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notwiselybuttoowell · 9 months

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Summary

This project, led by an Indian NGO Mahila Housing Sewa Trust (MHT), is on a mission to organise and empower women in low-income households to increase their resilience to impacts of climate change. To date, MHT’s initiatives have helped 25,000 low-income families across seven cities in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

The project is centred around an integrated model wherein women take the lead through collective action and technology incubation to devise locally relevant, pro‐poor, gender-sensitive and climate-resilient solutions. For example, women were trained to be energy auditors who encourage households to switch to more efficient products, forming a women-led distribution network of green energy and building products. Other solutions include using sprinkler taps to reduce the flow of water, harvesting rainwater, and other behavioural changes leading to more than 60% of households reporting to have increase in water quantity and more than 32% having sufficient water during summers.

Though projects like these, MHT is empowering women to take action against four major climate risks: heat waves, flooding and inundation, water scarcity, and water-vector-borne diseases. These slow‐onset events attract less attention but frequently impact poor people, particularly women, the most.

Key Facts

Mahila Housing Sewa Trust (MHT) has helped organise 114 Community Action Groups, who have reached out to 27,227 women in 107 slums. Of the women they’ve worked with, 8,165 women were recorded to demonstrate an increase in “knowledge seeking behavior”.

Over 1,500 women have been trained as climate-saathis, who are responsible for communicating the issue of climate change with their community in their local language. Through this communications exercise, the proportion of participants who viewed climate change as an act of god reduced from 26 % to 9 %.

To date, around 28,000 energy audits have been undertaken in slum communities, which have saved families over USD 700,000 per annum in electricity costs. These money and energy saving interventions have included installing over 200 modular roofs and 500 roofs with solar reflective white paint, while having also led to a reduction of 105 tonnes of CO2e per annum.

The Problem

It is estimated that over 190.7 million people live in informal settlements in South Asia. These settlements are often densely populated and highly vulnerable to even the slightest changes to our climate.

MHT’s project is building the resilience capacities of over 25,000 low-income families living in slums and informal settlements across seven cities in three South Asian countries, including: Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Ranchi, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar (India); Dhaka (Bangladesh), and Kathmandu (Nepal).

Their initiatives empower women to lead local mitigation efforts to prevent key climate risks such as heatwaves, flooding and inundation, and climate change related incidences of water-vector borne diseases. These types of slow-onset events tend to attract less global attention, while also disproportionately impacting low-income households. Women are commonly the primary caregiver and responsible for household management, which renders them more vulnerable to these types of stresses.

The Solution

MHT has championed a women-led empowerment model for building climate resilience in the slums of South Asia, focused around organising groups of women in their communities. Their model builds upon the conviction that if the urban poor are provided with requisite knowledge to undertake vulnerability and risk assessments, and are equipped with available resilient‐technologies, they will be able to devise and implement locally relevant and pro‐poor, climate-resilient solutions

The project model emphasizes women taking the lead through collective action and technology incubation in order to devise these locally relevant, gender-sensitive and climate-resilient solutions. To make this possible, MHT, assists with facilitating the required infrastructure, institutional and financial mechanisms.

Helping the Planet

Through empowering women, this project is also helping reduce the emissions associated with the production of electricity in these communities. For example, one of MHT’s core initiatives trains women to become energy auditors and educate households on the nuances of energy use such as bill calculation, wattage consumption and energy wastage. As energy auditors, these women also encourage households to switch to more energy efficient products.

These trained energy auditors also act as grassroots level micro-entrepreneurs, by forming a women-led distribution network of green energy and building products. Energy auditors promote the installation of energy efficient LED bulbs and lights, modular roofs, airlite ventilator, many other solutions.

Helping People

While women from low-income families are often the most vulnerable as they have the least access to information and resources, MHT believes they also have the greatest potential to be empowered to become agents of change.

The rationale for the project is to provide these women with the requisite knowledge to undertake vulnerability and risk assessments, while also equipping them with the available climate resilient-technologies. This means they will be able to identify climate induced vulnerabilities, minimize risk and adopt locally relevant climate resilient solutions. In turn, these women also can potentially play a role in influencing better city planning and governance for pro-poor adaptation and resilience actions.

Spillover Effect

Currently, MHT is in the process of training other grassroots organisations to reproduce similar women-led groups in areas such as Bhubaneswar, Dhaka and Kathmandu.

While many other urban resilience programs are top-down and externally driven, MHT has made a concerted effort to ensure their initiatives are low-cost, contextually-appropriate and participatory. Urban poor that have been organized under this program gather critical planning data to design their own solutions and negotiate with other urban stakeholders, as well as test and manage implementation of these solutions.

Through empowering women to help improve their homes and communities, MHT’s initiatives have also triggered behavior change in communities towards making more informed decisions. This has in turn empowered them with the necessary knowledge to demand improved government services, thus proving that this concept can be expanded to other communities throughout the world.

#mahila housing trust #mahila housing sewa trust #climate resilience #south asia #women led initiatives #climate change #inequality #sorry I couldn't get it to link properly so you get the whole thing #there's a video at the content source if you're interested

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indigodawns · 1 year

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#dude it's so........... im trying to read these sources for my thesis and i'll read a paragraph and be like ohh this is so interesting!#and then i will check whatsapp youtube tumblr. go back to the source. read a page. think oh this is so interesting i can keep going like th #this. but then i see ive only done two pages and it's overwhelming and i switch tabs again. take some notes. youtube. back to the source #(article i mean not source djfhjdfh my english is so shit these days rip and so is my dutch sigh)#and then inbetween im fidgeting with my earphones #and my nails and then my hands feel dry and it irks me and then im Too Bored so i need to eat smth but i don't want to eat the stuff i have #so i wait until i can make lunch. have lunch. watch video. stare at source. stare at the time ive wasted and how can i #possibly get back on track. WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE PULLING TEETH WHEN IM ENJOYING THE CONTENT #this has to be adhd right or am i just. unmotivated and scared to fail???#and my other question -- yesterday i was feeling so overwhelmed and tired bc lack of sleep + thesis stress + life stress right?#and i went to a friend with another friend to work on my thesis but like every noise just... annoyed me #but i also didn't WANT to work on my thesis and it's this kind of anger i get when im ignoring how stressed i am yk??#so what is that??? IS that overstimulation when it's just me waking up stressed??? no right??#anyways as always feedback is welcomed if you're still reading fmfmgnfmgn ily all hope the weather is a nice where you are #as it is here (blue skies!!!)

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nerdvi · 5 months

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In the wake of the whole james somerton fiasco and inspired by this post, I wanted to share a few of my um, soft signs, like, orange flags to detect when someone is bullshitting you.

First of all, I am on the spectrum which means 1) I tend to take what people say at face value and 2) I have a strong sense of justice which makes me prone to biases, all of which combined means I am at perpetual risk of swallowing the bullshit.

So, what to do about it? You turn on the critical thinking and pay attention.

As one of my favorite youtubers, Hannah Alonzo, likes to say: "consider the source, remember the motive". Who is talking to you?? What do you know about them?? What biases might they have?? How do they interact with your own biases?? Where are they talking from?? Is it anger?? happinness? boredom?? Also, why are they talking to you? Are they trying to sell you something?? Are they trying to convince you and why?? How do they go about the finantial motivation, if present? If you have, in this case, a white cis gay man talking to you as it he has it the worst of the worst in the world, there's probably some exaggeration and you should start to wonder. There's a good chance he's bullshitting you.

How they talk about women and POC No, no, stay with me. There's a rule I had back when I was dating men: Always beware of how they treat their mother. With the exception of extremes like mama's boys and cases of abuse, how a man treats the woman with whom they have that familial bond is a good indicator of how they are going to treat you. Do they berate her? speak ill of her? are aggressive or controlling? do they dismiss her opinions? Same with creators, and by god I tell you, specially cis male creators, queer or otherwise, always always beware of how they speak of women, how they treat women, how they treat POC. Somerton had a weird vendetta against straight women. It went mostly unnoticed. Then, he was dismissive towards lesbians and other queer women and it was once again overlooked. Then he went ahead and made sinophobic content about genres and cultures he knows NOTHING about. Again, it went unchecked. What I am telling you is IT'S NOT NORMAL. Contempt about women and non white-western cultures is not normal and if someone has them as them as an enemy or a scapegoat, they're probably bullshitting you. Take what they say and fact check it, see for yourself.

If at any point in a video or an essay you find yourself thinking "wait, really??" then it's time to fact check. Is it a bit suspicious?? is your logic telling you that's not quite how this works?? Then take to google, my friend, they might be bullshitting you. At worst, you dodge a fake fact, at best, you learn way too much about a topic you were already interested in.

Beware of the lack of nuance. I can not stress this enough. We all love monochrome, but life and societal issues are never black and white. It's just impossible, there's too many factors to consider. If you are being presented situations or anecdotes as absolute truths, you're probably being bullshitted. If it's too good to be true, it is. If it sounds waaay too convenient, it probably is. A good researcher, a serious investigator, will always have some nuance because they have done the work and checked the sources. If someone provides you 1) no nuance and 2) no sources, THEY'RE BULLSHITTING YOU.

These are the ones I can come up with just of the top of my head, I'm sure there's more and please, add them. Remember that naivité isn't a crime, I'm fairly naive and that's made me distrustful, and these are some of the techniques I've found that help me navigate through a world of information without losing myself.

#james somerton #hbomberguy #plagiarism

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faeiri-tft · 6 months

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PLEASE do the toontown online rant i want it so badly

this post kinda got away from me, and by "got away from me" i mean this 3000 word toontown rant is Part One. there will be a Part Two to this later in which i actually talk about the fanservers i wanted to talk about. anyway let's go

toontown online (tto) was a children's mostly-turn-based subscription MMO released in 2003. after a few years of obviously being on life support, disney gave a one-month notice that tto (and several other games) would be closing on september 19th, 2013. on the same day the game closed, the fan-run server toontown rewritten (ttr) was announced (with multiple other fanservers/fangames/reimaginings being established since), and is a few months away from outliving the original game

see, one thing about tto that allowed fanservers to crop up so quickly and easily was that it had, um, interesting choices. very interesting choices. like, "kids could use a code injector to turn their backyards into giant mashed-together nightmarescapes"-level choices

youtube

(loose video description: a rabbit toon running around a chaotic mismash of rooms, obstacles, and npcs that Should Not Be There. audio caption: Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life".)

but ok let's talk about the actual game first.

toontown online (tto)

the game starts with you creating your player character - you can pick from eventually-9 species, a couple body types, and 2 dozen preset colors. the gender code is a spaghetti nightmare but you won't learn this until the fanservers come about so don't worry about it. you're then taken to the Toontorial, which explains maybe 20% of the game's mechanics before setting you loose into the main game

the toontorial also gives you the basic "plot", such as it is: Toontown is suddenly* under attack by a bunch of boring businessrobots called the Cogs. their goal is to turn toontown into a dreary gray featureless corporate hell; their business activities are so boring that they're physically painful to be around. luckily, they can't take a joke, so the toons have figured out how to defeat them: by playing pranks on them until they laugh so hard they Explode

*originally, the game installer had a little animation giving a backstory for the Cogs' creation. this was never referenced in game, removed pretty quickly, and i think even the devs kinda forgot it existed

that's...pretty much the whole story! in that context, your toon progresses through all of toontown, helping some mostly-pretty-interchangeable shopkeepers, reclaiming buildings from the cogs, eating ice cream, etc. occasionally, the cogs would Come Up With New Tricks (read: major content update) and the toons would Find A Way To Fight Back (read: same major content update). that was the closest thing to Plot, unless you count "the devs scheduled a bunch of invasions of high-tier cogs right before the game's closure". but...i doubt most the kids really expected a Plot. mickey mouse was there

the gameplay:

the Free Account

there were two...pretty different approaches to playing toontown online. when the game launched, there was a 3-day free trial to the entire game, after which you got kicked entirely until you subscribed. at some point, this was changed so that the first area, Toontown Central (TTC), was Always Free - you could do all of that area's quests/"taskline" and limited activities, indefinitely, and in theory this would make you beg your parents for the rest of the game

i have no idea if this actually got more subscriptions or not. from what i can tell it just spawned more warrior cats

(source)

there were. a Lot of warrior cats. there were some other social activities, too, such as Fashion Shows (with your limited range of clothes) and Begging Subscribed Players To Summon Cog Buildings To TTC and Getting Chat Banned. ...however, as one of the subscription kids i didn't really interact with this side of the game, so i'm not the best person to talk about it

2. the Paid Account

mmm look at those crisp clear graphics. hell yes

a subscription account gave you access to this whole map, along with all these areas' tasklines. to progress through the game, you must complete a variety of "ToonTasks" for the Toon Resistance (it's called that. their catchphrase is "Toons of the World, Unite!". you were giving disney money for this). these reward you by increasing your max health (your "Laff Points"), slowly unlocking more combat options, and sending you to different, higher-difficulty areas of toontown

some of these tasks were...longer than others. generally, though, they all boiled down to: "just go fight some cogs"

combat:

(source)

toontown battles are turn-based: the players use their attacks ("gags") first, and then any surviving cogs attack you with, usually, office equipment and puns thereof (unless the cog is e.g. a Loan Shark, in which case they can just fucking bite you). if you defeat a cog, it explodes; if the cog defeats you, you "go sad" and are sent back to the safety of the playground, lose your gag inventory, and can't leave until you heal.

early on, most your battles are 1v1, but later on almost everything is a multiplayer 4-ish-v-4.

an...interesting feature here in the game's early days was that you could only Type Your Own Words to someone who shared their "friend code" with you IRL. otherwise, you had to use this thing:

(source)

you had a set list of phrases you could string together, which generally covered most the things you wanted to say. but it could get frustrating when you wanted to have a real conversation with your toontown friends! so...as the source above mentions, people obviously found ways around the system. turns out that if you let players move objects around their houses, they will use that to Draw Letters and pass their friend code along regardless

eventually - before the warrior cats, of course - disney presumably realized this system was pretty goofy (🥁) , so the game got a real chat, albeit one that functioned on a very strict whitelist. my favorite is that it didn't let you type numbers, however you could just say won too tree for hive etc. like. disney i really don't know what to tell you. anyway

(isn't he charming)

cogs come in levels 1-12, with levels displayed above their heads, and as you'd expect their damage output and HP increase with their level. however, the game doesn't...actually show you cog HP? instead they have a little colored light on their chest that fades from green to red until they explode. you see numbers on all the damage you do, and you see your own HP/laff, but never the cogs'. also lategame cogs are Too Tall For You To See Their Level once they line up for battle (which isn't actually that bad but it's funny). there's a formula for HP per level, but it's never mentioned in-game. i guess someone can teach it to you but then you have to watch them type "a level tin cog has won tree too health" and is that really worth it

(as you can tell i just…don't get this. "my kid is practicing arithmetic with toontown!" - marketing angle expressly denied by god. the stealth edutainment was right there)

anyway! in theory, you have seven base combat options ("gag tracks"), which combine in a variety of ways:

toon-up, which restores your teammates' health;

trap, which does guaranteed high damage but only if someone uses lure;

lure, which stuns the cogs for a few turns and is the only way to make trap work

sound, which does low damage to every cog;

throw, which does medium-high-ish damage to one cog; multiple throws combined give percentage combo damage, and hitting a lured cog will also add percentage "knockback damage";

squirt, which is exactly like throw but less damage;

and drop, which does high damage but cannot hit lured cogs, and has low accuracy unless you hit the cog with something else first

each gag track has 6 levels, which you unlock by using that gag track a bunch. you can't carry as many of the high levels with you - i mean, putting one piano in your backpack makes perfect sense, but two is just silly, right

a few years into the game's lifespan, level 7s were added - these were huge AOE that you could regain with every 500 track EXP. there was also something called "organic gags" to promote the please-log-in-every-day gardening system

every player starts with throw and squirt, and throughout the game you slowly unlock four more gag tracks. your choices are permanent: once you have your six tracks, you're locked out of the seventh forever.

in theory, all of this opens up a huge variety of combat options!

in practice, the battle strategy looks something like this:

use sound

as mentioned, almost all of lategame will be 4v4 battles, which means sound will almost always outdamage everything on earth. you don't even need four foghorns (the highest normal sound gag) to break 200 AOE damage, and the highest health a cog EVER has is 200*. and two of the boss battles can reward you with gag restocks and heals that you can use mid-battle with no consequences (other than having to grind for those rewards a bunch). and failing THAT, you can just...ration your foghorns and take 2 turns to clear a set of cogs, interspersed with healing.

(*okay there was something called "v2.0 cogs" but they were...strange, and we just used sound anyway)

sure, once level 7s were added you could use those occasionally. and you could fall back on lure+throw if you didn't want to use your sound restocks. but even then, for most of tto's existence there was something called the "knockback bug" which. well. just look at it

(link for transcript. it's tvtropes sorry)

if you are a target-audience eight-year-old this translates to "lure + throw will only do enough damage if the cogs Feel like it." like it's really just insult to injury at this point. this was the result of One misplaced variable and was not fixed until the game closed

in the tto era, if you didn't have sound, you were kinda doomed to be kicked out of every fight forever

(bonus fun fact: there were Four entire battle themes and they were 40-second midi loops. let me out)

the bosses:

each of the four cog departments has a Boss Cog. to face off against them, you have to assemble a cog disguise and collect enough merits/stock options/whatever to be allowed into the boss's office.

(pictured: your convincing disguise)

when you enter, your disguise pops off due to Reasons, and you have to fight through...a bunch of waves of normal cogs. it's basically a really long normal battle. once the minions are dealt with, you have to, inexplicably, do a live-action battle against the boss themself:

youtube

(loose video description: four toons defeating the CFO by using magnet cranes to hit him in the face with safes for 32 seconds.)

the live-action rounds aren't supposed to go this quickly, but it's still...kinda strange? certain reoccurring game areas require Parkour, but there are no battles like this outside of the Four bosses. the CFO's room is the only place you see these cranes and they have A Lot Going On. the other 3 bosses have their own unique weird mechanics. before the first boss was added we neither had nor needed the ability to Jump. it's just weird

once you've defeated the boss, you're given a reward of varying usefulness (the best/most unbalanced reward type is Unites, which are a free heal or gag restock you can do inside or outside of battle. essentially lategame toons can simply choose not to die. riv2u etc.)

and, um. then you get some more merits/stock options/whatever and do it again. and again. and again. and again. and agai

the grind:

so the thing is that tto was a subscription mmo. every addition to the game had to be measured, above all, in terms of "how can we best get kids to beg their parents to give us money." this especially shows in the suit grind:

(source/source)

you have to defeat each boss 78 times in order to get all their laff points - and as you proceed, you have to defeat an increasing amount of cogs to even be allowed into the boss (although once you max you get in for free).

by far the easiest way is to run through the designated HQ facilities - basically, cog fights interspersed with some platforming or minigames. you only collect your merits/whatever at the Very End of the facility. the only way to increase what a facility gives you is if your last battle ends during an "invasion" - a timed period where One Specific Cog replaces all street cogs, usually summoned with boss rewards.

the sellbot HQ grind isn't so bad. bossbot HQ - the endest-game HQ - frequently requires you to do an hour-long facility and on six separate occasions you have to do seven of them. if the invasion ends before your final battle, you have to sit around until someone summons another. if you lose your internet connection because it's 2008, or if your parents make you come to dinner, or if hacking or the game's general bugginess cause a server reset because you're probably in the busiest district for the invasion bonus, you have spent that Entire Hour On Nothing. the CEO (bossbot cog boss) probably also takes an hour because you and your fellow players are 10

this shit, combined with laff points locked behind gardening (time-gated), racing and golfing (multiplayer minigames with absurd requirements), and fishing (RNG-based with some fish being absurdly rare. i watched my mom fish for one every day for a month), meant that maxing a toon took Years, if you managed it ever.

it wasn't, um. it wasn't good

ok so what else is wrong with this game:

i had "aged out of the game" (lol) by the early '10s, so i'm not the best person to do a writeup of the hacking/scripting situation of those days. that said, what i'm going to do is give you a few examples, and i want you to just...look at them

(source)

(source). early '10s youtube was funny i'm trying to decide if i miss it

(source). fun thing to note here is that other players had collision, so a swarm of t-posing toons could just barricade the gag shop if they wanted to

youtube

(video description: toon who has Replaced His Head Model With An Anime Logo throwing thousands of jellybeans at everyone) (cw mild flashing just in case? and also the feather headband accessory)

i should note that the Bring Me To Life vid i started with was client-side, meaning only the player could see their technicolor hellscape. this guy's face was server-side. i do Not Think you should be able to do that

youtube

(video description: a player demonstrating use of a bot to get into the nutty river district, followed by other players using it to go to different game areas)

the above video was posted on august 17th, 2013. if you don't want to watch an Unregistered Hypercam 3 recording at about 5 frames per second, what's going on here is:

the player goes to a specific location and says a specific speedchat phrase.

a bot toon teleports to their location and provides some prompts on how to use it

the player tells the bot, via speedchat, to teleport to the (currently closed from the outside) busiest district so the player can follow

these "taxi toons" were server-sided, persisted across server resets, were made by a future fanserver dev, had younger kids referring to them as a "glitch" as if this were something that could Accidentally Happen, and stayed functional until the game closed

like...a lot of the "hacking" was just baby's first script download. this one - afaict also created by the laughing man head guy - is like...the fact that after years of no substantial game updates, someone effectively programmed their own "QOL feature" (note: not actually good for the poor mid-00s server being turned into a clown car) into a silly disney MMO and it just fucking sat there for a year is just. it's just.

i don't know what this is. this is not Playing The Game Toontown Online. this is nothing. this is everything. there are comments from 2013 on some of these videos saying stuff like "hackers killed toontown", but your game cannot have this happen if it is not already dying

and, like...it was. i'm not sure how many moderators there were by this point, but at the very end of tto, the number of active devs was One. the original devteam recently brought this up at the 20th anniversary celebration: devs just...slowly started getting pulled from the game, one at a time. there were a few updates after bossbot HQ - Field Offices, which i've basically never heard anything good about in their tto form ever; the Silly Meter, a yearly event...thing whose main function was to add unskippable dancing-inanimate-object cutscenes to your street battles; Parties, which...yknow parties were okay actually. i accept parties. but they weren't exactly a Major Game Update like the ones that had come before. in 2011 we gained the ability to Wear Hats. in 2012 the test server got some actual QOL updates that never made it to the main game; the final test server update was some maintenance in february, and then nothing for 18 months. disney was not providing enough resources to address the scripting because disney was not providing enough resources to address toontown. imagine being the last dev standing on an MMO that was older than some of its players, was losing its business model to mobile gaming, and spent most of its life falling apart at the seams. just imagine it, for a second

it couldn't have kept going, not like this.

on august 20, 2013, the closing announcement came: we had a month left of toontown online. the test server shut immediately; subscription refunds went out, and the game became actually F2P for the month; the part of the announcement that went like "we're shifting our focus to other games!" made a bunch of twelve-year-olds hate club penguin as if club penguin wouldn't also close in a few years; all the holiday events went off at once; and...

there wasn't a "thanks for playing!" popup. everyone online just got kicked, all at once. it was finally over

hey wait.

#toontown #toontown online #tto #tft talks #tft stuff #<- this goes in that tag i think #this was like. enrichment. thank you

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motheatenscarf · 5 months

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Amidst all the James Somerton fallout, I think it's important to remember not to moralize whether or not you or others fell for his grift.

Obviously, if you were rallied into being one of his attack dogs on social media when he put some pretty heinous hits out on people, uh. You might have other problems and should probably evaluate how you spend your time online and how you treat other people before you start caring about the rest of the points I'm about to make. Priorities, etc.

But for the rest of us, it's surprisingly easy to miss just how awful a creator can be.

If you only watched his videos that caught your interest, if you don't really follow creators on social media, if you skip livestreams because watching Some Guy talk unfiltered into a bad camera angle with shitty lighting for hours on end sounds like a fucking nightmare to you, you're not really gonna catch most of this shit. At least, you're not gonna catch most of it from any perspective but the one he tries to spin.

This is a reminder to be skeptical and to trust your gut and check sources if something sounds wrong, but also. Uh. That's still the creator's responsibility not to plagiarize and to fact check their work. You're not morally obligated to be as thorough in curating your experience as someone who is making sure they take every ethical precaution before absolutely destroying a "creator's" credibility in a video like H-Bomb's or Todd in the Shadows'. You're literally just some guy. Most people, myself included, watch these videos as background noise while doing at minimum one other task, you're not gonna google every damn thing he says, especially not on media analysis, where the POINT is to have one's own opinion. THEY'RE the ones trying to be "influencers," or, laughably, "creators." The standards are on them.

And for the isms, phobias, and misogyny, well. Frankly, for my own perspective, I gaslight myself all the damn time when I see red flags. Good Allyship™ has been telling me for years to ignore my own discomfort when someone criticizes a privileged group, especially one I'm a part of. I'm a cis asexual white-passing and probably neuroatypical woman, I am constantly trying to be aware of my own relative privilege while simultaneously doubting my own reaction to things. Despite this, I'd still liked to think I'm a skeptical person, but nobody's immune to everything. Everybody has weak spots.

If you got duped or fell for James' scam, that sucks. I feel ya. I fell for it too, I've seen probably 40% of his catalog over the last couple years and really liked what I'd seen. I recommended his channel and videos to people even if I didn't always agree with every point he made, but it felt important to at least consider what to me seemed like a unique perspective that had value or added to a conversation. There are red flags within his content, his analysis, his rate of publishing, his weird diatribes, that in retrospect, really all added up into things I should have known better than to ignore. But, for reasons I'm interrogating and am adding to my list of things to be aware of about myself, I didn't ignore them, and got grifted. I donated to his patreon a few times, probably gave him like $20 grand total over the years, about as much as I've given H Bomb. The important take away here isn't to be ashamed of the fact that you were fooled, it's to remember that you're fallible.

And it's good to recognize that about yourself. Everyone is, and the ones who say they aren't are lying. They're either gonna be the next person to feel really stupid and foolish when they fall for a scam, or are themselves the grifter.

No one is immune.

#James Somerton

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detailtilted · 2 months

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Comic-Con 2008 - Enhanced Edition of Supernatural Panel

youtube

Direct link. Warning: Some of the special content I added has big spoilers for season 4 beyond the original videos.

This video features Jared, Jensen, Eric Kripke, Sera Gamble, and Ben Edlund. If you've already seen the original videos and you're wondering why you'd want to watch this, see the details about the enhancements below. For other enhanced videos, check my YouTube channel or my Tumblr index post.

Video Improvements - Upscaled, fixed bad aspect ratios, improved colors

I received a great deal of help from @sensitivehandsomeactionman on the color correcting. They gave me tips on how to achieve better colors and they even took a screen shot from my video and corrected the colors on it with their own software to provide me with an example of what was possible. Having that example to reference was invaluable for me, because I'm not good with colors.

Without that help, Jared and Jensen would have looked like they were in training to become the world's tallest Oompa Loompas. Any remaining color wonkiness (Wonka-iness?) is due to my own failure to apply what I was taught and my failure to see the colors properly. But look at that difference! I was pretty excited about this.

Combined Videos to Cover Entire Event

As with my other enhanced videos, I combined multiple videos to create as seamless a video of the event as possible, from beginning to end. For my earlier videos, that meant combining maybe 5 videos. For this one, I used a total of 19 videos from 3 different sources. A lot of those were used for the talking head bubbles, explained further below.

None of the videos are my own. My video description on YouTube has links to the original videos I used.

Good, Color-Coded Subtitles

As with my other enhanced videos, I attempted to provide accurate and as-complete-as-possible subtitles. They're color-coded to make it easier to tell who's speaking. This is especially helpful when people are speaking at the same time, or when the speaker is off camera.

Since there were so very many people talking in this video, I doubled up on a couple colors if I thought I could do so without it being too confusing. Here's the complete color key:

Red = Jared Blue = Jensen Brown = Eric Kripke Pink = Sera Gamble Purple = Ben Edlund Green = General audience Yellow = The person asking the questions. In the first half this is the moderator, Alynda Wheat. In the second half, this is the fan at the mic. White = Mostly the publicist (Holly Ollis), but a couple times it's used for people off camera who I believe were Comic-Con staff. Two shades of orange = surprise guests

Additional Clarifying Content

As with my other enhanced videos, I've added some images to help add clarity to the references used by the speakers. I added images of characters and scenes referenced from the show, images to explain various pop culture references, as well as some explanatory text to help add details or clarity when I thought it might be useful.

I mostly kept this extra content to the sides so that, if it doesn't interest you, you can hopefully ignore it and focus on the main part of the video. Unlike my previous videos, sometimes this is on the left side and sometimes it's on the right side. The margins shift depending on where the talking head bubbles are.

Talking Head Bubbles - Jared and Jensen front and center, but other speakers visible too

This "enhancement" isn't anywhere close to perfect, but it sure as heck isn't from a lack of effort. This represented at least half if not two-thirds of the time I spent working on this video.

I always find the Comic-Con videos frustrating to watch. When the camera moves to other people who are talking, I want to see Jared and Jensen instead. I like to see their reactions and sometimes they do funny things that get missed. But when the camera is steadfastly focused on Jared and Jensen, I also get frustrated because I can’t see the people who are talking. Nope, you can’t win with me! I want to see everything.

I attempted to mitigate this frustration by adding talking head bubbles. The main source videos I used were the ones with the most constant and stable focus on Jared and Jensen. However, if one of the other source videos had a decent focus on another guest, I inserted a small window into that other video as seen below. Eric shows up on the left, because that's where he was seated relative to Jared. Sera and Ben show up on the right, because they were on the other side of Jensen.

Like I said, it's not anywhere close to perfect. Trying to make the bubbles look stable was an enormous challenge for me. Behind the scenes the person in the bubble was bobbing and weaving all over the original video frame, so I had to constantly adjust the position of the secondary video to keep the subject centered in the bubble. They also aren't always bubbles. The people taking the videos often had the writers on the edge of the frame because they wanted to capture Jared or Jensen too, so the bubbles start to collapse when they get too close to the edge because there isn't enough video surrounding them to form a circle.

I haven't decided if the end result was worth how much effort I put into these darn "bubbles", so I'd welcome any feedback -- good or bad.

#enhanced edition con video #j2 #jared padalecki #jensen ackles #eric kripke #sera gamble #ben edlund #comic con #comic con 2008 #Youtube

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fairuzfan · 6 months

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Social Media Archiving by WITNESS

Hey all — WITNESS released a blog post about social media archiving both in arabic (click) and in english (click) if you're interesting in preserving videos and other social media content.

Check out this open source resource on how to preserve social media and what considerations to have: https://www.gazamediaresources.com/

I wanted to share since I know some people are interesting in social media archiving given the blackouts.

#palestine #gaza

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infriga · 5 months

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To add to the discussion about plagiarization and misinformation, one thing I know that can contribute to complacency is how much time and effort it can take to fact check everything you watch. That's daunting for most people, let alone people who don't have as much experience with it or who deal with disabilities and executive dysfunction.

But there are some things you can do to minimize damages that are easier to manage on a more individual basis.

You don't have to necessarily fact check every single thing every creator says in every video in order to make sure they're 100% legit every time. I know not everyone has the mental bandwidth to do that sort of thing constantly. Generally it's okay to just practice some mindfulness and not blindly trust someone if you haven't vetted their claims personally.

What you can do is fact check yourself. Don't repeat stuff you hear from a video as if it is a fact unless you have looked into it yourself first to confirm that what the video said about it is true and that their sources are good. And if you source someone make sure you've vetted them specifically and checked their own sources on that particular topic or bit of information (and check that they even HAVE sources to begin with and aren't just copying their sources verbatim). You can't source every video essay you ever watch or check every single one for plagiarism, but you can source yourself and what you say, and make sure you're not spreading bullshit or citing the wrong person. If you find that you don't have the energy to do even that much in a given moment, then just keep the information in question to yourself for the time being until you do have the energy to verify it.

And some stuff that's generally just good practice: if it's a topic that you're particularly interested in, it's a good idea to seek out more than one video about it from more than one creator. The more diverse your sources of info on the topic the better, especially if you seek out more than just the popular stuff. Get a broader picture of it from a wide variety of people from a wide variety of demographics. It's a lot easier to spot stuff like plagiarism if you're looking at more than just one or two channels, and even if you don't spot it, because they're often good at hiding it, you at least can make sure that you're giving more obscure creators the same attention as well instead of only defaulting to the most popular wide-spread creators and content.

Seeking out more than one type of medium is usually a good idea as well. I know reading stuff like written papers or essays or books on a topic can be difficult for some people, but if you can manage it even just occasionally then branching out every once in a while is still worth doing because it gets you out of one particular information sphere and into another, reducing the chances of an echo chamber effect. If you can't bring yourself to do that much homework on a topic, then again remember to keep in mind that your knowledge about it is limited and could be wrong, and don't spread that info without doing your own research first. Videos are not inherently a bad way to learn about stuff, papers or books can be wrong, and plagiarized, and badly sourced, and can spread misinformation too, my main point is that it's good to avoid having your information come to you through a single choke point if you can help it.

It can be exhausting trying to hold every online creator accountable on an individual basis, I get that, so I don't expect everyone to extensively peer review every channel they ever watch, but at the end of the day you can at least make sure to try and hold yourself accountable first and foremost.

#hbomberguy #todd in the shadows #james somerton #Plagiarism #Misinformation #Wanted to offer some advice for people #who maybe don't have all the executive functions they need to do a background check on every channel that does video essays #For every video they make #This'll probably be the last major thing I reblog about this topic #Just wanted to add my two cents #Spilt tea #And this goes for any information you get from anywhere not just video essays #Like don't blindly trust and spread info from tumblr posts without verifying it personally either #Or reddit #Or friends or family #Etc #I said this is the last major thing I'll reblog I meant blog about in general lol forgot this was an original post for a second

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the-kestrels-feather · 2 months

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I know I'm SO late to the party, but In light of the hbomberguy video, I wanted to drop a list of some of my favorite video essayists on here who are all great. Some are well known, some of them not, but all deserve a lot of love thrown their way!

Any creators I know are Queer will have a * next to their names if that's what you're looking for! (Note some of them might not have a star that should, that's not me trying to invalidate anybody I just didn't know, please feel free to correct me!)

Dominic Noble- book content! Has a series called Lost in Adaptation that judges how faithful movie adaptations of books were to their original source material, but also does some reviews/summaries as well. Very publicly denounced JKR after she was revealed to be a TERF and stated he will no longer review anything by her on his channel. Also deleted ALL of his HP videos after finding out she was a TERF (which were his most popular videos), so I have a really deep respect for him tbh. Former Channel Awesome member who publicly denounced them on several occasions, and an all around swell guy.

*Overly Sarcastic Productions- channel run by 2 people who go by Red and Blue. History and Mythology/Literature content, as well as analysis of tropes and media! I've been told their History content can be a bit... Iffy, but I'm not a Historian so I don't know, however if they get something wrong they're good about correcting it for what that counts for. Very interesting to listen to, I've watched Red's Videos roughly 100 times each. Also has a podcast.

*Strange Aeons- fandom/Tumblr history mostly, as well as some history, and weird businesses too. Reads a LOT of cursed content for her channel.

*Lindsay Ellis- Media/film analysis. obviously not as unknown as some of the others on here, but I absolutely adore her content and will forever be sad that she isn't on YouTube anymore.

Cruel World Happy Mind- MLM/explanation of controversial figures. I'm not sure how best to explain her content, but she seems genuinely lovely and is interesting to listen to. Also a victim of Illuminaughtii's ire and deserves some love. The video she made on Blair is a bit outdated since she made it at the start of when this all came to light, but imo it's definitely worth a watch. Her talking about her interaction with Blair genuinely broke my heart.

*Night Mind- Analog horror/Unfiction/ARG content! Analyzes and explains various internet horror pieces, and also has a very nice voice to listen to.

*Lola Sebastian- Film/Media Analysis!

Li Speaks- Deep dives into various nostalgia, mainly flash games!

*Princess Weekes- Media/film/literary analysis!

abitfrank- summaries and analysis of various "darker" children's content such as Coraline (book and movie), Nightmare Before Christmas, and various dark fairy tales

Hello Future Me- writing advice and world building information!

Curious Archive- deep dives into the various bestiaries of video games and the animals in real life that they're similar to, I love his Subnautica video!

In Praise of Shadows- Horror media analysis! Will often focus on specific franchises, but also covers things like horror comics and tropes as well.

Wait in the Wings- theatre! Deep dives into the back stories behind the production of various musicals! His video on Rogers the Musical that he did for April Fool's last year is comedy fucking gold

Weird Reads With Emily Louise- conspiracy theory/cult/weird thing analysis! Looks at things from an objective and skeptical view, and is very in depth. Recently served as a consulting producer on an HBO Max documentary on the Love has Won cult.

Ask a Mortician- death content! Covers various historical events and darker stories of death from the view of a Mortician.

*Izzzyzz- deep dives into fandoms, as well as well as different video games and kids' virtual worlds.

Disney Dan- Disney content! Covers the history of different mascot costumes at Disney and Disney-like parks! Has collaborated with Definctland in the past too!

Yesterworld- theme park content! Discusses history behind rides and parks, as well as some Disney movies. I think has also collaborated with Defunctland and Disney Dan?

Legal Eagle- legal content! Breaks down news about ongoing legal cases in a way that feels approachable. I like him because both my parents are paralegals and his videos have helped me understand what they mean when they're talking about work a little bit

Super Eye patch Wolf- media video essays! Mostly about anime/manga and video games, but also covers things like influencer scams and pro wrestling. His "what the internet did to Garfield" video is SO GOOD

*Jessie Gender- Media Analysis, loves Star Trek

*Laura Crone- Media Analysis video essays, her videos on the Swan Princess are fucking great I highly recommend!

*Lady Emily- Media Analysis, did a whole video on Spuder-Man turn off the dark that is SO good. Co writer for Sarah Z

Tale Foundry- covers different forms of fiction, their xenofiction video is great, as is their Angelarium one!

Defunctland- Theme Park ride and Children's TV History channel!

Jenny Nicholson- one of the sort of "big three" commentary channels with Lindsay Ellis and Sarah Z imo, covers all sorts of stuff but her most recent one is a 3 hour video on the theme park Evermore Park!

*Sarah Z- Fandom history and Media analysis! I really enjoy their content, the Johnlock Conspiracy and DashCon videos are my favorites!

Li Speaks- Flash games/virtual world analysis mostly! She has a very soothing voice to listen to, if you played like. Any MMOs or virtual worlds growing up I Highly recommend. I've watched her video on Horseland SO many times.

*Codex Entry- Video game coverage! Her videos on Pathologic are great if you're like me and wanted more after the Hbomberguy video!

Wendigoon- ARG/Spooky content! One of the early proponents of the Mandela Catalog and best known for his conspiracy theory iceberg, but has also covered things like various weird/unsolved crimes, Assassination conspiracies, and other things. His videos on Faith, Blood Meridian, The Mandela Catalog, and his Religion/Cult iceberg are some of my favorites

Dino Diego- Dinosaur fiction, like movies, video games, books, short stories, etc. his 2 videos on West of Eden and Winter in Eden are two of my favorites!

Haley Whipjack- I don't know how to describe her content really? She does a lot of deep dives (her Shrek one is my favorite), currently doing a recap of Once Upon a Time by season that is very fun. She's an elementary school teacher by day (that's not me dozing her she talks about it on her channel), and so she has fun unhinged teacher energy!

Other channels that are a sort of collection of different people talking about different things rather than 1 or 2:

TEDx

PBS

The Exploring Series

#james somerton #hbomberguy #i know this is late #i meant to post this a while ago but i had so many to catalog #video essays #video essayist

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random-and-average · 10 months

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Can you do yandere Miguel x gn reader who has sans ability? I'm talking about that reader that has sans ability. They can teleport, they can summon a gaster blaster and something else! If you don't know sans. U can search them in Google, "sans undertale ability". You can make the reader be okay with Miguel kidnapping them or something. The reader doesn't have to look like sans or anything. Ignore this if u don't take request

I kinda take requests? As of now, I don't have any clear and defined will do's and will not's (plus, I have to figure out what fandoms I can write for since I usually don't engage with the source material directly and instead watch videos and research about it), so I don't want to claim that I take requests and inadvertently upset some people. Any requests I take will have to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Though your request is fine!

Also, sorry if advance if this isn't exactly what you wanted. After writing this whole thing, I realized that the reader's powers weren't a big part of the "headcanon," but I didn't have the heart to delete all of it :')

Yandere Miguel O'Hara x G/N Sans-like!S/O

Content Warning(s): unwilling imprisonment, kidnapping, Miguel pushing his subordinates around, Miguel snapping, Google Translate Spanish, possibly OOC Miguel, cringe writing, cringe dialogue, bastardization of Sans's powers

Handy Background Info

In this situation, I'd imagine you possessing hyper-cosmic awareness (being aware of different timelines and universes beyond your own as well as what goes on in them, though your powers are stronger than Sans's in this regard 'cause I like a nigh omniscient reader), time stopping abilities (because I personally believe that Sans doesn't teleport but rather stops time), and determination construct creation powers (essentially, you can create whatever you please, such as gaster blasters, via your determination)

Everyone in your universe has the ability to construct things based on the determination they have; however, your other two abilities are unique to you due to... very, very interesting reasons ☺

(In fact, the Spider-Man of your universe utilizes his determination to create his webs)

Since it'd be such a shame to only take Sans's powers, you also possess some of his signature traits—his permanent smile, though in your case it's more out of choice rather than something you were born with, and his chill nature

"Headcanon" Territory

You were brought back to HQ after you were accidentally sent to another universe

However, you weren't scared; you didn't even bat an eye

You simply accepted it for what it was, even the pain that came with "glitching"

But this was the first time you've ever been in this situation, which was suspicious

Naturally, you get questioned, and unnaturally, you acquiesce with the demands of (basically) your kidnappers

Miguel... doesn't know how to react to you, really

One could even say that he's annoyed by you to a degree

You're unwaveringly calm in situations you shouldn't be; though, you just claim that you're tired

Based on the Spider-Man of your universe, you have the power to resist, yet you don't

You have knowledge of his universe as well as others beyond your own (which is concerning on its own), but you don't do anything with it

Ultimately, Miguel comes to the conclusion that you must stay at HQ for a while in order to observe you

"Have they just been napping the whole time?" Jess questions as she watches your serene, sleeping form from the other side of the one-way mirror. Contrary to the purposefully nerve-inducing nature of the interrogation room, you were comfortable enough to be fall into a vulnerable state on your own volition. Many had been in that same spot you were currently in, but none have reacted like you.

"It seems so," Lyla answered. "They were even found just napping on a park bench in Earth-445761."

"And there isn't anything unusual about them outside of their apparent apathy?"

"It'd be better to list how they weren't unusual."

"How lovely..."

»»-———¯\_(ツ)_/¯———-««

From that point onwards, Miguel interrogates (or, more accurately, intimidates) you almost every other day

Expectedly, he doesn't get much out of you, much to his chagrin

"Anomaly, you aren't ever going to be able to return home if you don't answer honestly."

"and i am. frankly, i don't know what you find so spin-teresting about me."

"You little..."

At some point, he changes his approach since intimidating you obviously gets him nowhere

You're given your own (heavily monitored) room on HQ to stay at indefinitely

You're also not allowed to leave said room unless he supervises you

That doesn't really stop you from seemingly teleporting out of your room

You give the man gray hairs anytime you suddenly appear in the canteen or recreational area

At one point, you're in your room playing an indie role-playing game about monsters

The next, you're enjoying a good ol' hamburger and fries with the other Spider-People

And then, you appear back in your room with a purple donut and cider

"Lyla! Hurry up! What if the anomaly escaped to another universe!?"

"Give me a second! And... aha! Found them! Wait a minute..."

"What? What did you find?!"

"They're in the canteen? From the looks of it, they're just eating some fries. Eugh, with too much ketchup at that."

"Te cae?" (Are you serious?)

"See for yourself if you don't believe me. Which you should, because when have I ever lied?"

It doesn't help that he knows you can give your determination physical form, yet you never do so

For the sake of his own sanity, he chalks it up to you lacking determination

It would make sense considering your apathy

Frequently, Miguel drops by, typically around breakfast or lunch, and engages in conversation with you

However, they're mostly focused on your abilities and what life was like at home in order for you to let some info slip

Initially, your conversations are just him asking you questions; this time, in a non-threatening and genuinely interested manner

And you do tell him details of your personal life, though nothing indicates that you're part of an organization that also harnessed the power of interdimensional travel and knowledge

It's noticeable that you steer away from any emotionally heavy topics, but Miguel doesn't pry in understanding

He, himself, has let some info slip as well

As ashamed as he is to admit it, the more he talks with you, the more his fondness for you grows

Poor Miguel

The man has no one to talk to on a personal level, so whether he knows it or not, he cherishes every conversation he has with you

You don't judge him, nor do you promise things that you can't guarantee; you simply listen

It takes a while, but you eventually become his only friend and confidant

Following the recollection of his daughter's final moments, soft, restrained sniffles came from Miguel—sniffles that sounded louder than they actually were due to the absolute silence of your living space. The towering man hunched over the small dining table, obscuring his face from your vision. His body trembled, and the tea on the table shook alongside him. Compared to how he usually looked, he looked smaller this way; the vast sorrow of his memories reduced this man into a helpless spider.

"Perdóname," the man sniffed. "This behavior is unbecoming of me."

"is it?"

"Yes. As the leader, it is my responsibility to not let emotions get the better of me. Emotions lead to a clouded judgement, and clouded judgement leads to sloppy work."

"but you aren't doing any work right now," you pointed out before taking another sip of tea. It was surprisingly sweet despite the lack of any added sugar or sweeteners. If you focused on it enough, you could swear it tasted a bit like chocolate. "you are just having a conversation with me. unless this counts as work for you?"

Miguel's eyes widen in disbelief at your rational response. He had never thought you were capable of being this logical, especially with how you were carefree you were the majority of the time.

"No. No, this doesn't count as work for me."

"that's good. i was going to leave if that was the case."

Neither of you said anything else and instead enjoyed your own tea. Even when Miguel finished his tea, he pretended that there was still some left in his cup in order to avoid saying anything potentially embarrassing. Meanwhile, you continued to drink a tea that never seemed to run out. How did you do that? He supposed it was another mystery of yours.

Eventually, Miguel knew he couldn't up the farce anymore, so he asked, "Did you not mind my... moment of weakness earlier?"

He didn't know if he was hyperfocused out of nervousness, but he observed every small detail of yours as you placed your tea cup back on the table. There wasn't a falter in your stoic expression, and your movements were relaxed and smooth. Your eyes parted from your drink and moved to look at Miguel's brown ones. It was then that he noticed that the beverage in your cup wasn't the red-orange color of the tea but a chocolate drink with a few small marshmallows in it.

(He didn't even see you move to change your drink. Was his memory failing him? Or do you have some power that allows you to do this?)

"not really. it's normal to experience some sadness when thinking about the loss of a loved one."

You brought the cup back up to your lips to blow on the steaming beverage before taking a sip. The rich sweetness of the hot chocolate got a soft, satisfied hum out of you.

"besides, what would come out of me judging you? it is what it is."

There it was, your carefree attitude. Usually, this aspect of you frustrated him, but in this situation, he couldn't help but feel relieved that it made an appearance. With a tranquil slowly growing on his face, Miguel's body relaxed and lost its tension.

"You have a point."

"do you finally tea my point of view?"

"That... was a really bad pun."

"don't be so chai. i know you love my quali-tea puns."

»»-———¯\_(ツ)_/¯———-««

III

After several interrogations and conversations, even Miguel has to admit that you're just an innocent civilian

Albeit an odd one

You're given more privileges now, such as being able to explore HQ and go outside (though you need an escort for the latter)

Like always, Miguel always seeks you out first

He still eats his lunch and breakfast with you while engaging in conversation; as of late, they're about random topics instead of being focused on your history

But now, he also brings you places to hang out during his free time

(He struggles with discerning what you like, so he totally goes to Lyla and Jess for help, discreetly)

There's also the added bonus of him opening up to you more

Outside of work, you're his emotional support friend

Once he does find out what you like, you can guarantee that he'll always bring you out to your favorite places

He may even bring you to your favorite universes if he has the time

Ensures your living space is your personal heaven, as a friend obviously

You have the best bed, blankets, pillows, etc.

Pleads with you to not disappear and reappear without telling him

Don't you see if gives him a heart attack?

Occasionally tests your character so that he has a better idea of what you're like

For instance, he'll "accidentally" give you the chance to cause chaos just to see how you'd react

He trusts you! Don't misunderstand him

You may just be an innocent civilian, but he has the need to know you extremely well

Blame your anomalously chill and laid-back personality

He would be more protective of you, had he not witnessed first hand that you could clearly take care of yourself

(The lack of remains from a rogue anomaly after they got vaporized by strange skull-shaped blasters is a testament to that)

"Y/N, what did you to the anomaly?"

"i gave them a bad time."

As a result, he lets you fight your own battles if need be

But that doesn't stop him from fretting over you before, during, and after each one

Doesn't need to watch over you 24/7 like he would if you were anyone else, considering you're pretty lazy

(He definitely humble brags about the fact that he knows the most about you compared to your other friends)

You're allowed to have other friends than him

Just know that he's your best friend

Jess is honestly happy for him

You're his first friend!

Be honored(?)

While quickly brushing his hair down in order to not give off the impression that he rushed straight from work, Miguel approached the restaurant you suggested you two could eat at for dinner. As expected, you were waiting at the entrance for him. Your eyes lit up in acknowledgement once you spotted the man's signature blue suit.

"ah, miguel, you made it. thought you'd be late."

"I would never be late for a meet up with a friend. Who do you take me for?"

It was a lighthearted question with no deeper meaning, but the way you stared at him and hummed in reply made it seem as if you knew something he didn't. For just a moment, you looked like someone wise beyond your years; your eyes held a knowledge that he couldn't discern for the life of him.

Miguel had a feeling that this wasn't going to be an ordinary dinner.

"we should head inside. i'm sure you're hungry."

The two of you headed inside the suspiciously empty restaurant and seated yourselves in the center of the dining area. A waiter appeared a few minutes later to provide glasses of water without asking what beverages the two of you preferred, and he left immediately after with a quick, nigh unnoticeable glance in your direction.

The entire restaurant was quiet with no words or actions being exchanged. After your stare earlier, Miguel was too uncomfortable to say anything, and you seemed content with not talking.

But to ease the awkward silence, you opened with a conversation starter, "so, how was work today?"

"Busy," Miguel replied tersely. The atmosphere felt too uneasy to talk in a casual manner. "The anomaly today put up a bit of a fight."

"makes sense." You paused for a minute, like you were considering and weighing your next words. However, based on the small minute changes of the ever-present smile on your face, you weren't considering them for your sake, but rather for his.

"any iteration of venom would be difficult to defeat."

His eyes widened. Last time he checked, you were in your room the entire day, and no one who knew of the mission talked to you yet. There was no way that you could've known that the anomaly was related to Venom. Suddenly, the mood became more serious than it already was.

"Yes."

"..."

"that's it? just 'yes?' no questions whatsoever."

Wary of your next actions, he waited for you to make the next move and didn't say a thing until you did. His obvious plan drew a sigh out of you.

How boring.

"i suppose i'll get to the point if you plan on being so guarded: if i am to stay with you without putting up a fight, then there's gonna have to be some changes. it's the least you could do for attempting to keep me away from my home dimension, as futile as that may be.

"and don't think that i am letting you get away with this behavior because i have a soft spot for you. i don't." The smile on your face faltered. (A rare sight to see, Miguel noted with dread. You always had a smile on your face, even if the meaning and authenticity behind it wasn't always the same.) "frankly, you don't deserve it. at best, you play the bystander while you watch your followers mourn over deaths that you could've prevented, and at worst, you actively sabotage their endeavors to stop these deaths."

Your eyes fixated on his, staring and scrutinizing his very soul. "doesn't that make you a murderer in your own right? a serial killer even, seeing as you have done this time and time again. it's also a bit unfair. you got the opportunity to live the future you never had, yet you refuse that same privilege to others?"

"If you truly know these things despite anyone telling you," Miguel shuddered, a phantom weight pressing down on his chest, "then you would know why I did it."

"i do. and i still find it ridiculous. how can you call yourself a fellow scientist if you don't even understand that correlation does not imply causation?

"regardless, i did not go through the effort of organizing this dinner to explain the causes of universes being destroyed. my single demand is that, for as long as i stay here, you become a neutral party when it comes to other spider-people interfering with these 'canon events;' you won't get in their way of changing them, but you won't help them either.

"if you do this one thing, i won't try to escape and will always return to hq. a win for all sides, really. you don't have to worry about me returning to my dimension; i don't have to go through the effort of escaping; and the spider-people unsatisfied with their canon events have the opportunity to overcome the odds."

Miguel mulled over your request. In comparison to him keeping you at HQ against your will and forcing you to comply with his demands, this one request of yours was a laughably small price. However, it would mean that he would have to contradict his own morals. At the same time though, it would spare him and everyone else the headache of any possible escape attempts.

Within several minutes, he made up his mind, but there was one single thing he had to know before he stated his decision.

"Why do you care whether these people are able to prevent their canon events?"

Your eyes flickered with some unexplainable sorrow before returning to their usual impassive state.

"you might have given up on pursuing a better life, but there are some people who don't. and i know from firsthand experience that there's nothing that these people wouldn't do to gain that future they were deprived of. i just don't want to see such a thing to happen again."

With his question answered and curiosity (somewhat) satisfied, Miguel gave you his answer.

Simultaneously, you were made aware of the different response of other Miguels in the timeline.

»»-———¯\_(ツ)_/¯———-««

Not much changes if he does fall in love with you, to be honest

He kidnaps you from your room and asserts that you are to stay in his room from now on

But you don't care?

Actually, you're just sleeping on his bed (and he can't pry you off of it)

"Cariño?"

"zzzzzz"

"If Mayday can't get them to wake up, I doubt you can, Miguel. Why don't you just let them get some sleep for a bit?"

"If you aren't going to be helpful, I suggest you leave, Peter."

At first, Miguel struggles with the relationship

You're simply too laid-back for him

Yet at the same time, it's always as if he doesn't have a grasp on you

Do you even love him back?

This insecurity pushes him to go off the deep end

He locks you up in his room, which he installed several cameras and recording devices in

He (attempts to) emotionally manipulates you and, had you any dirt in your past, would've blackmailed you

"You're the only one who I can confide in, mi vida. You are the only one who cares about me. I would die without you in my life. Would you really abandon me like this?"

Forces all of his subordinates you return you back to him if they find you away from his room without him nearby

Interrogates you (again) about what you did that day as well as what you think of him

Would use his towering frame to intimidate you, but he knows that intimidating you would only give him a bad time

It all comes to a head when his insecurities about this relationship causes him to snap after months of bottling them up

"Why don't you ever love me?! I would do anything for you; I would even sacrifice the whole world for you, and you don't even care! Do I really mean anything to you? Answer me!"

(How he snaps out his rage is up to your interpretation)

After that incident, Miguel would become extremely clingy (for you only)

He wants you beside him always and will occasionally hug/cuddle with you without notice

Any moment away from you causes him to go into a frenzy and search for you

If you wanted to go somewhere, why didn't you just tell him?!

Day or night; rain or shine, he'll put aside what he's doing to go with you somewhere

"miguel."

"Yes, mi amor?"

"there's a cute pomeranian over there. it's been staring at me for a while now, so i'm going to go pet it."

"Hold on. Let me go with you."

"What? Miguel, we're kinda in the middle of a meeting right now. You can't just leave midway!"

"We can talk about this later."

"Where'd that dog even come from?"

Eventually, after you were pestered by many Spider-People begging you to tell Miguel to tone it down, you had a talk with him

(After some much needed communication, the poor man breaks into tears of relief and cuddles with you for the entire day)

(Miguel uses Cuddle! ... It's super effective! You are now inflicted with SLEEP!)

From that point on, he starts to get used to you and compromises with you

The majority of the cameras in your shared room has been removed, though there's still one at the door

Doesn't intentionally manipulate you anymore

You're allowed to go wherever you want without needing him around, but you have to text him wherever you're going

Still insists you tell him how your day went

Miguel takes the time and effort (or lack thereof) to enjoy your hobbies

Though, he does occasionally have you join him in his own, admittedly few, hobbies as well

He's just prefers doing things you like rather than things he likes since he has so few

With your influence, he starts to become noticeably more chill

He may even develop hobbies and interests of his own outside of you

(Intentionally or not, you actually somewhat succeeded in an "I can fix him" approach!)

"Hey, Miguel! Would you mind babysitting Mayday for a- Hold on, are you knitting?"

"What of it?"

Overall, he becomes more comfortable in your relationship

In fact, your relationship with him starts to resemble a normal one to an extent

At night, you're not allowed to go anywhere, no exceptions

Yes, after you two hugged it out, Miguel demands cuddles every night

He's so comfortable around you that he lets himself be needy for once

Whenever someone is hitting on you, he not so subtly glares at them and asks if you'd like to take a nap in his arms

Following that, he implements "training" sessions wherein he "spars" with anyone who wrongs you

He knows you can handle yourself

He just needs to discipline those who think they can go against you in your stead since you won't

Simply put, his yandere tendencies towards you are significantly dialed down, but as a result, they're more focused towards others

After all, Miguel knows you're too lazy (and he means that in an endearing way, really) to oppose his love

So that means any interference comes from outsiders

It was pure silent in the room. The only thing Miguel could feel was the hard floor against his back and the slight chill of the air. He was suddenly very aware of how still his body was as it had not moved even an inch for a while now. His eyes had nothing else to stare at except the white ceiling of your shared room.

Just a few minutes ago, Miguel asked if he could join you in one of your hobbies. It had been a busy day, and he wanted to destress with you. Of course, you obliged before laying down on the floor and asking you join him.

Initially, he thought this was a preparation step for what you two were going to do, but you had been on the floor for what seemed to be more than 5 minutes.

"Cariño, what are we doing?"

"..."

"Cariño?"

Miguel lifted his upper body to see if you were okay. To his relief, you were. Your eyes were closed, but it was clear that you weren't sleeping since your chest rose and fell at a normal rate. It looked as if you were in an untouchable state of tranquility.

With nothing else to do, he got back into position and continued laying there. Eventually, he got bored of the plain white ceiling and closed his eyes.

After a couple of minutes of more silence, Miguel started to feel his surroundings change. It was like he had drifted off into the cosmos with only you by his side. He could even see the multitude of galaxies and stars pass you by.

He could see why you liked doing this.

(And he hoped that he can do it again with you in the future.)

#yandere #yandere x reader #x reader #miguel o'hara x reader #yandere miguel o'hara #atsv x reader #yandere atsv #my first request :D #request #sans #reader could blow miguel to bits but doesn't #they're too lazy #an absolute mood lol

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aqours · 6 months

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ok i REAAAAAALLY need to make a dedicated sideblog for this shit now i realize bc this game is gonna fucking fully get me dragged into this discourse so i'm gonna make an active effort to stop putting these on main, but i can't see myself saying more beyond this in general but ANYWAAAAYS

so i recently made this post about the cognitive dissonance regarding this game and people using fucking CALL OF DUTY a game that is more or less a recruitment drive to make the US military look cool and try to get kids to join up and that GTA's wanted system is actually NOT rewarding you or something to try to play a dick measuring contest with coffin but this interaction really interested me and i wanna talk about it bc i just blocked them after they refused to answer the last question but this is a very specific kind of gaslighting tactic i'm very familiar with from my own days as an anti

i think p much all of us who are used to engaging with this discourse are used to like y'know, being called awful horrible disgusting things. this is not the first time some fucking weird random person came onto my content asking me if i was a kid didler or wanted to fuck my brother. ain't gonna be anywhere near the last time either folks, but i and Lord God knows that's not the case so i don't care what a rando on the internet says but here's the thing: you can't "win" this, but they want to win it. no matter what you say you are the absolute worst kind of dreg of society that should be shot behind a barn and no amount of anything would work. if i actually pulled a list of sourced all that would have happened was they would've doubled down on calling me an inc*s*ious p*d* that I would be willing to use articles probably written by "people like me." because YOU don't care about "winning" this argument, you just wanna get the facts out on your end. it's a catch-22 folks, nothing you say will get you out of it!

i started by calling them a karen, they immediately escalated the living FUCK out of it and tried to trap me in this catch-22 to keep feeling morally superior to me. me saying i don't have such desires and never will isn't enough because i like this game. nothing but me renouncing it will change it.

but here's the thing about antis- they fucking HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE it when you turn it on them. look at the difference. look at the difference between they were the one throwing the catch-22 at me vs. the other way around. what about you? you just came onto my post to harass me, so i'll say it back. how about you? are you just accusing me of these horrible things because you are projecting your thoughts on me? you told me to get a therapist: so maybe you're the one that needs help if so!

violent video games must encourage violence, riiiiight? and you support it because it's violent. Game of Thrones had in*e*t in it so everyone who likes it also is the same. and Demon Slayer, where the pfp is from is violent, so you support it. the main protag's little sister also gets a superpowered form where she gets physically older and a tits out kinda look. so clearly YOU want to see your sister in the same way, right?

and it went as expected. you can see the tone going from smug jerking off with a shit-eating grin to just annoyed while smelling their own farts like it's a rose. and the moment i started doing the same uh i got NO fucking answers and they stormed off. i waited half an hour for a response before blocking them

so why am i typing up this walltext? because i used to be an anti. i fucking guarantee you i would've called everyone who liked this game [insert horrible things] like 7-9 years ago. so let me tell you, you know what pisses off antis more than anything? more than ANYTHING? turning this catch-22 bullshit on them. this is the only way you can end this miserable conversation without blocking them.

it's all one-sided bullshit and the moment you turn it on an anti it IMMEDIATLY shuts it down. this fucker KNEW the answer and you know it. so i wanted to share that, if you ever struggle with this shit: well the best thing you can do is block them and to give a fuck about winning their imaginary argument, but this is the only way to make the headache end otherwise. just throw the catch-22 right back and that's the end. thanks for reading!

#starposts #the coffin of andy and leyley #coffin of andy and leyley #proship #comship #long post #anti anti #discourse cw #ok i REALLY do want this shit off my main blog though i'm gonna start using a sideblog probably

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mistydeyes · 8 months

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I wanna get to know more about cod but idk where to start.

When I was younger I new of cod,but I wasn’t really into it.As I never had a console, (I was a wii kid 😭) my parents wouldn’t allow me to play those types of games.

but now that I’m older I joined the fandom a bit late and I wanna know where to start like what comics? I need to read,what game I should play first or watch a gameplay of etc

hi anon! thank you so much for asking :) it is a little daunting when you first look at it (especially with so many games, there's over 20+). i would recommend playing these/watching the gameplay in this order and i included some of the extra content where it fits with the games. the wiki is also a great source for information. here's a little timeline for you! this is primarily focusing on the cod: modern warfare series.

so what most people want to know is where to start if you're interested in the modern warfare story (with price, gaz. ghost, and simon). call of duty is separated into 4 different arcs: world war ii, modern warfare, black ops, and standalone games. as such it doesn't matter what order you play the overall games but within each category, they are mostly released with extra content in order

the initial games (2007-2011) what started it all for the reboots! the story has all the familiar faces but a different story! this includes soap and price having a stronger dynamic (as oppose to the reboot's Price/Gaz and Soap/Ghost). the timeline of the characters are also different compared to the reboot as you'll see throughout the games (this includes major events and character deaths). we follow Captain Price and his Taskforce 141 as they fight through various enemies and try to save the world. there is also more of an emphasis on joint missions (and playable characters) from the US military and federal agencies. there are also more playable characters (Sgt. Paul Jackson, Sgt. Gary "Roach" Sanderson, PFC Joseph Allen and James Ramirez, Yuri, SSG Derek "Frost" Westbrook, and Sgt. Marcus Burns). overall summaries: suggestive gaming | the leaderboard (timeline) price and soap's story: inkslasher

Soap's Journal from the Hardened Edition of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - 2011 part of the collector's edition for MW3, this 80+ page book details soap's pov for various events happening prior to the first game and through the last game. this includes military sketches, diagrams, and written entries from soap. soap's journal

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - 2007 gameplay: gamingabsolute | gamer's little playground (only cutscenes)

Modern Warfare 2: Ghost - 2009 my post summary | the comic simon's story explained: inkslasher

Modern Warfare 2 - 2009 shameless promo here but this is my favorite game in the whole series! gameplay: mkiceandfire | gamer's little playground (only cutscenes)

Modern Warfare 3 - 2011 gameplay: nrmwalkthroughhd | gamer's little playground (only cutscenes)

the reboot (2019-2023) while sharing the same name/characterization as some of the characters in the initial series (including Price, Soap, Gaz, Ghost, Nikolai, Makarov, and General Shepherd), this story line is different from the initial series. instead of having many separate missions, it primarily follows Cpt. Price's Taskforce 141 and their allies, Laswell + Alex from the CIA, Urzik's rebel leader Farah Karim, Colonel Alejandro Vargas and SGM Rodlfo "Rudy" Parra, Nikolai, and PMC Commander Graves. the dynamics have changed in the game with the games focusing on Price and Gaz (+ Alex, Laswell, and Farah), then Soap and Ghost (+ Los Vaqueros and Graves).

Modern Warfare - 2019 gameplay: tmartn2 | shirrako (only cutscenes) summary: suggestive gaming | gamespot

Warzone - 2019 this six season battle royale style video game includes many of the characters from the main game. there are also various stories at align with the narratives in Modern Warfare, Black Ops, and Vanguard. summary: inkslasher

Modern Warfare II - 2022 gameplay: gamer's little playground | adguideshd (only cutscenes) summary: mrroflwaffles

Modern Warfare III - 2023 to be released in november

#task force 141 #call of duty modern warfare #cod mwii #modern warfare 2 #simon ghost riley #call of duty #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #modern warfare #izzie answers #madebyizzie #izzie is writing #izzie summarizes #gameplay #video games #modern warfare iii #call of duty mw3 #cod warzone

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thorraborinn · 1 month

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I know you've said that other Heathens have given you crap for giving Dr. Jackson Crawford even the mildest amount of criticism, but I was wondering if you would be willing to share any more criticism about his videos, especially the ones on the gods and Norse culture? If not, is anyone you know who has critiqued his stuff? I know Dr. MatthIas Nordvig doesn't like him, but he took down all his videos. I'm asking because I as I read a lot of other scholars' work the more I question how he came to some of those conclusions like translating Óðr's girl to Odin's girl. I know he subscribes to the idea that they are one and the same, but I still think it's weird to put in the translation while knowing you're not going to be adding explanations in the book.

Honestly I don't really have any systematic criticisms, just normal ones like I have for basically any scholar. I don't really watch his videos but I think I've agreed with most of what I have seen. It's more that because his content is so easily accessible and viewed by so many people, some of those people seem to have become really emotionally invested in him being an unquestionable authority, and they really shouldn't be doing that to anyone. There isn't a population of heathens who get personally offended and defensive if I say I think Terry Gunnell or Margaret Clunies Ross missed the mark somewhere. I think for many of Crawford's viewers he's the only specialist whose work they are accessing regularly, and if they read some other authors too they would have a better experience.

Come to think of it, some heathens do get really invested in certain authors like Vilhelm Grønbech or Paul Bauschatz, and get very defensive if you criticize them. To an extent this is also true of H.R. Ellis Davidson. For a lot of heathens of my generation her books were the first scholarly works they read, so their relationship to her was probably similar to heathens and Crawford now. And Ellis Davidson did a lot of good work that nonetheless can and should be criticized.

I will say though that Jackson Crawford's translation of the Poetic Edda is almost universally regarded as bad by people who can read the original, so yeah, most scholars would agree with you about that. And nobody seems to be able to wrap their heads around his decision not to include notes and commentary. I get the impression that he wasn't trying to make something that's accurate or suitable for scholars, but trying to produce something that's entertaining and easy to understand for a mass, popular audience with only casual interest. So if someone wants to get an accurate idea of what the source texts are actually saying, they should read Edward Pettit's translation or Carolyne Larrington's (2014, not 1996), just as someone who wants a translation that is highly poetic at the expense of accuracy and clarity might choose Hollander's.

To say any more than this would require me to watch more YouTube than I am willing to.

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mecachrome · 3 months

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for an incredibly new f1 follower, what would you recommend for getting up to date with teams and racers and performances and history? apart from dts lol

oh that is a good question!!! i don't think i'm even the best person to answer this but honestly i think it all comes naturally if you pick a specific thing/team/person you're interested in and set out to learn more about that topic, because everything is so connected and with time you can fill in those knowledge gaps pretty quickly :') more under the cut:

dts is imo perfectly acceptable for learning names and faces for the first time and basically creating a vague outline of a given subject (i've said it's like using duolingo for learning a new language lol), so if you watch it and are like oh—i'm interested in charles or mercedes or learning more about technical regulations or whatever, then you can just dive deeper into that via wiki / youtube / podcasts + published media + old race archives and build up from there!

otherwise i think the main thing is just to start watching the actual races when the season gets underway, and in order to properly appreciate them then also read up on + watch videos about the technical/strategy side of the sport as well. back in the day i used to really like chain bear and i still always recommend it to anyone who asks! after that i would just seek out like... a community/server/place where other people are discussing news real-time; this could be meeting people on tumblr and twitter, but personally i'm subscribed to r/formula1 because it's the most active composite source of f1 news and Discourse. if you're reddit-averse i also just keep a big list on twitter with a bunch of random data accounts, official driver/team accounts, journalists, etc. that helps me keep up with the season in a tidy fashion—though honestly f1 journalism is so unserious that you don't really need to do that because most journos regurgitate the same three quotes in slightly different formats, so if you want to follow One Guy who won't disseminate bs info i'd recommend chris medland. or just general sport publications like autosport, motosport.com, the athletic if you're already subscribed to it (pretty lacking for f1 though since it's american lol), etc... some sites like the-race are very contentious though so i'd say just tread with caution!!! on the data side i personally enjoy fdatanalysis and f1telemetrydata (i've also used f1-tempo to do my own telemetry analysis but idk if that's useful). but again i'd highly recommend the subreddit since it keeps everything i just mentioned in one place anyway 😭

other media recs:

f1tv, if it's available in your area, has pretty much everything you need to follow f1 in its entirety. i hate to shill for paid media but i genuinely think it's good; you can watch every f1, f2, f3 session real-time, as well as go to the archives and revisit old races for each series from most seasons. it also has technical shows and a whole host of minidocs with bite-sized info that are probably less sensationalized than dts. if you don't have f1tv though then a lot of decent content is cross-posted to the f1 youtube so honestly the official channels are all pretty good for keeping up with the sport.

podcasts: if you're an auditory person then podcasts are a great way to deepdive into f1 history. personally i believe that 80% of men running f1 podcasts should be legally barred from ever having an opinion on motorsport, so i don't listen to that many, but i do enjoy the official f1 podcast beyond the grid (i listen to it on spotify but you can also find full transcripts on the f1 site) since, you know, they get official personnel on and i appreciate the wide range of personalities interviewed—from drivers to tps to various types of engineers. i've also heard good things about shift+f1, the race, and engine braking, but i haven't checked them out so i'd recommend just looking podcasts up yourself and seeing what vibes with you! though some podcasts are just like... I'll eat this because you're interviewing my guy but i would never watch/listen to you otherwise. (cough pit stop...)

books & autobiographies: again if you want to dive more into old f1, then you can always read a book!! i read jenson's autobiography life to the limit earlier and was very endeared, it's a super breezy but charming read ❤️ adrian newey's memoir is also a decent overview of a clearly brilliant and accomplished mind, i enjoyed the technical details and found his early career path especially interesting.

docus, movies, tv: there's also plenty of f1 media outside of f1tv, so you can always check those out; f1 movies aren't necessarily that accurate or frankly good but sometimes it's fun just for the Vibes and the love of the sport. for ex rush (2013) covers james hunt & niki lauda's rivalry, netflix has a schumacher (2021) doc, the brawn gp miniseries ft. jense came out last november, just things like that... some current individual drivers also have their own random miniseries so you can always seek those out, for ex i watched maxv's anatomy of a champion the other day just for the fun of it LOL.

i don't know whether any of this is helpful... but maybe other people can reply with their own recommendations!!!

also if you're interested in f2, f3, etc. then honestly just follow feeder series on whatever platform since they cover everything pretty well; feeder_series on twitter, r/f1feederseries, plus they do interview podcasts on youtube/spotify so i like watching those to keep up with young drivers. you can also watch chasing the dream for succinct f2 narratives; it used to only be on f1tv but it gets uploaded on youtube now so it's fairly accessible. lmk if you have any other questions or something specific you'd like more info about!!!

#ask

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