#Very mother material she’s like in her late 40’s

[bunni-y0lks]

I got into another hyperfixation SAVE ME

(Angel is my oc, Scarlett belongs to @uniucky-clovers and Wales @tangerinetatko :3)

[therealslimshakespeare]

have you thought of Elaine's wedding dress? how does it look for you? I always think of something simple but not that simple

Oh welcome to my mind palace, darling, although it’s right about now that I’m spitting mad that my perfect inspo pictures are lost to my old blog, alas. However, with some scrounging I have a few examples I would submit to you.

First off, I described it as simple with a fitted waist, as I had that in mind and secondly I once stumbled across these pictures that to my mind suggest Daisy Mae wearing her mother’s dress -no doubt for the cover of a thinly veiled autobiographical rock album? I’ve an entire one shot mostly written out about Daisy and the very tell-all song about her mother’s marriage she wrote and sang much to the nation’s shock. But not Marlon Brando’s. 😏 These photos express a certain mimicry of Elaine, I think.

Next, here are some silhouettes I had in mind. I find I prefer most 40’s gowns over 50’s crinoline styles but as Elaine married late into the decade, the styles were beginning to slim again, reminiscent of the previous decade again, and with a little imagination we can tweak these into being in vogue.

I did imagine the slightly scooped neck of this second set, perhaps not fully off the shoulder, though. I particularly adore the veil on the second, seems like it would suit her essence.

The one below is stunning and from the 50’s and to be perfectly honest I think it remarkably toes the line between show-stopping, glamorous silhouette and unfussy material, minus train for Elaine..

Which dress has y’all’s vote?

[alinaxstarkov]

You know, sometimes I like to think that LB wrote Shadow and Bone from genuine concern for young girls. She allegedly had abusive relationship behind her and she to comfort her own emotions wrote this little fairytale to make herself feel better. And then this little fairytale became world-wide bestseller.

But at its heart it forever stayed a little comfort fairytale.

LB makes this mistake of... I don't want to use "overrating" but it feels like it, like she overrates her work. She created this narrative that this is a warning tale for young girls to not fall for the tall dark handsome guy with power who will manipulate her, use her and leave her, heartbroken. She put herself on this pedestal of a preacher for fair maidens and she seems to be very upset when her audience shows her that this narrative is false.

It's 2021. We live in era of Internet where information spread fast and world-wide. We have tumblr articles, twitter threads, tiktok series, youtube series. Now girls at age 13, 14 and 15 watch things like "how to spot a sociopath?", "three signs you date a master manipulator!" and "make your marriage happier than the one your parents had". And I'm not joking because I was watching materials like this, mostly to amuse myself, subconsciously learning things about this topics. Now more youth than ever is interested in psychology. More often I hear 20 y/o women speak about how to get out of abusive relationship rather than 40 y/o.

It's 2021 and young girls don't need warning tales about how handsome men potentially can be abusive. They know that from real life. Their mother just divorced her abusive husband. Their sister ended relationship with toxic boyfriend. Their best friend is in therapy because of horrible parents. Their favourite celebrity just made an interview about their evil ex and now shares "tips" how to escape from situation like this.

They don't need little fantasy fairytales to teach them that. It's no longer 1820s and they don't need to chose between marrying their poor childhood friend whom their love since they met or 10 years older man with 10 villages and 20 servants, who can help her family. They don't need next Jane Austen teaching them about risks of those choices.

Shadow and Bone has its flaws but if it would be treated (also by its author) as light-hearted fairytale about defeating evil instead of real life allegories to abusive relationships, no one would feel the need to mercilessly bash it in this whole hashtag. Because on one hand we have LB yelling at her readers about how to read her books, what interpretations are the only true ones, that this is the evil one and those are good guys, but on the other the same author pairs her heroine with a boy that feels belittled and endangered by powerful heroine, so she makes the moral of the story that its better to have husband who whines when you eat too much, than powers able to save the whole world.

LB tries very hard to push her own narratives on her readers, but she isn't doing it through her storytelling, but interviews and social media.

And I'm just tired of the next "I need to tell young girls that handsome men can be abusive and manipulative, because they don't know better and they will end up in toxic relationships!". It feels very vicitim-blaming to victims of abusive relationships. Because the truth is that sometimes you don't know that you are dealing with manipulator and you are in toxic affair before it's too late. And this whole "you should know better!" thing is just another way of patriarchal society pushing the blame of "naive young stupid girls" instead of their abusers. At the end of the day, I know S&B is just fiction.

And I don't mind the fiction. I didn't like the ending? Fuck it, I will read fanfic or find a better book. But I do mind belittling and moralising young women, especially when it comes to such a delicate topics like abuse.

[glitterytidalwavedragon]

Expanding into my other Fandoms (I’m gonna have to take a stance) Read the whole thing please.

One of my oldest and most beloved anime is Inuyasha. As of late I have been binged watching the hell out of it as I am getting my BFF into different anime shows. We are really close to entering the Yashahime part of the series, and she asked if I planned to write fanfiction involving the one character which made me even watch the show as a 10-year-old.

Sesshomaru

The first episode I ever watched involved this aloof, entitled dog fighting his brother over the sword in their father’s grave. Specifically, it was part 3 of that whole episode series were Kagome pulled out the sword. I at the time had 3 dogs of German Sheppard/wolf hybrid, they were MASSIVE dogs, fell in love with the big white fluff that was Sesshomaru’s demon form. I use to sneak staying up and watch the show faithfully to see the goodest boy as it was only on at 11pm EST on adult swim. Which meant it was bad and I was breaking the rules, I felt like a rebel.

Now I hesitated answering that question. She has no idea of what is in Yashahime, she is being careful not to spoil it so I told her I didn’t know. Recently, to find out what the feel is for Sesshomaru content, I looked into the tag on tumblr…

OH MY GOD.

Sesshomaru’s tag is FLOODED with hate. Like every four post, there is hate, distain, and attacking happening. As someone who watches Yashahime, I quickly knew why.

Sessrin.

Even now I sigh. And I sigh HARD. I am not for, nor am I against the Sessrin train. Same for the Sesskagu train. I think both sides need to look at things on a logical prospective. I plan to do just that. I know I will get hate from the either side and maybe some support as well. But if I am going to do anything in this fandom (as I like doing ships and reader inserts) it will come up.

So, like my Kaiba post, and my Sebastian Heel post, I will use my research skills as well as my COLLEGE DEGREE WHICH HAS BOTH ART AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY labelled on it to explain why this progression in the story is normal to anti-Sessrin fans and why this isn’t a crime by story standards nor should we look at it as a crime.

AS WELL

Explain to Sessrin fans why it is so weird for non-shippers to see it play out and why so much hate formed.

As I let out another sigh, we shall begin. Let’s start at an historical prospective. (Links at the bottom).

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING! I’LL BE ABLE TO TELL!

~~

I will start with the information I can access right away.

While finding charts on the life-span of common folk in 1590’s Feudal Japan is rather difficult, Ancient.edu states that the average lifespan was about 50. To put this in perspective, the average lifespan of Europeans at the time was somewhere between 40-45 with the latter being rare. Since most of us reading are not from Japanese descent, I will through Europe in this first.

If we look at the same time frame of 1590, we are looking at most of Western Europe had now entered the age of Renaissance. According to sources from Learning Resources in association with the National Gallery of Art, marriage was not what TV drama’s from HBO or Hulu depicted. By today standards they would be a crime, as the average age for marriage of an adult female was age 14…

The reasoning behind the young marriage age had multiple factors. First being, females were considered an adult once they were menstruating. Birthing also proved to be fatal, and since the lifespan was at best 40 and 45 if they were lucky, there was really no room to wait. Also Europe at the time had became hugely focused on making sure blood lines were legitimate, meaning to ensure the girl was a virgin, the moment she was able to reproduced she was married off. Those they married were not young teenagers either. Most marriages, a man would be in their thirties, and had probably multiple wives as women died more than men when not counting the battle field.

To make matters worse for the Renaissance Lady, these marriages would leave many young males unable to marry and if their husband died in battle, well, unfortunately they were not seen as desirable. This was due to the idea of a ‘free woman’. Should the girl not have a father, brother or uncle to return to as they too died, a widow had her freedom. But that freedom came at a cost. She would be assumed to have slept around, and in many writings, such as the Canterbury Tales, where Geoffrey Chaucer writes about a Window on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land survived her five husbands and the men in her family. In short, she was made to be a slut and to be looked down upon as no man controlled her.

The point of talking about Europe is because that is something most of us Non-Asian or Japanese people consume and like to paint in large romantic brush strokes of knights and magic. Honestly, reading G.R.R.Martin Song of Ice and Fire, he uses this model as we see the Queen of Dragons, Danny start off at age thirteen shortly after she had her first menstruation.  

Now let’s look at Feudal Japan.

As stated before, the lifespan was around 50 years. In some populations, this was even shorter. Nagaoka, Hirata, Yokota and Matsu’ura’s on demographic data at the Yuigahama-minami area in Kamakura, Japan and found both male and female remains that suggested life expectancy to have ended around age 24-25. This was largely due to living conditions and public health. In areas like these, it would make the most sense to marry and repopulate quickly as the expectancy of life was half the national average at the time.

To my frustration, I could not find a clear marriage age for Japanese women at the time of the edo period. HOWEVER, where there is a will there is a way. I took a look at famous Lords or Daimyo’s of the time. The average age of marriage of their wives was between 12-14. Much younger than I expected, but it made sense considering this is a time where war ran the show and marriage was strictly about political gain. One of these Daimyo’s was Masamune Date, who was also 13, but then as he got older took concubines who became considerably younger than him as he became older. The goal was to have as many children as possible for hires and for political marriages to gain power.

Now lets look at Inuyasha the MANGA

Lets get the manga timeline proper here. The whole adventure took place in 11 months, a month shy of Kagome’s 16th birthday. Doing a few estimations, Rin would have travelled with Sesshomaru about 8-9 of those months. But before we get into the relationship, lets look at something the ANIME made a huge mistake with in the beginning and tried to fix as the story went on.

For some reason I could only fine gifs for the Early appearances of Sesshomaru so bear with me.

Early appearances in the manga

 ^ He was so fickle and a trickster then...

Now early apperances in the anime.

Later appearance in the manga

Laster appearance in the anime

Notice the issue here? 

Sesshomaru was CONSIDERABLY younger looking in the start of the manga. In the anime, he started off looking like an fully adult male. But as the anime went on, they tried to make Sesshomaru look younger with subtle changes to his jaw line, eye size, and his height. Yeah, his height had changed. They made him shorter.

While in the manga, we see this young-teen looking demon, slowly mature over 11 months to look like he is in his later teens and by series end, closer to being in his late teens or twenty. Yes, art changes over time, but the anime went a reverse route. I can only guess they spoke to the author of Inuyasha about her ships, as they did Drama CDs, and realized the mistake that was made in making him more mature than he was.

You can’t tell me he doesn’t look closer to his manga self in the final act, because he does.

Since we are on the topic of the anime, lets be clear. The anime timeline and manga timeline are very different. The story in the anime (in the English) suggests that OVER a year has past since Kagome started her journey. They try to fix this in the final act, but it was still so muddled as previous seasons are to be taken as cannon. This could have been due to an translation error in the early production when the anime no longer had anymore manga material to reference. But whatever the case, for English viewers the time the group spent together felt much longer.

So now we come to the heart of the issue.

Because of the mistakes of the anime, a lot of anti-sessrin see the relationship as father daughter. I’ll be honest, watching the anime and solely the anime as a teenager and as an adult (as the manga was on hold for a very long time due to author’s health. I was in college when it finished.), I too thought it was just a father-daughter relationship and Jaken the nanny who got punched all the time. In fact, the English took hard liberties with Kagura, as the English dubs often do with characters, and made it very clear her feelings for the demon lord and Sesshomaru very much recognized them (though he never responded). Even in her death scene, it felt as if he was saying good bye to a friend more than love interest. But who really knows, as there are things that point otherwise.  When another demon mock’s Kagura’s death, Sesshomaru gets super pissy.

The manga did also play with this fact when it came out in English, idk if the wording or message is different in the Japanese. Translation errors happen a lot even in todays releases, look at Kuroshitsuji.  So of course most anti-sessrin’s did not see this coming in Yashahime when Rin was named mother. In fact it felt like a betrayal as we were sure Sesshomaru had no romantic feelings.

Then there was the Kohaku/Rin mashup that was hinted left and right. The English anime, with its overly dramatic and blunt emotions made it appear one way. That in the end the two kids would probably be married. Then the anime as a whole made Sesshomaru older than intended. I can see why and understand how this became a problem.

On the other side of that coin.

If you followed the dub, seen ‘Swords of an Honorable Ruler’ and read the manga… Sesshomaru was not fatherly to Rin at all. In fact, Jaken picked up all of that leg work. Rin worried for Kohaku, but clearly loved Lord Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru cared about Kagura but he almost CRIED when he lost Rin.

We have to remember that Sesshomaru and Rin’s relationship must have been very hard for the demon. While we never see his mental process expect for a few rare times, we have to remember he hated humans. In the movie, he blamed a human for the early death of his father, Sesshomaru killed without mercy. It made sense that he wouldn’t be fatherly to Rin as her just being there should have caused countless inner conflicts. Hell, he even says his father’s weakness was humans, and look who picked up that trait.

Sesshomaru was designed to, someday, walk in his father’s footsteps. So sess/rin, not a surprise. Also when you see it in a historical perspective, Rin having kids around age 15-16, makes sense. In fact you could argue he waited too long for the time period.

We also need to look more at the manga when concerned with Yashahime. 8-9 months is all Rin travelled with him and he was like hold up, and left her at the village because he KNEW she needed to come to her own conclusion. That no matter what she picked he would live with and protect her. Unconditional love on his end. She cannon wise spent YEARS living with humans and MONTHS with Sesshomaru. Again, by manga standards of cannon.

Now I can already hear the screaming about age and what not. Some sources say Sesshomaru is over 900, by the rule of thumb, if we look at anime and movie releases, we have Sesshomaru being over 500 with no define age and Inuyasha around 270 years old being more pinpointed due to the movie. Just by going by ANIME CANNON. Kagome and Inuyasha, you have a 15 year old with a 270 year old man. If you say being pinned to the tree doesn’t count, then you have 220.

Also, here is something very interesting. In the episode where Inuyasha meets the unmother, he tells her, thinking it was his mom, she died when he was very small and we have flash backs later in the series of him being small running from demons. Demons clearly age much slower than humans, even half-demons. Inuyasha can be 270 but mentally and physically be 15, the same logic works for Sesshomaru, who in the manga is not much older than Inuyasha.

In the manga, there wasn’t any grooming, in the anime, there was a ton of mess-ups but no grooming.

Would this fly in todays world? HELL NO! NO, its gross, she’s a kid. Stop.

I know any fanfic I write will lean heavily on the side of father/daughter because that is what I grew up seeing on the screen. I can’t think of Rin as an adult because years of seeing her as a cheerful little girl. It’s like seeing G.O.T Arya about to have sex for the first time in season 8… I remember when she was a kid on the show. It was way to weird and I had to look away until it ended. But that’s my 2021 mentality.

But Inuyasha is not taking place in 2021. Feudal Japan is a whole other era with its own beliefs, morals and way of life. Those who understand this have nothing wrong with them. They just understand history.

Also, just to bang some nails in…

Anyone remember Bleach? Remember the MOST accepted couple was Ichigo and Rukia…. Rukia who was hundreds of years old and Ichigo who was 15… or Ichigo’s mom who was a teenager and his dad also hundreds of years old.

Most of this also boils down to Sesshomaru being a dude. As in reverse roles in animes its accepted and they don’t have the same historical context. Inuyasha is based off of historical context of Feudal Japan.

We need to stop spreading hate. We can’t accept some forms of literature because its European fantasy but bash other fantasy based literature for doing the same thing.

Sure, its weird for those who were use to seeing the father/daughter dynamic. Yes, there are extreme sessrin fans who post really questionable illegal content when they decide to leave Rin as an 8-year-old…

But this wasn’t ever meant to be perverted. The story was meant to make sense on a logical and historical base.

I hope everyone takes the time to read this. I love Inuyasha, I love Sesshomaru. I am just sick of seeing so many people fighting over what should be the revival of a beloved series. While yes, there is still room for sess/rin not being a thing, until it is stated otherwise, why hate each other? This fandom will only lose people by doing this. Calling people names or accusing them of illegal endorsement can hurt someone these days over social media.

Tumblr allows you to block tags. You don’t have to read anything or watch anything you don’t like. We gain nothing from attacking each other but can lose so much by doing so. Fanart, really good fan fiction, friends, ideas, sharing fond memories. Both sides have the right to feel as they feel, but no right in hurting each other.

A fandom is meant to bring people together. Not start a war…

Thank you.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.20402

http://www.italianrenaissanceresources.com/units/unit-2/essays/husbands-and-wives/#:~:text=Marriage%20not%20only%20reflected%20order,to%20ensure%20the%20bride's%20virginity.

https://www.ancient.eu/Canterbury_Tales/

https://www.ancient.eu/article/1424/daily-life-in-medieval-japan/#:~:text=Just%20as%20Japanese%20people%20today,in%20Western%20Europe%2C%20for%20example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_Masamune

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megohime

[fleshxfailures]

introduce yourself

Hi friends! I’m Tonie (she/her) and I play Medea, Seif, and Rodin. I recently finished grad school and have been working to flex my creative muscles more and spend more time writing with you all! Presently I work nearly full-time in bridal sales so I may be a bit busy during the day but I can be reached pretty easily through dms and will try to get back as soon as I get a free moment! check out the rest of my intro below:

describe yourself as a writing partner

I’m pretty laid back but I do try to get to responses as soon as I can, especially now that I don’t have classes on top of working to keep my hands tied. I tend to be a bit wordy but never worry about matching length! I just happen to take longer trying to come up with something shorter rather than writing out a longer blurb lmao, I tend to favor longer paragraphs with gifs but I’m not opposed to other types or lengths of replies. Dming is the best way to get a hold of me as the notifications help me remember who I was meaning to reach out to, but I will open things at work and forget sometimes so do feel free to pester me if I haven’t responded--I promise it’s not because I’m not interested! I love chatting out headcanons and can’t wait to come up with new plots with you all!

who are your characters? (click for bios)

Seif Al-Ansari: he/him, ghoul, 86 (appears in his late 30s). Bladesmith trust fund baby that spends most of his time holed away in his home forge or walking his rescue dog Siggy out and about. Introverted grumpy gus who secretly just wants to talk about historical weapons. Probably knows quite a few people through his dog Siggy alone, she insists on stopping for treats and pets. Medea Colchis: she/her, mage, 73 (appears to be in her 40s). Medea stems from a long line of powerful sorceresses but was discouraged from practicing magic by a mother who had been ungifted. She has spent the best of her later years honing her magic and owns an apothecary storefront, specializing in potioneering, elemental magic, and poisons. Likes fine arts, wine, and live music and appearing emotionally unavailable. Queen of treating herself. Rodin: he/they, demon, unknown (appears to be in his late 50s/early 60s). Owns The Gates of Hell bar frequented by members of the criminal underground and supplies them with various weaponry. Rodin is old as dirt and has very few allegiances; he will help most anyone with procuring resources or knowledge if they’re willing to pay the proper price. He gets very excited about destruction.

plot ideas

Seif: someone please let him be a nerd about blades and talk shit about historical inaccuracies in popular media (aka this grumpy boy needs some friends). i also uhhhh would love to see him in an antagonistic relationship because he’s got a temper and i want to see him fist fight lol. he also supplies weapons through rodin some times so it would be fun to see him involved in some shadier business, and have some regular customers in general Medea:  my chaotic wine aunt, it would be great to see her have some friends to cause a ruckus and go to museums/art galleries with. she also loves helping others meddle and would be happy to supply spells and potions for your assorted revenge plots and the likes (especially if something ends up going wrong oops). she’s running from a tragic past which could be of interest to either potential enemies or intimate relationships. she’s been playing the emotionally unavailable card for a while because of it so i’d also be open to casual romantic interests or even tiptoeing in to something more serious. Rodin: first and foremost, i’d love to get him in to all kinds of trouble! as supplier of the criminal underground there would be plenty of opportunity to get involved in some shady business. he’s also very old so it would be nice to see him come across faces he may not have seen in a very long time. as the main plot progresses i think it would be interesting to have some interactions that would require him to get more personally invested in the community and the drama being unveiled from more than just a business standpoint.

wanted dynamics

Seif: platonic friends, fellow creators/artisans, maybe individuals with specific opinions (positive or negative) about ghouls, customers past and present, past or present romantic/sexual partners, someone older who might have information (troubled past w/ the supernatural government) on him to hold over his head, someone who pulls him out of his shell

Medea: platonic friends, fellow business owners, fellow magic practitioners, antagonist characters, someone she may have done wrong in the past (through her own doing or by helping someone else screw them over), neighbors that may find her jazz and barefoot dancing in the back yard schtick seem odd lol, past and present customers, past or present romantic/sexual partners, someone she feels comfortable opening up to/can be vulnerable around, intimacy that’s terrifying and exhilarating. 

Rodin: i absolutely would love for you all to use rodin in your shady business as much as possible, he’s very much the type to sit by on the sidelines and be an enabler with his wheeling and dealing. would also be interested in friends old and new, bar regulars, weapons enthusiasts, antagonistic relationships (especially with angels, though he has been known to target lesser demons to collect souls for weapons so like, who hasn’t he pissed off by now?)

present headcanons what is your character(s) doing in the present?

Seif: business as usual. he commissions custom orders out of his home forge and also sells a variety of blades to/through Rodin. he makes daily trips out with Siggy either for supply orders or simply for coffee and a walk. very much enjoys his (somewhat bland) routine, could use some spicing up. lives in his family’s historic mansion

Medea: constantly treating herself to local fare and sights when she isn’t working, does a great deal of gardening for her own materials. always shopping around and splurging, be it on wine or local businesses or clothing. lives a rather lavish but solitary lifestyle, perfectly comfortable going out places on her own. extravagant but eco-conscious lol. lives on the waterfront

Rodin: loves causing a commotion and encouraging chaos. gets excited when he comes up with new weapon ideas, disappears occasionally to fight some lesser demons or celestial beings to make weaponry of them. usually always on the bartender side of the bar but can be seen mingling, mostly in his own establishment unless duty calls. lives in a penthouse downtown

do you have any inspirations for your muses

pinterests to come!!

[bowlerhatwearer]

Nikolai Akdow (IDW Sonic Verse)

Name: Nikolai Leonid Akdow

Nickname: Nick (rarely used)

Species: Human

Alignment: Neutral Good

Age: 16 years

Birthplace: Holoska (formerly part of the United Democratic Republic or U.D.R for short)

Current Residence: Seaside City

Gender: Male

Personality:

workaholic, hospitable, active, intellectual, recalling, serious, realistic, thoughtful, free-thinking, hard shell, soft core, withdrawn, smug (certain situations), provocative (certain situations), slightly pessimistic, eccentric, dissident, resentful.

Hobbies:

cooking, inventing, engineering, solving physical problems, visiting a museum or university, window shopping, reading the news, strolling through the city.

Likes:

Himself, Recognition, Science, cold days, sleep, tea, desserts, his friends

Dislikes:

Abuse of Science, Abuse and injustice of people, ignorance, pollution, destruction, Sonic*, Knuckles* (*not hostile but does not like them), hot temperatures.

Appearance:

Nikolai Akdow is 180 centimeters tall (179,60 but he rounds his height up) and weights around 53 kilos. The human’s hair is bistre, greyish brown colored, his eye color is blue similar to compressed ice on a glacier.

His nose is aquiline and striking, the physical appearance of his eyes is that they look rather tired and like his cheeks slightly sunken. The Humans skin tone appears to be a pale fawn color.

Nikolais right arm is a robotic prosthetic that mostly consists of metal. On the outside it is mainly stainless steel whilst the inner parts are made up by lighter metals. The prosthetic arm was designed to resemble his lost arm as close as possible but at the wishes of Nikolai himself kept with its metallic appearance and without any coloring or artificial skin made from PVC or silicon. The socket is made from carbon fiber. When at work or in public the human prefers to wear a black glove over his prosthetic limb, this is mainly to prevent frostbite near the socket but also to some part for aesthetic reasons.

On most of the days, whether in private or under people Nikolai prefers to wear his lab coat above his light grey turtleneck. His trousers are most of the time kept black and the same goes for his dyed leather shoes. The belt who is made of the same material as the shoes is dyed in oak brown with a gun holster and a silver-colored belt buckle.

The holster is used to keep one of Nikolais own inventions always by his side, his Freeze-Gun/Ray (a work in progress name that he is too busy/lazy to change for now). A retro futuristic looking as well as blue shining device, that appears in being able to freeze everything.

Abilities:

Basic:

Having invented, constructed, and tested the Freeze Gun/Ray himself, Nikolai uses his tool as main weapon which he can freeze enemies and objects alike with a blue sparkly ice ray. The degree of strength which the ice ray has can be configured with a setting dial that is attached to the gun. The block of ice one might get frozen into is, except for immobility, harmless to who falls victim of the ice ray, although slight muscle pain is a side effect of being frozen.

Additional:

Not only because of having grown up in the harsh and cold weather conditions of the U.D.R but also for being long exposed to cryogenic materials in the laboratory have given Nikolai a slight cold resistance for sub-zero temperatures yet, this also brought the disadvantage that Nikolai is not used to hot temperatures and being for too long in a place that is over 40 degrees Celsius without cooling (may it be drinking cold water, eating ice cream etc.) make him dizzy and nauseous.

History/Bio:

Not much is known about the background as well as past of Nikolai Akdow given his quiet and secretive nature when it comes to these details. Young Nikolai was born and raised in the last years of the United Democratic Republic (U.D.R) in an orphanage that was infamously known for its behavioral experiments among children and juveniles, due of mentioned activities the orphanages was unofficially known as “The Cage” and the head of said institution was Nikolais “mother”, his father’s whereabouts are unknown for the documents that resurfaced after the U.D.Rs dissolution only marked him as an traitor and revealed that he got “dealt with”.

After a raid conducted during the last months of the multinational states existence that lead to his “mothers”, other scientists and caretakers arrest, Nikolai grew up until he was fourteen at the farm of his grandparents from his father’s side where he learned about agriculture and a bit about mechanics.

With fourteen Nikolai applied for an apprenticeship for a scientific facility that included the research of cryogenic technology, materials as well as meteorology.

Even though the facility was on the other world that was (mostly) not inhabited by humans Nikolai, despite the young age decided to pursue this job and moved to the other planet. For two years Nikolai worked there as an apprentice in the laboratory with his co-worker Keratin the Cat a researcher fuel technology. Although their relationship was sometimes tense and there were “louder discussions” they remained research partners in the laboratory.

With the war happening and in conclusion Dr.Eggmans takeover of the world with the help of his newest ally Infinite, Nikolais profession and work ended abruptly when the jackal attacked the city and during the evacuation process of the building, destroyed the facility.

Trapped due of his right arm stuck under debris, Infinite tortured Nikolais mind when the young researcher talked back to the jackal. In a cast of fortune Infinite was distracted and Nikolai was able to free himself in the moment although it came with the price that he had to amputate his right arm quickly and without any medical aid or knowledge.

Running for his life, under heavy pain and constant blood loss Nikolai moved as far away as he could, away from the city until the injured scientist collapsed but not before letting out a desperate and frustrated shout of anger and resignation.

Fortunately for the young scientist it was not death, that greeted him when he woke up, although a close call he survived due of the intensive care and help he got from the single parent rabbit and native of the world, Vanilla together with her daughter Cream, her pet chaos Cheese and Chocola and the robot Gemerl.  

Whilst Nikolai recovered as good as possible from his injuries the young man had to discover in his horror that because of Infinites torture with the phantom ruby, he was unable to speak, all that he tried to say came out unintelligible. For a long time, Nikolai was only able to express himself through gesticulation or writing, with the latter being very difficult and requiring practice, given the loss of his writing hand.

Trying not to appear like a burden Nikolai did what was possible in his condition, although not speaking it out loud he grew depressed and slightly bitter of the things, that in his view were insignificant works he could do in his weak state making him believe further to be more of a burden than to be helpful. Although when he did express himself as good as possible to Vanilla how he felt, she re-assured the young human that he was not a liability and did his parts to make the life in the crisis easier.  

Later trough intensive going practice that involved repeating letters, words, and later whole sentences as well as naming objects and or describing them Nikolai began to slowly regain his ability to speak. It was trough the support of Vanilla, Cream and Gemerl that he was able to speak out his first simple words after many weeks with difficulty, but trough time and practice Nikolai was able to speak slowly whole sentences.

Whilst for some time the rabbit family’s home was a safe haven it unfortunately didn’t last. The family with Akdow in tow had to flee to the Resistances hideout before it would have been too late. Here Nikolai offered his assistance and scientific expertise as good as possible as well as met his colleague Kerating again.

Using his knowledge of cryogenic technology and materials he used it in various way to aid the Resistance with their missions and objectives. Which does not mean that there had been not one or two arguments due of conflicting views or interests. Most notable was Nikolais opposition against “Operation Big Wave”, believing that it was badly planned and that more time was needed to come up with an operation against Eggman and Infinite and that the results of the scheduled mission would be devastating.

After the war Nikolai obtained a prosthetic to replace his arm that he lost at the beginning of Dr.Eggmans takeover and began to go through physio- and speech therapy. He returned to Seaside City and helped with the re-construction of the scientific facility that now was to an major part underground as a measure of the building being safer against attacks from Dr.Eggman or other villains. The human also remained partly active in the Resistance, offering his help when needed.

By the time, the war was over Nikolais relationship with Keratin eased up and they became friends. The researcher was now often visiting his colleague and helped her in taking care of her brother who got seriously injured during the war and was one of the closest relatives that remained to Keratin after the end of the war.

It was because of this, his colleague asked Nikolai to accompany her and her brother to earth. A doctor recommended curative treatment for her brother’s wellbeing at a health resort on Earth and Keratin asked Nikolai to be with them given that the human grew fond of her brother as well and vice versa.

This decision was what ultimately spared the two cats and Nikolai to fall victim in the Metal Virus crisis that begun only a few days after they went to the health resort.

Despite not being affected by the crisis directly, it put a shadow over the human, having heard of what happened to both Vanilla and Cream, Nikolai fell into a spiral of self-loathing for not being present when the Metal virus outbreak started. He questioned that maybe he would have been able to stop it somehow or aid Tails in his research for a cure. However, it was not only himself, Eggman and Dr.Starline who he disliked for what has happened whilst he was gone.

A passive disliking for the hero of speed grew in Nikolai as well, not actively attacking Sonic he grew distant and cold from the blue hedgehog he met during his times at the Resistance HQ. Whilst many moved on easily (or at least it appeared so) from the crisis that happened a short while ago and where glad that Sonic returned. The pain and shock of what he only heard about lingers over Nikolai who seems to not be able to forget…or forgive for what has happened.

Currently he lives his life in Seaside City, still working as a researcher and aiding Keratin if she needs help both at work and in the household. He likes to visit Vanilla and Cream, to go window shopping with Amy or to visit Tails and to talk with him about the newest scientific discovery or helping each other with a technical problem.

~~~~~~

Special Thanks: I would like to speak out my gratitude to @freakova who beta read my character sheet for this Sonic OC and helped me with her input, improving the writing. Futhermore would I like to thank @benignmilitancy who I bombarded with many asks about this OC and many others and lend her ear when I talked like a waterfall about some ideas ^^

[rwoan]

    𝒉𝒊  𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒐𝒏𝒆  !  oh  gosh  ,  i  am  so  excited  to  finally  be  posting  this  ?  ya  girl  has  been  ecstatic  about  this  group  for  the  past  few  days  and  just  wow  ,  thank  you  all  for  being  here  !  not  to  be  emo  ,  but  i  really  appreciate  your  interest  and  excitement  ,  i  truly  can’t  wait  to  meet  and  write  with  you  all  .  briefly  ,  my  name  is  lenny  (  22  ,  mst  ,  she  /  her  )  and  i’ve  been  freezing  my  ass  off  in  -  40  temperatures  all  week  #canada  .  i’m  a  huge  harry  potter  nerd  and  will  gladly  scream  with  you  about  ariana  grande  ,  harry  styles  ,  or  the  jonas  brothers  .  below  the  cut  is  all  that  you  need  to  know  about  my  dear  rowan  ,  one  of  my  favourite  muses  who  i’ve  developed  so  much  in  the  past  that  what  lies  below  is  a  novel  and  a  half  ,  so  i  apologize  in  advance  .  i  will  likely  be  messaging  you  all  through  discord  ,  so  keep  an  eye  on  your  dms  !  i’m  the  biggest  h*e  for  plots  ,  so  straight  up  just  throw  ‘em  all  at  me  —  angst  ,  drama  ,  fluff  ,  tension  ,  we  love  it  all  !  okay  shut  up  ,  lenny  ,  no  one  cares  —  mwah  ,  love  you  all  already  !

❛  ⋆  ․  i  totally  just  saw  𝒓𝒐𝒘𝒂𝒏  𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒔  walking  down  sunset  boulevard  ,  looking  so  much  like  𝒎𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒆  𝒑𝒆𝒕𝒔𝒄𝒉  that  i  had  to  do  a  double  take  !  the  𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒚  𝒇𝒐𝒖𝒓  year  old  has  been  living  in  the  city  of  angels  for  𝒇𝒐𝒖𝒓  𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔  now  and  has  made  quite  a  name  for  𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇  working  as  a  𝒇𝒐𝒐𝒅  𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒈𝒆𝒓  /  𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒖𝒃𝒆𝒓  .  i've  heard  they  can  be  quite  𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒄  &  𝒐𝒃𝒔𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒗𝒆  ,  but  at  least  they're  𝒑𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒆  &  𝒉𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒕  ,  hey  ?  they  remind  me  so  much  of  𝒂  𝒄𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒂  𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒍  𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍  𝒐𝒇  𝒇𝒐𝒐𝒅  𝒑𝒉𝒐𝒕𝒐𝒔  ,  𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒅  𝒄𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒆  𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓  𝒂  𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈  𝒓𝒖𝒏  ,  𝒈𝒐𝒍𝒅𝒆𝒏  𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔  𝒅𝒆��𝒐𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈  𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒅  𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓𝒔  (  lenny  ,  22  ,  mst  ,  she / her  )

*  /  ♡  𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀��𝐈𝐂𝐒  .

full  name  :  rowan georgina collins

nicknames  :  row

age  /  dob  :  twenty4 / september 1 , 1995

gender  :  cis female ( she / her )

sexuality  :  openly bisexual

hometown  :  calabasas , california

label  :  the epicure ( a person who takes particular pleasure in fine food and drink )

*  /  ♡  𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘  .

rowan comes from a fairly opulent background : her parents never married — in fact , her father came out as gay when she was young — but both were quite successful on their own independent ventures and raised row in a very happy , yet slightly spoiled , childhood

her mother is a big - time magazine editor and had sole custody of rowan in their lush calabasas home , but rowan has always remained incredibly close with her father , a celebrity chef , and often spent weekends and holidays in his long beach penthouse apartment .

because of her wealthy lifestyle ( and having a chef for a father ) rowan was exposed to fine cuisine at a young age . she had incredibly mature tastebuds — even at the age of like 6 she was munching on calamari and truffle oil . she honestly can’t remember a time she ever turned her nose up at trying something new , her father having instilled a deep curiosity and passion for all foods in her .

there honestly isn’t much else to say about her upbringing , there’s no big sob story or rising climax — rowan is incredibly grateful for the stable , happy , and comfortable life her parents blessed her with . she found going between homes quite exciting and looked forward to the double christmases and birthdays — which is a great symbol of how rowan looks at the world . while some may call it “ rose coloured glasses ” , rowan sees herself as an optimist and prefers to find the silver lining in most situations and considers dwelling on the negatives a waste of time .

alright , continuing on : when she was in her early teens , rowan started a food blog purely out of boredom and a general desire to share her passion for food . she started out by sharing low quality images of her meals and writing littles blurbs — nothing too fancy .

however , fast forward a couple years of ritualistic posting , her father discovered the blog one day and immediately shared it on his own social media ( because of course he had to brag about his little food connoisseur ) and row’s blog blew up from there . by the time she was 18 , rowan was getting paid to visit some nice ass restaurants around los angeles and write reviews on her blog , which was gaining interest with each post she wrote . 

high school graduation came and went , and row’s online influence grew bigger and bigger , and continued to grow even as she attended the university of california to major in communications , which she envisioned would only serve to aid her in her online endeavours .

during her college career , rowan started up her youtube channel . it started as a couple videos that she linked in blog posts , prompted by questions from her followers about how she juggled her busy calendar , what her favourite recipes were , and more . her videos opened her up to an entirely new audience , and thus rowan blew up even more . she has since become a popular youtube star , her channel a collection of daily vlogs , cooking videos , restaurant reviews , and more .

my main inspo for rowan’s youtube aesthetic was alisha marie , our queen , with her casual daily vlogs and fun challenge videos , but with a mix of madelaine herself and laurdiy ( i imagine row as the foodie version of lauren ) , and those sort of vlog queens !

rowan graduated uofc with her degree in communications 2 years ago , when she was 21 , and has since been able to fully dedicate herself to her online presence . for the last two years , she’s been mainly focused on consistent posting on both ( although she did get rid of having a set schedule about a year and a half ago in order to ease up her stress ) .

*  /  ♡  𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄  .

label(s)  :  the epicure , the icarian , the aesthete , the sybarite

epicure : the whole basis of rowan’s existence is food . like , it’s pretty much the whole basis of everyone’s existence , but rowan is extra in love with food . she’s both incredibly passionate about eating and cooking , although possibly more so about eating — it is her job after all .

icarian : curiosity , adventure , and spontaneity are likely the three words most commonly associated with rowan — aside from food of course .

aesthete : to be a popular food blogger / youtuber / instagrammer you kinda have to have a good aesthetic , but rowan’s is extraordinarily good . the girl is always on the look out for cute backdrops for selfies , decor for her home , and new clothes to fill her wardrobe .

sybarite : materialism is probably row’s biggest downfall . she can’t help but have a deep inner desire to own all things on trend .

traits  :  materialistic , creative , passionate , self - indulgent , obsessive , honest , expressive , confident , starry - eyed

aesthetics  :  a camera roll full of food photos , large red waves , hourly instagram stories , iced coffee after a morning run , a red kiss pressed onto a white napkin , golden rings decorating manicured fingers , keyboard clicks at midnight , chilled mimosas paired with laughter .

personality  :  rowan’s definitely very bubbly and charismatic , but can also come off as quite spoiled , materialistic , and bossy at times . she knows what she wants , how she wants it , and she’ll stop at next to nothing to get it .

she practically radiates bde and oozes confidence .

her friends are literally her everything and she’d likely do anything for them . she’s definitely that Rich Friend™ who will buy your lunch for you , take you shopping for the perfect outfit when you land the interview of a lifetime , and also buy the first ( and most ) of many rounds of shots at the bar .

her home has an open door to anyone she cares about . no point in letting two spare bedrooms sit empty , as she says , and she’ll always welcome you in with open arms when needed .

she’s a party girl , but is also the girl who will be texting the group chat at 9am after a night out asking when brunch is .

above all , she’s incredibly passionate about her work . she is a virgo after all , so she’s very organized , ambitious , and a bit of a perfectionist . she’s never afraid to stay up all night ensuring her latest video is perfect , or will re-read a new blog post at least twenty times to make sure she didn’t miss a thing . 

this ambition and perfectionism is both her saving grace and her downfall . it makes for incredibly cohesive , put - together , and strong content , but can also often drive her to the point of insanity of trying to make sure everything is just right .

*  /  ♡  𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐄𝐎𝐔𝐒  .

in order to keep this from becoming a novel ( too late ) , you can find some extra info about rowan by following the links below :

wanted plots .

headcanons .

pinterest .

playlist .

[salavante]

Odwain! The goodest.

Wow, featuring one of the more flattering drawings I’ve done of Odwain. Like last time, I’ll post all these guys separately and then do all the headshots in a masterpost. In the meantime buckle up for...a lot. (Thank you for giving me my favorite character.) 

Full Name: Odwain Novak. In Ben Yit’gab, the Bennai language, his first name would be Oediwen, and it’s what his dad called him. His mother calls him Oddy and he does not like it.

Gender and Sexuality: Male and Bisexual

Pronouns: He/him

Ethnicity/Species: Odwain is a Ben-Aleth, a Human-Bennai hybrid, also called a mosshead if you’re in coarse company. His human mother Blanche Novak is mixed race. Odwain’s maternal grandfather came directly from Earth, Poland specifically, during one of the several accidental migrations of humans coming from Earth to The Road. His maternal grandmother is from a previous wave who were already settled on The Road by that time, but the family can trace her ancestry back to West Africa. Odwain’s father, Ashatov Novak, was a full-blooded Bennai, a plant-based halfling race. Ashatov took his wife’s last name.

Birthplace and Birthdate: Thinking about this trips me out man. Odwain was born in 1946, sometime in the summer, probably July or August, in Septor Secundis, a coastal, metropolitan city and the seat of The Road’s government. He’s 27 during his first adventure and right now, in Godslaughter, he is 69 (what the FUCK). He will live maybe 20 or 30 years longer than your average human, and is in better physical shape than a human would be at 69. He’s more like late 40’s or early 50’s.  

Guilty Pleasures: A lot, probably - Odwain has just a bit of hedonistic streak just because he feels miserable so much of the time that he needs to feel good somehow. He smokes cigarettes for much of his life (but eventually quits), is a casual cannabis smoker and binge eats really truly terrible junk food (and has a bit of a gut because of it, but because he’s kind of lanky otherwise, he’s just kind of gourd-shaped). He likes beer, but doesn’t drink hard liqour all that often because he gets astronomically bad hangovers. Despite having a generally weak stomach, Odwain really likes frightfully spicy food, and his kids’ obligatory dad-gifts for him are probably hot sauces. When he’s not pounding down garbage, his favorite kind of cuisine is Thai. Not a guilty pleasure per say, but he also loves all things that have to do with insects, and when he and Rusty have a house together, Odwain takes up gardening as a hobby and plants an expansive garden of flora that are attractive to bees. (A Nice Thing: Odwain plants this garden when Rusty is pregnant because he found his love of insects through his father’s garden as a child, and wanted to give his kids the same opportunity) Odwain also maintains an apiary from the time that he’s living in a warehouse in the desert, to when he’s living with a partner and beyond. When he learns how to make Hot Honey it’s over for all of us. He has a modest collection of novelty bee-themed things that he’s amassed over the years, but he is not guilty about asserting his love of bees/wasps, like, at all. He’s also a little kinky but I’m not going into that.

Phobias: All of Odwain’s fears are existential - what if I push everyone away, existing in society is anxiety inducing, what if I’m just a bad person and my existence is making everything more difficult for functional people, etc. Though he’s kind of a sad fellow and has ideated suicide, and came very, VERY close to trying to kill himself after he dropped out of college, he also fears growing old and dying. I think death is more digestible to him if it’s on his own terms, but even then, I think what coaxed him off the edge was fear. If anything ever happened to his chosen romantic partner or any of his kids, he’d be besides himself, and is kind of one severe trauma and emotional breakdown away from becoming a bee-themed supervillian.

What They Would Be Famous For: Odwain is notable at a certain point in his career for being a pioneer in AI programming, and also for designing, building and patenting an invention called the Hercules Rig, which is basically a beetle-wing inspired jetpack. You can see it here. He holds the patent very closely and only allows it to be reproduced for recreation, construction, emergency rescue operations, etc. Odwain has taken a very firm stance on not allowing the military or any paramilitary organization to get their hands on it, though it has not stopped them from making shitty knock-offs that he is constantly suing people about.

What They Would Get Arrested For: Breaking and entering. Exploding something he shouldn’t. Buying illegal hazardous materials. Doing something petty that bites him in the ass.

OC You Ship Them With: To be honest there are not a lot of other characters besides Rusty that I ship him with. Bitter college rivals, thrown back together as late twenty-somethings, becoming better people together and learning to express empathy and vulnerability…it’s good. The only other character that I really go yeah, that’s the good stuff, is Jake’s character Finnick, who is kind of Odwain’s weird BFF and fellow mad scientist type. I don’t think they’d have a super stable relationship, and I think it would most likely be a “we yelled at each other and had weird sex enough that we like each other now” kind of scenario. But I do think they would come to love each other and have each other’s back to the death. Him and Hemlock, my dirty swamp witch who’s only picture was devoured during the great tumblr purge, also make a pretty fun couple for similar reasons. Iona too, but I think they are too explosive of personalities to ever find a stable middle ground. I also think he would find certain people attractive (August, Hare, Ganzrig, Ifechi the man I have spoken of but once, Jonquil in certain scenarios) but may not put himself out there to pursue them.

Neither of us have ever posted any art of her but here’s a few headshots of Finnick I did awhile ago, because she really is my favorite romantic partner for Odwain aside from Rusty, and is the only other one that’s really relevant in our games. 

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Odwain is fairly physically fragile and to be honest I think that most people could kill him as long as they could get their hands on him - he’s very dexterous and has a lot of gadgets that let him get the upper hand, keep enemies at a distance or escape. He has a ranged fighting/add-spawn build so he is mostly out of direct harm unless he’s reeled in somehow. But uh, Odwain IS dead right now in Godslaughter, he died fighting an eldritch deity named Dreamer who sucked him into a nightmare dimension and flayed his soul out of his body. It’s ok though, as long as the party beats Dio, he’ll be fine. I didn’t cry you’re the one who’s crying.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Ok, so, first off HAHA Odwain canonically likes Transformers and collects them, which are a thing in circulation after the last human migration from earth in the 90’s. Imagine. Imagine your grown ass father with a genius level IQ and multiple patents collecting plastic robots. Him and Finnick have transformers sonas - ANYWAY, that aside, he doesn’t really read for pleasure, just information, and generally just puts on cable while he works for white noise (and in later years, whatever The Road’s TV streaming service is). Most of the media he consumes is incidental to him, but will get interested in strange things that pique his interest. He probably thinks true crime docs are neat and enjoys pulpy sci-fi stuff that he can complain about. Any documentary about bugs. He’d like Mystery Science Theatre if they had it around. He enjoys things that are the fun, good kind of “bad” and has a fairly high threshold for  disturbing imagery.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Odwain is that guy who makes 20 minute long youtube videos lampooning movies for “not making sense”. If there’s anything that breaks his suspension of disbelief, his attention and tolerance disintegrates, even if it’s just one of those things that needs to happen to move the plot along. It doesn’t really matter what genre it is, though he is most hard on sci-fi and fantasy. There is a tipping point for him, however, where he starts enjoying the thrill of blasting something and circles back around to enjoying it.

Talents and/or Powers: Odwain is only a little bitty bit magical, and only because Bennai are the most magical race on The Road. He has latent magical ability that allows him to sense magical signatures and incorporate magic into technology, and maybe cast a low level spell if he tries really hard. If he was in a high fantasy setting, he’d be an enchanter. His staff (the big lightbulb thing I draw him with sometimes), the Hercules Rig, his Wasp Suite (robotic wasps with an AI and different spells loaded into them) and any other devilish, bug-based weapons and utility objects do his work for him.

Why Someone Might Love Them: Odwain’s a bit of a tough walnut to crack because I think that he shines in moments of sincerity and vulnerability, but he has to, well, get there. He’s capable of very great, thoughtful acts of selflessness and compassion, and deeply desires meaningful relationships with other people, but he gets insecure about how he expresses himself and can clam up. He’s passionate, emotional and expressive, but has been put down for being so, and was probably a very brilliant, curious child who was beaten down into a somber adult. I actually think that, at some point in his childhood, he was not entirely unlike Whitty in the way that he was eager to share things with people and explore the world around him, which is why Odwain feels very protective of his grandson. I think the most lovable thing about him is that when he’s at his best, nothing can stop him - he’s extremely intelligent, diligent, creative and innovative. He truly, deeply loves making things, and making them better, and when he’s not in a crash, creates prolifically. What he loves, he loves deeply and without compromise, which makes Rusty, a person that could also be said of, a good match for him. I also think his cattiness makes him very witty, he’s a genuinely funny guy who can engage in some really goofy shenanigans when he’s feeling up for it.  

Why Someone Might Hate Them: Oh, lots of reasons. Odwain is an acquired taste to many, or just not to many’s taste at all. He is very petty, blunt and catty, and as a young man is extremely bitter and negative. You’d be very hard pressed to get a positive statement about anything out of him between the ages of 16-25. He’s very confrontational, can become very loud and intense if it’s something that he feels is important, and is not afraid to cut people out of his life if he feels that they aren’t good for him. Sometimes, he will end relationships/friendships prematurely because of this. Being such, he is heavily prone to self-inflicted isolation. He has no childhood friends, and only kept in touch with one person from college. He just cuts and runs. Odwain’s self-loathing runs very deep, which makes it hard for him to accept, or ask for, emotional support or affection. And that can be hard on the people around him who care about him. His executive dysfunction can also be abysmal, making it seem like perhaps he is messy or lazy, but he’s just kind of a mess himself, hah.

A weird non-psychological one but I think is enough to get someone’s hackles up is that Odwain doesn’t like animals very much unless they are insects, invertebrates, etc. He finds mammals loud, messy and needy, and that “I’m the only one in my house that is allowed to be all of those things”.

How They Change: As Odwain ages and gains a stable support network of friends, his edges soften and he learns how to ask for help more effectively. He also learns how to better choose his battles, and how to exercise the compassion that he knows he has, but has been too insecure to utilize. He manages his mental health better, but is never entirely free of it, because you never really are. Most importantly, I think, he learns how to forgive the people who deserve forgiveness, and give people second chances, accepting that people can change. Which means the same can be said for him, too.

Why You Love Them: I’ve talked about this before, somewhere, I’m sure. Odwain is one of those characters that has a very big slice of my personality, and has a lot of my more negative traits, though they are ones we’re both working on. My first session with Odwain was a scene where Odwain’s dad died after being ill for a very long time, and as it happens, it was on father’s day, on the first or second father’s day after MY dad died, after several brutal months fighting with the cancer that eventually killed him. I had to put down the dice, so to speak, and for a short time, thought that Odwain might actually be a character that I scrapped completely. He came too close to something very painful and personal. I don’t remember how, exactly, but the solution to this problem of mine was that if he’s getting close to me on his own, then I might as well just let him in on everything. I can genuinely say that doing that has changed the way that I empathize with my characters and how I make them, and that there is something I share with Odwain that I don’t have with many of my other characters. Also, I like bees.

[forkanna]

[AO3 LINK] [EF LINK]

WARNING: Character death. (Sort of.)

As she rolled into the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall, video camera under one arm, the first and only thing she saw was a huge white eighteen-wheeler truck. It read "Dr Emmett L. Pabbie – Scientific Services" on its side, which really misled any potential passersby as to the eccentric old man who owned it. This late, no one else was using the lot, and she rolled lazily down the ramp and onto the concrete. The momentum took her all the way up to the truck where she could knock gently on its side.

"Doc?" she asked as she kicked the edge of the board to pop it up and catch it. "You in there? Or… what?"

Before she could call out again, a mangy white dog came loping around the corner, barking and wagging its tail. Anna bent down with a slight smile and scrubbed behind his ears. "Heya, Olaf! Where's the Doc, boy? Where'd he go?" He gave an answering yip that really was no help at all.

The hissing of hydraulics and white steam emanating from the back of the truck gave her all the information she needed. Moving around, she watched as the doors opened further; far enough to reveal piercing lights shining through the fog. A ramp slid out and down to the concrete, and out rolled…

A car. Not just any car– it was a crazy old 1980s model that almost looked more like something out of a cheesy movie on Syfy than a real automobile. It was familiar, though Anna hadn't ever seen one in person. What's more, this one was so souped up beyond recognition that it took her a moment to recall its name.

"A DeLorean…?" Stepping closer, she muttered under her breath, "Jesus, Doc. If you wanted a junker, we've got a freshly smashed one at home."

Then the gull-wing door of the ancient car hissed open, revealing a wild-eyed old man. His normally-white frizzled hair was stained green today – Anna didn't even want to ask why – and he was wearing a white radiation suit. When he got himself disentangled from the seatbelt and out of the car, she took a hesitant step toward him.

"Doc?"

He jumped, turning around to catch site of his poor assistant. "Anna!" he cried, breaking into a wider grin as he approached and gripped her shoulder, a zealous gleam in his eye. "You made it! And you brought the camera – excellent!"

Glancing past him at the car and its previous hiding place, she whispered, "Did you rig up a fog machine literally just for this reveal? Dude, that's… a little much."

"Don't be silly!" he chuckled. "Why pay for a fog machine when I have perfectly good dry ice just lying around?"

Anna could have left then and there. Instead, she rolled her eyes, yawned, and gestured pathetically with the camera. "Can we hurry up, please?" she asked. God she sounded pathetic, too. "Today hasn't been great…"

"Ah." Nodding sagely, he patted one shoulder even as the other hand moved to pick up a clipboard from the seat. "Trouble with your parents again? I understand. My own were rather… let's use the phrase 'disapproving' when it came to my own academic leanings. They wanted me to go into law – LAW!"

Then he leaned in, a gleam dancing in his beady eye. "But they were wrong, as are yours. Tonight, you and I are going to make scientific history!"

That was… honestly not what she wanted to hear. But maybe it was what she needed to hear. Something to get her mind off everything. Sucking in a breath, she nodded. "Okay, fine. Scientific history. What are we doing this time? Figuring out how to make weird cars worth something?"

"I know you're only joshing, but what if I said yes?"

Anna stared at him. "I'd say that you seem to misunderstand what 'scientific breakthrough' means, and this was a waste of time," she replied. Doc just laughed again.

"We have all the time in the world! Nothing will ever be a waste of time again because you see, my dear, dear Anna, what you're looking at isn't just a car! Oh no. It's a time machine."

She blinked. Then, she blinked again.

"Time machine," she repeated, voice terribly flat. Doc nodded. Pointing at the hunk of junk in front of her, she said, "That. Is a time machine."

"It is indeed. You're looking at the most valuable material possession in the world! See, look– come on! Turn on the camera!"

Numbly, Anna did as he said, turning on the antiquated device and pointing it at her mentor. It was way too late for this kind of bullshit. Patting down his front, Doc began speaking to the camera.

"Good evening. I'm Doctor Emmett Pabbie, and I'm standing at a parking lot of Twin Pines Mall, Dell Valley, California. It's Saturday morning, October 24, 2015—" here, he paused to check his watch, "—one thirty-eight in the morning, and this is temporal experiment number one."

What the- an actual experiment? Anna had seen enough Mythbusters to know that there should at least be safety glass and a fire extinguisher. Things always either exploded or caught on fire. Or both.

"This is not what I had in mind when I answered your Craigslist ad two years ago," she muttered under her breath as she focused the lens on him. No, she'd expected to be making a thousand pots of coffee a day and helping to type out some terrible handwriting. Not this.

She was brought back to the present by a whistling noise – Doc was flicking his fingers back and forth over the driver's seat, calling Olaf to him. The dog hopped up into seat, and Doc put a seatbelt around his furry body.

"Alright," Doc said as he held up two stopwatches, one from around his own neck and the other from Olaf's. "As you can see, both watches are synchronised, down to the millisecond." They both turned over to 1:40 at the same instant. "Great. Now, Olaf – stay."

The dog obediently cocked its head at his master, as if he might get a treat if he obeyed, but instead the door was shut above him. Then, Doc pulled out something she definitely did not expect to see next: a complex remote control setup that made her think of the ones used by drones and other UAVs. Before she even had a chance to say, "What the actual fuck," the car was zooming away, Doc controlling it with the remote.

Poor Olaf.

He was making it travel to the far end of the parking lot, lining it up so it would have a clear run of the parking lot. Whether it was supposed to do something fancy like time travel or what, Anna had no idea – she was more concerned by the fact that it was pointing directly at them. But they were supposed to move before the experiment began.

Right?

"This is it" he was saying with that same old Doc Pabbie manic gleam in his eyes. "We are standing on the precipice of the greatest scientific discovery since the wheel." He turned to look at his young protegé. "Keep that camera rolling, Anna, because if my calculations are correct, as soon as this baby hits 88 miles per hour, we're going to see some serious shit."

"Well, if we don't move, I'm going to shit myself. It's pointed right at us!" Anna's eyes widened as she stared at him. Doc noticed.

"Don't film me! Watch the car!"

Quickly correcting herself, she pointed the camera at the car, very aware of the fact that the car was pointing at them, and Doc actually seemed pretty keen on keeping it that way. He glared – actually glared! – at her when she shuffled to the side. Then, he hit some buttons and pressed some levers, and suddenly the air was filled with the smell of burning rubber as the car's tires spun in place along the pothole-riddled bitumen.

Anna's brain did some rapid calculations as the car came careening towards them. On the one hand, she was pretty upset right now with her whole life and family and all that shit; on the other hand, she didn't actually want to die.

But, then again, in all the years she had spent assisting Doc, she could truly call him a friend, even with the half-century age difference. Running them over with a rapidly moving chunk of nostalgia was wildly out of character – not to mention the fact that Doc would never, ever knowingly put Olaf in danger.

This was, after all, the man who had taught her to drive because her mother couldn't and her father wouldn't; the man who once spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time working on an immortality serum for dogs. He had a plan, Anna knew he had a plan.

Which was good. because the DeLorean was almost on top of them.

Anna was moments from deciding to shut her eyes, unwilling to be faced with her own mortality, when something odd began happening with the car. Huge crackles of electricity began to crawl over the bodywork of the car and a jet of flame erupted from the back of the vehicle.

And then it was gone. The entire car, everything inside of it, had winked out of existence, leaving behind nothing but two fire trails along the ground.

"I… wait, WHAT?!"

"It worked!" Doc cackled, hopping up and down. "What did I tell you?! Eighty-eight miles per hour!"

Anna stumbled, the camera now hanging loosely from her hand as she walked toward the only piece that had been left behind when it vanished; a smoking license plate that said "OUTATIME". She would have laughed at the humour if the rest of the situation felt as funny. Her hand strayed down to pick it up, but it was hot to the touch, and she dropped it with a hiss of surprise.

"What the actual shit?! Jeez, Doc, you disintegrated Olaf!"

"Not 'disintegrated', Miss McFly!" he said, doing a little jig of pure glee as he joined her side. "I assure you, both my trusty canine companion and his scientific chariot are both perfectly intact!"

Mouth flapping for a moment, Anna couldn't quite find her voice. She opened her arms, indicating the empty parking lot as her head swung back and forth. Almost as if she would see the DeLorean in some far off corner - which was ridiculous, but she couldn't help herself. Doc may have been a tinkerer, and true, many of his inventions did work. But they weren't marketable ones, and never on this scale! It was more likely that he'd figured out how to do literally anything else to the car other than it being a time machine. Disintegrating it was high on her list.

"Then where the hell is he?" she cried, when he didn't seem to be understanding her unspoken question,

"Wrong question, dear girl!" he giggled, like a preschooler with a secret cookie in his pocket. "You should be asking, 'when the hell are they?' I have just sent them into the FUTURE!" Anna was still blinking when he held up a pair of fingers. "Two minutes into the future, to be precise! Only enough to ensure that the experiment is a success, but not so much that we lose control of the testing site!"

Anna needed to sit down. Her legs were jelly. "Time machine," she said dazedly, eyes wide. Her stomach rolled and she wasn't even sure why. "You built a time machine. Out of a DeLorean?" Where the fuck did he even get a DeLorean, anyway?

"Well, if you're gonna build a time machine, you may as well do it in style," he said. Anna barely got through her eye roll before he continued with, "Plus, the stainless-steel construction made the flux dispersal a full 67% more effective than if I'd used a more contemporary model."

"Where did you even find one, Doc?" Anna asked in an exhale. Maybe if she focused on the small impossibilities, it would make the bigger ones less daunting.

Doc grinned. "Well, funny you should ask-" He was cut off from continuing by a sharp beep, emanating from the watch. There was a millisecond of silence before Anna was pushed roughly to the side. "Look out!"

There was a very sci-fi sounding whiz-bang-pop, and suddenly the car reappeared, skidding along the ground. It seemed to hiss as it settled, and steam was rolling off it in waves. Or perhaps not. As Anna moved slowly, a few paces behind Doc, it became apparent that the car wasn't burning – quite the opposite.

It was frozen.

Careful to keep his hand wrapped in the sleeve of his labcoat, Doc opened the door. Olaf let out a cheerful yip and Anna was not going to admit just how relieved she was that he wasn't disintegrated.

"What did I tell you?" Doc repeated over and over, scrubbing behind the dog's ears. Anna had to admit, the man really did love his dog; at first, she had been worried that he used him for experiments - after her initial concern that he wanted to use her for experiments - but it didn't take long to see that he loved Olaf, and only used him as a practical test subject once he was at least reasonably certain that he would be safe. Most of the time, he would use a potato or something similar first, then graduate to Olaf, and then run the test on himself – sometimes herself, too, if necessary. And she consented - whenever it didn't sound like she would be in mortal danger.

"It actually works," she breathed numbly, approaching. But then she saw Doc waving at the camera, so she raised it and aimed at the two of them. It had been recording the whole time; she forgot to hit 'pause' because she was so distracted by a working time machine actually existing.

"As you can see here, now Olaf's stopwatch is exactly two minutes behind mine and still ticking! For us, he ceased to exist for that period in time, but for my little devil here, it was as if he never left. Isn't that right, Laffy?"

Once more, Olaf gave a happy little yip. Well, he sounded happy, but as soon as Doc gave him enough room, he was out the car and into the Doc's trailer, staring at them through one of the grimy windows. Whatever Doc said about it being instantaneous, Anna had the impression that perhaps it wasn't quite that clear-cut. Perhaps it was one of those sixth-sense things that animals had. Either way, Olaf seemed pretty chuffed at not being in the DeLorean anymore.

She didn't have much time to wonder, though, because Doc was quickly calling her over. "Come and I'll show you how it works!"

Intrigued, Anna moved closer. It looked like a car, and it was. Well, the front half. The back started looking more like some relic from an old Star Trek series, all winking lights and buttons.

"This," he said, pointing to a few cables in a glass box nestled in the back seat. It was shaped like a Y and had the words 'flux capacitor' written above it. "Is the flux capacitor." Well, duh… "It's what makes time travel work. And here," he turned, pointing at the front console where the CD – or probably cassette – player should have been. Instead, there were three rows of clocks, looking similar to her digital alarm at home. "This is where you input the destination. The middle one is when you are, the bottom is when you were, and the top one is when you're going. "

"If you say so," Anna mumbled distantly. They were all labelled, as Doc was always completely meticulous about labelling everything. Even a saxophone hanging in his lab had a label stuck to its side that said "saxophone", as if it was at all necessary.

"Anywhere – anyTIME you want to be is at your fingertips. Let's say you want to witness the signing of the Declaration of Independence. All you need to do is type the date – in the scientific fashion. Year, month, day." In he typed 1776-7-2. "Or the Normandy landing?" 1944-6-6. "What about… seeing 'The Wizard Of Oz' when it was brand new?" 1939-8-25.

"Follow the yellow brick road," Anna couldn't help muttering, filming everything even as her head spun. "Wow… you can seriously do that? I mean, not just make a dog disappear for a few minutes?"

A twinkle shone in Emmett Pabbie's eyes. "That, and so much more. Ah – here's a red letter date in the history of science: November 5th, 1985." Wistful, he typed in the date.

"Right, yeah. I mean… wait, what date is that? You know I suck at history."

"Well, it's Guy Fawkes Night, but I wouldn't expect an average American student to know that. No… it's going to be remembered for a completely different reason: the date that time travel was invented." His eyes took on a distant look as he leaned back in the DeLorean's seat. "I remember it vividly: I was hanging a clock in my bathroom, standing on the toilet. The porcelain was wet, I slipped and hit my head on the edge of the sink; knocked myself out cold. When I came to, I had a revelation! A vision, a picture in my head! A picture… of this."

His finger drew both of their attentions to the flux capacitor, gently glowing in the technology-appropriated back seat. He had said that was the only thing that made time travel work in the first place, and it had all come to him because he was a klutz. Why not? That was one of the few things they had bonded over when she started working for him: both were slight outcasts who could be remarkably uncoordinated.

It was sort of encouraging, in a way. It meant that Anna could maybe be a complete failure and still succeed at something. Then again… her parents didn't have a great track record.

Ugh. She didn't want to think of her parents. Shaking her head, she followed him as he moved back towards the trailer. "So Doc, I don't suppose this runs on regular unleaded? You sure did add a bunch of equipment on the back there."

Doc gave a snort. "Unfortunately, no. A machine like this requires a little more… kick. Plutonium."

Wait, what? "Plutonium? What kind of- Doc, are- are you telling me this baby is nuclear?" Anna found herself taking a cautious step to the side – not that it would make much of a difference.

"Of course not. It's electrical – what is this, the Dark Ages? I just need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of power I need."

"And where, might I ask, did you get the plutonium? Just run down to the closest nuclear power plant and ask for a sample?"

At that, the Doc came striding back, waving his hands like he was trying to get her to shut up. "I stole it," he whispered harshly. "From a group of nationalists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and, in turn, gave them a shoddy bomb casing full of used pinball machine parts. Come on! Let's get you a radiation suit. We must prepare to reload."

"Wha-?" Honestly, Anna had not signed up to handle nuclear material. Seriously. The ad had said "part time assistant to help eccentric inventor". The pay wasn't half bad and he had zero expectations other than "show up". It was perfect!

Except for when shit like this happened.

Soon enough, they had "reloaded" the nuclear chamber in the back of the car. At least Doc was professional enough to have dressed them both in radiation suits; Anna was sweating from the thick material, but she definitely didn't feel any weird tingling that might mean she was infected by the plutonium.

"Almost forgot my luggage," Doc said, slipping a suitcase into the car. "Who knows if they have my brand of underwear in the future?"

"The future," Anna breathed, mystified by this entire series of events. Now that she had gotten over the bizarreness and thought about the possibilities, she was excited and began to grin. "Headed forward, like Olaf? How far?"

"Twenty-five years," he said with a shrug. "2040 should be interesting. I've always dreamed of seeing beyond my years, observing the progress of mankind. Find out if that Phantom cartoon was correct about anything."

Anna's eyebrows twitched together. "What cartoon?"

"Roll tape." Obediently, she raised the camera. He was the inventor and she was just along for the ride; no sense in delaying him. "I, Dr Emmett L. Pabbie, being of sound mind, am about to embark on a historic journey." Then he slapped his forehead. "IDIOT!"

"What?!"

"I almost forgot to bring extra plutonium!" Gesturing toward the yellow crate, he laughed. "Where is my head today? One rod, one trip – I'd never be able to come back here without it! I must be losing-"

They were interrupted by Olaf's excited barking. Both of them looked over at the far corner of the mall parking lot to see a beat-up white VW van barrelling toward them. It was still quite far away, but it looked very conspicuous given that the entire carpark was completely deserted.

Anna was still staring at them when Doc stumbled towards her, a hand on his head. "Oh my God. They found me. I don't know how they possibly could have, but they found me." Taking a staggering step back from the DeLorean, he shouted, "Run for it, Anna!"

"Who?" Anna swung the camera round reflexively as Doc rushed away and to the other side of his own truck. Even in that short a time, the camper had come significantly closer. The men inside appeared to be hell bent on arriving as fast as possible, with no regard to safety whatsoever. They did not, however, need safe driving, since what they appeared to have was a statistically significant quantity of AR-15s. One of the people inside, wearing a scarf and a balaclava to hide his identity poked his torso out of the sunroof of the camper and pulled the slide back on his automatic weapon.

Anna considered herself something of a wild child – and perhaps in her more fanciful moments even a child of the world – but this was completely outside of her norm. No one should find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun, let alone a teen girl whose only weapon was a video camera. She jumped behind the only object nearby that might offer her any protection, the DeLorean, as her mind went blank with terror. The distinctive sound of automatic gunfire resonated in her torso, as the sound of bullets tore through her mind.

It is an oft-noted fact by gun enthusiasts throughout the world that handling an automatic weapon is a tricky endeavour at best, and that a solid stable firing platform is required, along with good trigger discipline and time down the range to learn to deal with recoil. But clearly the half-crazed fanatic leaning out of the top of the camper had absolutely none of these qualities, and consequently managed to place bullets in a wide array of locations in the car park. None of them in Anna, Doc, or Olaf and none in the DeLorean either, she hoped.

That would really ruin her boss-slash-friend's day.

'I don't want to die. I really don't want to die.' The thought kept rolling through Anna's mind, over and over again.

"Stay down, Anna!" Doc shouted, pulling out of his toolbox… a revolver. Not a handgun, not a police-issue Glock or a private one, but an actual legit revolver like someone would use in an old gangster movie. It would have been comical if the situation weren't so serious.

The van bore down on him, and he held up both hands before he could get the gun loaded and fire off a single shot. So he tossed it toward them, palms open. From her position, Anna could see him. Hands up and sweating, despite the cool air.

"Gentlemen! Perhaps I could persuade you to reconsider such a drastic course of action? There's still plenty of plutonium left; I could have something for you by the end of-"

He never got to finish the sentence. Now that they were parked and idling in front of him, the jilted terrorist seemed to have no trouble firing a few rounds into his chest, blowing him backward and out of Anna's sight.

"NOOOOO!" she wailed, face stretched wide in horror. Gripping the camera more tightly, she ran toward them. She didn't know what made her do it, other than adrenaline and grief, but she ended up screaming the stupidest thing possible with tears running down her cheeks.

"IT'S NOT NICE TO SHOOT PEOPLE!"

By the time she realised that running towards the armed men was possibly even sillier than the words she'd just uttered, it was too late. She was directly in their sights.

Shit. Her life flashed behind her eyes. Pathetic life, obviously, but with a few bright spots. Despite the bizarre experiments, she had actually enjoyed working with Doc. And Jennifer… she would wake up tomorrow to see her face plastered across the news She could even see the headlines: "Eccentric Doctor, Stupid Assistant, Killed".

Closing her eyes, accepting her fate, Anna sucked in a breath. It was like the world had narrowed into this one moment; lights flooding down, bad guys staring at her down the barrel of a gun. Maybe her family could finally be happy this way. Always a silver lining somewhere.

Click.

Eyes opening, Anna realised with some surprise that she was actually Not Dead, and her face lit up in a grin. "HaHA, suckers!" she crowed – before they glared at her. "Oh shit!"

But they were still struggling with the jammed rifle. That gave her time to actually get out of the way. There was only one option: she leapt into the open DeLorean.

Her hands found the keys as her foot punched the accelerator. Luckily, the car seemed to have been converted to an automatic at some point in its existence, and it flung itself forward across the tarmac. The crazed gunman twisted wildly whilst yelling something at the driver, and the camper lurched forwards.

"All right, time to see if your shitmobile can keep up with a time machine," Anna muttered as she swerved the DeLorean wildly across the lot, forcing the camper to turn unexpectedly and throwing the terrorist's aim off. The staccato of bullets caused Anna flashes of sheer terror and she punched the accelerator right through the floor.

Anna had of course forgotten something significant. It actually was a time machine, and not just a getaway vehicle. Just as she saw a rocket launcher in her wing mirror – AN ACTUAL ROCKET LAUNCHER, IN DELL VALLEY, WERE THEY CRAZY – lights began to flash and flicker, both inside the car and outside. She gripped the wheel more tightly, glancing down at the speedometer: 88.

That particular number seemed familiar for some reason…

Then electricity began to crackle in front of and all around her, temporarily blinding her, and the car was shaking as if caught in a hurricane. And something felt very different, as if she were being forced through a pinhole by an unseen deity. There was else nothing for her to do but hang on for dear life.

"Help!"

                                                 To Be Continued…

[selenelavellan]

Dirthalene body worship and office sex :D

I got distracted with plot but I DID IT

Reverse Evanuris AU

Dirthamen and the usual Evanuris are @feynites

Ana is @lycheemilkarts

NSFW

Selene has been under quite a lot ofstress lately.

Dirthamen knows this, as does much ofthe castle. It is not a secret that she has been struggling to mendties with members of her family whom she alienated during thefestival. That she has been tense and trying to return to a sense ofnormalcy in her home ever since she returned from her mothersterritory.

He would like to help.

That is where the trouble started.

They had fought, before the festival.She seemed to forgive him for his outburst upon her return, butit still hasn't been quite the same between them. Almost as though she has triedto force herself to move on, to take him back the way they had beenbefore, but something is holding her back. He can only assume he hasdone something wrong, without realizing.

That will not do. But heis unsure of how to aptly apologize.

It is a dangerous thing, to ask Des'dinfor advice. It does not escape Dirthamen that his markings have notchanged; that his lord has not changed, despite his seeminglypermanent transfer, and that his life and privilege still thrive atthe whims of the horned god.

Des'din has noticed the tension of hisother half as well though.

“She's doing that...thing,again” Des'din says, making a waving motion with his hand. “Ithappens. She's not good with stress. She holds onto everything untilit crushes her. Then she breaks apart, takes a deep breath, forcesherself back together, and starts the process all over again. It's aterrible habit of hers.”

“How do I help?” Dirthamen asks, alittle more pointedly this time.

Des'din raises an eyebrow, mouthcurling into a grin. “You need to give her another outlet, ofcourse.”

Dirthamen blinks in confusion.

“Oh, dear thing,” Des'din sighs,propping his head up on the back of his hand. “Distract her fromher work; pull her away from her worries, and let her have some timewhere she remembers that the world is not going to fall apart becauseAndruil is off pouting in the woods.”

“Oh,” Dirthamen nods slowly. “Howshould I do that?”

The grin curls back onto Des'dins face,as he pats at the space on the stone bench beside him.

“Come listen to my tale, littleblackbird,” He coos “And I'll share with you the weaknessesof my other half.”

-

It has been a very long day.

A shame it is only noon, Selene thinks.

She pushes open the heavy wooden doorsof her office, letting out a soft sigh at the pile of papers stackedhigh upon it. Ana is inside, browsing through a scroll detailing therecent movement of Elgar'nans peacekeepers near their border. Sheblinks when Selene enters.

Glances down at the desk.

Glances back to Selene.

...Curious.

“I'm just gonna....” The red headsays, pointing to the entryway Selene had just used and exiting theroom before finishing her declaration.

Selene doesn't bother chasing afterher; whatever Ana is dealing with, Selene trusts her to handle it.

Selene lets out a breath, tugging offher cloak and tossing it haphazardly onto one of the chairs as sheuncoils the braids that are in fashion in Sylaise's lands, and whichsomehow had been requested for her morning trip to check on theprogress of June's latest project.

It is far better than she had expected,at least. For all his faults, he really has learned an impressivelyefficient way to use his resources, even with a minimal amount ofspiritual sacrifice. Still not none, but at least 40% lessthan the original plans had called for.

Progress, however slow, is stillprogress.

It is with this mindset that she takesto her seat, leaning forward to begin her slog through the dayspaperwork.

A small, black tendril begins to windits way up her calf, and she nearly lights it on fire before sherealizes who is controlling it.

“Dirthamen?” She asks, glancingdown to find him kneeling beneath her desk. “What are you doingdown th-”

The doors of the room are flung openand she nearly jumps out of her skin as she watches CaptainDin'Durgen barge into her office, a crumpled piece of parchmentraised high above her head. Without even thinking about it, Selenescoots her chair further in, in an effort to hide Dirthamen fromview.

“Is something wrong?” Selene asksthe woman, who finally remembers herself and stops a few feet awayfrom the desk, standing at a soldiers attention.

“There has been a mix up,”Din'Durgen asserts, before hastily adding “My lady.”

“Alright. What sort of mix-UP?!”Selene squeaks out the last wordas the tendril moves further up her leg, brushing against her corejust lightly enough to let her know where it is.

Din'Durgen clearsher throat “Ah, it seems as though all of our spiritually enhancedweaponry has been seized by your blacksmiths?”

It takes a fewmoments for the words to register to Selene, whose mind seems to bemuch more interested in the fact that Dirthamen has started trailinghis mouth and hands up the length of her legs.

“Uh,” Shefinally manages, forcing herself to focus. “Yes. I'm having theshards re-purposed.”

“For what?”Din'Durgen demands.

“To regrow in thedreaming,” Selene admits, trying to hide a shiver as Dirthamenshand traces the shape of her calf lightly enough that she can feelgoosebumps prickling her skin.

“Andhow are we to defendourselves?”

“Withyour-” Selene shakes her head, trying again to pull her focus tothe meeting with her guard captain, and away from her lover who hasapparently decided he would like to be exceedinglymischievous today “With your training, and your skills.”

“So we are to dieon the battlefield with only the words on our tongues and the storiesin our hearts?” Din'Durgen says wryly. “My lady, I know yourpurview is secrets, but please-what am I to tell my people?”

“I-” Selenestarts before getting pulled into a moan, Dirthamens mouth bitinggently on the soft skin of her inner thigh. She tries in vain to cover itwith a cough. “My research team is looking into a newmaterial for your weapons. One that has more naturally enchantedproperties. I discovered it while I was staying with the Lady Mythal.If we can harness it correctly, it should be able to lead us into awhole new era of energy that doesn't require spiritual sacrifice atall.”

“And in themeantime?”

“In themeantime,” Selene says, voice rising slightly in pitch as shestands abruptly to keep Dirthamen from delving his tongue inside ofher “I expect you to do your job the way I ask of you. You may takeyour leave now.”

Din'Durgensface twists slightly, ready to make another argument before Selenepushes out an air of impatience, and points directly to the doors.“You are dismissed,Captain.”

The turquoisehaired woman drops to a bow, and makes a hasty retreat. 

Selenefollows closely behind, locking and warding the doors behind her beforeturning and staring at the desk.

“Whatdo you think you're doing?” she says aloud.

Dirthamens headpeaks just over the edge of her desk as he says plainly “I amtrying to give you an outlet.”

“An outlet forwhat?”

His head tiltsslightly. “Interesting. I...did not ask that question.”

Selene drags herhand down her face. “Des put you up to this.”

“Not...precisely.He only mentioned that I should make my attempt somewhere that youoften find stressful. Since the council chambers would beinappropriate given their shared nature, your office seemed like themore reasonable choice.”

“And he told youto do...what? Surprise me with oral?”

Dirthamens mouthopens.

Closes.

He humsslightly in consideration before fully crawling out from beneath herdesk. “I would like to try something,” He finally decides.“If you would permit me.”

Selene feels herheartstrings tug, but stares over him at the piles of papers still on her desk.“I have so much to get done...”

“None of it istime sensitive,” He assures her. “I have already checked.”

“You read throughmy official paperwork?”

“You told me Iwas permitted to read 'anything I could get my hands on'.” Hepoints out.

Selene sighs andshakes her head fondly. “I did. I did say that.”

“May I make myattempt?” He tries again.

Selene slips herfingers into the loops of his robes, pulling him slightly towardsher. “I suppose so,” she allows.

The tops of hischeeks turn a soft pink at the gesture, but he clears his throat andtakes a step back.

“If you wouldhave a seat, I think this would perhaps be easier.”

Selene raises askeptical eyebrow. Chair sex in here? Really? Not quite theamount of support they usually need. The back of her chair is highperhaps, but several feet away from the wall. It's not meant towithstand a surplus of weight or movement, not like the ones heenjoys being tied to in the bedroom. One good thrust and they'll bothgo flying backwards.

Still. She canalways catch him, if need be. If something goes wrong, she'll simplyhandle it.

She always does.

Without furtherarguments, she seats herself back in her chair, scooting it fartherfrom her desk to avoid any temptation to multitask. Time sensitive ornot, she still has responsibilities after all.

But she sits upstraight, one leg crossed over the other expectantly, ready forwhatever Dirthamen might have in mind.

He kneels down infront of her, and her first instinct is to tell him to stand, thatit's ridiculous for him to act like this. He knows better than mostshe's no actual Goddess.

But his hand grazesover her knee and gently, so gently, uncrosses her legs.

“Just relax,”He says quietly, glancing up to make momentary eye contact, his baredhands still resting gently on her knees.

Such a small thing,really. The focus, the contact, the care for her in his words.

Her heart skips abeat all the same, words caught in her throat as she nods incompliance.

He places a softkiss to the top of one knee in thanks, eyes drifting closed and handsdrifting lower, thumbs rubbing small circles into the backs of hercalves. Affection is not unusual behavior for Dirthamen; quite theopposite, really. But this is...this is something different.

The way he exploresthe length of her legs, the attention and compliments he gives, theway he seems to savor every moment of this time...

It's worship.

She can feelherself heating up at the realization, even as he continues to takehis time with her legs and thighs. While he presses just firmlyenough on the tender flesh of her inner thighs to make small divots with his fingers,praising her softness, telling her how much he enjoys her, how muchshe means to him.

It is just words,really. Words coupled with affectionate touches, with genuineaffection and love and devotion pouring out of him.

It takes her breathaway. Ignites her in ways she hadn't expected, relaxes muscles sheforgot were capable of such a thing. His hands pull away the ribbonthat had been keeping her robes together and slide against her sides,reverent and unabashed while his mouth presses against the soft pouchof skin from where she is now slouching. Every inch of her is alight,straining and expectant, every touch like a new spark of magic fromhim. He goes slowly, so slowly it's almost maddening, but theanticipation is such a wonderful burn, his mouth and praise the balmshe craves while he takes his time inspecting and exploring everypiece of her.

Selene isn't sureprecisely when the scales appeared on her spine, or when her taildecided to make an appearance until Dirthamen is paying attention tothose pieces of her the same as he has the rest. She is on her kneeswith her back facing him, head raised towards her ceiling and breathscoming in shallow bursts when he runs his tongue over her scales andsends a shiver that makes her keen, tail dragging against thecold stone of the floor beneath them.

“Dirthamen,”She finally begs, head swimming in her hypersensitive state, hishands and mouth and ardor flooding her senses, thoughts falling awayas he makes a small bite on the crook of her neck, flooding her in anentirely different way.

Any other time shewould worry about the mess she must have made of her office chair,but now...now, all she can think of is him, is the way hemakes her feel, the relief of his presence, the love swelling withinher, ready to overflow and the blazing heat in the pit of herstomach.

He seems to noticethat she is approaching her limit, whispering more praise in her ear,telling her how well she is doing, how much he loves her, howgrateful he is to have been gifted her trust while he lifts her outof her chair, splaying her open on top of her desk instead.

A familiar,brightly colored container is pulled out of one of his pockets beforethe robe is discarded entirely. He coats one finger in it, slippingit inside of her with ease-

And she comesaround it.

Embarrassinglyearly, some corner of her mind thinks.

His own surpriseflares briefly around him before he reins it in and continues hisministrations, slipping a second finger in with ease and laving moreaffection over her sides and chest, a few tendrils sliding up hercalves once again, pulling her legs open a bit wider.

She hums as shefeels them, thoroughly relaxed, and considers the inspiration.

Subtly, as much asshe can hide it, she glances to where the discarded containerlays and carefully moves her tail closer to it. Pulling in on thecurls of hair that usually cover the end and softening the rough edges ofher scales, she rolls the extra appendage around in the lubricationbefore nudging it carefully against her lovers rear entrance.

Dirthamens eyes goslightly wide as he notices her actions, and she raises her eyebrowsup in challenge.

“Fair’s fair,”She coos, gently brushing her own hands over his cock.

He shivers, and shethinks he might be about to argue so she slides her mouth over hisbefore he can. Encases him in her arms and flips their positions,until he is the one splayed open on her desk and she is the one withtwo feet on the ground, devouring and drowning in the taste of him.

“Is thisalright?” She checks, pulling away just enough to speak, his breathstill warm against her lips.

“Yes,” Hebreathes, and she hums in thanks as she delves her tongue back intothe warm wet of his mouth, the tip of her tail pressing gently intohim in unison.

Selene can'tremember the last time she felt so relaxed. The last time she was inso little hurry to be somewhere or do something. Hownice it is just to enjoy her lover, her heart, to feel the way hemoves beneath her.

It would be better,she thinks, if he were not trying so hard to restrain himself.

“Let go Vhenan,”She purrs against his neck.

“My form...” Hemanages, skin still flushed and his cock dripping precum onto his stomach.

“I've got you,”She assures him.

He hesitates amoment before letting out a soft breath.

The air in the roomchanges notably as he does.

Six large blackwings unfurl from his back, skin turning to a beautiful dark expanselittered with stars and eyes. His legs lose some of their solidity,most of his body past the knees turning into tendrils that match hisskin, and the room fills with power and magic, long restrained by hischain and mask and his own growing capabilities. She has to loosesome of her own to cover it, to hide that this surplus of power ishis, so that anyone passing in the halls will only sense her power, her own magic flaring out into the wards. Her own pair of wingsunfurl, and she feels her pupils shift as she does, still in controlbut vulnerable as her peripheral vision nearly vanishes.

That's alright, shethinks as his tendrils curl around her. Her waist, her hips, herlegs, her arms; she trusts him.

Trusts himentirely, as he lifts her over his still straining cock and shelowers herself down onto it, sliding her tail slowly in and out ofhim in tandem with the rise and fall of her hips. His wings flare andhis breaths become as shallow as her own, her own hands exploring asmuch of the expanse of him as she can reach, stars bursting andgleaming under the pads of her fingers. Feathers fall down aroundthem; hers, his, theirs. 

Details become blurry while they losethemselves in each other, energies and words mixing and blurring andthe feeling of being touched all over simultaneously too much and not enough. Moansand groans and flesh on flesh, keening and orgasms and not even thecertainty of who between them is having them, only a shared desire to keep going, tosavor this, to make the most of being together again.

It is....very darkby the time they have stopped.

Selenes tail hasreceded and her scales have mostly vanished and Dirthamens form moreclosely resembles his usual one now, as they are spent and exhausted,hair damp and clinging and Selene is unsure if the insides of herthighs will ever be dry again after she glances down at the sloppymixture of their fluids still dripping out of her.

It’s a goodfeeling, though.

With the littleenergy still in her, she rolls over to Dirthamen, the two of them ona tapestry they seemed to have yanked off of her walls to lay on thefloor instead, and presses an affectionate kiss to his forehead.

“Thank you,”She manages.

He smiles, eyesonly half opened and his chest still rising and falling a bit tooviolently while he attempts to regain his breath. “Anytime.”

She snorts.

“Probably weshouldn't make a habit of completely destroying a room every time wehave sex,”

“There are worsehabits to have,” He notes, a mischievous gleam in his eye.

Selene shakes herhead in fondness before burying it in the crook of his neck, curlingher body up around his.

It is good to beback.

[tillymint7]

Louise Bourgeois

What can I say about Louise Bourgeois. She is one of my all time favourite artists. I don’t feel equipt enough to talk about her if I’m honest, she is a true legend. Once again technology fails me, I couldn’t get the online lecture to work so I’m going have to speak from what I know about Louise and some online research.

Louise Bourgeois is a French American Artist that only ever wanted to be known as an American Artist. Louise often catagorised as a surrealist when actually she thought of herself as an existentialist.

She moved to America with her husband Robert Goldwater after her mother died. She has said that she moved to America to avoid the embarrassment and torment of her fathers constant infidelities. These life events deeply scared Louise and she carried them into her later life and expresses them in her work.

Louise’s work is so emotionally charged her work is often about love, sex, hate, fear and death. Louise talks of her work as making love from hate. She created surreal, organic and figurative forms.

To Louise her artwork was a therapeutic escape that allowed her a sense of release from the torment of her memories and emotions. You can see the anguish in so many of Louise’s works.

(‘The Couple’ - 2003 it said that this piece and many of her works were created from the memory of watching the twisting and rinsing of fabric in the river. Louise loved the twisting action and the affect it had on the material.)

Louise also had the constant fear or recurring worry that she was a bad mother and the fear of abandonment or being forgotten. I think we all feel like this at times. I know I constantly doubt my ability to do a good job at rising my own 3 children. I think this is a natural struggle all mothers grapple with.

Louise actually lived surrounded by her work. So much so, her home was filled with works of various stages of completion. Some pieces taking decades to complete and others finished and just dotted around her home.

‘Spirals’ 2005 - I read that Louise loved spirals as they reminded her of winding a clock, she found this action relaxing, like an escape from thinking or doing. Louise spoke about her love of spirals, as spirals can not be interrupted just like she didn’t like being interrupted. They also remind me of spiders webs, and just like spiderwebs you can get caught up in them almost lost in them somehow. So they also have a link with Louises attractiont to spiders.

Louise speaks of the fact that being an artist is a privilege and gift that should never be seen as a struggle. Louise felt blessed by her ability to create although it exhausted her at times, she never failed to create everyday. She famously speaks about her artwork not needing words, her work was meant to be visual and didn’t require words.

She mentioned in interviews that people may be able to beat her with words, but never with visual arts. She also mentions success as being sexy and that we should never lack the ability to show our confidence in what we do or create.

(‘Maman’ 1999 at MoMa - Louise created so many of theses wonderful spider sculptures, to me they are creepy and elegant at the same time. Like an alien life form invading the earth, which also echos the fears people have for them, when in reality they are tiny delicate creatures.)

I find Louise Bourgious such a wonderful and an inspirational role model. She famously came into the artworlds view in the 40s and made appearances several times over the decades only to retreat again for years on end. Each time she emerged and presented large amounts of works vastly different from her previous creations, which both confused and intrigued her followers.

In Louises 71st year she had a show at MoMa that helped catapult her into the limelight and she became an icon. Louise actually became a contemporary artist in her own right. Artists of all genders and ages admire her for her vulnerability and her strength. She became the mother figure of the artworld.

All of Louise’s work to me is truly amazing, but I am drawn particularly to ‘Arch of Hysteria’ 2005. A surreal, sexual, expression of manhood that to me talks about how we are all male and female and that we all suffer the same. The reflection on the suspended sculpture allows the viewer to see themselves reflected back. The body of the sculpture was modelled on the figure of her assistant and close friend Jerry Gorovoy, which to me shows the love Louise had for him.

In the 90’s Jerry Gorovoy met Louise for the first time and encouraged her to show her work again after he discovered that her home was full of artworks. Jerry was astounded by her dedication to her practice he realised he had discovered a true artist to be seen. Louise spoke about her time away for the artworld and about the fact that she never ignored the artworld and suggests that the artworld ignored her, which I feel is an example of the bias the artworld has for favouring the coverage and promotion of male artists. This is an imbalance that is still very much alive today.

Jerry Gorovoy talks in interviews about Louise being a complex and enchanting character. She was very loving and caring, but also harsh at times and quick tempered and formidable. After watching interviews and documentaries with Louise at times you can actually see the emotion and anxiety she suffers on her face.

Louise is said to of struggled with the desire to be liked and accepted, which is so sad to hear, because when she speaks you can tell she is a charming, interesting and extremely intelligent person at the same time you can get a sense of the pain in her voice, as well as the deep passion she has for her work.

I too have a love for creating suspended sculptures there is something about the action of the pull in the material and the fact the the sculpture constantly changed and interrupted with its movement that really interests me as a artist. I’m also drawn to installationart and the idea of creating an experience for the viewer. Louise manages to do both of these things in such a stylish and timeless way.

I feel that transition from being just any other artist to a timeless icon is such an massive achievement. Louise’s work is also often categorised as feminist art (although she disagreed with the label herself) she spoke of how we are all feminists because we are women. I always remember that saying, it’s not a choice as all women are born femists and we should all support each other in any way we can. Louise has been held up as a feminist roll model for women all over the world. Louise’s work never dates and it remains just as relevant today as it did at the beginning of her career.

Louise will remain a true inspiration for me personally and for my art practice. She proved to all artists that it is never too late and that we should never give up and remain true to our creative journey.

Louise was one of my main inspirations when I was thinking of coming back to study fine art, it is never too late to become who you are meant to be. She also taught me that you do not have to limit yourself to one discipline, method or medium to become a true art master.

[sarahlwlee]

31 Stories in 31 Days: Opportunities

What is this? As part of celebrating Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month (May), I am writing a story a day about my experiences as a Chinese Malaysian immigrant in America. My friends and family have provided numerous one-word prompts to help me create these stories. Today’s word prompt was contributed by Stacey L. and the word is “Opportunities”. Thank you Stacey for your contribution and thank you everyone who stopped by to read my story today.

Social media has played a significant role in affording many opportunities for me to grow professionally and meet amazing people within my community, many of whom I am extremely grateful to call as my friends. The early days of social media was not as sophisticated as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter. It revolved around chatrooms such as IRC and Yahoo groups. Oh and who could forget Xanga, Blogger and Live Journal. These were the social media platforms of my teenage years. One of the Yahoo groups I had joined as a teenager was a public relations group in Malaysia. I sent an email to the group stating my intentions of finding a mentor or someone who was willing to help me understand the field of public relations through a job shadow opportunity.

One man responded to my email, his name was Tong. He owned a small public relations company called Integrated PR. I was so excited that someone had responded to my email and he said he would like to interview me. We made arrangements to meet at a local Mamak restaurant around 5:30pm near my home in Sri Petaling and he said to bring my CV. When I told my mom about this wonderful opportunity, she was skeptical about this meeting and questioned who this man was. At that point I did not know anything about this person other than a name, an email and that he was willing to consider my request for guidance on learning more about public relations. My mother did not feel comfortable letting me go by myself. The original plan was to walk to the Mamak restaurant and then come home after the meeting was done. Mom insisted that she would drop me off and wait in the car to take me home once I was done.

The day came I dressed in my best clean t-shirt and shorts. I printed a copy of my curricular vitae (CV) to take with me. In fact, I had never put together a CV before and I had to search online what a CV was. They don’t teach you these things in secondary school — the equivalent in America I believe its middle through high school. I walked up to the Mamak restaurant. It was open air with no entry doors and you could smell the delectable roti canai being made fresh before your eyes as well as Tandoori chicken barbecuing over red hot embers in a vertical clay oven. I searched the dinning area and found only one Chinese man in his 40’s with glasses partially balding, dressed in a professional suit eating his dinner. I assumed this must be Tong. He had removed his jacket, folded it in half to hang over the chair next to him. Both of his sleeves were rolled up and his tie loosened but tossed behind his back to prevent it from falling into his curry. I walked up to him and asked if his name was Tong. To my delight he said yes and apologized for eating while inviting me to take a seat. It seemed he had a long day and didn’t the opportunity to eat lunch.

I apologized for being a few minutes late and presented my CV as requested. He studied my CV as he moved his almost finished plate of curry with roti canai to the side, ensuring that my CV didn’t get dirty from his food. The first question he asked me was why I wanted to learn about public relations. I re-stated what I had expressed in my email that I only know so little about the profession and it was recommended by someone in a chatroom as a potential future job that could leverage my skills in writing while gaining some amazing life experiences. He looked at my CV again and said, “You have a very strong writing background, which is great for PR.” At this point, I had been writing and serving as a junior editor for a youth magazine called Phases, published by Scripture Union, an Evangelical Christian organization that helped people learn more about God. Tong further added that he has advised other young professionals if they want to get into public relations they need to major in journalism instead of public relations. It seems there wasn’t many good writers in the field of public relations in Malaysia and good writing skills were hard to come by. The next thing he said surprised me. He said, “Alright, Sarah. When I have a good opportunity for you to job shadow I will email you. Thank you for meeting me, you can leave now.” This whole meeting took 15 minutes or maybe even lesser. It was quick and I couldn’t believe what just happened, I was elated that I had a chance to learn something new. I walked back to where my mother’s car was parked and told her everything. She was relieved nothing bad happened to me and was supportive of me exploring these opportunities.

Tong was the first mentor I ever had in learning about the field of public relations, but more importantly what it was like to work as a professional. My first experience was at an event located in Sunway College where I helped his staff with registration and also reviewed a speech draft for the presenter. Once I read through the speech, I handed it to Tong to prepare the presenter on his talking points. I was so proud of myself because I contributed to this effort and my opinion was valued. Since I was such a good assistant he invited me to more public relations events focused on product launches and new restaurant ventures, where I did a lot of event grunt work but if I finished quickly I had the opportunity to review communications materials as well as speeches and provide feedback. What a foretaste of this field and it was so exciting as a young teenager to look into what my future prospects could be.

When I went to college, I picked journalism as my major because of Tong. He was right. My writing skills earned me better opportunities in the field of public relations when I first graduated with my bachelor’s degree. I was offered an internship with a company called 360 Degrees Pan Asia Concepts, a small-sized marketing agency focused on brand management and marketing communications. Through a mutual friend of my aunt’s I was connected to the owner of this company. This internship turned into a full-time opportunity within a few weeks because I was able to write well and deliver on many writing assignments quickly for their flagship publication called KIDZ magazine. However, I left this opportunity within four months because I was accepted into a master’s degree program in Kalamazoo, fully funded with a graduate assistantship. I had applied for a communications master’s degree program at Western Michigan University on a whim after I graduated and didn’t think I could get in.

It’s strange how opportunities can lead to other amazing and fascinating experiences. Something similar happened later in life where social media played a role. I was working at the Chamber of Commerce and I had established myself as a social media expert through my work organizing TweetUp Kalamazoo. One of my friend’s in the tweetup group mentioned that Pure Michigan is hosting a tweetup during National Tourism Week at the Radisson and I should go. I signed up and walked down the street to the Radisson in the lower level to find many business owners in the room, many of which I have never met before in person. My friend was there in the front and I sat in the back to listen. When Q&A came up during the tweetup, I asked them about why they had not done anything with Foursquare, a location-based gaming and review app, as part of their overall marketing strategy for the state of Michigan. They talked about how hyper local in nature it was and that there wasn’t anything they could do to launch something statewide. I disagreed with them and described multiple ideas on how they could have done it. They nodded and dismissed my ideas as they were trying to wrap up the tweetup.

Little did I know there was an older bald white man well dressed in a professional suit sitting on the opposite side of the room listening to every word I said. As I got up to leave, I waved at my friend and noticed this man walking towards me, waving his hand to get my attention. He introduced himself as Brad and that he was part of the Radisson. He was very curious about everything I said and asked if he could take me to lunch at Burdick’s to learn more about what I knew of social media. I said yes. I was very eager to help anyone who was interested in social media, I didn’t have a price tag on my services at the time because I just wanted more people to be involved in social media locally so that we could have a thriving social media community. Once we secured a date for lunch, I remember walking down to Burdick’s thinking what a great opportunity this is to work with one of the bigger businesses in town on something I loved. Lunch didn’t really happen because Brad introduced me to Brett the manager of Burdick’s at the time and sat me down to talk through some issues with their social media. Mostly about claiming their account on Foursquare as well as Facebook content development and how to schedule content.

Much later after this encounter, a marketing manager position opened at the Radisson for Greenleaf Hospitality Group. I was looking for my next step in my professional growth and applied for the position thinking it might be an amazing field to grow in. I remembered Brad worked there and emailed him to let him know I had applied. He thanked me for letting him know and the next thing I knew I was scheduled for several interviews. Within four months or so I was offered the position and I gladly accepted. The rest is history.

Reflecting back on some of these stories, many of the opportunities presented themselves because I took a chance and made sure I knew what I was talking about. Sometimes I took very risky chances and I didn’t think through the fears of what might happen to a young woman in a vulnerable and unpredictable situation. At the time, those fears never crossed my mind and perhaps that was very naive however if my thoughts were shrouded in those fears I don’t know if I would have pursued any of these opportunities or even allow myself to be open to any of it. Would my life be drastically different if I was more cautious? I don’t know.

What I do know is I will continue to live my life by taking a step forward every day until I reach my desired destination. The future is not written in stone, I believe that wholeheartedly. I am glad I have friends and families, and I am ever so grateful for the people who have helped lift me up. My hope is I can do the same for future young minds who were just like me finding a way forward by navigating the digital space for an opportunity of a lifetime.

[allistair-right]

hey.. i'd be interested in reading that ready player one criticism you wrote, even if it's not done, you should totally post that

Thanks for the interest in my late night ramblings anon! Well since I can just copy-paste it, why the fuck not. It’s… long and despite me saying that i’ll try not to let my anger/feelings take over, you can kinda see me starting to break near the end of the document :))) 

 I’m pasting the document in it’s entirety (I haven’t changed a word of it) Below the cut are my thoughts about Ready Player One on 10 ‎April ‎2017, ‏‎1:13:40 AM:

READY PLAYER ONE

I finished listening to the audiobook ofready player one around a week ago and I’ve discussed said book with a friend/sof mine although not too in depth since they have yet to read the book but havegraciously allowed me ramble on about it to them. Thanks guys you’re the best.

Disclaimer: Everything that I will bestating regarding the book are only my opinions and are, of course, flawed andit is not my intention to anger or offend anybody. I will try my hardest totackle the book logically without getting too caught up about how I feltregarding certain parts of the book. This is in no way a review of the book andis mostly just a random person’s ramblings and thoughts about this book.

SPOILER WARNING: I will be discussing thebook in its entirety meaning that there will be spoilers EVERYWHERE. I will nothold back.

·        The book is fun.

o  If I have to describe the bookin a sentence it would be: “A lot of Sci Fi, retro and nerdy fun” If you’reinto games, movies and even series, especially old school ones beginning fromthe 80’s, you would enjoy this book very much.

o  For people who grew up in the80’s this book is probably a love letter to you all and you’d either enjoy theconstant nostalgia porn or you’d all get fed up with it. Cause trust me,there’s a LOT of 80’s in this book.

o  The world building of this bookis very well done. You can actually visualize the world and what state it’s in.As an artist this book gave my imagination a lot to work with and I canmentally convince myself that the world is real.

·        I wish you’d show me ratherthan tell me.

o  There are times the book withgo into a sort of information dump in an attempt to flesh out the world. I’veread a review stating that it’s a bad case of “telling rather than showing” andI have to agree. It would usually begin when the writer is fleshing out theworld but then it would keep going and going and at times it feels too muchsince it’s not really essential to the story. Luckily, I’m a bit of aninformation hoard and I enjoy reading books and articles on random topics thatI would find interesting so when I run into information dumps that would go onand on, I’m not 100% put off by it. I will be stating samples of informationdumps throughout this rambling since I don’t think there’s a chapter or an Actwithout some kind of information dump/montage.

·        Limited characters and they’reall variations of Vanilla.

o  There is a very limited cast ofcharacters in this story, and sadly, they’re not all fleshed out that well. Themain characters are Wayde(Parzival), Samantha(Art3mis), Aech and maybe even themain antagonist Sorento (though it could be argued that Sorento is just arepresentative of IOI and that they’re the real antagonists). Every othercharacter are supporting characters and “Disposable characters”.  Yes, Daito and Shoto were part of the “HighFive” and have interacted with Wayde and the other main characters a handful oftimes but, sadly, I did not find them that fleshed out and are just a littleover the rank of Disposable characters.

o  Though there are very fewcharacters, I couldn’t get myself to be 100% invested in any of them, not evenin the main protagonist, Wayde. In fact, I found him to be annoying 50% of thetime. The character that I could say that I was sort of interested in was Aechbut sadly s/he wasn’t given much time until near the end of the book.

o  When I say “they’re allvariations of Vanilla” I meant that they’re all essentially a clone of the maincharacter Wayde. Now I’m not a professional writer and this maybe a stretch butto me, in their essence, they’re all just a variation of Wayde. Maybe that’sthe reason why I couldn’t get invested in any of the characters since they’rejust a different version of Wayde and I’m not even interested in him. Theircharacters are all basically this:

§ Obsessed with findingHalliday’s Easter egg.

§ Doesn’t have a family

·        Yes, Art3mis lived with hergrandparents but that was pretty much it. She never mentions how her home lifeis and she didn’t even bring them up when Wayde tells them to get out of theirhomes because IOI has information on them and plans to abduct them. When shecontacts them again at the airport she’s complaining about how she’s panickingand doesn’t have anything on her except for the clothes on her back. She doesnot express any concern for her grandparents.

·        Shoto may or may not have afamily. This was not clarified since when Wayde tells them to get out of theirhomes. Shoto runs off to a manga café. Like Art3mis, he does not expressconcern for his family if he had any.

§ Are all hiding some sort ofsecret about their self from everyone

§ Spends 95% of their timeplugged into the Oasis and have a heavy dislike and disconnect regarding thereal world.

§ Are all hardcore gunters andhave memorized facts about Halliday and his obsessions as if it was a religion

§ Are all exceptionally good withold school games.

§ Hates IOI with a passion

§ Very savvy with 80’s popculture references or just the 80’s in general.

·        The characters are okay I guess:

o  Wayde (Parzival):  The main character of the story which as I’vementioned before is high schooler with no family and has learned to becomeself-sufficient and provide for himself using his natural talents with computersand technology. I could not get myself to care about this character. To behonest the only thing I care about this entire book is the puzzle revolvingaround Halliday’s Easter egg and how they’re going to figure it out.Like I said, I found his character mostly annoying 50% of the time, now maybethis is because he’s written as a bit of a naïve high schooler and he doesn’thave everything sorted out but there are times that he’s been shown anddepicted as being very clever, smart and, as Daito and Shoto would say,“Honorable”. So I couldn’t convince myself of the very obvious mistakes thathe’s running into when it has been shown that he COULD have avoided saidmistakes.When IOI/Sorento blew up his Aunt’s trailer home along with most of the othertrailers surrounding that area, it didn’t really shake him as much as Iexpected it to other than feeling sad about a sweet old lady cause she didn’tdeserve to die in an explosion. I understand prioritizing hiding from the enemybut shouldn’t this have haunted him a bit more? I can understand him not caringabout his aunt’s fate along with her ex-con boyfriend but what about the otherfamilies that live with them? What about the young kinds in all the othertrailers? Why doesn’t it ever really dawn on him that if he just played it safeand stopped being cocky all those lives wouldn’t have been lost? If I remembercorrectly he mentions this like maybe once in the later part of the story buteven so it didn’t have any weight. Poor old lady that’s it. How am I supposedto care about a character that doesn’t seem to care?There was also a part where when he became the first person to ever find thefirst key, he received a lot of emails asking for interviews and a lot ofcompanies asking him to become a promoter. He smartly avoided the requests forinterviews but he immediately jumps on all the companies that want to make hima promoter? He mentions that the amount of money is enough to provide for hisneeds and that in a year he could afford an economy apartment and those are allunderstandable but it’s not enough for someone to just ignore a really longcontract and just simply state a few conditions and sign away on all thecontracts cause he can’t afford a lawyer to help him read the contracts.I remember being a 18-19 year old and a company wanted to use my art for somepromo material and since it was fan art I was fine but then they sent a 3 pagecontract and I panicked cause I don’t know what this contained and I had mymother read it for me to make sure it was alright to sign on it. This was asimple contract regarding a simple matter but since I was young andinexperienced regarding the professional world, I tackled it carefully. Wayde is also a young 18 year old high schooler in the story and he hasexperienced way more intense things in the world he lives in, he understandsthe great value of privacy and ensuring ones cyber-safety and takes a lot ofcounter measures to stay anonymous and keep his information private but hesomehow just decides to ignore a really lengthy contract from a bunch ofcompanies? Earlier on in the story when his aunt saw his laptop and demandedhim to give it to her, he quickly entered a command to clear out the entirecomputer and he mentions how he has a backup of all that information includingback up laptops. He even has a secret entrance and exit in his aunt’s trailerso he can sneak in and out to his hideout where all his important personalbelongings are. So I can’t convince myself that this really careful andpractically anal person about his privacy decides to just sign away on allcontracts and think that it’s okay since they all expire in 2 years and becausehe stated a few conditions. How can he be sure that there are not clauses orloop holes in those contracts that those companies can abuse and he has nopower over it? It just not convincing for his character to do something soobviously wrong and it doesn’t make any sense.

·        Deus ex Machina

o  It just so happens that Waydebought the IOI access codes a few months before he made an on-the-fly suicideplan to infiltrate IOI. This was not even discussed or brushed over prior tothe fact that the time when he bought this code was during a sort ofinformation dump about him trying to turn his life around after being turneddown by Art3mis. It described how depressed and desperate he was that hebarricaded himself from the real world even more by constantly upgrading histech and that, out of desperation, he ended up going to brothels in the oasisand even buying a sort of high tech blow up doll in the real world and then feelingdisgusted, throwing it away and resorting back to good old masturbation, which JamesHalliday also mentions in his Almanac how Masturbation is natural and the worldwouldn’t have progressed without it. He also describes how he upgraded hissecurity system and how he keeps himself fed and upgraded by buying stuffonline and having them delivered and how delivery people interact with hisSecurity system. There was even a point where Wayde is describing all his hightech gear and their functions and his daily routine.

Seewhat I mean by information dumps? And I’m just summarizing the whole thing. Inall that time and detailed “world building” he couldn’t have mentioned buyingthe IOI access codes. Too much telling not enough showing.

Ijust couldn’t convince myself of how very fortunate and lucky it is that Waydebought a bunch of IOI access codes on the internet black market and completelyforgot about them until he made a plan to infiltrate IOI. It’s just not inWayde’s character. He was written as a boy who had nothing growing up andprovided for himself. He kept track of all the things that he owns even in thevirtual world Oasis. He can even remember what album a song came from and whatyear it was released. But somehow he just forgets about buying a bunch ofaccess codes that could be used against his enemies. It’s not convincing.

o   It just so happens that the only person in theentire world that had the money and power to help him and his friends has beeneaves dropping on them since Key 1. When I read this reveal I couldn’t evenrelate to the shock that was being implied by the characters. This was “hinted”at earlier on when the “High Five” first met up in Aech’s chatroom, but to me,that entire scene with the books falling off the shelf and Aech and Waydediscussing it felt like an afterthought. Like it was written in when the bookwas being edited so when Moreou appeared it wouldn’t be so out of place or wouldn’tbecome an obvious Deus ex Machina.

[gurguliare]

I would love your thoughts on Dirhavel, vocaroo or text? Just because you were recently blogging about Hurin and I suppose this is kind of related. :)

A lot of my interest in Dirhavel is in his sources. The most detailed description we get of who he consulted in composing the Narn is from a pretty early stage of Tolkien’s legendarium-composition, which, let me just paste that here:

…this lay was the work of a Mannish poet, Dirhavel, who lived at the Havens in the days of Earendel and theregathered all the tidings and lore that he could of the House ofHador, whether among Men or Elves, remnants and fugitivesof Dorlomin, of Nargothrond, or of Doriath. From Mablung he learned much; and by fortune also he found a man namedAndvir, and he was very old, but was the son of that Androgwho was in the outlaw-band of Turin, and alone survived thebattle on the summit of Amon Rudh.(2) Otherwise all that timebetween the flight of Turin from Doriath and his coming toNargothrond, and Turin’s deeds in those days, would haveremained hidden, save the little that was remembered amongthe people of Nargothrond concerning such matters as Gwindoror Turin ever revealed. In this way also the matter of Mim andhis later dealings with Hurin were made clear. This lay was allthat Dirhavel ever made, but it was prized by the Elves andremembered by them. Dirhavel they say perished in the last raidof the sons of Feanor upon the Havens. His lay was composedin that mode of verse which was called Minlamad thent / estent.

Okay. So the first glaring Problem is Mablung: we know Mablung didn’t escape Doriath in the final timeline. But of course Mablung is in all other ways the ideal source for the Narn poet—we need that Mablung’s eye view on Nienor and Morwen on the trip to Nargothrond, Turin as he was that final morning in Brethil, etc. There’s another possibility, I suppose, which is that Dirhavel talks to one of the unnamed riders who form the rest of Morwen’s escort and (perhaps?) escape the clusterfuck at Nargothrond to ride out with Mablung again when he goes seeking Nienor and Turin in Brethil—but that’s not super satisfying, unless we can come up with anything else about the rider. We could also think in terms of people Mablung might choose as a confidante. Beleg’s out. Melian’s out, unfortunately. Hmm. Well, let me not string you along, I obviously have an idea here, although it’s a stupid one: NELLAS. Maybe a) Mablung started talking to Nellas after the trial/Beleg’s disappearance, since no one else was going to keep her updated and she was not going to stop creepily staring at him from a tree until he gave her an answer … b) it developed into a genuine friendship?? … c) Nellas took inspiration from Nienor and disguised herself as one of the riders who go with Mablung to Brethil? Or just legitimately went as a volunteer, who cares. Or like, everyone knew she was going along as a volunteer, but she still went in disguise, because it made her feel better.

…Hmm. Anyway, my point is, I like the idea of Nellas among the refugees in Sirion, and I like the idea of her making Dirhavel promise that he’ll list “Mablung” as his source, not “Nellas, who hates publicity.” I think it fits well in a few other ways—we know she spoke (and passed on to Turin) the beautiful ancient Doriath dialect or whatever, and one of the few pieces of information we’re given about Dirhavel is that he “has great skill in” Sindarin, which suggests to me not just fluency but mastery of multiple registers and a linguistic interest in Sindarin’s character as a language: maybe he got some material from Nellas, or it was what allowed him to talk to Nellas in the first place, or ideally both. Also, I have no basis for this actually, but Nellas seems like the kind of person who would be a really good mimic, A+ impressions—I hope this played a role in her teaching Turin about animals—and again I think it would be cool if there really was this feeling of Nellas like, channeling Mablung for the purposes of getting his testimony, in kind of the flip of Beleg summoning her for Turin’s trial.

Downsides to this theory: CoH specifically says that “Nellas of Doriath never saw [Túrin] again, and his shadow passed from her.” I don’t want to take this from Nellas!! I want to let his shadow pass from her! Still, I feel like ‘burning voyeuristic curiosity’ is distinct from ‘helpless loyalty to a memory,’ so maybe I can fudge it.

Moving on, I’m also suuuuuuuper interested in what “the people of Nargothrond” means here tbh. GWINDOR SURVIVED AND WENT TO THE HAVENS jk I love the freaking jab about “the little that… Gwindor or Turin ever revealed” too much to tamper with his post-mortem reticence, at least for the duration of this theory post. But, so, people from Nargothrond… I mean, I guess what puzzles me is the idea that it’s specifically Nargothrond’s survivors who know what happened to Mim, for example. Does that mean there were survivors in the area up to 5 years after the sack?? I guess that makes sense, now I think about it—people living off the land/going from part-time woodelf back to full-time woodelf, people who were left for dead in the battle—but I had never considered it before and it’s kind of weirding me out. Or do we imagine that Glaurung reserved a subset of the prisoners for his own slaves? That’s. Uhhh. Weird. I really don’t know what to picture for “witnesses to Mim’s death,” although I guess they could just have found the body after Hurin left. That’s a little more reasonable. That said what would make way MORE sense would be for Mim to have been one of the sources, given how many private Turin-Mim conversations are recorded. I realize Androg is supposed to have been eavesdropping but did he REALLY relay ALL of his eavesdropping to his adult son. Also, if you were Mim, would you not take this golden opportunity to pointedly enter your own “death” into the historical record

“I actually just camouflaged with the hoard because I was wearing so much shiny shit at that point. But listen, I saw his face, he WOULD have killed me if he hadn’t been busy playing hackey-sack with the Nauglamir. What do you mean he threw himself into the ocean somewhere near here, why would the ocean kill him, this isn’t safe”

…As for Dirhavel himself, I don’t know if I have a ton of headcanons. I guess I was thinking of him (??) as the kid of refugees from Brodda’s house, although man, now that I say that that feels like the kind of thing that would absolutely be mentioned if ‘true.’ Okay, here’s my thinking: I imagine him growing up in the Havens, not having ever been himself enslaved by the Easterlings, even as a child, and I also assume he was at least late 30s/40 when he died, so it would make SENSE if his parent(s) escaped in the 490s, and… hm. I guess that’s not super strong evidence. Because he’s listed as a man of the House of Hador and not, say, a man with a Hadorian mother and a Haladin father or something, I was thinking it would make sense if both his parents came from Dor-lomin and knew each other before Sirion, which was much more of a melting pot, but there’s really a bunch of unjustified assumptions I’m making there that don’t stand up to close examination, so, eh. On the other hand it’s kind of cute. Look. Whatever. I’m going to arbitrarily say I also picture him being related to Asgon. OH the other reason I was thinking about Brodda-refugees was because I was like, “where would the special affinity for Sindarin have come from,” and we know Brodda specifically seized most of Hurin’s holdings/people, and like sure everyone spoke Sindarin by then but I imagine nowhere moreso than in Hurin and Morwen’s service? To be polite to all the elf ambassadors constantly tramping through the garden if nothing else? So, that is my still deeply shaky basis. Thanks.

I was going to throw in some bullshit meta at the end here about blah blah the longest lay from those days not because more stuff HAPPENS in the Narn but because of the human preference for some granular description in the language whereas elves save the details for the telepathic music video, and also about the elves prizing the Narn because elf musicians never INTERVIEW people, the survivors of Nargothrond have never been INTERVIEWED before, no one ever talks to us!! It’s so enlivening. Then I decided I wouldn’t type it out. Then apparently I typed it out anyway. I do love the Narn being composed in Sirion because it really captures something about Sirion’s feeling of ill-defined urgency, like, we know we have to do SOMETHING… it’s all down to us… but what…… and in what timeframe… oh god, are we going to have to talk it out. I like the mechanical constraints—it can’t be a Numenorean reconstruction or whatever because it’s too immediate and living a piece of history, and he wants it to be history, and yet the Narn is in some senses about the end of history for Beleriand, or the end of its great bastions, so how do you get it written? Well, by engineering one more pause for breath. Okay. Sirion. And Dirhavel running around in the middle of that is someone I FEEL like I have a very clear image of, even if I haven’t actually talked about hypothetical personality at all here, nor would I because I suck at textual ghosts. Cute, though.

[gokuchulainn]

because apparently i'm not allowed to ask all about morgen i guess you have to do 1-10 rose, 11-20 ayo, 21-30 your seafolk girl i can't remember how to spell her name, 31-40 morgen. i expect you to write a book

WHOOPS I’M GONNA WRITE A NOVEL

ROSARY

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with? Rosary is the lone teenager! Both of her cousins are under the age of 12 and her mom and aunt are early 40′s and late 30′s respectively! She doesn’t know her dad’s family well and isn’t really familiar with whether or not she even HAS cousins her age on that side. 

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like? She loves her mom so much. She respects the shit out of her mom’s work ethic and will do whatever she can to support her mother in her endeavors. However, she misses her mom because their schedules don’t overlap much, since her mom works a lot and Rose is either in school or off solving mysteries or some shit. Her mom is very supportive but generally isn’t in the loop about her daughter, which drives a wedge between them.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like? Rose’s dad is dead but he was very supportive and involved with his daughter. He was very open about his culture and encouraged artistic endeavors from her. However, she was 9 or 10 when he passed and Rose feels a temporal distance from his love and support now.

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know? Oh boy. Having her abilities sealed off, seeing her mother break down after learning her father didn’t make it after the accident that killed him, reading the final missing page of Sharon’s diary (the one chronicling the leadup to her untimely death). The only people who are aware of ALL of these things are Ayo and Morgen. 

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets? She has a lot of twine in her pockets because she works as a florist. She usually also has receipts from the coffee she purchases before school, and the change from that. She also usually has eyedrops in her pocket because she cannot stand if she gets dry eyes while wearing her contacts. 

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams? Rose doesn’t remember most of her dreams, but if she does, it’s usually super bizarre shit.

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares? See above. Rosary isn’t really a dreamer. She doesn’t have enough information to draw from to draw off patterns.

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target? Rose’s weapon of choice isn’t really a gun, so N/A.

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up? Rosary has always grow up pretty smack-dab in the center of middle class, but money was very tight after her dad passed. When her aunt moved in with her kids, they were able to return to the smack dab of middle class sort of position. (Also they live out west so that cost of living tho).

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing? Rosary likes to show more skin, but she’s also a 17 year old with tattoos, which is considered pretty illegal or is at least frowned upon by others. Also her mom has no idea that she has them, so she’s very careful about how much skin and what skin she shows, which feels stifling for her.

Ayo

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been? Her first time out with Rosary investigating her friend’s murder kind of tosses her unceremoniously into the underworld of demons and spirits and stuff and she definitely doesn’t sleep for a few nights after that. In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been? She’s really chill when she’s spending time with her boyfriend, Al. He keeps her grounded.Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way? This is an interesting question. Ayo is pretty rough-and-tumble and plays catcher for her softball team, so she’s used to getting roughed up and bloody from time to time. However, she really HATES seeing other people’s blood. For example, Rosary uses blood magic, and Ayo has to look away whenever Rose cuts herself to use it.Does your character remember names or faces easier? Ayo has a great memory for both! It’s one of her predominant character traits. She can hear a full name once and remember it always. When she met her boyfriend in freshman year of high school, he introduced himself by his full name, and she was able to greet him by it when she met him again for the second time months later. Also, her facial memory is kind of nuts.

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not? Ayo kind of grew up in a pretty wealthy household, so she has that rich kid “doesn’t really understand the value of money” thing. She kind of just assumes she’ll be successful in life. In short, she doesn’t really have a preoccupation with it: it barely crosses her radar. 

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success? Before Sharon’s passing, Ayo was never truly unhappy in a broad sense. Her dreams are usually about the sort of job she’ll have and the sort of house she’ll live in, so I suppose success is what she idealizes. 

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child? Ayo’s favorite toy was her older sisters lol. She liked to bother them and get them to play make believe with her rather than play with dolls or action figures or other toys. She has a stuffed dog from when she was a child named Dottie that you would have to pry from her cold, dead hands.

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others? Ayo’s parents are both from cultures where elders and their advice are heavily respected, and this has passed on to Ayo. She views heavy ambition as a way for people to undo themselves. Ayo generally doesn’t value this quality as much.

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before? Ayo tends to overinvest in relationships at the beginning of them, which usually drives people away or makes them take advantage of her. She had a number of short-lived, unhappy relationships before she met Al because of this, but he was patient with her as they began to date. (note that they were friends for two years before they began to date). 

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism? Ayo tends to compare on a level of “what is x person doing that I’m not?” She’s fairly confident in her body image and appearance, not caring if she has slobbish days. However, if she feels that a friend is doing more than her, she may begin to internalize that she’s somehow lesser for not being as involved or as busy. (A large flaw of hers is equating busy with productive or fruitful). It’s more self-critical than anything.

Caarda

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others? Caarda is a young teenager by her species’ standards. She tends to blame others before looking at herself, although the tragic events that happen to her in her story are generally just terrible luck rather than anything she can actively control.

What does your character like in other people? Caarda enjoys altruism (she hates sensing ulterior motives) and confidence. She likes people who hum or sing to themselves, too, especially if they think no one else is watching. Also, those who actively swear without a filter.

What does your character dislike in other people? Caarda doesn’t like people who are closed-off or hard to read. Her biggest pet peeve is also when people touch without asking, and will actively do her best to avoid these sorts of people if she can.

How quick is your character to trust someone else? Though flighty, Caarda tends to trust people pretty quickly if they speak nicely enough and smile genuinely. 

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person? Caarda’s trust is quick to die if someone does something that speaks against her morals. For example, if someone were to actively lie in front of her (with her knowing the truth of the situation), then Caarda would begin to distrust that person. It doesn’t change if she’s close to someone, but it can cause her more angst/grief if she’s familiar with them.

How does your character behave around children? Caarda is a child lol. But with younger children she’s the “fun older kid” who teaches them shitty behaviors and fun games. 

How does your character normally deal with confrontation? Caarda is very avoidant with confrontation. She’d rather someone else deal with it while she hides away. Again, she’s pretty flighty, but that’s sort of to be expected from a young kid.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation? Caarda is very slow to resorting to physical violence. While she may horse around with friends or play-fight, she doesn’t want to actually fight and gets scared the minute things come to more than shoving and splashing. If necessary, she will do incapacitating blows and swim away as fast as possible. 

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true? Caarda wants to visit every major ocean and sea on the planet and meet all other seafolk (current stand-in name for her species). I’m hoping she gets to!

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting? After being taken aboard a research vessel, Caarda finds needles and human men repulsive. She doesn’t mind women, like Ayelet or Lillian (two other female characters in this story), but MAN OH MAN. If a human man ever touches her again she may resort to violence.

Morgen

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable. Morgen is most comfortable when doing something he’s good at, especially if he looks good doing the thing he’s good at. For example, if Morgen got to play a really wicked violin/fiddle solo in a well-lit, gorgeous building, he’d feel really comfortable and happy to the point of being showoffish. He’s kind of a vain little creature.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable. Morgen would be extremely uncomfortable in a situation in which he has no prior knowledge of what to do but is expected to perform/do a task perfectly. If someone gave him a task with no direction and not enough time to do it, he’d be uncomfortable to the point of excessive defensiveness or even tears.

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve? Morgen and criticism don’t mix well. He tends to get a bit defensive or deflects, asking if the critic could “do it better” or something like that. He can also get darkly self-deprecating, mockingly saying things like “Yeah I know, I fucking suck” etc etc. He’s pretty caustic when it comes to that, and he often has to be reminded that he doesn’t have to be perfect and criticism is okay.

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method? Morgen will strive toward perfection and the best-fit solution, so he will get really pissed off that it didn’t work but then invest quickly into finding a new solution or method to solving a problem. He’s the sort of person who would write like 80 drafts of something trying to find the “perfect” one.

How does your character behave around people they like? Oh god, this boy is so sappy and sweet, almost to the point of being overbearing. He likes to be physically affectionate and hug people or touch them, which can make some people uncomfortable.  He’s also very chatty, because he likes to share what he’s thinking and feeling.

How does your character behave around people they dislike? Quiet. Cold. Distant. He will not look them in the eye, might use words they don’t understand (whether it’s a language or knowledge barrier), and will do anything to keep them from continuing to talk to him. He’s kind of childish in that regard.

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status? Why not all of the above? Boy’s super worried about he’s perceived both physically, mentally, and any other form. He’s worried about looking good in all facets.

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat? Morgen will eliminate a threat as efficiently as possible. He doesn’t scare easily in the face of danger and would rather make the threat pay for being a threat than anything else. This sometimes can lead to what might effectively be an execution.

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)? Dude gets bitten by cats constantly. He loves them but they do not love him back. It depresses him because HE WANTS THE CATS TO LOVE HIM OH MY GODDDDDD. 

How does your character treat people in service jobs? A waiter could spill coffee on Morgen and he would apologize for sitting where the coffee fell instead of demanding an apology. 

[zarafoodrecipe]

Moore 'filthy' about Hadley's handshake after 'bully' claim

"Mate, Im filthy about this," he told PS, when asked to explain how he came to shake Hadley's hand. "I was contemplating how to use the coffee machine. I heard ,'hi Andrew', turned around and was stunned to see him [Hadley] with his hand reaching for mine, so technically I did shake it." But according to Moore: "Clearly he did it to report in to Rothfield. He asked me how I was and then in the most awkward 60 seconds of my life tried to help me use the coffee machine before disappearing." "I was trying to work out his angle, obviously reporting that to Rothfield was it. "And Rothfield has been, as far as Im aware, the only one trying to find a positive story about the bloke."

Sickened: Andrew Moore has accused Ray Hadley of bullying.Credit:ABC Moore confirmed it was the first contact he had with Hadley, who has declined to comment on Moore, since making his explosive accusations on April 3. "Im fully aware there is a reason for every action he takes, just wish I had seen him coming," Moore lamented, adding that he had not been contacted by Rothfield before the story was published. "When my wife read the story online I felt sick." PS had revealed in 2015 that Moore had kept a 40 page file on Hadley during his time at 2GB and contemplated launching legal action, but opted to quit the station to take up his current position with the ABC. Moore, who is now the ABC's Grandstand presenter and has known Hadley for 35 years, told 7.30 earlier this month: "As a human being, I think he's a bully. I think he thrives on intimidation yelling and screaming." When Moore complained to 2GB management about treatment he'd received, he said the matter ended up in Hadley's hands and was used as material for his show. "What I thought were private emails [were] being referred to on air by Ray, laughing about them. Not mentioning me by name, but it was clear, at least to me," Moore said. Hadley told 7.30 that he didn't remember such an incident and went on air the next day to reiterate that following previous allegations of bullying his workplace behaviour had changed. However, as PS has already exclusively revealed, within days Hadley was the subject of at least two new allegations of workplace bullying, which had been formally filed with management and are alleged to have occurred in recent months. PS has confirmed these new claims, by existing staff at 2GB, are currently being investigated by an independent third party. Hadley, sporting a new beard, returned to the 2GB Sydney studios last week after having relocated to Queensland for three weeks. Insiders report neither Hadley nor management have made any comment officially or unofficially about the latest claims. Management at 2GB's parent company Macquarie Media which is 54.5 per cent owned by Nine, the owner of this masthead has repeatedly stood by its position that it is unable to comment on bullying claims as they are treated confidentially. Rocky time for Jacenko as attacks hit raw nerve With the cameras out in full force, Roxy Jacenko ensured she was all smiles as she attempted in vain to operate a dish scourer to scrub the "Roxy is a c---" graffiti plastered over her Paddington offices on Wednesday morning.

On the hunt: Roxy Jacenko is offering a $5,000 reward to find the culprits of her latest graffiti attack.Credit:Louie Douvis By lunchtime it was gone, but similar missives scrawled along the route Jacenko takes from her Bondi home to her Paddington offices were not quite as easy to remove, especially on the wall of busy Syd Einfeld Drive. Jacenko, who is offering a $5,000 reward to find the culprits, claims she is unfazed by the latest attacks, but pin-pointing the offenders will not be an easy task, even with police currently investigating and her own CCTV footage showing a pair of men attacking her building in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Jacenko's various tribulations have been documented for many years, including across these pages. When PS approached her for comment on Wednesday, Jacenko wryly fired back: "Andrew, was it you?"

Graffiti sprayed on the wall of Roxy Jacenko's Paddington office.Credit:Andrew Hornery Well, PS hates to disappoint but it wasn't. Indeed, Jacenko has many detractors. She remains embroiled in an ugly and highly-public stoush with both her father Nick Jacenko and his partner, fashion designer Lisa Ho, which resulted in police being called following one particularly nasty incident on the streets of Woollahra. She is also estranged from her younger sister Ruby, more than a decade after her sibling was accused of punching Roxy twice at a Kings Cross party. In 2013 she was the subject of a 1000-word plus poison-pen letter purportedly written by a former staffer and titled Miss Karma. The letter went viral. In more recent years everything from her nose job and boob job, breast cancer media deals, relationship with former lover Nabil Gazal while her husband Oliver Curtis was in jail, to her children's relentless social media exposure, has ensured her position as one of this city's most written about characters. But Jacenko has not loved ALL the attention. In 2016 she called in the police after a lewd photo scandal erupted surrounding her then four-year-old daughter Pixie involving photo-shopped images of the little girl. In February she was rattled enough to engage lawyers after she was embroiled in a vulgar slanging match in front of a packed room with one of the attendees at her one-woman motivational talk. And behind the scenes, some of her closest associates say the latest attack which follows three other vandalism episodes on her building, ranging from paint bombing to faeces being smeared over her front door have hit a raw nerve. Last week PS revealed how unpopular she had become with neighbours in Paddington fed up with her $400,000 Aston Martin and husband's $250,000 Range Rover being illegally parked on their already cramped street. Next month her Sweaty Betty PR firm is marking its 15-year anniversary and Jacenko is understood to have plans for a big party. Exactly who will be celebrating remains to be seen. Pay no attention to the missing actor With his 32-year relationship in tatters, one time Australian showbiz golden boy Simon Gallaher has pulled out of his starring role in the Wizard of Oz spectacular. Gallaher told PS he was unable to face the audience on Newcastle this weekend and has quit from the production, in which he was due to play the role of the Wizard as it toured regional Australia.

Simon Gallaher (top-right) has exited the production of Wizard of Oz. Gallaher's personal life has been heavily scrutinised for the past six months since his former lover, fellow entertainer Todd McKenney, revealed how he discovered his ex-boyfriend had left him for his sister, Lisa. This week Gallaher confirmed his marriage to Lisa, the mother of their two adult children, had come to an end following McKenney's extraordinary revelations, which McKenney made in a lengthy interview on a gay community radio station in Melbourne late last year. The split comes as the Gallahers are expecting to welcome their first grandchild in a matter of weeks.

Todd McKenney as P.T. Barnum.Credit:Jeff Busby Gallaher took to social media to defend the decisions he had made in his private life after being openly criticised. Gallaher wrote on Twitter: "There was no lying, no delusions, no double life. A wonderful monogamous relationship with someone for 32 years. The other was a former dalliance long finished before a loving and fruitful marriage with no secrets. This is a public outing not a personal one. Check your facts." McKenney, who coincidentally opens in Melbourne this weekend with his latest role as P.T. Barnum, declined to comment further when PS called for a response to Gallaher's claim their five-year relationship was a "dalliance". Town goes to country for birthday bash If Ron and Nancy Reagan were still alive, it would be a safe bet that they would be among the long lineup of social luminaries heading to socialite, charity queen and one time cover girl Skye Leckie's 60th birthday party at her country estate Mulberry Farm in the Southern Highlands this weekend.

Birthday girl: Sydney society queen Skye Leckie is planning to mark her 60th birthday in a very big way this weekend. The Reagans became instant fans of Leckie way back in 1982 when she was Skye Macleod and ended up on the cover of US society magazine Town & Country wearing an Akubra for the magazine's special edition on Australia. She had been working for Vogue Australia "writing captions in a storeroom" at the time when she was asked to pose for the magazine.

Covergirl: Skye Leckie on the cover of American magazine Town & Country in 1982. "I forgot all about it but then I got a call from the White House and immediately thought it was someone having a lend and hung up because I was trying to get the Lotto numbers off the TV. But they rang back, and were deadly serious. I realised it wasn't a prank at all. Ronald and Nancy wanted to know about my hat and by the time I hung up I was arranging to have Akubras and a couple of Drizabones sent over to them," Leckie recalled to PS this week. The Town & Country cover has been dusted off and used as her party invitation, with the likes of Gretel Packer, Julie Bishop, Leo Schofield, Rachel Griffiths, Michael Usher, Mark Ferguson, Karl Stefanovic and Samantha Armytage, along with PS, heading for what promises to be one of the parties of the year. Andrew Hornery is a senior journalist and Private Sydney columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald. Most Viewed in Entertainment Loading https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/moore-filthy-about-hadley-s-handshake-after-bully-claim-20190424-p51grs.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed