not required to be there but is anyway (like the curtain covering the space under the table).
But then there's the misdirection—the bullshit and distractions. A company with AGI is going to want to feed it as many GPUs as possible while delaying the AGI announcement. They'll throw smoke bombs, release amazing new products, and make cryptic statements to keep people guessing. Their actions will seem more and more chaotic and unnecessarily obtuse. Customers will be happy but frustrated.
They'll start releasing products that are unreasonably better than they should be, with unclear paths to their creation. There will be sudden breakdowns in staff loyalty and communication. Firings, resignations, vague hints from people under NDAs. And then, the military will suddenly take a huge interest, and all PR from the company will go quiet.
That's when you know it's real. When the curtain comes down, everyone stops talking, but the checkbooks keep opening wider than ever, with investors and state departments pouring in resources. Bottlenecks will be reached for multiple industries. A complete drought of GPUs, etc.
And I'm telling you, with everything we're seeing from OpenAI, it's looking more and more like AGI every damn day.
2024.05.19 17:06 Star60WasTaken Speculations about the new DbD spinoff "What the Fog" being a data mining cash grab
 | Not sure how many people here are interested in What the Fog but since it doesn't have it's own subreddit I thought this would be the next best thing. submitted by Star60WasTaken to deadbydaylight [link] [comments] I'm going to ramble a lot about the games history that I can tell from its files, so if you're not really interested in that skip down to the next sentence with bold text to get to the meat of this post. So I'm sure most of you who did redeem What the Fog for free found it a little bit weird that in order to get your steam code you had to agree to two conditions being bHVR is allowed to data-mine from your game and share that data with 3rd party corporations. If you didn't want to agree to this you have the option of just buying the game on steam for the full price instead. Although not really major this did seem like a bit of a red flag and a couple of my friends thought so as well so I did a little digging. It didn't take long at all from looking in the games files that this game was never intended to be Dead by Daylight themed, I'm not just talking about the fact that the weapons are overly fantasy-like or the enemies and abilities don't fit the characters I mean the fact that there are literally 3 unused characters in the games files named "Paladin", "Ranger" and "Sorcerer". The folder containing all character models, textures, animations and abilities. The Paladin and the Sorcerer still have their character models left over in the games files and after a long battle with Umodel, Fmodel and UE 4/5 Scripting System I managed to recover both the Paladin and the Sorcerer. After loading them into Blender and setting up their materials here's how they look. The unused Sorcerer and Paladin character models. These models do appear to be outdated though as they do not have a skeleton or a rig and they are using the old hand type, have an outdated UV as well as missing parts of their models. I've been working over the past day or so to restore the models to a functional state based off the rigging of Dwight and Feng. They still need some work but here's an idea of what they could have looked like had they have not been scrapped. Interesting thing to note is that the skeletons used by Dwight and Feng have bones left over for these characters that are animated in the animations these characters use. Both characters share a 'hat' bone for the helmet and wizards hat and the Sorcerer has a 'strap' bone for knot at his chin as well as the Paladin having a 'wings' bone and a 'helm_front' bone. Take a look. The Sorcerer and Paladin playing their menu idle animations, alongside Dwight and Feng. The Sorcerer and Paladin playing their spawn animations, alongside Dwight and Feng. While the Paladin and Sorcerer were left over in the files unfortunately the Ranger is nowhere to be found, they could be tucked away in a random file but as far as I can see only their textures remain. I can infer a little from their diffuse map as to how they might have appeared. The diffuse texture for the Ranger. I believe that the Ranger wore a green puffer jacket but the rest is a bit hard to understand from the UV... with consideration of the fantasy theme the green quarter circle shapes in the top left could be a gambeson that they wore over a brown skirt with a white shirt. I can't see any pants on the texture so this is my best guess. Their shoes were green with black detailing and they wore a green headband with yellow writing with a yellow gem in the center of their headband. Their weapon was a green crossbow bearing yellow gems. They have dark skin with black curly hair and black eyes. Based on the skeleton that all the characters use having some hair bones that nobody else uses I can assume that they had a bun on the back of their head with puffy bangs that were swept to the left of their face. If you've played What the Fog then you'll be able to guess that the Sorcerer was replaced with Dwight, the Ranger was replaced with Claudette and the Paladin was replaced with Feng. This sudden change was assumedly made pretty late into the games development considering the fact that some abilities still reference removed character weapons and the 'SkullNBones' models that each survivor use are still using the old weapon designs from these characters when you die which I'll go into more detail about. Feng has 3 skills she can learn which feel off, those being 'Shield Bash', 'Plated' and 'Resolve' which you can see the icons for below in that order. Shield Bash, Plated & Resolve. Two of these skills still depict the character with the shield/torso plating that the Paladin wears, rather than reworking these abilities they just simply left them in despite them not making much sense. The last ability being Resolve feels off due to the art style, it's inconsistent with the rest of the drawings and the shading has more of a smeared paint look to it rather than the gradient every other icon in the game has, suggesting it was drawn over when they made the switch from the Paladin to Feng. (It's hard to see from this image, if anyone wants the HD texture files to compare let me know.) Despite those remnants still left over you can actually see the literal remains of the Paladin, Ranger and Sorcerer when a player dies and isn't revived by the end of the level. Below you can see the 'SkullNBones' models for each character where you can see that the sword has the Paladins design on the blade rather than the cloth wrapped around Feng's, the crossbow has the Rangers yellow gems on it instead of Claudette's pink gems and the staff has the Sorcerers green crystal in it rather than Dwight's blue crystal. The changes to this game to make it DbD themed must have happened late into development since the game already had original characters, mechanics and models before it was turned into a DbD spinoff. I assume they were also made very close to release considering how the wrong weapons displaying on dead players really should have been noticed before release. The remains of the Paladin, the Ranger and the Sorcerer being used by Feng, Claud and Dwight respectively. Other than the character models of the original characters remaining, there are some other remnants of the game before it became What the Fog left over in its files. Much like the character models I am unable to view most of them however I can say that certain mechanics such as the exit door was different. It appears to have had a massive crystal on it instead of trappers mask and would have been unlocked with a key, assumedly found in the level. Another leftover asset are the chests that existed before Generators. I found it a bit weird that you had to spend currency to complete a generator and for it to give you a buff, turns out its because they were chests before the game was rebranded. I'll include an image of them below. Chest_00 and Chest_02 respectively. So what's the point of this post, well I'm a bit worried about what this game means for bHVR and DbD in the future. On the surface this game looks like a funny little DbD spinoff but from what it looks like bHVR rebranded this game as a DbD game in order to get the fanbase of its biggest title to go "Omg! New DbD thing!" and start downloading it, normally this wouldn't be a problem as a lot of game studios make sequels upon sequels to games and spinoffs because the franchise sells but this game is a little different. Assumedly the game was either a little side project of bHVR's or a test for the Devs when moving from UE4 to UE5, they either finished work on it or were interrupted as they have said that they don't plan to work on it anymore then slapped DbD onto it and released it for free if you agree to bHVR data mining and selling your data to third party businesses. TL;DR What the Fog is basically a cash grab that bHVR slapped the DbD brand on very last minute to make fans buy the game. They don't plan to update it and they also offer it to existing DbD fans for free as long as bHVR can sell and use your data. Sometimes bHVR makes changes to DbD that isn't all well received, that's just apart of game development but while those are just choices from a game design standpoint and while you could argue that these changes were made to make the game appeal to DbD fans they also decided to make it free for 2 million DbD fans who chose to sign their data away through an agreement. Looking at those two choices together looks a bit shady, I can't make accurate assumptions based off the findings in a short spinoff game so this is purely speculation and I hope I'm just blowing things out of proportion but as a DbD fan myself I'm genuinely concerned that we could start to see more decisions like this being made, I don't want to find out I'm in the reality where DbD as a game and as a franchise as well as what we're seeing produced by bHVR as well suffers as a game due to questionable business decisions. After looking through the games files I thought this was an interesting and somewhat concerning discovery that people should know about. In any case if you did receive this game for free by redeeming a code you should go and turn off the data mining on your account through this link: https://account.bhvr.com/account/communication-preferences You'll still be able to play the game, but bHVR won't be able to collect your data anymore. Stay safe friends. |
2024.05.19 17:04 Itchy_Finish_6451 Mark it plssss?????
Can smone pls mark my descriptive text from 40? The question: write a text abt an old broken object. Thanks in advance!!!! :))
The watch
Fetching in my grandpa's soldier's uniform's pockets, I found an antiquated piece of time: a watch of his, back from the Second World War. I desperately tried to discern it, but my body cast an eerie shadow on the watch that it made it impossible to even see the Roman numerals on the watch's interface. I clasped my fist, tenaciously, with it inside and then shuffled my way to the room's window, furitively, trying to avoid drawing the attention of my parents. I opened my fingers, one at a time, and revealed this incorrigible piece of history of my grandpa, but I found that it was worn out and in a miserable state. It was broken. The front glass had an artistic pattern of scratches, that I was incompetent of reading the brand's name, the golden dull case was apparently damaged and had etched wounds and the brown leather's threads of the strap, that sewed two layers of leather together and sealed them, stood sporadically erect like stubborn baby hairs after a dip in salty seawater.
I flipped the watch upside down and there were illegible letters engraved on the back cover. As I was scrutinizing it, attempting to read what was carved onto this opulent disk of gold, I noticed it was craggy and wasn't evenly straight. It was open that it looked like a crevice from the side. Before attempting to shove my nails in the crevice and opening it, I tried peeking into the intricate brain of this masterpiece from the ajar lid, but it was all dark. Black. Nothing could have been seen, even with the sun's light directly aimed at the opening. I felt rejoiced and more curious, for I considered it a mysterious adventure to discover the neglected for decades. I impetuously, but a little tentatively, hauled the cover and it opened, but with a simultaneous crack sound. My heart skipped a beat. I looked at the inside of the watch, but I wasn't seeing. My eyes were broad open and my eyebrows arched exaggeratingly. Did I break it? What was that crack? Oh no. I examined it and concluded that it was just because it was so old and decrepit that it didn't open smoothly.
The inside was dingy and dilapidated. Components were stuffed with dry soil and the smell was musty and noisome, that it tickled my nostrils. All I could see were thin metal strips half buried in the relatively large amount of sand, like plants hesitatingly growing to the atmosphere. I felt like it was necessary to open the lid, because soon enough the revolting scent diffused and was no longer there, as though releasing sorcery from a sacred bottle. I was bewildered. I didn't know whether to fix it and make of it a good use or to keep it as is, useless, but an unforgettable memorandum of my grandpa's corpse. I pondered in silence, considering its value that I could sell it, but I disregarded the idea hastily, for no amount of money was worth such intimate, although still reeking, object.
I repaired it.
Post receiving it, it was good as new. The glass was spotless and I could read 'Patek Philippe 1941.' The case was still damaged, because it was irreparable and the leather strap was sewed all over again. Reading the bottom lid, the letters were: 'L.J.C' which stood for Lieutenant Jacob Carlson. Although the repair made a hole in my bank account, that I may not recover from. This sole detail made it worth all the money I spent. I decided to keep the watch and use it daily, as an honour of my grandpa's corpse
submitted by Itchy_Finish_6451 to igcse [link] [comments]
The watch
Fetching in my grandpa's soldier's uniform's pockets, I found an antiquated piece of time: a watch of his, back from the Second World War. I desperately tried to discern it, but my body cast an eerie shadow on the watch that it made it impossible to even see the Roman numerals on the watch's interface. I clasped my fist, tenaciously, with it inside and then shuffled my way to the room's window, furitively, trying to avoid drawing the attention of my parents. I opened my fingers, one at a time, and revealed this incorrigible piece of history of my grandpa, but I found that it was worn out and in a miserable state. It was broken. The front glass had an artistic pattern of scratches, that I was incompetent of reading the brand's name, the golden dull case was apparently damaged and had etched wounds and the brown leather's threads of the strap, that sewed two layers of leather together and sealed them, stood sporadically erect like stubborn baby hairs after a dip in salty seawater.
I flipped the watch upside down and there were illegible letters engraved on the back cover. As I was scrutinizing it, attempting to read what was carved onto this opulent disk of gold, I noticed it was craggy and wasn't evenly straight. It was open that it looked like a crevice from the side. Before attempting to shove my nails in the crevice and opening it, I tried peeking into the intricate brain of this masterpiece from the ajar lid, but it was all dark. Black. Nothing could have been seen, even with the sun's light directly aimed at the opening. I felt rejoiced and more curious, for I considered it a mysterious adventure to discover the neglected for decades. I impetuously, but a little tentatively, hauled the cover and it opened, but with a simultaneous crack sound. My heart skipped a beat. I looked at the inside of the watch, but I wasn't seeing. My eyes were broad open and my eyebrows arched exaggeratingly. Did I break it? What was that crack? Oh no. I examined it and concluded that it was just because it was so old and decrepit that it didn't open smoothly.
The inside was dingy and dilapidated. Components were stuffed with dry soil and the smell was musty and noisome, that it tickled my nostrils. All I could see were thin metal strips half buried in the relatively large amount of sand, like plants hesitatingly growing to the atmosphere. I felt like it was necessary to open the lid, because soon enough the revolting scent diffused and was no longer there, as though releasing sorcery from a sacred bottle. I was bewildered. I didn't know whether to fix it and make of it a good use or to keep it as is, useless, but an unforgettable memorandum of my grandpa's corpse. I pondered in silence, considering its value that I could sell it, but I disregarded the idea hastily, for no amount of money was worth such intimate, although still reeking, object.
I repaired it.
Post receiving it, it was good as new. The glass was spotless and I could read 'Patek Philippe 1941.' The case was still damaged, because it was irreparable and the leather strap was sewed all over again. Reading the bottom lid, the letters were: 'L.J.C' which stood for Lieutenant Jacob Carlson. Although the repair made a hole in my bank account, that I may not recover from. This sole detail made it worth all the money I spent. I decided to keep the watch and use it daily, as an honour of my grandpa's corpse