#I go to sessions in the summer too somewhere near my place where the entry fee is a donation to the food bank

[habken]

How do you practice poses/where do you find your references?

I go to life drawing sessions

[svtxsoju]

➼ soju + yakult | miss soju’s advice

Miss Soju is Pouring... 

for soju and yakult shots: pour equal parts soju, yakult, and sprite into a pitcher and stir well. best served cold. if you are new to drinking, this sweet concoction is definitely easier to swallow down than just straight soju. it’ll also make you feel like you’re at recess with your playground crush! (please drink responsibly)

Welcome to the first ever entry of the Dear Miss Soju advice column! Though it’s only our second week back, it seems like some students have already ventured into the wondrous (and stressful) world of college romance. I have to say my sympathies especially goes out to the freshman, who are now trying to figure out the ropes of college while dealing with their aching hearts. 

That’s why I’m here to help you take that first intimidating sip of love. Pour yourself a shot and let’s talk New Love and Confessions!

① Dear Miss Soju, 

I just started my first year at MU and she’s an exchange student from New York. We met at a party and talked for two hours about comics, aliens, anything we could think of. It was perfect. She even asked me to walk her home. When the time came for me to make a move though, I kind of dropped the ball. Since we had just met that night, I didn’t want to come off too strong. Now I really regret it - I don’t even have her phone number. I feel like such an idiot! I can’t stop thinking about her, but I don’t even know if I’ll ever talk to her again. Did I make myself seem disinterested? Will we meet again? Will she even remember me?

Sincerely,

Han Solo

Dear Han Solo,

You got some really big questions for me there! Now I could tell you that you will most definitely meet again if you really are fated to be, phone number exchanges be damned, but then I would be lying. Mansae University has a big campus and there’s really no guarantee that you’ll serendipitously meet each other again like you’re in an episode of ‘Crash Landing on You’. 

Luckily, you’ll probably have an easier time finding her knowing that she’s here on exchange. MU’s exchange program is pretty close-knit, so if you do some snooping around, I think you’d find your dream girl soon enough.You’re probably thinking ‘Miss Soju, what if she thinks I’m creepy?’ Well, it all just depends on how you go about it, Han Solo. I’m only telling you to go find her because a two hour conversation about your favorite things and a walk home seems evidence enough that you just made a small fumble that night. If, however, she tells you that you’ve been kidding yourself and that she was just being nice, then leave her the f**k alone! It’s that easy.

Honestly though, I think you’re just being really hard on yourself. I can’t promise that it will all work out between the two of you once you find her. What I can promise is that you won’t feel any better by whining on your butt about it. So go do something about it!

② Dear Miss Soju, 

Hi! I’m kind of nervous to be sending this in, but this has been driving me insane all summer, so here goes nothing. This past summer, I had broken up with my boyfriend, and because of this I was flunking all my classes. One day in the middle of the semester, we suddenly got a new TA and well, one look at him and all the solutions to my problems were all too easy, so I asked him to privately tutor me. With each session, we started to talk about non-academic topics, and I felt myself falling deeper and deeper for his contagious laugh and oh, those dreamy eyes. He is honestly such a sweetheart! I really want to be more than his friend and he’s sending signs that he wants that too. This must sound super simple and cliche to you, but I just don’t know how to move forward! Should I wait for him to say something first or should I make the first move? Please help!

Sincerely,

Blushing Crush

Dear Blushing Crush,

I’m so glad that you decided to write even though you were nervous! If I’m being honest, your situation is not an uncommon one. If you read the rest of this article, you’ll find there was one other person whose question was eerily similar to yours. But that just goes to show that having a crush is never simple and plenty of people need some gentle guidance in the right direction. Lucky for you, you can consider me your personal tutor for the subject of romance. I don’t know if I’ll measure up to Dreamy Eyes (I hope that his ~tutoring~ helped you pass that class btw), but I’ll definitely help you ace this crush! Since you claim your story is cliche, why not take the unexpected route? I mean, it’s the end of September! Both of you are stuck at neutral, waiting for the other to shift gears. If you feel he’s giving you signals, I say follow them and gun that accelerator. It might be nerve-wracking at first, but I promise you will feel so relieved that you took the initiative. 

Also, I hope this response has eased your nerves about writing to me. There is no crisis too simple or too cliche - everyone starts somewhere!

③ Dear Miss Soju,

My story is pretty simple: I like someone, but I haven’t told them yet. We met at the department welcome party last week and they sat beside me the entire time and even took some shots for me when I kept losing at the drinking games. I mean, it was basically love at first sight. They’re probably the most beautiful, kindest person I’ve ever met and I think that they deserve an amazing and memorable confession. But for the life of me, I  can’t seem to think of the perfect way to let them know that I feel this way. Do I write it in the sky? Do I name a highway after them? Please help me, this is my last resort for ideas.

Sincerely,

Jazz Hands

Dear Jazz Hands, 

Wow, one week in and you’re already ready to risk it all for this person! At the risk of sounding like a simp, I think this is one of the cutest requests I’ve gotten this week. Your life sounds like a teenage romantic comedy in real life; I’m just waiting for the part where Noah Centineo busts in to sweep you off your feet. 

That being said, a week is a pretty short time leading up to a confession. Let it be known that rom-coms still have their fair share of cringe-worthy angst leading up to the climax, and your story has barely even begun. It sounds like you barely know them, which is probably why you’re having such a hard time planning out your confession. There is definitely no shame in skipping the rom-com tropes and simply getting to know your beloved a little more, while building your relationship with them. In real life, it takes a little more time to build all that juicy tension that ends in an explosive kiss in the rain (and maybe a lil something more after if you’re into that). 

HOWEVER, if you insist on confessing as soon as possible, I think a simple “I like you’ would suffice. Maybe even get them a rose from the flower shop near campus. Both of you sound like some of the sweetest people at Mansae U, so I think your crush will appreciate the sentiment no matter how extravagant your confession is! 

Really though, you should probably just talk to them more.

④ Dear Miss Soju,

First, let me say I am so excited about this column! I am somewhat inexperienced, so I’m usually embarrassed to ask my friends for help since they’re all so much more outgoing than me. I’m glad to have a place where I can freely ask my noob questions without getting weird stares. I’ve always been somewhat shyer, but this summer, I met a guy that made me want to get out of my comfort zone. It might sound cliche, but he was the perfect man! Funny, kind-hearted, and the deepest, dreamiest eyes. I’ve never met anyone like him. We slowly talked more and more, and now I think I’m ready for the next level. It’s a really foreign feeling to me; sometimes it makes me so giddy and other times I’m scared out of my wits. Any tips on how I can overcome my fears and let him know I like him? 

Sincerely,

Clueless Flush

Dear Clueless Flush,

Thank you so much for your support! I’m so glad that you found me, because this column was definitely created with situations like yours in mind, and now I get to write to you. Believe it or not, I was also shy and inexperienced once. In my mind, romance was scary and unpredictable, but now? Not so much! It took me a little while to study and gather all my notes, but now romance is as easy to read as the pages of a textbook. I’ll be real with you though, I’m very impressed that this one man has made you level up from shy noob to prepared confessor. I’d say most people tend to wait around for something to happen (which is usually what leaves them disappointed). I really respect you for taking the initiative even when you’re scared - that’s true courage right there. From what I know, the easiest way to overcome those fears is to not overcome them at all. There’s no use trying to convince yourself that you’re not scared, because when the time comes, you’ll still feel nervous anyway. Next time you’re with him, just let the conversation flow naturally. Try not to think too much about confessing. If you get that giddy feeling, if you feel like you’ll burst if you don’t let him know how you feel, that’s when you just let it happen. Then voila, you’ve confessed to your crush and you’ve snagged the perfect man. I wish you the best of luck! Please feel free to write again if you have any questions once you two are together!

[darkelfshadow]

Session Summary - 96

AKA “A whole lot of rub and no tug”

Adventures in Taggriell

Session 96  (Date: 16th October 2020)

Players Present:

- Rob (Known as “Varis”) Elf Male.

- Bob (Known as “Sir Krondor) Dwarf Male.

- Paul (Known as “Labarett”) Elf Male.

- Travis (Known as “Trenchant”) Human Male.

- Arthur (Known as “Gim”) Dwarf Male.

Absent Players

- John (Known as “Ragnar”) Dwarf Male. <Play by Rob>

NPC

- (Known as “Naillae”) Elf Female. <Controlled by Travis>

Summary

- Oathday, 11th Desnus in the year 815 (Second Era). Summer.

- The party begin this session, having just set sail down the inland river headed back towards the Golden Channel. Gim hands over his Lion Greataxe to Galin The Blacksmith on board the ship, to start the work needed to attach the Moon Gem to his weapon.

- The ship arrives five hours later, in the early evening, at the port city of Phlan.

- Captain Lerustah and his men have prepared the ship to look like a common merchant ship, as opposed to an armed military ship. There are less Cult forces on the jetty than the last time the party arrived during daylight hours, and after a cursory check, the ship is allowed to dock without incident.

- Trenchant uses one of his spells to disguise the entire party. Trenchant, now looking like a low and non-influential merchant lord, is accompanied by a group that appears to have scruffy looking personal guards, ugly hand maidens, and poor servants. The group leaves the dock, with a warning from a Cult Officer to behave themselves in the city or else face consequences. Trenchant shows the proper fear and submissiveness, to the Cult Officer, that allows them passage into the city.

- The party make their way over to the Tea Kettle, where the small female Halfling proprietor Madame Freona, greets them kindly but advises them that as the shop is due to close shortly they can not get service.

- When Trenchant, still disguised, speaks out loudly to Olisara Lightsong (Harper), seated in the far corner, the Harper recognises who the group is. Olisara tells Madame Freona to let these guests in and she does so, organising seats, refreshing drinks and an assortment of delicious tasting foods. The party can not remember eating this well.

- The party and Olisara, discuss what has happened since they left and about the new mission they are on. She tells them the Cult has taken over Phlan as a base of operations for locating a new Pool Of Radiance, somewhere south west, near something called Kranun’s Crater.

- The party learn that thanks to their information, Olisara is now in contact with one of the resistance leaders: Captain Jhessail Greycastle. Greycastle is now working with the Harpers and the location of her base of operations is now known. Olisara has been unable to find out who the other resistance leader is, “The Black Knight”.

- Olisara gives the party five monks robes, of the Order of Mishakai, who do regular visits to the Grimshackle Jail. They learn their contact in the Jail, Glevith, is a member of the Welcomers (Thieves Guild) and has been assisting the Harpers with information and other things during the Cult intrusion. Olisara warns the party not to attack or harm any of the City Watch guards in the Jail, as they are not bad people. She gives the party the name of one of the Watch Sergeants, Bhevek, who can escort the party to see Glevith.

- The party then head over to the Cracked Crown Inn. Ellywick, the female Gnome owner of the inn, lets the party inn. The party speak to Seranolla The Whisperer (Emerald Enclave) and discuss anything she might know about the Pool Of Radiance. She tells the party that this area has attracted many pure Arcane stars, falling from the heavens to make lakes or pools of power, known as Pools Of Radiance. A shooting star was seen heading south over Phlan a few months ago. The last known confirmed pool was just off Phlan, falling into Thorn Island where Sokol Keep stands. The stars fall all over this region, sometimes falling into the same place more than once, as if attracted to fall by some force. She believes Kranun’s Crater was a previous location where a massive star fell creating a lake size pool of power. She does not know exactly where this crater is, as this was a very long time ago, though she thinks it may lay south of Lake Enion, which forms the border of the Elvish lands. She warns the party to be on the look out for increased Bulette activity in that area.

- The party come up with a plan to enter Grimshackle Jail. The three Dwarves wait in a nearby sewer exit, keeping the Jail under observation, ready for trouble. Varis, Labarett, Naillae and Trenchant wear the Robes Of Mishakai, and approach the Jail pretending to be priests wishing to perform their regular services to the prisoners.

- The guards let the disguised party members in, and send for Sergeant Bhevek, when Trenchant asks for him by name. The Sergeant attends and leads the party away, recognising the party as the ones he was waiting for from Olisara. He takes the party up the four levels of the massive tower, passing many cells holding about a hundred prisoners. The guards are well dressed and well behaved. The prisoners do not appear mistreated.

- He ushers them up to an area that is sectioned off from the rest. A single door leads to a large cell that has no neighbours. Inside is a well appointed room, with a comfortable bed and chair, a writing desk with a papers and inks on it, along with a plate of food and cup with water.

- A figure with a stern thin face seats on the chair, holding a leather bound book. He looks up at the party, the light from a nearby lantern reflected on his slick greasy black hair. His thin lips smile slightly under a large bent nose, “I’m so glad you’ve come. I was beginning to worry that Olisara did not get my message.”

- Sergeant Bhevek moves to wait back at the door, just out of hearing, whilst the party speak to Glevith. They discuss what information he has. He confirms he knows exactly where the Cult is going, as some of his people have seen paper records and maps showing the location of Kranun’s Crater. He tells the party he is willing to give this information over if they agree to rescue his younger sister, Lilly, from her enforced servitude in the Red Glove. A brothel and gambling den run by a gang of criminals lead by an evil man by the name of Gillim. He describes his sister has attractive with long fair hair.

- The party quickly agree to this and leave Grimshackle Jail. Once back in the city proper, they head over to the brothel, a well made and maintained two story building. Trenchant disguises the party and attempts to gain entry, but when he enquires after the name of Lilly, they are refused entry by a suspicious female care taker called Madame Star.

- The party drop the disguise and approach the brothel as themselves and this time gain entry. The are greeted by Madame Star, who supervises the girls and entertainment. The party walk through a long and well appointed entry hall, under the watchful eye of two heavily armoured guards, and walking through a heavy red curtain enter a large drinking room. Various customers sit around the room, with serving girls bringing drinks and an assortment of naked women talking and laughing with the customers at the tables. A female entertainer plays a flute off to the side, with much apparent skill, as a girl dressed in translucent and revealing loose clothing, dances in front of her. Two more guards are visible standing in front of a set of large double doors behind a long wooden serving bar.

- Whilst the party remain downstairs, Sir Krondor and Trenchant ask Madame Star if they can pay to meet the girls privately. She has them disarm and leave all their weapons in a wall cupboard and then follow her up stairs to the private rooms. She makes five of the girls come out to line up for their inspection whilst Trenchant uses magic to read the minds of the presented girls to see if any of them are Lilly. When none are, he asks Madame Star about a door at the far end of the hall that has two armoured soldiers wearing House colours. She informs the pair that they are the personal guards of some nobles playing in the gambling den. The pair ask if they can join in and she leads them to the gambling den, a large lavish room, filled with more personal guards and with a round table in the middle of the room. Seated around the round table are three very well dressed men, obviously powerful merchant lords, with a large pile of coins on the table that glitter in the torch light. A thin attractive female with long fair hair, dressed in rich silk clothes, is serving drinks to the men. Trenchant quickly learns that this girl is Lilly. Sir Krondor and Trenchant have to improvise a plan to get her out.

- Not wishing to be left out, Varis decides to go out stairs too. He waits until Madame Star can show him upstairs, removes all his weapons (except for one dagger he hides) and he selects one girl to take into a private room. Once inside he begins questioning her about how many girls are here, the number of guards and other information that will help the party.

- Back in the gambling den, Sir Krondor declares he must have this serving girl immediately as she is the most beautiful thing he as ever seen. Madame Star takes Sir Krondor and Lilly out of the gambling den and into a private room, opposite to where Varis is. Sir Krondor tells Lilly they are here to rescue her but she insists that they rescue all the girls as they are all here against their will.

- Meanwhile, downstairs, Labarett has been stewing. He has been looking at the faces of the girls, which though are smiling are obvious they do not wish to be here. He can see faint bruises on some of them. His anger is building. His rage at this unjust treatment is building. He will not stand by and do nothing whilst these girls are being held, their freedom removed.

- Labarett stands up, determination on his face. Naillae looks across and sees the expression on his face, “Labarett, where are you going? We have to wait …”

- Labarett does not stop or respond, he continues to walk towards the bar, his hands moving towards his longsword.

- Ragnar quickly moves up, “Change of plans! Backup Labarett!”

- As he says this Labarett breaks into a run, his speed carrying him towards the first guard before anyone even knows what is happening. Mayhem breaks out as the battle starts. At first the guards are caught in surprise but they quickly rally and the ex-soldiers show they know how to handle themselves in a fight.

- The female entertainer, actually a Bard, jumps onto the bar and starts hurtling spells at the party. Ragnar tries to summon his Spirit Guardians around him but the Bard stops the spell with a well timed Counter Spell.

- The large double doors near the bar open as more guards appear and worse yet, a massive Flesh Golem charges out. Naillae, leaps up and slides down the bar, and then leaps towards the Flesh Golem her enchanted dagger hitting and slicing down the torso of the creature. She leans back in horror as she sees her attack did nothing, her daggers having no effect.

- Ragnar looks over at the Flesh Golem shouting, “Only weapons made of adamantine can harm it!”

- Naillae quickly disengages and moves away from the Golem. The party start to panic as they realise none of them have adamantine weapons.

- Meanwhile, upstairs, the sound of the battle can be heard. All the personal guards race to surround and protect their respective lords whilst Trenchant casts a powerful Mass Suggestion spell on the group. All but one guard and one lord, falls under his suggestion, which is to accompany him and guard the girls back to the jetty.

- Varis runs out of his room, the hidden dagger now in his hands and leaps towards two brothel guards waiting at the top of a set of stairs.

- Sir Krondor comes out too but pretends to be drunk and confused. Varis runs back away from the guards just as Trenchant arrives from around the corner, casting Fear on the two guards. They both immediately run down the stairs, terror on their faces.

- Sir Krondor tells Lilly to grab all the rest of the girls and follow them downstairs.

- Meanwhile, downstairs, the fight has been continuing, as more guards have arrived to join the fight, including the gang leader Gillim. Gillim stays back, firing crossbow bolts from his office.

- Ragnar, frustrated with the battle points his finger at the open office, where Gillim and the Golem are. He casts Fireball, a small orange point of light hurtling from his finger towards the open office.

- Gim and Labarett do not notice this, the battle lust over coming them. So too, the hostile Bard does not notice Ragnar’s spell, otherwise she would have not hesitated to Counter Spell it, knowing how dangerous that spell would be in a wooden building.

- Naillae, the only one to see Ragnar cast the spell, watches the fast moving orange dot fly across the room with a look or pure shock and fear. But before she can get the words out, “You stupid son of …” a massive explosion comes from the open office as the Fireball explodes.

- Heat and wind comes out from the room. Flames begin to spread over the carpet covered wooden floor, wood reinforced clay walls, and exposed wood beam ceiling. Black smoke begins to fill the lower floor. Screams of panic fill the air, as all pretence at fighting stops as everyone begins running towards the single locked front door.

- The others upstairs hear the massive explosion which shakes the building. Sir Krondor bellows, “One job! They had one job! Just wait for us! I’m going to…”

- Trenchant interrupts him, “Not now Krondor! We need to all run! RUN!”

- There is now a massive stampede going. Everyone is trying to run to the only door, which has a massive metal bar, and three turn locks on it. One of the brothel guards is trying to open it but in his fear and panic, seeing the flames and smoke fill the room, along with a massive Flesh Golem picking up people and throwing them out of his way, his shaking hands keep failing.

- The Brothel Bard quickly steps up to him, plunging a knife into his neck, so she can instead calmly open the three locks. Labarett leans around her and with a mighty heave, pulls the heavy metal bar away. As the door opens, letting in fresh cold air, Varis shoots an arrow at the back of the Bard, dropping her dead, and clearing the doorway.

- The others from above have run downstairs and quickly retrieve their stowed gear.

- Ragnar standing near the office which is now an inferno of heat and flames, is summoning food and water, by casting his spell over and over. Each time he directs all the water to appear at the front of the fire. This is slowing the spread but only somewhat, but it is just enough to buy everyone enough time to run outside of the front door.

- The party, still escorted by the two merchants and their personal guards under a Suggestion, casually walk down the street as the tavern flames lit up the entire street. A group of Cult forces and locals are running towards the tavern.

<And as the party walk away from the scene of destruction, the sound of fire and battle as the Flesh Golem begins randomly attacking the arriving Cult Forces, that is the end of the session.>

XP Allocation

Group - Combined (This is equally divided by the number of players who were involved)

Quests (Only quests that are completed or rendered undoable, during this session, are shown here)

- “Ships Passing In The Night” - Enter Phlan Undetected By Cult = 500 XP

- “In And Out Again” - Rescue Lilly Undetected = FAIL

- “Freedom For All” - Release Entrapped Women (12) = 2400 XP

- “Secrets & Lies” - Recover Blackmail Journal of Gillim = FAIL

Creatures Overcome

- Gang Enforcers = 3500 XP

- Bard = 450 XP

- Gang Leader (Gillim) = 100 XP

Individual (This is only given to that person and is not divided amongst all players)

Special Bonus (Outstanding Role Playing)

Nil

XP Levels and Player Allocations

Player : Start +  Received = Total  (Notes)

Rob : 125088 + 1240 = 126328

Arthur : 99794 + 992 = 100786 (Level up to Level 12)

John : 95611 + 744 = 96355

Travis : 114986 + 992 = 115978

Paul : 104469 + 992 = 105461

Bob : 115627 + 992 = 116619

NPC (Naillae) : + (496)

[sohannabarberaesque]

“Underwater America with Peter Potamus” (episode 16: A river in the Missouri Ozarks)

[For the opening shot of this week's episode, we come to some backwater country store in and close to the Missouri Ozarks, somewhere near the Lake of the Ozarks, where we find our crew restocking on groceries, sundries, white gas, that sort of thing, for the sake of their expedition discovering the joy of diving underwater ...]

PETER POTAMUS, in the role of Your Host and Narrator: The very premise for this week's adventure, you might say, started in this particular country store on a rather muggy early summer's afternoon. As could be expected in these parts, our crew could be heard swapping stories and discussing the divability of Lake of the Ozarks, itself a rather popular paradiso for the boating community--until a certain Punkin Puss came along in the middle of the story session ...

PUNKIN PUSS, picking up the narration: ... and I was suggesting that maybe this here diving crew ought camp out by the river out close to my cabin, which is where I happen to do some occasional dives myself. With a homemade helmet ... and a somewhat basic air compressor, sometimes just spearing a catfish or two for supper ... and sometimes walking along the bottom of the river! Which, I must admit, is pert near six, maybe eight feet, deep from the surface about mid-channel, and is oh so remarkably clear account of the current!

PETER POTAMUS, resuming: Enough for our crew, after quite the fill of smoked ham sandwiches, potato chips and soda, to consider that river by Punkin Puss' place instead of Lake of the Ozarks, which, I had overheard, was somewhat murky in places and crowded a lot with boat traffic. Not the ideal sort of dive spot by any stretch of the imagination ... [Plenty of scenes in which Punkin Puss, in a somewhat God-forsaken pickup, leads the van and trailer of the Underwater America dive company unto Punkin Puss' place and the campsite, even if the final few miles are on rather treacherous gravel roads in the Ozarks backcountry] ... and just be thankful that Punkin Puss was able to direct us to that spot on the river he mentioned, even if the last few miles of road got to be a little rougher than we bargained for...

[The business of setting up camp, essentially some three-person canvas tents which, admittedly, took some while to negotiate. Not to mention Peter Potamus lending his hand in getting the tents set up and a fire pit arranged, with Punkin Puss lending some firewood to get some evening fires going ... and Hokey Wolf's bicycle-based pump for filling the air tanks for later dives. Meanwhile, some interesing narration about the camping experience--]

WALLY GATOR: At least a campout like this is much better than that rather hokey wading pool back at the zoo ... yet I just hope I don't get caught up in claustrophobia just sleeping in a tent on these warm summer nights in the Ozarks! But at any rate, the diving experience is what this gator is awaiting!!

LIPPY THE LION: The way Punkin Puss was explaining the summer weather, being humid and everything well into the night ... it's pretty likely that I'll be sleeping on top of my sleeping bag, rather than in same!

MAGILLA GORILLA, chowing down on another banana: Doesn't this gorilla certainly love the outdoors? Especially with a portable shortwave radio to break the ennui well into the night ...

LOOPY De LOOP: From personal experiences myself, I have to say camping is one of my favourite outdoor sports!

SQUIDDLY DIDDLY: Considering my own situation, Peter felt it might be best for yours truly to sleep in the shallows of the river just so this swinger can stay hydrated, and seriously!

PETER POTAMUS: With three tents, I thought it might be worthwhile to assign each of the three wolves into separate tents; Hokey sleeping with Breezly Bruin and Magilla Gorilla ... Mildew with yours truly and Wally Gator ... and Loopy with Lippy and Hardy. Just be grateful there were no fights over who was assigned which tent.

[The scene shifts to a campfire by the river bank well after sunset.]

Punkin Puss thought it worthwhile to go into a storytellin' session, coming up with a rather interesting underwater story which he started ... and which we were expected to pick up on and add to. The tale, at any rate, involved a rather elusive monster bass which none of the locals could manage to try and capture, even for an evening's rather substantial dinner ... until some rather brave, if somewhat naked, hillbilly boy as was into diving actually managed to spear--with a hay fork, of all things!

PUNKIN PUSS, at the campfire: Which, I must admit, is my preferred way of spearing catfish and other fish underwater!

[You can never guess the laughter ensuing. The next morning, we can see Lippy and Peter bringing down from the cabin of Punkin Puss his rather sorry-looking air compressor, while Punkin Puss gets his diving helmet and air line ... as well as the whole being set up for what could best be called his "dive of the day." Over the whole--]

PETER POTAMUS: Following a breakfast of country ham bacon, eggs and fried potatoes the next morning, Punkin Puss had his air compressor and his diving helmet brought over ... if you could call it a diving helmet. [At any rate, the helmet is fastened onto Punkin Puss' head as Peter starts the compressor; we can see a somewhat bewildered Punkin Puss otherwise wearing a primitive pair of diving trunks made from cutoff jeans, as seems to be the local custom. In time, with the camera of Squiddly Diddly capturing the action, we can see Punkin Puss walk into the river, sensing the feel of the sandy river bottom and the greenish-blue of the river waters while efforts are ensuing to make sure the air line isn't kinked up and air is flowing freely.]

PUNKIN PUSS, narrating over this: Sometimes, swimming seems to be about the best way I know to cool off on these muggy Ozarks days in this here river ... and sometimes, I can't resist swimming underwater; doesn't that feel invigoratin' and all that, especially when you don't have a certain pesky Mushmouse to deal with and risk getting unnerved? But when you're like walking underwater like I am, a slight sandy muck between your toes--now THAT is a sensation I couldn't resist, even if the current is a slight bit strong midstream....

PETER POTAMUS: Impressive as that was ... we saw in the rather muggy afternoon ahead an opportunity for some rather serious SCUBA! So, with a few pointers from Punkin Puss as our genial host, our crew was quick to suit up, get final checks ready, and-- [all make a walking entry into the stream, diving in at roughly chest height water wise. Not as theatrical as previous entrances, but credit Squiddly Diddly's camera to sense the esoterically wonderful display of fresh water fish life residing in the streams of the Ozarks region ... including at least one somewhat ferocious catfish, the sort Lippy the Lion managed to capture with his bared hands and handle for eventual frying-up as supper.

[Breezly Bruin could be discerned spotting a few freshwater clam shells on the stream bottom, opening a couple up to find modest-size freshwater pearls, something not seen much in inland waters otherwise thanks to pollution and past overfishing for clamshells as could be used in button making. The discovery of which attracts Peter's attention as leader of the diving company, and pretty much the whole lot. For safekeeping, Peter puts the pearls into one of the pockets of his safari jacket ... and his narration continues:]

What could be rather interesting than to find in a stream such as this freshwater pearls ... something you don't find all too often nowadays ...

PUNKIN PUSS, summarising his reaction at the find: Now ain't that a stunner, finding freshwater pearls in the river like that ... I wonder if maybe I find a few clams on the river bottom sometime, maybe I could find me a few of them pearls, and maybe I could be rich ...

[But then again, all good things have to end ...]

PETER POTAMUS, wrapping things up: Even if such may not have been right-sized pearls, Breezly agreed that his discovered pearls might want to go to Punkin Puss as a "thank you" for extending such hospitality under the circumstances--which turned out rather fortunate, for not long after we broke up camp ... would you believe a serious thunderstorm broke out from all that humidity, and that we managed to get out with our hides intact as much as our gear? Somehow, diving experiences can get to be good, bad and indifferent ... and yet somehow, Hardy thought that Breezly's finding freshwater pearls might have been enough to provoke the storm, which his companion Lippy the Lion was quick to disprove as exaggerated extrapolation.

Nonetheless, the cool air behind the thunderstorm must've felt as refreshing as all that rain ... especially as our next diving misadventure awaits....  

@warnerarchive​

[thefinalcinderella]

DIVE!! Book 3 Chapter 5-SLUMP

This chapter was very long. Next chapter is pretty long as well

Full list of translations here

Previously on DIVE!!: Youichi took a break and comes back to find out that everything changed.

October. During the period where the rays of summer had completely faded away, and the wind blew coldly through the wet hair that resulted from coming out of the pool, the MDC had never had such a tense atmosphere hanging over the practice grounds.

It was slightly different from being filled with enthusiasm about the upcoming Sino-Japanese Goodwill Competition next month. Before the meet, everyone’s expectations, anxiety, impatience, rival spirit, and so on were always laid bare and surged like the high tide, but only this time, everyone was confining those things within themselves.

It wasn’t that they had no motivation. Rather, it was more like that there was too much that can’t be displayed. It had continued to grow within them, already to the point of bursting, and it seemed that there was a danger of rupturing if it was touched.  

In particular, Tomoki’s tension was not ordinary.

Everyone could see that Tomoki had changed ever since he learned of the Olympic representative decision. His former innocence had been shadowed, and he did an absurd amount of practice without laughing, talking, or even showing any expression. Kayoko had to put a stop to it by saying, “If you don’t want to damage your health before the meet, then please leave it here for today.”

Reiji also devoted himself to practice in a way that was influenced by Tomoki. Never a talkative person, because he was the type who did what he had to do at his own pace, his companion Tomoki had become increasingly silent in his present condition.

Perhaps because he was afraid of this silence, Sachiya, now a first-year in middle school, hardly went near the diving tower, and did nothing but watch the mom’s synchro class by himself. Nowadays, he wasn’t only familiar with the power dynamics between the moms, but also the family circumstances and personal worries of his favorite moms. Even though he occasionally joined practice, at best he only dived off the one-meter springboard with the elementary schoolers.

As a result, since Ryou was also present only until recently, the always noisy and lively middle school section of the MDC, consisting of Tomoki and Reiji and sometimes Sachiya, had fell completely silent nowadays.

The two high schoolers—Youichi and Shibuki—were also very quiet.

Shibuki didn’t show his face much at the pool anymore, probably because he was busy with ballet lessons. Although he participated in every dryland training session at the Mizuki Sports Club, he didn’t dive with everyone else at Tatsumi.

According to a plausible rumor that Sachiya was spreading around, Shibuki was said to have visited the sea at Chiba with Kayoko several times a week, repeatedly doing secret special training. Though it wasn’t possible to swallow a story that came from a source like Sachiya, it didn’t seem like a totally groundless rumor, when seeing how the Spartan-like Kayoko sometimes didn’t show up to practice these days.

After ballet, then it was the sea.

What the hell is Shibuki thinking?

Why is he diving into the sea again, in the first place?

Youichi couldn’t help but keep thinking about it, and thought about asking him directly, but every time he wanted to call out to Shibuki in the high school corridors, he always stopped himself because he thought now wasn’t the right time to be concerned about others.

Ever since his one-week break, Youichi suffered from an unprecedented slump.

He couldn’t dive well. The techniques that weren’t difficult for him yesterday had become impossible today, for some reason. Even as he kept thinking about what he did wrong…no, the more he thought about it, the more he didn’t understand it, and that confusion would make his performance even more jerky.

In short, he was in a slump.

Ever since he began diving in the summer of second grade, Youichi had went through slumps harshly, and knew that everyone had underwent the same kind of suffering if they were divers. In particular, the bodies of Youichi and the others had repeated their subtle growths and changes, day by day, before the adults. Weight control was possible, but in some cases the unstoppable growth of the body threw the whole body out of balance, callously stealing away the performance intuition that had been built up until then. Also, the peculiarities the body unwittingly carried will gradually erode the performances, leading to a serious slump.

The waves of the slump more-or-less visited periodically, but the athlete becomes stronger by overcoming it, boosting themselves up to a new stage. Worrying together with their coach, they lunged and tore at the wall before their eyes, sometimes rationally, sometimes by hurling themselves at it. Youichi had come to that point.

However, this current slump was too intense.

Why did I mess up the entries of such easy forward dives? Why were my pike dives, my strong points, so dull? Why don’t my takeoffs have momentum? Why can’t I achieve the no-splashes that I was so confident in at all!?

He felt like he was going mad.

He had asked Coach Abe to point out the problems in one of his dives, and then used all his effort for improvement. He even brought a video camera from home to try and probe the cause for his slump with his own eyes. But, it was the same thing. If he thought that one problem had been overcome, another new problem arose. And furthermore, the new problem was always more complicated and nasty than the last.

It was as though every single one of his body parts banded together to go on strike.

He felt like he had been betrayed at the last hour by the feet, abdomen, arms, shoulders, fingertips and the tips of his toes that he had so desperately trained.

“I want to help you out somehow…but this only made me realize my own inexperience. I really am sorry that I cannot be helpful.”

Coach Abe, who had been worrying together with him, finally gave up. That apologetic voice implied that he did have an excellent father in Coach Fujitani.

Youichi, at the end of his rope, finally went to ask for Keisuke’s opinion, because he was interested in what his father, who had only watched his anguished self from a distance, would analyze about his slump.

But in the end, he thought he had probably lost his mind, and immediately regretted his folly.

“What you are missing now is your heart’s performance. Those who adhere to form will always stumble over it. What do you want to express with diving? What are you diving for? Your priority is to re-examine those things, right? If you want spiritual training, I can introduce you to an acquaintance of mine who is a priest at temple.”

Temple. With that one word, Youichi gave up on any further consultation.

Shutting yourself up in a temple sounded like something that people who didn’t know what they were suffering from would do. Or, maybe people who wanted to make their own troubles clearer. In cases like Youichi’s, where his troubles were already clear, he didn’t need a monk or God, but an expert familiar with those troubles.

A person who knew diving well, had good eyes, and able to make calm judgements.

A person who didn’t express notions or spiritual theories, but detail concrete solutions—.

That person came to Youichi’s mind naturally.

No, it might have been that somewhere in his heart, he had a hunch that the day would come where he would need to turn to that person for help.

Youichi arranged to meet with that person on the Saturday of that week. It was such a warm afternoon that the blazer of his winter uniform clung heavily to his shirt.

He waited for her on the terrace of an open café in Shimokitazawa, after school ended during the morning.

It was a sunny terrace that faced alleyway that branched off from the main street. The inside of the café was reminiscent of an European street corner, and as it was noon, colorfully painted with the figures of young couples and students, and the tables were also decorated with colorful drinks and crepes. Even Youichi’s simple ice coffee glowed gold from the particles of sunlight that fell past the white parasol.

It was an elegant moment. While he lived in the neighbouring Higashikitazawa, he had never spent time like this in Shimokitazawa until now. The other party was the one who had specified this shop. Youichi fidgeted in this unfamiliar atmosphere, and his eyes curiously flitted everywhere.

It was around the arranged time of twelve that those eyes spotted her.

“Sorry. I heard that a legendary acupuncturist was in Umegaoka, and I had to hear a little bit about that. Although it is more like dried whole fish than a legend.” (1)

As she talked, she placed her bag on the ground, and at the same time she sat down on her chair she took off her hound’s tooth jacket, and at the same time she used her left hand to open the menu she used her right hand to call for the waitress.

“Today’s pasta lunch, please. And some diluted coffee after the meal. And a cup of water.”

After drinking up the cup of water the waitress brought in one go, she finally looked directly at Youichi. Her face, still tanned from summer, was as dazzling as ever today, and despite being in a hurry, she still concentrated on her makeup. Her golden-brown chest peeked through her yellow shirt, and it was strangely sexier than her swimsuit-clad form that he saw everyday.

“It sure is quick when only one person has to order.” She—Kayoko—said as she glanced at Youichi’s ice coffee. “You can also ask for something you like. You still haven’t had lunch yet, right?”

“It’s fine. I’ll buy something later to eat.”

“A woman of marriageable age and a high school student at a café during lunch time. Only the woman is eating lunch. What would you think of that?”

“I wouldn’t think it was sexual harassment, at least.”

“Even if an adult man was full, they’d still go along with it.”

“But I’m seventeen, and a diver.”

“Diver?”

Youichi opened the menu to show what he meant.

“Mushroom cream on hamburger steak, 840 kilocalories. Penne au gratin, 570 kilocalories. Spaghetti Bolognese, 680 kilocalories. Omurice with ratatouille, 920 kilocalories. Club sandwich, 950 kilocalories. French toast, 680 kilocalories. By the way, the pasta lunch you ordered has 1480 kilocalories.”

“1480 kilocalories…”

“Pasta is already high-calorie even with the noodles alone, and then you’re adding bacon and white sauce to it, of all things. Furthermore, the dessert is marron mousse, which is high in fat. Even pigs before hibernation are not fed that much.”

“Indeed.”

Kayoko raise both hands in surrender.

“Buy and eat something later.”

“I will.”

“But, do pigs actually hibernate?”

“It was just an example.”

Kayoko suddenly smiled, having had a strained expression that said, “Well?” towards the opening tale up till then.

“For some reason, you wanted to talk.”

What to say? Where should he speak from? Despite planning them in advance, now when the time came, Youichi was at a loss for words. It was the first time that he was talking to Kayoko like this with just the two of them, and in fact, being with a young woman in itself was a zone that Youichi had no experience in, at all.

It wasn’t that he was uninterested in Kayoko up until now. Rather, he had a lot of interest, and he was always very aware of her presence. But as a coach, it was Tomoki and Shibuki she had her eyes on. Youichi had been protecting his pride by ignoring Kayoko.

“There’s something that I want to ask…”

When the time came, his pride still took precedence. “What is it?” Kayoko asked, jutting out her chin. In response, Youichi ignored all of his planning and blurted out a rude adlib.

“Why are you trying so hard?”

“What?”

“Coach Asaki, your goal was to send a representative to the Olympics from the MDC, right? That’s why you had your eye on Tomo, and you dragged Okitsu in from Tsugaru. But the right to represent has already been secured, and the MDC is going to survive without being destroyed, right? You’ve achieved your goal. And yet, why are you still desperately busying yourself with stuff like ballet and acupuncturists in Umegaoka?”

Provoking his opponents like that, and bringing them to his own pace by confusing them was Youichi’s usual trick.

However, in regards to winning people over with words, Kayoko had a slight edge.

“Because, those kids were not about to quit.”

“Those kids?”

“Sakai-kun and Okitsu-kun, and also Maruyama-kun…if you saw those kids who kept diving without saying anything after they were left out of the Olympic representative team, you would know that goals aren’t what a coach needs, but athletes.”

The waitress brought a plate of salad. The dressing was Thousand Island. Youichi reflexively added an extra 90 kilocalories, and before his eyes Kayoko shoved it into her mouth heartily.

“To be honest, even I don’t know what will happen five years from now. I might be getting married, I might be getting pregnant. But, for now I’m free at least, and I am in an environment where I can devote myself to what I love. Recently, I had thought that this period of time in life is surprisingly short, isn’t it? I want to completely burn up this precious time with those children. That’s all for now.”

“Haven’t you thought of the possibility of being single and continuing to coach for the rest of your life?”

“The pasta is late, isn’t it?”

“You don’t seem like someone suited to be a housewife.”

“That’s why it’s a talk for the future. I don’t know what kinds of dramatic changes will happen in five years.”

“You’re not going to give up.”

“Why do I have to give up?”

“True. I also thought so, so I kept holding out, but…I’m getting really tired.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m in a slump.” He had intended to casually broach the topic, but the straining of his voice was undeniable. “You might have noticed it, but these days I have been in the worst condition for a while, and I have no idea what to do.”

Kayoko rested her fork for just a moment, then nodded for him to continue.

“I probably shouldn’t be consulting with you like this, but there was only you. Both my father and Ooshima-san acknowledged the skill of your coaching. They said that you have a genius for being a coach. Anyone could see that’s not a bluff by looking at your usual training and Tomo’s growth. If it was you, you would know, right? What’s wrong with me, and why I can’t dive…”

In reponse his desperate complaint, however, Kayoko finished her salad without changing her expression, and then extended her fork towards the pasta.

Spaghetti with bacon and mushrooms mixed in with plenty of white sauce. Kayoko’s fork spun beautiful on the plate, skillfully coiling noodles around itself. There were only so many who would have associated this movement with the “twist” in a diving performance. But, Youichi and Kayoko were one of such minorities. Though they didn’t exactly have a trusting relationship, they both recognized each other’s rarity.

That was why he consulted her.

He threw away his pretensions and pride.

While pushing back the saliva that was gradually rising from his empty stomach, Youichi continued to patiently wait for Kayoko’s pasta dish to become empty.

“What do you think?”

Kayoko, who had been concentrating on her food, finally returned her gaze to Youichi. The marron mousse and coffee appeared in place of the cleaned pasta plate.

“What do you think is the reason for your slump?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, so that’s why…”

“Think about it with what you already know.”

Youichi thought. About how on the following day after he received the explanation about the Olympic selection, he had such a terrible chronic headache that he wanted very much to take a break from practice. How even though he always, if possible, drove himself on to do too much, he had no motivation for overworking. He tried to be absent from practice for one week. However, he reluctantly came back because of November’s Sino-Japanese Goodwill Competition. After that, his unprecedented, absolute slump continued…

“Seriously, this is the first time that I’ve been so wrecked. I know that my self-confidence is quickly decreasing. I won’t be myself if it disappears anymore than that.”

“Sakuragi High School’s Fujitani Youichi. The thoroughbred who everyone speaks of as having great confidence in himself.”

“Genetics are irrelevant. I always thought that my self-confidence was kept by my own effort, along with my stamina and physical strength.”

“But it’s different now?”

“It’s not my efforts that bring me confidence, but the results of my efforts. You can’t have confidence without results. I don’t know why, but when I see Tomo taking on the 4½, and Okitsu doing ballet, I lose my confidence even more. I feel like I have to hurry up, that I’m the only who isn’t progressing ahead…”

While thinking that there was no point in complaining about these things, Youichi couldn’t stop his mouth.

His usual feeling of frustration.

An unclear anxiety.

Just like footsteps that resound in the darkness, simply because he can’t clearly identify the origin, they chased Youichi down even more.

“I don’t know if I know, but…”

Kayoko finally put down her fork, leaving only the bowl of marron mousse.

“For most of your misdives, you relaxed your chin at the moment of takeoff. When you lift your chin up a little bit, your line of sight will also naturally be raised. Because of that, all of your intuition goes amiss from then on. After that, it seemed that you may have been troubled about the rhythm of your approach lately, because you’re too concentrated on your feet, and not paying enough attention to your upper body, right? For your bad jumps, it’s not just your feet, but the swing of your arms that has problems. While I’m at it, I had wondered if you were aware that reverse somersaults are your weak points. Your performances were stiffer than the ones for other dives, and your takeoffs were always one beat behind.”

Chin. The swing of his arms. Reverse somersaults.

Youichi was dumbfounded and couldn’t speak as she pointed out his weaknesses one by one.

How long had she seen the things that even Coach Abe, who watched Youichi everyday, hadn’t noticed?

Kayoko continued where she left off, as Youichi succumbed to his fear-filled thoughts.

“But, those are merely superficial issues. The essence of your problem is deeper within you. You don’t seem to care for Coach Fujitani’s idealism, but everyone can see that this slump is something mental.”

“Mental?”

“You were chosen as an Olympic representative. But in reality, you don’t understand how you were chosen. Isn’t that why you feel reluctant to come to practice? But for the Sino-Japanese Goodwill Competition…and consequently for the MDC, you were not able to resist until the end. Your mind and body are falling apart. This is why you can’t dive well. You were agitated when you saw Sakai-kun and Okitsu-kun, perhaps because even though they lost the chance to go to Sydney, they were doing their own diving with their own intents. In contrast, you are set on rails prepared by someone else, which has nothing to do with your own volition.”

“Rails…”

“You might have been happier if you could just go with it without thinking anything. But, you stood still and thought about it. In that way, you weren’t able to move forward or go back. You will become useless if you stay like that.”

“…”

The wind was blowing. The dust was dancing. When Youichi’s gaze went up to escape from the bustle of the terrace, he saw the clear, lush autumn sky spread out overhead on the other side of the parasol. The hazy feelings within Youichi were like smog that could make that sky cloudy, and Kayoko had put it into shape extremely easily. They had successfully spread to the table, like the salad, pasta, marron mousse.

“It’s a bit like imaginary snow.”

He muttered that, as though talking to himself. “Snow?” Kayoko asked, reflexively looking up at the sky.

“Snow without substance is falling. Even if you touch it, it doesn’t melt, and it’s not cold. Everyone’s rolling it.”

“Everyone?”

“The JASF is going to take me to Sydney as Teramoto-san’s assistant-slash-safety net. Mizuki is thankful for that right of representation, and trying to drag me into a shitty commercial. Maybe there is something going on behind the commercial appearance and Olympic representation right, maybe not. The little kids of the MDC who don’t know anything already treat me like a star, my father thinks of me as the chairman of the MDC Survival Committee, and I’m trying to make myself think so, too. Everyone’s disconnected, and yet they’re all making a big deal out of it. But I’m not even officially an Olympic representative yet...”

Youichi pressed his forehead against the back of his clasped hands in front of his face.

“A snowman is steadily growing bigger in places that have nothing to do with me.”

“That’s what the Olympics have always been, more or less.”

Just for a moment, a painful shadow flitted across Kayoko’s eyes.

“But, you don’t acknowledge that. You deny it with all your power.”

“What should I do?”

“Do you want to stop the snowman that’s rolling up?”

“I don’t know. But, I want to roll it by myself, at least.”

Kayoko let out a puff of breath, and wiped her lips with a paper napkin.

“If that’s the case, then you should be rolling it, right?”

“What?”

“It’s your snow that’s falling, so you should roll it by yourself.”

“By myself?”

“You only have to do what you want to do in the way you want. In any case, you don’t have the disposition where you can be moved at the wills of others, and if you’re trying hard to kill yourself, then this is the way to go. Therefore, do you have any choice but to do what you like?

Youichi was confused.

“But, I’m carrying the futures of the thirty people who go to the MDC on my shoulders.”

“The future of the thirty people is carried by the shoulders of each of those thirty people. No one else can carry it for them. Even if the MDC was forced to close down, children with true passion will continue elsewhere.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“That’s why, you have to decide. It’s your life after all.”

Kayoko stated flatly. Youichi immediately snarled back at her.

“You…you were the one who wanted to save the MDC more than anyone else. Why are you saying that?”

Kayoko rejected the hysterical Youichi’s question with her eyes. Despite having ingested about 1570 kilocalories, those eyes still looked hungry, greedily wanting something.

“Because, you have talent. A splendid talent that is no way inferior to Sakai-kun’s and Okitsu-kun���s…I don’t want it to be wasted in such a place. I want to see it with my own eyes, how far can you grow. I want you to see what’s ahead of you.”

It seemed like he had been walking around the bottom of a five-meter deep diving pool. Even when Kayoko headed for Tatsumi after they left the café, saying that she should “burn up all of my calories completely,” Youichi didn’t feel like going to practice together. He hadn’t dared to invite Kayoko either, and so he remained behind to prowl around aimlessly the young people’s neighborhood by himself.

A reality difficult to see directly.

The conflict of the mind that he had been turning a blind eye to.

He had thrusted those things before Kayoko, and he had carried them heavily in his head, on his shoulders, and on his chest, and he felt like the more he walked, the more he was sinking down to the bottom of the water.

And yet the weather was so nice. The flow of people did not end in the neighborhood, and though as long as one went along with it there, one could find one’s way somewhere almost without mistakes. He wondered just when had he missed that energy.

Youichi looked over the faces of the people who were swept along easily. It seemed that everyone in this neighborhood was wearing clothes that they wanted to wear, eating what they wanted to eat, and buying what they wanted to buy. Because he was hungry, his eyes were randomly caught by the good-smelling food that was everywhere.

Hamburger, 250 kilocalories. Curry bread, 300 kilocalories. Fried chicken, 150 kilocalories. Chocolate banana crepe, 560 kilocalories. Imagawayaki (2), 200 kilocalories. Potato chips, 500 kilocalories. Vanilla ice cream, 220 kilocalories. Chocolate ice cream, 250 kilocaloriesー.

Crap. This neighborhood is a sea of fat and cholesterol. I have to escape. Escape. Escape. Youichi raced up the stairs of an empty building in order to escape from the grotesque whirlpool of calories. A shabby barbershop was on the first floor, and there was a sign for a used record shop on the second floor. While listening to the tones of jazz leaking out from the second floor, he sat down with a thump on the cold staircase. My head feels like crap…he sighed.

He can neither go forward nor go back.

He was stuck in a dead end.

It’s your snow that’s falling, so you should roll it yourself.

When he recalled Kayoko’s voice, Youichi carelessly let his field of vision blur, almost letting out something like a sob.  

Translation Notes

1. Legend (maboroshi) sounds similar to dried fish (maruboshi)

2. Imagawayaki is a cake filled with bean paste, and is a popular street snack.

Next time on DIVE!!: Guess who’s back? Also, what you think will happen to Tomoki happens to him.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 60

Sunday 23rd August - 5:30pm

I left yesterday’s entry at almost three or four lines away from the end of the third page, because work just got crazy busy and before I knew it, it was 5pm and I got to head home. Evan and I skipped the family zoom call last night too, I mean the Sarah’s People zoom call. It was Nichole’s time to host and I felt a bit bad about it, especially when Amy messaged about an hour after us saying that she wasn’t going to make it last night either. The way I saw it though, was I was working like crazy and I didn’t want to be too tired for Sarah’s meditation session that was scheduled for this morning. We ended up attending Sarah’s meditation, and Nichole, Courtney, and Amy all weren’t in attendance. I feel as though maybe they would’ve attended the 4:30pm yin yoga class that was scheduled by Shannon, Sarah’s yoga teacher mate, so they still got to experience a bit of positivity and zen today. I do genuinely feel bad about missing the zoom session last night, but part of me also feels like Nichole doesn’t really care either way whether we’re there or not. More specifically, I suppose whether I’m there or not. I get the sense that I’m not her favourite person and it’s difficult for me to say that, even to myself. I feel as though I have a bit of a complex with her after Dan lived with us. We were always around each other for a good chunk of last year, and I just never felt like we clicked in all that time. She gets on really well with Amy and I’m really glad for that, though. I’m glad she has a friend in our group, even if it isn’t me, and I do mean that.

Honestly though, I’ve just been enjoying how much Sarah is in my life right now. She’s only ever been a great source of friendship and inspiration for me, and this rings true through this 21 Day challenge. I felt a bit off during the meditation session she hosted this morning, I mean I couldn’t be as sociable as I wanted to be on camera, which was a bit regretful for me. I couldn’t really talk to Braden and I SO WANTED TO. I miss Braden. I think he’s a really cool person, and I am looking forward to hanging out with him in future. AND ALF. I miss Alf so much. I feel like Alf just got me. Oh my lord, I want to do MD with all these people again. If our house was in any way both comfy and accessible, I’d have people over here as soon as humanly possible. I’m cherishing what we have left of lockdown, because I can recognise this time as a valuable resource for young people like me, who are trying to get a certain aspect of their lives up and running, i.e. career stuff or setting up good habits for the sake of good health and longevity. But I can still appreciate this time AND wish that it will come to a swift end before the summer. I don’t want to spend the holidays like this. I believe it’ll crush me. I’ve been singing Christmas carols kind of incessantly, but Evan’s found it endearing, thank the heavenly lord almighty. I’m starting to feel, though, that my singing Christmas carols is getting a bit foreboding, like maybe I’m celebrating Christmas in my head all year round because there’s not going to be an actual Christmas this year. I need to get Wren a birthday present. I’m waiting on my cross-stitch order to come in. I’m really excited to get that started. But I also want to keep the hoops, so I think I might frame the finished hot air balloon cross-stitch. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a good frame somewhere right now.

I also want to talk to Malith. I’ve been wanting to call him for the past week, but the time just keeps getting away from me. Maybe I should give him a ring tonight after my class with Bindee. We’ll most likely be finishing Romeo & Juliet tonight, and the class will most likely be going overtime again, but I’m okay with that. I just hope Malith will be. We’ll see if we can fit a conversation in at some point today. I should charge my phone...it’s losing battery quite quickly now. It's been approaching two years since I bought this phone, so I believe an upgrade may be in order soon. Definitely outright. I don’t want to be paying for a plan or anything, I mean this broadband plan is more than enough as it is. I’m paying $90 a month for unlimited internet on the nbn, and it’s been doing my head in, especially through lockdown. Not only has Telstra given other customers on the 500GB limit plan unlimited data during the lockdown because everyone’s home now, but they’ve also given absolutely no extras to the people who are ALREADY PAYING FOR UNLIMITED DATA. And the internet is still pretty shitty, like I have to use my mobile data on a near-daily basis. I had all this Belong data banked up and it’s just been dwindling away, to the point where I know I’ll inevitably have to be bumped back up to the 10GB a month plan and not the 1GB plan I’ve been on for the bulk of the year. I don’t want to pay an extra $15 a month though, screw that noise. I’m a tight arse, eh?

I just got a text from Sam, Wren’s partner. I sold them an Asus R17 gaming laptop and a Logitech G502 Hero mouse yesterday via the phone sales app, so they’ve been pretty grateful for that. They just sent me a photo of the stuff on their bed. This part of my job is by far the only part that keeps me going. I get to help people, I get to save them money, and people feel genuinely grateful towards me and my position. Sales can be weird and selfish and TERRITORIAL at the worst of times, but at the best of times I do get to feel like the empath I am. I do get to feel like I’m in a place where I can actually do good and feel good. 

It’s surprising how much faster I’m getting through these pages than I was through yesterday’s. I’m at home, and I’m just sitting here in the dark at my place at the head of the dining table, in front of the fireplace and in front of my whiteboard. The window is to my right, and the trees across the road are waving slightly to and fro in the breeze. Michael the mannequin is staring off into the distance and having a good old time, and Nicky is to my left on the green couch that’s followed Evan across the plains of time and space, sleeping on his electric blue and pink-padded Nike jacket. It’s clearly an incredibly warm jumper, and that’s why this cat is constantly on top of it or sandwiched inside it. We mentioned Nicky quite a bit in a family zoom call Evan and I have just finished up with, and this time with the actual family too. Christina, Barney, Mundell, Evan, and I were chatting from about 4pm till a bit before 5:30pm, and when that finished up, I decided it was about time that I do my pages for the day. I put it off this morning because I was still feeling tired, and I figured it might be best if I write directly after meditation. But that never happened and we ended up watching the rest of Season 5 of New Girl instead. Now we’re up to Season 6 and I’ve rapidly come to realise that the last season is only 6 or 7 episodes...or 8...long, so Season 6 is BASICALLY the last season and I am pumped. Of course, I already know it ends with Nick and Jess getting together, but I want to see it unfold in front of me and I want to see it now, so I don’t have to watch TV all the time anymore, even though I know that I will still always be watching TV when I’m not doing work or walking Lonzo, because it’s a surefire way of getting my dumb ass overactive brain to shut the fuck down. I’m worried about how much I’ve been working lately, and usually for such a little reward. And I thought I would be doing more work on the website today, but I don’t think that’s going to happen now anyway. I need to give myself a bit of a break, even though I have Bindee in about an hour. It’ll most likely be less than an hour once I finish these pages up. Or perhaps not, I’m actually making some pretty good progress right now.

I don’t know what to say right now, I don’t know what I’m thinking. I’m thinking maybe about Penny, my Abundance Accountability Buddy. She said her mum had to go to the hospital and that’s why she couldn’t reply to me over the weekend. I also found out a little bit more about her through the introduction that Sarah posted in the 21 Days discussion page. Apparently she’s an occupational therapist! And she did martial arts with Sarah too. Sarah wrote that she has ‘super powers’ in her prelude to Penny’s personally penned introduction. I love the alliteration I did there, that was epic. I am enjoying flexing my writerly muscles here and there. Teaching has been fun as of late. I’m set to make about $110 from teaching this week, because I had Dinel & Seni, Dinel, and Bindee. $50 + $30 + $30. All the littlies. Dinel had an extra class organised on Friday to help out with some debate prep. He’s joined the school’s debate team and his first topic is ‘bottled water should be banned’. Thankfully he’s on the affirmative team, so the arguments were quite easy to put together, and I feel like he’s gotten the hang of debating rather quickly. The issue is that the school isn’t using the RIGHT debate structure, like the first speaker isn’t considered the ‘leader’, and the third speaker has to do all the rebuttals AND the concluding statement, which just isn’t right. The first speaker should both open and close, so the brunt of the work doesn’t fall to the poor third speaker. I’m not too fussed about this, though. I mean, Dinel’s first debate tournament will be over zoom anyway, which sounds like it’ll be an...experience. I’m not sure. I want another cat. But I also do not. I want a house.

Christina and Barney spoke about us potentially buying a house briefly today. They seem glad that it’s a goal we’ve clearly set for ourselves at this young point in our lives. I’m hopeful that with another few years of hard work and saving like crazy, we’ll be able to realise this dream. Newfound dream for Evan, but a bit of a lifelong one for me. It’s been 5:59pm for ages now. I’m just watching the clock on the bottom of my screen and waiting...it went to 6pm finally. I swear that when I started this paragraph, it had been 5:59 for a whole three minutes. It was an age. I’ve been typing for about a half hour now, which means I can do around ten minutes per page. That’s not half bad, but I don’t want to start every day off with a half hour of writing. I just question the sustainability of this practice. Maybe I should bring it down to two...FUCK. I told myself I wouldn’t do this until at least after the 21 Days. It’s day 7. I’ve made it this far. I can wait another two weeks before I reassess. That being said, I’m ending this here. I’m going to start getting ready for Bindee. Just reached page 4 anyhow.

[ciathyzareposts]

Abandoned Places: Turnabout

In this session, I saw the “full party death” screen for the first time.

            I tried hard to finish Abandoned Places for this entry, pouring almost 16 hours into it over the last six days, but I’m not quite there. It’s been very frustrating, and I wish I’d just wrapped it up when I was toying with it last time.

       The frustration has come more from length and size than difficulty. If a game isn’t giving you what you want, the last thing you want it to do is persist, but Abandoned Places has unearned dreams to be epic. It started in the Hall of Light, which was about as big as a single regular dungeon level. The “proving grounds” at Souls Abbey was another level, then another at the library of Kal Kalon. The Steps dungeon had two levels, and that’s where I learned that I would need to find three Ruling Symbols–sword, orb, and staff–each broken into three pieces and secreted in three different dungeons. Each was only one level, but that was still another nine dungeons. Then, each Symbol required a fourth dungeon where I’d find an altar to assemble them, so that was another three. Once I had all three Symbols, Bronakh appeared and challenged me to get through a dungeon called the Halls of Rage.             

The Ruling Symbols came together on their respective altars.

          All told, I’ve been through 18 dungeon levels. That’s five more than Dungeon Master already. If you’re going to make a game in this style, you’ve got to supply something to keep it interesting. Options could be:

             Challenging combat. Make the player really fight for every inch. Make every foe memorable. Require the player to explore the full range of spell capabilities. Improve enemy AI and tactics on each new level.

Challenging puzzles. Really work the player’s mind with the mechanical puzzles. Force him to take a lot of notes and maps and make leaps of logic.

Interesting environment. Make the dungeon immersive. Blow the player’s mind with scenes and vistas that he’s never seen before.

Interesting stories. Give each level a backstory and character. Populate it with lore and encounters that fill in an ongoing narrative.

             Dungeon Master made itself famous with the first two options, particularly the second. Ultima Underworld went largely with the latter two but also had some interesting puzzles. Abandoned Places, at least for most of its run, does none of them. For 14 of the 18 levels I’ve experienced so far, the enemies have been staggeringly easy, and for 17 of the 18, the puzzles have been entirely of the rote mechanical kind. Push a switch here to open a door somewhere else. Dungeon Master had puzzles like that, too, but it kept you guessing. That switch might open one door but close another. Or you might need two switches to open the door. Or the switch might have multiple settings. Or it might only open the door for a limited period of time. I learned to play Dungeon Master and most of its lineage (e.g., Eye of the Beholder, Knightmare, Black Crypt) by carefully mapping without touching anything, then slowly testing things out. In Abandoned Places, you might as well pull a lever the moment you see it because there isn’t going to be any trick to it.           

The game has some interesting wall textures. Sometimes it’s tough to tell what’s interactive and what’s not.

           Some of the levels got highly annoying in their attempts to artificially stretch the length. A switch in the southwest corner opens a door in the northeast corner, for instance. Going through that door leads you to a lever that opens a door back in the southwest corner. Solving most of Abandoned Places‘ levels means making multiple “loops” through the dungeon, checking for what changed since the last time you were there. In that sense, the dungeons have been relatively linear and I’ve only been mapping spottily, mostly during those times when I ran out of options and I needed to make sure I hit every square and studied every wall again. Some of the buttons and switches are awfully hard to see.

Pressure plates on floors tripped me up a couple of times. You can’t see them; you have to listen for them. There are times I unthinkingly started playing without my headphones on and thus didn’t note when I walked over a floor plate. This isn’t a big deal if you only walk over it once–it probably just opens some door that you needed open anyway. But if you walk over it a second time, it closes the same door. Only if I wasn’t wearing my headphones the first time and was the second time, I might think I just walked over it for the first time and thus avoid it in the future, unknowingly locking myself out of an area until I get the whole thing sorted out.            

The game is fond of occasional messages, most of which have no relevance to the level.

           I said “for 14 of the 18 levels” above. Things changed a little after I recovered all of the Ruling Symbols. The next three levels required me to find the altars to unite the pieces of each symbol. The location of each dungeon was revealed to me as I exited the dungeon where I found the third piece. The game had a bug where it told me the Tower of Scions twice when it really meant to give me Draken Tor for one of the two, but I sorted that out with an online walkthrough. Anyway, the enemies in the three “altar” dungeons were much harder than those I’d encountered previously. They weren’t hard compared to Dungeon Master or any other game of this subgenre, but they were harder than before. I had to be a little more careful in combat and a couple of times rest between battles.          

Exiting each dungeon after you find the third piece of the Ruling Symbols brings up a message that tells you the location of the altar to unite them.

            On the subject of resting, theoretically the hunger system ought to discourage you from doing it too often unless you bring a huge supply of food with you from town. But I discovered through experimentation that the characters’ health regenerates faster than hunger depletes it. The ratio is about 1.4 to 1. So as long as you don’t mind dealing with everyone saying “oof!” about once a minute as hunger pains drain a hit point, you might as well ignore the whole system. Spell points regenerate much slower than hit points, unfortunately, and there were a couple of times that I parked my party in a corner while I did something else for 20 or 30 minutes so their spell power would regenerate.           

A random shot of opening a treasure chest.

         Let me take a diversion to complain about spells. While warriors suffer a “cool down” period after physical attacks, there is no similar pause after spells. The mage’s ability to destroy every foe with whatever offensive spell she chooses to cast is limited only by her mana. Because a player with a normal index finger can double-click the mouse about five times a second, it really doesn’t matter whether the mage is casting “Electricity,” “Fireblast,” “Mage Bolt,” “Ice Strike,” or whatever. The spells that cost more points do more damage, but you can cast them so fast that it hardly matters whether you cast three “Fireblasts” at 8 points each or four “Electricities” at 6 points each (or, for that matter, twelve “Mage Bolts” at 2 points each; and yes, I really do need to standardize when I use digits and when I spell it out). There might as well have just been one generic “Blast” spell for mages.

     My cleric has lagged well behind the others in character development because he can’t swing a weapon to save his life, even though I bought an amulet and a ring meant to improve his abilities. He currently has 52,877 experience points compared to my primary warrior’s 269,512. He gets some offensive spells, but I needed to save most of his spell points for healing, particularly as the foes got more difficult. “Cure of Gods” came along just as I was getting sick of having to cast “Minor Cure” dozens of times, and then he got “Healing,” which restores all hit points for 10 spell points. Equally important are his exploration spells, including “Swimming,” “Walk on Fire,” and “Jump,” the last of which lets you jump over a square. That became vital in the Halls of Rage.                

How is walking on fire a spell, but general fire resistance isn’t?

            Before I get to the Halls, I’ll just talk a bit about the economy. It’s relatively generous as long as you save and sell extra weapons, gems, and jewelry. (Oddly, extra armor can’t be sold.) There’s nothing useful to buy in the armory, but jewelry stores sell Rings of Mighty Attack, Amulets of Strength, Amulets of Speed, and Rings of Protection, and I was able to give each character some new item every two or three dungeon levels. Now my inventory slots are full, so I only need to keep a little money to buy passage into towns and the occasional meal or room at an inn. I’m thinking about dumping most of it because it weighs you down, and I think slows you in combat.

I don’t want to suggest that none of the dungeon levels prior to the Halls of Rage had anything interesting. The Summer Vale had 12 small interconnected levels (all of them together still equaling the size of one standard level) which were a challenge to map. The dungeon near the Lake of Dreams had a maze of single squares in which three of the four walls had levers that activated teleporters. There was a way to find your way through using messages, but I mapped the whole thing by dropping items on the floors. Still, until the Halls of Rage, that’s about as exciting as it got.

Once I united the three Ruling Symbols, I got an image of a crown for some reason. The Symbols themselves disappeared from our inventories. Then the weirdest thing happened: the game said that I had “new powers”–specifically, we could all transform ourselves into bats and fly across the landscape, avoiding random encounters and no more relying on boats to get between islands. (For some reason, the option to transform into a bat is activated by a button that looks like a hot air balloon.) I mean, I guess I appreciate the ability, but it really came out of nowhere. Perhaps it has some root in the frequent representation of vampires in Hungarian folklore? If so, it’s the only Hungarian-influenced thing I’ve seen in the game so far.                

Maybe now that we have the “Ruling Symbols,” we’re now “rulers”?

Using my new power to cross the land.

              The Halls of Rage was the final dungeon I explored for this entry, and it completely changed all the rules. It showed that the developers were capable of extremely challenging environments; they just didn’t implement them for the 17 previous levels. It was one of the most hateful dungeon levels that I’ve ever experienced, full of things that the game hadn’t even hinted were possible before. Fireballs roar continually down the hallways. Plants suddenly come alive and eat you when you’re adjacent. There are perpetually spinning squares in which you have to fight enemies coming at you from all directions without being able to stop yourself spinning. There are teleporters that dump you into the middle of fire or water. If you try to outsmart them by having “Swimming” or “Walk on Fire” active, they up the ante by dumping you on squares that cancel magic and are on fire. There’s one long corridor full of fire with one square in the middle that cancels magic and another just after it that spins you around, so you go racing through it at a panic when you lose “Walk on Fire” only to find that you’ve just returned to where you started. One whole section of the level features a puzzle where you have to push or pull planters around to clear a path, but one wrong move can leave you in a “walking dead” scenario. Getting through this level took me about six times as long as any other level. It was like playing an entirely different game.            

The party walks into a fireball.

             Check out this particularly awful area. You come into here from the western corridor. The moment you step on the “T@” square, it teleports you to one of the spinners (“@”) on the north or south ends of the room. They spin continually, so you have to try to walk off of them while they’re spinning. If you’re lucky, you walk into one of the safe corners. If you’re unlucky, you walk into one of the “FB” squares and fireballs–the kind that kill your entire party in seconds–come roaring out of the opposite end of this north/south section. Meanwhile, the plants in the two “P” planters are alive and biting you while you stand adjacent to them.           

A particularly vexing section of the Halls of Rage.

            Your only hope moving forward is to get to one of the doors on the east end, but there are enemies behind the doors–ghosts–and if they step into the doorway and block the path, you have to try to fight them while getting slammed with fireballs. That doesn’t work. So you have to lure them out into one of the corner squares, deal with them, and then get to the end of the room.                

Plants attack you in this dungeon, and you can’t fight them back. They’ve always been non-hostile before.

            The middle room has a secret wall behind it with a treasure chest on the far side. This is the ostensible goal of the area. But the only way to get into this area is to step on three successive fireball squares, each one of which continually launches fireballs as long as you’re on the square. So somehow you have to quickly sidle to the door, press the lever to open it, and hope that the enemy on the other side stays back long enough for you to walk through the door and escape the fireballs. Oh, and the one right in front of the door (“FB!”) also cancels magic, so you’re doing this with no protection and in the dark. I don’t think “Mage Shield” and “Walk on Fire” and other spells really help in this situation, but it would have been nice to have some false hope.

     The treasure chest, by the way, is entirely optional. I mean, this is the sort of game where you have to check everything, but it turns out that you don’t even need to be in this area. The problem is that once you step on “T@” and get teleported to one of the edge squares, there’s no good way to escape. You can linger in one of the western corners forever, but you can’t get out by entering “T@” from the north or south because you immediately get teleported. You have to cast “Jump” to get across it from the square in between the two planters–which is a perpetually spinning square. Half the time, your “Jump” won’t work because it will try to send you in the direction of a planter, one quarter of the time it will put you back in the doorway to the east, and the final quarter it will actually get you out of the room. You only have to somehow survive three fireball squares to make it in the first place. I couldn’t do it with all my characters alive. Maybe if I’d grinded more. I had to reload from outside the dungeon.                 

The whole purpose of the Halls of Rage was simply to find the stairway out. Once I’d achieved that, Bronakh again appeared and said “now let me see what you can do in my lair” and automatically transported us to his lair in the middle of a volcano, with no option to return to town to level up or anything.            

Our intro to the final dungeon.

            Miscellaneous notes, many dealing with bugs:

         I am particularly grateful for the ability to fly as a bat because it was getting increasingly hard to get anywhere on the overworld. You can’t just move smoothly across the map. The party gets hung up on all kinds of obstacles that you can’t even see.

The game weirdly divorces the overland features from the dungeons you have to find. For instance, I had to find the dungeon beneath the Tower of Scions. The tower is a feature on the map, but if you walk directly to the tower, you just get the “town menu” but with no menu options. You have to root around in the scrub surrounding the tower before the game finally tells you that you’ve found the dungeon.

        The regular Tower of Scions menu offers no option to enter its dungeon.

Instead, you have to hunt around its periphery until you get this.

            The game deletes unused keys from the previous dungeon when you enter a new dungeon, thus saving you from bulking up your inventory with extra keys that you’re too afraid to throw away.

In an early entry I said that the “combat waltz” was impossible because “enemies are always facing you.” This turns out not to be true. You can approach enemies from the side and rear. The waltz still doesn’t work though, for reasons having to do with the fact that there are actually four “positions” in each square, and you can only hit enemies if they’re in the two positions adjacent to you, which do require them to be facing you.

The graphic depiction of the cool downs frequently glitches, often showing that the weapon is available even when it isn’t. 

There’s an occasional bug in shops where accidentally clicking off the menu takes you to a blank screen. At this point, you can’t do anything and have to kill the game.

            I hope I saved recently.

           I’ve been avoiding the “Terror” spell because I don’t see any purpose in sending enemies running off for other parts of the dungeon, where I’ll just have to fight them again. However, I accidentally cast it (I was going for “Toxic Cloud” below it) on a dwarf. It somehow turned him invincible. Once it wore off, I was unable to hurt or even hit him with melee attacks or spells. I had to reload an earlier save.

In treasure chests, I found several suits of robes that told me they were the “wrong armor for this class” no matter what character I tried to equip with them.

A couple of times in the Halls of Death, my lead two warriors froze and refused to do anything when I clicked on their weapons. Both times were fighting ghosts. I don’t know if the game glitched or if ghosts have some kind of paralysis or terror effect. There’s nothing in the character sheet that tells you what kinds of conditions you’re under, and up until then (other than hunger), there hadn’t been any conditions.

         I have mixed feelings as I move forward towards the end. One the one hand, I’m glad I played Abandoned Places long enough to find out that the creators were capable of some Ördög-level cruelty. On the other hand, that was a lot of boring sludge to make me wade through to get to the good stuff. I don’t know if I hope that Bronakh’s fortress continues in the vein of the Halls of Rage or if it offers a quicker wrap-up.

             Time so far: 25 hours

         source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/abandoned-places-turnabout/

[robertkstone]

2018 Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO Review: The Future of the Supercar

The brake lights just ahead flash bright red through the steeply raked windshield. I count an extra beat then mash the brake pedal as hard as I can, the bellowing 620-hp V-10 behind me erupting into a quick fire, shock-and-awe sonic barrage—boom! boom! boom!—as I fan the left hand paddle, working the transmission back through the gears. The all-wheel-drive Lamborghini Huracán Performante in front of me is squirming all over the road as Squadra Corse test driver Christian Engelhart dances it to the absolute limit of adhesion on corner entry.

My rear-drive 2018 Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO stops hard enough to punch the air from my lungs, dives for the apex the instant I turn the wheel, and then carves through the corner, slick tires gripping like limpets, as the big V-10 at my shoulder blades bellows once more. In that moment I feel like a racing god—like I’ve swapped jobs with Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen, and no one’s laughing. And that’s exactly how Lamborghini’s newest factory race car has been designed to make me feel.

Welcome to the future of the supercar.

With its trick aerodynamics, racing transmission, slick tires, carbon brakes, and FIA-approved roll cage nestling in a stripped-down interior, the Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO is a proper race car. It’s also proper production Lamborghini, created by Lamborghini engineers and designers and built alongside the Huracán and Aventador road cars. Write a $295,000 check, and the friendly folks at Lamborghini will send you one, pretty much ready to race. What’s more, they’ll give you somewhere to race it.

Super Trofeo is a Pro-Am race series devised and promoted by Lamborghini specifically for these Huracán race cars and aimed at customers the company politely calls ‘gentleman drivers’—those with the money to consider racing Lamborghinis on some of the world’s most iconic tracks a hobby. Super Trofeo championships are held in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, culminating in a world final at the legendary Imola circuit in Italy, just down the road from Lamborghini HQ in Sant’Agata Bolognese.

Despite its race-face swagger, the Super Trofeo EVO is heavily based on the Huracán road car, sharing about 70 percent of its parts, including engine and suspension. It’s not as fast, nor as tricky to drive on the limit, as the Pro-spec Huracán GT3 race car. Although it has more power, the Super Trofeo EVO generates less downforce, and it is electronically limited to 174 mph. “We allow drivers to enjoy the power and torque, but the Super Trofeo is meant to be a scholarship car, to prepare them to move up to a GT3,” says Lamborghini Motorsport boss Giorgio Sanna.

The EVO’s engine, transmission, brakes, wheels, and tires are carried over from the 2015 Huracán Super Trofeo, along with sundry other pieces of hardware, including the giant rear wing. Power remains the same—around 620 hp—but a new air intake layout delivers a 3 percent increase in torque at maximum speed. Also new for 2018 are the exhaust system, revised hydraulic power steering pump, and updated software for the traction control and antilock braking systems.

The new aero package that comprises most of the EVO upgrades has been specifically designed to improve chassis balance and stability, especially through the fast fourth, fifth, and sixth gear corners that would give gentlemen drivers wide eyes and sweaty palms in the edgier GT3 Huracán. Key elements are new rear fenders, a vertical fin on the engine cover, bigger cooling vents for the front brakes, and larger louver openings on the front fenders.

Overall downforce is unchanged from the 2015 cars, but the aerodynamic balance has been shifted 3 percent toward the front axle, and the dorsal fin improves stability at the rear. Meanwhile, an 8 percent reduction in drag means better acceleration on the straights. Working together, these tweaks trimmed 1.5 seconds off the 2015 car’s lap times in testing at the storied Monza grand prix circuit outside Milan.

Many racetracks are built on godforsaken pieces of real estate; barren and windswept, stinking hot in the summer, freezing cold in the winter, miles from anywhere. Not the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, Italy. This 3.1-mile track nestles comfortably among rolling hills on the tree-lined south bank of the Santerno river, barely a mile from the cafés and restaurants of Imola’s old town, the streets of which were mapped by Leonardo da Vinci in 1502. Lamborghini boss Stefano Domenicali was born here.

Home to the San Marino Grand Prix between 1981 and 2006, the Imola circuit gained worldwide notoriety after the sublimely gifted Ayrton Senna was killed in the opening laps of the 1994 race. Tragically, Senna’s death had come barely 24 hours after Austrian Formula 1 rookie Roland Ratzenberger lost his life in a crash during qualifying. The first fatalities at a Grand Prix in 12 years, they prompted a redesign of the track layout. With chicanes replacing the fearsome 190-mph sweeper called Tamburello, where Senna crashed, and the flat-out right-hand Villeneuve kink that claimed Ratzenberger, Imola today is a less intimidating place. But it’s still fast and flowing in places, with dramatic changes in elevation that test driver commitment as much as chassis composure.

Perfect for a first drive of a 620-hp mid-engine race car, then.

‘My’ Super Trofeo EVO is one of two cars Lamborghini Squadra Corse has on hand for a small group of journalists to sample in between qualifying sessions and races over the Super Trofeo finale weekend. Painted menacing matte gray, it’s the older of the two, with some parts clearly straight out of the prototyping shop. The other EVO, painted bright lime green, is better finished but has been set up to suit the shorter drivers of the group. Only the pedals adjust—the seats are fixed—and the Lamborghini mechanics have had to guesstimate two broad compromise settings to enable journalists to switch in and out of cars with minimal time loss.

At 6’2”, I’m the tallest driver here, and the pedals in the tall guys’ car are still slightly too close for my liking. But I fit, and at least the steering wheel is reach and rake adjustable. ‘Wheel’ isn’t an entirely accurate description: It’s a vaguely butterfly shaped affair with an Alcantara covered rim that’s flat across the base and loops up and around to join the top side of a carbon-fiber-covered boss that has eight buttons and two knobs. To the lower right of the wheel is a box covered with pads. You press one to awaken the Lambo’s electrics and another to crank the big V-10 into life. It settles down to a fast, bawling idle.

As in most modern supercars, paddles lurk with easy finger reach behind the steering wheel rim, upshifts on the right, and downshifts on the left. But there’s also a clutch pedal, small and tucked down near the floor. The rear-drive Super Trofeo EVO has a full-race, six-speed sequential shift transmission that’s designed to bang home gears without the niceties of worrying about a clutch to smooth things out, but you still need that third pedal to get the EVO underway and to bring it smoothly to a halt.

Lemme see … Clutch in, left thumb on the neutral button on the steering wheel boss, click back the right paddle. Thunk! We’re in first gear. Build revs, ease out the clutch, and the low-slung Lambo stutters down pit lane, bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bahing against the 30-mph pit lane rev limiter. Past pit exit, right thumb on the pit button to cancel the pit limiter, and the Super Trofeo leaps forward. Bang! Second gear slams home like an anvil dropped in a dumpster. Bang! There’s third. Bang! Fourth.

I’ve only driven a car with a sequential shift transmission once before—the brain-melting Caterham R500, a pint-size 500-hp featherweight that, if you can stop the rear tires from going up in smoke, will dust a Viper ACR over the quarter mile. But that was only in a straight line. Over successive laps around Imola in the Lamborghini I learn there’s subtle art to getting the best out of a sequential-shift transmission; that on downshifts especially you have to pay close attention to engine revs and vehicle speed to prevent momentarily locking the rear wheels on corner entry and unsettling the car.

The grip, the stability, the noise, the braking—especially the braking—it’s all a vivid rush for the first few laps. Every young racer I’ve spoken with after they’ve driven a Formula 1 car for the first time has raved about the braking, not the power, and in the Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO I get a sense of why. This is my first experience of modern slicks, downforce, and carbon brakes all working together, and I cannot believe how deep I can go into corners before hitting the middle pedal. The Lambo slows crisply and concisely, corner after corner.

What’s most impressive about the Super Trofeo EVO, however, is that even after a few laps you can start to push it, to explore its limits rather than worry about your own. Default handling mode is mild understeer, which requires a little patience with the throttle exiting tight second and third gear corners but is a safer, more predictable option through the fast curves, where that new fin helps keep the rear end tracking faithfully on line. The engine loves to rev, the LEDs on the simple digital instrument readout rapidly flickering through green, blue, and orange en route to red, but the fat torque curve cuts you a little slack if you aren’t quite on top of your shift points.

This is a race car that rewards neatness and precision with a fast lap time but won’t bite your head off when you get it wrong, as mere mortals like us inevitably will … You can dial up or down appropriate levels of traction control and antilock braking via the two knobs on the steering wheel boss, depending on track conditions and your confidence level. And before you sneer, even the pros play around with these settings as they work toward the optimum setup. This is, as Lamborghini claims, a car in which you can learn how to drive like a pro racer.

IFTTT

[bestautochicago]

2018 Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO Review: The Future of the Supercar

The brake lights just ahead flash bright red through the steeply raked windshield. I count an extra beat then mash the brake pedal as hard as I can, the bellowing 620-hp V-10 behind me erupting into a quick fire, shock-and-awe sonic barrage—boom! boom! boom!—as I fan the left hand paddle, working the transmission back through the gears. The all-wheel-drive Lamborghini Huracán Performante in front of me is squirming all over the road as Squadra Corse test driver Christian Engelhart dances it to the absolute limit of adhesion on corner entry.

My rear-drive 2018 Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO stops hard enough to punch the air from my lungs, dives for the apex the instant I turn the wheel, and then carves through the corner, slick tires gripping like limpets, as the big V-10 at my shoulder blades bellows once more. In that moment I feel like a racing god—like I’ve swapped jobs with Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen, and no one’s laughing. And that’s exactly how Lamborghini’s newest factory race car has been designed to make me feel.

Welcome to the future of the supercar.

With its trick aerodynamics, racing transmission, slick tires, carbon brakes, and FIA-approved roll cage nestling in a stripped-down interior, the Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO is a proper race car. It’s also proper production Lamborghini, created by Lamborghini engineers and designers and built alongside the Huracán and Aventador road cars. Write a $295,000 check, and the friendly folks at Lamborghini will send you one, pretty much ready to race. What’s more, they’ll give you somewhere to race it.

Super Trofeo is a Pro-Am race series devised and promoted by Lamborghini specifically for these Huracán race cars and aimed at customers the company politely calls ‘gentleman drivers’—those with the money to consider racing Lamborghinis on some of the world’s most iconic tracks a hobby. Super Trofeo championships are held in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, culminating in a world final at the legendary Imola circuit in Italy, just down the road from Lamborghini HQ in Sant’Agata Bolognese.

Despite its race-face swagger, the Super Trofeo EVO is heavily based on the Huracán road car, sharing about 70 percent of its parts, including engine and suspension. It’s not as fast, nor as tricky to drive on the limit, as the Pro-spec Huracán GT3 race car. Although it has more power, the Super Trofeo EVO generates less downforce, and it is electronically limited to 174 mph. “We allow drivers to enjoy the power and torque, but the Super Trofeo is meant to be a scholarship car, to prepare them to move up to a GT3,” says Lamborghini Motorsport boss Giorgio Sanna.

The EVO’s engine, transmission, brakes, wheels, and tires are carried over from the 2015 Huracán Super Trofeo, along with sundry other pieces of hardware, including the giant rear wing. Power remains the same—around 620 hp—but a new air intake layout delivers a 3 percent increase in torque at maximum speed. Also new for 2018 are the exhaust system, revised hydraulic power steering pump, and updated software for the traction control and antilock braking systems.

The new aero package that comprises most of the EVO upgrades has been specifically designed to improve chassis balance and stability, especially through the fast fourth, fifth, and sixth gear corners that would give gentlemen drivers wide eyes and sweaty palms in the edgier GT3 Huracán. Key elements are new rear fenders, a vertical fin on the engine cover, bigger cooling vents for the front brakes, and larger louver openings on the front fenders.

Overall downforce is unchanged from the 2015 cars, but the aerodynamic balance has been shifted 3 percent toward the front axle, and the dorsal fin improves stability at the rear. Meanwhile, an 8 percent reduction in drag means better acceleration on the straights. Working together, these tweaks trimmed 1.5 seconds off the 2015 car’s lap times in testing at the storied Monza grand prix circuit outside Milan.

Many racetracks are built on godforsaken pieces of real estate; barren and windswept, stinking hot in the summer, freezing cold in the winter, miles from anywhere. Not the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, Italy. This 3.1-mile track nestles comfortably among rolling hills on the tree-lined south bank of the Santerno river, barely a mile from the cafés and restaurants of Imola’s old town, the streets of which were mapped by Leonardo da Vinci in 1502. Lamborghini boss Stefano Domenicali was born here.

Home to the San Marino Grand Prix between 1981 and 2006, the Imola circuit gained worldwide notoriety after the sublimely gifted Ayrton Senna was killed in the opening laps of the 1994 race. Tragically, Senna’s death had come barely 24 hours after Austrian Formula 1 rookie Roland Ratzenberger lost his life in a crash during qualifying. The first fatalities at a Grand Prix in 12 years, they prompted a redesign of the track layout. With chicanes replacing the fearsome 190-mph sweeper called Tamburello, where Senna crashed, and the flat-out right-hand Villeneuve kink that claimed Ratzenberger, Imola today is a less intimidating place. But it’s still fast and flowing in places, with dramatic changes in elevation that test driver commitment as much as chassis composure.

Perfect for a first drive of a 620-hp mid-engine race car, then.

‘My’ Super Trofeo EVO is one of two cars Lamborghini Squadra Corse has on hand for a small group of journalists to sample in between qualifying sessions and races over the Super Trofeo finale weekend. Painted menacing matte gray, it’s the older of the two, with some parts clearly straight out of the prototyping shop. The other EVO, painted bright lime green, is better finished but has been set up to suit the shorter drivers of the group. Only the pedals adjust—the seats are fixed—and the Lamborghini mechanics have had to guesstimate two broad compromise settings to enable journalists to switch in and out of cars with minimal time loss.

At 6’2”, I’m the tallest driver here, and the pedals in the tall guys’ car are still slightly too close for my liking. But I fit, and at least the steering wheel is reach and rake adjustable. ‘Wheel’ isn’t an entirely accurate description: It’s a vaguely butterfly shaped affair with an Alcantara covered rim that’s flat across the base and loops up and around to join the top side of a carbon-fiber-covered boss that has eight buttons and two knobs. To the lower right of the wheel is a box covered with pads. You press one to awaken the Lambo’s electrics and another to crank the big V-10 into life. It settles down to a fast, bawling idle.

As in most modern supercars, paddles lurk with easy finger reach behind the steering wheel rim, upshifts on the right, and downshifts on the left. But there’s also a clutch pedal, small and tucked down near the floor. The rear-drive Super Trofeo EVO has a full-race, six-speed sequential shift transmission that’s designed to bang home gears without the niceties of worrying about a clutch to smooth things out, but you still need that third pedal to get the EVO underway and to bring it smoothly to a halt.

Lemme see … Clutch in, left thumb on the neutral button on the steering wheel boss, click back the right paddle. Thunk! We’re in first gear. Build revs, ease out the clutch, and the low-slung Lambo stutters down pit lane, bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bahing against the 30-mph pit lane rev limiter. Past pit exit, right thumb on the pit button to cancel the pit limiter, and the Super Trofeo leaps forward. Bang! Second gear slams home like an anvil dropped in a dumpster. Bang! There’s third. Bang! Fourth.

I’ve only driven a car with a sequential shift transmission once before—the brain-melting Caterham R500, a pint-size 500-hp featherweight that, if you can stop the rear tires from going up in smoke, will dust a Viper ACR over the quarter mile. But that was only in a straight line. Over successive laps around Imola in the Lamborghini I learn there’s subtle art to getting the best out of a sequential-shift transmission; that on downshifts especially you have to pay close attention to engine revs and vehicle speed to prevent momentarily locking the rear wheels on corner entry and unsettling the car.

The grip, the stability, the noise, the braking—especially the braking—it’s all a vivid rush for the first few laps. Every young racer I’ve spoken with after they’ve driven a Formula 1 car for the first time has raved about the braking, not the power, and in the Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO I get a sense of why. This is my first experience of modern slicks, downforce, and carbon brakes all working together, and I cannot believe how deep I can go into corners before hitting the middle pedal. The Lambo slows crisply and concisely, corner after corner.

What’s most impressive about the Super Trofeo EVO, however, is that even after a few laps you can start to push it, to explore its limits rather than worry about your own. Default handling mode is mild understeer, which requires a little patience with the throttle exiting tight second and third gear corners but is a safer, more predictable option through the fast curves, where that new fin helps keep the rear end tracking faithfully on line. The engine loves to rev, the LEDs on the simple digital instrument readout rapidly flickering through green, blue, and orange en route to red, but the fat torque curve cuts you a little slack if you aren’t quite on top of your shift points.

This is a race car that rewards neatness and precision with a fast lap time but won’t bite your head off when you get it wrong, as mere mortals like us inevitably will … You can dial up or down appropriate levels of traction control and antilock braking via the two knobs on the steering wheel boss, depending on track conditions and your confidence level. And before you sneer, even the pros play around with these settings as they work toward the optimum setup. This is, as Lamborghini claims, a car in which you can learn how to drive like a pro racer.

Super Trofeo racing is close and spectacular (check it out on Motor Trend OnDemand) and for Lamborghini, it’s good business—the company has built 150 Huracán Super Trofeos since 2015 and already sold nearly 50 of the new EVO models. But it’s also a long-term survival strategy: As mass automobility heads inexorably toward autonomous vehicles, automakers that are defined by high performance and driving passion can no longer rely on simply selling fast and sexy road cars.

“Racing … it’s life,” said Steve McQueen in the 1971 film, Le Mans. “Anything that happens before or after … it’s just waiting.” The Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO, one of a growing group of factory-built race cars for gentleman drivers that includes the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup, the Ferrari 488 Challenge, and the Mercedes-AMG GT4, gives supercar owners the opportunity to not only drive the dream, but live it, too.

Source: http://chicagoautohaus.com/2018-lamborghini-huracan-super-trofeo-evo-review-the-future-of-the-supercar/

from Chicago Today https://chicagocarspot.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/2018-lamborghini-huracan-super-trofeo-evo-review-the-future-of-the-supercar/