#I haven’t got any adversity to overcome or any person forced into my life to overcome it with!

[sisterdragonwithfeathers]

All the books I am reading are about love thriving in extraordinary circumstances

That’s great, I love that

My circumstances are ordinary, though

[gayenerd]

An interview with Mike when Warning came out that I don’t even have a source for - sorry!

Laughing Off a "Warning" With Green Day 

Bassist Mike Dirnt's green thumb, punk perspective and personal dominatrix 

If Mike Dirnt wasn't in one of the most enduring and influential punk bands making the scene, the Green Day bassist could easily be a hilarious stand-up comic. Instead, he's devoting his insightful social commentary laced with witty repartee to the business (and funny business) at hand -- the band's sixth studio album, Warning. While Green Day's Nimrod and (especially) Dookie humor doesn't seep through in this seemingly ominous album title, it may be because these Bay Area hooligans -- Billie Joe Armstrong (vocals, guitar), Tre Cool (drums, percussion) and Dirnt -- have accepted and submitted to certain rites of passage other than platinum-selling discs. But it's definitely not as ominous as all that. We bantered with Dirnt to gauge the barometer of Warning, life as a prankster punk and his bid for world domination as Armstrong's presidential running mate. What would you like to talk about? Probably not myself (laughs). … It gets you so self-involved and self-absorbed, [that] it makes it difficult to change your perspective for an hour or two after you're done doing interviews. It's not so much narcissistic as it is dwelling. It's like being on tour and coming back and decompressing and acclimating to your home life again, because your surroundings are all about you, you, you for so long, that you need to stop and go home and realize, 'Hey, wait a minute. Other people aren't asking for a lot. I'm probably just self-absorbed still, and being an assh*le for a while and don't realize it.' And you need to take a breath and go, 'OK, how can I focus on the smaller things in my life, like getting up in the morning and making my girlfriend coffee? Or making my daughter breakfast.' And taking the focus off yourself for awhile. I think that's important. 

What's fun to talk about? I'm growing a huge pot plant in my back yard right now. My friend gave me this pot plant and I just left it in the window and left the light on it forever, and it grew and grew and grew, and got pretty big. So then I put it in my backyard just to see what would happen, and I came home and it's f*cking enormous! (Laughs) It's of the superskunk variety. It is nasty. Pretty cool. [My friend] is very proud of me. He said, 'Wow, Mike, that's beyond a plant -- that's a crime.' I smoke pot once a month. I take one hit. So I'm gonna give it all to friends.

No "jurassic monkeys" [joints] for you? Not this year.

Any special reason? Three months before my daughter was even conceived, I stopped smokin' pot and I stopped for about a year and a half, just to clean up my act. After that, it's never been the same. I haven't smoked as much pot ever since. I would hate to think that if she needed me, I was impaired by weed.

Warning seems to have been shrouded in a huge amount of secrecy and I have my theories as to why, but I'm hoping you could provide some perspective. We took a break so as not to hate what we do. We really toured the heck out of the last record [Nimrod] for about 238 shows, and we were like, 'OK, it's time to take a real break -- for once.' And instead of writing in the fashion of, 'OK, let's go in and write the next record and pound it out and pound it out' … [for] the last record we wrote about 40-some songs and then let the songs pop out and figure out what the record was from that … [this time] songs stood out on their own and we said, 'OK, this is the album' … Billie waited for inspired moments. And as a band, we practiced when it was working, and we only worked on the songs that already inspired us … instead of forcing it. We had about 14 or 15 songs, and we were like, 'We're totally ready.' And it was pretty obvious at the time which 12 songs were gonna be on the record. There's the dealio. (Laughs) … As far as the secrecy thing, we will sell no wine until its time. [But] go on Napster and check out a couple songs. (Laughs) I know they're there.

What is your point of view on Napster? I think it's gonna work itself out. Everyone keeps sayin', 'What's the deal?' I don't believe their schtick about 'Hey, we started doing this for poor college students and blah-blah-blah.' Well, first of all, if you can afford to go to college, [and if] you can afford a computer that can actually burn a f*ckin' CD and you can afford to pay the online bill, then you're probably not starvin', OK? When I was goin' to junior college, I was worryin' about where my next packet of Top Ramen was comin' from, OK? So, I don't wanna hear that. But do I think [Napster] is all evil? No. There's definitely two sides to it. I make comp tapes at home (granted, they're albums I've purchased). But when I was a kid, I would buy tapes at the flea market. When you're a kid, the only thing you can afford at the flea market is a tape or a pair of sunglasses. I don't think bands should be made to look evil just because they don't wanna be a grasshopper (hence, The Ant and the Grasshopper [fable]). The other side of that is people don't wanna purchase the record (laughs). I'm not gonna dwell on it. It might hurt you if you've only got one hit [on an album]. [But] we definitely have a full package.

How does Warning differ from your past efforts? I think this record definitely has an overtone of independence throughout the whole thing. I think that we've overcome a lot of adversity. We produced this record ourselves and it has a sense of honesty…. There's an overtone of hope to the whole record that says, 'It's up to you to choose to have hope.' And whether or not most people in the world want to admit that they want hope for their world … they do. If you really don't want any hope, well I have friends who didn't want any hope and they killed themselves.

What are some of the adversities that Green Day has managed to overcome? Everybody thinking, 'Here we are today, gone tomorrow.' Friends [thinking], 'They're becoming huge as a band,' and all of the family turmoil, friend turmoil. … I think the adversity is also that this is a Green Day-quality record. Every song on this record is good. And people giving up on rock-and-roll and punk rock ... [We're] being honest with ourselves and remaining who we are and what we are.

And with regards to remaining who you are and what you are, the band caught a lot of sh*t for "Time of Your Life" because.... … it was such a good song. (Laughs) It's funny, because the people who gave us sh*t about that … obviously hadn't heard our first two records [1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hour and Kerplunk]. Songs like 'Words I Might Have Ate' from Kerplunk and 'Rest' on 39/Smooth [have] touched on -- what can I say? -- our sensitive side. If you reach into your vulnerable side and you bleed on the plate for people, I think that takes a lot more balls than to just go out there a scream your head off and call it punk rock. Punk rock means no limits, no rules and breaking rules -- to us -- and there's a lot of punk rock on this new record. And if you think punk rock is just distorted guitars and hair-dos, you got another thing comin'. You need to listen to "Minority" and "Warning" [both from Warning].

Then can we look forward to songs like "Time of Your Life" and "Words I Might Have Ate" on Warning? No. (Laughs) There's definitely a sense of hope in some of these songs, but it's from a different perspective of where we're at this point in our lives. I'll give you an example: 'Minority.' That's a song about how … my next door neighbor's mom has a nose ring and my other next door neighbor is a jock with green hair. Everybody wants to look different and be different and act different, but ultimately, nowadays, you need to look inside yourself and find your individuality. With 'Minority,' everything has its suit -- its uniform. It's up to you inside to break the mold. With 'Warning,' that's a song about questioning everything. There's this false sense of freedom we have in the United States. There's all these signs tellin' you, 'Don't do this' and 'Don't do that,' and you just gotta read between the lines and figure out, 'What are those things really sayin'? Is it for someone else's convenience that I'm told to not go here, or that I can't do this or that? Or is it because it's really dangerous?'

Green Day traditionally has been trailed by a lot of controversy. What are some of your favorite controversies? It's weird. There are a lot of controversies, but it's a matter of how close to home you take 'em. Obviously, [there's the] whole sell-out thing, and I'm so over that. If selling out is compromising your musical intentions, I don't even know what that means. I guess that's a big one. (Laughs) At one point in my life it was -- now I'm over it. And I think most people are, too. Every time you spend a dollar, you're making that sell-out statement and casting a vote. Like, 'You're gonna slam me for being on a major label, and yet you smoke cigarettes? OK. (Laughs) Your shoe's on backwards, buddy.' Maybe you dug that controversy when Tre [Cool, drummer] climbed the Universal Studios globe after the MTV Video Music Awards. That was my idea. I'm so accident-prone, that I would have fallen off and broke my neck, so Tre did it. (Laughs) I said, 'Why don't you climb that?' and Tre's running up and down and I'm like, 'Good man.' Tre's got balls bigger than that globe, anyway. You gotta let the [music] industry know who's runnin' it -- and that's the artists. What our album is to a lot of people is a product. What our album is to us is our child. And often, when we turn a record over to the record company, when we finish it, it's like handing your child to a nurse after she was born -- all bloody, a purple tail, ready to go. (Laughs)

Have you settled the score on your past "disagreement" with Third Eye Blind? I really don't think anybody can mistake a kiwi for a banana. Third Eye Blind -- that whole thing. I was probably off the hook; I shouldn't have been fighting in the first place [backstage at a festival concert] and whoever hit me [over the head] with a bottle from behind was a f*ckin' coward. I shouldn't have been fightin' and they shouldn't have been fightin', and that's what boys do. To quote Eminem, 'Tomorrow we'll be boys again.' (Laughs)

Since Billie Joe is campaigning for president and you're his vice presidential running mate [and Tre is the ugly wife], what are you gonna do to keep him in line? Oh, he's a lame duck from the get-go. I'll be runnin' sh*t. (Laughs) I'll start out by lowering the price of alcohol and cigarettes, and shortly thereafter, we should take the 'explicit language' stickers off of albums, so f*ck Tipper Gore. I just think kids should be able to buy [the Clash's] London Calling. What kind of crap is that? That was a controversial record that got the explicit lyrics [campaign rolling]. It's the line, 'He who f*cks the nuns/Will later join the church.'

It was extremely magnanimous of Green Day to bring in dominatrix Mistress Simone for Warning's engineer Tone. Are we, then, to believe that the band didn't get spankings all around? Oh, no. I receive my floggings in the privacy of my own home. Under the watchful eye [and sure hand] of my gal. My girlfriend wouldn't have it. [My girlfriend's called] Mistress Sarah.

Where are you guys with the horror film you were planning, and have you signed Gwen Stefani yet? I think we got so involved in the new record that it became more important than anything else. I think we've decided to follow through on our own script that we've been working on, which is a much better script. Except that if I told you any more, I'd have to kill you.

[soul-music-is-life]

Hey!!!! I was wondering if you could do like the tiniest Drabble of em and Ali finding out their having another baby? That Ali’s pregnant with Sam?

The lovely people in my asks: “Emison prompts please?”

Me: *re-emerges years after apocalypse, sees asks are still in inbox, waves arms around in vast wasteland shouting* “DID SOMEONE SAY EMISON?”

You all have been asking for quite some time. Sorry the delivery has taken forever. Apparently the package got lost in the mail. Or the delivery driver read it and liked it and decided they wanted to keep it all to themselves. 

Seriously though, I haven’t forgotten about you all. I think about my PLL fam often. The state of the world has been a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of people, especially during quarantine. It’s an isolating time. I know the importance of needing an escape. I’ve been working on my Emison fics “The Dawn of Autumn” and “The Heart of Beacon Heights” but haven’t done a little ficlet in ages. I have so many sweet and loyal people who still follow me despite my years of fictional torture. And I just wrote this fluff as a thank you. Hope that it brings a little light into the world. We need more of that good light.

This is unedited. I wrote it in about half an hour at 2 in the morning, so if you find mistakes please send your notes to my inner critic. She will deal with them promptly.

***

Alison was hunched over on the edge of the bed, her knees bouncing as she anxiously tapped her feet against the carpet. She rubbed her palms against her jeans and exhaled a heavy breath.

Not many things made her nervous. She’d gone through a lot over the years. It had helped her develop a heavy outer armor. She had learned how to face adversity with her head held high. She had gone through a tremendous amount of growth with the help of Emily’s love and the love of their children. And several years of therapy.  

Her most recent session had her opening up about her fears and insecurities as a mother, and about whether or not she wanted to carry another child.

She felt the bed shift and then felt a comforting hand in between her shoulder blades.

Emily’s warmth was a force in her life that nothing else had ever come close to. Nothing compared to the way she felt about her wife.

The brunette was always there to calm her nerves. Every time. They’d been faced with some incredibly hard times. They’d endured a lot.

Even after everything had settled down...after all the torture had stopped...after they’d found their bliss...things still weren’t perfect.

They’d talked about expanding their family for a while. They’d been waiting until they’d found some stability, both emotionally and financially. After Alison landed her job as a professor at Hollis and Emily got her position at a prestigious swim academy that trained young hopefuls for the Olympics they’d found a stride...a balance between work and home.

That’s when the talks of having another baby had come up. They’d discussed it for months. The girls were old enough that they’d established a certain independence. And Alison and Emily missed having a little one around. Grace and Lily had stopped wanting to cuddle after they started middle school. They missed it.

Emily wanted to carry, so they’d gone through the process. They’d tried several times. The first time it didn’t take. The second time it took, but after six weeks they’d lost the baby.

It had been difficult to waver. Emily had wanted to try one more time, but after some routine testing her doctor discovered that she had uterine damage that made it very unlikely that she’d ever be able to carry a child to term. It had gone undiagnosed previously, but they found out it was from ill-effects from the torture she’d endured over the years.

That had left them with the choice of adoption or giving Alison the opportunity to carry.

Emily didn’t want to push her into it. She knew that Alison didn’t have fond memories of her previous pregnancy. She knew that having the twins had damaged her psychologically. So she didn’t ask.

They’d been laying in bed looking at adoption brochures one night when out of the blue Alison told Emily that she was open to the idea of carrying the baby. She’d been working through a lot of her past in therapy and she thought she was ready for the next step.

“Are you sure?” Emily had gently taken the brochure out of Alison’s hand. She would love any child that came into their lives. She didn’t want Alison to feel pressured. “You’re sure you’re ready?”

“I wasn’t at first. But I can’t let my past control me forever. There’s something about this...” She’d chewed on her lip.

Color flushed her cheeks and she smiled softly. The same vulnerable smile that Emily had seen hundreds of times when they were in high school. The smile that was reserved for her. And her alone.

“I know what happened with Lily and Grace wasn’t...we didn’t exactly ask for it or plan it. But I wouldn’t trade those girls for anything.”

“If Grace keeps mouthing off to her teachers I might consider trading her.” Their wild child was constantly in some kind of trouble.

Alison laughed. She appreciated Emily’s unwavering sense of humor. It helped calmed her racing mind.

“You know, that pregnancy...God, it was so hard...”

“I know.” Emily took her hand and peered at her with a soft expression.

It was a look that could only be shared and understood between the two of them. Because they both knew what it was like to have choices taken away from them...to have things thrust upon them that could never be completely overcome. It was something they would live with for the rest of their lives. But they shared that pain. They’d gone through that tumultuous journey together.

“I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting about this. And even though the pregnancy with the twins...it...it nearly destroyed me...”

Emily saw her retreating into herself sometimes when she thought back over those memories. But there was something different in her expression tonight. A newfound sense of confidence. It’s like she had chosen a direction, and she knew exactly where she was going.

“This isn’t the same. I...I want this. We’ve wanted this for so long, Em. And I realized that I actually have a choice this time. And it clicked. That’s what’s important to me. I...” she’d paused and then looked up at Emily, “WE...we get to make the decision this time. And that’s the biggest difference.”

She had watched Emily with their girls over the years, and she had fallen even more in love with her than she realized was possible. She was a beautiful person and a beautiful mom. And Alison woke up every morning thankful that someone like Emily loved someone like her.

Their family had started out from a broken place, but they’d picked up the pieces together and they’d created something beautiful along the way. And Alison wanted more of that.

She had threaded her fingers between Emily’s, interlocking their hands. She’d put her other hand on top of their joined fingers.

“I want to do this for us. I want to have our baby.”

Emily had been completely speechless. Alison was constantly surprising her with her courage and the depth of her strength. How was it possible she’d taken for granted just how incredibly resilient the blonde was? She looked at her and she saw the epitome of determination. A fighting spirit.

She was certain she’d never loved her more.

“I love you so much.” Emily turned towards Alison with a watery smile. She reached up and placed her palm against the side of Alison’s neck, leaning forward to capture her lips.

Alison could feel her emotions in her movements. She could feel it in the way that Emily gently stroked her cheek and brushed her hair aside.

“I love you, too.” Alison pulled back, tears of joy in her eyes.

There were moments in life that defined certain unspoken love between two people. There were moments that put them in a world all to themselves, where all there was...all that existed...was their love. Sometimes words were meaningless. Sometimes it was quiet little moments that people shared in which the most powerful exchanges of love were experienced.

Emily gently cupped Alison’s face and kissed her forehead tenderly. The warm smile on Emily’s face had sparked an even deeper meaning behind Alison’s choice. She looked at her wife and she saw pure joy. And she felt pure joy. She looked at Emily and she knew that everything was going to be okay. She knew that no matter what...they were going to be okay.

She had the most loyal woman in the world by her side. It had stripped her of her nerves that night. She knew they’d made the right decision for their family. In an odd way, it had taken the looming pressure of her past off of her.

But that had been months ago. Months before the fertility treatments and the hormone injections and the IVF procedure. That had been months before she’d started hoping and wishing. Months before she’d started picturing their child. What their baby would look like. How much her heart would melt when she saw their baby for the first time...first smile...first laugh. She started picturing what they wanted.

And now she was terrified they wouldn’t get it. They’d already had two failed attempts. Could they survive a third? They had spent their entire lives waiting for the other shoe to drop. Any time something good happened in their lives they were inevitably faced with something bad that ripped their happiness away from them.

When they’d bought the test Alison had felt her anxiety rising. The nerves had returned.

She glanced over at the pregnancy test on the edge of the dresser. She’d been shaking so much after she’d taken it. Emily had led her to the bed and made her sit down and take several deep breaths. She didn’t want Alison to stress herself into an anxiety attack.

They’d set the timer and had been waiting together. It felt like it was taking an eternity. The last time she’d taken a pregnancy test she’d been physically repulsed at the idea of having a child. But this time she was experiencing a painful worry that she wouldn’t have a child.

Emily could feel Alison’s tension underneath her touch. She wrapped her arm around Alison’s shoulder and pulled her in for a hug. She kissed her temple.

“Ali, relax.” She pulled her close. “Whatever the outcome...we’re in it together, okay?”

Alison nodded nervously. Her mouth felt dry and sticky. She reached for the bottle of water that Emily had brought to her and took a sip.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so impatient waiting on test results.” Alison curled her toes against the carpet.

“Remember when we were waiting on the girls’ placement tests?” Emily tried to take Alison’s mind off of the ticking time.

“Don’t remind me.” Alison scoffed.

Grace had tried to cheat by writing the answers on the back of her water bottle label. It was actually ingenious. If she put half as much energy into her school work as she spent trying to get around her school work she’d be at the top of her class with her sister.

“I thought Lily was going to have a nervous breakdown waiting for those results.” Emily reminisced.

Lily had always been their studious child. She was introspective and as sharp as a tack.

“What did we do to calm her down?” Alison asked.

“We rubbed bourbon on her gums and sang her to sleep just like when she was teething as a baby.” Emily waggled her brows with a grin.

Alison playfully smacked Emily’s arm. She’d forgotten all about when the girls were teething. That had been hell. But it had been worth it. There had been moments that her innocent little babies looked up at her with wide-eyed wonder that she’d never seen before. And it made her feel serene. She couldn’t wait to feel that again.

“Pretty sure we bought her a cell phone and told her to obsess over social media like a normal child,” Emily said. She shook her head. “That child and her test anxiety...I swear.” She glanced at Alison with a lighthearted smile. She poked Alison. “Wonder where she gets that from.”

“You know, we’ve spent so much time teaching them about the importance of rising to the occasion and passing their tests with flying colors. But this is the one test I wouldn’t want Lily and Grace to pass.” 

Emily made a face.

“God, we’re almost at the point where we need to sit down and have that conversation with them, aren’t we?”

“That’s all you. I handled the potty training. You handle the ‘don’t have sex or else your mothers will kill you’ thing.” Alison smiled.

“Or...we could teach them to be responsible about it. I’m not into scare tactics. They tend to have the opposite effect on people.”

Alison nodded in agreement. She’d certainly rebelled against her parents when they’d told her not to do things. Emily had, too.

“Whatever works. As long as we keep them off the pole and they don’t come home pregnant.”

“What a charming thought. You’re such a romantic.” Emily rolled her eyes, gently bumping against her with a playful smile.

“They’re good girls.” Alison felt herself relaxing. Her children had a way to her heart. “You think they’ll be okay with all of this?”

They’d spoken with the girls about the fact that they were trying to have another baby, but Lily and Grace had sort of waved it off like it wasn’t a possibility. Then again, they were just coming into their own as young teenagers, so they rarely listened to a word their mothers said.

“They’ll be fine,” Emily dropped her hand to Alison’s back and rubbed circles against the tension she was carrying.

Alison reached out and touched Emily’s knee, commanding her attention, drawing Emily’s eyes towards hers. Her lips twitched. A loving smile washed across her face.

“I really love you, you know.” She let out a content sigh.

“Well, I would hope so considering we’re married.” Emily grinned at her.

She got a lot of joy out of teasing Alison. She liked to see the spark in her eyes when she was flustered.

“Seriously.” Alison moved her palm up against Emily’s side, her fingers resting against her ribs. “I don’t think I realized how little I knew about love before you and the girls came into my life. It’s so much bigger than I ever knew. Have I ever thanked you for being so wonderful?”

“You don’t have to thank me for loving you, Alison. It is the most natural thing in the world for me.” Emily leaned over, their lips meeting for a chaste kiss. “I would do it over every time.”

“Maybe with a little less torture.” Alison added.

Emily chuckled.

Alison glanced at the timer. She watched as the clock rolled backwards from the sixty second mark. She felt her stomach tightening up in knots. Her heart started hammering in her chest. Her palms felt clammy.

“Breathe, sweetheart.” Emily tugged her into another hug, resting her chin on top of Alison’s head.

“I can’t believe how much I really want this,” she uttered under her breath.

It had been different with Lily and Grace. She certainly loved her little girls, but that pregnancy had been hell for her. She felt like she’d been alone on an island in the middle of a hurricane. She remembered feeling like her lungs were filling with water. But this time she felt like she was jogging along a beautiful beach...pushing desperately to reach a perfect destination with Emily in sync with her every step...right beside her.

She reached for Emily’s hand just as the timer beeped. Her head whipped towards the test on the dresser, but she looked away at the last second.

“I can’t look.” Alison shifted her feet and stood up, turning away from the dresser. She glanced at Emily. “Would you...”

Emily nodded, not needing to be prompted. She walked over to the test and picked it up to observe it.

Alison looked at her in anticipation, eagerly rubbing her hands together and licking her lips.

Emily pressed her lips together in thought, tilting her head with a furrowed brow, her eyes narrowed in concentration. Her mouth was twisted. Her nose was crinkled.

“Oh.” Alison felt deflated.

“Ali...” Emily slowly looked up at her.

Normally the blonde could read her wife like a book, but there was an expression in her eyes that she couldn’t decipher.

“Oh, God. It’s negative, isn’t it?” Alison dropped her head in defeat. They knew there was a possibility. They’d been through it before.

“Alison...”

“We...we’ll try again.” Alison cut her off. She reached up, running her fingers through her hair.

She was so consumed by her disappointment that she didn’t realize that Emily had moved next to her. She hadn’t seen the smile on her face.

“Hey...” Emily touched her cheek to get her attention.

Alison froze in place. She saw a glint in Emily’s eyes, a shocked expression on her face. She seemed to be having a hard time finding the right words to say. Tears were pooling in her eyes, but she was smiling.

Emily lifted the test up and Alison took it from her, her heart suddenly beating faster. Because she realized that the tears in her wife’s eyes were not tears of sorrow. They were tears of joy.

Alison stared at the positive test, a surprised laugh coming out of her mouth. Her eyes welled up with tears.

She looked at Emily. The brunette put her palm against Alison’s belly, knowing a bump would soon be growing.

“We’re going to have a baby.” Emily laughed through her tears.

Alison reached down and put her hand on top of Emily’s hand, holding it in place as she let the news sink in. Their baby was already growing. Their child was already carving out a space in their hearts. It was a glaring reminder that as they went about their daily business...they wouldn’t be alone. There would be a little child...a little piece of their heart coming to life.

She pictured tiny little hands. Baby toes. A button nose. Sweet coos and giggles. And the most kissable little face in the world.

After a few seconds she lurched forward, wrapping her arms around Emily’s neck. Joyous laughter filled the room.

“Oh my God! We’re having a baby!” Alison hung off of Emily’s shoulders and pulled back to press a hard kiss against her lips.

“A little you.” Tears were rolling down Emily’s cheeks. But she couldn’t stop laughing.

“Let’s hope this one takes after his or her Mama. I can’t deal with more of my attitude reflected back at me.” Alison sniffled, her cheeks rosy.

Emily looked at her, and she could suddenly see it. The glow. She wasn’t sure how she’d missed it before. She didn’t know why she’d doubted that the pregnancy would happen. Alison had been practically glowing for weeks. She could see a beautiful radiant aura around her.

Alison saw the adoration in her wife’s eyes. She shot her a bashful smile. It was crazy that after so many years together that Emily could still make her feel like she was back in high school, falling in love for the very first time. She still felt like that young kid crushing on her best friend. She felt loved in a way she’d never been loved.

Their hands naturally linked together. They shared a quiet intimate moment. The air in the room was tangible. Alison took a quivering breath, trying to center herself. Emily cupped her cheek. As always, Emily helped center her.

The moment was interrupted by a loud clatter and two squabbling teens.

“MOMS!” Grace burst into the room. “Lily stole my phone and changed the password, and I can’t get past the lock screen.”

“I’ll give you the password when you take down that picture you posted of me when I was being potty trained.” Lily had a smarmy look on her face.

She knew exactly how to get under her sister’s skin.

“I only put it up because you put up the video of me crying after a frog jumped on my arm.” Grace shoved her sister.

They spun towards their mothers to mediate their fight, but then they saw the tears.

Their faces dropped. They shot each other worried looks and then looked back at their parents. Grace’s brow was tight. Lily had her lips pressed into a thin line. They looked just like Emily when they were concerned.

“What’s wrong?” Grace’s voice quivered.

“Did something happen?” Lily echoed her sister’s worry.

“Is it Grandma? Is she okay?” A hint of panic reverberated in Grace’s tone.

“Grandma is fine.” Emily put her arms up in a calming manner. “Everything is okay, girls.”

“Then why are you crying?” Lily asked.

Emily and Alison looked at one another, smiling. Alison nearly bit through her lip in excitement.

She was pregnant. They were having another baby.

“Well...there is something your mother and I need to tell you,” Emily said, glancing at the pregnancy test in Alison’s hand. The girls hadn’t seen it yet. “We’ve got some good news.”

She grabbed Alison’s free hand and they gave each other a loving glance.

“Okay, you two are being weird.” Lily made a face.

Emily couldn’t help but laugh. Her little Lily was ever the cynic.

“You know how we’ve been talking about expanding our family?” Alison asked.

“Oh, are we finally getting a dog?” Grace lit up in excitement. 

“Not exactly,” Emily said. Though, that was on the table, too. The girls had been begging for a dog for years.

“Girls...”

Alison moved forward, gripping the test in her hand like a lifeline. She glanced at Emily again before facing Lily and Grace, who were looking at her eagerly.

“Your mother and I...we’re...” She felt a fluttering sensation in her chest. A warmth.

Seconds later Emily was next to her, her arm around her shoulder. Alison smiled at her.

“We’re having a baby.” She held up the pregnancy test. “I’m pregnant.”

There was a quiet pause, but then both girls gasped in delight.

“You’re pregnant?” Lily’s face brightened. Her jaw dropped. She had a huge smile on her face.

“Yeah.” Alison still couldn’t believe it herself.

“For real? We’re going to have a little sister?” Grace asked.

“Or brother,” Lily said. She threw her hands up and squealed. “This is so exciting. Finally, a sibling that will be a much less pain in the ass.”

“Oh, you wish. This kid is so going to like me better.” Grace scoffed. She looked at Alison. “Is that the test?”

“Mmmhmm.” Alison nodded, extending it out to Grace.

Grace didn’t even bother to grab it from the sterile end. She was too caught up in the moment. She looked at the positive result.

“This is super cool.” Grace smiled. She looked at Lily. “Check it out, Lil. Proof that someone else in this family is going to be cooler than you.”

“You know she peed on that, right?”

“Ew.” Grace suddenly held the test out like it was dynamite, handing it back to her mother.

“So...” Lily looked at Alison curiously. “Can you feel the baby yet?”

“Not yet. But we’ll get there.”

“I read that sometimes if you touch someone’s belly when they’re pregnant that you can feel things. Can we try?” Grace asked.

Alison and Emily laughed. They were overjoyed when the twins reached out to touch Alison’s stomach. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t very far along yet. The sentiment behind the bonding was real.

“That’s our little brother or sister in there.” Lily grinned, her palm on Alison’s stomach.

“What if it’s both?” Grace smirked.

“Don’t even joke about that.” Alison laughed.

But she didn’t hate the idea. It wouldn’t be easy having four kids, but she wouldn’t be upset if it happened.

“This is amazing.” Lily looked up at her mothers, a sincere expression on her face. “We know you’ve been trying...”

“Yeah. And we’ve been hoping this would happen.” Grace added.

“I know we give you guys hell sometimes, but you’re really amazing moms. And this baby is very very lucky to have you.” Lily smiled.

“To have us.” Grace corrected her.

Normally, Lily didn’t like it when Grace corrected her, but it didn’t bother her in this instance. She leaned into her mothers, wrapping them in a hug. Grace followed suit, embracing them all.

Emily and Alison smiled at one another as they bathed in their family’s affection. There was nothing quite like having a home in the hearts of the people you loved most, a safe place in the storm of life. They didn’t love anyone in the world like they loved their children. Their lives had only just begun after Lily and Grace were born. And they couldn’t wait for the next chapter.

They couldn’t wait to see the ways in which this baby was going to change their lives for the better, to complete their family.

[thespiralgrimoire]

So just realized that all of the female cast members (and probably some of the male ones) are based on fairytales Grey is Cinderella, Noelle is Snow White, Vanessa is rapunzal, Yuno might be Peter Pan or at least Sylph is tinkerbell

I got an ask similar to this quite a while ago, but it was a little more cumbersome and I wasn't sure how to respond to it....

I think this is an interesting take but personally I think it's a little reductive. There are definitely some similarities between the BC ladies and the Disney princesses, but I think to say that any of them are based on Disney princesses is a disservice to them as characters. While the BC universe is definitely loosely based in a European fantasy setting, I would think that the fact that it's written from a Japanese perspective would mean that the similarities to our classic Western fairytails can't be taken for granted.

HOWEVER, there is also the point to be made that the Disney Princess stories are based in tropes that show up in a LOT of traditions and stories, so maybe it would be more accurate to say that these characters' stories contain a lot of the same elements that appear in folklore all around the world?

That being said, I think it's fun to play with what we know, and I don't know a lot of Japanese fairytales. So let's take a look at some of the ones you listed, because I spent $75,000 on a Bachelor's degree in English literature and I don't get to use it much.

☘️ Of all of these, Grey is DEFINITELY the most obvious one. Like, it’s every element of Cinderella... The step sisters, the mistreatment, the false identity. But I think that’s is very important how it differs from the classic tale to play on Grey’s sense of self.

The classic Cinderella story doesn’t paint Cinderella as a self pitying damsel who needs to be rescued. She is upset with her situation, she knows it’s not fair, and she knows she’s entitled to a nice night out, especially after she puts in the work in to make an outfit appropriate for the occasion. Her step sisters’ vindictive nature ruins this for her, not any fault of her own, which is why her fairy godmother steps in to right the wrongs of her situation.

Grey doesn’t have the sense of self that Cinderella has. Be it through abuse or quirks of her own personality, she’s a rather passive victim to her step sisters’ bullying, and instead of doing what she does despite of them like Cinderella, she does everything she can to please them. The ending result is more or less the same: they can’t be pleased. In both cases the step sisters retaliate violently: in Cinderella’s case, they destroy the dress she’s made for herself, and in Grey’s case, they drive Grey into the woods, taking her attempt to please them as a personal insult.

Grey gets no fairy godmother, and no ball. And unlike Cinderella, she gets rescued by a “prince” character (as much as I loathe to call Gauche that, but an analogy does exist there, so let’s acknowledge it.) Gauche saves Grey in the literal sense, and he also gives her the courage to better her situation, which eventually leads her to develop a sense of self that is not “her step family’s doormat.” She varies from Cinderella in this way because Cinderella never had to make this personal jump in her narrative; she started her narrative already there. Whereas Grey was desperately trying to become something that someone would respect, Cinderella knew from the start that she was worthy of more than the world had given her.

But the nice thing about Grey’s narrative is that she IS working to be this person! She’s got to put in the work to get to where Cinderella is, but who knows? Maybe by the time she isn’t afraid to be her authentic self, she’ll get some help from an exterior source (a metaphorical fairy godmother character) or maybe that power will come from within (with this new magic she’s using to save Gauche?). If we stick with the fairytale princess narrative, her reward would be Gauche. Just like Cinderella was rewarded for her strength during an adverse time in her life, Grey will be rewarded for overcoming her insecurities.

☘️ I... gotta come clean here, I read “Snow White” but my brain went “Sleeping Beauty”, and I was all ready to talk about THAT fascinating analogy. So apologies if this one is a little lackluster while I get my fairytales straight.

I think this one is a little flimsy, but again, I prepared to talk about the wrong fairytale. Would we paint Magicula as the evil queen, wanting Noelle dead because she’s “fairer”? Or would her siblings be an abstract reading of the “evil queen” because Noelle looks too much like their mother, and therefore is the bane of their existance, like Snow White was for the evil queen? The Black Bulls as the seven dwarves is the one part of this I’m really digging, because it’s hilarious. But I think this one is a hard sell. Noelle has failed to be a victim to any serious threat for more than a few minutes because she’s always surrounded by people who fight tooth and nail for her, and she’s fighting every second to be stronger. Of course, that furthers the “Black bulls = seven dwarves” thing, which is just. So great. Snow White never had to do anything but housework. She doesn’t get stronger because strength was never a part of her equation.

☘️ Vanessa as Rapuzal is eh. She’s a classic princess trapped in a castle, but she’s the second one of those in the series (Charlotte being the other). In both cases, Yami saves them with a strange mix accidental concern and casual heroism. I think this says more about Yami as an accidental prince charming than it does about either of them as Disney princesses.

I haven’t seen Tangled, but from what I’ve gathered, there’s an analogy to be made here between Vanessa and Tangled Rapunzal being trapped by their mothers under the guise of caring for them. Hell yeah, can’t deny that connection! But it’s far from a sign of a fairytale princess. It’s just shitty parenting. Unfortunately, it’s rampant across all cultures, and therefore appears in all forms of media.

Charlotte’s case is, I believe, supposed to be a parody of a “strong independent woman” (which is a big problem I have with how she’s written but that’s a different conversation). There very well could be a specific fairytale that fits Charlotte’s case (Sh. Shrek?) but I think it’s meant to be more of a parody of the false persona she puts out than anything else.

Yami is really the one to look at here, since it’s not a coincidence that he’s rescued TWO of these fairytale-princess-knockoffs over the course of the story, and they both have unrequited crushes on him (although Vanessa’s is mostly for show). While Charlotte is a parody of a strong independent princess, Yami is a parody of Prince Charming. He doesn’t want the role, he didn’t ask for the role, he’s not looking for the role... He’s just doing what he’s doing and if he happens to rescue some ladies in peril, it’s just part of his day of wandering around busting through walls like the Koolaid man. That’s not a jab at Yami’s character. It doesn’t mean that he’s not a hero. Yami’s whole shtick is that you don’t have to be a conventionally handsome dude in a cape with a winning smile to be a hero. That’s the mantra he’s built the Black Bulls around. His whole character is a counterpoint to the traditional hero stereotype with Fuegoleon (and to a lesser degree, Nozel) as the point he’s countering.

Yami and the Black Bulls exist to make the point that there is more than one way to be right, to be strong, to be brave, to be heroic. You don’t have to look, act, think, or feel a certain way to be on the right side of things.

☘️ Okay so Yuno as Peter Pan is the one I’ve really been chomping at the bit to talk about because while I don’t think you’re right, I can’t decide if you’re wrong???

I don’t know what other stories and traditions could influence Bell’s design, so based on what I know, she’s a dead ringer for Tinkerbell. Moving past that.

Yuno as Peter Pan has me WILDING because he’s literally the host for an unborn baby. I don’t know how much harder you can drill in the “Never grow up” theme.

Does it really hold up past that though? I kind of want it to, just because the very premise of Yuno as Licht’s baby screams it so hard. But I don’t think it does.Which is a shame, because it could.

Yuno was a crybaby as a kid, which is a very infantile trait, but when he and Asta made their pact to be the wizard king, he went the opposite direction of “never grow up” and rapidly matured in order to accomplish this dream. We don’t really know how else Yuno may have changed besides “he doesn’t cry anymore”, but from the way he acts and the way he’s treated at the orphanage, it seems to me that a lot was placed on him. And that carries into his magic knight career. Because of his talent and his resolve, he was made to face some very adult problems at a very young age.

Major manga spoilers ahead!

This carries into the current events we’re seeing, too. There is no semblance of “never grow up” in the way that Yuno acts or is being treated as a member of the Golden Dawn. He’s the vice captain at... what, 16? 17? and he’s just found out that he’s also the next heir of a kingdom that he does not call his home-- that’s he’s considered the enemy for his entire career. Then he’s forced to handle the violent deaths of half his squad, the severe injury of the other half, and the kidnapping of his captain, which leaves him in charge. We see him give a big old holler about all this, but I what’s really interesting to me is that he doesn’t cry. The most infantile part of his identity, which he abandoned to get where he is now, does not come back to him in a moment of weakness, at a time where he very much has every write to feel like a helpless child. Whether he wants to or not, Yuno is no longer allowed to be a child, and he will never get the opportunity to be one again.

I guess you could say that this may mean that we’ll see him want to be Peter Pan, that he’ll grow nostalgic for the days where everything was simpler and he had the time to cry, the freedom to be scared and confused and feel sorry for himself. I would love to see that explored in his character, but I really don’t think that we’ll see it happen. In both the meta and the story universe, there’s no time for Yuno to have that breakdown and regression. It wouldn’t fit the pacing and Yuno’s got shit to do. Yuno isn’t Peter Pan. He’s lost the chance to be.

So in conclusion, I can see why a lot of people want to assign fairytale roles to characters in Black Clover, and I do think that the creators play with the concept themselves, but I think to boil any of the Black Clover characters down to a single character or fit them into a single fairytale is a disservice to the characters themselves, and overlooks everything else going on with them. None of the black clover characters are “based” on a fairytale character. Their stories may take inspiration from them, but there is far more going on with each and every one of them to ever take such similarities at face value.

[mr-entj]

1) Mr ENTJ, I'm a 20 year old ENTJ university student doing a double degree in humanities and science (philosophy and computer science respectively). I made that decision at 18 because I have always found utility and inspiration in being versatile/interdisciplinary. However, in my first year I was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease.

2) (double degree anon) In the periods of remission I am able to study, in times of sickness I am stuck in hospital. Next year I’ve been forced to go back home to focus on health because my health has since declined. I am struggling to reconcile this with my ambitious, over-achieving personality. I am thriving in what many rankings and people see as the best uni in my country (it’s got the country in the name and is federally funded) and I inevitably see returning as backsliding, or a failure. 

3) (double degree anon) I am spending the year volunteering where possible, developing soft and hard skills (I already have experience with working for UN Youth and also research assistance in labs) but have been strongly advised against committing to something like a paid job. After the year back home is up I expect to return to my studies. How do I adapt to this reality without feeling like a failure? And how do I overcome this in being hired in the future?

________________

Related answers:

Can you talk about the quality(ies) or trait(s) that contributed most to your success? I read about your adversity and I want to know what is your personal mindset of getting through those challenges.

Dealing with failure and overcoming adversity

Your question’s timing is impeccable because I’m writing this response as I recover from yet another surgery that removed a potentially cancerous tumor.

“How do I adapt to this reality without feeling like a failure?”

You adapt to this reality by accepting that you haven’t failed at all. You’re not a failure, you were diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease, and unless there’s a new competition where all the winners don’t get an incurable autoimmune disease and all the losers do get an incurable autoimmune disease, it’s a safe bet this situation wasn’t the result of any personal actions. A setback like this can be a delay in schedule, an inconvenience, and an overall pain in the ass but it’s by no means a final outcome that will wreck years of planning and hard work. It’s simply a new variable that’s been introduced into the equation of your life that must be accounted for moving forward.

“And how do I overcome this in being hired in the future?”

It’s illegal for employers to discriminate based on physical conditions/disabilities/etc. With that said, to get hired, you still need to be able to do the job but can ask for special accommodations. I’d research your country’s labor laws but without a clear idea of what career you’re pursuing, I can’t elaborate. The focus now should be on excelling in school and doing all the right things so that when the time comes to graduate you’ve built a solid springboard to launch your career.

Additional thoughts:

Give yourself credit for the things you’ve already done right. That’s first and foremost because it’s easy to beat yourself up during a difficult time like this. It’s easy to think about all the things that can go wrong moving forward because of your condition without remembering all the things that have already gone right. You’re a student in a top university pursuing a double degree with research and UN experience under your belt plus the foresight, ambition, and desire to pursue even bigger goals for your life. That counts for a lot. Start there.

Focus on your health and adjust to your new normal. Take the time to get physically, mentally, and emotionally strong. Learn how your condition has altered your energy levels, daily routine, thought process, study habits, etc. so that you can create a new system. Take this time to seriously invest in your health instead of trying to catch up on work or school, don’t be in the hospital with tubes in your arms but a textbook on algorithms wide open because skipping steps and cheating the process can turn a one year break into a two year break.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Teddy Roosevelt. This is more for when it’s time to return to college. What’s within your control should be done to the best of your ability. Look for accommodations at the university, reduce class loads if required, explore online classes, and leave no stone unturned as you keep moving towards your goals. Progress is better than perfection.

[yasuda-yoshiya]

Sorry I haven’t been around here much lately! The last few weeks (/months, really) have been rough for me, but I’m feeling a bit better at least for now. For now I’ll just drop some overdue thoughts here on some of the things I’ve been watching since I finished Utena:

Princess Tutu

I found Tutu to be a really sweet and charming show with a ton of heart, but I'm also sad to say that I don't think watching it straight after Utena did it any favours for me. Utena portrayed the same kinds of themes around breaking out of predefined narratives in a way that personally hit home for me a lot harder, so Tutu ended up feeling a bit like a watered down version of the same ideas to me... Which is a shame because I do still think it's a really cool show with a lot to like about it! It's visually and aesthetically gorgeous, I adore its whole cosy meta-fairytale atmosphere and the ballet theme and the whole general feel of the show a lot - it just didn't end up leaving that much of a lasting impression on me in the end. I may well come back and revisit it some day, because I feel like I'd probably get more out of it coming in with a clearer idea of what to expect and without Utena's shadow unfairly hanging over it.

For the characters, I loved Ahiru and Fakir! They were both so endearingly earnest and I really liked the respective directions they ended up taking both of their character arcs and their relationship (Fakir passionately rewriting the story to be about Ahiru's bravery and courage at the end made me cry so hard! That's like, the exact kind of individual heartfelt expression of love that hits straight to my heart when it comes to fictional couples, waaaah...)

Mytho and Rue were a bit harder to connect with for me; I felt like I couldn't really get invested in Rue's feelings for Mytho for the most of the show since the backstory around them wasn't revealed until the very end. (I did like Ahiru and Rue's relationship quite a bit, though! That sort of feeling of the narrative artificially pushing them into being enemies when they really could have helped each other as friends was well done.) On Mytho's end I just never clicked at all with the whole raven blood subplot that seemed to dominate his character in the second season, unfortunately. I couldn't make it meaningfully connect for me, even though I had quite liked him as a character in the first half of the series (even in just my generic "hnng cute boys struggling with the idea of having feelings" way). I'd be interested to see on a rewatch whether those two would work better for me having a better idea of where their trajectory was going from the start, since I felt like I didn't really "get" what they were going for with their relationship or how I was supposed to be reading them until the very end (I'm slow okay).

Steven Universe

What an absolutely lovely series! I've been wanting to check this out for a long time, and I'm glad I finally got the chance because it really is excellent. I totally fell in love with the whole Crystal Gem family, and the balance between them all having their own personal issues to deal with while still being able to draw love and support from each other was done really well. I really loved the handling of Steven's PoV in the first couple of the series especially for how they handled his growth around coming to understand that his parental figures are really flawed people who have a lot of baggage to deal with, but also without framing their personal problems or their relationships with each other as being at all within either his power or responsibility to "fix". Instead, his moments of growth are more about more consciously registering the burdens they're under and making those little gestures to ease them wherever he can, like consciously showing appreciation for their parenting efforts with the test, or giving Amethyst more time to vent things out with her friend when she's stressed out instead of asking her to take him home right away. Likewise, on the gems' end, we really get the sense that e.g. Pearl's love for Steven is real and valuable and "saves" her in a very real sense, but also that it's not going to ever fully erase her depression or her grief over losing the life she had with Rose before and that that's okay.

I would say as the show went on, it felt like it lost some of the grounded and occasionally harsh nature that originally drew me to it - the first couple of seasons felt like they had a sort of constant legitimate tension in the background with the gems trying hard to keep things together in a hard situation in a way that still obviously had its cracks in it, and a sort of acknowledgment that "maybe not everything will be okay, but there's still a lot of good in the world and in our relationships that's worth living for", which I appreciated. Whereas I felt like they moved a bit more towards unambiguously positive resolutions as the show went on, with a bit less of that willingness to leave things "unresolved". (Of course the show still has a lot of those moments, like the reveal of Rose's past in particular, but even then I wished that the fallout from the reveal and its lasting impact on the gems was given more time and weight than it was.) That feeling culminated for me in the finale of series 5 and the way the plot with the diamonds was resolved, where it felt like the show pretty much parted ways with reality entirely and fully embraced a kind of ideal fantasy positivity.

But I don't think that's necessarily a totally bad thing, either - it's still a very genuine and heartfelt kind of positivity that can be hard to find in narratives as unapologetically queer as SU is (especially in media targeted at young kids!) and I'm sure a lot of people really need that gap filled in their lives, so I can't really bring myself to resent it overall. The characters remain as endearing and lovable as ever, the show still made me smile from beginning to end, and all in all I have nothing but great appreciation for all the important ground it's willing to tread as a kids' show touching on a lot of extremely relevant contemporary issues in a positive and responsible way. It honestly makes me feel really happy and hopeful to think of kids getting to grow up with a show like this! So while I might personally have ended up resonating more with the show if they'd taken a different direction, I feel like I still have a lot of respect and understanding for the route they did end up taking, too, and I'm glad to have experienced it.

Mob Psycho 100

I thought this was a very cool and interesting show! As "deconstructing shounen tropes" series go, I feel like this one successfully hits a unique sort of sweetspot for me in the way that, rather than brutally tearing apart shounen conventions out from the roots (which is also something I can enjoy a lot when it's done well!), it's instead focusing on taking a lot of the genuinely positive ideas that draw people to shounen - the ability to overcome adversity through personal growth and "the power of bonds/friendship", positivity in the face of despair, and so on - and re-examining them through a more grounded context that asks "Okay, but what does that actually look like in the real world?" Because, you know, it definitely DOESN'T look like people with magical god-given superpowers blasting through everything that challenges them with the sheer force of their specialness and their pre-assigned role as the "main character", right?

So I was really impressed by Mob as a series for not only being so thorough about deconstructing that (to the point that the voice encouraging Mob to use his powers more and be a super special hero is an outright "devil on the hero's shoulder" kind of character!), but also for going that extra step to examining what real positive growth actually DOES look like. I felt like the series did a remarkably insightful job overall (especially in the second series) of sort of gently but firmly differentiating "real growth" from "shounen growth" in that sense. I really loved those little touches like the Emi episode, where the viewer is effectively led to expect a moral about how "people will like you more if you act more genuine and be yourself!" - but then the show very deliberately switches gears to the idea that trying to be more genuine is already worthwhile in and of itself, just because you're living in the world with a more conscious awareness of what's important to you and standing up for the things you care about, and how that authentic way of living can inspire other people and have a positive impact on them too.

And similarly, I absolutely love Mob and Reigen's weird, messy, problematic relationship being the emotional centrepiece of the series, because it's the exact opposite of the kind of friendship you'd expect to be centred in a "POWER OF BONDS!!" themed show, but that's also why it just... really really works! It's such a humble and near-accidental and flawed and limited connection, and I love that Reigen is also allowed to impact Mob in negative ways and have selfish motivations and be unambiguously portrayed as a genuinely pathetic and terrible person and a bad influence on him too, and that the show doesn't remotely shy away from that - and yet somehow it still absolutely shines through that both of them would be worse off without each other, that the "power of their bond" really has changed them both for the better as people. Not through any incredible magic connection, but just through those little moments where they save each other through things like Reigen telling Mob "It's okay to run away", or Mob telling Reigen "You're a good guy".

Because the show is so upfront about the limitations of their "bond", it really does make the emphasis on its positive impact and how fortunate the two of them are to have been influenced by each other really work and have value, I think - because it comes across as that kind of approachable, recognisable "miracle" that really can and does happen in people's daily lives. It doesn’t claim to be a perfect friendship, or to have the capability to fix all their individual problems just by existing, but it does still come across loud and clear that they’ve been a genuinely positive force in each other’s lives. I definitely came away from it with a greater appreciation for those little chance encounters and humble relationships that have helped me and shaped me as a person! On the whole, I'm sure the show isn't for everyone, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys shounen as a genre at all, because I feel that it really works as a remarkably critical and self-aware yet loving celebration of the spirit behind those kinds of stories.

[bendthekneejon]

Hey any advice on keeping hope? I really want to but with some of these (f)leaks these days I get more and more stressed and I try to avoid them but head just keeps spinning the possibilities. Your list helps for all the possibilities but I just need some assurances if it is not a bother

Hi anon, take a deep breath. Try to examine the fleaks with more reason than emotion, remembering what you know about the characters and the plot. I’m gonna ramble a lot now. 

We’ll start with Dany. Her story is one of empowerment, a source of strength for slaves, women, etc. and a hugely inspiring character for the audience as well. Her arch is one of overcoming adversities, of growing up, of striving to help people.

And madness? She’s wondered a bunch of times in ASOIAF if she’s mad, she’s scared about that. But tbh, haven’t you heard that asking yourself if you’re mad means that you aren’t? Lol, anyway, she’s never enjoyed murdering others. She banned torture ffs. She wasn’t like Cersei who sipped her wine as she smiled while watching the Sept burn to the ground. 

I’ll tell you something that just happened to me. I got into an argument defending Dany on Facebook this week. I was saying how clear Martin has been that she’s a selfless and devoted queen and not a mad one, and that D&D are clearly forcing this “role” into her for the sake of drama. A bunch of book readers came after me to tell me I was wrong. They told me they found book!Dany unbearable and annoying, and that the show had changed her character for the audience to like her better, that they wrote her friendlier and nicer. 

Now, idk if you’ve read the books anon, but when people call Dany annoying they’re usually referring to i. how she usually yells “but i’m a targaryen!” and ii. when she fell in love with daario and she was horny af. Now, I don’t think neither of these are wrong (first, her last name is what she uses to demand respect bc she’s a small girl; and 2nd, she’s a teenager who’s lonely as fuck OF COURSE she’s horny and needs some cuddling and good dick ffs). Anyway I’m rambling. I wanted to get to the following point: for these anti book!Dany dudes, show!Dany was less annoying and friendlier for the audience (even though she’s cute and funny in asoiaf anyway). So I realized they were contradicting themselves. If D&D have made show!Dany more likeable and friendly by omitting certain scenes from asoiaf (eg. when she made out with daario in front of everyone), it’s because D&D are emphasizing the characterization of a good queen. If they wanted her to be the ultimate villain, the “mad” queen, they would have included maybe the time when she tortured the wineseller’s daughter (that doesn’t make her mad though, she banned torture after that), they would have added MORE violence to prove this point. But they didn’t. Instead, they’ve shown this selfless queen risking her life, dragons and armies to save her bf and then the WORLD. They could’ve omitted that. They could’ve made her kill Varys when he told her he wouldn’t give her blind loyalty, but instead, they wrote a line where she tells him: “if you ever see i’m failing the people, you’ll look me in the eye and tell me how i’m failing them”. See my point? If D&D wanted her to truly become mad, they would’ve made an effort to build that progressive fall to madness like they did with Cersei, but they didn’t. 

This quote is important: “So you don’t want anything to surprise you for surprise’s sake. You want everything to feel earned and to look back and go ‘okay, yeah, I could see how they were building to that.’ And from that I know from the final season, it does that.” (James Hibberd, EW’s Game of Thrones Weekly podcast). The thing is, the mad queen bullshit DOES FEEL unearned, because D&D have strived to show the opposite through the seasons. It’s a “surprise for surprise’s sake”, so it makes no sense with this quote. You know those YouTube videos that are called “Every Daenerys Targaryen Scene”? Watch them. Watch her arch, watch for yourself how D&D have built her. 

Now, Jonerys’ plot is also crucial for this mad dany bullshit. Let’s examine the order of events in their love story:

Jon meets Dany and he’s annoyed by her (and she by him), thinking at the start that she’s just power hungry like Cersei and just wants the IT. He even wonders if she really is the Mad King’s daughter when he talks to Tyrion on the cliff.

Jon starts realizing she’s not thaaat bad when she gives him access to the mines.

Jon witnesses Dany risking her life and dragons to save him and his people, which made him realize he had misjudged her.

Jon finally “sees her for what she is” and falls in love with her true personality. 

So, if D&D’s point is that Jon is gonna kill Dany bc he didn’t know her well enough (enough to realize she’s mad), they would’ve had him fall in love with her the moment he met her and then see her true colors of a “mad queen”. But they did the opposite. Jon thought FIRST she was the Mad King’s daughter, and then fell in love when he saw her for what she was. They could have reduced her and Jon’s plot to only physical attraction and sex. But they didn’t. They could’ve omitted Jon telling her “they’ll come to see you for what you are” after witnessing her selflessness. But they didn’t. 

The same goes for Dany. The fact that she fell in love with Jon shows that she isn’t mad–what attracts her is also selflessness and goodness–did you see the face she put when she saw Jon’s scars??? When he volunteered to go beyond the wall to catch a wight? These times when she saw how caring Jon was for his people were the ones where she fell in love with him HARD. If she were mad, if she enjoyed violence and all that shit, she would LOVE Daario much more–a super violent dude–yet their relationship WAS reduced to sex only, and when she said goodbye to him on the show “she felt nothing”, and when she slept beside him in ADWD “she felt alone”. She didn’t love him. Violence does not attract her.

Jon was the one who held her hand as soon as he woke up in the boat, the one who knocked on her door for sex. Jon Snow!!! The dude who used to be a fuckign virgin until he got begged for sex 1000 times!!! Remember. He loves her, and loves her since he saw her for her true colors. He’s just conflicted and confused rn for drama purposes. So the fleak makes no sense. 

On the other hand, what makes perfect sense is the assumption that the leaker got the names wrong (Dany and Cersei) and that Jon kills Cersei bc he COULD BE the valonqar (he’s the youngest brother in his fam) and Dany is the YMBQ. And Cersei has said “what can lyanna’s ghost do to harm us?”  (cheers to @tomakeitbeautifultolive​  and @the-last-targaryens​ for this) and also “how can the Targaryen girl on the other side of the sea harm us?” (not the exact words, but same thing) in S4. Hmmmmmm… fishy. AND the “bells” leak also makes PERFECT sense for Cersei, and zeeero sense for Dany. 

Also: Jon on his own on the Throne would be the most expected and boring ending EVER. Also consider this boy would be MISERABLE in that job. It’s literally what he wants the least. 

And remember: Jonerys IS point of the story. 

Also: this ending has NO single common point with LOTR’s ending. 

And also: read the fleaks omfg the rest of them make no fucking sense. Bronn in the council are you fucjgin kidding me. That ending for bran?? Bullshit. Everything about them is nonsense. Think about them cold-headed. They’re absurd, stupid, they’re fucking comedy material. D&D are stupid too but these fleaks make no sense with Emilia’s interview where she says that the ending isn’t about who’s sitting on the Throne either.

I’m not defending d&d, but conflict is necessary for a happy ending to feel earned. ESPECIALLY inner conflict. So they’re doing all this stupid fucking mad queen shit for her happy ending to have more sense. Look at it this way, we still have TWO MORE MOVIE LENGTH EPISODES ahead. If the ending would be tragic, they would introduce the tragedy muuuch later, not two movies before it’s over.

FINALLY, please take care of yourself and this stress you’re going through. Eat fruits and vegetables, work out and sweat out the stress, and try to remain active during the day to take your mind off this if it’s making you this anxious. Your wellbeing is first. 

[lesbian-ed]

How do you move on? I've been in love with this girl for years and I only recently realized we'd never truly be in a committed relationship and it broke my heart. I miss her and I think about her everyday. I joined Her and I've gone on a few dates, but nothing has stuck. I don't really want it to or expect it to, but it still sucks.. I'm completely emotionally unavailable. I feel like I could sleep around and feel nothing. I've never felt like that before. How can I move on?

First and foremost, Anon, I think we need to dispelthe notion that moving on and getting over a broken heart necessarilymean jumping on to the next woman in line. If, as you said yourself,you are emotionally unavailable, my experience is that trying to bewith someone else to break the spell won’t aid you in the least.

See, moving on isn’t about moving on to the nextgirl, but moving on with life, with ourselves. You shouldn’t be attempting toerase the mark this girl has left on you by inviting lots of other women into your bed because it won’t have any effect if youhaven’t done the proper ‘digesting'—it’s no use to strain your bodyto fit in with another while trying to mend your heart and change yourmind. There’s a whole process involved, one of letting go and‘enjoying’ one’s solitude.

I know 'enjoying’ might seem a bit inappropriate whencoupled with the word 'solitude’ in light of an unsuccessfulrelationship, but there are elements of enjoyment to be found inbeing alone once one has surpassed that initial moment of disbelief,hurt, possibly despair. There is nothing novel in recommendingsomeone time in dealing with issues of feeling, I’m sure, andthere’s a reason why people will tell you to wait and let timeflow, but what most fail to tell you is that you cannot sit idly bywhilst consumed by the thought of this one girl, the errors orproblems that led to this outcome, wishing things were different—onthe contrary, I think one must use this moment to assess things asrealistically as possible. If it didn’t work out, then it wasn’tmeant to be—otherwise, logically, it wouldn’t have broken, wouldit?

There is a difference between grieving what we thinkmight have been amazing and condemning ourselves to misery by believing that that was the one chance for happinesswe’d get in this life. The first is a feeling that comes and goes,for, even in the future, when we have left this wholly behind (and itwill happen if you let it, if you make it happen), we still do findourselves wondering 'well, what if?’ but we don’t lose sleepover it anymore; it’s casual, human curiosity. Whereas the second option can lead us to a statevery close to what you’re describing, in which we become somehow verydependent on the memory of what was and on the desire of what couldhave been (or should have been, in our minds), dependent onthe idea of the woman that does not want us back. And that is bad.

It’s common in the first weeks following a break-upor another kind of romantic disenchantment, but to suffer years ofthis, of being shackled to one person who is clearly not at allshackled back to us?

You ask, Anon, how to move on. One must allow time tosweep away the dust of our sadness—but, and many will not like mesaying this, one must also give oneself permission to move on; onemust, at some point, actively pursue the overcoming of our sentimentif time by itself won’t do the trick. And to do that does not mean topursue someone else—but, perhaps, to pursue ourselves.

Now, personally, I dislike psychology and I do notwish to present myself an expert on the matter (Sappho forbid!), butthese sorts of issues, of over-dependence on an ex-girlfriend, onwanting what didn’t come to pass or what has already ended (or neverbegun, depending on the case) always seem to me linked to issues ofconfidence and self-esteem, as if one found it hard or unfeasible toimagine oneself without that person in one’s life. But the truthgenerally is that the person in question is already out of ourlife and we have not yet accepted that reality. For fear, perhaps; ofnever being loved again, of never loving someone to thatdegree again, of never settling down and finding happiness in thearms of any other woman… Reasons abound.

But we tend to feed on a handful of illusions and allof these motives for fear are just that: illusions. Nobody losesvalue by not being corresponded in love; nobody ceases to beimportant because one person in the world suddenly thinksdifferently; nobody is doomed to sadness because we believe ourselvesunloved and/or unloving. I wager we put too much value upon others’perception of us, that we base too much of our happiness on otherpeople—wonderful people, sure, women who stand out in a crowd,otherwise we would not have loved them, but even so we should notforget ourselves to their benefit. We should have the courage to facelife as it is; to choose to move forwards, to leave behind that whichgives us nothing.

Someone might argue that to love a woman still,albeit she loves us not, might give us some strength here and there;that this ideal, romantic, self-sacrificing love is ‘inspiring’; thatit is the only force driving us onwards, that it compells us to make something outof ourselves so those cherished eyes will once again befall us… And I would be forced to respond that livingfor someone else, and especially to that degree, is no way of living.It shouldn’t be difficult to verify that these circumstances are farfrom healthy—and to cling to a love with so much potential for harmis masochistic to say the least. We build prisons out of our owndreams, sometimes, and pain from our joys. With all the romanticismwe tend to use in approaching relationships, it’s a fairly commontrap to fall into.

You might accuse me of being unromantic or unfeelingto speak of these things in this tone, but I assure you I know allabout seeing no way out, about being chained to someone I loved whowould not bat an eyelash towards me. We all have at least oneexperience with this kind of thing and we must find ways to breakfree from this conundrum.

I said earlier that moving on might have something todo with finding ourselves rather than someone else to replace thewoman we loved. That’s also got to do with self-esteem. Many will saythey are incapable and unwilling to love themselves because theybelieve the 'love yourself and others will love you’ line a fallacy;whether it is true or not is completely negligible, because you don’tneed to love yourself, just accept and, perhaps most of all,respect yourself.

Respect your faults and qualities, the time you needto get back up again. Get to know yourself a bit better, enact a bitof harmless selfishness (as in 'I want to see that film in theatresand so I shall, regardless of company’ rather than 'fuck mum and dad,I can spray paint my room and turn up the heavy metal to full volumeif I want to’, mind you), spend time with yourself.

That is, I think, the best and only way to trulyheal. Talk to yourself, listen to yourself. What do you like doing?What are your wants and needs? What are your dreams? What’s yourfavourite smell, food, colour, book, film? Maybe you enjoy walking orswimming or sculpting or meditating or writing. Immerse yourself inyourself. Amidst the chaos of contemporary life, despite thepressures of study or work or peers or family, take a few minutesoff to be with yourself. No, you will not find a void there—and ifyou do, who better to fill it with something nice than you?

You mentioned putting yourself out there, trying toget in touch with other women, but I think sometimes we need to getin touch with ourselves first. And not just when getting over abreak-up or something of the sort, but as much as possible.

It well may be that this is nothing but my own,hyper-individual view on the matter and that many people willdisagree, but, alas, I was the one to answer your question on thisblog today. These are methods by which I have risen again afteradversities of the heart. For we rise again always, Anon. We mustsometimes help ourselves to do it, occupy our hands and muscles andthoughts with something other than our perceived failures, dosomething with ourselves for ourselves rather than for others, wantto be better for ourselves rather than for a partner. In theend, there are few people we can rely on in life apart from thatperson we see in the mirror staring back at us every day.

To finish this (and spare you any more of myphilosophy of life), you will get through this, Anon. It might seemlike a dead end right now, it might seem like you will never leavethis spot of stagnation, but you will. You must want it, as well, ifjust a little bit; be courageous and shed this shell. Breathe. Letyourself be alone for a little while, let it sink in that it did notwork—and that you are not obliged to make anything with anyone elsework at the moment. Focus on you. Find what brings you pleasure anddo not insult your own intelligence and spirit by thinking only shegives you pleasure in life; it isn’t true, not for you, not foranyone. We are made for more than to serve as partners to others,adorable as they might prove to be. If you are currently unable toopen yourself up, then don’t. Don’t go looking for women you’re notyet ready nor willing to bring into your life. Take what you have atthe moment and make the best of it for the time being.

The pressure to find a new girlfriend might even dieout. And that’s a good thing, because we tend to find the mostfantastic and remarkable partners precisely when we aren’tlooking—when we’re ready to live a life with them ratherthan for them, if you know what I mean!

Be patient with yourself and listen to yourself. Bekind. Be to yourself what you’d like others to be. You’ll do just fine.

/Mod T

[leaveharmony]

It's my father.  Yunno? I mean only partially, but that's the heart of it.  It's my father.  No matter what the subject is or who it effects or what his level of knowledge is on it (usually none), he will immediately decide he knows more about it than anyone else and feel perfectly entitled to talk over everybody, the automatic world's expert who knows best, who gets furiously pissy when he's not immediately agreed with because CAN'T ANYONE SEE he's the smartest person around?

I've got to strain my injured arm carrying my sewing machine from all the way in Jon's vacant room now, instead of just hoisting it up to the table from the floor, and why?  Because the idiot bought the wrong size cover for the air conditioner, and instead of admitting this and going back to exchange it for the right size his solution was to rip the seams out on one side to add some velcro, and in spite of the fact that he's never used a sewing machine in his life and at no point asked my permission to touch mine, I caught him carrying the machine grandma left me when she passed back up the stairs the other day - he thought he could just magically figure out how to use it (stupid people like ME can manage it so for him it should be a breeze right?), sew in the velcro and return it without me being any the wiser, but it was too complicated for him.   I haven't tried to figure it out either, yet, and so of course he wanted to use mine instead.  My machine is a rock-solid Singer the likes of which they no longer produce, I know it like I know the inside of my own head, and if he broke it I'd fucking murder him in his sleep - that isn't a joke.  I told him repeatedly not to touch it because I don't want him breaking it and he laughed about that like I was kidding, so now I have to hide it and put considerable strain on a persistent injury when I want to use it, because he feels perfectly entitled to my property.  He's broken, sold, deliberately destroyed and thrown away things of mine in the past without so much as a word to me about it.

White.  Fucking.  Men.  That's why I have no fucking desire to listen to What Kenny's Vision for the Future is.  I don't want to hear about how he's the best person to “steer the ship” in this Japanese company, I don't want to hear about his innovative ideas and how they're so much better than the way it is now.  I don't want to hear about how he ‘overcame racism’ after he shoehorned his way into another country and culture's promotion and tragically wasn't IMMEDIATELY given absolutely everything it had to offer.  I don't want to hear a goddamn word he has to say about Tana, without whom there would have been no company for him to feel entitled to.  I don't want to hear his racist garbage or his fatshaming or his cheap shots at people's appearance, I don't want to hear him criticizing people's workrate when he skips whole tours, or how Shinsuke must just not be TRYING hard enough if he isn't getting anywhere in WWE.  I'm sick to the back teeth of his two-faced nonsense, playacting at being a respectful babyface for the Japanese fans and being a fucking disgusting smark-pandering asshole for the english ones.

The thing about Kenny is, NEW JAPAN IS NOT HIS TO STEER OR FORGE OR RULE.   I don't want to hear his voice!  Or see him, or think about him.  I’ve had enough of listening to the manifest destiny garbage of white men. 

Because white fucking men are given everything, everywhere, and when they aren't given it they take it by force and call that ‘overcoming adversity.’

And maybe that's working myself into a shoot!  Maybe this is the shithead's idea of being an effective heel and it's working!  Maybe I’m overreacting (he’d sure say so!  My father would too).  I don't care!  The beautiful thing about the mute button is I don’t have to listen to this particular self-aggrandizing loudmouth trying to "save” something that doesn’t need saving, or belong to him.

[snarkeater]

Something wicked

Something...off...causes Nickel to suffer a spot of indigestion.

"Have you ever had someone, Kaon?"  Nickel asks him.

Around them, the streets are alive, buzzing with people and vehicles heading in all directions; it's unreasonably noisy, and trying to have a conversation in it would be a complete nightmare if they weren't sitting a foot apart.  As it stands, it's hard enough for Kaon to focus singularly on Nickel's voice; it's not the case for her, but for him, the layers upon layers of ambient noise flow through multiple processing streams simultaneously in order to provide him with audio as well as visual information, and the effort – while entirely passive – is taxing.

But conversation with Nickel, Kaon has always sincerely believed, is well worth the bother.

"Mmm..." Kaon replies, leaning forward to rest his forearms across his knees and linking his digits together between them; giving the impression that he actually has to think about the question, he stares across the busy roadway at a tight group of aerial bots exiting the custom paint place there.  Their chatter is loud.  Very loud.  Taken as a unit, it's louder even than some of the massive transport trucks that blow by every few minutes.  One of them, Kaon is idly able to pick out, is unhappy with the results of whatever it is he just got done.

Smirking to himself, Kaon shakes his helm.  Custom paint jobs...  Truly a thing fit for mechs with far richer fuel flowing through them than he.  If Kaon ever lost his mind and got something like that done – a real paint job, base to sheen, not just a touch-up – and it didn't turn out the way he expected it to, he'd just deal with it.  It's not…

It’s simply not in him to complain is all.

To his left, Nickel's legs swing back and forth, hanging off the edge of the bench; in her lap is the lunch she just bought – a small container of softened energon, half-eaten already.  Without turning, Kaon reaches across to dip a digit in the stuff and then sticks the coated finger in his mouth.

Miraculously, Nickel doesn't react adversely to the otherwise serious affront.

"No."  Kaon finally answers, the word coming out muffled; he waits until he's finished cleaning the energon off his finger and out of where it oozed into a joint before speaking again.  "I haven't.  Why?"  He snorts. "Looking for some pointers?" He goes for another scoop, but Nickel smacks his hand before it can further devastate what remains of her food.

"Ha! No."  Nickel chortles, shooing away the intrusive servo. "I've got it all figured out, thanks."

With more patience – by a margin – at his private disposal than the entire Division has combined, Kaon placidly watches the minibot grab a heaping spoonful of energon.  "Nice – that makes one of us.  Why'd you ask, then?"  He counters. As soon as the delicately-balanced spoon lifts away from the container – its attendant sufficiently distracted – he immediately goes in for his second serving.

Nickel's far less permissive this time; the clever act of thievery awards Kaon a miffed – but brilliantly impotent – growl.

Grinning, Kaon swiftly drags the goopy digit into his mouth, spilling only a single errant drop onto his knee during the hasty transfer.

Success never tasted so good.

Luckily for the rest of Kaon's afternoon, the crime wasn’t a severe one, as Nickel's mood is unmarred in its wake.  Lips smacking, she carries on, pondering out loud the way she typically does when they go out for meals – well, 'meal' is more accurate, as Kaon seldom buys his own – on the run like this:

"Just curious, more than anything..."

More smacking.  This time Kaon's own smacking joins hers in a disgusting duet – after all, there's no reason for the bit on his knee to go to waste...

"I was thinking about it the other day,” Nickel continues, “and it seems like you'd have to put a lot more into knowing a person – as in all the parts that other people can just see and immediately internalize, I mean – and that if you lost that person, it'd be...  I don't know...”  She lets the sentence hang and shovels another spoonful into her mouth, then talks through it.  “It'd be harder somehow.  It’s tough to explain.  D’you know what I mean?"

Baffled, Kaon stays silent for a moment and lets the comment soak.  In the intervening klicks, a couple mechs walk by on the sidewalk, inches away from his face; once they’ve passed, he follows them without needing to turn and look in their direction.  Two speedsters; talking about work, and money.  Between them, they’re hanging on to each other by a finger.

It looks very casual. On the outside.

It’s not wrong, what Nickel’s saying, but it’s not right either; when Kaon thinks about it, he does have to work hard to get to know people, he’s just not convinced it’s necessarily any harder than anyone else does. It’s just different.  Whether the individuals involved can see each other or not, there’s always a whole mess of noise – of one description or another – in the way regardless.  And if he’s honest with himself, sometimes it’s an outright boon to not know which way someone’s optics are focused when you’re speaking to them, or to not have to see subtle shifts in facial expression during difficult conversations.

It definitely makes some things easier...

But, admittedly, it does make a whole slew of other things that much harder.  It requires more trust on his part, above all else, and more time – so, so much more time.  And being as the former isn't something he's in the business of widely handing out and the latter isn't something people as a rule seem particularly eager to give nowadays, the whole situation leaves Kaon sitting firmly between a rock and hard place.

Fortunately, his predicament's forced him, over the years, to develop other means by which to overcome those challenges – to exercise other muscles that not only serve him in his work, but that also help him seek out the connections he craves in his personal life:

Observation – ironically – and what he likes to think is a sound and surely by now well-practiced ability to judge a mech's character by their words and actions.

Time is still an issue with that approach, but the overall results are much better.  

Usually, that is...

When he's right.  And when he's wrong, well...

Sometimes it doesn't matter what you can or can't see, inside or out – some people hide things deep. It might be Kaon's job to dig those things out, but even specialists get the gift of failure every now again.

"I've never experienced loss," Kaon eventually responds, long after the speedster couple's melted back into the crowd, "not like that, anyway.  So I can't say if it's harder or not."  He leans back and turns his helm in Nickel's direction; not unlike his own pet might watch him under similar circumstances, he watches her finish all but the last spoonful of energon from her lunch.  Fixating on it, he motions to the nearly-empty container in her lap.  "You gonna eat that?"  He asks, hopeful.

Behind him and along the sidewalk, from the same spot whereabouts the speedsters disappeared only moments ago, a familiar figure materializes from the roiling masses:

Tarn.

Unbeknownst to Kaon who believes Nickel's turned to face him, the minibot's gaze sails right over his head, focusing instead on the approaching mech.  An odd gap ensues that almost prompts Kaon to repeat himself—

And then whatever it is Nickel sees causes her to silently offer up the rest of her meal.

"Oh, I'll be sure to let you know if it happens, though," Kaon muses blithely, snatching up the container at once, "but if I were you..."  He swipes a finger along the bottom and then brings the laden digit to his mouth.  "I wouldn't hold my breath."

[a-mole-of-iron]

Short story: “Peacekeeper’s Journals - Airborne Welfare“

In a galaxy overcome by injustice, violence, hunger, and suffering, someone eventually has to stand up and say: “Enough.“ And this story, first in a short story cycle, focuses on the people who have done exactly that - the Peacekeeper Force, and among them, Kellian Korfal Aamvek, a young Peacekeeper officer who is willing to put his well-being and even life on the line to make the world a better place.

Read on, and you will see: Kindness and solidarity. Triumph in the face of adversity. Feeding the hungry, defending the powerless, and flying a variety of aircraft like a total madman. All this, and more - in Peacekeeper's Journals.

Genre: military sci-fi sentimental novel (well, short story). Content warning: absurdly miserable Charles Dickens-level poverty, momentary reference to abusive childhood, and lots of general sadness... but also plenty of fist-pumping adrenaline-fueled action.

***

"If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter, and therefore, unsafe."

- Military/aviation proverb

Hardcore electro-industrial rock thundered in Kellian's pilot headphones as he all but scraped the surface of a dried-out water canal with the underbelly and landing gear of a helicopter that he stole. He called out through the helicopter's intercom, yelling "Hey, everyone alright there in the back?" as the coaxial rotors swooshed right past an overhead monorail line - the passengers just answering with incoherent screams as they held on for dear life. Rapidly climbing to avoid a collision with an overpass coming up in front, he made a dangerously sharp turn around a dilapidated tower block to try and shake the pursuers. The day didn't look particularly good so far, but he could still turn it around if he got to friendly territory safely. Luckily, right now he was in the pilot's seat - a fact that'd allow him to take on an entire battalion and get away safely. This wasn't the first time he made a stunningly successful, nail-biting aerial escape - and it definitely wouldn't be the last.

***

This particular instance of Kellian's "badly-calculated risk-taking for the sake of the downtrodden", as he always called it when explaining his actions to High Command, began on the preceding morning. Then, he had no idea what was to come; he was on simple convoy guard duty, riding in the back of a truck to protect important supplies. His ears and tail breezed in the oncoming gentle wind, oxygen mask and pilot headphones hanging loosely alongside other gear, as always, and trench coat buttoned up in the spring chill. The run-down city he and the other Peacekeepers were in has definitely seen better days; after the once-powerful Starfarer Hegemony collapsed, it was sadly a common condition for its former worlds and peoples. Kel looked from the truck as the convoy approached the more populated area; regrettably, the place, like the entire city, really was a sorry sight. The street they were going through was in a state of dire disrepair, with garbage and rubble lining the streets, cracked wall paint and stucco and pothole-strewn pavement, dirty windows, rusted fences, vehicle wrecks that have been stripped of all that could be useful. A few people looked out to them with a mix of curiosity and fear: some children who were playing in the rubble with rusty tin cans and tattered pieces of red and blue cloth, trash collectors and scavengers who picked through things the - in massive quotes - "better-off" people threw away. Kellian understood the plight of those people, to the fullest extent he was able to. Being mistreated and then abandoned was familiar to him - and really hoped he and the Peacekeepers could bring something good to this planet's society.

As he looked up for a moment into the patchily-clouded sky, trying to find solace in it, Kel was told over the radio that the convoy was rolling in towards its destination. The head vehicle driver thanked the convoy defenders, as the trucks slowed to a stop; halting in such a manner that Kel noticed a few scavengers and beggars in a small courtyard off to the side, arguing over something. With the trucks held up at the gates of the local district hall, he hopped off his vehicle, and walked over to the scavengers. They were all different - different heights, different sexes, different ages - and yet the same, all wearing equally patched-over clothing, and all looking just as sad and downtrodden as one another. They noticed him, and reacted with fear.

"Wh-what do you want?" one asked, stammering. "Are you from t-the Iron Authority?"

"No, not at all." Kellian replied in a soft, nonthreatening tone. "I'm from the Peacekeeper Force, and I'm here to help."

"The... the Peacekeepers? Why?" another one of the scavengers asked, hiding their eyes from Kellian's sight. "Why are you here? Why so many soldiers?"

"The soldiers are here to protect you and the supplies we brought for you." Kellian said firmly. "We aren't here to conquer, we are here to help you build."

"Do... do you mean these are supplies? F-for us?" another scavenger asked from the back of the group.

"Yeah." Kellian responded. "Your community deserves help, and since no-one else will provide... we are here."

"Do you just give help to anyone who asks?" the person from the back asked. "I... I really need food for my family now..." He paused for a second, then continued. "We couldn't meet our quota because my friend here was sick, and now the Authority will barely pay us for our salvage..." he said, almost sobbing as he stepped forwards. "My family has two kids to feed and care for... what am I going to tell them all...?"

"Hey, I understand you. Please don't despair." Kellian said. "Helping people in need is second nature to me." He gently put his hand on the scavenger's shoulder, and reached into his flight suit's pocket, pulling out a sizeable Peacekeeper field ration. He handed it to the scavenger, and said: "Here, please take this. We'll be giving out a convoy's worth of food to everyone in a couple of hours, but I know all too well how it is to see hunger in someone's eyes."

"I... how can I thank you?" the scavenger asked. "You're so kind..."

"You can thank me by showing up to the... hmm. How's it called?" - here, Kellian paused for a moment - "...ah, right, leadership gathering, I think. Is that right?" he asked.

"A gathering?" the third person from among the group asked. "We haven't had one in years... are you really just going to hand out food, no questions asked?"

"More than just food." Kellian said, pointing to the convoy with open arms. "We brought tech resources, medical supplies, help for your teachers and librarians, means of defense. And above all... we tried to bring hope. Just hold out for a bit longer. Things are about to look up for your city, believe me."

"Tech... medkits... our doctors, our teachers... are we really going to get so much help? I just don't... it's so unbelievable! How can it be true?" one person in the group asked in astonishment.

"Well... you'd better get used to things going well for a change." Kellian told the group with a sad smile. "I and my comrades-in-arms will lay down our lives to protect you, but I hope the situation won't demand that level of sacrifice."

The group murmured among themselves, talking about the Peacekeepers' reputation; Kellian figured they may have heard good things, but not enough to convince them the Peacekeepers were worth trusting. He thought for a moment, then raised his hand a bit and addressed the group.

"Hey, I know how it looks." he said. "We might just look like another convoy of soldiers rolling into town. But we'll do our absolute best to be better than that." He paused for a second. "My CO, comrade Tak’Lar, will gladly make our case, but you've got to trust her. Trust the good things you may have heard about us."

"Okay, okay." one of the group replied. "I... we did hear good things about the Peacekeepers. But there's not much room for hope out here..."

"Well, do you want to do a favor to your community?" Kellian asked. "Then go and tell others that the Peacekeepers arrived with supplies for you, that there will be a leadership gathering, and that we mean no harm. Letting people know is the only way we'll be able to actually distribute what we brought."

"Well, alright..." one of the scavengers replied.

"Don't worry, things will be better soon." Kellian told the group. "We're not going to leave you alone and adrift."

"Thank you." the scavenger told Kellian. "Peacekeepers or not, we didn't hope any help would ever--"

"Let me stop you right there." Kellian told him. "You're just as worthy of help as the rest of the galaxy. And we will get help to everyone, one step at a time."

***

Later in the day, a little past lunchtime, the district hall and the plaza outside have gathered a fair few listeners. The diverse crowd was only united by one thing: there were people of all sorts of ages, sexes, genders, and societal roles, from several different species - all of them equally impoverished, and faintly hoping the Peacekeepers really would change something for the better.

They were talking among themselves, with a mix of apprehension and expectation in the air; by then, the news of the Peacekeeper arrival had spread across the district and beyond, and all who trusted them have shown up to hear what they have to say. A Peacekeeper officer - Kellian's CO - took to the central stage, and laid out the interstellar aid program.

"My comrades." she told the crowd, "My name is Ervek-Vaa Tak’Lar, and I am a Peacekeeper. We are here now, and we are going to try and make sure it means something for you. A convoy of supplies arrived today, the first of many; there is enough food for all of you, and it will last you at least three local weeks, with three good meals a day for everyone, if you pool it with what you have. And by then, we'll have many more convoys coming in!"

The crowd cheered, and Ervek-Vaa continued. "I asked your council to unload the trucks, and as soon as the speech ends, you can go and get rations in the parking lot. But that's not everything." she said. "We brought medicine for you, as well!" she told the crowd. "Right now, it's not much yet, just basic supplies, but I've been told many districts in your city barely have any left. Please, think of this as something you all deserve." she said, giving an encouraging smile to her listeners. "Everyone in this galaxy and beyond deserves a good standard of medical help whenever they need it, and we will do our absolute best to help you with that. We consider it our duty."

The people cheered again, but then one person in the back held out her hand. "Yes, what is it?" Ervek-Vaa asked, pointing her arm out at her.

"Yes, sorry..." the woman in ragged clothes asked. "My name is Heva Rii... I'm a teacher, or at least, I was a teacher..." She looked down at her feet, then continued. "Is it... really true that you brought something for teachers as well?"

"Yes, it's true." Ervek-Vaa told her. "Some textbooks in appropriate languages, and school supplies... we'll be able to supply you to repair the school building, as well. It's not much, but this is just the first convoy. There will be more - I will give all I can to make sure that happens."

The crowd cheered once again, rumbling with hope - a feeling that had been all but lost to them. Kellian was simply standing by a side door, hands in pockets, looking out into the crowd as he wondered what would be his next assignment on this mission. Suddenly, though, he saw two people approach him: a young kid, and the scavenger to whom he gave the food ration earlier today. The scavenger pointed his hand towards Kellian, and the kid walked up to him.

"Hey there." Kellian said.

"Hey..." the kid said. "You're the Peacekeeper, right?"

"I am a Peacekeeper, but yeah." Kellian said. "What can I do for you?"

"I... uh, my dad told me about you today..." the kid said. "People say bad stuff about myskans, but you don't look bad!"

"Heh, thanks." Kellian said. "My name's Kellian, but you can call me Kel. This goes to you as well, comrade." he said, nodding to the kid's father. "What is your name?" he asked the kid.

"I'm... I'm Exi." the kid said. "And my dad, his name is Cayan."

"Pleased to meet you two." Kellian said. He looked at the kid and his father - two frail figures, the father a bit shorter than him, wearing tattered clothing over their sand-yellow scales, their four-eyed expressions burdened with their hunger and sadness. "Is there anything you want?" he asked, struggling with his emotions as he saw just how bereft of happiness Cayan and Exi were. "Maybe I could... help somehow?"

"N-no, we... I..." Exi stammered, "We just hoped we could get food from the convoy, really..." He looked at Kellian, swallowing a lump in his throat. "My dad, he wanted to ask you about something, but I wondered, maybe you'd want to go to our place? Our family wanted to thank you, and if you need a place to stay..."

Kellian looked at the two, giving them a weak smile. "Don't worry, Exi, the Peacekeepers will provide me with a place to stay. But if you wanted me to, I could perhaps come along. Maybe. I'll just have to clear it with the command, but I think they'll understand." he said. "Now what was it that you wanted to ask, comrade?" he asked, turning to Exi's father.

Cayan looked towards Kellian, and mumbled: "I, well, I'm just worried for my brother today. He hasn't come back from a trading errand, and I just figured I'd ask you to come with us, so that our family can tell you what we know. I'm sorry if it's not your business, but..."

Kellian's ears perked up as he listened to Cayan. His brows furrowed, and he nodded to the two. "This sounds like something I should look into, definitely." he said. "I'm rank-and-file, but I think I can get it cleared. Where do you live?"

"We live here, in an old housing block..." Exi said. "It's down the street, at the Mirua Plaza."

After Exi told him where their family lived, Kellian raised his index finger to one side of his headphones, and pressed a communications button on it. "Command, this is Lantern 1-4, got two civvies from Mirua Plaza here with a possible missing person. I'm worried for them. Clear to investigate, over?" he asked. "Copy that, command, thank you. Lantern 1-4 out." He lowered his hand from the headphone, and told Cayan and Exi: "Alright, I'm clear. I can come with you; I'll look at your info and see if I can find your relative."

***

Having taken their alottment of food from the convoy trucks, Cayan and Exi went back to the building where they lived, with Kellian helping them carry the supplies. They went to Mirua Plaza, with its chipped, rusted rocketship statue and piles of salvaged junk around it. Kellian sighed as they went up several flights of stairs, with the stairwell's broken windows, writing in local scripts daubed over the walls, and garbage strewn around all along the path upwards. On the seventh floor, Cayan knocked on one of the doors, and the female voice from the other side asked: "Who's there?"

"Seena, it's me and Exi." Cayan said. "We have the supplies! And we have a guest with us, too!"

"R-really?" Seena asked from the other side. "That's amazing! Come on in!"

The door opened, and Seena invited Kellian in after Cayan and Exi carried in the food packs. She was a bit older than Exi, his teenage sister by the looks of it. "You're the Peacekeeper my father talked about, right?" she asked. "Welcome to our home... it's not much, but we try to..." she mumbled as Kellian walked in, her speech trailing off into silence as she turned her four eyes down towards the floor.

"Don't worry." Kellian said. "It's not your fault that your home might not be the best." He gave a reserved smile, adding: "We myskans judge people by their character, not by how rich they are."

After giving Seena a reassuring nod, Kellian looked around. The hab unit was still dingy and run-down, but definitely better than the outside world. The glass windows were all in place, dirty as they were, and the family's worldly belongings were either carefully stacked, or placed in the run-down cabinets, their paint peeling and wooden structure covered with dirt and soot. The weathered coat rack held all of the family's clothing, patched and ragged as one would expect on a world like this. A soot-stained, tattered curtain closed off most of the view to another room through a doorway, a few sheets of tin standing nearby - presumably to make a new door when that'd be possible. Kellian could see another member of the family resting in bed in that other room, a few more beds in the room he was in, and directly in the center of his view from the hab unit's door, a middle-aged woman keeping the fire in a scrappy, makeshift stove with her Thermodynamic set of psionic powers - the stove's chimney going out the window through a foam-insulated sheet of metal. Exi looked at Kellian, pulling on his sleeve, and asked: "I... I know it's not much, but what do you think, mister?"

"It's okay, Exi." Kellian said. "I know you're living a difficult life, and for that kind of life, your home is good. You're taking good care of it. Believe me, I wouldn't mind staying."

"Really?! Do you... do you really think that?", Exi asked Kellian with a few quiet sobs.

"Yeah, I do." Kellian said, patting Exi on his shoulder. "Please, don't cry. Things will get better now that the Peacekeepers are here."

"Yeah..." Exi mumbled, giving another quiet sob. "Thank you..."

"Shh, hey, it's alright." Kellian told him. "I know how it feels to be desperate. Your family is strong. You'll pull through, I promise."

Silence hung over the room for a moment, before the woman near the stove walked over to Kellian and embraced Exi. "Hello there..." she said, giving Kellian a glance over Exi's shoulder with a sad, ashamed look, recognizing how dismal the conditions must have looked to Kel.

"Hello. My name's comrade Kellian, but you can call me Kel." the myskan said. "What's your name?"

"Lemmta." the woman told him.

"Alright." Kellian said as Exi left her arms and went off to the next room.

Lemmta turned to Kellian with a more hopeful look. She raised her hand a little, and said: "Kellian... I'll be honest, I don't know what to make of you being here. I'd be afraid of any people with weapons showing up, but you brought more food than we've seen in the last month, Cayan trusts you, and you treat my son so well... you really do seem like a peacekeeper."

"Trust me, I'm not going to harm your family, and I'll do my best to protect your city." Kellian said. "I know it might be hard to believe, but we'll do everything we can to earn your trust."

"You've done a lot to do that." Lemmta said. "I've heard much worse about myskans, but you're so kind and helpful..."

Kellian looked at Lemmta and said: "Believe me, the bad things you'd normally hear about myskans are just lies. Many of us try our best to be kind and decent - just like your family."

"Thank you, Kellian..." Lemmta told him.

"Trust me, I'm not the only myskan who helps the Peacekeepers deliver food to the poor." Kellian said, reaching out for a handshake.

Lemmta reached back to Kellian, shaking his hand weakly. "Thank you." she said in a soft voice. "We didn't didn't expect any help, definitely not now..."

Kellian just looked at her with sadness in his eyes, and said: "I understand. My own father yelled at me and hit me any time I didn't follow his orders to the letter. And I felt like I couldn't expect anything to get better... even when I hit back with my psionics and the coward ran away from me and my mom. But trust me, things can get better. You just have to be ready when they do." He turned his eyes away, staying still for a moment. "Sorry, I don't want to bring you down even more." he told her. "I just want to say, I know how it feels to be in a bad place." Turning around, he tried to smile for Lemmta and Cayan, despite his sad feelings. "Okay." he said with a sigh. "Cayan... what can you tell me about your brother? Where'd he go, and when was he supposed to come back?"

"Well..." Cayan said, looking down to the floor, "His name is Merhal. He was supposed to go to another city district to trade some electronic scrap for fuel. We were expecting him back by lunchtime, but the other district is near Authority patrol routes... and now I fear..."

"Please, Cayan, don't worry." Kellian said. "I will personally go there, and search for your brother. If he's been injured or captured, I will bring him back alive. I've done things like that hundreds of times before. And believe me - I'm sure he's alive. I'm sure I'll be able to rescue him."

"Thank you." Cayan told Kellian. "I barely know the Peacekeepers, I only know you for a day - but you're so kind, so willing to help..."

"Don't worry about it." Kellian told him. "It's literally my job to help people like you. There's a reason I am a Peacekeeper." Kellian nodded politely to the family, and took one step back. "I'm going to leave now, but trust me, I will be back." he said. "And your brother will be with me, Cayan, safe and sound." With that, Kellian walked out the door, glancing back for a moment with a hopeful smile to reassure the family he was helping, and walked back down the stairs.

***

Within the hour, Kellian reached the other city district to investigate. He climbed out of a Peacekeeper scout car, nodding to the driver to head back to base, and looked around. Before him was a small city square with a rusted hovercar wreck off to one side and a waterless, dusty fountain in the center, the buildings around the square showing nothing but cracked walls and broken windows. There wasn't even any large-scale vegetation to speak of - just some grey-green weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement. The quiet wind blew around trash and scraps of paper, with no-one to be seen nearby. It all looked sad enough, but Kellian was, sadly, kind of used to it all. He looked downstreet, and saw a kind of life sign: a tattered golden-white-and-teal banner with writing in local script on it, possibly indicating some sort of place where people could be found. Figuring he could start there, Kellian set off down the street, keeping his eye out for anything that could be important to finding Merhal.

Gently knocking on the door, rusted around its frame and boarded up with plywood where a big glass pane once was, Kellian walked into the place under the tattered banner. It looked like a store, or an establishment similar enough to one. The shelves were loaded with salvaged items and resources - the shop owners were doing their best, it seemed. Still, the environment itself was dingy and run-down, with light having trouble getting in through the dirty windows and rust and grime being prevalent across the furniture and store shelves.

At the counter, Kellian saw the storekeeper clerk writing something on a piece of polypaper... but they stopped right as they noticed him entering, looking at him and immediately trying to hide behind the counter, even though it barely concealed them.

"W-what do you need? Who are you?" the clerk stammered.

"Please, don't be afraid." Kellian said, raising his hands to show he wasn't armed. "I'm not here to hurt you. I am a friend, comrade. A friend."

"But aren't you from the--" they asked.

"No, I am not from the Iron Authority." Kellian interrupted. "I am a Peacekeeper. I will not hurt you, I just want to ask you about a missing person."

"The Peacekeepers? I barely ever heard about the Peacekeepers..." the clerk said. "I heard you help people, but..."

"Look, let me be clear." Kellian frowned. "I see you're afraid of the Iron Authority. But if you help me now, you'll help to get it out of your city and off your planet, and they'll never know it. Our goals are no secret; the Authority can go die in a crossfire, as far as we think."

The clerk peeked out a little more from behind the counter, their face showing an expression of fear and misery just like those of many other people Kellian saw so far. They tugged at their ragged scarf, and asked: "I... see. What do you need to know? I don't really know much..."

"Like I told you, I'm looking for a missing person." Kellian said."He's a little shorter than I am, he's got yellow scales, and his name is Merhal. He was in the district before lunch, to trade some electronic scrap for stove fuel. Have you seen him?"

The clerk's expression once again became gripped with fear, and they tried to hide behind the counter again. "I, sorry, I can't--" they stammered, "Sorry, I can't tell... I don't..."

"The Iron Authority have taken him hostage, haven't they?" Kellian asked, instantly realizing what has happened.

"I... sorry, I'm just, I..." the clerk told Kellian, trying their best to get the words out.

"Hey, hey. Be calm." Kellian said. "I won't ever tell anyone you informed me. And I really need to know what happened. I implore you, tell me; Merhal's life may depend on it."

The clerk kept hiding behind the register, Kellian looking at them with pleading eyes. After a few moments, the clerk looked back towards him, and reached out towards the myskan with their hand.

"Okay... I think..." the clerk mumbled, "I, well, if you can save Merhal, I..."

"I'm sure I can." Kellian said. "Please, tell me where he went."

"Merhal... he was here, but then the Authority troopers stormed in and took him, and others too..." the clerk stammered.

"Others? There were other people here?" Kellian asked.

"Yes... seven people in all... the Authority troopers dragged them all away..." the clerk said, shuddering in fear.

"Then I will save all seven." Kellian said. "Don't worry, I will bring them all back safely."

Kellian raised his index finger to his headphone, pressing its comms button, and said: "Command, this is Lantern 1-4. I've been informed that seven people have been taken hostage by the Iron Authority. I will attempt a recon mission and report back, over." After a brief pause, he said: "Negative, Command, I will not attempt a rescue on my own unless absolutely necessary, over." Another pause, and he responded with "Affirmative, Command, I am going now. Affirmative, will keep you posted. Lantern 1-4 out." He turned to the clerk, and said: "It's better for you to lay low. Try to avoid the patrols; the Iron Authority isn't going to exist for much longer, in all likelihood. Just hold out, and things will be much, much better."

"Okay... I will try..." the clerk said.

"Please, just take care of yourself, okay?" Kellian asked. "That's all anyone can ask of you. The Peacekeepers will be helping the city as much as they can from now on." He nodded politely, and walked out of the salvage store.

***

On the approach to the Iron Authority outpost in the district, Kellian opted to tread carefully, making quiet steps and checking the corners before rounding them. A bit away from the needed place, he decided it'd be wise to take a view of the location; thankfully, the outpost was surrounded by buildings, and Kel knew how to exploit that. He made his way to a nearby fire escape, and hopped up to ascend the ladder, finding himself on a desolate rooftop. The city panorama he saw around him was as damaged by neglect and decay as the street-level view; a sorry sight of crumbling walls and broken windows.

Looking towards the outpost, he noticed a helicopter readying for takeoff on the far side of it, and took out a small set of binoculars to look it over. What he saw was instantly alarming: a group of Iron Authority's jackbooted thugs ordering seven handcuffed civilians to board the helicopter, waving around shock batons and blaster rifles. One of the civilians was obviously Merhal, with yellow scales and four eyes, and Kellian decided - he had no choice but to act. He raised his hand and pressed his headphone button, saying: "Command, this is Lantern 1-4. It's absolutely necessary. Lantern 1-4 out."

Making a running start, Kellian ran across the rooftops, leaping between them and then silently jumping down into the outpost grounds. Landing with myskan agility, he quietly made his way to the landing area, seeing the civilians get pushed onboard, followed by an armed guard, followed by the pilot starting the engines. As the helicopter's coaxial rotors started turning, Kellian readied himself to rush his target. He peeked out from behind the crates, seeing the helicopter and the guards around it; most weren't even looking in its direction, with just the guard onboard of the vehicle itself posing an immediate threat.

As the helicopter's rotors revved up, Kel raised up his hand, and focused the force of his mind on the helicopter guard. Before he could close the door, the guard was pulled from the helicopter by Kel's gravitic powers and flew off, barreling into several other guards who were keeping watch. Using the sudden confusion, Kel leapt towards the helicopter, reaching it in several bounds, opened the front door, and threw the pilot from the cockpit. The other guards tried to open fire on him, but before they could do anything, Kellian reached out with his hand again - and with his mental effort, the guards were thrown back, crashing into the nearby walls and crate stacks. Getting into the seat, he rapidly slammed the thrust lever to the maximum degree he could; the craft rapidly took off, with several bolts of blaster fire ricocheting off the hull.

"Alright, everyone, don't panic!" Kellian yelled into the helicopter's intercom speaker.

"Who is this?! W-what are you doing?!" one of the passengers asked in fear.

"This is your rescue, comrade!" Kellian responded. "Close that door, we're getting out of here!"

"B-but how-- why?!" another passenger asked.

"I'm a Peacekeeper, and we're not leaving you behind!" Kellian responded, rifle blaster bolts passing by the cockpit windows as the helicopter lifted far out of their range, towards safety. Kel pressed his headphone button, and called out: "Command, this is Lantern 1-4! I am coming in with the rescued civilians via airlift! Yes I stole the helicopter! No, it was the only possible tactical option! Affirmative, Command, I will write a full report! Just get ready for us. Lantern 1-4 out!"

***

Kellian turned to the intercom as soon as the helicopter made it out to the safe distance from the outpost. As it flew over the desolate city, he punched on the intercom.

"Hey, I have a question for you all. Why were you taken hostage?" he asked.

"We don't really know..." one of the civilians replied. "My gods, is this all really happening...?!"

"Believe me, this is real." Kellian said softly. "And you're safe now. I'm one of the best pilots in the sector... though I'm sure some of my comrades-in-arms would disagree." He paused for a moment, before asking: "So, you don't know why did the Iron Authority try to capture you?"

"No, not really..." another person told Kellian. "I overheard something about ransom..."

"Oh, that might explain it..." Kellian said. "The Peacekeepers brought in supplies today, and... maybe they wanted to ransom you for those. Honestly, seems like the Iron Authority... from what I've heard in the mission briefings, they're just insufferable--"

Suddenly, Kellian's insult-to-be was cut off by the helicopter's proximity alarm. He looked at the radar display, and noticed several small radar signatures approaching their location. "Figures... I knew they wouldn't let us escape that easily..." he muttered. Glancing over the instruments, he figured what he could do with the particular helicopter he had. To his glee, it was a highly maneuverable, aerobatics-certified model... just the thing that he needed. He turned to the intercom again, punching it on. "Okay, everyone, change of plans!" he told the passengers. "Hold onto your seats as best as you can! We have choppers incoming, probably unmanned, so I'm going to try and shake them! We just have a few clicks to fly further, and then we'll be safe!"

Kellian reached out to the control panel and flicked a few switches, disabling the helicopter's piloting assists. After that, he enabled the back view camera, giving him a picture of what was going on behind the helicopter. He saw a few small dots approaching from about 4 o'clock, and figured from the radar he had about a minute before they were in the attack range. He looked down through the bubble canopy of the pilot compartment, evaluating the landscape: a decayed urban sprawl with a couple of towerblocks, a water canal going roughly in the needed direction, and some public squares and roads he could fly through if need be. He reached down to a pocket on his pilot suit, fishing out the Flashbang - his personal music player that was plugged in via the suit's custom comms wiring. "Fine, you gunheads." he muttered to himself. "You want to dance? Let's dance." as he pressed the "Play" button on the Flashbang.

In an instant, Kellian pulled the helicopter into an aggressive dive at the same moment that one of his favourite songs started playing over his headphones. The pulse-pounding electro-industrial track was a perfect backdrop, Kellian's sight focusing as he plotted the flight route through the city. He leveled the helicopter out a little above the city rooftops, weaving and dodging between tower blocks as the pursuing helicopters opened fire on him. Angling the rotors, Kel ascended rapidly, then did a 360-degree turn around the vertical axis, briefly seeing the unmanned craft of his opponents before losing some altitude and spinning directly into the canals. He punched on the intercom, saying "Okay, you just hold on, comrades!"

"What in the fire lakes of the underworld?!" one of the passengers yelled back. "Are you completely nuts?!"

"Don't worry, I've got it in my claws!" Kellian yelled. "We're going to get out alive, unharmed, and only a bit rattled!" He turned off the intercom again, and directed his helicopter to speed along the surface of the dried-out canal.

Taking care to dodge several oncoming bridges with half-decent margin for error and banking the helicopter around piers and water outflow pipes, he made his way towards the city outskirts in a jagged line as fast as he could, enemy helicopters firing at him but missing by a long shot - whether they were AI or RC, Kellian's erratic piloting was too much for their operators' targeting skills. Looking at the navigator screen, Kel noticed he was coming up on a damaged section of the canals... and, suddenly for him, his pursuers started hitting the water and canal banks closer to his chopper, a quick look at the radar and back view screens informing him that they're trying to play his game now, chasing after his helicopter around the obstacles. "Oh, now you're playing by my rules..." Kellian mused with a wicked grin.

His electro-industrial playlist thundering in his headphones, Kel all but scraped the surface of the canal with the underbelly and landing gear of his chopper, punching the intercom on and yelling: "Hey, everyone alright there in the back?" as the rotors of the helicopter swooshed past the monorail line overhead. The passengers just screamed incoherently in response as they held on for dear life, Kellian pulling into a rapid climb to avoid an overpass in front and making a sharp turn around a dilapidated tower block. Trying to shake his pursuers, he descended to the rooftop level again, doing several rapid dashes against the sound of creaking metal and blaring proximity alarms. He noticed the industrial area on the horizon, approaching rapidly... and quickly realized the Peacekeeper base at a small spaceport was right on the other side of it. Kellian smiled - this was exactly what he needed right now. He put the engine power to maximum, and sped off towards the industrial zone with its smokestacks, pipelines, and fractionating columns.

On the approach to the decrepit industrial sector, Kellian glanced over the helicopter's instruments again, and then turned his eyes back to the landscape in front of him, comparing the radar map to what he saw in front of him. The oncoming landscape of tall buildings presented a perfect opportunity to him - sure, it was deadly dangerous for an unskilled pilot, but Kellian was anything except unskilled. He took the helicopter into a broad sweep leftwards, and flew it directly into the fray, weaving around the industrial structures. Noticing a canyon-like stretch of road between tall multi-floor warehouses, he dove right into it, with barely the required three-metre safe distance between the rotors and the building walls flanking the street - and to his satisfaction, the enemy choppers followed right after him. As the music track playing over his headphones hit its crescendo, Kellian sped towards a building complex at the end of the street... then, right before a lesser-skilled pilot would crash, pitched the nose of the chopper straight up and did a fighter-style J-turn; the screeching of the chopper's metal almost louder than the screams of the passengers, who were by all definitions not prepared for that sort of aerial escape.

"Ha! Got one!" Kellian grinned, as he heard one of the pursuing helicopters spin out of control and crash as it tried to follow after him. Reorienting the helicopter with another spin, he turned towards the Peacekeeper spaceport base - it was almost within reach now.

Pitching forwards and resuming his flight towards the spaceport, Kellian glanced at the backwards view display again. The second enemy helicopter was still in pursuit, but fortunately, Kellian knew exactly what he could do; a small forest of fractionating columns was coming up in front, the chemical plant they belonged to long since shut down and inoperable. Dodging enemy fire, Kel lured the remaining helicopter right after him, aiming for the space between two tallest columns. "Alright everyone, hang on!" he yelled over the intercom. "We're doing an aileron roll!" With that, Kellian banked the helicopter sideways, and squeezed it between the fractionating columns, the rotor axis pointing sideways and the landing gear whooshing a metre past one of the structures - Kellian giving all the extra safe distance to the rotors that he could. The helicopter turned upside down, and then back the right way, as Kellian heard another explosion behind him: the topmost portion of the right column got torn off, with plumes of fire and smoke rising from it.

For a few moments, relative silence hung over the helicopter's interior. With a satisfied smile, Kel breathed out slowly, and pressed "pause" on the Flashbang. Slowing the helicopter down, he punched on the intercom again.

"Hey... sorry for the rollercoaster ride. Hope no-one's injured?" he asked.

"Oh... you... you gods-damned... complete, utter, lunatic!" one of the passengers yelled. "Never, ever fly me anywhere, ever again!"

"You scared me worse than Iron Authority ever did, you madman!" another one added.

"Alright, alright, no need to yell at me..." Kellian said. "I know my piloting is far from cautious, but we got away safely, right? We're three minutes away from the Peacekeeper base now. And you're all safe. Just keep it together."

"Easy for you to say!" one of the passengers retorted. "I still can't believe we made it out alive!"

"Feh, I do these kinds of flights every week, and not once have I let anyone die from it..." Kellian muttered.

"Every week?! Oh gods..." a passenger mumbled in despair.

Kellian just sighed, and flipped over to the Peacekeeper comms channel. "FOB Restorer, come in, this is Lantern 1-4 speaking. I'm coming in for landing, be ready to accept rescued people. Yes, actually... have the medics on hand, just in case. No, it's not just because of what I just did piloting this bucket of bolts! Yes. Yes. No, I didn't! Yes, acknowledged. Lantern 1-4 out."

With that, Kellian made the last short distance to the spaceport - seeing the Peacekeeper spaceships on the decrepit landing field and temporary base structures placed in a few locations nearby. Noticing a good place to land, he slowed to a hover, then dialed down the engines and touched down. As soon as the helicopter landed, Kellian saw the Peacekeeper medics rushing over... and the fire crew standing a little further off in the distance. Grumbling under his breath about the horrendous lack of trust, he got out of the cockpit and looked on as the medics and Peacekeeper officers got people off of it, some visibly shuddering but others looking somewhat better.

A Peacekeeper officer walked up to Kellian, and asked:

"Comrade Aamvek, if I'm not mistaken?"

"Yes..." Kellian replied, feeling he's not going to get away with yet another rash aerial escape that easily.

"Let's say, I hope you've got some time to spare, comrade." the officer replied. "Because you'll definitely have to do some explaining."

***

One very, very long explanation full of self-justifications and half-hearted responses later, Kellian found himself face-to-face with the people he saved. He looked at them with an awkward, shy smile, the group now feeling better but still visibly apprehensive.

"Hey... sorry for rattling your nerves back there..." Kellian said. "I know there's a reason why people complain about my piloting, but if it can save someone, I'm not going to hold it back."

The group looked at Kellian awkwardly, before one of them, a tall slender amphibian with a long forward nose and jaw and teal scales, dressed in a ragged woolen coat that was patched over many times, held out their hand. "It's alright." he said. "You saved us from imprisonment, probably even from death, myskan, even if it was scary. Thank you."

"Don't worry about it." Kellian said. "I'm a Peacekeeper, it's literally my job description. But... thinking on all that happened today... there's one thing I've got to tell you."

"What is it that you have?" another person asked.

"That you are the ones with the greatest task." Kellian told the group. "The Peacekeepers can give you the resources you need to rebuild, so that you no longer have to fend for yourselves. And we can protect your rebuilding efforts from anyone who'd want to rob you. But the rebuilding itself? That's up to you."

"Those are wise words, myskan." the amphibian rescuee said. "We will do our best. Thanks to your comrades, we are not alone now."

"Yeah. Exactly." Kel said. "Now, Merhal, please come with me." he pointed at the scavenger among the group. "Your family is waiting for you to come back."

"Of course, yes!" Merhal said, going after Kellian. "...as long as you don't drive..."

"Don't worry." Kellian grinned. "We can ask one of the scout car drivers to get us to Mirua Plaza."

Merhal walked after Kellian as the two left the group, going towards the motor pool to get Merhal a ride home. But a few metres away from the rescued people, Kellian turned around, and tried to smile for them. "And... by the way." he said. "If the Peacekeeper Command won't be opposed, you can keep the helicopter. I doubt the Iron Authority would treat you any better even if you gave it back. So make it your own, and use it for good. It's got the specs to be a good cargo lifter."

***

The drive back to Mirua Plaza wasn't too long; the scout car hovered over the damaged stretches of pavement, gliding towards its destination, Kellian and Merhal in the back seat. Merhal thanked Kellian several times for rescuing him, even though he admitted that Kel's piloting was at best utterly terrifying, and nothing would change his mind about that. When they reached the plaza, Kellian got out of the car... and looked up, noticing Cayan, Exi, and others looking out the window. He waved to them, Merhal getting out of the car at the same moment, Kel pointing at him - and heard the family cheering even from up above in the building. The two quickly ran into the building and upstairs as fast as they could... and when they got to the seventh floor, running through the open door of the hab unit, the entire family ran to embrace Merhal and Kellian.

"Thank you, Kellian..." Cayan said, weeping as he hugged Merhal close. "You saved my brother... I haven't hoped you'd do so much for us... that anyone would."

"Hey, it's alright..." Kellian said. "Cry if you need to... believe me, I'd give life and limb to save Merhal and others if I had to."

"Kellian, we owe you a great debt..." Lemmta said, almost crying herself. "How could we ever repay you?" she asked him.

"You don't need to repay me anything." Kellian said, lifting his head up and smiling to the family, gentle tears forming in the corners of his eyes. "The Peacekeeper Force literally pays me a living wage to help you and others. But... even if they hadn't, I'd still do it. Other Peacekeepers would do, too." He paused for a moment, before embracing Merhal and Cayan, others joining the three for a massive hug before letting go. Kellian smiled to them again - and this time, his smile was effortless. "We all took the Oath." he told the family as they looked towards him, Exi holding onto Merhal's hand. "We'll never abandon people in need of our help. We won't abandon you, and we won't abandon any others."

[tratct]

DD And MT Is Jace Beleren Being Courteous?

DD And MT Schedule

Second Post: DD And MT Is Jace Beleren Being Courteous?

Table of Content

Prelude: Co-exist

1. The DD In My Life

2. VIP Tickets

3. Responding To Adversity

4. Facing Reality (“You Are Going Nowhere”)

5. Preservation (You Cannot Go Against All Of Them): What is the Causes? Did it happen for a reason or coincidence?

6. Constructing My First MT Deck

7. Level One “Increase Knowledge” Deck

8. The Day Of The Redemption MT (Redemption “Increase Knowledge” Deck Experience And Gameplay Biography)

9. Fans Claim

“Sege” Deck Biography And Beyond (Mainly On MTG Tournament Tip)

10. Level One “Sege” (“Increase Knowledge”) Deck Biography (Read #7 For MT Experience)

11. Level Two “Sege” Deck Biography

12. Redemption (High Level or Level 3) “Sege” Deck Biography And The Final Act (For The Fans. Redemption.  Just Once Before The Expiration Date.)

13. MT Tournament Tip (Beyond “Sege” Deck Biography)

14. MTG Note And Abbreviation

Glossary And Index

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Co-exist

Borderline.  Guideline.  Co-exist.  My “Stardragon Treasure” started when I was in middle school.  Ever since then, my trade had been the center of attention among those who was a part of the “Stardragon Treasure”.  One of the reason was because I was able to meet the demand.  The coming up post, “DD And MT Stardragon Treasure” will have full coverage on “Stardragon Treasure”.

Also, my parents who was isolated, because of the English language gap and adjusting to the USA.  I was able to provide them with English translation, because beside going to a regular public school, I had been taking extra courses such as after-school programs, Summer school programs, student-counselor programs, and etc.  Other than providing my parents with English translation, I been serving term after term at my schools such as Equipment Room Monitor, Recess Monitor, Gate Monitor, Cafeteria, and Attendant Monitor.  So, basically I had been taking charge early in my life.

At my house, I had done my share of house chores.  In the article, “Cranberry Sauce” I wrote about the house chores early in life.  Also, how it was transition into our contemporary thinking and our traditional thinking.  Example: The conflicts between them such as contemporary and dynasty (tradition).

In the articles, “Invigorous” and “Invigorous: Community And Independent”, I wrote about energy and invigoration such as the community interpretation on those topics.  Example: What it is like to hold the mile run record in my PE classes, being the first person to complete my cross-country run even with the extra distance, being called “Track Star”, and last but not least, try-out for sport’s teams.  Those articles not only focus on the things listed in the example, but there were things that we might neglected such as isolation, out-casted, and etc.

In addition, those articles covered more than the energy and invigoration, there were also Straight As and Top Classes, and the connection with honor programs.  Quoted, “The role models of our future.”  Same as above, mainly on community interpretation on those topics, but this time a more austerely argument such as harden and callus of our everyday life.  Another reason was I wanted to express my decision making during that time such as while I had straight As and top classes and at the same time was deciding on if I should enroll in the honor programs.

To sum it all up, the articles, “Invigorous” and “Invigorous: Community And Independent”, finding results from my past where there were conflicts with I am being invigorous.  Possibility of how it might connected to my present time (now).

Another thing, coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS (Champion Streak Series) line, I had maintain the PT (Pokemon Tournament) for a long time.   Beside maintain the PT for a long time, I had also maintaining my images as Pokemon Master with a CSS line.  Example: As Pokemon Master I gave out tips, advices, suggestions, and recommendations to Pokemon Players.  I also tutors and teaches about deck construction and plays.

As for the customs and traditions in the USA, beside being courteous and practicing mannerism, my life is like what I wrote above.  In the article, “Cranberry Sauce” one of the argument would be that because of our traditional thinking, when we see a person who is being courteous and practicing mannerism, we would think (stereotype) that person as being classy, noble, and/or importance.  In other words that traditional thinking is like a stereotype.  Then, the stereotype would lead into more conflicts such as conflicts about a person who is classy, noble, and/or importance.  Some example conflicts:  Bloodline, Legacy, Prodigy, Pride, Hair, and Mafia.

In conclusion, because of my up-bringing, there are some different guidelines in our everyday life and everyday thinking, many of that differences I had wrote about in my articles, PTTS (Pokemon Tournament Tip Session) writing, Autobiography, and etc.  Also, many of the topics was talked about while hosting the Daily Sessions and PTTS.

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The DD (Double Dilemma) In My Life

In my articles, “Marathon” and “Metropolis” I wrote about the conflicts I had with my parents.  My parents was not the topic of the articles, but they were part of the argument.  I also wrote that I was conditioning myself. So, the question, what am I preparing for?  What is my parents preparing me for?  During my PE class cross-country run, I am the first one to complete the run.  Also, I took the extra credit by doing the extra distance.

The DD (Double Dilemma)…  it is not my articles or cross-country runs, I am living the DD.  How much I wished it was one of my articles or it was a cross-country run.

I immediately purchase a Magnum for protection.  Every night, I counted the bullets I had.  Maybe a way to comfort myself.  I remember when I first just purchase my Magnum and ammunition, before I unpacked my ammunition, I noticed it came with one bullet.  There were a note attached to the bullet.  The note written, “You only need 1 bullet.”

I unpacked my ammunition.  Loaded my Magnum.  I drove my vehicle to a deserted area.  Close to the train track.  Thinking the train would cover-up the sound that my Magnum going to make.  When the train starting to get close, I would fire my Magnum at target for practice.  I could still hear the loud sound from my Magnum, but I think the train does cover-up some of the sound.

If I was to stop and think, I would probably agree with the note.  “Why suffer when I could just ended my life?” A very simple concept, but I did not stop to think.  The powerful force from that one shot will blow up my head clean.  A quick and instant dead.  I was glad, I purchase the ammunition with my Magnum.  Because, I don’t think I will get a second chance such as going to the Gunshop for ammunition.

I had always questioned the stability of the Magnum even after I had tested before at Gunshop, until I finally purchase my own.  For a handgun with a lot of power, it is very stable.  I did not felt too much of the kick after firing each shot.

I could probably make the full 6 shots in a row without feeling any kick. I did tried before during the testing at Gunshop, but I haven’t tried with my Magnum, because I might need the ammo.  Also, it would probably make too much sound.  The train probably won’t be able to cover up all the sound.

In one those articles, my parent had argued, “After a mountain climber climbed all the mountains in the world, they will suicide.”  They would repeated to me loud and clear.  “Is the DD what my parents been trying to tell me all this time? Or a wake-up call, so that my life would not have to face a DD?”  The education system taught us to state the point of argument at all time.

“Don’t cry Abe, I know what to do.”

“We are so much better than you!  You and Abe get to stay cute all the time!”  I blocked those memories.  They would not.  Or Abe and I already left for training camp, so they don’t have that opportunity.  I blocked too much memories.  They would not.  But, it is an argument.

I don’t wanted to say this, “I think I am living one of my article that I wrote or similar.”

When a person come to a point in his or her life.  Where all hope seem so far away.  There are creatures from the darkness all around.  How would this person overcome these situations?

While writing the article, “Marathon” I had thought about it.  A person from the past time-traveled into the future.  He only got what he wore on him.  Into a world, where he no longer exist.  In that scenario, he eventually found time-traveler agents who guided him in the new world.  Together they solved the problems between the old world and new world.  But, before getting to the time-traveler agents, he had to overcome a series of obstacles and problems.  One of the problem was the ghosts of the old world.  The line he used, “The future of the worlds is depend on me such as how far can a person go, it is all depended on me.”

He fought until the very end.  Just when all of the ghosts of the past about to drag him down.  They were all over him, then all sudden a hand was reached out to him.  “Grab on!” I categorized that thought as futuristic science-fiction.  Maybe joggers wear headphone, so they don’t have to hear their thoughts when they are jogging.

Beside the contemporary conflicts in our modern world, I think that thought might serve it purpose.  Also, I interpreted in my article, “Marathon”.

… …  Technically, I am a merchant since I open up two Online stores.  Also, the “Stardragon Treasure” had a long history. I had seen label of brand name showing their history such as generations of history.

… …  I have not stop to think about the DD…  …  “Brian Robeson survive the wilderness twice.”  I think any person in my situation would also be upset.

To comprehend about what I am going through their might be sources a person might relied on.  Example: From the film and video game, “Max Payne”.  The protagonist on a raging revenge.

Sooner or later, there might be sources I don’t even know about.  Beside, coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line, serving terms at my schools, club president, and opened up two Online store there were not much about me.  Also, I would fall into the category as being competitive.

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VIP Tickets (Months Away From The DD)

“I don’t know why, but… I did try… I don’t know why, I even try…”

From my first semester at the College until now, my “Stardragon Treasure” and I had came a long way.  I am the club president at my college.  My multimedia instructors had wrote me “letters” (to be use on my projects, jobs, contracts, and etc.)  I had a stable income from my job.  My two Online stores had a long history such as transition from my “Stardragon Treasure”. Also, I might just open up my Online stores for a few years, but I had been an Ebay Star Seller (accounts; stores) for many years.  I even make time in my schedule to stop by “Artifact” (MT store) once in a while. By stopping by “Artifact” mean I am digging up my MTG (Magic The Gathering) collection of cards I had accumulated for many years.  Basically, enough MTG cards to post up for sell in my two Online stores.

What could possibly go wrong at this point?

Yes, I am isolated.  Yes, I do feel lonely sometime.

A flashback: “You are taking charge…  As the club president… grand event… many people will be there…”  My adviser wanted to congrated me, but those were the lines he used.  “What could possibly go wrong at this point?”  I repeated again to myself.  The reasons I am having this talk with my adviser because I had just accepted a few big projects with my adviser.  I will be the one working on the big projects, but he will be there to help me any ways he can.

I got back from my flashback.  “I don’t know why, but… I did try… I don’t know why, I even try…”  That same line again.  In that flashback, we would probably open up a few fancy cigar packs and fine champagne bottles and laugh and celebrated our achievements.

“WHERE?!  Where are the cigars and champagnes?  Where are the laughs and celebration?”  I stop my thoughts.  I then look over to the fine suits I had set on my bed.  There were a few suits.  I need a suit that will match me as the club president.

I must be very sad, because I don’t feel any of it.  Then, I noticed some event tickets my adviser handed to me. “He probably thought I might have someone coming with me…”  I feel like throwing up.  I was just about to rip those tickets to pieces.

I remember a while ago in one of my E-mail page, I could not come up with a reason, I wrote that I am busy because I was about to get marry.  But, that was a while ago.  Also, it should have been understandable, because my schedule was full.

I am not angry at those event tickets.  It just those tickets reminded me how lonely I am.  Maybe that was why I did not know I had them until now, I just noticed I had some event tickets.  I quickly try to come up with a reason, before I am going to rip them to pieces.  “HE MIGHT… want them BACK!”  I shouted out.  “Those tickets are expensive… it is about $100 per ticket.”  Also, those are not the regular tickets being sold, those are the VIP tickets.  “U-N-R-E-P-L-A-C-E-A-B-L-E.”

“Just in case he need them back.  But I don’t want to see them again.”  I told myself.  Then, I put them deep inside my drawer.  I pretend I did not noticed them in the first place.

The coming event is a big event that happen once a year, and had been going on for many years.

“I am not going to ruin this big event…  Instead, I am usually this perfect person in the event.  I don’t know how I do it every time.  It does not matter how I feel or what I had to go through, but I am always this perfect person.”

Then, in one of my voice mails, my financier left me a voice-mail.  Basically, the voice-mail was asking me if I had receive an invitation to a gathering.  “I don’t know why, but… I did try… I don’t know why, I even try…”  I repeated to myself again.

I am usually professional about these things.  “Oh My God.  I had reversed everything.  I am the president.  I am in charge.  I run all these things.”

“That is why I had those VIP tickets, so I could distribute them among all the different departments who are a part of this big event.”  I am basically trying to clear my thoughts. Take a few breath of air.

“Extra Double Espresso in the morning.  A few glasses of fine wine in the evening.”  One more time, I’ll try again.  I am going to repeat that line again to myself.  “I don’t know why, but… I did try… I don’t know why, I even try…”

“I’ll stop by.  Just for a few minutes.”  I response to my financier’s voice-mail.  I just wanted to drop off the presents, and leave.  I been handling all of my affairs on my own, not that long ago, I started having a financier.  Just for the tax part at least or something like that.  As club president having financier or assistance should be something I have to get use to.

I am usually professional.  But, that evening while stopping by the gathering and dropping off the presents, I told them about the big event I am going to be in charge of.  “Probably I just had to be perfect all the time.”

Reflection: By saying that line, just said that my financier gathering cannot even compare to the big event that is about to happen.  I cannot change what already happen.  Again, “I don’t know why, but… I did try… I don’t know why, I even try…”

I was right, those tickets are the VIP tickets, I was supposed to distribute them, but my adviser thought I already know that.  He also had his mind set on nothing could possibly ruin this big event for us.  “No problem, if you wanted to keep those tickets.”  He would said something like that to me.

My financier wanted to do the same thing I did to them.  But, I don’t know that.  I still haven’t done my reflection.  My financier know about my life, so it was not too difficult for them to get me back.  I supposed getting even is consider justify.

It was until getting very close to the event, I noticed my financier’s scheme. Again, “I don’t know why, but… I did try… I don’t know why, I even try…”  My financier’s scheme was to get me to acquire as many tickets as possible for them, then on the last minute they will tell me they cannot make it for the event.

My adviser also notice something, but again, he had his mind set on nothing could possibly ruin this big event for us.  So, when I am instead of distributing those VIP tickets, asking for more tickets.  He knew something was wary.

“What have they done to my president?” Would probably be my adviser reaction.  Just a tiny little bit of reaction from my adviser, I knew about my financier’s scheme. But, he been holding his reaction until it was close to the event.

A few days away from the event, he was saying something about the tickets. He did not said he could not get the ticket for me.  But, I knew I fell into a trap.  “I supposed getting even consider justify.”

I had not let down my adviser before.  He forget all about it the next day.  He even don’t care I had some VIP tickets that I did not distribute.  He probably took all the blame already from all the other departments.

In conclusion, whenever I feel lonely I repeat this line, “I don’t know why, but… I did try… I don’t know why, I even try…”

______________________________________________________________

Responding To Adversity

Probably not a soul in the world know about the Double Dilemma (DD), because I have not say a word to anyone about it.  Again, I did have meets and appointments with my manager and assistance manager to talk about my working hour.  Long story.  They were the ones that caused the Double Dilemma (DD), so it probably don’t count toward “I have not say a word to anyone about it.”

Relatives (Including family members) had portrayed a various situations that happen in life.  Example: A situation when getting layoff (employee no long working for the company) from work.  The relatives said something like, “You got layoff, you could borrow my car anytime if you want.  Or, sleep over at my place anytime, until you are back on your feet.”

I did not engage in talk too much with relatives.  If we talk too long, probably they still remember, back when I still have not got my first gaming system.  When relatives brought over a gaming system, I would be the first person to wake up, and started the gaming system while still in my pajama.  Because now, I am club president.  I have two Online stores.  I did not say a word about it to any of my relatives.

Maybe it is better that way.  Probably relatives might say something like, “Still like those time when I brought over the gaming system.”  Such as once I start something, I don’t let go.  Could I be a part of those portraits my relatives portrayed?

I am not mute.  I could talk such as the meets and appointments I had with my assistance manager and manager. As club president, I had to make announcement to my club.  As for my Online stores’ transactions, a few time as part of the transactions, I would have Email communication and Online chat for weeks of time.  Other time, I would have to go through hundreds of Emails during the busy weeks.

Again, the two Online stores is from my “Stardragon Treasure”.  I don’t know if having Online stores was the best way such as continue my “Stardragon Treasure” Online by open up two Online stores.  In college, I was taking Multimedia classes, so from those studies, there were researches saying that the Online world (AKA cyber world) are starting to rise in business.  That was one of the reason, I took that step.

I have to stop my thought, I had done a lot of reflection in my writing...  Change Scene...

“I know every cards in almost every sets such as the reprint, promotion, event, MT, and etc.”  A Magic Player show up with a collection cards, want to engage in trade with me.

It is like a dream come true for an Elf deck to have “Nissa Revane” at that point of time.  “Sorin Markov” was used in Vampire deck.  There was something missing.  I don’t know. I hear something about barrier.

I have more Vampire cards than Elf cards.  Maybe I wanted to trade Nissa, but I know how important it is to his or her deck. Also, that person remind me of the dedication I put into Pokemon TCG.

“Nissa, just release, I heard Nissa work well with the elves?”  I already knew the answer, because I know he or she had an “Elf” deck.  Just saying that to continue the conversation.  That person look at me for a moment.  “You are new here.”  The person surprised I don’t know about his or her “Elf” deck.  “I am also looking for Nissa.”  I did not said I was looking for Nissa.  “I’ll let you know if I find some.”

As I am walking away, “But, I am also willing to make exception to trading my Nissa.”  That person added.

If I were to watch a match, I’ll probably want to see that person’s Elf deck match-play.  He or she is dedicated to Magic TCG.  Maybe, I needed to say that line to that person, “I’ll let you know if I find some.”

Magic and Elf seem like a combination that goes together.  In other words, the magic and elf combination been going on for a while, might be at multiple level.  With an experienced Elf deck in the MT…

Having Magic Players like that person in the MT, I felt that coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line might not needed introduction.  I don’t know how many time that person had got first place in the MT, but he or she is one of them who got first place.

Even though, I am sneaking into the MT, and having some magic time, it is okay to know about the environment.  There is another person with a vampire deck.  He or she also got first place before.  Since I just joined the MT, the DCI system would not match me up with them. Maybe I accidentally saw their decks. To see Magic Players who are dedicated to Magic TCG was kind of like the line, “It is okay if you cross over my fence a bit.”

Again, I sneak into the MT, because the MT allow me to keep my mind away from the DD.  If I were thinking, I would say that, “But, I think the Vampire deck and Elf deck, would be a match that have audience.”

The DD and MT happened all sudden.  Probably at that point, I wanted to make the MT place as a regular MT that I go to each week.

I had a few talks with the store keeper, store keeper would told me, that the MT store, “Artifact” are usually open.  Even at time when store keeper is not available such as store keeper said that one of those usual Magic Players sometime would watch over “Artifact”, so that it would stay open.  Remind me of the PT place such as me and those Garnet Pokemon Players maintaining the PT, and sometime watch over “Name Of The Game” (PT store).

Again, the magic time does work to keep my mind away from the Double Dilemma (DD). Once a week.  The beginning part (stage) of the Double Dilemma (DD) probably the most difficult part.  Especially seeing relatives, don’t know what to say.  Maybe that is why I haven’t say a word about it.  So the MT environment should not matter to me, but because I been maintain the PT for a long time, maybe that is why knowing the environment come natural to me.  Also, I have not see a Pokemon Player, Magic Player, or any kind of TCG Player who had come close to my CSS, so I felt that maybe there might needed an introduction or something (probably courteous).  Example: Only so few got First place, fewer got first place streak.  As for first place streak record, I haven’t see anyone got that many first place or close to that many first place (not talking about the character of the person).

In conclusion, those actions I took in the MT is part of my Pokemon Master with a CSS line responsibility.  So, I guess that might be why that person saying, “Is Jace Beleren being courteous?” That person meant to say, he or she noticed those responsibility I took in the MT.

______________________________________________________________

Facing Reality (“You are going nowhere.”)

They might be right.  “Brian Robeson survived the wilderness twice (two time).”  Because he got out of the city.  As twisted as it is, that might be true.  Each time, I am starting to use my mind, I am losing myself.

“What are you doing, man?”  Probably people might argued that the right way to handle the Double Dilemma (DD) is like the portrait that portrayed by my relatives:  Again, Example: A situation when getting layoff (employee no long working for the company) from work.  The relatives said something like, “You got layoff, you could borrow my car anytime if you want.  Or, sleep over at my place anytime, until you are back on your feet.”

Also, since I had not told anyone about it, probably mean that I have decided to handle it myself.  So, I would answer that question as, “I am doing fine.”

“You are going nowhere.”  One of the assistance manager told me.  When I went to pick up my last paycheck.  Long story. They were the ones who created the Double Dilemma (DD).  Also, that confirm that those meets and appointments with my manager and assistance manager probably does not mean anything.  Again, I did my part.  Long story. (“You are going nowhere.” Mean that I am trapped.)

Again, each time, I am starting to use my mind, I am losing myself.  As long as I don’t use my mind I could manage. So, I was glad I got the MT to go to, it really help to keep my mind away from the DD.

“Ninja Gaiden” is my only way, but it is so far from reality.  Because that way is probably like in a dream or during one of my video special effect session.  Again, the DD was a sudden.  Example: my workplace was fine.  I had never receive a negative feedback before about my two Online stores, then all sudden the DD happen such as first, I am not schedule to work and second, I got a patch of negative feedbacks about my two Online stores.  My life all sudden had a turn (curve), so I felt I needed to react to it fast, before it is too late.  Example: I am picturing myself like in “Ninja Gaiden” the main character Ryu Hayabusa, loaned my car with weapons, driving at full speed.  Determined.  No matter what I am going out of the city.  So, even though Ryu is a ninja, and he usually use katana, but I am driving, and I am firing guns.  Destroying anything that is blocking my way.  But, each day passed by, this dream or session is further away.  It would have worked, if I had done it, the moment it came to my mind.  After a few days, I felt maybe I needed a hostage along to pass border with patrols.

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Preservation (You Can Not Go Against All Of Them): What is the causes? Did it happen for a reason or coincidence?

Even Super Man have weakness.  Super Man have strength of many men combined.  He could fly.  Rotated the world backward, so time reverse.  I don’t even have those powers.

MT is temporary.  But, that thought still had not register in my head, because I was not thinking.  I did not stop to think.  When I have time in my schedule, I would have my Zombie deck against my Fire deck.  So, I might be new to the MT, but I needed the speed.  I also needed game-play that is fast and non-stop, so there are no in between in my schedule such as so that I don’t have time to think.  Also, coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line, lacking speed don’t know what it mean.  As for the reasons to use those decks to accelerate my game-play speed, because in the Zombie deck, the zombies keep coming from graveyard continuously (non-stop), as for the Fire deck, the fire-spells are some of the fastest spell in the Magic TCG.

After a few of those fast and non-stop matches.  While during the DD, everything that is happening (going on) seem like it should not be happening, but it is happening.  So, it like a blend of reality and dream.  I have to constantly occupying my schedule, because I cannot have time in my schedule to think.

So, in the midst of what is happening (going on), I remember having a dream. The dream took place during the night time, cover with fog.  Only a few survivors are left, the whole place had been taken over by zombies, ghouls, skeletons, spirits, and etc.

There were only a few lamp-poles close by.  The only light source are from those lamp-poles.  So, those survivors are gathered on one of the lamp-pole. Then, all sudden, they could hear the sound of the zombies, ghouls, skeletons, spirits, and etc. coming closer and closer.  “I’ll handle this.  I’ll meet up with you guys afterward.”  One of the elite/legend wizard among them said, while his back is facing them.  He is glazing toward the sound, and set up the spells he going to use.

I am calm and cool.  “Preservation.”  I felt that showing anything beyond that, my relative or people might know about the DD. As the club president, having two Online stores, and coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line would put me on the competitive side.  An argument would be, “I should know the consequence for being competitive.”

Before DD And MT I had schedule to write titles that I started, but when the DD started many things had changed.  Example: A regular greeting from relative might sound luxurious. Maybe the relative might sense something about me that is not right or something.

In the film, “Batman Begin” was based on Comic series titled “Batman”.  “Batman Begin” directed by Christopher Nolan.  In the story, Bruce Wayne masked as Batman.  The Wayne company was the most wealthiest company in the whole city (Gotham city).  Bruce’s parents did not take part of their family company business, instead Bruce’s father is a doctor.  Bruce’s father would said to Bruce that he does not take part in his family company business, but the people of the city been kind to his family.  So, Bruce’s father used his company’s fund to build a transportation that connected the city.  Give the people of the city an easy, accessible, and affordable transportation.  Repaying the city for their kindness.  Other than the transportation Bruce’s father constructed, he is not part of the Wayne family company business.

Bruce and his parents, during a night out to watch theater’s play, while Bruce needed to go outside to get some air.  When they were outside, his parents got robbed and murdered.

The city been saying many things about his parents, but Bruce was very protective about his parents.  So, instead listening to the things that was being said about his parents, he took the blame for his parents’ death to cover up what might be the reasons for the murders.

Bruce was still a child when his parents got murdered, so the police force took him in.  The police force justice of making up for the justice that the city lacked.  Example: how could Gotham city allow this to happen?

When Bruce was old enough, he bought a gun, and decided to take justice in his hand by killing the murderer who murder his parents.  Also, right after the court had done with the trials, and decided to release the murderer.  While the murderer was surrounded by reporters, Bruce was only a few feet away from him.  Just moment from pulling his gun trigger.  But, an assassin open fire and killed the murderer just seconds before Bruce could pull his trigger.  The assassin was send by a leader of the mobsters.

Bruce personally went to meet the leader of the mobsters.  As the prince of the Gotham city, after the gang of mobsters had some beating on him then, the leader of mobsters had a few words with him. Telling Bruce, he will never understand. Example: The Wayne family is the wealthiest family in Gotham city.  Bruce been living in mansion with servants.  He don’t know the meaning of poor.

This is showing that Gotham city cannot have people like Bruce’s parents to exist.  Because Bruce’s parents are neglecting their fortune and wealth, to become doctor. Also, his parents provided the city with an easy, accessible, and affordable transportation.  Bruce’s parent was too good and too kind.  So, even if being the wealthiest people in the city could not make up for being too good and too kind.  This mean people who are too good and too kind cannot exist. Gotham city could not have Bruce’s parents to exist.  It is the city, the Gotham city to blame.  The leader of the mobsters was saying, Bruce will never understand. Because he is too protective of his parents.  Also, he don’t know the meaning of poor.

Maybe the city could not have my CSS (first place streak record) to exist. Only half the participants could get to semi-final rounds.  How many could get first place?  How many could get first place streak?  How many could get first place streak record?  Because Bruce’s parents were the wealthiest family in the city, they got an easy way out.  As for me, I don’t think I have the wealth like the Wayne family.  So, the “Ninja Gaiden” way out would be my best choice.

I don’t think the Double Dilemma (DD) is a coincidence.  I don’t think, my assistance manager and manager purposely ignoring me is a coincidence.  I don’t think all sudden, I got a patch of negative feedbacks about my two of my Online stores is a coincidence, I don’t think my relatives portraying those situations was a coincidence.  “Don’t say, I did not said so.”

If there is justice, my relatives could use the time like when I still have not got my first gaming system, when they brought their gaming system over I was the first person who wake up and I was still wearing my pajama when I started the gaming system.

An anti-Pokemon or anti-PT, could argued, “Do you know how many first place you have to get to have that CSS (Champion Streak Series)?  There were people who don’t even a get a percentage of that number of first place you had in their whole life time.”

In conclusion, if Gotham city cannot tolerate noble people such as people who are too good and too kind even if they are the wealthiest in the city. Then, the city cannot tolerate my CSS as well.  Now things are much clearer.  I could at least know what had happen such as it was not just a coincidence.  As I continue my MT matches, I now registered that the MT is probably temporary.  I have to look for an opportunity such as a fighting chance. Maybe might not be like “Ninja Gaiden” how I pictured, but probably would not be far away.

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Constructing My First MT Deck

The talk with the Magic Player with an Elf deck.  That Magic Player was some what right.  Also, right after our talk, immediate, without second thought, he or she rushed to the store display , and bought the only “Nissa Revane” card in the MT store display.  “That could have been me.”

By somewhat right, because I have 3 holographic “Elvish Champion” cards. Those cards are getting close to “Expiration Date”.  At this point, expiration date are second in the priority.  I have a lot of Magic TCG cards.  I don’t know which ones had reprint such as which ones are Standard MT playable.  Because I own two Online stores, Magic TCG was going to be put up for sell in either or both of my Online stores.

First holographic “Elvish Champion” card was a prize from one of the Wizards booth promotion contest.  Second one, Magic TCG Online promotional event.  Third one, probably trade, since I already got two.

Other noticeable Elf cards: “Elvish Archdruid”, “Elvish Pipper”, and “Nissa Revane”.  And “Eldazi Monument” (AKA The Barrier).  I don’t know about The Barrier at that point of time such as when it had just released.

DCI System would not match me up with those experienced Magic Players, because I just joined the MT.  I supposedly according to the DCI System, the talk I had with the Magic Player with the Elf deck would consider uncommon.

A flashback from Gen Con, “5 Minutes until the Tournament begin.”  I don’t have a lot places to go to.  I usually stay at the tournament area.  I had joined more tournament than I would have in a year duration in those few days at Gen Con, because of non-stop tournament one after another.  The 5 minutes grace period was probably the longest in between tournament.  Because of the non-stop, I might have got some food and drink, but skipped sleep.  “Maybe this is where I belong.”

The classmates that I went to Gen Con with asked me, “So how many tournament did you joined?”  I answered, “Three.”  “That is it!” They were surprised.  “I haven’t finish.  Three days in a row.”  “Non-stop without sleep.”

Again, the MT was not part of my schedule, I joined the MT, because the DD happened.  I don’t even know why I had that flashback.  “I had a job. Two Online stores.”

I must have felt a bit of my exhaustion from my full schedule, so I dozed into those flashbacks.

When I returned from those flashbacks, the store keeper from the counter said, “There are many Magic Players.  The store could not keep up with the Magic TCG cards demand.  So, if you want to help out by selling some the cards you don’t need that would help out a lot.  But, I see you making a lot trade, so I didn’t want you to miss out on some the trade you might make.”

I look over to the 4X “Time Warp” cards in the store display.  Earlier, there were even “Nissa Revane” in the display. Just one “Nissa Revane” card.  I been having my eye on both the “Time Warp” and “Nissa Revane”.  I might not know a lot about the MTG at that time, but I do know that Magic and elves goes all the way back.  I would mostly be the store most value customer, instead there might be a possible trade.

I been visiting “Artifact” many time, but did not joined the MT.  That might be why the store keeper asked me if I wanted to sell my cards.  “I just read the Standard MT rule the other day.  Reprint was allowed.  So, it was a surprise, now I might be joining the MT.”  The store keeper was very understanding.  “The Magic Players going to be glad to hear this.”

I usually dwell.  The correct word is reflection, because I been journal keeping regularly.  But, not since the DD started.  Again, each time I use my mind, I am losing myself.

There were films, trying portray the wars such as the soldiers are surrounded by guns firing and bombs exploding.  There were History Channel, Discovery Channel, and etc. had documentary films on the past wars.  There were differences between the hollywood film and documentary film.  Also, the documentary films had to through production process and editing process. But, I haven’t really thought of arguing about any of those films such as the films and documentary films.

The DD are not too far from those war films.  “I choose to go to Gen Con.  At Gen Con, I choose to join those tournament non-stop for three days without sleep.  But, I did not choose for the DD to happen.”  Maybe that might make some sense.

I am on the road driving my car.  “In the face of adversity, a person true-self will show.”  A wisdom that was pass down.  How much will I have to show?  Instead of using my mind, I am facing my adversity.  Then all sudden, I went to the other side of the road.  With cars coming on the opposite side. “Probably need to have nerve of steel.” Then, after some seconds, I went back to my side of the road.  “Was that enough?”

Maybe that was just a taste.  “What happen if I found out I was set up?  Will it be worst than having a car collision?”  Again, each time I use my mind, I am losing myself.  “I will join the MT.  Decided.”

“Jace Beleren”.  He is blue color.  I will stay in the character of “Jace Beleren” like my deck.  My deck will be focusing on Increase Knowledge.  The blue color is known for that.  I will sign up for the MT, the next time I stop by “Artifact”.  I have either 2 or 3 “Jace Beleren” cards. So, to have a set of 4, I probably need to purchase 1 or 2 card(s) at “Artifact”.

The next time I stop by, “Artifact”, I rushed to the register counter as fast I could without greeting the Magic Players.  “Sign me up for the MT.  Also, I need to purchase “Jace Beleren”.”

“We been selling Planeswalker cards very quickly.  But, I think I might have a couple of “Jace Beleren”.”  I just saw “Nissa Revane” Planeswalker card the other day in the display.  So, the store keeper was right, those Planeswalker cards does sell quickly.

I probably might have to face “Nissa Revane” and “Sorin Markov” in the MT.

My eye glowed as the store keeper handed the “Jace Beleren” to me.  “I knew I was going to use “Jace Beleren”.  But, I got use to having reflection.”  “I know.  I know.  There are pros and cons.”  I already pictured myself defending “Jace Beleren”.

“Again, the Planeswalker been selling fast.  I apologize, but that is all I got.  Might not be the complete set of 4, but you could get started with them.” The store keeper said as he handed the “Jace Beleren” to me.  I quickly opened my binder, and quickly flipped to “Jace Beleren” page.  “I already got a few of them.”  “Holographic “Jace Beleren”, that is the first time I see holographic “Jace Beleren”.  From the promotional Jace VS Chandra.”

After the store keeper done with the transaction of my purchase, “We talked about it the other day, reprint are allowed in the Standard MT.  So, you are set.  I’ll see you when the MT start.”  The store keeper did said something about the application as well such as it will only take less than a minute.  Or the first few MT, I don’t have to fill out the application would be fine.  (DCI System application)  As the MT coordinator, he or she probably know ways around the DCI System.

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Level One “Increase Knowledge” Deck

Coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line, I am familiar with the PT.  I cannot said the same thing for the MT at that point of time.

Even though, I sneak into the MT, but I notice fans been watching my first MT matches, but they did not claim as fans at that point (basically those fans did not comment much at that point).

As for my Pokemon Master with a CSS line, like I wrote in the TFPD CSS (Tounament First Place Deck Champion Streak Series) Schedule, my first few first place at the PT seem as those they were unofficial.  I started having recognition, after I started my first place streak with my “Haymaker” deck and at the same time having a show and tell of my “Haymaker” in a front of a group of gathered Champion Pokemon Players, Experienced (Veteran) Pokemon Players, and Magic Players.

The reason I said that I had a lot of Magic The Gathering (MTG) cards, because I was planning to post them up on either or both of my Online stores.

Before the DD started.  After some visit at “Artifact” (MT store), there might be Magic Players who saw my binders (folders) of collection of MTG cards.  Basically, there were cards from Alliances Block (1996), Ice Age Block (1995), and older Block.  In other words, from look of my binder of cards mean that I had more than 10+ years of MTG experience such as I had finally completed my MTG training.  Like the trilogy films, “Star Wars” Episode 4 A New Hope, the protagonists just complete his or her training.  (“Where were him or her train at?”  “Belle of the beast.”) The trackers and bounty hunters could not find the protagonist because he or she was in the belle of the beast.

As for my side of the story, my “Stardragon Treasure” been very active when I first started during my Middle School year.  Pokemon TCG is consider as TCG, and MTG is also consider as TCG. But, MTG was the first TCG to release and had 10+ years of history.  So, in my “Stardragon Treasure” trade I accumulated a lot of MTG cards.  “I should know what to do with those MTG cards, right?  Because I come from Pokemon Master with a CSS line such as I am an expert TCG Player.” In conclusion, that is why I took that step and went to “Artifact”.

Either way, even though, after a few visits, we all sat down and had a full house MTG matches.  But, we only use cards we gathered from tables and counters.  Stacked them into one huge deck.  We also made exception to the rule.

“I had gone over this many time.  My “Increase Knowledge” deck is at level one.  Also, this is during the Double Dilemma (DD).  I have to drive a long way to get to the MT.  I paid the entrance fee.  I just want to have some magic time.”

Dreams that seem so real yet, it is in a fantasy realm.  The lights in my house flicker and flashes as I am engage in my MTG matches.  Sometime even the earth starting to quake and tremble.  “I just want to have some magic time.”  This is another reason I join the MT (beyond the reasons I already had for joining).

Just having some magic time in the MT matches.  Able to use “Jace Beleren” in the MT.  The “Counter Spells” are sleek and manageable.  Again, the “Increase Knowledge” deck is at level one. I did not expected to get first place. Especially with the DCI system running the MT.  According to the DCI system, I just sign in the MT for the first time in my life.  A theory: if I am not pair up with experienced Magic Players, how would I score point(s), and able to advance to championship round?

Either way, the DD already gave me enough problems.  I am joining the MT, so that I could keep my mind away from the DD.

By my second MT, I added “Tezzeret the Seeker”.  My opponent about to laugh instead there were a few chuckles, “How are you going to win, all you got is Counter Spells?”  (I substitute the words Counter Spells in his or her line.)  By using the word, “Win” he or she mean how I am going to do enough Life Point Damage to win.

Usually I waited for my opponent to open their mouth, then I use “Tezzeret the Seeker” which I been holding in my hand.  But, he or she does got a point.  A few days before, I joined my first MT, a fan did comment, Something about keeping track of my matches.

“Maybe “Tezzeret the Seeker” belong to a renowned deck.  But, I been holding it in my hand, because I am not going to let Tezzeret steal Jace MT time.”  When I decided to win the match, then I will play Tezzeret.  The theory about the DCI system seem reasonable.  Example: If I have no possibility to advance to championship round, then my MT rounds might not be as important to me as for those Magic Players who have a possibility of advancing to championship round.

The fans could not hold it in anymore, “Come on.  Show us that combination with Tezzeret.”  So, my opponent about to laugh, all sudden went into a panic.  “Huh. What you said?  I haven’t seen any other Planeswalker other than “Jace Beleren”.” “Well, he mean this combination.” So, I played my Tezzeret.  My opponent quickly snap back, “I have 30 Life Points.  Almost double my starting Life Points.  The “Jace Beleren” deck barely do any damage.  Also, he is down to a few Life Points.  This match already over for “Jace Beleren”.”

“Unless you have a “Jace Beleren” deck, otherwise, don’t use those words is already over.”  That would probably be the fans response.  But, the fans hold it in this time.  Instead the fans kept quiet, and let the match continue.  “This Magic Player might misunderstand that “Counter Spells” are used for aggravation.”  I thought to myself.

My opponent is going for the “STACK”.  “Ugly.  Eeeke.” All sudden, all the fans came hurried to watch my match.  Again, “Counter Spells” are not used for aggravation.  He or she should have expected, he or she said earlier in his or her own sentence that my “Increase Knowledge” had many “Counter Spells”.  “Usually the stack happen during championship round.” A fan commented.

“Thank you very much DCI system.  This is my second MT, and I have to experienced stack.”  Example of the stack: Bottom of the stack, Tezzeret card, then opponent’s Counter Spell, then my Counter Spell, then opponent Counter Spell, and then finally my Counter Spell.  Opponent cussed a few “cuss words”, then in aggravation said, “This is bullshit.”

“Another win for “Increase Knowledge” deck.”  A fan commented proudly.

The fans.  The stack. The turnaround.  All of it seem so natural.  Again, I was there to keep my mind away from the DD.  So, I did not post questions.

If I were posting questions:

MT experience argument: “It is natural for a Magic Player to have fans on his second MT?”

My answer: Coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line, almost every matches I have fans cheering and celebrating along the way.  So, reflexes from my Pokemon Master with a CSS line.

Cards quantity and quality argument: Magic Players had seen my binders of collection of cards, but they had not heard of my “Stardragon Treasure” or my two Online stores.  In addition, those binders of cards went all the way back to the Alliance Block (1996), Ice Age Block (1995), and older Blocks.  Those Blocks are more than 10 years ago, so they might think I had 10+ years of MTG experience.  Also, I have multiple binders of cards, so they might think that I had all the cards I needed to construct my deck.  Also, they don’t know that I am currently have to handle the DD.

My answer: This is my second MT.  As for my binders of cards, I still have not got the chance to look through all of my MTG cards or sorted those cards out.  But, I did found many reprint cards in my binders of cards.  Especially, because of the Core Set releases such as Core Sets are made out of almost entirely reprint cards.  In conclusion, I have a handful of cards that I could use to construct my deck for the standard MT, but definitely not enough cards to construct a deck I wanted to construct.

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The Day Of The Redemption MT (Redemption “Increase Knowledge” Deck Experience And Gameplay Biography)

Plan:

1. At around noon, eat my lunch.  I usually cook my meal.  But, today, I am going to get a few “Big MaC” at McDonald.

2. Drive to the first MT place

3. Park my car

4. Enter the MT place

5. Greet the fans and store keeper

6. Talk with the fans and store keeper like usual

7. I needed to purchase many cards.  After I selected all the cards I wanted to purchase (usually in binder and some time in boxes), then I am ready to purchase the cards in the display.  I would say something like, “Those “Time Warp” you just cannot separate them.  You know what I mean?”  (I usually limited to one line since I needed to go to another MT store and get ready for the MT in the evening) The store keeper would answer, “I was wondering when you going to say that.”  Priority #1 are those “Time Warp” cards.  As for the 4X “Day Of Judgement” cards, the store keeper would understand some time even Magic Player could get a break.  Same with the land cards, but I only missing 1 or 2.  Then, purchase some dices, sleeves, boxes, tokens, counters, mats, and etc.  Make it like I am on a shopping (spending) streak...   “I am just buying”  (Also, it is a rare occasion)

Repeat the following to myself:

“Drawing “Time Warp” card around the “Fourth Turn” will make all my trouble worth it.  Would be much better to draw it earlier than the “Fourth Turn” than later.  Redemption Tournament.”

“Day Of Judgement cards will buy me time, if I cannot draw the “Time Warp” card(s) in time.”

“By now the whole MT should know my deck focus on “Increase Knowledge”, so drawing the cards I needed is part of it.”

8. Depart from fans and store keeper

9. Repeat 1-7, but it is getting close to the evening, so I am eating dinner

10. DESTINY.  My final chance, to trade with Magic Players to get the rest of the cards, such as cards that was sold out (I did not find ) in the two different MT stores.  MT should start any time sooner.

11. MT Begin.

DESTINY: A period of 15-60 Minutes right before the beginning of the MT. Last chance to trade with Magic Players for cards that you needed for your deck.

By now, the Magic Players probably already came up with comment about my “Jace Beleren” cards. Examples: “This is a Magic Tournament.”  “I am not holding back.”  “Is “Jace Beleren” being courteous?”  “Is rare to see “Jace Beleren” being use in the Magic Tournament.” “The new version of Jace had better powers, but required more mana to play.”  “The Only Playable cards in his deck are Twincast.”

Could have been the result of the comments, there were Magic Player(s) know that I had “Twincast” cards in my deck, and they still use “Diabolic Tutor” card. Basically, saving me all the trouble of using cards that allow me to draw cards from my library.  In a way, “Diabolic Tutor” is limit to only drawing 1 card, but you get to search your whole library for any card.  Example: “Increase Knowledge” mean drawing cards from the library. “Diabolic Tutor” card effect allow a Player to search his or her library for any 1 card.

Full description of “Diabolic Tutor” card, it is Swarm (dark color element), and it is Uncommon.  As for the other 4 colors, you might have do a lot of searching to find similar effect as “Diabolic Tutor”.  When you found them, they are not Uncommon instead those cards are usually Mystic Rare or Rare.  Also, most likely those cards had already expired, so have to wait until those cards reprint to use in standard MT.

Finally, I am going to get it all back.  Also, “Sege” is at a high level.  Now they will understanding why I been trading to get the cards I need.

“Believe me you wanted to save your comment(s) until the match is over.”

First Match In The MT: “The first one will be…  “attractive”.  If it is just somewhat attractive…  that Magic Player would add comment to make it more attractive.”

After the first round, there were a lot of talking.  Fans and Magic Players calling other Fans and Magic Players to come watch “Time Warp” cards “IN ACTION” (Live).  “Check it out.  A lot of the Magic Players thought “Time Warp” would work better at another Block.” All sudden, I felt that my “Time Warp” cards had just multiplied in value.

“HOW MANY TIME?”  The Store Keeper would raise his or her voice so that he or she could be heard from the register.  “His whole deck (library)!  So, that was all 4 of the “Time Warp”.”  “NO… He “Twincast” his “Time Warp”” Another Fan would added.  I think by taking all the extra turns from the “Time Warp”, I did 6-7 turns in a row before.  But, at average MT matches, I do 3-4 turns in a row.  Using my whole deck is not a rare thing since my deck is called “Increase Knowledge”.  The reason for that line is because there are a lot of cards that allow me to draw from my deck, and I could easily draw my whole library.  So, not drawing all the cards at once is the strategy.

The fans after watching the first few rounds thought I was going to get first place.  A few of the fans gathered their cards collection and trade or borrow cards in the MT store and MT place asked me about some cards they might have missed in my matches.  Then, quickly they constructed the “Increase Knowledge” deck like mine.  To test out the combination I was using, because they said they had seen many TFPDs (tournament first place decks) before Online, but they have not seen a deck like mine.  So while in between my rounds, there were fans asking me about my plays, and I would show those plays to them.

The following are Redemption “Sege” Plays:

The “Time Warp” Play

“Time Warp” ability allow the Player to take another (extra) turn. “Time Warp” required 5 manas to cast/play (use the card/spell).  By following the regular playing 1 land per turn, “Time Warp” could only be use on the “Fifth Turn”  (Example: 1 mana = “First Turn”.  5 manas = “Fifth Turn”)

Set Up: So, the setup, have creature, artifact, enchantment, sorcery, and etc. to increase that regular playing 1 land per turn to able to use “Time Warp” earlier than the “Fifth Turn”.  The following cards are example of cards that provide Mana like the land cards: “Bird of Paradise” card is a Creature Type (commonly use Rare cards, reprinted many time), the various Borderpost and Obelisks cards are Artifact Type, “Trace of abundance” card is an Enchantment Type, and “Rampant Growth” card is a Sorcery Type.

1. Play “Time Warp”: Take an extra turn

2. The next turn (during the extra turn), play “Time Warp” again, take an extra turn

3. Continue playing “Time Warp” to have multiple turns in a row.  My average MT matches, I do 3-4 turns in a row.  If you have extra “Twincast” card(s) then, use “Twincast” to copy “Time Warp” for 2 extra turns. (“Twincast” ability allow the Player to copy a Sorcery Spell or Instant Spell)

Opponent use “Twincast” card Scenario: As long as you play “Time Warp” or “Twincast” to copy “Time Warp” each turn or every 2 turns, even if your opponent use “Twincast” to copy your “Time Warp”, you may still continue your extra turn(s) until you are done with taking all of your extra turn(s).

 “Runeflare Trap” Play

“Runeflare Trap” does damage to your opponent equal to the number of card(s) in your opponent’s hand.  Example: 1 Card = 1 Damage.  7 Cards = 7 Damage.  (Only at the end of the Player turn, if a Player have more than 7 cards, then that Player will have to discard his hand down to 7 cards.)

The Set Up: You want your opponent to have as much cards as possible in his or her hand.

The “Runeflare Trap” Play had ways to play, the way I played was just a few of the plays (ways).  Also, In my average MT matches, I do 3-4 “Time Warp” in a row.  In other words, I usually end my matches right after I use the “Time Warp” play.

1. During 3-4 “Time Warp” (Turns): Use “Jace Beleren” to add cards to your opponent’s hand.  You could end the match by the following: #2 or #3-4.

2. Check to see if you have enough “Runeflare Trap” cards in your hand to end the match.  (Each Player start with 20 Life Points)  Also, “Runeflare Trap” cost 6 Manas to cast.  After the first “Runeflare Trap”, you could use “Twincast” card to copy it. “Twincast” cost 2 Manas to cast. Did not have enough Mana or did not do enough Damage?  Then do #3-4 instead.

3. Before ending 3-4 “Time Warps” (Turns): depending on the color of your opponent deck, have a few spells ready, because your opponent now have cards in his or her hand and Manas from his or her “Untap Step”.

4. During your opponent’s “Draw Step”: Have “Howling Mine” card(s) and “Font of Mythos” card(s) to add cards to your opponent’s hand.  If he or she drew 3 or more cards, “Runeflare Trap” only cost 1 Mana (instead of 6 Manas) to use (cast).  You should have at least 2-3 “Runeflare Trap” cards in your hand.  If for some reasons, not enough, then “Twincast” the “Runeflare Trap”.

About my side deck:  I believe the DESTINY period could have been just eough to complete Redemption “Sege” deck.  As for my side deck, it is second in priority.

1. I have “Safe Passage” cards, just in case a Magic Player decided to use “Sadistic Sacrament” card(s) to remove the “Fog”.  Another reason to switch in “Safe Passage” because “Fog” is not enough against Goblin Rush.  Example: from the talks, it is faster than Soldier Rush.

2. When against Soldier Rush, Goblin Rush, and etc., the “Volcanic Fallout” cards could destroy multiple creatures at once (a similar card to “Day of Judgement” card, but cost 1 less mana to cast which mean 1 turn ealier to cast.).

3. As for Negate, to negate the “Sadistic Sacrament” or Negate against “Runeflare Trap”.

4. “Celestial Purge”:  For those people who had seen a boxing match before.  Picture a signature punch that the audience will stand up and in loud cheer or roar, and started clapping.  This card pack a punch.

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Fans Claim

When the MT result came out, even though, I won all my matches, but I did not get first place.  The fans match-played the first place deck against my deck multiple time.  They said the outcome had always been mine.  Meaning my deck won each time.  I did not said anything.  Like in my PTTS, talking about Pokemon Players creating scenes.  So, I did not wanted to be the Magic Player who caused a scene.  In other words, I knew my deck was the better TFPDs in the MT.  That could be the reason, I did not keep track who got first place.  I think the first place deck could have been the Goblin Deck.  “Warren Instigator” card a Goblin creature was just released. Combined with “Goblin Chieftain” card and “Siege-Gang Commander” card.  On the Third turn (Second turn if “Instigator” have haste) if you don’t have mana left, that combination does 15 Life Points of Damage, 75% of the Starting Life Point (each Magic Player start with 20 Life Points).  If you still have mana, that combination could do up to 25 Life Points of Damage.  Note: the 10 out of the 25 Damage from “Siege-Gang Commander” required 10 mana (2 Damage Per 2 mana).

Soldier Deck (Other names Champion And Noble Deck, and etc.) usually end the match at around fourth turn or fifth turn.  But, those matches are in a regular all-out battle.  Example: not using cards like Fog or Safe Passage. Goblin Deck are similar to Soldier Deck. But, Magic Players had said that Goblin Rush is faster than Soldier Rush.  Goblin Rush might be faster but, Soldier Rush had a better defense.  In addition, Soldier Rush with some tactic could avoid being countered.  As for Goblin Rush, after the rush, you are left open for counter attack. Furthermore, in Innistrad set, there are Champion card and Noble card.  Soldier Deck reminded me of my “Haymaker” Deck from Pokemon TCG. (“Haymaker” started my first place streak in the PT.)

The following is the step by step of the fans claim:

MT Rule “Passes”: A round where the participant is not in the matches, he or she get a “Pass”.

Higher Rank: More experience Magic Player (By using the database from DCI system)

Even though, I won all my matches.  But, because there are “Passes” and “Rank”.  I did not get first place.  Example 1: Let say during Round 2, the DCI system paired me with a Magic Player who lost in Round 1.  As for Mary, she is paired with a Magic Player who won in Round 1.  According to the DCI system, if Mary and I both won our matches, Mary would score more points than me.  Example 2: The DCI system paired me with a Magic Player who just join the MT.  As for Chris, he is paired with the Highest Rank Magic Player in San Diego.  If Chris and I both won our matches, Chris would score more point.

As I am continue with my Rounds, there were fans trying out the plays (combinations) I was using.

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Level One “Sege” (“Increase Knowledge”) Deck Biography

“Sege”, take the last two letters from “Increase” and last two letters from “Knowledge”, put those letters together.  Those letters will make up the word, “Sege”.  Instead of calling it, “Increase Knowledge”, you may called it, “Sege”.

Se [from Increa(se)] + ge [from Knowled(ge)] = “Sege”

“Sege” is like my blimp.  “I had drove a distance on the road.  Purchase all the cards that needed for the MT.  Paid my participation fee.  Now wanted some magic time.”

Timeline

October 2007- October 2009 Roughly around the time I start constructing my MT deck

October 2010- May 2012 Constructing the “Blademaster” deck

October 2010- July 2012 Constructing the “Golden Sorin” deck

The Standard Tournament Format: The playable cards are limited at about 1-2 year(s) duration (the length of the duration such as 1-2 years are depended on the regulation).  Example of 1 year duration: From October 2007 released (Core Set Tenth Edition) to the October 2008 (Shards Of Alara).

Like I wrote in previous post about joining the MT for the first time, I was immediately drawn to the Sleek and Manageable Counter Spells.  Not until later on, I was able to get pass that stage. Example: when first just joining the MT, my side deck usually had “Meddling Mage” and “Pithing Needle”. Sometime I also included “Sadistic Sacrament”.  Just in case for an unexpected play(s).  “Not going to fall for the same play(s) again.”

One of the conflicts I had while constructing my MT deck: Lorwyn Block cards and Core Set Tenth Edition set cards was very close to the “Expiration Date”. If I have those card(s), then my deck will need an update soon.  In # 13 Beyond “Sege” Deck Biography, I listed cards with MT tips and notes from Lorwyn Block and Core Set Tenth Edition.  Mainly Island Element, because my “Sege” deck is mainly Island Element.

The following cards are some examples I could have used in my “Sege”: Spiketail Hatchling, Cloud Sprite, Bottle Gnomes, Mind Stone, Persuasion, and etc. were some of the cards I would use to construct my MT deck, but it was about to expire.  (In # 13 Beyond “Sege” Deck Biography, I listed cards tips on Deck Construction)

In addition, the Island Creature Types such as Faerie, Merfolk, and Wizard were also close to expire.  Mainly in the Lorwyn Block.  A “Sege” deck with Faerie, Merfolk, and/or Wizard would be a deck I definitely want to construct.  (Important Note: “Jace Beleren” is also in Lorwyn Block, but had reprinted in Core Set 2010)

“Jace Beleren” had traveled the many different worlds.  He even adventured into the multiverse.  The level one “Sege” is mainly Blue color. Because of the pressure from the DD, I don’t have much time.  There were only a handful of cards I could found in my collection that I could use in the “Standard Format” MT.

The noticeable things about my “Sege”: first, “Increase Knowledge” mean drawing cards from your library.  So, “Sege” have many cards that allow me to draw from my library.  This was also because I would sometime during trade, start out by asking, “Do you have any drawing cards for trade?”  (Not only noticeable, but increasing.  Hinted the name, “Increase Knowledge”.)  Second, the Counter Spells.  “I am not here to aggravate you.  My “Sege” deck happen to have to a good amount of Counter Spells.” 

The reason I called my “Sege”, my blimp, because I am not too picky on Counter opponents’ spells.  Because, if I was to felt regret afterward about not countering a spell I let my opponents’ played, then I could eight use “Mind Control” or “Persuasion” on it to join my side.  Last but not least, there are also “Ice Cage” if needed it to Ice Cage opponents’ spells. (Useful note: “Sorin, Lord of Innistrad” not only could get creature(s) to join your side, but also Planeswalker(s).)

Level 1 “Sege” (Before Zendikar)

Planeswalker: Jace Beleren x4

Creature: Cloud Sprite (CSX) x4, Zephyr Sprite x3, Spiketail Hatchling (CSX) x4, Illusionary Servant x3, Esperzoa x2

Sorcery: Divination x3, Flow of Ideas (CSX) x1

Instant: Worldly Counsel x3 Instant Counter Spell: Twincast x3, Essence Scatter x2, Negate x2, Cancel x1

Enchantment: Ice Cage x3, Persuasion (CSX) x2, Mind Control x1

Land: Island x19

Level 1 “Sege” (After Zendikar)

Planeswalker (5 Total) Jace Beleren x3 Tezzeret the Seeker x2

Creature (13 Total) Zephyr Sprite x3 Etherium Sculptor x4 Gomazoa Sculptor x3 Esperzoa x3

Sorcery (4 Total) Fabricate x2 Sleep x2

Instant (8 Total) Worldly Counsel x2 Twincast x3 Spell Pierce x3

Artifact (11 Total) Ornihopter (Artifact Creature) x3 Spellbook x2 Bone Saw x1 Courier's Capsule x2 Howling Mine x3

Land (19 Total) Island x19

Tezzeret’s Ultimate Plays

1. Set Up: Have enough artifacts in the battlefield.  “Etherium Sculptor” lower artifacts Mana cost to play by 1.  There are some artifacts that are 0 Mana cost to play.  Possible to hold some artifacts in your hands, until you want to use Tezzeret’s Ultimate, because of the 0 Mana cost to play.  But, make sure all those artifacts must be played before your turn start.  Even though, artifacts could be use on the turn it is play, but Artifact Creature still have to follow the creature attacking rule.

After the Set Up, you could use 2-5 or 6-10.

2. Play Tezzeret, it start out with 4 Loyalty Counter.  Use Tezzeret’s +1 ability to add 1 Loyalty Counter.  Now Tezzeret have 5 Loyalty Counter, so on your next turn you could use Tezzeret’s Ultimate (Require 5 Loyalty).

3. Play all artifacts that cost 0 Mana to play.  If you have Mana and you still have not got enough artifacts to end the game, then play more artifact(s).

4. After 2-3, end your turn.  When it is your turn, play “Sleep” to tap all of your opponent’s creatures.

5. Use Tezzeret’s Ultimate.  All of your artifacts will become 5/5 Artifact Creatures.  Start your combat step.  Declare all those Artifact Creatures as Attacking Creatures.  You win.

6. Play “Sleep”.   “Sleep” tap all of your opponent’s creatures.  Those creatures does not untap during opponent’s Untap Step.  By playing “Sleep” you safe from opponent’s creatures, because those creature will all stay tapped.

7. On the same turn of playing “Sleep”, play Tezzeret, it start out with 4 Loyalty Counter.  Use Tezzeret’s +1 ability to add 1 Loyalty Counter.  Now Tezzeret have 5 Loyalty Counter, so on your next turn you could use Tezzeret’s Ultimate (Require 5 Loyalty).

8. Last but not least, play all artifacts that cost 0 Mana to play.  All of Planeswalker(s) and all of the creatures you control are safe, because of the “Sleep” spell.

9. After 6-8, end your turn.  Even though, the deck list shown “Spell Pierce”, but a lot of the time, I would have “Flashfreeze”.  The “Flashfreeze” could use to counter the creature(s) your opponent going to play.

10. When it is your turn again.  Use Tezzeret’s Ultimate.  All of your artifacts will become 5/5 Artifact Creatures.  All of your opponent’s creature is still tapped.  If you did not use “Flashfreeze”, then the creature(s) your opponent just played are untap.  Start your combat step.  Declare all those Artifact Creatures as Attacking Creatures.  You should still able to win the match, if you did the Set Up correctly.

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Level 2 “Sege” Deck Biography

The Level 2 “Sege” Deck Biography, just limited to how to use it and how to construct it.  Read the content stories to know how the Level 1 "Sege" Deck did in the MT such as MT experience and how the Magic Players and fans reaction on it.  Also, how did I able to get to that stage of completion.  Example: First, idea and concept.  Second, going to "Artifact".  Third, gathering information from accessible resources.  Fourth, engage in trading transaction and other MTG activities.

Flashbacks, use "Tezzeret The Seeker" Ultimate, turn all the artifacts to 5/5 artifact creatures.  Then, use "Sleep" to sleep (tap) all of opponent's creatures.  Then, go for the win.  The fans claimed to me, that they don't get bore or tired of watching that play even if they had already seen me done it many time.

But, I need a backup plan, just in case, someone found an escape from that play.  Or worst a counter to go against that play...  So it is time to move to Level 2.  Note, even though, that Tezzeret’s Ultimate Play is effective, and I use that play often to win the match, but "Jace Beleren" made the steps to those wins possible.

Zendikar.  "There were "Gomazoa" in Level 1 "Sege", so I did not neglected Zendikar."  Partial true about that statement, because for a few reasons.  First, DCI System theory (below is my thought about it).  Second, the DD, again I don’t want to have attachment with the MT.

"Blame the DCI System such as when will they put me against those Magic Players who... I was gonna said got to the Final round or Championship round.  But, instead, the Vampire Deck or the Elf Deck.  Of Course, I cannot neglect the Barrier.  From Vampire deck, you could see the Vampiric Bloodline and its hierarchy.  Protected not only by the “Sorin Markov”, but also other Vampire lord(s).  The same with the Elves."  I would probably construct my Vampire Deck like how I thought.  But, I have not watch those matches before, maybe just a few glances from a distance.  Also, I am not constructing a Vampire deck, so beside trading and searching for the cards I needed for my “Sege” deck, I am not searching for the Vampire cards yet (not until later on in the schedule).

Zendikar was just release.  “Nissa Revane” and the Barrier were the talks of the MT.  Same story for me, the DD is still putting pressure.  Again, I don't want any attachment with the MT.

Anyway, I purchase a few Zendikar booster packs or could have been prizes from the MT.  In those packs, I got "Child of the Night", "Vampire Hexmage", "Vampire Gatekeeper", "Bloodgast", and a few other Vampire cards.  I am not going to construct a Vampire deck any time soon.  Also, there are already Vampire decks in the MT.  But, the "Bloodgast" work with the "Parasitic Strix".  I been searching a way for the "Parasitic Strix" combination to work, because it is artificial owl.  It is affordable.  Now, the card to make “Parasitic Strix” Plays work finally release.

“Vampire D” in the anime film titled "Vampire D" is consider hardcore and acclaimed.  "A man with a few words.  I like that."  My interpretation such as there were a scene.  A character was telling Vampire D he don’t talk much, but she don’t mind.  The film is consider a classic cult film.  With a remake version titled “Vampire D: Bloodlust”.  Both Versions the Classic Cult Version and Bloodlust Version get high rate from anime fans.  That is why I said it is hardcore and acclaimed.  The anime films had formulas that might consider epic proportion for those who don’t usually watch anime or don’t like watching anime.  I think Vampire D probably consider an anime grandeur.  Example: Vampire D actually step into Dracula Castle by himself.  Also, he is a half Vampire.  He could live under the sun light.  I had talked and written about the inventories in my “Stardragon Treasure” or my two Online stores, but “Vampire D” was not one of the inventory.  If Vampire D is half-blooded, then what side will he choose?

There are films that had something to do with Dracula Castle.  There are also the Castlevania Series and Castlevania: Lords of shadow series from Video Game Industry also have good sources of Dracula castle.  My opinion the “Darkstalker Revenge” is a great source for Dracula castle reference.  The opening line from “Darkstalker Revenge”, “The Darks shall be with us always.”

Since “Bloodgast” is the only Vampire in my deck, and there are so many Vampire cards had released.  Especially, in Zendikar Set, had argued as the best set to get the Vampire cards.  “Sorin Markov” also released in Zendikar set.  The other solo Vampire that came to my mind was Vampire D, so that is why I brought Vampire D anime film up.

"Bloodgast" is a full vampire.  Again, beside "Gomazoa", I felt like I had neglected Zendikar completely.  "I don't even know that inside my binder, there were a handful of Land fletch.  Many Magic Players will fight over them, and would trade me anything for them."  (Supposedly Land fletch is the hottest thing in Zendikar.)  In conclusion, if I add "Bloodgast" mean I had noticed Zendikar.  "Gomazoa" is a great card.  Did anyone noticed?  I bet the Vampire card will be noticed right away.  "It is true, Vampire D does not talk much.  But he is hardcore and acclaimed."

I am not constructing a Vampire deck, I am just adding "Bloodgast" in my "Sege" deck.  "Parasitic Strix" is an Artifact Owl.  The benefits of having it in my deck: First, Tezzeret’s Ultimate would turn it to a 5/5 artifact creature.  Second, Owl and Blue color seem like a better match than Vampire and blue color.  Third, Artifact Owl in my "Sege", would make it seem artificial and wise.

Anyway, even though, "Parasitic Strix" is an Artifact Owl, but it does not look Artifact at all.  In fact, it actually look like a real owl.  With the exception of its blade like wing.  Usually Artifact bird had wing like a blade.  "Tidehollow Strix" also an Artifact Owl, but it look more like an artifact than "Parasitic Strix".

One of “Jace Beleren” ability is “Archive Trap”.  Meaning Jace could deck opponent.

The first version of Level 2 "Sege" had "Bloodgast" and "Hedron Crab".  I don't even deck my opponent.  But, they were all ready to be decked.  Once in a while, I do decked my opponent.  "That is one of “Jace Beleren” ability."

The reason I had “Hedron Crab” in my deck, because I wanted to use "Hedron Crab" Landfall ability to get "Bloodgast".  But, it is known for being use in the MT as a creature that decks its opponents.  I could see why they were ready to be decked when they saw it.

Basically, the "Bloodgast" and "Mistvein Borderpost" in my "Sege", because of "Parasitic Strix" effect.  Example: When "Parasitic Strix" enter the battlefield I needed to control a Swamp permanent to gain 2 life and my opponent lose 2 life.  "Bloodgast" and "Mistvein Borderpost" are both Swamp permanent.  "Bloodgast" is a very persistence Swamp permanent.  More persistence than I thought.  Even though, the "Mistvein Borderpost" mainly for "Parasistic Stric" effect, but there are other reasons such as it increase "Bloodgast" persistency and "Hedron Crab" Landfall ability.  Tezzeret could untap two of them for two extra Mana.  Or use Tezzeret’s Ultimate to turn it into 5/5 artifact creature.

My "Sege" is like a blimp high in the sky.  Now, it is becoming Level 2, so I am modifying it.  "Parasistic Strix", Oh yeah, it feel good.  So, I called Level 2, I was satisfy with the changes.

"General, whatever come out.  We fight them together."  "Vampire D is hardcore and acclaimed."

Anyway, the Level 2 completed version was not far away.  Along the way, I got a piece of the hottest thing about Zendikar such as the Land Fletch and Landfall.

In conclusion, I decided to construct all the creatures in my "Sege" into artifact creatures.  Capping on (potentializing) my already pushed artifact Sculptors, Transmuters, and Summoners to their fullest.  "Esperzoa" was also pushed to its fullest.  Finally, I called completed level 2 "Sege".  I should start getting first place by now. "If I continue to wander why I don't get first place...  probably the same with putting a shotgun in my mouth and pulling the trigger."

Level 2 "Sege" Deck: First Version Planeswalker (3 Total) Jace Beleren x2 Tezzeret The Seeker x1

Creature (24 Total) Hedron Crab x4 Bloodgast x4 Etherium Sculptor x4 Merfolk Looter x1 Parasitic Strix x4 Esperzoa x3 Master Transmuter x2 Sphinx Summoner x2

Artifact (9 Total) Howling Mine x3 Etherium Astrolabe x3 Mistvein Borderpost x3

Sorcery (3 Total) Fabricate x2 Sleep x1

Land (21 Total) Misty Rainforest x4 Esper Panorama x2 Drowned Catacomb x4 Island x10 Swamp x1

Level 2 "Sege" Deck: Complete Version Planeswalker (3 Total) Jace Beleren x2 Tezzeret The Seeker x1

Creature (20 Total) Etherium Sculptor x4 Tidehollow Strix x3 Parasitic Strix x4 Esperzoa x3 Master of Etherium x2 Master Transmuter x2 Sphinx Summoner x2

Artifact (13 Total) Executionner's Capsule x4 Howling Mine x3 Etherium Astrolabe x3 Mistvein Borderpost x3

Sorcery (3 Total) Fabricate x2 Sleep x1

Land (21 Total) Island x9 Swamp x8 Drowned Catacomb x4

The Following Plays Are From Level 2 “Sege” Deck Complete Version:

“Parasitic Strix” Plays (It feel good, because it is an artificial owl in a “Sege” deck)

Like I had been written before, there are play(s) to develop.

“Parasitic Strix” effect seem moderate comparing to the powerful spells, so Magic Players don’t fess over it.  Even if you play it a few time.  Anyway, in these Plays your goal is to play “Parasitic Strix” as many time as you can on a single turn.  Example: Play it 8-9 time in a row on a single turn.  So, your opponent might rethink about “Parasitic Strix” effect once it is over.

1. Set up: Get the “Parasitic Strix” effect to be seamlessly.  As thought, there are no requirement to the effect.  Example: There are plenty of artifacts that count as Swamp permanents.  In other words, have a Swamp permanent handy at all time is not a problem.

2. Playing each Sculptor will lower the cost to play “Parasitic Strix” (all the artifacts) by 1 Mana.  Example: 1 Sculptor in play = 1 lesser Mana to play.  2 Sculptors = 2 lesser Mana to play.  Play Sculptor first before “Parasitic Strix”.

3. “Esperzoa” is consider overpower for a creature with 3 converted Mana cost, but it is understandable, because of the requirement.  Example: at the beginning of your upkeep, you have to return a creature you control to your hand.  Basically, use this requirement from “Esperzoa” to return “Parasitic Strix” to your hand, so you could play it multiple time.

4. As for the Transmuter, it might seem like overdone.  Because, Transmuter are usually use to play very difficult to play artifacts or very expensive (costly) to play artifacts.  But, Sculptor already taking care of the cost. Basically, use Transmuter to cycle “Parasitic Strix”, increase the playing it multiple time.  Example: Transmuter requirement is to return an artifact to your hand.  So return “Parasitic Strix”.  As for the Transmuter effect, you could play any artifact in your hand, so play “Parasitic Strix”.

5. The Summoner effect is to search library for an artifact and added it to your hand.  So, you could use Summoner to get “Parasitic Strix” from your library.  Just in case, if you don’t have enough Sculptor(s) to lower the 5 Mana requirement, you could use Transmuter to play it without any Mana cost.

Once you get the hang of it you could Eperzoa, Sculpt, Transmute, and Summon “Parasitic Strix” with smoothness and precision.  Also, time “Parasitic Strix” Plays to end the match.  If you do time it correctly, you could incorporate “Etherium Astrolabe” Plays with the “Parasitic Strix” Plays.

“Etherium Astrolabe” Plays

1. Set up: Sculptor will lower the Mana cost to play.  Use Transmuter to play without paying any Mana cost.  Also, because Transmuter is an Activate ability, so you could still use the Flash ability from “Etherium Astrolabe”.

2. “Tidehollow Strix” have Deathtouch.  So, use it to destroy any attacking creature.

3. While blocking with “Tidehollow Strix” and right when it does damage to the attacking creature, immediately play “Etherium Astrolabe” you could draw a card from sacrificing “Tidehollow Strix”.  Example: “Tidehollow Strix” only got 1 Toughness, it is usually destroy after it block.  Since it is going to be destroy, when combination with “Etherium Astrolabe” instead of destroy it is being sacrifice to draw a draw, so in a way you are drawing a card without “Etherium Astrolabe” requirement.  Basically, this combination neutralized “Etherium Astrolabe” requirement of sacrificing an artifact.  One more thing, this combination work with any number of blocking creatures.  Once you get the hang of it, it will be smooth. (In the Fourth Post MT Advance Rule Content will have detail and demonstration)

4. Like #3, any time one of your artifacts is destroy by your opponent’s spell, you may play “Etherium Astrolabe” to draw a card.

5. Using “Etherium Astrolabe” right before your opponents draw step, you could stop them from drawing the additional card with “Howling Mine”. Also, you get to draw a card.

6. Combination with “Parasitic Strix” Plays to end the match.  Since you are going to end the match mean you don’t need those artifact(s) once the match is over, so you may sacrifice any number of artifact(s) to draw that many number of card(s).  Only if you going to end the match, because if you don’t end the match, you might be in trouble.  Use this plays after the first match with your opponent, so you have some idea about your opponent deck.

Tezzeret’s Ultimate Plays (The classic Level One “Sege” Play)

By any chance, if you have “Tezzeret The Seeker” card and “Sleep” card in your hand.  You could set up for the Tezzeret’s Ultimate Play. It had proven to be successful and effective.  Go to #10. Level 1 “Sege” Deck Biography for Tezzeret’s Ultimate Plays.

“Master of Etherium” Plays (Mind as well since there are so many artifacts)

After the first match such as during your second or third match or when you know your opponent deck well enough.  Mainly if opponent see “Master of Etherium”, then they will know your deck have a lot of artifacts.  If you draw “Master of Etherium” in your starting hand, you could make an exception. Tips, anything too usual there are usually counter(s) against them.

1. Set up: Pile up on your artifacts.  “Master of Etherium” Power and Toughness is depended on the number of artifacts you have in play.  Also all artifact creature(s) you control get +1/+1.

2. All the creatures are artifact creatures

3. More than half of the deck is artifacts

4. If play “Master of Etherium” with Tezzeret’s Ultimate all of your artifacts will becomes 6/6 instead of 5/5 artifact creatures.  Or higher than 6/6 if there are more than one “Master of Etherium”.

Card Note and Side Deck Note

“Esperzoa”: at the beginning of your upkeep, you have to return a creature you control to your hand.

“Etherium Sculptor”: “Etherium Sculptor” is known as Sculptor.  The creature ability effect is all artifacts cost 1 Mana lesser to play.

“Master Transmuter”: “Master Transmuter” is known as Transmuter.  1 Island Mana, Activate.  Return an artifact to your hand, put an artifact from your hand into play.

“Sphinx Summoner”: “Sphinx Summoner” is known as Summoner.  When Sphinx Summoner enter the battlefield, you may search your library for an artifact and put it in your hand.

Side Deck Note: (15 Cards Total)

There are cards like “Austere Command” (LO) destroy all artifacts.  It is commonly used in tournament side deck. From the beyond the “Sege” Deck Biography content, I listed cards like “Glen Elendra Archmage”, “Declaration of Naught” (MO), and etc.  But, again those cards even if you have money or been trading at the MT place, you still could not get them.  So, I usually have to side deck Counter Spells like “Spell Pierce”.  Might be a common card, but it is worth more than a rare card.  “Oh, it is just a common card.”  “Yes. Finally.  I been looking for a person who does not use “Spell Pierce”.”

1. “Spell Pierce” x2

2. “Master of Etherium” x1: if the MT is being kind.  “Austere Command” is about to expire.

3. “Countersquall” x3: Not only could counter spell, but also opponent lose 2 life.

4. “Filigree Angel”x1: could restore a lot of Life Point, but must use Transmute to play this card.

5. “Tezzeret The Seeker” x1, “Sleep” x2, “Jace Beleren” x1, “Diabolic Tutor” x1

6. “Quest for Ancient Secrets” x3: could recover your library from “Traumatize” and “Archive Trap”

I usually go with the “Parasitic Strix” Plays, because it feel good.  Possible to win a match without attacking or decking opponent’s library.

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Redemption (High Level or Level 3) “Sege” Deck Biography And The Final Act

“What Is There For Me?”

On the contrary, because I was so involved (caught up) with the DD, I neglected that there were fans asking about my MT matches before I even joined my first MT.

Another reason I neglecting my fans, because I sneak into the MT, and I joined the MT, because I wanted to keep my mind away from the DD.

Another thing, coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line, I have many fans watching all of my matches.  I got so use to that.  In other words, the numbers of fans are in a huge number and also the number continuously going up after each PT.

In conclusion, I put myself as sneaking into the MT.  Also, I joined the MT, because I wanted to keep my mind away from the DD.  In other words, I have no attachment with the MT such as fans and Magic Players.  That also explained why I might have neglected the fans during the beginning part.  “The fans, how they know I am going to join the MT, I am still deciding?”

Beyond the no attachment, the theory about DCI system seem reasonable. So, the DCI System would sorted me in a beginning level zone.  Example: “Am I supposed to unreleased my play(s) that even National Level champion Magic Player cannot counter on a beginner level Magic Player?”

“General.”  I was greeted by a few of my opponents when we had declared to start our MT match.  A scenario: maybe I am human and my opponents are also humans.  We are still in control.  So, they greeted me as “General.” Saying that I have the control and command over the match. There were even very few Magic Players go beyond just the greeting.  They would said, “When the creatures come out, we will fight them together.” Again, the DCI system could have sorted me in the beginning level zone.

Question: Were there angry (resentful; upset) fans or opponents that was causing you problems?

Answer: Even though, in the MT there were regulation, standard, and etc., but like any other competition there were those who advanced to next round, and there were those who don’t advanced to next round.

Beyond the competition, there are values and beliefs.  My fans and opponents know that I spend a lot of time and put a lot of efforts to avoid having to deal with causing problems. Example: Coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line I had maintain the PT for a long time.  My PTTS had been going on for some years.

 The Final Act

In my article, “Marathon”, I wrote about a futuristic science-fiction about a protagonist who time-traveled to the future, and had overcame a series of obstacles and problems.  But, even that protagonist need to joined force to overcome “greater forces”.

I been occupying my schedule, so that I do not have time to think.  But, like what I wrote above, there are limit to a person capability and ability.  “I am…  just in case, before I declare anything, I am going to have a look at my life…”

Beyond the DD and MT, I am club president at my college, and I am taking college classes.

As for my parents who sacrifice themselves so that my siblings and I could live in the USA and have proper education.  “I found something.”  My father been asking about helping him with his autobiography book on his family as refugees who had to survive through a regime.

I feel like something very bad going to happen.  Example: maybe the DD going to take over me completely.  I should make some time in my schedule to help my father.  I did. Afterward, I finally reached my limit.

During the time I reached my limit, while in my college class, I met a female companion.  We immediate made connection, and shared intimate things together.  We also went on a few dates together.

After a while, I have not heard anything about my female companion.

During the time we were together, there were a few time, we listened to “Final Fantasy 13” (FF 13) theme song, Leona Lewis “My Hands”.  The singer is singing about they won’t let her go.

“FF 13 is so emotional.”  Now that my female companion and I watched the theme song and some scenes together. “FF 13 in a way hold sentimental value.”

So whenever I watched FF 13 I was wandering:  Was it emotional?  Or because it hold sentimental value?  Example: Lightning and Snow got into a fight, then in the midst of their fight they hugged each other.  Their eyes are in tears, and they said to each others, “We will see her again, right?” “Yes.  We will.  Hang on.” Their eye beginning to have more tears.

Even though, my female companion and I only together for a short period, but it is like Lightning and Snow saying to each others, “Yes.  We will.  Hang on.”

In conclusion, after I helped my father and reached my limit.  If I ended my life, then I would not met my female companion.  Then, we don’t know about Lightning and Snow.

So, I decided that I could still overcome the DD.  As for the MT, it is not too late, I could still back out of it. (This is roughly around the time of Redemption MT. Also, “Artifact” (MT place) all sudden got shut down.  My fist place got robbed (according to the fans).)

In summary, the MT did not meet up to my Pokemon Master with a CSS line. Especially, during the time of PT, the DCI System did not exist.  Example: How could I get first place such as according to the DCI System theory, I have no possibility of getting to the championship round?  Even if I could get first place in the MT, but how will I ever going to meet up with my Pokemon Master with a CSS line?  Again, the MT was a temporary.  That temporary period is coming to an end.  If I don’t act soon, then that chance of “Ninja Gaiden” how I pictured will be far away.

Not a soul in the world know about the DD.  “Ahhhh…”  I opened my mouth for a loud cry.  There were some seconds of silence.  Even though, my mouth was open for the loud cry, but only after some seconds then I could hear my loud cry.

There were a Chinese Tradition, with the lunar calendar on the 7th month and 15th day, it is a tradition to pray (visit elder’s grave(s) at the cemetery and pray) for elder(s) who had pass away.

So, my cousin and I, we drove to Los Angeles (LA) to visit the elder’s graves. My cousin told me that we have not got a chance to talk for a long time.  Also, my cousin notice I was bothered by something.  I told my cousin just some down time that is all.  “You are the club president.  You are handsome, charming, and charismatic.  You shouldn’t be in down time.”

Basically, probably just a few cheering words.  “Wait a minute, you think that those were cheering words?”

“I’ll be fine.  Lets get back to visiting the elder’s graves.”  “I am not done.  I’ll prove it to you.”

So, my cousin and I, we went to a restaurant to din in.  As we are seated in the restaurant, we are paying attention to the waiter and waitress.  Without raising our voices, often the waiters and waitress would come to our table.  As for other tables, there were shouting and raising voices and could barely get the waiter and waitress.  “Probably because we tip well.  That is why they came to our table.”  I wanted to say that line, but for the sake of avoiding argument I did not.  Instead I did not say anything.

“Lets have a walk.”  My cousin suggested.  While we were walking we notice that there were staring and glancing at us.  There were even a few ladies while staring at us had bummed into door, pole, or other people.  “Is that handsome, charming, and charismatic enough, club president?”

In conclusion, maybe I was so use to my Pokemon Master with a CSS line such as having many fans, so I do not pay attention to those things.  But, my cousin does got a point.

“For the Fans.  Redemption. Once before the expiration date.”

Redemption "Sege" Deck Planeswalker Jace Beleren x4

Artifact And Enchantment Howling Mine x4 Font of Mythos x4 Trace of abundance x3

Sorcery And Instant Time Warp x4 Twincast x3 Runefare Trap x4 Fog x4 Day of Judgement x4

Land Terramorphic Expanse x4 Sunpetal Grove x3 Glacial Fortress x4 Forest x5 Island x3 Mountain x1 Plains x2

Side Deck Negate x3 Volcanic Fallout x4 Celestial Purge x4 Safe Passage x4

The Redemption “Sege” Deck Plays are listed in #8 The Day of the Redemption MT.

“My “Sege” should have already got first place a while ago, but the DCI System did not announce as first place.  The Redemption “Sege” will be renowned as a better TFPD (Tournament First Place Deck).”  Finally, a chance for redemption.

I had wrote many time through-out the contents about coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line such as I had maintain the PT for a long time.  Beside maintain the PT for a long time, I had also maintaining my images as Pokemon Master with a CSS line.  The following are examples of maintaining my images:

1. The 4x “Time Warp” and 4x “Day of Judgement” was in the MT stores display. “Force of nature.”  Even though, I also purchased many cards at the MT stores during the same day, but those cards did not stand out like “Time Warp” or “Day of Judgement”.

2. Tezzeret’s Ultimate and “Sleep” were the most powerful spells I had used before the Redemption MT.  Unless, I decided to deck my opponent, then I would use Jace’s Ultimate.

3. Jace’s Ultimate Plays could win matches.  But, my Pokemon Master with a CSS line multiple level TCG skill are at an “Unbelievable Level”, so I don’t have to relied on Jace’s Ultimate Plays to win matches.  For example: my Level 2 “Sege” Deck, if you stay in the tournament long enough, it is possible to detect cards like “Austere Command” before it being play. So, it don’t have to come down to Jace using his Ultimate.

To get to the Level 2 “Sege” Complete Version took some time.  Like I wrote in the Level One “Sege” Deck Biography, “My “Sege” Deck is like my Blimp.”  A Blimp could stay in the air for a long time.  Also, it only used limit amount of energy.  Could have been the 3 reasons the Blimp is high above the ground, it could stay in the air for a long time, and it is energy efficient.  So, my MT experience from beginning until my Level 2 “Sege” Complete Version would seem smooth and transition so well.  To some fans and Magic Players, they might not notice too much difference. But, it had came a long way. Meaning I had spend a lot of time in the MT places searching the cards I needed.  All of that finally got to completion.  I did not neglected my Level 2 “Sege” when I constructed my Redemption (Level 3) “Sege”.  Beyond, the reasons I had repeated many time already such as for the fans, redemption, and once before the expiration date.  The following are some more reasons:

1. Coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line, I had many “Awed” reactions from Pokemon Players and Pokemon Players who would shout out comment like, “Unbelievable.”:  I have not got to that level of “Awed” from Magic Players.  There were a lot of surprised and amazed reactions from Magic Players, but not yet to that level like the PT.  The Redemption “Sege” will get to that level like the PT which will redeem myself as coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line.

2. This reason the same as in #8 Day of Redemption MT.  By now, the Magic Players probably already came up with comment about my “Jace Beleren” cards. Examples: “This is a Magic Tournament.” “I am not holding back.”  “Is “Jace Beleren” being courteous?”  “Is rare to see “Jace Beleren” being use in the Magic Tournament.”  “The new version of Jace had better powers, but required more mana to play.”  “The Only Playable cards in his deck are Twincast.”

3. I am in my own world away from the MT.  Example: I am going to be the Magic Player who stay and did not get criticize.  Also, because of the DD, I been trying not to have attachment to the MT.  Now a chance to redeem all of that.

4. Similar reason #2.  I had explained this reason in #7 Level One “Increase Knowledge” Deck.  My binders of cards show that I had cards from Blocks that are more than 10 years ago.  Also, Magic Players don’t know about my “Stardragon Treasure” and my two Online stores.  I had not joined the MT for that long. Those comments from reason #2 could mean that I am holding back.  When I first joined my first MT, I did not have that many years of experience like my binders of cards might show.  So, I just needed some time until I could meet up with my Pokemon Master with a CSS line.

5. Last but not least, “What happen if there is an “Austere Command” under the radar?”  Because of reason #2 and #4, my MT plays they were nothing like coming from Pokemon Master with a CSS line.  Now with the concern about “Austere Command” under the radar.  (“Austere Command” destroy all artifacts) Mainly because my Level 2 “Sege” more than half of the deck are artifacts.  So, “Austere Command” is being cast, my side of the battlefield will most likely be entirely destroyed.  In conclusion, my MT plays had been hindered lately.  I hate to see my Level 2 “Sege” get destroyed completely by cards like “Austere Command”, because it took me a while to get it to reached completion.

A few weeks after the Redemption MT, I stop by “Artifact”…  Continue On the Fourth Post

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MT Tournament Tip (Beyond “Sege” Deck Biography) 

For the following tips read the “MTG Note And Abbreviation” for description, detail, and definition.  These tips are from Core Set Tenth Edition (CSX), Lorwyn (LO), Morningtide (MO), Shadowmoor (SH), and Eventide (EV).  All the tips focus only on the Island Element.  Unless, they are exceptional tips.

Core Set Tenth Edition (CSX)

Island Element

Earth Creature Type: Human, Serpent, Beast, Vedalken

Sea Creature Type: Merfolk, Crab

Air Creature Type: Elemental, Bird, Faerie, Drake

Intangible Creature Type: Illusion

Mix Creature Type: Spirit, Wall

Unique Creature Type: Cephalid, Djinn, Metathran

Specific Creature Type: Wizard, Soldier, Rogue, Warrior

Shapeshifter: Changeling (This card is every creature type at all times.)

  Increase Knowledge: Counsel of the Soratami 3 SOR (Draw 2 Cards), Sift 4 SOR (Draw 3 Cards, Discard 1 Card), Tiding 5 (Draw 4 Cards), Thieving Magpie 4 Bird Flying (Deals Damage To An Opponent)

Cards With Landwalk Ability: Rootwater Commando 3 Merfolk IW

Cards With Word(s) of The Five Colors: Flashfreeze 3 INS (Red Or Green), Mind Bend 1 INS (Change Permanent or Basic Land), Sky Weaver 2 Metathran Wizard (White Or Black)

Cards With Uniqueness:

Archive Trap: Ambassador Laquatus 3 Merfolk Wizard (Mana Creature Ability), Dreamborn Muse 4 Spirit (Passive Creature Ability), Scalpelexis 5 Beast Flying (Deals Combat Damage To A Player), Traumatize 5 SOR (Half of Library)

Archive Trap Counter: Reminisce 3 SOR (Shuffles Graveyard Into Library)

Sigil of Sleep: Boomerang 2 INS (Permanent To Hand), Cephalid Constable 3 Cephalid Wizard (Deals Combat Damage To A Player), Evacuation 5 INS (Return All Creature(s) To Hand), Hurkyl’s Recall 2 INS (Return All Artifact(s) To Hand), Sunken Hope 5 ENC (Esperzoa Effect On All Players), Unsummon 1 INS, Vedalken Mastermind 2 Vedalken Wizard (Activate Permanent To Hand)

Tap Or Untap:

Counter Spells: Discombobulate 4 INS (Arrange 4 Cards On Top Of Library), Cancel 3 INS, Remove Soul 2 INS (Creature Spell), Twincast 2 INS (Copy INS Or SOR), Spiketail Hatchling 2 Drake Flying (Unless Pays 1)

Affiliation Bonus:

Ambiguous Card: Aura Graft 2 INS (Gain Control Of Aura), Arcanis the Omnipotent 6 Wizard (Activate: Draw 3 Cards), Clone 4 Shapesifter, March of the Machines 4 ENC (Tezzeret Ultimate), Plagiarize 4 INS (Opponent Skip Draw), Telling Time 2 INS, Time Stop 6 INS (End the Turn), Time Stretch 10 SOR (2 Extra Turns)

Off Topic Note: Brainstorm, Serum Visions, Telling Time, Ponder

Lorwyn (LO) Set

Lorwyn Block (Lorwyn, Morningtide, Shadowmoor, Eventide)

Island Element

Earth Creature Type:

Sea Creature Type: Elemental, Merfolk

Air Creature Type: Faerie

Intangible Creature Type:

Mix Creature Type:

Unique Creature Type: Incarnation

Specific Creature Type: Rogue, Wizard, Soldier, Scout

Shapeshifter: Changeling (This card is every creature type at all times.)

 Creature Type Search: Faerie Harbinger 4 Faerie Wizard (Faerie Search), Merrow Harbinger 4 Merfolk Wizard (Merfolk Search) IW*

Increase Knowledge: Fathom Trawl 5 SOR (Reveal 3 Nonland Cards), Mulldrifter 5 Elemental Evoke 3

Cards With Landwalk Ability: Aquitect’s Will 1 Tribal SOR Merfolk (IW), Deeptread Merrow 2 Merfolk Rogue (IW), Inkfathom Divers 5 Merfolk Soldier (IW), Streambed Aquitects 3 Merfolk Scout (IW)

Cards With Word(s) of The Five Colors:

Cards With Uniqueness: Champion A Card

Archive Trap: Drowner of Secrets 3 Merfolk Wizard (Tap Merfolk: Top Card Into Graveyard), Forced Fruition 6 ENC (Opponent Draw 7 Cards)

Archive Trap Counter:

Sigil of Sleep: Athersnipe 6 Elemental Evoke 3

Tap Or Untap: Pestermite 3 Faerie Rogue Flash (Comes Into Play), Stonybrook Angler 2 Merfolk Wizard (Activate With Mana Cost)

Counter Spells (Look at Spellstutter Combo.):

Spellstutter Sprite Combination: Familiar’s Ruse 2 INS, Glen Elendra Pranksters 4 Faerie Wizard (During An Opponent’s Turn), Surgespanner 4 Merfolk Wizard (Become Tapped With Mana Cost)

Affiliation Bonus: Merrow Commerce 2 Tribal ENC Merfolk (End Turn, Untap All Merfolk) Merrow Reejerey 3 Merfolk Soldier (+1/+1 And Tap or Untap), Scion of Oona 3 Faerie Soldier (+1/+1 And Shroud), Shapesharer 3 Shapeshifter Changeling (Becomes A Copy Of Target Creature), Silvergill Douser 2 Merfolk Wizard (Activate Merfolk and/or Faeries Increase Power)

Ambiguous Card: Cryptic Command 4 INS (4 Choices), Fallowsage 4 Merfolk Wizard (Becomes Tapped, Draw A Card), Guile 6 Elemental Incarnation, Mistbind Clique 4 Faerie Wizard Flash (Tap All Land(s)), Silvergill Adept 2 Merfolk Wizard (Comes Into Play, Draw A Card), Sower of Temptation 4 Faerie Wizard (Comes Into Play, Gain Control Of Creature), Tideshaper Mystic 1 Merfolk Wizard (Activate Basic Land Type Change)/Grixis Illusionist 1 Human Wizard (CFX), Wanderwine Phophets 6 Merfolk Wizard

 Cards With Clash: Broken Ambitions 1 INS (4 Cards Into Graveyard), Captivating Glance 3 ENC (Win = Success), Paperfin Rascal (Merfolk Rogue), Scattering Stroke (Instant), Ringskipper (Faerie Wizard), Whirlpool Whelm (Instant)

Tribal Card: Ego Erasure 3 INS Shapeshifter, Faerie Trickery 3 INS Faerie, Merrow Commerce Merfolk 2 ENC Merfolk, Wings of Velis Vel 2 INS Shapeshifter (4/4 Flying) 

Morningtide (MO) Set

Island Element

Earth Creature Type:

Sea Creature Type: Elemental, Merfolk

Air Creature Type: Faerie

Intangible Creature Type:

Mix Creature Type:

Unique Creature Type:

Specific Creature Type: Rogue, Soldier, Wizard

Shapeshifter: Changeling (This card is every creature type at all times.)

  Increase Knowledge: Distant Melody 4 INS (Creature Type Affiliation), Mind Spring 2 SOR (Draw X cards), Slithermuse 4 Elemental Evoke 4 (Draw Cards = Opponent’s Hand)

Cards With Landwalk Ability: Floodchaser 6 Elemental

Cards With Word(s) of The Five Colors:

Cards With Uniqueness: Champion A Card

Archive Trap: Grimoire Thief 2 Merfolk Rogue (Exile Library Cards), Ink Dissolver 2 Merfolk Wizard (Kinship)

Archive Trap Counter:

Sigil of Sleep: Nevermaker 4 Elemental Evoke 4 (Top Library)

Tap Or Untap:

Counter Spells: Declaration of Naught 2 ENC (Naming Spell), Vendilion Clique 3 Faerie Wizard (Shuffle 1 Card From Opponent’s Hand Into Library)

Affiliation Bonus: Inspired Sprite 4 Faerie Wizard (When Wizard Spell Are Cast: Tap Or Untap), Sage of Fables 3 Merfolk Wizard (Wizard Creature Get +1/+1 Counter), Sigil Tracer 3 Merfolk Wizard (Tap 2 Wizards: Twincast), Stonybrook Banneret 2 Merfolk Wizard (1 Less To Play) IW*, Waterspout Weavers 5 Merfolk Wizard (Kinship), Supreme Exemplar 7 Elemental (Champion An Elemental 10/10)

Ambiguous Card:

Card With Clash: Research the Deep 2 SOR (Return To Hand)

Card With Prowl Cost: Latchkey Faerie 4 Faerie Rogue Prowl 3 (Draw a card)

Tribal Card: Knowledge Exploitation 7 SOR Rouge Prowl 4 (Opponent’s Library), Notorious Throng 4 SOR Rogue Prowl 6 (Put Token(s) Into Play), Sage’s Dousing 3 INS Wizard (Counter Spell), Stream of Unconsciousness 1 INS Wizard (-4/-0 And Draw A Card), Thieve’s Fortune 3 INS Rogue Prowl 1 (4 Cards, Put 1 In Hand)

Shadowmoor (SH) Set

Island Element

Earth Creature Type: Kithkin, Beast

Sea Creature Type: Merfolk, Kraken, Elemental

Air Creature Type: Faerie

Intangible Creature Type:

Mix Creature Type:

Unique Creature Type:

Specific Creature Type: Soldier, Wizard, Rogue

Shapeshifter: Changeling (This card is every creature type at all times.)

 Increase Knowledge: Advice from the Fae 3 or 6 SOR (Look And Draw), Flow of Ideas 6 SOR (Draw Card = To Island), Ghastly Discoery 3 SOR Conspire (Draw 2 And Discard 1), River Kelpie 5 Beast Persist (Put Into Play From A Graveyard And Played From A Graveyard), Thought Reflection 7 ENC (Draw 2 Instead Of 1), Augury Adept 3 P/I Kithkin Wizard (Deals Combat Damage To A Player)

Cards With Landwalk Ability:

Cards With Word(s) of The Five Colors: Cerulean Wisps 1 INS (Blue; Draw A Card), Consign to Dream 3 INS (Red Or Green), Deepchanner Mentor 6 Merfolk Rogue (Blue), Barenton Cragtreads 4 P/I Kirhkin Scout (Red),

Cards With Uniqueness: Untap Activate, Conspire

Archive Trap: Drowner Initiate 1 Merfolk Wizard Blue* (Passive Creature Ability)

Archive Trap Counter:

Sigil of Sleep: Athertow 4 P/I INS Conspire (Attacking Or Blocking),

Tap Or Untap:

Counter Spells: Counterbore 5 INS (Graveyard, Hand, and Library), Cursecatcher 1 Merfolk Wizard (Unless Pays 1), Spell Syphon 2 INS (Pays 1 For Blue Permanent)

Affiliation Bonus: Faerie Swarm 4 Faerie Flying (Blue Permanents Increase Power And Toughness),

Ambiguous Card: Knacksaw Clique 4 Faerie Rogue Flying (“Untap Activate” Playing Opponent Spell), Leech Bonder 3 Merfolk Soldier (“Untap Activate” Move Counter), Puca’s Mischief 4 ENC (Exchange Permanent), Savor the Moment 3 SOR (Extra Turn)

Hybrid Mana: Plains (P), Island (I), Swamp (S), Mountain (M), And Forest (F). P/I is Plains And Island Hybrid Mana. Hybrid Mana will be right next to Converted Mana Cost.

Eventide (EV) Set

Island Element

Earth Creature Type:

Sea Creature Type: Merfolk, Elemental

Air Creature Type: Faerie

Intangible Creature Type:

Mix Creature Type:

Unique Creature Type:

Specific Creature Type: Rogue, Wizard, Soldier

Shapeshifter: Changeling (This card is every creature type at all times.)

 Increase Knowledge: Idle Thoughts 4 ENC (Draw A Card If No Cards In Hand), Oona’s Grace 3 INS Retrace (Draw A Card)

Cards With Landwalk Ability:

Cards With Word(s) of The Five Colors: Glamerdye 2 INS Retrace (Change Target Spell Or Permanent), Indigo Faerie 2 Faerie Wizard Flying (Blue), Wilderness Hypnotist 4 Merfolk Wizard (Red Or Green)

Cards With Uniqueness: Chroma

Archive Trap: Sanity Grinding 3 SOR Chroma

Archive Trap Counter:

Sigil of Sleep: Banishing Knack 1 INS (Activate Return Permanent To Hand), Cache Raiders 5 Merfolk Rogue (Eperzoa Effect; Permanent), Inundate 6 SOR (Return All Nonblue Creatures To Hands), Razorfin Abolisher 3 Merfolk Wizard (Activate Return Creature With Counter To Hand)

Tap Or Untap: Merrow Levitator 4 Merfolk Wizard (Play A Blue Spell)

Counter Spells: Dream Fracture 3 INS (Draw A Card), Glen Elendra Archmage 4 Faerie Wizard Flying Persist (Noncreature Spell),

Affiliation Bonus:

Ambiguous Card: Wake Thrasher 3 Merfolk Soldier (Permanent Becomes Untapped, Increase Power And Toughness)

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Magic The Gathering (MTG) Note And Abbreviation

 These contents (pages) are description, detail, and definition for the tips in the “MT Tournament Tip” contents (pages).  The sets are Core Set Tenth Edition (CSX), Lorwyn (LO), Morningtide (MO), Shadowmoor (SH), Eventide (EV).  Focus only on the Island Element.  There are cards that belong in more than one category.  When no card is listed in a category, there is a possibility of finding card(s) from that category.

 Island Element: Island Element is the Blue Color Element among the five different colors. The Island Element mana is a blue color water symbol.  In my writing sometime I referred Island Element as the “Blue Color”.

Brief Description: The brief description is in the ().  Describing a card with as few words as possible.

Total Converted Mana Cost: The number right next to the card name

Card Type Abbreviation: Sorcery (SOR), Instant (INS), Enchantment (ENC), Artifact (ART), Basic Land (BASL), Unique Land (UNIL).  As for Creature, the creature type(s) will be listed, and usually there will be more than 1 creature type name(s).

Cards With Landwalk Ability (Landwalk Ability Abbreviation): Plainswalk (PW), Islandwalk (IW), Swampwalk (SW), Mountainwalk (MW), Forestwalk (FW)

Card With Word(s) of The Five Colors: The Five Colors are White, Blue, Black, Red, And Green.

Cards With Uniqueness: Uniqueness is usually a card with an unique feature distinctive in that Block or Set.  The name of the Uniqueness will be right next to Card Type.  Example: Flashback, Retrace, Buyback, Fateful hour, Hellbent, Metalcraft, and etc.  Also, Uniqueness is different from Creature Ability such as First Strike, Lifelink, Indestructible, Regenerate, and etc.  Last but not least, sometime Creature ability like Soulbound and Undying are commonly found in Innistrad Block, so could mix up as Uniqueness. (Read Creature Ability below for Creature Ability Description)

Archive Trap: Archive Trap is when you are using spell(s) on opponent’s library, so that he or she will run out of cards in it.  One of the way to win a match in MTG match.  Archive Trap (ZE) is a MTG card name.

Sigil of Sleep: Sigil of Sleep effects are in the range of returning (Put) target permanent to hand, into library, or on top of library.  The following divide up the effects: Esperzoa Effect: return target creature into hand at the beginning of Upkeep.  Gomazoa Effect: return target creature to library, and shuffle it.  Top Library: put target creature or permanent on top of library.  Another thing, the Sigil of Sleep are not limited to those range of effects.  Sigil of Sleep (UR), Esperzoa (CFX), and Gomazoa (ZE) are MTG card names.

Tap Or Untap: Card effect or card ability that cause Tap and/or Untap.  This category might seem as though it had lesser priority than the other category such as when a card belong in multiple categories.  But, it is another category.  This mix up happen, because there are cards like “Mistbind Clique” and “Sleep” such as I would most likely list those cards in Ambiguous Card category.  Example: when you are searching for “Mistbind Clique”, because you wanted a card that could tap out all of your opponent lands, so that they cannot counter your spell(s).  Or, searching for “Sleep”, because “Sleep” is often used to end the match. Sleep 5 SOR (Tap All Opponent’s Creature(s)).  “Sleep is Island Element, and it is from CS10.  In conclusion, there are strategy that require Tap and/or Untap.

Counter Spell: Counter Spells are spells usually played on opponent’s turn. Usually Counter Spell(s) are casted (played) in response and/or interact to opponent’s spell(s).

Affiliation Bonus: When having (controlling) the same creature type among all of your creatures in the battlefield.  But, it is not limited to creature type or in the battlefield. Example of having the same creature type bonus: “Coat of Arms” 5 ART (CS10).  Increase Power and Toughness when you having the same creature type among all of your creatures.  In addition, the more you have, the more the Power and Toughness will increase.

 Tribal Card: Tribal Card have Tribal Type and Subtype (Creature Type).  Like Artifact Card, Tribal Card could be categorized in more than one card types, but Tribal Cards are usually count as 2 card types.  Example: Tribal Enchantment Merfolk would count as a Merfolk Creature Type Card and Enchantment Type Card.  Tribal Instant Wizard count as a Wizard Creature Type Card and Instant Type Card.

Champion A Card: A Common Requirement To Play Creature In Lorwyn Block.  When a Creature with Champion A Card comes into play, sacrifice it unless you remove a distinctive creature type that is written (specified) on that card you control from the game.  When this creature leaves play, that card returns to play. Example: Champion a Faerie: When this comes into play, sacrifice it unless you remove another Faerie you control from the game.  When this leave play, that card return to play.

Ambiguous Card: Could be in multiple or none of the categories.  Also, cards that stand out such as very powerful, very difficult to get, expensive, and etc.

Word With *: If a word had *, then the card had either or both Landwalk or/and word(s) of the five Colors.  Also, the card was not listed in either or both categories.

 Archive Trap Brief Summary: Archive Trap is when you are using spell(s) on opponent’s library, so that he or she will run out of cards in it.  One of the way to win a match in MTG match.  Cards like “Archangel’s Light” (IN), “Laboratory Maniac” (IN), “Elixir of Immortality” (CS10), and “Quest for Ancient Secrets” (ZE) could prevent or take advantage of the Archive Trap.  There are cards with Retrace, Flashback, Unearth, Threshold, could also take advantage of Archive Trap.  Innistrad Block: beyond cards with those ability listed above, the following cards effect focus on the graveyard (discard pile) such as the effects are usually effective only when there are some cars in the graveyard: Boneyard Wurm, Creeping Renaissance, Gnaw to the Bone, Splinterfright, Wreath of Geists, Runechanter’s Pike.  The following cards have Archive Trap effect: Trepanation Blade, Ghoulcaller’s Bell. Beside Innistrad Block: Visions of Beyond (Draw 3 cards instead 1), Accumulated Knowledge (Draw up to 4+ card(s))

The following cards had something to do with Archive Trap:

Odyssey Block: Threshold (You have threshold as long as seven or more cards are in your graveyard)

Masques Block: Ghoul’s Feast (Attack Power Increase), Avatar of Woe (Lower the Mana cost to play), Raven Guild Master 2 Human Wizard Mutant (Deals Combat Damage To A Player)

 Creature Ability: Creature Ability are divided into multiple categories.  The categories: (Common) Creature Ability, Activate Creature Ability, Passive Creature Ability, Mana Creature Ability.  Common Creature Ability (or Creature Ability) could be found commonly printed on Creature Type such as First Strike, Lifelink, Indestructible, Regenerate, and etc.  Usually the Creature Card have description about the Creature Ability.  The following is a brief description about each of the categories: Activate Creature Ability have a curve arrow symbol and to use it require usually tap that creature.  With exception of sometime the requirement could be untap instead of tap.  Passive Creature Ability are usually on-going.  Mana Creature Ability require paying the Mana cost to use it.

______________________________________________________________

Glossary And Index (In Progress)

Will have update.

[tomoyanosekai]

Pride and Exhaustion ~ 割れた時計の顔~ (Wareta Tokei no Kao: Cracked Watch Face)

“Push through the pain. Giving up hurts more.”

     -  Vegeta, “Dragon Ball Z”

“Ah dammit, not again…”

I laid there on the ground exhausted and gasping for air, staring at the sky from my house’s empty driveway after jogging a mile and a half through a bunch of hills. As I was gasping and trying to catch my breath, I collapsed to the ground and laid there with my body sprawled out. While my body collapsed, my left arm was also dropped heavily to the ground. But as that happened, there was a strange noise that happened for an instant. It wasn’t until five minutes later that I saw the screen of my watch: it was cracked again. It had only two weeks where I was given a replacement Fitbit that my Father never opened or used after I ended up shattering the screen on my former watch while exercising. Unlike the former watch which was extremely noticeable and posed a bit of a hazard, the cracks here weren’t that bad.  

“Time to restart the clock.”

It’s a bit ironic that I ended last month’s post with an analogy to Kamen Rider and Watches, only to crack the screen of the watch I used every day, right? When looking at it from afar, it’s not too noticeable, but on closer inspection, there are definitely cracks. I guess when I look back at this month, both cracked watches pose a fine analogy to use when looking back and summarizing a frankly hard month. The thing I’ve noticed with my tumblr and all of its posts is that it’s a very “human” type of blog, with a sense of added grandeur due to the fact that I am a big fan of the writing style known as “The Hero’s Journey.” (Basically, a character ventures out to get what they need, faces conflict, and then ultimately triumphs over adversity.) In the end, all the stories and events that are recounted here are just this when everything’s said and done: it’s just life. There’s always going to be ups and downs in the purest form of life, but I’d say this month was filled with more downs than usual; again a natural trait within life. I’ll warn you right now, this month has really been a hard month for me to take in, but if you’re willing to see and accept my darkest and worst sides, feel free to continue reading. If not, feel free to stop here and find something else to read or do, and come back in a month or so. I’m still trying to find ways to overcome everything, but for now, these are the unfiltered and unadulterated thoughts as I live through each moment trying to find ways of overcoming life. Without any clever segues or transitions, here’s November.

To begin with a reference from last month, yes, the clock finally restarted for me again, and I can see clearly that time and life are moving forward for me, just as it is moving forward for everyone else. My life began to move forward again as I obtained a new job as a waiter at a Ramen Shop. With a new job, I had to begin figuring out how to balance classes and homework, hanging out with friends, and spending time with family along with that new work schedule. Just as my life began to move forward, I also saw that my friends’ lives were also moving forward steadily, and seeing the surrealness of time moving forward with everyone was honestly really inspiring. Although moments at the ramen shop have been interesting and slightly stressful, it’s also given me time to learn more about how to serve people, as well as learn more about something I’ve always had a passion for. The more I talked with people about my new job, they always said it sounded like “something meant for me” or a “very ‘Chad’ thing to do.” They weren’t wrong; especially since this gave me a chance to practice Japanese, serve people with a smile, eat delicious food for free, and learn more about the culinary world while earning money. But then again, when people say that’s “a very ‘Chad’ thing to do,” what do they mean when they say that? That’s only a question that I’ve only begun to ask and think about due to more recent events.

As November was a pivotal point for me to try and move forward, it was also filled with meetups between good friends for me. Even though October was a time that left me ultimately sort of jaded and lonely due to the fact that I was at Biola alone with no sense of community waiting for me anymore, meeting up with good friends and spending time with all of them helped fill the gap that was made when I was feeling lonely at school and home. However, ever since coming back from Japan, along with facing so many other hurdles in the past previously, I felt that I grew immensely as a person, especially with my sense of trust in others. While meeting up individually with certain friends, it was brought to my attention that they were all still worried about me, and in this case: felt that it was hard to open up to me because I still wasn’t being honest with them or even myself from their point of view.

For all the things I went through to bring me up to where I am now, I thought that I was always finding ways to constantly improve myself and find ways to become more honest with myself and others, but this still wasn’t the case from their perspective. They were both frustrated and concerned that I continually tried to face things alone, even though I felt that there were things that were either non-issues or not much of a problem by the time word got out. When growing up with the cultural mindset of trying not to inconvenience others or trying to be considerate of other people’s time and emotions, why wouldn’t I try to keep my problems self-contained? That isn’t something that can easily be removed. But the thing that was extremely frustrating was being told that I hadn’t made much progress. The question that made me think the most was when one of my friends asked me this:

“Do you love yourself?... Would you do the same things you do for others, except for yourself?”

When I was first asked that question, my immediate thought was “Yes,” because the things I went through I felt were trials for me to learn to love myself, love being who I am, and being more honest with myself. However, the more I thought about it, I began to ask more about my identity and who I really was when I wasn’t serving other people. In the end, it bothered me that my close friends felt they couldn’t open up or trust me, but yet also felt that they were trying to force trust out of me, and it bothered me even more that I was told I wasn’t making any progress in a place where I felt I was now mixed with questions of self-love, and I even began to ask whether or not if my everyday personality was a genuine “me.”

Nevertheless, besides working and figuring out myself in the midst of figuring out how to improve my relationships, there was one more wrench thrown into my emotional gears. I found out that I wasn’t going to graduate this semester yet again, and due to this revelation, I unfortunately figured out my true answer and reason to that earlier question of self-love. After learning that I wouldn’t graduate this semester and breaking that news to my parents made me realize that I truly don’t actually love myself for who I am and I still don’t; I have a lot of self-hatred buried deep underneath my carefree or cheerful exterior. The person I had to see in front of me was a liar and someone extremely weak; traits that I didn’t want to be or accept. What was real or fake? None of that mattered anymore. The simple fact was that I hated that myself; I hated the person I truly was, and I still do. But the more I thought about it and stewed in my own frustration and anger, I hated having to deal with a sense of forced weakness and powerlessness. I hated that I tried to work so hard to get where I am now, only to find out that I still wasn’t graduating mixed with my hatred focusing on my own stagnant growth as seen from the perspective of other people. I hated the fact that I couldn’t deliver on my own promises, and this was all humiliating. I hated that I felt that I couldn’t do things for myself or solve my own problems and the sense of weakness that came from it. I already sacrificed a lot of things in my childhood in order to protect other people and myself by lying to others, and I felt that other people were more important than me. It forced me to be strong on my own, and accepting my weakness here in the present meant denying everything that I went through. I couldn’t rely on other people and was forced to rely on myself when I was younger. These are feelings that still haven’t changed to this day, and neither has this desire for strength changed as well. I don’t like thinking about this at all, but suddenly having to face the reality that my truest self is a weak liar and even thinking that the person I presented to every person I met was all a lie left me really pissed off with myself and God.

“The person known as Chad is created from lies.”

But even in the midst of this of my own burning self-hatred do I see things now, and ultimately how tired I am. My own pride based within my desire to fix my own problems along with my inability to trusting others with the task of listening to these problems are all things I can’t get rid of easily. Do I still hate myself for being weak and a liar? Yes, I do; and I know that this isn’t going away easily. I can’t accept that part of myself, and I refuse to accept him. I know I need to rely on God and just saying that most of all, especially now, is the hardest and most frustrating thing to admit. I hate that I have to admit it, and admitting this really pisses me off; I am extremely stubborn. However, like I said at the beginning, the watches here still pose as a fine analogy. As I look at my two watches, they’re definitely cracked. However, even if they’re cracked, they’re still functioning. The cracks were formed as a result of me pushing myself too hard, but even as the cracks are still there, they’re still serving their purpose and still working just fine, despite a flawed and cracked appearance.

Even though the watch is broken on the outside, it’s time to try and look past the cracked appearance and the reflection seen in that broken screen.

[xlivethroughthisx]

The Rippling Impact of Suicide

Over Memorial Day Weekend, Congresswoman Susan Wild (PA) lost her longtime partner to suicide. This set her down a path to making change in the halls of Congress. She recently introduced two bills: the Enhancing Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Through Campus Planning Act and the Greater Mental Health Access Act. Today, she convened a roundtable event on Capitol Hill that included a panel of suicide experts that included Dr. Paul Sasha Nestadt (Johns Hopkins), Chris Maxwell (American Association of Suicidology), Fred Stokes (NFL Super Bowl Champion), and myself, with Mike Schlossberg (State Representative, PA) moderating. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, opened the event. There were also several other members of Congress in attendance, including Congresswoman Grace Napolitano (CA).

The event was slated to last an hour, but was so well-attended, and with an incredibly engaged audience, that it was extended an extra hour. While we had a pre-planned list of discussion questions to address, the time wasn’t there, and it made more sense to answer the questions posed by folks in the room.

I prepared in advance for the planned questions, and I think the content is still important, so I wanted to share my responses with the Live Through This audience.

Q: One of the common things that happens when someone tells their story about losing someone to suicide is that it empowers other to share their personal stories as well. It also sheds a light on how prevalent this has become. Do you agree that suicide is a public health epidemic, and how should that inform the way we address it?

A: I guess my question would be: it is a public health issue, but what is our goal in calling it an epidemic? Most mental health clinicians have zero training on suicide and their responses to suicidal clients are driven by fear or liability, which often results in suicidal people being locked up and traumatized by the people and systems that are supposed to help them. Hotlines are underfunded. Crisis centers are underfunded. People are being funneled into the prison system for having mental health crises. So I wouldn’t encourage even more public health messaging on the topic by calling it an epidemic without first addressing those funding issues, because right now public health is failing us.

Q: What are some common misconceptions about suicide that you’d like to clarify?

A: The CDC released a report in June 2018 indicating that 54% of Americans who died by suicide between 1999-2016 did not have a known mental health diagnosis. Instead, issues at play were relationship problems, housing issues, legal issues, substance use issues, financial issues. 

These are life events that can happen to any of us, and that can threaten our our wellbeing. Certainly there are intersections with mental health, but I think marrying suicide to mental illness closes off a lot of opportunities for people to relate to the issues and, honestly, it closes off a lot of opportunities for actual suicide prevention, too. 

When we focus on mental illness, we automatically allow people who have never struggled to believe it can’t happen to them, and it can. Adversity affects all of us. Trauma affects all of us. I think it’s imperative that we change the focus of our messaging.

Q: Loss survivors often express a sense of guilt. They wonder if there were signs they missed, or how they could have intervened. However, one of the things we are learning is that there often aren’t missed signs. What are some of the most common things you hear from loss survivors about their healing process?

A: Guilt is a part of the grieving process. We ask why, and we scour our memories for all the times we could have done something differently. Ultimately, the “blame” does not rest on the loss survivor. Not ever. The responsibility for the action belongs to the person it rests with. I have known people who died by suicide who did everything they were told to do—they sought treatment, they built coping skills, they had supports—but the pain was still too great. As those left behind, we have to grieve, and we have to accept that we can only do what we can do.

I do think there are almost always missed signs; I think that we usually just don’t see them because we haven’t been given the necessary education. Many of us in this field are here because we have been affected by suicide. We sought out the education after we were affected, and we dedicated ourselves to making change. Part of our job, then, is to commit ourselves to educating others in the hopes that they might be able to help someone in crisis in the future.  

Q: There are some who think that a person just needs to “get help” and after that, the ideations will go away. However, some attempt survivors sometimes describe suicidal ideations as a life-long experience that they’ve learned to work through. Can you discuss the importance of having lifelong access to mental health services?

A: In my experience, having spoken to hundreds of people with lived experience, suicidal thoughts occur more than once over the lifespan. They also occur on a spectrum—sometimes they’re worth talking through, sometimes it’s a true crisis. 

We’ve been sold a narrative: something bad happens, a person attempts suicide, they seek a specific, sanctioned kind of treatment, and they’re better forever. This isn’t true for most of us. The thoughts recur. Sanctioned treatment isn’t accessible to everyone and it doesn’t work for everyone. We need more clinicians, we need more clinicians of color, we need better access, and we need to be more honest about the recurring nature of suicidal thoughts so that we can encourage people to build supports and build better coping skills. But we also have to stop pushing therapy and education as the ONLY answers, we have to educate people on how to seek those treatments effectively if they do go that route, and we have to encourage people to seek out what works for them—especially if treatment isn’t an option. Leaving people in the lurch contributes to suicidality.

Q: One of the reasons people are reluctant to reach out about their struggles with suicide or a loved one’s struggle is the stigma that’s attached. Can you explain the different ways a person might experience stigma, and what needs to be done to overcome this?

A: From the lived experience perspective, there are a lot of hurdles and so many ways it can go wrong. If we tell the people in our lives, we open ourselves up to the potential for harmful feedback, like, "Pull yourself up by the bootstraps,” or, "Other people have it worse,” or, "But you have so much to live for.” If you open yourself up to an employer, you risk losing your job because there aren’t protections in place. If you open up in a time of crisis, you risk someone overreacting and calling the police for a welfare check or an active rescue, which could put a person acting erratically, or a POC, or a queer person in danger. Medical professionals have also been known to sometimes mistreat suicidal folks, from expressing resentment to administering forced treatment like physical and chemical restraints, which have the potential to further traumatize the person in need. All of this really depends on the compassion of the person whose hands you put yourself in—and whether they have training or experience with suicidal people, and whether they can avoid a fear-driven response and respect the autonomy of the person in crisis.

Q: What can someone do to support a loved one or friend who is struggling with suicidal ideation?

A: Talk to them. Ask how you can help. Rally around them. Do their dishes, make sure they eat, distract them. If they want to and can seek treatment, help them navigate the insurance system, help them find a therapist who might be a good fit for them, help make appointments. Check in regularly. Listen when they talk and validate their feelings, even if you don’t understand. Don’t react with fear and put them in danger. Always respect that they are a person and should be allowed to retain autonomy and maintain control of decisions about their bodies.

Q: What can government do to help prevent the prevalence of suicide?

A: Fund research. Fund training. Fund the development of training programs that address suicide from a person-centered perspective. By that, I mean include people with lived experience in the development of these trainings. We know best what helps us. Treat us like people who need help, rather than problems to be solved. Fund alternative approaches to care, like peer support. Mandate training for all clinicians who work with patients, from mental health professionals to medical professionals to speech therapists, occupational therapists, and especially teachers. Mandate suicide education in schools, starting from Kindergarten. In my work, I have encountered people who said they started thinking about suicide as early as 5. Not teaching them about it is not protecting them, it’s endangering them. We have to make suicide a regular conversation, beyond awareness campaigns. We’ve got to approach it practically, and we’ve got to stop ignoring it.

[socialattractionuk]

Using Edison’s Current To Light Up Your Ideal Dating Life

You can find the original article at http://www.socialattraction.co.uk Connect with us Google+

Thomas Edison was the first-ever person to create a working light bulb. And the reason why it’s such a famous story is because he actually failed over a thousand times before he finally reached his end result. And it’s my intention in this podcast to outline three very powerful self-development tools that we can use to light up our dating life.

Now, the three things that I’m going to be discussing are firstly, his ability to overcome adversity. Secondly, I’m going to give you a very powerful tool to help beat frustration in your life, and this was life changing for me when I first discovered it. And finally, I’m going to talk about a really strange but interesting way that he used to use sleep to help him solve problems. And that’s a very interesting way of helping solve any problems in any area of your life.

So let’s just first begin with his ability to overcome adversity. So, as we know, Edison failed over a thousand times before he finally made a working light bulb. Now, the reason why this is interesting is because to be able to do that, Edison had to do a few things. So first of all, we had to have a very specific goal in mind. And in this case, his goal was obviously to have a working light bulb.

Now, if we can relate this back to dating, most of us typically don’t have a very specific goal of the person who’d like to meet or the lifestyle that we’d like to have.

So what we tend to do is say, “I want to get better results with women.” But in my experience it’s not really specific enough. I mean, a much better goal would be to meet a girl who is this age, who’s into this type of work, who has this type of lifestyle.

Because the more specific you can get with your goal, the easier it is is to actually start developing your life to meet someone, so, you know, giving you both parameters there. Getting better results with women is very generic. I mean, where would you go to meet typical women? I mean, you just … Anywhere, right? Whereas if your goal is to meet a girl who’s into artwork, who’s very creative, you can really niche down straight away and be like, “Okay, well, she’s most likely to be in art galleries, art courses or self-expression places.” So just by delving down in one specific area, you can see how your dating strategy will change depending on your goal.

The other thing that Edison did with regards to overcoming adversity is obviously he kept changing his plan along the way. Now, he knew where his end result was. “I am going to create a working light bulb.”

But what he didn’t have was the plan. And every time he came up with a plan that didn’t work, he learned something, and then he moved on to the next one.

And this is something that I do on my training course with everyone. After every interaction you say, “What did I do right and what would I add to make it better next time?” Because we never have the perfect plan when we start. We have the intention of going out and meeting people and attracting the women that we want, but we don’t have an ideal plan on how to do that. So in my experience, you go out with your initial plan, and then you change it as you go along. There’s nothing really that can be learned by being negative in this situation. It’s literally what did I do right and how can I add to it?

And the final thing that Edison was great at with regards to overcoming adversity, he didn’t quit. And to put this in perspective, a thousand times he tried and he failed. I mean, could you imagine approaching a thousand women? Actually starting off today, how long that would take you to do? I mean, within a thousand approaches, I’m pretty confident that anyone without any form of coaching in this area, if you just went up to a thousand women, that you are going to meet the girl of your dreams.

And if you actually have the goal of the specific girl in mind, for example, an art girl, like I spoke about earlier, if you went to art galleries and approached a thousand women, I’m extremely confident that you would learn and refine along the way.

And eventually, somewhere along that line, probably way before you get to the thousand mark, you’d actually meet the girl of your dreams. So that’s another interesting lesson with regards to overcoming adversity.

Now, this brings me nicely on to the second part, which is how to beat frustration in your life. Now, the first thing I’d like to say about this is that I actually felt frustrated in my life for most of my life, yet I was unaware that was feeling frustrated.

So the symptoms that I had was the I just felt like things weren’t happening fast enough. I felt like I was checking my phone a lot. I was checking my emails a lot. I was trying to force things, right? I was trying to do too many things, just trying to force it all the time. So if anyone listening to this suffers from the same problem … And in my experience most of us at some point in our life when we set goals, we then do begin to feel a little bit more frustrated about the fact as to why we haven’t achieved them along the way. So actually most of us, in my experience, do suffer from frustration.

But I found one tool that actually really helps to get rid of this feeling completely. And all it is is just a list of achievements. So when I first found out about this, I wrote a list of achievements. And when I first started coaching, which was a decade ago, right? And I outlined everything that I’d done. And it’s almost like turning around, right?

So you’ve got your goals in front of you, but then you turned around like where have I come from? What have I done? And all of these amazing things became apparent and I realised actually how far I’d come.

Because frustration’s normally only a short-term thing. If you’re working towards your goals, actually, typically over a longer period of time, you’re getting so much closer to them. I mean, for me personally, quitting a job that I didn’t like and setting up a business to do what I love, just looking back on the things I’d done … You know, I’d been to various European cities and was coaching people … I just had all of these amazing experiences of times where I didn’t quit, times where I stood up against difficult things in my life and I came out stronger.

And when you actually just stop and look at that, it makes you feel so proud of yourself. It makes you feel like you have real value in the world, you know? That I’ve gone and done a lot of things that other people aren’t willing to do. I stuck to my moral compass along the way. I’ve developed. I’ve read. I’ve done all of these different things. I mean, I’ve read a book a week for like a decade. That’s 500 books. When you think about the knowledge that you can get from doing that, it’s just amazing.

And what I do now is I have a weekly list of achievements, where I look back … I think daily is a bit too much, but I look back and say, “Okay, what have I done this week?” And my list is normally about 30. And if you do that, you are going to feel better about yourself, and the feeling of frustration is going to fall away. And what it does, it renews your strength. It renews your energy. Because actually when you look at the list of 30, you’re like, “God, actually I could have done a bit more of that.” So I read, for seven hours this week. “Oh, actually I probably could’ve read for nine.”

So by looking at it, you actually start to set future goals, but you do it in a way which is going to increase your self-esteem rather than getting frustrated.

Because if you’re looking forward and you’re like, “Oh, why haven’t I got there yet? Why haven’t I got there yet? Why haven’t I got there yet?” you’re going to be frustrated. Whereas if you look back, you’re going to feel proud, and that’s going to renew your energy to keep going.

And I cannot express enough how life-changing this is, especially if you’re looking at making a change in your life, with a career that you have, with regards to meeting more women or attracting more women, or just any area of your life. Take the first step today, and then look back at the end of the week what you’ve done towards it. And that is going to make you feel 10 times better. And when you’re doing that, that is how you increase your self-esteem and feel better as a person.

And in my experience of this, if you start today, at the end of the week when you look back, it’s kind of a perfect week because you look back and think, “God, I have achieved so much. I’m so proud of myself.” And since I’ve been doing this, it’s just been so life-changing for me personally. And obviously I educate everyone on my courses about this.

So just take out a pen and paper and just write out your achievements. It is going to help.

So on to the last one, which is about sleep, which is quite interesting because I found over the years that when I’m travelling away on courses that I really struggle to get good sleep. Even if I’m sleeping for like seven or eight hours, I’m still like mentally struggling. And I did some research into this and looked into it. And there’s a lot of different thoughts in this, but basically, when you’re away from home, there’s a part of your brain that doesn’t allow you to switch off so that you’re almost on vigilance alert all night so you don’t go into REM sleep.

Now, what I found helpful here is before I fall asleep in a foreign city or anywhere new, I visualise myself being back at feeling completely comfortable. And what I found is that that helps tremendously with allowing me to sleep and actually just get so much more energy for the following day. Because I think you need seven to nine hours a night, and any less than that, I think it’s been proven that your energy levels are a third less.

So, anyone that’s training the gym or travelling or away with work, sleep is super important, right? It’s one of the fundamentals that we take for granted. I also think that if you drink alcohol that impinges your ability to access sleep. Even though it’s a sedative, it doesn’t actually allow you to sleep properly. So if sleep is a problem for you, I would advise doing that.

Going to bed early, reading, make sure you get a minimum seven hours, and a little visualisation of being at home where you feel comfortable is really going to help.

But I just thought I’d talk about a few other things here which are quite cool. So Edison was actually famous. What he would do, if he had a problem that he wanted to solve, he would get ball bearings in his hand and he’d clasp them, and then he’d put like a frying pan on the floor. And as he’d fall asleep, literally the inception part when you fall asleep, his hand would open and he’d drop the ball bearings. And this would then allow him to solve any problems that he was struggling with because sleep renewed his energy.

That’s super interesting, right? Because for years, what I’ve done, when I fall asleep, I think about any problems I need to solve. And the first thing when I wake up in the morning, normally I’ve got so many different ideas and ways in which I can solve them, the creativity really comes out.

So that’s super interesting, right? There are a few different techniques there. First of all, you can think about a question before you go to sleep. And that allows you to then wake up and have solutions to problems. And obviously you can do what Edison did, where you, as you’re falling asleep, have some kind of way of waking yourself back up.

And that’s going to allow you to just to have that brief moment of respite and allow the creativity to follow through.

So just to round up this episode, first of all, I discussed about how you can overcome adversity by goal-setting, changing your plan along the way and not quitting, which is what allowed Edison to fail over a thousand times but still reach his end goal. Then I spoke about how we can beat frustration by using a list of achievements once a week in our life, and the self-esteem and the power that can be gained from that as opposed to looking too far ahead and feeling too frustrated.

And the final thing we looked at is how we can use sleep in our lives to firstly, give ourselves more energy by getting seven to nine hours per evening. And then second of all, just another technique that Edison used by falling asleep and waking himself back up to access his creativity.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, and I will catch you next time.

  Listen to The Gary Gunn Show Podcast #27 – Using Edison’s Current To Light Up Your Dating Life



  Want to learn how to light up your dating life? – View our upcoming courses here

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50 Quotes About Being Strong Against all Odds

Our latest collection of quotes about being strong to give you strength to fight through your challenges..

Life is full of challenges. Whatever your goals or dreams, you’re bound to encounter obstacles before hitting your targets. You’ll always have to fight through hardships and suffer some pain before you achieve success.

When everything seems to be going wrong, the question is – what will you do? Will you give up or will you persist and keep fighting past the hurdles and obstacles?

If your endeavor is driven and fueled by purpose, then giving up is not an option. You’ll find the courage and persistence to look past the problems and difficulties along your path and instead focus on finding solutions.

Despite the challenges or difficulties you might be facing, here are some inspirational quotes about being strong that will give you the strength to keep fighting through them.

We hope these quotes about being strong will encourage you to solve your problems, live your dreams and pursue your mission in life.

Quotes about being strong against all odds

1.) “The weak fall, but the strong will remain and never go under!”— Anne Frank

2.) “Be strong, be fearless, be beautiful. And believe that anything is possible when you have the right people there to support you.” – Misty Copeland

3.) “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” – Vince Lombardi

4.) “When I’m competing, I need to be strong.” –  Ashley Wagner

5.) “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” – Og Mandino

6.) “Be strong & face the life. Because sometimes Life keeping nothing but only one option. Be strong anyway.” – Bharat Zanvar

7.) “A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.” —Vernon Howard

8.) “Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.”~ Orison Swett Marden

9.) “You’ve got to stay strong to be strong in tough times.” – Tilman J. Fertitta

10.) “People with a strong willpower will always have the bigger picture in mind. They will be able to forgo small pleasures in order to help attain bigger goals.” – Brian Adams

Quotes about being strong to keep you fighting

11.) “Sometimes you don’t realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness.”– Susan Gale

12.) “Life is full of happiness and tears; be strong and have faith.” – Kareena Kapoor Khan

13.) “The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.” – Swami Vivekananda

14.) “Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” – A. A. Milne

15.) “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world right in the eye.” – Helen Keller

16.) “There are better starters than me but I’m a strong finisher.” —Usain Bolt

17.) “Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed.” ~Bob Riley

18.) “Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.” – Knute Rockne

19.) “The bird rises against a strong headwind, not only in spite of the wind but because of it. The opposing force becomes a lifting force if faced at the right angle.” – L.B. Cowman

20.) “The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.” – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Quotes about being strong through hard times

21.) “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”– Arnold Schwarzenegger

22.) “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” – Dale Carnegie

23.) “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”– Winston Churchill

24.) “He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.” – Louisa May Alcott

25.) “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” —Robert H. Schuller

26.) “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

27.) “I’m a strong man, and usually I get over hurts and it makes me stronger when I come back.” – Dusty Baker

28.) “Each of us is stronger than we realize. Strength is something we often find in desperate moments.” – Jennifer Arnold

29.) “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” – Khalil Gibran

30.) “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” – Bernice Johnson Reagon

Quotes about being strong and happy

31.) “You can’t really be strong until you see a funny side to things.” – Ken Kesey

32.) “A strong woman is someone who is able to smile this morning like she wasn’t crying last night.” – Harriet Morgan

33.) “Smiling does not necessarily mean you’re happy. Sometimes it just means you’re strong.” – Nishan Panwar

34.) “Being glamorous is about strength and confidence. It’s black and white – dramatic. You have to be strong.” –Catherine Zeta-Jones

35.) “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!”– Audrey Hepburn

36.) “You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.” – James A. Froude

37.) “I like criticism. It makes you strong.” – LeBron James

38.) “Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.” — William Ellery Channing

39.) “My strength did not come from lifting weights. My strength came from lifting myself up when I was knocked down.”~Bob Moore

40.) “Never believe for a second that your weak, within all of us we have a reserve of inner hidden strength.” – Victoria Addino

Other inspirational quotes about being strong through hard times

41.) “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”– Ernest Hemingway

42.) “Be strong in body, clean in mind, lofty in ideals.” – James Naismith

43.) “Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn so that we see ourselves as we really are.” – Arthur Golden

44.) “You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.” – Bob Marley

45.) “Be very strong… be very methodical in your life if you want to be a champion.” —Alberto Juantorena

46.) “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.” ~Thomas Edison

47.) “Anyone can give up; it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone would expect you to fall apart, that’s true strength.~Chris Bradford

48.) “Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.” – Louis Pasteur

49.) “There are no negatives in life, only challenges to overcome that will make you stronger.” – Eric Bates

50.) “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” – Frank A. Clark

Did you enjoy these quotes about being strong

Whatever stage you are in your life, you’ll always encounter obstacles along your path. When that happens, you can either choose to give up or to keep on fighting through. It’s up to you to look beyond your challenges and work towards achieving your targets.

Hopefully, these quotes about being strong have helped you find the strength to keep fighting regardless of what hardship or difficulty you might be facing in your life.

Did you enjoy these quotes about being strong? Which of the quotes was your favorite? Tell us in the comment section below. We would love to hear all about it in the comment section below.

The post 50 Quotes About Being Strong Against all Odds appeared first on Everyday Power.