#Mischief Maker || Fable

[yhwhrulz]

Charles Spurgeon's "Morning & Evening" Devotional for December 6

Morning

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

1 Timothy 1

Hitherto we have only read portions from Paul’s letters to churches; we now turn to one of his four epistles to individual Christians. It was written to Timothy, who was very dear to the apostle as one of the most affectionate, faithful, and gifted of his spiritual children.

1 Timothy 1:3 , 1 Timothy 1:4

Jewish “teachers of the law” introduced into the churches a kind of mystic philosophy, made up of foolish legends, spiritualizings, and ascetical precepts, which Paul did not hesitate to call “old wives’ fables” and “profane babblings.” Timothy was stationed at Ephesus, to do battle with these mischief-makers, and to set the church in order. In these times there are tendencies to absurdities of the same kind, and we should be upon our guard against them. That which pretends to be wiser, deeper, or holier than the word of God must come from the father of lies.

1 Timothy 1:5-7

Some teachers of our own day are for ever raising questions upon points of no practical value. Such vain jangling let us keep clear of, and follow the simple teachings of our Lord Jesus.

1 Timothy 1:8-15

This is a Christian proverb, an axiom of our creed, “familiar in our mouths as household words,” and right well does it deserve to be repeated and received by all mankind.

1 Timothy 1:17

At thought of the grace which saved him, Paul broke forth into a doxology, and well he might.

1 Timothy 1:18-20

Perhaps they were left to follow out the natural tendency of their doctrines under the influence of Satan until they should see by actual experience where their teachings would land them, and would then have grace to repent. May the Lord keep us free from all false doctrine lest we come under the like condemnation.

Now to the God of victory,

Immortal thanks be paid,

Who makes us conquerors while we die,

Through Christ our living Head.

Evening

“Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine.”

1 Timothy 4

In this letter to Timothy Paul denounces many of those forms, of error which have been the plague of the Christian church in all ages. Those who deal with spirits, or profess to do so, those who multiply forms and ceremonies, those who make religion to lie in meats and drinks, and those who attach importance to legends and traditions, are all heavily censured, as they deserve.

1 Timothy 4:1

leading on to the worship of angels, fear of demons, and attempts at commerce with the dead. In every age some deceivers and deceived ones have wandered in this direction. Far from us be such darkness.

1 Timothy 4:2

As a hot iron deadens the part which it burns, so is their conscience no longer sensitive, and they can utter falsehood unblushingly.

1 Timothy 4:3

How well this describes the Church of Rome, which combines both superstitions. Other sects also have decried marriage, and issued laws as to eating and drinking, making that to be sin which is no. sin.

1 Timothy 4:6

To hold fast the true faith is one of our first duties. To be for ever chopping and changing is a most unhappy and dangerous condition.

1 Timothy 4:8

For bodily exercise profiteth little: or a little; it may, when rightly used, promote bodily health, but that is all

1 Timothy 4:9 , 1 Timothy 4:10

All men derive some benefit from Jesus death. They are spared, they enjoy the common blessings of providence, and they are placed under mediatorial rule; yet redemption has its special design and effect, and these have to do only with believers. The Saviour has bought some good things for all men, and all good things for some men. Are we believers? Then, in a special sense, Jesus is our Saviour.

1 Timothy 4:14

Even when the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were in the church the most favoured ministers were to study and meditate: how much more then is it now their duty! Those who speak without thinking seldom say anything worth thinking of.

1 Timothy 4:15 , 1 Timothy 4:16

Or “be thou wholly in them.” Be absorbed in thy work,

Care as to our doctrine will both preserve the teacher himself from serious error, and keep his hearers from the same evil. This should lead us to be very prayerful, and careful as to what we receive, and what we communicate to others. Doctrines are not to be trifled with, they are life and death matters. Lord teach us thy truth.

Make me to understand

Thy precepts and thy will;

Thy wondrous works on every hand,

I’ll sing and talk of still.

Copyright Statement This resource was produced before 1923 and therefore is considered in the "Public Domain".

[jiubilant]

the following saints are said to have followed veloth the pilgrim during his life. they’re venerated primarily in narsis and the surrounding countryside, where the cult of veloth enjoyed surprising latitude during the reign of the living gods and an explosive resurgence after their fall

st. tiro the firebringer, also referred to as “tiro dirnamat.” a popular figure in children’s fables, st. tiro is said to have kindled the first fire as a girl, a feat that allowed veloth’s followers to confer with their dead. some stories also portray her as friend to the young fa-nuit-hen, who often goaded her into mischief (or vice versa)

st. doler of the tel, said to have spent his life in contemplation atop a tall mushroom. velothi parents and tutors often admonish daydreaming children to “come down from that cap,” an idiom that references st. doler

st. tanthelys, patron of narsis’s thriving textile trade, who is often depicted with six arms. veloth “summons” tanthelys for counsel in several recorded folktales; the ambiguous meaning of the word summon leads some to insist that st. tanthelys was a spirit or daedroth. deeds attributed to them include the taming of the first silk-spider, the invention of the spindle, and the weaving of veloth’s death-shroud (said to be their finest work, though most stories agree that tanthelys themself disclaimed it as their worst, for they “could not see for weeping as [they] wove”)

st. dels of tilammu, said to be the first mystic to leave their body and walk the world as a spirit. in many stories, st. dels soothes a family’s furious ancestors by walking through the family’s hearthfire or waiting-door into the realm of the dead

st. vara of selruhn, an obscure local saint also referred to as “ama vara” or “vara clibar” (ama meaning “mother” and clibar meaning “redbeard” in the narsisi dialect of velothis). scholars postulate that “vara” is a corruption of “varac,” and that the saint in question was a dwemeri potter whose urns—signed by their maker and often discovered in forgotten ancestral tombs—are still unearthed today by selruhni egg-miners

these saints, though recognized and revered locally, were never canonized by the tribunal temple; this being the case, tales of their miraculous deeds and exploits tend to vary dramatically from teller to teller

working from home's not so bad. i can make up velothi saints on the clock

[seasidewriter1-writes]

The Mummy!Balance/Obi-Lara AU

A big thanks to @rjnorth-writes​ who helped me flesh this out! And a shout out to @ban-joey​ who asked to hear some headcanons!

Kinda like the Moulin Rouge! hcs, I’m gonna do some basic ones, but if y’all want ones that, like... follow the plot of The Mummy in more detail, or want a particular scene expanded on, lemme know!

So let’s start with a little dramatis personae:

Elara Skywalkers works as a librarian at the Cairo Museum of Antiquities. In the grand scheme of things, she’d love to work in the field, or in some more substantial role at the museum. But because it’s 1926, it doesn’t matter if she’s good at what she does––and she is good at what she does, you should see the stack of note filled journals she’s got––she’s relegated to librarian. And though it’s not what she wants to do, she does still enjoy it. Being around books all day is a joy; especially when she gets a chance to sit down and read a couple.

Then there’s Anakin. He’s the cocky little brother who manages to get a job as an assistant archeologist. He gripes about the fact that she’s not out there with him, and that she’d be able to identify things twice as fast as the white-bearded men that strutted around the sites. His a mischief maker, loves to bother Elara at work. Sometimes he’ll accidentally mess up her organizing, and as punishment she’ll make him assist her in putting the books away.

And last, but certainly not least––Obi-Wan Kenobi. A good, honorable, loyal soldier. Followed his troop into the desert on a goddamn rumor, because he wasn’t about to let them go without him. Betrayed by his comrade Hondo, he was left stranded in the desert, wandering until he made it to Cairo. Such events left his trust fractured, his exterior a little rough, and he’s more guarded than he’s ever been. What was once easy going charm, is now apathetic snark. He’s quick to action, slow to trust.

So it all starts when Anakin lifts a strange artifact off a stranger at the kasbah

He doesn’t steal, not usually. But this thing... this golden box with hieroglyphics on its sides... something about it is different. The man in possession of it seemed like a drunk, all scruffy hair and wild beard, sweat-stained clothes with sand in its creases

So he just... lifts it out of the guy’s pocket, puts it in his own, spares some money to buy the guy another drink, and then slips off into the night

Elara is more than intrigued with the thing, especially when she and Anakin figure out how to open it and discover the map inside––the map to the fabled Hamunaptra

Curator Windu (somehow, it works for him to the the curator, amIright?) discourages them from researching the matter further, or trying to follow the map

And Padmé, an American ambassador to the museum agrees with said notion

So when it comes out that Anakin stole the map and was not allowed to borrow it for ‘research purposes,’ Elara gives him the most long suffering look, and them whaps him with a pocket-sized book on ancient Egyptian history

After doing some good old-fashioned snooping around, Elara and Anakin discover that the man he robbed was arrested for brawling (and probably other charges he’s been avoiding)

At the jail they meet the jailer––Watto. What fun.

They’re brought to a cell, where the man they requested to meet is brought... and he is apathetic to say the least

He’s scruffy looking, with a bushy bead, stringy hair down to his shoulders, and sweat stained clothes

He clocks Anakin once he recognizes him and realizes what he did

Is very snide about the fact they want to know about the map (”I’m afraid you think me dumb. It’s obvious you’re in search of Hamunaptra.”)

When Elara steps forward to take the reigns of the conversation, apathy turns to roguish charm; which leads to his getting her close enough to the bars to kiss her through them, demanding that she get him out of there if she wants his help

And Elara is reeling from that kiss because it’s quick and rough and lingering, and nothing like that has ever happened to her before

One he’s saved from execution, he founds himself duty bound to help out the pretty lady and her snarky brother. So arrangements are made to help them journey out into the goddamn desert––‘cause that went well last time

Needless to say when the previously very scruffy Obi-Wan Kenobi is perfectly clean cut, Elara is thrown for a loop

 Because now his hair is cut and clean and swept into a perfect side-sweep. He’s clean shaven. And his clothes are crisp and clean... he is, perhaps, the most handsome man that she’s ever seen, and she is visibly struck by that

And yet she is reminded of his sharp, snide attitude and that has her more than a little hesitant. After all, the devil has a beautiful face...

Obi-Wan re-encounters Obi-Wan on the river boat, much to his chagrin; and even worse, Hondo’s taken to flirting with Elara, which gets him strangely riled up

And so he throws Hondo into the River Nile... but not while Elara is watching. Not that it would matter if she’d been there, because he didn’t care what her opinion of him was. Nope, he couldn’t care less that her opinion of him was at ground level...

By the time they make it to Hamunaptra, it’s become clear that Obi-Wan’s got a soft spot for Elara, who’s been happily rattling off facts about the lost city, the desert, ancient Egyptian culture... it’s endearing how excited she gets when discussing such things. And he’s happy to listen. Quietly, of course

And Elara realizes that he isn’t too bad––despite throwing her into the Nile, having a snarky comment for every situation, and being an over-all rogue. There’s a charm about him, something warm hidden beneath the exterior of a man who had been through and seen much

Dooku and Wyle are part of Hondo’s expedition crew

And it is through working their way through the tombs that the roguish Obi-Wan Kenboi finds himself being softer and softer towards the bookish, beautiful Elara Skywalker; and her brother’s growing on him, but he’s still a cocky bastard. And that Elara finds herself particularly drawn to this roguish man that seems to have a hidden soft side

And Anakin is watching it all happen, not sure whether he should egg them on, or be completely disgusted by it

Over drinks under a cloudless, nighttime desert sky, Elara asks Obi-Wan to teach her how to fight; and he agrees, and is pleasantly surprised that, even drunk, she’s a natural

They almost kiss again... but just as Elara goes in for it, Obi-Wan stops her and urges her to get some sleep... which comes sooner rather than later, given as she passes out shortly afterwards

The action and adventure only drives them closer together; the Mummy seems to have taken an interest in Elara, which neither Anakin or Obi-Wan are a fan of––and she really isn’t a fan of––and that drives them all back to Cairo

Obi-Wan and Elara get into it when he insists the best thing to do is flee, and she thinks it’s best to stay and fix the mess they’d made. She thinks they should stand their ground, and he fires back with the fact that this was not what he’d been contracted to do, and he didn’t start anything

So they part ways on bad terms, leaving Elara and Anakin scrambling to figure out how to fix this mess; and she’s initially enthusiastic when Obi-Wan makes his harried return, spewing something about the fact the Mummy and all its plagues were coming to Cairo for revenge

Elara, true to form, ends up being self-sacrificing and agrees to go off with Hondo and the Mummy, much to Anakin and Obi-Wan’s horror; but she knows that if there’s anyone that’ll fight through hell to get to her, it’s Anakin...

And she’s got a feeling Obi-Wan might just do so, too

And by the end of it all, that assumption is proved correct. He fights like hell to save her, even though she’s held up damn well on her own

The funny thing, both of them find, is how these situations can drag the right people together. How the danger makes you both re-evaluate and evaluate what matters. It reinforced just how dear Anakin and Elara are to one another. It revealed that, despite the circumstances of their meeting, Anakin and Obi-Wan are a good team. And it showed how a rogue and a librarian might just be perfect for one another.

[swan-of-fabletown]

how can you tell jack is not lying, keira?

Keira: I never say he is telling the truth but Jack always lying and cause trouble and he is at Bigby’s top of Fables most mischief makers in town. 

[storiesofwildfire]

@thefateofwar said: "Sit." Kratos' smiling would strike fear to any other, he is sure but for the child before him it is unbearably kind. A dampness about his eyes that would earn the axe should any dare to voice it now shown in the gentle press of his hand to Atreus shoulder, clearing his throat in a practiced manner. "When you were young you would ask me for one thing. A story. I could not give it then but I have been training for you and if you would permit it, for your birthday, I would like to gift it now."

♔—- The idea of Loki’s birthday had always been a bit of a sore spot. Not that most Aesir paid much mind to the importance of the day. Celebrating year after year grew tiresome when one could live for thousands upon thousands of years and one year seemed to sweep by in the blink of an eye. But Loki was always a special circumstance because no one really seemed to remember the specific day of their birth. Sure, Odin and Frigga claimed a date, but the rest of Asgard couldn’t really support those claims because Loki’s birth had been rather secretive and the child had been kept away from the public due to ailment. 

Loki remembered the ailment rather clearly. That sickness came and went, especially during their younger years, but the rest of Odin’s story or explanations for why most of Asgard went unaware of the second prince’s conception or birth held very little merit. 

The day Kratos swept through Asgard with Fenrir, Hel, and Jörmungandr, Loki was finally able to make sense of the oddities that surrounded their early life. Why Asgard seemed so uncertain of the younger prince, why Loki remembered a loving father that they’d been close to but clearly didn’t have in Odin, why they were so odd for an Aesir, and why even the simplest questions couldn’t properly be answered or supported by more than a few people...

Like the date of Loki’s birth.

They knew their birthday was coming up. Odin had at least known a rough time period in which Loki had been born. Once Heimdall’s restraints to the king had been broken, he’d been free to give Loki an overwhelming amount of knowledge and truths, some of which might have been better left unknown. And, of course, Kratos’ reintroduction to Loki’s life gave the young God insight into the life they lived before Odin. A painstaking process, really, as Odin corrupted Loki’s memories of life on Midgard with a loving mother and father and a modest cabin. Some days, the mischief-maker struggled to make sense of what was real and what wasn’t, wading through a sea of jumbled memories to sort out what actually was and what had been planted in their mind by a corrupt king.

Kratos helped, of course, giving Loki as much information as the poor soul could hope to absorb. Even in the centuries the father and child had been separated, Kratos’ memories of his Atreus never faded. Loki thought it would take time getting used to the name, but in actuality, it felt like home. So much so that only their father was permitted to use it. It sounded wrong coming from anyone else’s lips, didn’t hold the same sentiment or warmth.

The command to sit came with a surprising gentleness that many likely didn’t believe Kratos capable of. It shouldn’t have come as a shock that their father remembered the special nature of the day, but Loki spent centuries with a father who never loved them, never went out of his way to show care or genuine concern. Kratos wasn’t like that and while he did sometimes struggle with verbal communication, he always did his best to make Loki feel loved. They both wished to make up for lost time and yet... Loki still found themselves shocked that such an invitation had been extended. 

“All right?” the murmured quizzically. 

The expression their father wore only deepened that feeling. The ability to show wide emotional range usually escaped the Spartan and while he felt intensely, he never really showed it. Hints of tears clung to his eyes now and a warm, sentimental smile sought to reassure his child that he only requested Loki’s company for something to share.

“Father, are you all right?” Anyone else would have been afraid to make mention of the signs of mist around the man’s eyes, but Loki did not fear their father. Calling him out quickly became one of their favorite things to do.

A large hand, rough in texture but warm and strong to the touch rested upon Loki’s shoulder, reassuring them that nothing was wrong, and easily guided them down to sit in a plush chair adorned with a few emerald pillows. With a graceful little plop, the God relaxed, though their eyes never left the larger man.

“I...” Frustration passed over their visage briefly, eyes blinking rapidly a few times over. Every time Loki thought about their life with Kratos, it felt like a mental exercise. Memories came back easier now, with more clarity, but always with a little bit of resistance, like their mind grinding the wrong gears together in the processing phase. Even still, a few moments bubbled up to the surface. A canoe Kratos rowed, his little boy sitting opposite him with wanderlust-filled eyes that darted from his father, to a massive temple, to a beaten-down statue that stood in the center of a small island, to the side of Jörmungandr’s massive body, and right back to his father. He kept asking for stories and every one Kratos delivered fell flat. They were never stories so much as blunt statements or commentary that didn’t make for a very good story. Loki even found himself correcting Kratos’ stories to make them more entertaining. “I did ask you for stories a lot, didn’t I?”

Poor Kratos never stood a chance in that department. Even as a small boy, Loki rarely knew when to shut up and always tried to engage those around him into holding a conversation. Kratos had never been good at that, but he tried so hard. 

“As long as you do not tell me about the scorpion and the frog again, I would love to hear your stories.” They’d be proud about how clearly they remembered Kratos’ retelling of that age-old fable a little later. “I--” Pale cheeks filled with a pleasant, rosy color and as if to match Kratos’ expression, subtle dampness made Loki’s eyes shine even brighter than usual. They didn’t expect the overwhelming tidal wave of emotion to crash down on them, but it happened every time the pair shared these genuine and intimate moments. 

“I’d love that very much.” 

[katiexklein]

Katie took care placing the babe in Elise's arms. That little girl was the most precious person in the world to so many. She held the promise of a world repaired, even if Katie did doubt the existence of the fabled cure that might restore the world to normalcy. If only she could gift the children the easy world that Katie grew in. "You are too sweet. He's a bit of a mischief maker." She chuckled, knowing the hijinks that Joshie got into when no one was looking.

"Oh uh, s-sure", her nerves were visible but still she held her arms out to hold the little bundle. So soft, so innocent, and so damn cute. This was certainly not helping with the fact that Kane and her had to wait for her next period to see if they were in the clear. Maybe she'd actually be sad instead of relived when it came. "Oh", the younger woman perked up. "Of course I do. He's a great kid."

[shadyxdealings-blog]

TIMID yet PLAYFUL

                                       is the GOD of

                                                              PLEASURE and DECEIT.

RULES: Think carefully about your character and their development within their story. Fill out the chart and tag whoever you want! Multimuses, pick as many characters as you want! Just repost, don’t reblog. Don’t clog the dash, please.

Associated with: Pleasures often felt with guilt or shame, but otherwise generally harmless. Protection to those who are weak and incapable, be they human or not. Lesser, deceit; There is always something to be feared in those who appear harmless upon first glance.

Sacred plants: Rhododendron, Cherry Blossom, Rose of Sharon. And Sundew.

Sacred stones/gems: Rhodochrosite, Rose Quartz, Hessonite.

Sacred animal(s): Raccoon Dog, Asian Badger, Least Weasel. And the Asian Black Bear.

Colors: Pink, Orange, White, and lesser so, Black. Accents of a light pale green are often applied.

Scents: Freshly picked strawberries, the richest honey, and warm vanilla. The sweetest Hazelnut, too.

Accepted offerings / Ways to honor: Leaving small pots or jars of honey with flowers and sweets, too. Flower petals and honey dropped within the sacred pool fountain inside the altar are also acceptable offers for those who cannot afford much. During the end of the summer bowls of heavily spiced and fragrant noodles are set around the altar as a means to wish for protection from the coming winter time, like a prayer for warmth.

Other facts (optional): Although timid and shy, this deity can be quite the mischief maker. Those who his antics may befall are those who are often times full of themselves. Ones who are focused more on work and less on the little things in life that may bring even the tiniest of joy. To be free of him, a person like that must perform a grand act of delivering happiness to someone else, lest they be plagued with constant childish pranks for others passing amusement.

To invoke his anger is a difficult task as he is quite the benevolent spirit. If someone dared enough to invoke his wrath they would be immediately met with terrible luck and 5 great misfortunes brought on by the deity himself. However.. this is only known in vocal rumors and fables. Most people today do not believe such things are real or true.

Often he is depicted is stories by a fairy-like creature, or in a human form with his face obscured by a mask or veil. For him to show his face one must first appeal to him, befriend him. Alas, he does not show himself to just anyone.. or very often if at all. A mysterious little deity is what he is.

Tagged by: I kept seeing it around and thought it’d be nice to join in on the fun. ;v;

Tagging: Anyone who has yet to do this!

[aion-rsa]

Xbox Game Pass: New Games for April 2021 Revealed

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Xbox Game Pass is Microsoft’s subscription service for Xbox One owners. It’s designed to be like a “Netflix for games,” where you pay a simple monthly rate and get access to loads of games for download. It’s not to be confused with the Xbox Live Gold membership, which gives users a selection of free games each month.

There has been a huge surge in popularity and profile for Xbox Game Pass since its launch, mainly due to the diverse list of games and first-party exlusives on the service. In fact, Microsoft drops new releases from its own internal studios onto the service on day one! Sea of Thieves was the first example of this, followed by State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3. Since then, the service has seen the day one launch of several other high-profile Xbox exclusives, including Gears 5, The Outer Worlds, and Halo: Reach on the Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

Membership to Xbox Game Pass will set you back $9.99 per month. You can now also get an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription for $1 for the first month and $14.99 every month after that. The subscription includes an Xbox Live Gold membership as well as all of the games offered on Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass for PC. Plus, with cloud support, you can play a selection of Xbox Game Pass titles on your Android phone. And now you even get access to titles on EA Play, the third-party publisher’s own on-demand service.

New games are added each month to Xbox Game Pass. Here are the games coming in March and April, plus all of the new Bethesda games available on the service starting on March 12 (with descriptions courtesy of the Xbox team) :

Xbox Game Pass: Games for April 2021

Outriders (Cloud and Console) – April 1

Outriders brings intense action and deep role-playing to Xbox Game Pass! Developed by People Can Fly, veterans of the shooter genre, Outriders presents a journey of survival across a savage planet, which can be tackled in both single player and 1-3 player co-op.

Grand Theft Auto V (Cloud and Console) – April 8

When a young street hustler, a retired bank robber and a terrifying psychopath find themselves entangled with some of the most frightening and deranged elements of the criminal underworld, the U.S. government and the entertainment industry, they must pull off a series of dangerous heists to survive in a ruthless city in which they can trust nobody, least of all each other.

Zombie Army 4: Dead War (Cloud, Console, and PC) – April 8

Hitler’s zombie hordes are back for more in this spine-chilling shooter from the makers of Sniper Elite 4! Abominable occult enemies, epic weapons and a harrowing campaign for 1-4 players await in 1940s Europe, as you fight to save humankind from undead Armageddon!

Disneyland Adventures (Cloud) – April 8

Experience the magic of Disneyland! Take a journey where stories come to life and dreams come true, right in your living room! Explore Disneyland park, from Main Street U.S.A. to Critter Country, where you can join Peter Pan to battle Captain Hook, high-five Mickey Mouse, and hug Snow White.

Rush: A Disney/Pixar Adventure (Cloud) – April 8

Rush: A Disney/Pixar Adventure invites families and fans of all ages to experience the worlds of six beloved Disney/Pixar films. Team up with characters from “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “Up,” “Cars,” “Toy Story,” and “Finding Dory” to solve puzzles and uncover hidden secrets.

NHL 21 (Console) EA Play – April 12

Carve your path to superstardom in an expanded Be A Pro mode and go down as one of the league’s greatest. On the ice, change up your attack with all new moves, dekes, dangles, and evasive maneuvers, inspired by the league’s most groundbreaking innovators.

Rain on Your Parade (Cloud, Console, and PC) – April 15

Travel the world as a cute cardboard cloud and ruin everybody’s day! Unlock new methods of mischief in over 50 levels, each with unique setting and objectives. Make new friends and help them too – it’s an adorable schadenfreude game!

Pathway (PC) – April 15

Assemble a bold team of adventurers and journey through the desert-wilderness. In 1936, Nazi influence has spread, along with rumors of secret excavations, mysterious artefacts, and gruesome occult rituals… Outwit foes in strategic squad combat and locate ancient treasures before they fall into the wrong hands!

MLB The Show 21 (Cloud and Console) – April 20

MLB The Show 21 rockets the franchise onto the next generation of video game consoles with a huge range of improvements, enhancements, and optimizations that make The Show the ultimate Major League Baseball experience. Thousands of new animations, revolutionary innovation on gameplay, and an all-new Stadium Creator let you own The Show like never before.

Phogs! (PC) – April 22

In Phogs! you play as a duo of dogs on a captivating, puzzle-filled adventure. Linked by a stretchy belly, you’ll need to bark, bite, and bounce your way through obstacles set across the themed worlds of Food, Sleep, and Play. Play through your entire fun-filled adventure in co-op or single-player exploring 24 fantastical levels stuffed with exciting challenges and creatures to play with.

Second Extinction (Game Preview) (Cloud, Console, and PC) – April 28

Second Extinction tasks you and up to two friends with fighting bloodthirsty mutant dinosaurs in a bid to reclaim Earth. But be warned: These carnivores have an appetite for war. The game takes place on a large-scale map where each region has a unique threat level. As the community lowers the threat level, the dinosaur menace retreats. Fail to keep the hordes at bay, however, and you’ll face increased threats, more dangerous enemies, and the chance of emergence events that will test your limits.

Destroy All Humans! (Cloud, Console, and PC) – April 29

The cult-classic returns! Invade 1950s Earth in the role of the evil alien Crypto-137. Harvest human DNA and bring down the U.S. government in the faithful remake of the legendary alien invasion action adventure. Annihilate puny humans using an assortment of alien weaponry and psychic abilities and reduce their cities to rubble with your flying saucer!

Fable III (Cloud) – April 30

Lead a revolution to take control of Albion, fight alongside your people, and experience love and loss while preparing to defend the kingdom against a looming threat. Your choices as ruler will lead to consequences felt across the entire land.

Fable Anniversary (Cloud) – April 30

As the best-selling RPG on the original Xbox, Fable pioneered every player’s choice having a consequence. With Fable Anniversary, a spectacular HD remaster of the original Fable, players will be reminded of why the franchise is so special and unique. All new textures and 3D models, an entirely new lighting system, a slick new interface, achievements, and all the content from The Lost Chapters, make Fable Anniversary the definitive Fable experience for faithful fans and new players alike!

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[goldstarzzz]

I’m guessing for Jess...

Best:

Banjo-Kazooie - Has talked about how much she loves Banjo-Kazoo

Pokemon BW - Jess and I are both Gen V for life so

FFIX - Just a guess, but given how well liked it is I didn’t think it would end up on a worst list (then again maybe I’m wrong and it might be another Jess Hot Take?)

Shadow of the Colossus - Thematically seems like Jess’ shit

Mario 64 - Beloved Collectathon like Banjo

Spyro - Random guess

Worst:

NDRV3 - Like.....

Exile Election - Bc it’s so badly paced lol

Oxenfree - I stg Jess mentioned she didn’t like how the dialogue for this game was written some time

Quest 64 - Just guessing

Dog's Life - Just guessing

Mischief Makers - Just guessing

And for Nate....

Best:

Valkyria Chronicles - Played on stream bc of how much he loves it

KH2 - Nate loves KH, it would be super weird for the only KH game to appear be on the hate list

The Last of Us - Literally just played it

Chrono Trigger - Just a guess through reputation

HM64 - I’m p sure Nate mentioned liking the HM franchise so

Super Mario Sunshine - Just a guess, seems like the kinda game Nate would like

Worst:

Secret of Mana - All of these are just guesses tbh. I do vaguely think I remember him talking about not liking Dragon Age once tho

Dragon Age Origins

Super Metroid

Fable

L4D 2

Super Mario World

@jinjojess gave me a list of her top and bottom 6 games of all time. Can you organize them into the right categories? I’ve added mine below Jess’. Can you organize them into the correct categories?

Jess’:

Mine:

[jabbers-wild-world]

Hero In-Training: Ragnarok

Name: Loki Laevateinn

Hero Name: Ragnarok

Age: 18

Gender: Male

Occupation: Student (transfer from Iceland)

Quirk: Mischief-Maker

Quirk Description: By concentrating all energy in his hands, Loki can tap into the potential of any object he touches and change that potential energy into kinetic energy. As well, he has the option of instead using his own potential energy to create fire in his hands, but this has a more limited application.

Strengths: Loki is quick on his feet and very flexible and agile. He’s excellent at hand-to-hand combat, and can dodge most attacks if he knows they’re coming. He also has great balance and it’s difficult to knock him off his feet. He’s lightweight and clever as well.

Weaknesses: Being as lightweight as he is, Loki cannot actually take as much damage as some others, and once he’s hit, it takes him a little while to recover from the blow, which makes him vulnerable. As well, he has a limit to how many times he can use his own energy to create fire. If he pushes it too far, or doesn’t get a chance to even use any of the built up energy, it backfires on him and his hands and arms will spontaneously combust. Also, the more energy he uses, the more tired he gets.

Appearance: A relatively tall young man (though nowhere near as tall as his friends Balder and Thor), with silver-blue eyes and long red hair, Loki is actually very uniquely beautiful. He has an elegant and graceful form to his body type, and to his movements, and his features are similar, giving him an appearance almost like fabled elves or fae, complete with the pointed ears to match. He tends to dress in form-fitting shirts and comfortable pants, and a very over-sized black and purple jacket with large pockets. He comes across as the cute, playful type, but beware of his temper and possessiveness.

Trivia:

He has a signature move he calls ‘Jormungandr’, during which he uses the potential energy to manipulate any large rope or snake-like object, especially if it’s something he can pull up from under the ground, and uses it to strike very fast and heavy blows. Strongly recommended to watch your feet, please.

His Plus Ultra, though as of yet untapped, is called ‘World’s End’, and he can utilize an intense amount of potential energy from all around him to more or less create disastrous effects like earthquakes and fissures in the ground.

He has no family, but instead lives with Balder and Thor, after they saved his life and argued with their school’s principal to let him come back to school.

Balder and Thor’s caring for him is why he followed them when they transferred to UA.

He is an amazing singer, with a voice like a mythical siren, but he very rarely actually sings in front of anyone, even Balder and Thor haven’t heard him.

His favorite food is lamb stew.

He can’t cook, and often harasses Balder to cook for him. His puppy eyes are very hard to resist.

He loves to play pranks on others, especially the really startling ones. So just watch out for him. If you don’t see him anywhere, it’s a safe bet to assume he may be trying to sneak up on you.

He is nearly inseparable from Balder and Thor, and is very possessive of them. He doesn’t like when they talk to other people too much, especially if he doesn’t trust the person they’re talking to.

He has a scar behind his left ear from an incident when another student back home threw a rock at him.

He sleeps with a very ratty old stuffed wolf toy, but gets embarrassed and angry if anyone finds it and points it out to him.

[pastorhogg]

How a Hotshot New Yorker Found Jesus in Paraguay

Es complicado.

For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth.

—A. W. Tozer

Eden is 12 and a firm believer in a variety of mythological forest goblins. In particular, he detests the Pombéro, chief mischief-maker among the fabled Paraguayan creatures. People say the diminutive furry scamp steals chickens’ eggs, drinks cow udders dry, and generally upsets local farm animals. Leaving bottles of whiskey out at night supposedly appeases the nocturnal beast.

I consider letting my young friend continue to believe in these amusing cultural anecdotes, but my sense of duty as a Peace Corps volunteer and, therefore, arbiter of scientific fact, compels me to correct him.

“The Pombéro is a myth,” I explain in a mix of broken Guaraní and Spanish.

We are sitting outside the dilapidated shack I call home. Evening quiet has settled on Tuna, Ava’i, Caazapá, a rural village situated hours from any paved road. As the day’s stifling heat dissipates, it leaves a palpable somnolence.

Éden insists that the Pombéro’s counterpart, Kurupí, has impregnated a number of virgins. To Éden, their newborns are prima facie evidence of goblin tomfoolery.

I attempt to distinguish between myths and legends: Forest goblins are mitos, I explain. When real world people—such as local teenage mothers—are involved with mythic creatures, these stories are called leyendas. Neither are true, I say resolutely. The only way those girls got pregnant is from real men.

Obviously dissatisfied with my explanation, Éden says nothing for quite a while. ...

Continue reading...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://ift.tt/2nRj84h via IFTTT

[simondcox87]

How a Hotshot New Yorker Found Jesus in Paraguay

Es complicado.

For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth.

—A. W. Tozer

Eden is 12 and a firm believer in a variety of mythological forest goblins. In particular, he detests the Pombéro, chief mischief-maker among the fabled Paraguayan creatures. People say the diminutive furry scamp steals chickens’ eggs, drinks cow udders dry, and generally upsets local farm animals. Leaving bottles of whiskey out at night supposedly appeases the nocturnal beast.

I consider letting my young friend continue to believe in these amusing cultural anecdotes, but my sense of duty as a Peace Corps volunteer and, therefore, arbiter of scientific fact, compels me to correct him.

“The Pombéro is a myth,” I explain in a mix of broken Guaraní and Spanish.

We are sitting outside the dilapidated shack I call home. Evening quiet has settled on Tuna, Ava’i, Caazapá, a rural village situated hours from any paved road. As the day’s stifling heat dissipates, it leaves a palpable somnolence.

Éden insists that the Pombéro’s counterpart, Kurupí, has impregnated a number of virgins. To Éden, their newborns are prima facie evidence of goblin tomfoolery.

I attempt to distinguish between myths and legends: Forest goblins are mitos, I explain. When real world people—such as local teenage mothers—are involved with mythic creatures, these stories are called leyendas. Neither are true, I say resolutely. The only way those girls got pregnant is from real men.

Obviously dissatisfied with my explanation, Éden says nothing for quite a while. ...

Continue reading...

from http://feeds.christianitytoday.com/~r/christianitytoday/ctmag/~3/zpblsSlbDvs/how-hotshot-new-yorker-found-jesus-in-paraguay.html

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Chuck Berry and the Modernist Fable of “Johnny B. Goode”

Chuck Berry performing at the “Biggest Show of Stars For ’57” concert in Edmonton, Alberta (Richard G. Proctor Photography Limited fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, via Wikimedia Commons)

“Johnny B. Goode” is Chuck Berry’s two-and-a-half minute essay on the Machine in the Garden.

In The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, the cultural historian Leo Marx explores the philosophical tension between colonists’ visions of America as paradise regained — the Edenic idyll familiar from Edward Hicks’s folk painting, “Peaceable Kingdom” (ca 1833) — and the America of the Technological Sublime, a humming dynamo of technological progress and gadget worship.

For Marx, this dialectic is neatly summed up by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s encounter with industrial modernity on the morning of July 27, 1844. Hawthorne is musing idly in the Concord woods, where “sunshine glimmers through shadow, and shadow effaces sunshine, imaging that pleasant mood of mind where gaiety and pensiveness intermingle,” when the bucolic peace is shattered by the whistle of a nearby locomotive, a “long shriek, harsh, above all other harshness” that reminds the writer that civilization’s swarming anthill is not far off. With historical hindsight, we can hear it, too, as the annunciatory trumpet of the 20th century, just around the bend.

In “Johnny B. Goode” (1958), Berry zooms in with a camera eye, taking us “Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans /  way back up in the woods among the evergreens,” a setting that, if not exactly Arcadian, is at least rural. But the jackhammer chatter of the song’s opening riff lets us know the pastoral is past. Dragging the blues out of its “log cabin made of earth and wood,” Berry hitches it to the chugging of a steam engine’s driving wheels, leaving the languorous rhythms of Delta blues in the rear-view mirror. Unlike another African-American folk hero, John Henry, the steel-driving martyr to Luddism who beat the steam hammer but died of exhaustion, Johnny keeps pace with the passing locomotives, “strumming with the rhythm that the drivers made.”

Country blues is rubato, speeding up and slowing down in defiance of the metronome’s tick. Its elastic sense of time accommodates a song’s changing moods, but it also reflects the pace of life in the pre-industrial South, before the coming of the time clock and the assembly line, when most labor meant farm work, tied to the seasons and the rising and setting of the sun. By contrast, Berry’s machinelike rhythms are products of postwar America. His machine-gunned double stops — two strings played at once, slurred from one fret to the next — give revving engines a run for their money. His rhythm parts — the deathless “Chuck Berry chord,” a barre chord with a major sixth (and sometimes a flatted seventh) on top — hammer home their point with the staccato insistence of a locomotive piston. Spat out with rivet-gun speed and uniformity, Chuck Berry licks sound mass-produced, as if they were turned out on a Detroit assembly line.

Chuck Berry circa 1958 (via Wikimedia Commons)

As important, the masses can produce them: for decades, mastering the intro to “Johnny B. Goode” was a rite of passage for any aspiring guitar hero. And, in keeping with the Fordist logic of postwar manufacturing, Berry’s musical vocabulary is a kit of parts. His little widgets are modular, easily recombined into a seemingly endless series of musical assemblages, as Keith Richards and a wave of British invaders soon discovered.

“Someday your name will be in lights,” Johnny’s mother prophesies; we assume he’s bound for the big city, a trajectory Berry himself followed when he drove from St. Louis to Chicago, in 1955, to land a record deal with the legendary Chess label. “Johnny B. Goode” is rock’s earliest exercise in self-mythologization, a thinly veiled autobiographical fiction whose first draft starred “a colored boy named ‘Johnny B. Goode” who was “more or less myself,” admitted Berry, in his 1987 memoir, The Autobiography. Ever mindful of his crossover potential, Berry changed the lyric to “a country boy” because, he later claimed, “I thought it would seem biased to my white fans to say ‘colored boy.’” But his alter ego was still Berry, by any other name, and therefore still black, if only subtextually: Johnny owes his surname to Goode Avenue in St. Louis, the site of Berry’s childhood home.

At the same time, Johnny stands in for every African American who embarked on the Great Migration — the exodus, beginning in 1915, of millions of blacks from the rural, agrarian, Jim Crow South to the urban, industrial North, specifically to Chicago. The opening scene of “Johnny B. Goode” isn’t just a cinematic zoom-in on some backwoods Dogpatch; it’s a trip back in time as well, a fade-in on the antebellum South. “The gateway from freedom, I was led to understand, was somewhere ‘close to New Orleans’ where most Africans were sorted through and sold” into slavery, wrote Berry, in The Autobiography. “I’d been told my grandfather lived ‘back up in the woods among the evergreens’ in a log cabin. I revived the era with a story about a ‘colored boy named Johnny B. Goode.’”

At once exuberant and slyly ironizing, Berry’s songs are road trips through the American mythos. He saw things through W.E.B. Du Bois’s dark veil of race as it’s lived, and from the illusionless perspective of a sensitive, intensely private black man who grew up in a time when the threat of violence shadowed even the most mundane interactions between the races. Yet he lived to see his name in lights on the Fox Theater on Grand Avenue, in St. Louis, where the ticket-seller had told him, as an 11-year-old, that he couldn’t see A Tale of Two Cities because the Fox was a whites-only movie house. “You know you people can’t come in here,” he recalled her saying, in the documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’  Roll. (Was the irony of the title lost on the lady in the ticket booth? We’ll never know. It’s hard to imagine it was lost on someone who loved wordplay as much as Berry.)

He duck-walked the always fine and fraught line between black and white Americas with winking aplomb; his Trickster guile is on display in “Johnny,” in allusions that flew past white ears. In Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry, Bruce Pegg wonders if Johnny was another incarnation of the archetypal “man of the black masses with provincial concerns” who served, in Langston Hughes’s “Here to Yonder” column in the Chicago Defender, as a philosophical foil to the “educated black man with a more global perspective.” In a suggestive coincidence, Hughes’s countrified Everyman was named Jesse B. Simple.

As well, there are resonances, in the lyrics of “Johnny B. Goode,” with African-American history. In The Autobiography, Berry claims, in one of several versions  of the song’s origin story, that it was inspired by his first visit, in 1955, to New Orleans, “a place I’d longed to visit ever since hearing Muddy Waters’s lyrics, ‘Going down in Louisiana, way down behind the sun.’ That inspiration, combined with little bits of Dad’s stories and the thrill of seeing my black name posted all over town in one of the cities they brought the slaves through, turned into the song ‘Johnny B. Goode.’”

Chuck Berry performing at the Long Beach Blues Festival in 1997 (photo by Masahiro Sumori, via Wikimedia Commons)

But we can hear echoes, too, in that opening line, of the African-American folktale of the Signifying Monkey, an irreverent mischief-maker based on Esu, the Trickster figure of Yoruba myth. Like Berry himself, the Monkey is a master of signification, manipulating language to his own, wily ends. One rhyming version of the Signifying Monkey tale begins, “Deep down in the jungle so they say / there’s a signifying motherfucker down the way /  There hadn’t been no disturbin’ in the jungle for quite a bit / For up jumped the monkey in the tree one day and laughed / ‘I guess I’ll start some shit.’” Not coincidentally, Berry knew that version, and thought it “naughty and funny” but too obscene, obviously, for 1950s America.

“Johnny B. Goode” also testifies to black folks’ embrace of newborn technologies such as the electric guitar and amplifier, not to mention special effects like distortion, reverb, and electronic tremolo (taken to B-movie extremes by Bo Diddley, an inveterate tinkerer who designed his own jaw-dropping guitars — think Russian Constructivism with tail fins — and souped them up with homemade electronics). Berry was “completely fascinated,” he said, in his autobiography, by the reel-to-reel magnetic wire recorder he bought, early on. Hearing his playing mechanically reproduced profoundly altered his sense of his sound. “Historians of technology have usually characterized technological enthusiasm as a white male pastime,” Steve Waksman observes, in Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience. Berry’s “acquisition of the means to record himself and his professed fascination with these means certainly demonstrates a high level of interest in ways of shaping sound through electric technology.” “Johnny B. Goode,” Waksman speculates, may be the first song by an African-American guitarist to feature overdubbed guitar tracks.

In a broader sense,  “Johnny” speaks to black artists’ appropriation of the Modernist aesthetic, and their ability to drive flaming donuts around it, signifying the shit out of it, as the Monkey might say. In The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, Henry Louis Gates defines signifying, in the black vernacular sense, as the art of moving “freely between two discursive universes” — “the white linguistic realm,” Eurocentric and self-consciously literary, and a parallel black dimension that wrests the tool of language from the master’s hand and turns it to its own uses, be they political, playful, subversive, or outright seditious. Berry was a peerless Signifier, reveling in rhyme, alliteration, double entendre, mock grandiloquence, and playful neologisms (“As I was motorvatin’ over the hill…”).

Conceptually, his songs are wry snapshots of the American Scene in the 1950s; harmonized with Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) and Robert Frank’s The Americans (1958), they make interesting historical music. Berry was Pop before Warhol, Johns, and Rauschenberg were Pop. (When I hear “Back in the USA,” I always imagine it as the soundtrack to James Rosenquist’s “F-111.”). Later, in 1970, Jimi Hendrix would deconstruct “Johnny B. Goode” as he had “The Star-Spangled Banner,” reimagining Berry’s masterpiece of Pop miniaturism as an Abstract-Expressionist explosion of drips, smears, and lashes of sound.

In its moment, Berry’s music was thoroughly modern: jump-cutting, hyperkinetic, ironic, intertextual, infatuated with the bright, shiny surfaces of consumer culture, giddy with the pedal-to-the-metal acceleration of postwar America. Taken together, his ‘50s classics are a brown-eyed man’s road trip through a nation being transformed by technology and consumer culture — a psychogeography of a cultural landscape defined by the Mercury launches and the mushroom cloud, jet airliners and the Interstate Highway System, the arrival of TV and the invention of teen culture (which had Berry’s fingerprints all over it). “Johnny”’s refrain, “Go! Go!” is what Ezra Pound’s Modernist battle cry, “Make it new!” sounds like when it’s blown down the wind, the gleeful shout of a black man in a “yellow convertible four-door De Ville” with “a powerful motor with a jet off-take,” flooring it for the Promised Land.

The post Chuck Berry and the Modernist Fable of “Johnny B. Goode” appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[pastorhogg]

How a Hotshot New Yorker Found Jesus in Paraguay

How a Hotshot New Yorker Found Jesus in Paraguay

Es complicado. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth. —A. W. Tozer Eden is 12 and a firm believer in a variety of mythological forest goblins. In particular, he detests the Pombéro, chief mischief-maker among the fabled Paraguayan creatures. People say…