#I was not aware that making the quest into an Investigation allowed you to repeat it 3 times

[midnightwind]

my friend just explained how the Investigations work in Wilds and I am going to start foaming at the mouth real quick-

[utterlyrandomperson]

We Do After All Have A Case To Solve

Fandom: Dead Boy Detectives

Summary: When waiting for your mortal friends to complete their quest, one might have to resort to special methods to keep the boredom at bay. However, those special methods are also very likely to backfire.

Content warnings: swearing, tickling.

Edwin gasps and flinches away when he feels ten fingers lightly squeezing his waist. He turns around and catches sight of Charles, who is grinning cheekily.

"Mate, don't tell me you're ticklish?", he aks, though he is fully aware of the answer. Edwin eyes him with suspicion.

"What's this about?"

Charles tilts his head. "What's what about?", he responds with an innocent voice while slowly making a few steps towards the other. Edwin immediately backs up.

"What do you want?", he says, trying to sound annoyed. But the way his voice quivers gives him away. Charles smirks as he keeps approaching.

"To tickle you", he simply says.

"And why would you want that? I didn't do anything to provoke you", Edwin argues, his facade starting to break down. He has a nervous smile on his lips and his hands are raised, ready to defend himself. Charles laughs.

"Well, since we have to wait for Crystal and Niko to return so we can continue with our investigations, I have to find ways to keep my boredom at bay... and, unfortunately for you, tickling you seems like a fun thing to do. And besides, don't start with that 'didn't do anything to provoke you' bullshit. You were literally lecturing me like thirty seconds ago."

Edwin swallows when his back hits the wall. Theoretically, he could just fade through the wall. But somehow, his mind does not catch on that quickly. Before he can make an escape, Charles closes the distance between them and starts squeezing the other's hips. Edwin opens his mouth to protest, but a stream of giggles escapes him instead. He's gripping Charles' wrists but doesn't manage to push them away.

"Charles! Charles, stop thihis at once!", he exclaims. His giggles suddenly become more high-pitched and he bends his body forward to protect his hips.

"Please! You know I cahan't-"

Charles pauses. As soon as he does so, Edwin loosens his grip around his wrists, which allows for Charles to change their position so he's now holding onto the other's wrists. Edwin gasps for air and shakes his head.

"Don't, don't your dare-"

He cuts himself off with a burst of laughter when he feels hands kneading into his sides. He tries to break free by pushing the other away, but he's too weak already.It takes only a few more seconds until he can't take it anymore. His knees buckle and he slowly sinks to the ground, his back pressed against the wall.

Turns out that is exactly what Charles has been waiting for. As soon as Edwin goes down, he grabs one of his legs and buries his fingers in the hollow of his knee. Edwin cries out and tries to pull his leg away but fails miserably. He shuts his eyes and leans his head back, a stream of giggles making his whole body tremble. When Charles begins tickling the front and the back of his knee, he squeals and his laughter becomes louder and higher in pitch. It takes him several attempts to form words as he keeps interrupting himself with wheezes and fits of giggles.

"Not there! Not thehere, Charles I cahan't- plehease! Nonono please-"

Charles abandons his leg, only to grab the other one and repeat the same procedure, pushing Edwin into the next laughing fit.

"It is kind of funny to me that you didn't believe someone could be ticklish on their knees not too long ago. And now it turns out that you are even worse than me", he teases playfully. Edwin winces violently when he grazes his nails over the back of his thigh and Charles chuckles.

"Seriously, you're too ticklish for your own good."

Edwin tries to curl up, but he's trapped against the wall (and still doesn't realise he could simply fade through it... though that probably wouldn't make any difference anyway since Charles could just follow him). He has a weak grip on one of Charles' wrists, but he doesn't have any strength left to push it away.

"Mehercy! Please, Charles plehease."

He hiccups once before he bursts into giggles again. Charles smiles and slows down, leaving his knees alone and tracing patterns over his calfs instead. It's not nearly as torturous and allows Edwin to catch his breath.

"Wow, didn't think I'd ever hear you use the word 'please' in a sentence twice. Your knees must be a really bad spot."

Edwin decides to ignore the blush on his cheeks and scowls at the other. "I'll do what I must to get you to stop this nonsense. We actually have a case to-"

"Oh, stop acting like you are above all this. I know that part of you is enjoying it. Why else would you have conveniently forgotten that you could just make this stop by fading through the wall? Or through the floor, for that matter."

Edwin sighs. Yes, why indeed. Deep down, he knows as well as Charles does that the latter is right. He does enjoy this. Or at least he enjoys the lightheartedness of it. He shoots his friend a glare.

"I will get you back for this", he warns.

Charles breaks into a grin and tilts his head.

"I'm counting on it. But first-"

His hands shoot forwards before Edwin can react and attach themselves to his ribcage.

"-it's your turn."

Edwin shrieks and doubles over. He protectively crosses his arms in front of his chest, but Charles keeps finding new openings. Shortly after, the latter is tickling him all over. His hands dart from his ribs to his sides to his belly to his lower back. When he traces his neck and collarbones, Edwin's laugh falls silent for a few seconds before he inhales and bursts into a fit of hysterical giggles. He pulls up his shoulders and weakly pushes at the other's chest.

"Noho! Charles, for Gohod's sake!"

When Charles doesn't let up, Edwin curses under his breath. It's a very tame cuss, but Charles still raises his eyebrows at it and acts shocked.

"Edwin Payne! Did you just make use of a swearword? How very rude of you. I shall have to punish you for such indecency."

When he grabs onto the other's thigh and squeezes it, Edwin curses again, only this time a lot filthier and directed at Charles. The latter can't help but crack up.

"Wow, okay. Guess I had that coming."

Edwin shudders and frantically tries to push the hands away that have now found the back of his thigh.

"Stohop! Charles, this has been enohough!"

Charles slows down a bit but doesn't stop yet. "Say please one more time?", he asks innocently but with a mischievous grin on his face. Edwin glares at him but crumbles the second the other goes for his knees again.

"Alright! Plehease, please stohop."

Charles nods contentedly and draws his hands back, leaving Edwin as a panting and giggling mess. It takes him half a minute before he manages to calm his breathing and sit up.

"You're a menace, you know that?", he mutters. Charles gives him one of his signature smiles that makes it impossible to stay angry with him. Not that Edwin was angry with him in the first place. But he definitely does not plan on just allowing this to stand. So he makes a show of straightening his clothes to gain a couple of seconds to assess the situation. Then he clears his throat and looks Charles in the eyes.

"But you also know that I promised you revenge, right?"

Charles laughs, but he still eyes the other warily.

"Come on mate, do you seriously think you can get the upper hand over me in the condition that you're in? You couldn't even push my hands away a minute ago."

Edwin purses his lips.

"Maybe not, but I think you will probably let me get the upper hand. Perhaps I should mention that the alternative would be me convincing Crystal and Niko to assisst me, which you know they definitely will. So probably it's better if you just get it over with."

Charles stares at him and slowly shakes his head.

"Oh, you are playing dirty."

Edwin shrugs. "Thought I'd give you a taste of your own medicine. Now."

He suddenly closes the distance between them and grabs his leg.

"Let's see if I'm really that much worse than you."

Charles doesn't even have time to fully process what's happening before Edwin starts squeezing his thigh and skitters his nails over his knee. Despite his mind telling him to grab the other's hands or tickle him back, his body simply goes limp and he collapses onto the floor. As soon as he's lying on his back, Edwin seizes the opportunity and climbs onto his thighs to pin him down. Then he reaches back with one hand to continue tickling his knee while the other hand hovers over Charles to keep him in check.

The latter is bucking his hips and giggling, but he isn't so far gone that he's not able to try to fight Edwin off. After he's blocked two of Charles' attempts to push him off, Edwin clicks his tongue.

"Okay fine. Your knees aren't that ticklish. But I know a place that is."

Charles bursts into booming laughter the second Edwin starts tickling his waist.

"Nohoho!"

Edwin evades the hands reaching out for his own and keeps going, squeezing the other's sides and spidering over his belly. He even slides one hand beneath Charles' shirt and grazes his nails over the bare skin of his waistline. Charles immediately begins writhing and kicking while frantically shaking his head.

"No! I'm sorry! I'm sohorry, I- please, Edwihin!"

He tries to break free, tries to fight the other off. But all of his strength seems to have left his body. He protectively wraps his arms around his abdomen and curls up as much as possible, but Edwin's fingers still find ways to sneak past his defenses.

"Please! Edwin, plehease!"

"Charles, come on. It's been ten seconds", Edwin says with raised eyebrows, but his voice betrays his amusement. He gently tickles the other's lower back when he is presented with the opportunity due to Charles turning onto his right side. He's rewarded with a squeal followed by a stream of giggles and pleas.

"I- No- I can't, I fucking cahan't!"

Charles closes his eyes and focuses on getting air into his lungs. He's holding onto both of Edwin's wrists, but he doesn't manage to push him away. One moment he's close to screaming, the next he's shaking with silent laughter. Just when Charles is seriously considering screaming at the top of his lungs to make Edwin stop, he hears someone entering the room.

When he turns his head and catches sight of Crystal and Niko standing on the threshold, he only manages a very giggly "Hehelp!". But in combination with the tears sparkling in his eyes and the high pitch of his voice, it still conveys his urgency.

Crystal chuckles and walks up to them.

"Alright, alright. Whatever he's done this time Edwin, I think he's learned his lesson. But if you're not sure yet, you can always go for his upper ribs. That'll put him over the edge."

Charles wails and his squirming becomes more frantic.

"Noho! Please don't, Edwin please-"

He yelps when Edwin pinches his ribs, but the other doesn't repeat the action. Instead, he climbs off his thighs, which finally allows Charles to properly curl up on the floor.

"You are in luck, Charles. Now that Niko and Crystal have returned, we can finally continue working on our case, which I think has a higher priority than punishing you for your shenanigans. But this time, please do actually remember the lesson that I - apparently - taught you", Edwin says. Charles is still breathing heavily, but he still manages a cheeky grin.

"You know I won't, mate. Now, Crystal and Niko, would you like to inform us about what you've found out? We do after all have a case to solve."

Masterpost

[professoruber]

A swapped place in Sweet Jazz City Chapter 1: Masks and Faces (Epithet Erased Fanfiction)

Inspired by the Role Swap AU created by @spliinkles.

Synopsis: We all know the stories of Sweet Jazz City, people did things and other people reacted to those things. However what if places were switched? Banzai Captain Molly prepares for her first great heist while rambunctious twelve year old troublemaker Giovanni sneaks into a the Sweet Jazz Museum after hours.

Prologue: https://professoruber.tumblr.com/post/189820483268/epithet-erased-role-swap-au-fanfic-a-swapped

Chapter 1: You are here

==============================================================

Giovanni couldn’t believe it, real life criminal stood before him. He had a million questions to ask them and hoped they’d be impressed by the diabolical vandalism he has committed. Through his sheer joy he manages to get through a few words of excitement.

“Wow, criminals! Awesome!”

==================================================================================

Earlier that day….

==================================================================================

Detective Sylvester Ashling stood before the crime scene, analysing it with investigative genius mind. The crime had been committed without any alarms, the culprit or culprits having gotten in from cutting through the roof while somehow not alerting anyone or any security.

And while the good detective would never admit it, even he was mildly puzzled by this.

“So, what do you think detective?” questions the stressed gallery curator, who has been spending all their time since the robbery alternating between cooperating with police and apologising to wealthy patrons.

“Well it’s about time I was brought in to bring an end to this caper. Behold as I unleash the powerful mind of a master investigator” He answers dramatically, somewhat reassuring the curator.

He returned to considering the circumstances and events this this criminal act, all while absentmindedly swinging around his yoyo. The thieves in question got in from the roof, and by that he means burst through. The cracks are visible and it seems like they simply forced their way down by sheer weight pressure, something which would’ve logically caused much noise and alerted even the most asleep night guard. 

But security cameras showed all nightguards were doing their jobs, and neither security guards nor cameras recorded any unusual noises.

And then there were the teddy bears, these toys were left in place of these very expensive statues. They have already been taken in for examination but so far, no noticeable traces evidence could be found on them.

This is not the first time such an event has occurred. In past months alone there has been a variety of bear theme crimes, many committed in areas with high Banzai Blaster activity.

But as Sweet Jazz City’s most brilliant master detective, or at least that’s what he always called himself, Sylvie was sure he would get to the bottom of this in now time.

He gave a laugh which most definitely sounded awesome and showed his masterful genius and did not sound like clown laugher in anyway, which drew a few stares from others.

These criminals will rue the day they decided to commit crimes in the notice of Detective Sylvester Ashling.

==================================================================================

Dr Percival King stood admiring the fine exhibits of the prestigious Sweet Jazz Museum, honoured to be attendance of the fine work of noble historians. Truly there are few greater pursuits than that of knowledge, an ideal with Percy took to heart.

As a criminal psychologist her days consisted of long hours of analysing the sickening debauchery and vile criminal minds of her patients. Hers’ is a dangerous road yet she has chosen it nonetheless.

As she walks around examining these exhibits her attention is drawn to a tour group of children being led by two museum staff.

“Ah, I see that this museum makes sure to spread its knowledge to aspiring youths. Very excellent” she compliments to no one in particular as she was over to get a closer look.

The tour itself was fairly standard and admittedly lacklustre at time, however a notable occurrence was the information on the ‘Arsene Amulet’, a mysterious artefact capable of stealing Epithets.

Such an item would catch her attention both for her research into if a person’s Epithet affect their criminal capabilities as well as that such an item would likely come under threat of theft, and as such studying it would provide an excellent resource in delving into the dark motivation of criminals.

She respectfully waits for the tour to be finished and for the pair of museum curators to be free before approaching them.

Walking up to the young woman she believes was called Mera, Percy launches into introductions and explanations.

“Good day miss museum curator. I was hoping to discuss a hypothetical partnership with the Sweet Jazz Museum in order to further my research into the minds of the criminal element”

The museum guard in question looked caught off guard “Wait… what are you talking about? Who even are you kid?”

Percy looks somewhat embarrassed at her own forgetfulness “Uh of course. I apologise, I have not introduced myself. I am Dr Percival King, criminal psychologist residing in Sweet Jazz City” she explains matter of facty.

Mera meanwhile still looks confused and also doubtful “A psychologist? Really? Sure kid whatever you say, now did you need something”

“I can assure you I am a registered psychologist, as impersonating a professional would be a severe offence” As Percy hands Mera her business card and qualifications, she briefly notes Mera had a nervous reaction to the mention of impersonation.

Suddenly the other tour guide bursts into the scene and shouts “Greetings apprentice Mera and teenager I have never met!” He catches sight of Percy’s qualifications causing his eyes to go wide “Ah a psychologist I see. Greetings Dr Percival King, I am Indus Tarbella, the man whose Epithet is BARRIER!” He suddenly proudly shouts and flexes as his sentence finishes while he also shows off his barrier.

Percy merely nods in greeting “It is a pleasure. With your permission I seek to extend my research to that of the Arsene Amulet which I heard will be displayed in the Museum”

Mera looked startled at the mention of the Amulet, but kept her cool mostly “Uh… look ‘Dr King’, as much as we’d LOVE to assist in growing your bright young mind, I am afraid that we will be much too busy tonight with… museum work… for any ‘psychology research’ to be done”

Indus looks saddened by these works but nonetheless agrees “Indeed my apprentice speaks truthfully. Are work will take us to great lengths in the coming nights, am I am afraid we must tearfully stand in the way of your quest of knowledge”

Percy was disappointment but not upset “I understand, please allow me leave my details with you before I take my leave. And with that I bid you both good luck in dealing with the inevitable assaults on the sanctity of learning by the many vicious thieves who will no doubt be on their way here”   

Despite the sincerity and non-accusing nature of Percy’s words, it still causes a great deal of alarm in Mera, who begins waving her arms around in a panic “Thieves? Who said anything about thieves? What do know kid!” Her tone shifts rapidly from fear to accusing and back around again. Causing Indus to come in to comfort her and calm her down.

Percy takes some moments to analyse Mera’s reaction but otherwise seems unperturbed by the outburst.

“I apologise for my lack of explanation, I simply assumed you were already aware. As someone who has studied criminal psychology for a number of years now, I have come to find an understanding and pattern to their actions. An artefact such as the Arsene Amulet being placed in a museum would attract many opportunists and scalawags seeking the notoriety and validation that such a theft would be assumed to entail, of course their broken vile minds are unable to comprehend that crime leads to nothing but suffer, but I digress. With crime rate increasing and many of my disenfranchised troubled peers flock to criminal dens of debauchery such as the Banzai Blaster”

Percy looks to her personal belongings “it is for those reasons why I always carry this” she begins to motion to a real ass goddamn sword which she is carrying, causing another startled reaction from Mera and a look of amazement from Indus.

“Is that...?” Indus asks with a tone of wonder. Percy nods and confirms “Indeed it is. But do not be alarmed, I assure you on my honour as a psychologist that I am both fully trained and licenced to wield such a weapon and am prepared to only use it for the purpose of self-defence”

Indus and Mera both stare at her for a while, Indus is the one to break the silence with a request “Please remain here young psychologist, while me and my apprentice talk over there”

Both Indus and Mera scuttle off to a corner to talk, while Percy stands there politely waiting. After a while they return.

“So… look here’s the deal kid. We thought about it and with all these threats of thieves and stuff around, it might not hurt to have another ear in the museum. Just so long as you stay in the offices while we’re busy” says Mera, to which Indus smiles which prompts Mera herself to give a small smile.

Indus pats Percy on the back “It is our honour to support the troubles of a young scholar such as yourself”

Percy has a look of gratitude “As a fellow academic I thank you. And you have my word that I go over my research away from your work while you are busy. And also, that I will make sure to report any suspicious behaviour to you”

==================================================================================

Meanwhile across town Molly had just finished stocking the last of the shelves with the new toys she had made. Her face plastered with false joy for the sake of the annoying customers which just love to continually interrupt her stocking with obvious and meaningless questioning.

“Right over there, sir” “No need to worry sir” “What can I for you sir” “Sorry sir those coupons are for other competitors” “I’m sorry we failed to meet your satisfaction sir”

These are some of the phrases she has trained herself to repeat without thinking since she was ten. Even if her main job was filling her dad’s place as the toymaker, she did still have to deal with customers often, and Lorelai just loved every chance to outsource her own work to Molly.

False smiles and resisting the urge to hit people who deserve it so much has been Molly’s life. She would’ve gotten crazy by now if she didn’t get a chance to be herself around her friends, and by friends she means fellow criminals.

Stocking the last shelf, Molly proceeds to make her way to the counter, stopping several times to deal with customer, all while she retained the same level of faux cheerfulness that is expected of those in retail. She walked steadily forward in the heels she swapped out her working boots for, as her mother has always made sure Molly knew to keep up appearances when in working among customers.

“All selves are done Lorelai and my shift is over. I’ll just be clocking out and heading back to my apartment to get ready for night school now” Molly doesn’t wait for her sister’s response and instead simply takes her leave, clocking out and letting another staff member know just in case Lorelai wasn’t paying attention. With their mum still probably off discussing business deals across town, it would be up to the hired staff to keep an eye on Lorelai for the night, Molly gave a silent prayer for their continued relative sanity.

She takes off her apron and places it in a small back closet of the store and continues outside in her simple green dress after having her nametag placed in her bag, nothing about her would make her stand out but anything other than a normal woman. The special devices for the heist which she has made on the side were store safely to be ‘collected’ later. Having to juggle her legitimate and illegitimate work was tough but her first job as a Banzai Captain was worth it.

Making sure to get to the bus stop before it gets too dark, she rushed to the nearby bus stop just in time to catch the next one to her apartment.

She sits down and crosses her legs, looking like just any other passenger. And just like any other passenger gets up and calmly walks from the bus and to her stop when it is called.

The rest of the walk to her apartment is simple as she wears a mask, the mask which she has trained herself to wear for almost a decade. Token girlish giggles at compliments and flirts, smile at passersby, one foot forward at a time. Her mum had always ‘encouraged’ her to act as expected and in public nothing about Molly Blyndeff deviated from what one might expect a young woman in both life in the retail world would act.

She buzzed into the apartment complex, waving and smiling at any of her neighbours who by chance were also out and about across the building, even the rude ones. She gave a final token giggle and “Thank you” to the older lady who lived down the hall who had just told her that the heels she wears everyday look particularly nice tonight. She didn’t have anything against the old lady and she did seem perfectly nice to Molly, it’s just that Molly just barely had the energy to deal with anyone after work.

Entering her room with a smile which immediately dissolves the moment the door is shut, Molly collapses into her small bed. Finally feeling the effects of all the energy, she has expended across the day in wearing her mask.

 She just lays there for a while. Not moving. This is one of the few places she can still act herself, its why she worked so hard to get this tiny one room apartment, with the only attachment being a small walk-in closet sized washing room.

Getting up slowly she squeezes into the washing room and splashes some cold water on her face before taking off her dress in favour of some jeans and a purple singlet along with her favourite woolly jacket pulled over it. A cute mildly bear themed head band is snuggled into place among her hair as she takes out her retail heels in favour of criminal sneakers.

Going through her possessions to make sure tonight would go according to her plans, her eyes briefly falling to the smudged-up picture of her family, back when her dad was still alive.

It had been cried on, torn apart and put together again dozens of times and the damage showed, yet despite all this it was one of the few things Molly could see with complete clarity. 

In the picture her dad was alive and holding her mum’s hand. Molly and her young sister both stood between them and Molly had a genuine real smile on her lips, a rarity as the years went on.

“I’m sorry…” she said, and unlike her trained response to customers, this apology came from somewhere else.

Sighing, Molly tucked the photo deep under her clothes, out of sight and out of mind.

What happened all those years ago is irrelevant, all that mattered to Molly tonight was the heist. Night school had simply been a cover for her work with the Banzai Blasters, once Molly may have been uncomfortable with the lies but in the tightly controlled Blyndeff Household she quickly realised that it was the only way to survive.

Refreshed and ready for the night, Molly flashes a wicked grin as she got her bear claws, a literal bear life hand attached to a stick which she can use for self-defence if need be. As well as her pair of hand claws for climbing. Stuffing them into her back for now to avoid unneeded attention.

From the moment she exited her room the mask re-established itself naturally. She walked down the halls, briefly stopping to make some polite small talk with the old lady down the hall due to Molly now having more energy to deal with people.

Soon she returned to her walk. Heading down the streets of the town and towards the building where her night class was allegedly taking place. Her mum’s frequent insistence on keeping up appearance even through tragedy plays through her mind, making her work with ease and an aura of normalcy.

The cute smile of the young woman would seem perfectly normal to those passing by her. And yet a small tint of a maniacal grin itched itself ever so slightly into it, as Molly prepared to take one more step towards freedom.

==================================================================================

Molly sat in the passenger seat of the van, her friend Sound Phoenix, real name Phoenicia Fleecity, sat in the driver’s street. Molly took a moment to look at herself in the small car mirror, her new Banzai Captain uniform and cape caused a real smile to come to her face.

She reminded herself that while in this yellow uniform she wasn’t Molly Blyndeff, the hardworking and cheerful daughter of a respected businesswoman, she was Bear Trap, dark hearted criminal and newly minted Banzai Captain.  

She still remembers the thrill of finding out about her promotion. Her old captain Gorou Shimizaki had been promoted to Banzai Vice Principal despite admittedly not being the most competent individual, thanks in large part due to Bear Trap’s role in the heist of several expensive statues.

Afterwards he took her aside and told her that as his first act as Banzai Vice Principal was stealing a bunch of donuts for himself. She wasn’t sure how that was relevant to her but then he also mentioned that while he was eating those donuts, he thought about all that she’s done to help him and recommended her promotion.

No matter her opinion on the abilities or intelligence of her old captain, she was undeniably thankful to him for that. Being a member of the Banzai Blasters was one of the few things which was truly hers. Rising up the ranks of this pyramid scheme was her way to freedom.

The van pulled up in a hidden spot near the museum, any noise which may have come from it having been muffled by Bear Trap’s Epithet.

Sound Phoenix was left behind in case of need of a speedy get away. The rest of the Banzai Blasters proceeded with their captain while making sure to stay within her noise cancelling field.

They kept the dark sidelines and eventually snuck to the back wall of the building. Molly’s hand claws were may specifically for this kind of obstacle. She had also made sure to use the time she was suppose to be making toys in order to craft several more hand claws for her minions, it was hard but worth it.

The team of thieves proceeded up the wall and using a map they had found online of the semantics of the museum, they walked over to the entrance area, deeming it the best place to begin their search for valuable items to steal and be most alert of any potential dangers.

Sawing a hole in the roof took some time but Bear Trap’s epithet made it so no one could hear it happen. After several silent moments it was done and carefully placed out of the way as they begin lowering themselves with a rope.

Night Fright, also known as Molly’s friend Trixie Roughhouse, remained on the roof to keep watch of any potential dangers.

The rest of the Banzai Blasters entered the Museum along with their leader.

“Alright girls. This is the Sweet Jazz Museum. Now all that’s left to do is stick to my plan and commit all the crimes” she said with a wicked grin which was soon shared by her minions.

“Alright first let’s search this area…” Molly’s voice soon trails off as a young boy with a brush of pink hair atop his head suddenly popped out from behind a desk.

Her mind raced with panic as she rapidly pondered what this child was doing here this late. Where were his parents? Did they abandon him? Did he run away? Is he hurt? Will he yell for the staff? Are his parents the staff?

In her panic she barely noticed she had dropped her muffling bubble and now the silence which filled the room came only from the surprise and shock of those within.

She braced herself for the child’s screams which would no doubt begin once he realises that he’s alone at night with a group of dangerous criminals. She is about to move forward to silence the inevitable screams when to her renewed confusion his face begins shifting not into one of fear but into one of amazement and wonder.

“You’re, criminals! Awesome!” He said with a smile. Bear Trap…. No,… Molly paused in her place, unsure of how to respond to that.

[bountyofbeads]

It’s Alan Dershowitz vs. David Boies, again and again

https://wapo.st/2yVg2D4

It’s Alan Dershowitz vs. David Boies, again and again

By Tom Jackman, Deanna Paul and Manuel Roig-Franzia | Published August 13 at 11:21 AM ET | Washington Post | Posted August 13, 2019 5:59 PM ET |

In the twilight of the ceaselessly dueling courtroom gods, legacies wobble and crack.

Once, they were unquestioned giants of the legal profession. David Boies, the slayer of Microsoft’s monopoly, the man Al Gore turned to in hopes of salvaging his bid for the presidency. Alan Dershowitz, one of the intellectual bulwarks of the O.J. Simpson defense team, the tactician immortalized on the big screen for reversing the murder conviction of socialite Claus von Bülow.

But now, as they reach an age when other esteemed elder statesmen of the bar might be basking in acclaim for their life’s work, the 78-year-old Boies and the 80-year-old Dershowitz are brutally yoked in a subplot of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case. Their link became even tighter and more complicated this past weekend when the disgraced multimillionaire was found dead of an apparent suicide at a federal detention center in New York where he was awaiting trial on new sex trafficking charges. Epstein’s death occurred the day after newly unsealed court documents claimed he had a voracious sexual appetite for underage girls and detailed the alleged methods he and his friends used to recruit them.

The clash between Dershowitz and Boies, and its offshoots, have spawned lawsuits, swarms of stinging court documents, ferocious accusations, angry television appearances, a secretly taped call and more. In this long-running melodrama, Boies and his partners at Boies Schiller Flexner represent one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre — who was a teenage locker-room attendant at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort when she met Epstein. Giuffre has alleged that Epstein demanded that she have sex with him repeatedly when she was underage and lent her for sex to his friends, including Dershowitz.

Dershowitz finds himself labeled as an alleged sex abuser in a personal affidavit by Boies, a claim he has volcanically denied. Dershowitz’s effort to counter the accusations has been made all the more nettlesome because his long-ago representation of Epstein has come under greater scrutiny following Epstein’s arrest last month. Dershowitz, an emeritus Harvard University law professor, is also fending off a defamation suit filed by Giuffre, set for key oral arguments next month, in which Boies has become a vital player.

Because Epstein’s death will end his criminal case, the Giuffre defamation action against Dershowitz could be one of the dwindling number of cases that would allow for the full public airing of numerous accusations against Epstein that his alleged victims have long sought.

As the Boies-Dershowitz conflict has dragged on, Boies, his partners and his allies have tarred Dershowitz in personal affidavits related to a bar complaint and a defamation lawsuit for allegedly bedding Giuffre when she was an underage teenager. In court filings, they portray Dershowitz, who has never been charged with a sex crime, as a liar and a sneak who secretly recorded a call with a fellow lawyer.

“After extensive consideration of everything Mr. Dershowitz told and showed me, I ultimately concluded that his denials were not credible,” Boies wrote in an affidavit included in Giuffre’s defamation suit against Dershowitz. (Giuffre sued Dershowitz because of numerous statements he made in media interviews, including calling her a “certified, complete, total liar” and saying that “she simply made up the entire story for money.”)

Meanwhile, Dershowitz has painted Boies as a corrupt attorney with a long trail of ethical lapses, a cheat and the head of a criminal enterprise.

“I believe the law firm of Boies Schiller is a RICO,” Dershowitz said in a recent interview at his New York apartment, citing the acronym used for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law frequently used against the mafia. “I believe they are the law firm of extortion, subornation of perjury and other crimes.”

Boies declined repeated interview requests and did not respond to written questions that specifically referenced the RICO allegation, as well as other assertions made by Dershowitz. Giuffre’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

NAMED IN A COURT FILING

The mudslinging between two of America’s most famous and celebrated attorneys tracks to the wee hours of Jan. 22, 2015, when the men were casual acquaintances and occasional confidants. Dershowitz, a ubiquitous TV presence, awoke early that morning at his New York apartment and headed to Rockefeller Center, where he was scheduled to appear on NBC’s “Today” show to discuss the sex allegations made by Giuffre.

On the way, Dershowitz seethed.

Three weeks earlier, his name had surfaced in a court filing by Giuffre, who was then known only as Jane Doe No. 3, asking to join a lawsuit related to the Epstein case. The suit alleged that Epstein’s victims hadn’t been notified in advance of a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors after the wealthy financier was arrested on suspicion of sex trafficking involving minors.

It wasn’t the substance of the complaint about victim notification that was most important to Dershowitz, though. Instead, he was incensed that the filing asserted that Giuffre had been lent to Britain’s Prince Andrew for sex and to Dershowitz, whom she alleged had sex with her at Epstein’s private island, his Palm Beach estate, his New Mexico ranch, his New York mansion and on his private plane.

Dershowitz and the prince adamantly denied the accusations at the time. Dershowitz and Buckingham Palace, speaking on behalf of Andrew, also issued strongly worded denials last week when the court documents were unsealed.

On “Today” that day in 2015, Dershowitz went nuclear. He accused Giuffre of filing “perjured” court papers and said, “She is categorically lying and making the whole thing up.”

Dershowitz has bolstered his contention that Giuffre cannot be trusted by referencing claims that she has made about having dinner with former president Bill Clinton on Epstein’s island. Dershowitz took it upon himself to investigate the Clinton allegation and to clear his name. He hired a security firm headed by former FBI director Louis Freeh to investigate.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests, the firm determined that Clinton could not have been on Epstein’s island during the time period when Giuffre said she had dinner with him. A summary of findings prepared by the Freeh firm states that the FOIA records “completely undermine [Giuffre’s] credibility.” The firm also said it found no evidence to support the sex allegations against Dershowitz.

Unsealed records

Last week, Dershowitz also gained what might be a potent weapon in his quest to impeach Giuffre’s credibility in the newly unsealed court documents. The papers relate to a defamation suit filed against Ghislaine Maxwell, whom Giuffre and others have accused of procuring girls and women for Epstein. The suit was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2017. The records were unsealed at the request of several news organizations, including The Washington Post and the Miami Herald, which published a series of articles about Epstein’s alleged abuses prior to his recent arrest.

Among the documents was a 2011 email sent to Giuffre from Sharon Churcher, a journalist for the British tabloid the Mail on Sunday, that Dershowitz contends is proof that Giuffre was being encouraged to lie about him. The email appears to reference a book proposal Giuffre was compiling.

“Don’t forget Alan Dershowitz . . . JE’s buddy and lawyer,” Churcher writes to Giuffre in an apparent reference to Jeffrey Epstein’s initials. “Good name for your pitch as he repped Claus von Bulow and a movie was made about that case . . . title was Reversal of Fortune. We all suspect Alan is a pedo and tho no proof of that, you probably met him when he was hanging put [sic] w JE.”

Churcher did not respond to a request for an interview.

The famed law professor’s campaign to refute Giuffre’s allegations created a pile of legal trouble because of the words he chose. While defending himself, he also cast aspersions on the character and ethics of the two attorneys representing Giuffre in her attempt to join the lawsuit related to notifying Epstein’s victims.

Dershowitz had said in a television interview that the attorneys — Florida-based Brad Edwards and former federal judge Paul Cassell — were “prepared to lie, cheat and steal.” He had described Cassell as “essentially a crook.” (Cassell and Edwards did not respond to interview requests.)

Cassell and Edwards responded in the way lawyers might be expected to — they sued him for defamation.

Despite the lawsuit, Dershowitz continued to vociferously and publicly defend himself.

In Florida, an attorney in ­Boies’s firm named Carlos Sires was watching “Today” when Dershowitz appeared. He reached out via email to Dershowitz offering to help him with the dispute and later discussed the possibility of representing him. (Dershowitz has said he considered Sires his attorney at that point, a contention that Sires has disputed in an affidavit attached to a bar complaint Dershowitz later filed against Boies.)

Sires also said in the affidavit that he was not aware at the time of his initial contact with Dershowitz that other lawyers in his firm were representing Giuffre in a separate case. That digital note set in motion a cascading series of events that have put Dershowitz and Boies at odds for the past four years. (Sires could not be reached for comment.)

The dispute centered on Dershowitz’s claim that Sires reviewed confidential material about the defamation case filed against Dershowitz by Edwards and Cassell. About a week later, Boies determined that there was a conflict that Sires had not known about and the firm notified Dershowitz that it couldn’t represent him.

Dershowitz was angry, concluding that the firm sneakily got inside information about his defense in order to gain an advantage, according to interviews with Dershowitz. Boies has dismissed that suggestion, saying in a personal affidavit connected to the Florida bar complaint Dershowitz later filed against him that material Sires reviewed was nothing more than a recap of Dershowitz’s public statements.

What Dershowitz didn’t know at the time was that Boies, the man who would become his nemesis, had been in contact with Giuffre for nearly six months. Boies was contacted in June 2014 by Stanley Pottinger, an attorney who was the former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, about representing Giuffre, according to an affidavit by Boies included in Giuffre’s ongoing case against Dershowitz.

Although Giuffre had two attorneys, Pottinger thought she needed more legal help because he expected her to “become the target of vicious attacks” by people she accused of sex abuse, according to an affidavit Pottinger wrote that is included in Giuffre’s ongoing case against Dershowitz.

The next month, Boies met with Giuffre in New York, according to his affidavit, and he asked Pottinger to vet Giuffre’s claims. Satisfied that she was credible, Boies agreed that his firm would take her on as a client, although he says the firm did no work related to her until November. Boies said in the affidavit that partner Sigrid McCawley represented Giuffre while she was a witness in the defamation suit filed in January 2015 by Edwards and Cassell.

Eventually, Dershowitz came to allege even darker motives for Sires’s outreach after the “Today” interview. He developed a complicated extortion theory involving Boies after being contacted in April 2015 by one of Giuffre’s friends — a woman named Rebecca Boylan — who’d seen coverage of the scandal and agreed to speak with him in a tape-recorded conversation, Dershowitz said in an interview. He played the tape for The Post, but did not let the news organization have a copy,

Boylan, according to Dershowitz’s account of the conversation, told him that Giuffre had never mentioned having sex with him. She added that Giuffre had told her she had been urged by her lawyers to name Dershowitz.

“She felt pressure to do it, she didn’t want to go after you personally,” Boylan said, according to Dershowitz’s tape of the conversation. “She felt pressured by her lawyers.”

But that wasn’t all. Boylan also said that naming Dershowitz was a step in a plan to win an enormous settlement from the founder and CEO of the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie giant. Dershowitz knew Boylan was referring to Leslie Wexner, a billionaire who was a close friend and mentor to Epstein.

“They wanted to sue him for at least half his money,” Boylan said, according to Dershowitz’s tape .

Dershowitz also claims that Boies and his firm were attempting to send a message to Wexner, whom Giuffre had not publicly accused at that point of having sex with her at the behest of Epstein, although she later would. The message, according to Dershowitz, was that Wexner would be publicly shamed, in the same way that Dershowitz had been, if he didn’t pay up.

Boies wrote in his response to Dershowitz’s Florida bar complaint that neither he nor McCawley had been involved in the decision to name Dershowitz and has denied attempting to extort Wexner. He also wrote that “no settlement demand was ever made, or even discussed with, Mr. Wexner or his counsel.”

A SECRETLY TAPED CALL

Still, Dershowitz was eager to persuade Boies that he was innocent, according to interviews with Dershowitz and accounts of their interactions included in an affidavit by Boies. The two men began a series of meetings between May and July 2015, according to Boies’s affidavit.

Among the items Dershowitz showed Boies, according to Dershowitz, were detailed calendars that he cited as definitive proof that he could not have been at Epstein’s island, ranch, Palm Beach mansion or on his private plane during the time period when Giuffre said he was having sex with her. (Dershowitz keeps a massive spreadsheet handy at his New York apartment to show the reporters he’s courted to tell his version of events.)

The two lawyers have different memories of those meetings. Dershowitz has asserted in interviews with The Post that Boies told him during those meetings that Giuffre must have mistaken him for someone else. Boies wrote in his affidavit that Dershowitz’s account “is not true.” Among the data points Boies cites in his affidavit is a lie-detector test that he says Giuffre passed. (Results of such tests are seldom deemed admissible in court.)

Later in 2015, Dershowitz took the unusual step of secretly taping a call with Boies. Dershowitz played the tape, which is muffled and cuts off at points, for The Post, but did not allow the newspaper to have a copy. On the tape, Boies appears to say he and one of his partners are convinced Giuffre’s claim of having sex with Dershowitz is “wrong.” Boies said in his affidavit that he never told Dershowitz that Giuffre wasn’t telling the truth.

In Giuffre’s defamation case against Dershowitz, two of Boies’s partners assert that the taping was “a violation of the canons of ethics.” They also say Boies was merely discussing a hypothetical and that he believed all along that Giuffre was telling the truth. Dershowitz has said the taping was entirely legal because at the time he was in New York, which only requires the consent of one of the parties on the call for a legal taping.

Armed with what he thought was a plausible extortion theory and with his taped evidence, Dershowitz went to war.

In 2017, he filed the bar complaint against Boies in Florida. The document lays out his allegations about the Boies firm’s handling of the defamation case filed against him by Edwards and Cassell, and then goes on to read almost like a lengthy Wikipedia article about controversies during what he describes as the Boies firm’s “long and sordid history.” He cites a 2012 case in which a New York judge chided Boies’s firm, saying “a clearer conflict of interest cannot be imagined. A first-year law student on day one of an ethics course should be able to spot it.”

Dershowitz also summarized the controversy over a potential conflict spurred by Boies serving on the board of directors and as a lawyer for Theranos, the scandal-plagued blood-testing start-up.

The bar complaint, which was obtained by The Post, surfaced shortly after Boies was enmeshed in a major conflict-of-interest scandal in 2017 involving the famed movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who was being accused in a series of sexual abuse incidents. At the time, Boies was getting a torrent of bad publicity because of the revelation in media reports that he was representing the New York Times in legal matters without telling the newspaper that he was simultaneously representing Weinstein, who was being investigated by Times reporters. Boies also secretly oversaw an effort to undermine the paper’s reporting by hiring a firm that employed former agents of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, to collect information on Times reporters and Weinstein’s alleged victims.

The Times cut ties with Boies and issued a blistering statement.

“We learned today that the law firm of Boies Schiller and Flexner secretly worked to stop our reporting on Harvey Weinstein at the same time as the firm’s lawyers were representing us in other matters. We consider this intolerable conduct, a grave betrayal of trust, and a breach of the basic professional standards that all lawyers are required to observe.” It added: “We never contemplated that the law firm would contract with an intelligence firm to conduct a secret spying operation aimed at our reporting and our reporters. Such an operation is reprehensible.”

Boies had signed the contract with the spy group, but later tried to distance himself from its work.

“I regret having done this,” Boies said in an email sent to his staff that was published by New York magazine. “It was a mistake to contract with, and pay on behalf of a client, investigators who we did not select and did not control. I would never knowingly participate in an effort to intimidate or silence women or anyone else. . . . That is not who I am.”

Dershowitz seized on the Times imbroglio to press his argument in public that Boies is an unethical lawyer.

“No lawyer in modern American history has ever been more credibly accused of more ethical violations than David Boies and his law firm,” Dershowitz said in a recent interview with The Post.

In 2017, Boies’s firm issued a statement in response to Dershowitz’s conflict-of-interest allegations, saying: “Over the years, there have been some bar complaints filed against Mr. Boies. Each of them was filed by an unhappy adverse party; none was filed by a client. No disciplinary action was ever taken.”

THE DISPUTE GOES ON

The feud between Dershowitz and Boies is well known in legal circles, where both men have earned stellar reputations over the years.

“People can have grudges and sometimes things get heated between lawyers, but based on headlines about two people I’ve worked with, who are talented, smart and committed to their clients, we just don’t have enough information to make a judgment,” said Lawrence Fox, a Yale Law professor and former chairman of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility who has worked alongside both men.

As the months have passed, one by one, Dershowitz’s broadsides against Boies and his allies have cratered. He settled the defamation case filed by Cassell and Edwards, Giuffre’s attorneys, before Boies and his partners came on the scene.

Earlier this year, the Florida bar complaint against Boies got tossed out.

But their dispute continues, with the next field of battle in New York, where Giuffre’s defamation case against Dershowitz — with a potential star plaintiff’s witness named David Boies — trudges on. Boies is a potential witness because he could be called to testify about his interactions with Dershowitz and about Dershowitz’s extortion theory. That means that Dershowitz, the 80-year-old, and Boies, the 78-year-old, will tangle again as the elder party in the grudge match tries to get the younger one’s law firm barred from representing Giuffre in the defamation suit against Dershowitz.

And so it has gone for years, an endless cycle of enmity playing out on a continuous loop. This clash of the titans is so persistent and many-tentacled that one could imagine it outliving the legal giants it has consumed.

Paul Farhi and Alice Crites contributed to this report

[a-shrieking-cloud-of-bats]

okay so long breakdown of my experience with Morrowind as a starter I first tried to play the game last year, fumbled it, repeated that a few times, before dropping it for a while and eventually coming back to it the past few days and running through it! Ran a Nord, Heavy Armor, Warrior, used almost no non scroll magic, notably used them to deal with locks, used divine intervention once during that one Baar Dau bit in the main story, probably a handful of other scroll usages for random junk. I also didn’t do the expacs and I haven’t played Oblivion in a while so I’m trying to avoid in depth comparisons to it. I’ll start off by saying I did enjoy it overall, and while I don’t think it stole my Favorite TES Award,  it definitely left a mark, and I think my favorite bit of it was the main quest, the tone was just something I liked more then the other two TES games and all in all the whole mysterious diseases angle felt a bit more urgent then more nebulous threats like demons and dragons. Additionally, the plot conceptually I think is just a lot more fun to think about rather then “x is attacking!”, and I think the things like ash creature ambushes and ominous dreams helped that feeling a lot. All in all I feel it was a bit better handled to boot, and I particularly liked the whole “your cover story for being in the blades is that you’re an adventurer because they’re all over the place, you’d blend in, and you’re gonna need to be fighting anyway so you might as well develop that skillset”, since it allowed for explicit breaks in the main quest line where he’d tell you to go do other stuff for a while and “keep your cover story up to date” while he did research or whatever. Added to the settling, added to the plot, added a reason to go faff around in a dungeon and maybe find something cool. Maybe. We’ll get to that.

But the cover story thing is super appreciated because it’s an issue I frequently ran into in other games where it just never really felt like you had a stopping point in the main quest line, if you were playing as if you were legitimately concerned with the status of the main quest. Like, with Skyrim you start out. . . -escape from Helgen -go down to Riverwood with whoever -they tell you Riverwood’s in potential danger so you go up and talk to the jarl -he tells you to help with his investigations of the dragons (if you’re playing a bit more apathetic of a character this could potentially be a time to step out but let’s assume a sort’ve “lawful good” here) - you go down to bleak falls barrow, come back - a dragon attacks the tower, you go investigate and fight it - End Scene; and even then I think it wouldn’t be a stretch to feel like you had to answer the summons, and that goes through a very long road trip, a dungeon, and a dragon fight before you get to a solid “I need to do things, go outside and play” style stopping point. and after all that you’re like.... an hour or two into the game? It’s not absurd but it’s quite a bit compared to silt stridering over to Balmora and getting told to go have fun, and it’s not a game breaking thing, obviously the player doesn’t absolutely have to be told to stop doing main quest stuff, but it was a nice touch that I liked. At any rate I liked the main quest, but I think the thing I was most impressed with was the travel. I went into Morrowind thinking I was going to hate wandering around 24/7 and paying fees and so on and so forth but actually it felt pretty great after a while! I came out of Morrowind preferring the “carriage” system rather then the fast travel system, just because getting more mobility options and strength in that category was interesting to me. Given that I was playing the least mobile “class” in the game; heavy armor weighs a lot which slows your ground speed (I think) and weakens your jumping, with no magic and no knowledge of how to get propylon indices working, I think that’s pretty glowing praise. I also liked the way enchanted gear worked in Morrowind, where there are usable artifacts and passive artifacts, passive artifacts just give you the boost, and usable artifacts are purposely triggered to get an effect and slowly recharge over time, which is a game changer. I know I don’t really use enchanted weapons in Skyrim because it’s not that big a boost and juggling soul gems and soul traps is a pain in the butt, but if they recharged over time I might be more inclined. Again, a nice little thing the game does differently. The graphics were wildly better then I expected, and I think the game is an excellent example of restrictions creating a unique and good looking style in some cases. The polygonal models really add a lot to the fairly eerie main quest backdrop and pretty hostile game world overall, and ultimately the game just sort’ve creates its’ own aesthetic and it’s super good despite being very obviously dated. The entire inside the ghost fence part of the end game was spooky as hell and felt very climactic despite the landscape looking like something that came out of 3D Studio Max circa 1990. And on a side note, Diyavath Fir’s tower and the Corprusarium were a really cool dungeon concept and I’m very surprised the whole “sequential treasure chests with keys in them that eventually lead to a prize” thing hasn’t been done again since IIRC. With all the praise out of the way, let’s get to stuff I was more neutral on or outright disliked (there’s surprisingly little of the latter, by the way). To start off, I felt gear progression felt super weird. I started out by buying a full set of steel armor and an iron long sword and I didn’t get an upgrade until like, halfway through my playtime, so like, two days total, and my long sword went un-upgraded even longer. After a while I found a silver long sword and about an hour after that I found a daedric katana and suddenly the game was basically over past that point because I was 2 shotting everything that wasn’t a higher end ash creature or daedra. It felt very spotty, it wasn’t a game changer or anything, and to be fair once the armor upgrades started going, that progression didn’t feel too bad either (though my shield did get upgraded from steel to daedric). Not a huge deal, but it was a thing. The end game quest line where you’re re-uniting the tribes and houses is a huge chore and also holds the only two escort missions in the game which I don’t think is a co-incidence. I liked the house quests more initially since they were more tightly packed in and had fast travel options around. . . buuuut they quickly became a gold count check. Having to get confirmation from councilors that, by their own mention, wouldn’t be necessary, was also obnoxious, though I didn’t mind that as much, as the whole declaring a war leader thing is a big deal and I can believe that from a plot standpoint. Still didn’t like it. I am aware I could’ve skipped all this with reputation, and that’s fair, but I still think as a quest line it’s a bit much; though I dunno how I’d fix it without banging up the plot significantly, to be fair. All the side quests I did were pretty bland. Lotta “go here, clear this dungeon, come back get x gold”, some “go here, fetch y guy, bring him back, get z gold”. Sometimes you didn’t even get rewarded, though the reputation system makes up for that. I ended up stopping about halfway into House Redoran because the quests were, by and large, just dungeon clear quests and I was vastly more interested in the main quest. It’s something I might take more interest in on a second play through. You can end up trivializing combat very quickly, which was probably a part of why I didn’t end up liking the end game so much. Part of that’s my fault; athletics and acrobatics were minor skills, it basically put me on a timer, and some people like the “I’m level 20 and I can crush anything in the game like a walnut” thing, which is fair. I did end up finishing it at about level 23, and I’ve heard scaling stops at 20, so that’s about right to be fair. Though I’ve also heard Dagoth Ur scales up to 35? It sure didn’t feel like it, and overall it kind’ve made the whole lead up into Dagoth’s big moment a bit of an anticlimax, I hit him like six times for the fight and I got most of the heart fiddling done before he brought me to half. A big part of why I even almost died was because I didn’t realize I had to run back over the bridge. Though that all might be a side effect of running a heavy armor warrior, IIRC they’re pretty easy, but I also did surprisingly little side stuff. It just sorta feels like if you do anything other then the main quest you’ll trivialize the final stages of it, and if you do the main quest you trivialize the extra stuff? It’s a bit of an odd problem to solve and it seems like they’ve still not gotten it quite right, to be fair. I’m trying to think of stuff I outright hated and really all I can think of is the fact that NPCs stand in “one NPC wide” hallways and doorways like it’s their job. A not insignificant part of why I gave up on Redoran is because getting through under-skar was hell because of all the guards just shuffling around on rope bridges and staring at me anytime I got anywhere near them while they clogged up the road. But yeah, overall had a good time and I probably played the least complex character type, so that’s definitely a good sign. I look forward to playing it again and playing with magic more; already thinking on an acrobat like, athletics/acrobatics/whatever magic school does jump/move speed boosts character and getting a bit more into the setting with it, eventually. I definitely get why people love the game so much and while I don’t think I hooked into it quite as hard I admit I haven’t played something quite like it before, between the aesthetics and mechanics either, and admittedly most of my complaints were half complaints, so that’s definitely not a bad track record. Will definitely play again at some point.

[shannaraisles]

Inquisitor As A Companion!

I was tagged by the incomparable @ironbullsmissingeye! Thank you, my precious! Thought I'd go with an actual Inquisitor this time around, although heaven knows I have plenty of characters to do this with!

(Side note - if anyone else has tagged me in this, or anything else, drop me a DM so I know; my notes are still wonky)

Inquisitor’s Name: Xena

Race / Class / Specialisation: Dwarf/Warrior/Champion

Gender Identity: Female

Varric’s Nickname for them: Killer

Short bio: Born in Orzammar to unknown parents, Xena was found exposed by Carta dwarves employed by House Dace, and brought her back to their surfacer employers. She was raised in a form of indentured servitude by Gavar Dace, used by him as an enforcer until she was fifteen. His punishment following her first mistake was brutal, and left her with a terror of him that fueled the way she determined to create an effective army from the houseless surfacer Carta mercenaries he abandoned her to. Her reputation precedes her - no surfacer dwarf has not heard of Xena.

What would their companion card look like? A view of her side from chin to hips, armored in typically rogue-like leather, a sword in the hand in front of her, a flaming torch in the hand at her back.

Recruitment mission: In Short Supply - A cutscene triggers in Haven when the Inquisitor leaves the Chantry after the post-Val Royeaux discussion cutscene. A small group of dwarves are arguing with Threnn - the leader, Xena, abandons the argument to waylay the Herald and put her case. She and her companions are Carta enforcers with a fearsome reputation, and have decided to join the Inquisition as a mercenary group. Threnn and the recruitment officers are making it difficult. The Herald can choose to allow them to join, or decline. In either case, Xena will remain as a companion, citing the fact that everyone and their nug-son wants the Herald of Andraste dead right now and she's got the reputation to at least put the dwarves off trying it.

Varric can be questioned about Xena's reputation, and will spin a tale about some exaggerated adventure from her childhood. Cullen can also be asked about her - he notes her dwarves (if accepted into the Inquisition) are rowdy and undisciplined, but that she has firm control over them. Krem will pass comment on some friction between the Chargers and Xena's band in Haven.

Where they would be in Skyhold / Haven: In Haven,  Xena hangs out at the fire where Varric can be found. In Skyhold, she can be found initially in the hallways between Josephine's office and the War Room, before settling in the garden beside the well.

Personal quests: Dacing With Death: A war table mission that activates once two of the major areas are unlocked. Gavar Dace, head of the surfacer House Dace, has sent a missive to the Inquisition, demanding that Xena is handed over to him to face punishment for undisclosed crimes. Josephine will suggest running interference; Leliana will suggest investigating Xena's past to ascertain what she is supposed to be punished for; Cullen is unavailable for this mission. Josephine's option will result in another missive from Gavar, reiterating his demands in more threatening tones; Leliana's will turn up a report on a broken attempt at an alliance between House Dace and House Gavorn, which Xena was responsible for. Both will present a monetary and influence reward, and will result in the next part opening on the quest list.

Sins Of The Past: The Inquisitor unlocks this by speaking to Xena and mentioning Gavar Dace. If approval is high enough, she reacts with open fear, and blurts out her version of events (she wasn't aware of any alliance, and dealt with what she thought were incursions in Dace territory under her remit). She will also hint at just how severe her first punishment was. If approval isn't high enough, she still reacts with fear, but will not share the details. Either way, she will request that the Inquisitor accompany her to Dace territory in the Frostbacks near the entrance to Orzammar, to face Gavar and his accusations.

At the location, Gavar and his heavies will approach openly and offer a deal - he will release Gabrael Harrick, a female dwarf in his custody, in return for Xena giving herself up. Xena will agree, but leaves the decision up to the Inquisitor, who can choose to honor this agreement, negotiate for better terms, or attack. In all cases, Gavar will stab Gabrael in the belly, and the whole thing will devolve into combat. When combat is over, Xena is frantic over Gabrael. If any mage is in the party, they will apply minor healing magic to the dwarven girl, and she will rouse enough to ask Xena to take her home to her husband, and to forgive her for not coming to her aid sooner. Xena will then ask the Inquisitor to make sure Gabrael gets back to her family, take the signet ring from Gavar's dead hand, and put it on her own finger. She promises to return to Skyhold when her business is concluded.

She doesn't return until either Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts or Here Lies The Abyss is concluded. When spoken to, she asserts that she has taken control of House Dace and has been cleaning out the brittle stone. An Inquisitor with high enough approval will come out of this conversation with an additional agent in the Secrets section of Perks, reducing the time it takes Leliana to complete missions by 5%.

How to get their approval/disapproval: Break down Approval Ratings for Major Missions(borrowed from @vivalaegghead):

Helping the refugees and people of Redcliffe will always lead to: Slightly Approves Gaining Allies(Skywatcher, Ritz, ect): Slightly Approves

Fate of the Mages: Conscript: Approves Ally: No change

Fate of the Templars Disband: Approves Ally: No change

Inquisitor’s Lead: A Dwarf/Elf/Qunari Stands for us all: No change Example as a Mage: Slightly Disapproves For Faith: Greatly Disapproves For Order: Greatly Approves For What’s Right:  Approves To Stop Corypheus: Greatly Approves For Personal Power: Slightly Disapproves For Vengeance: Greatly Disapproves

Fate of the Wardens Exile: Greatly Disapproves Ally: Greatly Approves

Ruler of Orlais Gaspard: Approves Briala: Greatly Approves Celene: No change Reunite: No change Spare Everyone: Slightly Disapproves Arrest Florianne: Disapproves Save Celene: No change Kill Celene: No change

Abelas Alliance Ally: Approves Reject: No change Inquisitor Drinks From the Well: Slightly Disapproves Romanced Inquisitor Drinks: Greatly Disapproves. Morrigan Drinks: Slightly Approves

Are they romanceable? Yes - all races, all genders.

Can you have sex with them? Yes.

Are they open to polyamory? Yes, in the right configuration. A male Inquisitor romancing Josephine, or a female Inquisitor romancing Blackwall - both would have the option of broaching the idea of polyamory with Xena to their respective partners with success.

If they can be romanced and are not, will they begin a relationship / relationships with other character(s)? If so, who? If unromanced, there will be gossip in Haven and Skyhold (prior to completion of the two mid-game main quests) about Xena's conquests among the soldiers, mercenaries, and staff. After the completion of Varric's personal quest, the gossip will change to start passing comment on the amount of time he is spending with Xena. By Trespasser, Xena is his "bodyguard".

Who are they friendly with? Varric, Iron Bull, Sera, and Cole. In party banter, she teases Varric constantly (with increasing affection, if unromanced by Inquisitor); compares notes on fighting and past accomplishments with Bull; compliments Sera on her skill and shares opinions on women they've both noticed; and gently teaches Cole not repeat everything he finds in people's heads.

Who do they dislike? Solas and Vivienne. In party banter, she will exaggerate her allegiance to the Stone and generally killing anything that annoys her with Solas; with Vivienne, she describes her favorite kills as though they were society tea parties. It's nothing personal, she just doesn't like mages, and she doesn't like anyone who looks down on her.

Special note: Cassandra and Dorian. She respects both, but is also wary of both. In party banter, Cassandra will often pass comment on her lack of a shield, and she will attempt to defend her choices; with Dorian, conversation stays almost rigidly within the lines of hairstyles, clothing, and food.

Companion card changes: (use a text descrip. if you have no images) Loyalty: Her figure facing forward, from chin to hips, hands clasped together around the hilt of her longsword. Romance: (with Inquisitor) Full body, on one knee with her forehead against the hilt of her longsword set in the ground before her, Inquisitor's marked hand on her bowed head.

Side Missions: If the Inquisitor manages to complete the collection Bottles On The Wall, Xena will invite them to crack open a bottle or two with her. If the Inquisitor engages in a drinking game, this will result in Xena sharing the story of her first love (Gabrael) and the pair of them lying in the garden, star-gazing.

Opinions on mages / templars / how the world is going to shit? Xena disapproves of anyone who holds power over others and misuses it. She doesn't trust mages in general, and she doesn't trust templars, either. The world going to shit is a problem, because once it explodes, who is going to pay her?

Something guaranteed to make them leave the party:   Nothing. She's stubborn like that.

Special Events:

Imprisoned at Redcliffe: How are they holding up in Redcliffe, being slowly infected with red lyrium over the course of a year? Singing bawdy tavern songs to pass the time, she seems unchanged by her experience at first, but her responses are darker and more violent than the Xena the Herald knows.

At the Winter Palace: Do they enjoy the party, any special events with them at the Palace? Xena spends her time at the Winter Palace on the stairs in the vestibule that lead to the royal apartments, ostensibly "keeping an eye" on the dwarves gathered at the foot of them. She despises the whole situation and just wants out.

In the Fade: Their reaction upon entering the Fade? Nightmare demon’s taunt, and their response? Fear on their grave?

Reaction upon entering - You know ... I've never much wanted to see this place. I could have died happy without it. (If Sera is there, she will offer to kill everything that even looks at her friend funny to calm her down; if Varric is there, he will reassure Xena) Taunt and response - The Nightmare demon will pass comment on the number of people she's killed under orders. Xena will not respond. Greatest fear - Disappointing everyone

Trespasser: What were they up to two years after Corypheus’ defeat? Any special events with them over the events of Trespasser? If romanced, Xena stays with the Inquisition. Her epilogue states that she was granted a pardon by the King of Orzammar for her efforts on the surface, and remained with the Inquisitor regardless of the status of the Inquisition. If unromanced, Xena goes to Kirkwall with Varric as his "bodyguard". Conversation with Varric during Trespasser throws up the comment that he really should think about marrying her at some point, if only to annoy Bran. Her epilogue states that she married Varric and became Viscountess of Kirkwall, a move that resulted in much tearing of beards among the Merchants Guild. If the Inquisitor has low approval with Xena, she does not appear in Trespasser. Her epilogue for Inquisition states that she took firm control of House Dace and eventually the Carta operations on the surface, and the only surfacer Dwarf House allied to her (not under her control) is House Harrick.

Other Major Events: Any other major events that happen with them over the course of the main game? (At the close of Varric's personal quest, if unromanced by the Inquisitor) A cutscene between Bianca and Xena in which Xena makes it perfectly clear in a very polite way that if Bianca so much as thinks about endangering Varric ever again, she will very much regret it. Bianca takes this seriously, and will also apologize for her comment to the Inquisitor in Valammar.

[entergamingxp]

Persona 5 Royal Review — This Palace’s Treasure Gleams Even Brighter

March 17, 2020 9:00 AM EST

The long-awaited Persona 5 Royal is finally upon us, with tons of new content and gameplay overhauls to create a more robust experience.

Persona 5 Royal is the upgraded version of the immensely popular JRPG that originally released in Japan back in 2016. With this definitive edition of the game comes a variety of new changes which include two new characters and Confidants, a brand new semester and Palace that culminates in two new endings, new gameplay mechanics, and reworked dungeons and boss battles.

There are also a variety of new minigames, gameplay balance fixes, expanded character scenes, and so much more. While it might still share much of the same DNA as the original Persona 5, Atlus has packed P5R full of new content that is sure to delight newcomers and veterans of the original with a far more robust experience.

“Atlus has packed Persona 5 Royal full of new content that is sure to delight newcomers and even veterans of the original with a far more robust experience.”

Royal starts off with a bang as it brandishes two of its biggest additions in the prologue. The protagonist, codenamed Joker, ends up using his grappling hook to reach a new area of the stairwell during his chase scene. Afterward, he encounters a mysterious and masked young woman, who wields a Persona, and aids him in battle. She departs just as abruptly as she arrived — with parting words hinting at her relationship to him — and Joker continues on his way.

Following this opening, we delve into the story proper: a tale of high school students who band together with the help of a cat-like ally named Morgana to dive into the hearts of rotten adults. Known as the “Phantom Thieves,” they slowly become infamous both online and in the real world and are soon pulled into a much greater and more sinister plot.

While the main premise from the original Persona 5 remains intact, it soon becomes apparent that the story has been tangibly altered due to the added presence of the two new characters. First is the mysterious girl, Kasumi, whom we met in the opening. The second is the psychologist Maruki, brought in by Shujin Academy after the infamous events of Kamoshida occur. Both newcomers are as interesting and nuanced as the rest of the main cast and it’s clear that plenty of effort went into reworking both the general writing and the spoken dialogue to ensure that they fit in with the plot seamlessly.

Both characters even receive their own Confidants (Faith and Councillor respectively), giving the protagonist time to cozy up and learn more about their backstories and motivations. I found their Confidants to be engaging, funny, and well-written, particularly Maruki’s, as his methods of counseling mirror how real-world psychologists and psychiatrists’ sessions run. There’s even a tangible perk for ranking up their Confidants. For each level, Kasumi awards the hero with a 5 HP increase while Maruki provides him with a 5 SP increase. But even ignoring these benefits, the quality of writing alone places them as two of my favorite Confidants, only beaten out by Toranosuke Yoshida.

Just as Kasumi and Maruki are intertwined with the protagonist, they’re also deeply connected with each other. This all comes to a head during the new semester and final Palace, which spirals into an emotional reveal and conclusion that contrasts well with the beautiful aesthetics of both the dungeon itself and the true final boss designs. Without going into spoiler territory, I found the resolution between Kasumi, Maruki, and Joker to be wholly satisfying, if not somewhat predictable.

Receiving some much-needed love is the ever divisive Akechi, as his entire Confidant route has been completely overhauled. As a result, his route is slotted in at a different point in the story to go along with more screen time and importance in the bonus sections of the new endgame content. While my opinion of him is still rather lukewarm, I found myself appreciating his character more due to these improvements.

“Both newcomers are as interesting and nuanced as the rest of the main cast and it’s clear that plenty of effort went into reworking both the general writing and the spoken dialogue to ensure that they fit in with the plot seamlessly.”

The main cast also shares in the glow of additional screen time. Throughout the game, there are new holidays featuring brand new cutscenes and voiced dialogue, new conversations that lead to special team-up moves being unlocked, new portrait artwork giving each character a more dynamic range of expressions, and a third tier of Personae that are unlocked during the new semester (similar to Persona 4 Golden), among other features. Even the last party member, Haru, receives slightly better treatment, though her late introduction to the Phantom Thieves still hurts her overall development.

The infamous scene at the end of the drug trade investigation in Shinjuku has also been altered in the English version of the game. The two gay men, who in the original attempted to sexually harass and assault a teenager (AKA Ryuji), have had their dialogue changed to instead mistakenly believe that he’s into the drag scene because he’s been standing around their club and attempt to help him out. While not perfect in its execution, it’s a far more genuinely funny scene than the one in the original Persona 5 and is much less painful to watch in action. Not to mention, it’s a very natural change that fits much more nicely; if you weren’t aware of the original scene, you would be hard-pressed to notice any difference.

Gameplay gets plenty of fixing as well. Each dungeon has been reworked to incorporate the grappling hook mechanic, which at first feels limited due to its fixed uses. Players will find that the hook not only serves as a far better way for Joker to traverse through each Palace but also lets you access brand new areas where Will Seeds can be found. Each Palace contains three seeds and finding them all unlocks a special accessory that, when equipped, allows that party member to permanently access a certain useful skill.

Then there’s Showtime, the brand new super moves that are unlocked throughout the main story via conversations between two teammates. This allows for two party members, whether in the active or backup party, to team up and unleash a Showtime attack that deals massive damage to the enemy. Though incredibly fun to watch and even more useful, they’re extremely powerful and destroy the balance of each battle as they’re much stronger than All Out Attacks. Luckily, they’re optional, so you can simply ignore them when they crop up.

Boss battles have also been revamped to either provide more of a challenge or to better connect them with their respective Palace. For instance, Kamoshida’s battle now involves two new “slaves” that help him set up his special attack. Madarame’s battle features a new stage, and Kaneshiro’s fight now requires that you toss away an item to avoid his most powerful attack. While small changes, they make each boss feel more fleshed out and memorable from a gameplay perspective. Though, my one complaint is that the connection between the Palace boss and their corresponding story arc could have been stronger and made more personal, resulting in a more compelling conclusion.

The side quest dungeon, Mementos, sees its fair share of upgrades as well. The dungeon portions have been expanded and the randomized floors are often much larger in size, lending itself to more exploration. That said, why couldn’t they change the music sooner? Only the later sections of Mementos play an excellent remix of the main theme. Most of the dungeon is still filled with that unfortunate, bland track that’s stuck on an infinite repeat, which is personally disappointing to me, especially considering all the enhancements to the dungeon design itself. The brightest spot in the host of changes comes in the form of a strange young boy named Jose who appears before your party the first time they venture into Mementos. This is the same boy from the Thieves’ Den.

“While small changes, they make each boss feel more fleshed out and memorable from a gameplay perspective.”

Jose opens up a special shop that sells battle items based on the number of flowers you collect for him within the dungeon. And if you located special stickers scattered around platforms, you can use them to change gameplay properties inside Mementos which can lead to more rewards from battle, higher encounter rates, and so on. It doesn’t hurt that Jose is adorable and his shop UI is literally the most gorgeous thing you will see in the game (considering how polished the UI is in general, this is extremely high praise).

Even the Velvet Room hasn’t been spared from improvements. One of the major new features is called Challenge Battles. By speaking to the wardens, you can fight foes using your current party to aim for the highest score by dealing as much damage as possible. You’ll receive a reward from the wardens based on your score and because you won’t get a game over if you lose, it’s a fun and low-risk challenge.

Another added mechanic is the fusion alarm status, which occurs randomly after defeating enemies in a Palace. When fusing during this time, any resulting Persona will have greatly boosted stats and a chance to pass on new special skills. The downside is that fusion accidents are much more likely, which can result in wildly different and sometimes disappointing results. Despite the clear drawback, it’s a great mechanic that injects some much-needed excitement and vibrance in the otherwise monotonous grind of fusing.

Personae themselves — both with Joker and the other playable characters — have been upgraded with a brand new feature called Skill Traits. In Royal, each Persona possesses a unique trait that grants certain abilities, such as decreased SP cost for skills under a certain element or increased potency for spells that have a single target. These special traits can also be passed on just like regular skills and can also be passed on during fusion, allowing for even more customization options. Their general existence, especially skills that cut down on SP cost, are so useful during dungeon runs that I found myself wondering how I managed to traverse Palaces in vanilla P5.

It’s also worth mentioning here that another major change to Royal sees Morgana cutting back on the number of times they make Joker go to bed early, which has a tremendous effect on how quickly players can rank up their parameters. Even on days in which venturing outside isn’t possible, you can still engage in a multitude of tasks that raise your social stats. For instance, in my own playthrough, by the middle of July, three of my stats were already rank three and the other two were rank four.

More minigames make their debut in Persona 5 Royal and not only are they a welcome break from the intensity of the main story, but they also provide players with gameplay advantages.

The Thieves Den is an example of the former as it lets players use collected P Medals, the currency of this base, in order to purchase artwork for your gallery, soundtracks, and trophies depicting major story events to decorate said base with. You win P Medals either by obtaining awards or by playing the card game Tycoon with your party members. I’ve spent so much time playing Tycoon that it often feels like its own separate (albeit much smaller) game and the enthusiast voice work and expressions from the characters really immerses you in the experience of sitting back and playing a fun round of cards with your friends.

The last minigame comes from a new district that Ryuji opens up, called Kichijoji. The area itself, bustling with tons of eateries and shops selling unique wares, is the largest explorable location in the game. It’s also home to the Darts and Billiards lounge, which features a darts game reminiscent of the one from the Yakuza series in that it utilizes the motion controls built into the DualShock 4. The darts minigame is fun, fairly easy to master, and best of all, it can be used to rank up a team member’s Baton Pass. The higher the rank, the more benefits that party members will receive whenever Baton Pass is used in a turn, which includes dealing more damage and HP/SP recovery.

Graphics have been noticeably upgraded in Persona 5 Royal as they’ve been optimized for the PS4, resulting in a crisper look to the character models and 3D environments. PS4 Pro owners haven’t been left in the dust either, as there’s a 4K setting to choose from.

There are also several new music tracks in Royal and for the most part, they’re quite enjoyable, particularly the new battle theme. That being said, I wasn’t too impressed with the true boss theme; while a great track on its own, it lacked the weighty presence and punch that a final boss theme should have.

“If you never got around to playing vanilla Persona 5, then Persona 5 Royal is now the perfect starting point.”

If you never got around to playing vanilla Persona 5, then Persona 5 Royal is now the perfect starting point. Filled with a plethora of new story and gameplay content to go along with all of the DLC from the original, this is without a doubt the definitive edition.

However, what if you did sink over 100 hours into the original? Then the question becomes, how much did you enjoy Persona 5? Because make no mistake, even with all the shiny new things included here with Royal, this is still Persona 5. That means you will absolutely be playing through the same 100 hours of the base game since no effort has been made to fix one of the most egregious issues of the original: its pacing. First time players discovering each twist and turn will most decidedly find Persona 5 Royal exciting and fresh. However, veterans may have a difficult time staying engaged the whole way through, even with all the bells and whistles.

Regardless, for an updated re-release, Persona 5 Royal is certainly worth the price of admission for newcomers. And if you enjoyed the original and are eager to jump back into the fray, then there’s certainly more than enough new content and improvements to justify a second purchase.

March 17, 2020 9:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/persona-5-royal-review-this-palaces-treasure-gleams-even-brighter/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=persona-5-royal-review-this-palaces-treasure-gleams-even-brighter

[psychotherapyconsultants]

Is Mindfulness at Work Detrimental? A Cautionary Tale About Scientific Research and the Dangers of Overgeneralizing

As consumers of news, we often take things we read at face value. This can be especially true of scientific research that we read in the newspaper and elsewhere, where we often don’t question the claims that are being made. But we need to learn to be cautious consumers, reading the fine print; we also need to be accurate scientists, being careful that our claims match the research conducted; and we need to rely on our media to make sure that what is being published is accurately portrayed, as it will likely influence a wide audience, often naive to the subject matter at hand.

While scientific research can be extremely beneficial for understanding human behavior and guiding us towards practices that are “evidence-based”, we have to be cautious about the conclusions that we draw from such research, and make sure these conclusions don’t generalize in ways that go far beyond the scope of the research that was actually conducted.   

One example of this happening, I believe, where misleading conclusions were drawn by the authors of a recent research study, is illustrated in the article “Don’t Meditate at Work”, published by The New York Times on Sunday, June 17, 2018.  In this article, the authors of a large research study suggest that mindfulness meditation, while perhaps beneficial in other settings, actually decreases motivation on work tasks and is “bad news for proponents of meditation in the work place.”

I would like to unpack some of the major flaws of this study that make it puzzling to me how the researchers drew the conclusions they seem to be suggesting. First and foremost, none of their studies were conducted in the work place, or in an environment close to a work place setting. Some of the studies were conducted using an Amazon survey software platform (recruiting subjects online), where participants listened to one 15 minute recorded meditation and then were asked questions about their motivation to complete a word puzzle or other mundane task (which in some cases they didn’t even have to actually do, and in other cases they completed). In another study, subjects came in to a lab setting, listened to a meditation, and were asked to edit a cover letter, and fill out a survey. Variations of these conditions were repeated in their other studies.

The important point is that this was a VERY different study design than teaching people mindfulness meditation in the workplace and measuring their actual performance at work. In addition, and equally important, participants listened to a one time 15 minute meditation recording, and data was collected based on this. This is very different than teaching people an ongoing meditation practice in the workplace. Also, unlike many actual mindfulness at work programs, where workers are taught to understand what mindfulness is and how it can be helpful, this one time meditation was completely out of context of any mindfulness training. Such a study design, while it can answer certain specific questions, is very limited in terms of generalizing to the actual workplace, and to answering the question of whether mindfulness can be beneficial in the workplace. (While in the text of the actual study, the authors distinguish a one-time induced mindfulness state from a more ongoing mindfulness practice, this is completely lost in their NYT article where they make the global claim “we found strong evidence that meditation is demotivating.”)

It may be true and helpful to know that a one time mindfulness meditation done under certain circumstances outside of the work place decreases immediate perceived motivation to perform a subsequent task (while not actually affecting performance one way or another on that task). However, that result is in no way a reason to suggest that bosses should not have their employees meditate (as the article title suggests), and as the authors of the study seem to imply in this article.  

There may be (and are) many benefits of meditation that go beyond the scope of this specific study design, and these need to be considered — and not disregarded or dismissed by such a strong claim as the person who coined the NYT piece online title “Hey Boss, You Don’t Want Your Employees to Meditate”, or by claims of the authors of this study that “meditation is demotivating.” For example, if you took these same participants in an actual work setting and had them meditate on a regular basis at work for a week or a month, or even a day, what would their motivation be to perform a “real” task at work? How would their overall motivation to show up for work each day and perform their duties be affected? What would their reported levels of stress and job satisfaction be like relative to non-meditators? What would their overall productivity and work motivation look like in chunks of a week or more at a time if they meditated for a brief period every day? What would their level of burnout be? How frequently would they call in sick relative to workers who don’t meditate, and how would this affect their productivity and motivation? Would meditating and then being asked to do a real task in an actual work environment produce different results than randomly meditating once online or in a lab and then being asked to do a random puzzle or mundane task that has nothing to do with anything of relevance in one’s life? Answering any of these questions might inform us as to the benefits (or detriments) of meditation in the workplace.

A further example of conclusions that don’t seem to fit with the results of the actual study is when the authors say that while they found that having meditated did not increase or decrease one’s quality of work on a task (which, mind you, was a word puzzle or a text editing task done in a lab or online), they then (surprisingly) claim  that “this is bad news for proponents of meditation in the workplace.” Their rationale for this bad news was that because previous studies showed that meditation increases mental focus, they would have expected people in their study to perform better on the task and they didn’t, so their decreased motivation seemed to cancel out the effects of any increased mental focus. To generalize this finding to a global statement about this being bad news for proponents of meditation in the workplace is quite puzzling and rather misleading.

There are other statements made by the authors of this article, which seem to misrepresent a deeper understanding of mindfulness. I believe that their stating that the goal of mindfulness is to accept things as they are, and that this is at odds with work motivation and “striving to obtain a more desirable future”, is somewhat misleading. Yes, mindfulness helps us to step out of our tendency for past and future thinking and return to the present moment and be with things right here. But importantly, doing this allows us to be more aware, not complacent. When we can see clearly where we are (without being swept away by catastrophic worries about the future or ruminating thoughts of things that we can’t change, or caught in unhelpful judgments, self-criticism, or mind wandering, etc.), we also develop the capacity to take wise and skillful actions, rather than to react (or zone out) on automatic pilot. This can be immensely helpful in the workplace. For example, some of my patients who have practiced meditation have developed the awareness to notice unhealthy communication patterns at work and make important changes to correct this; others have used increased mindful awareness to implement important system wide changes in their organization. Learning to be in the present moment is not mutually exclusive to striving to create a more desirable future; in fact it can be beneficial to doing so.

One other comment that may mislead people who don’t understand mindfulness is when the authors say that “Mindfulness is perhaps akin to a mental nap.” It is far from akin to a nap. We practice mindfulness to become awake and aware in our lives, not to fall asleep. Though the authors are suggesting it may be relaxing, calming and refreshing like a nap (which mindfulness can sometimes be), there is also the suggestion that this relaxed state makes us unmotivated to do tasks that are required. (Remember, by the way, that the tasks required of the study participants were random and generally boring or mundane tasks that had nothing to do with a work environment where there may be some inherent motivation to stay focused and perform at one’s best). Mindfulness practice, when done consistently, often allows us to bring greater focus and attention to tasks at hand, not less. A one time, 15 minute recording with no context in the mindfulness tradition will not necessarily help with this, but a regular mindfulness practice may.

While I am concerned about the conclusions being drawn from this article by its authors, and the subsequent confusion to readers, I am in no way critical of the study itself. In fact, I commend the authors on wanting to explore the limitations of mindfulness and investigate its impact on motivation at work. Their study has a definite place in the literature, and taken at face value it is a good piece of research. Mindfulness has become all the rage, and at times, has been misrepresented as a magic pill or panacea, and it is important to use scientific investigation to accurately understand what mindfulness can and can’t do. But we must be careful about making sweeping conclusions about the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation in the workplace based on participants in a lab or online listening to one 15-minute meditation recording devoid of any context.

I hope that instead of misleading people, this study might motivate others to continue their scientific inquiry to understand the benefits and limitations of mindfulness, to pursue a quest for more specificity about the definition of mindfulness meditation and carefulness about how it is used, and to develop a deeper understanding of what circumstances meditation might be more and less helpful for in the actual workplace setting.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/is-mindfulness-at-work-detrimental-a-cautionary-tale-about-scientific-research-and-the-dangers-of-overgeneralizing/

[sunnydawn444]

New Post has been published on Sunny Dawn Johnston

New Post has been published on http://sunnydawnjohnston.com/blog/numerology-report-going-within-the-gift-of-julys-7-vibration/

Numerology Report- Going Within – The Gift of July’s 7 Vibration

Going Within – The Gift of July’s 7 Vibration

July contains one of my favorite numbers – the 7 Vibration. The number 7 is one of the most esoteric and mystical of all the numbers. Yes, each number vibration is multi-faceted and has a wide range of expression, much like musical notes and scales. The musical note C can have a low, mid or high tone, it can be sharp or flat, it can be played in a variety of ways that changes and enhances its signature sound. Numbers work the same way.

The 7 vibration is the explorer walking between two worlds: the physical and the spiritual. Its quest is to understand the unknown and unknowable. And at its core is a call to mastery of some kind. This month supports your personal journey to self-mastery.

And one of the best paths to self-mastery is self-awareness. And self-awareness requires going within. Connecting deeper with Source/Spirit also requires going within. Thus the primary theme for this July is Going Within.

How you choose to explore your inner world is up to you. There are so many ways you can do this.

My favorite ways to go within:

Spending quiet time in nature and allowing the peaceful spirit to infuse me. Often new insights bubble up to the surface.

Quiet walks, in nature or in my neighborhood. I view these as walking meditations.

Breathing and mindfulness practices.

There are so many types of meditation you can do. None have to be long hours om-ing in a lotus position either! You can listen to a guided meditation, have a silent meditation, repeat a mantra over and over.

Writing or journaling (although truthfully, I seldom journal, but I do write about things, tell stories that provide additional self-awareness for me)

Talking or dialoging with myself. I’ve done this pretty much most of my life. Often walking and talking. I think of it as journaling out-loud! When I hear myself say something and pay attention to the words I use and the emotion behind them, I gain so much understanding of how I think, feel and what I believe to be true or not true.

What are your favorite ways of going within? For July, make a commitment to do 1 or 2 of them on a regular basis. Daily if possible. You might be pleasantly surprised by the insights you receive and the shifts that begin to happen for you.

Along with Introspection (aka “going within”), other themes of the multi-faceted 7 vibration that are highlighted this July are: Wisdom and Mastery.

Inside of you there is a wise woman or sage aspect of you. You might think of it as your higher self. You have the ability to tap into this fount of wisdom at any time. Practice tapping into your internal wisdom keeper. Create a mental avatar to represent this aspect of you if it helps. Perhaps imagine that aspect of yourself as a Wizard like Gandalf, a Jedi Master like Yoda, or an enlightened being of some kind. Ask it how wisdom would handle a situation you are dealing with.

This month, in addition to the brilliant WWLD (What Would Love Do), add WWWMD (What Would Wise Me Do) and apply both Love and Wisdom to your situation. See what previously unthought-of of guidance arises.

  Here are a few other attributes of the 7 vibration…

The Light Side of the 7: Trust, Discernment, Openness, Spirituality, Spiritual Growth, Mystical, Occult, Philosophy, Investigation, Intuition, Logical, Intellect, Learning, Science, Technology, Awakening, Uniting “Head” and “Heart”, Exploring and Understanding the Unknown.

You can think of the 7 vibration as The Dali Lama meets Sherlock Holms!

  The Shadow Side of the 7 brings in the following elements to stir the pot: judgmental, moody, critical, argumentative, aloof, withdrawn, manipulative, lonely, living in your head, or stuck in your head.

The shadow 7 likes to question the heck out of everything in the pursuit of understanding why, why, why… why they said this, why they did that, why is this happening, why that didn’t work, why you didn’t get what you wanted, and so on.

The questioning aspect of the 7 becomes a disruptive and downward spiral, keeping you stuck in the past and preventing you from reaching acceptance of what is. Getting stuck in the unknowable “whys” blocks your ability to access wise choices to move you forward.

So instead of asking a fruitless series of why-why-why, ask your inner Wise One “What Would Wise Me Do?” And do that.

Public Service Announcement… Mercury is preparing to go retrograde

Mark your calendars now!

Mercury Pre-Retrograde Shadow begins on July 7th

Mercury Retrograde officially begins on July 26th through August 18th.

And then Mercury finishes playing with us in its Post-Retro Shadow, in effect from August 20th till September 2nd.

And yeah, Mercury’s retrograde shadow and full retrograde supports a slowdown period and going within. That slowdown continues through August. So go with the flow rather than try to swim upstream.

Maybe you really do need some lazy, peaceful, slower days this summer to help you get in touch with yourself and pay more attention to your own self-care and well-being!

  Wishing you a wonderful July. And for those who celebrate it in the US, have a Happy and Safe 4th of July.

With Love and Appreciation, Karen M. Winkelman

Consultant for Your Life and Your Business

An eclectic mix of creativity and business, woo and practical, spirituality and science, Karen is a natural counselor who can help you reframe a situation, reconnect with your creative essence, and rediscover your sense of self.

For most of her life, Karen’s empowered other creatives and heart-centered professionals to find clarity and direction, bust through blocks and get unstuck. Whether working with clients, speaking at an event, or chatting with friends, Karen blends intuition, wisdom, and spiritual teachings with deep listening, practical guidance, and a wickedly playful sense of humor.

Intuitive numerologist, idea generator, and illuminator, Karen can help you see possibilities and give you permission to stop “Shoulding” yourself and be and do “You” instead.  Karen is available for consultations, workshops and speaking engagements.

If you’d like your personal numerology forecast for 2018 or if you’d like clarity and direction for those pesky issues in your life or business, I’d love to work with you if we’re a fit. Let’s connect:  www.TheLifeCraftingGuide.com and  https://www.facebook.com/karen.m.winkelman.lifecrafting

[notesbylinh-blog]

Silicon Valley's Problem with Death Doesn't Serve Humanity but Itself

Peter Thiel wants to get rid of death. The tech-titan billionaire and PayPal co-founder, you see, is a transhumanist, meaning that he believes technology can emancipate us from our human limitations. In a 2009 essay written for the Cato Institute, Thiel wrote that he stands against the “ideology of the inevitably of death of every individual.” This struck such a chord with me that I couldn’t help but wonder: is there something funny in Thiel’s water? Death, in his sci-fi narrative, is another problem to be solved, to stand against, to cure. But that perception itself isn’t even the main issue. What I’m critical of is the motive: Thiel cares more about beating death than making life worth living. 

He has an investment firm, Founders Fund, to help him in this quest, which claims to "invests in science and technology companies solving the world's most difficult problems." However, what Thiel sees as the world’s most difficult problems are the problems of the few, not of the many. Instead of death, why not tackle poverty, wealth inequality or climate change? Thiel and the Silicon Valley elites are smart enough to be aware of these issues, but choose not to invest in them because they don’t affect them directly (perhaps climate change, though they’re figuring out how to get to Mars).

Disruption is the function in the valley and death is its ultimate goal. Through the lens of tech, everything is seen as a machine, everything is a code that can be cracked and therefore hacked. Granted, one of Silicon Valley’s admirable traits is that it can think long-term by focusing on trajectory. But because the question of the future will always remain open, trajectory can only be conceived from the reality of today. We can't get to where we want to go if the problems we have now don't improve, such as infrastructure, education and the economy. But the Silicon Valley elites don't care about the rest of the world; they only want to take winners in their proxy version of eugenics. It's no wonder that life-extension is a popular topic among those who already have everything.

To assume that just because death affects everyone, and therefore is everyone’s battle, is absurd. Most Americans, for example, don’t like the prospect of living longer. Many also see that such a treatment will only be available to the wealthy, and has bad consequences for society by putting a strain on natural resources. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by palliative-care nurse Bonnie Ware adds another voice to the conversation around death. Regrets ranged from not having the courage to be true to oneself, working less, being happier and staying in touch with friends. Of course, an obvious argument for life-extension would be that it gives people more time to undo these regrets, but then we have to consider the priorities and circumstances that result in these regrets in the first place. More time could just mean more of the same things.

Extending life is the last thing on people’s mind if they live in environments where they’re struggling just to live. If we were to ask people to think about real social problems, I bet you living longer is further down the list of solutions for those problems. 

And what about the 800,000 suicides a year, not to mention the many more who attempt? Those who take their own life do so because life is fundamentally no longer worth living; and in the context of suicide, death isn’t the problem but the solution. Life isn’t hard because it’s short, but because it’s unfair and uncertain.

A tech company doesn’t just exist to solve all the problems of humanities but to make money for its shareholders. We all know by now that the bulk of Silicon Valley’s slogan Making The World A Better Place is just brand-speak for Raking It In. Disrupting death isn’t about solving the ultimate universal problem, but for the few who can afford to think it’s a problem worth paying billions for. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of money pumping into cryogenics programmes and anti-ageing technology. Thiel plans to live to 120 years, if not forever, via parabiosis, a practise that involves the transfusions of blood from young people. Parabiosis has been successfully tested on mice, but whether it translates well to humans is still unclear, as well as whether Thiel is currently receiving such treatments.

Calico, an anti-ageing initiative, backed by Google Ventures and created by Bill Maris, is one of the companies leading the way in the life-extension quest, alongside Unity, backed by Jeff Bezos, and Human Longevity. Though there’s nothing inherently wrong with these initiatives, my issue comes from what I see as disingenuous claims of interests: just whom are these companies truly serving? Bill Gates, when asked about Calico in his third Reddit AMA, answered that: "It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer. It would be nice to live longer though I admit.” Is it for humanity, or is it for the few? And even if it’s for humanity, who’s to say it’ll be evenly distributed? 

There are dystopian consequences for the utopian endeavours of the few. Life-extension isn’t really utopia if it perpetuates the activities of those on top, who are largely unaware of the relational character of their activities. Despite life expectancy increasing by 5 years since 2000, health inequality still persists. We still have a long way to go in regard to universal health coverage, but the journey is even longer when those who can afford to accelerate it choose a different route. Quality of life isn’t contingent on how long we live or the diseases we don’t have. Quality of life is also about access to the things that allows us to live well, such as shelter, food and sanitation. No one can deny how much technology has improved the world; but no one can also deny how technology isn’t as diversified as we think.

Innovation doesn’t make the world a better place by default. A problem solved may lead to new problems. Uber has streamlined transportation, but is accused of lowering worker’s wages; Airbnb has improved accommodation, but has come under fire for housing illegal hotels. Death, however, is a whole other realm compared to Uber and Airbnb: people’s lives are on the line. Healthcare is an industry highly subjected to regulations for this very reason. It’s no wonder that Theranos, the blood-testing start-up led by Elizabeth Holmes, is undergoing criminal investigation for fraud. Because when people’s lives are on the line, you’re going to need evidence-based answers for all the questions firing your way. The start-up has faced repeated questions about its technology, lab procedures and accuracy of its tests. 

It’s easy to get swept up in the latest tech trends, especially when tech has been sold to us as synonymous with progress. Everyone wants better things. Indeed, this is just a lesson to motivate us to better critics of tech. To do so doesn’t make us Luddites, but people who care enough to interpret the implications of what treatments like life-extension could do to us as individuals, the fabric of society, and existence itself.

Who wants to live forever? We may not all wish to go gently into that good night—that is fair—but Thiel’s claim that death is unnatural and that he’s ‘basically against it’ is alarming to hear because death is, well, very natural. Life is a cycle with finite resources, and for new life to emerge, the old life must go. This is evolutionary progress. But I do concede that the world does change and has changed as knowledge increases, and what it means to be human changes, too. We are, of course, always creatures of our time. Perhaps there’s a far-future where we don’t need to die. But right now, Silicon Valley’s quest for immortality is vain, misguided and expensive, and draws attention away from the world we live in; and for those reasons, I’m a reluctant immortalist.

[aion-rsa]

INTERVIEW: Jessi Zabarsky Conjures Magic with Adventure-Fantasy Witchlight

“Witchlight” is Jessi Zabarsky’s debut graphic novel, though she first serialized the story in multiple chapters. She describes the book as a “shojo-adventure” comic — referencing the manga genre that focuses on personal relationships — because it’s a variation on high fantasy, with, as she puts it, “a lot of tender feelings and soft moments.”

There’s a witch and a fighter, there’s a quest, but the ultimate object of the quest is not exactly what is presented at the outset. What makes “Witchlight” not only work but shine is how Zabarsky manages to use those elements and craft a very personal story of two characters, whose lives and experiences and reactions are ultimately more important than the quest.

The collected “Witchlight” is out now from Czap Books, and Zabarsky was kind enough to talk with CBR about the book, its character-driven fight scenes and the book’s place in the small-but-mighty witch comics sub-community.

CBR: Jessi, for the uninitiated, what is “Witchlight?”

Jessi Zabarsky: “Witchlight” is what I’ve been calling a “shojo-adventure” comic, by which I mean it’s a fantasy story with magic and swords, but also a lot of tender feelings and soft moments. It follows Lelek, a witch, and Sanja, as they travel, learn to take care of themselves and each other, and figure out what they want, what they’re missing, and what kind of life they want to build.

Where did the idea for this story begin?

Lelek started as a character design I used for an art test for a job, and I liked her so much I wanted to get to know her better. The story was originally supposed to be an 18 page mini for TCAF [Toronto Comic Arts Festival] a few years ago, but it kept growing and I love slow pacing too much to have condensed it.

At that time, I was also becoming familiar with the work of people like Victoria Elliott and Britt Sabo, and was discovering this tiny sub-community of witch comics, which felt very singular and special to me.

The story is also very much about being in your early 20s and not knowing what the heck you’re doing, but also feeling very sure of what you’re doing (but you’re probably wrong). I had just experienced that phase of my life, and that crept in whether I realized it at the time or not.

Wait, there’s a sub-community of witch comics? Tell me more about this!

I might be the only one who thinks of it as a community, but there are several comic creators I’m aware of making various kinds of witch comics. Some (like mine) are mainly print, some are webcomics, some go both routes! To me, though they often differ greatly in tone and setting, they all give me a feeling of support, inclusion, and taking familiar tropes and freshening them up a bit. Some examples are “Balderdash!” by Victoria Elliott, “All Night” by Britt Sabo, “Witch Trade” by Isaac Robin, some of Carey Pietsch’s short comics — and probably a lot of others which I’m forgetting!

I think witches and worlds that include witches are attractive to a lot of people because they allow investigation into some darker ideas with an equal balance of very comforting themes. It’s a place where you can acknowledge and embrace messiness without being overwhelmed.

You were serializing chapters of the story. Did that serialization and the feedback you got affect the shape of the book or the choices you made as you worked?

Honestly, not much. I don’t think I got a lot of specific feedback, but also I tend to be very inwardly focused when I make things. I heard somewhere that if you want to make something good, make it for one person only, don’t try to please a bunch of people — so I made “Witchlight” pretty much for myself. I’ve never felt guilty about that approach, because the things that tend to resonate with me most are ones that are very self-indulgent, where you can feel how important it is to the creator or how much fun they had making it.

The story did get longer as I serialized it, though! The longer I worked with the characters, the more I wanted them to meander instead of going straight for the goals of the plot. The initial version of the story was much more plot and action driven, but Lelek and Sanja didn’t get to really be seen as people.

You mentioned that the story was initially going to be an 18-page comic. Has the plot changed much since that initial idea? Or is the difference between 18 pages and the book you discovering how the story needed to be told?

Both! Like I mentioned, it was initially much more action driven, it was basically just a string of important events with nothing much holding them together. The plot stayed essentially the same, I just fleshed it out a lot more and made the people/situations/world more specific and interesting. Before “Witchlight,” the longest comic I’d done was maybe 40 pages, so it made sense that I was trying to write something short, since it was what I was accustomed to. Luckily, I realized that the story I had in mind would just be bad if I tried to make it that brief.

I kept gradually increasing how many chapters I thought it would end up being as I went (one, three, five, then finally the correct number, six). At the beginning of “Witchlight,” I was very intimidated by any project that would take me longer than a month, so I think this was the only way I could get myself to actually do it. The change was probably equally me learning to be a better writer and also just getting too excited about new bits I wanted to include.

You have a line in your bio that your comics “are generally about very small spaces and moments in very big worlds,” and I’m curious whether you think that applies to “Witchlight” and how.

“Witchlight” is actually what made me realize this about my comics! I grew up reading a lot of fantasy and adventure stories, watching a lot of shonen anime. I still love those genres, but they do have a disconnect between the “one person saving the world” vibe and the average person’s life. These days, I tend to love stories about everyday life and the details of specific relationships, but those stories have limitations too, they don’t usually tend to acknowledge a larger world. With “Witchlight,” I wanted to make a story where there’s tension and drama and high stakes, but only for a very few people. Not to minimize those struggles, but to show how important and precious they are instead. Also, I tried to include hints of the world that these people inhabit, that there are social issues and prejudices going on, that there’s an economy and history, and changing ideas, and that the main characters might not confront those things directly, but they’re still affected by them.

Can you talk a little about the fight scenes? Especially the magic battles, because there are some beautiful designs and layouts in those scenes, and each fight is depicted differently.

I’m glad the fight scenes came out well! Honestly, I realized around issue 2 that I didn’t really know how to plot fights at all. [Laughs] Luckily, the way Lelek’s magic works and the kind of person she is put an automatic framework in place for me. She’s extremely limited in what she can do, so she has to be very creative in her ideas. She can’t just throw force or power at someone, she has to shape it very deliberately and respond to her opponent and surroundings. Basically, what I mean is, I figured out I was better at character writing than action, so I wrote all the action as character choices. So, for example, instead of asking myself, “What would look cool here?” I’d ask, “What would Lelek think would look cool here?” All the fights look different because Lelek doesn’t like to repeat herself, she doesn’t want to be boring. She’s a person who very much could have been the “one person saving the world” type from above, but she’s heavily restricted and frustrated, so she expresses that side of herself however she can.

Having said all that about the fight scenes, the story really is about the dynamic between Lelek and Sanja. Was their characters and their relationship something you knew from the beginning?

I knew the basic arc from the very beginning, but the specifics of the entire middle were basically a mush. When it was supposed to be much shorter, all their travels and bonding were going to be a couple pages of montage, but I realized it had zero emotional punch that way. All those quiet moments came out of me thinking of little vignettes that I loved but didn’t know quite where they fit, and then kind of jigsawing them together as I went. The bulk of their lives is made up of walking, sleeping, eating, and talking, so it felt dishonest to ignore those parts in favor of the “interesting” bits. In my own life, I find a lot of meaning and value in simple restful times, and I think those are the kind of experiences that have built the best relationships for me. Plus, I just wanted to draw a lot of plants.

Did you make any changes for the collection? Will your devoted readers see anything new or different?

Yes! Most significantly, the final chapter is not being released outside of the collection. I also redrew some of the art in the first couple issues, and standardized how the grey tones were used. There are a few instances where pacing was changed, I think universally to make it slower and gentler. There are also a few places where my publisher, Kevin Czapiewski, helped me to make the panel flow read a bit clearer.

I do not want to spoil anything — I loathe spoilers — but you leave the penultimate chapter on something of a nail-biting cliffhanger. I’m curious if that was always the plan?

Pretty much, yes! When it was supposed to be much shorter I didn’t know it’d be a cliffhanger, but I did always want it to be as much of a gut-punch as I could manage, and having it be the end to a chapter was, I felt, the most effective way to do that. I think it also gives the reader time and space for whatever emotions they have about what happened, instead of immediately giving them more to process.

Was this the ending you had in mind from the beginning?

For the most part. I was a little iffy on the details, and originally it was written much cheesier, but I was always generally sure that it had to end that way. There are, however, a couple panels on the third-to-last page which I’m incredibly proud of and I didn’t figure them out until nearly the last second. [Laughs] I had to erase some work I’d already done, but I was just too pleased with myself not to.

Jessi Zabarsky’s collected “Witchlight” is on sale now from Czap Books.

The post INTERVIEW: Jessi Zabarsky Conjures Magic with Adventure-Fantasy Witchlight appeared first on CBR.

http://ift.tt/2mArVuE