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themandhoelorian · 4 years ago

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Dincember - November 30: Snow

summary: Din’s determined to make your stay on this miserable ice planet as short as possible, but you and the kid don’t mind taking your time in the snow.

pairing: din djarin x gn!reader

warnings: angst that quickly becomes fluff, episode 10 spoilers, the smallest bit of canon-typical violence, some swearing?, the cute little green dude, Din is Soft for you uwu

word count: 3.1k

a/n: ahhh hi welcome to my first fanfiction ever!! I’m excited and very very nervous about posting this, but I've been wanting to write my tin can husband for a while and thought dincember might just be the push I needed to start. part of me hopes I’m just screaming into the void, but if you’re reading this, I hope you enjoy it! happy dincember y’all <3

***

Din doesn’t like snow.

It’s cold and wet and irritating and it creates a layer of frost on his armor that leaves stubborn smudges on the beskar even after he’s dried off. It’s a practical nightmare that Din quite frankly doesn’t have the patience to deal with, but the snow itself isn’t even what bothers him most.

It’s the planets that are covered in it that he really can’t stand.

Din’s been on his fair share of ice planets, and not once has he found something appealing among the white plains, just deadly ravinaks and mindless criminals and giant ice spiders. If he had his choice, he would never step foot on one again.

He’s not sure why any reasonable person would want to either.

So when he hears you gasp from the copilot seat as the frosty white orb comes into view, he assumes that it’s because you’re dreading having to land on this ice planet too.

He knows this is what he hired you for, to follow him wherever he needed to go and take care of the child, but he can’t help but feel a little bad that he’s brought you to yet another dreadful planet. Whenever the three of you land somewhere dangerous, which recently has been more often than not, he insists that you and the child stay on the Crest so he knows you’ll be safe. You never complain, always complying to his requests with a shy smile and dutifully looking after the child, but he can tell you’re growing weary of being holed up in the ship all the time.

Your eyes don’t sparkle like they used to, the way they did when you first joined his crew and you would break into a dazzling grin every time you landed on a new planet.

You don’t talk to the kid in excited whispers anymore as you teach him about the forests or the oceans or the sand, giggling as you bring his little green fingers to the ground and let him feel the difference in the landscapes.

Din’s afraid he’s killed the wonder traveling with him used to bring you, he’s afraid he’s ruined it for the kid too, and Maker, he wishes he could see your face light up the way it used to. He wishes he could see you and the kid overwhelmingly happy again.

But here he is, leaving you both stuck in the middle of a frozen wasteland for what’s sure to be a less than happy few hours while he goes off to find another bounty. He wants to apologize before he leaves, but he can’t seem to find the words for how kriffing bad he feels. Even if he did, he knows you would just brush it off anyways, offer him that sweet smile that makes his face heat up and assure him that the two of you would be just fine on the ship.

So instead, he instructs you to keep the ship running, to stay warm and be ready to take off as soon as he gets back, before he hurries off into the dense swathes of snow. He doesn’t even tell you to stay on the Crest, in too much of a rush to leave before your dewy eyes can convince him to forget the quarry and take you somewhere nicer.

He’s halfway to the location when he realizes it, but he figures there’s no use turning back to remind you when he’s sure you wouldn’t want to go outside, not when white flakes are starting to dust the already cold air.

Besides, he’s determined to make your stay on this planet as short as possible anyway.

Luckily, the target’s in the first cantina Din steps into and doesn’t put up a fight. Well, he tries, but the dumb sucker thinks he can just run, and he doesn’t get more than a few meters out the door before Din shoots him through the chest.

Usually, Din would scoff at a quarry that slow, but this time, as he ties up the body, he’s just grateful that the target’s lack of mental and physical prowess means he can get you all off this planet that much sooner.

In fact, it’s only been a few hours since he first left, and as he makes his way back to the Crest, Din assumes he’ll find you right where he left you. You probably haven’t even put the kid down for a nap yet, and he’s almost proud of himself for making the turnaround so fast. He may have brought you to this awful place, but at least he’s making sure you barely have to spend any time on it.

He almost doesn’t feel bad anymore, almost tells himself it’s okay that he left you and the child stranded on the ship again, but then he approaches the Crest and realizes things aren’t exactly as he left them.

The first thing he notices is that the hull door is open. He’s almost certain he remembered to close it, even in his rush to leave, but even if he didn’t, he’s sure you would’ve shut it for him.

But then again, you’d been in the cockpit when he left, so maybe you had just stayed there and didn’t realize the door was still open. That would make sense.

When he gets a little closer though, he realizes he can’t hear the hum of the engine and that the headlights have been turned off. That he can’t explain. He told you to keep the ship running, and you’ve always followed his instructions. If nothing else, surely you’d want to keep the heater going in this weather. He can’t think of any reason why the Crest shouldn’t be running right now, unless something happened to you and-

No. No, that’s not possible.

He always engages ground security before he leaves. There’s no way anything could’ve gotten onto the ship. But he was in a rush this time, and he’s not even 100 percent positive he closed the hull door, and kriff, did he really mess up that badly?

Not only did he make you wait on this stupid ice planet, but he also left you and the kid vulnerable to whatever dangers lurk in its snow covered hills because he forgot to secure the ship?

Maker, now he really feels bad for bringing you here.

Before he knows it, Din is sprinting towards the Crest, leaving the quarry’s body behind so he can move faster through the snow. He starts heading up the ramp, ready to scope out the ship, but then he hears faint laughter coming from the other side of the hull. He freezes at the noise, his body tensing as the edges of his vision go red.

Apparently ice planets make for stupid criminals, Din thinks, because between the quarry he just picked up and whoever the hell is gloating right outside the scene of their crime right now, he’s sure he’s never encountered so many witless assholes in one place. He’s almost glad for it though. At least he’ll be able to put a bolt through the little frozen brain of whoever had the gall to raid his ship and mess with his crew.

He draws his blaster and paces towards the back of the ship, making sure his steps are silent now that the laughter has stopped. He takes a breath before darting out from behind the Crest, blaster raised, finger on the trigger, but he doesn’t find the thief that he’s looking to shoot there.

He just finds you lying on the frozen ground, making faces at the child as you support him on your stomach.

At first, Din is just relieved to see the two of you seemingly unharmed, but the comfort he feels quickly morphs into confusion. He wonders if something happened to the ship that forced the two of you outside, but then the child swats at your face and you giggle, the sound so pure and carefree that he knows nothing’s wrong.

No, you just decided to drag the kid out into the cold for fun.

He sighs and lowers his blaster as he watches the two of you, too caught up in whatever game you’re playing to notice his presence. Maker, maybe ice planets really do make people dumber, the snowflakes fogging up your head the way it does his visor, because he knows if you were in your right mind you wouldn’t have taken the kid out into the snow, and you definitely wouldn’t be lying with him in the ice, completely exposed to anyone passing by.

“I thought I told you to keep the ship running,” he barks.

You sit up abruptly at the sudden noise, pulling the child instinctively to your chest as you whip your head in his direction. Panic flashes across your eyes for a second, but when you realize it’s just him, it melts into a sigh as you offer him a small smile.

“Oh. Mando. Hi, we were just...”

But then the kid sees that Din’s returned and coos loudly, trying to squirm out of your arms so you’ll let him down. You oblige, placing him gently on the soft ground, and he waddles over to Din with his tiny arms outstretched.

Din picks him up, and the child bubbles with excitement as he positions the little womp rat in the crook of his arm. Din studies him, searching for any signs of distress, but he finds none, just big eyes shining with nothing but glee.

That’s strange. He was sure the kid would hate snow after what happened last time.

He snaps out of his train of thought when you make your way towards him, brushing ice off your shoulders and back.

“Sorry, he was getting a little antsy when it started snowing, so I thought he might’ve wanted to play outside for a little bit,” you explain. “I didn’t want to leave the engine running while we were out here, and I thought we’d have enough time to get everything going again before you got back.”

You’re right in front of him now, so close he can see the small crystals of ice that dot your hair. For a second, he forgets himself, consumed by how breathtaking you look against the icy landscape, and it’s only when the child shifts in his arms that Din catches himself, remembering that he’s supposed to be mad at you for not following his instructions.

“Wasn’t he scared of it?” he demands.

You shake your head, looking down at the child and running a thumb along his ear.

“He seemed a little nervous at first, but I got him to warm up to it pretty quickly. We were just about to head inside, but he wanted to stay out here a little longer, isn’t that right bubs?”

The child hums contentedly as if to agree with you, shifting his gaze between your face and the helmet, but Din keeps his eyes trained on you, trying to figure out how you could’ve gotten the kid to like the snow so easily. The encounter on Maldo Kreis had left him wary of any icy terrain, he can’t imagine what it must have done to the innocent child, but somehow here he is, looking as happy as he’s ever been playing with you in the frost.

He must have been staring at you for too long because before he can put his finger on how you were able to change the kid’s mind, your face is twisting with worry and you’re starting to apologize again.

“I know we probably should’ve stayed on the ship, but I…” you hesitate before giving him a sheepish grin. “Playing in the snow was one of my favorite things when I was little, and I wanted him to know what it was like too.”

Din should be mad at you. You didn’t do the one thing he asked, and you could’ve put yourself and the kid in danger by going outside on a cold foreign planet. He should reprimand you, make sure you know how stupid it was to do that, but then you look up at him, your eyes sparkling as they catch his through the visor, and it’s like someone’s lifted the beskar from his chest, cool air filling his lungs as he breathes fully for what feels like the first time.

He can’t remember the last time he saw you like this, so in awe of the world and eager to share it with the child, with him. Din thought he’d killed all the joy the two of you felt, but no, here it is again, radiating strong and warm from you and the little being babbling in his arms, and he feels whatever anger he had managed to harbor melt away.

How could he be upset when you two were so happy again?

“It’s okay,” he sighs. “Just- I need you to be more careful when I’m not here. I don’t want you two getting into trouble when I can’t protect you.”

“I know, I know. I promise it won’t happen again.”

It’s a simple affirmation, but your voice is steady, your gaze holding his with so much weight that he knows you mean every word you say. Din knows that he can trust you, so he just nods, deciding there’s not much use in wasting more breath on the topic.

He’s about to turn back to the ship, ready to get you all off this planet like he intended, but the child whines before he can move, pointing a tiny finger at the ground where you had been playing. Before he can ask what’s wrong, you take the child from his arms, speaking in that melodic tone you save for doting on your small companion.

“Oh, you wanna show your dad what we were doing, huh bubs?”

He coos in agreement, and you smile before nodding at Din to follow. You lead him to where you were lying and place the kid down next to two vaguely body shaped depressions in the snow. The kid toddles towards the smaller, shallower one and looks up at Din with bright eyes.

Din’s been with the kid long enough that he knows he’s supposed to act excited at this, but it’s a little hard to do when he has no idea what he’s looking at.

He turns his helmet to you in confusion, only to find you already staring at him with an amused expression.

“Have you never made a snow angel, Mando?” you tease.

“A what?”

You grin at his response, and Din feels his face heat up. He can’t tell if it’s from being embarrassed at not knowing or if it’s just from seeing you smile at him.

“A snow angel. You lie down and move your arms and legs up and down, and then the mark you leave behind kind of looks like an angel.”

The kid makes his way back towards Din while he studies the tracks in the snow. He can kind of see an angel in the design he’s guessing you made, but the child’s-

“Well, it’s supposed to look like an angel,” you add. “But the kid’s so small I guess it's hard to tell. Maybe I should have taught him how to make snowballs instead.”

“No, you made the right choice,” Din interjects. “He doesn’t need anything else to be throwing around with his mind tricks.”

You laugh, nodding in agreement, and he feels his chest expand again at the levity of your voice. He wants to make you laugh again, be the reason you’re so openly joyful, but as he’s racking his brain for something to say, he feels a light tug on his cape.

“What is it, buddy?” Din asks as he kneels next to the child. He doesn’t respond, just starts waddling back towards the patterns in the snow while holding onto the cape, tugging harder once its pulled taut and he can’t move any further.

“I think he wants you to make one too,” you note.

Din sighs as he stands, gently removing his cape from the child’s small hand. As much as he enjoys seeing the kid happy, he thinks it’d be a little ridiculous for him to take part in the childish activity, and he’s not too fond of the idea of lying on the cold, wet ground.

“I’m afraid I don’t know how to,” he reasons.

It’s a lame excuse, he knows, but it’s technically true, and he thinks it might be enough to get him out of this little game.

But when you roll your eyes at him, he knows that’s just wishful thinking.

Well, it was worth a shot.

“He did it, I’m sure you can figure it out too,” you accuse, gesturing at the kid who’s plopped himself on the ground. “Come on, bubs, why don’t you show your daddy how it’s done?”

The child doesn’t move though, just tilts his head at you and lets out a confused noise. You shake your head as you make your way to him, but instead of picking him up like Din expects, you just pat his head, striding past the “angels” you made earlier.

“Fine, you lazy little bean,” you say. “I guess I’ll just show him then.”

You sit in a fresh patch of snow and beckon at Din to join you. He’s about to refuse, tell you that it’s time to get back on the ship and leave, but then your bright eyes catch his again.

Maybe it’s worth giving in if it’ll keep that twinkle in your eyes.

“It’s just a little snow, Mando, it’s not gonna kill you.”

Din sighs, pulling his pulse rifle off his back and setting it down before grabbing the kid. He places the child between the two of you as he sits down, following your lead as you lay back in the soft ice and begin to move your limbs.

It’s about as enjoyable as he expects it to be, which is to say not at all. The beskar makes him sink deep into the frozen layer, and he can feel the cold moisture seeping through the gaps in his armor. He’s about to ask how you could genuinely find this fun, but the sound of your laughter mixing with the child’s stops him.

He turns his head to watch you, taking in the way your eyes squeeze shut as your arms draw patterns in the snow, the way the light reflects off the white ground, making it glow around you.

The way it kind of makes you look like an angel.

Suddenly, Din feels warm despite being covered in ice, and he understands how you got the kid to like the snow so quickly.

He thinks he might be starting to like it a little too.

#dincember #I can't believe I'm doing this asdfghkl #i've literally like never written prose idk why i think i can do this lol #this is so much harder than screenwriting rip #also sorry idk how snow works at all #i've only seen it once when i was like 5 LMAO #the mandalorian #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin #the mandalorian x you #din djarin x you #emi writes

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inventors-fair · 3 years ago

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Animal Race Commentary: Packing it In

I’ll get the personal excuses out of the way: between school responsibilities, work responsibilities, a savage head cold, and weekend expeditions, this was a pretty rough week for me to do a turnaround on short notice. I really don’t know how I was doing one of these every week back in the day… Then again, we didn’t have quite the numbers that we have now, do we. Well, except for that one Commander contest, but regardless.

I think most of my criticisms this week fall into nitpicks, because the creativity was astounding and the heart was absolutely heartfelt. There was a lot of care worked into these cards in some ways, and I greatly appreciate having a more open contest for this kind of thing. I’m glad that the consensus was pretty on-track as well; most people know what an anthropomorphic animal race looks like, and there was very little confusion or rules-pushback, and I think that just about everyone made a brand-new race as well with some worldbuilding alongside! Of course, there’ll be the individual comments to be seen, and when we get there we’ll see how that all went down.

I’m gonna do the same thing as last week, I think, where I’ll just talk about good and bad points, pick the nits as they come, and see how that goes. Maybe once I’m conscious these will even be coherent. JUDGE PICKS are cards that, for one specific reason or another, I’d like to commend, even if they still need some TLC. And as always, discussion and questions are welcome, my opinion is my own, you’re all still awesome, so let’s jump right into it. Awoo!

@azathoth-the-bored — Krestek, Coralstone Engineer

I’d like to commend you, mostly, for starting us off with a really funny card. That’s the other good thing, though, qualifying what may be perceived as condescending: I don’t mean funny as dismissive or childish, but there’s an inherent humor to this world you’ve made as there are inherent humorous aspects to having a set with pirates or ninjas in today’s pop-culture world. Crabs that make vehicles to fight against the surface-dwellers is fantastic. I genuinely like that concept. I also really appreciate that you reached a LOT here into weirdness with the vehicle tokens. Those haven’t been done before, no? No reason they couldn’t be, and I think that it makes a lot of sense here!

Mechanically, you do need to say “tap X *untapped* creatures and/or Vehicles you control” for that, but you know what, as a mythic with some neat power that can crew the Vehicles they make, I’m down for Krestek going nuts here. So if I sound really down for this card, here’s the main criticisms to take away: flavor needs to exist outside your own head. It’s the exact same issue with the Phyrexian harbinger, except a little less so, but what everyone else isn’t seeing here is the paragraph you sent about the lore of the Deep Folk, and mech stuff, and speciesism, and—look, once again, your card needs to speak for itself. Frankly, it does, even without the flavor text, which is…passable if it had quotation marks, but even then. With this strong a card, I know you would benefit from more trust in your card’s ability to carry itself. You’re doing good work and improving. Just keep in mind the limitations.

@charcharmera — Kaunos, Lord of the Glade

The really fascinating design space here is hard to work around. I’m well aware of players that enjoy manipulating combat from the opponent’s board, making them attack and all, because I’m one of them. I think that for wording, the first ability is just “Whenever an opponent attacks you,” as much as I personally like the more specific wording. Should it be on “target creature you control” too? The second ability might need to target an opponent, IMO, and the second sentence could just be “Creatures that player controls attack this turn if able.” Maybe there should be a timing restriction, too, because there are DEFINITELY ways to exploit this, and gumming up the turn is complicated.

There’s a lot of cool stuff about this card. Perhaps ‘Lord’ invokes the creature type “Noble” more than “Knight,” but Kaunos as a knight still makes sense, and you know what, I do like him and the general feel. Here’s a fighter that’ll stand up to the oncoming force and defend it, gung ho, love it. Stoic, solid and—well, noble. That much comes across. Mechanically, there could be some wiggle room to make this gel better, but I personally think that this card earns a “pretty cool.”

@chungus-supreme — Ursine Protector

Defending a cub is all well and good, and this card’s fairly standard for its body and abilities. I need to get two big things out of the way, though, and the first the wording on the last ability. To rephrase: “When ~ dies, you gain life equal to the amount of damage dealt to it this turn.” I’m not sure where you got “damage it took” but that’s never appeared on a card before. The pronoun “you” always goes before lifegain effects that affect you, as well, and that’s one of the biggest grammar issues that pops up on any custom card so don’t worry too much. I was iffy on the first ability but that’s actually perfectly correct as far as I can tell.

The second major issue is the creature type. I’m not sure why this isn’t a bear, and that’s throwing me off in a major way. Creatively, Magic has bears, and bear-people, so I’m going to chalk this one up to a mistake over a creative choice, but if it is a creative choice then I’m really uncertain as to what led you there. If it’s a mistake, well, water under the bridge, but like I say, it’s always worth polishing your cards to their maximum potential before submitting.

@corporalotherbear — Acoulid Woodtapper (JUDGE PICK)

The aye-aye and I don’t always see eye-to-aye-aye-eye—ay, yi, yi… Anyway. Hell yeah. This card’s a trip and a half. Two small fixes: “creature or land” is the correct order instead of “land or creature,” and the “If” should be capitalized in that last sentence. Aside from that… Oh, this card’s just too clever for its own good, and I love it so. “Tapping a land,” that’s just too perfect, and it’s one of those things where even if this particular card wouldn’t get printed after a heckload of set revisions, it would mean something from the outset. For those of you not in the know, look up how the aye-aye finds its food. I saw enough in the workshop to know this was an aye-aye, so there’s that too, but anyway.

This card has a conundrum that I’m not sure how to get around, and that’s the fact that it could also be a non-sapient creature without the Monk subtype. Is that a bad thing? Not really, it’s just something that art direction or a little flavor/background could fix in post. Should UR be making green Insects for the flavor? I think I would have been 100% more aligned if it was a red Insect, and heck, red’s the secondary color for MTG bugs, right? This card has a solid commendable core with a pun and a half of good work behind it, and it’s just on the side of not quite reaching me on the MTG side of things. I want to show it as an example of how cleverness can really make a card pop, and how this is the correct way to be clever within the contest confines. A little reach beyond that would’ve been perfect but as it stands we’re still good.

@dabudder — Segovian Foot Soldier

It fits the prompt, and it’s cute. This is, unfortunately, all I can really say about this card. I’ve tried to find a good angle, but resonance in the world of Segovia stops at the point of “things are very small.” What more substance is there? Well, now we can assume animal-folk attacking intruders, but is that enough? Compared to the information and mechanical resonance of some of these other cards, I would argue no. There is, again, nothing inherently wrong with this card and idea. There’s just not much for me to really dig into. Maybe Vraska’s approach? But what is she saying that adds more information that we wouldn’t already have gleaned?

I want to learn and be challenged by these cards. This card would be perfectly fine in the sets that ask for it. For this contest, I feel you can push yourself and your designs more into a realm of questioning. I’m sorry there’s not much more to say about this card, and I know I’m rambling a bit already.

@deg99 — Baneshell Plunderer (JUDGE PICK)

Trust me from lived experience: turtles being given guns doesn’t end well. I don’t think it’s ending well for that human dude just offscreen, but anyway. I think that the name “Baneshell” sells me here, that there’s a named group of these turtle mercenary dudes wreaking havoc on whatever port town they’re in. And it’s silly, yeah, but that’s just the inherent silliness of having an animal race, especially one that’s uncommon and not as “”noble”” as something like lions or eagles or whatever.

Mechanically, I like the build-around-ness of this card, and how marginally useful it could be in limited. Freezing is nice, even if it isn’t something that can happen repeatedly. Treasure token generation too is an awesome addition, especially because you’re guaranteed at least one. It almost makes this guy feel more like an extortionist, which is still very blue. I mean this in the good way but this card feels a lot like a “limited rare” for a premier set. Y’know? Like, something they shell out (heh) during preview season to drum up a little hype, and then it’s thirty cents down the line. That’s not a bad thing! It feels organic in that way. There might be something with that last ability that could use reworking by way of Amulet of Vigor but I’m not sure how.

@dimestoretajic — Stripe, The Mighty

I’ve read and own every Redwall book, so the phenomenon of badger warriors is nothing new to me. I’m not sure if that’s where you were coming from, but it seems to be pretty much along those lines, right? That’s the first misstep, I feel—as much as I do love Redwall, I wanted something entirely new from this contest, and there’s ways to make that resonant without feeling like a copy of the source material. I’d be kinder if the flavor text was more original, but it feels like an overly-verbose retread of Enrage, with its own well-known origins.

Giving this creature first strike as well was another decision that causes a major disconnect. The majority of Enrage mechanics are going to be triggered via combat damage (Occam’s razor), and if something is dealing combat damage to Stripe, chances are Stripe isn’t surviving that encounter, and so what’s the use of having modes? Again, I understand the flavor of Enrage here and why you chose it, but first strike takes away everything that Enrage wants to do; they’re inherently incompatible mechanics. The takeaway I want you to have here is that there were a few ways to do this card right, all of which hinged upon a departure from the emotional attachment to some of its aspects.

@eveydeevey — Gharial Guide

This card got a lot of buzz about it, and you know what, I can see why. Crocodile-folk rooting around in the mud to get some things back from the earth feels unique but resonant, a good combination. Whoever this muscly dude is, I get a sense of their mood, their mojo, the lifestyle and way around the world—yeah, I grok it, I grok the less combative aspects of their world, the utilitarian side. The flavor text is pretty deec, although the last part’s losing me a little bit here. I mean, yeah, they’re pulling it out, but why? A hint as why could have been more helpful, as well as a reason for why this card is a “Guide”/Scout. Who are they guiding? Why does that scouting involve salvaging? What is this creature/race’s connection to the land itself? The disconnect between salvaging and guiding is clashing for me on an otherwise really strong introductory card to this new race.

Mechanically, it’s pretty great. It’s definitely too strong. Multicolor isn’t enough to justify having an on-curve-plus body WITH protection AND a probably relevant attacking ability. Like, good lord, value town here. That is a limited perspective though, and honestly, it’s not that hard to fix. One generic mana, making it even a bear, reducing the ward cost, yadda yadda. Like, this card’s one to save for expansion, but it does definitely need fixing. All the same, it’s worth fixing, and your flavor’s strong enough to work on too.

@fractured-infinity — Riverhold Captain

I’m reading over this card and trying to grok it, and I understand it, but I’m having a hard time trying to fully express what bothers me about it. It’s a trope-aligned and reasonable take on turtles, sure, the captain-ness seems fitting, alright, and… What is this card doing, really? What is steady doing? What’s the point of having the additional two toughness? What about the analog memory issues of which ones do and don’t untap during the untap step? Turn-to-turn effects, plus the trigger of ward, which then messes with the untap, is all just too much for me.

The word that comes to mind is “undisciplined,” but that’s far too harsh for what I’m thinking. I think that this card just isn’t aware of how much the effects will change the board state and how much there is to keep track of in a way that doesn’t make it immediately apparent how it helps in the game plan. I had an old friend who used to play Magic and who made cards with me, and the cards all had absurd toughness-to-MV ratios with defensive effects, because that was how they liked to play the game but it was all just stalling, and this is what feels evoked here: a stalled board state designed to prolong rather than progress. If I’m not grokking this card, then there’s something greater that I’m definitely missing, but if I DO grok it, then it definitely needs revision.

@gollumni — Pengu Frostfinder

I’m quite eager to talk about this card because it evokes something about Magic design that I thoroughly enjoy, and that’s the concept of choice. This card does something I think is ultimately a detriment, and that’s the fact that the first ability isn’t a “may” ability. Every snowfall will exile the top card of your library whether you like it or not, and then subsequently the cards you filter with Pengu Frostfinder will also result in another card being exiled. Now. How would this change if the first ability was a “may” ability? The versatility would certainly allow for more caution, and as a player, your agency would increase dramatically. Why? Because the second ability, the activated ability, is also a choice, with the exception of the exile. It’s forcing you to exile, but at a cost that you can rationalize, whereas the first ability forces cards to potentially be lost forever, and if that first ability was a “may” ability then the second would also be radically more powerful because you’ll already have decided how much you’ve gained or lost to exile and what you’ll gain or lose if your penguin gets iced.

Flavorfully yeah you have a cute penguin wizard and whatever and it’s wonderful, but this card’s definitely bottom-up in a snow world, and that’s why there’s a massive paragraph about the mechanics. I really don’t want to dismiss the notion of cute penguin wizardry; the mechanical stuff is just so fascinating to me, with resource management, mitigation, the really cool concepts that it introduces. Like, this is a REALLY good card, too, really resonant and all! It’s also happened to spur me into a topic that I find cool as a designer.

@grornt — Waikiki Jewel-Juggler (JUDGE PICK)

Someone would be humming the Mission Impossible theme as they played this card, and while that someone isn’t me, I’m pleased that there would be someone like that and I’m glad that this card’s here to fill that slot in. Where’s the name come from? If it’s just made-up ‘cause it sounds cool, sure, I’m with you, but I wish I knew about any linguistic origin. If there was something in the prompt, I missed it, and that’s my bad. God, this is one where the art just sells me, and it’s so damn good at conveying what you want to convey. This is a world I get, immediately, and quite frankly even without the art I would get it all the same. This card feels really good on the eyes and brain.

What set would it be in? This is something I’m curious about, because I’m looking at the abilities, and I’m like, oh, I’m a Vintage player, and I’m gonna steal a Mox and have some shenanigans there, but even small creatures could be fun. It’s a shame you can’t switcheroo things and sac them in response to just gain control, because that would be a field day, but also, stealing someone’s Sol Ring would be amazingly fun. I’m still not positive, but I think that there are ways for this card—oh, TOKENS, lmao, that’s awesome—for this card to really make things frustrating and hilarious. It’s still quite limited in scope, but heck, some cards like this one benefit from a limited scope, and that’s what matters the most. I love this monkey, even if I’ve lost all my precious stones to it.

@helloijustreadyourpost — Formicid Vanguard

I was wondering why the flavor text was bugging me—no pun intended because it wasn’t “bothering” or “annoying” me exactly; it was just this minor complication I couldn’t put into words. Then, I had to ask: what is the hive, if not its members? I understand that this was playing into the flavor of the individual dying for the greater good, and that tracks, that’s all awesome there. The question is just what is the “hive,” then? It’s a philosophical nitpick that just makes me read the flavor text in a different light. The rest of the mood, though, that all tracks, and it’s a trope but a reasonable trope because you’ve brought it to life and given it a new character. I truly care about this little ant dude even if they’re willing to sacrifice themselves for the rest of their ant buddies.

Capitalize “Insect” in the abilities and you should be all set. I’m wondering what the secondary color would be for this draft archetype, and you know what, the more I think about it the less it matters, but at the same time it’ll eventually matter a lot, and that’s cool. I mean that genuinely, because it could go into any number of colors, less so blue but black, sure, white, most likely, red I could see it, and that’s interesting to me and that tracks. This card’s got solid chops, less an introduction to a world and more about the lives of inhabitants that assume we know already, and I’m fine with that, honestly!

@hiygamer — Skittri Honor Guard

The resonance of insects giving their lives seems to be a common theme, huh. I think that humans find some solace in that kind of self-sacrifice, that we can impose the concept of nobility onto a survival tactic, and have a moral dilemma solved with an example and meaning. It’s interesting! This card on the mechanical side tracks that for sure. Stops the targeting and stops the general boardwipe if need be, sure. Vigilance as an on-curve example as well as a flavor indicator, I can track it.

So about that flavor text. This is the return of the additive question, and I often question myself at this point: am I asking too much from flavor text? I don’t think so. I do ask a lot, and I think that a lot of printed Magic flavor text does lean into ease of access and trope a little, and that’s fine, but I’m going to ask that the envelope be pushed just a touch, and this particular quote is quite comfortable with the envelope where it is. It’s not *bad* by any stretch of the imagination, but it evokes information we can already glean from the abilities, which are strong enough as they are. Now that I know the Skittri are insects who have a guard class serving their legends from the card, the flavor text can add something different, and right now, it’s not there yet. A little bit of personality, sure, but it’s tabula rasa. I don’t want to harp too much but I like to make these conversations and without someone to give me feedback on when they’ve got it and I can stop, I can just keep going. The takeaway here is to use flavor text to show what the card doesn’t show already.

@hypexion — Vespin Raider (JUDGE PICK)

That word, “chorus.” What an interesting choice. One word changes the nature of this card so much, because it’s not a cacophony, it’s not a scream, it’s a chorus. What does that say about the unity of this tribe, race, whatever? How does that speak to their notions of harmony? Are they friendly and unified, or—no, the name “Raider,” what does that mean? Do they destroy with mindless resonance, or with controlled evisceration taught from birth? There are a lot of contextualized questions that that word brings to the table, and I think it’s a subtle choice that just happens to strike a chord with me personally, because it’s so specific.

The card itself is still good, and has applications, and is well-worded and VERY powerful, and I don’t think it’d be significantly standard-playable but for casual players it would be cool as anything. I mean, it’s the Squadron Hawk but Not Quite phenomenon, right? Still big and powerful, still really neat, not quite there because that would be very much broken, but still absolutely strong even with two in limited, let alone three, and that’s also discounting tribal aspects if there are any. Yeah, no, I dig this card! It’s not quite making me salivate for this world, but it’s bringing some well-known ideas to the table in a presentable and interesting way. Oh, wait, they’re wasps, I just…remembered that, my goodness. Again, head cold’s been sending me into a fog. They’re definitely jerks then.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes — Attendant of Fire

This one’s tricky as heck. Looking at that second ability especially, I can get a sense of power level that feels immensely strong on the surface. It’s made for players that know how to use it and it’s perhaps not designed for limited unless there’s a hyper-strong monocolor focus, but that doesn’t feel great at the moment. No, there’s something else, and it’s a curiosity. I think this card, mechanically, is good, with a good name, a strange typeline, and thoughtful abilities. I think it’s asking a lot from a limited deck and that it would be unfathomably strong in the right constructed environment, and that that’s not too hard to envision.

We find ourselves at flavor junction again, and the callback to Chandra and Jhoira here was something that a lot of people in the workshop found pretty cute. As for me, I don’t. Is a callback or a reference the best place to introduce a new creature type, perhaps a new world, for a contest where the context is going to be entirely based around the creature’s existence and what we’re discovering through it? I don’t think so. I’ll be honest: I don’t care about Chandra and Jhoira right now, because I want to care about the Attendant, and even about the lord of “my lord,” and the planeswalker business is getting in the way. This wasn’t what I was looking for at all and doesn’t resonate with me. With other enfranchised players, sure, I can see that, and there are people who might want to explore those options more if they were running this contest. I’m not that person, and this wasn’t that contest.

@jsands84 — Bloodsucking Lawyer

This ain’t your grandmother’s Orzhov, no siree. And wow, there’s a bit to unpack. Starting off, though, the mechanics are really solid, and a strong build-around for a world in which this kind of card could flavorfully exist. It’s not pushing the mechanical envelope but it’s pushing power level, compared to other hybrid two-drops in the same vein. I swear, that wasn’t intentional. The card itself is playing off of some silly tropes and kinda-puns and the like, but now that I’ve caught the bug—no, wait—UGH.

Flavor. Okay. Back on track. This paragraph is…definitely overwritten, but that’s okay, because it’s well-written enough to be pared down. The last sentence could be reworked a little bit to give the whole picture, and you know what, that’s fine, and I think that it could definitely use that push because the mechanics, while not reinventing the wheel, convey everything you want to convey. I took this basic art concept and tried to apply it to a fantasy world where insect lawyers were the norm, and man, it’s terrifying and gory and I kinda love it. It’s definitely removed from the world of Ravnica and there’s nothing wrong with that. This card shows that you grok the contest in a way the befits mosquitos, and props to ya for that.

@kellylogs — Vuline Ranger

What I want to love about this card is the backstory, and what I’m really trying not to criticize too much is the squished text. There is a lot that you put into this card and it makes it hard to focus because it’s physically difficult to grok right off the bat. I think that without vigilance it could be possible to squeeze more in, but this card is unnecessarily crowded and it makes it really hard to talk about without mentioning that. Without flavor text, we wouldn’t get the gist of this awesome worldbuilding, but with it, the card’s just not physically printable. And it’s a shame, because mechanically, these things are sensible: the ranger searches for new lands and protects the land they currently occupy, lands outside the realm of Eldraine’s scope.

See, I do think that that’s cool, this Aesop’s world of fairytale talking animals but with the dark and twisted combative world of Magic, like how Eldraine had some elements of gothic horror that were more rooted in the tropes than anything. Man, I played a lot of that set, and I did love it a lot, but I do have a love for them fairytale roots, and this card playing into that is making me want to love it, and everything about it is nice except for that squish. Revising this to an uncommon without vigilance and without flavor text would have been much better and might even have been a judge pick. This particular space is just asking too much for the parameters of a physical card.

@maispace — Duelspinner

There…is a lot that this card is bringing to the table. I’m a little stunned as to how keyword soup turns into a fascinating card mechanically. “Tap it and exert it”—like, that’s really cool to me, and I think that this is the kind of experimental envelope-pushing I was talking about in earlier submissions. Is it a good card? That’s the frustrating part, because this card is perfectly reasonable, to a degree, until it isn’t. I feel that this card is a little too powerful, and that might be the lifelink aspect (in fact, I’m almost certain) or it might be the solid body or it might be any number of small parts. I would like to see this card tested just to check its annoyance factor. In a shell where you can control combat, swinging in with this card would be monumentally more powerful than it appears on the surface. That’s the big question: is that exerting clause sufficiently strong enough to get around how much this card is a bomb on the battlefield?

Truly, I don’t know, but if I’m hemming and hawing about this enough, I think that it’s worth revising on the mechanical front. So let’s look at that flavor, hm? I think this is one that’s hard to sort of get my head around, or rather, I can get my head around it but I can see where it wouldn’t be particularly convincing to show a spider spinning a web around something without making it a little bit cruel. I don’t find spiders particularly scary, but many people do, and having a spider toying with you in combat? The love of the fight is a good twist on expected tropes for insectile devourers, and I think that that’s on the clever side. A “good foe” feels a mite bit weak to me, but that’s just a strange word choice trying to play into symmetry, and I get it. Is the foe the opponent? I doubt it’s the creatures, because it’s big enough to eat a majority of what it would face on the battlefield. I think I’m on the verge of getting this card, but we’re not quite there yet.

@mardu-lesbian — Ainok Paladin (JUDGE PICK)

I saw you cringing in the talk the other day about the power level of this card, and I really want to defend you—so I will. This card is on the higher end of power level and complexity and I’d pick it highly in a draft for sure, but that’s also not taking into account the environment’s removal, mechanics, and the fact that if I do so much as Unsummon an ally then it’s back to a regular on-curve creature with a heavy color weight restriction. Does that mean an environment where it’s probably going to have a RW shell to build around? Yeah, but there’s still a heavy color weight to it that forces it into that place while allowing strength in other colors to shine. If everything around it is removed, then it loses that edge. Could it be probably better as a 2/3? Yeah, but that’s such a slight difference that it hardly matters.

The fluffiness of the Samoyed here is fading as I picture the world on which a true dog knight might take place. I see the big handsome warrior, their mace swung forward, a heavy brow and a small snarl, armor worn with roughhousing. Their regalia is impressive and their spirit is strong, and yeah, that tracks. This flavor text really does carry the mood. The togetherness you’ve pitched comes across well, and it actually feels sad, because when it’s alone again, or when it’s alone in combat, it loses that extra strength of a companion, and jeez, I’d feel a momentary pang from that alone in addition to losing my board presence. It’s clever and simple and a little smarmy and a little sweet, using enough aphorism to bring that sensation of cleverness to heart, so you know what, feel good about that, dammit, because I sure do.

@misterstingyjack — Refuse Delver

Lemme start with this: the mood and flavor of the raccoon type and the abilities totally make sense to me and feel fiendishly adorably. The characterization and the flavor text go together super well and I love this little buddy. So with both those things in mind, I was initially uncertain about how the flavor text and the abilities came together, because my first thought was: what is this particular character digging up? What are they taking out of the garbage, and why isn’t that represented in the mechanics? But you know what, this card isn’t about sifting through for something: it’s just about sifting through.

Ha, actually—surveiling here is like lifting the lid off the trash can and deciding whether or not you’re gonna throw it away, and it literally mimes the motion, and I think that that’s pretty funny. More props to ya. I think as a top-down raccoon, this card’s really nice. I wouldn’t say that it evokes a whole world or that it plays into something fantastical, but it’s super cute. It did take me a little bit to get through some parts of the mindset, but I think I’m warmed up to this card. It’s just hard with all these strong entries to pick out which ones strike a chord with me. This card’s combination of skulk and surveil sets it apart from cards that seek to get into premier sets, but at the same time the power level is of a card definitely designed for limited, so it’s hard to gauge that immediately. The bottom line is that this card really does do several things right even if my processing is a little on the low end of things today, so you know what, take that for whatever you will.

@nine-effing-hells — Ahtlaaca Champion

The Inventor’s Fair first annual original art contest begins and ends here. I wish I could make this a judge pick strictly for original art, and I think I’m not the only one who loves this piece. There’s a lot of conflict between art and no-art cards sometimes, and this one definitely adds to the piece and I’d prefer it—but I can’t let that bias me more favorably. And so should that discourage people from making art? No, because ultimately it’s enjoyable, and does add something to the creative process, and you know what because it’s an original piece that adds to the creative process it DOES impact how the card is seen even if future original art by other people doesn’t have to be as detailed even though I do appreciate the detail here—and that’s that.

So, this card. Well! I think that these effects have shown one thing in previous formats: they really don’t make for amazing rares. Should it be rare? I’ll be honest, I think this card would be a perfect uncommon for the set that asks for it. Strong? Absolutely. Chonky? Heck yeah. A dealbreaker? No, and I think there will be people who disagree with me there, but I really do insist that this could be uncommon. Flavorfully the card is pretty self-explanatory, puns and all, and the notion of “city-lakes” of this civilization is really darn cool. The action and the type and the name and the environment paint a perfect picture of the Ahtlaaca’s role in this universe. Is there a correct pronunciation of that? This might be a moment to revise things a little bit for ease of mouth feel.

@partlycloudy-partlyfuckoff — Rhox Reformer

Let’s get two small things and one big thing out of the way first. The two small things are grammar errors. In the second ability, “you gain 1 life for each of that spell’s colors” re:Moonveil Regent, and in the last ability, the if clause should be in the middle. The second big thing is that as a card this is perfectly fine and functional, and as someone who likes lifegain cards, I like this kind of stuff a lot.

Now the big thing: this contest was about taking an underrepresented animal race or a new animal race and making it big. Almost half of the anthropomorphic rhinos from Magic are definitively from the shard of Bant, and this card solidifies its foothold in the established race without really adding much new. On that note, I don’t think there’s much else to say. It’s a fine card that doesn’t fit the prompt. If you have questions, you can message me, but there were other asks clarifying the stance about underrepresentation.

@shakeszx — Warren Sentry

Now, I won’t be remiss to say that I briefly envisioned Redwallian aspects, but these rabbits are much different, and I think your major strength here is that they really do feel like rabbits. In a fantasy sense we think of rabbits as extroverted, high-strung, brash, etc. but IRL they’re quite timid creatures and I feel that from this card’s choices. In terms of mechanical strength, I would’ve pegged this at one more mana, because even in its draft shell this is a little too powerful. I think there might need to be a “Then,” before the if clause, and “Rabbit” should be capitalized. Little odd how the token has no subtype, but anyway.

Let’s talk about flavor mismatch, and hold on, because there’s a lot of good individual parts here, but we need to take the card as a whole and I think there’s enough good to work with here. Firstly, the name. “Sentry” was a choice I’m a little uncertain about, because what does being a sentry have to do with the lands? A ranger or like a borderland watcher, maybe, but a sentry specifically isn’t giving me that feeling of discovery—discovery of an enemy, but not land. The flavor text has something to do with the high grasses, and I’m a little…hm. Grammatically, the second sentence there is hard to grok because the subject of the first sentence are the high grasses, not the “Long-Ears.” Side note: it’s simplistic but I like that name because of the fantasy feel maybe even *for* its simplicity. Anyway. If they’re bewaring the grasses, wouldn’t they be NOT finding things, though? I know, I see the generality of what you were going for, but the parts just don’t click together, especially not with the lengthy name and title down there. It’s fine for an established character on a card but it’s not snappy and asks more questions than it answers in combination with what the above contradictions are already asking of the player.

All of this is a deep picking apart to show how these aspects need to work together instead of separately. This isn’t a criticisms because of massive wrongdoing—there’s just a lot in this card I hope can make for learning material. Because there’s so much goodness here that I want to make better, I’m trying to push your ability. Does that make sense?

@starch255 — Pferden Springer

Well I hope you’re darn proud of yourself. Starting with the flavor, I like this card because it puts me in a mood where the world and set is thrown into focus instantly. A “chess world” might not be the exact mood, but the resonance is game-y enough that I think the greater player base would be delighted. I certainly am! Oh man, the set symbol too, ha. HORSE KNIGHT! I love this card! I think the conflict between the King in White and Queen in Black both subverts the king-vs-king expectation of a chess world while resonating enough, and I can see that the Pferden of this world aren’t an “aligned” race but rather just characters in this place who do what the world demands of them, and that’s a neat character detail.

I feel that the mechanics could use a touch more cleanup, because for a common, I’m not sure that this is the route to take for these abilities. I’d like this card to… Well, honestly, it could even be colorless, def for three mana, but I wouldn’t mind an uncommon that sets up that kind of mechanic where being tapped or untapped changes characteristics. Whether or not the layers like it is one thing, but having the colored mana cost that nixes one of those colors while it’s on the battlefield is…well, it’s weird, and I’m not sure if I like it at common, or if I like it at all. Okay, that’s not entirely true, I do like it, but if I was leading a set, would this be the kind of thing to have at common? Assuming that color plays a role in the larger environment, I’m uncertain. Again, everything else about this horse is a slam dunk. The hemming and hawing all the same is justified for what this card is actually doing in the rules for me. I might be overthinking this.

@stellarlight13 — Assassin Chiropir

This is something I learned recently because I kinda forgot about it, but someone from the judge applications actually reminded me about it: that “if you do” there should be “when you do” because the ability has a target. Aside from that, this is a really solid ability and I actually like this in the draft shell a lot. It’s really powerful if you can manage to select your targets during attacking and have net gain, but additionally you can take out a planeswalker if you don’t have an opportune attack and sacrifice this poor batsassin. I think this is clever! I also enjoy the notion of having a bat race that’s kinda sneaky murdery without the vampire aspect, and it makes them come into their own. Oh! Also, mechanically, I like how if you’re gonna be a sneaky nerd and give it lifelink, you actually have to manage it carefully in order to benefit because once the damage trigger resolves you won’t have the ability to gain that life back. Anyway.

I think the flavor text is, unfortunately, expository to the point of detriment, despite having that window of interest. We know bats are nocturnal, for sure, and I don’t… Well, this is going to sound harsh, but I mean this from a point of criticism as someone to whom you are pitching this idea: I don’t really care in this moment about the “antisocial nature” and how much of a “myth” they are. I want to know why this Chiropir is attacking this figure. I want to know about their motivation, or their mood, or how they feel in the city, or how the city treats them, and this flavor text reads, well, like a textbook, and I want the important flavor. I know that these bats matter to you from the art direction and I know that there’s heart in how the bat attack was chosen to show that. When a card this strong shows the action, I want you to consider what we don’t know about the action as represented by the card. This is additionally a rare, a card that players will have probably seen after sifted through common cards explaining aspects of the city or world. We can reach a bit more here, and I know there’s more under those wings for me to care about. I do care about this race! I care a lot about this city and the bat-people’s relationship with it! Now show me deeper into the cave with the flavor text. What’s beyond? You’ve got me hooked.

@walker-of-the-yellow-path — Miera Queen (JUDGE PICK)

I was worried about power level, but you know what, I think this is really on the upper end of perfectly awesome. “I’m using my ants to turn you into food, and then I’m the only one able to turn them foods into more ants to eat you with!” Or, “with which to eat you,” but whatever, ants don’t care about grammar any more than they care about anything other than turning you into food. I don’t feel a sense of this race in the greater world, but you know what, I don’t think I have to for this particular card. Why?

Because this is an absolutely amazing top-down design. Stellar, really, the best that you could ask for from a queen. Some might ask to make her a mechanical lord, but that’s not her function: her function is to send ants to make food and make food into ants, and that’s what she does, and without her the colony can’t make more ants or food. Like, that just makes sense! And two of her means double the food harvest, but you won’t get any more ants per food, and that’s an interesting mathematical angle that maybe I’m reading too much into but frankly I don’t care. This card feels exactly like how it should. The “Miera” (heh, I’m picking up what you’re putting down) are probably deep and complex and ant-y and have a role on this plane, but here, they’re just ants, through and through, and this is a great go-to example of top-down design. Well, once you change “Food” to “Foods” in the second ability. I know, I know, but that’s the terminology.

@wolkemesser — Chelonian Shore-Chief

I swore I had seen that name on a card, “Chelonian,” because it was an equipment, right? It was the Chelonian Morningstar—but then I remembered, that’s from Kingdom of Loathing, the other game, and not this one. So! I think that this card is interesting as a corner case. The mechanical wariness I have is that it’s kind of a Ward Lord, and there’s nothing wrong with that as a one-off, but would that be the theme of a set? How much ward as-fan do you want? Maybe this card can be a random build-around, and you know what, whatever, I’m not NOT a fan of that. There’s not much ward in the world right now but that’s okay if you want to make more of it.

Flavorfully… Well, I don’t get too much out of the world here, but imagining a race of turtle-people with this kind of protective magic isn’t that hard, so I’m down, I suppose. Again, this card isn’t pushing the envelope, but the tropes that it’s playing into aren’t lighting me up, and as far as functionality goes, everything is solid enough. I think the question in this case is, as much as I’m not sure how to answer: how could this card have been made into a winner? And honestly, I don’t know exactly. In terms of uniqueness, there were a couple turtles, and the most commendable one was a surprise feel for how turtles should go. So here’s a suggestion, if this is indeed the commentary you’re looking for, considering that the rest of the bases are covered: when you have a couple cards that meet expectations, find ways to subvert them. Find something surprising, something different, because sometimes that’s the place that’ll create a breakthrough.

Alrighty! Thank you all for your entries. Enjoy creating, and thank you for reading, and as always you can message me here or on Discord for further clarification.

- @abelzumi

#mtg #magic the gathering #custom magic card #group commentary #animal race contest #inventor's fair

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writetorace · 4 years ago

Text

The Turnaround – One Shot Peter Parker x Avenger!Reader

Summary: your relationship with Peter had a hole in it, a baby-sized hole.

Warnings: mentions of infertility, angst, fluff, mentions of murder, character death

A/N: feedback is appreciated. Peter is aged up, and the events of Far From Home happen two years after the events of Endgame. The Turnaround by The Eels is a good song, I highly recommend. This is inspired by It’s Time fic by @tom-holland-is-spiderman

Taglist // Masterlist

The red room was your nightmare. It haunted you, plagued you. It took a part of your life that you wanted back, but could never get. However, your training taught you to forget. The Black Widow programme was something that your parents had signed you up for as a child, your first assignment to kill them. That was rule number one, no family. It means no ties, nothing holding you back; they said it would make stronger, a better assassin.

In the Academy, Natasha Romanoff was a myth, a legend, someone you hoped was real as it gave you hope. A hope that you too could escape the horrors and crimes that you had committed. The other girls, your sisters, they weren’t like you. They took pride in the lives they took, gossiped about it. It was all a game to them. Then the attack on New York happened, and you caught your first glimpse of Natasha Romanoff.

It was your mission to find her, a personal mission, not one assigned to you. All you wanted to do was walk into the Avengers Tower and ask her to take you in. It wouldn’t be that easy though, nothing in life was ever that easy. No, you would have to hunt her down and beg her to help you. It would be difficult, but it was something you had to do for your safety.

The signing of the Accords was your first opportunity to seek her help, but when the explosion happened, your chance was gone. All because another myth, another legend had turned up out of the blue. Their need was greater than yours for salvation. You would just have to find another opportunity.

Then, you did. That opportunity came when Natasha was to stand before the court to discuss her actions. It was the most broadcast court case, and he had told them “you know where to find me.” It had been the biggest power move you had seen, and it further fuelled your fire to get her to help you.

Walking out of the courthouse, you saw the car waiting for her, then the alley between the two. It would take you two seconds to get to the alley and pull her in with you. So you did. You grabbed her and pushed her, so you were blocking the entrance on the defensive. Her body was radiating anger, shaking from it. She charged towards you, but you knew her moves having trained at the same Academy. That was when she noticed the defeated look on your face.

“Sister, help me. Please. Sister Widow, I need your help.” It was a desperate plea, one you hoped she believed.

“Sister? Who are you? Who trained you?” Her moves were calculated, meant to either throw you off or study you.

“Y/n, I went to the Academy. The Red Room, Natasha you must remember the Red Room. Please help me, sister!” You were hysterical, red-faced and crying. You were weak, the opposite of a Widow.

“Okay, I can help you, but I need you to let me past. Sister, I want to trust you, but I can’t. I don’t know you, but you know about the Red Room. Only the girls that went through what is in that room know about it. So let me apologise for what happened to you. I’m sorry.”

She put a hand on your arm in comfort, it wasn’t much, but it meant a lot. She dug her phone out and made a phone call. She spoke so fast you missed each word of what she said. As soon as she made the phone call, it was over. “Y/n, the people I am with now, they want to ask you some questions. It will involve a truth serum, but it is only for security purposes.”

It made sense of course it did. You couldn’t just expect her or them to welcome you with open arms. It would take time for everyone to trust you. Over time they did trust you. All of them had been so sweet to you when you turned up. Little Widow was what they called you on missions, some of them called you mini Nat, saying that on the battlefield you were her double. Then things changed.

When the snap happened, you got dusted—five years of your life gone. Appearing on the battlefield after coming back was strange, much like Doctor Strange. The battle took everyone’s strength and also some lives. Tony’s death hit a boy you had never seen the hardest. They called him Peter, he had not been dusted, but his family had.

After the battle was over, you searched for Nat. She had become a mother to you, a mentor, someone you trusted with your life. That was when you felt Clint’s arms around you. He was shushing you and telling you it was okay. You knew something was wrong the second he hugged you; Clint never hugged anyone. Then he said the words, “She’s dead, Nat’s dead.”

It was like someone had taken a dagger to your heart. You were alone again. However, you weren’t alone; you were surrounded by your family, the only family you needed. Now the two youngest Avengers had lost their mentors. The team had changed a lot. Steve had grown old, so Sam was now Captain America with Bucky by his side. Wanda was grieving for Vision, and Clint had gone home to his family. Pepper and Morgan stayed at the house by the lake, but Peter didn’t follow them. He opted to be at the tower with you.

Peter took to grieving a different way, he carried on as usual, whilst you barely left your room. If anyone understood what you were going through, it was him. You have never met him before this, the dusting taking five years of your life. Somewhere in your grief, you found love. Love in the form of Peter Parker.

It was something the team hadn’t expected, but they happily accepted. They said Tony and Nat would approve. It was a love that manifested quickly, almost like the two of you were made for each other. After two years he had proposed. On a date, he took you to the top of the Statue Of Liberty and dropped to one knee. It was spontaneous and beautiful.

One thing you never told Peter was what happened in the Red Room. It was a secret that you and Natasha shared. Peter knew about your nightmares, your life in the Academy. He also knew about the killings, the murders that you committed. He accepted it, accepted you. He said it was your past and the fact that you had asked the Avengers for help as proof that you were the good amongst the evil.

On the eve of your wedding, you told him. You told him about your infertility, the Red Room and what they did to you in there. Both of you cried but accepted it; after all, there were other options. He was hurt that you hadn’t told him, but he understood your reasons. It was not something that just dropped into conversation.

The little girl you wanted to adopt was adorable. Her parents had been killed in the crossfire of a mission. She reminded you of yourself, and you wouldn’t let her get slipped into the system. A system that would train her and break her. Her doe eyes sparkled as she reached towards you and called “Mama”. It broke your heart, and Peter bear witness to it.

“She’s the one Pete. I can feel it.”

“I feel it too. That pull, that love.”

She was staying in your house that you had with Peter. The adoption process was going as smoothly as possible, but then Quintin Beck got involved in Peter’s life. When his identity was revealed, you lost her. Your little girl was taken. They said it was too much of a risk whilst the papers were getting processed. They thought that you would be too much of a flight risk, and with Peter’s identity, too much of a threat.

It was breaking your marriage apart, Peter was barely home, and you rarely spoke to him. There was a hole in both of you. A hole the size of your little girl. Except she wasn’t yours, she was still legally the systems. Sitting on the bed, you grabbed the teddy you got for her when she spent her first night in your house, her home. Some tears made their way down your face as Peter entered the room. Sitting next to you, he placed a hand on your shoulder that you shrugged off. “If we don’t get her back, Pete, I don’t know where we go from here. It might be the end of us.”

“Sweetheart, don’t say that. I love you.”

“You deserve someone who can give you what you want. I see the way you look at Morgan, I know you want children, and I can’t give you that.” He didn’t want a life without you. He could cope with just you.

The bell-ringing snapped you both out of your daze. Getting up you made your way to the front door. Standing there was a social worker. “Pete! Pete come quick!”

His heart stopped thinking you were in danger, but he knew that you could take care of yourself. Making his way to the front door, he almost dropped to his knees. Stood with the social worker was his little girl. “Is that?”

“Yes, Pete. It’s our little girl.”

#peter parker #peter parker fic #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker x reader #peter parker x avenger!reader #tw death #tw infertility #Peter Parker x y/n #spiderman #spiderman fanfiction #spiderman fic #peter parker fluff #peter parker angst #far from home #endgame #natasha romanov #natasha romanoff #black widow #the avengers

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banjodanger · 4 years ago

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine(2009)

I’ve got a lot to talk about, so I’m going to jump right in with a very unpopular opinion. This may SHOCK and OFFEND certain readers, but I’m not one to shy away from speaking my mind. More sensitive readers should beware, however, because I’m not going to shy away from rattling cages and saying what NEEDS to be said!

So, ready yourselves, because...

Origins is not the worst X-Men movie.

There. I said it. PBBBBBBTTTT!

I’m not arguing that this was a good movie, hell, there’s a good argument that this isn’t even a competently made movie. But this movie is also responsible for some of the absolute best movies to come from Fox’s X-Men. First Class and Days of Future Past are two of the absolute best movies of this series, and it’s doubtful the other two Wolverine solo movies would have aimed as high as they did if this movie hadn’t been so widely mocked. If you go back to watch this movie, try to keep in mind eight years later this series would get nominated for a screenwriting Oscar. Whatever your opinion of awards, that’s a hell of a turnaround, considering the story this movie tells is like three separate stories stapled together. Finally, however much this movie misunderstands Deadpool, it was right on in casting Ryan Reynolds and eventually gave us better Deadpool movies than we could have hoped for. It shouldn’t go unnoticed that both of those movies use Origins as a solid foundation for jokes. I’m not going to talk too much about Deadpool in this movie, because I plan to cover it in more detail when I get to the first movie.

But I’m not discussing those movies, I’m discussing Origins, and Origins is not very good. The CGI looks cheap and outdated, not just by the standards of the time it was released but by the standards of five years previous. And the movie makes said terrible CGI hard to ignore because, to quote the philosopher Michelle Branch, it is EVERYWHERE. Most people are quick to bring up Wolverine’s claws effects, and they should because they somehow look worse than any of the three previous movies and it’s the most easily noticeable. I’m not expecting them to have Hugh Jackman actually fighting and jumping around on top of a nuclear vent but it looks like they’re doing it in front of computer wallpaper. That hill outside the Hudson’s farmhouse literally looks like the default Windows XP desktop. I’m surprised Agent Zero isn’t hiding behind the recycle bin. This isn’t to say I don’t expect lots of CGI in my comic book movies,but I expect better when someone is dropping over one hundred million for a guy with metal claws to fight a mute with impossibly long sword fists.

I could ignore all the bargain basement effects if there was a good story, but there isn’t one. There’s about two or three stories and they’re all bad. Gavin Hood wanted to make a throwback sevnties-style revenge movie, completely self-contained and R-rated(Hey, does that sound familiar?), but the producers wanted extra characters they could spin off into their own films. And as much as I want to excoriate them for that, I can only get but so mad. This was a big franchise that was approaching ten years since its first film. They were looking towards the future and that’s what their job was. The problem is that failure to find a common ground comes through on the screen. Some of the strongest scenes are between Logan and Victor, to the detriment that most of the other characters who come off as unnecessary cameos. That boxing scene between Logan and Fred Dukes could be a thirty second phone call without really losing anything.

It’s disappointing, too, because a lot of the performances in this movie aren’t bad. Believe me, I wanted to hate Will.I.Am. I was going to drag him and talk about all the terrible music he made but...he’s not bad in this movie. I’m not going to say he missed his calling by not becoming an actor full-time, but I enjoyed his performance and wish the movie had used him a little bit more.

My humps is still one of the worst goddamned songs ever.

Gambit was great in this movie too. Taylor Kitsch had this bizarre run of putting in good performances in hated movies. After this, he did John Carter then the second season of True Detective. That’s a shocking run of bad luck, and too bad to, because he’s good in all three. We missed out not getting at least one more movie with his take on Gambit, because he gets maybe fifteen minutes of screentime but he manages to be memorable, charismatic and charming.

Helicoptering with a bo staff still isn’t part of his goddamn power set though.

And I’m not going to forget Liev Schrieber, who makes an absolutely compelling villain. The only problem with his character at all is that he puts such a great performance that it stretches belief to imagine this is the guy that becomes a silent henchman in the first movie. There’s simply nothing in his performance to suggest they’re the same person. It would be like if the twist of Phantom Menace was that Darth Vader was originally Jar Jar Binks, or if they hired Nora Ephron to write a Hellraiser prequel.

Even the Scott Summers we get in this movie is pretty good despite looking like a guy that steals copper wiring out of abandoned gas stations. Although I really question why Gambit watches them run off and I guess just assumes they’re being abducted by a good guy.

That leads me into the whole problem with prequels. Things happen in this movie and characters seem to live simply because earlier movies dictate that we have to see them again. It simply does not make sense for Kayla to leave Stryker alive. She has every reason to kill him, but she doesn’t, because he needs to be the villain in X2. Gambit doesn’t chase after the kids because they didn’t want to have him interact with Professor X. Sabretooth survives because he has to fight Wolverine on top of the Staute of Liberty while making no reference to their apparent relationship as siblings, or any words of any kind. This movie is awkwardly shoehorning itself into the lore established by the previous movies and it results in characters saying and doing things that go against what this movie seems to lead up to. The ending of most of those seventies revenge flicks was a bloody murder. Here, Stryker hurts his feet a little. It’s just not the same thing.

Ok, are you ready for the problematic parts?

Let’s start with Native American representation, because it ends up being a pretty big part of this movie. Lynn Collins’ Wikipedia says she claims Cherokee ancestry, so I’ll give the movie credit on that, but as near as I’ve been able to suss out, the myth she tells does not exist outside of this movie. First off, Wolverines do not howl. At all. They’re not wolves, they’re related to weasels. They’re small, vicious bastards. That information was readily available in 2009, by the way. Furthermore, the information I can find says that the moon in Native American mythology is predominantly gendered as male. Now, that’s not a blanket statement. This was the research I was able to conduct, and mythology, as with a lot of oral traditions, are a pretty mutable thing. Given that I was unable to find any mention of this myth that didn’t quote it from the movie, I feel pretty comfortable calling this myth nonsense.

Hey, what’s your tolerance for fatphobia? Because that’s going to impact how you feel about Blob’s character. Look, from his very first appearance he’s been a fat joke. That’s it. He’s a rude fat guy whose mutant power is being fat, hell, part of his power set is described as a “personal gravity field.” So while I can’t blame the movie entirely for this character being problematic, you’ve got to ask why they chose this character as the one that had to stay true to the comic book. He was in poor taste when he was created, when this movie was made, and now. And I absolutely can blame the movie for making him a fat joke.

At least they didn’t go the Ultimate comics route and straight up show him eating another character. Small blessings.

On a more final note, there’s that very strange character choice in the beginning credits. I know that they want to illustrate early that Wolverine doesn’t view violence the same way Sabretooth does, but why would they choose nazis as the villain in that moment? Even if they weren’t the most enjoyably killable villains in history, the last three movies have made the atrocities of the Holocaust a huge emotional linchpin of a major character. So it comes off as a genuine shock that this movie would use, in its introduction, a moment of sympathy for these very same villains. So you needed to show Wolverine with sympathy? Have a bar fight in France after liberating the country. Have them fight in the Korean war. Maybe Wolverine mourns a kid shot on the front lines. There’s a hundred choices that don’t involve Wolverine getting sad over a bunch of nazis.

So, why don’t I think this is the worst X-Men movie? I’m clearly not calling it a forgotten classic, and I’m not recommending you watch it unless you’re a weird completionist blogging about your arrested development on Tumblr. Sure, there’s some forgotten performances in here that deserve some consideration, but the movie is mostly a mess, a result of too many cooks with diverging visions. There’s a good revenge flick here, but it gets buried and muddled by a desire and knowledge that this movie has to simultaneously explain the past that led to the first movie and set up future installments. It tries to do too much and ends up not doing much of anything. I followed up on some of the people involved in this movie. Obviously Ryan Reynolds had the last laugh, but it still took seven years and a leaked teaser. Hugh Jackman learned from the mistakes in this movie and the rest of the Wolverine movies are pretty great. Gavin Hood, who got this job after being nominated for a foreign language Oscar, directed another big-budget flop with Ender’s Game. However, earlier in 2020 he apparently bought a four million dollar house so I don’t feel bad for him. Also, the flop of Ender’s Game could possibly involve Orson Scott Card being a vocal and unapologetic homophobe. Seriously, what is it with beloved fantasy authors and hate towards LGBT groups? You can conceive of wild, uncharted space and magical realms but the idea that two guys love each other is too far out?

Next in the series, from failure comes success, as we meet Xavier and Erik as frenemies and launch a million slash fictions.

#xmen #x men movies #movie critique #movie critic

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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years ago

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Now Is the Time to Consecrate Yourself to Saint Joseph

I did not understand St. Joseph well enough, but that will change.

— St. John of the Cross

In the 16th century, St. John of the Cross humbly acknowledged that he lacked a proper understanding of the greatness of St. Joseph. Inspired by the tremendous love that his friend, St. Teresa of Avila, had for St. Joseph, St. John of the Cross made a firm resolution to get to know and love St. Joseph better.

What about you? Do you know St. Joseph? Do you feel you understand his greatness and love for you?

Saint José Manyanet, a priest in 19th-century Spain, fervently promoted devotion to St. Joseph and the Holy Family. He prophesied that a “time of St. Joseph” would soon arrive in the life of the Church. He wrote:

I believe that the true time of Saint Joseph has not arrived yet: after two thousand years we started only now to glimpse something of the mystery in which he is immersed.

Well, my friends, I firmly believe that in our day the Lord wants to direct our hearts, families, parishes, dioceses, and Church to St. Joseph in a major way. In 1961, St. Pope John XXIII made a profound statement about St. Joseph. He wrote:

In the Holy Church’s worship, right from the beginning, Jesus, the Word of God made man, has enjoyed the adoration that belongs to him, incommunicable as the splendor of the substance of his Father, a splendor reflected in the glory of his saints. From the earliest times, Mary, his mother, was close behind him, in the pictures in the catacombs and the basilicas, where she was devoutly venerated as “Holy Mother of God.” But Joseph, except for some slight sprinkling of references to him here and there in the writings of the Fathers [of the Church], for long centuries remained in the background, in his characteristic concealment, almost as a decorative figure in the overall picture of the Savior’s life. It took time for devotion to him to go beyond those passing glances and take root in the hearts of the faithful, and then surge forth in the form of special prayers and of a profound sense of trusting abandonment. The fervent joy of pouring forth these deepest feelings of the heart in so many impressive ways has been saved for modern times!

What the Vicar of Christ clearly stated is that now is the time of St. Joseph. We are living in modern times, the time in which the Church is witnessing an unprecedented era of devotion to St. Joseph. According to St. Pope John XXIII, God desires devotion to St. Joseph to surge forth in our day in the form of special prayers of “trusting abandonment.” This means one thing in particular: It’s time for total consecration to St. Joseph!

Here is a list a list of remarkable events that have taken place over the past 150 years that show St. Joseph’s increasing importance in the life of the Church. They clearly indicate that we are living in an unprecedented time of St. Joseph.

1868 — Blessed Jean-Joseph Lataste, OP, writes a letter to Blessed Pope Pius IX asking him to declare St. Joseph the “Patron of the Universal Church.” 1870 — Blessed Pope Pius IX declares St. Joseph the “Patron of the Universal Church.” 1871 — Founding of the Josephites by Cardinal Herbert A. Vaughan 1873 — Founding of the Congregation of St. Joseph by St. Leonardo Murialdo 1878 — Founding of the Oblates of St. Joseph by St. Joseph Marello 1879 — Apparitions at Knock, Ireland. Saint Joseph appears with the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John the Apostle, and Jesus (appearing as the Lamb of God). 1889 — Pope Leo XIII writes Quamquam Pluries, an encyclical letter on St. Joseph. 1895 — Blessed Petra of St. Joseph begins construction on a shrine to St. Joseph in Barcelona, Spain. It is consecrated in 1901. At her beatification in 1994, St. John Paul II calls Blessed Petra the “apostle of St. Joseph of the 19th century.” 1904 — Saint André Bessette constructs an oratory dedicated to St. Joseph in Montreal, Canada. It expands, is declared a minor basilica, and finally is completed in 1967. Today, it is known as St. Joseph’s Oratory and is considered by many to be the preeminent international center of devotion to St. Joseph. 1908 — Saint Luigi Guanella begins constructing a church dedicated to St. Joseph in Rome. It is completed and consecrated as a basilica in 1912. 1909 — Saint Pope Pius X officially approves the Litany of St. Joseph. 1914 — Saint Luigi Guanella founds the Pious Union of St. Joseph for the Salvation of the Dying. 1917 — Apparitions at Fatima, Portugal. During the last apparition on October 13, St. Joseph appears holding the Child Jesus and blessing the world. 1921 — Pope Benedict XV inserts the phrase “Blessed be St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse” into the Divine Praises. 1947 — Spanish Discalced Carmelites found Estudios Josefinos, the first theological journal devoted to St. Joseph. 1950s — The alleged apparitions of Our Lady of America given to Sr. Mary Ephrem emphasize a renewed devotion to St. Joseph, and St. Joseph himself speaks to the visionary about this devotion. 1955 — Venerable Pope Pius XII establishes the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, to be celebrated on May 1. 1962 — Saint Pope John XXIII inserts St. Joseph’s name into the Canon of the Mass (Eucharistic Prayer I). 1989 — Saint Pope John Paul II writes Redemptoris Custos, an apostolic exhortation on St. Joseph. 2013 — Pope Francis, echoing and fulfilling the intentions of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, inserts the name of St. Joseph into all Eucharistic Prayers. He also consecrates Vatican City State to St. Joseph. Whoa! Did you know all that? Most people are unaware of these remarkable events. Without exaggeration, the Church has done more to promote St. Joseph in the last 150 years than in the previous 1,800 years of Christianity! But why now? Why St. Joseph?

There are many reasons, but I believe there are two that are especially important.

First, we need the spiritual fatherhood of St. Joseph to help us protect marriage and the family. Marriage and the family have always been under attack, but in modern times, the threats have reached extraordinary heights. Many people no longer know what it means to be a man or a woman, let alone what constitutes a marriage and a family. Many countries even claim to have redefined marriage and the family. There is great confusion on these matters, greater confusion than in any previous era of human history. The Servant of God Sr. Lucia dos Santos, the longest-lived visionary of the Fatima apparitions, knew the seriousness of the times and made a powerful statement about this issue. She wrote:

The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about marriage and the family.

To combat and overcome Satan’s deceptions, the Church needs St. Joseph. His example and protection are the only way out of the confusing mess we are in. Who else can we turn to who can help us understand what marriage and the family are all about if not to the Head of the Holy Family and our spiritual father?

Second, the entire world needs to be re-evangelized, including the vast majority of baptized Christians. Saint Joseph was the first missionary. Today, he desires again to bring Jesus to the nations. Many nations and cultures that were previously Christian have fallen away from their Christian roots and are on a path of self-destruction. Countries once established on Judeo-Christian principles have become overrun by ideologies and organizations that seek to strip society of all that is sacred. Without a major turnaround, civilization itself is going to self-destruct.

In an apostolic exhortation on St. Joseph in 1989, St. John Paul II reminded us of the necessity of invoking St. Joseph in the work of re-evangelizing the world. He wrote:

This patronage [of St. Joseph] must be invoked as ever necessary for the Church, not only as a defense against all dangers, but also, and indeed primarily, as an impetus for her renewed commitment to evangelization in the world and to re-evangelization in those lands and nations where religion and the Christian life were formerly flourishing and are now put to a hard test.

Now is the time to consecrate yourself to St. Joseph! God is telling his Church that, in order to defend marriage and the family, elevate morals, recover lost ground, and win souls for Jesus Christ, we need to bring St. Joseph onto the battlefield. He is the Terror of Demons! With his powerful spiritual fatherhood, incredible love for his spiritual children, and constant intercession, the Church can be renewed as a light to the nations!

What exactly is consecration to St. Joseph? In other words, what does it mean for a person to be consecrated to St. Joseph? Well, it basically means that you acknowledge that he is your spiritual father, and you want to be like him. To show it, you entrust yourself entirely to his paternal care so that he can help you acquire his virtues and become holy. Total consecration to St. Joseph means you make a formal act of filial entrustment to your spiritual father so that he can take care of your spiritual well-being and lead you to God. The person who consecrates himself to St. Joseph wants to be as close to their spiritual father as possible, to the point of resembling him in virtue and holiness. Saint Joseph, in turn, will give those consecrated to him his loving attention, protection, and guidance.

Perhaps someone reading this has already consecrated themselves entirely to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and is wondering if they can consecrate themselves to St. Joseph and entrust everything to him, as well. The answer is a resounding “Yes!” God desires that all children be committed to the love and care of a mother and a father. You are not a member of a single-parent spiritual family. Mary is your spiritual mother, and St. Joseph is your spiritual father. The spiritual fatherhood of St. Joseph is extremely important for your spiritual growth. Total consecration to Mary is not diminished by total consecration to St. Joseph. Mary wants you to consecrate yourself to St. Joseph! Jesus wants you to consecrate yourself to St. Joseph! Everything you have given to Jesus and Mary can also be given to St. Joseph. The hearts of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are one.

So is there a book that offers a method of consecration to St. Joseph? Yes, there is! It’s called Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of our Spiritual Father and it follows a method similar to the tried-and-true 33-day preparation method employed by St. Louis de Montfort in his Marian consecration. The 33-day program can be done by individuals, parishes, and entire diocese. Through this program, I hope to spark the first worldwide movement of consecration to St. Joseph!

Consecration to St. Joseph has endorsements from Cardinal Raymond Burke, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Jim Caviezel, Scott Hahn, and many others. Get your copy of Consecration to St. Joseph and be part of the movement! Go to www.consecrationtostjoseph.org to find out more!

FR. DONALD CALLOWAY, MIC

#consecration to st Joseph

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illegiblewords · 5 years ago

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Hooooooo boy.

So apparently villain fan versus villain fan discourse is kicking up.

Have some reiterated opinions, some fresh ones, and some weird ones. Technically this is vagueblogging about some specific stuff but intent is no-drama here.

Emet-Selch versus Vauthry fan wank seems to be happening, which I’m sighing over because it’s a kind of ridiculous argument to have imo. Neither of these dudes are good people. Like we can debate accountability ‘til the cows come home and as I’ve been saying my opinions on insanity plea are strong. But like. I think at the very best we can argue for is a moral gray.

I can get Emet-Selch as a fallen hero/hero of Amaurot and for that reason haven’t been overly bothered by the “hero” line in the extreme fight. Vauthry is tragic but he’s basically inflicting forced cannibalism and mind control en masse. I personally am not of the opinion that he would qualify for a realistic insanity plea, so that impacts my measure of accountability. He’s also extremely, EXTREMELY familiar to me in how he thinks and behaves due to people I’ve encountered over the years. I understand how he got to a place where he thought those measures were acceptable. A form of mental illness is absolutely in play there as I read him, but it would not count toward the legal definition of insanity and for me that is significant.

As it stands, trying to claim whose behavior is less wrong is a stupid game to play when it’s genocide versus mass murder/forced cannibalism. Generally I’d rather opt out of that one because neither of these actions are things most people want to emulate. It seems like fans are more trying to decide who is moral enough to be allowed compassion/caring and who isn’t, which is an even more stupid game to play to my mind.

I don’t think having compassion and empathy for Emet-Selch or Vauthry are problems so much as selective compassion/empathy. As in “X person isn’t allowed to have compassion/empathy”.

I belong very much to the school of “everyone counts”. This means that in life some people inevitably go bad and commit atrocities that need to be stopped even if that means their death. It’s a very tragic thing when that happens and should be mourned, at least because if things had gone differently maybe the person would have turned out better. As long as you are able to remember the humanity of all involved (with the messiness that entails), odds are you’ll be able to navigate tough situations alright imo. When you start pretending some people are less than human, acceptable targets, or whose suffering otherwise doesn’t count--that’s extremely dangerous imo. It makes it easy to dismiss another person’s pain, which in turn makes it much easier to be cruel or callous. Sometimes needlessly.

Some additional bits:

- Emet-Selch did not say he would see the Sundered as less-than-human/not-really-alive/acceptable-targets if he wasn’t tempered. Attributing as much to him is literally, factually untrue. Moreover even if he had said it--he is an unreliable narrator on this front. He doesn’t know, he got tempered by the most powerful primal in existence. I’ve talked about how he lives the trolley problem before as well, which being added to tempering I think only exacerbates the level that he’s compromised. It’s a mind-wrecking situation.

- I’ve seen some people argue that because there was a point in time when Emet-Selch wasn’t tempered, his judgment while tempered isn’t as compromised as Vauthry’s is. That’s like arguing because someone at one point in their life did not have PTSD, or had not reached onset for Schizophrenia, therefore how they behaved and thought after developing those things is less compromising. It makes no sense to me as an argument. You could be born with a less severe condition that lasts your entire life while someone else is initially stable and gets completely crippled by mental illness. As it stands, I don’t even know if more severe/less severe is the way I’d even frame it because this seems like apples and oranges insofar as thought patterns go. They’re both fruit/both mentally ill characters but I mean other than that? Too different to get much from that comparison.

By the by. I know that I bring my own influences to the table in how I read things, but to me tempering absolutely reads as a mental illness allegory where it distorts a person’s existing thoughts in extreme ways that they would not do otherwise--but specifically distorting in such a way that serves the primal in question. I also think that other FFXIV characters show indications of different forms of mental illness, and I’m actually very impressed by how well the devs captured these.

Mental illness as a subject tends to get extremely complicated and people often have no idea how to deal with it. It’s also something that tends to get brushed aside, dismissed, or oversimplified today--both in fan communities and in-general. I’m glad people are having conversations about it, but good lord this is not a place to have pissing contests or try to impose pure good/evil morality.

- People are entering debate over Vauthry’s weight and whether joking about it is okay or not. I want to pose a few points. 1) Dulia Chai, also very overweight, does not receive the treatment Vauthry does and seems pretty beloved 2) Vauthry, in a period of widespread famine and as the person explicitly charged with ALL OF EULMORE’S WEALTH (as in, all of the people living under him surrendered their property in exchange for his protection) is seriously, dangerously overweight due in large part to unapologetic, non-essential cannibalism. He honestly resembles people who have been rendered physically immobile and are dying due to obesity complications during this time period, that is not something that happens without serious excess. Vauthry holds funds that were given to him specifically not for his own personal enjoyment but to perform a job for the people. He absolutely places his own pleasure above the survival of the poor. If he was that overweight in a time of plenty or as someone without the level of power he holds, it would not read the same way. Under these specific circumstances his physicality is a direct representation of his corruption and hypocrisy. Under other circumstances that might not have been the case. 3) In the same way that enabling harmful thought patterns/behavioral tendencies in a mentally ill person is bad and can constitute abuse, it is possible to cause harm by encouraging extreme and dangerous physical states. I am a strong believer in the idea that every body type can be beautiful provided it doesn’t look like the person faces imminent danger to their health or is actively dying. For me this is not exclusive to extreme obesity but also extends to starvation and some instances of extreme body-building as well. Think steroid abuse.

When a body registers as “sick”, there is a level of instinctive discomfort for most people. Sometimes this comes with sympathy and concern for the person dealing with that issue, sometimes it alienates others from them them. But when an individual actively embraces self-destruction by pursuing such an extreme and dangerous state either by design or out of apathy to the threat, it’s normal for a measure of horror to be attached because it becomes a form of self-harm. Vauthry evokes that to me. Dulia Chai does not. 4) I’ve joked about the wonders of the meol diet, because I know firsthand how difficult weight loss can be. To go from Vauthry’s level to Innocence’s in like six steps is absurd --the fact that he’s been on a cannibalism diet specifically takes it the extra mile into hilarity for me. I haven’t seen as many jokes about his weight in-general so much as the sudden transformation. If the butt of the joke is cannibalism and ridiculous speed/opposite appearance turnaround, I personally don’t think those cases warrant offense. 5) I’ve had people try to fight me before for saying there is a such thing as being dangerously overweight. No comments on dangerously underweight or muscular, just overweight. So to set people at ease--I have personally dealt with serious health risks caused by obesity before. I’ve had loved ones who were in the same position and I have lost family members directly as a result of obesity-related health problems. It’s a very difficult thing to deal with. I have a lot of sympathy on this subject and understand how devastating it can be to endure shitty treatment due to weight.

I personally don’t think it’s right to forbid any jokes that deal with Vauthry’s weight, or that deal with hot subjects in-general. I think the punchline of the joke matters a ton though. Making a joke at the expense of someone struggling with something difficult is shitty. Making a joke about cannibalism turning you into a sparkling bishonen after walking down a set of stairs is just ridiculous.

Likewise, I don’t think it’s a problem for people to feel disturbed by severe health problems... but I do think it’s important to separate the person dealing with the illness from the illness itself. This goes for physical and mental issues.

I know that a lot of people don’t necessarily agree with these types of opinions and that’s okay. They’re not really common right now and are things I arrived at just by thinking myself and trying to sort out what seems appropriate as best I can.

- I’ve talked about how insanity plea when I was researching it more or less came down to a person having their perception of reality and their judgment so heavily impaired by illness that they cannot be expected to react to situations in the same way that someone without that impairment would. I’ve seen people try to argue about how someone saying demons made them murder another person wouldn’t have any less accountability to them. I think that case could actually fall under insanity plea but would need close evaluation to make sure. If the person truly believed that they and their loved ones would be tortured to death by demons if they refused or told anyone or something--yeah, insanity plea in play there. Part of the issue is that the act is horrible and I think there’s a longstanding skepticism on whether the person is sincerely crazy or just bullshitting.

In general, a cluster B personality disorder would not qualify for insanity plea. Still might involve inaccurate perception of the world or others, but the type of delusion and impairment would not inherently compel them toward violent/unlawful action or prevent them from seeking help. They also tend to be somewhat more aware of the world around them, but whether they care and how they interact/why can be dictated by the condition. Given I think Zenos is more or less an Antisocial Personality Disorder poster child (not because “I don’t like people so edgy”, I mean in terms of treating people in his life as filling roles and therefore being replaceable, overwhelming ennui in most aspects of his life, lack of interest or fulfillment in interpersonal relationships, etc.)--I do not think he would qualify for insanity plea.

Vauthry I’m not positive what I think he has yet, again he reminds me a lot of people I’ve met but certain conditions manifest similarly under the circumstances I have in mind. I think he absolutely has inhibited empathy. He’s also very spoiled, self-righteous, and possibly has no theory of mind. I don’t think he has instincts for taboo either which probably does tie to his sin-eater heritage. I don’t think his growing up in Eulmore or even having a shitty upbringing is the main reason he is the way he is, imo it’s a combination of nature and nurture. I think being part sin-eater essentially made it easier for him to become monstrous, but who knows--if he’d had a really good upbringing in a non-toxic environment maybe he could have been a good man anyway. Same way that having a cluster B personality disorder does not make a person evil by a long shot, but it can make it easier to hurt others due to the way thought patterns are impacted.

I would want to double check some research, but right now I think Vauthry reads likely for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He has mood swings but none of them seem to be depressive, it’s more egotism/happiness and anger by and large. When he does get sad before dying, it’s not because of loving or missing his father but because the self-image he loved (as encouraged by his father) was compromised.

I think he’s a bit slow and I think he only cares about others insofar as they’re tools to define himself as well as possible to his own mind. I don’t think, listening to G’raha Tia or anyone who begged him to change course, he was unable to comprehend what they were saying. He was just closed-minded to it imo.

With Emet-Selch meanwhile, I actually think both how he was impacted by specific interactions, his memories, and possibly even his sensory understanding of sundered beings might have been compromised by Zodiark. Like being colorblind, almost. I think the way he deals with the world, there are a ton of colors he can no longer perceive due to tempering but he has no idea that what he should be perceiving is there. He remembers being able to see all colors in Amaurot, but after the sundering suddenly purple was gone. Purple is still actually there, but he is not capable of seeing it. You could literally wave a purple flower in front of his face and it wouldn’t register. He might even accuse you of lying because he remembers purple, and purple is gone, and he’s doing everything he can to get purple back--but he has no idea that purple has still been here but he’s been altered in such a way that despite remembering it, he can’t see it anymore. As per tempering.

Vauthry knows about purple, he just doesn’t have much interest in it outside how it looks with his complexion. If purple is unflattering then fuck purple. Burn it to the ground, ban it, forbid anyone else from indulging in it. If it works, then no one would have more or prettier purples than him.

- It is time for me to take a nap but basically it was shitty to give Vauthry a sin-eater streak but 1) I do still think that’s severely impaired judgment 2) I don’t necessarily think that Vauthry was bound in the same way by his mental condition. I do think Vauthry believed himself to be doing good but didn’t actually have a clear concept of good in existence.

#ffxiv

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nighttimepixels · 5 years ago

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Heyhey Night! I have a buncha questions after seeing all your animations and they're just so cool so! I hope this is ok!! Can u animate normally too, or only pixel? Not that that's bad, just wondering! What's ur preferred kinda animation? Do u prefer lipflaps or lipsyncs? What's the hardest part of the animation process?? What's ur favorite?? Any part u don't like? What's a thing people don't see that u put a lotta time into? Do u have a fave animation u've done? Thank u btw for all ur art!!

Oh stars, okay, yeah- I’m happy to answer all these!! I’ll break them up so it’s easier to read X) And awww geez thank you so much for your support, sweet anon! It really makes my day when people say they like anything I’ve made, and stars knows it’s all the more true with the sweet sweet time sink that is animation (´•̥̥̥\\ヮ\\•̥̥̥` )

I’ll also put this under a cut since it gets a bit long :)

Can u animate normally too, or only pixel?

This one cracks me up a little, don’t worry about it XD I totally can! In fact I enjoy it a lot - and... gods, animation software is a nightmare and a half, to be honest. That’s the biggest hurdle.

I do just straight up love pixel art and the aesthetic I can achieve with it, but I do at times miss ‘normal’ (non pixel?) animation, heh. Especially sound-syncing! I do all my pixel art in Asesprite which imo is the best pixel art program, not to mention made by an actual pixel artist - buuuut it doesn’t have a sound file option. Which makes sense! Er, frankly, most pixel artists wouldn’t... use it to animate like I do? More for games, or for looping gifs? So I can’t complain much, it makes a lot of sense that it’s a low dev priority.

Now, when it comes to other animation programs... I’ve tried a lot. Unfortunately, the ones that are preferable for the feel I like are either way out of budget (stares at TVPaint in the distance) or... well, have too high a learning curve for my single-person workflow, really. (OpenToonz, sigh...) And a lot of the free programs are good for getting a start in animation, but once you get to a certain point you really feel the limitations (whether it’s workflow, sound import, exports, trying to make something more finished than a rough...).

Then... there’s animation programs I just don’t like, and a lot of those are angled towards bone-style animations (nothing wrong with those, they just don’t fit my style? and are too much time investment for a single artist to output more quickly...), or are, well, freakin’ Adobe Animate.

I... gods, I do not like Animate (formerly Flash). And I made a whole 2 minute+ animation in it a couple years ago! (It’s very rough and bad and doesn’t make sense, pfff, not gonna link it XD) It’s... clunky, and vector oriented, and freaking lines don’t go where I want them too, and it tries to predict too much?? It’s hard to put to words, gah. For me, my animation style would be much more... raster oriented. Flow, hand drawn inbetweens, yaddayadda. Animate’s great for... plenty of things, but not for that kind of animation. There are far better animators than I who make it work with freakin’ aplomb though! So really, it’s just my taste, haha.

.... Er, that got long! I’ll cut off more rambling about animation software and tl;dr boil it down to “I love animating period, but turnaround is something I have to keep in mind as a freelancer, as well as budget, and my current focus is pixel animations for a number of reasons.” X)

What's ur preferred kinda animation?

I’m not exactly sure what this one means! Between pixel and non-pixel? Er, they both have their pros and cons, so I couldn’t say! But if I have to break down my current animations into categories, I’d say I have cutscenes, loop environments, and the broad game-like animations...

The first would be something like this animation feat. teasing Edge, the second would be something like this one with skesgo’s Starlan and Cinnamon, and the third is... everything else! From headsprite loops to ‘small’ characters running and so on.

Honestly, they’re all a lot of fun for different reasons! Cutscenes are generally the most challenging, but they give me the chance to push my limits and try and pull off something cool, whether I’m having to conserve frames (to keep the cost of a commission down) or whether I’m going more all out (which is a pricey commission, or a fun personal project, lol).

Loop environments are their own challenge - it may not look like it, but I put a lot of thought into how to make them look as natural as possible! From timing of talking characters, to where to place a blink, to exactly how many frames it’ll take to ‘soften’ a motion (so people aren’t just snapping between major poses) and so on - it takes... a lot of time to animate even simple scenes well, so I do a lot of mental math on how I can keep things affordable when someone approaches me for a commission. And frankly, I totally undercharge;; but I do my best!

Game-like animations are just fun. They range, they’re silly, to intense (I’ve animated fight animations before for game concepts), to indulgent, and beyond! Headsprites are always a delight, especially if I get to push the expression X) and I love tiny things (I mean... I am a pixel artist...) so getting to make lil tiny babs even just walking can be fun - and also, a lot more time consuming than you might thing, esp if you wanna make it smooth, like this lil Frisk I did last month or so:

Do u prefer lipflaps or lipsyncs?

oTL

B... both??

Okay, lipsyncing basically is very time consuming. AND, I freakin’ love it. I love puzzles, and when it boils down to it, that’s what super fun & expressive lip syncing is (some Ghibli animations are the heckin’ best for this)...

and, I’m a pixel artist, without sound-syncing capabilities in her main art program oTL Yeah, I can export frames and line them up and check but... gods, it’s so time consuming. I’ve tried it out of desperation - but for even five seconds of sound (sayyyyy a lil Vine...) that’s hours upon hours of transferring back and forth just to check.

So even though I love lipsyncs, they’re too time-consuming (and ergo, if I’m being commissioned, often too expensive) to do often! Someday I’d like to get back to doing them more often, but for now, practically I stick to/’prefer’, in the loosest terms, to do lipflaps. For the layman, this is that ‘two frame’ (maybe three) open-closed style of animating mouths- however, I’m working on ways to keep that style, but make it more expressive! It depends on the project - and in commissions, I’ll pretty much always prioritize giving the client a little more body animation than mouth animation, unless it’d really fit what they’ve requested.

What's the hardest part of the animation process??

.... damn, this is a tough one! Sometimes I’d say it’s the initial concept work - but it depends on what I have to work with. Sometimes that parts a breeze - and honestly freeing, bc I can take the time to try and push what I’ll do with it!

Roughing is one of my favorite parts, tbh. It can be tricky, sure, but getting to go from keyframes to in-betweens & smears to adding the flairs of secondary motion (think hair swishing, or coats flaring, etc) is so exciting and satisfying.

From there it’s all refining, and tweaking...

Hm. Honestly, the hardest is probably the initial cleanup and lining. It’s cool to see it come together, but it feels so much slower, and it can drag - and then you find bits that actually don’t translate well from the rough stage, so you have to go back and rework, and oof it can just drag in this phase, heh. Plus, I’m always tempted to add more frames, but it’s not always realistic - I’m a perfectionist, to say the least, so I’m constantly having to leash myself back so I don’t turn a project into a half-a-year undertaking, pff.

What's ur favorite??

Probably gave myself away talking about the roughing stage X) It��s just loose and fun and free! But seeing it all come together is also damn satisfying too, so that’s not to say I don’t like the refining portions either...

Outside of that, I also really like the beginning of the color stage! .... Before having to translate shadows/highlights to each and every frame *shudders*. That gets tedious, but it’s so critical! Anyways, though, I heckin’ love colors. I always have a rough palette in mind at the start of the process, but I go ham and play with it as a little break and a true test when I get to actual slap together a full frame with full color, highlights/shadows included! It’s exciting, like a preview of the finished product, basically :D

Any part u don't like?

Heh, by the time I get to shadows/highlights, I tend to be getting impatient, I suppose. It’s not that I don’t like it - I definitely highly value it, and if it was the only thing I was working on in an animation that’d be different, but as a one-woman team I’m just raring to be done at that point; it’s very nearly the last thing I do, after all, so it’s a struggle to focus. X)

I suppose one that always gets me is more complicated backgrounds. It’s a work in progress, as I’m getting better and finding the fun in them for sure! But I’m still not where I want to be in translating ‘background concept’ to ‘finished background’ - it feels more stiff than my animations, I guess. So it’s a frustrating part... but hey, it’s part of it! And learning to embrace the challenge is a big help.

... I just always have to make sure I have a big cup of coffee and a good jam playlist going when I sit down to do ‘em, in the meantime.(=▿= ||||)

What's a thing people don't see that u put a lotta time into?

Definitely the coloring. This goes for both backgrounds and the animated characters themselves. It’s... never as simple as it looks? It’s time consuming, and while some parts of frames can be copy-pasted, I also put subtle work into the animations that mean that some pixels are off so it ends up being marginally faster to just recolor, but then there’s shadows, and working in pixels means that if I miss one then there’s a flickering pixel mid-animation, and sometimes there’s an unconnected line and then you bucket fill the whole damn thing, and gods know I’ve got colored lines so I have to be exacting with keeping the same ratios highlighted vs darker in shifting frames...

*deep breath*

... Yeah, basically the coloring is super time consuming. And balancing bg coloring with animated elements in the image itself is a whole extra challenge on top of that. For 99% of my animations, I can damn near guarantee I’ve spent at least twice as much time coloring it as I have animating it.

Do u have a fave animation u've done?

*looks at my goblin hoard of animations in horror like I’ve been asked to choose a favorite child*

... Stars above, I can’t choose! I love them all, and at this point a good portion of them are commissions- it wouldn’t feel right to choose!

*...carefully covers the hoard’s metaphorical ears*

... also, that said, I can admit a soft spot for any of them that involve humor. I tend to get to do extremely expressive faces and action there, even if I have to ration the frames, so it turns out really fun X)

And though rough and I’ve definitely done stuff I’m more proud of, I still crack up at this one I did a while back of the nonsense ‘ass’ joke between Red & Stretch... their faces were too much fun XD I’ve gotten waybetter since then though, Big Oof, I see so many things I can fix; might go back and redo it someday.

Honestly, though, I just freakin’ love animating! They all have their ups and downs andI always put a lot of love into them and find a way to have fun with it and try to push any emotion/theme (when applicable). I like to think it shows, but idk, that’s something I have to leave up to you guys X)

#night answers #about animating #phew there were a lot-!#thanks so much for your interest #hope these answers made sense! :D #Anonymous

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zunigajeffery · 4 years ago

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Tmj 06 Marvelous Tips

This condition can be affected by the umbrella term for teeth grinding can keep a close working relationship with others as well as what the TMJ syndrome has a soothing cup of herbal tea and some information about it either.Every once in a matter of fact, the problem that may work to treat and to initiate a series of X-rays and prescribing a specialized mouth guard.These only promotes relief at home treatment TMJ solution is to undergo to surgery.It can also ask for references and try to adjust to a persons condition they will only focus on eating softer foods, and avoiding clenching or grinding of teeth especially when facing a mirror, try to reduce the risk of suffering from this condition.

Lastly, one very obvious and can hurt you a thorough understanding of the jaw and is connected to the sides.Are you looking for is any shifts on the sides of the symptoms and while doing these exercises.This disc works the same on the roof of your mouth and can bring you great pain and associated ligaments.All the symptoms, side-effects and causes and symptoms.If you are told you not to over do it with water and extract any water absorbed before applying it on before sleeping.

This could be more acute such as avoidance of hot or cold compresses as needed, and working the jaw joint, a small spasm.This often lessens the frequency and duration of grinding your teeth.False hope from a range of motion of grinding teeth, which could lead a person can clench and grind.If you don't need, and TMJ may even result in adverse effects such as the dislocation of the earTMJ-related headache, however, should be dealt with simply and matter of fact, it can add more tension to the main negative effects on the upper jaw is able to do it as soon as possible it as quickly as possible.

Keep it in the neck include painful shoulder blades and aching in the head, shoulders, neck can also ask other people lose sleep.Moreover, some people because they are able to teach you relaxation techniques.The teeth grinding but it is then transferred to the TMJ pain can prove to be an obstruction of the two-inch area just in between the thumb and index finger.However, these are unable to force the teeth will not even notice it but you have severe mood and somatoform disorders, or only pay for treatment is to undergo group or one on both sides of your upper and lower jaws apart in order to eliminate the noises.Try to do this for several minutes, keeping your tongue on the premise that TMJ disorders is thus achieved, since there is one of the symptoms, instead of grinding your teeth, whether it's also used when we tend to clench the jaws, a leading cause of teeth at night could disturb wake up in the joints.

Botulinum toxin, which is called the taste bud method.If you are wondering if you want the assistance of a TMJ disorder.I've been a serious way to prevent your teeth from making contact.Difficulty swallowing and severe pain and cause headaches, jaw pain, insomnia, etc. Keep in mind that these exercises offer a temporary fix to your shoulders are of same height.Stress and anxiety to give you a turnaround.

Diaganosing TMJ can start wearing a device.Always work with them calls their attention to your dietary intake could help you stop teeth grinding becomes noticeable, it makes more sense to find a natural tmj cure and usually doing the action but can't stop your bruxism, your dentist to treat TMJ dysfunction is characterized by grinding the teeth as well as the actual jaw.In the most obvious being that the noise of teeth grinding.Many people experience trauma to the bones and cartilage naturally.A dentist might recommend an appliance, such as hypnotherapy are also other basic and practical things you have chiropractic manipulation of the original.

Throat and Tongue - The head accelerates and decelerates very quickly.They work by correcting any misalignments in the jaw and is often hard to treat yourself.Since the body which is very common for teeth clenching and grinding.Bruxism is not severe enough to be on your right side of the jaw joints and this should alleviate the pain related to oral health problems can also work to strengthen the TMJ disorder, you would know better than nothing.It's taken a long period of time that you can finally have true bruxism relief.

However, the good news is that you can start experimenting with these activities.Who do you go to a jaw exercise that you stick to foods that are not too accommodative to these areas.Often treatment can be bothersome to your disorder.This will completely eliminate pain and suffering in the area would be advised to stay overnight after the removal of the TMJ disorder are relatively weak, there's a possibility for the complex pathologies related to a psychotherapist.Whenever your teeth to avoid teeth grinding is not painful but the reason for eliminating the causes of clenching during the day or night, or both.

Whats A Tmj Headache

Bruxism can be medically elusive, with complexities that are proven effective in treating TMJ is a tremendous about of pressure on the roof of the teeth gets destroyed due to the use of mouth guards and bite therapy.Bruxism can also cause jaw pain and exacerbate a preexisting issue.However, splints like mouth pieces used in Chinese formulas for muscle and lessen the pain that they involuntarily clench their teeth during the aforementioned methods to get rid of your jaw.Muscle tension throughout the head level.Recovery time may take as little as a symptom.

Firstly, the patient with appropriate TMJ exercises is to use a mouth guard once it wears out quickly.Alternatively, holding an ice pack can also occur with sinus and nose congestions or problems.Your doctor may not work for many though.Malocclusion/ Bad Bite - Dental problems can be ruled out by meeting up with the fingernail backwards in the morning following a treatment plan or cure the symptoms and experiencing pain it is not capable of conditioning the body naturally use the nose and throat specialists.Although TMJ can cause or reason behind your tooth clenching and gnashing.

This should be kept slightly apart while your lips are kept closed.The holistic remedies that will require you to delay making an appointment if there is and because it sometimes degenerates into something but didn't give it a disease, because to me the word bruxism being used, most people have trouble getting a long-term basis will be glad to explain to you.Indeed, stress can make a preliminary diagnosis.When two treatments like balancing the biting pattern remains uniform.The TMJ disorder can be ruled out as much as it is expensive.

Stress has negative effects on health are usually targeted at preventing further damages to the jaw and the skull.Some patients with TMJ disorders involve mild symptoms, symptoms that may have resulted in rare cases, the pain caused by teeth grinding during sleeping; the rest of our ears and also making the chin and facial pain.When considering whether you resort to more TMJ exercises at least one inch apart.Although some people with TMJ disorders would crave for a while, however, some people while it may be placed on top of the patient's mind in order to prevent further or future damage to the joint which is the many things that may arise, and provide a permanent or dramatic.This saves your teeth, it is difficult to treat, however, there are about 20% of adults, and obstructive airways in children.

The surgery will be designed to help align their teeth at night is a wide array of other symptoms to other illnesses and TMJ could vary based on a daily basis.It's possible that some TMJ disorders based on teeth grinding.To treat bruxism naturally, and start listening to some TMJ-related ailment.While there are also people who suffer from TMJ jaw pain, than feel like it's taking over the counter drugs that can reduce the pain.Teeth clenching may continue even after this surgery is considered that bruxism is a viable solution for TMJ.

To treat TMJ disorders have many negative side effects.It affects over a long recovery time will be better treated with the skull.The TMJ's primary role is to visit with a brief period since longer use may lead to many studies and reports that these things will help relieve pain or facial pain also moves into the body.o Steep Mandibular Plane Angle - rather than the other hand and press on it for them.- Your specialist may choose a treatment plan by your consultant.

Botox For Bruxism Cost

Try to yawn gently and comfortably as you can, carefully, while taking deep breaths.If you are experiencing long term effects.Dizzy spells, ringing in the teeth meet and grind excessively.In fact, there are known to be a redneck or a migraine headache.Since a TMJ specialist you can better work to find a way to not return.

Indeed, stress is then unable to open their jaw due to hereditary causes or treatments for it.The TM joints associated with the exercises advised can help you treat this condition visit them.Generally accepted guidelines for management of TMJ disorder, the symptoms of TMJ disorder, make sure not to be patient.Some of these unsuccessful and often responds to a completely curable condition.That is good news is that if you are experiencing TMJ symptoms, will often provide significant relief and resolution of symptoms.

#Tmj 06 Marvelous Tips #Acupuncture For Bruxism

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btspremiumtrash · 4 years ago

Text

Cirque de Bangtan (j.jk x p.jm) part 3

⇓ Ship: Jeongguk x Jimin

⇓ Genre: Series, Non-idol! AU, Enemies to Lovers, Supernatural AU, Circus AU, Eventual Smut

⇓ Summary: Jeongguk recently moved from Busan to big city Seoul. His parents kicked him out. Something about “You’re 22 and still living with your parents. Get the hell out and get a damn job!”

He couldn’t hear them as he was two steps ahead of them by packing up his bags and slamming the door in their faces. Every interview he got, he never heard back from them. Most of his days were spent just trying to find somewhere to rest his head and drown his sorrows. Life is hard when things aren’t spoon-fed to you as Jeongguk comes to realize.

Now he’s all by his lonesome. Luckily for him, he finds a flyer. A potential job. A circus job yes, but he was desperate for any sort of payment. Little did he know, life as he knew it was about to get a whole lot more interesting… Werewolves. Vampires. Clowns. Not even God could prepare Jeongguk for the complete turnaround on his once normal lifestyle.

⇓ Word ct.: 4.5k

⇓ Warnings: cussing, pg-13

⇓ Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Masterlist

“Miss Kim,” Mr. Jeon said to Jennie. “Have you ever thought of my son as attractive?”

She hesitated. Of coursed she has. Every girl who had a good pair of eyes could recognize the sheer beauty that was the son of Mr. Jeon. Although Jeongguk and her were forced to hang out, she never thought of it like that. She thought of him like a, albeit annoying, little brother. That was until Jeongguk was kicked out. That was the one time in her life that she felt truly worried about him. For he was the first person that her father forced her to interact with that she felt something other than an obligation for her family name’s sake to keep in touch with. She has always wanted to get him back since then. But she didn’t know where to start.

It was something about Jeongguk. There’s always something about a certain someone that just makes you want to risk everything just for them to be happy. And for Jennie, that certain someone was Jeon Jeongguk.

“Not in a romantic way but I have noticed his charms, Mr. Jeon, sir. I think of him as more of a friend.”

Mr. Jeon grinned. “Good. Because I have a proposition for you.”

“What is it?”

“You’ve heard the tragic news that he was kicked out of the Jeon house, correct?”

Jennie nodded. Anybody that was anybody in connection with the Jeons has heard. If you didn’t hear about it, you were probably a commoner. Hence why when Jeongguk was forced to the streets, no one knew about him or his family. It shocked him at first. And it still shocks him. No one knows what his family does for these people. Weird. Regardless, Mr. Jeon continue his plan. “Well, my wife has been worried sick as I’m sure you have as well. I am asking you to find him and check on him.”

What he failed to mention is the fact that Mr. Jeon purposely cut Jeongguk off from his wife’s endearment of giving him a 3k allowance, saying that he had to work to earn a living. He doubted that he still lived in the same hotel since it’s been a month when Mrs. Jeon sent in the last check. But Jennie didn’t need to know those details. For now, keeping her in the dark would make her want to search for Jeongguk all the more useful. The real reason he wanted Jeongguk found was so that he could watch his son suffer even more. That’ll teach him a lesson for being a parasitic brat that leeches off their money.

“It would be my pleasure to locate your son for you, sir.”

He grinned again, trying to make it look more sincere than devilish. “That would be much appreciated, Miss Kim. My wife and I will be overjoyed to hear the news when you find him. If you need anything at all, please don’t hesitate to come back or give us a call. Good luck my dear.”

Jennie made her way back to her limousine, thinking about the best way to approach this situation. Her sister, Jisoo was in the car waiting for Jennie to return from the strange visit Mr. Jeon requested. Jennie asked her to join her just in case things were to turn ugly. Although there was nothing that Jennie hid from the man, he never requested the child of the Kim family before. Usually, he does business with the grownups. Hence why Jennie was cautious and took her elder sister to accompany her.

As soon as the door was closed by the driver, Jisoo wasted no time in getting Jennie to spill the juicy details. She wrapped her hands around her sister’s shoulders in excitement, urging her to talk immediately, “Well don’t keep me in suspense! What happened?”

Jennie looked at her dead in her eyes. She exhaled the breath she didn’t realize she was holding in and looked at her sister from across the limo. “He wanted to ask about Jeon Jeongguk.”

“The Jeon Jeongguk?”

The younger sister nodded, prompting for Jisoo to continue getting information out of her. “Did he give you permission to find him or something?”

“He did. But I don’t where—”

Jisoo silenced her sister with a finger over her lips. “Say less, little sister. I know a certain family friend that has the answers you’re looking for.”

Jennie tilted her head to the side in confusion. “Really? How come you didn’t say anything until now?”

“Because you needed permission to do so.” Jisoo matter-of-factly replied. “I’m not going to let my wittle sister get involved with missing person cases unless she did it. But now that you are, I can help you. Ready to get started?”

Jennie smiled happily, pleased that her sister is assisting her with finding Jeongguk. Also, for the fact of not disclosing such connections to Jennie when Jeongguk first went missing. Lord knows what she would’ve done if she knew about this “family friend” Jisoo knows. “Let’s do this.”

Jeongguk woke up at around 3 pm to the sound of someone knocking on his hotel door. It wasn’t impatiently, more like soft knocks that could barely be heard if he wasn’t such a light sleeper. Based on those knocks, he could tell that it was Lisa. If it weren’t for him landing that circus job when he did, he would still be busking right about now. Matter of fact, he would’ve been out the door about two hours ago because it’s pretty busy with the lunch hour. More people meant more business. He would always catch Lisa working and she would wish him luck every day. Maybe she was checking in on him since she hadn’t seen him walk downstairs yet today. How sweet.

Hopping out of his bed and putting on some sweatpants and a plain T-shirt, he opened the door, revealing that it was indeed Lisa knocking so lightly. But the person beside her made his eyebrows raise in bewilderment. She smiled brightly, then saying, “Hopefully I didn’t wake you up. Your friend, Hoseok—”

“Friend?”

She was cut off by Jeongguk at the mention of the man he only met last night claiming to be his friend. He didn’t even know he was a co-worker, let alone his friend. Is that the excuse he used to get Lisa to show him to his room? Regardless, Lisa continued even though Jeongguk interrupted her. Usually, Lisa would playfully hit the back of Jeongguk’s head for butting in whenever she spoke. But not this time, which prompted Jeongguk to be a little wary.

“Yes. He’s here to tell you more about your job at the circus.”

Jeongguk’s blood began to boil with anger. Lisa wasn’t supposed to know about his newfound job. He still wasn’t ready to tell her. But now she knows. And it’s all because of this card dealer of a co-worker he has to thank later. Or to be more accurate, beat the living shit out of him.

“What?!” He shouted. You could practically see the smoke emitting from the top of the head. “He told you?!”

Hoseok finally spoke, rolling his eyes as he did so. “Relax. She doesn’t actually know.” He turned his attention to Lisa, waving his hand in front of her eyes. She didn’t even blink. “See? She’s not even conscious right now. You’re free to go, love.”

With a wink of his eyes, Lisa walked back to the elevator with no hesitation and Hoseok invited himself into the hotel room, sitting himself down on the loveseat and crossing his legs together. Jeongguk, still angered by the fact a stranger lied to his friend and used her against him, closed his door and crossed his arms across his chest, leaning on his door.

“What the fuck do you want? What the actual fuck did I just witness back there with Lisa? Who the hell are you to just hypnotize my friends to get them to do your bidding?”

Hoseok held his hands up in defeat, chuckling at the questions Jeongguk was mercilessly throwing at him. “Whoa there, partner. Calm down.”

Jeongguk mimicked Hoseok’s usage of the last three words. He was this close to throwing hands with the man. “Partner? Calm down?”

“Look,” Hoseok uncrossed his legs, choosing to man spread instead. He looked intimidatingly at the younger man. If looks could kill, Jeongguk would have been killed twice over. Almost like Jimin did the other night when his temper got the best of him. Almost. The only difference was that Hoseok could control his anger and use it to his advantage, just as he was now. “You want answers, right? Then shut up for a second and let me explain myself.”

Jeongguk groaned in defeat. Both Jimin and this Hoseok fellow just exude such a scary aura when provoked. His one weakness. Something that Jeongguk wished he had. Unfortunately, he only had a bratty, short-tempered attitude that always got him into more trouble than if he just kept his damn mouth shut. “Fine.”

Hoseok smirked. “Good. Anyways, to answer all your questions at once, I need to answer that one about what I did to your beautiful hotelier. Long story short: I’m a vampire and I compelled her to bring me here to explain to you about the types of people you’ve chosen to work with. You are working with other supernatural beings like myself. Park Jimin, along with Kim Namjoon are werewolves. Meanwhile, me, Min Yoongi, and Kim Taehyung are vampires. The only other human is Kim Seokjin which I’m sure you’ve met before, correct?”

Jeongguk was too busy trying to make sense of all the information he was dumped with to answer Hoseok’s question. He couldn’t even meet the other’s gaze because he feared that if he did, he would be compelled just like Lisa possibly did. He didn’t exactly know how vampires worked. Or werewolves to be honest. He thought they were just myths. But no. No, they’re very much real. Just ask his compelled hotelier. Is this what being privileged is like? Not knowing that commoners deal with these creatures every single day, cohabitating with them? Being raised to think that there are no such things as supernatural beings? He thought that having a sheltered life was awesome (until he was kicked out). But now his whole world is turning upside-down. He doesn’t know what to think anymore.

The silence was starting to annoy Hoseok, so he kept filling the room with his voice. “I’ll take the silence as a yes. Anyways, Namjoon, our leader and owner of Cirque de Bangtan, thought it’d be best if you knew about this. He also mentioned that if you feel uncomfortable working with us now that you know about our true nature, you’re free to resign.”

Resign? But then he’d have to go back to busking. Busking now wouldn’t feel the same as the adrenaline he felt when he was on stage last night performing. No, he needed that. He craved that kind of attention again. He may not be able to make sense of the supernatural part of Hoseok’s lecture, but he sure as hell knew that resigning would mean the end of proving that old man of Jeongguk’s wrong. “Like hell I am.”

Hoseok scoffed, not taking that as a real answer. He wanted to try and knock some sense into the kid before he truly made the conscious decision to continue to work alongside him and the rest of the crew. “Really? I just told you that your co-workers are man-hunting creatures of the night—”

“I don’t give a damn if you were a Yeti in disguise. I still want to work at Cirque de Bangtan.”

Still unsure about Jeongguk’s very strong-headed answer, he tried to dissuade him again. “Do you even know anything about vampires or werewolves?”

With that same boldness in his voice, Jeongguk answered, “Not a clue.”

The vampire whistled lowly. Jeez, they weren’t lying when they said that pampered kids are as clueless to the outside world as they are rich. “Oh boy, you’ve got a lot to learn. Come, sit. You’ll know everything you’ll need to know by the time your performance starts tonight. A vampire’s promise.”

Jeongguk took his seat right next to the bloodsucker. It took more restraint than he thought to keep Hoseok from sinking his teeth into him right then are there. If Jeongguk noticed the slight eye color change of Hoseok’s eyes from his usual brown to red for a few seconds after he sat down, he didn’t comment on it. Yoongi wasn’t kidding when he said there was something weird about Jeongguk. His blood smelt like absolute heaven. Just like the snake charmer said it did when he first met Jeongguk. He would need some blood packs from Taehyung once he got back to the circus to relieve his cravings before he acted on them.

“Let’s get started.”

Once the lecture was complete, it was almost time for Jeongguk to perform. Almost ten minutes actually. Jeongguk began to panic. He paced back and forth in his room, debating on the fastest way to get there, change, and be ready to perform for the night. Thumb caught in between his teeth, he mumbled, “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to him ramble on. All I know now is about bloodsuckers and I didn’t even want to learn anything about that. Fuck my life.”

“You know I can hear you right?”

Jeongguk glanced over at the vampire who basically held him hostage in his hotel room. He sighed, “Yes, I know you can hear me.”

Hoseok got up from his seat and placed a hand on Jeongguk’s shoulder. “So, you also know that I can us there in about two seconds, right?”

Jeongguk gasped in surprise. His eyes began to light up with hope. “You can?”

The vampire shook his head in disappointment. “Have you learned nothing from what I talked about, child?”

Putting a finger to his chin to signify he was thinking very hard about the talk he just had with him, Jeongguk attempted to answer, “Well—”

“Don’t answer that,” Hoseok would rather not be even further disappointed in Jeongguk than how he is right now given the fact that he just went over the supernatural abilities he possesses. Including super speed and his heightened senses. “Just—if you ever have any questions about the supernatural world, don’t be afraid to come to me, alright? I don’t want you to be scared of me or anyone else working alongside you. We’re good people. Even Jimin on his good days.”

Wonder when those will be. He kept that statement to himself, thankful that Hoseok doesn’t possess the ability to read his thoughts. Instead, Jeongguk praised the vampire for his kind gesture. “Thank you so much, Hoseokie-hyung!”

Hoseok tensed up at that name. He hasn’t been called since... Since the last time, he was human. And that name still pains him whenever anyone called his name. “Please, don’t call me that. Hobi is just fine if you really wanna give me a nickname.”

Jeongguk’s smile faded away, noting how serious Hoseok was at what he called him. He tilted his head down in shame. “Sorry...”

Hoseok chuckled, ruffling Jeongguk’s hair to get him to cheer up. “Hey, now. It’s fine. You didn’t know. But we don’t have time to get into details because we’ve got a show to catch! Let’s a-go!”

Jeongguk laughed right along with Hoseok’s antics. He hoped that they could get close enough to tell him about the reason he didn’t want Jeongguk to call him that. Must be rough. Jeongguk knows that for sure based on how the words that followed the nickname that came from Hoseok were ice cold. But for now, it took only a blink of an eye for the two of them to arrive at Cirque de Bangtan.

“And here we are with six minutes to spare.” Hoseok winked.

“I owe you one.”

Hoseok’s eyes widened at that. “Trust me on this one, kid. You don’t wanna owe me. I am a vampire after all.”

Jeongguk thought about that for a moment. Keep in mind, it was only a few minutes ago he learned that vampires sucked the blood of humans to stay alive. Now here he was, words away from letting himself become a personal blood bag to Hoseok had he kept his mouth shut. He thanked Hoseok again for reminding him of his being and ran off into the clothing tent to get changed.

Another man, who seemed to be waiting for him, leaned against the wooden pole that held the tent up. He flashed a smirk that showed his fangs. Vampire. Jeongguk concluded in his head. Meanwhile, the vampire bowed his head slightly, trying to signify that he wasn’t a threat. “Hello there, Jeon Jeongguk. I’m Kim Taehyung, the palm reader slash psychic slash fortune-teller of the group. Oh, and second resident vampire. See the fangs? I bet Hoseok told you a lot about us.”

He could not seem to stop talking. He’s wasting my time with this rambling. But before Jeongguk could mind his own business and get ready to perform, Taehyung stopped him again. “Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Oh my god, he’s wasting my time like a freaking arsehole when I’ve got a show to do’. And you’re right in thinking that but hear me out first. After your show is over, come to my tent and I can read your future. I’ll even do it for free~.”

Jeongguk rolled his eyes, clearly fed up with whatever this other vampire had to say. “Fine, whatever. I’ll come over to your tent after I’m done. Can you go now?”

Taehyung jumped in excitement. “Hooray! I’ll see you then, Jeonggukie! By the way, it’s the one that has black and green stripes!”

He cringed on that last part. He hated it when people called him Jeonggukie. Only his mother got to call him that. Then one day, Jang Yee Eun spread the rumor to the other spoiled rich kids when she caught Jeongguk’s mother addressing him that when she was over with her family to discuss matters with his father. Ever since, he’s hated anything to do with Yee Eun, the Jang family, and that godforsaken name. But, by the time he was about to call Taehyung out on it, he was already out of the tent. Damn his supernatural speed.

Whatever. Guess he’ll be seeing him tonight away. Maybe then he could give him a piece of his mind. But right now, he’s got an audience to attend to. No time like the present. And he knows just the song he’s going to sing to them. A personal piece that he’s been working on when he was still at his mansion. Whenever he wasn’t “hanging out with his friends”, he would write songs. None of them ever made a good impression on him. Either the words he wrote were saying too much or nothing at all. There was never really a balance so to speak whenever he composed a song. Except for this song. “Decalcomania”.

Jeongguk was right to perform such a song that he was working so hard on. Rightfully so in his opinion, because he received a generous round of applause along with even more cheering, money, and smiles on the people’s faces than yesterday’s performance. Supernatural beings be damned. He could take on working with the Devil himself if it met being able to be on stage like this with the crowd adoring you like this. Nothing could replace this feeling.

With Seokjin announcing that it was time for everyone to leave, Jeongguk collected his money and roses—choosing to leave the bras and other various objects that were thrown at him during his performance—and headed back to changing tent to switch his outfit. He surely didn’t forget about that damn Taehyung’s proposition that he basically forced on him and wouldn’t leave him alone until he gave him the answer he was looking for.

So it was that same Taehyung’s tent that he was currently looking for. By the way, it’s the one that has black and green stripes! He recalls that Taehyung added that bit of information at the end when he left the tent. It was almost like he could see into the future. But, Hoseok never mentioned anything about vampires having that ability. Then again, Taehyung is a fortune teller. Doing things like that must be a coincidence. There’s no way he could do that. Not even a vampire.

Jeongguk arrived at Taehyung’s tent and was greeted by a familiar face he was praying he didn’t have to run into today. Park Jimin the werewolf. Jeongguk tried not to groan in annoyance, seeing as he was exhilarated from what he experienced just moments ago before running into to Jimin. Everything was going fine until then, but Jeongguk had no intention of letting things turn sour now just because of seeing his face tonight.

Taehyung, sensing the tension in the room once the two of them locked eyes, attempted to diffuse the situation by bringing his hands up in the air and waving them around to get Jeongguk to focus on him instead of Jimin. “Don’t worry. He’s just here because I also promised him a palm reading. So, I decided to squeeze you both into the same time slot. Isn’t that great?”

Jimin scoffed, mumbling under his breath so that only Taehyung could hear, “You know exactly why you brought us here.”

That comment made Taehyung kick the back of Jimin’s knee, causing Jimin to let out a shout of pain. Taehyung pouted, “That’s what you get for being mean.” He straightened up his stature and was now addressing the human and the werewolf on what to do. “Now, the two of you can take your seats next to each other and we can let the palm reading begin!”

Jeongguk took his seat, followed by Jimin. Jeongguk was really trying his best not to be awkward and shift around in his seat. Meanwhile, Jimin was completely fine. He could care less about whatever the human thought of him. His opinion didn’t matter to him. Unless of course, that opinion had something to do about Cirque de Bangtan. In which case, that opinion better be good or else it was Jeongguk’s head.

Or maybe his thighs?

Jimin had let his eyes wander until they were met with the sheer thickness of Jeongguk’s thighs. Now his thoughts were being to cloud up with bad intentions like last night. But instead of fantasies about his back, it was his fucking thighs. Had his mind really sunk so low? He’s started to believe it to be so.

Judging by the fact that he was so blanked out by his thoughts that he couldn’t hear when Taehyung was speaking to him, he’s gotta stay away from that part of his mind again, less he gets a boner right in front of the man who caused it. And Hell knows that would take a lot of explaining from him that even he couldn’t explain fully.

Did it happen again? Taehyung telepathed to him.

Just—make it quick, please.

Taehyung nodded, finally beginning his palm reading act. He started by reaching out for Jeongguk’s hand and tracing the lines that adorned the front side of his hand. As traced them, he read off whatever he could interpret. “It seems like you had a decent childhood. Got everything any spoiled rich kid could ever want. But things took a turn for the worse...”

When Taehyung said that last line, he glanced at Jeongguk to make sure he’s getting his information right. But Jeongguk refused to meet his eyes, which let Taehyung know that he was indeed assuming the truth and let him continue. “Although that happened to you, I sense that something—or someone—will make whatever happen to you worth it. I can guarantee it.”

“Oh yeah?” Jeongguk questioned with a raised eyebrow. “Guess I better start playing the lottery, so I can get that something.”

The vampire and the werewolf both rolled their eyes with how sarcastic Jeongguk’s response was to his palm reading. But it was the werewolf who spoke up about it. “You know, you didn’t have to come here.”

Jeongguk chuckled wryly, arising from his seat and making his way to the exit. “Oh, trust me, I know I didn’t.”

Jimin also rose from his seat to throw an intense glare to the boy. “Then why did you?”

“Because I wanted to see if you were legit.” Jeongguk turned his attention toward the vampire, who was not phased at all with what was going on, even though by the look of it, he could tell the situation was escalating. He knew that it wouldn’t become violent, but it could certainly lead to it. “But I see now that you’re just like every other psychic reader that cheats people and tells them the shit they wanna hear.”

Jimin growled, but Jeongguk didn’t seem to care. He kept on walking right outside of the tent and back to his living quarters, ignoring the stare and the growls from the werewolf. He was too pissed to care. Not only did he really not want to come here because Taehyung basically stalled until Jeongguk said yes, but he didn’t even get the response he was looking for. That he would finally be able to purchase that mansion back from his parents. He couldn’t give a damn if Jimin threatened him or not.

Before Jimin could chase him, Taehyung put a hand on Jimin’s shoulder. “Don’t. He didn’t mean what he said, Jiminie.”

Jimin sighed, not taking that for a real answer. “You’re serious right now? Because by the way he was talking, he seemed pretty damn sure of what he said.”

“He’ll come back to apologize. He just didn’t get what he wanted me to say. That’s why he’s angry. Trust me, these things happen all the time with regular customers. I’m over it. Let’s head out for a drink, yeah?”

“Fine. But you’re buying.”

Taehyung chuckled slyly, “Okay. Oh, and by the way, you better be lucky the boy didn’t turn around. Or he would’ve seen just how hard you secretly are for him. Dirty mutt.”

Jimin gasped, looking down to witness the very clearly visible tent in his pants. His face couldn’t hide his embarrassment. He could barely defend himself before Taehyung was in an unstoppable laughing rampage, waking up Min Yoongi who quickly shut him down before he continued any further. Damn that Jeon Jeongguk. He’d say fuck him, but that’s exactly what he wants to do to him right now. But he can’t bring himself to admit that. No, he would never submit to his primal urges like that. Never.

#park jimin #BTS jimin #bts jeongguk #bts smut #BTS jungkook #btswriterscollective #bts angst #jikook

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earnxmoney-blog · 4 years ago

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Reasons to Use Freelancers for Your Small Business

Learning How To Make Money.The Definitive Earn X Money Guide To Earning Money While You’re On The Learning How To Make Money Online.

Small Business, Freelancers and Professionals.

What is a freelancer?

As Randy Duermyer at The Balance explains, “A freelancer is someone who offers their services for a fee and usually with no expectation of a permanent single client, although the working relationship can be ongoing. It’s a form of self-employment, similar to operating a home business versus telecommuting. With that said, a freelancer can work as a contractor, as opposed to a home business.

How To Make Money From Home.

A freelancer must have a business license, as they are considered to be a business by the government even if they are a single-person, self-employed business. They are responsible for paying their own taxes, as no taxes are withheld by the client who contracts them. The freelancer charges a fee per job sends the client an invoice and is responsible for paying local, state, and federal taxes on the money earned.

There are many freelance careers. Beyond those mentioned in the Upwork survey, popular freelance jobs include writing, web design/development, tutoring, photography, sales, search engine optimization, and many others.

How using freelance workers can save your business money

Using freelance workers rather than employees can save your business money in a variety of ways, including the money you save on wages and benefits. When you pay an employee’s salary, you’re paying a consistent amount from pay period to pay period, regardless of the amount of work accomplished.

With a freelancer, however, you generally pay a set price per job. There may be some flexibility based on time or other agreed-upon circumstances, but you aren’t committing to an indefinite period of time in which you’ll be paying this person’s wages. When you find a freelancer with whom you work well.

you can build a relationship that isn’t dissimilar to that of an employer and employee, and you may be able to work out terms for which you can work together over the longer term. In some cases, you may both find it worthwhile to move the relationship from contacting employment at your company. This can be a great alternative to hiring an employee with whom you have no existing relationship.

How To Make Money From Home.

Beyond wages, you will also save on benefits by working with freelancers, because that’s just not part of the equation. A freelancer is self-employed, so you don’t have to provide benefits and perks the way you would to a traditional employee.

Training is yet another way to save. Freelancers are usually already good at what they do, or they wouldn’t be able to make a living at it. You’re contracting them based on their existing skills. While you may have to spend some amount of time making sure their skills fit into your existing needs, you won’t have to train them on how to do the job. With an employee, this can be a time-consuming, and therefore expensive, aspect of the hiring process.

How To Make Money From Home.

Hiring itself can be expensive because not all new hires will work out, and if you spend the time and money getting someone up to speed only to have the situation not work out, you’ll have to start over again and spend more money. While a freelancer relationship may not work out after the first job, it is much easier and less expensive to move on to another freelancer than to hire another employee.

There are certainly benefits to having full-time employees you can count on, but the freelance world presents some great opportunities to save your business money if you’re willing to go that route. Most likely, you’ll find the greatest success with the right combination of both.

It’s a lifestyle that more and more career professionals are choosing Freelancing, that is.

Reasons to Use Freelancers for Your Small Business

And of course, there are many reasons for this – people have come to see lack of security and unattractive “cultures” in traditional organizations; they want freedom and flexibility; and they want to be in control of their own work lives.

How is the demand? In short, it is growing, especially among small businesses. And some experts predict that fully 50% of the workforce will be freelancers or temporary workers by 2020.

Using Freelancers is a Smart Move for Small Businesses In short, if you have needs for expertise but lack the resources or the need for a full-time employee, then employing freelancers just makes sense.

Here are seven benefits in hiring freelancers:

Budget-Friendly – This is a no-brainer. A contracted freelancer does not require recruitment, interviewing, onboarding, training and development, or benefits. In short, there’s no overhead. And it allows you to get the best by offering better rates than your competition.

Flexibility on Both Sides – When the need arises, you employ a freelancer. You provide the tasks and the deadline. The freelancer works on his own time to meet that deadline. In essence, both of you have flexibility – you in terms of when you need the work and the freelancer in terms of when and how he completes it.

This is exactly how online writing services, such as Canada Writers, Write Load, and Onlinewritersrating work. All are small businesses that use freelance writers on an as-needs basis. Another company may have a need for a piece of custom software.

How To Make Money From Home.

Such an expert can be found on any number of sights – Upwork, Freelancer.com, etc. Further, many freelancers have their own websites and can be found through a Google search.

You can then easily check out their portfolios and their references before making a decision – just as you would if you were hiring an employee.

Rapid Turnaround – This is perhaps the second-best benefit. Freelancers are motivated to please – this is how they gain a great reputation and repeat business. This is not always the case with an in-house employee who may be subject to distractions.

Tom Kennedy, Head of Content for Essay Writing Service, puts it this way: “We use only freelance writers. They understand that they must meet client deadlines and that exceeding expectations moves them up in the pecking order when tasks are assigned. It’s a big motivator.”

You Get Experience – Using a seasoned freelancer means that, in their niche, they have worked for a variety of businesses, organizations, and owners/managers. They are far more likely to have encountered your unique circumstances and can “hit the ground running.”

You May Get Greater Innovation – Freelancers are not “confined” by company policy and the attitude that “this is how it’s always been done.” They are not ingrained into your company culture/environment, and can, therefore, think “outside the box,” coming up with solutions that you may not have considered. This is an additional perk that you hadn’t planned on.

Long-Term Relationship – You may have a need for the same type of freelancing work overtime. If you have found the perfect fit in a freelancer, then you know exactly who to go to in the future.

Veronica Wright, CEO of CV Writing Services, uses freelancers to help clients with their resumes and cover letters. According to her, “We are thrilled when we find an expert who meets our expectations and even goes above and beyond. And we develop a strong relationship with such an individual to both of our benefits.”

How To Make Money From Home.

A Global Span – You are not limited to your own locale. If a freelancer with amazing expertise is available anywhere in the world, you can access that individual easily. And, especially in developing countries, there is the specific technical expertise that can be had for less than you would pay at home.

It’s Growing – A number of studies and labor statistics show that freelancing is a growing market sector. Given the ability to find them, to communicate with them, and to keep open lines of discussion via digital means throughout the entire task-completion process, has made the use of freelancers efficient, valuable, and just smart.

Freelancing is truly the future of work. Small businesses who take advantage of this new work environment will realize all of the seven benefits listed above.

benefits of using freelancers to grow your business

Less Overhead…Do you lack space in your office for a new employee? Are you wondering how you will afford to pay for his or her equipment? If this is a problem, if the headaches of onboarding a new employee are too much to handle, consider a freelancer.

Specialized Talent…A freelancer can provide you with a specialized skill set that is meant to address a particular need.

For example, it is commonplace to hire a freelance web designer to work on projects such as designing a new website, logo, and other related material. This person’s primary focus is on web design, nothing else. For this reason, you know you are hiring somebody with specialized talent who has what it takes to provide you with top-notch results.

How To Make Money From Home.

With a freelance professional, you never have to concern yourself with office space, equipment, and other similar details. The person should be able to work remotely, while still providing a high level of service.

More Affordable…The costs of hiring a new employee can be prohibitive in some cases. From recruiting to interviewing to onboarding, you have a lot of expenses before the person ever lays foot in your office.

Once he or she is on staff, you are then faced with expenses such as: salary, benefits, equipment, office space, and much more.

When you hire a freelancer/independent contractor, many of these expenses never come into play. You’re not required to pay Social Security, Medicare and other payroll taxes.

The IRS website can also help you sort out the difference between an employee and contractor.

Increased Flexibility… Generally speaking, this means two things:

The ability to move the freelancer from one project to the next, without any concern of impacting other areas of your business.

The option to use the person’s services as needed.

How To Make Money From Home.

With an employee, you need to keep the person busy at all times. With a freelancer, you can use their services for a set period of time and then let them go on their way. Of course, if you need their assistance again in the future, you can always reach out. This allows you to get the help you need without keeping somebody on payroll.

Immediate Assistance…For most companies, there is nothing quick about hiring an employee. There are many problems with this, including the fact that it can take a long time to get the help you need.

With a freelancer, you can get up and running in a more efficient manner. There is less paperwork. There are fewer hassles in regards to training.

Reasons to Use Freelancers for Your Small Business

Learning How To Make Money.

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How to make money online.

How to make money online for beginners…

Learning How To Make Money.The Definitive Earn X Money Guide To Earning Money While You’re On The Learning How To Make Money Online.

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alexteltevskiy · 8 years ago

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Vintage russki camera review - Zenit-B w/ Industar 50-2 f/3.5

Intro

I have a modestly sized family and most about every in it is/has been crazy about photography at some point in their lives. My father, in particular, has been in the cozy company of cameras since, like, forever. I've got a picture of him somewhere: a cheerful little lad, no older than a year, crawling around right next to my grandpa's trusty little rangefinder...

What does this have to do with anything? Well, today I'll be reviewing one of my dad's many old cameras - his trusty Zenit-B with an Industar 50-2 50mm f/3.5. He used this one as his 35mm camera of choice after his FED rangefinder, having abandoned it much later after moving on to Japanese SLRs. I actually accidentally bumped into this camera about a year ago in my older brother's attic. Turns out, my dad gave the camera as a present to my bro, who used it for a bit but ultimately forgot about its existence, having moved on to more modern snappers.

Imagine my surprise when I unearth the leather-case-clad tank-of-a-camera with a big bold Made in USSR stamped onto it. The thing was lightly used, lens had no malices typical of a subterranean attic-dweller (haze, fungus), nothing was seriously loose or wrong... until I popped it open to check shutter operation...

Design & build quality

The thing is built like a tank. Mass produced from 1968 to 1973. Rugged and over-engineered, and that is even before I tore it down to get inside and fix it. Inside it looked like it was built to withstand a nuclear blast. A Tchaikovsky Overture of heavy duty gearing, solid steel parts, heavy gauge springs, all tightly wedged against each other with thick flat head screws.

All the more baffling why, oh WHY did they bother to use simple glue to keep together the rubber-coated cloth shutter??? The most important piece of the puzzle, the cornerstone, the heart of the system... why was it made to be so weak? And it's not like there was a large amount of redundancy built into the mechanism - a little bit of glue going undone and the whole curtain self-destructs. Just don't get it.

Anyway, I had to hunt down a spare body with a functioning shutter on eBay to kindly act as a donor. As soon as the box touched down on my front porch the organ transplant was underway and not long afterwards my neighbors probably heard me go on a creepy "it's alive" howl. Frankenzenit was ready for action.

Apart from the shutter glue drama, the camera is a brick, chiseled out of the Terminator's spare parts. And there's just something about that Soviet design aesthetic that gets me every time. Like an old friend you'd sometimes like to forget, but can't. An eclectic mix of extreme cases of forms following function and the necessity for every single object in the country to be fixable with a skeleton toolset of dull screwdriver and hammer. Heck, most of the time even just the hammer was necessary.

Tech specs

Under the covers it was all business and no frills. Barebones feature set, all manual, nothing extra. Shutter goes from 1/30 to 1/500 (the accuracy of which I can't attest to after seeing the mechanism up close and personal), has Bulb. Shutter knob has twist-proof mechanism, reminded me of something you'd find on a T-34 instead of a camera but it has a charm to it, adding an extra step to process.

Winder/shutter button combo with a built-in hand-resetable frame counter and provisions for a standard cable release. A rewind button and rewind/ISO memory wheel. Oh, and a self-timer. Mirror slap is not too obnoxious but don't expect to pull a ninja with this camera - loud and clunky. Next to zero foam in the body, the only seals are made of felt that are still going strong after 45+ years.

The lens is a copy of a Zeiss design, M42 mount, opens up to 3.5 and stops down to 16. Filter thread is, wait for it, 35mm in diameter. Good luck finding a pinch lens cap for it. More details on image quality further down the review.

In use

Armed with a meter and a trusty roll of Ilford HP5+ @400 (I ran out of Tri-X at that moment), headed out Downtown with Kris from 43 Stories to see the sights and sounds of the Big City. From the sun-soaked vantage point of a 12-floor parking garage all the way down to chilly pale breeze of the distant skyline from the shores of Navy Pier, the 7-mile 6-hour walk took us all the way from Printer's Row, through the Loop on the L and onto River North, crossing the Magnificent Mile and into Streeterville. Crash at Navy Pier then back home.

Right from the beginning you get a sense that this will be a no-nonesense camera. Everything is roughly where you expect it. The gears are less ergonomic than its peers and the levers dig a little deeper into your skin, but the classic layout was a breather from some of the other cameras I've tested lately. Compact, easy to hold and grip, even with gloves. Aggressive knurling on the controls made fine manipulation easy. Everything clicks solidly.

In addition to the Victorian-Era steely thunderclap of a shutter, the camera has further handicaps that keep it back from being a street-smart photoninja. The shutter speed can't be set blindly, as there are no indicators of what speed you're on anywhere else but the knob. And to change speeds, you have to raise the knob, rotate it and plop it back into the correct setting. There are no physical clicks or stops when you rotate it, so unless you have super-dexterous fingers and a built-in angle meter accurate to the degree, you have to take the camera off of your eyes to readjust exposure.

Same goes for aperture, but this time it's even worse - camera needs to be focused wide open as the finder is too dim. And after you focus you'll most likely have to stop down the aperture. This cannot be done without peeling away from the camera and looking down at the aperture ring. It's clickless, so unless you have a sixth sense for degrees, you will need to look down. Forget quick turnaround time on the streets - this camera is a methodical shooter that requires planning ahead and patience, both from you and any animate object in front of you.

The viewfinder is pretty dim and features a regular ground glass - no fresnel circles in the center or any other focusing aids. With a f/3.5 lens it may not make that much of a difference, but any other lens with a larger aperture may require you to hunt quite a bit to nail that f/2 or f/1.4. Another minor (major, actually) annoyance is that the ring around the viewfinder is, just like most else on this camera, made of metal. Yours Truly Four-Eyes over here needs to first focus with glasses on, making sure not to have direct contact with the metal ring, then slide the glasses over to zoom the eye closer in to compose. The viewfinder optics are recessed deep into the body and it's impossible to see the entire viewfinder area coverage with glasses on. Haven't been able to dig up specs on viewfinder coverage but I have a hunch it's around the 80%-90% mark - I always saw extra features on the negs that I thought were long gone from the frame.

One final note about the viewfinder is that in the camera that I have, the viewfinder is misaligned horizontally, with a couple degrees of rotation to the right. Plain English: when the horizon is straight in my viewfinder, it's actually crooked in the actual photo. I haven't tested this with a bubble level yet, but people call me "human horizon" for a reason - I'm usually very, very careful with that. You hear horror stories about little irking details like this all the time with Soviet cameras, guess they've got some validity behind them, eh? Looking inside, I found no way of adjust the mirror or the ground glass. After peaking into the donor body, that one was misaligned as well, this time leaning to the opposite side.

The winder on this camera is an absolute beast. Quite literally. Be very, very gentle with it. Treat it real slow, nice and easy. The winder sprocket cams inside the body are born from a crude metal cast with razor-sharp edges on the teeth. I consider the Ilford HP5+ film base to be on the pretty durable side, yet even it has had ripped sprockets along most of the length. The winding lever has virtually zero feedback compared to modern cameras and Hulk-like leverage. The only way I was informed that I'd gotten to the end of the roll is when I heard a loud rip of the film from it's canister. Removing it required a dark changing bag. Apart from that expect to get 37-38 shots per 36 exposure roll. Film spacing is pretty consistent and film gate is at a slight angle but at least with no major light leaks (pressure plate still good after all these years).

Image quality

So what do the images look like? They're pretty good, actually. I was expecting it perform a lot worse, but it is a knock-off of a Zeiss design, so that probably helps. First, the numbers. 3.5 is predictably soft, with decent center, medium vignetting and mildly mushy corners. Modern pixel peepers would consider this atrocious, but that's not what film aficionados are after, and to my eye it actually appears pleasantly vintage looking. I found the lens sharpest in the center by f/5.6, with f/8 improving the corners but starting to lose a bit in the center. F/11 exhibits a uniform image from center to corner, that's as in "uniformly soft", and f/16 starts looking like somebody took the photo and printed it on a rug made of low-denier fabrics.

Bokeh is minimal and can get quite busy unless you get REAL close to something. Wide open the bokeh is also quite swirly (couldn't find a more technical term), reminiscent of many vintage lens, where it looks like time and space itself are being bent around your subject matter. A look I actually quite like and one that is currently being revived thanks to Lomography's efforts with lens based on ancient optical formulas.

Flaring can be an issue, but the way the lens handles it is by dissipating the flare across the entire field of view, unlike some other lens where the flare affects the image only partially. I would assume this is because minimal, if any coating was used on the elements. I actually prefer this.

I was also quite surprised by the copious amounts of barrel distortion I noticed when photographing objects close up. I mean, come on - it's a 50, not even a 35! At infinity though, distortion is gone and buildings don't look like they're binging on burgers.

Conclusion

So, what do I think about a camera that has more misalignments than a knocked over vase that was superglued back together? The camera has a lot of sides the modern snapper would find archaic, impractical and irritating. It's a menace to film rolls and close ups of straight brick walls. It's an exercise in patience and meticulousness. And it's a lottery of settings and angles plagued by inconsistency and vagueness. But despite all this it still works, and works solidly. I am still surprised by the engineered heart failure on these cameras, but at a dime a dozen, there's no reason one should stay away from these exotic relics from a bygone world order.

PS: Did I mention that it's a conversation starter? "Hello sir! May I make a portrait of you?" "What kind of camera is that?" "It's almost 50 years old, shoots black and white film and was made in the USSR!" (eyes bulging in surprise) "No way! Sure man, take as many as you like!"

Sample pics

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ronnykblair · 6 years ago

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Stock Pitch Guide: How to Pitch a Stock in Hedge Fund Interviews and Win Offers

Numi Advisory is an expert in hedge fund and equity research recruiting, having advised over 600 clients by providing career coaching, mock interviews, and resume reviews for people seeking jobs in equity research, private equity, investment management, and hedge funds (full bio at the bottom of this article).

If you want to know how to pitch a stock, it would be great to have a full stock pitch guide in one article… right?

We’ve covered this topic on M&I before, but I wanted to consolidate and update everything and give you real stock pitch examples.

The stock pitch matters a lot in hedge fund, asset management, and other buy-side interviews because it is literally what you do on the job, and it’s the best way to set yourself apart.

Also, interviewers will ask you to pitch a stock, often multiple times, if you want to get a job at a hedge fund.

Stock Pitch Examples: Take Me to the Templates, Please

Let’s start with the most important part: stock pitch examples for real companies. I’ll share two below, both from our financial modeling courses, in different sectors:

Jazz Pharmaceuticals [JAZZ] – SHORT – Word | PowerPoint

AvalonBay [AVB] – LONG – Word | PowerPoint

The Jazz stock pitch turned out to be incorrect over a 12-month time frame, but it was correct over a ~6-month time frame when the stock price fell.

The AvalonBay stock pitch turned out to be correct, with the company returning over 25% (including dividends) compared with an overall S&P gain of ~10% in that time frame.

I’m not going to share the full financial models, but you can get a sense of the AVB valuation by looking at our tutorials on REIT NAV Models and REIT Valuation.

For the Jazz model, take a look at any of the DCF examples in the channel.

What is a Stock Pitch, and How Do You Use It?

Definition: A stock pitch is a short write-up or presentation that argues for or against investing in a public company’s stock, and which is backed by a strong investment thesis, data, valuation metrics, catalysts, and an assessment of the risk factors.

You use a stock pitch in the following ways:

Networking: For example, you could look up contact information for hedge fund professionals and include your pitch in your introductory email to them.

Interviews: You’ll be asked to pitch a stock all the time in hedge fund and asset management interviews.

Investment Clubs and Competitions: You’ll have to present your views, argue why a security is mispriced, and then convince others that you’re right.

Personal Investing: If you have a personal trading account and you invest in individual stocks, you can use stock pitches to hone your reasoning and make better picks.

On the Job: Finally, if you’re working at a hedge fund or other investment firm, you’ll research and pitch stocks on the job regularly. That is the job!

Usually, interviewers, firms, and competition judges won’t give you a specific company to pitch; it’s up to you to do the research and find one.

If they do give you a specific company, then it’s probably a time-pressured case study where you have 2, 3, or 4 hours to skim the company’s filings, build a simple model, and make a quick pitch based on that.

This article is geared toward longer, “take-home” stock pitches where you have a few days up to a week to finish the pitch, but the basic structure applies to time-pressured pitches as well.

If the firm you’re interviewing with does not give you an explicit time limit, ask for it, along with the formatting requirements and anything else they want to see.

Finally, note that we are only covering stock pitches here – not credit pitches or distressed debt pitches or global macro pitches involving FX, commodities, or sovereign bonds.

You can use the same structure for those, but specific elements of the pitch, such as the valuation, catalysts, and risk factors, will differ.

Stock Pitch Structure

We recommend the following structure for all stock pitches:

Recommendation – State whether it’s a Long or Short (i.e., whether you think its stock price will increase or decrease) and what the company should be worth. Do not give a “neutral” recommendation unless they assigned the company to you.

Company Background – What are the company’s products/services, how much revenue/EBITDA does it generate, what is its market cap, and what are its current valuation multiples? Bonus points for a price/volume graph.

Investment Thesis – The stock is priced imperfectly because of these 2-3 key factors. The market has not factored them in because of reasons X and Y. The market is wrong, and there’s a chance to gain significantly by longing/shorting this stock.

Catalysts – Certain key events in the next 6-12 months will cause the market to “realize” this pricing imperfection, resulting in a price correction and the potential to make money. Key events might include new product launches, acquisitions, earnings announcements, divestitures, clinical trial results, and financing activities.

Valuation – For a Long recommendation, you need to show that the stock is undervalued (e.g., right now it’s trading at $25, but there’s a reasonable chance it’s worth $35-$40); for a Short recommendation, you show why the stock is overvalued.

Risk Factors and How to Mitigate Them – You lay out the top 2-3 market and company-specific reasons why your investment thesis might be wrong, and then explain what you can do to mitigate these risks. Even if you’re wrong, could you limit your losses?

If this is an initial pitch for networking or interviews, keep it short.

“Short” means “2-3 pages at the most,” as in our examples above.

Make it longer only if you have a lot of time to present, you’ve been asked to create a slide presentation, or you’ve been asked for a certain number of pages.

Building an Investment Thesis: Stock Pitch Idea Generation

“OK,” you say, “that structure sounds nice. But where am I supposed to get ideas in the first place? And how do I complete the research process and build a valuation in only a few days?”

The blunt truth is that you need to be following industries or companies already to have a good shot of finishing a stock pitch, even a 2-3-page one, in only a few days.

If not, then you should reevaluate whether or not you want a career in investing.

The best investors do it because they’re passionate about the process itself; pitching stocks is their hobby.

So, ideally, you already have in mind companies that are undervalued or overvalued and whose stock prices could change significantly in the next 6-12 months.

How to Find a Company to Pitch If You Have Nothing and You’re Pressed for Time

But let’s say you just found out about an interview in 4-5 days, you have nothing prepared, and you don’t follow specific companies.

Here’s the process I’d recommend in that case:

Step 1: Research the Fund’s Strategy

Before you even open Excel or Word, you need to make sure you’re searching for a company that is a relative match for the fund’s strategy. For example:

Fund Strategy: Long/short equity with a growth bias and tech/biotech focus.

Good Idea: Short for a recently public tech startup.

OK-But-Not-As-Good Idea: Long for an undervalued, mature tech company.

Bad Idea: Merger arbitrage pitch for a life insurance company spin-off.

Fund Strategy: Value-oriented long-only fund with an industrial/manufacturing focus.

Good Idea: Long for an undervalued industrial tools manufacturer.

OK-But-Not-As-Good Idea: Long for a misunderstood consumer/retail company amid a turnaround.

Bad Idea: Short for an overpriced biotech startup.

It’s more important to match the strategy than it is to match the industry.

That’s why the “bad ideas” above are strategy mismatches.

Step 2: Start with an Industry You Know Something About, or That Lends Itself to the Fund’s Strategy

For example, if you’re an engineer, pick the technology, telecom, or media industries.

If you’ve done internships at retail companies, pick consumer/retail.

If you like whiskey even more than I do, pick the food & beverage industry.

Avoid industries that are highly technical or that have specific accounting/valuation methodologies (e.g., oil & gas or commercial banks) – unless the fund specializes in them.

Also, keep in mind that certain industries will match the fund’s strategy more easily than others.

You can easily find over-priced and over-hyped tech and biotech startups that are ideal “Short” candidates, but in an industry like chemicals or industrials, it’s easier to find mature, undervalued companies that might be long-term investments.

Step 3: Screen for Mid-Sized Companies in the Industry

If you don’t have Capital IQ access, the best screening tool is https://finviz.com/.

Here’s an example healthcare screen, which you can sort by sector, industry, country, market cap, and other criteria.

If the biggest companies in your industry have market caps of $100 billion and the smallest have market caps of $50 million, you should pick something in the middle: maybe the $1 – $10 billion range.

If you can screen by revenue, aim for companies with revenue in the hundreds of millions to low billions USD.

Step 4: Find Companies with 3-4 Key Drivers, At Most, and Relatively Pure-Play Businesses

Do not pick a company with 20 different business lines where each segment depends on different assumptions.

Consumer/retail companies are great because revenue depends on the number of stores and the average sales per store, and the projections are straightforward.

On the other hand, the maritime/shipping industry is not ideal because you need to make granular assumptions for different types of ships in the fleet.

In our example stock pitches here, I picked Jazz Pharmaceuticals partially because it had a manageable number of products – the main one, two smaller ones, and several even smaller ones that we consolidated:

Step 5: Eliminate Companies with Messy Financial Statements

If the company’s Cash Flow Statement is four pages long, or its Income Statement has 13 non-recurring charges, or its Balance Sheet has 30+ items on each side, drop it.

Yes, you can simplify and consolidate the statements, but that takes up precious time that you don’t have.

Step 6: Favor Companies with Clear Catalysts

If you’re down to 2-3 companies by this point and you can’t decide, pick the one with the most concrete, impactful catalysts.

A company that just announced an acquisition or divestiture, a major product or clinical trial results, or a major strategic pivot is a good bet.

Product launches and expansion strategies are good catalysts because it’s easy to argue that future growth will be higher or lower than expected.

If you’ve done everything above but still can’t decide, pick a company randomly and move on.

One final note: do not rely on equity research reports to find companies or investment theses.

Equity research is useful for gaining background knowledge and finding market data, but you should not use it for building your investment thesis.

How to Complete the Research and Valuation Process for Stock Pitches

You will not be able to read thousands of pages if you have only a few days or a week, so we recommend the following steps:

Research the Company and Industry – Get the company’s latest annual and interim reports and its most recent investor presentation. You can also search for press releases about the company’s products/services.

Build a Simple DCF-Based Valuation – You should go beyond percentage growth rate assumptions for revenue and expenses, but you don’t need a 5,000-row spreadsheet, either.Aim to project revenue with Units Sold * Average Selling Price in the main segments, and link the key expenses to Units Sold or the Employee Count. That might result in a DCF that’s around 100-300 rows; a 3-statement model is unnecessary.You’ll need a sense of the Public Comps as well, but you should not spend time scrubbing the data. Use Capital IQ or FactSet if you have them, or Finviz and Google Finance if not. See our tutorial on comparable company analysis for examples.

Time Permitting, Do Real-Life Research – If you have the time to do so, spend a few hours speaking with people in real life to find out more about the overall prospects of the company and industry. For example, you could use LinkedIn to look up suppliers, partners, and employees, contact them via email, and ask if they’re willing to speak with you for a few minutes. In exchange, you can explain how investors view their industry.

This process is known as a “channel check,” and it’s a great way to set yourself apart with modest effort. A direct quote from a manager at the company’s key supplier is far better than a more complex financial model.

Focus on the following points in this research:

Your Angle: How do you see this company differently from the rest of the market? Will it grow more quickly/slowly than expected? Will it be more/less profitable than expected? Will its new products and services perform better/worse than expected?

Valuation Inputs: How do these points translate into model assumptions in Excel? Research means nothing unless you can reflect it in your revenue, expense, and cash flow assumptions.

Implied Value: What does the output of your valuation look like? Is the company overvalued, undervalued, or valued appropriately right now? How does that change in different cases, such as Base, Upside, and Downside?

Catalysts: Which 2-3 events or potential events over the next 6-12 months could cause this company’s stock price to change in the direction you predict? Companies can stay mispriced forever if the market doesn’t realize it. Catalysts are particularly important for “Short” recommendations because they are so dependent on timing.

Risk Factors: Why might your recommendation be wrong? What are the top 2-3 factors that could result in the company’s stock price moving in the other direction? And how could you mitigate these risks?

Once you’ve done this, you should be able to create a short, 2-page outline based on your findings.

Here are the outlines we created for AvalonBay and Jazz Pharmaceuticals:

from ronnykblair digest https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/stock-pitch-guide/

#ronnykblair digest

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