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burkymakar · 4 years

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Hi! I was wondering if you could post the Athletic's Olympic roster predictions please?!

ok here’s a lot under the cut, i’ve included men and womens for both Canada and USA.

Canada Mens

Remember how the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang unfolded? Canada won a hard-earned bronze medal playing a stingy brand of defence under coach Willie Desjardins and lost only a single game in regulation – to Germany in the semifinals – before defeating the Czech Republic to earn a place on the podium.

Just one thing was missing: NHL players. Hockey’s crème de la crème. Three years ago, the NHL decided not to participate in the Winter Olympics for a lot of reasons that made little sense to the hockey world which made the Games look a little like the Spengler Cup.

Thankfully, as part of the collective bargaining extension signed last summer, the NHL is returning to compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing — assuming the logistical details can be ironed out among the league, the IIHF and the IOC and that the pandemic is under some sort of control.

With apologies to all the players who competed so hard for Canada in 2018, the selection process this time around will be far more difficult because of the staggering depth of the talent pool.

One thing Canada never lacks at the highest level of hockey is oodles of options at both forward and defence. The players who don’t make the grade for Canada would fill out a ‘B’ team that would contend for gold.

How might Team Canada 2022 look? Thought you’d never ask. In our eternal quest to be helpful to the managerial powers-that-be, here are our projections for a 25-player roster, which is what the IOC permitted for Sochi in 2014.

As always, remember that in Canada, for an exercise such as this one, there really aren’t many bad options. Just too many good ones.

The last time men’s hockey had a best-on-best tournament was back in 2016 and if that World Cup taught us anything, it is that the younger generation of players dominating the game today had no stage fright whatsoever when they were got a chance to play together as North America’s 23-and-under team. They were fun to watch and unlucky not to advance to the medal round.

In previous Olympics, sometimes Canada’s management team would opt for veteran players over young up-and-comers because of a fear that they might be overwhelmed by the moment. Team Canada’s biggest Olympic bobble in the NHL era came in 2006 and you wonder what might have happened if they’d injected the youth and vigour of Sidney Crosby onto a team that seemed slow and plodding on the big ice of Turin.

By contrast, the decision to go with the 20-year-old Drew Doughty in Vancouver proved quite prescient – he was one of the key contributors that year and then again in 2014 in Sochi, as Canada won back-to-back golds.

Nowadays, Doughty is one of the more polarizing players in the game. He still plays a ton of minutes for the Los Angeles Kings and oozes confidence. On a blue line that features a whole lot of next-gen talent – from Cale Makar and Shea Theodore to Thomas Chabot and Morgan Rielly — chances are they’ll opt for one or two steadying veterans on the blue line. We’ve selected Alex Pietrangelo and Doughty to fill out what is otherwise a talented but relatively green defence corps that’ll get the puck up to the forwards, with great dispatch and accuracy.

Canada’s 2014 gold-medal team won with a stingy brand of hockey and timely saves from Carey Price, whenever he was called upon. That can be a challenge sometimes – playing goal on a team that surrenders few Grade-A opportunities and tests your level of focus and concentration because there will be the occasional breakdown that you will need to be in a position to respond to.

Long-term, Carter Hart will likely take over from Price as Canada’s go-to starter in goal, but there are still some inconsistencies in his game that drops him down to the No. 2 position. One wild card I considered here was the Devils’ Mackenzie Blackwood, who had an excellent rookie season last year and was off to a good start this year as well. Chances are if Blues’ GM Doug Armstrong has the final say, Jordan Binnington would likely be the third goalie on this roster.

All of which leads us to the hardest, most controversial decisions which involve the forward group. There’s the usual problem of having too many natural centres on the roster and so someone will have to switch to the right wing. Among the elite-level centres in Canada, both Nathan MacKinnon and Mark Scheifele are right-handed shots and could swing over to the wing. One likely will have to and in this scenario, it’s Scheifele, if only so that MacKinnon and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who developed some familiarity playing for Team North America in the World Cup, can play together.

That creates some flexibility if the coach – we’re picking Barry Trotz – ultimately wants to shift Nugent-Hopkins up to Connor McDavid’s line.

Splitting Crosby and Brad Marchand may also just be temporary. In 2016, those two along with Patrice Bergeron were the clear top line for Canada, and scored all the important goal. But Bergeron will be 36 by the time the Olympics roll around, and thus, didn’t make the final group here. You could theoretically put Marchand, Crosby and MacKinnon (playing right wing) together on an all-Nova Scotia line and the chemistry could be magical.

The beauty of Canada’s roster is the versatility of so many of the better forwards – Ryan O’Reilly, Sean Couturier, Brayden Point and Bo Horvat could all play the wing as well as down the middle. Chances are, every line that Canada rolls out will include two natural centres making face-off match-ups easier for the coaching staff, if they can fit both a right- and a left-hand centre onto each line.

The bottom line: With a player pool so deep, Canada has incredible talent and flexibility. Talent enough to get the go-ahead goal in a tight game.

Flexibility enough to juggle lines as needed and get the defensive match-ups as required. The greatest coaching challenge is usually selling a one-for-all and all-for-one vision. If a star player is forced to adopt a secondary role, he’ll need to handle it with maturity and grace and cannot start pouting because he isn’t the first option on the PP or the PK the way he might be on his club team.

Managing egos is as big a part of the job for the coaching staff as setting lines and spooling out ice time. — Eric Duhatschek

I’m going to keep this very simple.

Hockey Canada has a formula. It involves a few key rules that have helped Team Canada dominate best-on-best competition to an unprecedented degree over the past decade:

1) Everyone plays on their strong side.

2) Wherever possible, bring pairs of players that play together in the NHL so you have an immediate chemistry advantage in a short tournament.

3) Bring extra centres and just have them play on the wall.

4) Experience and tenure matter. If you were on the last team and are still elite, you have an edge in the event all other factors are equal.

Now, Hockey Canada has also opted to play grinding, low event hockey over the past decade. It’s cynical, it’s ruthless and it delivers gold.

However, this approach stinks. It shows a certain ruthless focus, which I appreciate, but it actually lacks any grander ambition.

Hockey Canada could aspire for more. They should aspire for greatness.

They should aspir for a national men’s team with the purpose of articulating a national vision of a beautiful, skillful and yet still assertive and physical two-way brand of hockey. Canada’s men’s team could play hockey beautifully if Canada decided to play hockey beautifully, and that’s what this team is going to do — within the framework of Hockey Canada’s otherwise winning formula.

Right off the top, I’ve built the fastest first line in the history of the sport. McDavid moves to the wing mostly for handedness reasons. A top line of McDavid, MacKinnon and Mathew Barzal are going to test the limits of what’s possible to accomplish in hockey playing at the highest possible speed.

Until one of Marchand, Crosby and Bergeron fall off and aren’t among the NHL’s best individually, they’re a set line for Hockey Canada. This is the easiest choice there is. They have chemistry, experience, swagger as a group, and they bring the DNA of Hockey Canada’s decade-of-dominance to this forward group.

The third line is where things get interesting, particularly because this is where the toughest omission from my team — Jonathan Huberdeau — kicks in. Ultimately I’m going to make a decision to prefer John Tavares’ experience, ability to cover in the event of a centre injury and his chemistry with Mitch Marner over Huberdeau’s electricity.

I’m not bringing Rob Zamuner or Kris Draper to fill a role or anything, but my fourth-line definitely has the identity of the highest-end possible version of an energy line. Honestly, in some matchups, this trio may well end up being Hockey Canada’s matchup line ahead of the Crosby line, since it’s just a collection of the countries most willful two-way players.

I’m bringing Steven Stamkos and Couturier as extra forwards, basically two centremen — a lefty and a righty — which means snubbing Bo Horvat and Claude Giroux, my toughest omissions besides Huberdeau.

We weren’t asked to name coaches, but I should add that I’ve named Pete DeBoer and Jared Bednar as assistant coaches, partly because they’re deserving and partly so that my top-four can get reps together throughout the NHL season leading up to the 2022 Games.

There’s a factor in the international game that I still don’t think Hockey Canada has fully incorporated into their player selection process, but they really should: Puck-moving defenders are everything.

Which is why Samuel Girard — probably my most surprising selection — is a slam dunk no brainer for this team and is likely to play a prominent role. Thanks to Bednar’s colluding with me to win a gold medal, he’ll spend more time with Makar in the season leading up to the Olympics (although they’ve spent 200 5-on-5 minutes together the past two seasons, so they’re not exactly strangers). Same goes for Pietrangelo and Shea Theodore, who have played together a bit at 5-on-5 in the early going for Vegas (about 35 minutes so far), but will become the Golden Knight’s fixture top pair in 2021-22 for the purposes of Olympic preparation.

Doughty makes the team because he’s still performing at a high enough level that his status as the most important Hockey Canada veteran defender matters. And Morgan Rielly will be his partner on a mobile third pair, narrowly edging out Giordano.

Ryan Ellis is custom made for the international game and my Hockey Canada will have zero reservation bumping him up the lineup if injuries call for it.

In net, Price and Hart are coming to represent the past and the future while Jordan Binnington gets the nod to round out my trio of netminders. I’m comfortable enough with all three goaltenders that whoever is performing the best ahead of the tournament will go into the round-robin as my defacto starter. — Thomas Drance

Canada Womens

Picking a Canadian roster a year ahead of an Olympics is never easy.

And this time around, looking ahead to Beijing 2022, might be harder than ever, as the years since the 2018 Games have been unlike any other post-Olympic period for Team Canada.

First of all, Canada is coming off a silver medal finish at the last games in Pyeongchang — the first time that’s happened in two decades. If that wasn’t difficult enough, on the eve of the 2019 world championships, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League announced it would fold after nearly 12 years in operation, taking away most Canadians’ daily training environments. Canada ultimately lost in the semifinal of the tournament and took home a bronze medal, the first time Team Canada hasn’t won’t at least silver at a world championship. Then, the 2019 4 Nations Cup was cancelled due to contract disputes between the Swedish Ice Hockey Association and the Swedish women’s team.

On top of all of that, there have been further complications brought by a global pandemic, which led to the cancellation of the 2020 4 Nations Cup and the 2020 women’s world championships.

Essentially, the women’s hockey calendar through the first three years of the Olympic quad cycle has been almost entirely wiped out.

“This quad had been a huge challenge, not only for our program but certainly for women’s hockey globally,” said Gina Kingsbury, the manager of the senior women’s national team. “We’re sitting at Year 3 of our quad with a very little amount of critical experience that we were able to share across our athlete pool to be able to evaluate them and be able to prepare them for an Olympic Games.”

The last time Team Canada played at an international event was 660 days ago at the 2019 worlds. Since then, they’ve relied on games against the U.S. national team and mini-camps throughout the season hosted by Hockey Canada, but even those have been largely put on hold due to the pandemic.

Still, with all that being said, as part of The Athletic’s one year out from the Olympics package, we are going to try our best to project the 2022 Team Canada women’s Olympic roster.

Guided by 2018

To start, let’s take a brief comparative look at who played for Canada in 2018 and who would make the team today. Players selected for the 2022 team are highlighted in red.

FORWARDDEFENCEGOAL

Meghan AgostaRenata FastShannon Szabados

Bailey BramLaura FortinoAnn-Renée Desbiens

Emily ClarkBrigette LacquetteGeneviève Lacasse

Mélodie DaoustJocelyne Larocque

Haley IrwinMeaghan Mikkelson

Brianne JennerLauriane Rougeau

Rebecca Johnston

Sarah Nurse

Marie-Philip Poulin

Jill Saulnier

Natalie Spooner

Laura Stacey

Blayre Turnbull

Jennifer Wakefield

From 2018 to 2022, we’re projecting 15 returnees among the 23 roster spots. Nine up front, four on the blue line, and two in goal. It’s not a ton of turnover between the four years, but there are still several spots for younger players to break onto the senior national team and for others to make their Olympic debuts.

Now, let’s look at the projection.

How did I arrive at these names with so few evaluation opportunities?

Well, despite the cancellation, Hockey Canada still named its 23-player roster for the 2020 world championships.

And, in early January, 47 players were invited to a training camp at Hockey Canada’s home base in Calgary. Thirty-five athletes attended the two-week camp — players such as Rebecca Johnston and Sarah Nurse were invited but unable to attend — and were split into two teams for scrimmages, with the line rushes and defence pairings posted daily.

It’s not a huge sample size, but using the previous Olympic and World Championship rosters, and taking stock of the two-week camp, which ended on Friday, you can get a pretty good idea of where things stand one year out from Beijing 2022.

As mentioned above, this roster consists of 15 returnees from the 2018 Games. And 22 of the 23 players projected here were named to Canada’s roster for the cancelled 2020 Women’s World Championship. Brigette Lacquette is the only player on my roster who didn’t make the World Championship roster, as she was unable to play.

These lines and pairings certainly aren’t set in stone, but they were consistently used at last week’s camp, except for Nurse on the line with Emily Clark and Blayre Turnbull, as Nurse did not attend camp.

To start, there are some names on this roster that should be no-brainers.

Marie-Philip Poulin, 29, is now over a decade into her international career and is arguably the greatest player of all-time in the women’s game. She’s Canada’s captain and scored the game-winning goal in the gold medal games of her first two Olympic appearances (2010 and 2014). A knee injury kept her mostly out of the 2019 world championships, but she’s healthy now. And it would take something completely unforeseen for Poulin to not be in Beijing.

Her frequent winger for club (the now-defunct CWHL Les Canadiennes) and country, Mélodie Daoust, is also a natural choice. With three goals and seven points in five games, she led Canada in scoring at the last Olympics. And scored one of the most impressive shootout goals in the gold medal game.

Natalie Spooner and Brianne Jenner have been consistent staples for Team Canada in the last two Olympic Games, with Spooner making her World Championship debut in 2011, and Jenner in 2012. The duo ranked No. 1 and 2 in scoring for Canada at the 2019 world championships. Spooner scored six goals and 10 points in seven games, only one goal behind Hilary Knight, who led the tournament with 11 points. Jenner wasn’t far behind with nine points.

Lauriane Rougeau and Jocelyne Larocque are also steady veterans, albeit on the blue line, who have the 2014 and 2018 Olympics under their belts. While, Nurse and Clark, who played together at the University of Wisconsin, both made their Olympic debuts in 2018 and should be natural choices to return in 2022. Similarly, Fast made her debut in 2018 and has established herself as one of the top defenders in the women’s game.

Youth vs. experience

I wanted to strike a balance on this roster with returning players, veterans and young players, or those making their Olympic debut. Because according to Kingsbury, as much as you want to win a gold medal, you have to keep an eye to the future.

“Often you tend to lean on what you know, and the unknowns of the young players obviously is a little scary, but I do think we’re at a point in our program that we do have to sometimes take calculated risks,” she explained. “We’re aiming at winning a gold medal in Beijing, but we’re also making sure that we’ve got a sustainable success here down the road as well and that we’re looking ahead in the future of our program.”

With that front of mind, there are some obvious omissions on this projected roster.

Both Johnston and Laura Fortino, who played in 2018, were among the final cuts for the 2020 world championships. I left them off this roster.

Shannon Szabados was a steady presence in Canada’s crease from her Olympic debut in 2010 until 2019. She recently had her first child and is currently not playing. She could certainly decide to come back but will be 35 by the next games and 39 by 2026.

So, this feels like a natural time for a passing of the torch in the crease to younger goalies like Ann-Renée Desbiens, 26, and Emerance Maschmeyer, 26, who have been given a lot of the net over the last two and a half years, along with Geneviève Lacasse, 31.

Similarly, Meaghan Mikkelson, a three-time Olympian, was one of the most experienced players at last week’s camp, with just under 50 games for Canada at the Olympics (14) and world championships (35) over the last decade. She last played in 2017-18, taking a leave after the birth of her second child. This will be her second comeback to the national team.

This was one of the more difficult decisions for my projected blue line, and I assume this will be the same for the real decision-makers at Hockey Canada. Mikkelson will be 37 when the Games begin. If she can re-elevate her game, she can be a force on the ice. But could, say, Claire Thompson, 23, have a similar impact?

If we assume Rougeau, 30, and Larocque, 31, make this team, with two other returning blueliners in Fast and Lacquette, the Canadian blue line isn’t going to be inexperienced. So bringing Thompson to Beijing over Mikkelson could be one of those “looking ahead in the future” decisions.

There could be a similar decision in looking at a player like Erin Ambrose, who was the most difficult omission for me. Ambrose was one of the last cuts for the 2018 Olympics, but played her way onto the 2019 and 2020 World Championship rosters. She could realistically do the same for Beijing. But again, how much does Hockey Canada want to look forward to the future?

Admittedly, Ambrose, Mikkelson and even Meghan Agosta — a four-time Olympian who is a full-time Vancouver police officer who hasn’t play for Canada since 2017-18 — could be the ultimate wild cards for 2022. However, for this exercise, I decided that if I was undecided between a player on the way up and an older player, I erred on the side of the former.

This brings us to the Olympic rookies, projected to be: Jamie Lee Rattray, Victoria Bach, Sarah Fillier, Loren Gabel, Jaime Bourbonnais, Micah Zandee-Hart, and the aforementioned Maschmeyer and Thompson.

All eight of these rookies were named to the 2020 World Championship roster, and they were all featured in the 2019 world championships except for Bach and Fillier, who were among the final cuts. Rattray, 28, has been in the Hockey Canada program for a while now and has seemed to solidify a place within the core group. Bach was set to make her international tournament debut at the world championships, and while that debut has been delayed, her standing on the team remains.

There are two young stars to watch for here, too, in Gabel and Fillier.

Gabel, 23, made her senior team debut at the 2018 4 Nations Cup and won the Patty Kazmaier Award — the biggest individual honour in women’s college hockey — in 2019 after scoring 40 goals and 69 points in 38 games, including 11 game-winning goals for Clarkson University. She graduated that year as the all-time leading scorer with 213 points on 116 goals and 97 assists through 160 games.

Fillier, 20, was nominated for the Patty Kazmaier as a rookie at Princeton in 2018-19 after she put up nearly two points per game (1.97) to lead NCAA women’s hockey. Fillier, a centre, also led her team in scoring (22 goals and 57 points in 29 games) and was named the National Rookie of the Year. Like Gabel, Fillier made her senior team debut at the 2018 4 Nations Cup.

These two have been on the rise and should certainly crack the 2021 World Championship and 2022 Olympics rosters.

Bourbonnais, Thompson and Zandee-Hart further make up the young up and coming core of Hockey Canada’s roster, specifically on the blue line.

As mentioned, all of the above players were named to the 2020 World Championship roster, which shows a lot of trust from the decision-makers to put them into best-on-best competition. The world championships is often a dress rehearsal for the Olympics, too. That they were all chosen over veterans like Johnston and Fortino means a lot.

Finally, there are some other young players in Hockey Canada’s talent pool to be highlighted here, such as Élizabeth Giguère, Emma Maltais and Daryl Watts.

Giguère won the Patty Kazmaier last season, while Watts currently leads the nation with 11 goals and 21 points through 10 games to start the NCAA season. There are some key complications impacting their Olympic chances.

None of the three were at the recent camp, a key evaluator for the 2021 world championships. Kingsbury said “it was impossible” to bring any U.S.-based athletes to camp due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. (Fillier decided to take the year off from Princeton with the questions around if Ivy League schools would have a season and the Olympic considerations in mind.)

“Having our college players not here is definitely another challenge,” she said. “You’re trying to scout online, and it’s hard to see what they do in college and try to figure out if that’s going to have an impact at the international level.”

So while they are talented, without camps and potentially cracking the 2021 World Championship roster, it will be hard to jump into the 2022 Olympics. Especially if they are trying to take spots from returning players such as Turnbull, Jill Saulnier and Laura Stacey, who have all shown they can be reliable forwards who can play up and down the lineup.

For everything laid out here, all it takes is a really good tournament or training camp by one or two players to change my entire roster. Every year before the Olympics, Hockey Canada invites its Olympic hopefuls to Calgary for a six-to-seven month “centralized” camp before the Games.

Typically, there are some surprises on the roster, as Kingsbury said some players come in “like sponges” and elevate their game.

Such is the difficulty in this exercise. Anything can happen once we officially get into the final year of the Olympic quad. But regardless, Canada is going to have a deep talent pool to chose from when it comes time for Beijing 2022.

USA Mens

I remember covering the 2010 United States Olympic men’s hockey team — that came within a Sidney Crosby overtime goal of winning a gold medal — and before the tournament wondering: How the hell are they going to fill out this roster?

Ten years later, there has been a seismic change in the hockey landscape at the highest levels in the United States. Depth is no longer an issue for the U.S.

We often joke Canada could enter two teams in these best-on-best tournaments and both would be gold-medal worthy. The U.S. is not so far behind that and it’s illustrated by the difficult decisions we’ve made with this lineup and the hard decisions that await whoever builds the 2022 version of Team USA. There will be no shortage of heated debate about those tabbed to wear the red, white and blue and, of course, those whose names do not end up on the 25-man roster.

In starting to narrow down our roster here, we hearkened back to that scrappy 2010 team built by Brian Burke and David Poile and coached by Ron Wilson and looked for clues as to how to build not just the most talented team but the team most likely to win gold. What was it that allowed that group to defy projections and push a superstar-laden Canadian team to overtime?

Conversely, what was it that led a talented American roster to fall short of a medal in Sochi four years later and to flame out spectacularly in the 2016 World Cup? You will hear over and over that this version of Team USA will be the most talented ever iced in a best-on-best tournament. Maybe. But we focused in this exercise on building not just the most talented American roster but a team that can overcome disappointment, obstacles and the unexpected en route to what would be the first American gold medal in men’s hockey since the Miracle on Ice in 1980.

Let the shame-talking begin. Yes. No room on this roster for Johnny Gaudreau, Zach Parise or Paul Stastny. No room for 2019 first overall pick Jack Hughes. Sorry.

This is as good a team down the middle as any Team USA has iced, starting with Auston Matthews and Jack Eichel. A little bit of everything from this group of centers including solid leadership, ability to play shutdown hockey and, of course, create offense. That meant excluding worthy pivots like Kevin Hayes and Hughes even though one former coach and executive we spoke to felt Hughes would continue to evolve and push his way onto the roster before the end of 2021.

As for the wingers, there is so much to like from this group including the size and speed of Blake Wheeler, Jake Guentzel and Anders Lee and the offensive creativity of J.T. Miller and Kyle Connor. And of course, who will every team in the tournament love to hate from the word go? Matthew Tkachuk.

We kept Stanley Cup champion and Olympic shootout hero T.J. Oshie (T.J. Sochi as he is known after his exploits in 2014) given his experience. If you wanted more speed on the right side, you could go with Bryan Rust and/or one of our favorite emerging players, Conor Garland. We love the natural connection between usual Winnipeg linemates Connor and Wheeler and we wanted Stanley Cup champion Blake Coleman on this roster for his versatility and his ability to play both ends of the ice.

At one point, we had Gaudreau as one of our extra forwards in place of Max Pacioretty but the experts we spoke to felt Pacioretty needed to be on the roster and the fact that Gaudreau has struggled to produce in the playoffs we went with Pacioretty. Both the coach and former player we spoke to suggested two Brocks, Nelson and Boeser, and Columbus captain Nick Foligno should be considered. Another dark horse forward in the former player’s view is Alex Iafallo.

There will be no more critical decisions for Team USA’s management team than the ones made on the blue line.

The Beijing Games will be played on North American-sized ice so it will be critical to include not only those defenders who can skate fluidly and make good, quick decisions with the puck but who can defend vigorously. Team USA’s entry in the World Cup in 2016 is a good illustration of why you should never build a team with the notion of facing one particular opponent. But given Canada is in the same round-robin pool as the U.S., the ability to defend a physical, skilled team like Canada will be paramount.

As in all things, the balance will be crucial. This group is split evenly right shot/left shot and does have a good mix of youthful zest and solid experience. Some may quibble with leaving a guy like Zach Werenski off the roster, especially given his familiarity with Seth Jones. Fair enough. But a number of NHL sources we spoke to felt Torey Krug needed to be on this team.

Jeff Petry has established himself as one of the most effective defensemen in the game excelling in all situations and playing more often than not against opposing teams’ top talent. Jaccob Slavin, who is the motor that drives the talented Carolina blue line, must be on this roster. Charlie McAvoy has emerged from the shadows of Zdeno Chara to become the Bruins’ undisputed number one defender and he will be a key part of this blue line.

So having to leave Werenski off the list of eight is difficult but a function of the breadth and depth of options that will be available. Others who were on the radar included young John Marino, who has been so impressive in Pittsburgh, and the venerable Ryan Suter, who is a perennial participant in these best-on-best tournaments.

Goaltending is probably the most clearly established position for Team USA. Connor Hellebuyck is the defending Vezina Trophy winner. He’s an elite netminder who has endured his own share of ups and downs en route to his current lofty status.

John Gibson, playing behind a rebuilding Ducks team, won’t have the gaudy numbers that other top NHL netminders boast but he is recognized around the hockey world as an elite netminder and he will push Hellebuyck for the starter’s role in Beijing.

Ben Bishop’s lingering health issues excuse him from our list but if the multiple time Vezina Trophy finalist went on a roll later this season or to start the 2021-22 season he could play his way into the picture. Two-time Stanley Cup winner Jonathan Quick is Hall of Fame worthy but past his prime so we went younger with Thatcher Demko, who was stellar in the bubble playoffs for Vancouver.

We’ll admit one former NHL coach and executive with whom we shared our roster felt unequivocally Bishop should be on the team ahead of Demko. And one longtime netminder and analyst felt that the Kings’ Cal Petersen in Los Angeles might actually jump over Gibson by the time the Olympics roll around. — Scott Burnside

Let’s start with the fourth line. I was chatting with Blackhawks director of amateur scouting Mark Kelley for another story on the way about Team USA and he suggested this one. We were debating the merits of Jack Hughes on the Olympic team and he said, if he were to do it, he’d throw him out there with the two Tkachuks.

“No one will get near him,” Kelley said of Hughes. “It’ll be like he’s walking his two pit bulls.”

To pull it off, we’re probably costing a guy like Jake Guentzel a deserving spot, but it’s fun. I like the idea of T.J. Oshie as an option for shootouts but just couldn’t squeeze him in. I’d also like to find a spot for Joe Pavelski, who is averaging like three goals per game this season, but am skewing younger because we’re a year out. This team is loaded.

Quinn Hughes has gone from a guy knocking on the door to make the roster to the top pair over the last year. Just think of how good he’ll be a year from now. Zach Werenski could be penciled in to play in the place of Ryan Suter but it would be great to have Suter’s Olympic experience available in the top six. It’s also possible we’re suffering from some recency bias following Werenski’s slow start. Adam Fox, Neal Pionk and Matt Grzelcyk all have to be on a watch list this season.

The debate in goal will be about who starts between Gibson and Hellebuyck but the most interesting slot might be No. 3. Chances are, that goalie isn’t playing, so I’m bringing the future of American goaltending — world junior gold medalist Spencer Knight — to get experience on the big stage and soak in the experience much like a young Jonathan Quick did in 2010. — Craig Custance

Team USA is due in best-on-best hockey.

They lost the bronze medal game at the Sochi Olympics in 2014. They were embarrassed at the 2016 World Cup.

Now they’ve got a whole new generation of stars ready to bring USA Hockey back to gold-medal contention.

The difficulty in this exercise of selecting the roster for the Beijing Olympics is proof of how things got to another level for USA Hockey over the past decade.

It’s probably a crime to leave off T.J. Sochi but there’s plenty of time for me to change my mind before next year. Anders Lee, Jake Guentzel, Blake Coleman, Bryan Rust, Chris Kreider and James van Riemsdyk are among other names I passed over for now. It speaks to the elite U.S. depth. I’m probably one of the few who has young Brady Tkachuk on this roster this far out but, believe me, when we get closer to the final roster picks next December/January, he will have worked his way on to a lot of people’s lists.

I may also be one of the few to select Kevin Hayes but I wanted the extra center on the roster and given the fact the tournament will be played on North American-sized ice, I like his big body as a factor.

Four lefties and four righties, talk about balance in this defense group. I do worry I put too much offense on here but I’ve got my penalty-killing units in Slavin-Jones and McDonagh-Petry. Obviously, it’s tough to leave off a quality veteran like Suter and no doubt USA Hockey may not. Zach Werenski and Cam Fowler are other names to monitor over the year. But I really like the balance in those eight I put down.

Not much to debate in goal as Hellebuyck-Gibson is pretty much locked in at this point as the 1-2 punch. Now, I went with youth as the No. 3 with Demko but obviously, a healthy Ben Bishop or a resurgent Jonathan Quick would force USA Hockey’s hand. — Pierre LeBrun

USA Womens

It’s been nearly three years since USA Hockey forward Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson unleashed her gold-medal winning shootout goal at the 2018 Winter Olympics. The “Oops I Did it Again“ move shook Canadian netminder Shannon Szabados right out of her pads and sent the United States back home with their first goal medal since 1998.

Much has changed in the women’s hockey landscape since the national team was paraded around the United States media circuit. From “Ellen” to “The Tonight Show” to some players visiting the White House, we seemed on track to see the best leadup to the next Olympics ever.

However, the U.S. women’s team hasn’t competed in an official tournament since the April 2019 women’s worlds in Finland and has had very few competitive games since. It’s been a rocky road that has been only further complicated by the pandemic. The last official roster we got from USA Hockey was ahead of the cancelled 2020 world championships.

The 2022 Winter Olympics are officially one year away and soon we can expect USA Hockey to name a roster for the 2021 worlds and enter residency in the fall ahead of selecting the roster for the Beijing Games. Here is a look at all that has happened since the Pyeongchang Games and what we predict the final U.S. Olympic roster will look like.

The rundown

The Canadian Women’s Hockey League folded as Team USA traveled to Finland for the 2019 world championship — their last official tournament. New head coach Bob Corkum made some noticeable roster adjustments for that tournament, including bringing back the final cuts from the 2018 Olympic roster: Alex Carpenter and Megan Bozek. Kelly Pannek, Annie Pankowski and the return of 2014 Olympian Michelle Picard were other notable additions.

As Team USA was competing on the ice, they were also paving a future for professional women’s sports off the ice. Players made a bold statement with the #ForTheGame movement, vowing not to play for an existing professional league in North America. That was a loud and clear message to then-NWHL commissioner Dani Rylan. The movement has since evolved into the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association and the #DreamGap tour.

Games were already sparse when the Swedish national team held its own boycott for better conditions. Unlike what unfolded after the U.S. held out of the 2017 worlds, Sweden and its players did not reach an agreement and the 4 Nations Cup was canceled.

In lieu of 4 Nations, USA Hockey and Hockey Canada held a joint training camp in Pennsylvania. Canada opted for a young roster for the training camp, while the U.S. went with the usual suspects.

The next scheduled official tournament was the 2020 worlds. However, the pandemic shut that down and we haven’t seen USA Hockey in competition since. COVID-19 also greatly affected the PWHPA’s second year. Some players hit the ice last month in Tampa, but the organization has not yet been able to activate all of its five hub cities.

The 2020 world championship roster was announced and likely gives us the best glimpse at what USA Hockey will roll with as we approach the one year mark from the 2022 Olympics.

2020 world championship rosterFORWARDSDEFENDERSGOALIES

Brianna DeckerLee SteckleinAlex Cavallini

Hannah BrandtCayla BarnesMaddie Rooney

Hayley ScamurraMegan KellerAerin Frankel

Hilary KnightEmily Matheson

Kelly PannekMegan Bozek

Dani CameranesiKacey Bellamy

Kendall Coyne-SchofieldSavannah Harmon

Amanda Kessel

Jesse Compher

Alex Carpenter

Britta Curl

Grace Zumwinkle

Abby Roque

Roster changes

Notably missing from this roster compared to the 2018 Olympic team are Meghan Duggan, Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson, and Monique Lamoureaux-Morando. Duggan has since retired and it is unclear if USA Hockey is permanently moving on from the Lamoureux twins, who both returned to the team in November 2019 after each giving birth to their first child.

Defender Emily Matheson has announced she is expecting a baby boy in June 2021. Shelly Picard, who returned for the 2019 worlds, has also effectively retired and now serves as the deputy commissioner of the NWHL.

In goal, it would appear Nicole Hensley is on the outside looking in. Katie Burt and Aerin Frankel might be the two netminders Corkum brings in to join Maddie Rooney and Alex Cavallini. Overall, Corkum has shown he isn’t afraid to mix in some new faces with those synonymous with USA Hockey, such as Hilary Knight, Kacey Bellamy and new captain Kendall Coyne Schofield.

Annie Pankowski had a great world championship in 2019 but did not land on the 2020 roster. She was also missing from the 53-player roster tapped for an evaluation camp in October 2020, while younger players like Jincy Dunne, Natalie Snodgrass and Britta Curl were present.

Corkum emphasized in October the importance of bringing in new players and facilitating internal competition.

“We have a nice blend of youth and veteran talent here and the young players are certainly pushing the older players. And the older players aren’t ready to give it up,” Corkum said in a USA Hockey video recap.

Predictions

It is always difficult to make Olympic predictions, especially when USA Hockey hasn’t hit the ice in so long. I get the impression, though, that Corkum and USA Hockey are ready to shake things up. The roster for the 2021 worlds won’t be a complete youth movement, but it will feature some rising stars who have proven themselves in the 2019-20 Rivalry Series and in the NCAA. Here is my best guess at the 2022 Olympic Roster:

The 2020 world championship roster is the best indicator we have right now and I think we’ll see that team begin to take form as the go-to roster. I came up with line pairings based on the 2018 Olympics, 2019 worlds, and the 2019-20 Rivalry Series.

Alex Carpenter and Megan Bozek should make the next Olympics, though I’m more confident in Bozek than Carpenter.

Both are extremely skilled and are two of the few players currently getting in competitive games overseas. That said, there are a lot of good, young forwards coming up in the USA Hockey system. Abby Roque and Jesse Compher, for example, showed they are ready to play with Olympians in the 2019-20 Rivalry Series.

Roque, the 2020 Bob Allen USA Hockey Player of the Year, is an elite center and all signs point to her having a stellar international career. She scored two impressive goals in the Rivalry Series and injected some much-needed energy into USA Hockey coming off the lackluster performance at the 2019 November camp.

Last year would have marked the second consecutive world championship for Boston University product Jesse Compher. An injury kept her away from the Rivalry Series, but expect her to be back in the rotation. She has a great combination of size and skill for a USA Hockey team that is equal parts fast and furious on the ice.

Making the USA Hockey roster as a defender is tough, but ultimately, I think Matheson will need more time to return. I predict Savannah Harmon and Jincy Dunne will be the two vying for a spot this year, while Matheson will go for hers in 2022. I give the edge to the youth.

In net, Cavanelli and Rooney seem to be the mainstays for Corkum. Hensley attended the October evaluation camp, while Katie Burt did not. Frankel making the worlds roster indicates to me that she is being prepared for international competition.

As a journalist very fond of the eye test, this exercise was difficult, but here is to hoping we get to see players hit the ice for the red, white, and blue sooner rather than later.

#they haven't released other countries yet #but if u want them just let me know #yellowpinkrose #askos

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thiefsoldier · 4 years

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE

Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥

My muse is:

canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO / N/A

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / i guess? he’s a thin prettyboy anyway

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO

Are they underrated? YES / NO / N/A

Were they relevant to the main story? YES / NO

Were they relevant to the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. / In theory, if they meet during the events of the game

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO.

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

How strictly do you follow canon?

While I believe it’s entirely possible for OCs to be canon compliant, I do make Lanh a different kind of SOLDIER than the ones most others do. This is partly due to Lanh being a transplanted OC; he was originally from Avatar: the Last Airbender before I revamped him (and his two best friends) for Final Fantasy VII. The other reason is because it’s only logical that not everyone would react to the SOLDIER treatments in the same way.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutual.

Lanh is a former pickpocket who grew up homeless in Midgar before being picked up for SOLDIER

He was literally picked up for SOLDIER; one of the Project Boys* caught him pickpocketing and went “hey that could be useful.” * My heacanon is that it was Angeal but that part’s flexible.

Lanh stands out in SOLDIER because while he’s nowhere near as tanky as most others, his speed and reflexes are well into the First Class category, making him something of an outlier.

He’s ethnically Wutaian but was born in Midgar and has never left.

He’s a skilled mimic, specialising in Behemoths and Guard Hounds.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).

While Lanh’s not necessarily ride or die for Shinra, he remains loyal to the company because-- what else is he going to do?

He’s really not interested in fighting -- if he has to actually fight, he prefers ambush attacks where he can be in, out, and gone before anyone figures out what happened. He’s best utilized as a sighthound, sent to flush out or chase down prey.

Most of his interests include making it to the next day; one of his biggest fears is dying.

What inspired you to rp your muse?

Originally? Well, waaaaay back when, in 2009, I needed some background OCs the same age as the Gaang, to provide more points of view into what kind of people go into the Dai Li. Lanh and his buddies developed from there. come about.... nnnn.... 2013, I feel back into FF fandom. It was pretty easy to alter Lanh’s backstory for FF7 while still keeping true to his original background. Swap Ba Sing Se for Midgar and Dai Li for SOLDIER. Perhaps a Turk would’ve worked better but I liked him in SOLDIER.

What keeps your inspiration going?

Man, who even knows? lol. Some days are better than others.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO.

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO.

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO.

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO.

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO.

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?

To a degree? Like, come at me about his background/stuff i get wrng about SOLDIER, but don’t tell me his personality is wrong. You don’t know him, I do. I made him.

Do you like questions which help you explore your character?

YES

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?

Given that Lanh is my OC, damn straight I do.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?

The only one with any right to disagree is my friend Bex, who has written him in AtLA just like I’ve written their OCs. They were crucial to Lanh’s initial development and in fact helped me name him. Nobody else is allowed.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?

If you find ‘em, please do!

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?

I hope that I am, anyway....

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

Tagged by: @stingslikeabee to spread the OC love! Tagging: i mean if we’re doing OCs then technically speaking @ancientblxde and @lovelessblade count. ✌️🏽 love you guys~

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the-bounce-back · 5 years

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THE CONFIDENCE CHRONICLES IV - CONFIDENCE IN YOUR CRAFT

This is post 4/5 of my “Confidence Chronicles” series, in which I discuss the mindsets, actions and thought processes I’ve applied to build/rebuild my confidence in different aspects of my life. The goal of these 5 posts is for you readers to be able to apply relevant points to your own insecurities in order to combat them, and hopefully aid in building your own confidence over time.

_____________

Oooh, check me out with the post consistency. That’s how you know it’s a new year and decade, baby!

I’d like to start off by saying that I have been excited to write this post in particular for quite a long while now - literally since about July last year. However, my life was a bit of a mess at the time, and I didn’t want to put the previous post on hold, so it had to wait until now.

Maybe this was for the best, though - this post is going to be about confidence in your craft and the projects you put out into the world. Although I was literally planning on writing this post around 7 months ago, I can honestly say that my confidence levels in my own projects have never been higher than right now, so writing about it now makes more sense. See, procrastination helps!

Anyways. To kick this post off, I want to take some time to acknowledge my many talents. Besides my *impeccable* blogging skills, not many people know that I’ve dabbled in acting and drumming in the past, and I am currently also writing a book (more about that in a future post) and getting back into interior design, learning new languages and drawing. These are my current favourite pastimes, and what I say to people whenever I’m asked what my “hobbies” are.

The reason why I’m sharing this is because I want people to understand that unless you are vocal about your passions, how the hell are other people meant to be able to support and appreciate your work? It goes without saying that bigging yourself up and showing off your talents can feel extremely vain if you are a naturally reserved/humble person - but my hope is that this post will teach you how to be more confident in your work.

I am very excited to share this post because I am blessed to have friends of what feels like millions of different talents. Actors, musicians, podcasters, poets, youtubers, models, MUA’s, chefs, hair stylists… the list goes on, and it makes me so proud to see that they are all in their respective creative bags right now - so this post is somewhat dedicated to them as well if they ever have feelings of insecurity in their talents.

I will be talking about what I have found to be the most important factors of being confident in your creativity, not letting criticism (constructive or otherwise) make you want to give up, and getting over the initial fear of putting something you’ve created out into the world, because let’s face it; sharing something you’ve created can be incredibly vulnerable. You are essentially sharing a private aspect of yourself for the world to critically analyse, and it’s normal to find this daunting - however, it’s all about how you handle it.

Based on my own experiences and anonymous examples from my friends, I will try my best to explain how best to develop a deep sense of confidence and pride in your creative endeavours.

1. Ensure that you are doing your craft out of passion.

Regardless of if you are creating content solely for your own enjoyment or to capitalise on it, I definitely think that it is imperative that what you are doing fills you with joy and that you are excited to do the activity. This may sound like a no-brainer, but I feel like I see a lot of people nowadays forcing themselves to pursue certain endeavours due to influences from social media, or are forcing themselves to capitalise off a hobby they used to love, but now hate because of the added pressure of having to create content/products for the target audience.

This is partly why I am apprehensive about ways of monetising this blog - or any of my other creative projects, for that matter. I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t crossed my mind, but my biggest fear is starting to resent an activity I once loved because of external pressure such as deadlines, not having full creative control and having to “tread carefully” with the messages I put out, if that makes sense.

Pursuing a hobby for the sole purpose of others is never going to make you feel that what you’re creating is good. Constantly trying to please the masses as opposed to just doing whatever makes you feel happy is always going to make you feel anxious and scared of the reception, I think. Instead, I’d suggest that you evaluate what is more important to you: approval or enjoyment. If it’s the former, then by all means… keep forcing yourself to pursue hobbies that may or may not give you recognition. Who knows - maybe you’ll blow up and get the sponsorships, money and fans that you want, and I don’t even mean this in a petty or sarcastic way. If that’s what you set out to do, then I’d be very happy for you.

However, I reiterate: pursuing a hobby for anyone other than yourself runs a great risk of becoming a burden in the long run, as well as a risk of losing your self confidence when you don’t get the attention or accolades that you believe that you deserve.

I think I have an issue with the above because it relates back to past posts in which I’ve discussed humans’ desperation to be approved and acknowledged by their peers. It alludes to a deeply rooted insecurity in yourself, your abilities and your belief in said abilities - I only say this because this literally used to be me before deciding to sack everyone off and do whatever the f*ck I wanted.

Personally, my dream scenario would be for people to find a hobby that they are truly passionate about and that they can capitalise off in a way that doesn’t restrict their creative process and that is on their own terms. Because, let’s be honest - receiving money and accolades doing something that you truly love is a major confidence boost… regardless of if the money and recognition motivates you or not. But the bottom line is that your confidence in your creativity should not be rooted in anything else but your own joy.

2. Appoint a/some constructive critic(s).

It goes without saying that true confidence comes from ~*wItHiN*~, but there is nothing wrong with looking to friends and/or family for opinions and support. In fact, I’d even go as far as saying that having someone who understands your vision and wants you to achieve your goals is a must.

This someone is a crucial part of the creative process, because they will ideally motivate (aka bully...exactly like the gif above) you into meeting the deadlines you set for yourself, give you honest feedback and give you a kick up the arse on the days where you don’t really feel like doing anything. They will remind you of the reason why you started your project when you feel like giving up - and having someone like this in your corner that unconditionally believes in you is a massive ego boost.

Something that’s even better than having one person in your corner is having multiple people in your corner. And something that’s even better than having multiple people in your corner, is having multiple people in your corner that are also creative and have their own projects going on. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a group of people with the exact same hobby as you (although this definitely helps too!), but surrounding yourself with people that are also making things happen for themselves gives you a beautiful sense of community. I can only speak for myself, but forming friendships with other creatives has definitely helped me come out of my shell. I still remember when I first “pitched” my blog idea to my friends - thinking that I’d get a lukewarm response (because let’s face it… a lot of people unfortunately don’t enjoy reading anymore) - but the positive feedback and support I got is what gave me the confidence to actually start. And when I was on my hiatus, I’d be harassed for updates on when my next post was coming, and brutally dragged when I didn’t post on the days I had promised. The same goes for their projects as well - it was only recently that we had to bully someone for not releasing their podcast when they said they would.

Another aspect of having a group of critics that believe in you is the motivation you get from seeing them putting their plans into action. Honestly. Seeing my friends’ work ethics and how hard they grind makes me want to be better - not only to keep up, but for myself in general.

The bottom line is that although you don’t need people in your corner to get started, it is definitely a major asset to have. You should be confident that your work is great by your own accord, but getting it confirmed - or receiving feedback for improvements - is just another key to improving your confidence.

3. Do not be afraid of vulnerability (if your craft requires you to do so).

Believe me… I get it. Putting out something you’ve created for the entire planet to see can be incredibly daunting, especially if a lot of emotion has gone into it. It feels like you’re putting a very dainty and vulnerable part of you out on a perilous battlefield, out in the open where nowhere to take cover. This is where a lot of us (myself included) tend to overthink sharing our work, or in some cases chose not to share it at all. If only you guys knew how many draft posts have ended up in the bin because I was worried about being judged (they’re being revived though, fear not!)... it’s mad how much fear and anxiety can hold you back from being great.

This is where it’s important to understand the power of being able to be vulnerable, honest and open through your selected medium. As cringe as it sounds, opening your heart to the world and letting people see your insecurities, unresolved issues and things you’d much rather hide leads to the situations power over you significantly diminishing. And the more you do it, the closer you get to the situation no longer being able to hurt you anymore - because once it’s out in the open, nothing or no one can actually tell you sh*t. Once you get to the point of no longer caring who knows what your internal struggles are, I promise that you feel insanely confident and empowered, because you are no longer living in fear.

Another beautiful aspect of vulnerability in relation to self-confidence is that ever so often, you get to hear that your work has genuinely helped, inspired or motivated someone. I know I said that validation and approval from others isn’t the best reason for pursuing a hobby, but this is different in the sense that you’re doing your thing regardless of if you get positive feedback for it - the recognition is truly just a bonus, but a contributor to increased confidence all the same.

Hopefully, utilising these three methods will make you feel a great deal more confident about your creative projects/side hustles for the following reasons:

You’re doing this project primarily because it brings you joy.

The way I see it, taking time out of your day to do something that makes you genuinely happy is an act of self-care and incredibly empowering, in the sense that we are choosing to not be distracted and led astray by the infinite amount of garbage media that is constantly in our faces due to social media. Being able to make time on a project - whatever it may be - that brings you happiness and engages your right brain is a massive blessing in our age group, as we take on more and more responsibilities that eat up our time and drain us.

A cute metaphor for this could be that your day to day routine is a desert. Going to work/uni, doing work/uni related projects, doing chores around the house and all your other responsibilities is walking around for hours in the sun, making us drained, famished and parched. Our hobbies should be like a much-welcomed oasis, providing us with water, food, shade and somewhere to recharge (joy, inspiration, motivation and a well-deserved break for the brain).

Okay, that was a bit cringe. But you get the point - allowing ourselves to have something in this hard life to enjoy is a confidence boost in itself.

After paying attention to the feedback you get, you’ll become even more skilled at your craft over time.

It’s no conundrum that experience equals expertise, and that constantly improving your creative process in accordance with feedback from someone you know understands your vision will make you more sure of yourself in the long run.

Think about it: if you’re already doing something you genuinely love, and you have a trusted person/trusted people in your life to turn to for genuine opinions, how can you not win?

By “winning”, I mean your work getting progressively better over time, combined with a feeling of security and support from your peers. I mean becoming more emotionally, mentally, spiritually and maybe even financially (if you’re so inclined) stable through doing something you genuinely love. The prize is peace of mind, feeling supported, and full creative control of your work - and I honestly can’t think of anything more satisfying.

You’re taking control of your doubts and insecurities and flipping them into assets.

For me, this is a no brainer. What could possibly be more confidence-boosting than overcoming insecurities and being able to use them to your advantage in your creative endeavours? It’s literally what my entire blog is based upon, and writing about things that have caused me a great deal of pain in the past has ended up being a very therapeutic and cathartic experience, as well as extremely empowering - in the sense that I don’t allow certain situations have control over me anymore. I can now focus on continuing to heal, and help others who may come across my work in the meantime.

Having a personal project that challenges you to face and overcome your insecurities is something that I think everyone should try to have. It might get hard at times and extremely tempting to quit, but once your work is ready for the world to see I promise you that you’ll get a boost in confidence.

By keeping these three points in mind, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll feel infinitely more confident in your creative projects. Knowing that you’re putting your entire heart into a project that you are sharing with the whole world, knowing that you have supporters that you can trust with honest opinions and feedback and knowing that you’ve stayed true to yourself regardless of if the norm enjoys is an ideal state of mind to be in.

On a final note, I want to reiterate that there is no “wrong” or “right” way to have a hobby and gain confidence from it. This post is just general guidelines that really helped me come out of my shell creatively, and I’d like to think it’d work for others too. However, you know best how comfortable you are with exposing your work and what your existing confidence levels are like, so please proceed accordingly (and don’t blame me if things go tits up because you decided not to take the time to listen to yourself!).

Love,

Liv

#selfhelp #selflove #goals #empowerment

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ohpenelopes · 5 years

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i mean i could be aesthetic but instead i'm just pathetic

ALISHA BOE? No, that’s actually PENELOPE “PENNY” BROWN-PATIL from the NEXT GENERATION ERA. You know, the child of LAVENDER BROWN and PARVATI PATIL? Only 21 years old, this HUFFLEPUFF alumni works as a BARISTA and is sided with THE NEUTRALS. SHE identifies as a CIS WOMAN and is a PUREBLOOD who is known to be SELF-PITYING, A PERFECTIONIST, and INSECURE but also FLEXIBLE, GENTLE and IMAGINATIVE.

LINKS – pinboard, stats. CHARACTER PARALLELS – jackie burkhart ( that 70s show ), chloe gemell ( my mad fat diary ), mini mcguinness ( skins uk ), engel beekman ( skam nl ), cassie howard ( euphoria ), emaline ( everything sucks! ), gretchen wieners ( mean girls ), caroline forbes ( the vampire diaries -- earlier seasons ), kelly kapoor ( the office ) AESTHETIC – star shaped hoop earrings, drawing hearts all over your notes, needle pricked finger tips, unapologetic femininity, a loud and cheerful laugh echoing through a hallway, pinky promises, heart shaped sunglasses hiding hungover stained eyes, movie nights with popcorn and rose wine, drowning in the sea of your own thoughts HEADS UP – this intro has mentions of anxiety, but i’ve marked all of these with a trigger warning! <3

backstory ( 2008 - 2026 )

penny is born penelope lyra brown-patil --- penelope, for the woman who not only waited faithfully for her husband’s return for years, but who tricked many man in the process; lyra, for the constellation (because the stars are so wise) --- and as the second (and eventual middle) child to lavender and parvati

and she grows up happy. her childhood is peaceful and wonderful, filled with fun days and laughter. there’s not much out of the ordinary --- it’s stable and beautiful, and penny longs for those days quite a lot.

at some point, she learns of the things her parents went through at school, about war and rebellion and fear. penny admires her mothers more than anything --- she’s scared of this world, of this past, but she’s filled with admiration and a bit of fear that she won’t be able to live up to that. (she doesn’t have to, of course --- there’s no pressure or reason to, but still; she wonders about it, and she can’t shake the thought.)

anxiety tw | though life was stable and good, penny has always felt very uncertain about ... everything. insecurity has never been a stranger to her, nor has anxiety or pressure. she has high expectations of herself, expecting nothing short of the best --- and when she failed as a child (whether it was in playing quidditch on toy brooms or when drawing or when trying to sing perfectly), she would throw tantrums. she got help for this as a child after she had her first full-blown anxiety attack, but it never really faded. | end of tw

her interests as a child mostly range from princess stories to drawing elaborate things to cutting out pretty outfits from fashion magazines. she’s gentle and quiet and excitable when she wants to be, a whirlwind of pink and smiles and tangled long hair

at hogwarts, penny is sorted in hufflepuff (though the hat did consider ravenclaw) for her spirit. she doesn’t mind not being a gryffindor like her parents once were (or, at least, she doesn’t later on; at first it just seems like an affirmation that she’s not as brave as they are), likes how yellow compliments her eyes and fits in quite nicely among the puffs.

anxiety tw | teenagedom is a tough time for her. it seems like everyone is able to juggle it all, and then there’s penny: unable to keep up good grades and look pretty and have an exciting social life and have enough sleep. she feels like she’s drowning in all the expectations she has for herself, feels like she’s the only one on this world who is suffering (she’s prone to a woe is me mentality, for sure) and so hides it all behind perfectly curated smiles. her insecurity has always been strong, but it grows. she drowns them out by pretending. end of tw

in those years, she should be learning who she is, but in stead, penny learns how to be what others want. she shifts and shapes and bends herself to match others expectations --- she’s loud and funny and excitable among her peers, grinning widely and flipping her hair, appearing confident and extroverted and completely at ease. sometimes she’s quieter, a more gentle and softer being, lovely and quaint. she’s a model student (minus the amazing grades) to her teachers, a kind older housemate to the first years, a tough bitch when situations call for it. and sometimes it feels genuine, this person she’s showing off, and sometimes it all feels like a play. it depends, on her mood, on the role, on the weather, on the stars.

and you know what? it works. for most of the time. and then sometimes, it doesn’t, and there’s nothing to do but cry endless tears in her bed and be the most melodramatic person in the castle. alcohol tw | this happens when she’s drunk most of the time, to be honest --- penny is such a messy drunk. end of tw

penny also developed a taste for fuckboys during this time. she wanted to feel loved, she wanted to be touched, to be desired, and part of her was desperate --- but that didn’t make it okay for guys to treat her that way, period. i would get into this more but i don’t feel comfy about doing that akdjssdf.

when she turned fourteen, she got a sewing machine for her birthday. the next schoolyear, she dragged the thing behind her into the castle, unable to part from it after a summer of sewing. penny had always been interested in fashion, but now she was able to take it to the next level.

the dream to become a fashion designer grows and grows and grows, and penny is quite handy with the sewing machine, and her designs aren’t half bad, but of course it’s a stupid dream --- because penny doesn’t believe in herself, not yet at least.

post-graduation life ( 2026 - now )

penny graduated with one ambition only (see above) and no faith in herself. she became a barista, telling herself that she would work on her self esteem, that she would build herself up and become stronger and ready, that she would work on her portfolio and her design skills and that she would practice and work hard and ... that’s where she’s been for the past few years.

not much has changed, to be honest. penny still feels like that lost teenager, and in a certain sense she is --- she has just gained a slight bit of maturity, has moved out and has started working. her sense of self is still incredibly fragile, as is her self esteem, and while she’s trying to improve it, she just hasn’t found the right way to.

she feels so stuck. she feels so frozen. she feels like she has no clue who the hell she is, and she doesn’t know what to do about changing that. another part of her doesn’t even want to be thinking about these things, and just wants to have some fun --- once penny graduated, she definitely started partying more sfksjdfhsdkjfh. party girls dont get hurt!!!!! and like, on one hand, that’s all completely fine, because this is the time for fun and self discovery, and who says you can’t do both?

the timeclash kind of turned everything upside down. it did for everyone, i imagine, but that’s not really how penny sees it (woe is me! why does everything bad always happen to me!!). she’s so scared sakjdf. scared to see her parents and to be a Big Disappointment because she’s scared of the fact that there’s suddenly a war (like, what the fuck?), because she doesn’t want to fight, because she doesn’t even know how to fight!!!

she’s a coward lmao, but a coward with Standards (lookin at you peter)

i mean, if it came down to it --- if she had to protect her friends or family --- she would fight, of course. she’s just not very good at combatical magic, or at strategy, or at anything war or rebellion-related, really (except for smuggling booze into hogwarts, i guess, but that’s something of the past). and that’s fine, if you ask me, but penny doesn’t think it is --- but that doesn’t mean she’s going to push herself to be braver or to do more

personality & details

jfc i rambled so much up there, time to get a bit more coherent up in this BITCH

penny is such a mess. i have a hard time talking about her sometimes because she’s so messy and because her mood and her energy fluctuate so much --- she can be high energy and extroverted one moment, and completely down and sad the other.

did i ... project myself .... onto penny? maybe. partly.

she’s a bit of a chameleon, really. she’s very adaptable and flexible and willing to change for the comfort of others, and she thus feels like she has a small sense of self. this is true, to a certain extent. i think she’s too focused on finding herself that she doesn’t see that she’s already found herself a little, that there are parts of her that are genuine. she’s so hard on herself, expects so much, she’s just ... completely blinded by her own doubts, tbh.

and she’s def a sad bitch and a messy bitch, but she’s so much fun. god. penny just loves laughing and being happy and doing fun and cute stuff! she likes good things! so much! she tries to be such an upbeat person and she can be and agh. i love her like that.

such a romantic. pls stop her. her idea of love makes her so blind and deaf and she always falls for dumb boys :( but skfjshdf she just loves romance! and romantic comedies! and romance novels (tho she struggles to focus on books properly, ngl) and just ... pink hearts and all that fuzzy stuff

when she got her job as a barista, all she thought was that it might just bring her the perfect coffee shop romance

she’s an idiot

she usually just goes by penny, but not because she dislikes the name penelope --- she thinks it’s a really neat name, to be honest (a bit poetic and mysterious), but penny has just been her nickname for so long that she doesn’t want to make people call her penelope. BUT she does want to be referred to as penelope when she gets famous, thank you very much.

regarding that: penny wants to be famous dskfjhdsf. a famous designer, of course --- but she just likes the idea of fame altogether as well!!!

she takes that dream and ambition seriously, in a way. she plans to take serious steps soon (but she’s been saying that for years), always waiting until she feels ready to put herself out there. the idea of being rejected is just ... massive. the idea of not succeeding, of flopping, is so terrifying, that she prefers sticking with her dead-end job, for now. she has been sewing a lot after graduation, and i imagine she constructs a fair amount of her outfits herself (and does the same for friends), but that’s it, and she’s such a Coward about it

when she buys fashion magazines, she always gets two copies so she can use one for cutouts so she can make collages and moodboards

aEsThEtIc QuEeN!!!!

no really though, she has such a good sense for aesthetics. knows what colours and fabrics and prints mesh well together, always looks on Point, etcetera.

idk what to say this intro is such a gd mess bc i wrote everything from scratch and i kept changing my mind about things and while penny is a Very old muse, i changed a LOT oops!!!

#quantum intro #alcohol tw #anxiety tw

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pasteltofus · 5 years

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1 Year of Learning Korean

One of the most popular questions I’ve gotten since coming back from Korea is: Are you fluent in Korean now??*

*Spoilers: I am not. 🙃

Looking back, I probably would have become more conversational if I had just done a 3-month intensive program. Although, compared to just learning by myself in the Bay Area, being in Korea definitely gave me more opportunities and motivation. I was placed in the high intermediate class for orientation (switched to low intermediate), but I would say that I’m now truly at an intermediate level. I think my Korean’s more or less the same as my Japanese (which has regressed a lot, and I only took 3 semesters in college) but with very shaky foundations.

Anyways, here’s a brief timeline of what I did this grant year. Let’s go~

[Initiate lock n’ load montage]

July

Korean Intensive Program (8-12pm, 1-2pm M-F)

Because of how the program was structured, I didn’t feel like I learned very much. This is partly why my foundation is so full of holes...we skipped around here and there.

August

Korean Intensive Program

September

Korean was put on pause due to troubles adjusting to homestay

October

Occasionally did a few chapters of Billy Go’s Korean Made Simple at school

Studied some Korean vocab

November

???

December

I don’t think I studied Korean at all

January

Got a wakeup call when I spent 5 minutes trying to read the back of a sign at a smoothie shop and realized how slow I was at reading

February

Vocab grind (1000 Essential Korean Words), plan was to finish by the end of March. Two weeks of intense vocabulary cramming on Quizlet (did nothing in the end lol don’t try that)

Bought the Real Life Conversations Intermediate book

Studied Korean in Kpop lyrics

Started a side coding project to help my touch typing (K-pop lyric typing game)

March

Memorized dialogues from Real Life Conversations book with Lauren

Improved reading skills slightly by listening and following along with the audio recordings that come with the book

Read through the dialogues with the Korean literature teacher in my gyomushil

Continued to learn song lyrics

Wrote sentences with each new vocabulary word, got my co-teacher and the Korean literature teacher to check them (<-this was probably the most helpful game changer...it helped a lot with my spelling too)

Continued working on the K-pop typing game

April

Stopped learning new vocab at around Chapter 11 of Essential Words, focused on retaining old vocab through Anki flash cards

Finished the Go! Billy Korean Made Simple book that I bought ages ago (tbh it was too easy for me at this point but I was just too lazy)

Finally sat down and “learned” Korean verb conjugations (I’d just been going by gut instinct before…tbh I still kind of do 😅)

Kind of dropped the typing game after finishing the MVP 😅but I’m gonna try to finish it up now that I’m back

May

Started to panic about leaving Korea in 2.5 months but still sucking at Korean

Signed up for private lessons once a week for 90 minutes (My tutor asked me to give her a shout out. Her name is 서영심 ([email protected]). If you’re in the Cheongju/Ochang area, she comes to you! She’s very professional and you’ll get your money’s worth.)

Started at the intermediate book that focused on grammar

Learned ~5 grammar points every week

Started writing and reading a lot more and actually seeing how words are spelled. The first time I saw 여기--a super common word (yogi) that means here--written out I thought it was so strange...not that I had thought it was 요기 (also pronounced yogi) but I just didn’t have a visual of it in my head, I guess.

June

Depressed about lack of improvement

Continued with private lessons but felt like I wasn’t really retaining the grammar dump from each week

At the very least, Korean homework kept me on track and made me practice even when I didn’t want to

Started Anki again since I hadn’t actively studied vocab since April.

An old K.Will song that I hadn’t listened to for a long time came up and I realized I could suddenly understand the lyrics. That was pretty cool and one of my small win moments.

July

Feeling pretty hopeless with Korean

However, hung out with more Korean friends that only spoke Korean and felt like I was actually able to contribute to the conversation. (3 hours of Korean Listening ...🙃)

Was able to understand 70% of the conversation at my gyomushil’s final farewell lunch for me. I contributed to the gossip!

Went home and immediately lost 50% of my Korean skills upon touching U.S. soil.

So basically, after my burst of inspiration in February, my confidence and motivation in Korean just kept plummeting. Even now as I write up this post I feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. But I do want to highlight the progress that I’ve made since orientation.

Korean Reading

We were all supposed to be able to read Hangul before we came to Korea. Being able to recognize the alphabet is different from being able to read and also different from knowing the pronunciation rules and where to pause in your reading. During my first semester, my eyes would automatically glaze over whenever I saw Korean text. When the second semester started, I tried to force myself to read everything I came across - storefronts, street signs, advertisements on buses, etc. Even if I didn’t know what it meant, I would force myself to read it. Right now, I can navigate a Korean shopping website and read a menu semi-comfortably. I’m still waiting for the day when I’ll see English sounding hangul and be able to read it as fast as English. Although, I will say it’s really nice to be able to read the Korean titles in Kpop videos on Youtube, especially when I come across really old songs (like Super Junior’s No Other 너 같은 사람 또 없어) and realize I now know what it means.

Also, a new world that has opened up to me is...노래방!! Karaoke is such an adrenaline rush. I’d compare it to sight-reading or DDR/rhythm games where you know something is coming up and the satisfaction you get when you get it right with the beat of the music is 👌. It’s so gratifying to be able to sing along...거기 너 I FANCY YOU 아무나 원하지 않아 HEY! I love you (LOVE YA)!!

Korean Writing

Back during orientation, I couldn’t spell anything on my own. I knew words every koreaboo knew like 어떻게 and 괜찮아 but I couldn’t write it because I didn’t know how spelling worked. It’s no wonder my spelling didn’t improve since a) I didn’t write and b) I didn’t even read. Even now I still make a lot of spelling mistakes, but I pay attention to words when I see them. It’s still a very slow process, but now I can picture the hangul in my head when I think of the word.

Typing: I started orientation with around 15 wpm, then by the end of orientation I got to around 30 wpm. Currently, I’m at 60 wpm when I start cold and after I get warmed up I can go up to 80wpm. Being able to touch type is so useful, especially when I’m typing up long sentences from my textbook and I don’t have to look up.

Korean Listening

Dare I say...my Korean listening is my strongest point??? I remember when I took French listening tests in high school, I would always lament with everyone else that they spoke too fast for me to understand. But interestingly, for both Japanese and Korean, I never had that problem. If it only contains words and grammar I know, I can understand it perfectly fine even if it’s fast. I intuitively understand most Korean verb endings and exclamations so it’s not hard to know which way the conversation is flowing or when to interject with “세상에,” “맞아 맞아,” or “말도 안돼.” I used to think my poor lack of vocabulary was the number 1 thing blocking me from understanding, but then I learned more grammar and realized the things I didn’t know. I do feel like parts of the fog are being lifted...sometimes...

Korean Speaking:

I still feel pretty embarrassed when I speak Korean because there are some sounds that I can’t pronounce. Compared to orientation, I have a few more stock phrases tucked and ready to go, but I still feel unable to express myself. Every conversation will start out fine, but they’ll all stagnate to the same topics and sentences after a while.

Complications with other languages

I talked about how knowing some Japanese and Chinese was both an advantage and a disadvantage during my beginning stages, but this is true even now.

Ever since I started getting more comfortable with typing and spelling Korean, I’ve started seeing the actual Hangul in my head when I think/hear Korean. I’ve also started to associate the locations of the Hangul characters with their locations on the Korean keyboard.

One day, I was trying to text back my mom with “那是什么?” (Na Shi Shen Me/What’s that?) but was confused because those characters weren’t showing up. Then I realized I was typing “sk” instead of “na.” Some of you guys might get it....because “s” is where ㄴ(n) is and k is where ㅏ(a) is on the Korean keyboard. Clearly, my brain can’t handle it. It’s interesting because both the Japanese and Chinese keyboard uses the same alphabet placements as English.

Another time: I was watching a Talk To Me in Korean video where Hyunwoo talked about how 하다 is a very versatile verb. I immediately thought about how the Japanese equivalent is 수루 and even mentally mapped it out on the Korean keyboard...before realizing this is WRONG, WRONG, it’s する not 수루 LOUISE WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING. (They are both pronounced suru)

What’s next?

Now that I’m back in the States, it’s going to take even more determination and self-discipline to keep up with my Korean. But I really don’t want everything I’ve worked towards to just wash down the drain. I’ll aim to finish my intermediate grammar textbook and grind anki flashcards. Hopefully, I can find a language partner or a study group. We’ll see!

#language learning #studying Korean #korean #fulbright korea #sorry for the long post #but yes i am back in california #also which one of you messaged isabel about my blog #thanks for reading whoever you are!!#also shout out to my buddy #i actually have one more post to make on my school festival #and then i'll wrap up this blog #learning korean

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marypsue · 6 years

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fanfic: First 5 prime numbers!

why would you force me, a writer and known dumbass, to try to remember math stuff

2) What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favourite if you write for more than one?

I was going to be extremely witty and paste in screenshots of the list of fandoms on my AO3, but tumblr is having a breakdown and won’t let me, so I’ll just go with the short answer: lots.

There are different things I like about all of the different canons - and fandoms - that I’ve written for. I love cheesy jokes no matter where I go, but I also like the rich mine of angst and garish darkness that the Lost Boys have to offer. I love the fairy-tale structure and the heady romance of Labyrinth, I like how I can basically just write original fiction when it comes to the X-Men and it’s probably canon to something somewhere, and I appreciate the challenge of trying to nail the tone of RAM while still keeping the depth of character and the core of sincerity and emotion that I’m gonna end up bringing to anything I write about. (And also, projecting. Did I mention projecting?)

ROTG in particular stands out for the sheer creative freedom the fandom encouraged - we made up an AU where several different versions of the main villain (English movie, Finnish dub, book, concept art) lived together and attended the same university (along with multiple versions of the other characters) and it was sheer unadulterated crack. We wrote mythos. We wrote an expanded steampunk Treasure Planet universe full of high tragedy and classic-children’s-lit drama. We wrote poetry. We wrote ambitious crossovers and extraordinarily complex backstories for characters who ended up being Not That Deep. We wrote ridiculous comedy nonsense. We wrote so much fluff. My partner @gretchensinister created an entirely original fantasy alternate world and wrote a high fantasy novel inspired by the characters, which she’s planning to turn into an original series (speaking of, I will always shamelessly plug A Draught Of Light. If you liked A:TLA, you owe it to yourself to read it, and you don’t need to know anything about ROTG to enjoy it. In fact, you might enjoy it more not knowing anything about ROTG, though a few inside jokes might go over your head).

With that said, though, I think I have enjoyed writing for Gravity Falls the most. Partly it’s because of the skills I developed working in the other fandoms, so that now I feel confident enough in my work that I can stop worrying so much about making it good and just have fun with it. Partly it’s because the tone, the mood and the theme, of the series align with my interests and my values so well. It’s the kind of story that I would like to write, it’s the kind of story that I wish I’d written, and I love all of the characters so much but also can relate to so many of them, that getting to expand on it and play in its universe is just a treat and a joy. I may have found my forever fandom.

(The rest of this is going behind a cut for length because it turns out all of my answers are like this.)

3) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer.

I…don’t get reader inserts. Especially the ones that include the little (y/n). (Partly because it jolts me right out of a story, partly because for the first while after the trend started, I was reading them as ‘yes/no’ and was extremely confused.) I understand that the intent is to create a story where the reader can easily imagine themselves as the protagonist, but…you have to give that protagonist some traits, and have them make choices, and in order to do that you have to give them some sort of a personality, and then 1) not every person who reads it will be able to go ‘oh yeah, that’s me’ and 2) you’ve got an original character anyway!

I saw a post recently where someone had drawn a picture with the caption “this is what (y/n), the reader of my story x, looks like” and listed a set of personality traits/likes and dislikes, like, at that point…just give them a name! They’re an OC!

With that said, though, like self-inserts, reader inserts are fun (for people who like that sort of thing) and harmless, and I really hope nobody’s being a dick about them. Fandom should be fun, and even if I don’t get that thing you’re doing for fun, that doesn’t mean you’re Doing It Wrong.

Also, I fucking love making up OCs, and if allowed, I would do nothing but that all day.

5) If you had to choose a favourite out of all of your multi chaptered stories, which would it be and why?

Oh, this is cruel. I should not have done this.

So, there are a lot of them. Apparently some people don’t spend all their free time coming up with bullshit ideas that spiral wildly out of their control into full, developed narratives that require tens of thousands of words to fully express? I bet those people have cleaner bedrooms than I do. Also probably more money.

Again, I’ve gotten better at this with lots of time and practice, so a lot of my earlier stuff is less well-executed than I’d want it to be. There are still ideas that I like, and stuff I’m proud of finishing, but I wouldn’t say they’re favourites, because the execution is less skillful and less polished than some newer things. With that said, though, I still have a big ol’ soft spot for Northern Lights, which was my indoctrination into the genre of ‘wildly self-indulgent crossovers and rampant canon revisionism’. Same with It Was A Dark And Stormy Night, the first multi-chaptered thing I ever finished. You can see the seeds of some classic Mary tropes in it, including ‘what if we just took all the female characters who were mentioned once and develop them into fully-realised people with important roles in this story’, as well as some tropes that have since fallen by the wayside (I do not do nearly as much with fairy tales as I did when I was a teenager).

Dreamland deserves a shot at the title, as do Reincarnation Blues and Raising Stakes. But purely for scale, ambition, and how closely the execution matches the ideal version that exists only in my head, my absolute favourite multi-chaptered fic has to be Hive. I’ve been trying to write decent horror for eleven long years and Hive makes me feel like I’ve finally nailed it.

7) When is your preferred time to write?

Preferred time to write is from midnight to 2am.

Best time to write is literally any other time than that, probably.

(I’ve read all the science and the thinkpieces. I am aware that the only reason 2am seems like such a good time for creative work is because you’re tired enough that your internal self-regulation is low and your inner critic is silenced, and also because it’s often the only time when we sit down and let ourselves focus on the work with no distractions - because there aren’t any. I’m working on introducing this environment into the rest of my day so that I am not in a permanent state of sleep deprivation. Funnily enough, writing in a dimly-lit room and working on a dimmed computer screen really seems to help.)

11) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

Not that I can remember.

To be fair, I have received very few criticisms after posting that were about writing issues rather than matters of personal taste (and most of those have been along the lines of ‘so uh, I know you knew mentally what was going on in this scene, but the critical piece of information never actually made it to the page’). But…I also…take long enough to work on things and have so many damn things on the go that once something is posted, it’s posted, and I have to make a promise to myself to never touch it again, otherwise I would spend all my time nitpicking and never finish anything. If somebody’s noticed a legitimate issue or possible improvement, it is incredibly likely that I will go ‘oh dang why didn’t I notice that’ and then mentally file it for use in future stuff. I’ve only ever taken one fic down, and most of the edits I do after the fact are for tagging or author’s notes.

I did amend the ending of Any Misery You Choose, but that was less because I got criticism (people were actually incredibly nice about it!) and more because I was extremely dissatisfied with how the original ending turned out, because I hadn’t adhered to the plan I myself had made, because I was rushing to finish the damn thing. (Protip: don’t do that.)

(please, please, please let these actually be the first five prime numbers)

#chatter

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun – 12 (Fin) – Her Skills, His Goals

After the big blow-up with Hinami, Tomozaki backslides hard into old habits and then some, as he’s even playing Tackfam with a bored look on his face that “really isn’t him.” He also failed to notice that he’d left poor Fuuka hanging by not looking at his phone for two days.

When he immediately texts back that he’ll go with her to pick up Andi’s new book, his sister acknowledges he “must be going through some stuff”, and to hang in there. While it’s a shame she never got a name, his sister (ably voiced by Hidaka Rina) struck a fine balance between typical imouto brattiness and sincere concern and quiet support for her big bro.

For his bookstore date with Fuuka, as with the fireworks date before, Tomozaki is determined to be his “real, unvarnished self”, ditching the task-and-goal based game mechanics Hinami had thrust upon him, which did nothing for Fuuka. Still, as he looks at his re-disheveled appearance in the mirror of the cafe restroom, he can’t deny that meeting Hinami’s goals made him happy too.

In keeping with his desire to remain real and unvarnished with her always, Tomozaki tells Fuuka how he’s still a little mixed up. He reveals how he had a coach teach him how to play the game of life, but how speaking to her with canned topics felt like wearing a mask or cheating, and asks if he should continue improving his skills.

Fuuka explains that when it’s easy to talk to him, she can picture the things he says clearly, directly, and honestly in her head, like she’s reading a novel. When it’s harder to talk to him (or most other people), the images lose focus. It’s no secret that she treasures books immensely, so for him to be able to have that same ability to project imagery into her head is surely a big part of his appeal!

But it’s more than that: when they first started talking, the images were in black-and-white; a “sad and lonely world”, but which made her think they saw the world the same way. She loves novels because the images they send have always looked more beautiful and colorful than the real world as she sees it. But more lately, the images Tomozaki has sent have been full of color too.

Fuuka is glad he’s working hard to change himself, and believes that if there’s someone in his world—a “magician” that gave it those colors—than he should “treasure” that person. After all, those colors have begun to convince her that she too can still change how she sees the world.

Fuuka’s sincere and heartfelt words inspire Tomozaki to make up with the “magician” who gave his world and words color, while not conceding to her own black-and-white view of it. Just getting her to agree to talk again is a little mini-battle in and of itself, but Tomozaki is victorious and gains an audience with her, partly because he’s persistent, and partly because part of her probably wants to make up too.

After meeting, he takes her to the very storefront from where she first revealed to him that she was NO NAME and they began their elaborate master-and-apprentice dance. There, he tells her why he loves Tackfam: the way he could put aside his own weakness, pitifulness, and self-hatred and pour his soul into the game, giving it color.

Hinami helped show him ways to control the game of life so it began to shine with color too. He wants to be a controller in that game, not just the controlled. Hinami shuts him down, dismissing his “this is what I really want” talk as being “drunk on idealism” and “wallowing in sentimentality.” But…but…if he’s saying his “true desires” actually exist beyond those hollow constructs, she’ll need him to provide proof.

In a lovely inversion of their early discussion in which she explained to him the value of the game of life, Tomozaki tells her the proof consists of “many simple rules in combination, intersecting in complex ways that make them harder to grasp”. She won’t find her true desires simply by asking for proof they even exist, but by struggling to discover how she feels and making steady, honest progress.

As someone who believes true desires don’t exist, Tomozaki says she’s only been going through the motions from a player’s POV; without experiencing true, genuine fun. She may be better at playing the game of life, but he’s certain he’s got her beat when it comes to enjoying it. So just as she resolved to help him learn how to play it, he’s going to show her how to enjoy it more than she does now—and in doing so, find what it is she really wants.

Hinami won’t go on this journey with him until he’s given her something to make her rethink her belief that true desires don’t exist, and he has one: She still hasn’t managed to beat him at Tackfam…not once. That’s not due to lack of effort. It’s because his true desires have always fueled his gaming. He knows what he really wants, and she doesn’t.

In the world of Tackfam where they’re both hardcore gamers, he’s Japan’s Top Player nanashi and she’s NO NAME and winless against him. She can’t complain about his “false logic” until she can beat him first, and Tomozaki is confident that if and when she does beat him, she’ll already understand what he’s on about.

Hinami admits she’s impressed by his thoughtful argument, couched though it may be in irrationality. As such, she decides to meet him halfway: not accepting that “true desires or whatever” exist, but can’t say they definitively don’t exist either. If he wants to convince her to come down from that fence, he’s welcome to try. In the meantime, Tomozaki wishes to continue trying to conquer the game of life with her guidance.

She can keep setting goals and he’ll keep working towards them, but from now on he’ll choose which ones conflict with what he really wants. He can’t deny her skills have worked; not when they brought color his life, and by extension, Fuuka’s. But he’ll adopt a hybrid playing style going forward: balancing her goals with his desires. While celebrating their making up by ordering the same salted mackerel dinner, Hinami assigns Tomozaki his next goal: acquiring a part-time job.

Hinami ends up setting him up with a job at the same karaoke parlor where Mizusawa works, where she knows he’ll have an ally to help ease him into the sub-game of Employment. Tomozaki continues to hang out with his new circle of normies, helping (or rather not helping) Yuzu pick out an outfit for her new first date with Nakamura. He gives her sister a strap Mimimi likes, which of course his sister loves because Mimimi does. He and Mizusawa serve their friends while they’re at the parlor singing the show’s theme song.

He also keeps dating Fuuka, who is working on a new novel and excited for Tomozaki to read it and even more excited to hear his thoughts about it, since they’ll surely shine with dazzling color. And he keeps having his debriefing sessions with Hinami, only now thanks to his job it makes sense how he can afford to eat out so much!

The episode, and the series, ends with nanashi beating NO NAME yet again, Hinami stewing with frustration and immediately demanding another match, and Tomozaki gladly agreeing. This, to me, is the perfect set-up for a second season in which Tomozaki and Hinami will be both student and teacher to each other.

While a 2-episode OVA will ship with the Blu-ray, no second season has been announced. But I for one would love to return to the vibrant, complex characters, smart, precise dialogue, and adorable dates of Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki, an unexpected breath of fresh air in a sea of high school rom-coms.

By: sesameacrylic

#Anime #News #RABUJOI – An Anime Blog

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heavymetalhexcode · 7 years

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Paladin Character Analysis

Here I am once again where I should be doing something productive yet thinking about Voltron. I am hyped for season 5! The thing on my mind today is an analysis of the Voltron crew’s personalities, largely viewed through the ways I can relate to them (or not). Each character is very archetypal, but I think the show does a reasonable job of throwing in a bit more complexity, allowing a lot of very different people to see different qualities that they admire or possess. That's how people decide they like fictional characters, after all. I've ordered this list roughly in order of how much I identify with or think I understand each person.

More after the cut. Much more.

Lance

Water. This is my element. It ebbs and flows, displaying equal gentleness and strength as befits the situation, and Lance has proven he is a versatile member of the team. The scene where he told Coran he misses rain really stuck with me – rain on the roof is possibly the most relaxing sound I can think of.

He's fun and lighthearted, often cracking jokes and trying to make the others smile. I find humor is often the best way for me to deal with stress or grief. Immediately upon coming out of the cryo pod, he makes a joke about Allura asking him on a date – and yes, I do believe that was a joke -- which shifts the tone of the conversation away from grievous injury. In the space mall, he jumps to help Pidge find the money for the game console so they could have something fun to do in the Castle. The blue lion is probably the most welcoming and friendly of the bunch, something that I strive to be despite being kind of terrible at dealing with people, and I'm sure that my first flight in a lion would have looked a lot like his. Despite putting up a front of confidence and cheer, he's insecure about his role on the team. It's only after he receives explicit recognition from his idol Shiro that he begins to feel confident in his skills. Even then he still has doubts, so much so that he offers to step aside for Allura.

Overcompensating. Absolutely. He likes girls, sure, but he's also way too overt about it. It's possible that he really is just that flirty, but I think he's overplaying it to draw attention away from something else, either intentionally or not. It could be that he's still figuring out or uncomfortable with his sexuality (there's just enough Klance chemistry that I would believe it if the show went that way), but it might just be that he's being loud, boisterous, and obnoxious to draw attention away from the fact that he's not always a carefree party boy. It's hard to say right now, but I bet we'll be getting some clues down the line. Personally I like the idea of a bi character on Voltron, and Lance fits the mold for someone still in the closet.

Lance's self-care routine is an awesome inversion of typical gender roles. I think he and Hunk (cooking) are the only ones we've seen with noteworthy feminine-coded interests, and you know who's not about that "girly" life? Pidge! Allura is more typically effeminate than Pidge, which is fine, but I love that not being the only kind of femininity we see on the crew. It can be hard for a guy to accept having feminine interests, and Lance being comfortable doing so shows that either a) he really cares about making a good impression and strives to be well groomed or b) he don't give a shit what you think and will pamper himself if he wants. Possibly both.

Pidge

Nature! Technology! It seems conflicted! I'm a computer scientist who loves to unplug for a few days and go hiking or whatever. These two seemingly opposite interests in a person can absolutely blend, and it was great to see her realize that on Olkarion.

Machines > people. One of the primary reasons I decided to become a programmer, and I'm pretty sure the same is at least partly true for Pidge. She was a misfit at school because she was driven to learn (and possibly some other stuff), made fun of for her intelligence, and appears to have withdrawn from people to work on computers. I didn't have to deal with a lot of that, and I'm very thankful for the environment I had in my schools growing up. She needed the team to help draw her out of her shell, and now her friends are a surrogate family. Apparently, a lot of people like to characterize her as ace because she's a nerd, and while I agree with the ace bit, I argue it's actually the other way around. Computers don't ostracize you because they don't understand you. Computers won't mock you or tell you that you just "haven't found the right person yet." I know some ace folks who have told me what it's like to grow up with that crap, and I'm not surprised Pidge gave up on people. I also headcanon her as trans, which is yet another possible source of social issues. That bathroom moment at the mall? Very telling.

The way she reacts to alien technology may look over the top, but let me tell you, an elegantly written algorithm is one of the most beautiful things in the universe. AI is exciting! The materials are exciting! There's so much shiny technology to explore out there!

Shiro

He is in his 30s. I will fight you. I know it's only supposed to be an age gap of a few years, but his appearance, behavior, and voice all make me believe he is older than canon.

Good lord, this man needs a therapist! Shiro is so busy supporting the rest of the team and helping them through the zillion difficult situations this war has gotten them into that he hasn't taken time to deal with his own demons. He needs that. He's put things behind him, sure, and we're not seeing his PTSD so much anymore, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. He managed to shove it all away in a corner and stop looking at it. It'll be interesting to see what Sendak's return does to his mental health. Poor Space Dad.

Shiro is my favorite paladin. Hands down. I'm very drawn to dad figures, and he's attractive to boot. He's confident, a quick thinker, and does a remarkable job keeping emotions in check and leading with logic without being perfect. We get to see that even he has his limits with Slav and Sendak. He supports his team, knows their strengths, and doesn't force anyone to do things they don't want to. We've seen gallows humor from him as well as bad sound effects, and when he thinks he might die, he names his replacement to be sure that the team won't feel lost when he's gone. I'm also pretty sure he and I handle emotional stress in similar ways: poorly.

On the subject of stress as relates to shipping, I have thoughts. Shiro is hurting hard, and he needs someone he feels close enough to that he can confide his pain in them. I've been in a similar situation (to a lesser degree), pushing things away and bottling emotions up until it did very bad things for me. It took the kind of trust I could only form with my SO to start learning how to lean on someone else, and even now, years later and in a much better place, I can only think of three people I consider confidants. (Yes, I am absolutely projecting here, but) I wouldn't be surprised if Shiro has similar difficulties opening up. There isn't anyone he feels comfortable talking to yet, and he might need a stronger bond than the one between friends and teammates before he can. Unfortunately for our black paladin, I have a hard time picturing him with anyone currently available. The age/maturity gap that I can't get over immediately rules out the younger paladins. Besides, they're his kids. If Shiro is going to get into a relationship, he needs someone who can give him the kind of support he extends to everyone else, not someone who looks up to him like a father figure. Next choice? Allura, but they're both too focused on the war. They've got bigger things to worry about than dating, and neither will probably even think about such things until after they've won. Maybe a someday option, but not now. Coran? Just... no. Despite needing a deeper relationship in a bad way, I think Shiro is too private, focused, and traumatized right now to even think about it.

Can I just say I love watching him fight? It's beautiful. He's very fast, fluid, and in the other guy's face. Always very well animated, too.

Hunk

I love Hunk. Dude's awesome. He reminds me a lot of my sister: obsessed with food, just wants to be comfy, a little high strung when things don't go according to plan. No wonder he and Lance are bros. Not a lot of character depth for him yet, which makes me sad. Seems like Hunk is mostly played for laughs, so I appreciate that he was suspicious of Rolo and Nyma instead of any of the others. Of course, Hunk is also pretty stable as a person, so he's not in need of as much growth as the rest of the paladins. He's a solid grounding presence (ha ha) for them.

Keith

Keith is... difficult. I have a hard time getting into his head. He's a rebel; I'm not really. His anger is hot; I think mine is cold. He needs to figure out his family to know who he is; I couldn't do that until I got away from mine. He obviously cares about his teammates, and they're probably the closest thing to a functional family he's ever had. I wish we had gotten to see him struggle and grow more in a leadership role. While he is too reckless to be a good leader, the consequences of those disastrous first missions should have helped him do better. Instead there was an irritating time skip and OH YEAH KEITH'S TOTES IN THE BLADE. I wish that time had been handled better.

That said, he's doing well in the Blade. I like him there. There's more room for personal responsibility and the snap decision making that he likes to do. It's letting him stay in his comfort zone instead of pushing him to improve like leading Voltron would have, so pros and cons, but that was not a role that suited him. He'll find opportunities that are better for him. Even after real Shiro comes back and they beat the stuffing out of Kuron, I think staying with Marmora would be better for Keith.

Allura

I WISH SHE HAD MORE DEVELOPMENT. This gal kicks ass. I love her. She's not your standard princess in some ways, but she's also been their magic plot device more than once. Alteans are chameleons? Let's see that referenced again, please! The Balmera thing? Sweet, but I wish we knew more about that too. Is that a royal thing only? Could Coran do a ceremony? Probably not to save the whole creature, but I don't see why he wouldn't be able to do it on a smaller scale. Haggar/Honerva does magic stuff, too, which either tells us magic isn't just a royal thing or it's a result of messing with quintessence. Hard to say.

The mice? Much Disney princess. Such wow. Useful little buggers, though.

She really is the heart of Voltron, and she's the commander of the war effort as well. Devoted as hell. She killed her dad a second time for the war. She got (partly) over her Galra grudge for the war. She's been a diplomat, a support pilot, and a paladin for the war. Allura is cool.

Coran

He's the goofy uncle whose prime function is watching out for Allura. Flair for the dramatic. Not really much to say here. Nice 'stache.

#voltron #too much time on my hands #character analysis

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destiny-smasher · 7 years

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Life is Strange: Before the Storm (Episode 1)

I’ve spent so much time discussing this prequel over the past few months, it’s a bit tricky to try and sum up things into something readable. As lengthy as this post is, there’s plenty of details I have to let go of. I’d like to lay out my biggest pros, cons, and a bit of commentary on how I feel about its very conception and potential intent, along with some casual predictions.

I was very critical of this project from the moment it was leaked, but I quickly grew to support Deck Nine, the studio developing the game, because it was easy to see how passionate and thoughtful they were being. Makes sense, right? The sort of dev team who would want to take on a Life is Strange story would probably be the sort to be mindful of just how delicate such an undertaking is. Square-Enix, however, gradually frustrated me more and more, and their choices and actions with this entire project kept me on my guard all summer. With the first episode released, I can confirm my feelings about both companies’ involvement haven’t changed -- I’m still very supportive of Deck Nine, and I’m still rather frustrated and confused with Square-Enix. This first episode helped prove to me to that the developer definitely does have their heart in the right place, and has the ability to realize the same kind of potential one might expect from a follow up to such a special game. I have my concerns, but to be honest, most of them have arisen from Square-Enix's questionable setup to this project and the premise of the game itself bothering me on a core level.

With most video game releases, the way a game is marketed or how it's conceived is rarely important to me. However, Life is Strange was a special indie game that doesn’t come along often. Before I discuss the actual game itself, I feel compelled to bring up the reveal and marketing of this project. We of course don't know the full story, but what we do know has unfortunately colored the whole project with a weird shade. Setting aside the interpersonal experiences I've run into with fellow fansm I will say that at the heart of my concerns is the unshakable feeling that DontNod did not want this game to get made. The feeling that DontNod, who created these characters and this world, wanted those characters to be left alone. That's just speculation at this time, but everything I've seen and heard seems to point in this direction, and while that's not the developer's problem, it is the publisher's. When an indie team creates such an earnest indie game with a strong emphasis on narrative and themes about regret and not being able to fix the past, goes on to say the story is done and they're going to leave it alone, it's pretty damn odd to me to proceed with producing a prequel about the past, ditching the protagonist of the original story, and focusing on two women who we know meet unfortunate fates. Oh, and the actual creators of the characters aren't involved. Oh, and neither are the actors. AND it's not gonna connect its story to the original game because it's “stand-alone” (why make a prequel, then?). AND it's going to cost more but have fewer episodes. AND the fourth episode is conveyed as a thinly veiled cash grab to get fans of the first game to ante up for the Deluxe Edition right away. When a pre-existing narrative has been around for years, and its creators have had ample time to consider how they might expand upon their own story and are ready to let it go, then I'm much more understanding of giving the reigns to someone new who might have that interest. It must've been barely a year since Life is Strange was finished, however, before Square set this prequel into motion. That's way too soon to hand those keys off to someone else entirely, especially if those who created the keys weren't happy about it. The fact that it has taken all summer for DontNod to even acknowledge the game's existence is suspicious, and at this point, even a positively spun statement would come across as legally obligatory pleasantries. I have confidence that both dev teams have mutual respect for one another, but the seeming lack of communication between them with regards to such a delicate story is unfortunate, and I just hope that whatever Deck Nine is doing, the core concept of it was approved by DontNod as a team – or that they at least end up happy with it. Now, let me take a step back from this and point out that Square has made steps to try and correct and reassure concerns folks have had, and that's good. But a lot of it has come across as damage control for fires that shouldn't have even started. All right. There's my frustration with Square-Enix out of the way. Let's move on to the actual episode that has been released. I went into this game feeling very wary, worried, and concerned. I walked away from it feeling...pretty OK, and even pleasantly surprised by parts of it. I will be discussing the game freely, so if you have not experienced the story and don't want to know about any details beforehand, you should stop reading this now and come back when you're ready.

Partway through this I stop referring to Deck Nine in the third person and begin addressing them directly, partly because I'm honestly writing this as a personal expression to them, specifically, because I really do think they have a lot of skills being put to work, and I want to provide useful criticism, support, and feedback, which they've personally expressed an interest in. So, Madeleine, Felice, and anyone else at Deck Nine who might be reading this, I just want to express that it really means a lot to see your team interacting with us fans so directly and openly. I can say that I feel like Deck Nine “gets it” when it comes to what made Life is Strange special, how it connected to people, and what kind of overall aesthetic and tone it has. It's a shame that the concept of the story itself places things in such a bizarre, trapped kind of position, though. I've had so many conversations about this game in the past few months, I'm not even really sure what I would like for it to do as a game or as a prequel. Most angles I've approached it with just end up leaving me feeling worried and dissatisfied. Some things are better left alone. I honestly still feel like this story was one of those things – but, to be fair, that story still hasn't been fully told yet. And this first episode has certainly illustrated that there is intent at work here. This doesn't feel like a cash grab or something purely being made for fanservice. And yet, I still can't see where it could go within the bounds that they've laid out and still coalesce with its source material in a way that is fulfilling and meaningful. I've been vocal in the past that for as much as I love Life is Strange, I found its climax to be unfulfilling, illogical, and self-defeating. If Before the Storm can manage to somehow lead things into the original game's story in a way that can make sense of things (ex. the titular 'Storm'), my feelings about the nature of the overarcing story itself could change drastically. From where I'm standing right now, though, this story still feels pointless and unnecessary. And I really hope that by the end, that changes. When it comes to Chloe, Rachel, and essentially everything relating to them, we don't really learn anything new in this episode. Nothing mind-blowing or revelatory is given to us. On the upside, it means that things basically line up with pre-existing canon, makes fine sense, and even reaffirms things that were implied in Life is Strange. On the downside, the narrative feels like it's spinning its tires here in terms of plot, shoving these two characters together in a way that feels rushed and forced while simultaneously not going anywhere with them. If you look at the actual plot of this episode, and compare it to Max's, the stakes are so much lower, the trajectory of the protagonists so much more unclear, and the character development itself much more shallow. This is not a knock on Deck Nine's abilities so much as the choice of content. Chloe Price was already in such a bad place at age 19. Go back three years and...she doesn't exactly have much room to grow, and even if she does, what's the point when we already know where she ends up? When we already know where Rachel ends up? (and if this all some alternate universe thing, given that AU's are already established as a canonical aspect of this lore, it's gonna be super tricky to make that concept not feel hamfisted if it's gonna be a big plot reveal later) There's clearly more compelling stuff going on with Rachel if only because we don't truly know Rachel, and I do like that this episode sets up some dramatic things for her, but I'm still left feeling like I don't really get a sense of what her arc is supposed to be here. When you're telling a story with only three episodes, it can go a long way to make clear – by showing, not telling – what is at stake for the characters, and what their goals are. I get that this is a story about teenage drama, but even Max, who was such an uncertain character, had an opening act that established very clearly what her goals were, and what internal and external obstacles she was going to have to confront. With this story, that clear sense of direction is missing. To be fair, that very well could be intentional, given the emphasis on mystery, trickery, and such. And part of the problem is that there's sort of a 'ceiling' for where this narrative can feasibly go, and thus how these characters could be developed. Again – the very premise itself is, in a lot of ways, holding the story back, and that's a shame. It's a shame because on a technical level, there is a lot of good stuff going on here. The overall aesthetic, the themes, the writing, it all does feel in-line with the source material. While the painterly vibes of the original game are replaced with a bit more flat of a visual design, seeing the character's faces actually emote in a noticeably more detailed way is a technical improvement over the original, and was actually something I was very excited to see. In a way the first game couldn't really achieve, there are even moments here that let the visual expressions alone tell story beats. The music is good, but I actually felt like a lot of the episode was too quiet on this front. While this does heighten the impact of the music later on, the actual story beats didn't quite match the intensity of the music for me. Even the montage at the end felt a little off, like it was trying to replicate the ending of the first episode of Life is Strange but rushed through things too quickly. The subtle addition of more detailed sound effects was great, though. Like the expressions on the faces, those additional sound details put another layer of depth to the setting. The camera angles in particular were another noticeably upgrade from the presentation of the original game. On the downside, some scenes felt very awkward – controlling Chloe through the world in general felt particularly clunkier and harder to do than moving Max around; certain moments that expect you to control the camera in order to pick options, like the clothing bit, were also weird and unclear at first, in a way that didn't occur in the first game, maybe because they usually kept the camera behind Max's back? On the upside, there were a lot of cinematic choices I really liked that fleshed out the presentation, from Chloe grabbing her phone in the bathroom to the neat stuff during the 'Smash' scene in the junkyard to the angles during the tabletop game...just a lot of more dynamic and intriguing camera angles. I honestly wish there were even more “reflection” moments, like Max would often have. The moment with Chloe smoking was a great parallel between the characters while capturing that same reflective vibe. The writing isn't exactly going to turn heads, and there's still a fair amount of corny dialogue (mostly when characters are trying too hard to be 'edgy' or 'sassy'), but the original game had this, too, and usually, it just ends up feeling like that same kind of honest cheesiness you might expect. Some moments, however, the writing gets distractably bad – mainly, the Backtalk sequences, and a couple of clunky dialogue sequences like Chloe's chat with Joyce (which can feel unbalanced and off). The Backtalk is a fine idea on paper, but in practice it's just...taking something away, rather than adding to things. The timer puts unneeded pressure on the player, and lends these segments to be more about random guessing or shallow word play than any kind of legitimate, thoughtful intimidation. I do like the idea of Chloe being an asshole to intimidate people, but it, erh, does kind of feel odd to be encouraged to be an unnecessary dickhead to people who usually don't really deserve it because they're just trying to do their jobs. This is Chloe's character, though, and she is the opposite of Max, especially at this point in their lives, so I get the intent. But the dialogue here is at its weakest, its mechanically unclear and ultimately feels kind of pointless. My recommendation for making it more engaging would be to make it more like what it feels inspired by: the sword fighting in Monkey Island. Let the player use info they've previously obtained to give them more options during an 'encounter' without making it obvious when those options are useful (like finding those bits of things to bring up to Joyce at the house). Give them time to consider their choices, and in turn make the actual dialogue that ensues feel less like hamfisted schoolyard playground disses and more like actual intimidation. I think there's some potential to this mechanic but it needs work. Hopefully, by episode 3, we'll be in for some legitimately intense Backtalk sequences in circumstances that actually warrant threats and intimidation. Noteworthy moment – the wine-theft scene was...just...yeesh. Given the tone of most of this episode, that scene in particular just felt weird, like we were transported from an indie teen drama and into a Nickelodeon cartoon. I've seen the argument made that this scene was intentionally goofy in order to lower the player's guard so the junkyard scene hit us with more 'oomph,' but...yea, I'd recommend tackling the humor in the more organic way you were able to with most of this episode, like the D&D scene. Speaking of which – wow, what a pleasant surprise that was! That scene in particular, I think, really showed what you guys are capable of. Even the Backtalk mechanic's finickiness was less noticeable here because of the less serious context. Getting to meet new characters who were adorable and realisticwas such a treat – much more interesting and engaging to me than the somewhat predictable interaction with Victoria, which felt kind of tacked on for fanservice. The D&D scene felt organic, original, and charming. I especially loved the detail where if Chloe has read Joyce's self-help book earlier, she whips out the phrase she read if the player chooses to encourage Mikey. This was my favorite scene in the episode, and it had nothing to do with Chloe Price being present, or even being tied to Life is Strange in any way. I admit in my own interpretation of the characters for All Wounds, I've written Chloe making D&D references due to a history of playing it with Max – so there's some personal bias that helps elevate this scene for me, but still, I think this was a great scene. Likewise, the 'two truths and a lie' scene was also a game played via dialogue choices, and it, too, felt organic and fresh, using the players' element of choice to more readily establish a connection to the world and what its characters were doing (as opposed to just grilling someone for information or to just move the plot along). In terms of the overall tone and emotion of this episode, the dream sequences were an intriguing callback to Max's Nightmare. There were many interesting details there which made it feel genuinely connected to future events in this forboding way, so I hope there's something intentional there. On that note, I found the imagery of Max hanging to death on a tree branch to be...a bit too much. This is coming from someone who relishes that darker kind of imagery, but usually that's when the character being attacked is actually present within the narrative. The frequency and intensity of Max-bashing going on in this episode made me uncomfortable and that 'hangman' imagery even felt kind of disrespectful to Max's character. I'm not going to do what others have done and jump to conclusions about 'ohhh they're portraying Max as an asshole' or what-not. In truth, I felt what you've expressed with those letters was so intense and angry that it has an intent. After all, the original game had a strength in showing one side of a character to set up a broad expectation, only to subvert it later to remind us that real life human beings are three-dimensional. The implication I pick up from all of this Max-hating is that it's there to show us just how special Max was to Chloe, just how painful it is for her to face their disconnection, and thus just how meaningful it is for Chloe, three years later, when Max finally reappears (which, I mean, simultaneously has me questioning exactly what your plan is with Rachel, given the layers of context here). I really hope the story you're telling will somehow end up somewhere that subverts all of this Max-hating toward what the original game ultimately does with Max and Chloe. From where I'm standing right now, just one episode in, it feels over the top and unnecessary, but again, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that there's a purpose there. The fact that Max is even dressed how she is three years in the future, and the fact that her text states she's see Chloe when she dies – which is, literally, how things play out – combined with the overt 'All Seeing Eye,' and how Chloe's dream even foretold how Rachel would start the fire, all of this feels thought out and intentional, rather than mere coincidence. I certainly hope that's the case, as a story precursing one about time travel could certainly incorporate supernatural foresight in interesting ways. This brings me into the aspect of the supernatural. I was a little offput by how interviews and PR stuff tried to tell us there'd be no supernatural elements at play when it seems apparent that there will be. When a story lies to its audience, that's fine, but when the physical, real-life people are lying about it, that's dodgy. I'm honestly more intrigued by the supernatural stuff here than I ever thought I'd be, and I think it's because between the foresight element of the dreams, the spirit animal implications, and the unnatural wind projected onto Rachel's fire, it tickles my imagination with the possibility of “Oh shit, could this story actually end up implying an explanation behind Life is Strange's biggest plot hole?” The title, 'Before the Storm,' the name of the Platinum trophy, 'Bring on the Storm,' and the premise of the fourth episode focusing on Max and Chloe all further adds to this gut feeling for me that you might actually be trying to fill in some blanks with the origin of the tornado. Because, frankly, the tornado in Max's story is my saltiest issue with everything in those five episodes, so the idea of some kind of explanation tying it together with Rachel and Chloe's past is actually very intriguing to me.

Here's the thing, though: no matter what your team has planned, no matter what big plot twist you might have in store, someone out here in the fandom has already predicted it, and for others it might not even feel too surprising by the time we get there. Either way, surprise and shock value are an exciting but fleeting emotion. I genuinely hope that whatever climax this story is leading up to, you focus more on the execution and establishing a rational resolution rather than just trying to grab “the feels.” I can already tell from this first episode that you've thought ahead with this stuff. From way back when your game was unfortunately leaked, a single question on a marker board has kept me intrigued by what this story will hopefully explore: “Is Rachel good?” I think that question has already been implicitly brought up in this episode, and while the technical plot hasn't moved much of anywhere yet, the prospect of this question, the different themes it could entail, and how it could ultimately flesh out Chloe's background and this world, are all things that have me more interested than I expected. While I think the core relationship of this prequel has been pushed too quickly and illogically, it's true that teens can make decisions irrationally and have sudden bursts of intense emotion – Rachel's angry fits were an example of this I didn't actually expect from her, but now feel almost like I should have, and I also feel a sense of intent with that. Part of me feels like I should talk more about Rachel and Chloe's relationship here, but honestly, I'm just having a hard time feeling invested. I don't think it's because anything is “wrong,” I mean...it makes enough sense for them, given all we learned about them in the original game. I guess it's just that knowing how things turn out – and Rachel's evident role in that – is disconcerting to just how quickly Chloe is diving into this, and how too eagerly Rachel is to pull her in. It makes me feel just as wary about Rachel as would've expected to, and maybe that's the point. Of special note are the very interesting parallels you've drawn between characters from Shakespeare's The Tempest and Rachel, Chloe, and Nathan. Very fascinating implications, I adore the intertextuality here, and the literal 'storm' imagery makes it such a great fit to be drawing from. I'm expecting to see some kind of meaningful payoff here, as well. You might notice that a lot of what I'm saying at this point is basically me seeing seeds you've planted, and expecting those to germinate and grow by the end here. Three episodes is a very short storytelling space, though. I'm worried about just how fulfilling these threads can be resolved, and I admit that how this story ultimately concludes will probably play a huge part in how I ultimately feel about it. But, at the very least, I hope this helps you get a grasp on what kinds of thoughts your story has put into the head of someone who is very invested in this world. I'll confess that I'm maybe not as hyped to see more as I was with the original game. And so much of this prequel makes me feel...just, weird, in a bad way. But, I will just as readily confess that most of what I am worried about or am taking issue with doesn't really have to do with your efforts as a creative team, but rather, the very nature of what this story is in relation to the source material, and the creators of these characters not really being present. I think that for a first software release for a new dev team, this is some great stuff, and to be blunt, I am actually more excited for whatever your team will be working on a year from now – hopefully something entirely your own? – than for this prequel. I'm certainly curious to see what Before the Storm does, and how you continue to build off of this start, but I just want your team to know that I'm already more excited to see what you come up with down the road when you've established yourselves and don't have these unnecessary weights to be contending with. I think this episode's strongest moments don't actually rely on its connections to Life is Strange at all, they just happen to inhabit Arcadia Bay – which you have been able to recapture well, at the same time. There are some discrepancies, a couple questionable details that don't seem to line up, and the incessant Max-bashing feels super weird, but as someone else who's written fan-made content with this world, I can understand the delicate nature of trying to set up dominoes someone else made and trying to line them up in a way where they’ll topple in an elegant fashion. With everyone shouting in your ears that can’t make it easier, but I see such attention to detail in your work that I have much more faith than I did a month ago that as long as the story culminates into something meaningful and satisfying, I think a lot of those 'weird' things some fans are feeling right now will be easier to let go of. And even if things go south with this project, I think you’ve already established the potential your team has. Good luck with the next three episodes. I went into this feeling so much anxiety, fear, and doubt, and while not all of that has been resolved, I'm at least relieved that the team working on this seems to be capable, passionate, and up to the task.

#Life is Strange #Before the Storm #LiS BtS #Life is Strange Before the Storm

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teamoliv-archive · 5 years

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Cutscene: The Return to Atlas

The trip back to Atlas was long and soul draining. The flight was cleared to enter and the small private vessel swooped right onto a private helipad at the top of a building in the floating city. The words Cheshire Financial Group were emblazoned on the top of the building over a large crawler showing various stock and good prices as well as a few advertisements for loans and financing.

“Well here we are.” Hari from the cockpit with an impressive smile. “It’s a shame you kids didn’t want to talk during the trip. You know, Nyx, your mom never let Auroras and I visit you growing up. Something about ‘not wanting the family associated with lowly mercenaries’ or something like that. Hopefully, we can catch up. I wanna hear all about what your team’s been up to after Ty’s done with what he wants.”

When the plane lands two figures very familiar to each member of the team could be visible. All four leaned into the windows as best as their restraints would allow and a collective look of apprehension and shock covered them.

“You’re kidding me...”

“What’s she doing here?”

Auburn was clearly in far better shape than she had been. Her would in her fight with Onyx had caused a series of ugly clawed scars down the left side of her face and her hair was swooped to the other side. She looked far more confident and cocky if such a thing were possible.

Tyrael waited for the plane’s five passengers to depart, ignoring the mix of glares and incredulous looks from the team. “Release their restraints and collect their weapons, Hari. The four of you come with me. I went through a lot of trouble to gather you so I suggest you take what I’m about to offer very seriously.

Lapis wastes no time charging forward the moment his restraints are broken. “Not interested!”

Violet hit the realization quicker than the rest of them. They were being released and given their weapons back? That wasn’t normally how capturing people worked. Whatever it was that Tyrael Cheshire had planned, he wasn’t concerned about counterattacks. “Lapis, wait, something’s not right!”

Auburn swooped to the side and dodged Lapis’s incoming punch without much visible effort. She twirled around faster than anyone else could notice and slammed him into the ground with a well placed kick to his back. She then smirked at the others, locking her eyes on Onyx. “I told you I’d rise up past you, Jett. I hope you don’t mind but everything that used to be yours is mine now. Even your old room- dominance and all that. I hope you understand.”

“Are we all done playing?” Tyrael asks harshly, “Pick yourselves up and come with me. Hari, deliver their weapons to the new training room. Once I’m done with this, I will give you the rest of your payment.” He pauses and counts- four. “Where are the others?”

“What do you think? Auroras found a way to get paid twice. You specifically said you wanted these four and someone else wanted the other two so he went off to deliver them there. I’ll tell you the rest later.”

Onyx says nothing, merely rubbing his wrists when they’re freed. He ignored Auburn’s taunting for now and focused on what his father could want. It was strange he still thought of him that way. Perhaps that would never really fade. Seeing him turn and start walking to the door to the inside of the building, Onyx followed. Ivory was close behind him.

Lapis pulls himself up and begrudgingly follows. Violet was also acting on a slower pace than normal. “I don’t like this...”

“None of us do, but we have to find out what’s going on first.” Violet passes Lapis and catches up with Onyx and Ivory. She knew Hari was bringing up the rear and making sure no one tried to make a break for it.

-------

A tense and silent elevator ride down countless levels followed. Once it finally reached the floor it had meant to, it opened up to a large training room with screens, monitors, and various amenities. “This is where I will evaluate whether bringing you here will be worth my time.”

As the seven of them entered into the expansive training room, Violet glanced around to see what was here. There looked to be a door on the other side with a plaque saying ‘weapon storage’. “Let me guess, our stuff’s going in there until you say we can have it, right?” She froze when she saw past the glass and the lettering on it and to a familiar sight propped up in a sturdy case.

“That’s... His Majesty’s Colors! My dad’s weapon! Why do you have it!?”

Tyrael walked into the room to stand at one of the terminals by the wall of the training room. “Well well, once again your observation skills impress me, Ms. Goodfellow. You’re correct, that is your father’s weapon. I’m afraid both of your parents had a bit of a run in after their latest frolic in the frozen wastelands of Solitas. This is, partly, why you’re all here.” He pushes a button to show both Shin and Emril Goodfellow in effective stasis, the pods they were in showing various life signs.

Onyx took a step forward and finally broke his silence. His harsh damaged voice echoing as much as it could in the large room. “You expect me to believe that you went out of your way to collect wounded huntsmen on a rescue mission? That run in could only have been with you.”

“Well, I mean... yeah. Yeah it was- and it was all for me.” Auburn, in lieu of walking, decided on a flashy flip over the team and landed in front of them with a showy pose. “What you are looking at now is the product of the future. You see, your ex-father here took Ciar’s aura research and decided to put it to use. We got one of those fancy aura transfer machines that they found in Beacon’s wreckage and,” She smirks to Violet in a taunting way, “Your parents’ aura is mine now. Well... most of it. We needed them alive after all.”

Lapis jerked back, his normally solid form shaking slightly at the thought. “You can... do that?” He balled a fist as his features tightened. “So, what, are we just going to be more supply for your damn project!? Is that it!?” He was already prepared for another ill-fated fight. He knew he was outmatched by at least two of the people in this room, but he wasn’t going to let Huldre pull that on him again.

“Oh, please try and attack me again. We can do this with only three of them, right?”

“Both of you cool it down.” Hari mentions from the back, helping himself to one of the water bottles on a table. “Ty, I’m kind of curious, is this that ‘Borealis Project’ of yours?”

“It is, Hari. This is my version of Ciar’s Aurora. Using these transfers to enhance the abilities of huntsmen and huntresses to unheard of heights. What once needed entire teams to take down will now be the role of a solitary one. However, we’re still testing this and that is why I need a full team. You are to serve as my benchmark.” He taps another button and prepared licenses for Team OLIV showed up. “These are yours, as is access to this facility, room and board, and meals. All you have to do is your job and compare your performance to Auburn’s.”

“And if we don’t something happens to my parents, is that it?” Violet snaps. She realized she didn’t have much other choice and gritted her teeth tightly. What would Robin have done in this situation? She figured her brother would have likely gone berserk and tried to kill everyone in the room. The thought that this was what he was like now still frightened her a little. That wasn’t the kind of person she could be, though, and she just wasn’t strong enough. She reflexively shrinks down in a pained defeat.

“I’m not doing anything until my sister is back where she belongs.” He flings himself around toward Hari, “You tell your partner that you need to get her back here if you want me to do anything!”

“Sorry, kid, can’t do it.” Hari says with a shrug. “Auroras took the job and going back on a contract’s one of the worst things you can do in this business. I can’t say I like the people he was talking to, but sometimes that’s just how it goes. Besides,” He points to Tyrael, “It’s not like Ty to give you room to negotiate.”

“That would be correct. Lapis, was it? Your meddling is what ultimately destroyed my daughter if I recall. By all rights I should demand blood for blood, but I will choose to instead offer you a gracious forgiveness as well as a job. Or are you so selfish that you would risk trying to break through the entirety of Mistral’s underground yet again at the cost of putting your teammate’s parents in peril?”

Watching Lapis shrink down as well, Ivory took a step forward. “I want to speak with my father, Mr. Cheshire.” If anyone could pull something out of the man it would be Redmond Reynard.

“I’m afraid he’s away on business for the foreseeable future. He actually left before you got here. It’s a shame he had no time to see his own daugther, but when you have so many important things to do, sometimes you must make sacrifices.”

Ivory knew immediately that her father was sent off before she got here on purpose just in case he insisted on trying to change the offer somehow. She’d have to see if she could find Sterling later- he would know where he went and why with how often the butler hung around her father.

Onyx swallowed hard and felt an ache in his throat as he spoke again. It was still healing, but slowly. “I think that’s enough empty negotiating. You didn’t bring us here to this room specifically just to explain this to us. You said you wanted a baseline...”

“Indeed I did. Prepare your weapons once they are returned to you. The four of you will be fighting Auburn so I know exactly the gap in strength that Borealis provides.”

#teamoliv #Onyx Cheshire - Cutscene #Lapis Hamelin - Cutscene #Ivory Reynard - Cutscene #Violet Goodfellow - Cutscene #Tyrael Cheshire - Cutscene #Auburn Huldre - Cutscene #Hari Lackey - Cutscene #Team OLIV - Project Borealis

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dondokaviews · 5 years

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My hairdressing experience "Fake it till you make it"!

Hi for those who don't know me I'm 39 years old and I'm a hairdresser and I wanted to share my experience in this business starting out much later in life at 30 when most hairdressers start their careers much younger some around 18!

Anyway starting any career at 30 with 2 kids and a mortgage is a whole other ball game then starting fresh out of high school while you still live with your parents,and the hairdressing business is definitely not for the faint of heart!

The competition is fierce,there's so many different things you can do in ths industrythat it's a little overwhelming,even though I hate that word (story for another time) I used it because it really is overwhelming!🤯

The only thing I knew when I got out of school was that I needed to make money and more than I would have made if I was waitressing since now I also have a student loan to pay off.

I first went to work for a well establish full service salon that i had interviewed for a project in school but since I was fresh out of school all I could get was part time since I wasn't going to be on the floor,no full service salon will let you just jump right on and start cutting away no matter what,you definitely have to pay your dues but I just needed more hours and money now!

I looked around and found a salon that paid hourly and would hire me full time and it was right around the corner from my house!I jumped at the opportunity, I did leave the other salon in really good terms by the way as you'll see keep reading...👇

I did it all at this salon nails,facials,makeup and just a little bit of hair so I became "jack of all trades,master of none" or at least I felt like that ,there also were a lot of old timers with large clientele but not enough walk-ins and they were distributed by seniority and that put me bottom of the list!Back to the money thing!I did stay for about 8 months the owner was really nice and she did send me to a lot of training for facials and makeup not for hair so much.

I heard my old boss was had opened another salon and was going to open a third I decided that maybe it be better starting in a new salon where nobody really had seniority so I would have a better chance of getting walk-ins.

Well things did not work out the way I thought they would,even though I think the owner had the intention of training me and putting me right on the floor with all she had going on I was put in the backburner...

I was lucky to work with the girls there especially Denise, she was my tutor and now a good friend she took the time to teach and encourage me even with her schedule being crazy busy!THANKS GIRL I LOVE YOU!

Anyway I also met some really nice clients that actually I ended up cleaning for because I was so straped for money and before I knew it I was working in like 12 houses and still working full time at the salon so I went weeks without a day off and that went on for 3 years!I was exausted but thank God now I had plenty of money!

I put my career on the backburner also now,I was out of school for a while now and I wasn’t happy at the salon anymore I was tired of not using my skils I needed a change but I was scared because I was working for good people,but I made the change and went to work for Great Clips.

Finally I had the training I had been craving for and I got to focus on just haircuts and I got really good at it,I was able to make management in about 6 months partly because of the customer service skills I had learned at my previous places,I quit cleaning houses.

It was busy I did about 30 haircuts on average a day met great people and I was finally making the money I wanted it!

So here is what I learned:

1.Fake it ‘till you make it was the best advice that I got,its important to know your stuff but confidence and customer service goes a long way remember you can always fix a mistake on a cut or color but you can never change the way you make someone fell.

2.Educate yourself,take classes,watch videos,read about new products watch the other stylists even the newbie can give you a tip or show you a cool trick!On you down time make sure you know all the products you sell that alone will put you a step ahead.

3.Go to a chain salon right after school,they provide great training and the opportunity to get right on the floor and you will get to meet so many clients and get your name out there.

4.Master the art of cutting especially mens hair they are more loyal than women when it comes to their hair and also people will pretty much do color,extentions perms at home but it’s rare people cutting their own hair.

5.Don’t get stuck!If you fell like the salon you are at its not for you move, don’t waste time because you need to find your place so you can build a clientele.

I hope you enjoyed this article and hope it will help someone that's starting out.It’s a hard business but you got this!

Good luck!

xoxo

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bexical · 5 years

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July

Rather late, I know - I started this post on the first of the month actually, but it took some time and I got sidetracked by a variety of things. At least I’m here now :P

To briefly summarize the previous month’s progress: as expected, draft 0 is not complete, but I’m not too concerned. I do want to note my writing experiences this past month, particularly one rather intense session: I immersed myself in my character in order to capture her feelings, and as a result I was actually on the verge of tears for a significant amount of time while writing that scene.

Looking forward though, my goal is still hopefully to finish draft 1 of “Ghost of a Fireflower” by the end of August. It’s unlikely that I’ll finish draft 0 by the end of July, but I’ll do my best. Unfortunately, I think that means being a little less social for some time perhaps, but if that’s what has to happen, so be it.

Either way though, I want to take a little break between “Ghost of a Fireflower” and before “Birth of a Dragon”. While this is partly to give myself some time to develop the third part, I also need to spend some time on other writing-related things to refresh my excitement about writing in general. I'll spend some time on portraits and landscapes (an idea I had where I take a particular picture and write a scene from it) and more flash fic (I still want to make a final edit of “Blue”). I'll also likely spend some time practicing editing on r/DestructiveReaders.

In addition to the usual update, I wanted to do something unique this time. I'm normally quite harsh with myself, but it's not healthy for my motivation. I actually have a lot of things to be proud of, and even if it's a little self-aggrandizing, I want to go through these things:

Worldbuilding

I am incredibly proud of the world I’ve built. Even though I kind of feel like I’ve lucked into creating this amazing world, that doesn’t change how I feel about it. Its otherworldly elements range from mundane to beautiful to exotically horrific, and together they create a very rich world that is distinct from our own. I think it feels rather refreshing as a result, and again, I’m really happy with this world that I’ve built.

One thing in particular that I want to note about the world is how well it ties together with the plot and the characters and even with itself. Because it all ties together so well, each new element feels appropriate when it is introduced. It provides a strong sense of cohesion to the whole book, and I really like how it’s coming along as a result.

Worldview

I think I have a take on relationships and gender that is both insightful and unique enough to be worth sharing. Kiri and Rose are born from my experiences, and their respective journeys reflect my views on love and relationships. Kiri further reflects my take on gender, in particular what femininity means to me and my acceptance of that as a part of who I am. I hope readers will be able to resonate with Kiri and Rose and be inspired by them in some manner, and I'm excited to write their journey.

Wordcrafting

I generally like my writing, especially the more descriptive passages, and I’m occasionally rather proud of certain phrases that use creative imagery or an interesting cadence for example. I think I would attribute this generally to the care and attention I dedicate to the words I use and the way I phrase them. When it comes to the cadence of my writing in particular, I might actually attribute that to my love for music and my experience with it.

Narrative structure

Due to the extensive time I’ve spent analyzing film, I’ve become pretty good with narrative structure. Admittedly, I started this project with much less sense of structure, and I had no outline for the book - parts 2 and 3 didn’t even exist, and while I knew how part 1 ended, I made up a lot of it as I went along. All of this is pretty evident in draft 1 of “A Dying Spark”. Since then though, I’ve improved significantly and developed the outline much more. I’ve developed a three-part structure, likely inspired subconsciously by A:TLA and its three books (since it is my favorite series, after all =P). Admittedly, I did explicitly analyze the pacing of the antagonists of A:TLA when creating my own. These antagonists helped shape the plot shifts that mark the separate parts, resulting in three distinct parts with different themes and character motivations. Still, these parts manage to come together in a single, cohesive arc. When it comes to individual parts, I want to call out "Ghost of a Fireflower". The outline features the parallel stories of Kiri and Rose, and their stories resonate with each other and interleave together in order to advance a shared plot thread and emotional arc. The two stories come to a head together in a twin conclusion, and I’m really excited to write this conclusion. As for “Birth of a Dragon”, I don’t have much of an outline for it yet. However, I am confident that I'll be able to structure it so that it is engaging on its own and it ties together all of the threads that came to be in the first two parts.

Editing

At some point, I decided I wanted to analyze what exactly I thought about the media I consumed. It was no longer sufficient that I just like something, and it was especially insufferable that I just dislike something: I had to be able to describe its flaws as meticulously as possible.

More and more analysis has helped me develop a detailed and accurate sense of what constitutes good and bad writing. This includes big picture aspects like narrative structure and character arcs as well as minutiae on the order of sentence structure and word choice. In a fortunate coincidence, this is what I (perhaps biasedly) consider to be the most important quality in editing: after all, it’s important to be able to describe the problem before attempting to fix it.

I think my dabbling in game design has also helped me develop this skill. Games can be very multifaceted art forms, perhaps even more so than novels and films. As with editing a novel, it is important to be able to describe the problems and isolate what aspects of the game are causing them; otherwise, a designer can end up making a number of changes that fail to address the actual problem. I developed these skills while working on various game design projects, and these skills have transferred over to my writing and made me rather good at editing.

Finally, I want to finish this post off quickly with a description of a few small areas I need improvement in:

Writing speed

I write too slowly. I know it’s because I want every word to be perfect, but I really need to find a way to push myself to move along and write at a quicker pace. I think I need to recognize that not everything needs to be perfect the first time around - after all, any given scene might be replaced in its entirety. As another example, I’ve spent so much time on this post, which has little purpose beyond its effect on my pride.

Brainstorming

I’m really bad at brainstorming (something I’ve also noticed with work and in my game design pursuit). When faced with a problem, I need to be better at coming up with varied ideas that explore different paths. My current problem-solving ‘strategy’ is just to kind of struggle with a problem until a solution comes along, and this just isn’t viable. I’m going to come across problems in the narrative, and I’ll need to be able to handle them quickly and sufficiently when they come up.

Pride

This might be ironic, given that I wrote this whole post because I felt I needed to be more proud of my work, but pride is actually my biggest flaw. In other aspects of life, I might even say the vast majority of my problems stem from my pride. As for writing, it’s likely why I write slowly, since I can’t bear writing something I’m not proud in. Perhaps more importantly is the issue of feedback - throughout my time working on this book, I will get feedback at various times. I’ll need to react in an objective manner and let go of my pride if I want to write the best book I can, and hopefully I’ll be able to do that.

Well, that’s finally all for now! Even if it is going slower than I’d like, I’m really proud of what I’ve created so far. I love Kiri and Rose, and I’m really excited to take them to the conclusion of “Ghost of a Fireflower” and start brainstorming what they do in “Birth of a Dragon”. Whew, it’s been quite a long post =P pce out til next time!

#writing #mynovel #monthly updates

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theyarebangtan · 7 years

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Hit Korean boy band BTS is ready to take over Anaheim

Rap Monster, one of the seven guys in the South Korean boy band BTS, says it was only at the end of 2016 that he and the others realized how huge their band had become around the world. "Somebody in the company sent me a message: 'You got No. 26 on Billboard OMG congratulations,'" says Mr. Monster, the 22-year-old rapper born Kim Nam-joon, by phone from Chicago where BTS was set to play on Thursday before hitting Honda Center for a pair of sold-out shows on Saturday and Sunday. "At first I thought, 'Ha ha, your humor isn't really very good,'" says Rap Monster, the leader of the group and its primary songwriter. "We didn't believe it." But as more messages started to ping onto their phones he says the BTS boys realized it was no joke: Their sophomore album, "Wings," entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 26 after its October release, making it the highest chart position for any K-pop act -- not to mention one that sings primarily in Korean -- and offering a bit of foreshadowing for Billboard naming the record the best K-pop album of the year. Since then things have only gotten sunnier for Rap Monster, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook. In February, "Wings" was re-released in a new edition as "You'll Never Walk Alone," and the combined editions have since sold nearly 1.5 million copies worldwide. Music videos for "Spring Day" and "Not Today" were released a week apart last month as well and exploded on YouTube where they've currently racked up 59.2 million and 60.1 million views respectively. "When we heard that and really got that, I was saying, 'OK, this is going to be a whole other world,'" Rap Monster says of the significance of the Billboard chart success and all that followed. "And I feel like we should do something more, and dream something more." This past week they've taken a step toward something more, playing their first headlining and sold-out arena dates in the United States, after previously having mostly played on multi-artist billings at KCON conventions held here. "So many people just to see BTS was really an honor," Rap Monster says of the opening pair of shows at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. "It feels dreamy these days." Not, mind you, that it's been anything like an overnight success or an easy road for him and the other BTS members. He grew up a top student in his school who loved American rappers such as Eminem and Nas, performing even as he attended high school and eventually catching the attention of BTS future manager Bang Si-hyuk at BigHit Entertainment in South Korea. And though he says he gave up on music when he was 16, lacking confidence in where he was headed, he says Bang encouraged him to stay strong, believe in himself, and sign on as the first to join BTS, even though at the time he wasn't sure who or what it would end up incorporating. "I was not aware of the other members," Rap Monster says. "But I like the company and I respect them. And he promised to me, 'I will make you do your music and get big someday, so please believe me.' "So I believed him." The other six members soon were selected, each of them bringing different talents on the mic or on stage. Songs were developed by Rap Monster and the other members, with a team of producers working to craft the best music from the raw material, the melodies and beats, that they created. "Our chemistry is different from other groups," Rap Monster says. "Everyone has their own points and characteristics. If I'm a bad dancer, a good dancer teaches me. If I'm a good songwriter, I help the others with a good melody." We ask the obvious question: Are you a bad dancer? He laughs and answers: "Yes, I'm a bad dancer." Their music is different from a lot of K-pop acts that have made ripples on the American airwaves. They're not popular because of the novelty aspect of their songs -- think "Gangnam Style" by Psy from a few years back. And they're not quite as bubblegum as a group such as Girls Generation or as eclectic as the synthpop of f(x), the first Korean band to play the South By Southwest festival. Instead, BTS often aims for that sweet spot where R&B and rap get together, the kind of stuff Justin Bieber might be doing if he sang in Korean and there were six Bieber variations with fashionable hair and eclectic yet unified fashion choices. "BTS music sounds like it's from America," Rap Monster says. "We decide to always watch the trends and watch what's going on over the world. America's the No. 1 market in the world so that's why people in America prefer us." As for communicating through the language divide, Rap Monster says that's partly handled by the group's wildly enthusiastic social media following: "Fans translate our lyrics and interviews," he says of a following that has landed them at the top of Billboard's Social 50 list for a total of 17 weeks since "Wings" dropped in October. "They're able to say, 'OK, BTS is talking about us and our lives.'" And it's partly addressed through lyrical subjects that express the common hopes and dreams and fears and worries of any teenager or young adult in any country. "Our lyrics are mostly Korean but we always talk about the young people's lives and their minds," Rap Monster says. "There's something similar between every young person in the world, in America or in Korea. We share something together even if we use different languages or live so far." American fans are also the savviest music lovers in the world, Rap Monster says, which made heading out on this brief headlining tour a little bit intimidating at first. "We actually were scared of performing in America as a solo act," he says. "Their playlists are the best in the world. I was really nervous for them. "But after we were on stage our fear disappeared. They're like everybody, they're like friends. Singing along all of the lyrics even through the raps. They know how to play, the rhythms and the dances." An aside here to share our favorite piece of Rap Monster trivia. You might be wondering whether he spoke through a translator. He did not. His excellent English skills were polished in the classroom but also at home through what he refers to as "a Korean mothers syndrome." "'Friends' was really famous for the mothers in Korea for English education," Rap Monster says of the hit American sitcom from the '90s. "It was kind of like a syndrome. Korean mothers make their kids watch 'Friends' even when they were eating food or playing. "I think it really helped. It has like 10 seasons, I think, and I watched it like more than five times through the 10 seasons. They use the gestures and expressions, like, Americans use, right? I think that naturally teaches me how to speak or how to make a gesture when you try to express some emotions. "Thank you, 'Friends,'" he says, laughing. "God bless 'Friends'!" Rap Monster recently collaborated with the American rapper Wale on the song "Change," which like some of BTS' other songs -- and unlike most K-pop -- touches on politics and societal issues. He says he'd loved Wale's music for a few years when the opportunity to do the song came along last year "like a miracle, like a dream come true. "The song has already come out and we shot a music video together, but still sometimes I lie in my bed and think, 'Did I really do something with him?'" Rap Monster says. He knows that boy groups from Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync to the Jonas Brothers and One Direction tend to have a finite lifespan before members get restless to move on solo projects, acting gigs and other opportunities. But he thinks the variety of interests and musical genres that individual BTS members have can be handled on the side or even within the group, and BTS itself can carry on. So while Rap Monster says he'd love to collaborate with Drake or Miguel one day, Suga feels the same way about Kanye West and Flume. Jungkook seems more inclined toward pop R&B -- his dream musical partners would include Bieber or Charlie Puth. V is a little bit old school, having mentioned Norah Jones and the Fugees as on his wish list. Rap Monster ticks off the rest of the band: Jimin digs Chris Brown, J-Hope is into the similarly initialed J. Cole, and Jin is a fan of old-school showman Bruno Mars. "I always tell them that every time we have hits under the name of BTS we shine the best when we are a team," Rap Monster says. "I know all the seven members, they love music, and I know their No. 1 wish is for us to perform and make music and sing and dance. "Maybe someday someone will want to be on a television show or be an actor," he says. "I just hope they know all of the popularity and fame and money is from the name of our team. That's not one person, everybody contributes to the team. "Nobody knows the future. I just hope it can last as long as possible." cr: http://ocregister.com/articles/says-747923-monster-rap.html

#bts #bangtan #bangtan boys #interview #the wings tour

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liskantope · 7 years

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My reaction to 13 Reasons Why

I recently finished the controversial Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, partly because I wanted to understand the controversy myself, and partly because several people highly recommended it. Here are my main thoughts. Spoilers and content warnings for the obvious heavy issues (see tags) under the cut.

To start with, this series was well-done, well-acted, and really gripping at least once it got into its stride. I also found that it was deeply moving and conveyed really positive messages in certain places. As well as the expected suicide scene (which was longer and more graphic than I expected), there’s a rape scene near the end which I found very upsetting and uncomfortable to watch, so I would hate to think how someone whose life experiences are closer to Hannah’s might react. I guess my point is that the content warnings should really be taken seriously.

One thing this series is not is gritty. The darkly glamorized high school aesthetic strikes me as unrealistic and annoyed me a lot earlier on. Maybe part of my annoyance originates in my not having had the typical high school experience, at least the way it’s depicted in most media (I feel similarly about That 70′s Show, which displays a lighter version of this subculture). But even granting that partying, drinking, and sex are so ubiquitous in the high school environment and that pretty much everyone is super good-looking in high school, are most teenagers really go around with that kind of verbally quick-witted confidence? Do most parents respond to their sarcasm not with anger but with an equal degree of casual sass? Are most parents so lackadaisical about their teenagers going out to parties at unknown houses (”why not take a break and relax?”). The events that take place at parties in this show are sort of an argument against that kind of laxity, I think, but they’re not pushed as such. And a lot of the dialog felt basically like an un-nuanced depiction of how adults imagine today’s teenagers to talk: for instance, I remember the perjorative term “pussy” being popular among guys who liked to put down other guys, but not nearly so ubiquitous in conversation. Also, I’ve never had the impression that so much slut-shaming comes directly from guys rather than from other girls, but I could be wrong.

Most of all, I was bothered for the first two-thirds of the series by Hannah’s self-assured articulateness and apparent confidence which seemed to be with her at almost all times. My impression is that such characteristics, along with flawless good looks, tend to make for a lot of popularity, with the main forms of bullying stemming from jealousy (which is not the way Hannah’s bullying was depicted). It was hard for me to swallow the fact that Hannah wasn’t a total hotshot despite clearly having the looks and the social skills to be one, and it felt like a bit of a stretch to me that the slightest things caused negative rumors against her that were taken quite so seriously. But it may well be that these events are quite realistic and that high schoolers are even dumber and crueler than I realize.

There were of course some plot points that seemed unrealistic. To name a couple, it seems like relatively little was made of Clay basically having to watch his friend Jeff die (his parents are wondering why he’s acting strange, and this is never even brought up as a recent traumatizing incident!); and it seems strange that Hannah’s parents, anxious to get their hands onto any clue behind Hannah’s suicide, weren’t immediately on the hunt for the tapes that Hannah had wanted for her “stupid” school project.

A couple more stray notes:

I’m always pleased to see depictions of a couple like Hannah’s parents, who obviously had a lot of disagreements both before and after the horrific event of their daughter’s suicide and still manage to stick it out together.

The plot event at the end that sets it up for a second season doesn’t particularly intrigue me. This just doesn’t feel like the kind of story which should be followed with a sequel.

And finally, the big controversy about the potential dangers of this series. The issue in a nutshell is that a lot of people worry about the content of this show encouraging suicide among viewers, especially teens. My first response to this is going to be mostly tautologically obvious: 13 Reasons definitely will have a harmful effect on some teenagers for the reasons I’m about to discuss, while it will also have a helpful effect on others because of some very positive and helpful messages it preaches. I wouldn’t be able to offer much insight on which people might react how because I don’t have enough experience dealing with high schoolers who are struggling with these issues. (For what it’s worth, one of the glowing recommendations for this show came from a friend of mine who worked/volunteered for years helping teens at suicide crisis centers.)

On a basic level, some are criticizing the show for “glamorizing” suicide. Although the writers were clearly well-intentioned and went out of their way to show that suicide is not “worthwhile”, I think I understand exactly what these critics mean. Disclaimer: I am not suicidal and have never been seriously suicidal for any extended period. Yet watching the show made even me feel a sliver of attraction to it in the abstract due to the glamorous way it’s done (leaving 13 well-spoken messages), in a similar way to how watching a James Bond movie might give me a momentary desire to be a gun-slinging badass even though I hate guns, or how Breaking Bad made me idly fantasize for a moment about running a drug empire. So I do worry about the wrong person consuming it at the wrong time.

But the suggestion that makes me raise my eyebrows a little more is the deeper idea that 13 Reasons encourages suicide by providing a close-up shot of a lot of horrible things that happen to one teenage girl (mainly to do with sexual harassment, assault and rape) and how it drives her to kill herself -- as in, maybe this might weaken the resolve of a real-life teenage girl who is going through similar things. And it’s not as though there isn’t a point to that. Because yes, the story depicts rising above the trauma of being harassed/assaulted/raped and bringing the perpetrator(s) to justice (Jessica says something like “You know what happens to girls who go for help”) as pretty hopeless. The story pretty much implies the message that these things happen to women all the time and that the result is necessarily life-shattering trauma that can’t possibly be overcome except in the vastly unlikely circumstance that someone is actually willing to listen without saying anything that could be perceived as judgmental. And it pretty much implies (although I don’t think the writers quite intended this) that it’s perfectly natural for a girl in a severe enough situation of this kind to be driven to kill herself. Rape is presented as pretty much the worst thing that can happen to someone apart from death, and possibly even worse than death.

The interesting thing is, I get the impression that a lot of this criticism comes from the same kind of people who, in the name of feminism, present rape and its milder variants as necessarily a life-shatteringly traumatic thing for which it’s virtually impossible to pursue justice. Such people must surely realize that to some extent, in order to raise awareness and opposition to horrific crimes, we need to deliver a message about just how awful it is to suffer them and how helpless victims or potential victims can feel and that it’s okay to feel that way. But at a certain point, too much of this narrative just might become needlessly disempowering for victims or potential victims.

So where do we draw the line? It seems that depicting a victim actually committing suicide goes over the line for these people, but is it really so much less damaging to constantly push a narrative implying that rape is absolutely always so thoroughly dehumanizing and second-only-to-death that fear of it has to be the main day-to-day existential concern for women everywhere? Isn’t it possible that such a narrative might push some rape victims over the edge to suicide even when nobody’s actually saying “a rape victim might reasonably want to kill herself”? It’s something that I wish more people would think about. Because I’m not saying that I know where that line is, but I don’t think it should be assumed hands-down that telling women how helpless and fragile they are in the face of sexual violence is completely justified exactly until suicide is (somewhat) sympathetically depicted as a response.

#13 reasons why #13 reasons why spoilers #suicide cw #rape cw #That 70's Show #feminism

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