#TV characters are always magically more 'fit' than their characters ought to be!

[stellaluna33]

I might be the only person in the WORLD who would prefer to ignore AYITL Jess's muscular physique, and it's simply because I'd really rather imagine that he'd be spending his time doing less boring things than going to the gym. 😂😭

[septic-skele]

UF - Out of Reach

Summary: Classic and Blue have it good with their brothers. They make displays of love and affection look so easy. Red can’t help but feel bitter about it. He stands no chance of ever having anything like that with his boss.

Well, not with that attitude about it, Blue says.

Red couldn’t understand it. Logically he figured it was because Classic and Blue came from drastically different backgrounds. They weren’t living with eye sockets in the back of their heads or half-formed, sharpened bones under their pillows like he and Boss did. They were probably just as baffled about him and his behavior, but there was something Blue had said once that wouldn’t leave his mind.

Red had walked in on a private moment and for reasons beyond him, he hadn’t taken a hasty shortcut back out. He stopped and stared and couldn’t help being taken aback when he saw Blue cradling his Papyrus’ skull against his shoulder, murmuring comforts to him. Red had never seen that casual, laidback Papyrus so drunk, weak and vulnerable, much less Blue so solemn.

“I love you, Papy,” he soothed. “I’d love you no matter the ‘reset’, whatever that may be—no matter the world, no matter the universe. A good, proper Sans would never give up on his brother, and I am just that.”

Good, proper. Red had no illusions of propriety but the idea of it nagged and frustrated him. Any time he had tried to console Papyrus in recent memory, it had ended with all the wrong things being said and door hinges buckling under the strain of being slammed.

Red already knew what Blue would say if he heard of this. “You can always try again! I believe in you, pal! You simply need to persevere! You’ll get through to him, I know it!” Disgusting.

The worst part of it, however, was that even Classic did it better than he could. Classic—depressed, cynical, apathetic, a liar to Papyrus’ face more often than not—still loved his brother better.

Somehow the six of them had survived a night in together, though the argument over the TV remote had almost come to blows and the throw pillows may have sacrificed some of their stuffing. Now that they were all retiring, Red wandered down the hall to hear strains of Classic’s voice from one of the nearby bedrooms. He didn’t sound anything like the blasé character Red usually knew; he was lighter, actually putting effort into this.

“…Peekaboo had become a game of hide-and-seek! Where could her friends have gone? Fluffy Bunny wondered, bounding across the green, green field to look for them. She searched high! She searched low!”

“She searched near and far,” Papyrus chimed in.

“You bet she did. She searched east and west, under rocks and up in trees. But Fluffy Bunny couldn’t find her friends anywhere! Wherever could they be?”

Maybe they ditched her for wantin’ to play such stupid games, Red mused with a snort, although as Classic continued he was distracted by an old, old memory fluttering forth.

He had spent hours poring over the dump, fishing out as many old, damaged books as he could find. Drained and shivering, he’d lugged them back to the nook where he’d left Papyrus, safely out of sight. Before he could find sleep, Papyrus had thrown himself over Red’s back and pitched a fit about learning how to read.

“Show me, brother! I want to do it like you do, I want to try! It doesn’t have to be the long one! Just show me how, please! Please, please, please, plea-a-a-ase!”

Red had capitulated only because he didn’t want the tantrum to draw unwanted attention, but that wasn’t the part that stuck with him. Papyrus had curled up against him, half-tucked under his coat, watching him trace letters with intent focus. As he haltingly sounded out the words, every small success made him light up like a star, clutching eagerly at Red’s ribs for his approval.

“Did you see that, Sans?! Did you hear me?! I did it!”

“Yeah, yeah. Pipe down, kid, I saw. Nice one.”

Red’s opinion and praise had still meant something to Papyrus back then. Stars, he was still willing to cuddle with him, despite the filth and the damp clinging to his clothes from the river.

Had Boss ever really been that hopeful, clingy little baby bones or was Red trying to convince himself that was how it had happened? It was so long ago. Pap could have just fished those books out and taught himself while Sans was away, trying to find work. That sounded far more likely.

“G’night, bro,” Classic concluded, sliding the book onto the nightstand and giving his Papyrus an affectionate squeeze of the hand.

Balking, Red ducked back toward the stairs before he could be found snooping, all too well aware of what Boss might do if he ever dared reach out that way. He’d probably end up losing a few fingers.

It wasn’t fair, something small and spiteful in the back of his mind huffed. The idea nearly made him miss one of the steps, torn between shock and scornful amusement. Since when had fairness ever been part of the equation? If things were fair…

If things were fair, they would probably look a lot like the scene he had just left, as well as the scene he was walking into now. Blue perched prim and proper on the end of the couch, surfing idly through channels. His brother was stretched across the rest of the cushions, head propped against Blue’s lap, swaddled up in blankets, the whole nine yards.

Jerks. They were intent on showing off now; they knew exactly how good they had it. Sparks of irrational anger crackled along Red's jaw and spine. If he had something immediately on hand to hurl at them, he would have, but he had already shucked off his boots and summoning a bone would be a waste of magic.

“Edgy me?” Blue called in a faux whisper, making him tense. “I would have thought you’d be asleep already.”

“Yeah, well, it’s kinda hard to rest easy with Classic jabbering on about fluffy bunnies through the wall!” Red snarked, louder and sharper than necessary. He took little satisfaction in the way Blue winced, resting a hand on Papy’s skull as if to muffle the noise.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” So genteel, so polite, he still offered an inviting smile. “If you’d care to come and join us, any of the chairs from the dinner table are free! Mweheh, I honestly have no idea how Papy sleeps like this; the side I sit on is the only one without mangled, broken springs. It’s probably all of his tossing and turning that’s done it. I’ve been meaning to get them repaired, but he hardly ever leaves the couch to let me at it! He really ought to—”

“Shut up already, would’ja? I don’t care! Besides—Tch, wouldn’t want to interrupt your cute little ‘brother bonding’ time.”

“Oh, no, y-you’re not interrupting anything! Did I imply that somehow? I’m sorry! If you want part of the couch, I can wake him and ask him to scoot over—”

“How d’you make it look so easy?” It broke free before Red could fully comprehend how irrational it would be to ask. Jaw clenching so tightly that his teeth squeaked, he drew back from his own brash demand. Blue tilted his head.

“I’m sorry?” That counted three times in this conversation that he’d apologized for nothing. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

He should have retreated. He should have spat, “Never mind!” and transported to his room to seethe in privacy. Instead his foolish, fat mouth blundered on. “How d’you get him to do that?” He threw an irritated gesture at the sleeping lump on his lap. “How d’you make him…relax, with you there? It’s as if he likes having you around!”

Even that was saying too much and yet just enough. Realization dawned in Blue’s eyes, followed by—oh, stars, there was pity.

“Well, I…I’m not really sure. If there are no other comfortable surfaces around for him while he sleeps, I’m happy to help! The last thing he needs is a cramp in his neck. Heh, I’m not tall enough to fix that for him so why not try to prevent it entirely? We’ve huddled up ever since we were baby bones; it’s always been this way.”

Of course. Cheekbones flaming, Red ducked his head. They never had raging fights that lasted until dawn (or until they started losing their voices, whichever came first.) Blue and Stretch had it all sorted out from birth, cozy and coddled.

“…Papy always caught cold too easily. I’d make up some rather impressive beds for him with grass and water sausages so he wouldn’t have to sleep on the rock, but the dew would leave him shivering all night! I couldn’t let that stand! Those chattering teeth of his kept me awake too so I made the noble sacrifice and slept on the damp side while he nestled up to me.” Blue chuckled, an uncharacteristic note of something laced through it. “With our two shirts tucked together, we could almost imagine a full hoodie like he has now!”

“Wh—You? That’s rich.” That was decidedly not what Red had been picturing as a life that could spit out someone as sickeningly sweet as Blue. “You’re not tellin’ me you two were homeless.”

“I preferred to think of us as explorers!” Blue corrected. “I told Papy that we were on an adventure to find the perfect place for a new start. We experienced all that the Underground had to offer a couple of wandering baby bones: scavenging, hide-and-seek, games of chase with older monsters, who were rather poor sports when they couldn’t catch us. I grew strong and magnificent thanks to all of that exercise and my brother…well, he tried very hard!”

Red shuffled uncomfortably in place. Funny, how familiar all of those experiences sounded—but from someone else’s mouth?

“Then Papy fell terribly ill. He was poisoned, in fact. It was the first time I really wondered if I’d lose him.” Ignoring how Red startled, Blue glanced pensively down at his snoring brother, smoothing his fingers more gently over his skull. “It may have been an accident, but I was responsible for his safety; I should have been paying closer attention. In part it was my fault.”

“And he…forgave you for that?” An accident like that, caused by a slip in Sans’ attention, could probably get him disowned.

“On the contrary, he blamed himself! He blames himself for a great many things and he thinks most of them can’t be helped. I try, I always try to help. What’s infuriating is that he acts as if he doesn’t deserve it. Despite what you may think, there are plenty of times he doesn’t want me around. He shuts down, he pushes me away, he tells me I’m wasting my time.”

Red’s eyelights flicked off.

“Shut up, Sans. I don’t want to discuss it.”

“You idiot! Get away from me!”

“Useless. What a waste of time.”

“I think he’s scared of what might happen if he lets his guard down…Perhaps he thinks I’m not strong enough to face whatever is underneath,” Blue continued. “Perhaps he thinks that if he lets me too close, it will be the thing to drive me away for good. Nevertheless! With time and patience, I know I’ll convince him.”

“But how?! How am I supposed to—I mean, how do you keep trying when it never does any good?”

“It does do some good, I’m sure of it! I keep pushing to help him so he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that I won’t be driven away so easily. Maybe Papy just isn’t ready to show me the good it’s done yet. He has to learn to trust himself before he can trust me, but he can never say that I don’t care about him. I’ll show love to every part of him, even the bad, and it will be an influence for the better. I will break down those barriers!” Blue concluded with a fiercer grin.

A good Sans would never give up on his brother.

“Doesn’t it…suck?” Red ground out, hoping it wouldn’t be interpreted as an admission of weakness. Doesn’t it hurt? “When he shuts you out all the time?”

“Of course. I never said it was an easy task but it’s not within me to accept defeat!” Blue stopped up short then, holding his breath as Papyrus shifted against him. Neither Red nor Blue had been particularly careful about their volume.

After a few moments of adjustment, Stretch settled deeper into his blankets with a sleepy hum of contentment. Blue softened, eyelights aglow with such fondness that Red could almost feel a ripple of it in the air between them. It made his soul turn.

“He’s my only brother. We only have each other in the end. Isn’t that worth the effort?”

_____________________________________

If Red hadn’t been passing his boss’s room at precisely the right moment, he never would have heard it: a string of low, ragged gasps, followed by a rumble that could have been a groan or a growl. Sans grimaced at the sound, already aware of what was happening. Boss never made noise in his sleep unless he was injured, pain slipping through the cracks of his subconscious, or he was fighting a nightmare. Seeing as the last few days had been highly uneventful, it would be the latter.

Welp, that’s his problem. I’m not about to get impaled ’cause he mistakes me for his sleep paralysis demon.

That was habit speaking. Better reasoning caught him a few steps later, slowing him to a halt.

It would be easy to swan off, mind his own business and let Papyrus suffer on his own. It would have been easy to do it years ago too, when Pap was nothing but a scrawny baby bones who couldn’t have done anything about it.

If he hadn’t then, why should he now? It was Boss’s shouts in the morning that often woke him from dark dreams…He could return the favor and feel less indebted to him for it.

It was only fair.

Cursing his newly planted seed of a conscience, Sans pivoted with great difficulty and kicked a foot at the door with a small thump. No answer. He kicked again. The gruff breaths from within quickened.

“…Boss?” he ventured, clearing his throat roughly. “Hey. Boss.” Belatedly he realized that he had no proper excuse ready if Papyrus awoke and asked what he wanted. That might not go over well, but the circumstances were making it hard to focus. Those strangled groans were slowly but surely chipping away his first instinct of self-preservation.

He was definitely going to get impaled. One shot, -9999 damage and his life would be over, all for an attempt to be considerate, but he could hear it now in Papyrus’ voice. There was a scared little brat trapped inside the intimidating commander and that brat clearly still needed a big brother to drag him out of trouble.

Steeled for his impending doom, Sans jostled open the door. “Boss,” he began again as he poked his head in. “You’re makin’ noise, alright? You gotta—Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s not good—”

Papyrus was a writhing, tangled mess in his blankets, some already torn where his claws had caught. Sweat and magic bled down his face, eye sockets sputtering and smoking in a flurry of colors as he choked for traction to cry out.

“Ngnnh—No, no—stop!”

“Boss?!” Sans stammered, surging forward. Of their own volition his hands got busy, dragging at the blankets to rend them free of Papyrus’ kicking legs. “Bro, hey! It’s okay, it’s just a dream!”

From there it must have only been a few seconds but to Sans it felt like an eternity before Papyrus lurched upright, already scrambling. He didn’t lunge to attack as Sans had expected but recoiled; it was only when he smacked his skull against the wall behind him that he came to a lurching stop.

“I-It’s just me, Pap,” Sans stated cautiously. He wouldn’t have dared use the old nickname under any other circumstances, but it seemed to clear some of the wild haze in his brother’s eyes. It took a beat for him to formulate an appropriate response.

“Get out,” he rasped. It didn’t hold a candle to its usual bite. He was still panting, disoriented. “What are you doing here?”

Which d’you want, an answer or me getting out? “I heard you…Well, I didn’t know if somethin’ was up. Maybe someone…broke in or somethin’, trying to get to you.”

“Oh?” Shoulders shuddering in what could barely be masked as a laugh, Papyrus shook his head minutely. “And what could you do to save me? L-Look at you. You’re not even armed.”

“And look who didn’t even wake up when I barged in here! The big, bad boss could’ve gotten killed in his sleep because he was too busy cryin’ like a—” By the greatest restraint he cut himself off, foreseeing how that would be received, but he’d said enough already.

“Get. Out,” Papyrus snarled, rediscovering vitriol enough for Sans to cringe.

“Sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Get out, you fool, this instant, or I’ll—!”

“I’m sorry, okay? I was worried!” That word felt taboo aloud. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright and you weren’t so I stayed to help.”

“There’s nothing you can do here, Sans; as always, you—you prove to be utterly inadequate! Your best course of action will be to close the door behind you.” Judging by the way his chin jutted out, he was clearly expecting that to be the last word.

“…No.” Tossing the blanket’s edge back to the floor, Sans squared up. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.” The incredulity that flashed in Pap’s eyes should have cowed him but he had resigned himself to that already at the door. “I’m not just gonna leave you here, all jittery and crunched up against the wall. I can’t leave you like this. You’re not fine and I know if I try to say somethin’ to make it better, I’ll screw it up. Like you said, I always do. So let’s just skip that part where I do it wrong and get to the bit where you tell me what you need. What d’you need to feel better and get back to sleep okay?”

The following silence caught him off guard. Papyrus was never at a loss for further scathing remarks so why was he just staring at him? Moreover, where had his anger gone? He looked smaller without it, less like the Great and Terrible Papyrus and more like…

Papyrus. Red’s only brother. Hunched down, hands fisted into the mattress, micro-tremors trailing down his ribs as he breathed, he looked exhausted.

A minute passed. Maybe it was two.

Sans fidgeted, his nerve failing. “Boss, listen, I—”

“Tea,” he muttered, hooded eyes darting away. “If you really want to make yourself useful.” Sans hadn’t expected his soul to fill his throat at that response; something must have shown in his face, as Papyrus’ next grumble was even quieter. “You’re acting uncharacteristically generous with your work ethic. Why would I pass up this opportunity to make you work in the kitchen for once?”

Sans felt oddly light at the words as he nodded, turning for the door. “Gotcha.” He had never thought this day would come. For once in his life, he saw doing more work as a victory.

If it did some small modicum of good, if it made one miniscule chip in those walls between them, it would be worth the effort.

[fictionadventurer]

Don’t let it go to your head + Man from UNCLE? (Or whichever fandom you prefer) for the prompt meme?

I really did intend to try to write something for this fandom. But I haven’t seen any episodes of the TV show in years, and I’ve never seen the movie (which I suspect is the fandom you’re referring to, so the TV characterizations probably wouldn’t hold much appeal for you anyhow). I wasn’t confident enough in my grasp of the material to come up with any decent drabbles.

I then tried to think of similar fandoms, or any fandoms at all, that would fit the prompt, but my brain was contrary and decided to use it as a spark for a scene from one of my original universes. Well, two, technically. I have characters from my long-abandoned non-magical fantasy romance, A Beautiful Tomorrow, and this drabble’s a bit of an experiment in switching up their story and moving into my Starfall universe (though the Starfall portion of it doesn’t really factor into this scene).

So even though it’s not fanfiction, it’s a little bit like fanfiction for my own characters, and I’ve been sitting on this prompt so long that I’m overdue to do something with it. I hope it’s not thoroughly disappointing.

Interior Worlds

Snowflakes drifted like daytime stardust beyond the schoolroom window. Daniela rested her head against the glass to watch it fall. She could take a moment to relax. Her student was absorbed in her geography text, attentive to the lesson for once. Even in exile, Lucia preferred tales of far-off lands to facts about her homeland.

Something moved in the faint reflection of the glass. A shadow darkened the schoolroom door.

Daniela bolted upright. Hoops clattered against the wall as she straightened her skirts. She patted down the flyaway strands in her hair, even as the more rational part of her mind told her it was unnecessary. Even though Prince Alessandro couldn’t see her hair, Daniela couldn’t shake the conviction that he would know.

He, as usual, looked as pristine as an oil painting, the pleats of his trousers and jacket crisp, every hair in place. His unfocused eyes seemed to see everything, including Daniela’s inattention to duty.

Daniela breathed deeply, steeled her spine, and gave a curtsy that would have made the Countess proud. “Good morning, your highness.”

He acknowledged her with a stiff nod. “Good morning, Miss Decardi. I hope I’m not intruding?”

Though he spoke it as a question, it had the effect of a command. He couldn’t be intruding when it was his house, his sister, and his employee, and it was her duty to accommodate him. “Not at all, your highness.” She was proud of the steadiness of her tone. She was ever amazed at how social training could cover fear and anxiety. “Lucia is finishing her geography lesson.”

He nodded and strode into the room, his cane lightly sweeping before his feet. “How does she progress?”

“Very well, your highness.”

Lucia lit up brighter than a star lamp and bounced up from her seat. She rushed to his side and led him toward the wooden chair next to the standing globe. “I know all the capitals!”

His eyebrows rose. “All the capitals?”

Lucia helped him into the chair with the patient confidence of a nurse three times her age. “All the important ones.”

Daniela explained, “She has learned to identify all the major cities of the western nations.”

Would it be enough? He’d made it very clear that Lucia’s accomplishments were her responsibility, but she had needed to take extra time to frame the lessons in a way that captured Lucia’s attention…

The barest of smiles softened the sharp lines of Alessandro’s face. “An excellent accomplishment,” he told Lucia. “But don’t let it go to your head. There’s much more of the world to learn.”

“I know,” Lucia said, with the enthusiasm of an explorer.

“By the time you come of age,” Alessandro said seriously, “you ought to be able to label a globe blindfolded.”

Daniela’s stomach twisted at the reminder of the prince’s astronomically high expectations.

Lucia only laughed. “Even you can’t do that, Sandro.”

His shoulders and spine straightened. “You think I can’t?” He lifted a hand to the standing globe beside him and turned it until his hand covered the entire Western continent. He pointed at nations. “Alsperra, Corlant, Myraldia, Ephros, Dartan.”

Lucia laughed. “You’re just guessing.”

“Am I right?”

“So far. But that’s the easy part.” She twisted the globe and planted his finger in the middle of the broad Eastern Expanse. “What’s here?”

He brushed his other hand over the surrounding patch of the globe. “The Espiren Mountains.”

“What country?” she demanded, unimpressed.

“It goes without saying that they’re in the western portion of Poresti.”

She twisted the globe again. “What’s here?”

“The Feshrin Peninsula.”

“Here?”

“The Midnight Islands.”

“How about here?”

“Well, now we’re just in the middle of the Avrian Ocean.”

She released his hand and threw her own into the air. “How are you doing that?”

His eyes, blank as they were, sparkled with mischief. “What do you think I did as a boy?” he asked. “I forsook all sleep and leisure, memorizing this globe so I could one day astound you with my geographical wizardry.”

“You’re cheating!” The accusation was half amusement and half outrage. Lucia looked toward Daniela. “Miss Decardi, how is he cheating?”

Daniela only shook her head in amazement. The globe included topographical definition, and most of the places Lucia had pinpointed were geographically distinct, but his quick, confident answers were still impressive. “I don’t believe he is,” she said.

Alessandro’s smile was as bright as the sun through a storm cloud, and just as startling. “Thank you, Miss Decardi. I knew I could trust your academic honesty.”

The words left her dumbfounded. Not what he’d said, but how he’d said it. It was like he’d transformed into a different person. Always, he’d been the meticulously polite prince, the exacting employer. But now, he was speaking to her, with genuine warmth rather than polite formality. As if some dividing veil had been pushed aside and she was seeing something of the man beneath.

She was surprised to find herself returning the smile.  “Always glad to be of service, your highness.”

Lucia seized Alessandro’s hand again, and the game continued. He identified seven more nations, three mountain ranges and two archipelagos before he finally stumbled over a collection of nations in the southern hemisphere.

“It’s not Efzi!” Lucia cried triumphantly. “It’s Falni!”

“I think not.” He brushed a finger of his other hand over the flat surface to the nation’s left. “It’s a coastal nation.”

“It’s on the...” Lucia peered at writing on the land mass. “The Efni Flats.”

He lifted his head. “Miss Decardi, does she tell the truth?”

“I’m afraid she does, your highness.”

Alessandro withdrew his hand from the globe. “It wasn’t a fair test,” he told Lucia. “You turned the globe upside down. It doesn’t count.”

Lucia said, “That wasn’t in the rules!”

“We never defined the rules.”

The quarrel continued, with no real hostility. The answer didn’t matter so much as the contest and the camaraderie. Daniela had never seen either of them so at ease. Their lives had been painted by sorrow, weighed down by war, but here and now, they were a brother and sister caught up in silly games. Daniela thought she finally understood how Lucia could be fond of her brother. This was the man she’d always been able to see; this was what they brought out in each other.

Finally, Alessandro settled back in his chair. “If I made a mistake,” he conceded, “it means only that you have opportunity to surpass me. I still expect you to make a diligent study of geography.”

“I will,” Lucia said, then seized his hand. “I’ll bet you can’t get another one.”

He withdrew his hand from her grasp. “Unless I was very much misled, I graduated the schoolroom long ago. It would be rude of me to take you from your tutor any longer.”

Lucia turned pleading eyes toward Daniela. “Miss Decardi, don’t make him leave! I was learning geography, really!”

Alessandro began to rise from his chair. “I did not intend to distract your student. The schoolroom is your domain, and I apologize for taking your...”

“No. Please. Stay.”

The words escaped before Daniela had time to consider them. When she’d spoken them, she wasn’t sure what was more shocking—that she’d interrupted the prince, that she’d contradicted him, or that she truly did want him to stay.

She used every lesson in deportment she’d ever received to gather up her confidence and courage, then added, “It is an unorthodox lesson, but an engaging one, and Lucia enjoys it. If it pleases your highness, you may stay as long as you desire.”

The prince laughed. “Very well,” he said. “If the ever-proper Miss Decardi is willing to indulge this folly, who am I to protest?” He sat back in his seat. “But you must be willing to be judge of this contest.”

Daniela smiled at him—even if he couldn’t see it, he’d know. “Gladly, your highness.”

[randomkposts]

Favorite FFIV WMG’s (from TV tropes)

Ffvi WMG Celes and Maria are really the same person. Celes apparently looks exactly like Maria, sounds exactly like Maria, and is able to sing opera well enough to pose as Maria. Further, the real Maria never shows up, and nobody claims to have even heard from her while Celes is with your party. Celes agrees to the impersonation plan rather quickly, after seeming to resist for all of a few seconds. Opera isn't something a beginner can just take up and instantly master. Also, it's unheard-of for one opera singer to sound exactly like another, even when they have the same range and type of voice. To be able to perform that well during the opera scene, Celes must really be a professional opera singer with years of training. Due to her genetic augmentation and magitek infusions, Celes may not have needed much combat training to perform her military duties, which may have allowed her enough free time during her off-duty hours to pursue a secondary career as an opera singer. Perhaps she has a teleport spell that lets her get to and from the opera house quickly. But she may be embarrassed about her passion for opera, fearing it may clash with the "tough chick" image she tries to project among her military comrades, so she hides this side of herself by taking on a different name and pretending to be someone else. Out of my head, boy! Strangely enough, she does have a secret teleport spell she doesn't tell people about: When Kefka catches up with the party under the magitek factory, she teleports away with him. Needless to say, she doesn't have this power when she's under your control, so she must be keeping it secret for some reason. WMG Banon and Duncan were the same person. Think about it, we get no backstory for Banon, none at all. And he and Duncan share the same sprite, Duncan just has a different color palette. Sure, you could chalk it up to being lazy, but remember that when Edgar was using the alias Gerad, he used the same sprite as normal with a different color palette. So why not pull the same trick with Duncan and Banon, use the same sprite but different palettes to hint they're the same guy? Think about it, if they were the same person, then Duncan would easily be found by the Empire as a famous martial arts master. So he makes up an alias, and whenever the Returners refer to their leader, they use his alias "Banon" to keep his identity secret. When Vargas "killed" Duncan, he took the chance to drop out of sight and devote his full energy to the Returners - remember that the timeframe when Vargas killed Duncan more or less lines up with Locke rescuing Terra, so if we assume he sent word to Banon of this young woman who could use magic, it makes sense Duncan would use the "death" excuse to vanish and take on the Banon persona full-time. This is why Banon vanishes in Vector when the Floating Continent rises, he's going back to hide under the Duncan persona again. This is also why, despite the fact he's supposedly alive the whole time, we never see Duncan in the World of Balance - because we do see him, as Banon. This would also explain Banon's Pray/Health ability which seems to be magic, Duncan would naturally have the ability to harness the same type of energy that powers Sabin's Blitzes. But then why doesn't Sabin say anything? Simple - he knew, he was in on it. Being that Terra never knew who Duncan was it would make no sense to point it out to her. The people who ought to have been told Duncan was Banon knew, and the people who didn't need to know weren't told. Even Duncan's wife mentioning he's dead fits in with the idea, she either didn't know about his double life or did know and lied to people to keep up the charade. That's actually not a bad theory. When you meet Duncan in the World of Ruin, he doesn't say a word about Vargas, even though that was a far more obvious reason for him to be dead than the End of the World as We Know It. That also explains something that has always bugged me a bit, why Sabin was immediately accepted as part of the returners. Locke and Edgar had already been shown to be members, Terra being recruited is part of the story but Sabin just seems to be along for the ride for no real reason. If he was already secretly a member already then there would be no reason to try and recruit him. Sabin is probably along for the ride because he's a capable fighter, and Edgar's brother. That, or the fact that Sabin was the most distraught when his father died, poisoned by the Empire, so he'd probably be part of the Returners anyway if he knew about them. Assuming Duncan is Banon, if Sabin ever told Duncan why he ran away, then Duncan might recruit him into the Returners and make sure he knew about the Banon alias. This theory has a tangential yet interesting implication: Was Vargas really Duncan's son? An argument against this would be that Banon betrays no hint that his son just died; shouldn't he be in grief? Yes, but neither do his parents. You can speak to both his mother throughout the game and his father later in it, and neither of them have a single word to say about the death (or even the existence) of their child. The only way I can see to explain that are that Vargus, being an uncontrollably antagonistic psychopath who kills (or claims to kill) his own father over a snub, without any display of remorse or guilt, was so awful a person that even his own parents wouldn't acknowledge him (perhaps politely expressed by his father in the form of shunning Vargas in favor of Sabin). Which *whew* would explain why Banon expresses no reaction about the death of 'Duncan's' son. Maybe he even feels relief inside. Or, 2: There's some stupidly convoluted scenario involving Duncan lying to Vargas about being his father. I prefer the first idea. The World of Balance has continental drift margins. At the western edge of the western-most continent, and at the eastern edge of the eastern-most continent, the shapes of the lands are such that they just about fit together, like South America with Africa. Chalk that one up to the original War of the Magi. The world before that might well have been one prosperous continent that was subsequently split apart and reduced to a barren wasteland. (Fridge Brilliance moment...) I hadn't actually thought of the drift being that recent, but it makes perfect sense. That opens awesome possibilities for the layout of the pre-Magi world map. Kefka is Baram. Kefka grew up in a crappy orphanage, where he learned to steal and fight to survive. As he grows up, he is noticed by someone in the Empire, and is taken in to become a soldier. He grows up more and becomes a general, etc etc. When the Espers were discovered, he was prepared to become the first Magitek knight. However, it seems unlikely that Cid and the Emperor Geshtal hadn't experimented at all before trying it on one of the best soldiers, so they probably tried weaker Espers on weak animals or criminals, and Kefka got to see the results, which were likely filled with Body Horror and insanity. The esper he was to be infused with was also probably out of control. It freaked him out badly and he ran away, hoping to escape the experiment. Government propaganda covered his escape as him going on a mission or something. Kefka drew upon his past experience of thieving and fighting, and became a robber with the name of Baram. He met Clyde, etc etc., until he gets injured. He begs to be killed, because he remembers what the Esper infusions did to the subjects, and wants to escape that fate. Clyde leaves him behind, and he gets brought to the Empire, where he is forced to become a Magitek knight. His anger and feelings of betrayal are amplified by the Esper's anger, causing him to snap and become permanently hate filled and angry, as well as insane. Also, both Baram and Kefka lose self-control when they see their blood: Baram breaks down when he's injured, and Kefka goes berserk when Celes stabs him. note I know this reads like bad fanfiction, and I got the idea from a Youtube comment, but I don't think this has too much fridge logic. So Shadow tried to make amends by finishing Kefka/Baram off on the floating continent? Interesting theory. That... is disturbingly plausible. I have to admit, I don't favor this theory and even I have to say it's surprisingly plausible. Good job. Madeline is the most badass character in the game She made it through the Cave to the Sealed Gate, apparently alone and without weapons, certainly without magic, and somehow opened the gate to the Esper realm and got inside, something that on the two other occasions it is down needs the magic force of multiple Espers to be done. Even the Espers don't know how she managed to get into their realm, so clearly her ability surpasses even them. It's fortunate for the Empire Madeline isn't a playable character or she'd probably be able to take out the Guardian and storm the palace on her own. CID : Designated Good Adopted Grandparent: Cid. After his esper infusion process turned Kefka into what he is, he tweaks the process and then runs it on the child he has been entrusted to raise, which is to say Celes. Maybe he tested it on some more folks before he did it to her, maybe he didn't, but she was certainly too young to give any kind of meaningful consent to the procedure. After that he let her be raised as a Child Soldier. But nobody ever calls him out for this particular ethical shiner. There's also the fact that he researched the detained espers (a process that left Ifrit and Shiva near death) in the first place. The only regret he seems to feel is that his discoveries were misused; he's perfectly content with what he had to do to make them. It might be that the only reason that he was entrusted with Celes' care was because Emperor Gestahl told him run the process on her. In that case the fact that Cid treated her as a child instead of a test subject is to his credit, not that it excuses him being involved in the research in the first place. Nobody may call Cid out for it, but he does express regret himself, saying that there's no excuse for what he's done to the Espers, or for what he's made out of Celes's life.

Ffvi Wmgs

What if all the rentals had a cover outside of their job, and Celes is Maria

[sugarbabywenkexing]

@veliseraptor tagged me in the “I Should Have Read That” meme, so here we go.

This is reminding me that I should maybe actually write down my TBR, rather than just assuming I'll remember everything.

A book that a certain friend is always telling you to read:

1984 is the first one that comes to mind. I read and enjoyed Brave New World, so I don't know why I haven't got around to it yet, but sometimes we don't do things sensibly.

A book that’s been on your TBR forever and yet you still haven’t picked it up:

Probably The Iliad and The Odyssey? I definitely want to get onto them at some point, but I've not fit anything classical in yet.

A book in a series you’ve started, but haven’t finished yet: 

House of Niccolo is the big ongoing one at the moment, but I'm also partway through Shades of Magic and Rebel of the Sands. Oh, and the Vorkosigan Saga. And All The Wrong Questions.

I'm in the middle of a lot of series.

A classic you’ve always liked the sound of, but never actually read:

Sherlock Holmes. I've read A Study in Scarlet, but I really need to read the short stories at some point.

A popular book that it seems everyone but you has read:

Despite having read the other five Austen novels, I haven't read Sense and Sensibility and I really probably ought to.

A book that inspired a film/TV adaptation that you really love, but you just haven’t read it yet:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (the old one with Alec Guinness). The same with The Night Manager, actually. And Funeral in Berlin, although I have read The Ipcress File.

Let's put it this way, maybe I should read more spy novels.

A book you see all over Instagram Tumblr but haven’t picked up yet: (I'm keeping Tumblr because I don't use Instagram)

I started reading A Song of Ice and Fire about ten years ago and got partway into book one before deciding it was way too dark for me at the time. Now I'm thinking it can't be as bad as Pawn in Frankincense so maybe I should give it another go.

Six of Crows, too. Fantasy heist with interesting characters definitely seems like my cup of tea.

I don't know who to tag, so let's go for @funforahermit @vassarve @raelis1 @starblr85 but please feel free to do it if I haven't tagged you, or not do it if I have.

[notesofarichlycolorednight]

I have the headcanon that Luke is a Venus Legacy. She's very important in the Roman mythology. And there's more: he has the power to redirect Aphrodite/Venus magic,like firebenders can redirect lightning (very risky and a bit difficult, though). Okay, I'm so obsessed with those headcanons that I can't believe May to be totally mortal. On the top of that,Luke seems to be way above his siblings in power and skill,and we all know that mortals aren't much in Percy Jackson,with the exception of...

Continued. With the exception of Sally,Rachel, perhaps Frederick and Paul(that doesn’t bother me, though. I have (little more than) a bit of bias against the badass normal trope,in most cases. They want to pass them as everymen with cleverness,but I can’t buy someone like Ty Lee as an everywoman. Sokka is great, though). Frank is way more powerful than even Clarisse, despite his lack of experience. Is May that much of an snowflake to have a powerful demigod from an ordinary god?

Continued. Or is she a legacy? Okay,Luke is probably a perfectionist workaholic,so he gets the credit. But being strong enough to get to host Kronos’ essence? Sorry about the length and the anti badass normal rant.

BTW,I love your prankster/mischievous Luke Castellan. I usually am not fond of that kind of headcanon for him,since fandom usually makes him too much like Travis and Connor,and Luke is very different from his brothers (Percy himself even lampshades it). Besides,the whole “silent mischief” fits his personality better,IMO. Luke didn’t come across as a loud guy to me,and he seems to act responsible most of time(for good and for bad, though). 💗💓💝💓💓💓💓

hi there! thanks for being patient with me on this. been busy ;_;

under cut bc it got longer than i was expecting

i really like this idea that May is a legacy. it’s interesting you pick Venus, but given how good-looking Luke was described as and how charming (tho, that could reasonably come from Hermes bc con-ppl are often charming) it makes sense

not to mention, as you say Luke did seem more powerful than most other demigods, being able to take on the curse of Achilles, hosting Kronos, not to mention holding up the sky for however long he did. i think it was Chiron who mentioned that only the greatest heroes are able to hold up the sky, but Luke was so clearly on the wrong side, and Percy even notices that in the books, but it’s like…never explained???

so for him to have more than just half godly blood in his system would make a lot more sense than the “it’s complicated” explanation we’re given in canon

i really like that hc that he can redirect Venus magic (my mind first went to charmspeak) but that it’s difficult and dangerous. like it’s such a cool concept, tho i’m not sure how much it applies to Luke? like maybe that’s a skill that any child or legacy of Aphrodite/Venus would have, but Luke was unable to unlock that power, or at least the full potential

bc it’s just that, and i think it’s mentioned by Annabeth in moa, but a big reason that Luke fell into Kronos’ trap was because Kronos fed Luke a lot of what he wanted to hear, manipulated his thoughts and it’s implied by Annabeth that Kelli also had a lot to do with manipulating him by using charmspeak

like i guess if it’s difficult and dangerous, it would make sense that he was unable to redirect her charmspeak, esp with Kronos also manipulating his thoughts and emotions, but it doesn’t quite fit…tho i think that has a lot of potential to be a story arc regarding the development of Luke’s character, kind of like how it was for Zuko and lightning

but that would also imply, following Zuko’s story arc, that Luke eventually realized the error of his ways and joined the gods’ side

altho, it would be more interesting, playing off him being able to hold up the sky, despite not being the “hero,” if he learned how to redirect charmspeak but remained “loyal” to Kronos

anyway /tangent

i can see where you’re coming from regarding the normal badass trope. i’m not sure how well Rick executed it (if he even did) bc in my opinion, it’s not necessarily that Sally, Rachel, Paul, and Fredrick are what i would term as a badass. Sally can see thru the mist and Poseidon loved her so much he offered immortality. that speaks to her character, but isn’t exactly badass. Rachel is the oracle, but doesn’t have any combat skills to speak of. in en extenuating circumstance, Paul used his sword-fighting skills to help protect Sally and others, but i doubt he’d have much else use for swordsmanship except if he were to take up acting. like Paul, under extenuating circumstances, Fredrick piloted a plane and shot at monsters with Celestial bronze bullets he’d made himself, tho i imagine that’s as much action that plane is going to see for the rest of Fredrick’s life

the acts themselves are certainly badass, but it doesn’t necessarily speak to their character as being a badass.

now, of course, being a badass doesn’t constitute being able to beat someone up. Rachel throwing her hairbrush at the lord of titans is p badass. and sally charming one of the Big Three gods so much he offered her immortality, not to mention killing Gabe and his buddies indirectly, is v badass. so being a badass can take many forms, i’m not denying that

but it doesn’t quite fit what i see the trope being, as defined by society, whereby to be a badass, you have to have some combat and strategic planning skills or smth. i hope that makes sense

i guess this is all just more complicated than i was originally thinking, bc if badass can be defined in so many ways, so can normal?

you mention Ty Lee, right? now i haven’t watched a:tla in forever, but from what i remember of her character, i never actually saw her as some everywoman. she was friends with a sociopathic princess whose father colonized the rest of the world. that’s not exactly normal. i mean even taking away the sociopathic and her father part, she’s friends with a princess! that’s not exactly what i’d constitute as normal you know?

but it’s hard to say what’s normal in that universe, right? bc nonbenders, like sokka, are considered “normal” and average bc they can’t bend, when a majority can. and sokka is often talked abt like he’s “normal” but his tribe taught him how to be a warrior from a young age. his father went off to war, and his mother was killed by a firebender when Ozai began colonizing the other tribes. that’s not normal. even in that universe, bc the avatar is supposed to keep peace b/t the different benders

so it comes back to how society defines the trope, where normal is your average person (no special powers, no secret talents, just goes abt their mundane day at a nine-to-five and binges TV shows on Netflix when they get home) and badass is having that hidden talent (that they most likely don’t even know abt) or learning to be a badass as their character arc and as the story progresses

gosh, hope that all made sense. long story long, i agree with you that it’s a tired trope (in that we’re introduced to someone we consider and are supposed to think is average but, surprise! they actually have a hidden talent that turns them into a badass), but i think if done right, it can be really cathartic and exciting

/tangent 2

yes, i think being legacies definitely affords demigods more power, bc they have more godly blood. and you make a good point: why was Luke so powerful and special? esp as a son of Hermes. i think a reasonable explanation would be that he’s a legacy

by definition, tho, him being a legacy means that May is also a legacy, bc Hermes can’t have other godly blood from other gods with him being a god himself already (disregarding the fact that gods don’t even have DNA)

no worries! as you can see, i kind of went into some rants too!

oh thank you!! i’m glad you liked those hcs. yeah, i like to think that Luke definitely pulls pranks and enjoys it too! but the way he’s portrayed in the books, he’s much more serious than Travis and Conner, probably bc of the house he had to grow up in, being on the run at a young age, and then going thru so much heart-break and trauma before he even turned Travis and Conner’s ages. that ought to subdue you a little

so i wanted to make sure i expressed that in my hcs, long story long lol. i like to think of Luke, before Kronos and all that shit, as a fun and easy-going guy but in a quieter and more subtle way than Travis and Conner specifically

thanks again for sending these!! i love, love, love talking abt to ppl abt stuff. my inbox is always open!

FEED ME SEYMOUR

[armstrong48-blog]

Wrestling: No Longer a Mystery

There's a feeling that in the event the truth does eventually emerge, it may upend everything we know. Becoming learning-focused means putting the procedure ahead of the item. Sometimes, you've got to do things that aren't that fun to achieve your objectives. Well, you have to drill repeatedly if you would like moves to develop into second nature. You've got a particular possibility to play such a video game all by yourself and also have a considerable quantity of fun in this approach. It's about disciplinebeing disciplined enough to plow through the procedure and make it take place. What You Need to Do About Wrestling Before You Miss Your Chance You don't need to be worried about it because this completely damage is not going to bring it any result. Your dog is not going to understand that they're managing a little child who doesn't wish to hurt him. Simple, there's no magic pill to earn the concussion go away. Periodization is frequently associated with weight training but can be utilized to train other athletic attributes also. Such exercises are for when you're attempting to shed weight so as to be in a specific competitive wrestling category. If you must cut weight that you should begin a couple weeks or a month in advance if necessary. Choosing Wrestling There are lots of shady dealers out there. Their chemistry for a team is legendary. The matches are predetermined but of course that's the whole intention of the company. It doesn't matter the apathy both of these candidates are satisfied with. It was also a very simple way to be certain that he'd dominate over his former Shield brothers, aligning with the men and women in charge, to receive the best matches and the opponents with the highest-profiles. The individual was turned over to the right authorities. The Unusual Secret of Wrestling The full point of this exercise is to have a rise from the crowd and it is irrelevant whether it's cheers or boos. His solution was supposed to create his own form of the barbaric duo in Demolition. The reason this is sensible to know about is mainly because you might find that yourself bored playing the identical game and having options would be wise so that you're able to alter the kind of game you're playing. The thought is simple, you beat the defenders till they are not able to get up and attack you. I simply don't like that he constantly receives a shot. Major man smooth like a large baby penguin. In addition, I hope not one of the regulars end it. Sasha pulls Becky from the ring. Valkyrie Spears Grace on the ground. Wrestling - the Conspiracy Writing a book isn't easy, but neither is wrestling. We'll also be running a complete live blog of the function which is going to be available here. We did not receive the story we were promised. All these wrestling stars have various trademarks most especially the way that they dress and how they smack their opponents. Owens is only short of a million at the right time of writing. Whether you like him or not you need to admit he is extremely gifted and definitely looks the component of a top superstar. Wrestling is among the only sports that everyone on the planet can understand. Every one of these sports are going to have its exclusive demands. In earlier times athletes weren't too concerned about a concussion. A Startling Fact about Wrestling Uncovered Whatever might be the experience, jot down all of the information down. Ideally, in case you have chosen the proper exercises, participants ought to be able to experience a complete cycle 3 times. Another thing to think about is that bad parents don't always raise bad children. Inside this section you must jot down all of the critical abilities, specifically linked to leadership activities, communication skills, teaching, together with initiative skills etc.. The program is composed of a string of exercises each performed at various stations in the gym. Always believe in yourself and you can also reach your objectives. We're not there to just enforce the rules. Make certain you inspect thoroughly and properly maintain to guarantee safety. If you take a close look at practice in Russia, every practice at each club throughout the country has a particular structure to it, while the US is all around the place. The Foolproof Wrestling Strategy When you speak about wrestling most individuals think about World Wrestling Entertainment also referred to as WWE. Therefore, attempting to use periodization for wrestling may appear impractical. Women wrestlers who tune out all of the horny boy stuff which goes about. Wrestling is so closely associated with life, he explained. Brock Lesnar is easily among the most protected Superstars in WWE history and he's got a WWE huge contract which likewise will come with limited dates. When it has to do with wrestling, it's often in comparison to the UFC and NCAA wrestling. A whole lot of wrestlers have a tendency to jump around to and from other promotions but The Undertaker proved to be a massive portion of WWE for his whole run there, 27 decades. WWE serves not just to promote fights, yet to entertain by storytelling. WWE however isn't the only wrestling promotion on the landscape. The Argument About Wrestling In some cases, the defender is equipped to flatten the attacker to the mat like a pancake, thus the name. You are going to be more able to dodge or slip from a tight hold. If you keep in 1 spot, you're putting yourself into a place to be taken down by your opponent or pushed from the mat. A previous alternative is to construct a structure to hold out the costume in the correct form. If you prefer, you even can trample it to the ground. In 1848, Exbroyat produced a big rule that forbade holds beneath the waist. Sacrifice often goes together with dedication. Wrestling to a degree of greatness requires commitments from all possible pieces of your entire body and mind. Unfortunately, it's not stored within the body. Choosing Good Wrestling You need to have a fair command over the neighborhood language at least languages. Inside my opinion, you should attempt to keep periodization simple. Not lots of expressions, usually. It leveled me up indirectly in various ways too. You've got a particular possibility to play such a video game all by yourself and also have a considerable quantity of fun in this approach. This will permit you to bring another facet of the sport in your arsenal of abilities and techniques. The Foolproof Wrestling Strategy Folk wrestling styles aren't recognized as international trends of wrestling by UWW. If your kid is younger or his school does not own a wrestling group, you can discover a regional independent wrestling club. Outlast the competition with the proper wrestling headgear. On the flip side, more than 1 macrocycle might be used over the course of a wrestling season as you could have more than one significant competition which you want to peak for. There's a whole lot of wrestling fan denial. This won't be the case with AEW on a roster that already boasts a number of the best wrestlers on earth and Cody. Every WWE Superstar ought to be given time to come up with their character and prove they are capable, regardless of what the circumstance. The Divas can not merely kick but in the ring, but a lot of them can even manage different wrestlers and even run companies regarding the area of wrestling. WWE however isn't the only wrestling promotion on the landscape. The Ultimate Wrestling Trick Post called that a minimal point. You may think about where in NYC you wish to go to narrow things down. Provided that the story lives on TV, it's entertaining alone. Meanwhile Terri Gold gets all of the air. Be certain to speak to his coach for anything else you will want to understand. WWE's inability to develop transcendent icons is a step over the real issue they are too stubborn to handle. Moreover, autograph events are often held in order to permit fans to fulfill their favorite wrestling superstars up-close and personal. Not necessary, but you need to be related to sports. In earlier times athletes weren't too concerned about a concussion. Life, Death, and Wrestling If you want it, you might have a try! Sandow marks a terrific pop. If you wind up with the incorrect dimensions, just inform us and we'll help you exchange it for the best size. If you have feet, we've got a full array of wrestling shoes in all styles, colours and sizes for you to select from. This is just a slice of cloth that's wrapped around like underwear. To receive added information on john cena cardboard cutout please Visit Website. Remember, wrestling shoes are notoriously tricky to discover the ideal fit. However, while his brothers continue to be around, we're never likely to love Roman Reigns. Valkyrie Spears Grace on the ground. What You Must Know About Wrestling He wore face paint, he'd spit mist into the opinion of his opponent. He's also a fresher face who's on the up. When the wrestler has developed a good square stance, he or she is able to work on a staggered stance, also referred to as an offensive stance. A previous alternative is to construct a structure to hold out the costume in the correct form. Good stance plays an essential part in enabling a wrestler to stay stable on the mat. Some might envision themselves standing on the cap of the podium in 1st location. Grip training should only be carried out at the conclusion of a workout. The Death Mask's present moveset is largely designed with quick, snap maneuvers that could surprise opponents from unexpected angles and offer impact without using an exhaustive quantity of strength. Unfortunately, it's not stored within the body. Why Almost Everything You've Learned About Wrestling Is Wrong You'd have to eat plenty of red meat to coincide with a single serving of powdered creatine, but it is surely present. Athletes ought to be given only sufficient time between sets to get properly set for the exercise they're going to execute. Proteins help to construct muscle. If you need to earn weight, plan ahead, and attempt to get rid of body fat, not muscle. You may have to work on technique initially and boost your volume and intensity as time passes. So it is crucial to receive a steady dose of protein each and every day. The Key to Successful Wrestling Even in the event the early phases of a career, it comes down to the company which is kept. Their chemistry for a team is legendary. It may sound easy, but by spending a little quantity of the match posing you will greatly enhance the caliber of the photos taken of you. But these are all necessary so as to thrill the spectators. 1 important element is to be certain your child regularly mixes with different children. Not exactly my 1st alternative, but it's better than other choices. A Startling Fact about Wrestling Uncovered It is possible to learn that information online and discover what is there. Ideally, in case you have chosen the proper exercises, participants ought to be able to experience a complete cycle 3 times. If you're uncertain about whether it's the case that you or your little one should wrestle, this guide delivers a number of reasons which should help you create your final choice. In the last few years, mixed martial arts have come to be ever more popular for kids and adults of all ages. However, because the years went on I started to comprehend what teaching Middle School children is about. This sport was once thought to be crucial training for most Greek soldiers. We're not there to just enforce the rules. Make certain you inspect thoroughly and properly maintain to guarantee safety. We are constantly looking for volunteers to assist with the other districts. The Tried and True Method for Wrestling in Step by Step Detail Meal replacement drinks are a lot better since you don't need to consider what foods to eat along with them. Athletes ought to be given only sufficient time between sets to get properly set for the exercise they're going to execute. As it takes more time to digest complex carbohydrates, you feel fuller longer and don't will need to eat as much. A kid should never be required to ask what things to eat to shed weight. Such exercises are for when you're attempting to shed weight so as to be in a specific competitive wrestling category. If you're really cutting lots of weight this season, you might not be in a position to obtain strength because the body requires a surplus of calories from food to be able to feed the muscle. Life After Wrestling To retire a legend and act as though you're still an excellent guy to the fans is much more. It needs to be the proper moment, it needs to be the best product and it must be the proper distributor. It sold lots of magazines. Meanwhile Terri Gold gets all of the air. Be certain to speak to his coach for anything else you will want to understand. Whether you like him or not you need to admit he is extremely gifted and definitely looks the component of a top superstar. If there's a school that the business endorses, athletes may benefit from attending the suggested wrestling school in order to enhance their odds of stardom. Not necessary, but you need to be related to sports. Some athletes find it can help to meditate or listen to hypnosis recordings to have them focused and prepared to wrestle. The Wrestling Game So long as you receive a reaction, its working. The only way we are presented with a challenge is when our child gives evidence in the shape of problems she's involved in. Well some of us will try to inform you. I really like that folks love things. The people that are in charge are simply not interested in letting them tell great stories. Wrestling - the Conspiracy In some cases, the defender is equipped to flatten the attacker to the mat like a pancake, thus the name. You are going to be more able to dodge or slip from a tight hold. It is an excellent means to score 5 points when you're losing or to have an essential pin. To put it simply, it's intimidating. 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[frederator-studios]

Meet Joel Veitch and David P. Shute, Creators of “Kid Arthur”

From the dawning of 2000 AD - when Adobe Systems first pulled Flash from the Software Stone - British animators Joel Veitch and David Shute have crafted absurd and iconic web comedy for their site, Rather Good. They are bricklayers of our Modern Age of Memes; but beyond builders, they are Wizards of the Web, gracing our desktops with such magic as the Spongmonkeys and Punk Kittens Play ‘Fell in Love With a Girl’ by the White Stripes, memes that thrived even in the dark ether of the pre-YouTube web. Frederator is honored to have aided in their maturity into long-form content, heralded by the release of their GO! Cartoon, “Kid Arthur,” which comes in at a whopping 5 minutes and 40 seconds long. Joel, David and I sat about a round table to discuss out-of-control saxophonists, dial-up modems, and wizard cats of great Magick.

So how did you each find your way into animation?

JV: We were both already in animation when we met, weren’t we David? DS: I was fairly newly graduated at the time. I studied animation at Uni - Southampton University - and was doing adverts for a while before I met Joel. JV: I started off more on the web comedy side, and drifted into animation when I began learning Flash in the early 2000s. I soon realized that my heart lay with that more than anything else. I made a couple of things that did alright and it became possible to do it for a living… so yeah, I kind of fell into animation by accident, but loved it once I’d discovered it.

How did you guys meet?

JV: I had an office, which I was sharing with some people, who were making a video which was never released. It was... all copies were ordered destroyed.(they start laughin’)  They were doing it for a client! Which turned out to be just so... completely insane. DS: It was a stop motion cartoon, and the idea was to parody something, but it was…. they gave… no I won’t say it, I won’t - (Joel is cracking up) They gave us the brief to be as offensive as possible with it. So me and another animator, we just went to town, made it. It was monstrous. It never got released, and that’s a very good thing. JV: I saw it through production and it blew my mind. Of course it never saw the light of day. But I was so completely overwhelmed by what I had witnessed being made that I asked David to come team up with me, and we’ve been a brothership ever since.

What did you guys first work on together?

JV: I still do a bit, but at the time I was doing a lot of comedy music. So we made a load of animated videos for the songs. For our own projects, that was kind of the bread and butter of what we collaborated on.

What did the comedy music entail?

JV: Well the not-full-band stuff we did as Rather Good; often just guitar and singing. But I'm also the singer of a 7 piece ska band called 7 Seconds Of Love, and we did live gigs, which was a lot of fun. We still gig, if the events are big enough—but it’s tougher now that some bandmates have moved from London.

Any legendary comedy music gig stories?

JV: If I had to choose one… it’d be the time Chaynsaw climbed the lighting rig.

We all have band names: I’m Stallion Explosion, The Bearslayer is bassist, Chaynsaw is the saxophonist, and so on. One night we were playing at quite a big venue in London; large stage, gallery seating, and there was a huge lighting rig that went all the way to the ceiling. During the song “Ninja”, Chaynsaw flipped out. He took a running jump and flew over the barriers and into the crowd, disappearing in a pile of flailing bodies. He ran through the crowd to the back and began climbing up the scaffolding of the lighting rig like some kind of crazed sax-wielding gibbon. Up and up all the way to the gods, as the crowd went crazy and we wondered whether we were about to witness his death. When he reached the gods, he climbed over onto the balcony and sprinted out of sight.  The crowd was going wild. They thought the stunt was part of the show but we had no idea what he was playing at. The song approached Chaynsaw's solo, with no sign of him. I assumed he had run off into the night, probably bellowing "CHAYNSAAAAAW!" and wielding his saxophone.  However, just at the exact moment his solo began, he came barrelling out from backstage at full speed, skidded to a halt at the front of the stage and blasted out a storming solo. The crowd went crazy: they thought it was the best bit of showmanship they’d ever seen. But it was a fluke. He'd just run headlong through random passages and stairwells backstage until he’d burst out on to the stage at the exact right moment.  It was a triumph. Nobody need ever know that it was a suicidally dangerous lunatic episode. My lips are sealed.

Yes, clearly. So Rather Good’s animations pre-date YouTube?

JV: Oh, pre-YouTube, yeah. You couldn’t really do video in those days because you didn’t have the bandwidth to do it, which was why Flash was so popular. You had to keep projects down to a couple of megabytes, very small files. Everyone was on dial-up modems.

(Rather Good’s highly educational vid about the history of the world wide web)

Wild. Was your goal to just have fun, or did you have an online audience in mind while making things?

JV: Historically they’ve been a way to entertain ourselves, at least primarily. On the basis that if you’re making something fun, that you enjoy making, then it’s more likely to be interesting and enjoyable out in the world. If you over-analyze it, you end up with something that doesn’t work very well; that’s how bad comedy gets written.

So what was it like, helping to build meme culture from the ground up… rewarding?

JV: Ha, yeah... it’s a fascinating and evolving world, isn’t it? And it’s changing so much and so fast it’s just… it’s almost difficult to put into words, the sheer magnitude of it. DS: You couldn’t really imagine this ecosystem now, 20 years ago. It would sound insane. JV: I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that the big hit was a mini track with a bunch of animated gifs of hamsters. DS: A 4 second loop of a CGI baby dancing... JV: God, and do you remember the crazy frog? DS: Oh God… yeah. JV: (laughing) It’s come a long way, and that’s a good thing. And it’s not just a technological thing is it, there’s really important stuff about the way that it’s opened up… I used to say “democratization of creativity,” which is a slightly overblown way of just saying it’s much easier for people to get stuff out in the world than it used to be. There was a system of gatekeepers in place that was very difficult to get past, until a little before YouTube. That system is bypassed now, it doesn’t really have the power anymore to dictate what makes it onto TV and hence into the popular consciousness. That’s now distributed out into the world. Which is good, although there’s a new dictator now, isn’t there? The algorithms. But that’s a different sort of thing.

(“We Like the Moon,” an ancient and powerful Rather Good meme. So revered that Quiznos used it to sell subs, in a commercial that you may, like me, vaguely remember as a fever dream from your adolescence)

Our strange new reality. Have you guys done much in the traditional kids space in the UK, with CBBC or CITV or others?

JV: We haven’t done much of anything in kids—most of what we’ve done for telly has been in the adult realm. One of our motivations for “Kid Arthur” and some other projects is getting to focus on character and narrative. Because for a long, long time, we’ve done short form - proper short form, often a minute or less long - and that’s fun, but you don’t get the opportunity to really develop character and story in those. It’s just gags. DS: That’s what’s been so fun about “Kid Arthur”: being able to actually build characters with a relationship between them, and have the space to explore that and the outer world.

So how did you guys come up with “Kid Arthur”?

JV: We’ve both always loved the Arthurian legends, fantasy worlds, Tolkien’s writing. It’s been a big part of our... cultural space, if you know what I mean? It feels like it’s been more ‘everywhere’ than ever in the last couple of years, since The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Game of Thrones and everything - everybody’s all about swords and dragons these days, which is fun. We’d talk about King Arthur and he’d pop up in conversation a lot, and we thought it’d be hilarious to put him and Mordred as kids in a modern day school. 

So is the rest of Arthur and Mordred’s world totally normal, and no one notices that these kids are summoning dragons and crazy shiz?

DS: Absolutely, they’re clueless. JV: It’s too out there for people to process. DS: I think they’re aware on some dim level, but their minds are totally unable to process or comprehend it.

(Poor, sweet, unknowing ‘Miss’)

When did you guys decide to pitch to Frederator, and what stage of development was “Kid Arthur” in?

DS: It was still pretty early on when we pitched it. JV: I met Carrie Miller in London a while ago now, at an animation event. And we talked about how we ought to pitch something to you guys. So we’d been thinking about what we could do with Frederator specifically, and “Kid Arthur” felt like the right fit.

Who do you each relate to the most between Mordred or Arthur?

DS: That’s pretty obvious isn’t it? I’m definitely Arthur. (note: David voices Arthur. Meanwhile, Joel is cracking up) JV: But this is the thing though isn’t it, part of the joy of the character, is that Arthur, he’s a kind of all-conquering heroic warrior, but he’s got Dave’s personality here, you know? He’s kinda like “Sighhhh… oh God. He’s trying to destroy me again, isn’t he”. DS: Yeaaah. JV: And I very much relate to Mordred. (Joel voices Mordred)

Oh gosh, really? How so?

JV: Well, he’s an extension of my own character to a certain extent. I’m not painting a very nice picture of myself there, am I? I mean, he’s not totally evil - he’d be gutted if he ever did destroy Arthur. That’s key to it, isn’t it? DS: Oh yeah. He’d be bereft. JV: Utterly bereft.

Have you guys been developing your ideas for a full series?

DS: We’ve talked about it quite a lot. JV: There’s a whole expanded world that we couldn’t really fit into a 5 minute short, and more characters: Guinevere - DS: Merlin - JV: Merlin as a cat! He’s the most powerful wizard in the universe. But he’s also a cat, so he tends to use his awesome power to do stuff like magic up fish heads. DS: He’s not a super intelligent cat, mind you, just a standard cat. With great magic. JV: And there’s all the knights of the round table, the witches, the Lady of the Lake. There’s this pre-existing structure from legend of all of these quests, and it’s all just ripe to be transplanted into a little town, where it exists slightly below the surface, manifesting in, you know, neighborhood parks and ponds. DS: We really love this idea that Arthur and Mordred’s battle is this ageless, epic struggle between good and evil. It’s been going on in some form or another for thousands of years, and will continue until the apocalypse. So the notion that there’s all these artifacts and characters from this enormous mythology in this modern town, largely unnoticed by everyone else—that’s exciting to us.

How has reading about Arthurian legend played a role in development?

DS: The great thing about Arthurian legend is that there are several classical texts, and they all contradict each other. Even the relationship between Arthur and Mordred shifts around quite a lot. So there’s so much within range that we can play with, and select whatever fits our world best. JV: We realized early on, that with other historical characters - say Henry VIII - there’s a very firm history of who they were, a definite character that you can research. But with these guys... you know, whether or not there was a genuine historical figure who was the genesis of these tales, when you really drill into it, it’s mystic. There’s nothing definite in this history to grab hold to - or be beholden to. The variation is part of the fun of the idea.

How do you guys usually divvy up your work?

DS: We write collaboratively; we get together and bash out words. I take the lead on the art side, things like character designs and boards. Joel more on things like sound and foley, and general managing of projects, and you know, talking to people. I’m far more happy when I’m kind of locked away and not having to talk with anyone. JV: He’s happy to not deal with actual humans.

Do you guys always pitch together, or David do you prefer to sit that out?

DS: We normally get together for that kind of thing. But Joel usually says about 20 words for my 1 word, which is fine with me. JV: We’re pretty evenly split today aren’t we David? DS: Yeah, not so bad.

What are your favorite cartoons?

JV: Battle of the Planets! DS: Yeah, we like the 80s cartoons: Ulysses 31 I really loved as a kid. It was absurdly bleak. A guy and his son drifting through deep space, encountering depressing, frightening worlds… the whole thing was a bit hopeless. Which 8 year old me really enjoyed. JV: There was a show called The Trap Door which was fantastic. Claymation show - I presume that it never aired in the states, which is a shame because it’s wonderful, truly wonderful. And Danger Mouse is a favorite, always great. DS: There’s a couple more grown up things, like Venture Bros. - JV: - Adventure Time! DS: Of course, yeah. JV: And there’s some proper adult animation being made at the moment which is lovely. We both love Archer. And Rick and Morty is obviously what it is, it’s incredible.

Any last thoughts to share with the Frederator audience?

JV: I’d just like to say how grateful we are to Frederator for helping us realize our vision for “Kid Arthur,” and exactly as we envisioned it. Working with a lot of studios can feel like you’re smashing through a brick wall with your face; and you come out of it with a product that isn’t really what you wanted to create in the first place. But “Kid Arthur” has been our baby, and we were paired with an incredible team of people to help us bring it to life. Just thinking about how much we learned from Larry (Huber, the director)... it’s incredible. It has been lovely working with Frederator. DS: Throughout the whole process, it’s been really nice. That’s so rare. JV: I wouldn’t even say rare, David! It’s unique. It’s absolutely unique. So we’re thankful.

Thanks for the great chat, Joel and David! I’ll be staying abreast of your Rather Good content - especially since I think a lot of it has been swimming around my subconscious mind for years. Excited to see what you guys do next! 

- Cooper

[random-notes-and-jottings]

Following the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol (and the daubing of slogans on the Cenotaph in Whitehall and the plinth of Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square), there have been an awful lot of poorly-argued positions flying around. One such is James O’Brien’s tweet which asserts, “Your view of the statue is your view of slavery”. Even given the limited character-count of Twitter, that is a very poor imitation of an argument. It plays well to the adoring gallery, but it’s no more coherent than “Your view of Boris Johnson is your view of people from New York,” or, “Your view of Priti Patel is your view of British Asian women”.

Those who have condemned the toppling of the statue have tended to rely on an equally poor counter-assertion: “It’s part of our history”. That is true, but it’s not an argument in itself, or perhaps not in the sense that its proponents think. Jimmy Savile is part of our recent popular history. Many of us grew up watching him on TV, and though we always suspected he was a bit of a weirdo, he was generally admired for his charity work, and plaques (and at least one statue) were put up in his honour. However, no one would now justify any public memorial to a man whom we know to have been a paedophile and a rapist. The same would go for any public memorials of Hitler. But should, say, Francisco Franco be similarly vilified? In the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca there are dozens of bas-relief roundels depicting rulers of Spain and the one of Franco was removed in 2017. And yet not one of the others (mainly monarchs from Felipe V to Alfonso XI) would pass any current ‘woke approval test’, largely because none of them lived in the 21st century. Franco’s ‘monument’ may have been removed, but the almost 40 years that he ruled Spain is thereby not magically excised. We cannot change the past. It remains a reality of history, to be debated, examined, recalled, abjured and/or celebrated. Few, if any, historical figures are irredeemably evil or faultlessly saintly.

So there is a tension between contemporary approval and “he’s just part of our history”, and no tweet is capable of resolving that tension in a couple of snappy sentences. I say “he” by the way, because very few non-royal statues are of women, and most that are are recent and therefore more likely to meet with contemporary approval. But even here there are controversies. There is a statue of Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) in the Smithsonian. She’s one of Hillary Clinton’s heroines and, thanks to the Planned Parenthood connection, a ‘woke’ liberal heroine. Yet she was also a proponent of race-based eugenics. In some cities in the United States, up to 5 times as many black women have abortions as white women. Surely, even the most ‘pro-choice’ person cannot think that such a racial disparity is something to celebrate?

Then we hear from Professor David Olusoga, a TV film-maker who tells us that statues are “not about history, but adoration” (and, by implication, approval). That is clearly nonsense, though an attempt at a pithy aphorism that will ensure the maximum media appearances. “Admiration” perhaps, but not “adoration” (and, moreover, “admiration” at the time of erection, not for posterity). Catholics and Hindus are usually those accused of ‘worshipping’ statues. I cannot speak for Hindus, but no Catholic ought to be ‘worshipping’ or, to use Olusoga’s term, ‘adoring’, a statue. A statue is a symbol or a token of the thing represented. 90% of the statues in a Catholic church are of the Virgin Mary and various saints, and none of them is to be worshipped — neither the statues nor the people they represent.

Even when it comes to representations of Christ himself, he is most often depicted nailed to a cross. We do not remind ourselves of the way in which Jesus was tortured and the sufferings he endured during his execution because we celebrate or approve of those sufferings. Rather, the cross stands as a reminder of what human beings are capable of — that when we meet perfect love, we are wont to destroy it. The crucifix is both a representation of perfect love and of human evil. It sustains millions in their prayer precisely because it is both. It demands reflection and meditation. Similarly, the fact that Auschwitz has not been bulldozed points to a similar idea — it is an image of something horrible, but what it represents should never be forgotten, even after the WWII generation are all long dead. And then there are the tombs and portraits of people in churches (particularly those dating from before the Reformation) — not honours given to saints, but plaintive pleas of the deceased for the living to pray for them, because they were aware of their own sin in life and believed they would need those prayers to have any hope for heaven. They were about humility, not pride.

Statues and memorials, then, are not straightforward, semiotically speaking. There is a strong case for having Colston’s statue removed to a museum (as the Hungarians did with all their Soviet era statues) or to a less prominent place, or even for its scrapping, certainly, but it does not follow that it stood as a ‘celebration’ of slavery, or its existence suggested that the people of Bristol are (nowadays) enthusiastic slavers. It might have been different if people were still bringing flowers and garlands, but that was not — as far as I know — the case. One annual protest which did take place around Edward Colston’s statue was the placing of figures of human bodies around the plinth, with labels like “domestic servants”, “sex workers”, “farm workers” and so on, reminding people that slavery still exists in this country. Colston’s statue had thus become, not the celebration of slavery that O’Brien thinks it was, but a rallying point for those who work to eradicate slavery in our own time.

Anti-Slavery Day 2018

Edward Colston is an easy target, because no one would defend slavery (pace O’Brien); but he was also a philanthropist, which is why he got a statue in the first place (1895 in fact). Should the wealthy, cosmopolitan, liberal city of Bristol be allowed to forget that it grew rich and successful partly as a result of the exploitation of human beings? Tearing down a statue doesn’t alter the fact, any more than a slave-owner giving money to charity alters the fact that his money came from slavery. One could argue that such an unhappy period of its history should be, visibly and palpably, on Bristol’s conscience; it shouldn’t be forgotten or erased (because it can’t be erased: even if you demolished Colston Girls’ School and all the other public buildings he endowed). He existed. He helped create modern Bristol. As they say, ‘Deal with it’.

Aside from a tangential contribution to parliamentary sovereignty, I do not ‘adore’ Cromwell in any way. He was a small-minded, anti-Catholic thug. But I cannot erase the fact that he ruled Britain for 5 miserable years, nor can I alter the fact that many still do admire and even ‘adore’ him. But the reason why a statue is erected is not necessarily the reason why a statue should be left in place. No one now worships Graeco-Roman deities, yet we do not crush their statues for hardcore. No one worships Bel or Baalshamin and yet most were appalled by the destruction of their temples in Palmyra by ISIS. The reason that statues are “our history” is precisely that they were erecting “in history”. They are snapshots of history. People in Bristol in 1895 deemed it seemly and fitting to erect a statue to Edward Colson. We would not do so now, but they did then. Perhaps even ten years later they would not have done so. People in the present are not bound by history, because we live in the present, but we cannot erase history, however much we might wish that the past had been better or different.

Let’s say that you are a teacher in Bristol and you have a young and thoughtful class of children (say, Year 7 or 8) with whom you wanted to examine the transatlantic slave trade and Bristol’s part in it. At the moment you have statues and the names of streets and buildings to go out and explore — in other words you have some actual history. It would be a similar story in most of Britain (think of Bold Street in Liverpool or Buchanan Street in Glasgow, etc.). Do we really imagine that the presence of a few 100+ year old statues and street names are going to make kids into racist apologists for slavery, or might the effect be rather different? We have heard, quite rightly, voices urging Britain to “confront” its dark past with respect to slavery. Seeking to “erase” the visible legacy of slavery might not be the best way of going about this, however painful those signs are.

There are also the empty comparisons with the toppling of the statues of Saddam in 2002-03, or Lenin in 1991-92, or the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The difference is surely clear. None of those Iraqis, Russians or East Germans had previously had any democratic means of getting rid of those statues or structures because they were symbols of oppression imposed upon them. Had Colston’s statue in Bristol been universally hated and become an issue in local elections then it could not have remained (Bristol has a black mayor, after all, who can hardly have been ignorant of the connection). It seems that it just wasn’t a major issue for people (which is an issue in itself). Olusoga’s (and some Labour MPs’) view that tearing down statues “IS history” is true, but not a justification. A year ago most people (Labour and Cons) wanted rid of Theresa May, and yet because we knew we had the means to bring this about (a vote of NC, General Election, etc.) we could not have justified sending a mob to Downing Street to remove her. If we were living under an absolute monarchy which still traded African slaves, then tossing Colston into the river would have been a political act, rather than a student jape. It’s worth remembering, too, that although the transatlantic slave-trade ended long ago, we live in a world in which more people are enslaved than at any point in its history. The countries with most slaves are China, India, Pakistan, followed by the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahara region. Protestors against the horrors of slavery should also be demonstrating outside the Mauritanian Embassy on Vauxhall Bridge Road. If we are to ‘never forget’ and ‘learn the lessons’ of slavery, should we not be standing in solidarity with Albanians and the Vietnamese who are the 2nd and 3rd largest groups enslaved in the UK? (And indeed British citizens, black and white, who recently took the No. 1 spot?)

When Britain abolished slavery in 1833 (and she would be criticised now for compensating owners yet not ex-slaves) the government borrowed 40% of the national budget* to do so. That debt was only finally paid off in 2015. In the view of Guardian journalists this was a shameful act and little more than ‘blood money’ (and some on Twitter have suggested that British tax-payers were still “paying slave owners” until 2015), but in the US let’s remember it took a civil war and 600,000 deaths to free slaves there. However differently we think Britain should have acted in 1833, the fact is that the Slavery Abolition Act incurred a significant financial cost. For a country to take on a debt so large that it would take 183 years to repay suggests, surely, an admirable commitment to the belief that all human beings ought to be free?

* £20m in 1833 would be approximately £16.5bn in 2013 wage terms. As 5% of GDP would mean £100bn (in 2016). The Treasury’s statement is here.

[blacknovelist]

Sorry if this question comes way the hell out of freaking nowhere, but I am a self taught author, and I am going to start writing the first book (properly and officially this time) in my series next year, and seeing as you and I share something in common, writing novel length things, over analyzing things and thinking our own ideas through to a frightening amount, could you give me some advise? Right now about your opinion and tricks of writing enigmatic, creepy and over powered villains?

Oh wow, I’m honored you’re asking me for advice, anon. I’d be happy to try and help you out! Don’t you worry about being outta nowhere, that’s never much a problem unless the context is important like for ask memes and stuff, haha. I’m answering this first outta the asks I’ve gotten because I think this is a question that I ought to get back to you about quick (though I’m almost done some of the other answers, so I’ll edit and queue ‘em when I’ve got some time later).

As far as writing an enigmatic, creepy, super-powerful villain goes, it depends a little bit on what kind of person you want that villain to be, and how you want people to perceive them. Are they supposed to be the villain from the start, do they have an early cameo, are they human or some other race, and so on.

For example, there’s Father from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. He’s certainly a mystery, seeing how he lives under Central and doesn’t oft show his full capabilities. When he first meets Ed, he wasn't antagonistic towards him, which sends mixed signals. It’s been some time since I’ve seen FMA, but in general, he keeps his cards close to his chest and sends others out to do his dirty work, which prevents us from knowing much about him. He’s also really creepy - face always blank, thirst for power, he’s not human and it shows. In general, his mannerisms are very blank and he acts aloof and superior as a default state of being, which is just strange from our perspectives. And, well, we all know Father is ridiculously powerful, and wanting to become moreso by opening the gate and becoming God. In different ways, he’s a fairly enigmatic, creepy, overpowered villain.

Another example is Shigaraki from BNHA (AfO also fits the bill for this kind of villain, but I wanted to use someone different). In his case, what makes him so creepy and enigmatic is his unpredictability - his seemingly arbitrary/childlike mannerisms and reasons combined with his personality, motivations, and tutelage under All for One mean he’s got the smarts, the resources and, in the context of BNHA, an advantageous quirk (disintegration is good for the raw power of it, though as we’ve seen he can’t really disintegrate things that are already in particles like sand). It’s difficult to understand who he is, why he’s doing what he’s doing, and what he might do later on, the way he acts is not “socially acceptable or normal” (which varies depending on your given world), and he’s powerful through the League and his disintegration quirk.

The kind of vibes your antagonist is supposed to give off and the type of person they’re supposed to be within your series impact how you should portray them to your protag and your readers. Mostly, it’s kind of an exercise in red herrings and concealment.

For example, by hiding specific motivations or revealing some motivations at certain times while keeping others vague and secret, it becomes harder to predict, understand and follow the thoughts of your antagonist, which gives them that enigmatic air. One of my OC’s (who is an anti-hero) often “forgets” to mention her reasons for doing things or deliberately uses misleading language and phrasing whenever she appears in the story, which leads to others making assumptions about her and obscures her actual personality and motivations, for example. As a result, very few characters are even aware that their interpretation of her may be flawed, and others are left not knowing what to think. But readers, with an outside perspective, might be able to tell she’s being evasive, and as such would see her in a mysterious or suspicious light.

Maybe your villain is obvious about some things, and very secretive about others - making a character enigmatic depends on how much you’re hiding and how you’re hiding it. If readers follow along with the knowledge of your protagonist, maybe your protag doesn’t notice the phrasing of the villain’s words, but the readers do; then the suspicion and air of mystery is there. Or, maybe their reasoning is hypocritical or conflicts with previously established elements - claiming to be doing something lawful despite their actions being unlawful, or acting on a reason that seems to go against their actions, and so on.

A creepy vibe can be added based on their mannerisms or portrayed personality, like the way they move, talk, and react to things, though it can also tie into the enigma factor. Maybe they’ve got a particular way of standing, or there’s an off-putting tone of their voice, or they have unusual reactions to different events? Or, it could be shown in the things a character can do or that a character knows. If, somehow, a character always arrives before everyone else, or always knows the answer or refuses to disclose those answers by being evasive or just denying it - when someone has skills or powers that put them ahead without any due or logical explanation, or they act in a manner that isn’t considered socially acceptable in the world (or they twist the definition of socially acceptable in “justifying” or “explaining” their acts), they start becoming unsettling in the eyes of those observing.

If your villain acts bright and bubbly on a regular basis, spin it so there’s almost too much cheer; if they’re often calm and even-tempered, make it clear that it’s difficult to read their expressions or body language. Strategic exaggeration of different traits and pushing characters to notice (or even not notice) specific traits or actions can clear up some things and obscure others, which can leave readers wrong-footed about your villain and help make them creepier. Pairing that with enigma again, by being specific about what you are and aren’t saying you can leave readers with the distinct impression that something is off without them knowing why that is (unless you want them to, of course).

Power has the most ways of being portrayed, I’d say, and all of them tie in well with both the creepy factor and the enigma factor. Like I mentioned earlier, shadow-leaders like AfO are a good example of mixing enigma with power, since you have one character controlling everything without revealing their true nature or self. Alternatively, there’s the option of the Father-like overlord character - someone who is obviously in charge, but who has many details about them obscured, hidden, or otherwise not understood to make it seem like they’re a mystery. Again, it depends on how you play out the other elements, and the kind of character you want your villain to be. Shigaraki, in this case, would be something in between, I think. Perhaps their power is what makes them unsettling, rather than their mannerisms, even. Figure out how powerful you want your villain to be, and what kind of power that manifests as - if your world has powers, is your villain adept in it? If not (or if your world doesn’t have powers), what else are they good at? Is their strength physical, mental, spiritual, magical, some combination of them, or all of the above? 

In general, these elements are easiest to put into a story through little things, I think - a character mentioning an incident that on the surface is normal but deep down seems odd, someone spotting the same stranger they saw in the previous city, a reference to some big event or disaster of some kind. By picking and choosing what traits you reveal about your villain, you influence how creepy, enigmatic and overpowered your villain comes across as, too. They could actually be the weakest character in the universe and we’d never know, as long as you sell it well. Mix and match traits you would put in your character, and experiment on how to show these traits and the impression you create with them.

Things like TV tropes can help, slogging through unrelated tropes aside, since it also gives traits that often apply to characters that are creepy/enigmatic/overpowered/all of the above and gives examples of when this happens. Take a look at other characters who embody one, two, or all three traits and understand what goes on in the story or in their design that makes you feel that way. How do they walk or talk, how does the author/creator reveal them or things about them, what are/what do their motivations seem to be, etc. 

I asked my sister for her thoughts on the subject too, because she happened to be around at the time - she suggests keeping in mind specific actions and how they’re accomplished also portray how creepy or enigmatic a character may be. 

Chances are, if you think your character is unsettling and creepy and unfairly strong, your observation is probably right and you’re fine (and if second opinions are needed, that’s what beta readers are for). Don’t get so caught up in thinking about it you don’t go anywhere! Sometimes a villain can come across as enigmatic by never appearing at all - it leaves everyone wondering where and who they are, and why they haven’t made any big or obvious moves, for instance.

Is this enough? I hope it is, but if it isn’t, I’d be happy to help more if you need it, and there’s plenty of lovely writing blogs and resources everywhere. I wish you all the good luck on your novel, anon!! I’m cheering for you!! ง(◕▽◕)ノ

[we-pay-for-everything]

Not Fade Away, Conversations With Dead People, Graduation Day pt. 2

Hi! Thank you for the ask! I NFA and Graduation Day are favorites too. CWDP... not so much. Let’s see:

Not Fade Away

My favorite or second favorite episode! The best series finale I’ve ever seen. This episode is quite controversial. I know many who, like me, think it is brilliant, and many who lament the abruptness of the ending. There’s so much I could say about this episode, including how it connects to the season, but I’ll settle for the essential analysis. 

This episode works wonderfully as a series finale because it does what series finales must do: it honors the show (and not the season necessarily) and represents, in 40 minutes, everything we love about Angel. 

To honor Angel (both the show and the character) is to honor its mission statement - that started back in Amends, which isn’t even an Angel episode. Buffy’s words to Angel “Strong is fighting. It's hard and it's painful and it's every day. It's what we have to do and we can do it together.” inspired Angel to fight for himself and, later on his own show, for others. 

Angel himself never stopped fighting but throughout the show had to learn and re-learn what he was fighting for: “If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do, ‘cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, finally just to beat the other guy, but... I never got it. [...]  All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because I don't think people should suffer, as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.". 

After his epiphany, Angel never looked back and also taught others what he had learned the hard way: “Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and cruel. But that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.”. 

Angel knows how to make a statement, he knows that even if you can’t win you have to fight, because the smallest act is everything we’ve got against the universe. Angel must fight W&H because, like he told Buffy, evil is there to be fought, not necessarily to be won. Angel had to show the world what it could be and lead the way for other champions and fighters. It doesn’t matter where he came from, what he suffered or even if he made a difference, he decided to live what could be his last minutes as the world should be to prove what it could be. “Let’s go to work”, he said. I can’t think of a better way to close the show and Angel’s arc. Despite his shortcomings during season 5, I knew who the Angel from NFA was and I loved him.

There’s an existential theme to this episode (and to the show as well) that has always been represented by Angel and his arc. But Gunn’s own contribution to this episode was also an important existentialist one that justified the ending of the show itself. Gunn spends his last day helping his friend, Anne, at her shelter. When helping her move some boxes, he asks her: “What if I told you it doesn't help? What would you do if you found out that none of it matters? That it's all controlled by forces more powerful and uncaring than we can conceive, and they will never let it get better down here. What would you do?”. Anne’s answer is simple: “I'd get this truck packed before the new stuff gets here.” And nothing else is said on the subject. 

 Although the most prominent theme of the episode is existentialist in nature, there’s also an absurdist theme represented by Wesley’s character. Wesley’s journey was largely one of pain, sacrifice and meaningless loss. He kidnapped Connor, but his plan failed and he ended up friendless and with his throat slit, he finally got the girl and lost her violently, he tried to kill a member of the Circle of Black Thorn and died having failed. Unlike the potential deaths of Angel, Gunn, Spike and Illyria, Wes didn’t die in battle victoriously and with purpose, but rather meaninglessly, wasted away on the floor, in the arms of an illusion. Wesley’s journey is an absurd, pessimistic one that counters the show’s lesson that fighting is worth it and that life as a meaning, a design, even if it’s a small one. Whereas Angel fights but wins, Wesley fights and loses. I like that. It’s tragic but adds a touch of realism to the show. Not everything has a meaning or a purpose. Somethings are just absurd.  

Earlier in the day, Wesley and Illyria had discussed what his perfect day would be. Wesley, in that absurdist vein, answered: “There is no perfect day for me, Illyria. There is no sunset or painting or finely-aged scotch that's going to sum up my life and make tonight any... There is nothing that I want.”. However, there was something Wesley wanted, but couldn’t have: Fred. So Illyria offered to become her and Wesley refused: “The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magics, it's the hardest thing to do. The truth is that Fred is gone. To pretend anything else would be a lie. And since I don't actually intend to die tonight, I won't accept a lie.“. 

Mercifully and true to his words, when Wesley realizes he is going to die, he finally accepts the lie: “Would you like me to lie to you now?”. Wes sees “Fred” for the last time and dies in her arms. If you listen closely, you can hear my sobs. That was the most beautiful, poignant death scene I’ve ever seen. 

Lastly, I’d like to mention Spike, Lorne and Lindsey’s stories. Spike finally gets some credit for his bad poetry - a surprising but fitting ending for his character, the “fool for love”. Lorne gets a sadder, controversial ending. He kills Lindsey. All I’ll say on the subject is that Lorne had a choice and chose to help Angel. And Lindsey, well, he was more demon than man at that point. 

Rating: 10/10

Conversations with Dead People

I’m not particularly fond of this episode. I also confess that I don’t remember it well. Mostly, my dislike for it comes from the conversation between Buffy and Holden. 

What many might call a introspective, clever conversation, I consider to be psycho babble and pretentious drivel. Like many, “psychology” students portrayed in tv and movies, these “experts” sound very little like actual psychologists and more like people who like to name drop Freudian concepts like “ego”, “id”, “Oedipus” so they can sound more knowledgeable. 

I disliked how Buffy spoke of Spike. One of the major problems in this season is how victimized Spike is and how villanized Buffy is. Following the unhealthy Spuffy relationship from season 6 which culminated in the AR from Seeing Red, there’s a lot of bad blood between Spike and Buffy that the writers decided to not address or to address rather badly. Giving Spike a soul immediately shifted the blame from Spike, giving him a chance to escape judgment. However, the writers passed judgement on Buffy instead. She admits herself that she is to blame for their dynamic, because she used him, and implies feeling guilty for whatever she did while depressed and in a “relationship” with a manipulative, abusive, soulless demon. 

Perhaps this episode could’ve done something useful and helped Buffy acknowledge that her guilt was misplaced, which would’ve caused a much needed shift in Buffy and Spike’s dynamic. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen and their dynamic became more and more co-dependent and gross. Spike used Buffy as a clutch, Buffy felt guilty so she clung to Spike, Spike isolated Buffy and Buffy relied more heavily on him, and so on and so forth.

I’m also not convinced by Buffy’s “inferiority complex about her superiority” complex either (see what I mean about pseudo psychology?). Sounds like a gross simplification to me, 

Regarding the Willow/Cassie and Dawn/Joyce parts, my only comment is that I was unimpressed by both. Tara/Willow doesn’t interest me much so I think it’s natural that Cassie didn’t spook me. I will concede that The First was used more effectively in this episode than in most of the other season 7 episodes. 

My rating: 6/10.

Graduation Day, Part 2

My second favorite season 3 episode and one of my top 10 best Buffy episodes! I very much adore it. 

Graduation Day (both parts) in one of the most intense episodes of the Buffyverse. As it happened with Surprise/Innocence, Graduation Day, parts 1 and 2, are immensely successful at constructing a heavy, suspenseful, dangerous atmosphere to keep the audience hooked and expectant. 

Following the Buffy/Faith fight and Angel’s poisoned state, the stakes are high on GD pt. 2. Faith is in a coma, and Buffy has no slayer blood to feed to Angel except her own. Despite bite scenes being a common occurrence in vampire fiction, Joss Whedon only once resorted to that cliché and did it cleverly enough that it didn’t seem like a cliché at all. It was convenient that the poison’s antidote was slayer’s blood because it forced Buffy’s hand regarding Faith. However, it was also a clever way to put the final nail in the coffin for Buffy and Angel’s relationship. What better way to contrast their opposite natures then through Angel drinking Buffy’s blood? Whereas Buffy gives life, Angel takes it, Buffy dies and Angel lives. They can’t co-exist together, not as lovers, not as friends, and not as enemies. That bite scene is perhaps one of my favorite Bangel moments ever. I loved how it was directed. Buffy and Angel falling in slow motion on the floor was quite dramatic, and the music was also. The scene was definitely erotic (the final consummation of Buffy and Angel’s love, because Buffy giving Angel her blood was an act of love) but it was not completely romanticized, it had a very disturbing vibe to it. 

I also loved Wesley and Cordy’s epic kiss, the preparation for taking down the Mayor (not with humus) and every little moment that led up to the battle. Graduation Day part 2 has less filler scenes than the first part, one of the reasons why I find it superior. 

The epic battle was indeed epic. It was the perfect tribute to the high school years and to Joss’ original concept of Buffy being about surviving high school. The Sunnydale High students’ survive high school both literally and figuratively. They fight as one, united for the first time in acknowledgment of the supernatural. Buffy kills the Mayor quite creatively, but first he snacks on Snider (RIP). 

Buffy and Angel’s parting kills me a bit inside, and the final shot of out heroes, as well as Oz’s words, fills me with intense longing and nostalgia. This episode is one of the hardest for me to watch for this very reason. It’s the last of the best Buffy seasons and the end of an era.

Rating: 10/10. 

Tell me your 3 favorite BtVS/AtS episodes and I’ll give you my brutally honest opinion on them 

[alittleoptimistic]

Writing prompt reply

Wrote a little story based on the Tumblr prompt: You open the door to someone who says “you’re my favorite book character and I know how it ends and I’m here to change it” plot twist: this person is your favorite character.

So um. A precious bookworm bean only-moderately-insane Loki?

yes. I think so.

Here you have it.

—- To say I was shocked was like saying a pop tart is rather tasty. Or riding on a dragon would be fun. Or that your tongue may be slightly singed upon leaving a hot pocket in the microwave for .0000023 seconds too long.

No, I wasn’t just shocked, I was knocked flat, blown over, mouth open and probably drooling or something because there was no possible way in all of the universe that he could be standing at my doorstep.

I’d been busy finishing a bit of psychology homework in my bedroom, avoiding my screaming baby brother and my mom, who thought it was a good idea to clean the entire house for reasons far above my head. But overall, to say I was content was a pretty good description. I was finally with the girl of my dreams (Her name is Ashlen, by the way.) and tonight I was going to have pizza my dad, who I’d been searching for weeks after it became apparent that my mother wasn’t going to give me any info and immaculate conception was a bit of a long shot. Anyway, I found him and he wasn’t the coolest dude in existence, but he was pretty okay and got me out of some difficult situations. He could talk someone into a puddle if he wished. The man had a tongue like acid. Which was fine when it was in a direction other than me. Hopefully we wouldn’t kill each other within the first hour alone.

But, I mean, really, everything was good. My problems were at ease for the moment.

But now I was at the door, unable to speak. Breathless and slightly singed, the Asgardian outside gulped down oxygen and held up a hand when I tried to speak. Dressed in a tan tunic and green leggings with leather boots, dark hair spilling down his neck, he would have fit in well with a medieval fair. He hadn’t even looked at me yet. “I need to locate Tomas. Have you seen-?”

He finally saw me and his entire form went rigid with surprise, shock equal to my own, maybe.

Do I need to point out that my name is Tomas? Yes, without an “H” get it right. I stared at him and finally gave a nervous giggle thing that probably sounded so freaking unmanly I don’t even want to think about it. “This is a joke, right?”

He cocked his head. “You know who I am.”

“Of course I know you. I’ve seen all the movies and…”

What friend of mine planed this? But, oh wait, I didn’t have any friends. And how the heck did Tom Hiddleson know my name? And why was he dressed like… well, like his character? Were they filming in the area? Why was he at my door again?

Hiddleson blinked at me, seeming to weigh something in his mind. He came to a decision and stepped closer. I stepped back automatically, still so stunned I didn’t even think that I should probably ask for an autograph or something like a normal fan.

The weird thing was that the man was giving me the same expression I figured was on my face. A mix of shock and wonder and excitement. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to meet you,” he said in a murmur, his gaze zipping up and down me.

Right. Okay. This was a dream. This was most definitely a dream.

“Excuse me?”

Loki of Asgard finally seemed to get a hold of himself. “I know you don’t understand this, but I need to tell you. I’m from a universe where you are… acharacterinmyfavoritebook.” He said the last part so quickly I hardly caught it. Probably because he knew it sounded bonkers.

I think I might have wheezed. Or coughed. Or sneezed. Or something in between. “What?”

He shifted his weight nervously. “Look, I’ve been working on a bit of a spell in my free time because it always bothered me how you… well, how the story ended. The twist was…” Loki wrinkled his nose. “And, anyway, I’m here to change it.”

My eyes ought to have rolled out of my head, I had them open so wide. “Uh, right.”

Did he just say spells? Was this some kind of TV trick thing? I glanced around for cameras and saw none. Meanwhile, Loki (Tom, or whatever his name was) was giving me a decidedly irritated look. “I haven’t got long before it wears off and I disappear. You’re smart for a Midgardian. I remember. I need you to act fast.”

Snorting, I placed the door between us and peeked beyond it. “You’re crazy.”

Hissing between his teeth, he pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a headache. “I ought to have anticipated this. You don’t believe in magic.”

Another squeal like noise escaped me and if calling for my mom wouldn’t have made me look like a toddler, I would have shouted for her. As it was, I continued staring at him, debated what exactly to do. Slam the door in his crazy face? Yeah. That was a good idea.

I moved to shut the door, but suddenly Loki raised his hand and the door stuck, lit up by a golden light. Letting go of the door like it was on fire, my gaze jumped back between the Asgardian and the door which was being held by magic or some freaking thing.

The medieval mad man was looking far more smug than I liked. “Your name is Tomas Haddic. You are in love with that lass Ashen, have a little brother you secretly despise, a mother you resent, and a father you’re not sure about. Tonight you’re going to meet with him in his apartment, I believe it is called, but you haven’t told your mother because you’re afraid she’ll stop you, or worse, be an escort.” He was getting more and more worked up as he spoke. “When you get to your father’s, you’re going to find something extremely unpleasant.” He grabbed the door and forced it open. “I’m sorry, but you have to understand, this is for your best interest. It is the deviant point.”

My heart strumming in my throat and my mouth dry, I scrambled backwards. “How do you- how do you know all of that?”

Loki growled in frustration. “I just bloody told you! Do try and pay attention. I know you just act thoughtless so that that imbecile from your education center will not target you, but at this moment, that tactic is ineffective.”

“You mean Tyler? I’m not afraid of him.”

“Yes, you are.”

Forget this. I scrambled back into the house, shouting. “Mom! Mom, there’s a crazy stalker dude trying to-!”

But a sudden hand closed over my mouth and another wrapped around my waist, pinning my arms down. He was impossibly strong and although he did not hurt me, it was impossible to twist free. “You idiot child, if I… This is for your benefit.”

I didn’t have time to wonder how he’d caught up to me or anything because suddenly gold swirled around me, and we were in a small alleyway, trash cans piled in a corner. The bright sunlight glared from the sidewalk outside. Terrified, I slammed my elbow into his gut and managed to twist out of the man’s grip. “You’re crazy! You- you… how the heck did we get out here?!”

“Magic?” he offered with a shrug. His bright eyes gleamed with an excitement I did not understand at all. “Tomas, believe me-”

“I’m not believing a single freaking thing you say!”

He gave me a long suffering glare. “The things I do for you people.”

I scrambled to the light, glad when he didn’t try to stop me. Instead, he called out. “Your book is called The Peculiar Memoir of Tomas Haddic.” I didn’t stop. “My father nearly threw it out of the palace library when Thor and I were children. But I stopped him because I liked the green cover and the simplicity and I didn’t know anything about Midgard and I kept reading it over and over again because you reminded me of… well, myself.”

At that, I stopped and turned, just barely in the shadow. “You do realize you’re a murdering psychopath who betrayed his family and tries to invade earth? That’s not exactly a compliment.”

Loki fell very still at this, paler than before. The shadows made him look almost sickly. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the best thing to say. “You’re lying,” he murmured. “I would never- what could possibly make me-?”

“That’s the story, Loki,” I spat at him mockingly. The man was insane or playing a really bad joke. He deserved a bit of my spite. “You’re the bad guy.”

With that, I swerved into the street and left the stunned madman behind. It only took me a few moments to realize I was only a street or two away from my dad’s apartment. A sigh of relief fell from my lips. My sneakers thudded on the concrete, and I shoved several people aside as I ran. “Sorry!” I caught a glimpse of my terrified expression in a shop window. My black hair was a wavy mess and my blue eyes wide with fear. I swung around a street sign pole as I skidded around a corner. There was the apartment. Just up there and across the street. Cars wizzed back and forth across the road, narrowly missing me as I jaywalked/ran across.

It was in a run down part of town and some lady smoking on the balcony was dressed like she was fifteen even though she looked forty. Her eyes followed me disinterestedly as I dashed up the stairs and toward my father’s number. Fourty-two, fourty-three, fourty-four. There.

It was already open and I burst inside. “Darren!” I shouted for my dad. “Darren? Tom Hiddleson is chasing me. He’s a psychopath! Dad!”

The apartment wasn’t really that large. He had to be around here somewhere. I flew through the one-butt kitchen and into his bedroom. That was the last place.

What I saw made me stop short in my tracks.

My dad was scrambling out of bed and some woman was in the process of escaping out of the window. Their hair was escue and it did not take crazy deduction skills to figure out what they’d been up to.

In retrospect, I suppose it shouldn’t have bothered me. He wasn’t married to my mom, after all.

But it did bother me. A lot. What kinda cow was this jerk? And who was she? Why was he this kind of guy? Why was he this sass talking, carnal jerk and why had I even bothered to…

It bothered me enough that all I could do was stand there and gape at him, hoping my disgust filtered into my gaze. Darren lifted a hand to me as if I was a wild animal he needed to calm, irritation flashing in his eyes. “Tomas, I can explain-”

“No,” I said in a whisper. And then louder. “That won’t be necessary.”

With that, I stumbled backward, feeling half blinded, out of his dirty apartment, and onto the balcony outside. I fumbled down the stairs, not really caring where I went, and ran toward the road.

I darted into the street when suddenly a truck veered around the corner. I had a moment to open my mouth in shock and terror, knowing without a doubt it would hit me, when a sudden flash of gold filled my vision and something wrapped it’s arms around my waist.

And then I was on the opposite sidewalk, feeling the air from the truck rush past me. Gasping, I collapsed on the ground and lay there on my elbows and hoped I didn’t throw up my heart if it beat any harder.

“I… I almost died,” I exhaled.

“No,” I voice said quietly, evenly devoid of emotion. “You almost ended up in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of your life.”

Shocked, I rolled upward and swiveled to look at the speaker. It was the psycho.

Who was looking steadily less crazy.

I stared at him. “You saved me.”

“Do you always state the obvious?”

“I do when I’m nearly run over by a semi,” I spat.

For some reason, Loki looked delighted. “There you are. I’ve been waiting for that sarcastic devil to show up.”

Suddenly beyond exhausted, I moved to the wall and sat against it. Resting my head back on the bricks, I squinted up at the prince. “You knew,” I said. It wasn’t a question. “You knew what I’d find when I went in Darren’s apartment.”

Loki shifted his weight. “Yes.”

“Because where you’re from, I’m in your favorite book.”

“Yes. Do you believe me?”

I considered this. “It’s easier to think about this than…” I gestured in vague disgust toward the apartments. “That.”

Nodding, Loki seemed to think for a moment, and then, abruptly, he sat next to me. “You are not defined by him, Tomas,” he said in a low voice. “His blood in your veins… it has no bearing on who you could be.”

I blinked at him. “You don’t know how ironic that is, coming from you.”

He frowned, confused. “I don’t-”

“Look,” I interrupted tiredly. I appraised him briefly before sighing. “If you really are Loki from the stories I know, then… you’re going to figure out something. Soon, probably. And… it’s going to change everything. And I mean everything.”

Loki nodded slowly. “Alright.”

“And when you do, you’re going to have to remember just what you told me. Blood doesn’t define you. You can be whoever you want, Loki. It doesn’t matter if Odin approves or not. Or if anyone approves. There’s nothing you can do to change them. So give up and be who you want to be, not who you think they want you to be.”

Loki’s eyes were narrowed. He folded his legs to his chest and rested his arms on his knees. “How about we make a deal?”

“I’m a bit wary to make a deal with the god of mischief.”

Loki smirked. “No mischief. I swear. You promise to remember my words, and… I will promise to remember yours. Hopefully we can change our stories for the better, yes?”

I pursed my lips, considering, then with a sad smile, I caught his eye and stuck out my hand. “Deal. I promise.”

“Likewise, I promise to remember your words, Tomas.” We shook hands, and he winked at me.

And suddenly Loki was gone.

I blinked at the spot he had been, startled. Had I imagined him?

Then I heard something clatter to the pavement and I turned to see what it was. There on the floor was a small green coin. I turned it over in my hands. “Remember,” it said on the side. I smiled.

With a shaky breath, I stood and tucked my coin into my pocket. Forcing myself to look at the apartment, I gulped. My father’s blood did not define me.

With that, I turned and made my way home, a sad sort of smile in my step.

I would remember, but would Loki?

[jaxxonpollux]

“why do i always pick people that don’t want to be with me?”

this is completely cliche. i know it, probably everybody knows it. it’s something you’d hear on an episode of Degrassi, or maybe occasionally on Full House. poor Uncle Joey, let’s give him a throwaway line to say to, i don’t know, Bob Saget or twin baby Michelle so that they can monologue something heartfelt over our staple sentimental TV show score. that’s like, our thing. or, let’s have this teenager guy say this to his lady bff so she has a reason to look sad and throw herself at him. something that would never happen irl except under desperate circumstances.

and i know why i said it too. not because i truly felt it, in all honesty. i mean, i did felt some semblance of rejection from a variety of people i had spoken to or heard from or looked at in the past 24 hours, but the notion that i’m so pitiful that i’m just “picking the wrong people” and wearing blinders is kind of a a joke. i can just as readily give up on somebody as i can be obsessed with them. it’s some ugly cosmic power i have. i always allude to my vague sense of pride, and that’s a part of it, a refusal to be desperate. i’d rather be alone forever than be desperate! you don’t say things like this because you mean them.

it’s intentionally pitiful. manipulative. again, not a word that i like to wear, but it fits nice and snug around the ol’ waist. and i tap into it even during the smallest interactions. i don’t know why it’s a part of me. maybe it’s the way i was raised, maybe miasma is really a thing, and i’m just converting all of my dad’s alcoholic guilt-trip energy into something equally ugly and not yet as sinister. sometimes a conversation is like an experiment. sometimes you just say things because you wonder about the response, not to get things off your chest.

i said it and she paused for a second, and then said “i’m sorry.” like she was complicit in the crime, a #metoo with an entirely different meaning. an admission that she never wanted to be with me either. which, like, doesn’t really bother me at this point, but it’s interesting to hear people react that way. not a supportive “aw shucks pal, you’ve got the right person for you just around the corner! and besides, i love you tons, c’mere you big pile of marshmallow!”

or maybe she could just smell the manipulation. i do that too, like, when homeless people go on a tangent to explain how much of a christian they are before they ask for money. i met one guy who crossed his chest, pointed at the sky, and made a cross with his fingers all within the span of 5 seconds. it kind of made me feel like a vampire or something. anyway, when you smell a manipulation tactic, the first instinct is always repulsion, and it’s usually the one you go with. maybe that’s why she said what she said the way she said it, a casual brush away. not playing that game. it makes the whole probe kind of a dud, but that happens with probes, doesn’t it?

it’s peculiar, treating conversations like experiments. trying on personalities and characters like masks. you can’t really do that without some kind of cost. it ruins your image, to the people you don’t want to be ruining your image for. you can’t have any fun anymore! as i recently said to someone else i know. there’s no rehearsal when it comes to this kind of stuff. no rewind. you just say it and let yourself be destroyed. for science, i guess.

---

anywho, i think i’m becoming more comfortable with being an awful person. like, just letting the floodgates loose. i had a girlfriend when i was 14 who was very catty and loved to gossip, one day she said she was gonna try not to do that anymore, it made her feel bad. i begrudgingly went along. i think it destroyed the magic. and anyway it didn’t last very long, people can’t really make choices like that for themselves. i mean, maybe some people can. i don’t really know. but i’m just accepting some of those evils now and letting them boil on the stovetop. all the things i try to hide or not be. all the things i don’t want people to see when they look at me. i suppose it’s a victory for “being yourself,” isn’t it? isn’t that the ideal everyone tries to reach? or is that just another piece of teenage tv melodrama advice that doesn’t really mean anything? i saw a clip from the new spider man movies, spider man was like “you’re right, i should just be myself,” and his fat friend was like “c’mon peter, nobody wants that.” he might be right, and maybe a lot of people aren’t themselves because they know they suck.

i still feel like i don’t know who myself is. there are some people out there that spend every waking moment worrying about what other people think about them, about trying to put their best face on every day, trying to be a really good person, under the assumption that it will also make them feel good. be kind, love, and be loved. constantly wondering what the best thing to say is, and constantly drawing a blank. people like me! i feel like half the time i hear somebody i don’t have any reaction inside. it’s not that i have secret hateful thoughts that i bottle up or anything. i just have like, a lot of undeveloped land in there, somehow. i could run a kid over on his bike and shrug it off. i could be having sex with a beautiful woman and not feel a hint of arousal. my mind goes blank a lot.

or maybe i just have a lot of cellophane over certain parts of myself. does that make sense? i haven’t had the experience that required me to unpack that box there in the back. i’m sure if i actually ran over a kid, went to court, had to face their sobbing parents, got slapped around by some interrogating police officer, spent time stewing in a jail cell, my heart would be bleeding with guilt and regret. i just haven’t gotten a chance to make that mistake yet and unlock that part of myself.

or maybe when i’m faced with things that i ought to care about, a big shield pops up, a wave of protection, and everything goes blank. a sort of dissociation, which i really hate in other people when i want to know them, but maybe it’s something that i have too. like a wall of fear that doesn’t let anything in or out. it’s paralyzing, being put in a situation, and not knowing what you would do in that situation. your head doesn’t let you know the next step, so you wait there, dumb and sweating. it’s only until directly after that everything comes flowing through, kind of like that “oh, THIS is what i should have said, this is what i should have done” feeling that is so incredibly common in everybody.

or maybe i’ve just locked the front door, but the back door is still wide open. and things only get to me through specific channels, ones that i wouldn’t normally count on but are tried and true. i don’t know what i’m doing in a bed with someone, but i come alive naked in front of a webcam. i’m a wallflower at parties, unless i get a specific concoction of drugs and drinks in me that pulls everything out, wit charm guts and all. i can’t talk for shit, but i can write up a real enthralling tale. who knows what’s going on in there?

---

i feel like i’ve been trying to get to know this girl through the back door, the front door is locked. like, talking to her, when she makes herself available (scarcely), doesn’t bring me any closer to knowing her. KNOWING her, whatever the hell that means. so instead i’ve been digging around in everything she tells me she ever liked, movies she watched, books she read, things that had a profound effect on her. trying to put together machine parts and figuring out what potions were sloshed together to make her. it’s a backwards way of trying to get to know someone.

i want to get to know people by living with them. i feel like it’s the purest way, learning a person’s diet and mannerisms and how often they do the dishes. it says a lot about how someone feels inside, i think, the time they wake up for work, or the food they have for lunch. every person i’ve ever met, i wish i had gotten to live with them for a while. i want those nitty gritty details, i thrive off of them. sometimes i even want to become people for a while, like some psychotic twist on method acting. 

actually, that’s probably not true. i tried to think of why i would want to be somebody else and it’s just exhausting. and i think i only want to understand other people so i can shape myself to be the best for them, again that kind of manipulative “i’m trying my best to be perfect for you” desire. the problem is, i’m never going to figure anyone out, and even if i did, i don’t think i have the proper judgment to decide what would be best for them either. i need to figure out a better way to interact with people, clearly. letting people just be themselves and not thinking about it drives me nuts sometimes, but it’s obviously the best. i just don’t want to be one of those Men that goes through life steam rolling everyone else under whatever my personality ends up being, just being unabashedly unashamedly “myself.” that kind of person gets on my nerves too. i get the feeling some people really love that kind of person, but oh here i go again trying to decide on “kinds of people” like i’m trying on shoes.

it’s honestly a mess. maybe i’ll grow out of it. like maybe i’ll have a kid and the only person i’m allowed to be is a good dad, for the rest of my life. there’s some comfort in that, knowing who you gotta be and just committing to it. right now, i could still be anybody. i don’t know if i’m a baker or a writer. i don’t know if i’m an artist or a mindless consumer. i don’t know if i’m a bad boyfriend, a libertarian, a genderfluid fruit basket, or just a total sack of shit. and that really bothers me. i mean, obviously.

[goguruhub-blog]

Feeling Fantastic Whilst Losing Weight

Dancing is a healthful, natural outlet for the emotions. It develops grace and poise, timing and stability. Men take pride in their capability to direct their partners with assurance and poise. Ladies enjoy the capability to adhere get more info to their partners easily, expertly and correctly. The ability to dance develops character, and above all-it is enjoyable.

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The evening exhibits at the Aurora Theatre were a mix of the ship's own crew of dancers and singers plus some outdoors comics and singers. In common, the exhibits had been quite great. We would have liked them to combine up the enjoyment every evening instead than allocate songs, comedy and magic into different evenings. Instead than an whole show of magic, we would have preferred each evening featuring a variety of enjoyment. Reside songs about the ship was a nice added touch. Whether you are having to pay it back again or paying it forward you will be cultivating relationships and interactions with people. This is a good thing to do and can be furthered. The first two illustrations may involve strangers for the most part. You can also expand these ideas with the people near to you. Make certain to spend time with your family and buddies and have real coronary heart to heart conversations with them. Opening up produces happier people who will be more good in all locations. If you are deficient in this region at the second you can flip this around. Be a part of a club, consider a course. dance classes are highly popular at the second, ballroom dancing in specific. You will satisfy new individuals and have much more fun in the procedure.

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Before you embark on your excess weight reduction journey, don't be afraid to look to your buddies and family for support. You can generally expect a very positive reaction, and numerous of your pals will make an effort to respect your weight loss program by choosing restaurants or venues exactly where reduced-body fat or more healthy options are on the menu. Obesity is a make a difference of growing problem in this country. A lot of the kids who don't do any activities after college are generally in frontal of the tv or taking part in games on their telephones or searching the net. An following school action keeps your kid busy. As soon as a child has built friends with these children and joined their social circle, he's much more likely to get into difficulty with them. One worry is that they may turn out to be involved in illegal actions. Out of each of these projects, you ought to be quite worried regarding drug use in specific. Children seem to be experimenting with medication at more youthful and younger ages. The quicker they start, the additional time they have to damage their life before they even get began. The rocket was killed before it even had a risk to start from the pad.

There are other people who aren't phased at all by the video clip. It calls into query what would get their attention if these 7 yr olds sporting spandex lingerie, hefty makeup and shaking their physique like a twenty year previous doesn't even make them take a 2nd appear. Get a dog. Taking your canine for an early walk is an superb way to start the day. Go with medium or large-sized canine, as smaller types are most likely to get fatigued easily.

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I took ballet for years as a child - got exhausted of it when I became a surly, sullen teenager and quit. I needed to get back again into dance but needed some thing different. There was a Center Japanese dance class that fit my routine and my spending budget, and I thought, "Well, that's various, all correct." So I tried it and got hooked. Full sole ballet shoes have a sole which covers the length of the shoe from the ball of the foot to the heel to provide the needed support for newbies. Allow's face it, we are all both scrimping for money or conserving for an unsure long term. Once they are all wound up and prepared to operate, time to hunt for Pixie Dust! If not, the male companions might stage on it and damage the scene. For a girl some of the most essential things in lifestyle relate to pink and lace and these items will often be discovered throughout their dress up wardrobe. Rinna, a 47-yr-old mom of two women, has always taken care of a fit, toned bikini body, many thanks to demanding daily workouts alternating in between dance classes, yoga, Pilates, running and spinning.

Center's dance director, Jenna Jones, is an alumnus of New Mexico's Venture in Motion. Venture In Movement has scheduled a show they state is a mesmerizing adaption of the Shakespearian classic, A Midsummer Night's Aspiration. The show will operate from March eight-17 in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

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Ask a professional personal coach to assist you. At this stage you will have at least flirted with the concept of joining your nearby fitness center (or have probably already joined). Numerous gyms and health golf equipment have individual trainers on staff who will help you develop a fitness and physical exercise plan to assist you get wholesome. Your individual trainer will be extremely familiar with all of the gym equipment and will help you determine out which devices will work very best for you, which classes are really worth using and how a lot time you ought to invest working out. Perhaps most importantly of all, a individual coach will cheer you on when you require it. Tons of individuals are scared to place together their own health and fitness routines. Getting somebody by your aspect who not only knows what he is performing but is invested in your achievement can be bolstering.

Heading to the gym is not the only way to exercise, although. There are a lot of activities that are not only fun, but would also help you shed extra excess weight. You just require a small creativity to discover the very best 1 for you. Here are five examples to give you a much better idea. Participate in a Charity Stroll/Run Together - In most communities, we are lucky to find a myriad of arranged charity walks all through the year. All you have to do is discover one that is significant to you, register and display up. Not only will you have this time with your family and get some valuable physical exercise, but you will be demonstrating to your children the worth of providing and supporting others.

[lookingfortroublr]

The Age of Insight

Slide 1

Why now?

The story of the quest for insights for innovation and new ideas has the elements of a great drama. Two opposing forces play each their character in a battle between heart versus rationality; feelings versus facts; instinct versus evidence.

On the one side of the battlefield we have you have the classical creative crafts that advertising people traditionally have honed and based on intuition and sudden inspiration.

On the other side we have a character that have come onto stage in the later years called ‘Big Data’ with it’s massive amounts of data[1].  This lead character is gaining more and more ground with the digital development in most research fields.

Which could be for better or worse, but there can be no doubt that there is something massive happening right now in the way human nature surfaces it self, for that could be truly profound for all in innovation, communication, design and any other field dealing with tapping into human nature and peoples:

 Each day, consumers throughout the world are generating an estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, per day. That’s a billion billion; a million trillion bytes of data.Where William Shakespeare’s  complete works would amount to about 5 megabytes of data then today we are producing what equals 500 billion works of Shakespeare – every day!

 Why are people doing this? Transactions like wiring money or trading stocks or other obviously practical activities speak for themselves, though there may always be an underlying emotional motive like sending the wage home out of love or buying and selling shares for the excitement and thrill that can follow monetary gains and losses.

 For social media the motives behind activities like liking pictures, sharing, commenting, contributing and creating can according to Ric Dragon be summed up in nine significant devices or drivers: 1. Gaming 2. Presence 3. Curation 4. Reputation 5. Gifting 6. Relationships 7. Conversations 8. Groups 9. Identity[2].

 In short you can like say it’s human nature to play, like, share, talk, share  and show-off.

No matter the motive, the result is an increasing and endless amount of data that somewhere deep down rest upon an emotion, so for sure there must be insights to be excavated.

Thus the leading technology researcher Gartner, has predicted that soon, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) will spend more on on information technology than Chief Information Officers (CIOs)[3].

We are here talking about CMOs outspending CIOs on information technology, not just on digital market research or consultancy services. At the same time we see how the old analogue advertising market of 500 billion US dollars is going digital.

Then add real time predictive analysis and marketing automation and it is safe to say that there is a significant change happening that we as marketers can either try to ignore or embrace. [4]

So in many fields companies and researchers are we are digging in data, mining, crunching, washing, modeling and doing predictive analysis to get ‘the perfect picture’ of the human world to create solutions customized one-to-one to the human world and fit into peoples lives.

Why do companies do it digitally? Because it promises a way the problem for innovation that Henry Ford stated as “Had I asked the customers they would have asked for faster horses.”

And sure you can’t innovate by asking people what they want, because they seldom know and can’t imagine the new. So while “Listen to the customers” has been a mantra in many companies to get insights for innovations it has seldom let to the desired new.

Another thing is that not only don’t people what they know what they want they also lie in research. When asked what they do people under rapport their alcohol consumption and over rapport how often they have sex.

The same goes when asked how they choose or why they desire a certain product or brand. Ask people why they wanted a premium car like an Audi, few would straight ought answer “To get prestige.” Rather than that most would rationalize about the superior German quality, the safety, the beautiful design and so on.

 Here we now with digital have some other data that allows us to observe what people do instead of asking them about it, but do we have the lenses in place for how to understand ‘Why people do what they do’? What to look for in the data? What does an insight actually ‘look’ like?

But here many companies still miss structured approach to capture and convert insights into action. Many admit to be learning infants when it comes to insights– every 3 years they start over because they lack the principles and pillars to built on.

So they mostly use market research for elimination, not illumination (some a bit like when a drunk man using a light post to avoid falling). More and more data available doesn’t help, but rather results in paralysis by analysis.  

That's understandable. The digital-driven world of Big Data easily ends up taking the the role of a “rogerian” therapist as known from psycho-therapy, where Rogers’ method with the use of seamingly meaningless ink spots intentionally mirrors the patient.  Then what the client says the therapist follow and reflects back. They don’t lead and don’t stand for any particular point of view.

If we do this as leaders, product developers and marketers, we risk pandering to our audience.. Big data provides us with clusters and the main trend, the mean and average. But if you start with the average that’s the reflection of what people and already do the most then you are bound to create the average. In effect the golden middle way wont lead you to create leaps forward and give people what they didn’t know they wished for.

Now as we shall see, it makes good sense to observe people and this is where big data promises an amazing opportunity with it’s waste amount of descriptions of what people do.

But it’s a balance because it is doubtful if we can become more creative by acting like the cold war KGB surveilling people, and in particular make any sense of it without applying empathy.  

Blindly following what we believe to be the perfect data is not the way to get insights for innovation. The data may be real time, objective and correct, but it takes empathy and a subjective lens to to see the hidden stories and the magic that but will that provide a leap into innovations tomorrow.

While the classic advertising persons approach, as many may have seen depicted in the TV series Mad Men - have been  predicted to be demolished by digital approaches, then there may be some tenets from the intuitive approach worth not throwing out with the bath water.  

That’s why  in the next post we will look at a brief history of advertising and the foundation for thinking that Bill Bernbach of DDB coined back in the 1950’es and 1960’es Creative Revolution fuelled by the perspective that: “Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature.”

 Sources:

 [1] ‘Two opposing forces:’ This drama between Big Data and Big Emotion is most notoriously brought out by Chris Foster, Chairman and CEO Saatchi & Saatch Asia Pacific in hos speech the Algorithm of Attraction. CF-AME_China-8 May 2013

[2] Ric Dragon: Social Media Marketing

[3] Gartner

[4] Chip & Dan Heath, ”Made to stick”

[supified]

A long winded introduction

Who am I and why should you care?  To say that I’m a nobody is a pretty big understatement.  There are over seven billion people in the world and everyone is a perfect snowflake.  And when everyone is a snowflake no one is.  Clearly, I’m not important in the grand scheme of things and yet, you’re reading this.  That is the only thing I can be sure of is if someone is reading this than they’re reading this.  So why should you care?

 The first thing about this blog that I ought to make clear is what the point is.  This is a blog entirely built around reviewing and discussing the craft of writing and story books.  I am not an author, at least not when I wrote this, but I do read a lot of books and try to help other people filter through the endless mass of books to find the ones they will enjoy.  Think of it as a service I provide for the satisfaction of sharing my passion.  If you’re reading this blog then you should be interested in either my point of view on books or reading books yourself at the very least and maybe writing, although there are probably better blogs for that.  Probably better blogs for all of this.

 Now to the million-dollar question still unanswered, why should you care who I am. What books someone enjoys will depend on several factors and quality is only one.  The fact is a very high-quality book may yet still be unenjoyable to you specifically as determined by your taste.  I can go into what I think makes a book quality and for the sake of argument, let’s pretend I’m right.  Does that mean you will enjoy the book…? Not necessarily.  Taste matters.  Take any genre and there is going to be master works in those genres and people who won’t enjoy them.  I for one do not enjoy the romance genre at all, or the regency, so books like Jane Austin, who is unquestionably a master writer, wouldn’t particularly interest me. While my reviews are aimed to express my point of view while exposing the lens I view it through to help anyone reading them to know if they share my point of view and may enjoy the same sorts of things I do.  The fact remains my lens and point of view matters if you are reading my review.  It matters because without knowing what that lens is you won’t know if the view you are getting is distorted to your taste. It’s kind of like eyeglasses that way I guess.

 That isn’t to say a good reviewer who likes stuff you do not won’t be useful. I will express why I dislike something or like it and then if you’re already reading my review you might be able to say, huh, they didn’t like that but I like that in books so maybe this book is for me even.  I have a friend who loves romance for instance, and she doesn’t particularly mind if a book sub plots to include it.  She’ll enjoy stuff I won’t and I try to keep that sort of thing in mind when I critique a book.  So if I’m going to include that explanation, why then again should you care who I am? Well because if a book is Jane Austin, whom I recognize as good but not down my alley I simply won’t read it to begin with.  So that is why it matters who I am.

 Now that I’ve got that out of the way, who am I?  Well, I’m not actually going to tell you that.  Rather I’m going to tell you what I like and appreciate and look for in literature.  This is where you put your taste against mine.  First, I like female inclusion if not female protagonists.  Media is over whelmed with male leads and male oriented stories. Most fiction, games, movies, tv, ect. . will include this magic number of thirty percent or less female inclusion. Just count the characters and you’ll see it is this bizarre trend that for whatever reason goes across lines, even cultures.  It is like all content creators got together and agreed on this in advance.  Obviously, it isn’t -all- media, but it is very pervasive. So one thing about me is I try to find the stuff that doesn’t follow that.  For me to want to read something I will generally look for fifty percent or greater female inclusion (because to make up for all the times the opposite was true we need to head in the other direction).

 Second, I care a lot about stories telling the truth.  What is telling the truth?  In a nutshell, it means an action or event shouldn’t happen that doesn’t fit the world that the story already established or character motivations.  Dues ex Machina (hand of god) are great examples.  When the author forces an outcome and it just doesn’t fit this sort of thing bothers me and I will always attempt to call them out. Why this bothers me is because to put it simply it isn’t any fun to read about something with shifting rules.  You can’t speculate about the world if there are no criteria with which to speculate on and if the author demonstrates willingness to break rules they themselves set then there is a problem.  Examples might include having a character cliff hanging involve falling into deep water in full armor and somehow swimming to escape anyway.  If you don’t want your character to die, don’t put them in a situation they can’t escape, it cheapens the experience and the story.  

 Third I care a lot about guiding principal.  I realize story telling is an art and not a science really, but I think everything should be built on something.  If you are designing anything you should have a purpose in mind and stories are no different.  Sub plots are a great example of a violation of this, something tossed into the story that doesn’t belong or have anything to do with what the story is about.  The most common subplot is romance, many stories will include this for the sake of a quick fix for the reader, like taking a drug. Instant gratification may sell, but it rarely makes for quality.  I find sub plots to be distractions and often detracting from a story.  Since this is the third thing on my list I’ll also mention these are in order of importance to me.  Generally, I’m more willing to forgive something farther down on the list than earlier.  Rules are made to be broken, right?  Just make sure if you’re breaking them you know what you’re doing because if you just think rules don’t apply to you than you’re probably just a bad writer.

 Lastly, I prefer there to be modern elements to the story, like LGBT awareness. This isn’t to say everyone in every world has to be gay or what have you.  No, this is more a comment on the author themselves.  If the author is homophobic I probably won’t read their stuff. If their work simply doesn’t touch the subject, okay, but I would rather that in some ways it is at least acknowledged. Once again, this doesn’t have to be by making a character non-het norm, tokenization can be worse than exclusion, but for instance same sex characters should be able to have meaningful friendships with each other.  For me the LGBT issue goes beyond simple sexual preference but it goes into gender identity and comfort with members of the gender which someone is not attracted to. A great example of being anti-lgbt in my view is if a character only truly interacts with potential partners and ignores everyone else and treats same sex characters purely as romantic rivals. In those hyper het-norm settings I find my interest quickly wanes.

 So now in a nutshell you know what kind of books I’ll be considering.  The last thing to touch on is genre.  The only one I don’t particularly like is romance. Why don’t I like the romance genre? Mostly because I feel it focuses a little too heavily on one aspect of human nature.  Stories usually exclude description of the main character when they shower.  Most people shower every day, see themselves naked every day.. ect.  These things are not parts of stories, why?  Well one it doesn’t usually have anything to do with the guiding principal, but two it’s just gratuitous.  I feel many or maybe most romance novels to be gratuitous. There is probably lots of good ones in the genre, but I’m not prepared to dig through the others.  It is unlikely I will review many, if any, romance novels.

 Now that you have a feel for me, you can keep reading my blog, or you know, not.  Also, my reviews are available on Amazon.  I try to review everything I read, though the stuff that is already reviewed to death I may just skip.  Happy reading!