BEFORE: there was a Priscilla Queen of the Desert or a RuPaul's Drag Race...there was "The Queen of Fire-Island."

(Just viewing this photo by itself, one might say, "what a mess he is," and you would be ohhhh so wrong for feeling or thinking this way.")

Photo: 1985

I was 20 years old at the time and this was my first time to Province Town / Cap-Cod. My friend and I visited a prominent local gay-bar there. It wasn't long before I noticed, "The Queen." He was alone on the ocean-side balcony of this bar...no one could ignore him...but there was no one talking to him either and he was daintily sipping his drink alone for quite some time.

I told my friend, "I'm going to go say hi to him." My friend said, "really?" I didn't answer and walked nervously toward The Queen and he smiled when he realized I was bee-lining his way. His smile was reassuring and I relaxed immediately. I introduced myself and instead of taking my out-stretched hand, he gathered me in a bear-hug and kissed my cheek. I could feel all eyes upon us but for some reason - I didn't care. For what seemed like a wonderful lifetime of conversation (which was probably more like an hour and a half) we tapped each others souls. He, seeing my youth and guessing my painful history growing up as a gay child and young man, put words to his soul and then bestowed them upon my heart.

From this moment on in my life I have never let anyone hurt me in my heart the way I had before about my lifestyle...The Queen took care of all that for me. I, guessing nothing about The Queen other than he was extremely comfortable in his own skin (and attire!) longed for him to tell me all about his life and why or how could he dress comfortably like he was in 1985! Then he told me all about his upbringing and his college years and then he got to; the Stonewall Riots...

(The Stonewall Riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City.

The Queen had been there and was a part of all that horror that came before us...which was the turning point for all gays in American history. I was four years old at the time of these riots.

I took in every precious word he was willing to share with me, in some places my heart broke for the tragedy of it all and at other times...I felt an overwhelming sense of pride for our forefathers and lesbians who took on and were a part of Stonewall.

I left Cape-Cod the next day....not the uneducated young-man...as I had arrived...but a man.

A nostalgic moment...and a heartfelt thank you to Stonewall Vanguard...for a name that is as historically-linked... as it is strong.

To "The Queen," you mostly probably are in heaven by now...but thank you for what you gave me in experience, strength and compassion...God bless you and hold you in his arms....as you once held me.

Also: posted as a tribute and memorial in my albums.

Quote by DoctorDisaster

Benton. His name is Benton.

David Nicholas Benton! :lol:

I remembered that it started with a B, and there was no 'r' in it :P

Almost everything gives you experience or other benefits, so do whatever you want! You'll still progress through the game. :)

Can't wait to play it!

Does anybody know if you can customize key bindings per character so that it doesn't apply to all of your characters?

Thanks for sharing these tips! I was always a ::gasp:: Up, Down, Left Right arrow key and mouse icon clicker kinda person. (game I played in the past you could get away with that easily and do well). Seems in GW2 I'll greatly need these key binds for fast reaction time... now to train my muscle memory... that's going to be an adventure! :laugh:

Buy your harvesting tools first thing and collect every node you see. Even if crafting is not your thing you can always store or sell them. Remember we will also have a guild bank for storage and sharing :)

Don't be afraid to explore.

You can send your gathered crafting mats from your inventory to your bank while you're out and about.... all at once!

As soon as you can, get gathering tools.

Re-bind your dodge to another key and disable the default "double tap a direction to dodge" setting (this is a just a personal preference of mine).

All armor crafting professions (armorsmith, leatherworker, and tailor) can create inventory bags. It's not just for leatherworkers ;)

Also make sure to group together as much as possible! The game rewards you more for being in groups, in addition you get influence for finishing events with a guild member.

So this is my 2nd Foundry mission I made. It's called "Operation Demon Storm"

You need to be at least level 16+ to play and it's a Federation mission.

Hope ya'll enjoy :)

Summary: A quick and fast paced mission with lots of action. Basically you have to save a Federation-Romulan colony from invading Tal Shiar forces; whom are searching for these things called "Demons". Careful, there's a few surprises new the end.

Benton. His name is Benton.

David Nicholas Benton! :lol:

Episode 706 - Enterprise - "The Forgotten" - 04/28/2004

http://www.allstepisodes.com/megvid.php?n=5320

Archer deals with the loss of many crew members and continues peaceful talks with two Xindi species that destroy a fellow Xindi ship in self-defense.

Enjoy!

OOC: I wanted to share a fun little link to the Nova Class ship page on the memory alpha website. Lots of great little tid bits about location of facilities and crew compliments and ship capabilities. This might help with getting the creative juices flowing!

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Nova_class

After reviewing the results of the Main Deflector Dish Diagnostic, Commander Seven of Eleven surmised that it was indeed the focal point of the explosion that threw the ship so far from home. In fact, it appears to have actually amplified it. This leads him to believe that it was the main target of the saboteur, and the purpose was to bring the ship to this location deliberately, not accidental as first suspected. As the main deflector is damaged beyond Repair, Commander Sev directed his repair crews to begin rerouting all main deflector controls and functions to the secondary array. It wont be as accurate, but it will be better then what they currently have. When we get the other main repairs completed we can reassess the main deflector to see if any of it is salvageable, his hopes are not high of this however.

The Sensor grid is another matter entirely, the sabotage has flooded the Sensor grid with so many exotic particles that they keep sending out false signals and sensor ghosts. He has already herd several reports from all shifts stating that the sensors are continuously unreliable. If we are ever going to get out of this mess we will need to get them sorted out, and sooner rather than later. Trying to repair the system now would require us to drop out of Warp and lose sensor function across the ship for hours or even days at a time, we just cant afford to do that right now. The best I can offer the Captain is a manual purging of all sensor grids and hope that we clear out as much of the exotic particles as possible.

You can start PvPing anytime you wish, if you want to do WvWvW i'd personally wait till you are about level 15 or 20, so you have a couple of utilities unlocked, they help. But for sPvP anytime you wish after you're out of the tutorial area.

There are no real "ways to level" as everything offers experience, play at your own pace. Each profession offers something different in terms of gameplay, determining what you want to play and how you want to play is a hard thing with this game.

Above all though, have fun.

Big butch norn dancing:

Hey guys, so I know a lot of you guys were in the Beta weekends and I was hoping there were some words of advice you could pass on to us new players. Anything would be appreciated! Lessons learned about your first character, different professions, ways to level, when to start PVPing.

Basically, anything you've learned from the BWE that you would've liked to know before you played for the first time! Thanks for the help. It's always good to have some veterans around to turn to for advice.

- Karsten

Quote by RodgerPM

There must be a barrel somewhere they keep scraping them out of.

ROFL-LMAO! Ditto!

Quote by Kerstov

Merriam-Webster definition: wise-ly adverb 1.a. To spend your influence on Stonewall Vanguard

B)

Checking my Webster's.....yep it says that! LMAO

There must be a barrel somewhere they keep scraping them out of.