#I think I just mean that there’s a ton of projection in arcane and everyone needs to get it together and be ok

[idkwhatimdoingbutslay]

Something something when an Arcane character lets themselves love and care for someone they’re inadvertently loving and caring for themselves.

Vi allowed herself to relax in Caitlyn presence and comfort, she took care of Caitlyn and looked out for her, proving Caitlyn right about her having a good heart.

Silco by the end says he loves Jinx and would have never given her up. We’ve all already talked about Jinx and Silco’s parallels and how he sees himself and his struggles in her.

Vander loving and caring but also fearing for Vi because he knew of the things he has done and these two are very similar, particularly how they developed as people. He’s accepted and moved past it but he still feels guilty.

Letting yourself love and accept someone means accepting the fact that you’re capable and deserving of the experience of love and acceptance. Even more so in Arcane because of the parallels between characters and how guilt ridden they are.

+ just how do you show love and adoration to someone so similar to you while turning around and hating yourself, that’s straight hypocrisy.

Anyway lemme distract you from my incoherent thoughts and make your reading this worth it with a funny

[gendiegremlin]

ok i've figured out what i want everyone to be. races and classes will be above the cut and explanations will be under the cut so this isnt a horrendously long post

nastya - elf, battle smith artificer

ivy - kenku, diviner wizard

raphaella - aarakocra, maverick artificer

jonny - goblin, wild magic sorcerer

brian - warforged, oath of the ancients paladin

marius - gnome, college of creation bard

tim - human, gunslinger fighter

ashes - dragonborn, wildfire druid

ts - changeling, arcane trickster rogue

nastya

elves are all graceful and stuff and i thought that sort of fit because she was a princess

they can have naturally blue hair

elves are slow to make friends and enemies but slow to forget them as well (did i take this idea of nastya straight from this fanfic? yes absolutely and you can't stop me)

artificer was an obvious choice cause shes the engineer

battle smith artificers are good at fixing things. sort of like a machine medic

battle smith artificers have a machine companion that sticks with them, so i'm gonna make that aurora

ivy

kenku are sort of based on ravens, and ravens are smart

kenku don't know where their race came from, which i thought was a cool parallel to ivy not remembering her past

"kenku are blessed with keen observation and supernaturally accurate memories"

ivy is a wizard because books

i chose diviner wizard because divination is about finding things out

raphaella

aarakocra because wings

artificer because she's a scientist

maverick artificers dabble in tons of stuff but keep abandoning projects to find out new stuff and i thought that was great for raph (she has adhd and you cant change my mind)

i thought the aspect of additional spells from other spell lists was a cool reflection of how raph also wants to find things out but in a much more hands-on way than ivy

jonny

jonny is just a little goblin man. what can i say i had no choice

@mightybeaujester you were so right to say jonny would be a paladin with an oath of fucking things up and i tried to hard to find an oath that i thought reflected that well but the one i thought came closest was basically an oath of just looking out for yourself and noone else

i made him a wild magic sorcerer because if anyone deserves to cause that amount of chaos its jonny

there are some things on the wild magic table that are helpful and some that are very much not helpful. i thought that was cool because jonny has no regard for his own wellbeing as long as hes fucking things up

brian

warforged was an obvious choice. big metal man

brians class was SO HARD to choose

@liuqinggessocialskills you were so right to say that brian would be a monk based on vibes alone. he has monk vibes. but i couldnt bring myself to make him a monk because i couldn't think of any actual reasoning. maybe he can multiclass into monk later. i will keep you updated (if i remember. and if i actually play these guys. wow thats a lot of ifs)

i went with paladin because i feel like he would have an oath of helping people. cause both his morality switches are to help its just that the way that he tries to help changes

i knew he had to be a spellcaster

he couldn't be a cleric because that would mean being bound to one god and i feel like that wouldn't work with the morality switch

so yeah we ended up at paladin

oath of the ancients was basically 'yeah i want to help, but not because i have good morals'

tim

i could not think of a good race for tim so i just went with the obvious choice and made him human. i dont usually want to make humans, but tim is literally from london so i did

@mightybeaujester THANK YOU FOR SAYING TIM AS A GUNSLINGER FIGHTER I DIDNT KNOW THAT EXISTED BUT ITS SO PERFECT

i dont think that needs any more explanation. the most gun and explosion class ever

marius

gnome. small man. short guy. tiny

also gnomes are silly and whimsical (sort of. to a degree) and if any of the mechs are silly and whimsical its marius

bard. this guy loves music. hid a violin in his arm. IN HIS ARM. music guy

also sort of bard because i had to make someone a bard and i had no other ideas for marius. apparently marius had befuddled us all because all the other mechs had multiple suggestions and marius had next to none

college of creation is literally the bards that are just like YEAH MUSIC LETS GO. they are the singy bards

ashes

ashes had to be some kind of dragon descent (because fire). so it was either dragonborn (or something similar like kobold or half-dragon) or draconic sorcerer. i tried to not double up on classes (key word is try because both ivy and raph are artificers) and sorcerer was already taken, so dragonborn it is

@liuqinggessocialskills ashes as a wildfire druid is so right. they just be setting everything on fire. not much more explanation needed

ts

ok so i do have reasoning for ts being a changeling but can i put it into words? not very well. but im gonna try

so changeling can sort of change their identity and i thought that would be cool for ts because at the start it was pretending to be the widow's husband and now it's not

also a changeling doesn't usually stay in their true form so they're pretending to be whatever they've changed into and ts is only pretending to be real so that sort of matches up

stole the arcane trickster rogue idea straight from @mightybeaujester. you're right it is a rogue. i cant explain why but youre right

thanks to @mightybeaujester, @liuqinggessocialskills, @lolgmalolg-did-nothing-wrong, @thenforgotten, and @rocksanddeadflowers for your help i read all of them and they were all very good suggestions

guys this is very important what dnd race and class do you think each of the mechanisms would have? im gonna make a character out of every single mech and its gonna be great but im so stuck on what they could be

[onlycosmere]

VeryNiceName16: With everything else you guys are doing next year, what is the plan for the Stormlight 4.5 novella?

Brandon Sanderson: Still on my list to do when I finish Stormlight 5. I think it needs to be written; I am excited by it. We will see what happens, because Stormlight 5 is almost assuredly 2024 now. And that's partially the Secret Projects, but not as much as you guys probably would assume.

The main reason has been movie and television stuff. As jofwu anticipated in the first question, I still can't say anything. This is the year the Hollywood came calling, and came calling in a very big way, even before the Kickstarter. They saw that, basically - all of Hollywood was watching and seeing that fantasy can work that is not Game of Thrones. The Witcher, and Shadow and Bone, and plenty of other excellent properties. I mean, Arcane is fantastic; another fantastic example. They're like "Oh, people like these and it can be done if it's not George R.R. Martin". And every one of those studio execs has had someone say "Well, get us one of these," or "get us more of these."

And every one of them went to BookScan, which is the ratings for how books sell. And every one of them sorted the BookScan and said, "Alright, what authors are there out there that have not had anything made?" And, far as I can tell, I am definitely the best selling science fiction and fantasy writer who's never had an adaptation. I might be the best selling author in the world who's never had an adaptation. That's hard for me to say, because it's harder to penetrate different subgenres and figure out where their sales factors are. And, you know, it depends what you count as adaptation.

Basically, they all arrived at the same name, and then the Kickstarter happened. They were already calling, and then they started calling more. And so this is the year where I've had to take numerous meetings with all of the streaming services and a large number of the various studios and producers and things. And that takes time. Just takes a lot of time to be on all of those meetings.

We will bear fruit from this eventually. But I'm being very careful. In fact, when I did my call with Netflix, I led off by saying to them, "I am both very fortunate and very unfortunate. Very unfortunate in that I've never actually had anything made. I've sold tons and tons of things, and nobody was able to get one off the ground. That's unfortunate because I'm an unproven quality in Hollywood, and I understand that. I am also very fortunate in that none of those things actually got made. So nothing bad got made." And all the rights have come back to me, basically. And here I'm sitting in a world where everyone wants fantasy and I have my rights and I can say yes or no. That puts me in a very good position also. Which lets... you know, then I don't need the money.

Hollywood doesn't know what to do with people that don't need their money. It's very bizarre to them.

So we get to be very discerning and picky with what we want to do.

[grimoire-of-geekery]

Detect Magic: the Sixth World Tarot by Echo Chernik

(pictured here- the deluxe edition [left] and the Arcanist edition of the Sixth World Tarot by Echo Chernik)

Y'know, it's been a long time since I did one of these, but here goes. It's time for another Detect Magic review. I haven't put the Dork Magician hat on for a while, so let's give this a whirl!

Today we're taking a look at the Sixth World Tarot, by Echo and Lazarus Chernik. She has this available on her website (click the above link), which come signed by the artist and the author. I'm a bit bummed, I bought a copy of this deck juuuuust before she started signing them. Not her fault, but still. XD

For those of you unfamiliar with Shadowrun, it's a cyberpunk dystopian magic-and-mech RPG setting and fantasy novel universe which originated in the late 80's. The premise is that magic is growing stronger, the world experienced a big Awakening in the early 2000's, right around the same time that corporations managed to gain extraterritoriality. So, you have dragons running huge megacorps, which basically enslave people to be lifelong wageslaves from birth (or as soon as they can get their hands on a desired talent), immersive VR Matrix hackers, cyberware enhanced fighters and magic practitioners acting as "deniable assets" to said corps for all sorts of shady business.

Hence the name "Shadowrun."

This setting, one of my absolute favorite settings out there, has had the misfortune of developing a sort of eerie prophetic element akin to the Simpsons and its bizarre track record of prediction of ludicrous world events. Shadowrun was intended to be a cautionary tale, not an oracular one. That being said, that does make a tarot based on Shadowrun more than a little on-the-nose for predictive purposes. After all, they're telling the future without even trying. Wait until they actually put some effort into it...

All right, time to Detect Magic!

Accessory- Crit (4 out of 4) Stunning artwork, evocative imagery... this deck is gorgeous. It's so beautiful, and so intricate and well made, that people who don't even read tarot (or even particularly like tarot) buy several copies for their geeky collections, and even people who don't particularly care about Shadowrun have dropped their jaw when I showed the deck to them.

A bit busier than I'm used to working with (not the art, but the extras which I'll explain later), I was pleasantly surprised at how much I loved the cards when I first got them. The box for both editions I own are a nice durable gloss with a magnetic foldover closure, there's a ribbon inside each to help pull the cards and book out of the box, and the decorative artwork is gorgeous and fitting with the setting. Definitely aesthetically pleasing enough to take places, and durable enough to resist scuffing or tearing for on-the-go divination and gaming use.

Tome- Crit (4 out of 4) So, the Tome section of this review is supposed to be about how well the cards help one in the pursuit of learning magic and practicing geekomancy. And... really, I don't think I've found a deck (or any artifact of fandom) quite as good as this.

Let me explain.

Tarot, in the sorcery practice I teach, are already basically a pictorial grimoire, describing life in a way that allows us to learn the hidden movements, mysteries, and forces at play in our world. Art is good for things like that in general. It helps you see the world through a special lens, one which allows you to see things you might have missed.

The thing is, the lens of this deck is the Shadowrun continuity, which as I said earlier, has proven to be more than a little prophetic, and alarmingly so.

The magic system of Shadowrun is pretty adjacent to our own. Life force lines, spiritual power sites, astral projection and spirits and magical "energy" forms, initiatory mysteries... it's all pretty much the same as our own reality, just juiced up a bit, with some extra game elements added (don't even ask me about insect spirits).

This makes the deck particularly helpful if one wishes to learn magic in any of the myriad ways described in Shadowrun (and they're particularly respectful and diverse and true-to-life in their tradition descriptions).

BUT, it also has an entire lore-book called the Book of the Lost associated with it, which explains all these little secret sigils and images and easter eggs stored throughout the deck, which can be used for gamebuilding and storytelling, but are designed to be arcane indicators and omens, among other things. And the kinds of symbols they use range from sentences or mottos in dead languages, all the way to waveform patterns and dot-matrix maps. I swear, if you're one of those people who like puzzles and cryptography, this deck is even more fun than the Hermetic Tarot.

In summary, while you'll have to get some Shadowrun sourcebooks to really get deep into the canon lore, there's so much of it that the cards really show you on their own that I don't consider this a setback at all. Feel free to deep-dive with this deck, you'll learn a TON about magic if you let it guide you.

Relic- Success (3 out of 4) If you read the Book of the Lost, or Unearthed Arcana, or any of the 5th edition Shadowrun magic sourcebooks, you'll see that "tarot magic" is an up and coming thing in their canon. Each text helps you see how practitioners use the cards in-game for spellcasting, ritual magic, initiation practices and spirit summoning. The Tarot are already really valuable as central objects of importance to certain kinds of magical practice. This particular deck is designed to be so handy a central object that there's an entire book dedicated to it.

Weapon- Success (3 out of 4) The only reason I'm rating this a success instead of a crit is because they don't provide enough spreads in the various associated books for one to immediately begin casting spells with them, which means you'll have to do some designing. They do have a couple solid unique spreads for basic divination though.

The deck's canon in-game suggests ritual practices like gathering and doing a ritual with sets of related cards, and one such ritual was easily adapted in my own practice, into the Lucky Kimono spread I designed (which people can read about on my Patreon at the higher tiers). So, even without outright including spell-spreads, they sort of gave us clues anyway.

Again, you're going to need the sourcebooks, but it's only a few of them, and they're well worth a read even if you're not planning on playing the game (and I don't play in the actual Shadowrun mechanical system, though I do like the sourcebooks for campaign setting ideas).

Overall Rating: Critical Success (14 out of 16)

Achievement Unlocked: Novahot Echo's artwork is already legendary in the dork realms of geekomancy. She's done work for Dungeons and Dragons, Mage: the Ascension, House of Night... she's even working on a Fate: the Winx Saga playing card deck right now. Her art-nouveau delicacy combined with the powerful non-pandering way she draws women means that her paintings pack a punch!

That being said, it's rare that we see professional artists create a tarot deck of this magnitude as a gaming accessory. Most tarot decks of this caliber are found in professional occult catalogues or as independent projects by artists just wanting to flex their skills for their own reasons. To have a deck like this, clearly a labor of love by all involved, as a major element of gameplay within a franchise is really very special. And something this diverse, deep, and absolutely saturated with layers of ciphers and riddles... it's a geekomancer's dream come true.

Level Up: 2 Levels I think the only way anyone's going to be able to top this deck is if they manage to design a tarot deck that's also a fully immersive VR video game AND an AR game and divination tool useable with one's iPhone or Android. Legit, Echo and Lazarus left everyone in the dust. I haven't been this excited about Shadowrun since Shadowrun Returns first came out, and I got a set of dogtags that had a USB drive with the game on it.

It's just... crazy cool.

Full disclosure, I've had the deluxe edition of these cards for a while now, so I've basically been low-key squeeing about this deck since I first heard about it in 2018, even before I got it. I've been utterly astonished that people weren't more excited about them, and I wasn't hearing about them everywhere.

Before this, I created my own Shadowrun tarot method using the Universal Transparent Tarot (cuz, y'know, plastic and see-through and weird little mosaic readings all in one place, seemed fitting to me), and when I got the Sixth World Tarot? I don't think I've opened the UTT since!

Anyway, this is my review of this deck! Go follow the link up at the top of this post, and buy yourself one! And hey, let me know if you figure out the cool little map trick. My jaw literally dropped when I was shown that!

[maxparkhurst]

How did you create your characters? What was your process?

TMI Tuesday:  How did you create your characters? What was your process?

// <offers out a chair> You’re going to want to sit for this. It’s going to be a LONG story. For those who’re looking for a short answer: I’m actually in the middle of creating these two. Edits and tweaks are always being made to make them appear real and true. And it’s thanks to everyone on here and in-game that they’ve progressed so much. 

Now for the long version. 

<buckles seat belt> 

Evolving as an Author:

Maxinora and Augustine Parkhurst are a culmination of ideas inspired by a myriad of things. The process of creating them isn’t linear. It has a lot of pit falls, unexpected twists and turns, and a ton of hills. To understand how we got the current versions of these two, we need to go back a couple years ago. 

It’s the summer of 2012. In efforts to get me off of his account, my Dad gifted me my own. This was when I made my first ever serious roleplay character- a hunter named Evelon Holmwood. Well, at the time I spelled it like Evavllyn but...Yeah. We’re going to gloss over that fact. Now, Eve was my pride and joy for the last several years. I played this character nonstop, refusing to play or write about anyone else. In retrospect, I used this character more as therapy than anything of creative merit. 

Eve’s story was basic at best. But I got better with story-telling the older I got. Unfortunately, her story got so convoluted that I had hard time salvaging anything from it. Now, you’re probably asking: How does this relate to Max? Fear not. I’m getting there. It was around this existential crisis that a mutual friend of my boyfriend and I convinced us to leave WoW and hop on SWTOR. My boyfriend was more than eager to make the switch but I was skeptical. Leaving WoW meant leaving Eve. And was I ready for that? 

He assured me I was and helped me make a character on SWTOR. This was the first iteration of Max. A bounty hunter from Nar’Shadda named Maxinora Fenrik. My intentions was to make her a lowkey copy of Eve. At this time, I wasn’t very confident in my writing abilities and liked to stay in my lane. But, the more I roleplayed this character the more she took on a life of her own. She evolved past Eve and exceeded my expectations. Playing a new character bolstered my confidence and while I no longer play SWTOR -due to OOC reasons- I still have fond memories with this character. I enjoyed this character so much that I reused several components of her design when making Max. Some which include her name and being blind in one eye. 

I flipped between the MMOs when Legion dropped. Expenses started to pile up and between the two subscriptions I didn’t have the time to play both. In the end, WoW won my affection and I made a Blood Elf because I had friends on Horde Side. Rorien Hawkthorne was her name. A drunk artist and master assassin. She’d be the second iteration of Max. She had an older sister complex, an affinity for being melancholy, and it was my first experience with playing a character who could kept secrets- or tried to at least. Another new character under the belt and I was feeling a little more confident in my story telling abilities. I’d probably would’ve kept playing that character if not for OOC drama happening in a guild I was in. The fallout had me jump back to the Alliance where I indulged in creature comforts. It was back to Eve. 

Tumblr made an entrance in my life around then as I ventured forth with a refreshed look on my hunter. I salvaged what I could and made a half-decent story. A lot of her misadventures are still posted up on her blog @evelonholmwood​ On the side I made the third iteration of Max. A fire mage and blacksmith combo by the name of Rowan Celwick with her younger brother Thomas Celwick.  They were just two orphaned kids trying to make a life in Stormwind. Rowan was an arcane drop-out and blacksmith wannabe and Thomas...Was...Well? Thomas? A glorified side-piece? A way to garner pity for Rowan. I didn’t place a lot of emphasis on them or their characters. My main focus was Eve. But these two would be the underlying foundation of Max and Auggie’s characters. 

I eventually took a hiatus from WoW and focused on more personal writing. The details are boring so I’ll gloss over it by saying that creating a character completely from scratch was the final push in the right direction for me. Fast forward several months to a year aaaaaand BOOM! Pandemic. 

Writing is an escape for me. It’s one of my best coping mechanisms during trying times. And when nothing else works, I over indulge in some Warcraft. So, I resubbed. There was hesitance when re-entering the RP scene. I didn’t leave Eve’s story off on an convenient note. For lack of better phrasing, I wrote myself into a hole I couldn’t get out of. So, with the help of my boyfriend, I decided it was time to give Eve her happy ending and shelf her for good. 

Which put me in a dilemma! Who was I going to RP? Well, you remember the Celwicks? They became my newest project. 

The Creative Process: 

I knew the Celwick story was weak and read much like a middle-school fanfiction. Revising was a must. But there were integral pieces to their story which I enjoyed: 

Familial Sacrifice 

Juxtaposing concepts

Intertwined Fates

These were themes I could work with and evolve. Keeping these in mind, I started to deconstruct the Celwick story line. They were no longer Gilnean but Kul’tiran. This prompted a name change from Celwick to Parkhurst. And I won’t lie, I like the sound of Parkhurst better than Celwick. Thomas became Augustine and Rowan became Maxinora (Mainly because I actually HAD the name Maxinora and not Rowan). The little changes got me hyped for the characters. 

Next, I started to trim away the unnecessary details that bogged down the narrative. Things that either didn’t fit or made the timeline too convoluted were replaced. Pyromancy was a great example. The age I wanted Max to be wouldn’t yield to her understanding of Pyromancy. At least, not to the level I WANTED it to be. SO, I turned it into lament’s magic. Alchemy. (I also always wanted to play an alchemist since watching FMA) 

A girl with two professions seemed excessive as well. I had to look at why I wanted her to be both an Alchemist and a Blacksmith. The answer was simple. I just liked the juxtaposition of an intelligent woman being rough and tumble. Which made me ask: Was Blacksmithing necessary to achieve that imagine? The answer was no. To pay respect to her previous iteration, I made their parents blacksmiths. It also let me keep themes of fire in her concept. The change in profession brought on a change in her appearance. I made her a little more slender to fit with the alchemist appeal. 

Max’s aesthetic was brought on by my previous characters.  Rorien inspired more internal facets of Max while Fenrik inspired outward appearances. Max’s auburn was strictly a decision made on the fact that I had one too many character’s with black hair. There wasn’t any other reason for it. 

Designing Max was easy. The real challenge was with Augustine. Up until that point, all I had to go on for his character was Tommy Celwick and...Well. There wasn’t a lot there. He wasn’t much more than a poorly used trope and I considered doing away with him all together. But I realized that I REALLY liked the trope and I liked what he did for Max’s character.  So, I buckled down and made myself think through all the reasons why Thomas Celwick -AKA Augustine Parkhust- needed to exist. 

I decided that I needed him in order to present themes in Max’s story. He was the foil to her character. Cynic older sister? Meet optimistic brother. He also appealed to not only the three themes listed above, but also the newest one I wanted to explore: two sides of the same coin. Max and Augustine are simultaneously the same, having similar traumas, and yet different. If for nothing else, Augustine could help propel Max in the right direction. Be her moral compass, you know? With a bit of half-assing here and there, I managed to get a decent character out of Augustine. Took the cliche nerdy brother idea, physical design and all, and ran with it. Shortly after I  made their Tumblr account. In no way did I expect this BOY to take on a life of his own. Like, Auggie knocked on my brain’s door and was like, “Yeah. No. I’m not a side character. Give me my own story...” 

Which will bring me into my final point! 

The Characters Write Their Own Story: 

I’ve never been able to sit down and plan a story. My mind doesn’t work in such a structured fashion. It wanders and explores. When I’m creating, I’m watching. Watching the scenes play out before my eyes as these characters take what I’ve given them and grow into something almost independent of me. The basic pieces of Max and Auggie’s back story, along with character design, were purposeful. Yes. But everything that came after was THEM.

It’s cliche, I know, but I can’t describe this experience any other way. These two grew outside of my influence and now dominate a space in my brain. They talk, work, and interact without me. I mean...Not REALLY. But...It feels like that. It feels I’m watching through a keyhole and just recording what I see as their story plays out. 

I guess a better analogy is me being the director. I’m watching the movie in the stands as two actors improv. On good days, I’m in control and rework scenes until I’m satisfied with the results. Try this. Move here. Say this. On bad days, I don’t see anything. My actors went home. The lights are off. Show’s cancelled for the day. These days make me sad...But they’re worth it because on the BEST days...The best days Max and Auggie run the whole show, and I am watching through the keyhole as their story unfolds little by little. 

It’s truly magical. 

The last part of their creation was the voice. Character voice, for me, is like building muscle. You need to work out. Start small and work your way up in weight. Every little piece I wrote made their voices stronger; and that’s including asks and threads. Interacting with other characters helped to flesh them out as people. And while it was hard and intimidating at first, it’s started to become easier. 

Wrap-Up

My method is messy and untrained. I don’t claim to have any secrets. My knowledge of writing is mediocre at best. But I’m having fun. And that’s were the real magic of any character comes in. Fun. Because if you aren’t writing about something that sparks your soul- either with love, happiness, hatred, etc- then it’s nothing more than a forced, hollow husk. Writing is meant to evoke emotion. At least in mind. And want to express complex emotions and share them. In a perfect world? My characters -any of my characters- resonates with someone. They become the escape someone needed. That’s the ultimate goal. 

It’s thanks to all of you that Max and Auggie have come this far. It’s from their interactions with others that they’ve managed to evolve into something incredible- especially Augustine. He just kept shining brighter and brighter until I felt obligated to make him an in-game character. So, you all are just as much a part in the creative process as me. Thank you! 

And a special thanks to my boyfriend for always being a sound board for my rambling ass <3 

THANK YOU FOR THE ASK, ANON! Sorry I posted an essay...<3 

[mgrgfan]

Past of the future, future of the past...

Chapter 3: A hard day.

"Well, those three months were quite something," Anthony said, when the Space Shuttle finally stopped on the runway. "I mean, actual first contact situation, even if with humans!" "Falkis, shut it for now," Sarah mumbled. "We'll have to explain this all over again to our superiors, when we return to the Mossdeep." "Okay, whatever, miss Born-with-camera-in-hands." Several seconds after it, the hatch in the side of the vehicle opened, the astronauts were safely removed from their seats with Psychic of the service Alakazam and put into the wheelchairs on the ground. "Don't worry, guys'n'girls, it's just a precaution," sounded voice of professor Takao Cozmo, making Sarah and Samuel slightly cringe. Of course, this man was a genius, especially for someone, who just turned 20, but at times, he was just impossible to be around. "We know," all four astronauts, along with the rest of Shuttle's crew, replied in unison. Of course, they wondered, why this mission only took astronauts down and didn't bring fresh crew... ---- "Can you secure this thing now?" "Wait… yeah, I'm securing it." Captain Vasilyev hovered near the console, monitoring feeds from the helmet cameras of cosmonauts, along with their talks, and wondered, why exactly did it have to be yesterday for the station's backup power source, the nuclear fission reactor, to get stricken with some kind of space debris and get a total coolant leak. Of course, since the reactor wasn't activated for the entire duration of its staying in the station, there wasn't any imminent radiation hazard, but they still had to return it back to Zemlino Space Center for the inspection and repairs. Right now, Lozhkin, Migulya and Panasenko were removing the reactor and loading it into the opened payload bay of the Lenticular Return Vehicle. There was some sort of a strange irony - today, the cosmonauts from both space stations were returning back to Earth. "Comrade captain, the reactor was safely removed and is now secured in the payload bay of the LRV" sounded the proud voice of Migulya in the comm. "I think we're done here. Let us all pack up and go back home!" "As a commander of this station, I give this proposal my complete approval!" announced Vasilyev to everyone. "Since we are all packed up already, I propose to fulfill it as soon as possible. To EVA team - go to station's primary airlock on the "Drum" module. I know, the LRV's backup airlock seems very nice, but we need to leave the MMUs and suits here for the next crew." "Aye-aye, comrade captain!" reported the EVA team, firing up their MMUs and flying back to the first module of this great station. Since the airlock wasn't exactly spacious, they'll have to enter one by one - mostly because the MMUs were pretty huge. Of course, was it not for the advanced materials from Imperial Science Facility 9, which allowed creation of the normobaric EVA suits - the entire crew would've had to stay on the station for a few more hours. Thankfully, when the EVA team finally got back into station and re-dressed, everyone else was ready. "So, comrades, I want to congratulate you with the successful end of the 10th expedition to the Space Lab 2, which also served as a cornerstone for our relationship with… "Nationals", I think. So, anyway, we all served very well. Glory and long live to the Empire!" "Glory and long live to the Empire!" "Since the rest of our crew returned to Earth in pods already - thank the Emperor for launching that propellant tanker! - we can now return home at leisure pace. All hands - board the LRV and prepare for return." "Aye-aye, comrade captain!" ---- "Goodbye, Space Lab 2. We will miss you and try to return soon. Just wait for us," the pilot said, looking in the return vehicle’s main window. The space station, jewel in crown of the Empire’s space program, was left by its crew and switched to full-auto mode, waiting for the next bunch of people to take the residence in it for performing even more science operations and making even more discoveries. "Proceeding as normal, four hours until touchdown." "Acknowledged," replied the captain, recollecting the events of past three months - the craziest months in his live so far. Contacts with cosmonauts from other regions of the world after the event, which was later named "The Shift"; nearly inviting them onboard the Space Lab 2 one time and only not doing this because of medic's advice; having to constantly help in writing reports to linguists back on the ground; making sure, that the space station works properly, especially before the propellant tanker gave them some more freedom in maneuvering… those months were most definitely crazy. "Comrade captain, I have a small question - why aren't the replacement crew already there?" asked him Grigoriy, who served as a biologist and medic aboard the station. "I don't know. Zemlino told me, that there were some hiccups with their launch vehicle, and their LRV is an experimental one, with fuel cells instead of nuclear reactor... they've decided not to rush it. Station can wait, after all, but losing cosmonauts is not an option. They were launched a few hours ago and will dock to the station tomorrow." ---- "Hello there, darling," said man in plain clothes, entering the room. If not for the reaction of the Empress, not many would've thought, that this man was, in fact, the Emperor Ivan the Second himself. "How's your bad?" "Like ****," replied Empress Svetlana in tired voice. "Trying to make negotiations through these crude translators, when we are no longer the most advanced country on the planet…" "We still kinda are, in some branches." "In some, mind it. So, trying to negotiate with what's, apparently, called "Pokemon Nation", process all the data, prevent instabilities within the Empire and so on and so on… It's so tiring. And you?" "Not much better," said Ivan, starting to undress. "Since our main advantages are more advanced arcane science, nuclear physics and space technology…" "You mean, you want to make orbital weapon platform," finished his wife. "I don't approve this idea. We aren't on exactly good terms with the Nation now and making them even worse isn't going to take us anywhere." "Not quite, my dear, not quite. Do you remember the Project Tin Can?" "Yes, and what?" "Do you remember, what is it?" "I don't. Honestly, Vanya, with so much work, I can't keep track of all of your projects." "This project, my dear, is a nuclear pulse spaceship, whose wet mass measures 4000 tons. It uses small nuclear explosion devices, constructed to create a directed wave of superhot plasma upon detonation, for propulsion." "And?" "We've finished assembling the propulsion bus of this ship today. Pusher plate, shock absorbers, plasma deflection cone, gas gun for drive bombs, magazines and so on - this was quite a challenge! Now, we only need to construct the payload part…" "Wait, actual nuclear explosion launch?! Dear, let me check your temperature…" "No no no, don't be afraid! This thing will be boosted by the NUCLEUS superheavy chemical rocket and will only engage the bomb drive at high enough altitude!" "Still, using demolition devices for propulsion… I think it's pretty crazy." "Crazy or not, it should work. By the way, some time ago, Knyazev showed me a project of turning the "Red Explorer"..." "The what?" "The nuclear pulse ship - we've named it "Red Explorer", since it's designed to explore the Fourth Planet. So, he showed me project of turning the "Red Explorer" into warship, with retro-missiles for planetary bombardment, electromagnetic rail mass accelerators, point defence and so on…" "Retro-missiles?" "Okay, let me explain this for you. Retro-missile is a type of hypothetical space-to-surface weapon, which is launched against the orbital vector and uses its engines to decelerate to slower-than-orbital velocity and fall into gravity well of targeted planet/moon, later correcting direction of fall with smaller maneuvering engines to ensure, that it'll hit the intended target area." "And what would be the true purpose of this monster? Considering, that all-out war is the latest thing we want?" "I don't know. Knyazev is an already a strange one, always seeking to turn any project into the weapon…" ---- "So, why exactly the next expedition wasn't launched?" Donnager asked in not-quite-slightly angry voice. "I'm not supposed to tell it to you… but the reason for it is Rayquaza," half-whispered Cozmo "Rayquaza? Isn't it the legend of Draconids?" "I wish it was, but, as it recently turned out, it's a completely real Sky High Pokemon, and a very territorial one at that!" "So…" "Yes, the space stations will get destroyed any moment now. The road to space is now closed by the ruler of skies." "..." Samuel clenched his fists in anger. He hoped, that the astronauts from the other station have also returned home. ---- "... Nose gear touchdown!" the pilot of the LRV happily commented. "Deploying the drag chute…" The pretty big machine, measuring 12 meters in diameter and looking somewhat like the flying saucer, deployed small fabric cupola behind itself, along with moving all control surfaces into positions for aerobraking, in order to lower the current velocity and prevent rolling off the runway. Roughly twenty-five seconds later, the chute got detached and the machine soon ground to halt. "Welcome back!" sounded from comm. "Guys - hang in there for a few more…" "Zemlino, you're not clear, repeat, you're not clear!" said the pilot, trying to find the reason for the sudden cut-out in the words of flight control officer. "... Guys, you don't even know, how lucky you were," finally replied the officer in flat and shaky voice. "Right now, the Space Lab 2 was destroyed by the Pokemon of Legendary power, known by hoennians as "Rayquaza", along with LRV-03. Second space station was also destroyed. The 11th expedition to the Space Lab 2… is no more." "..." all cosmonauts froze. If not for this lucky early return, mostly forced by the need to return the reactor to Earth - they all would've been dead now. And their comrades weren't so lucky... ---- "Dear, what's with you?" asked her husband the Empress. The Emperor, indeed, did not look good - he was pale in face, shaking and still staring at the screen of his portable computer. "... Nothing too bad. Wait a second," said he, getting the portable telephone out of his case and calling someone. "Knyazev? I know you knew this, you bastard! Does not matter right now. Consult the medics, I guess, Psychics with ability to predict the future aren't abundant. Anyway, your altered version of the Project Tin Can has just got my total and complete approval. Consult the ISF 5 and 9 for required equipment. Yes. Does not matter, but make sure, that it'll be able to withstand hits with Hyper Beam without getting holes - at least not at the first hit." Empress thought, that, whatever has happened, if it was enough to instantly convince her husband to turn the exploration ship, about which he dreamed for a very long time (at least as long as he was together with her), into the machine of war - it must be really bad… and yes, she saw the notification on her own computer - the notification, that the Rayquaza has just destroyed the LRV with the new expedition, measuring 12 cosmonauts total, and the Space Lab 2 along with the space station of the Pokemon Nation. Thankfully, all nuclear-powered satellites executed their contingency protocols flawlessly and moved onto graveyard orbits before this Pokemon would be able to destroy them and spill the nuclear fuel from their reactors. "... Yes. No. Of course. Yes. Goodbye," Emperor ended his phone call and turned back to his wife. "Sorry, dear…" "I know already. You know… I approve of it too. It'll help me rally the people of Soris together and lower the level of internal instabilities, as well as allow our people up here to protect themselves from attacks of this monster. So, you say, that this ship needs lots of nuclear materials?" "Yes. At first, they were needed just for the drive bombs and reactor, but now, they'll also be needed for the weapons - shells for railguns, missiles and so on. We can remake some of our already-existing demolition devices into weapons, but that won't be enough." "I understand. I think I can tailor this campaign as a sort of posthumous reverence for our cosmonauts. It'll really help us in keeping the Empire stable." "Do it, if you want to do so. But we need to get this son-of-a-Red Spirit flying, lest the road to space be closed forever for us all." "... Wait, nearly forgot - what about the political effect? Because, you know, getting something like this in orbit would be even worse, than actual weapon platforms!" "I don't know. I'm sure you can deal with this, my dear." Emperor smiled gently after saying those words. Empress hated it, because she could never resist this smile. "Besides, once everything settles down, we can use this ship as it was originally intended - for exploring the Fourth Planet! The amounts of drive bombs and supplies should be sufficient for this and replacing the landers won't be a problem at all…" Notes: ISF - Imperial Science Facility. Worldbuilding mini-note #1: Red Spirit - mystical being in the sorisian mythology, not directly linked to any of Legendaries. It's a somewhat malevolent entity, which, however, patrons those, who fight to avenge their comrades. Some sorisian warriors pray to the Red Spirit before battle to help them in the quest for revenge and, if they fall - make sure that their comrades will avenge their deaths. Worldbuilding mini-note #2: Emperor Ivan Yevgeniyevich Bazarenko the Second is a very shitty ruler (hence why his wife rules the Soris Empire - he gave his throne to her as soon as he was able to), but is an awesome constructor of pretty much anything that flies. Because of that, he spends most of his time in the Imperial Aeronautics Institute, returning to the palace only on special occasions. Worldbuilding mini-note #3: The Project Tin Can is based on the real Project Orion. Worldbuilding mini-note #4: The Rayquaza's aggression and territorial tendencies are based on its depiction in the anime. The Shift may also have something to do with it. Author's note: those three months will, eventually, get expanded upon in the small series of drabbles. Also, the next chapter will have much more action.

[wirewitchviolet]

RPG Campaign Setting Thoughts - Alignments, Death, and Outsiders

Continuing on from this post here, tonight we have some VERY sketchy notes about the Outer Planes and associated stuff, which is going to spill over from world-building into mechanics and this is all too loose for me to bother with anything resembling in-book presentation.

The Outer Planes have traditionally always served two purposes in this cosmology of D&D and its derivatives which are honestly somewhat at odds with each other. They are both the actual afterlife of the setting, where the souls of the dead end up, theoretically for eternity, and they’re where all the demons and devils and daemons and angels and maybe gods and a bunch of other really weird things that exist mainly for the sake of symmetry generally hang out when they aren’t being summoned so they tend to prominently feature as a way to go bigger and more epic late in a campaign. It’s also very much a tradition (which is weird because I can’t think of a single religion that actually works like this) where all of these supernatural creatures are what the souls of the dead BECOME in the afterlife. If you’re neutral good, when you die you become an angel. If you’re lawful evil, you become a devil, etc. (and there’s a lot of weird exceptions because there’s way more outsider types than alignment combinations, and that’s before also factoring in undead and reincarnation and so on).

The problem here of course is that sometimes, the PCs are going to end up dying, and having friends who die, and when you’ve established that that turns you into one of these cool types of monsters, and that those monsters can be summoned, dying turns into this weird sort of power-up, and this was fixed with a very... game designer sort of solution. Namely, when you die, you completely lose all your memories, skills, personal connections, and really by any reasonable standard straight up cease to exist, being replaced with some new outsider springing into being on whatever other plane who’s really just a different character doing their own thing. And, yeah, that solves that problem, but it creates the new one that WOW, THIS AFTERLIFE REALLY SUCKS!

Now, I did already establish for this setting the concept of a layered prime material plane, where you can essentially have your high level alternate universes as weird little pocket dimensions you can honestly just walk right into without even using magic... but I mean, visiting the outer planes is still a cool fun thing to do, and fighting demons is a cool fun thing to do, and your soul transforming into some weird thing in the afterlife is just neat. So I don’t want to drop any of that, but I want to make some tweaks.

Also? Death sucks game mechanics wise. Players, as it turns out decades down the road from when this whole RPG thing first began, tend to be really attached to their characters, and don’t want to just rip up their sheets when they die. They want to cheat death. Which is fine. But the way you cheat death is you pay a bunch of money and either have your cleric cast a quick spell (or rush back to town to find one) and tada, you’re back with some temporary experience penalty you either kinda walk off or buy off. Which is all very... weightless. And straight up losing cash sucks if you’re saving up to buy fancy magic stuff. AND you don’t even get to visit the afterlife really.

So... the standard raise dead spells? They’re gone or at least getting alterations (gotta keep reincarnate in some form because I have a soft spot for it). Plane shift? Also gone. Instead we are going to dust off our old pal Astral Projection, have it at a reasonable level, and no, when someone gets killed, you have to cast that sucker, chase them across the astral plane, maybe to one of the outer planes, and have this whole mini adventure of rescuing their soul and shoving it back in their body.

Also? I am sticking to a hard and fast rule that the material plane is the physical plane, and all the outer stuff is all souls and magic. Nobody gets to bring their body with them which also means you don’t get to bring all your fancy equipment. You’re either a ghost getting sucked into hell or you’re a demon that used to be a ghost or you’re still alive but effectively a ghost tethered to home by a silver cord.

By the same token, outsiders can’t just physically come over to the prime material plane. This is kind of a big fundamental shift in things, but at the end of the day, isn’t it just freaking weird that there’s never really been a place in D&D for demonic possession?

So, tada. That’s a thing now. Outsiders on the material plane need to borrow something to use as a body. A willing person to possess, or an unwilling person subjected to a proper ritual first, or a recently sacrificed corpse, maybe some kind of magical focus stone. This is one of the sketchier parts of the idea here, but no matter how it works out it’s a built in adventure hook, and it doesn’t really change a ton because obviously being possessed by a whatever dramatically transforms the host into the standard existing stat block until its defeated. Summon spells kinda need a material component or a focus I guess, or maybe even not because like you’re calling up a whatever but you can’t really anchor it so it just has this unstable body made of dust and debris and temporarily conjured matter.

I’m also tempted to straight up invent a new divine caster class to fit in with this theme that’s all about having some outside pal they let possess them in combat. Get the whole Devilman sorta thing going, Maybe in a little subsection with a really dex-y fighter and a different take on an arcane type and a rogue type for a really non-standard but complementary core 4.

Back on the side of dying and visiting the other planes though, I say this is a good place to wedge in a good ol’ corruption mechanic. If you die,and your friends manage to catch up to you while you’re streaking across the astral plane, cool, no harm, no foul. Once you end up in whatever plane though, you gradually start to turn into whatever sort of outsider. Subtle cosmetic stuff at first, sprouting horns and getting weird colored hair and maybe a tail first, some slight shifts in personality, and over months or years you just kinda naturally lean into that, and your class levels fade away, and you just kinda naturally go all in on being a mephit or an azata or whatever the hell thing.

And then when your friends do get your soul back and shove it into your body again, that weird metaphysical transformative soul corruption deal doesn’t just go away. That’s partially demonified you possessing your old body now, so, you keep the horns and the flaming eyes and stuff as a permanent reminder of that time you died for a bit and you can be all angsty about it and maybe rededicate yourself to something because that’s not an afterlife you want to go back to, and honestly if you’re the sort of person with a real thing for dramatic mid-campaign transformations and you want a character to look all furry or glowing or be a hot demon gal at higher levels without the mechanical baggage of transformation magic, hey, the door’s open a crack for you.

Also speaking of succubi, while I’m playing around with outsiders, this one has always bugged me. Say we’re going all 7 deadly sins. We’ve got our wrath demons- big angry spikey jerks, maybe on fire. We’ve got our sloth demons- big gross sluggy things who can barely move. Our gross-Kirby gluttony demons, etc. But then we get to lust and it’s this super hot seductress. That breaks the pattern and I hate it. I am definitely kicking them out of that niche and replacing them with proper lust demons, evoking super creepy long-fingered horny dudes.

And really there is room from there to expand into a two-tiered system of outsiders for every plane where there’s the things that are there because they’re what happens to the average person who had this alignment as their reward/punishment, and then there’s the things that are their to make sure things run the way they’re supposed to, are generally more powerful, and are formed from the souls of people who really actively served their patron deity in life. I’m mainly looking at this from the angle of “do the members of the cult of this demon lord realize that in the afterlife they’re all going to become lemures and realize how much that sucks?” but even on the good side, you have to figure the average paladin doesn’t want the blissful retirement package after death, they want to do the whole holy avenging archon sort of thing and continue to kick evil’s ass, right?

Which segues me into alignments. A lot of people absolutely hate the traditional law/chaos good/evil alignment system, but I find as long as you’re careful to use it descriptively rather than prescriptively and you don’t use really messed up alignment definitions (AD&D 2nd ed had some DOOZIES), it’s cool. There is one missing element I would like to formally add in though- An extra variable for mundane and divine/committed/radicalized versons of each. Breaking this down with specific examples...

First and foremost, I am a big big fan of neutral as the default alignment nearly everyone falls into, with everything else being a bit of an outlying extreme. On the good/evil axis then, neutral if for people who you would generally describe as basically good people. They know right from wrong, and generally always try to do the right thing, but they have a strong sense of self-preservation. Truly good people go past that and will, as a general rule, really stick their neck out and take major personal risks or do full-on self-sacrificial things to help people. Evil people are all about looking out for themselves first. Or put more simply, seeing someone being attacked/persecuted/in great need, a neutral person will think “someone should do something,” a good person will think “someone should do something and I’m that someone” and an evil person will think “sucks to be that person” and try not to think about them much.

Meanwhile on the law/chaos axis, lawful people have an unflinching commitment to some form of faith in the system/some particular authority/a rigid personal code of some kind.and will always work within that framework. If that’s always obeying the law, any plan that’s explicitly illegal is off the table, and if the law is unjust, working to change it is the way to go. If they’re super religious, doubting their own deity is never on the table. If they’re strict adherents to a code, they don’t make exceptions. “I’ll never allow suffering” never gets a quiet clause of “unless the person suffering is a scumbag who deserves it” they’re really going to intervene over that.

Someone who is chaotic meanwhile actively has a chip on their shoulder about any sort of bureaucracy, full stop will never “have faith in the system,” generally assume any sort of authority figure is a power hungry scumbag, and while it’s hard to translate this into fantasy terms, be the sort of person who always jailbreaks their phone and has a strict no-DRM stance on all their software.

The vast majority of people are, again, neutral, falling between those extremes. Follow the law, trust that calling the cops will usually get things sorted out, but when push comes to shove, most rules are really guidelines and you can make exceptions where you have to.

All of these represent real, realistic attitudes normal real-world people have. Most are true neutral. The corner alignments are the rarest (always going by the book and always sticking your neck out is demanding, looking out for number 1 without bowing down to the powers that be really requires a certain sort of lifestyle, etc.) but there should be people you can point to at all 9 points on the grid, and none of them should really clash so hard that people can’t be friends or live in the same society, and they should all be functional alignments for adventurers since a good adventure should have a mix of personal stakes and rewards and a good party should all like each other enough to stick together through whatever comes up.

Then there’s the more extreme versions of these alignments. Where neutrality becomes about “maintaining the balance” or actively rejecting society as a whole, evil is actively causing harm for harm’s sake, chaos is constant change, law is absolute rigidity and caste structures and such, and good gets really extreme about scope. These are still worldviews actual humans CAN hold, but more typically these are the sort of things supernatural forces get bent out of shape about and have as sources of constant conflict.

Again, lots of loose sloppy notes here, but you can hopefully see where I’m going as far as moral philosophies and cosmology driving games in fun directions, right?

[carolynpetit]

lonely warriors across space and time

Keleyna of Azeroth

Keleyna awoke in a small tent. Or was this something other than waking? Somehow she knew that it had not been hours or even days since she had stepped into the tent, but ten months. It was as if she had nearly phased out of existence, as if she were part of someone else’s dream and had been all but forgotten. She thought the sudden sensation of reawakening—re-existing—after so long was not unlike plummeting into a pool of icy water.

Dazed and unsteady on her feet, she emerged from the tent to a familiar sight. Yes, this Alliance fort in the Barrens was the last place she remembered, and seemingly nothing had changed. She stumbled over to a smiling, stationary gnome, Mizzy Pistonhammer, who it seemed was still patiently waiting for the eight pieces of siege engine scrap she’d asked Keleyna to collect for her ten months ago. The distant sound of explosions told her that goblin suicide bombers were still steadily charging the battlements. Gods, this world seemed so resistant to change, the constant conflict as pointless as it was endless.

Still, as she left Fort Triumph to go do something, anything, she remembered that she loved the Barrens. A phrase formed in her mind: “Lonely as I am, together we cry.” She didn’t know where it came from—a fragment of a mostly-forgotten song, perhaps—but whatever the source, it seemed fitting. In a world where her actions so often seemed insignificant, there was something oddly comforting about the forthright way in which the Barrens seemed to say to her, Yes, you ARE small, just one little, tiny part of this vast world, this mysterious universe. There was a spiritual comfort in the sparseness of it all, the heat of the dry, cracking earth a balm for her loneliness.

A balm, but not a cure. When she’d last gone to sleep all those months ago she felt a troubling void inside of herself, a persistent lack of purpose or meaning to all of her questing. She couldn’t recall any dreams from the deep sleep into which she’d fallen, but if she’d had any, they clearly hadn’t offered any answers.

Keleyna decided to see if she could be of service to the dwarves at Bael Modan, and when Marley Twinbraid asked her to retrieve his tools from the nearby digsite, she immediately set herself to the task, as much to distract herself from the troubling thoughts and feelings she couldn’t shake as anything else. It wasn’t long until she returned with the tools in hand, which Twinbraid promptly used to repair his flying machine. He entreated Keleyna to join him for a quick flight to his father’s nearby camp, but shortly after liftoff, a massive explosion shook the air around the contraption, and they went plummeting toward the earth.

Walking away from the wreckage unscathed, Keleyna wondered if she shouldn’t be a bit shaken up about what had just happened, but somehow she knew she hadn’t been in any real danger, nothing had been at stake. This was just a bit of fun, an adventure, a chapter in a story that couldn’t really hurt her, no matter what happened. But, then, what was the point? People didn’t usually go to Disneyland alone and ride the rides by themselves, she thought. The magic wasn’t in Pirates of the Caribbean itself; it was in making memories together. It was in holding hands on the ride. It was in going to the Blue Bayou Restaurant with people you loved right afterwards, your spirits buoyed by your shared experience. Wait, what’s Disneyland?

She’d heard rumors that soon, through some sort of arcane magicks, adventurers who so desired would be able to return to the way things had been long ago, before the great cataclysm remade the world. Some said that what had made things better then was that people were friendlier, that they adventured together more, they cooperated more, they talked more. Keleyna definitely felt the absence of these things in her adventures. She’d recently had the eerie experience of venturing through a dungeon with others, nobody saying a word to each other the entire time, and when it was over, they all parted silently, as immaterial to each other as phantoms.

She couldn’t say if things had been better back then. She hadn’t even existed. But she seemed to carry with her the vague memories of a night elf druid who had existed back then, someone who was somehow both her and not her. When she examined the place in herself where those memories resided, she saw some warm recollections of fellowship, but also some frustration and bitterness, as the druid quickly fell behind those she’d called friends, lacked the experience needed to journey alongside them any longer, and found herself feeling lonely and left out.

Keleyna imagined a goblin zeppelin drifting across the sky, blaring a repeating announcement: “A new life awaits you in World of Warcraft Classic! The chance to begin again in a golden age of opportunity and adventure.” She’d heard some big proponents of Classic, as the land through the portals was called, use the slogan “Make Azeroth Great Again,” a phrase she found repellant, though she couldn’t articulate exactly why. Maybe it was just that people who held romanticized notions of the past tended to be hostile to people different from  themselves in the present.

She hated the war. She desperately wished that the Alliance and Horde could put aside their differences once and for all, and learn to coexist. She even sometimes felt that the Alliance might well be the more unjust and oppressive of the two, though she couldn’t say that out loud, of course. In her mind, the only real hope was to create a new future that looked like nothing the peoples of Azeroth had ever seen before, not to go back to the earlier years of this relentless conflict. But she was also willing to try just about anything at this point. If there was even a chance that the togetherness she longed for would be waiting on the other side of those portals to the past, then why not make the leap?

The portals hadn’t been opened just yet, though, and while the warm empty vastness of the Barrens had been a welcome comfort, it couldn’t stave off the feelings that sapped her will from within for long. Craving a change of scenery, she hopped a gryphon to Theramore Isle, the sturdy trees and salty sea air a welcome change from the dry heat of the Barrens. She entered the inn and felt a pang in her heart at the sight of its emptiness. Weren’t inns like this supposed to be places where adventurers connected, sharing tales of their latest quests over flagons of mead? With a heavy sigh, she sat down, wondering when she might reawaken, or if this time, she might slip out of the world’s dreams forever. 

-----

Many miles away, something flies from the surface of a blue marbled sphere…

-----

The Guardian, Milky Way Galaxy, sometime in the future

She had a name, of course, though nobody knew it but herself. People just called her The Guardian. There were other guardians, of course--tons of them--but if you just said “The Guardian,” everybody knew you were talking about her. After all, she was the one who had done that one big thing, and then, later, she’d done that other big thing, too. She couldn’t actually tell you what those things were that she had done or why exactly they’d mattered so much, but the Vanguard clearly relied on her to take care of the biggest problems that came along. Oh, and she’d avenged Cayde’s death. That, at least, had been an adventure she’d more or less understood, and she’d liked Cayde a lot, but she didn’t feel great about revenge as a motivator. Still, her options had been to do that or to not do anything, so she’d done that, too.

Everyone knew of her, but nobody knew her. When she walked past the ramen shop in the Tower, the people at the counter would talk in hushed whispers, wondering what the Guardian really fought for, and if this woman who had done so much for so many others had anything, anyone, in her own life. Or at least, the Guardian liked to think that this was true. It was her own personal headcanon. The world hadn’t given her what felt like a meaningful story, so she created one herself. She was a legend in her own mind. Sure, she’d fought alongside other guardians a handful of times, guardians she’d known and felt safe with, and those times had been, by far, the most enjoyable and meaningful of her adventures. But those guardians had disappeared without a trace, long, long ago. Now, she knew she could team up with other guardians at random, but she would never do that. She had strong defenses up, and with good reason. Too many bad experiences, too many painful memories.

So she worked alone. It was something to do, but it felt empty. She’d go on missions and get some gear that raised her light level a bit. It was tangible progress, but to what end? So that she could go on more missions and get more gear that raised her light level a bit? Was this all there was?

She looked up at the Traveler, that mysterious being, a fusion of magic and technology that hinted at possibilities beyond this life of guns and blood, and wondered if anything stirred inside of it. She wondered if there actually was more than this, or if this was all there was. She wondered what it was all for, and figured that people had been looking to the sky and wondering this for as long as there had been people, so at least in this, at least in feeling alone and lost and uncertain, she was connected to everyone who had come before. But that was cold comfort as she climbed into her little single-seater starship and set out for The Tangled Shore in hopes of finding a better pair of gauntlets.

-----

“I wake up scared, I wake up strange, and everything around me stays the same.”

--BNL, “What a Good Boy”

-----

Carolyn, Berkeley

Here I am, the link between these two characters, projecting all my own doubt and dissatisfaction onto them.

Things are up in the air right now, Unstructured. Scary. The one constant is that I’m steadfastly working on a long-term project that’s quite unlike anything I’ve done before. It requires a lot more planning. I know where it’s going. I mean, I don’t know exactly what turn it’s going to take at every crossroads, but I have a map to the final destination. There’s comfort in this, but it also means that this writing comes from a different place than so much of the writing I’ve done. I believe in it. I feel good about it. I like doing it and knowing that I’m capable of doing it. But also, it’s safer, less emotionally urgent. (Whether or not it will ever see the light of day, now that is a question of some urgency, as it’s not exactly pulling in any money just yet, but that’s a different matter.) That project aside, lately I’ve felt like I’m looking for a reason to write. The pinprick, the provocation, the punch in the face. The things I usually find in life and in art, and in the space between myself and the games I play.

Destiny 2 and World of Warcraft don’t give me those reasons. So why do I keep returning to them, when whatever comforts they offer are fleeting, when they leave me feeling as empty as when I started? Why, when I’m so desperate for connection, do I keep playing alone these games that are designed to be played together? Why don’t I take the hours that these games swallow up and use them to read a book? Is it because I think that at any moment, something may change? Is it because I know that, while a book may be far more worthwhile, I won’t find the connection I crave in its pages, either?

I want games that fuck me up. The first episode of Stories Untold, man, that fucked me up. My brain buzzed for a few hours afterwards with the excitement and stimulation of having played something truly surprising. Destiny, WoW, these games might be fun if I had people to play them with, but the one thing they will never be, especially not as long as I play them on my own, is surprising. I know exactly what I’m in for each time I fire them up. And yet I do it again and again and again.

Here’s why I think I keep coming back: Because in this moment, when my life feels so uncertain and terrifying, I know for certain that in those worlds I can succeed, that after an hour or two, the numbers that define my character will be a little bit higher than they were when I started. Things feel so out of my control right now. Here’s a place where I can have a kind of control, however small, however empty.  

But games can’t be the answer. Life has to be. A few shallow, friendly connections won’t cut it, whether it’s people I hang out with but don’t really know in the real world, or people I run dungeons with in WoW but never really talk to or touch. As Olivia Laing so perceptively writes in The Lonely City, “[L]oneliness is hallmarked by an intense desire to bring the experience to a close; something which cannot be achieved by sheer willpower or by simply getting out more, but only by developing intimate connections.”

Or, as Bruce Springsteen sang,

I'm dying for some action I'm sick of sitting 'round here trying to write this book I need a love reaction Come on now baby gimme just one look

Because that’s where life is. That’s where the reason to write is. That’s where the reason to play is. You take what life gives you and you bring it to those things. But if life isn’t giving you the stuff of life, what, then, do you do?

I don’t want to be a warrior anymore, or at least not a lonely one. I don’t want the Boba Fett mystique. When I was younger I thought maybe I did, but now I know I don’t. Keleyna and the Guardian don’t come from anywhere, they sprang into the world fully formed as adults with no past, no family, no history, but I want someone to know where I come from. They quest alone, or when they do team up with others, it’s a fully superficial affair, no words exchanged, no lasting connection. I want to go on adventures with someone who takes on my complexity and lets me into theirs, someone I can have a real conversation with at the end of a long week, someone to walk around a real city with, someone I want to be there for and who wants to be there for me.

It’s not that I want to stop playing. Not at all. I just want the flame to be reignited. I want something to hold onto, something I can bring back to my time with the controller to make it all mean something. I’m sick of sitting ‘round here trying to write this book.

-----

Thank you for reading. If you liked it, please consider sharing it, or, if you’re in a position to do so, supporting me on Ko-fi. All donations are greatly appreciated as I continue looking for work.

[pwnyta]

POKEMON DOODLES. BETCHA DIDNT SEE THAT COMING.

These mediocre doodles are mostly for Omi. Theyre not even real characters from the games/show... its just... dont worry about it. Since im lazy its all just sketchy doodles. ((A shit ton of them under the cut!))

Hugo (Nat- ):

Candy (Nat- Naive): A not all together newbie. Im sure she was delighted to get he codename... and then less delighted that there was someone already called ‘Candyman‘.

Scarecrow or just ‘Crow’ (Nat- Modest): A spooky man who’ll fit whatever roll he needed for. Very flexible. Has an easy personality to deal with though hes not very forthcoming about himself personally... might be better in a job like this.

Lock (Nat- Quiet):

Doc (Nat- Careful): He has a lot of information on almost everyone... aside from Sickle whos doctor is Emanuel. Hes not a fighter and refuses to evolve because his tail was mutilated and he can be a Slowbro anymore. Hes somehow gained a weirdly dark organ harvester rep... maybe because hes rarely seen and peoples imagination go wild... but to the people under his care hes just a nice, tiny guy who does a good job of patching them up quickly. He will smuggle drugs however because now he gets to work in better conditions under Sickle... hes also got a strange morbid sense of humor.

Wisp (Nat- Hasty): An ice queen type, kinda haughty and smug but shes got the skills to back that up so no one can talk shit. Like ‘sure shes an asshole... but shes not wrong‘. She tries to work WITH people just so she can get them the fuck away from her as quickly as possible. She doesnt appreciate people overstaying their welcome and prefers to go solo. If she needs a partner she prefers another woman or at least a pretty man... but someone like Link or Skim would be better.

Skim (Nat- Sassy): Honestly just a nod to Catwoman in general.

Father (Nat- Serious): A very religious man, mute, demands perfection. If you work for him and fuck up and embarrass him youre in for a world of hurt.  No matter how fond he may seem to be towards someone this is true. He doesnt play favorites and he doesnt want anyone under him to stagnate. You push yourself or HE’LL PUSH YOU. The operatives working under him are jokingly referred to as his ‘kids‘. Toward his equals he can be respectful... or maybe just tolerant.

Perma (Nat- Adamant): A cruel efficient lady. Has a thing for blades which is possibly why she has no trouble working for a guy like Sickle. The fact hes not interested piques her interest in him even more.

Gadget (Nat- Rash): Tries to be a fun gamer girl but her short temper makes it hard. Some suggest her codename should be ‘Tripwire‘ because of how unpredictably dangerous she can be... but she disagrees BECAUSE SHES A FUCKING DELIGHT. Can be a bit of a troll... and not the goofy fun kind (the malicious I’ll ruin your life if you cross me kind).

Blink (Nat- Calm) A Very obedient and very smart. Has a really droning dull voice and never loses his temper. Hes good at calming a certain Luxray down.

Mele (IDK)

Wool (Nat- Sassy) Plays dumb and pretty but hes rather clever and is a fun loving fella. Has a French accent. Master of disguise!

Wreckingball (Nat- Hardy): Has no real talent or skill. Hes just a tough bastard you call in if you need to fuck some shit up. Hes probably one of the more pleasant agents in Sickles crew and is chummy... probably not the greatest idea considering his coworkers are a bunch of shady assholes.

Mittens (Nat- Jolly): Hes another rather nice agent of Sickles. But hes not a dumbass like Wreckingball and has become of the head of the Sigma divison. He is a bit reckless tho. He can shoot his arms off and use them as weapons so he occasionally wears prosthetic arms and spends a lot of time with Doc.

Prick (Nat- Impish) Hes a smarmy lad who enjoys talking vaguely and annoying people. HIS NAME IS APPROPRIATE AND HE LOVES IT.

River (Nat- Naughty): Flirty and dangerous. Hes a killer but hes quick and efficient doesnt draw out anyones death. Not because hes nicer or squeamish or anything its because torture isnt in his job description. Hes great at getting people to think he honestly cares and like using built trust to crush his victims. He also like cucumbers! He somehow gets along well with Madam even though theyre both just being fake bitches.

Madam (Nat- Mild): Looks very dainty and delicate and uses peoples desire to please a pretty woman to take advantage of them. Shes not shy about minor edits to peoples memories to help her get away even though its illegal.

Cleo (Nat- Docile):

Cresent the Shiny Lycanroc (dusk form. Nat- relaxed)

Link the Golisopod (Nat- Quiet)-

Methuselah the Drampa (Nat- Mild)

Viola the Chatot (Nat- Naughty)

Sandstorm the Flygon (Nat- Adamant)... Her personality is like that of a strict teacher dont let her have a ruler unless you wanna get spanked. Shes neat and detail oriented and because shes so outwardly respectable... no one would ever suspect shes a fucking thief. Shes a collector of rare and valuable books and of course prefers original copies. Her social skills arent grea unless shes pretending to be someone shes not and gets embarrassed if she reveals too much about herself to anyone.

Cavendish the Tropius (Nat- Lax). Her personality is like shes on autopilot, she gets shit done but shes sorta checked out. Shed much rather just stay home but she also got expensive tastes and shes not rich.

Alkaloid (Nat- Lonely): A gloomy lass that craves companionship. Shes not great at making connections to people which is fine for her position but really wants to have someone to click with. After she lost her eye she became even more distant with people. Shes rather fond of Doc though their relationship is rather one sided... her projecting some strange friendship on him because he cares for her and keeps her secrets... but hes a doctor and its kind of his job.

Blanco (Nat- Quirky): A vain dramatic ladies man. Is a skilled in his job (of course) but he hates when hes gotta tone back his extravagant life. After a long job he likes to surround himself with lively people and have some fun. He thinks he works VERY well with others and thinks himself a perfect partner.... most find him obnoxious and a lot have told him so... he just takes all criticism as jokes and lets it roll off him. If nothing else hes very positive!

Mistletoe (Nat- Serious): He seems cold and scary but hes a man of honor (for a guy who tortures people for a living anyway). He refuses to harm anyone weaker than him and is very caring of children and will step in if he sees some injustice if he can. Rouge agents, traitors,and shit like that though... hes ruthless and is very good at prying information out of them.  His hobby of developing new and dangerous poisons/chemicals are often tested on whoever hes toying with. ((He should have spots on the light red parts of his jacket... I forgot them IDK how OH WELL. I wanna tweak his costume a bit anyways. Vileplume colors are so bleh.))

Dust (Nat- Calm): Outwardly very charming but theyre not as sweet as they seem on the inside. Dust doesnt need to bring their victims in any kind of room to do their dirty work and prefers using their dust and psychic abilities to just mind fuck their victims into submission.

The Candyman the Alolan Muk (Nat- Quiet) is an annoyingly patient man and the perfect guy to call if you need to teach someone a lesson. If no one else can do it... THE CANDYMAN CAN. IDK what that Mr Mime did but he pissed Sickle off... Candyman has one weak point and thats his poor eyesight... and he’ll get very annoyed if you touch his glasses.

Doc gets a penpal.

BB Sparky helps Boat be a Pichu with the clever use of feathers and a pink marker.

Lees a hit with his mommas work friends.

Lee and his kids. (Sam and Sparky are his kids occasionally.) Hes a stronk boy but his health isnt the best... even Sam can feel a little guilty and worried when he causes trouble for his friend.

Alex is not an easy man to anger and hes very dangerous when hes angry but no matter how pissed off he is... just seeing Lee can sweep that all away. Alex can get away with a lot... but Lee still wont let him wear his preferred fighting attire. QQ so mean.

I revamped Boats friend Arcane. Hes a cop. ...he mostly hangs out with other dogs but also Boat. Nice guy, very righteous but also kind of a prideful asshole sometimes.

Ray revamp.

I made Sandy shiny because the black looked cool.

Some cops.

Another scientist

TAPUS!!!

Halos childhood friend turned criminal.

Stan and Davy fam!! Stans mum is a detective, his dad is a stay at home dad.

Davys mum is an ~*~ARTIST~*~ especially in fashion but shes flexible and creative... and very spontaneous and his dad is former military turned workhorse for his wife. Hes good at sewing with all his tentacles.

Although her desire to have a kid was random and ill thought out... they werent as awful at being parents as he thought.

Another Ray! Mega Manectric and Hebenon.

BB Pokemon Quest crew.

I forgot to add Ho-Oh Lugia

And the trios.

[script-a-world]

Hi guys, I’m glad I came upon your blog. If you could give me some help in the right direction I’d really appreciate it. My idea is to have a planet [not our earth nor solar system, I need to create new ones to fit my story] devastated after a genocidal war and the end result is the bad guys completely defeated and the ones left over fled the planet. Now, the planet is pretty much ruined and sort of back in the Bronze Age with random bits and pieces left over of more modern stuff but anyone who can create more is basically gone so everything will have to be rediscovered and reinvented. But most importantly, the people that are left are from all over the world, hundreds of little tribes with as little as 1 to 2000 survivors with a total of a million population. They did get off world help to finally defeat the bad guys so there’s a further extra quarter million aliens staying behind to help rebuild the world. You’d think with aliens, they’d have technology? Nope. Everything is magic for them. So here’s a dilemma, use magic to rebuild the world or stay in the Bronze Age and rebuild with their own technology, that would take another thousands of years. People are divided or mixed. So we got a world that looks like a magical realm one town and the Bronze Age the next town over, and everything in between. End result is like I’m writing a fantasy story set in the Bronze Age but people have modern ideas and knowledge with no way to actually use them. They know what democracy is, the minority know they deserve rights and freedom. They can drive a car, they can use a computer, but those things are basically all destroyed and no one knows how to make them. So, any ideas on where I should do my research or problems the people will face, or perhaps similar stories I could draw inspiration/ideas from? Thank you!

Synth:  For any computers they had, look into the worst-case projections from back in the 1990s when Y2K was becoming a looming concern, and for electric stuff in general check out what mega huge solar flares have the potential to do right now.

Saphira:  The best thing about this scenario is that though the people are decimated and scattered, they have not lost their memories. This means anyone who had any training whatsoever still has it. Even better, literacy is still strong. They can still teach these things to their children and that is their greatest asset. What you have is not so much a race to resources, but a race to a Communal Knowledge, a Library of Letters.

What tradesman still live? How much do they understand the craft? How can one tradesman get help from another? How do we preserve what knowledge we still have before it fades? Sure we know what a pencil looks like, how it works. I can figure out a wood barrel, but I have no idea where to get graphite, or how to make rubber for an eraser. Maybe someone in the next tribe over might know. We can substitute graphite for charcoal for now, and send out a letter to every town nearby...

Most will not be tradesmen, I'm guessing. They can still read. They can still run. They might go about the destroyed world and look for scraps. Maybe a snapped motherboard. Maybe an entire gundam: who knows? Whatever they bring back, if it can jog the memory or provide insight, it has value. Look at how much we humans learn about our history and technology just by looking at old common tools and of all things the jars and plates.

Now not everyone will be so dedicated. Some will see the Arcane way of doing things that the Aliens provide, and think Well, why not? What if we simply cannot figure out some piece of advanced tech? Really hard to rebuild computers when you don't have a way to make silicon. Well, until we figure that out... Why not... Cheat? We'll uh, make it genuine later but for now we just need it to work...

I suggest try recreating something you have with household items. How would you recreate a doorknob? Yes, seemingly simple. Deceptively so. Take down what problems you face. Consider asking Google the same as asking the Arcane Aliens for help. What problems, what thoughts, what sort of experience is it?

Good luck.

Feral:  The first thing that comes to mind is what's left?

People remember how to drive cars? Are there still cars hanging around? People who not only know how to drive but how to maintain and/or hotwire the left over vehicles may very well do so.

The same goes for any and all technology that people can get their hands on. For all of human history, we have re-purposed the cultural artifacts left by previous societies; why wouldn't your people?

In terms of why people might choose to go with the aliens or try it on their own  is going to depend heavily on their access to clean water and food sources. A clean water source is paramount. And after a planet wide war, there might not be many water sources left that do not require filtration. Do the people have access to filtration technology? Or are their options alien magitech, war with a tribe that has filtration, or die from dehydration?

Constablewrites:  From the related works to study angle, the Schizo Tech trope is probably a good place to start, since the order in which they revive given technologies is probably not going to be the same order in which they were originally developed.

Like a lot of After the End stories, a lot is going to depend on how long they've had to recover from all of this. Consider that if it's been more than a generation or two, a lot of the knowledge of how to use this stuff will die out just because there's not much point in passing it down anymore. Are parents going to teach their kids to drive once they can no longer make the cars function? There will still likely be records of this stuff and people who choose to study it, but the widespread practical knowledge and experience will die out as soon as the technology is no longer viable. Just look at how many people these days don't know how to sew their own clothes, which was considered an absolutely critical life skill less than 100 years ago.

Synth:  The pro-alien-tech people clashing with the pro-DIY people seem like another potential source of conflict to help drive your story. Do the pro-tech people think the anti-tech people are stubborn and stupid for not wanting such easily accessed assistance? Do the anti folks think the pros are lazy for just accepting these handouts instead of working hard to do things themselves? Are there conspiracy theorists asking "But what are their real motives and goals?" about these aliens? Have people split themselves off into different groups/factions/entire separate settlements based on whether they embrace or shun the alien magitech? Which side do your main characters fall on, and what happens when they meet someone from or have to travel through an area populated by people from the opposing side? Hell, do all the members of your main gang of characters even share the same views regarding magic vs. going it (very) old school? What kinds of experiences might someone have that could change their mind about the alien magic? (e.g. someone against magic comes down with some horrible disease for which medications no longer exist, but can be cured pretty easily with magic. Does magic suddenly seem acceptable now that it's their life at stake, or will they go down with their principles? What about someone gung-ho about magic? What might make them decide "Actually how about No," and turn away from it?)

Tex:  I wonder if those survivors communicated with each other - the survivors of zombie-style apocalypse/ELE (Extinction Level Event) in movies such as I Am Legend and Zombieland utilized ham radios and sent out distress signals and messages containing news about holdout locations where other survivors could travel to and be safe. Radios don't require a ton of materials or knowledge to build from scratch (Boy Scouts of America has kits for building a crystal radio), and they're relatively easy to learn how to use. If there's manuals around to build something, and someone deems it important, it's probably going to get built.

That being said, the first generation of survivors is integral for the rebuilding of society. If there was enough tech left over for survivors to leave the planet, did they do so without contacting those left behind? Was any technology repaired or retrofitted for other purposes? Does this planet have any sort of internet, or even libraries? What about fleeing survivors that pledged to come back after X amount of time or Y reason? Settling on a new planet is awfully similar to restructuring society after a devastating event, so the skill sets between the two activities have a lot of overlap.

Being able to flee the planet and presumably settle somewhere else implies that the people are capable of interplanetary travel, if not interstellar. If there's FTL drives, could these be used to power city grids, so as to take advantage of electricity, LANs, and digital information repositories? What about power supplies or engines in transportation vehicles? These can be retrofitted for use as generators, and if you're crafty enough, to boost the range of telecommunications equipment.

You only need less than a thousand people to start up a society, so having a million people, even disparate, means that the aggregate knowledge is much higher than would even be needed for colonizing a new planet from scratch. The fact that these aliens use magic isn't necessarily an issue - can they be convinced to move heavy objects, can their skills in magic be used to repair power lines or other things? What about using them to help find ore and mineral deposits to make the raw material for tech again? Are these aliens capable of scrying or telepathy, and would they be willing to create a pseudo-telecommunications net (think magic phone network where the aliens are the phone booths) across the planet to allow the different tribes to talk with each other and come up with some sort of plan? A division of labour to complete a task according to skill set can be complementary instead of contradictory, and would allow the planet to recuperate to its antebellum technological peak much faster, even if some people decide to go without it.

[merigreenleaf]

World Building June 2018 - Day 22, Work & Education

I wasn't sure how to answer this one because I've already mentioned the economy and trade in earlier prompts. A friend suggested talking about education and how apprenticeships work in Concordia, so I'll answer this that way. The world- or at least the main continent I'm writing-- doesn't really have mass-production. It's not that this wouldn't be an option because I'm sure they have the technology, but so much emphasis is put on crafting and creating things by hand that this is cornerstone of pretty much every culture/country. I'm going to focus on my main country of Concordia where trades are divided into nine different categories: the Artisans, The Tradespeople, the Merchants, the Healers, the Performers, the Protectorates, the Docents, the Growers, and the Laborers. I talked a little about each of these in the government prompt. Everyone's education starts with Concordia's schools; classes are taught either by docents or by people taught by the docents, and there's a standard curriculum that's taught throughout the country. Many people stay in these schools until they graduate at 17, but some of the trades involve apprenticeships or additional education.

Artisans: The Artisans are the people who have art magic. When their magic develops, usually between the ages of 11 and 14, they're picked by a master who has the same kind of magic. They stop going to the regular school so that they can focus on training their magic and art, and they move in with their master and the master's family for about seven years until they reach the end of their apprenticeship. Usually a master only has one apprentice at a time (although their spouse will usually have an apprentice at the same time), but a master could take on two if there weren't enough free masters to go around at that particular time in that particular field. When the master has judged the apprentice done with their studies, they'll gift the apprentice with enough money to last a year, assuming the apprentice is frugal. This is so the now-amateur can go wherever they need to go and devote all their time to working on their graduation project. When the year's up, the amateur goes to the guildhall in the capital city and presents this to the grand masters. Generally the GMs approve of this because the young artist was trained well enough to pass. If not, an extension is given-- all do eventually pass and become masters, some just take a little longer.

More info about the Artisans and the rest under the read more link!

At this point the artist is promoted to novice, which is full adult artist status that lasts a few years until they're ready to become masters. (Adair starts the series as an amateur and becomes a novice in book 2.) In the years of being a novice, the artist is expected to experiment with their magic and try new things, as well as find the two people who will become their muses (spouses); one is usually another artist and the other is always a sentinel-intended. At some point in here the trio is thrown into a test by the docents. The trio doesn't know when it's coming, just that it is, so that this way the three respond the way they would if it was an actual risk. The test-- called the Criterion-- is the thing that causes the triad link to form. Way back in the day a test wasn't needed because life being more dangerous was enough to attach a sentinel to two artists, but now they need that boost. The test mimics something dangerous or something with a choice, but in a controlled way. Most of the time the trio passes. Once in a while they just aren't as compatible as they thought they were, in which case they'd have to find someone else or work out any problems they have, then try again. Artists are really* good at following their hearts and picking right, though, so they pass far more often than needing a do-over; it also helps that an artist's magic calls out for the balance a triad grants, so this could possible also influence them towards finding people who are compatible. At this point they have their link and are masters, which means they can start taking on apprentices; this usually happens in their mid-to-late 20s and because of that need for balance and arcane stability, it tends to happen sooner rather than later. (Fun fact: the link doesn't always need a test to form. Sometimes life is dangerous enough and the choice big enough to make it spring up on its own. Adair has this happen.) Almost all masters stay masters. The only other rank is grand master, which are people selected by members of their particular kind of art/magic to represent them and take care of any technical things that the guild might have to do.

Tradespeople: I promise the rest of these blurbs are much shorter! Tradespeople are the crafters who don't have magic, but they do apprentice similarly to the Artisans. In their case, though, they continue with the regular schooling alongside the apprenticeship. This lasts until their teacher (master? I'm not sure if “master” is a term I'm using culture-wide or not) thinks that they're ready to work entirely on their own. They have their own graduation project thing going on, too, but it's not nearly as convoluted as the whole Artisan process because they finish it, it gets approved, they're done and can work as a master.

Merchants: Also go to school, although if anyone in this culture was going to home-school out of sheer pickiness, it would be someone in this group. They take special classes after school to learn about art and trade and things. These aren't taught one-on-one and is another classroom setting, but not standard across the board, so what they learn is going to be hit-or-miss based on their teacher.

Healers and Medics: Healers are the ones with magic, medics are the healers who don't have magic. These also have an outside-school extra school, but this is also the group where you're most likely to have adults learning because people sometimes come into being medics later in life. As they progress and stick with it, they'll get tutored under a licensed healer or medic, usually spending at least some time learning under the other. (Like a healer will learn a bit from a medic, and vice a versa.) Medics tend to be all-purpose while healers often specialize, so they'll learn the more advanced stuff under someone in the same field. Some healers do skip the school step, though, because their magic may already be obvious and strong or something they've been fiddling with on their own. In this case they'll get that personal tutor immediately. (This happened to Blythe who had been living outside of Concordia and playing around with the healing magic before learning how to use it.)

Performers: You join the carnival performers by showing up and auditioning so they know you're serious, but to be honest, they'll let anyone join even if they're not very good. They figure you can always learn from other carnies on the road and all they're really looking for is enthusiasm and a willingness to cooperate. Being a carny is a lot of sharing and working as a team: setting up stages, playing music for others, prepping meals, clean-up. It's one big family and if you're willing to be a part of this, you're welcome in there. They prefer people to join who are adults and generally the only people who are under age who would join a troupe would be in Silveridge because the troupe in the capital city doesn't travel. This way the kid can still go to school and live with their family or whatnot. For the traveling troupes, education to the kids of members is going to be done by other members of the troupe or their parents. They'd be following the same curriculum as the schools, but depending on if the parents like this idea or not, sometimes troupe members with kids will live in a city or town for at least part of the kid's education.

Protectorates: They're taught in the regular schools in Silveridge. Protectorate families will live in the city until their children are a certain age, then one of the parents will be on duty again. There's almost too much education here! The kids grow up learning the regular stuff in the city school, then learning about weapons and plants from the other Protectorates, then going to some of the same classes about art as the merchants do because the Protectorates guard art and artists and this makes them have to know what it is they're trading and selling. Once a Protectorate kid is old enough, they can join the Protectorates officially. Anyone is free to join, though, and they don't have to come from a family in here-- all that's required is the training and education.

Docents: Docents are the judges, the historians, the researchers, and they're picked, not a career choice. When they're near the end of their schooling, somewhere in their mid-teens, they're approached by a docent and asked if they want to become one. This is a huge honor and most would say yes, but they don't have to if they don't want to. Docents train for about a decade in their particular field. Some non-docents study alongside them once they age out of regular school-- these don't become docents, but tend to also become historians or research scholars, just at kind of a different level. Docents are a little... strange. (Fun fact that's probably a spoiler: it isn't actually a docent that selects new ones, but the Creator ghosts who have been observing the potential new-docent and in this case are using the docent's eyes and mouth to make their choice known. Docents know this and willingly serve as these eyes. They learn how to share their body without being overwhelmed, as well as learning telepathy, which they largely use to help with law because they can see the truth.

Growers/Farmers & Laborers: The growers are often retired Protectorates. There aren't a ton of people needed for this job because technology males it easier for less to do more. This was always the case and how Concordia was able to do so well even back in the beginning of their history. Like with trades or the medics, you can go into this because you're interested, and any education on this would run alongside the standard schooling. There isn’t much to say about the laborers (I still need a better word for that) because anyone who doesn’t fit into the other 8 categories would have the regular school education, then pick up whatever job they do along the way. 

------------------------

I'll get into Galanvoth and Montglace some other time because this is already ridiculously long and I still need to work out those countries anyway. If anyone has any questions, let me know! I’m honestly amazed if anyone read this whole thing, but it’s really good info for me to have so I’m really thankful for WBJ. :) 

Tagging my world building peoples. Let me know if you want on or off this world building list (I also have a separate list for short stories/moodboards if you’d want on that one) and please please feel free to tag me in any writing thing you share. I love seeing what people are working on! <3 @ageekyreader @lynnafred @worldbuildingwren @theguildedtypewriter @toboldlywrite @wchwriter @ghostsmooches @lady-redshield-writes @bluemartlet @reeseweston @dreameronthewind @forlornraven @pen-for-sword @homesteadhorner @shadow-maker @loopyhoopydrabbles @emptymanuscript @madmooninc

Day 1 (Intro to my writing/series) / Day 2 (Geography) / Day 3 (People) / Day 4 (History)/ Day 5 (Civilization & Architecture) / Bonus: Art Theft  / Day 6 (Gender & Sexuality) / Day 7 (Economy) / Day 8 (Government) / Day 9 (Religion) / Day 10 (Holidays) / Day 12 (Elementals) / Day 11, 13, 14 (Language, Plants, Food) / Day 15 (Technology) / Day 16 (Magic)  / Day 17 (Medicine) / Day 18 (Fashion) / Day 19 & 20 (War & Weapons) / Day 21 (Fun) / Day 23 (The Sky)

[trentteti]

Getting Through Brutally Difficult Reading Comp Passages About Science

If you’ve done any LSAT from the last five or so years, you’ve certainly realized that the Reading Comprehension section can be brutally difficult. The LSAT as a whole has gotten slightly more difficult in the last few years, but neither the Logical Reasoning nor Logic Games sections have become quite as fearsome as Reading Comprehension. And three types of passages almost always give their readers the most trouble: passages about science, the law, and the arts. Unfortunately for us all, basically every LSAT has at least one passage on science, at least one passage about the law, and at least one passage about the arts.

If you’ve been recently tearing out your hair as you attempt to read through dozens of these seemingly impenetrable passages, you’ve read enough lately, so I’ll just cut straight to the point: in a three-part series, we’re going to discuss what makes these passages so difficult, and what we can do to make them a little less formidable. We’ll begin this series today by focusing on passages about science.

We who set our gazes on law school are typically not the most science-adept people. If we were, perhaps we would have chosen a career in the medical field, with its broken business model and fast-approaching reckoning with AI, rather than … um … the field we chose. Instead, we dutifully took the science GEs everyone told us were the easiest and learned the bare minimum about astronomy or physiology or whatever-it-was-it’s-so-hard-to-remember-now-maybe-it-had-to-do-with-rocks? And then that was about it for our less-than-illustrious science education. Any advances in science we would, like Arthur C. Clarke, chalk up to magic.

OK, maybe I should use “I” statements rather than project my aspersions onto you. I don’t really understand science. Like at all. But in my extensive experience working with people preparing to tackle the LSAT, I recognize that most test takers aren’t terribly science-fluent either. So with our plainly deficient scientific knowledge, it can seem a little cruel that we will certainly get a passage about science on the LSAT. It can feel especially cruel when the topics of these passages can run the gamut from dormant pathogens to entropy in the multiverse to plate tectonics to how brain scans work. So what can we do to make our reading of these passages a little more comprehensible?

Three rhetorical devices can help us understand these seemingly incomprehnsible science passages. These three devices are frequently employed in scientific passages, and can help you understand the subject matter and the point the author wants to drive home. These rhetorical devices are truly a venerable triumvirate. They are our lodestars helping us navigate the dark night these passages present … OK, I’m waxing rhapsodic now. It’s not very appropriate for the neutral, fact-based science passages. So let’s get to those three devices.

The first device you should always look out for in these passages are questions posed by the author, especially those posed early in the passage. These passages frequently inundate you with a dense morass of unfamiliar concepts and theories, but there’s almost always only one important point at hand. Whenever the author of the passage poses a question, you can cut through all the excess info thrown at you, and get straight to the point of the passage — which is simply answering that question. Just track the answers that the passage provides to uncover the main idea the passage. Sometimes you only get one answer, and the author agrees that it is, indeed, the answer. That’s great — the main point of the passage is simply that answer. Other times there will more than one answer. In that case, the main point is either the one answer the author agrees with, or a summary of each answer, if the author has no stated or implied preference. So figuring out the questions posed and answers provided can help you at the very least understand the subject matter and main point of the passage, which is certainly a useful starting point.

The second device to look out for are analogies. You may not know a ton about science, and the embittered souls who compile these passages know this and will usually exploit it for their nefarious ends. Occasionally, however, they’ll throw you a bone in the form of an analogy. An analogy will take some scientific concept — which, remember, you probably don’t know anything about — and relate it to something you already understand. Recent passages have analogized entropy to the arrangement of furniture in a living room, the subduction in plate tectonics to an oar bending into water, and the improbability of life in our universe to the improbable survival of an action movie hero. Hold onto these analogies — use them to help you understand what they’re even talking about in the passage. By relating the arcane subject matter to something we can all picture, these analogies clarify either the central subject matter or some supporting piece of evidence. If you don’t even understand how the analogy relates to the subject matter, take a moment. Re-read that paragraph, and don’t proceed without getting a better understanding of the passage. These analogies are carefully placed — if we don’t understand the analogy, we’re going to have a very hard time understanding anything that follows.

(Note: There’s a common misconception about analogies in RC — many people think that you’ll definitely get questions about analogies. Although many questions ask you to find an answer choice that is analogous to something mentioned in the passage, the questions almost never ask about analogies made by the passage. Instead, use these analogies to help you make sense the subject matter and supporting evidence in the passage).

Finally, we should always try to simply these passages to the underlying cause and effect being described. These science passages will cover all manner of topics, but at their heart, they almost always attempt to prove that some cause and effect relationship exists. Almost every recent published science passage has argued that some cause and effect relationship exists. The last four have claimed, respectively, that changes in sea water temp or salinity might cause cholera to reproduce in humans; that fish farming may cause as much harm to the environment as line or net fishing; that random fluctuations can cause a high entropy system to become, briefly, a low entropy system; and that the lateral movements of plates of the Earth’s crust against each other cause earthquakes. All cause and effect. If you can simplify the the passage to a short description of the cause and effect relationship, you’ll know enough about the passage. And because most details in the passage will merely support that central cause and effect relationship, you’ll even be able to answer questions about those picayune details.

The recent November 2018 passage about entropy and the Big Bang — my pick for the most difficult recent RC passage — illustrates how these three rhetorical devices can help us answer all the questions. We begin the passage with a veritable onslaught of murky terms — “infinitesimally” “entropy,” “thermodynamics,” “multiverse,” “cosmic bubble” — designed to scare us off. But then, a question is implicitly posed: How did the Big Bang occur, and our universe begin, in an improbably low entropy state? An analogy is then used to clarify why low entropy states are unlikely — if you were to randomly reconfigure items in your living room, the room would probably get more disordered (i.e., entropic) over time; the universe works, by analogy, in similar ways. Finally, we get the answer, which is expressed to us as cause and effect: random fluctuations of energy on a subatomic scale can cause a momentarily low entropy universe from which the Big Bang could have banged. Now, I don’t really understand what “random fluctuations of energy on a subatomic scale” means, but by focusing on the question and analogy I understood the subject matter, and by simplifying the answer to a cause and effect relationship, I understood the main point well enough. With just this information, I answered all the questions correctly, despite being resolutely not a Science Guy (or even a Big Bang viewer).

So focus on these three rhetorical devices to simplify these unfamiliar and frequently over-complicated science passages. If they work for me — a genuine science dum dum — they can surely work for you.

Stay tuned next week for a post on how to handle passages about the law, and later for a post on how to handle passages about the arts.

Getting Through Brutally Difficult Reading Comp Passages About Science was originally published on Blueprint LSAT Blog

[templified]

Best WordPress Masonry Grid Portfolio and Blog Themes | Templified

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Best WordPress Masonry Grid Portfolio and Blog Themes

If you’re a photographer, a graphic or interior designer, a web designer, freelance creative professional or you just want a great way to show off cool design work, photographs, websites, you’ll want a great looking, well designed and reasonably priced WordPress grid portfolio theme.  It’s sort of like your online business card.  You want to give potential clients and customers a look at your work and the one-page grid layout is a great way to do that.  Masonry Grid WordPress themes seem to be getting more and more popular, thanks in large part to their flexibility and functionality, and this collection represents the absolute best grid design themes we could find.  In 2017, these themes are the absolute best we could find and we add more every week.

Laying your website out in a grid format will help make the page look organized and modern.  The masonry format helps attract the eye and you can even add a feature to allow for infinite scrolling, sort of like Pinterest, which can be something to help set your page apart from everyone else.  Similar to this collection is our gathering of WordPress grid themes.

Margo

Margo may look very simple and sleek, but the design can’t hide the fact that this theme is a highly functional, feature filled and dynamic theme that can help elevate your content and help you build a simply wonderful looking website.  This stylish and creative portfolio theme is minimalistic in design, ideal for artists, illustrators, wedding photographers, design agencies and other types of professionals who admire clean, minimal and modern design, but also need a theme that loads quickly and offers incredibly clean code.  Select from two, three or four column designs, add posts with formats like standard, image, video, audio and galleries.  This CSS3 and HTML5 coded theme has been tested on all major browsers, operates flawlessly on any size device thanks to it’s responsiveness.  Check out these minimal WordPress themes.

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Divi

By now, you’ve probably heard of Divi in your search for a fantastic WordPress grid theme.  If not, welcome.  Divi is Elegant Themes’ premium WordPress page builder theme.  It’s fluid, responsive and well appointed, the visual page builder plugin (Divi builder) lets you make a website that has every feature you need, with a fun and easy to navigate grid layout for your images, video clips, artwork or other posts.  Divi is a real go-to multi-purpose theme.  Divi, the ultimate designers tool?  Could very well be.

For support, you’ve got access to the knowledge base that Elegant Themes has already amassed, but there’s more.  An online community of Divi developers is constantly making Divi better and better.  You can use a predefined layout, including a beautiful and user friendly grid design, create your own layout or download one of the community sourced design templates.  Each one is professional, beautiful and easy to use.  Check out the demos with the link below and find out if Divi is the right theme for your next project.

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Uncode

The Uncode WordPress theme offers so many different customization options it can be considered a true shape shifter in the realm of one or multipage website design. Its modern appearance and supreme functionality let even non-developers easily create a stunningly feature-filled site with all the latest elements displayed well, animated effortlessly and laid out to best showcase all the textual and graphic content. Uncode succeeds as a theme for web presence in any industry because it is truly appropriate for multiple uses. To make it even easier to launch, Uncode comes packaged with multiple premade one-page template demos and tons of widgets and elements you can customize in no time at all.

This modern WP theme was built on the powerful HTML5 and CSS3 coding with Bootstrap technology that facilitates the seamless design options of a truly dynamic website. No coding knowledge or experience necessary to change the layout or add content. Choose one of the professionally designed demos or create your own structure for whatever message you want to send site visitors. The Uncode theme is 100% responsive for smooth views on any size screen. The overall impression is one of polished harmony and a perfect marriage between content message and design.

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UberGrid

Ubergrid, exclusively available on ThemeForest, is a retina ready portfolio theme that packs a lot of features into a simple, minimalist design package and does it all at a reasonable price.  This beautiful, reliable, well-built, flexible and contemporary WooCommerce WordPress theme will allow you to market old products, contact buyers, develop your online business, launch new items and manage shipping and your stock and more.  UberGrid comes included with a page builder, a powerful and easy-to-usefront-page manager and theme manager pages.  Infinite scrolling options are handy too, if that’s something you’re interested in.  All this and demo content installed at the click of a mouse?  Perfect!  Here are some more WooCommerce WordPress themes.

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Notio

Want a fun theme with grid layout and easy to grasp, minimalist style to make a really memorable first impression on the folks who come to your website?  Yeah?  Me too!  Well, Notio is a theme that might be a fit for what you need.  Notio is a high end portfolio theme which also allows for WooCommerce sales of any kind of products, from digitally downloaded files to stuff you normally find in a brick and mortar store.  Notio is easy to use too, simple enough for beginners but fluid and dynamic enough for expert web designers.  I think you’ll find that it’s simple to get started and there are plenty of options to make the site look like you want it without being too arcane.  Tweak the settings, give it a try.  We think you’ll love what you find.

Installation is a cool and easy process, thanks in large part to Notio’s single click installer.  Yeppers, it is what it is.  One click gets the job done.  Get started now, not in a few minutes.  Pretty, pretty, pretty cool.  Visual Composer, which allows you to change up the layout rapidly, is what powers this theme.  Lots of the very best templates on the market are using this powerful tool and it has no limits to what can be build.  No fences.  Notio looks great on any device thanks to retina ready display and that means your WooCommerce driven store with grid layout is going to look amazing and behave even better.

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Wonder

Looking for a clean and crisp, powerful and modern grid portfolio theme with tools and talent enough to help you create an attractive and professional portfolio in minutes?  Then Wonder may be what you’re looking for.  This template is complete with several portfolio types, so you can showcase images, video, sliders and even audio clips.  The minimal look is seductive and the WordPress Live Customizer helps make it really easy to adjust settings on everything from colors and logos, blog options and more.  It’s a one stop control panel for your entire website.  Wonder is a responsive theme that includes half a dozen free plugins too to integrate social media links, pricing tables and more.

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Vulcano

Vulcano is a Tesla Themes original, wonderfully well suited to make a great blog, portfolio, creative agency site, photography portfolio page or home-page for any kind of creative small business. Vulcano is creative about it’s layout too, allowing for various sizes of images on each page, sort of like a metro style theme.  The Tesla framework assures you that this theme will have fast load times and won’t bog down even as your website, and your traffic, grows.

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Kappe

Kappe is a theme by artists, for artists.  Any sort of creative will love the flat geometric style design, the full background images, the infinite scrolling options and trendy masonry grid layout.  I think this one will be great for your photos, design work, illustrations and whatever you want to throw at it.

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Petal

This grid layout portfolio WordPress theme is flexible, user friendly, spectacular, feature filled and well built, it’s adaptive, perfectly coded and feature filled, ideal for promotion firms, boutique design firms, graphic designers, advertising agencies or commercial photographers. A well designed portfolio theme can really help you make a lasting first impression.  The best drag and drop WordPress page-builder plugin is called Visual Composer, which is probably the most effective and quite adaptive method to generate the kind of website you are looking for with the design and features you’d like to have.  Visual Composer supports the major third party plugins like both Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms, WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, Essential Grid and Layer or Revolution Sliders. What’s best of all is how this beautiful WordPress theme so incredibly flexible, so your portfolio page will look as good as can be on any device.

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Kalium

Kalium is wonderfully well crafted and attractive, modern grid theme with a glossy and appealing design, it’s also incredibly lightweight and exceptionally responsive, just like all WordPress creative multipurpose themes should be.  The optional ability to set up an online shop and portfolio is also a great touch. Kalium is a robust and sound design alternative for webmasters who don’t want the hassle of managing any coding but need to craft innovative sites that are contemporary in a grand fashion, while remaining capable of efficiently conveying information to a comprehensive variety of demographics in a huge, on-line crowd.

To that end, Kalium sets up the superior Visual Composer page builder to facilitate the whole customization procedure, joining it with the engaging and animated power of LayerSlider plugins and the Revolution Slider for good measure. You are going to discover Kalium’s capacities are distinctively powered by a robust treatment of grid fashions including the masonry that is configurable and most modern layouts in the marketplace now, with the capacity of presenting a variety of content in an appealing, first, organization that is customizable. Strive Kalium and let everything where it should be be!

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Infinity

Infinity is an uncomplicated, spotless, and fashionable portfolio theme that adjusts to virtually any screen quality. It really is one of the better ThemeTrust themes. Set full screen background photos to conveniently supply every project, blog post, or web page it’s own attitude. Successfully flip a grouping of imagery into a slideshow. Instantly alter components of the theme with a built in features panel. Choose and post your logo image. Every Theme Trust theme which you invest in offers life time support.

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Ink

Ink is a very simple, fresh, and chic portfolio theme that changes to virtually any screen pixel resolution with it’s responsive design. This is probably the best ThemeTrust web templates. Set full screen back-ground illustrations or photos to simply bestow every photo, post, or webpage it’s very own special personality. Readily transform a collection of photos right into a slideshow. Rapidly change parts of the theme with an internal options panel. Pick and post your logo graphic. Every Theme Trust theme which you buy comes with lifetime guidance.

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Rinjani

Creating a blog than needs a special dose of wonderfully constructed masonry grid layout?  Or perhaps you’re looking for a highly structured, geometric and solid, strong layout for a portfolio, and you’d prefer the high levels of order and visibility that a grid WordPress theme provides?  Well, look no further than Rinjani, a wonderful, slim and sleek, modern and orderly, neat and clean WordPress grid theme.  Want to blog about your favorite hobbies, arts and crafts, travel or design?  Want to make a little money while you’re at it?  (Who doesn’t?)  If you want a theme that can do all of that and more, then have a look at the advantages Rinjani offers you.  Whether you’re blogging about a personal story, you’re marketing your company online or blogging for a corporate entity, Rinjani is a great choice, thanks to it’s ease of use and high level of custom features and looks you can give it.

Rinjani is completely responsive, meaning it looks great on every device, every screen size, every browser, every time.  The grid style layout means even on a mobile device, the readability and impact is high, the presentation is attractive and the reader will stand up and take notice of what you have to say, every time.  Rinjani offers ACF formatting, a crafty plugin that offers you immense levels of control over custom field data, which means there’s no end to the level of custom experience you can provide. The strong administration panel allows you to customize Rinjani to suit any look, giving you full control over every aspect of the style.  Rinjani empowers you, gives you the freedom of color choice, font choice and other basic CSS options that fit your website’s desired style or your company’s existing lookbook.  Rinjani’s developers spared no expense in creating an SEO optimized theme to help power your website higher in the search engines, like Yahoo, Google, Bing and others.  Rinjani offers an amazing treasure-trove of documentation to let you install, develop and customize your site quickly and with no need to learn how to code.

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[raystart]

This 1 Piece of Advice Could Make Or Break Your Career

There’s no handbook on how to evaluate and process “suggestions” and “advice” from a boss or a mentor. But how you choose to act on these recommendations can speed up your learning and make or break your career. Here’s what to keep in mind:

I had a team of students working on an arcane customer problem. While they were quickly coming up to speed, I suggested that they talk to someone who I knew was an expert in the area and could help them learn much faster. In fact, starting in the second week of the class, I suggested the same person several times – one-on-one, in class and in writing. Each time the various team members smiled, nodded and said, “Yes, we’ll get right on it.”  Finally, eight weeks later when they were about to fly across the country to meet the customer, I reminded them again.

When they returned from the trip, I asked if the advisor I suggested was helpful.

I was a bit surprised when they replied, “Oh, we’ve been trying to connect with him for a while and he never responded.”  So, I asked:

Team, As per our conversation about the lack of response from your advisor John Doe -please forward me copies of the emails you have sent to him.

Thanks

Steve

The reply I received was disappointing — but not totally surprising.

Dear Steve, 

Unfortunately, I believe our team has painted the wrong picture due to miscommunication on our part. It was our responsibility to reach out to John Doe, but we failed to do so.

We did not attempt to reach out to him up until Week 8 before our flight, but the email bounced. We got caught up in work on the trip and did not follow-up. What we should have done was to clarify the email address with our Teaching Assistant and attempt to contact him again.

Best regards,

Taylor

Extra credit for finally owning that they screwed up – but there was more to it.

Combine Outside Advice with Your Own Insights Upon reflection I realized that this student team was missing a learning opportunity. They were soon heading for the real world, and they had no idea how to evaluate and process “suggestions” and “advice.”  Ironically, given they were really smart and in a world-class university, they were confusing “smart” with “I can figure it all out by myself.”

Throughout my entrepreneurial career I was constantly bombarded by advice – from bosses, mentors, friends, investors, et al. I was lucky enough to have mentors who took an interest in my career, and as a young entrepreneur, I tried to pay attention to what they were trying to tell me. (Coming into my first startup from four years in the military I didn’t have the advantage of thinking I knew it all.) It made me better – I learned faster than having to acquire every bit of knowledge from scratch and I could combine the data coming from others with the insights I had.

Have a Process to Evaluate Suggestions and Advice Here was my response to my student team:

Dear Team:

Throughout your work career you’ll be getting tons of suggestions and advice; from mentors – people you don’t work for but who care about your career and from your direct boss and others up your reporting chain.

Treat advice and suggestions as a gift, not a distraction

Assume someone has just given you a package wrapped in a bow with your name on it.

Then think of how they’ll feel when you ignore it and toss it aside.

When you’re working at full speed just trying to get your job done, it’s pretty easy to assume that advice/suggestions from others are just diversions. That’s a mistake. At times following up on them may make or break a career and/or a relationship.

The first time your boss or mentor will assume you were too busy to follow up.

The second time your boss will begin to question your judgment. Your mentor is going to question your willingness to be coached.

The third time you ignore suggestions/advice from your boss is a career-limiting move. And if from a mentor, you’ve likely damaged or ended the relationship.

Everyone likes to offer “suggestions” and “advice.” Think of these as falling into four categories:

Some bosses/mentors offer “suggestions” and “advice” because it makes them feel important.

Others have a set of contacts or insights they are willing to share with you because they believe these might be useful to you.

A few bosses/mentors have pattern-recognition skills. They’ve recognized the project you’re working on or problem you’re trying to solve could be helped by connecting with a specific person/group or by listening to how it was solved previously.

A very small subset of bosses/mentors has extracted some best practices and/or wisdom from those patterns. These can give you shortcuts to the insights they’ve taken years to learn.

Early in your career it’s hard to know whether a suggestion/advice is valuable enough to spend time following up. Here’s what I suggest:

Start with “Thanks for the suggestion.”

Next, it’s OK to ask, “Help me understand why is this important? Why should I talk to them? What should I learn?” This will help you figure out which category of advice you’re getting.If it’s a direct boss and others up your reporting chain, ask, “How should I prioritize this? Does it require immediate action?” (And it most cases it doesn’t matter what category it’s in, just do it.)

Always report back to whoever offered you the advice/suggestion to share what you learned. Thank them.

If you open yourself to outside advice, you’ll find people interested in the long-term development of your career – these are your career mentors. Unlike coaching, there’s no specific agenda or goal but mentor relationships can result in a decades-long dialog of continual learning. What makes these relationships a mentorship is this: you have to give as good as you are getting. While you’ll be learning from them – and their years of experience and expertise – what you need to give back is equally important – offering fresh insights to their data.

If your goal is to be a founder, having a network of mentors/advisors means that not only will you be up to date on current technology, markets or trends, you’ll be able to recognize patterns and bring new perspectives that might be basis for your next startup.

Lessons Learned

Suggestions/advice at work are not distractions that can be ignored

Understand the type of suggestions/advice you’re getting (noise, contacts, patterns, insights)

Understand why the advice is being given

Agree on the priority in following it up

Not understanding how to respond to advice/suggestions can limit your career

Advice is a kickstarter for your own insights and a gateway for mentorship

Treat advice and suggestions as a gift, not a distraction

[brilliantheartbeautifulmind]

google + my reading list

Nicholas Carr picks up where our previous readings from Phaedrus and about the invention of writing and movable type left off.  He brings us to the present day, when we get our news in 140-character tweets and our attention spans are smaller than they have ever been.  The invention of the Internet and, to a lesser extent, Google, changed the way we approach knowledge and information forever.  No longer are extensive allusions in literature and the possession of arcane bits of trivia impressive; the information that once was reserved for those with excellent memories and expensive educations is now available to all with a few clicks.  This is an extension of the fear that Plato expressed in Phaedrus, of people being “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.”  We don’t even have to read and absorb knowledge, we can find a definition or opinion for us to read off our glowing screens.

The part that struck me most in this essay was when Carr talks about Taylor’s theory of automation in factories and Google’s plan of applying that to the internet.  My favorite quote at the moment and one that I have been basing many of my actions around recently comes from the Victorian art critic John Ruskin.  In The Stones of Venice, a book that nominally addresses the form and function of Gothic architecture but is really about humanity, he says, “…while in all things that we see, or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, that we may, the more surely enjoy the complacency of success” (178).  As a perfectionist myself, it is tempting to only attempt projects I know will succeed, rather than trying for something that will stretch me that may also completely fail.  The internet takes away the possibility of failure but removes much of the potential for learning.  To illustrate this, allow me two examples.

In the first, I am trying to recall the name of a poet.  I tell my mother, “I can’t think of the name of that poet who wrote a ton of depressing poetry and eventually stuck her head in the oven and killed herself.  Do you know her name?”  My mom nods her head and I quickly interrupt her, “Don’t tell me!  I’ll think of it.”  

“Let me know if you need a letter,” she replies.  In our family, we frequently play the name game.  Someone asks another person for help remembering the name of a family friend or famous person, living or dead, and the person who has the answer gives the first letter of the searched-for first or last name. Needing a letter is, of course, admitting defeat, so I start rattling off the things I remember about this nameless poet.  

“She had a horrible husband who cheated on her and knocked up his mistress…he wrote a radio play about the affair and she was horribly humiliated and that led to her successful suicide…It’s not Edith Wharton; she’s a novelist…” This tactic is not working out so I switch to the Alphabet Game.  “A…B…C…D…E…still not Edith Wharton…F…G…” Somewhere around “M” I have my eureka moment and shout out “Sylvia Plath!”

This whole interval took me about three minutes.  I just tried Googling the exact question I asked my mother.  It took nine seconds for me to type in my vague clues and get the correct answer.  In the week since my little memory work, I have never once had to reach any further than a second to find Sylvia Plath’s name.  

My second example finds me, as is typical, needing the answer to a technical question.  I enter “how to screenshot on a mac” into the Google bar and find the answer (command + shift + 4).  A few days later, I need to screenshot something yet again and can’t remember how to do that, so I return again to Google for my answer.  

These examples show, to me, the difference between memory and accessibility. In the first instance, I searched my brain for a bit of knowledge I knew was there, but couldn’t remember at the moment. After a few minutes of musing, I found the answer within myself (in the least cliché way possible) and have had no trouble recollecting that answer since.  The process of looking and coming up empty, of trying and failing has cemented certain pieces of knowledge into my brain in a way that instantly retrieving information from a secondary source will never achieve.  However, knowing how the invention of printing revolutionized the way we interact with and gain knowledge, it seems foolish to decry what is obviously the next great step in accessible information.  Instead, I would encourage everyone, where and when it is possible, to take a few minutes to search your own personal information database before turning to that blinking cursor and typing in “what is a word that means outside but attached to your body?”

 What I’m Reading and Why

After much deep thought over the past week, I have come to the realization that I am avoiding the inevitable.  I have been staying in my comfort zone.  I have written short stories before and the idea of writing 12 short stories was not as formidable as what I now understand I must do.  This is a novel.  A novel about three women, related to each other by blood and experience and location. The inspiration I took from Paul-Albert Besnard’s prints does not lead me to a series of vignettes, but rather to a larger work, encompassing generations. 

I avoided this decision because I will need to have a grander theme with a more acute reason for the action to begin.  Since I’m writing literary fiction, the need for a momentous action is not as necessary as it would be if I was writing a mystery or thriller but the need still exists.  I also want to keep the original order of the Besnard prints intact.  In addition to an overarching plot, I will also be jumping around in time quite a bit and will need to decide how to do that. These struggles and decisions will impact the research I need to do, hence this announcement. 

Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay:  This poem by one of my favorite poets depicts the sensation of dying, being buried, and deciding to rejoin life.  It will be helpful when crafting the chapters that deal with suicide and apotheosis.

Willa Cather: Our Nebraskan author fulfills several needs from the fiction I am reading.  She provides a female voice and a rural setting.  I have loved her work since I first read My Antonia years ago and am really looking forward to reacquainting myself with it.

Mari Sandoz:  This historian provides stories from the rough and tumble days of the homesteaders, an important group to know about when you are writing about people who still live in the glory of their successful ancestors.

Non-Fiction and Essays:  I will be using my favorite search engine (JSTOR) to find academic essays and research papers on the psychological and emotional repercussions of the various traumas my characters will undergo.  JSTOR offers a list feature in which I will collect these various articles until it is time to read them.  A few examples of the search terms I am using are:

-       After effects of rape within a family

-       Hereditary mental illnesses

-       Influence of evangelical Christianity on self-esteem after trauma

-       Results of a matriarchal society on adult children

-       Drug abuse in rural America

As you can see from these categories, the issues I will be doing research on are the themes on which I feel unqualified to address without further study.  If necessary, I will expand my search past journals only to books, documentaries, etc.

Sylvia Plath:  A famously troubled poet, Plath tried and eventually succeeded in taking her life. The themes she expresses in her poetry are similar to the themes that I will be working with and will provide additional insight into the emotional mindset of my troubled characters.

The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney:  This is a great intergenerational family drama that fits into the genre I chose.  I read this book when it first came out, but I think it warrants a reread so that I can learn at the feet of a master.

Literary Fiction:  The former is only an example of that, but I will be reading this genre in general so that I can truly understand the mechanics. This isn’t as pressing a To Be Read item as the rest of the items on this list, but I will be focusing my “fun” reading time on this style. 

Of course, this is only the start of my list.  I feel like these texts will give me a good jumping-off point from which to begin outlining and writing.