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therenlover · 4 years ago

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Therenlover’s Official Fanfic Glossary!

Hey hey hey! This is the place where you can find all my up-to-date fanfics linked nicely, read about what projects I have upcoming, and learn what requests I’m taking at the moment! Cheers!

This post is massive so, for the sake of your dash, everything is under the cut

A NOTE ABOUT REQUESTS!

I will do my best to fulfill any requests I get while my ask box/requests are open! That being said, I cannot promise every request will get done, and that if they do, they’ll be done in a timely manner. I’m currently working on a long-form project that needs a lot of time and energy to come out consistently, so unless I’m doing a writing event most of my writing juice will be focused on that. That being said, if you want something ask! The worst I can possibly do is direct you towards someone else who might be able to write what you want if I cant.

If I choose not to do your request based on personal preference (it makes me uncomfy/I don’t write for the character at that time/I don’t feel I can write what you want/etc.) I will do my best to contact you and let you know! That being said, if you think your ask got buried/forgotten, feel free to message me again and let me know, but please tell me when you message me if I should be looking for a prior request.

Characters/Fandoms I will write for currently

💙 = I’m Currently Super Inspired To Write For This Character

Marvel/X-Men

Bucky Barnes

Loki

Peter Maximoff 💙

Pietro Maximoff

Helmut Zemo 💙

Hank McCoy

Ralph Bohner 💙

Vision

American Horror Story

Tate Langdon

Kit Walker 💙

Kyle Spencer (Pre- and Post- Death)

Jimmy Darling 💙

James Patrick March 💙

Kai Anderson

Fallout 4

Nick Valentine

Hancock

Star Wars

Poe Dameron

Armitage Hux 💙

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo

Finn

Han Solo

Assorted/Random

Diarmuid Ua Duibhne - FGO

Cu Chulainn/Cu Alter - FGO

Warren Lipka - American Animals 💙

Enjolras - Les Miserables

Grantaire - Les Miserables

Gabriel - Supernatural

Imagines - REQUESTS CLOSED

Songs From Musicals Y/N Would Sing To The Evans

Characters: Tate Langdon, Kit Walker, Kyle Spencer, Jimmy Darling, James Patrick March, Kai Anderson, Peter Maximoff

Rating: T

How The Evans (+ Quicksilver) Would React To Yoplait’s New Gushers Yogurt

Characters: Tate Langdon, Kit Walker, Kyle Spencer, Jimmy Darling, James Patrick March, Rory Monahan, Kai Anderson, Peter Maximoff

Rating: T

Would The Danny Bunch Survive A Holiday With My Family?

Characters: Laszlo Kreizler, Alex Kerner, Niki Lauda, Andrea Marowski, Ernst Schmidt, Helmut Zemo

Rating: T

Headcanons - REQUESTS CLOSED

Modern! AU Armitage Hux Boyfriend Headcanons

Zemo With A Well Dress S/O Headcanons

Zemo Getting Jealous Headcanons

Oneshots - REQUESTS CLOSED

Marvel/X-Men

Helmut Zemo

One Last Night In Madripoor

Synopsis: Baron Helmut Zemo is a lonely, wanted man looking for some fun, you’re a piss-poor bounty hunter in search of a connection before leaving your life of crime behind, and fate has brought you together at a party the likes of which has never been seen before. You only have one night left in Madripoor, so why not take a chance?

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 4200~

Still Some Catching Up To Do

Synopsis: As a member of the criminal underworld, people walk out of your life all the time. Some are killed, others kill themselves, most get caught and only a couple get out of the life unscathed, disappearing into the world never to be seen again. Very few walk back in. So when your supposedly incarcerated ex-lover, the Winter Soldier, and the Falcon waltzed through your door and made you murder your boss, needless to say, you were surprised and more than a little bit pissed.

Rating: 16+

Word Count: 6800~

Nine Years Starved

Synopsis: It had been a little over nine years since Helmut Zemo lost his family, his country, and his sanity. Nine years since his last kiss. Nine years since he felt like a human man. Finally, he was ready to start over again, but first, he had to pay his penance back where it all began; Novi Grad. That’s when, by the grace of the fates, he met you.

Rating: G

Word Count: 7000~

Daddy Dearest

Synopsis: Not everyone gets lucky enough to go from being a broke college student in New York to being the sugar baby to literal royalty, but not everyone is you. Most people would be worried about messing things up or losing him to someone else, but you knew he would never find another baby just like you. Besides, you knew exactly what to do to keep him wrapped around your little finger. He may have been the daddy, but you pulled the reins.

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 8000~

In Fleeting Touches & Airy Sighs

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four

Synopsis: As a wanted man, Helmut Zemo spends most of his time jumping from place to place in the hopes of avoiding a trip back to prison. Unfortunately, that means he can’t always be home in your arms. When he is, though, in the rare moments of calm, you’re reminded of just how worth it it’s been to wait, even if that wait was only shortened by the arrival of your enemies.

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 35,700~

Two Bodies In The Rain

Synopsis: It was raining the day you finally had to admit your feelings to Helmut. You hated to tell him the way you did, under the grey skies as your blood pooled below you, but at least you knew, in the end, he had seen the real you, even just once. That was enough.

Rating: T

Word Count: 5600~

Rest

Synopsis: Living life on the lam with your escaped super-villain lover means things rarely slow down enough for a real rest. When the exhaustion starts to take its toll on you, though, he knows exactly what to do to ease the pain. He may not be a good man, but he’s a good husband when it counts.

Rating: T

Word Count: 3200~

American Horror Story

Jimmy Darling

Red Nights In Jupiter

Synopsis: At the end of another long day, you fall into bed with Jimmy Darling. The men you served throughout the day don’t matter then, nor do the coins in the mason jar by the door, or the women scheduled to attend Jimmy’s next Tupperware party. No, in that quiet darkness it’s just you and the man you love, bone-tired and happy to be home. Who could ask for more?

Rating: 16+

Word Count: 3000~

James Patrick March

Heartsick

Synopsis: When you fall ill, James is given a forceful awakening about how he’s been neglecting your needs and what he must do to prevent harm from befalling you again.

Rating: 16+

Word Count: 3700~

In Sickness And In Health

Synopsis: Normally people don’t have their wedding and funeral on the same day, but you and James don’t quite have a normal relationship, do you? Besides, you wouldn’t wanna go any other way.

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 5500~

Fallout 4

Currently Empty

Star Wars

Currently Empty

Assorted/Random

Currently Empty

Long Form Works/Series

Young Artist!Zemo AU

Chapter One: The Boy With The Easel

Synopsis: About a month into your first semester at Novi Grad’s top university, you finally meet the strange young man that you’ve taken to calling “easel boy” in the back of a bookshop. From a distance, he always seemed cold and aloof. As you get to know him, though, you realize things aren’t always what they seem.

Rating: T

Word Count: 7000~

Till Forever Falls Apart (A Peter Maximoff/Reader Series)

Chapter One: Welcome Home

Synopsis: As if getting thrown through the multiverse, trapped in an attic (albeit a cool one), mind-controlled to manipulate his grieving sister, and subsequently dragged out of Westview “for his own safety” by the FBI wasn’t enough, Peter Maximoff has now been shipped off to New York to live with a glorified baby sitter like some tragic orphan in a comic book until they find a way to get him back home. Things are not always as they seem, though, and this change might just be for the better.

Rating: T

Word Count: 2400~

Chapter Two: The Doctor Is In

Synopsis: Peter’s first few days in his new home are mostly uneventful, so he decides it’s the perfect time to dust off his running goggles and steal some shit. The building with the massive circular stained glass window seems like a great place to start! People with buildings that lavish are usually rich and weak, so what could possibly go wrong?

Rating: T

Word Count: 2800~

Chapter Three: It’s Always Been You

Synopsis: After a month of adapting to his new universe, Peter Maximoff can confidently say that he likes his new life more than his old one. Sure, he misses home sometimes, but he’s been far too busy flirting with his new roommate to spend time crying over the things he’s lost. Everything is smooth sailing until a strange journal in his roommate’s study leaves him with more questions than he knows what to do with. Now he’s on a mission to discover who he’s really living with before she has the chance to turn against him.

Rating: T

Word Count: 8600~

Chapter Four: Before You Go

Synopsis: Peter, after days of contemplation, has realized that part of him loves Y/N no matter what she is or what she’s been through. Unfortunately, he can’t find her anywhere. When she finally returns home with the intention of leaving again, Peter realizes it’s his last chance to tell her how he really feels. Will he succeed, or will he fail to be fast enough once again?

Rating: T

Word Count: 4000~

Chapter Four And A Half: Gimme Swayze

Synopsis: Now that the issue of Y/N leaving is out of the way, and Peter has finally kissed her, he falls into the motions of learning how to love someone for the first time. It’s easier than he thought it would be.

Rating: T

Word Count; 2600~

Cakes For The Evans: A Blogging And Baking Adventure!

Kai Anderson’s Disaster Cake

Hey you! If you’ve made it this far down the list, thanks for supporting me as an author! I’ll be linking my AO3 here. I post everything there shortly before I post it here, and there are some older fics there you might enjoy along the way! It’s also easier to drop comments over there and I keep them open for non-members, so give me a shout if you liked what I wrote!

I love you all, you make me so happy, and without you support I would never be motivated to write! Cheers!

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swimyghost · 5 years ago

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I SAW YOUR REBLOG THANK YOU PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT YOUR OCS TOO -SELF INSERT NONSENSE

I love you @self-insert-nonsense and your OCS!

I have a couple of OCs that aren’t bound to any fandoms (though I occasionally plop them into certain universes when I want). Here are some of them, plus my Invader Zim OCs:

(Also, heads up, I have the drawing ability of an armless baby so no pictures, sadly) (UNEDITED)

Crow Romana:

Crow one of the oldest OCs in my catalog. As a 443-year-old vampire (43 in regular human years), he’s seen his fair share of the horrors the world holds and the suffering it brings.

The most common reason he gives when discussing why he has a semi-nihilistic world view is the fact he had to raise his daughter, Starling, alone due to his wife’s death.

When Crow was a young vampire studying to become a politician in the Vampiric government, The Blood Rose Court, he stumbled across a higher noble above his social ranking. Her name was Raven Corax and she too was to become apart of the Court, just in a very different way.

Raven was to marry Vladislav Montague, a noble in a popular and regal family who already had a high seat in the Court’s inner circle, and with Raven’s Blood Magic (an ability that all vampires have, but some are much better at it than others), the two would make one of the most dominant couples in Vampiric Society

However, Raven had no real attachment to the narcissistic and womanizing Vlad and found comfort in a quiet, yet thoughtful Crow.

The two’s relationship blossomed into a careful dance to not expose their love affair. When the day of Raven’s wedding and Crow’s interview with the Court arrived, Crow couldn’t take it anymore.

With a heart full of both love and bravado, the young vampire sunk into the Montague estate where the wedding was to be held and discovered his long ebony-haired love trying to jump out a window with a suitcase in hand.

The two ended up eloping that night after sneaking out of the estate with the Montagues none the wiser. The new couple took up residence in Crow’s old family manor that had been abandoned for over two centuries. Instead of succumbing to their misery at their ghoulish new home, they were overjoyed to have a project to work on together... As a family. Soon, after the renovation, Raven became pregnant and, nine months later, gave birth to their daughter, Starling Romana.

Life couldn’t be more perfect for the Romana trio. But, as they say, all good things come to an end.

Only two weeks after celebrating Starling’s first birthday, Montague and his gang of loyal followers stormed the Romana household with the intent to kill everyone inside. Crow tried to defend his wife, but Raven, realizing that Montague was only here because he was snubbed on their supposed wedding day and wanted revenge.

Using the last amount of her magic, Raven cast a spell that blocked her husband and child from the invaders while she dealt with Montague. Crow was able to escape with a terrified Starling, not before watching Montague brutally stab his wife in the back and demanded his followers to light the house ablaze.

Now, 167 years later, Crow lives with the guilt and shame of not being able to save his family from Montague’s attack and forcing his daughter to live such a loner lifestyle.

Starling Romana:

Unlike her seemingly joyless father, Starling loves life and everyone in it.

Due to her lack of knowledge on her mother and not really remembering her, Starling grew up a spoiled daddy’s girl who doted on her every need, even if the need was more of a want.

Like her mother, Starling is a fantastic user of Blood Magic, which comes in handy when she and her father have to hunt the vampire’s mortal enemy: ghouls (vampires who turned into cannibalistic and light fearing creatures who prey on anything that moves). However, her skills are lacking since there isn’t really anyone who can teach her due to her family’s damaged reputation.

But a little bad press never stopped Starling from having fun. Despite the sun being one of the vampires most lethal weaknesses, Starling looks forward to being out on a warm summer day or just being in light in general (in this universe, the sun works like a flame boiling the vampire’s blood from the inside out, which kills them slowly). She also loves to flirt and tease anyone she deems worthy enough to become her friend (leading to many awkward situations revolving her father and new love interest).

Because of her age (168 years old), Starling is considered a teenager both by human and vampire standards, meaning the young girl often tries to foolishly get the adults to respect her by doing wild and crazy stunts.

While Crow, Raven, and Starling aren’t Invader Zim OCs, I sometimes put them in the universe just because I find the idea of Dib not believing Starling is a vampire because “she just... loves the sun. Vampires don’t love the sun!” Plus, Professor Membrane would totally make Crow his new vessel for dumbing all his science info onto.

Obi and Ren

My Invader Zim OCs! (Obi’s name is pronounced Oh-Bee)

Obi is an Irken invader that is really obsessed with the Tallest, claiming to be their “#1 Fan!”.

Because she wanted to prove her loyalty and devotion to the Tallest, Obi decided to steal an Invader ship and a defective SIR unit and travel to Earth to defeat the Tallest’s greatest enemy: Zim.

After a six month period of nothing but singing, napping, and fixing her SIR unit, Obi landed on Earth with the newly functioning SIR unit she swiftly named Ren after seeing the name on a poser with large-eyed humans covering it. Posers similar to the one Obi got Ren’s name from were also the inspiration for her human disguise.

In her Irken form, she has light reddish-pink eyes were curled antennas; in her human form, Obi looks like a young Japanese-American preteen (around Dib and Gaz’s age) with short light brown hair in two small pigtails. She wears a standard Invader-Outfit in her Irken form while in her human form, she wears a sparkly pink skirt with white leggings and burgundy sneakers, plus a white T-shirt with an angry cartoon bunny head on the front with a soft light pink highschool jacket.

Obi, after landing on Earth and claiming to be Zim’s worst enemy, doesn’t really try to take over Earth. She doesn’t see a need and, plus, she really likes Earth!

She loves the almost indefinite amount of pink things she can buy, the way trees change color, zoos, cotton candy, movies, cute animals... Practically everything is new and exciting for her. Plus, she really likes anime (especially the magical girl kind) and video games (though she isn’t good at it) and visual novels.

Unlike Obi, Ren is very interested in ending Zim and conquering Earth; however, since he was a defective SIR unit, he has some trouble accomplishing this goal.

For starters, Ren has a very obvious stutter that gets more pronounced the more he becomes enraged. His head has to be bolted to his neck in order to keep it from falling (Frankenstein’s Monster style) and he is quite shorter than most SIR units. His shortened height actually does help him when he is disguised as a black mitt colored ferret with bright amber eyes.

Ren is also very neat and tidy dissimilar to Obi, who frequently leaves trash and her games scattered all over the place. Although he attempts to keep their house clean, it always ends up a mess either due to Obi or Ren accidentally setting himself on fire (a more common occurrence then you’d think).

In the end, Ren does care for Obi and thanks her constantly for saving his life, even though he wishes she’d just clean up for once in her life.

I ship Obi with Gaz because I like to think that Gaz would totally try to help her “git gud” at video games after watching her fail at Mario Kart eight times in a row. Obi would try to help Gaz become more tolerable to people and Gaz would help Obi toughen up since the Irken Invader, surprisingly, isn’t good at defending herself. Gaz would try to hide her feelings while Obi would just be completely obvious. The only one who can tell Gaz likes Obi is Ren since Dib would believe Gaz is under some type of Irken mind control and Zim would think that Obi is trying to steal his spot as ruler of Earth.

I can add some more later, but for now, I’m really tired :/

Thanks for listening to me ramble.

#invaderzim #invader zim #invader zim original character #invader zim oc #invader zim zim #invader zim gaz #invader zim dib #invader zim professor #oc #original characters #vampires #custom world #anime reference

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mischiefandmagic6 · 6 years ago

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Day 1- Just Friends

This is my entry for Adrinette April 2019

“You okay, dude?” Nino asked as soon as he saw Adrien.

Adrien came out of his thoughts. “Yeah, I think I am.” The fingers on his right hand went through the F scale.

“You sure? You look like you just came to a realization,” Nino said as he sat down at his desk.

“You remember that girl I told you about? The one I met at that con?” Adrien waited until his best friend nodded to continue. “I didn’t tell you that I had a crush on her.”

Nino’s brows furrowed. “Huh. I should have guessed with how you talked about her.”

“Well, she doesn’t like me in the same way and has turned me down. I’ve decided to try and move on,” Adrien said.

“That’s mature of you. What made you decide that?” Nino’s eyebrows were now unfurrowed and had risen up.

“I’ve done a lot of thinking,” Adrien spread his hands out to demonstrate, “and realized that I didn't really know much about her. She also likes someone else.”

Nino nodded. “So are you going to date anyone or are you going to spend time by yourself to get back in the game?”

“Definitely not jumping in right away. I’ve gotta get used to not pursuing her and all.” Adrien shrugged.

“You’ll find someone when you’re ready,” Nino said before patting Adrien on the shoulder. They fell quiet as Mlle. Bustier started the lesson of the day. Adrien sat forward, ready to listen to the lesson.

Over the next month, Adrien stuck with his decision. Ladybug hadn’t made any comments on his behavior change. It was surprisingly easy to not show off to impress her.

Today, he was with his friends as they walk around shops and restaurants. Nino trailed behind with him as Marinette and Alya walked ahead with their arms linked.

“It’s a nice day,” Nino commented.

Adrien looked around. The sun was shining and the wind was cool. “It is. Think we should go to the park?”

“Up to the girls,” Nino waved his hand to them as they walked into a fabric shop. “We can ask.”

Adrien and Nino walked into the store. It was filled with rows of fabric. He split off from Nino to look for the girls.

He found Marinette by herself, gazing at the different bolts on the wall. He watched as she felt different fabrics. Her nose scrunched up at the textures she didn’t like. She was pursing her lips at a bolt of fabric decorated with watercolor flowers.

“That looks pretty,” Adrien said.

Marinette jumped at his voice. “Y-you scared me.”

“Sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Marinette said. She had gotten better with speaking to him lately.

“You going to buy that?” He asked.

She found the price tag. “Fourteen euros per yard. I like to have a lot to make many items and see if the fabric is truly versatile.”

“How many is a lot?”

“It takes about four and a half yards for a dress with short sleeves, five with long sleeves. A blouse takes two to three depending on sleeves and so on and so forth.” Marinette tapped on her fingers. “That’s about nine or ten yards of fabric which would cost one hundred thirty euros at least.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Adrien saw another price tag that read twelve euros. “I didn’t know how much went into designing clothes.”

“Do you not see the process with your dad?” She asked. Her brows were furrowed.

“Not really. What I mostly do is model the clothes,” Adrien said.

Marinette nodded. “How long have you done modeling?”

“A few years.”

“And you don’t see the process of the clothes?”

“Father never required me to so I didn’t.” Adrien followed her as she went down the aisle. “How long have you designed and made clothes?”

“A couple of years now. My first project was my bag actually,” Marinette said, gesturing to her bag that rested on her hip.

“May I?” He asked.

Marinette’s eyes widened momentarily before she nodded slowly. Adrien's fingers brushed against her hip as he picked the bag up. Looking closely, he could tell that it was handmade.

“I’m guessing that the flowers are your logo of sorts?”

“Uh, y-yes.” Her face had a pink hue to it.

He nodded and set the bag back on her hip. His phone buzzed in his pocket.

“That’s Nino,” Adrien commented after he read the text. “He says that Alya had to go home and that he’s going with her.”

“She must have to babysit her sisters,” She assumed.

“I would guess so.” Adrien put his phone away. “Well, Nino and I were coming in to ask if you two wanted to go to the park, but I guess that since Alya and Nino are gone we can do something else.”

Marinette shook her head. “We can still go to the park after we have lunch.”

“After you, Madam,” he said, bowing with an arm out to his side. Marinette giggled and went through.

Before they left, Adrien feigned that he left something in the store. He walked to the counter instead.

The worker had a smile on her face. “Hello, did you find what you wanted?”

“Yes, but it’s a surprise,” Adrien told her. “My friend was looking at some fabric in the back and she likes the one with the watercolor flowers.”

“Ah, I see,” the name tag on the worker’s shirt told him her name was Darcy. “If you would show me the fabric in question please.”

Adrien led Darcy to where he found Marinette and showed her the fabric. Darcy picked the bolt of the display and took it to a counter where she cut off the twelve yards he requested.

“Okay, that is done and since this is a gift, I can ring you up at this counter and get an address to send it to,” Darcy said.

Soon, Adrien had paid for the fabric and had it sent to his house. He thanked her and walked out to see Marinette sitting on a bench with her sketchbook out. She was drawing clothes using the fabric he just bought.

“Ready to go?” He asked.

She nodded as she added some finishing touches. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Uh,” Adrien need to think of an excuse quickly and pulled out his wallet. “My wallet had fallen out of my pocket and Darcy, the worker, helped me find it.”

“That’s important to have.” She closed her sketchbook and put it in her bag carefully. She stood up and they then were on their way.

Aimless chatter filled their walk to a restaurant near the park. In no time, they had arrived.

Adrien held the door open for Marinette. “Thank you, kind sir,” she said with a half curtsy.

He responded in kind. “T’was my pleasure, Madam.”

She was giggling as he requested a table for them. The host sat them at a table on the wall.

“Do you understand the assignment the Mlle. Bustier gave us?” Marinette asked after they ordered their drinks.

“Yeah, I did.” Adrien picked up the menu. “Did you need help on it?”

Marinette nodded. “I didn’t understand question seven and question twelve. Alya tried to explain it but she rage quit on me.”

“I could help you with it.”

“That would save me,” Marinette said. She ran her finger over the menu. “I don’t know what I should get.”

“How about you close your eyes, move your finger around randomly and which meal you land on you get?” He used this tactic many times. There have been a few misses with meals, but overall it had worked out.

“Okay,” she agreed and followed his instructions. “Looks like I’ll be having a Tartiflette.”

Adrien read over the description. “Want to share it? It sounds good.”

“Yeah, I’m not feeling too hungry right now. Maman and Papa made a big breakfast this morning.” Marinette sat her menu down.

“It works out. How is the bakery doing by the way?”

“Things are running smoothly. I’ve picked up a few shifts lately to help out. Maman was talking to Papa about hiring someone to lighten the load.”

Adrien perked up. “Do you think I could do it?”

“You just want to have access to all the pastries,” Marinette teased.

“You’ve got me,” he faked despair. “I shall one be with my one true love.”

“All jokes aside, I’m sure Maman would consider you but aren’t you already so busy with modeling and your extracurriculars?”

“Lately, Father has shortened the number of photoshoots I do and fencing isn’t in season,” Adrien says. “I’ll have time for working at the bakery.”

“I’m surprised that he’s having fewer shoots without you.”

“I am too, but I’m not going to question it. I have more freedom to do what I would like.” Adrien smiled at the memories that popped up of their adventures.

Their food had arrived and the conversation turned to lighter topics. Adrien had never felt so full of that indescribable feeling.

Plagg floated around Adrien’s room. He was most likely looking for Camembert. “It seems that your date went well,” the glutton said.

“It wasn’t a date, Plagg,” Adrien said as he changed into his pajamas. “She’s a friend and we hung out today.”

“Didn’t seem like it,” Plagg stopped in front of Adrien’s face. “If I had witnessed this, and I did, I would say that it was a date.”

“How would it be a date?”

Plagg tapped his paw. “First, you go shopping together all the while staring at her.”

“We were with Alya and Nino,” Adrien added.

“They left, kid,” Plagg said bluntly. “Next was lunch. I know for a fact that you paid and you two shared a meal. That and the park where the flowers were blooming and you were practically sitting on each other.”

A blush rose to the blonde’s cheeks. “It got cold.”

“You just don’t want to admit it.” Plagg taunted him as he waved the Camembert he found.

“There’s nothing to admit. We’re just friends.” Adrien sat on his bed. “Good night, Plagg.”

Plagg sighed. “Good night, Adrien.”

Was she really just a friend? He thought as his holder fell asleep.

#adrinetteapril2019 #adrien agreste #adrienette #marinette dupain cheng #miraculous ladybug #mlb #she just a friend #no #adrien #she isnt

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elvsium-blog · 6 years ago

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⊰ ⦂ ⋰ * ✧ [ LUCY LIU, FORTY-NINE, CISFEMALE, SHE/HER ] have you seen ANNA SUN around san francisco ? it’s been said that they have been in the city for TEN YEARS and works as an ANTIQUITIES DEALER. if you look closely, you can see that they are INTELLIGENT AND LEVEL HEADED but look further still and you’ll see that they can also be HARSH AND UNCOMPROMISING.

what up, i’m christa, i’m 24, and i never fucking learned how to talk about myself. i’m super excited to be here, bringing you all an actual goddess anna ! you can hit the cut for more info about her. leave a like on this and i’ll hit you up to plot, OR you can find me on discord @ stfu christa#3644.

basics ;

birth name: sun zhi ruo. ( 孫芷若 )

american name: angelica sun, shortened to anna sun.

age + d.o.b.: forty-nine years old. august 23rd, 1969.

zodiac sign: virgo.

nationality: chinese-american.

ethnicity: han chinese.

sexual orientation: bisexual.

gender: cisfemale.

education: doctorate of archaeology from princeton university.

occupation: archaeologist. artist. former professor of archaeology at nyu. currently works as an antiquities dealer for the fine arts museum of san francisco.

fluent languagues: english. mandarin chinese. classical chinese. classical latin. ancient greek. ancient hebrew. classical arabic.

relationship status: single.

notable features: cheekbones. her jawline. she’s on the short side ( 5′3″ ) and has a slender, feminine figure. her cheeks and the bridge of her nose are dusted with freckles. aging like fine wine... but for real, she’s 49 and doesn’t look a day over 35.

bio ;

she was born in new york city to first gen. chinese immigrants. the entire family lived in an apartment above the antique store that her parents owned in the tribeca neighborhood of manhattan. she was an only child, but the store was a busy place, so she was never really lonely.

growing up in an antique store gave her a deep love of “ old things, ” although she eventually took it farther than selling old chairs and porcelain dolls to collectors.

all throughout school she was a pretty average student in math and science, but she excelled in history and literature. after graduating from the beekman school at the age of 18, she attended princeton university where she majored in, and eventually earned a doctorate in, archaeology.

as an archaeologist, she worked in the field all over the world. most of her work centered in the mediterranean region. the greek islands, italy, turkey, and various parts of the middle east. she had some lara croft vibes™ going.

when she was 33 years old, her parents died in a fire that consumed both their store and the apartment upstairs where she grew up. she was in rhodes at the time, and she was inconsolable. just like that, her entire family was gone.

it made her consider settling down and getting married. at 35, she got involved with a woman that she considered the love of her life. they moved in together, and were in a stable relationship for three years. anna got a job at nyu as a professor so that she wouldn’t have to be away from home for months at a time on archaeological digs. the two of them had plans to get married and start a family together...

and then they didn’t. things fell apart. badly. they broke up when anna was 38. when the fine arts museum of san francisco offered her a position, she practically jumped on the chance to leave new york behind and move completely across the country.

she’s worked as an antiquities dealer since. she identifies, buys, and cares for “ antique ” art and sculptures. things from ancient egypt, ancient greece, and ancient rome. pieces of art that can be up to 5,000 years old.

misc ;

learning to repair old paintings meant that she had to learn how to paint, and she’s since found a passion for art. she does a bit of painting of her own, but nothing that she would consider selling.

field work left her very athletic, but even now that she no longer works on archaeological sites, she does martial arts and goes to the gym regularly to keep in shape. could possibly kick your ass.

ridiculously smart about history and languages and literature. like... hella smart. but can barely do basic math in her head and uses the calculator on her phone way more than she cares to admit.

character inspo is diana prince / wonder woman from the dceu, lara croft, and athena.

connections ;

artsy pals. people who are artists, or just enjoy art. people who might hang around the museum, or around the stores where anna buys art supplies.

gym buddies or a personal trainer.

friends she can drink with. anna is a Whiskey Mom. let her make you a crown and coke while you complain about your week.

she is currently thinking of looking into adopting a child, so i’d love some connects with muses who are parents. people who can possibly help her, give her advice, etc.

younger muses she can be a Mom Friend for.

fake dating, wedding date, etc.* she’d make a hella impressive date to show off to your family, ngl.

fwb.*

exes.*

someone that will affectionately call her freckles, pls and thx.

* since anna is quite a bit older than a lot of other muses here, i’m gonna be selective about any romantic connections ( even if they’re fake, or one night stands ) to prevent any uncomfortable age gaps. so i’ll only consider muses who are 35+ for any romantic or sexual relationships.

#* . ˚ ◝ 002. — out of character › intro.#golden.intro #finally home from work so i can get this posted #catch me in the starter tag.... soon

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years ago

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Damage to Children’s Education — And Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime

Before the pandemic, 16-year-old Na’ryen Cayou had everything he needed. He had his own room. A partial scholarship to a boys’ prep school. A spot playing trombone in the marching band, performing in parades all over New Orleans.

Then covid-19 blew through the Big Easy like a hurricane, washing away nearly everything that helped him feel safe and secure. Schools shut down. His mom lost her job and couldn’t make the rent. Their landlord evicted them.

Na’ryen and his mom now live with his grandmother. His mom sleeps on one couch; he sleeps on the other. He spent half the school year in virtual learning rather than in class with friends. Although he has struggled with math and chemistry, his mother, Nakia Lewis, said there’s no money for a tutor.

“He went through a real deep depression,” said Lewis, 45, a single mother with two older daughters living on their own. “This is nothing anyone could have prepared them for.”

As Americans crowd into restaurants, line up at movie theaters and pack their bags for summer travel, people are understandably eager to put the pandemic behind them. Yet kids like Na’ryen won’t rebound quickly. Some won’t recover at all.

After more than a year of isolation, widespread financial insecurity and the loss of an unprecedented amount of classroom time, experts say many of the youngest Americans have fallen behind socially, academically and emotionally in ways that could harm their physical and mental health for years or even decades.

“This could affect a whole generation for the rest of their lives,” said Dr. Jack Shonkoff, a pediatrician and director of the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University. “All kids will be affected. Some will get through this and be fine. They will learn from it and grow. But lots of kids are going to be in big trouble.”

Many kids will go back to school this fall without having mastered the previous year’s curriculum. Some kids have disappeared from school altogether, and educators worry that more students will drop out. Between school closures and reduced instructional time, the average U.S. child has lost the equivalent of five to nine months of learning during the pandemic, according to a report from McKinsey & Co.

Educational losses have been even greater for some minorities. Black and Hispanic students — whose parents are more likely to have lost jobs and whose schools were less likely to reopen for in-person instruction — missed six to 12 months of learning, according to the McKinsey report.

Missing educational opportunities doesn’t just deprive kids of better careers; it can also cost them years of life. In study after study, researchers have found that people with less education die younger than those with more.

Schools across the country were closed for an average of 54 days in spring 2020, and many provided little to no virtual instruction, said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. A study he co-authored found the learning that kids missed during that time could shorten an elementary school boy’s life by eight months and a girl’s by more than five months.

The total loss of life would be even larger when factoring in the loss of instructional time in the school year that just ended, Christakis said. “We’ve interrupted children’s education, and it’s going to have a significant impact on their health and longevity,” he said. “The effects will linger a very long time.”

Assaulted on All Sides

The double hit from the pandemic, which has impoverished millions of children and deprived them of classroom time, will be too much for some to overcome.

“Living in poverty, even as a child, has health consequences for decades to come,” said Dr. Hilary Seligman, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “Children in poverty will have higher risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”

A growing body of research shows that poverty reshapes the way children’s brains develop, altering both the structure of the brain and the chemicals that transmit signals. These changes can alter how children react to stress and reduce their long-term health and educational achievements.

“Adversity literally shapes the developing brain,” said Shonkoff, of Harvard. “It affects your memory, your ability to organize information, to control impulses.”

Chronic stress in children can lead to persistent inflammation that damages the immune system, raises blood sugar and accelerates hardening of the arteries. The heart disease that kills someone in midlife can actually begin in childhood, Shonkoff said.

“What happens to children early on doesn’t just affect early language and school readiness, but the early foundations of lifelong health,” he said.

More Kids Going Hungry

The pandemic has deprived millions of children of school-related services that normally blunt the harm caused by poverty.

From March to May 2020, students missed more than 1.1 billion free or reduced-price meals that would have been provided in school.

Children who experience even occasional “food insecurity” suffer two to four times as many health problems as other kids at the same income level, said Dr. Deborah Frank, director of the Grow Clinic for Children at Boston Medical Center.

Kids who don’t consistently eat nutritious meals are more likely to develop anemia, more likely to be hospitalized and more susceptible to lead poisoning, Frank said. They also are more likely to behave aggressively and suffer from hyperactivity, depression and anxiety.

The consequences of food insecurity last well into adulthood, she said, increasing the risk of substance abuse, arrest and suicidal thoughts. “There’s going to be educational and emotional fallout that won’t disappear right away,” Frank said. “These kids have endured a year and a half of deprivation. You can’t sweep all that under the rug.”

Kids at the Breaking Point

Young people are already showing signs of strain.

The proportion of emergency room visits related to mental health among kids 12 to 17 increased 31% from 2019 to 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although overall suicide deaths haven’t increased during the pandemic, as many feared, teens are making more attempts. ERs treated 50% more adolescent girls and 4% more boys for suspected suicide attempts in February and March 2021 than in those months the year before.

Diagnoses of obsessive-compulsive disorder have soared 41% among girls 12 to 18, according to a June report from Epic Health Research Network. Diagnoses of eating disorders have jumped 38% among girls and 5% among boys.

Many children separated from their peers during the pandemic have been depressed and anxious, said Dr. Lisa Tuchman, chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

“Mental illness thrives in isolation,” Tuchman said. “The longer the behaviors and thoughts persist, the more entrenched they become and the harder they are to interrupt.”

Falling Behind in School

The loss of educational opportunities has been far more extensive than many realize. Although the majority of students were back in classrooms by the end of the last school year, most spent a large part of the year in virtual learning.

And while some students thrive in virtual classes, studies generally find they provide an inferior education to in-person instruction, partly because students are less engaged. Just 60% of students consistently participated in distance learning, recent surveys found.

Test scores show students have fallen behind in math and reading. And those scores likely underestimate the damage, given that some of the most vulnerable kids weren’t able to report to school for the exams.

An estimated 3 million marginalized students — including those who are homeless or in foster care — received no instruction during the past school year, either because they had no computer or internet access, had to leave school to work or faced other challenges, according to Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit that focuses on disadvantaged students.

Less-educated students can expect to earn less after they leave school.

Lost educational time will cost the average child $61,000 to $82,000 in lifetime earnings, McKinsey concluded. Lifetime earning losses are predicted to be twice as great for Black and Hispanic students as for whites.

“Many of the teens I see have given up on school and are working instead,” said Dr. Sara Bode, a pediatrician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s helping their families in the short term, but what does it mean for their future?”

Learning From Katrina

Experience with natural disasters and teacher strikes suggests that even relatively short interruptions in education can set children back years, said McKinsey analyst Jimmy Sarakatsannis, co-author of a 2020 report, “COVID-19 and Student Learning in the United States: The Hurt Could Last a Lifetime.”

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, for example, it disrupted the education of 187,000 Louisiana public school students.

Katrina left 80% of the city under water. Although New Orleans students missed an average of five weeks of learning, children wound up two years behind peers not affected by the hurricane, said Douglas Harris, professor and chair of economics at Tulane University.

Na’ryen Cayou was just 2 months old when Katrina submerged his house, leaving the family homeless. He contracted whooping cough in an emergency shelter, the first of four moves in eight months. His sister, O’re’ion Lewis, then 4, didn’t attend school at all that year. When she finally began prekindergarten at age 5, the other kids “were already ahead of her,” mom Nakia Lewis said. For a time, teachers even mislabeled O’re’ion as having dyslexia. It took five years — from prekindergarten until fourth grade — before she finally caught up with her peers, Lewis said.

It will be years before researchers know how far behind the pandemic will have left American kids.

After Katrina, 14% to 20% of students never returned to school, according to the McKinsey report. “As kids fall further behind, they feel hopeless; they don’t engage,” said Sarakatsannis, one of its authors.

Under normal circumstances, high school students who miss more than 10 days of school are 36% more likely to drop out. Based on the number of absences during the pandemic, dropout rates could increase by 2% to 9%, with up to 1.1 million kids quitting school, Sarakatsannis said.

Communities need to find ways to repair the damage children have suffered, said Dr. Gabrielle Shapiro, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Children, Adolescents and their Families. “How we behave as a society now will determine the depth of the impact on the younger generation.”

Nakia Lewis is hoping for better days.

O’re’ion is now 20 and studying nursing at community college. Although her classes were virtual last year, she expects to attend class in person in the fall.

Lewis recently landed a job as a manager at a Shoney’s restaurant and is looking for an affordable home. She looks forward to reclaiming her furniture, which went into storage — at $375 a month — when she was evicted.

She said she’s relieved that Na’ryen’s mood has improved. He found a summer job working part time at a food market and will begin marching band practice this summer.

“He is happy and I’m happy for him,” Lewis said. “Now I just have to worry about everything else.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Damage to Children’s Education — And Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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stephenmccull · 4 years ago

Text

Damage to Children’s Education — And Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime

“He went through a real deep depression,” said Lewis, 45, a single mother with two older daughters living on their own. “This is nothing anyone could have prepared them for.”

Assaulted on All Sides

The double hit from the pandemic, which has impoverished millions of children and deprived them of classroom time, will be too much for some to overcome.

“Adversity literally shapes the developing brain,” said Shonkoff, of Harvard. “It affects your memory, your ability to organize information, to control impulses.”

“What happens to children early on doesn’t just affect early language and school readiness, but the early foundations of lifelong health,” he said.

More Kids Going Hungry

The pandemic has deprived millions of children of school-related services that normally blunt the harm caused by poverty.

From March to May 2020, students missed more than 1.1 billion free or reduced-price meals that would have been provided in school.

Kids at the Breaking Point

Young people are already showing signs of strain.

The proportion of emergency room visits related to mental health among kids 12 to 17 increased 31% from 2019 to 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Mental illness thrives in isolation,” Tuchman said. “The longer the behaviors and thoughts persist, the more entrenched they become and the harder they are to interrupt.”

Falling Behind in School

Less-educated students can expect to earn less after they leave school.

Learning From Katrina

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, for example, it disrupted the education of 187,000 Louisiana public school students.

It will be years before researchers know how far behind the pandemic will have left American kids.

Nakia Lewis is hoping for better days.

O’re’ion is now 20 and studying nursing at community college. Although her classes were virtual last year, she expects to attend class in person in the fall.

She said she’s relieved that Na’ryen’s mood has improved. He found a summer job working part time at a food market and will begin marching band practice this summer.

“He is happy and I’m happy for him,” Lewis said. “Now I just have to worry about everything else.”

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Damage to Children’s Education — And Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

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cryptocoinguides · 4 years ago

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HUGE! Bitcoin Price Prediction

Hello and welcome back to Crypto Lion. Today, we’ll be discussing whether you can retire early through Bitcoin and subscribe to this channel to see more videos like this one. Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency to ever be created, sparking the birth of an entire industry and thousands upon thousands of old coins to be created in its image. Not only is Bitcoin the first of its kind, but it’s been designed to disrupt and replace paper-based fiat currencies to become the global digital currency used by the entire population, regardless of what country or region they live in.

Bitcoin price has lately become the hot button topic since the forefather of old cryptocurrencies is making headway and revisiting its highest price level at twenty thousand dollars established on December 17th, 2017.

However, a wise investor should always think far ahead and ask themselves what Bitcoin will be worth in five years. We’d also like to offer our Bitcoin price prediction for the next five to 10 years, taking into account the Bitcoin price history and its fundamental value. Needless to say that ever since people announced that it’s stepping into the cryptocurrency space by offering its three hundred and sixty million users an option to buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin, cash, and Litecoin directly on its online platform, the price of Bitcoin has been pumping hard. The performance profile of the first cryptocurrency looks as follows eighty-seven point four percent of the upside against the US in one year, forty-two point three percent gain in a month, and five-point four percent price appreciation in the past seven days.

This is undoubtedly bullish performance and it’s had a significant impact on the alignment of forces, so to speak, on the Bitcoin historical chart, the Bitcoin price chart for the year ahead.

Twenty twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-five, and twenty-thirty confirm that the uptrend will persist throughout that period of time. Our Bitcoin price prediction model suggests that in six months, Bitcoin will be worth twenty-eight thousand three hundred and thirty dollars, whereas the 12-month projection puts Bitcoin at thirty-eight thousand one hundred and four dollars, which marks one hundred and thirty-five percent price appreciation. This price expectation is supported by the fact that the famo around the cryptocurrency hasn’t even kicked in yet. As the Google search data still shows that the interest in Bitcoin remains quite low, especially when compared to that of twenty seventeen.

Besides, the majority of search inquiries about Bitcoin price come from developing countries, which is great for adoption purposes but also signifies the fact that retail investors from the first world economies haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet.

Once they do, the US disvalue of Bitcoin will rise exponentially. So there is little to no doubt that the all-time high is going to be met and surpassed over the course of this year, despite the fact that Bitcoin remains a risky asset that has the proclivity towards significant price fluctuations like those we’ve witnessed during twenty 20 this cryptocurrency as one important trait, which is adding a zero to its price at least once every few years.

Right now, we might be looking at the nascent stage of the bull market that could last for three to five years, since the cryptocurrency industry itself in the market by association has been getting more mature, which means more protracted but also more sustainable periods of market growth before it naturally begins to degrade. One Bloomberg analyst claims that the maturity time during which Bitcoin goes from one price hike to another tends to double with every cycle, which puts Bitcoin price and USD at over one hundred thousand dollars by twenty twenty-five and beyond.

In four years, the price of Bitcoin will shoot up by one thousand four hundred and sixteen percent and put a two hundred and forty-six thousand dollar price tag on it.

And to answer the question, what will bitcoin be worth in twenty, twenty-five? Our model insists that Bitcoin will rise to the stratosphere by about two thousand nine hundred and thirteen percent and end up being valued at four hundred eighty-eight thousand eight hundred eighty-six dollars. Our prediction falls in line with that of Max Keiser, the well-known broadcaster and Bitcoin proponent who sees Bitcoin at four hundred thousand dollars in the next few years.

To summarize, in five years Bitcoin will be worth anywhere from one hundred thousand dollars to four hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars, which suggests that now might be the best time to buy Bitcoin. Since the bull market is at the nascent stage, Bitcoin offers one of the most compelling RESCORED profiles among assets, as our analysis suggests, should scale from roughly two hundred billion dollars today to one to five trillion dollars net or capitalization during the next five to 10 years.

Whether you’re an existing or prospective investor, you’ve probably been watching Bitcoin’s recent performance obsessively.

With a current market cap of about six hundred and forty-two billion and a price of thirty-four thousand six hundred twenty dollars, Bitcoin is far outstripped its previous all time high of twenty thousand. Its bullish run began in early November, rising from thirteen thousand one hundred and twenty-four dollars to fifteen thousand four hundred sixty-three in the space of just one week. Since then, its price hasn’t slowed down. In fact, it was averaging a daily growth rate of almost a thousand dollars a day before the end of twenty-twenty.

Ever since Bitcoin came to our computers in 2009. The world of cryptocurrency has been famously hard to predict. Some people believe that crypto would never take off, while others thought that it would replace fiat money within a matter of years. Neither of those outcomes has happened yet, but we have seen the price of Bitcoin skyrocket and crash numerous times in the last decade. In twenty twenty-two, provisionally, Bitcoin expects the price of Bitcoin to reach a top price of two hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars, although this is equal to the heights that Tom Fitzpatrick has predicted in the lead, Citibank reports it’s still a very encouraging value.

The platform expects the Bitcoin asset price to hit a hundred thousand dollars in January twenty twenty-two before skyrocketing to double that by April, an incredible growth rate of more than one hundred percent in less than four months, according to this forecast November twenty twenty-two, we’ll see the price of Bitcoin fall back down to one hundred forty-six thousand, though Bitcoin price will reclaim two hundred eighty-two thousand before the end of twenty twenty two.

But do you want to retire early? I guess you might be saying no by twenty twenty-five, Bitcoin will be traded between one hundred thousand dollars and four hundred thousand dollars in twenty-thirty. Bitcoin is likely to be worth over one million with the rate of increase in Bitcoin price and shooting up with future predictions, I don’t think you should be eager to retire soon. Why not work a little bit more and enjoy a more productive income at the end?

Bitcoin price in the following ten years will be determined not as much by its supply to demand ratio as around 90 percent of the twenty-one million coins have already been mined, but rather by the rate of adoption of both block, chain, and Bitcoin.

Right now, all on-chain metrics are extremely positive for Bitcoin, which means that in 10 years’ time we’ll see a true mass adoption of Bitcoin and other strong cryptocurrencies is that might well push the price of Bitcoin to one million dollars or higher. The year 20 30 could catch investors in the midst of the third bull market. That is likely to begin taking shape in twenty twenty-four after the next Bitcoin having an event that will cut the block reward to three thousand one hundred twenty-five coins and ultimately shorten the supply and drop the inflation rate. Plus, let’s not forget that Bitcoin represents arguably the most lucrative market for millennials and the people of Generation X who are likely to choose a digital asset over something like commodities and property, thus bringing Bitcoin’s market capitalization and its price to a whole new level.

The recent bull run in the crypto markets has been incredibly exciting to watch, with Bitcoin smashing records in early January after surging to forty-one thousand nine hundred forty-one dollars. Institutional adoption has led to a favorable forecast in the short term, but for investors who are concerned, they may be buying at a bad time.

Bitcoin price prediction for twenty twenty-five can prove useful. Bitcoin’s market cap has the potential to reach three trillion dollars in just four years’ time. This would result in a price of bitcoin of about one hundred and forty thousand dollars, although triple-digit growth may seem exceedingly outlandish.

Do remember that Bitcoin achieved this and much more in twenty-twenty alone. Here’s some proof of the rise in Bitcoin price in the future, Robert Kiyosaki, New York Times best selling author of the book Rich Dad.

Poor Dad has been recommending his followers to buy gold and bitcoin. He calls for gold to reach three thousand an ounce and Bitcoin to reach seventy-five thousand dollars within the next three years. Max Keiser, investor, and host of the Kaisa Report call for one hundred thousand dollar Bitcoin in the short term, but four hundred thousand dollars in the long term is one of Bitcoin’s most outspoken bulls, calling for one hundred thousand dollars since the asset was just trading at one dollar.

His new one hundred thousand dollar target those for the end of twenty-twenty. Meanwhile, four hundred thousand is a long-term goal to do the coronavirus and the comparison to gold. Bitcoin developer and early electronic cash pioneer Adam Beck says the Bitcoin should reach as high as three hundred thousand dollars over the next several years.

The price of Bitcoin will peak in twenty twenty-three at one hundred thirty thousand dollars over the next two years. Bitcoin price will continue to climb before falling again in the run-up to twenty twenty-six.

We believe the bitcoin will hit the following yearly highs. One hundred and twenty-one thousand eight hundred seventy-one and twenty twenty two, an all-time high of one hundred and thirty thousand in twenty twenty-three.

Twenty twenty-four would see a drop back down to ninety thousand and closing off twenty twenty-five at any nine thousand dollars. This outlook is ultimately a mix of good and bad news for any investors who are worried that Bitcoin’s bullish run will proceed to a massive and sudden crash that will take it back to its predecessor prices.

It’s an encouraging sign, and just like a new bull market started and the bubble pattern began again right after each hardcoded, having another one is due towards the end of twenty twenty-four and into twenty twenty-five.

Twenty twenty-five should line up. Well, with the current price action since the having takes place roughly every four years, giving Bitcoin a unique four-year market cycle, considering all of the massive price projections and forecasts from industry experts, that’s just bitcoin will someday replace all currencies across the globe. It’s easy to see why so many are bullish on Bitcoin and why Bitcoin price predictions can reach such high numbers.

The revolutionary technology has sparked an entire industry aimed at disrupting traditional finance, and cryptocurrencies are already well on their way to widespread adoption and regular use by the mainstream public. With Bitcoin about to take off on yet another bull run, the opportunity to profit has never been greater.

And with Bitcoin price expected to reach a hundred thousand dollars to as much as one million per bitcoin, it’s never too late to get started. We hope you enjoyed this video, and if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Subscribe and click on that notification. Bill, what other bitcoin topics would you like us to talk about? Let us know in the comments below.

Read More: Litecoin LTC Price Prediction 2021

via HUGE! Bitcoin Price Prediction

#bitcoin news #ethereum news #xrp news #cardano news #crypto news #best cryptocurrency to buy #best crypt

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thefinalcinderella · 7 years ago

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DIVE!! Book 3 Chapter 10-CHAMPION TOMOKI

The penultimate chapter! Looking back, this title’s pretty funny.

This chapter is very long, so I recommend reading this on desktop.

Full list of translations here

Previously on DIVE!!: Youichi spills his sad, kind of pathetic life story.

November 28, 1:30 P.M. In the northern part of Kanagawa prefecture, a huge crowd of people hailing from many different regions gathered at the “Sagamihara Green Pool,” located on the Sagamihara Plateau.

The verdant green Yokoyama Park housed a tennis court, baseball field, a track-and-field stadium, and other facilities. The pool was situated in that part, built in 1998 for the National Athletic Meet in Kanagawa, and had a huge dome-shape exterior as well as a white and grey, modern-looking interior. At a glance, it still looked young.

On the contrary, the age groups of the spectators who filled the stands on this day were older, enshrouded in a banqueting mood that was closer to cherry-blossom viewing rather than watching sports. They were people cheering on the “Underwater Walking Championship・National Seniors’ Competition” going on at the main pool.

Meanwhile, the stands for the men’s high diving finals of the Sino-Japanese Diving Competition at the diving pool were as empty and desolate as ever. The top two Japanese divers who earn more than 600 points in this competition would be given the right to represent at the Olympics. Because of the JASF launching such a plan, the number of people who wished to participate had drastically increased, and thanks to the qualifiers being in the morning, there was an unusually large number of spectators. But as the athletes were eliminated by the qualifiers, the buzz in the stands also faded. Still remaining in the completely deserted seats were the people who were concerned with the twelve advancing into the finals.

In the midst of the different DCs and families forming their own little clusters, there was one diver who got the attention of the diving-concerned parties while staying still in a corner of the upper seats, away from the MDC group.

It was Youichi.

Despite his plain outfit of black hoodie and khakis, Youichi at times had attention attracted more to himself than to the athletes on the platform. That was understandable, as he was someone in the middle of a maelstrom who had come to calmly spectate.

Wherever it leaked from, the story that Youichi had directly appealed to Chairman Maebara had already reached every corner of the diving world. That Fujitani Youichi had returned the unofficial representative nominations to a blank slate by himself—an overwhelming number of people had criticized it as an arrogant, foolish act. Or coldly scorned it. Not to mention, there was something extraordinary about the resentment of everyone involved with the MDC, who had lost their guarantee of continued club operation thanks to Youichi. His clubmates and guardians privately and openly vented their disappointment in him, who had been a star until recently. The President of Mizuki promptly announced the withholding of his commercial appearance. His father Keisuke, since he learned of Youichi’s reckless action, did not try to make eye contact with him if he wasn’t only going to say a single word—.

In the midst of those intense criticism, that were more than he had expected, Youichi had never once explained himself. Even if he did do it, he himself had no reasons to make everyone accept it. He only wanted to go to the path that he himself accepted, and if the compensation for that was being talked about being his back as an “idiot” and “weirdo” and “egoist”, then he was willing to resign himself to it.

Although, he wasn’t completely isolated. People such as Yoriko and Kayoko, the officials who were critical of the JASF’s way of doing things from the start, and the divers who had a chance to go to the Olympics thanks to this unexpected result, defended and supported Youichi from different points of view.

On this day of destiny, Shibuki materialized on the stands right before the start of the finals, and sat down with a thump next to Youichi. He was, once again, one of those few allies of his.

“How were the qualifiers?”

Shibuki asked Youichi as he yawned. He pushed his bed hair against the back of his seat. He had probably been sleeping until noon.

“The one who passed to the top was the seventy-two-year-old old man, Yamanouchi Tatsuo, from Saitama.” Youichi answered.

“What?” The look in Shibuki’s eyes changed. “That’s…no way. Impossible.”

“It is, since he was in the over-70 category of the Underwater Walking Championships.”

Shibuki scowled at him. “I’m talking about diving, of course.”

“If you cared about it, get up earlier and come watch it. It was pretty impressive. Everyone’s been going all out since the qualifiers.”

“So, who went to the top?”

“Of course Teramoto-san. Reiji got eliminated in eighteenth place, and Tomo advanced to the finals in sixth place. Plus, among the nine Japanese people left in the finals, Tomo’s fourth. He’s not practicing that desperately just for show.”

“There’s nine Japanese people left in the finals…?” Shibuki repeated in a sober voice. “Two of those people who get more than 600 points will get to hug the koalas.”

“No, except for Teramoto-san who has been settled upon for Sydney, there’s just one person left. Teramoto-san has immediately earned 600 points in yesterday’s springboard competition, so he’s already clear. He really is incredible.”

“One person left…”

Both of them turned their humbled gazes towards the diving tower.

The concrete dragon, backed by a window that looked out at the greenery, was coloured by the faint afternoon sunlight and the light from the ceiling, waiting for its challengers. The twelve athletes who passed the qualifiers stood in a line at the bottom of the steps in order of descending rank, doing light jumps and revolving their arms as they prepared for the start of the finals. It’s said that observers could understand the condition of an athlete just by watching those movements, but Tomoki’s movements were natural and without strain, making one feel an unprecedented stability.

“Did you talk to Sakai?”

“Oh, just a little after the qualifiers. I was thinking of telling him that I came to watch out for him if he was going to do a flat performance, but when I saw him looking so happy from passing with a sixth place, I became too mean. So I said something completely different like, ‘I’m never going to forgive you if you get more than 600 points.’”

“You’re pretty childish too,” Shibuki placed his thick palm on Youichi’s shoulder. “But, I’m finding that complicated personality of yours more and more interesting. You’re usually smart, but at the most crucial moment, you also managed to do the most foolish thing in the world.”

“You’re also foolish enough like that. You’re not sane at all to withdraw at the very last moment from the competition that would have let you go to Sydney. The title of the world’s biggest fool is perfect for you.”

“No, I was…told by the doctor to rest my back for a while longer. I’m already using small amounts of energy to do the techniques I’m doing now.”

“Those new dives? I heard that you’re doing secret special training with Asaki Kayoko, but what on earth are you guys doing?”

“I’m not telling. Or rather, if I have to say something, they’re techniques like the end of an impact match.” (1)

“What the hell is that?”

“See it with your own eyes next month.”

“But, if a Japanese person other than Teramoto-san gets more than 600 points in the competition, there won’t be a next one.”

“At that time, let’s dive together into the sea, even. I’ve told you before, but I returned in order to dive once more with you guys. For that, the stage can be anywhere.”

To the cheerfully smiling Shibuki, Youichi was now able to return an open smile.

“The sea? That’s not bad. But that’s talk for when I return from Sydney.”

Right then, a solemn voice announced the beginning of the finals.

Was the harsh condition of 600 points a stroke of good fortune? The Olympic right to represent was granted at the finals, where a barrage of performances overflowing with vigour followed one after the other, becoming a high-level battle that was rarely seen. Nonetheless, 600 points was a post too far for divers.

As Chairman Maebara said, 600 points was not a superficial score. Even in the three-year period between 1996 to 1998, there were only three divers who earned over 600 points throughout all of the domestic competitions. Except for Teramoto, two of them had already retired.

Incidentally, during those three years, the average score for the winners of boys’ high diving at the Middle School Selections was only 265 points. Will Tomoki, who had never advanced to Nationals from the Middle School Selections, be introduced to the overwhelming gap between him and Teramoto Kenichirou, who boasted a superhuman record of 670 points as his highest core?

However, Tomoki was shortening that gap at a terrifying speed under Kayoko’s coaching. Youichi was always conscious of the existence that was steadily approaching him from behind, and as he watched the competition, he held the fear that maybe Tomoki wasn’t chasing after him, but Teramoto. The Tomoki of this day was so bright, that each of his performances shining with an unprecedented, sharp power.

Meanwhile, though the Chinese divers that Coach Sun led were still rookies in their home country, they knew all about “showy performances.” Their inherent flexibility, sense of speed, and level of perfection of techniques—all the Japanese divers were relieved that they weren’t competing against them for the Olympic representation right. It was probably because of their obsession of “I want to win everything” did not compare to that of the Japanese that the Chinese influence made little progress into the finals.

The scores of the top six at the end of the first half (restricted-choice dives) were as follows:

1 Teramoto Kenichirou—232.40

2 Dai Yi-Chen—217.51

3 Oomiya Izumu—211.58

4 Sakai Tomoki—210.22

5 Huang Liang—181.37

6 Pinky Yamada—179.08

At this competition, where university, high school, and adult divers from all over the country, as well as the Chinese divers, exhausted their hardest efforts, Tomoki had somehow emerged at fourth place.

“Well, this…might be kind of dangerous.”

“It is. This isn’t a joke at all.”

During the twenty-minute rest time, Youichi and Shibuki were filled with a trepidation as they waited for the second half in the stands, a sorrow floating behind their backs like travellers who missed getting on a ship that only came once in four years.

They never thought that Tomoki would have made such strenuous efforts up to this point. If there was a possibility of someone else other than Teramoto getting more than 600 points, right now, it would probably be the third-place Oomiya of the Nippon Sport Science University. However, given the situation, they couldn’t help but admit that that estimate was too optimistic.

“The problem is the degree of difficulty.” Youichi calmly analyzed. “Tomo has 210 points right now, so he’ll need to take 390 points for the free-choice dives in order to surpass 600 points. Meaning, he’ll need an average of 65 points for each performance…damn! Even I never did that. What’s more, since he doesn’t have techniques with such high difficulty rates, if he is to get an average of 65 points, he’ll need to perform all six entries perfectly.”

“Is he going to do the 4½?”

“No,” Youichi whispered in response to Shibuki’s suddenly low voice. “Asaki Kayoko stopped him. She told him that it was too reckless to do a technique that he still hadn’t succeeded at even once at a competition. It’s a wise decision.”

“Especially with this development.”

They looked at each other, then sighed deeply at the same time.

“If Sakai ends up going to Sydney, would we be able to see him off with a smile?”

“Impossible. I’m going to secretly send back the moth orchids that I got from Tomo with express delivery. They’re a bit withered.”

Though he murmured that with faraway eyes, in truth, Youichi still couldn’t believe in Tomoki’s victory. He would never be able to do all six free-choice dives perfectly, he made light of him somewhere within.

Even Teramoto failed once or twice doing competitions. However, because Teramoto’s dives had dizzyingly high degrees of difficulty, he was able to easily surpass 600 points. Tomoki could not tolerate small mistakes, much less failures.

An average of 65 points. Right now, that’s still too far away—.

When the main pool erupted with cheers for the winning team of the “Backwards Walking Relay,” Youichi continued to stubbornly think that.

However, victory or defeat cannot be known.

Contrary to Youichi’s prediction, Tomoki had somehow managed to complete three rounds of the second half’s free-choice dives perfectly without making a single mistake.

His average score was 61.4 points.

Although he stopped short of 65 points, this made everyone doubt their own eyes.

On the contrary, the performances of the veteran Oomiya had become more passive as he entered the second half, a painful mistake in somersault after the third round causing him to descend in rank. With that, Tomoki finally climbed up to second-place among the Japanese divers.

First place was of course Teramoto, and his victory will have already been decided once the last three rounds were over, but Japan’s reigning champion still continued to dive to the end with his full power. It was the usual for him to force a battle with himself in domestic competitions with no worthy rivals. Nobody could be motivated without fighting spirit, aspirations, or anything to drive themselves on with. That loneliness, that irritation, and that heavy pressure—it was as though his diving was sending all of those things flying, and there was no reason for spectators to not be moved by it.

Whether or not the champion’s vigour inspired him, Tomoki’s performances became more and more tinged with an intensity that approached ghastliness as he advanced into the competition, and he finally registered a high score of 66.23 points for his fourth entry.

There were two more entries left.

At this stage, Tomoki had 460.65 points.

139.35 points more until the desired 600 points.

Calculating the degrees of difficulty from the last two rounds, Tomoki would only be bound for Sydney if five judges (among the seven, the highest and lowest scores are excluded) gave more than 9 points.

Five of the judges giving 9 or more points. Was such a thing possible or impossible? Nobody could have predicted this, and the stands of the diving pool were covered with a suffocating feeling of tension.

Youichi was also very tense, and as he was desperately suppressing his body that was going to lash out if he lost focus, he never moved his eyes away from Tomoki, who had transformed into something else.

On the contrary, he might had become an enemy.

Perhaps because he was too tense, when it was finally the crucial fifth round, he had to leave his seat.

He couldn’t hold in the urge to go to the washroom any longer.

He quickly slipped through the exit, and ran to the washroom outside the venue. He suppressed his impetuous feelings and released what he had been holding in. Even at that moment, Youichi’s mind was still in the venue.

There’s no way he can get it. Even if Tomoki hid an unpredictable and explosive hidden power, there’s no way he can get an average of 69 points…

As he recited those spell-like words in his heart, the shadow of a person slowly walked towards him from behind, lining up shoulder to shoulder next to Youichi. Despite the fact that the washroom was virtually empty, it was as though they expressly aimed to stand right next to him.

Déjà vu. It seemed like something like this happened somewhere before…

Youichi looked towards them in surprise, and sure enough, there was Chairman Maebara, with a smile in his eyes that showed that he was probably up to something, doing his business as vigorously as ever.

“I didn’t expect you to come.”

A strange second meeting due to a strange destiny.

Although it was expected that Chairman Maebara would only show up at an important competition that wagered the Olympic right of representation, he never thought that they’d meet again in this sort of place.

“The home country of the four people invited this time has a fable called “The Snipe and the Clam” (2). While someone is disputing with someone else, an unrelated third party gets all of the benefits. As expected, people on the continent say good things. I just wanted to offer these words to you. How did it ever happen that the right of representation that you’ve thrown away, is now going to be stolen away by your junior?” (3)

Youichi returned an undaunted, forced smile, as he always did when dealing with provocations.

“I have mixed feelings, of course. But, if this is how things are going, then I hope to do my best until the end. If Tomo gets the representation right, then I’ll grow up and accept my defeat, and then cheer him on like a good sport.”

“I see. How sportsmanlike. But, are you serious?”

“Of course it’s a joke.”

“Indeed,” Chairman Maebara nodded, looking convinced. “But, this might not end with a joke.”

“Huh?”

“Sakai Tomoki. That child is frightening.”

Leaving with those words in a low voice, he left briskly through the exit.

Youichi, who he had already finished his business with, chased after him. He wanted to use this opportunity to clarify something.

“Um, I missed the chance to ask about this before, but…well, now I feel like I don’t care about it anymore, but is there some sort of link between my unofficial Olympic nomination and the discussions of the commercial from Mizuki?”

“Link?”

“Mizuki was looking for a star to sell sports drinks. The JASF was looking for a star to spread diving into the world. So the idea that such motives had an effect on the Olympic selections is…”

“Impossible.” Chairman Maebara interrupted him before he could finish, looking annoyed. “The only stars for us, Fujitani-kun, are medalists.”

Abruptly throwing that over his shoulder, he started walking again. There was only an obsession with medals in that grey head. Everything else may have been like watermelon seeds to him. While thinking about the possibility that the JASF and Mizuki were connected, unbeknownst to Chairman Maebara, Youichi no longer tried to dig up those watermelon seeds any longer.

“Please wait. There’s one more thing…”

Instead, he voiced his second question.

“This is from more than twenty years ago, but sir, you wrote a booklet titled ‘Diving Manual,’ right? It’s a really detailed book, and it can be used as a reference even now. But, even though you live in the world of swimming, why would you write a book about diving?”

“There were two reasons. One, because my wife, who died young, was a diver. Even though she was an average diver who always lost in the qualifiers, even when she retired she would only talk about diving. And it might be because I am a sentimental man, I did for my wife something that she couldn’t do during her lifetime.”

Chairman Maebara cleared his throat, to force out the warmth that coiled around his voice somewhere.

“I wrote that book a long time after my wife passed away, but in truth, at that time there was a girl who liked divers. Her unyielding strength, and yet frightened appearance when she was on the platform was very similar to my wife. Well, to cut a long story short, I wanted to do something for that girl.”

Youichi was bewildered by that unexpected answer.

“Both of those reasons are related to women, huh.”

“Yes, they are. If you lived a little more, you’ll understand.”

He smiled meaningfully. “That’s all, I suppose?” Chairman Maebara said as he prepared to take his leave this time.

“Just one last thing.” Youichi raised a third question that had come into his mind just now.

“Have you ever touched that girl’s butt?”

Chairman Maebara, about to head back to the venue, stopped his foot in midair. The uncertain balance had been destroyed, and he turned around towards Youichi while staggering.

A mysterious smile appeared on his face.

“I wonder which one are you more interested in: my answer or the outcome of the finals?”

Youichi, taken aback, came back to his senses.

That’s right, right now it’s the climax of the finals…Tomoki’s fifth round!

It wasn’t that he had no curiosity about the last answer. However, Youichi couldn’t stop running to the venue. He was annoyed with himself for getting absorbed in talking when it was such an important time. What was happening to Tomoki in the competition?

When Youichi barged into the venue, the stands were enveloped in a strange silence. He knew by looking at the pool that it wasn’t the quiet before the storm, but after.

Tomoki was in the deep-blue pool, having just finished his fifth round.

Youichi controlled his breathing, then cautiously turned towards the electric scoreboard.

9 points.

10 points.

9.5 points.

10 points.

9 points.

8.5 points.

10 points.

Total, 71.25 points.

Overall score, 531.9 points.

Youichi reeled at the three perfect scores.

Finally, Tomoki approached the point where he had 68.1 points left until the destined 600 points.

During the competition’s first round, the golden sun was shining behind the platform, but now it was tending towards the west, pouring a smoky orange from the side windows. Popularity had died out in the main pool, where the competition had already ended, and spectators from the stands left one by one.

The venue suddenly fell completely silent. (4)

Now, a lone boy was trying to entrust his fate to only 1.4 seconds.

The last entry.

The event was the forward 3½ somersault in tuck position.

When Tomoki slowly appeared on the ten-meter to contend, Youichi saw Kayoko tightly clasp her hands together in the stands. It was she who had taught the 3½ to that carefreely innocent boy, and she who persistently and resiliently polished him. It could be said that Tomoki took his first big step to a great breakthrough with that technique. Will he be able to soar to Sydney with that technique—?

Next to Kayoko, there was Keisuke’s back, not even making the slightest movement. Next to him, Ooshima was fidgeting restlessly. Sachiya was there. Ryou had came too. Reiji, who lost in the qualifiers, was there. Everyone, including Shibuki, who was holding his breath, were watching the ten-meter platform with intense concentration.

Just as his mouth became dry just by being in the stands, what was Tomoki thinking in this crucial moment, as he stood alone on the platform?

A nauseous tension.

A crushing pressure.

A fear of failure that would never leave, even for a moment.

As Youichi painfully understood those feelings, he couldn’t help wishing that he wanted him to do his best.

He wanted him to dive his best, and fail on top of that.

Please briskly scatter everywhere!

Youichi prayed with all his power, as a short whistle sounded, and Tomoki stepped forward.

His body had become a spring, as he lightly danced high into the air. A perfect takeoff. The somersaults that came after were filled with power and speed, and his body traced a beautiful arc, like a compass, as he rotated. A satisfying 3½ without an inch of deviation. At this point, everyone was convinced that Tomoki was going to Sydney.

This was probably when Youichi, Kayoko and Keisuke saw what Tomoki was trying to do.

Tomoki had done a perfect 3½, then right before his entry, he suddenly made a strange movement at the water’s edge. As if rejecting the water, he stretched out, and sank into the water as though a thread was snapped behind his back.

A violent splash sprang up.

That pillar of water has blocked Tomoki’s path to Sydney.

For a moment, everyone was unaware of what happened.

Even though the pool was five-meters deep, the waters were choppy, as though they had swallowed a strange, unexpected object.

The seven judges were the first to return to themselves, driven by their responsibility to score. They tilted their heads, or knitted their eyebrows, as they extended their fingers to the keyboard in front of them.

5.5 points.

5 points.

6 points.

4 points.

4.5 points.

5 points.

Total, 38.88 points.

Overall score, 570.78 points—.

A small shriek came from somewhere. And then the venue became filled with sound again.

Even when the next diver appeared on the platform, no one attempted to look in his direction.

The one who accepted this result more calmly than anyone else was perhaps the person who received it himself. Tomoki, getting out of the pool, glanced at the scoreboard, and walked briskly towards the Jacuzzi bath with a face that said, “that’s the way it is.” His expression didn’t even change, and his shoulders didn’t give off any hint of dejection.

Only when he saw that indifferent stride, did Shibuki, partly absentminded, suddenly spoke from next to Youichi.

“It couldn’t be…was he attempting the 4½!?”

Youichi sighed in place of a response.

Among all of the sighs that he sighed countless numbers of times during the competition, this one was the longest and deepest.

“There’s one more fool, huh.”

The heated battle between the twelve divers brilliantly ended with Teramoto Kenichirou’s 688.41 points, astoundingly beating his own personal best. Tomoki, who messed up his challenge for 600 points, would be lumped together as one of the eleven that lost, destined to be promptly consigned to oblivion in people’s memories. The spectators would not know the thoughts that he kept to himself during his final entry. They would only assess and praise the results of the winner. That was the nature of competitions, of victories and defeats.

After the competition, Youichi and Shibuki finally found Tomoki, who had disappeared before they knew it, nearby in an area wrapped in a twilight that was a darker blue than the water.

Tomoki was at the edges of the deserted Yokoyama Park, sitting by himself on a fence that separated the trees and the path. His exhausted appearance resembled a fish that had been taken out of water, as he looked at his feet with eyes that seemed to yearn for the water.

“Congrats,” Youichi spoke without hesitation, as he walked briskly towards him. “After consulting with Okitsu, we have decided that the champion for the title of world’s biggest fool is you, Sakai Tomoki-kun.”

Tomoki absentmindedly raised his head, slowly turning his gaze towards the two of them.

“Thank you. But, is that an honourable thing?”

“It’s not, you fool. If you did a faultless 3½ you would have gotten 600 points, but at the last moment you did that recklessly honourable and stupid thing. Where’s the guy that drove off from himself the representation right that was so hard to get?”

“Where’s the guy…” Shibuki interjected from the side. “The guy who’s going to return it to himself is right here.”

Youichi glared at Shibuki, then faced Tomoki again.

“Okay? If in the unlikely event that you succeeded at the 4½, you’ll get 0 points for breaking the rules, since you dived a technique that was different from the event that you stated beforehand. You were going to lose either way. You are crazy. Even if they circled the earth ten times, they wouldn’t be able to find another fool like you.”

He spoke mercilessly, but Tomoki did not refute any of it, and stared straight back at him.

The cold wind of November blew over them as they locked eyes with each other.

Eventually, as though he was outlasted, Youichi’s voice dropped.

“But, you knew that, and you were going to dive that from the beginning.”

“…”

“Though you pretended to give it up in front of Asaki Kayoko, you were actually going to dive the 4½ today from the start.”

“Youichi-kun, you…” Tomoki’s lips, paled from fatigue and the cold, were spasming. “Because you took back the Olympics…because you did something for us once again, I wanted to take back something with my own hands as well today.”

“…”

“Even though the competition was in vain, I properly took it back.”

A smile spread across Tomoki’s pale face. Youichi bit the back of his mouth to keep from laughing.

“If that’s the case, then you don’t have to feel dejected. Show everyone what you took back. Tell everyone that I tried to do something amazing.”

“I’m not dejected. I’m not. I was repeating it in my head so I wouldn’t forget it.”

“What is it?”

“The 4½…today, I feel like I finally grasped it.”

Tomoki’s whole body trembled, and he hugged himself like he was holding back something that was getting worked up.

“Like, maybe I can do it. Today, I thought for the first time that I can dive it. That feeling…I felt it for the very first time today. That’s why I don’t want to forget it, so I’m looping it over and over again because I want it to permeate into my brain, and then I want to succeed at it next time…”

Youichi and Shibuki looked at each other, startled, at the sudden heat in Tomoki’s voice.

The match was not over.

Or rather, this was just the beginning.

The stage of the decisive battle was next month. From now on, Tomoki will evolve day by day, moment by moment, continuing to threaten the two of them with his bottomless power.

“At the qualifying trials next month, I’ll definitely succeed at the 4½.”

Within Tomoki’s powerful declaration dwelled a confidence that he never had before.

“I’ll rotate more than anyone, and then next time, I’ll earn more than 600 points…and then, I’m going to Sydney.”

The strong wind started again, messing up Tomoki’s hair, which was still wet.

The trees behind him stirred as well, disturbing the deepening darkness.

When the wind ceased, Youichi’s lips regained their usual daring smile.

“You aren’t going to Sydney,” he said. “I’ll be blocking you.”

“We’ll be blocking you.” Shibuki corrected from the side.

The three of them, staring at each other, burst into joyful laughter.

They silently confirmed their respective resolutions, and then because it was cold, returned to the venue.

Translation Notes

1. Not sure what he’s saying here (おしまいのインパクト勝負)

2. A Chinese folktale about a snipe and a clam that were too busy fighting each other, and before they knew it, they both got caught by a fisherman.

3. Chairman Maebara uses “onore,” which is a rude way to refer to another person, so you know shit is going down.

4. Apparently, there’s a Japanese sound effect for “empty,” so originally, this line was like “Suddenly the venue sounded with emptiness.”

Next time on DIVE!!: Another conversation with Kayoko, and the meaning of “SS Special ‘99.”

#DIVE!!#dive novel translation

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beardcore-blog · 5 years ago

Text

A Princess Diary

"What’s Wrong With Cinderella?"

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with ”Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her ”princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, ”I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, ”Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

”Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. ”Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

”Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. ”It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. ”Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. ”What’s wrong with princesses?”

Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a ”trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. ”Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

Meanwhile in 2001, Mattel brought out its own ”world of girl” line of princess Barbie dolls, DVDs, toys, clothing, home décor and myriad other products. At a time when Barbie sales were declining domestically, they became instant best sellers. Shortly before that, Mary Drolet, a Chicago-area mother and former Claire’s and Montgomery Ward executive, opened Club Libby Lu, now a chain of mall stores based largely in the suburbs in which girls ages 4 to 12 can shop for ”Princess Phones” covered in faux fur and attend ”Princess-Makeover Birthday Parties.” Saks bought Club Libby Lu in 2003 for $12 million and has since expanded it to 87 outlets; by 2005, with only scant local advertising, revenues hovered around the $46 million mark, a 53 percent jump from the previous year. Pink, it seems, is the new gold.

Even Dora the Explorer, the intrepid, dirty-kneed adventurer, has ascended to the throne: in 2004, after a two-part episode in which she turns into a ”true princess,” the Nickelodeon and Viacom consumer-products division released a satin-gowned ”Magic Hair Fairytale Dora,” with hair that grows or shortens when her crown is touched. Among other phrases the bilingual doll utters: ”Vámonos! Let’s go to fairy-tale land!” and ”Will you brush my hair?”

As a feminist mother — not to mention a nostalgic product of the Grranimals era — I have been taken by surprise by the princess craze and the girlie-girl culture that has risen around it. What happened to William wanting a doll and not dressing your cat in an apron? Whither Marlo Thomas? I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they’d never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble ”So This Is Love” or insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they’d concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.

More to the point, when my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom — something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her. I’ve spent much of my career writing about experiences that undermine girls’ well-being, warning parents that a preoccupation with body and beauty (encouraged by films, TV, magazines and, yes, toys) is perilous to their daughters’ mental and physical health. Am I now supposed to shrug and forget all that? If trafficking in stereotypes doesn’t matter at 3, when does it matter? At 6? Eight? Thirteen?

On the other hand, maybe I’m still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can ”have it all.” Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that?

The rise of the Disney princesses reads like a fairy tale itself, with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive, playing the part of prince, riding into the company on a metaphoric white horse in January 2000 to save a consumer-products division whose sales were dropping by as much as 30 percent a year. Both overstretched and underfocused, the division had triggered price wars by granting multiple licenses for core products (say, Winnie-the-Pooh undies) while ignoring the potential of new media. What’s more, Disney films like ”A Bug’s Life” in 1998 had yielded few merchandising opportunities — what child wants to snuggle up with an ant?

It was about a month after Mooney’s arrival that the magic struck. That’s when he flew to Phoenix to check out his first ”Disney on Ice” show. ”Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses,” he told me last summer in his palatial office, then located in Burbank, and speaking in a rolling Scottish burr. ”They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, ‘O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.’ ”

Mooney picked a mix of old and new heroines to wear the Pantone pink No. 241 corona: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas. It was the first time Disney marketed characters separately from a film’s release, let alone lumped together those from different stories. To ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual ”mythologies,” the princesses never make eye contact when they’re grouped: each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others’ presence.

It is also worth noting that not all of the ladies are of royal extraction. Part of the genius of ”Princess” is that its meaning is so broadly constructed that it actually has no meaning. Even Tinker Bell was originally a Princess, though her reign didn’t last. ”We’d always debate over whether she was really a part of the Princess mythology,” Mooney recalled. ”She really wasn’t.” Likewise, Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, though for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. (When Mulan does appear, she is typically in the kimonolike hanfu, which makes her miserable in the movie, rather than her liberated warrior’s gear.)

The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. To this day, Disney conducts little market research on the Princess line, relying instead on the power of its legacy among mothers as well as the instant-read sales barometer of the theme parks and Disney Stores. ”We simply gave girls what they wanted,” Mooney said of the line’s success, ”although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.”

Every reporter Mooney talks to asks some version of my next question: Aren’t the Princesses, who are interested only in clothes, jewelry and cadging the handsome prince, somewhat retrograde role models?

”Look,” he said, ”I have friends whose son went through the Power Rangers phase who castigated themselves over what they must’ve done wrong. Then they talked to other parents whose kids had gone through it. The boy passes through. The girl passes through. I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers, doctors, mothers or princesses, whatever the case may be.”

Mooney has a point: There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be ”perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be ”kind and caring,” ”please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.

At the grocery store one day, my daughter noticed a little girl sporting a Cinderella backpack. ”There’s that princess you don’t like, Mama!” she shouted.

”Um, yeah,” I said, trying not to meet the other mother’s hostile gaze.

”Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”

I had to admit, I did.

She thought about this. ”Then don’t you like her face?”

”Her face is all right,” I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?) ”It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”

Over the next 45 minutes, we ran through that conversation, verbatim, approximately 37 million times, as my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks — all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart — as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler. What was it about my answers that confounded her? What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?

According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable. They believe that they have a choice: they can grow up to be either a mommy or a daddy. Some psychologists say that until permanency sets in kids embrace whatever stereotypes our culture presents, whether it’s piling on the most spangles or attacking one another with light sabers. What better way to assure that they’ll always remain themselves? If that’s the case, score one for Mooney. By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.

Anyway, you have to give girls some credit. It’s true that, according to Mattel, one of the most popular games young girls play is ”bride,” but Disney found that a groom or prince is incidental to that fantasy, a regrettable necessity at best. Although they keep him around for the climactic kiss, he is otherwise relegated to the bottom of the toy box, which is why you don’t see him prominently displayed in stores.

What’s more, just because they wear the tulle doesn’t mean they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Plenty of girls stray from the script, say, by playing basketball in their finery, or casting themselves as the powerful evil stepsister bossing around the sniveling Cinderella. I recall a headline-grabbing 2005 British study that revealed that girls enjoy torturing, decapitating and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up for dates. There is spice along with that sugar after all, though why this was news is beyond me: anyone who ever played with the doll knows there’s nothing more satisfying than hacking off all her hair and holding her underwater in the bathtub. Princesses can even be a boon to exasperated parents: in our house, for instance, royalty never whines and uses the potty every single time.

”Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of ”Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” ”The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. ”When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”

It’s hard to imagine that girls’ options could truly be shrinking when they dominate the honor roll and outnumber boys in college. Then again, have you taken a stroll through a children’s store lately? A year ago, when we shopped for ”big girl” bedding at Pottery Barn Kids, we found the ”girls” side awash in flowers, hearts and hula dancers; not a soccer player or sailboat in sight. Across the no-fly zone, the ”boys” territory was all about sports, trains, planes and automobiles. Meanwhile, Baby GAP’s boys’ onesies were emblazoned with ”Big Man on Campus” and the girls’ with ”Social Butterfly”; guess whose matching shoes were decorated on the soles with hearts and whose sported a ”No. 1” logo? And at Toys ”R” Us, aisles of pink baby dolls, kitchens, shopping carts and princesses unfurl a safe distance from the ”Star Wars” figures, GeoTrax and tool chests. The relentless resegregation of childhood appears to have sneaked up without any further discussion about sex roles, about what it now means to be a boy or to be a girl. Or maybe it has happened in lieu of such discussion because it’s easier this way.

Easier, that is, unless you want to buy your daughter something that isn’t pink. Girls’ obsession with that color may seem like something they’re born with, like the ability to breathe or talk on the phone for hours on end. But according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, it ain’t so. When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty. Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s a significant percentage of adults in one national survey held to that split. Perhaps that’s why so many early Disney heroines — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice-in-Wonderland — are swathed in varying shades of azure. (Purple, incidentally, may be the next color to swap teams: once the realm of kings and N.F.L. players, it is fast becoming the bolder girl’s version of pink.)

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a key strategy of children’s marketing (recall the emergence of ” ‘tween”), that pink became seemingly innate to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few years. That was also the time that the first of the generation raised during the unisex phase of feminism — ah, hither Marlo! — became parents. ”The kids who grew up in the 1970s wanted sharp definitions for their own kids,” Paoletti told me. ”I can understand that, because the unisex thing denied everything — you couldn’t be this, you couldn’t be that, you had to be a neutral nothing.”

The infatuation with the girlie girl certainly could, at least in part, be a reaction against the so-called second wave of the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s (the first wave was the fight for suffrage), which fought for reproductive rights and economic, social and legal equality. If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through ”Ally McBeal,” ”Bridget Jones’s Diary,” ”Sex and the City” — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.

I mulled that over while flipping through ”The Paper Bag Princess,” a 1980 picture book hailed as an antidote to Disney. The heroine outwits a dragon who has kidnapped her prince, but not before the beast’s fiery breath frizzles her hair and destroys her dress, forcing her to don a paper bag. The ungrateful prince rejects her, telling her to come back when she is ”dressed like a real princess.” She dumps him and skips off into the sunset, happily ever after, alone.

There you have it, ”Thelma and Louise” all over again. Step out of line, and you end up solo or, worse, sailing crazily over a cliff to your doom. Alternatives like those might send you skittering right back to the castle. And I get that: the fact is, though I want my daughter to do and be whatever she wants as an adult, I still hope she’ll find her Prince Charming and have babies, just as I have. I don’t want her to be a fish without a bicycle; I want her to be a fish with another fish. Preferably, one who loves and respects her and also does the dishes and half the child care.

There had to be a middle ground between compliant and defiant, between petticoats and paper bags. I remembered a video on YouTube, an ad for a Nintendo game called Super Princess Peach. It showed a pack of girls in tiaras, gowns and elbow-length white gloves sliding down a zip line on parasols, navigating an obstacle course of tires in their stilettos, slithering on their bellies under barbed wire, then using their telekinetic powers to make a climbing wall burst into flames. ”If you can stand up to really mean people,” an announcer intoned, ”maybe you have what it takes to be a princess.”

Now here were some girls who had grit as well as grace. I loved Princess Peach even as I recognized that there was no way she could run in those heels, that her peachiness did nothing to upset the apple cart of expectation: she may have been athletic, smart and strong, but she was also adorable. Maybe she’s what those once-unisex, postfeminist parents are shooting for: the melding of old and new standards. And perhaps that’s a good thing, the ideal solution. But what to make, then, of the young women in the Girls Inc. survey? It doesn’t seem to be ”having it all” that’s getting to them; it’s the pressure to be it all. In telling our girls they can be anything, we have inadvertently demanded that they be everything. To everyone. All the time. No wonder the report was titled ”The Supergirl Dilemma.”

The princess as superhero is not irrelevant. Some scholars I spoke with say that given its post-9/11 timing, princess mania is a response to a newly dangerous world. ”Historically, princess worship has emerged during periods of uncertainty and profound social change,” observes Miriam Forman-Brunell, a historian at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Francis Hodgson Burnett’s original”Little Princess” was published at a time of rapid urbanization, immigration and poverty; Shirley Temple’s film version was a hit during the Great Depression. ”The original folk tales themselves,” Forman-Brunell says, ”spring from medieval and early modern European culture that faced all kinds of economic and demographic and social upheaval — famine, war, disease, terror of wolves. Girls play savior during times of economic crisis and instability.” That’s a heavy burden for little shoulders. Perhaps that’s why the magic wand has become an essential part of the princess get-up. In the original stories — even the Disney versions of them — it’s not the girl herself who’s magic; it’s the fairy godmother. Now if Forman-Brunell is right, we adults have become the cursed creatures whom girls have the thaumaturgic power to transform.

In the 1990s, third-wave feminists rebelled against their dour big sisters, ”reclaiming” sexual objectification as a woman’s right — provided, of course, that it was on her own terms, that she was the one choosing to strip or wear a shirt that said ”Porn Star” or make out with her best friend at a frat-house bash. They embraced words like ”bitch” and ”slut” as terms of affection and empowerment. That is, when used by the right people, with the right dash of playful irony. But how can you assure that? As Madonna gave way to Britney, whatever self-determination that message contained was watered down and commodified until all that was left was a gaggle of 6-year-old girls in belly-baring T-shirts (which I’m guessing they don’t wear as cultural critique). It is no wonder that parents, faced with thongs for 8-year-olds and Bratz dolls’ ”passion for fashion,” fill their daughters’ closets with pink sateen; the innocence of Princess feels like a reprieve.

”But what does that mean?” asks Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael’s College. ”There are other ways to express ‘innocence’ — girls could play ladybug or caterpillar. What you’re really talking about is sexual purity. And there’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink — exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”

Lamb suggested that to see for myself how ”Someday My Prince Will Come” morphs into ”Oops! I Did It Again,” I visit Club Libby Lu, the mall shop dedicated to the ”Very Important Princess.”

Walking into one of the newest links in the store’s chain, in Natick, Mass., last summer, I had to tip my tiara to the founder, Mary Drolet: Libby Lu’s design was flawless. Unlike Disney, Drolet depended on focus groups to choose the logo (a crown-topped heart) and the colors (pink, pink, purple and more pink). The displays were scaled to the size of a 10-year-old, though most of the shoppers I saw were several years younger than that. The decals on the walls and dressing rooms — ”I Love Your Hair,” ”Hip Chick,” ”Spoiled” — were written in ”girlfriend language.” The young sales clerks at this ”special secret club for superfabulous girls” are called ”club counselors” and come off like your coolest baby sitter, the one who used to let you brush her hair. The malls themselves are chosen based on a company formula called the G.P.I., or ”Girl Power Index,” which predicts potential sales revenues. Talk about newspeak: ”Girl Power” has gone from a riot grrrrl anthem to ”I Am Woman, Watch Me Shop.”

Inside, the store was divided into several glittery ”shopping zones” called ”experiences”: Libby’s Laboratory, now called Sparkle Spa, where girls concoct their own cosmetics and bath products; Libby’s Room; Ear Piercing; Pooch Parlor (where divas in training can pamper stuffed poodles, pugs and Chihuahuas); and the Style Studio, offering ”Libby Du” makeover choices, including ‘Tween Idol, Rock Star, Pop Star and, of course, Priceless Princess. Each look includes hairstyle, makeup, nail polish and sparkly tattoos.

As I browsed, I noticed a mother standing in the center of the store holding a price list for makeover birthday parties — $22.50 to $35 per child. Her name was Anne McAuliffe; her daughters — Stephanie, 4, and 7-year-old twins Rory and Sarah — were dashing giddily up and down the aisles.

”They’ve been begging to come to this store for three weeks,” McAuliffe said. ”I’d never heard of it. So I said they could, but they’d have to spend their own money if they bought anything.” She looked around. ”Some of this stuff is innocuous,” she observed, then leaned toward me, eyes wide and stage-whispered: ”But … a lot of it is horrible. It makes them look like little prostitutes. It’s crazy. They’re babies!”

As we debated the line between frivolous fun and JonBenét, McAuliffe’s daughter Rory came dashing up, pigtails haphazard, glasses askew. ”They have the best pocketbooks here,” she said breathlessly, brandishing a clutch with the words ”Girlie Girl” stamped on it. ”Please, can I have one? It has sequins!”

”You see that?” McAuliffe asked, gesturing at the bag. ”What am I supposed to say?”

On my way out of the mall, I popped into the ” ‘tween” mecca Hot Topic, where a display of Tinker Bell items caught my eye. Tinker Bell, whose image racks up an annual $400 million in retail sales with no particular effort on Disney’s part, is poised to wreak vengeance on the Princess line that once expelled her. Last winter, the first chapter book designed to introduce girls to Tink and her Pixie Hollow pals spent 18 weeks on The New York Times children’s best-seller list. In a direct-to-DVD now under production, she will speak for the first time, voiced by the actress Brittany Murphy. Next year, Disney Fairies will be rolled out in earnest. Aimed at 6- to 9-year-old girls, the line will catch them just as they outgrow Princess. Their colors will be lavender, green, turquoise — anything but the Princess’s soon-to-be-babyish pink.

To appeal to that older child, Disney executives said, the Fairies will have more ”attitude” and ”sass” than the Princesses. What, I wondered, did that entail? I’d seen some of the Tinker Bell merchandise that Disney sells at its theme parks: T-shirts reading, ”Spoiled to Perfection,” ”Mood Subject to Change Without Notice” and ”Tinker Bell: Prettier Than a Princess.” At Hot Topic, that edge was even sharper: magnets, clocks, light-switch plates and panties featured ”Dark Tink,” described as ”the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw.”

Girl power, indeed.

A few days later, I picked my daughter up from preschool. She came tearing over in a full-skirted frock with a gold bodice, a beaded crown perched sideways on her head. ”Look, Mommy, I’m Ariel!” she crowed. referring to Disney’s Little Mermaid. Then she stopped and furrowed her brow. ”Mommy, do you like Ariel?”

I considered her for a moment. Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ll never really know. In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. Maybe the best I can hope for is that her generation will get a little further with the solutions than we did.

For now, I kneeled down on the floor and gave my daughter a hug.

She smiled happily. ”But, Mommy?” she added. ”When I grow up, I’m still going to be a fireman.”

– by Peggy Orenstein, for the New York Times Magazine (December 2006)

Posted by lukewho on 2007-01-01 19:50:52

Tagged: , fremont , christmas , 2006 , jacinto , princess , disney

The post A Princess Diary appeared first on Good Info.

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bedbeer65-blog · 6 years ago

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Bulls fall to Bucks, 117-106

So why is a Bulls game like a candelabra?

The Bulls Monday saw their season long three-game winning streak succumb to the shooting, scrambling and superiority of the league-leading Milwaukee Bucks in a 117-106 Milwaukee victory.

The Bulls would not be able to party even as Lauri Markkanen had his league most seventh game this month with at least 20 points and 10 rebounds with 26 points and 12 rebounds, and Robin Lopez matched Markkanen with a season-high 26 points, his sixth consecutive game scoring at least 17 points.

Zach LaVine, playing mostly point guard with Kris Dunn out with a migraine headache, had 11 points, nine assists and eight rebounds while Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot and Wayne Selden had a dozen points each. The Bulls also were without Otto Porter Jr. with a leg injury. MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo sat out with knee soreness.

The Bulls led 38-25 after the first quarter, but the Bucks tightened up with a 38-16 second quarter to lead by nine at halftime and Milwaukee controlled the second half. Khris Middleton and Malcolm Brogdon each scored 22 points and former Bull Nikola Mirotic in his first time playing back in the United Center had 13 points off the bench.

“I think in the second we made a few too many mental mistakes,” said Lopez. "Got to play a little smarter. I think we all know that top to bottom.”

Though it was bottoms up for the Bulls’ hatter as Lopez made his only three-point attempt, the 10th of his career and sixth this season on a Ryan Arcidiacono pass.

It was 9 o’clock, but still tea time.

“When I am open I am going to look to pull it,” Robin said. “It seems when Arch passes me the ball it has… I don’t know if Vegas knows the odds on Arch passing me the ball on how often it goes in, but it seems I get some good assists from him.”

While the Bulls have been getting some truly remarkable and somewhat overlooked play from the veteran seven footer who can be as mischievous as a cheshire cat.

It was Lopez with the Bulls last gasp, his three pointer with 4:47 left to get the Bulls within 103-93 before the Bucks were tail lights on I-94.

The Bulls dropped to 16-45 against the 46-14 Bucks. But it’s been the best sustained play of the season for the Bulls starring mostly LaVine and Markkanen. And strangely enough, Lopez.

“Everyone has been really engaged and pulling for each other,” said Lopez. “I think we all feel a little reinvigorated; it’s been a lot of fun.”

Which pretty much describes the life of the Bulls merry prankster who lives at Disney World in the offseason, is feared by the league’s mascots and set the table after his three pointer, mixing his pantomime tea for Robin’s Tea Party.

Like Alice in the story told the Hatter, “You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret, all the best people are.”

The non conformist Lopez probably would enjoy the sentiment, and the Bulls certainly have been enjoying his antics. His play this month has been among the least expected and surprising in this wacky season that went down its own rabbit hole pretty early.

Lopez is averaging 20.6 points on 65 percent shooting the last five games, which is more than double his career scoring average, and 15.6 points on 68 percent shooting this month for a player who never has averaged 12 points in a season.

It’s come mostly thanks to a post up dropstep and spin move sequence that is as sweet as orange marmalade. It’s oddly becoming one of the more unstoppable shots in the game as Robin continually converted Monday against his brother, Brook, who had 13 points. Robin was 10 of 16.

“My teammates are just finding me in really good spaces,” said Robin, who rarely elaborates about his own play. “We had a pretty good offensive rhythm going on out there. Lauri and Zach, they are making everyone better, and I’ve been in some good spaces. I was doing that (drop spin) a little more in New York with the triangle offense, catching it in the post. I just try to help out my teammates, do what is needed of me. I’m just trying to go out there, set screens, help out my teammates. They’ve been looking for me a little bit. I am grateful to be playing with some really good players.”

And his teammates have been every bit as appreciative about having on their side the gentle giant who isn’t so gentle—or composed sometimes—in the games.

“Robin is so damn big, once he gets it down there and pump fakes a guy there’s not a lot you can do,” said LaVine. “He’s seven-whatever; throw it toward the rim he will get it. We’ve had a good two-man game going; with Lauri, too.

“It’s tough when you are a veteran guy and you are asked to play a role and he does that very professionally,” added LaVine. “Now with him back in the lineup, he is getting back in shape. We love Robin; he knows we need him. He’s very valued here. He’s a big-time teammate to where he is going to protect you, he is going to fight for you. He’ll play defense one day, he’ll try to block shots, try to run the rim, he sets some of the best screens in the NBA. I don’t take him for granted for sure.”

Which makes it a crucial week for the Bulls and Lopez. This is the last week players on rosters can be bought out and participate in the playoffs. Lopez said, as he has for weeks, that he isn’t thinking about that. The Bulls have said they don’t intend to approach Lopez for a buyout.

"We love Robin; he knows we need him. He’s very valued here. He’s a big-time teammate to where he is going to protect you, he is going to fight for you." - LaVine on Lopez

Which seemed certain, or at least a trade a few months ago. Now the Bulls have to be thinking about retaining the 11-year veteran. Wendell Carter Jr., the presumed future center, is more like 6-10 while seven footer Markkanen, despite rebounding so well, probably shouldn’t regularly face the rigors of the game’s most physical players. It would seem the Bulls need a big man going forward if they lose Lopez. So why lose him?

Though that seemed to be the plan to start the season. Lopez was out of the rotation early as the Bulls experimented with the more active Cristiano Felicio. When Bobby Portis was injured, Lopez played more. But the ironman who rarely has missed games in his career was in and out of the regular rotation with the occasional DNP. It wasn’t until late January when he began playing more than 20 minutes regularly and more than 30 minutes for the first time this season two weeks ago. Since then he’s averaged 32 minutes per game and has been one of the team’s most reliable scorers in their best stretch of the season.

But even Robin couldn’t save the Bulls after that terrific fast-paced first quarter.

Arcidiacono started for Dunn and Luwawu-Cabarrot started for Porter, and the Bulls were playing fast and sure as Markkanen had 14 points and LaVine 10 as they combined for four of six threes in a fleet first.

But the Bulls’ depleted bench got knocked back in the second quarter with a 16-2 Bucks start. Milwaukee led 63-54 at halftime, and there’s a reason Milwaukee’s Mike Budenholzer probably will be Coach of the Year. He did wonders with a modestly talented team in Atlanta a few years back, and has this Bucks team despite few changes from last season with the league’s best record. After LaVine started quickly, the Bucks made a nice adjustment to sink their Lopez back into the lane and spread out the wings to cut off LaVine, who had another of his amazing baseline hammer dunks in the first quarter.

With Dunn out and the added defensive pressure, LaVine looked to make the right play, as the advice generally goes.

“I was reading the game,” said LaVine, who is averaging almost six assists per game this month along with 25.5 points. “I had 10 quick ones and then they started switching up the coverage. I feel I was making the right plays to get us baskets. Once I drove to the paint I could pass the ball out. I saw a lot of people open. I felt if I kept doing that we were going to get a lot of wide open shots. I just tried to play the right way.”

But especially now with Porter out, which isn’t expected to be long, the Bulls also need LaVine’s offense. The Bulls reserves were pummeled 42-24.

“I think I should have been a little more aggressive in the second half to where I got some more points on the board,” LaVine acknowledged. “I should have been more aggressive with the shortened bench. I felt good in the pick and roll facilitating; whatever they need me to do to help the offense. But I should have been more aggressive.”

Bulls coach Jim Boylen said afterward he was upset several times when the players failed to execute properly on called plays even out of timeouts.

But with LaVine being shuttered, the Bulls were again overwhelmed by a team that depends on the three-point shot. The Bucks were 17 of 49, scoring 24 more points than the Bulls on three pointers. Plus, the Bucks are a high IQ team. They move the ball well, but are quick to identify and attack mismatches. There were numerous times the Bucks immediately jumped on switches to have Lopez or Markkanen trying to defend Middleton or Brogdon. The result was easy scores, though in the third game in four nights the Bulls were a bit more languorous with just five fast break points after averaging 19 in the three wins.

Now the Bulls head for Memphis and Atlanta, and their improved play may have a lot to do with whether Lopez is heading anywhere.

“I haven’t been thinking about it,” Lopez said. “I don’t worry about that. I’ve been enjoying myself.”

So Robin, why is a Bulls game like a candelabra? Darned if he has the slightest idea. But it’s felt like a party lately. And that dude sure abides these days.

Source: https://www.nba.com/bulls/gameday/bulls-fall-bucks-117-106

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goodluckgamers · 7 years ago

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Persona 5 Review

Twenty-five years ago, Atlus unleashed upon the world a little series called Shin Megami Tensei otherwise shortened to SMT. And just a few months ago they capped off their anniversary with their newest body of work yet,Persona 5. With a huge legacy to live up to Persona 5 meets the challenge and far exceeds it as one of the greatest RPGs of the year and definitely one of Atlus’s best pieces of work to date.

The game opens up in a nontraditional Persona fashion. You and your crew have just broken into a casino and after a bit of showing off have to find a way out before being caught by the authorities. Where in previous Persona games you ran around dungeons and attacked monsters you saw in your path Persona 5 kicks it up to eleven.

It sees you running down hallways, ducking around corners, dynamically ambushing enemies all the while avoiding attention. As a member of the phantom thieves the game truly engages you as a thief in the night who wants to avoid detection at all cost. This sort of constant sense of movement or need to move gives a fresh coat of paint to dungeon crawling. Sadly, you get caught arrested by the police and the rest of the game is told as from the point of view of you retelling the past year.

The story truly starts in typical Persona fashion. You’re on your way to a brand-new town. The cause of the move this time around has been some criminal activity. Framed for attacking a politician you’re sent far away from home to live out your probation sentence with a friend of the family. Your past follows you and word spreads fast. With the delinquent title hanging over your head, you’re hard pressed to make a new life here.

Right off the bat, a new feature is presented to the player in the form of ambient conversations. As you navigate the streets of Tokyo, you can hear people having conversations about the state of politics in Japan or the weather; or as you walk around the school, hear your classmates whisper about you. It serves to enhance a central concept of the game: what everyone thinks about you.

Walking around the in-game world has never felt so alive. Spaces are cramped, people are everywhere, locations are either close by or you need to get on the train. In the past, you were locked into a smallish area normally the town connected to your school. Here you have a decent chunk of Tokyo to visit from hanging out in Yongen-Jaya during the day and seeing what Akihabara’s like at night.

The unique art design of Persona has also taken a huge step forward. Borrowing from the cell shaded nature of Atlus’s previous title Catherine, there’s a level of polish that shows the strength of the console generation. The animations are smoother than they’ve ever been, the characters animate naturally and the colors pop and blend to a beautiful package. Having just come off replaying Persona 4 on the PS2, the jump in quality is mind-blowing.

In true Persona fashion, things can’t stay normal for long. Late to your first day of school you and fellow delinquent Ryuji find yourself in a twisted alternate version of the school. Rather than severing detention for being late you’re both thrown in a dungeon. Before being put to death, you awaken the power of the Persona and things kick back into high gear.

Combat is stylized to the nines with its expressive UI.

Where before you simply summoned your persona to cast spells or use its abilities now when you hover over the menu your persona physically manifest and just hangs around until you choose an option. Returning are the usual suite of fire, ice, wind, and lightning attacks however added are new elements of psi and nova.

The next new tool are guns. Guns are limited to an amount of ammo your character hold which replenishes by returning to the real world. Each character has a different gun, different animations and even different hit radius. An assault rifle and a shot gun wouldn’t exactly hit enemies the same way right? The player can even learn gun based special attacks down the road if they find the right teacher.

Finally, the next major change is the baton pass system. When hitting an enemy’s weakness, you knock them down and get another turn which is already powerful in RPGs. Baton pass, however, lets you change who’s attacking. So, knocking down one enemy and then swapping to a different ally. Careful planning allows you to take out an entire group of enemies without them having a turn.

This nice intro the combat ends with you returning to the over the world and the game finally breaking open to its full breath. In typical persona fashion, you have a time limit, usually two or three in-game weeks to beat the dungeon presented before you. In that time, you can work jobs to get money, buy equipment, and spend time with your friends.

Spending time with your friends is the one that matters the most here because not only do you get to learn more about your friends as people, they all provide useful bonuses in game. The more you know your friends that fight with you, the better they fight. Meanwhile the more you know your friends that don’t fight with you, they give decent buffs like more experience points, cheaper items in shops or extra skills. The biggest choice to make is finding the confidants you want to get to know better and which ones will help you the most in game.

While doing all of these activities is Shoji Meguro with his beautiful musical composition. Chill tunes in the coffee shop, repetitive upbeat sounds at school, perfectly matched theme songs per dungeon and the best standard battle music I’ve ever heard in a Persona game period. The music will draw you into this game so deep that it’ll be weird not having ambient music in real life.

Persona has always been an rpg that best captures living a real everyday life and also living a secret double life in a crazy supernatural world. Atlus has found the magic blend of building relationships with people, actually maintaining your personal self (the fact that bathing increases charm is a fantastic thing), and also progressing forward as the phantom thieves all in one beautiful package. You’re the leader of the phantom thieves and you’re going to steal hearts for justice. They’ll never see you coming.

#persona 5 #GLG #good luck gamers #persona 5 review #game review #best rpg ever

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karenuse54-blog · 6 years ago

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Bulls fall to Bucks, 117-106

So why is a Bulls game like a candelabra?

The Bulls Monday saw their season long three-game winning streak succumb to the shooting, scrambling and superiority of the league-leading Milwaukee Bucks in a 117-106 Milwaukee victory.

“I think in the second we made a few too many mental mistakes,” said Lopez. "Got to play a little smarter. I think we all know that top to bottom.”

Though it was bottoms up for the Bulls’ hatter as Lopez made his only three-point attempt, the 10th of his career and sixth this season on a Ryan Arcidiacono pass.

It was 9 o’clock, but still tea time.

While the Bulls have been getting some truly remarkable and somewhat overlooked play from the veteran seven footer who can be as mischievous as a cheshire cat.

It was Lopez with the Bulls last gasp, his three pointer with 4:47 left to get the Bulls within 103-93 before the Bucks were tail lights on I-94.

The Bulls dropped to 16-45 against the 46-14 Bucks. But it’s been the best sustained play of the season for the Bulls starring mostly LaVine and Markkanen. And strangely enough, Lopez.

“Everyone has been really engaged and pulling for each other,” said Lopez. “I think we all feel a little reinvigorated; it’s been a lot of fun.”

Like Alice in the story told the Hatter, “You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret, all the best people are.”

And his teammates have been every bit as appreciative about having on their side the gentle giant who isn’t so gentle—or composed sometimes—in the games.

"We love Robin; he knows we need him. He’s very valued here. He’s a big-time teammate to where he is going to protect you, he is going to fight for you." - LaVine on Lopez

But even Robin couldn’t save the Bulls after that terrific fast-paced first quarter.

With Dunn out and the added defensive pressure, LaVine looked to make the right play, as the advice generally goes.

But especially now with Porter out, which isn’t expected to be long, the Bulls also need LaVine’s offense. The Bulls reserves were pummeled 42-24.

Bulls coach Jim Boylen said afterward he was upset several times when the players failed to execute properly on called plays even out of timeouts.

Now the Bulls head for Memphis and Atlanta, and their improved play may have a lot to do with whether Lopez is heading anywhere.

“I haven’t been thinking about it,” Lopez said. “I don’t worry about that. I’ve been enjoying myself.”

So Robin, why is a Bulls game like a candelabra? Darned if he has the slightest idea. But it’s felt like a party lately. And that dude sure abides these days.

Source: https://www.nba.com/bulls/gameday/bulls-fall-bucks-117-106

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thrashermaxey · 6 years ago

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21 Fantasy Hockey Rambles

Every Sunday, we'll share 21 Fantasy Rambles – formerly 20 Fantasy Thoughts – from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week's ‘Daily Ramblings’.

Writers: Michael Clifford, Ian Gooding, Cam Robinson, and Dobber

1. If you own Mathew Barzal, you were waiting for his next goal for a while. As in over a month. Fortunately, the Isles’ center broke his goal-scoring slump (and added an assist) on Thursday. Barzal had gone without a goal in his previous 19 games.

Barzal isn’t one to pile up the goals, as his 18 goals this season is just four fewer than his total last season. With 62 points at the moment, however, he is well short of his 85-point rookie season from last season. This could be the result of having to play the tougher matchups this season versus last season, when John Tavares was still in the fold.

Playing on the top line alongside Barzal, Jordan Eberle might have decent value at this very moment based on where he’s being used, but he’s also staring at his first sub-40-point season (lockout-shortened 2012-13 not included) in his career. (mar29)

2. The Panthers might be out of the playoff race but that isn’t stopping Jonathan Huberdeau. Huby now has nine multipoint games during March to go with nine goals and 23 points over his last 13 games. Too bad I’ve been eliminated in the league that I own him in. Don’t you just hate it when your players cash in after you’ve been eliminated?

Evgenii Dadonov is another Panthers’ forward who has picked up the pace. Over his last 13 games, Dadonov has 19 points (6g-13a). Playing on a line with Huberdeau and Aleksander Barkov might have something to do with it. Dadonov has now surpassed last season’s point total and is just two points shy of his first 70-point season. (mar29)

3. It’s been a down year for Rickard Rakell but he might still make it to 20 goals. It’s not the 34 goals like last season, or the 33 he scored the season before, but Rakell has piled up seven goals over his last five games.

Rakell was a recent buy-low candidate through his goalless droughts of 14, 9, 8, and 6 games, up to the point in which he had just nine goals on the season earlier this month. To justify that buy-low, his shooting percentage was at a highly unlucky 6.3 percent, but it is now up to a more respectable 9.6 percent and could still climb further.

In terms of what you can do going forward, look to Rakell as a rebound candidate as he will probably slip in next season’s fantasy hockey drafts based on his overall numbers. He was drafted at around the 70th pick in this season’s Yahoo drafts, but next season he could provide great value if he is drafted outside of the top 100. (mar31)

4. The Cam Talbot era in Philly might be short-lived, but at least he made another start on Saturday (just his second since being acquired). Talbot allowed three goals on 30 shots in the Flyers’ 5-2 loss to Carolina.

Now that the Flyers have been eliminated, the Flyers might start Talbot one or two more times as they play out the string. With this being the second consecutive season that Talbot has posted a goals-against average over 3.00, he probably won’t be considered a starter anywhere. Instead, expect him to land as a backup or at best a timeshare somewhere. (mar31)

5. Nick Schmaltz’ new seven-year extension with an unconfirmed cap hit of $5.85 million might seem like a lengthy extension for a player that has cracked 50 points just once in three seasons, but remember that the Coyotes coveted him enough to pay a significant price (Dylan Strome and Brendan Perlini) just to acquire him.

Regardless, he was fitting in well with his new team (14 points in 17 games) before suffering a season-ending knee injury late last December. Even though the trade may appear heavily weighted in Chicago’s favor, it’s one of those that could still work out well for both teams. Salary cap owners would likely prefer to see more sustained production before investing, though. (mar31)

6. Kevin Fiala’s ice time is up 2:40 per game with the Wild versus what he was getting with Nashville. And yet he has just seven points in 15 contests. We expected the jump in ice time but had assumed it would come with a corresponding bump in production.

That hasn’t happened, but as fantasy owners that's the mindset we need to stick to – opportunity increases the odds of success. Just because it’s a ‘fail’ (so far) doesn’t mean we figured wrong. Next year is his fourth and I expect some magic. (mar30)

7. So, does Ryan Strome have upside after all? I mean, obviously not the elite upside we hoped for six years ago, but fantasy-worthy upside?

Now that the Rangers have shed some top players, Strome is usually seeing about 18 minutes of ice time. This is ice time he was given during the first few years of his career and he didn’t do anything with it. Now he’s doing something.

Entering Sunday action, Strome had 18 points in his last 23 games, and nine in his last 10. Food for thought: Friday he was on a line with Vladislav Namestnikov and Lias Andersson. His next goal would be his 18th, which would set a career high. (mar30)

8. Mackenzie Blackwood is 3-8-0, 2.90 and 0.901 over his last 11 games. He’s 22, a high draft pick and has bounced back in this his third pro season after having it rough during his first two. I’m not yet ready to write him off as a potential starter for the long term but this year is the most he has played as a pro (40 combined games). (mar30)

9. Andreas Athanasiou scored his 30th goal this past Friday. Unfortunately, the assists haven’t really been there for this year because he’s often placed on a line with the likes of ‘Tommy Stonehands’ and ‘Jimmy Lunchpail’ – for example, his linemates on Friday were Luke Glendening and Taro Hirose.

When he hits his prime in a couple of years, though, the Red Wings should have the talent around him upgraded by that point. Next year, I see another small step forward, perhaps hitting 60 (if anyone does on this team besides Dylan Larkin, it should be him) before his big jump in his sixth campaign. (mar30)

Elsewhere, the early results for Detroit’s undrafted NCAA foray this year are in. Entering Sunday action, 22-year-old Ryan Kuffner was pointless and minus-2 in six games. He had 96 points in his last 67 games with Princeton, as Max Veronneau’s (now with Ottawa) sidekick. Taro Hirose, also after six outings, saw a five-game assist streak come to an end on Friday. Hirose didn’t have a Veronneau to play with at Michigan State and to me has the higher upside. He’s been averaging about 15 minutes per game to Kuffner’s 10, so you know coach Jeff Blashill sees it the same way. (mar30)

10. Hawks’ Alex DeBrincat now has 41 goals – that places him in the league’s top-10 in goal scoring. Not bad for a 21-year-old in just his second NHL season and who many teams thought was too small. DeBrincat is not averse to slumps, though, as he was pointless during a six-game streak before hitting the scoresheet again late this past week. (mar29)

* Don’t forget to download your Playoff Draft List. released this Friday, April 5.

If you bought the Ultimate Fantasy Pack in the summer, this will be included in that purchase. It is not included in the Keeper Fantasy Pack.

11. Leon Draisaitl also scored goal number 47 this week, which has him four behind Alex Ovechkin in the Rocket Richard Trophy race. Both Connor McDavid and Draisaitl have now hit 100 points and are in the top-5 in scoring. You’d think that would set the Oilers up nicely for a playoff spot, right? Of course not. You need an entire team, not just a couple of top-end players. The same theory applies in fantasy. (mar29)

12. Dustin Byfuglien finally returned to the Jets’ lineup on Saturday, logging 24 minutes of ice time. Big Buff had missed the past month and a half with an ankle injury. In fact, he has been held to just 38 games this season, so it appears that playing a physical style for a decade has finally caught up to him.

Byfuglien could be in for a bounceback next season if he can stay healthy most of the time, but I’d be weary of drafting him as high as he has been in recent seasons. He averaged as the 40th pick in Yahoo drafts last fall, but I’d suggest waiting at least another round or two for the multicategory beast next season. (mar31)

13. It was Happy Quinn Hughes day last Thursday in Vancouver, as the seventh overall pick in last summer’s NHL Entry Draft made his NHL debut. He was paired with the recently-resurgent Luke Schenn in just over 15 minutes of ice time. For fantasy owners who were lightning-fast in adding Hughes to their lineups, he recorded his first NHL point by assisting on Brock Boeser’s second-period goal. Hughes did much of the work on the goal, hopefully giving us a preview of things to come.

No first-unit power-play duty for Hughes (in that game), as the Canucks went with a four-forward first unit with Alex Edler on the point as per usual. However, 3-on-3 overtime with Hughes, Boeser, and Elias Pettersson was a sight to behold. Amazing stuff. (You can also check out Hughes' profile on Dobber Prospects.)

Elsewhere, with Thatcher Demko in net, the Canucks’ roster on Thursday provided a real glimpse into the future. Demko stopped 37 of 39 shots in earning his second win in three games. It looks like the Canucks will alternate between Demko and Jacob Markstrom the rest of the way, so plan accordingly. (mar29)

14. Following three straight 30-point seasons and back-to-back 35-point seasons, things were looking bright for Colton Parayko heading into 2018-19. The team added names like Ryan O’Reilly, Patrick Maroon, David Perron, and Tyler Bozak, giving them loads of scoring depth. With Parayko’s stout peripheral production, a 40-point season would have made him a top-10 multicategory defenceman.

That didn’t come to pass, obviously, as Parayko sits with 26 points in 78 games. His peripherals and plus/minus have meant a solid fantasy season, but he’s still yet to attain anywhere close to his ceiling. The problem is his assists, as he has managed just 16 total thus far, and just two primary assists at five-on-five. Among 114 defenseman with at least 1000 minutes played at five-on-five, he has the fourth-lowest primary assist rate.

Parayko will be in tough to reach his ceiling now that he’s apparently third in line for power play minutes. It doesn’t mean he can’t be very valuable in fantasy leagues. With the Blues loaded with both rising and established stars, and Parayko due for a rebound in his assists next year, it seems very possible he’s a top-10 blue liner in multicategory leagues in a year’s time. (mar28)

15. Sergei Bobrovsky is showing up when it matters most – for his squad and for his fantasy owners. Much has been said about the pending unrestricted free-agent and the likely anchor of a contract he may sign on July 1. Well, the two-time Vezina winner has been near the top of the heap for the last three months.

Stretching back to the beginning of February, Bobrovsky is 16-7-0 with six shutouts and his season save percentage is now up to .912. He’s had a few clunkers mixed in there but the overall theme is positive.

He remains a tier one guy heading into 2019-20 – especially if he finds himself on a contender next fall. (mar27)

16. If I’m sitting down to draft a one-year league next fall, I’m pencilling Jordan Binnington into a tier-2 position. I feel that’s as aggressive as anyone should be. We’re constantly burned by the masked men, that drinking the kool-aid too quickly will send you on a not so welcoming trip. (mar27)

17. Darcy Kuemper continues to be a rock for the desert dogs. This season could've easily been a write-off for Arizona when Antti Raanta went down in November, but thanks to Kuemper, the Yotes still have a slim shot at some playoff revenue. He's posted a quality start in 35 of 52 outings, while his 0.922 save percentage on the year is top-5 amongst ‘regular starters’.

Kuemper’s value lies at this moment, as we won't be seeing him earn this amount of starts next year. That is unless we see a team make a play for the 28-year-old via trade. He makes 1.8 million next season before hitting unrestricted free agency. (mar27)

18. Reports came out last Tuesday that Hurricanes prospect and Hobey Baker finalist, Adam Fox, will return to Harvard for this senior year. This could a big blow for the Hurricanes, who targeted Fox in last summer's blockbuster trade with Calgary. In fact, Fox could become a free agent in 2020 if he decides to and that would be great news for all the teams in search of a young, super offensive right-shot defender. Fox would have plenty of suitors. (mar27)

19. To give some positivity to the realm, I’m quite enjoying the trio of Jordan Greenway, Luke Kunin and Ryan Donato. Those three have been lining up together at even-strength and on the team’s second power-play unit. All three possess decent multi-category upsides. (mar26)

20. Former first-round selection Jared McCann is with his third organization but appears to have found a fit in Pittsburgh. McCann has great wheels, a heavy release and loads of tenacity. He’s finally cracked the second power-play unit, but 31 of his 34 points have come at even-strength or while shorthanded. There remains some intriguing upside with the 22-year-old, especially if he maintains his space in the top-six moving forward. (mar26)

21. Petr Mrazek is yet another unrestricted free agent in the summer ahead and he’s completely revived his career. The Hurricanes were likely going to move on from him come July and now I think they’re interested in hearing what he’s looking for.

If I was GM Don Waddell, I would see if I can’t lock him in for two years at a low cap rate of perhaps under $3 million. Carolina was a destination for one of the many UFA goaltenders this summer but Mrazek is doing what he can to shut the door on that opportunity for those people such as Cam Talbot, Brian Elliott and Robin Lehner.

Have a good week, folks!!

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/21-fantasy-hockey-rambles/21-fantasy-hockey-rambles-11/

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cameronwjones · 6 years ago

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Event Heroes: How MozCon Creates an Active and Engaged Community

Each month we interview an events professional who is breaking the mold. This month we spoke with Danielle Launders—Community Events Manager at Moz—about building an engaged event community, setting event goals, event hacks, Spain and more.

Every year, over 1,000 marketers, SEOs, agencies, consultants and executives converge on Seattle for MozCon. This three-day event is the experiential flagship of Moz—one of the world's leading providers of search engine optimization (SEO) software.

Danielle Launders has spent over six years working on events at Moz—managing everything from sponsorships to collateral to content and all of the logistics in-between. Underlying Danielle's unique approach to events is a passion for bringing people together.

Topic discussed in this Event Heroes interview include:

Setting event goals

Delighting attendees

Incorporating a local environment into an event experience

Leveraging online and offline touch points to build an event community

Integrating event technology to measure ROI

Note: This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.

Brandon: You’ve been at Moz for almost six years on the dot. During that time you’ve managed everything from smaller, intimate events to Moz’s huge annual customer conference. But before any of this, you worked as an environmental analyst. What led from your career in environmental science to where you are today?

Danielle: Honestly, I would say a lot of luck and chance.

I enjoyed my time in the environmental field, but after three years of driving 60 hours a week for fieldwork, I was ready for a change.

I had a discussion with someone and they told me about this exciting company named Moz who were hiring for their marketing team. This same person thought I’d be a good fit, and they knew the CMO so they made an introduction. I ended up going through the interview process and was hired.

I fell in love with the team, the product, and the community. It was just really exciting and I’m so fortunate it happened. I can't say I planned it. Sometimes life just works that way.

Brandon: Was the initial position for event marketing?

Danielle: No, actually, the initial position was for marketing administration supporting the whole marketing team. This gave me a lot of exposure to different marketing specialties and I found that events was an area I was most interested in. At the time, the event marketer was looking for extra support with sponsorships and MozCon, so I got to dive right in.

I've been helping with events and sponsorships at Moz since 2013. This year will be my seventh MozCon. Which is kind of crazy!

Brandon: Moz has a very active community of over 600,000 marketers and SEO specialists who actively contribute to the Moz blog, chat on social and, of course, attend Moz events. Could you tell us a little bit about how you tap into this community?

Danielle: Community is such a strong backbone for both Moz, and MozCon. We really try to give our community members opportunities to connect with one another.

For instance, the MozCon Facebook community has become an extremely active year-round group and our members are so supportive of one another. The group ranges from first-time attendees to MozCon veterans, with more joining every year.

It’s a great way to get acclimated before the conference each year. We often see first-time attendees reaching out for words of advice to get the best from their MozCon experience and veteran attendees jumping in to recommend their favorite not-to-miss speakers, sessions, and activities. It’s been amazing to see how community members are able to build buzz and excitement while being there for each other.

Another strong facet of the MozCon community is our community speaker program.

I feel like we're giving back and yet at the same time our community is giving us so much more.

It's an opportunity for anyone in our community to pitch to speak for 15 minutes on the MozCon stage. Each year, we get over 80 really great pitches and we select the top six to join us for the community speaker spots.

There have been a handful of community speakers over the years that we’ve invited back to be a headline speaker at MozCon or that we’ve recommended for other conferences. It’s rewarding to see our community members build their speaking careers on our stage.

Brandon: Someone once said that you are “an excellent event marketer with an eye toward customer service and realizing that details push events from good to great.” Now, we know that MozCon has great content, tasty snacks, and ample networking opportunities—but how else do you strive to provide attendees with a stellar experience? Any new approaches you’re planning on for 2019 and beyond?

Danielle: That's so nice! Yes, a core pillar of MozCon is that we want to give our attendees the best conference experience possible. We actually internally call MozCon a great big hug to the community.

For a lot of people, they only get to go to one conference, maybe two, a year. We’re honored that they choose MozCon so we want to make sure it’s an amazing experience!

MozCon 2017

From a planning perspective, we are very intentional with everything that we do. We spend a lot of time considering the content, the layout, the environmental design, the food and snacks, how our guests will interact with everything, and many other elements. We come at it from the perspective of what would I want from a conference if I were attending?

The next step is thinking about how we can enhance that experience year-over-year.

We know our attendees will be joining us from nine to five for three days straight—and some of them have never been to Seattle before. So we provide them with amenities such as ethernet cables and power strips in the sessions to make sure that they can take notes and keep in touch with their teams back home but we also look to create opportunities for them to explore our city with other attendees during our evening programming or for morning runs and other informal activities.

Knowing that some of our attendees may not have the chance to really explore Seattle, we try to bring a little piece of Seattle to the conference.

One way we do this is by featuring a special snack each day from one of our favorite Seattle food vendors. Seattle is known to be a foodie town, and this gives attendees a small taste.

Seattle is also known for its coffee, so we love to treat our attendees with really good coffee. Nobody typically talks about coffee at a conference because likely it's just drip coffee, but last year we actually had a bicycle that was in the lobby and it had nitro coffee cold brew on tap as well as a trailer serving frappuccinos.

We’re also big proponents of making sure the swag that we give attendees is something they actually want to take home.

Take for instance last year when we had a superhero theme. We created a little figurine of Roger, Moz’s mascot, wearing a cape. Today, we’re still getting pictures on Twitter and the MozCon Facebook group of Roger hanging out on different desks.

Roger picked his favorite coffee this morning at ⁦@_anchorhead⁩ #MozCon pic.twitter.com/VBqN7EAeWH

— Sam Insalaco (@SamInsalaco) July 11, 2018

Brandon: Another thing that’s very cool about MozCon is that your goal isn’t to make a profit from ticket sales. (BTW: We love the graphic you’ve created to represent this for promoting past Moz events). So what are the primary ways that you measure ROI and prove it to key stakeholders? How do you use technology and integrations to help you here?

Danielle: Of course to make MozCon sustainable, we need to break even so ticket sales is a very important metric for us. Our marketing automation software helps with email communications, but it also helps us track whether attendees are current customers or potential prospects.

We also look at where attendees are coming from, the roles they are in, and if they’ve attended MozCon in the past as they are valuable indicators for ensuring our audience and content are aligned. Our tech stack helps us track some of the supporting metrics for these goals.

Given that the attendee experience is a huge part of MozCon, tracking post-event survey information like NPS is also important.

There are many ways to measure success on financial terms (for instance tracking customer conversions, up-sells or cross-sells further down the line), however, we really do see a lot of value from MozCon in brand awareness, and building a community of brand champions. This can be a little harder to track, but we believe it’s equally as important.

Brandon: According to our Event Marketing 2019: Benchmarks and Trends report, most marketers believe that email marketing is the most effective channel for promoting your event. Which promotional channels have worked best for you?

Danielle: We definitely rely on email marketing. We have an event email list specifically dedicated to updating subscribers about MozCon. Email is especially useful because the audience is self-electing. They want to learn more.

Our biggest campaign every year is the announcement of our final agenda, which contains our confirmed headline speakers and community speakers. Sometimes people aren't able to get budget approval for making a purchase until the full agenda is available, and email is a great way to spread the word.

Another big thing for us is blog posts. Since we have a lot of readers that follow our blog it is a valuable channel. We also use social, but I would say email and blog posts are our top two converters.

Brandon: How do you work with other teams in your company to drive event success?

Danielle: Our event team is part of the Moz marketing team but to pull off MozCon, it takes cross-team, and cross-department collaboration.

Event marketing at Moz operates across the company— working with nearly every team from our dev team who builds the web page that drives registrations, our design team who brings our online and on-site experience to life, to our sales and customer service teams. It’s truly a team effort.

We coordinate across the marketing team for support from our email, newsletter, blog, social media, and paid marketing channels.

Then, when it comes to the actual event, our on-site volunteers are all Moz staff.

For example, we have engineers working alongside our customer service team and our administration team. It’s great because they actually get to meet the people they're building the products for or marketing the products to or processing payments for while also having a deep team bonding experience.

The MozCon Staff

Our Moz staff are the ones working registration. They're the ones hosting our Birds-of-a-feather tables at lunch, networking with attendees or showcasing our products in the Moz hub. It's all hands on deck in a really exciting way.

Brandon: Could you tell us more about these Birds-of-a-feather tables?

Danielle: During lunchtime, across all three days of the conference, we have speakers, partners or Moz staff host discussions on different topics. These topics have a wide range, for example they may be email-focused or SEO-focused, or even vertical focused like agencies that work with commerce and retail. Two years ago we had one for new parents adjusting to returning to work.

Brandon: Going into 2019, what trends and new strategies are you excited about incorporating into your event strategy?

Danielle: I'm excited to see how our new white label app will provide a place for information and connection. This includes having a space for our attendees and our partners to connect, networking features for attendees, and having a searchable digital agenda.

Brandon: What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone who is just starting to run a conference like MozCon?

Danielle: Have a clear understanding of the why and make sure that all of your stakeholders are aligned on the goal. That's going to drive all your decisions down the road. From here, you’ll get a better understanding of your ideal audience, content, speakers and experiences.

Brandon: Now for the tough questions. We understand that when you’re not building a huge community around events, you like to travel the globe. Any favorite destinations?

Danielle: I’m so fortunate to have the opportunity to travel and I haven't been to a place I don't love yet. But I’ll always have a soft spot for Spain. I actually studied abroad there and I've been back three times.

Brandon: What is one of your favorite things about living in Seattle?

Danielle: Honestly, I would say the food. I'm so lucky to experience the amazing food scene here. I also love the access to the outdoors. In two hours, I could go to the beach, I could be on the ski slopes, or I could be on a hiking trail. It's amazing.

Brandon: How do you stay inspired and keep your creative instincts fresh?

Danielle: Actually, I like to create a lot. I'll make anything from jewelry to my own body care to furniture. I also consider cooking to be creating. I think it's really important—even if it doesn't look beautiful or taste good—to always be creating something.

That's all for this spotlight, but you may be interested in checking out these other Event Heroes:

Mike Butcher (TechCrunch/The Europas)

Britta Schellenberg (Brightcove)

Cathy McPhillips (Content Marketing World)

Vasil Azarov (Growth Marketing Conference)

Dayna Rothman (SaaStr)

from Cameron Jones Updates https://blog.bizzabo.com/event-heroes-danielle-launders

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flauntpage · 7 years ago

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Tactical Guide to Machida vs. Anders

During the early days of PRIDE FC’s Bushido brand they themed events around the two sides of the card. You had Japan vs. Brazil, Japan vs. Gracies, Chute Boxe vs. Brazilian Top Team and the like. If you look at the poster for this weekend’s UFC Fight Night in Belem, Brazil, you could be forgiven for thinking that the UFC had adopted the theme of “Team Established Names vs Team Who?”

The stand out odd match on this card is Valentina Shevchenko vs. Priscila Cachoeira. Cachoeira looks out of place partly because she is the only person on the poster without a glossy official UFC head shot, but perhaps the MMA fan will look at this poster and concede that they don't know much about the women’s weightclasses outside of the UFC and that maybe Cachoeira is good enough to debut against Shevchenko. In one sense they would be right—Tapology ranks her as the No. 30 flyweight in the world. FightMatrix has her all the way up at number nine! But then her only viewable fights are grainy recordings from regional events on Youtube… and they aren’t impressive. Pushing forward with her chin up in the air, Cachoeira takes as many punches as she throws and looks exhausted from the third minute onwards. Putting her in with a fighter like Shevchenko—a counter puncher to the point of paralysis if her opponent doesn’t lead—seems like a blatant tune up.

Hands down, head stationary until it is pulled straight back at the sight of a jab, swinging from the knees, eating counters and already breathing hard a minute into round 1? Probably a good match up for a well conditioned counter striker like Shevchenko.

But on the other extreme of that equation is the main event between Lyoto Machida and Eryk Anders. The double edged sword of name value is that when you get old, the UFC will use you to headline events in your home country but for the most part they won’t pitch you softballs. This leads to an awkward silence and a rapid evacuation of the stadium the moment that Mauricio Rua or Vitor Belfort gets starched in the main event. Belem is the Brazilian Lyoto Machida’s hometown and as such he is the star of the show, but Eryk Anders—despite being largely unknown amongst the less hardcore viewership—is a tough test for the old dragon.

Machida’s trials are well known by now. He was an undersized marvel at 205 lbs., relying on his minimalist counter striking game and frustrating opponents into overcommitting and stepping onto his reverse punches. He moved down to middleweight and became more active on offense— scoring a couple of sensational knockouts with his sharpshooting kicking game at range. Machida gave us one of the most compelling middleweight title fights in history in his barnburner with Chris Weidman, but was ultimately unable to win his second UFC belt. Suffering devastating losses to Luke Rockhold and Yoel Romero, Machida was forced out for two years after alerting USADA to his use of a dietary supplement which it turned out was on their ban list. Upon his return to the UFC in October of 2017, Machida was matched against Derek Brunson. The most cautious striker in the UFC was quickly knocked out by the most reckless striker in the UFC and everyone was left hoping that Machida would retire.

Eryk Anders is a peculiarity in MMA. A promising college football player making the switch to fighting, he spent a whole lot of time and effort fighting just for the sake of fighting after he gave up the hand-egg. He has only ten professional fights to his name, but Anders took over twenty amateur fights before he even began drawing a professional paycheck. That is a deceptively large amount of in ring experience for an up-and-comer.

After the briefest of stints in Bellator—he knocked out his only opponent in twenty-three seconds—Anders moved on to LFA. On June 23, 2017 he won their middleweight title and less than thirty days later he was in the UFC. Still sore from a twenty-five minute fight, Anders looked a little softer around the edges. Anders fought on the counter—attempting to time Rafael Natal with counter left straights.

Herding Natal into the cage, Anders feinted his way in on the quickly tiring veteran before knocking him stiff with a couple of left straights.

Five months later, Anders returned to the UFC to take on Markus Perez. Between his ponytail and his desire to throw jump spinning kicks any time Anders got close enough, Perez seemed to be fighting out of a different era. Clean shaven and considerably trimmer, Anders looked better than ever as he cut the cage on Perez and applied constant pressure. Perez spun often, missed, and wound up against the cage. In the first round it was enough for Anders to force clinches and make Perez work. By the second round Perez was more static and each time he stood still by the fence, Anders would crack him with a couple of punches and tie up again.

In the third round Perez was desperate and kept shooting takedowns which Anders sprawled on effortlessly, using the quarter nelson and lining up hard elbows and knees off it.

The quarter nelson in action.

Hypothetical Gameplans

While Eryk Anders has shown himself to be wild at times—he tends to run for that extra swing when he has his man off balance or just escaping off the fence—he doesn’t normally burst into a sprint and run straight for his man off the bat as Derek Brunson does. In fact, watching Anders fight he does seem very much like Derek Brunson if Derek Brunson had a fight IQ and some regard for his own safety. On one hand, drawing the charge for the counter gyaku-zuki will probably be tougher. On the other hand, at least he isn’t going to sprint forward and catch Machida cold.

For Machida, this writer recommends exactly the same thing he did for the Brunson fight. Switch stances to orthodox and keep the open guard dynamic. Closed guard (southpaw vs southpaw) exchanges do not favor Machida because he drops his lead hand to his hip like a traditional karateka every time he punches. He’s rarely the bigger hitter and he can’t take a shot like he used to, so against fellow southpaws he can eat left hands and get himself hurt. It’s far, far too late for him to learn how to box and it will continue to cost him, but by changing stances to remain in open guard he can hide most of those flaws.

Throw straight, drop hand, eat counter.

Machida’s willingness to change stances also helps him against good ring cutters, and against Weidman he showed excellent awareness of his ring position, changing direction multiple times and faking escapes along the fence in an attempt to get Weidman overcommitted in one direction. We discussed this at length in Ringcraft: The Fall of Ronda Rousey.

It will be interesting to see if Machida can use direction changes to stay off the fence against Anders. Anders has done well pressuring opponents to the fence and teeing off on them when they stop moving—good misdirection and ring awareness can make that a lot trickier. Anders is also a little one-handed in his herding—looking for the left hand constantly and often allowing the opponent to circle away from it freely as he throws it.

Lovely follow up though.

An especially important point for Machida to keep in mind is Anders’s defensive position with that rear hand. Watching his fights with Natal and Perez you will notice that it is awkwardly close to his chin and body. When opponents have thrown body kicks into that open side he has looked especially uncomfortable and over-reacted. If Machida fights orthodox he will be kicking with his less dextrous leg but he should be able to snipe with his round kicks and knees between Anders’s advances.

Luckily Perez was not a particularly smart fighter.

The way that Anders squirms and crunches his body over in reaction to any body kick he takes, and the fact that he holds his left fist almost flush against his chin throughout the fight, means that there is also a great chance of a classic Machida high kick if he can stay off the fence and set the trap with a couple of body kicks.

For Anders, his usual pressure might be a good look, provided he doesn’t get out of his stance or start throwing wild. Low kicks have always been a great tactic against Machida and The Dragon doesn’t often lash out off the fence so Anders can probably take his time. Keeping Machida near the fence so that he must keep moving laterally will also shorten his stance and keep his feet moving—taking away those telegraph free kicks.

Chris Weidman did a great job of making Machida burn energy by staying on him along the fence and simply letting him try to dance his way out. Weidman’s feints also did more in that fight—in moving Machida to the fence and making him second guess his usual counter opportunities—and Anders has also shown that he understands the value of feinting his way in slowly along the fence. That was how he laid out Natal and clipped off nice combinations on Perez.

Much of Machida’s takedown defense has been done with his feet, but by bringing the fight towards the fence and ducking in for Machida’s hips, Anders could force Machida to fight off the takedown with his hips and hands. Anders did a great job against Perez of working up and down, coming up with strikes off of takedown attempts when he met resistance. Reaching for a single and coming up with strikes along the fence could be a tremendous way to hurt Machida as both his hands and feet would be out of his usual striking position.

As Lyoto Machida is the writer’s favorite fighter, it is getting a little hard to watch him get in the cage with young, well equipped fighters and get beaten up. But with what Anders has been able to show so far ,a victory over Machida would do wonders to get eyes on him and could lead to his arrival as a much-needed young(ish) contender in the aging middleweight top ten. And of course, there is always the chance that Machida can do something magical...

Jack wrote the hit biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and scouts prospects at The Fight Primer.

Tactical Guide to Machida vs. Anders published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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