#and of course the outcome isn’t that I actually achieve this impressive thing

[ink-the-artist]

I am so curious if anyone else does this, one of the most useful things I do when making art is being stupidly overconfident almost deluding myself, like if throughout the entire process I completely convince myself I can pull off whatever it is I’m trying to do, even if it’s something beyond my skill level that I naturally don’t end up reaching at the end, the end result comes out better than I expect even when it doesn’t look like what I was going for. I don’t rly know how to properly explain this but I’ve been doing it all my life and it’s probably one of the funniest mental processes I go through when making art

[mc-critical]

I really don’t understand the amount of people who apparently dislike Mihrimah for not giving Rüstem a chance/not having Rüstem grow on her. I don’t know entirely how I feel about Mihrimah as a character but I feel like if you were to dislike her that’d be a silly reason. It was a opportunistic marriage, one she never wanted and to a man she never loved. Not to mention he was also borderline pedophilic (when he said to her on her wedding night that he had been “waiting for this moment for years” when she was 17..okay) and then coercing her into consumating the marriage through the threat of suicide. Sure, the circumstances of Rüstem’s life were sad, but I don’t understand how that entails him being *entitled* to Mihrimah’s love or affection. And if anything I found Rüstem to be misogynistic and possibly even abusive, which likely made marriage to him all the worse. Mihrimah’s definitely not perfect or above criticism, but that doesn’t mean she owed any man love, sex or affection, royal borne woman or not.

I don't understand them, either. Because this is the last thing Mihrimah should be disliked for.

Rüstem is a very odious character with minimal redeeming qualities. His supposed love for Mihrimah is established disturbingly early on and while that may have fled over the audience's heads (it sure did fly over my head when I first watched the show!) because their marriage is a historical fact and as such, is automatically considered the normal course of things - the questionable pedophilic implications are definitely there and send off the alarming signs of utterly problematic behavior. Sure, he's done his duty by saving her after she fell off a horse and (little!) Mihrimah thanked him for it, but it is clearly seen in his eyes by the second episode he's on-screen that there's something more and something baffling when the girl is so young. And it only escalated from there.

Obviously, most of his fanbase ignores or flat out misses this aspect of his character, but I also find people that think that his attitude to Mihrimah is the only bad thing about Rüstem when I find most of his negative traits to be present outside of Mihrimah, but with her witnessing them. I feel the connection to Iskender Çelebi and the way he bacame the stable-man of the castle are his most important character establishing moments: they shine a light into his sneakiness and ability to play dirty, but also reveal his immediate prejudice against Ibrahim. The ambition, similar to Hürrem's, but not for the same reasons, is set up from the get-go. He's seemingly following Iskender, just like he comes to seemigly follow Hürrem, but he always forges his own path for his own gain. His alleged "loyalty" is the thing that Rüstem usually gets the most credit for, but while he begins to look like Hürrem's loyal companion that shall fulfill her every order, this whole facade is deconstructed and ultimately, totally broken apart in S04. His character establishing moments recontextualize all the decisions he makes in that season and show the true nature of his ambition: he followed Hürrem when she prevailed over everyone, he followed her when she seemingly gave him the world and all the desired power and when she and the one she wanted for the throne were put into a disadvantaged position and Selim got the upper hand, he ran straight for the opportunity, despite of him making an oath in front of the Quran not to do that. He turns out to be simply an opportunist hyena who works only for his own gain. Nothing more. Just like he saw the opportunity to get rid of the stable-man before him in the past, now he sees the opportunity to be on the winning side again with Selim. He doesn't care who is he in front of and who he promised what, as long as they're of no use to him, he bails. His "loyalty" immediately disappears from his positive traits, because it turns out he never had it in the first place. People praise him for his loyalty for Mihrimah, but that "loyalty" also lasted so long - when he found out that she wouldn't ever come to love him, he began to bang with Gracia Mendez, in conjunction with the betrayal of what Hürrem stood up for. Now, tell me, how can Mihrimah love such a guy? That was one of the only reasons she tolerated him and when even that was lost, how can she still keep her ties with him?

[His backstory is sad indeed, but the only thing it does is put his actions into perspective, not justify them or make him likeable somehow. Especially when what that "character lore dump" specifically explains is his refusal to tell Nigar where her daughter is - the backstory makes that action logical for his character, but it's still framed as nothing short of spiteful. That said, he still does have some soft sides and the arc with his brother is where I found him the most sympathetic - this is the time Rüstem actually showed vulnerability without false alarms or disguise and his brother was probably the only thing that was precious to him and stayed precious after all these years, consistently throughout his screentime. What helps even more, is the brother's role as a moral compass and the last bridge between the past/his loyalties and the future/the victories he would achieve through opportunism. That was the last gasp of what was left of his possible humanity and after his brother was killed, he let it go almost instantly, because... well, after he willingly chose his own life in the saray, he might as well continue to live it, right? Him saving a boy in S03 without any hesitation whatsoever, was also respectable. But these demonstrations of a softer side of his being are also taking place outside of Mihrimah, but with her not witnessing them altogether. And they do little in changing the general impression of Rüstem's character and his relationship with Mihrimah.]

We have to keep in mind that Mihrimah's whole S03 arc was finding purpose in her life and finding true love. She had many love stories throughout the series with different people, different personalities and different motives to try to make it work with them. No matter what they've went through together and despite of them all having the same outcomes due to different outside (and inside) factors, there is a reason she fell for these people in the first place. Okay, while for Bali Bey it was a bizarre, puppy, immature, childish love, for Taşlicalı something truly genuine began to flourish with all the glances, poems, dedication (Mahidevran succeeded to break them up, but it's not to be denied that Taşlicalı was very hard to convince and he was still thinking of her afterwards) and sweet words. She got a call for a new adventure with him. Bali Bey, on the other hand, was adored by her mostly for his handsomeness, I feel, but even when he tore all her dreams apart, he showed tact and respect. What I mean to say is, if Rüstem has qualities that are "worthy of Mihrimah", wouldn't she see them? Wouldn't she see all these virtues? Because all she sees before the marriage are his words that she will marry him, that she will be his and that's it. The best she sees of him is his good manners when he asks her whether she wants something or stuff, but he could do that with everyone else, knowing his post, and the previous implications make even that alone head scratching. Why would she want a man like that? I agree with all your points. Are you, people, denying Mihrimah her feelings? She realized the potential advantages of this marriage and agreed to do it regardless, why does she have to come to love him when he truly gives her no real reasons to, even before she married him?

I believe Rüstem cares about Mihrimah, albeit in his own distorted, toxic way, but in reality, he didn't do her any good. His relationship with Mihrimah revels in manipulation and facades for her to keep, because she has to "protect" her brothers. Rüstem never actually took account of her own feelings or opinions on matters, especially when what she proposed wasn't an opportunistic enough option for him to afford. Their interactions are mostly focused on the survival of the game and the actions that have to be taken to achieve that. He often puts an unbelievable amount of pressure on her, which while given because of the system they live in, hurt more than it helped. Their relationship was never allowed to flourish in a healthy manner and Mihrimah could never be truly herself in it, not even for a moment. The castle she lived in, her home, was merely full of tension every day, not a source of comfort. His stoic, serious cunning contrasts with her own spirit. Not to mention that it always seemed he considered his marriage to Mihrimah as a price, a goal he had finally achieved and I doubt that she wasn't aware of it to some extent. The root of the marriage is only political opportunism and no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot force a person to love someone they're with only out of sheer necessity, only for a purpose for "the greater good". Rüstem never did anything to earn Mihrimah's love and she shouldn't be hated for not loving him. This is what MC Rüstem is as a character, whether we like it or not, and he isn't a healthy person for Mihrimah. If she couldn't warm up to him when she fully got to know him in their alone time, that means something is missing. That means he just isn't for her and. that's. OKAY.

But there may be reasons why some people could dislike Mihrimah because of it. I offer my experience with cases I've encountered in forums: these people are usually very invested in Hürrem's character to the point they view everything she does as excusable, at the least, so of course they would want to justify Hürrem marrying Mihrimah to Rüstem. But plainly selfish political gain is no justification and that may leave cracks in their view of Hürrem and it all may disturb them to a great amount. That's why they channel this ire on Mihrimah and perhaps demand for her to warm up to Rüstem, so they get the justification Hürrem supposedly deserves, especially paralleled with Valide and Mahidevran's previous attempt to marry Aybige and Mustafa, who.. surprise, surprise (but not really), didn't love each other. There's another facet to this, with people seeing or wanting to see Mihri only as "her mother's daughter" and not wanting to marry, not loving Rüstem destroys that picture, because there's a "crack in the system", she doesn't listen to her mother, who obviously knows better and that could be disappointing or demotivating, given the expectations she has set when she defended her in E84. Or maybe they dislike Mihrimah for not loving Rüstem, because they do find something in him. They love "bad boys" and genuinely don't know why Mihrimah doesn't, either and that could make them see her as an annoyance. Or maybe they just anticipate more juicy scenes between her and Rüstem because of the probable chemistry between the two actors and if they watch it only for the spectacle (believe me, such people really exist!), they may insist that Mihrimah is only spoiled and ruined everything for them. Or maybe, again, people may find this insulting to the historical facts or whatnot and if Mihrimah didn't not stand him, this "mess" of writing could be fixed a little. The writers have ruined her character along with the history, according to them. It's absurd, I know and I don't get it, either, but the reasons are there, as far as I'm concerned. That still doesn't take away from the fact that this is the weirdest accusation you could throw at Mihrimah, with how Rüstem himself is.

You're right that Mihrimah has many other, vastly more offputting traits that she could be disliked for. Little Mihrimah is very brash and spoiled and entitled, to the point she gave her own mother a run for her money. That was gone when she grew up, but it would be understandable if some didn't actually believe the change, especially when she shows this side of hers again every now and then. She could be perceptive, but could also be prone to influence at the same time, sometimes to an annoying degree. There have been times where she has let her own bias lead her and that clouded her judgement in several occasions. She came to idealize her mother too much sometimes, as well. She was terribly insistent on her infatuation with Bali Bey and letting go of it took her very long. She didn't want to listen much to the enemies of her own mother. Her huge love for Bayezid prevented her from viewing Selim as objectively. She could be vengeful. She could be bossy. She couldn't fully face someone calling her out on her mistakes. (the confrontation with Selim in E139) She became so engrained to her castle life that when she was offered a way out, she didn't follow it. All these are very interesting character flaws for me, but I get why they might be a dealbreaker. But disliking or hating her for not loving Rüstem? Heck, hating her for her contribution to Mustafa's death alone is more valid than that! Disliking her for all these flaws piling up together is perfectly reasonable. But for this? It's strange.

[silver-wield]

FF7R: The Cloud Narrative

While in the middle of one of my replays that involved making different choices for Cloud to get other stuff, I started thinking, “What would Cloud choose?”

And that got me thinking some more about the fact we say it's all what Cloud would choose, but really, it's what we pick to get the best story that suits our preferences.

And since I'm that kind of dork, I decided to replay and let Cloud's personality and development lead me to make the choices so I could try and see what Cloud would've chosen if he had autonomy. It makes for a slightly different game than the one I usually play, but it was fun really thinking over the options and deciding how Cloud would react to every situation and whether he'd choose to engage with it or not.  

I didn't actually remember to grab every screenshot of my playthrough, so some of these are from Youtube, but the decisions I say I made are the ones I made because why would I lie?

Ok, let's mosey...

Spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be long.

The opening decision is in Chapter 2 when we first meet Aerith. None of these decisions affect anything within the game to do with the resolution, it just makes either girl react differently to Cloud.

I'm sure some people would argue he'd buy it because Aerith, but he doesn't know her, has no obligation to be nice to her – especially compared to the Avalanche crew who he needed to rely on back in the reactor and he was a dick to them – he's in a rush and has no reason to buy flowers unless people want to assume he already had Tifa in mind the moment Aerith mentioned it. If we do choose the option to buy it right away, Aerith flirts a little and slots the flower into Cloud's shoulder strap over his heart. We get none of the extended dialogue if we choose this option. For those people who say the more someone talks is a sign of canon, this would make the “how much” option the non-canon choice because it contains the least amount of dialogue and time they spend together.

If we choose “I'm good,” then we hear Aerith insisting he takes it by saying, “When was the last time you saw a real one,” and adding that “it'll make your girlfriend's day.”

Then we get the automatic line from Cloud that happened when we originally chose “how much.”

After some more dialogue from Aerith another choice occurs, one which can make Cloud sound like a royal shitbag or not.

I think everyone would agree that Cloud purposely pissing off a total stranger is out of character, and if you choose the second option he doesn't actually speak and Aerith goes straight into her line about how “lovers used to give these when they were reunited.”

For my choices as Cloud I said, “I'm good,” and then when she insisted, I agreed to take it because to me – and this is how I always answer – it feels the most Cloud kind of answer.

Chapter 3

The next choice Cloud's presented with is during chapter 3 when Tifa offers him a drink. No matter which choice you make he calls Tifa beautiful as the outcome.

By answering “something hard” Tifa goes into her cocktail making routine before pouring Cloud a drink that looks suspiciously like piss, but is actually meant to represent the colour of his hair. Hard and bitter. Like him. He doesn't like it. Colour me shocked. She then goes on to make the red drink that's a representation of her eye colour. This is when Cloud raises the glass and makes the “beautiful” comment.

If you choose the refuse option, Tifa replies that “if you were in the mood” and then goes into the same drinks making routine as the first option, with the exact same dialogue and outcome between them. (And now I know it's almost identical I wonder why the devs did it? It seems like a straw man option tbf. There's no real choice or changes to the dialogue and it's like it's been put there to give the illusion of it being optional).

Since Cloud is secretly into Tifa I figured he'd choose “something hard and bitter” as a way to try and show off how tough he is. However, it’s worth noting that Cloud isn’t a big drinker and only drinks when he’s in a low mood. He’s pretty happy here, so I’d say in general he wouldn’t drink, but because he’s only recently reunited with Tifa he still wants to impress her. So yeah, to drink.

The next chance for Cloud to have a choice concerns the chapter 3 side quests that open up the alone at last which goes towards choosing a dress for Tifa later in chapter 9. If you don't finish the quests or miss alone at last you always get Tifa's blue dress and moon charm earring. That is her canon outfit.

The quests for chapter 3 are all monster related apart from one – which I'll get to in a minute.

Chadley's report involves scanning monsters for data and killing them. Rat problem comes from the item vendor and involves killing doomrats.

Nuisance in the factory involves killing drakes.

On the prowl involves going after a shinra dog thing

Just flew in from the graveyard involves a larger drake.

These are all the type of job that Cloud would accept without thinking about it too much. He's a merc, he's getting paid to kill monsters. It'll show off his skills and build his rep and as Tifa says, the better his rep the more he gets paid. These five quests are ones Cloud would take because that's the type of person he thinks he should be. The monster slayer.

As for quest 4, lost friends, I initially said that Cloud would avoid this because it involves two things he isn't good with: kids and animals. Now, I've heard from people that by AC Cloud is actually pretty good around kids, and I agree, he's got a lot of love from them by this point. But that's at least two years away from now and he's not even slightly good around kids and actively avoids them. Cats seem to have a grudge against him, too, at this point in the game – though Wedge's cat mellows towards him after he helps out. These were my reasons for deciding to avoid this quest because Cloud just wouldn't do it. Then, once I got to it, I realised the reason why Cloud would do it.

Tifa.

Tifa likes kids and animals. Now, as a respectful type of girl, she doesn't usually push Cloud to do things he doesn't want to. She's always considerate to his feelings and to others too. In this case, though, she's not focused on Cloud and if he'd want to do this job, but on helping out a little girl. Cloud's been running around doing jobs all morning, so Tifa's related him to the task of finding the cats.

Usually Cloud would refuse to something that's so obviously beneath his skills, but because it's Tifa who's asking, he agrees.

Alone at last triggers and we get to view a moment between Cloud and Tifa that ends in him choosing a dress for her. Alone as last is narrative canon whether we choose to see it or not because of other hints in the game that refer back to the conversation they had. While they talk about the past we get an above view of the rug that has a reunion flower pattern on it. Tifa and Cloud both take steps towards each other during this scene, which symbolises their closing the emotional distance that's between them.

This choice changes nothing about the game and only matters if you want to go for the dressed to the nines achievement.

If you choose the top option – for her canon outfit, Tifa replies “Yeah, I guess we aren't kids anymore.” If you choose the second option she says, “That's not much different to my regular style.”

If you choose the exotic outfit she says, “really?” and acts a little awkward about it.

She then asks Cloud to dress to match her. The dresses he wears during wall market all have a similar style to Tifa's options, showing he did dress to match her. The narrative canon choice for which dress Cloud eventually went with is something I'll be bringing up later.

By choosing the canon outfit option and getting Tifa's canon dialogue we get a reference to the fact they've known each other for a long time. This ties into the conversation they had which also touched on their shared history. This is a background development scene between them, but isn't necessary to know because we get other info about them over the rest of the game. This extra bit of dialogue is to increase our knowledge of Cloud and Tifa, both separately and together.

Chapter Four

Jessie’s bike ride, which isn’t optional in the sense you can choose how it goes. The result depends on how good you are at the minigame. However, since there’s three endings, this is a choice based result.

Are you, Cloud? Really? When did you get that SOLDIER mandatory training? Of the three optional endings, the narrative canon that makes the most sense is Cloud being really bad at it. This is his first time doing any of that, but it gives him the crash course he needs for later in the Shinra building when he does all those fancy moves. Cloud owes Roche some props for observational bike stunting. 

Chapter Five

And our next canon narrative choice is between making Cloud look incompetent at his job or choosing to have an intimate moment with his one true love. Well, seeing how the cloti roll is in the ultimania we know this is the correct narrative choice.

Chapter 8

There's a long gap between chapter 5 and the next option we get for Cloud. Once we meet Aerith again and get her back to Sector 5, we go into her side quests and optional discovery. Aerith's side quests are tied to what dress she later wears during chapter 9.

The side quests for Aerith's chapter are split into groups of 3. This means that by unlocking one, you get the further quests on that branch. One branch is more of a Cloud oriented style set of quests, while the other involves the thing he doesn't do well around: kids.

Kids on patrol → A verified hero + Angel of the slums

Weapons on a rampage → Paying respects + moogle merchant.

If you don't complete kids on patrol first then the other two don't unlock. One of these further quests involves more kids and playing with them. Not really Cloud type activities and unlike with chapter 3 where he'd do something because Tifa asked, he's not got that type of relationship with Aerith that he'd be willing to do stuff that he doesn't want to just to impress her.

Breakdown of sidequests in sector 5 and NPC background dialogues.

Weapons on a rampage is more his style of quest, which leads to the NPC who set it to ask a further favour. This links to the next quest where you have to pay respects for the old man. The thing is, he doesn't have the graveyard key, which leads to the next quest where we have to go buy it off Moggie. This is the only kid related quest on this branch and it's over in moments. Cloud has the minimum amount of contact with Moggie and doesn't show any kind of tolerance towards her while he's talking. There's also no apology for his behaviour – unlike when he said to Tifa he was doing his best when she scolded him for being rude.  

The way these quests are set out in blocks of three and the fact one half is heavily reliant on child interaction – which Cloud wouldn't do at this point in his development or association with Aerith – leads me to believe he wouldn't agree to these quests. This means the language of flowers discovery doesn't trigger and Aerith ends up in her second option dress – which I've theorised is her canon outfit because of its design similarity to the OG version, her reaction to the dress, the fact that in OG, Aerith chose her own dress, the hairstyle and accessory match the OG style and Cloud's reaction is a very Cloud reaction to have, compared to the other two outfits – the bad dress has dogs and rats following her and the red dress is so ott she's swarmed by fans, a red carpet and so on, but also her accessories don't fit her symbolism theme of flowers because she's wearing stars.

With all of the above in mind, I surmised Cloud would do the monster hunt branch of quests and quit while he was ahead.

Chapter 9

Where before we had a few choices happening, once we hit Wall Market we're inundated with options that affect Cloud's outfit later on. They also showcase what kind of morals Cloud has. Either way, it's canonically easier to get Chocobo Sam's pts higher than Madam M's, leading me to believe he is the canon narrative choice for this section and that Cloud's black and blue corset dress is the one he ends up wearing.

This contradicts my previous theory about the ultimania in which Cloud is shown very uncomfortable in the loli outfit, which led me to believe that was the one he ended up in if he made the choices in Wall Market. I now believe it's because if you pick this outfit it's his “bad ending”, worse than if you don't make any effort and get the plain black and grey dress.

The maximum amount of pts you can get from Chocobo Sam's options is 6.5, compared to Madam M's 5.

There are several people who offer you options during Wall Market.

The love hotel owner (not a Nojima self-insert lol).

Johnny (discovery) + before the first coloseum match – there's a bottle on the table and the choice is to drink or not.

Madam M x2

Sam x2

The first option you get in Wall Market happens before you've even entered the place. Sam asks you what the girl you're searching for looks like. No matter which option you choose, Sam says that Cloud has a crush on Tifa – which he doesn't deny.

If you choose the first option you get 1pt with Sam.

If you choose the second option you get 0pts

If you choose the 3rd option you get 1pt with Madam M.

I chose the first option because Cloud's a guy, with eyes, and the other two choices don't offer anything in the way of a physical description and if he's describing her to someone then he needs to actually describe what she looks like in some way. This is the only option that does that. It's also the only option that gets a different reaction out of Aerith, whereas the other two options have the same reaction from her.

This is the second option we can choose from and it's the love hotel guy (still not a Nojima self-insert). If you choose “no thanks,” this gets you 1pt with Sam and Aerith flirts with Cloud.

If you choose “how much?” you get a surprised “Cloud!” from Aerith and 1pt with Madam M.

If you choose “back off” you get 0pts and Aerith apologises on his behalf.

Of the 3 choices, I picked “back off” because it's the most Cloud appropriate choice.

Next, we have the Johnny discovery when he literally runs past you as you try to go to Don Corneo's for the first time. By following him to the Honey Bee, we get a lecherous dialogue from him and then a question about Cloud's own preferences. Would he go into the Honey Bee? If he agrees with Johnny, we get a slightly self-loathing assumption of a reply, whereas if we disagree, Johnny says that Cloud hasn't experienced anything yet. Either way, he runs off once he's finished.

By agreeing with Johnny you get 1pt for Sam.

If you don't agree you get 0pts.

I chose to disagree because Cloud isn't a lecherous pig and is actually pure af with no experience.

We learn from Leslie that the only way to get into an audition with Corneo is through the trio. Andrea Rhodea has a 3 year waiting list, so we don't even see him. So, we go back to Sam.

This is a hint that the following event with Sam is a load of bull. Johnny telling Cloud – if you interact with him – that he should've followed his gut is a hint that Cloud should trust his instincts. It’s also confirming that while Cloud is a total cheapskate who doesn’t do anything for free, he’s also a betting man who’ll think little of dropping 1000g on a sure thing (why 1000g? because that’s the amount he says to Barret in chapter 6, showing that while Cloud appreciates having money, he’ll also spend it.) Then it's around the corner to where Sam waits. Who, despite having already endorsed Tifa, says he's willing to help Aerith if she can guess the result of a coin toss.

Ofc it's rigged. But if you choose to gamble, it impresses Sam. You get 1.5 pts for choosing heads or tails. If you refuse to gamble then you get 0.5pts.

I believe the narrative choice is to pick heads, like Johnny suggested because he is the inner voice of Cloud and gives us hints as to real Cloud’s feelings at different points in the game. Either way, Cloud gets the coin and says he had a hunch about the result.

After this it's away to Madam M's and the most hilarious choice I've ever seen! I have to wait until the room's clear before choosing because it's a watch from behind a cushion moment lol

Madam M won't help Cloud unless he agrees to a massage. Since our SOLDIER boi doesn't like being forced into decisions and has issues around touch and intimacy, not to mention he's stingy af and wouldn't drop 3k on a massage when he's previously hounded people for a lot less money. But, he also doesn’t stop to think about spending money if it’s worth this while. 1000g doesn’t seem like much of a big deal to him, if it’s his standard amount of bet on a sure thing. He wants to save Tifa, so he’d likely go with the standard course. The other one alludes to him being a cheapskate like Aerith accused and there’s no reference to the luxury course anywhere in the game except here. This isn't something he's doing for pleasure, he's in Wall Market to save Tifa, so the things he's doing are a means to an end.

If you pick the luxury massage you get 2pts with Madam M.

If you pick the standard massage you get 1pt with Madam M

If you pick the poor man's massage you get 0pts.

I chose the standard course massage because I believe that's what Cloud would choose just to get Madam M to agree to help them.

The next choice comes right off the back of the massage at Madam M's and involves Cloud giving an opinion of Aerith's outfit.

If you choose the first option it gets you 1pt with Sam and a pleased reaction from Aerith.

If you choose the second option you get 0pts and an angry retort from Aerith.

If you choose the third option you get 1pt with Madam M and a middle of the road comment from Aerith. No matter which you choose, Madam M scolds you.

Since by this point in the game Cloud and Aerith are friendly enough for him to pass comment on her outfit, I could see him answering with the second choice, but not the first since he doesn't even notice what anyone's wearing let alone have an opinion on it. The third option sounds the most Cloud-centric choice, so that's what I picked.

The last option is for Cloud to drink an unknown substance or not while waiting for his match to start at the coliseum. Johnny gives the explanation of what it is, who it came from and what it potentially does.

By choosing to drink the mystery substance you get 1pt with Sam.

By ignoring the drink you get 0pts.

Since Cloud is the last person to put weird shit in his body I went with not drinking it.

The final tally for the options that Cloud gets set him on Chocobo Sam's side quests for the blue corset dress that matches Tifa's canon outfit – she said dress to match, remember? It's also the one that in the ultimania Cloud looks the most at ease in.

Chocobo Sam's sidequests are the ones that I got as a result of choosing the options I did. I believe this is the canon narrative that Cloud would take if he were choosing. After several playthroughs I did waver on whose quests seemed more the narrative canon. I began thinking Sam's were, but then the ultimania illustration of Cloud embarrassed in the satin dress led me to think Madam M's were the narrative canon. After playing both sets of side quests, I've come to the conclusion that Sam's would be the narrative choice if Cloud were making the decisions.

Having Cloud's choices result in Sam's side quests we get burning thighs (appears in both), the party never stops and a dynamite body.

Burning thighs is the squats contest that echoes the OG storyline. We meet Andrea's little brother, Jules – who is totally not staring at Cloud's ass through the entire minigame while encouraging him.  This side quest touches on egos and being cocky – which Cloud can be. It's a humble pie moment, which is another life lesson that Cloud needs to learn also.

The party never stops features the return of Johnny, who appears as we leave the dressmaker's son who's the originator for the quest. We're sent over into the bar, where we can collect the Midgar Blues single for the cd achievement. This song is canonically Cloud and Tifa's romantic theme in Advent Children. Once we meet the dressmaker, we're sent over to the materia guy who wants “the sauce” in exchange for “inspiration”.

This sidequest is a bunch of tongue in cheek dick jokes and it's hilarious! It's also alludes to the fact that Cloud has zero experience since he had a crush on Tifa until he left the village, spent his time pining for her as a grunt, then got stuffed in a test tube and was in a coma for five years. Ofc he blusters his way through it, handling his balls and making comments about how he doesn't need lessons on “whipping it out”. Oh you poor sweet boi.

Once we get the sauce – fun fact there's no picture in the inventory of it when you get it – and we hand off to the materia guy (unintentional pun but I'm leaving it in now I've done it – and that one) we head over to the next weirdo on the list. The chef. Who literally poisons all of his customers. I suspect he and the pharmacy guy are in cahoots. He poisons people, the pharmacy guy cures them and they both get rich.

The chef asks Cloud to help fix the problem with his kitchen – but from npcs around it sounds like it's just his cooking that's the issue. It doesn't matter which option you pick, Johnny still gets food poisoning. Even if you max your materia, nothing changes. Cloud doesn't even offer the options, Johnny does the talking.

Once we're done with the killer chef, it's over to the pharmacy guy, who asks Cloud to go and deliver medicine. If you maxed your cleansing materia you get 3 packets of meds. The only one that matters is the guy in the pub bathroom since that moves the side quest along. The others are optional, but increase Cloud's rep about town since he's helping more people.

The pharmacy guy gives Cloud a Honey Bee Inn VIP pass, which is the dressmaker's inspiration. Once that's handed back, Cloud chats to the dressmaker's son, who caps the side quest off with the below screen.

This is a reference to the dream that Cloud had during chapter 8 where his mother mentioned he should have a mature girlfriend. This is the contradicting opinion that balances that. The dressmaker's son saying age doesn't equal maturity is referencing Tifa – since these quests are the ones that get you the matching dress to her canon one. This is the same as the Midgar Blues playing in the pub. These are Tifa centric quests, which is the entire reason Cloud's in Wall Market to begin with.

The last quest is a dynamite body, which comes from Sam. Tifa has a bomb bracelet on her default weapon that is part of a matching pair with her chocobo bracelet. Tifa is represented by “da bomb” and everyone knows Cloud’s a chocobo head. This quest is referencing cloti, and a comment from the announcer using a mixed metaphor mentions putting on shades. 

Afterwards Same tries to hand Cloud his cut of the prize money and Cloud says he's there for Tifa, not money. Sam replies that Cloud has changed since his arrival and could likely storm Corneo's place all by himself to save Tifa. He also mentions that Tifa is a bombshell and Cloud goes to confront him by taking a step forward and saying “Hey.” This is Cloud stepping up to people sexually objectifying Tifa.

Once the quests are done, it's back to Corneo's where Cloud considers breaking in – like Sam suggested – but Leslie uses Cloud's feelings for Tifa against him by saying Corneo could hurt her if he does anything he shouldn't. This isn’t the first time Cloud’s emotionally blackmailed in Wall Market. 

Cloud backs down, but is now operating under the sense that Corneo is a lot more dangerous than he first thought, and he's sending Aerith in. Aerith. Who's useless in a fight. He's now thinking that he'd have to go in and save them both, which is why he says to Aerith that he's not letting her go alone.

We've now reached the point where Cloud's earlier refusal to do kid related quests gives us the result with Aerith's dress. Her theme has been given a slightly rock vibe, which is SOLDIER Cloud appropriate, and the design is something that she has chosen – this is in line with her OG dress which she chose herself. She also has a large hair bow, similar hairstyle to OG and her flower symbolism throughout – compared to the red dress which has stars that haven't been associated with her at any point. The straps on the pink dress – which is her signature colour – also match the straps on the OG design. Johnny’s around throwing cherry blossom petals, which match several of her abilities and are a reference to Zack. Aerith wore this dress for Zack. This is her Zack date dress. This leads me to believe that this is her canon narrative outfit.

The accompanying blocking to this scene is also more realistic than the other two.

Cloud's reaction to the dress is suitably Cloud. His jaw drops a little and he gets a bit soft voiced when talking to Aerith, though it's a quick moment that ends when he asks why she left Madam M's.

And now we're at the point where Cloud has to impress Andrea Rhodea. As long as you get 112pts in his dance sequence (great = 2, good = 1) then Cloud will wear the earrings with his dress, no matter which one it is.

This is the last choice you have and it's the tie breaker between the two girls if you chose to do all of the side quests for them. By choosing Aerith you get her resolution later in chapter 14, but in the meantime you get a short dialogue and then Tifa wakes up.

If you choose Tifa, this goes towards her resolution in chapter 14, but in the meantime you get a longer dialogue concerning the imminent dangers in sector 7 and also she questions Cloud about his relationship with Aerith. This is referencing all of the strange things about Aerith from her initial touch to Cloud’s wrist letting him see the whispers, to the whispers attacking them later in sector 7, to her not letting him leave sector 5, to her crying and wanting to go with him. Tifa’s question makes Cloud suspicious. It’s not romantically motivated on her part because her focus is on saving sector 7.

Cloud doesn't get a chance to answer, as Aerith wakes up.

Chapter 12

Technically not a choice -- in fact it implies the opposite -- because if you run the timer out in chapter 12 at the top of the pillar nothing happens. This is a message that all previous timed events were optional because that’s what the players wanted. This is saying that no matter if you try to choose to ignore Tifa or Barret or any of the plot, that the game will wait for you to move. There are no consequences to running this timer down because it’s implying that the time for optional choices has passed. Narrative canon only will commence from this point on.

The last optional choice in the game comes a lot later with the stairs and elevator, so anything that Cloud says or does between then is canon. All of the resolutions are canon, but we're only able to view one at a time because of how the game operates. Cloud is the witness to the resolutions because they’re Barret, Tifa’s and Aerith’s resolutions.

Barret's resolution is first because the lighting is much brighter indicating it's earlier in the night.

After that comes Tifa's resolution, which is much later in the night, but well before dawn.

The last resolution is Aerith's and she indicates that it's almost morning at the end of hers.

All resolutions are canon

Aerith's resolution is hinted at by Mirielle during the lost wallet and Kyrie sidequests.

Tifa's resolution is hinted at by Tifa, through Leslie in the chapter 14 intel gathering main quest where you hunt down Don Corneo. Tifa relates Leslie's fiancee's necklace to a symbol of reunion. Since the necklace has a reunion flower on it, that she's seen, and the only time she mentions learning about the meaning of that flower is during her resolution, this is the confirmation of it having happened. Also, the fact that Cloud was about to mention the meaning, then stopped because he thought it might embarrass Tifa – who'd been in a vulnerable state at the time – shows that he was aware of both the meaning and the resolution and Tifa's feelings.

Chapter 16

Last choice in the game and it’s between the stairs and the elevator. And as much as I love the stairs, Mayor Domino tells us later on that the stuff in the elevator is what happened. 

Feel bad for Cloud having to confront his claustrophobia with Tifa there. He’s not happy at all by the time they reach the top.

In Conclusion.

Playing as though Cloud were the one making the choices was a lot harder than I thought. I tend to choose things either as he would, or close enough in most cases, but there were some choices that had me stopping to debate which was the right choice. Cloud's character development is a slow process and even though I know he's got a whole kid army in AC, I couldn't resolve that with his current personality, so that led me to avoiding the kid quests. This revealed that Aerith should have worn her pink dress in the narrative and the scene between them when she reveals it feels a very narrative canon type of scene.

Tifa's dress is the same no matter what. I also believe she'd be the narrative choice in the sewers over Aerith because of the content of her dialogue and the fact real!Cloud has a crush on her still. He often checks in with her to make sure she's ok and he has an overriding urge to support and comfort her even when he doesn't know how. The way she lands in the sewers is echoed later in several other falls, but there’s one in the opening of chapter 13 where she’s got her arm under her head. This is because Cloud positioned her that way after she got knocked out. This shows he’d go to her if he saw her hurt.

All of the events, options and side quests culminate in Tifa's resolution being the main narrative option we see, with Aerith and Barret as a second and third option through replay choices, though all three do happen. From Cloud’s pov, though, the important one is Tifa because that’s the person he cares about the most. You only get Barret’s resolution by being a closed off asshole and Aerith’s if you act out of character and more like Zack, which is what Aerith wants. The quest dialogue with Leslie shows the resolutions happened, which makes them narrative canon.

People can disagree with this, but I found the narrative canon a really enjoyable way to play – once I got over messing up in wall market with the dress and had to start again (the choices are hard lol). Seeing events through Cloud's eyes, instead of being like some puppet master telling him what to do so I could get the story I wanted to see, was a really fun way to play. I definitely recommend it!

[midnightactual]

Yoruichi’s Character Arc

I’ve alluded to it before with things like Yoruichi’s Versions, but I’ve never really directly spelled out my conception of Yoruichi’s post-exile development and character arc from a more emotional point of view, so I guess I might as well do that. I’ve talked about Yoruichi’s character flaws and deficiencies before in The Duality of Yoruichi, and I’ve talked about impressions other people have of her in Yoruichi and Loneliness. A lot of the former issues stem from her childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, which is detailed (if dispassionately) in History, and a lot of the latter has to do with the image she presents to others as a form of distancing herself from them.

Something which serves as a good emotional guide to Yoruichi in this timeframe is The Glitch Mob’s remix of Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes. I’ll be intercutting lyrics from it to illustrate that point more as I go.

Upon her arrival on Earth, Yoruichi (Yoruichi-4) was essentially extremely Tired and Done as a result of the things which had happened to Yoruichi-1 through Yoruichi-3. Although getting away from things wasn’t her primary motivation during the Hollowfication Incident, it did nonetheless inform her complete willingness to leave her life behind. Simply doing that, however, didn’t really free her mentally from the ramifications.

And I’m talking to myself at night Because I can’t forget Back and forth through my mind Behind a cigarette

And the message coming from my eyes Says “Leave it alone”

Engaging in avoidant behavior, she quickly departed from reminders of her past life and promptly threw herself into worldly human concerns as a way of getting away from her past and herself. This sort of worked for a time, although she would accordingly encounter new traumas due to the horrors of the early 20th century, resulting in Yoruichi-5 and Yoruichi-6.

While she would properly reconnect with Kisuke and the Shōten following the conclusion World War II, it was the death of Kaien that really altered her trajectory substantively. The subsequent Yoruichi-7 was more aware of the fact that she couldn’t escape who she was and where she’d come from, but chose to contextualize it within her recent experiences: she chose to uphold Kaien’s ideals in trying to guide and save humanity through direct action. (As a full nuclear exchange World War III would crash the reincarnation system just as hard as any subsequent threat.)

And if I catch it coming back my way I’m gonna serve it to you And that ain’t what you want to hear But that’s what I’ll do

And the feeling coming from my bones Says “Find a home”

Yeah

I’m going to Wichita Far from this opera forevermore I’m gonna work the straw Make the sweat drip out of every pore

While this agenda was ultimately successful (even if her final relevance to the outcome was questionable) it really boiled down to just keeping things ticking over so that (metaphorically) the sun would still rise the next day. Yoruichi also kind of lost herself in the process and became even more Tired, which even the comparative respite of the ‘90s did relatively little to alleviate.

Being summoned back to Karakura to deal with Aizen finally making moves again, she sort of framed it as one last ride before retirement, only for the fights with Soifon and especially with Yammy to make it clear to her that nothing was really over. Yoruichi-8 thus came about, resolved to return to to her peak performance (at the level of Yoruichi-3 and more) and to put an end to everything once and for all.

The return to dealing with matters involving Soul Society and the organization of the universe at large reawakened feelings of inadequacy and failure within Yoruichi, and Kisuke’s proposition of a grand plan to put things right using Ichigo and Rukia resonated with her: she could either finally atone and receive absolution for her past, or at least receive judgment and oblivion.

All that came crashing down when that plan failed in a spectacularly ignominious fashion. “Judgment Day” came and went with the Wandenreich War, and the world as it was known trundled on past the apocalypse rather substantively unchanged. They failed. She failed. The resulting Yoruichi-9 was thus mostly defined by her rage and resentment at having her satisfactory conclusion snatched away from her by forces beyond her control, and being forced to live with herself just like before only without much hope for some sort of resolution.

But she did have to live with herself. Eventually, as she lived day to day and her anger cooled, she became Yoruichi-10, who was nonetheless still rather more latently irritable and aggressive than most past iterations. This Yoruichi was left looking for purpose in life, and more besides.

And I’m bleeding, and I’m bleeding, and I’m bleeding Right before the Lord All the words are gonna bleed from me And I will think no more

Eventually, she found it in the idea of protecting humanity, just like Yoruichi-7... if differently. Yoruichi-11 was, as a result of recent experiences with Yoruichi-9 and Yoruichi-10, rather more presumptive, assertive, and—to not put too fine of a point on it—quite capable of being a bitch toward others. Unfortunately for her, just having the resolve to live and a purpose in doing so wasn’t really sufficient to lead a meaningful and fulfilling life, and she knew it (as seen in Provocateur).

The real crux at the heart of her interpersonal discontent was, “Don’t you all know you’d be so much better off without me?”

And the stains coming from my blood Tell me “Go back home”

The Void and Hale event was Yoruichi’s attempt to find real personal meaning in life rather than just some sort of impersonal mission statement, and so she decided to fashion her own little idea of “Judgment Day”: she quite literally threw herself away, again and again, searching for deeper meaning in the process of doing so.

There was no divine revelation at the bottom. All that was down there, in the deepest and darkest abyss, was a single spark of indignation: a rage against the dying of the light. What she decided to do upon finding it, was to cradle it within her hands and to make it her purpose to fill the entire universe with it: “Let there be light.”

Yoruichi-12 finally really gets that she can’t do that by herself, and that the way of achieving it is to indeed “Go back home”. Of course, home to her isn’t something so simple as the Shihōin Manor or even the Urahara Shōten. She’s a creature of two worlds at this point—of Earth and Soul Society—and knows that home is as much other people as it is some place. It’s Yūno, and Yūshirō, and Kūkaku, and Kisuke, and Tessai, and Soifon, and so on. (Yes, even her parents.)

This Yoruichi is probably the closest which she has ever actually been to the image which many others have of her (see Yoruichi and Loneliness) and is (increasingly with time) likely the most well-adjusted she’s been too. However it’s important to keep in mind that despite this, Yoruichi is fundamentally a rather Absurdist figure, capital-A.

What she’s truly wanted for more than a century—redemption—has been, in essence, ridiculous. Her latest conception of herself, as filling the human universe with “light” through her own personal example—of rebelling against the status quo and improving things for their own sake right now, and damn the consequences, because that’s what it means to be human—is preposterous. What she ultimately resolves to do in Peace and subsequent threads (set approximately a year after Void and Hale?) could really be seen as her at her most absurd, like Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

Nonetheless, there she is, and there she goes, living on and by her own terms.

[seyaryminamoto]

Yakuza Sokkla AU headcanons?

Well, for starters I can point you to a Yakuza AU fic that already exists and features Sokkla, though it’s not the main pairing... here you go!

Now then... let’s toy around with a set of headcanons, shall we?

Azula of course belongs to the biggest baddest yakuza clan in the nation, spanning back who knows how many generations, probably since the Edo period. It’s a pretty violent clan, with complicated and gruesome rites of passage. For instance, Zuko could’ve even been burned in this setting for the sake of proving himself a worthy successor to his father :’D it may sound insane, but there’s a real-life yakuza tradition of amputating their pinky fingers to settle conflicts or as punishments... so in their case, the burning is a rite done to the clan’s heir -- if the heir survives, he’s proven himself, so, strangely, in this AU Zuko’s burn is a mark of pride rather than shame :’D (and Ozai probably has a burn of his own too). Theirs could be, perhaps, the Homura clan (as a reading of Homura 炎 would mean “flames”).

Sokka would belong to a smaller yakuza clan, but his father could be a little like Hanzo and Genji’s father from Overwatch, a wise old man who actually reels back his more criminal and wild associates, who surely want their clan to outdo the Homura at all costs, even if by breaking their more traditional and respectful (and samurai-ish (?)) approach to their work. I’d think their clan can be the Kawakami clan (written  川上, means “above the river”).

The Kawakami are renowned for having THE coolest tattoos so that’s one nice thing they have over every other Yakuza clan around, bahahaha. Sokka has been learning (amongst other things) how to make tattoos of his own too, so he gets plenty of art education here and is damn good at what he does because this boy has the soul of an artist and if it were nurtured properly he’d go the distance with his talents, MARK MY WORDS!

Eh-hem, Sokka fangirl rant over... as they’re from rival clans, Sokka and Azula have bumped into each other on occasion, whenever friction rises between their groups. They’ve known of the other’s existence (and their respective siblings) all along, and they’ve been raised to hate each other’s guts :’D as kids they probably only saw each other on a few occasions, but once they’re old enough to take up missions of their own, their paths will cross more often.

The Homura clan traditionally handles most the drug trafficking and arms trading, and of course, the Kawakami are trying to deal in those things too... which results in frequent spats over suppliers, even outright fights between group members, until Hakoda Kawakami decides he’s had enough of the nonsensical rivalry and determines their clan will benefit most from a truce and an alliance with the Homura clan. He tasks his son and heir with arranging it, since this could be their rise to yakuza glory!

Of course, Sokka Kawakami has a lot of possible ways to achieve success at his father’s request. He starts by making peace offerings to the other clan, yielding some suppliers, for instance, in a show of good faith. But Ozai Homura is not amused and not impressed because he can tell these people are up to something: as he wants his heir Zuko to stay focused on learning the elements of the business that matter, such as learning to read stock markets and such (legit, it seems the Yakuza do this to find out which companies to extort :’D), he dispatches his daughter to handle the lesser threat of the Kawakami clan.

This means a huge cat and mouse struggle begins between Azula and Sokka: she decides to turn his displays of generosity against him, by extending Homura “protection” AKA extortion to people within Kawakami territories, arguing that the Kawakami’s displays of weakness these days mean they’re no longer upholding their duties to “protect” their people as they should. Naturally, Sokka is outraged that she’s fucked up his plan but he counterattacks by reaching out to the people she’s trying to steal away to prove that he’s indeed going to protect them. From HER! :’D The people in question are just plain confused because who should they believe at this point? xD

After a few weeks of this pretty pointless tug of war, Sokka decides he needs to step up his game and take a new approach to fulfilling his father’s request: he asks Azula for a peaceful private meeting in an empty park at night (and by private I mean they’ll talk alone while about 20 members of each clan point guns at each other from the shadows of the park), and he explains what’s going on and why he’s been up to what he’s up to. Azula is uninterested in any alliances, for the Homura are perfectly strong as they are, but Sokka points out... their tattoo game ain’t as good as the Kawakami clan’s. Azula is confused but intrigued.

Next thing Ozai knows, Azula is offering to take one bullet for the clan: she will receive a tattoo from the Kawakami heir to see if they have ONE worthwhile thing to offer their clan or not. Ozai is utterly uninterested but fiiiiiiiiiine, their artists have been pretty lackluster lately and it’s known decent tattoos are needed for people to respect a yakuza clan as it should be.

As these tattoos are very difficult, painful and time-consuming, it takes more than one session. Sokka of course insists he must be alone with Azula or he won’t be able to focus -- not that he’s focusing too much while she lies down naked to the waist on his tattoo parlor and he works on inking her back as best as he can :’D the very FATE of his clan rides on whether he can do wonders on Azula’s body or not... (?)

... Obviously, this ends up taking a whole other meaning when it’s time for him to work on other, more intimate parts of her body...

Ehem. Things are no longer PG-13. Not that they ever are when it comes to the yakuza. Or to me writing these two.

Azula goes home after the final session of her hugely-detailed epic tattoo with the biggest, stupidest smile on her face because ahaha that tattoo was good “ahaha yes father he’s TALENTED I mean, very talented, the things he does with his HUGE needle...! Um, y-yeah, I’m totally talking about tattoos, not about anything else, that’s not it (?)”

A temporary alliance is crafted then, despite Ozai thinks Azula’s approval of the Kawakami clan is super weird and isn’t exactly crazy about allowing this puny clan to even breathe in his direction, but he’s always had a weakness for his daughter + has no idea she’s doing the tattoo artist so he lets everything run its course (?)

I guess one day he finds out and legit war blows up between both factions (?) buuuut that’s too much plot to plot and I have enough big stories in my head as it is x’D feel free to imagine that war and its outcome for yourself, anon (?)

(as a bonus, looking into the yakuza wikipedia article revealed that, amongst their TONS of criminal activities, the real life yakuza actually offered relief and assistance during big catastrophic events in Japan, like the Kobe and Sendai earthquakes? How epic would it be for the Kawakami clan to offer relief and earn the loyalty of a fuckton of people, turning them into a clan big enough to rival the Homura before Ozai is the wiser... :’DDDD further spice into the clan war, eh, ehhhh?)

Well, that was fun xD I hope you enjoyed it too, Anon xD

[besttablaplayerinindia]

On the Web Music Theory Lessons - You Can Learn in a Much More Fun and Interactive Way

Let us not beat around the bush in regards to taking best tabla player in india, it isn't always easy to find the correct teacher for your requirements, nor can it be easy to get a teacher whose program can accommodate yours, or viceversa. Often, students will miss too many courses, the majority of times for valid reasons. If you reside in a small town, the degree of expertise of private teachers might not satisfy your demands, or suit your learning style. Teacher - student relationships are based on a beneficial learning experience. Many people have wasted time attempting to study on books independently. This"experience" most usually ends up being very bothersome as the learners hardly ever really reach the level they wish to achieve.

Attempting to study musical theory from your self is like trying to invent a new math; you simply require the assistance of a teacher to describe theories. Certainly, the hunt is bothersome and also you can easily give up in your goal to learn music theory. Don't give up! In the event that you recognized yourself at one of the above mentioned scenarios, (which you probably did in the event that you're taking to this time to read this article), there is a remedy. (Yes, now's the time when you can begin feeling relief about not having to give your goal). That remedy is on the web lessons. A hunt on the internet using simple key terms in Google will immediately reveal the vast amount of advice and courses available. Quite impressively, the key words"online music lessons" provide 1 140 000 search results in 0.30 seconds!

Is it really that good? Some popular subjects found in online lessons include how to learn the guitar, guitar moves for beginners and how to play the keyboard. You can also find on the web instructions on a variety of different instruments, like woodwinds and brass. However, on the web lessons are far from offering tutorials on tool playing with only. Theory lessons teach crucial theoretical concepts in depth which every great artist should understand and know.

You can literally find lessons on any part of music theory. Newer learners can study basic concepts like note pruning, easy rhythms, ear training, scales, chords and intervals. If you're at a higher level, you'll find courses on more advanced concepts such as complex and syncopated rhythms, 1-2 tone and modal scales, as an instance, the traditional pentatonic scale often within Claude Debussy's music. Other notions include different caliber of chords, transposition and chemical time signatures to list a couple different advantages.

In addition to this vast availability of concepts made accessible through online theory courses, many different advantages think about: the simple fact that you can study anywhere, anytime and at your own pace isn't a small one. It's not necessary to take a weekly lesson, especially for adults who have an active career, or even for younger people that participate in extracurricular activities or sports teams. Maybe not being forced to travel to and from courses is especially crucial for the adult who needs to commute to work everyday, or to get the parent who's come to be a private cab service for their children's numerous activities.

For a lot of youngsters, the fact of accomplishing interactive theory on the web will likely soon be sufficient to motivate them to help expand their own musical interest. Moreover, it instructs the young learner to be independent and participate in their or her own education, hence understanding how to be considered a self-taught student, an art that is likely to be most useful in every area of life. In addition to that, he or she will be learning and improving on computer and Internet skills.

Most sites provide premium quality lessons at an extremely reasonable price. You may even get video lessons, and take quizzes and tests. You get the outcome at the click of a mouse. The accessibility to a teacher can be available nearly 24 hours each day on a number of the websites. In case you compare price versus quality and availability of the instructor, you can certainly figure out that it may be well worth it. In actuality, having a teacher available for you anywhere and at anytime... is priceless! The importance of the theory itself Exactly why is music theory so essential? It is imperative to your general musicianship and of one's understanding of music irrespective of the instrument you are playing with. Consider your self playing street hockey and being the ideal goalscorer on your team.

So, you try the local team at the arena... simply you can't skate. See where this is going? The same is true for your own musician. You can learn to play an instrument quite well, but provided that you don't understand and appreciate the theory behind it, your music-playing will probably never really get any sense. You could be tempted to think differently, however you'll even realise how wrong you're for thinking so once you"see the light" supporting the theory of this music. Quite a few things can be accomplished by analyzing and understanding music theory. As an example, understanding recurrent chord progressions where you will get familiar will help you in memorizing a song, or in understanding"at which in fact the music is going". You will acquire a better understanding of their interpretation, as well as a thorough understanding of scales and key specifications.

This facet is crucial for every aspect of music and cannot be stressed enough! It's the foundation of western music. Recognizing time signatures in order to help you determine where in fact the powerful overcome ought to be executed is also essential. Mentioned above are a few essential concepts, however the more you study, the more you will detect and be more cautious! Yes, but... Things are just not the same in a traditional setting, with the one hour per week, where you want to follow along with everyone else's pace (frustrating if they are slower OR faster). In either scenario, you are not getting the money's worthit.

The teacher is available for your requirements (also to most of the additional students) just 1 hour each week. Perhaps you'll feel shy to ask the teacher for clarification infront of dozens of youthful minds... However, using an online setting, there would be no need to feel misplaced about requesting a"dumb" question. (even though, we all understand such questions do not exist, right?) 1 obstacle Don't panic! The single requirement to online lessons would be also, well, to gain use of the Internet. But I am presuming that if you are reading through this at the moment, chances are this aspect is already looked after. Therefore, this internet site you're on today maybe the clear answer. Best of luck with your internet studies! Oh, something else, will love learning the pentatonic scale.

[yamboy15]

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[vaguely-concerned]

Some Alec Ryder Meta

So since I couldn’t find the screenshots of Alec Ryder’s dying ‘thoughts’, I went and got them myself!* And I am uh way closer to crying than I thought I would be, Alec sort of surprised me here. Let’s go! 

I was NOT prepared for his literal first thought to be of his children. And notice -- this is not his children being impressive or special or idk ordered/obedient. It’s them being happy and safe and playing and chaotic. I uh did not expect this, frankly.

I’m guessing this is where they used to live when the kids were small! (Would this be before or during their time on the Citadel? The timeline there is so hazy to me haha, I can never quite remember how that works)

Baby Scott on the swing ;______; I wonder if Alec is ‘there’ off screen in this scene, pushing him, since we start off with a shot looking over Scott’s shoulder like that 

Can I just say how quietly charmed I am by the fact that in Alec’s memories Ellen isn’t captured when she was ~*young and beautiful*~ or whatever nonsense -- she’s a mature woman, the same age as himself. It feels like there is something sweet and telling in that, like they were partners/equals in his mind. (This also makes me very uncomfortable to think he didn’t ask her/didn’t get her consent at the last moment on her death bed to put her in stasis, after the twins left the room at least; he seems to have respected her so much, if he went against her wishes that’s... such a breach of everything she seems to have meant to him and really should have been addressed more because it would essentially be his big sin as a character. So I choose to believe for now that when the kids left he did one last ‘give it this one last shot and I promise that if I find nothing within a certain time I’ll let you go and grieve like a normal fucking person’ sales pitch, possibly with prepared Science to back him up because they were both kind of weird like that and I think that if anything could have worked that would. ‘But think of the scientific implications tho babe wouldn’t you want to be able to find out how worked?’ ‘...You’ve got me there’)

More confirmation that Ellen had probably come to terms with her death and Alec Really Hadn’t lol. (Ellen might have just been grateful she lost neither of her children to the eezo exposure, actually -- she would have understood intimately how phenomenally lucky they were that both the twins survived and were healthy to boot) If I were to hazard a guess I’d say that Alec probably was in pretty bad need of space therapy even before his wife got ill, she was just his emotional support and he was intelligent and driven enough to hide most of it until that stability came under threat

:( this is upsetting. It doesn’t come across as well without the movement but he’s bowing his head and putting his face in his hands. Either Ellen when she’s really sick or when she uh ‘died’ 

I’m fairly sure that’s Ellen’s eyes -- and crucially they’re opening again. 

Mom and the twins :’) I think it’s pretty clear Alec did that thing some people (especially men) do where they sort of organize all their feelings through their partner -- “Your mother would have been proud of you, of both of you” JESUS CHRIST ALEC JUST TELL YOUR CHILDREN YOU’RE PROUD OF THEM LIKE YOU ACTUALLY MEANT TO SAY, THEY ALREADY KNOW THEIR MOM LOVED THEM FOR GOD’S SAKE YOU ARE THE UNCERTAIN ELEMENT HERE

ETA: actually this might also have something to do with how convinced he seems to be that the kids don’t need him -- that his love and attention and regard doesn’t matter or count, or would even be seen as an imposition (he consistently refers to himself pretty self-deprecatingly in connection to them, their ‘old man’ coming in and messing up their lives, like he considers his absence to probably be the best he can do for them? He certainly devalues his own impact massively, positive or negative). Meanwhile Ellen’s place in all their lives is a clear and uncontested positive so maybe that’s why he goes for her pride and her love like that. Again: who the fuck raised this weird dysfunctional man to be like this and how did he get away with it for so long haha

Alec and adult/at least teenaged twins! a) I suspect going to another galaxy with them to explore might honestly have been his idea of how bonding works, which... well and b) Sara is right behind him, leaning in like she’s listening and interested in what he’s saying and maybe even speaking too, and Scott looks to me like he’s sort of stranded on the side, looking in but not quite able to connect the same way. (This might be coloured by what I know about their respective relationships from the rest of the game, granted)

The same memory as before BUT interestingly --

the camera is turning around, like Alec is trying to get a look at his children’s faces and can’t :) this is fine and not at all illustrative of his entire deal *everything in my heart is on fire*

sOME observations: 

- These flashes give you more emotional insight in him than all the unlockable memories put together, and you’ll literally never see most of them unless you’re a freak like me, painstakingly frame by framing your way through it. That... seems like a waste?? 

- Despite his numerous flaws and shortcomings as a parent and as a person, literally every single thought he has at the end is about his family -- and not only his wife, all of them. There’s no place for his work here at all. That doesn’t absolve him of anything, of course, but it makes me sad that he never found a better way to show it, or to emotionally connect with his children, which he seems to have a real wish to. (”Maybe six hundred years can change a man”) Bioware... Bioware sequel pls don’t leave it like this ;_________;

- He himself does not figure prominently in his memories, and when he does he is faceless and vague -- except for when he is completely alone with his grief and Ellen is gone. I think there is something to be said about the fact that he makes all these huge inspiring speeches about the unknown and exploration... and yet his actual motivation is so firmly rooted in this immense fear of the unknown and of himself, of not knowing who to be without his wife, of not knowing how to go on living, of being alone. I wonder to what degree he knows this himself. (From what I’ve read so far of Mass Effect Initiation he certainly isn’t as idealistic about the whole thing as even the game portrays him, where he’s show to be pretty clear-eyed about the Initiative already -- or maybe he sort of is an idealist, under the fear and the jaded exhaustion. Either he genuinely believes Andromeda will hold answers and that science can achieve the impossible or he’s just too scared to consider any other outcome. Oh Boy tm)

- Ellen’s illness is such a cataclysmic event for him that I really have to assume he was never that stable to begin with. And as we’ve seen: When a Ryder goes off the rails they do so in STYLE and drag thousands of people with them to an uncertain fate haha

- My personal headcanon is that Alec used to be a better dad before Ellen got ill and when the kids were still very young; when all they really needed was to be held and loved and made to feel safe, and then became more and more distant as his work with SAM progressed and the children’s emotional needs grew more complex and demanding. Sara remembers this part of their father better (or clings to it more desperately, depending on your point of view) and is also more like him in general, being driven, competitive and intensely intellectually engaged (no matter how you play her in-game, Sara is always presented as vastly more A Nerd than Scott is -- its own can of worms of course but it’s there in the text). Meanwhile Scott has reached a resigned sort of ‘It’s perfectly plausible my dad would not be able to pick me out from a crowd’ place about it and given up on expecting anything more a long time ago in self defense. I think they’ve both hit on different parts of the truth there lol

(Also Sara and Alec seem to have bonded over making fun of Scott a little bit and considering him the underachiever of the two and like Not Cool guys!!! :( ) 

- Anyway Alec Ryder is a very interesting and immensely flawed character and killing him off and never meaningfully engaging with him again seems like throwing away a golden opportunity. Sequel where ‘Ghost Riders’ takes on a new meaning when??? I just want the twins to be able to either yell at him or connect to him better, as appropriate to the feelings of the individual player (I totally get why people would want to give their Ryders a chance to straight up hate him)

I think where it really hurts for me is that he clearly has these feelings, the capacity for it. There’s a wealth of affection and... tenderness? reverence, nearly? in these memories. None of his outward hardass needs-everything-to-be-under-control persona. And yet he could find no way to express this or even really meaningfully stay with his own feelings and his children suffered for it. It’s just all so fucking sad

*Courtesy of DanaDuchy’s youtube channel, which is truly one of the marvels of the internet; please check it out if you have any interest at all in Bioware games or indeed RPGs/games in general, there’s SO much content and it’s all neatly organized! If like me you want to listen to all the banter of every game... this channel’s got you covered

[incarnation-of-victory]

Bakugou’s Fear of Mediocrity and Human Weakness

It’s interesting to see Bakugou’s inner thought process here as he prepares to fight this villain (from the 1st chapter of the spin-off tie-in manga to the Heroes: Rising movie, “Deku & Bakugo: Rising”), especially knowing what we know now about Bakugou and his fears about him not actually being as great as he thinks he is.

For one, the line about “[m]ost of the top heroes show[ing] signs of greatness even as students” echoes the line Bakugou says in the very first chapter of the manga proper:

Both monologues get across similar messages, but I think the one from the spin-off is a little more revealing/blatant, especially with the line “I’m not just a normal middle schooler. I’ll show them I’m different and rise to the top.” This line from the spin-off suggests that Bakugou doesn’t quite think he’s unique from the rest of his peers yet, and that he’s desperate to use this chance to finally prove himself to everybody. Meanwhile, the line from the manga makes him seem more confident in himself, that he’s sure that he’ll be the only one to succeed, while simultaneously disparaging the rest of his classmates. Of course, his words contradict his actions here: Bakugou isn’t as confident in this outcome as he seems, since he goes out of his way to discourage Deku from applying to U.A. because he actually feels threatened by him. Bakugou being the only one to get into U.A. would be a way of him validating his belief (read: hope) that he’s the best after all. Additionally, Bakugou goes on about being the first and only hero/U.A. student originating from Aldera, which, in theory, would be an easy accomplishment, since the middle school is supposedly devoid of any promising hero applicants. This achievement of him being the only one to succeed would also make him seem all the more impressive and exceptional—a unique case, so to speak. His goal should be guaranteed... if it wasn’t for Deku.

So both scenes carry the same idea, but Bakugou is a little more honest to himself in his head (makes sense, naturally). There’s this kind of sad, desperate urgency I get from the spin-off that I don’t get from the manga. It’s just a weird train of thought to have when hunting down a villain, that he’s using this opportunity to prove to everyone (and himself) he’s the great prodigy they made him out to be his whole life. Even though he still needs to reassure himself that he’s not ordinary and is actually “different.”

This whole idea of Bakugou wanting to rise above everyone else stems from this fear of mediocrity. It calls to mind how the literal translation of “Quirk” from Japanese means “Individuality” (the word “quirk” itself also implies some unique trait). This means that your Quirk is essentially what makes you, you. It's what makes you stand out among everyone else. Because Bakugou does place a lot of faith in his Quirk getting him to the top, distinguishing him as someone special. 

The interesting thing is that Bakugou initially wasn’t really aware that he was just more naturally adept—sans Quirk—than other kids his age growing up. The way he comes off in his childhood flashbacks in the manga make him seem more naive, not really understanding why everyone else just can’t as easily grasp the skills he masters so easily:

(I would argue that even current Bakugou doesn’t notice his other good qualities/talents as much, which is probably why it’s so easy for him to twist them into something bad or forget them entirely, and instead fixate solely on his Quirk. This is especially important when it comes to Heroism as a career, and his need to take more things than just raw power into consideration).

The theory that he’s just “better than everyone else” doesn’t fully cement until he gets his Quirk. With this, Bakugou seems to think of himself as someone almost godly or invincible, as someone almost more than just... human. Which is why I think he’s so averse to any suggestion that he has any weaknesses—it’s a reminder that he’s indeed human after all. He’s mortal and fallible and need help sometimes. And being human brings him back down to the level of everyone else, but perhaps even further beneath them, which is exemplified in the infamous creek scene where Deku tries to help Bakugou. And again when Deku tries to save him from the sludge villain. And repeated other instances throughout their lives. Because if Deku, someone who doesn’t even have a Quirk or anything that makes him special, is somehow is able to do something for him, then what does that make Bakugou? If Quirkless Deku is somehow better than Quirk-holder Bakugou, then Bakugou’s power—which is something he built his self-esteem around—essentially means nothing in comparison. Bakugou ends up being just like everyone else, but worse: someone so weak that they need help from a “worthless Deku.”

Another important thing to note is that part of why Bakugou neglects to think of himself as human is because most people never really treated him as such. For one, everybody almost exclusively praised him for his superficial or material strengths that it gave him the idea that he was perfect and had no flaws. In turn, he carries himself this way around others, thus perpetuating how everybody else sees him: as someone who never needs help. I could write a whole other essay on its own of how many times people in the BNHA universe assume that Bakugou doesn’t need help, or that he’s stronger than he actually is. The time the heroes left him to fend off the sludge villain is but one example. Even when Bakugou fell off that log as a child, his other friends disregarded the possibility that he might be hurt, because he’s “strong.” In terms of emotional need, nobody, not even his parents, suspected that Bakugou was still suffering emotionally from the Kamino incident, and that he wasn’t handling it as well as everyone thought he was (Talk about a poker face! For someone so outwardly expressive, it’s stunning to see how well he hides his suffering. The greatest hint we get is him being unusually quiet). All Might even points out his failure to recognize this. As much as Bakugou is responsible for his own actions, others have failed him repeatedly too.

I know I said that “people failing to recognize when Bakugou needs help” could be another post on its own, but I want to point out one scene (or rather two) in particular that showcase how much Bakugou really does need emotional and physical help sometimes.

For one, when All Might and the rescue operation break into the LoV’s hideout to retrieve Bakugou, All Might’s first priority is to verbally comfort/reassure him, as per Nana Shimura’s adage to not only save a person’s life, but their heart/spirit as well. He gives the whole “We are here” line and tells Bakugou he’s okay...

Though he outwardly denies it, the truth of the matter is, Bakugou really was in trouble and needed their help, and he truly was scared. This is clear enough by his initial reaction, which he quickly covers up with a defensive response immediately afterwards. I can’t say for sure whether All Might’s words made him feel much better, but I assume it must have given him at least a little peace of mind.

A similar thing happens when Deku and company pull Bakugou out of the following fight. Again, Bakugou is initially grateful to the team because he really did need their assistance to escape the battle grounds. Though he goes back to grumbling and arguing with Iida immediately after, and denies their part in saving him after they’ve fully escaped, his grateful/relieved, perhaps lightly disapproving smile when grabbing Kirishima’s hand reveals his true feelings.

On a somewhat different note, when Bakugou is having issues, people address them in a poor and/or dehumanizing manner: see the way he was chained and muzzled at the end of the Sports Festival. And not to get too much into the Mitsuki discourse, but the way she tries to curb her son’s behavior does not seem to help either.

Because Bakugou is so ingrained in this mentality that he’s supposed to be invulnerable, he isn’t able to interpret basic human concern properly when it’s shown to him, notably when it’s one of the few people who ever treated him like a human being: Deku. Not only that, but Deku knew Bakugou before he got his Quirk, and admired him for his other traits as well, such as his confidence and determination. But Deku never blindly idolized his friend either: he notes several times (to other people) Bakugou’s bad qualities too. The distinction here is that Deku never paints Bakugou as a lesser or bad person for it. Instead, he accepts who Bakugou is as a whole, while still acknowledging him as someone worth looking up to.

An investment in being the best is fine and all on its own, but not when it starts to infest other aspects of your life, especially socially. Bakugou’s antisocial tendencies are probably mostly due to him just deeming activities that don’t allow him to prove himself as a waste of time, but I also feel that some of it is due to his fear of appearing as a normal human being—as someone who sometimes just wants to spend time with his friends purely for the sake of enjoying their company. As someone who needs other people. I think this also kind of applies to his inability to be emotionally vulnerable around others, as well as to accept acts of kindness and affection. It’s what makes him human. This is why Bakugou only comes to Deku when he needs to open up—because Deku is one of the few people who knows him for everything he is, who recognizes him as a flawed individual. And again, Deku never looks down on him for anything (despite Bakugou’s former belief). Not even when Bakugou cries.

All this really comes down to is Bakugou accepting other people’s help and relying more on collaboration than just taking on enemies solo. I think having him participate in other, non-combative activities, such as playing in a band in the School Festival Arc, is a good way to ease him into this methodology. Also, since it seems to be a trend at this point, it’d be nice to see him be hugged at least once without making a face. Though I do think it’s at least good that people are being more attentive to his emotional needs, whether it be in praising him (when it’s warranted), or comforting him (even if he thinks he doesn’t need it). Like yeah, I highly doubt Bakugou will ever be much of a touchy-feely person.  But at the very least, he needs to know that other people care about him as a human being, and that this concern doesn’t make him any less of a talented, powerful individual.

[blackcoffeeandblankpagess]

Things

Was scrolling through my blog yesterday (because who doesn’t scroll through their own blog?) and realized that I haven’t done a life update/list of random thoughts in awhile and I honestly like to look back at them and be reminded of where I was in life at different times + it’s a good way to flesh out my thoughts

So! I guess we can start with law school-I have heard back from 8 out of 9 schools and I have incredibly mixed feelings, I have only been accepted to two schools, and they were two safeties, I have been waitlisted at FOUR and straight rejected from 2 (will go into more details once I have finalized my decisions). Honestly I feel like the two schools that appear to be my options right now in a weird backwards way really are the best choices (at least for my mental health and happiness) because they are in the locations I prefer by far BUT I have also felt a LOT of stress because the legal field is one that places a LOT of emphasis on where you went to school and it seems like if you aren’t at a T-14 you might as well get out now...it’s ironic because when I was applying to undergrad I was so crazy about wanting to go to the school with the best name and seem impressive and when I first started the law school process I just wanted to go where I would be happy and then I found out how much the name matters and I was like wait what no go back. BUT, the schools I have gotten into have AMAZING programs for my specific field soooo Idk, it’s all a give and a take, yeah they aren’t the most prestigious school in the world but they have incredible opportunities for what I want to do and I think that matters too. I’m going to go visit both of them in the next month or two and I’m excited

^also, like I said, mixed emotions. even though I feel like the schools I got into truly are where I will be happiest, I have been feeling a LOT of disappointment in myself for essentially feeling like I ~failed~ in my quest to get into these other schools. I am a super type A high achiever and honestly the past year has been very out of character for me. Sure on paper I did a ton of cool shit and traveled a lot and now I’m working in an impressive position I suppose but I have just felt...off. Like giving 100% of my effort to something is pointless and I have no desire to, and I don’t like that! that’s not me! at the same time I know the admissions process is literally a game. Half the time schools don’t let you in because they think they are your safety and you’re too good and you won’t actually come so they don’t want to waste their space on you, the other half of the time they really aren’t your safety and they are an amazing school but they know that even if you are good enough to get into them, then you’re probably good enough to get into other amazing schools and again, you won’t actually come. IT IS REDICULOUS. and then of course sometimes you really just aren’t good enough but I am SURE that some of my schools are playing this game which on the one hand makes me feel better about myself because wtf is there for me to do in that situation but on the other hand....WTF.

^^also, also I listened to a podcast months ago that someone here actually recommended about the LSAT and they mentioned how big of a deal your score is in determining if you are admitted to a school or not and I 100% believe it. I think my score is a large part of why I’ve had the outcome I have. And that sucks. Because my score is good enough to get me really, really good scholarships to most schools, but not quite good enough to get me into the best schools. And I want to get into those schools. Also I lost my mind studying for that test and I literally just had a bad day on the test day. I never have test anxiety but at the end of the first section I got overwhelmed and just blew it. And that’s what really kills me. I spent months studying, preparing, devoting SO much time to get a score that was literally exactly the same as what I got on my first practice exam. And it was just because I had a bad day.

But it be like that sometimes I suppose!

Okay anyway....so yeah law school things are almost done and I’m honestly really just excited to know where I will end up...also where jared will end up. So far he has been accepted to 2 PhD programs which is really, really exciting because they are HARD to get into...and I think he will get into more because he is a great candidate. It’s crazy to think that we will be long distance for at least 3, maybe 6 years...it’s crazy to even think that it would be possible to be long distance for 6 years because like wtf. I feel like an idiot even thinking that. But in all honesty we have no idea what could happen and it could be much shorter than that or maybe we aren’t even The Ones for each other but...crossing all of these bridges when we get to them. 

Keeping on the subject, living together has been really, really hard if I’m being honest. Sharing a small space with another person...sharing a BEDROOM has been rough because so much of me managing my mental health comes from alone time and having a chance to process things and recharge (also I’m an only child so....alone time). Also, like I’ve said, working at the same place is nice in some ways but it means were are together sooooooooo much of the day (not actually when we are working but on the way to work, way home, never being home really when the other one is at work because we commute together, etc.). It’s been a tough adjustment. I feel like moving in with your partner can be hard and nobody talks about it so hello world here I am talking about it.

but at the same time it sucks because I keep feeling like I Need To Enjoy Every Second Of This Right Now because we are going to be apart for 34234112412424 years

But living together aside, jared is still just as incredible and wonderful and loving as ever and I appreciate him so much

It’s also kinda crazy that we only have like 2 months left here and they are SO busy. I think we only have 4 weekends that we are both here at the same time with no other plans. Because he has 2 grad school visits, I have 2 law school visits, he has to travel for a family event, his parent’s are visiting one week, my mom is visiting one week, etc. And we still have so much to cross off of our california bucket list 

That being said I think we might take a few weeks to road trip around the west coast in may because 1. I want to travel a lot this summer and 2. we are here 3. there is so much to see out here and a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily want to take an entire trip to see in the future but places I would want to spend a day or two visiting

Think: California national parks, OR, WA, vancouver, etc. Depending on where we both end up going to school aka where the car needs to get to we have talked about driving through canada a bit/the northern U.S. (I’m looking at you glacier national park)

But it’s all very up in the air (much like our lives) so we shall see!

Food stuff....idk, I’ve felt stressed just because my anxiety in general has been high and that applies to food because food is part of my life but overall I know I am in a good place, or at least I am continuing the general upward trajectory. I was looking through old food posts on here and realizing so many places where I have come so far even in just a year. A few examples- I honestly love beer and wine (and whiskey) and I enjoy going to breweries or opening a bottle of chilly white wine to have with dinner once in awhile or ordering a fancy cocktail, and I think enjoying alcohol is fun! and normal! and for so long I told myself I didn’t like to drink because I was so scared of the calories in alcohol and how it didn’t have any nutritional value and was a ~waste~ but it is fun and social and often delicious and I don’t stress about it and I enjoy it when I want it and I don’t have it when I don’t! I think college is also just weird because alcohol use is often just about Getting Drunk whereas as you age I feel like you are more often drinking because something sounds good or because it’s a holiday or w/e. Idk it just isn’t as drastic if that makes sense. Other food things that have changed- I used to be so scared of burritos specifically and now I literally eat them all of the time because they are delicious. There are others but this is already so long so I’ll leave ya with those. 

Another related food thing- I feel like I used to be so stressed about food because I was terrified of gaining weight (I guess? I don’t even think it was that I think it was just about being in control.. but anyway) but now I feel like most of my food stress just comes from the fear of feeling uncomfortable- i.e. it’s saturday and 3pm but I feel antsy about eating lunch so late because I don’t want to not feel hungry at dinner time. I have SO much more trust in my body and I literally never worry about it changing in a drastic way because....your body does not really want to change in a drastic way unless you are doing something drastic (or it needs to change to be healthy) in the first place

wow who knew I had so much to say I’ve been typing for like 20 mins and don’t feel like I’ve even gotten into the exciting little details but I should probably stop now because SOMEONE is gonna read this and I don’t want your eyes to fall out of your head (or my fingers to fall off)

[denver675-blog1]

Understanding Athletic Potential - Hint: Everyone Has It

Start

Everybody is imagined - not envisioned, at any rate considered: when the sperm meets the egg - with the potential for criticalness. Barely any individuals altogether accomplish their most prominent cutoff in any case, so what you end up with in any field or considering isn't the "most top notch", yet rather, the "best of what is left". From managerial issues to clinical thought, intending to games, industry to industry we don't see the most top notch players or experts that may have ever been made. Or then again perhaps, we see the ones who remained the longest or just never surrendered, until they were chosen into association - "Accomplishment through wearing out".

Doug Flutie, Rudy Ruettiger, Kurt Warner, and Michael Oher (American football players) are exceptional events of what happens when center and drive overlook potential. Believe it or not, their potential for athletic significance were impressively not actually different players of the game, in any case their obsession and drive to be practical moved them into a tip top request. Then again, players like Todd Marinovich had the entire of the potential and sponsorship fundamental for significance, and were allowed every occasion to succeed - yet missed the mark Industrial athletes .

Your juvenile has more significant function to change into an authority soccer player than they do changing into a space voyager, a mind master, a United States Congressman, or a lottery victor

Reason, center and attestation are more extraordinary than potential.

So what occured for the total of that potential?

With sports expressly, potential is lost through frightful planning, unpleasant child raising, a weakness to see the potential, injury or disaster, to give a couple of models. The greatest disappointment in accomplishing possible notwithstanding, is in those gatekeepers that genuinely REALIZE their kid's dormant breaking point, and dismissal to support it. The cerebrum transcendent part of the current potential - in each area, not simply games - is squandered because of parental absence of concern or "need change". Need change may show itself as feeble dietary decisions, a nonattendance of chances accommodated the youngster, or social issues that are inconsistently tended to. What we see today is a colossal heap of good youthful players getting too fat to even think about evening think about night think about playing the game when they hit assistant school or stopping before they ever appeared at the apex of their capacities. That, gotten together with a general populace that places cash before its flourishing and dreams, proposes that...

Achievement is open just to the individuals who are restless to pay for it.

Shock Parents

Once in a while, it's the youngster's potential that is their whipping. Gatekeepers can be blinded by their kid's latent breaking point. Right when Moms and Dads are surveying their juvenile's capacities and assessing future achievements, they subliminally measure their kid's potential against the other kids' showcase. Right when you measure prospects against authentic creation, potential outcomes look AWESOME - Dreams versus Reality.

"So if my kid's by and by the best (in Mom or Dad's eyes), for what reason does he/she have to rehearse 12 hours out of consistently, or eat loads of vegetables, or evade Mountain Dew?"

There are social events of guards who think their kid is the best - considering their unmistakable potential - and ought to as such get more game time, the #10 pullover and the "wonder" of beginning at focus forward. The intriguing thing about potential is that EVERYONE has it, and if those moms took a gander at each player on the field the way wherein they took a gander at their own youngster, they'd either surrender all together or select a wellbeing coach to improve the other 9 hours of setting they up need every week to ACTUALLY be the best. Notwithstanding...

Potential without reason, center and insistence is futile.

"That is Too Hard"

In America, a genuine clarification behind NOT accomplishing something is "That is superfluously hard." I used to state it an exceptional game plan when I was a child, and nobody appeared to fight the point. On my 25th birthday celebration party however(1992), as I was heading off to my pizza development work, I had a divulgence. I started thinking about my youth, and was placed in the California Public Schools "Intellectually Gifted Minds" (MGM) program when I was in first grade (1973). By then I recalled those center school evaluation tests that recorded how shrewd I was. What happened for the absolute of that "potential". I had a lot of it. Everybody instructed my mom concerning it, so what was the course of action? My mom never maintained it.

I can't charge her. Considering, it was the 1970's and 80's, we were in a dive and my mom was single, trying to raise 2 adolescents with no assistance from my dad in a climate that wasn't helpful for her prospering. I was never compelled to finish my work, or made to examine for tests, or ought to have been committed for anything without a doubt. I was given stacks of "freedom"... event to come up short. So it's no huge shock that following two years of straight F's in discretionary school, I was set in a learning crippled program. I encapsulated squandered potential.

Disappointment is an unbelievable instructor regardless - regardless of whether my mom wasn't.

As a parent, YOU are subject for proceeding with the potential your kid has.

Supporting Success

In 1999 I was setting up an under 12 youths recreational assembling and had one staggering player that would encounter hours step by step rehearsing dead ball kicks and reworking. He had an outstanding committed air that showed itself on the field. He was sufficient - VERY unimaginable - and it was nothing I did. Following an arrangement one night, I told his kin that I was certain I'd see him on the US National Team one day, and they just sneered, and said "Truly?", like I was basically meddling with them. By at that point, I really felt baffled about that submitted, skilled little soccer player, on the grounds that those two had his future in their grasp and they simply didn't recognize that he could be an exceptional soccer player. Conceivably they had different prerequisites, yet since they didn't recognize he could be an amazing soccer player, I comprehended that they wouldn't have been supporting and connecting with those limits.

Without any justifiable cause, grown-ups love to tell adolescents with dreams of athletic courage that "The opposition is intense", and a brief timeframe later ask them "What's your fortress plan?" These individuals obviously have never been fit competitors, and truly have no clue about the stuff to get one. Those equivalent individuals will in addition admonish an adolescent who ought to be a mind master or a space pioneer "That is a great deal of work. Sure you're gifted?" It's difficult to offer heading to a juvenile about the stuff to accomplish importance when you've never recognized that you could do it with no other person's help.

We by and large make unavoidable outcomes - for ourselves and our adolescents.

Exploration likely the best fit competitors, and you'll see some astoundingly shrewd, driven individuals who may have been gainful at SOMETHING. By at that point, investigate no ifs, ands or buts the most observable asset chiefs ever, and you'll see that a basic number of them were additionally genuinely sufficient competitors. The drive it takes to be unbelievable in business, is a relative drive it takes to be surprising in sports

In the event that you give your childhood every chance and draw in them with the EXPECTATION that they will be awesome, they will... in addition, the opposite route around.

So if EVERYONE has the potential for tremendousness, at any rate not many are outfitting it and accomplishing it, that recommends that opposition for monster is truth be told truly light.

Your kid presumably won't have an athletic structure, or be the speediest or most grounded, yet on the off chance that you take a gander at history, those things are in every practical sense, UNNECESSARY to be an awesome competitor. What is fundamental is the will, need and clear criticalness to let nothing hold up traffic of progress. Achievement and criticalness is reachable by any individual who needs it, paying little mind to "potential".

YOU, the parent must be the nurturer of the potential and build up a change that keeps your kid intrigued and improving, without consuming them out on the movement all together.

[maritzaerwin]

How to Formulate Your Career Goals and Objectives (+Examples)

Progress results from targeted action. When you are not quite sure where you want to be career-wise, you won’t accomplish much. You need a strong sense of direction to push your career forward and that’s where precise career goals come into play.

By knowing where you want to be in 3-, 5-years, and, more importantly, understanding how you’ll get to that point can help you massively improve your career progression and accelerate job search. So let’s dive in and take a look at why having goals is important and how you can get better at meeting them!

Why You Need to Have Clear Career Goals

Job searching without career goals is like driving without a rearview mirror — you can easily miss some big opportunity heading your way. Setting clear professional goals and objectives can help you stay on track towards your success.

In fact, precise goal setting is one of the four techniques the US military used to increase NAVY SEAL passing rates from 25% to 33%. And their framework also delivers great results in the “civilian” fields.

Goal-setting teaches you to break lofty, intangible dreams into smaller, daily steps that are much easier to accomplish. For instance, rather than stating that you want to get a high-paid IT job, drill down to the specific goals such as a) write or update your resume b) craft a compelling cover letter c) find and review at least 5 job posts this week and so on.

Mental rehearsals help you visualize yourself in succeeding with your stated course of action.

Self-talk. Talk positively to yourself. The military found that doing so helped recruits “override fears” that are generated by the amygdala — a useful part of our brain that helps us deal with anxiety. So pep talk yourself into the right mood whenever you feel like the job blues are about to hit you.

Practice arousal control — getting your excitement or anxiety levels in check with the right breathing and emotional control techniques is key to helping you mitigate the crippling emotions and fears.

This framework is an excellent tool for helping you formalize and push through your day-to-day job search and short-term career goals.

When it comes to long term career goals, you’ll need some extra time to think and strategize about what you want to achieve in life.

Do you want an increase in your earnings, move up the career ladder, or change your occupation entirely? Asking yourself where you would like to be in five or ten years is a good starting point.

Doing so helps you work backward and plan for more short-term, smaller, and more achievable goals with an objective (as per technique above) and slaying them effectively so that you can hit your five or ten-year target.

Also, by having a formalized list of both short-term and long-term career goals, you’ll be able to easily answer the “what are your career goals?” interview question!

So let’s get started with the goal-setting part!

How to Set Your Career Goals

The benefits of setting a career goal give you something to work towards achieving, but it spurs you on to take the necessary steps needed to fulfill your long-term ambitions.

So how do you identify those steps? Here are some pointers, plus career goals examples.

Aim for Smaller Byte-Sized Career Goals

When setting up your career goals, be careful not to bite off more than you can chew. Set yourself smaller goals that can be spread out daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. This way you will not become overwhelmed by trying to achieve too much at once and potentially suffering a career set-back should you fail to meet your goals.

It is very easy to say ‘I want to double my salary in five years’, but achieving that goal can be made much more difficult if you try to take on too much too soon. So rather than writing down that broad idea, consider the following wording instead:

“In five years, I want to break into a management position in my industry that pays $80,000-$100,000 on average. To accomplish that I will need to a) improve my leadership skills by completing an online training course (by December 2020)  b)negotiate more supervisory responsibilities at my current job (starting from Jan 2021) c)get more proactive during group work (whenever the opportunity comes up).”

Having such a detailed formula planned out with achievable goals set at regular intervals is much more effective than merely stating some ‘dreamy’ objective without thinking much about how you’ll accomplish it.

Get Your Priorities Straight

Berkeley Career & People division advises prioritizing all the goals you are setting. As the earlier example shows, your grand career goal will likely involve several interim steps. Prioritizing them helps you focus your attention on what’s really important right now and reduces the overwhelm.

Also, as studies show people who can precisely picture or describe their set goals are 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to achieve them eventually.

So get that pen and paper, jot down your big long-term goal. Then pounder over and add short-term sub-goals that stand for steps you’ll be taking to get there. Here’s an example:

“In 3 years, I’d like to work as a Customer Success Manager for a SaaS startup with 1+ million active monthly users. I’d like to have a salary of $95,000 to $120,000. 

This year, I will maximize my issue resolution rate to 90% and try to raise the Customer Satisfaction Score to 85%.

By May 2021, I will complete a course in product management and apply for a certification from Boston University via edX

During the next year, I will attend at least 5 SaaS startup/Product Management meetups to network. 

Also, by February 2022, I will negotiate a promotion at my current job (from Customer Support Specialist to Customer Support Supervisor).”

Set H.A.R.D Goals

You’ve probably heard about SMART goals a dozen of times already. But the truth is…SMART goals don’t really work for most people. As one study suggests: only 15% of survey respondents agreed that their set SMART goals will help them accomplish something this year.

HARD goal-setting isn’t a new concept either. But it’s a big boon is that it helps you set more ruthless and refined goals — ones that are both challenging and delightful to achieve.

HARD stands for:

H — Heartfelt: Can you create an emotional attachment to the set goal? In three adjectives, describe what makes you want this. Your motivation can be intrinsic, extrinsic, or personal.

A — Animated: Can you visualize your goal? In great detail, describe exactly where you want to be and what do you want to do in 3-,5-,10-years. Try to paint the best picture you can.

 R — Required: What’s required of you to get to where you want to be? Set deadlines for yourself. What do you want to get done in 90 days? In the next 30 days? What can you accomplish today?

D — Difficult. What are the possible stumbling blocks on your way to the top? Do you need extra skills, training, credential, confidence? What difficulties will you need to overcome to achieve your outcome?

Research shows that people who use the HARD goal-setting technique end up feeling up to 75% more fulfilled than people using weaker frameworks. So give yourself a challenge, OK?

Several More Career Goals Statement Examples To Swipe

If you need some more inspiration, think about your career goals from either of the following perspectives:

Level up your skills

Improve your in-person networking skills

Get better at networking on LinkedIn

Boost your performance metrics

Get a new degree or extra certifications

Obtain a new license

Speak at an industry event

Change jobs or career fields

Negotiate a promotion

Break into management/executive roles

Improve your personal brand

Find a new weekend job

Launch a side-hustle

Start a business

By knowing what direction and steps you need to take in life over the foreseeable future will keep you ahead of the curve. Setting career goals will prevent you from going forward in an aimless direction and will make you stop and think carefully before taking up opportunities that are not quite right for your long-term goals.

How to Create Winning Career Objectives

While career goals are rather ‘personal’, a career objective (also known as resume objective) is a succinct statement atop of your resume explaining what you want to get from the job and what you are bringing to the table.

A career objective should align with your career goals. When these two don’t match, you can easily get derailed from your selected career pass and settle for opportunities that don’t quite tick all the boxes.

We wrote a separate big guide on writing great resume objectives with some snappy examples, so be sure to check it out. Here’s we’ll just recap some key best practices:

Maintain a positive, confident tone. Speak about what you want to achieve, rather than what you’d want to avoid.

Customize your career objectives to each role to make a positive impression with a potential employer.

Keep it short. A good career objective does not need to incorporate all your goals. It should not be more than 2-3 short sentences long.

It should be about “them”, not “you”. Don’t just say what you want from this job. Indicate how you can help the company.

Here’s a quick career objective statement for a recent graduate, looking for an internship position:

“BA of Management Sunnydale College graduate with strong marketing analysis, social media marketing, and writing skills seeks a full-time internship at Communications/Marketing Department at a SaaS startup”.

Don’t Forget to Create Accountability

Having career goals is one thing, but taking the necessary steps to reach them is another. You may sit and imagine yourself working in your dream job, but unless you actually take those physical steps to reach your goal, a dream is all it will ever be.

That’s why you need to build a strong accountability system to support your goals.

One study suggests that you have a 65% higher chance of completing a goal if you commit to someone. And your success rate rises to 95% if you have regular meetings with the person you’ve committed. While building an accountability tandem with a professional career advisor or mentor can give you the most acceleration, committing to your friend, spouse, or family member can be very beneficial too. They’ll act as your support system and will help you to get going despite possible setbacks.

Further, by becoming accountable for what you do, and remembering to praise yourself once you have finished a set of tasks, you can get great satisfaction from being another step closer to your dream job. This in itself can be extremely motivating and will encourage you to take the next step, then the next step, and so on.

You can also try to use various habit trackers and planning tools to personally track your progress on your small day-to-day goals. Doing so also helps you visualize your progress over time — a helpful and satisfying thing to do!

Wrap Up

Your career goals will remain ephemeral unless you break them down into management chunks, write down the outcomes, and place them on a timeline. By creating and accomplishing small steps one at a time, you will be consistently working towards your end goal, but you will also be more productive and motivated along this path to complete these tasks because you have a firm career goal in mind!

This post has been originally published on September 4, 2017 and has been extensively revised and updated on July 21, 2020.

The post How to Formulate Your Career Goals and Objectives (+Examples) appeared first on Freesumes.com.

How to Formulate Your Career Goals and Objectives (+Examples) published first on https://skillsireweb.tumblr.com/

[gentlekendoist]

Pedagogy 101

Giving purpose and using the deductive approach.

It’s not a new idea, back in 2012, I had already noted in my dissertation towards my pedagogy degree, that the way Kendo is taught often fails to motivate learners for orthodoxy’s sake. 

A sense of purpose is rarely given to beginners and they are simply expected to perform tasks and drills without knowing their goal in the long run. Not all dojos teach like that, of course, but I’d be willing to risk myself stating that it’s pretty much the rule out there. 

In the minds of some western instructors, the ideas of training à la Japanese, including the harsh treatment and the philosophy of “出る釘は打たれる” (the nail that sticks out gets hammered down) inhabit most of western kenshis’ imaginations as exotic traits that are desired and sometimes almost romanticised.

But many things go wrong and get lost in the translation because we interpret another culture with our own frame of reference without really trying to understand what makes us different and therefore should warrant (at least slightly) different approaches.

For example, westerners’ concept of discipline is deeply militaristic, and with armies come stupidity, yelling orders, “If I ask you to jump, you say how high!” it also brings along its potential share of humiliations, hazings, etc.

Seen through that scope, one could mistake the Japanese tendency to withdraw the ego in favour of the group — a trait acquired from a very young age that has its base in learning respect for each other and for the places we live in — for our own western conception of obedience and discipline. 

I bet every western federation has an iteration of that instructor who’s on a narcissistic ego trip that leads to abusive behaviours within their dojo but no one bats an eye because “IT’S JAPANESE DISCIPLINE”. 

One might tell me “but the Imperial Guard and Police are like that” but since both of those are militaristic organisations, it kinda proves my point, not to mention the fact that we, as westerners tend to admire that kendo, maybe specifically, because it meets our collective subconscious’ expectations of strict discipline.

Anyway, you might have heard some fellow kenshi utter the phrase “let us not think that we are more Japanese than the Japanese themselves”. This is a sentence that aims at avoiding the problem by stating that one shouldn’t try to emulate everything mindlessly, without critical thinking. 

In my opinion, this also has to apply to the teaching method.  (Because believe it or not, I wasn’t going to talk about abuse at all).

——

The importance of purpose.

Pedagogy theory tells us that adult learners, and probably voluntary learners in general, engage into a learning process, motivated by a goal, an outcome. There is a strong need from learners to know that what they are learning is useful. The relevance of learning a specific skill must be clear to them in relation to the general goal.

In kendo, the importance of this might be often overlooked, as the learning process is akin to the inductive approach, where from learning specific actions or skills, a learner is supposed to piece together by and for himself the general mechanics of kendo. In the context of a classroom, it is an approach that is usually preferred, because there is constant dialog and (co)building of the knowledge. But in the context of kendo and its solitary element, it is a pretty daunting task for most.

The deductive method, going from the general idea towards specific skills that are clearly seen as necessary by the learner is often times better suited to maintain the motivation of the beginner as well as (counter intuitively) giving them the tools to look after their own evolution.

This might seem a bit obscure, but I have an example for you, using the difficult-to-grasp notion of seme : 

The way I was first taught seme was simply through the instructions “step in, take the center, strike” without much else to go on. I understood the drill and could see how it could work in theory, but in practice, it isn’t easy to pull off, I had to figure out the general mechanics for myself and it took me quite a few years to understand the general idea behind seme. 

That’s the inductive approach. “From separate drills and not much linking context, go and discover the secrets behind seme my young Padawan!”

The counter-example :

This season, with shinsa coming for many of my members, I’ve searched for ways to make the bigger principles as clear as possible in the least amount of words and after a few training sessions, I’m finding myself believing that Kizeme (threat through your “energy”), which we often see as most complicated, is actually the type of seme that contains the general principle and therefore could be most relevant as a starting point.

Make yourself tall, relax, don’t let aite impress you, don’t step backwards, show that you are there and willing, as if you were telling aite “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, watchu gonna do about it”. 

That would be complicated only if you were thinking about learning specific actions, but if you have a wider approach with a clear goal in mind, it is actually easy to make the learners understand how that plays out. 

Then, knowing the purpose and the goal that is being aimed that, going into a specific drill like “take center, strike men” becomes so much more meaningful for the learners. It is not only learning the moves behind the technique, but learning the moves of a technique within its proper context.

To sum it up : for maximised motivation and efficiency, learners should always know the following points and the instructor should make it clear for them in this order :

This is the goal (i.e. “we are working on becoming proficient at seme”)

This is the canvas (i.e. “seme is about the pressure on the other and putting ourselves in a favourable spot for attacks that will lead to ippon” — the importance of the general principle should be made clear) 

These are the drills to achieve the goal within the canvas (i.e. from the simple “step-in to take center and strike immediately” to the more subtle hikidasu, all depend on the learner’s ability to have a strong presence and a mind geared towards meeting/attacking the opponent)

Then all an instructor would have to do is keeping learners motivated and putting on them the responsibility of keeping these aspects in mind while going through the drills.

Once the method is correctly implemented (and why not, explained) learners can become their own day-to-day instructors and more efficiently identify their flaws, the areas that need their attention as well as purposefully setting goals for themselves. 

That’s how I’ve been going about my own training anyway, but through experimentation and lots of trials and errors. As a dojo-leader, I’m happy to be able to put my formal pedagogy training to good use in helping others go over obstacles faster than I did.

[artemis-entreri]

[[ This post contains Part 3 of my review/analysis of the Forgotten Realms/Drizzt novel, Boundless, by R. A. Salvatore. As such, the entirety of this post’s content is OOC. ]]

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Generations: Book 2 | Legend of Drizzt #35 (#32 if not counting The Sellswords)

Publisher: Harper Collins (September 10, 2019)

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Additional Information: Artwork for the cover of Boundless and used above is originally done by Aleks Melnik. This post CONTAINS SPOILERS. Furthermore, this discussion concerns topics that I am very passionate about, and as such, at times I do use strong language. Read and expand the cut at your own discretion.

Contents:

Introduction

I. Positives    I.1 Pure Positives    I.2 Muddled Positives

II. Mediocre Writing Style    II.1 Bad Descriptions    II.2 Salvatorisms    II.3 Laborious “Action”

III. Poor Characterization (you are here)    III.1 “Maestro”    III.2 Lieutenant    III.3 Barbarian    III.4 “Hero”    III.5 Mother

IV. World Breaks    IV.1 Blinders Against the Greater World    IV.2 Befuddlement of Earth and Toril    IV.3 Self-Inconsistency    IV.4 Dungeon Amateur    IV.5 Utter Nonsense

V. Ego Stroking    V.1 The Ineffable Companions of the Hall    V.2 Me, Myself, and I

VI. Problematic Themes    VI.1 No Homo    VI.2 Disrespect of Women    VI.3 Social-normalization    VI.4 Eugenics

VII. What’s Next   VII.1 Drizzt Ascends to Godhood   VII.2 Profane Redemption   VII.3 Passing the Torch   VII.4 Don’t Notice Me Senpai

Poor Characterization

Boundless sees an overall regression from Timeless in terms of quality of characterization. It almost feels as though Salvatore is saying, "I don't have room for character development because Boundless is such a non-stop action novel". Most of the page space is taken up by the many unfolding events, with opponents one after another that Zaknafein has to duel in the past and a full on war fought on at least three separate fronts in the present. However, even putting aside the fact that so many of those pages could've been truncated and space dedicated to character progression, instead, what we find in Boundless is shallow, self-inconsistent, lazy, and really, just mediocre. I'm not sure what effect Salvatore was trying to achieve through the cursory and flat overviews he gives to all of the characters in his Dramatis Personae section that precedes the body of the novel. Descriptions like the one for Briza Do'Urden, which reads, "Malice's eldest daughter. Huge and formidable" makes me wonder if Salvatore was going for humor. Yet, there isn't anything funny about the rest of the characterizations, except in an ironic sense in how bad they are, as though they were the words of someone trying to explain the characters to a not very bright child. I suppose it's an appropriate precedent, given how the "fleshed out" characterizations go in the novel.

"Maestro"

As suggested by Boundless' cover art, there's a lot of Jarlaxle in the book. Sadly, this manifests as a sort of butchering of Jarlaxle's capability and characterization in both the past and present timelines of the novel. Overall, Jarlaxle is very flat-footed, constantly doing the proverbial rocking back on his heels and falling on his butt. A character rocking back on their heels is one of Salvatore's favorite descriptors, and while, ironically, that phrase doesn't appear in Boundless, Salvatore does an excellent job of showing that Jarlaxle does it a great deal. This would be great in terms of showing instead of telling, except that, unfortunately, it happens when Jarlaxle's supposed to be doing something clever or there's some great revelation that manages to escape his masterfully strategic mind. I'd often joked that Salvatore isn't smart enough to write a character who's supposed to be as smart as Jarlaxle is, and this is very much evident in Boundless, except there's nothing funny about it. It's really just disappointing to see a character who is actually a nonconformist dragged down and forced to conform to Drizzt. Jarlaxle is also becoming more like Drizzt in the sense that he acts very differently from how he's supposed to be, all while we are being told over and over how he is truly, for real, pinky swear that certain way. In Drizzt's case, it is a judgmental, sanctimonious, pretentious, self-aggrandizing and presumptuous twat hailed to be the shining hero of goodness and virtue. And now, sadly, in Jarlaxle's case, a dopey, shortsighted, reckless, inattentive and not very bright clown wrapped in the cloak of one whose flair is matched only by his genius. 

As he is presented in Boundless, Jarlaxle would've been wholly consumed by the perils of Menzoberranzan almost immediately. The Jarlaxle in the past timeline should be closer to how he was in the Legacy of the Drow trilogy, but he's been tempered to beyond how he is in The Sellswords trilogy. He's even more tame than how he appears in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, where he features as a genteel, at worst mischievous, sort of villain. Jarlaxle has become closer to Drizzt than even Zaknafein, with Zaknafein being more brutal. The Jarlaxle of the past is nearly identical to the Jarlaxle of the present, as though he were transcribed across the hundreds of years. I don't understand the reason that Salvatore did this. The current version of Jarlaxle is unpalatable enough, with all of the "intrigue" and the being for himself stance as nothing but empty posturing. It makes no sense that Jarlaxle would be that way in the past, for supposedly, experiencing the personality-altering phenomenon that is Drizzt Do'Urden hadn't even happened then. 

That said, let's look at some details. First, Boundless introduces an activity that Jarlaxle and Zaknafein enjoyed together, "cavern jumping", which is what we call free running or parkour in our world. They first partake of this activity in a super inspired and uniquely-named chapter entitled "Running Free". I was sarcastic just now, but I'm absolutely not sarcastic when I say this: parkour is dangerous. Even in our world, experienced traceurs can and do get hurt, and they don't normally run in an environment where many individuals stand to benefit if a fatal accident befalls them. Despite Jarlaxle saying that the risk is what makes the activity fun, this seems like a weak justification injected by a paranoid narrator who's aware that they're recounting a very unlikely event. For, the reality is, it's already dangerous that Jarlaxle and Zaknafein perform risky acrobatic maneuvers in one of the deadliest cities of Faerûn, they're doing it without any of their magical equipment. The very fact that Jarlaxle engages in this activity is reckless, and what makes it even more unlikely is the lack of assurances that are put in place to minimize potential "accidents". Zaknafein and Jarlaxle's cavern-jumping escapades aren't at all like when they pillaged Barrison Del'Armgo's armory. Although both are adrenaline-seeking activities, the latter was a controlled simulation that Jarlaxle had engineered and pulled strings to achieve. Jarlaxle might be a daredevil and an excitement-seeker, but he's not stupid, and he's supposed to be prudent, else everything that he's worked for would be for naught. He takes risks but we've been told that they're calculated ones, ones in which he's already figured out and examined every possible outcome. There's nothing calculated about cavern-jumping, and the only aspect that's even approaching consistent is their route. Even then, "consistent" can hardly be applied, for the two are constantly one-upping each other, pushing one another to quicker paces and more daring maneuvers. There aren't even Bregan D'aerthe scouts watching every turn, keeping an eye out for any parties of ill intention that might target the two high profile male drow. Heck, Jarlaxle isn't even aware of who's watching them, and he should both know and care, especially since Zaknafein is big enough of a target that many individuals wouldn't care about implicating Jarlaxle while attempting to "cavern-jump" Zaknafein. In fact, we even see in the same chapter one such interested party, and given that so much of the book is about people wanting to kill Zaknafein, I feel like the whole free running thing was just an excuse for Salvatore to show off his action scenes, except that there isn't anything to show off there. Simply showing off to this degree puts both of them at a disadvantage given how cutthroat and scheme-based drow society is supposed to be. Shouldn't Jarlaxle be worried about illustrating how flexible and agile he is, and doesn't Zaknafein want opponents to underestimate him?

Far from being circumspect, Jarlaxle doesn't seem to think at all. Even obvious things that would've occurred to a novice strategist escapes the one indirectly dubbed as "maestro". Following the fight between Zaknafein and Duvon Tr'arach, a holder of a century-long grudge against the weapons master who destroyed his house and humiliated him in combat, Jarlaxle is surprised to find that the drow whom he thought were ambushers were actually reinforcements brought by Zaknafein. This is not evocative of a streetwise genius maestro super spy. Of course Zaknafein would bring back-up, he knows the way of his society and knows how many want him dead. It would have been more reasonable for Jarlaxle to be surprised if Zaknafein hadn't brought anyone from his house with him. Salvatore has Jarlaxle thinking Zaknafein clever, but what should've happened is that Jarlaxle should have known about Zaknafein's backup in the first place, and have had agents monitoring them the whole time instead of embarrassing himself with his lack of foresight. Even better would have been if he feigned being surprised and impressed while we see Jarlaxle's agents melt back into the shadows without them alerting Zaknafein's assistants.

Jarlaxle being blindsided by the relationship between Zaknafein and Dab'nay, while more reasonable than the previous example, nonetheless doesn't belong to the same drow  who, during the Crenshinibon era, knew immediately that his two lieutenants were conspiring together against him. It's true that Jarlaxle is younger and less experienced during the flashback scenes of Boundless, but there's already a rapport between him and the members of his band, a trust that would not have built up solely based on individuals sharing the same plight. Jarlaxle's followers are fiercely loyal to him, and not solely because of his charisma. Jarlaxle shows these second-class citizens of his society something they've never known before, that someone is interested in who they are. He wins their favor because all they've known previously is that their worth is measured by their bloodline, their aptitude in combat and their aptitude in the bedroom. Even if Jarlaxle's intellect wasn't enough to allow him to foresee Dab'nay and Zaknafein hooking up as a possibility, his personal knowledge of Dab'nay should've suggested the probability to him. There's another poor characterization in that if Zaknafein's hatred of priestesses was as absolute and blinding as we've been told that it is, the only dagger he'd have plunged into Dab'nay wouldn't have been the one that's permanently attached to him. However, the relationship between Dab'nay and Zaknafein being what it's forced to be, surely, Jarlaxle would've known Zaknafein well enough to at least suspect the possibility. 

Although Jarlaxle is only literally stated to have "for once, seemed at a loss for words", his demonstrated lack of cleverness fails to back this up. Even in the scenario in which that is explicitly written, it's uncharacteristic of Jarlaxle to not know what to say. The passage reads:

So, from this we are to believe that the genius Jarlaxle can't produce an answer to that simple statement, when even I can think of a number of things to say on the fly: that Jarlaxle's not just any drow, that there are varying levels of trust that should be adjusted based on the circumstance, that there's such a thing as "trust but verify", that, fundamentally, the drow word for "trust" isn't as black and white as what Zaknafein is demanding. Jarlaxle's int score is a staggering 20, and he should easily come up with everything I've come up with just now and many many more answers that I can't even begin to think of with my far less staggering intellect. Things like these are just downright embarrassingly inept portrayals of Jarlaxle's alleged brilliance.

In the current timeline, Jarlaxle is even more dull, which I suppose is appropriate given the nerfing of who he was in the past. In addition to being just as flat-footed and shortsighted as his past incarnation in Boundless, Jarlaxle draws some really inaccurate conclusions. For instance, "Jarlaxle knew, of course, that Bruenor was more friend to Drizzt than Zaknafein had ever been, and indeed, more father to Drizzt than Zaknafein had ever been." Really? He knows, of course and indeed, this totally untrue assessment, does he? The first might be true, for Zaknafein wasn't present in Drizzt's life for nearly as much as Bruenor was, and even while he was there, the interactions between him and his son was restricted. But when did Bruenor risk his life on numerous occasions to simply ensure that Drizzt's moral compass and free will were not tainted? When did Bruenor sacrifice himself so that Drizzt might live? Bruenor was never even in a position to entreaty an assailant to take him instead of Drizzt. Perhaps if Salvatore defines father figures as aloof and distant presences in one's life who give tough love but never direct validation, then certainly Bruenor has been more of a father to Drizzt than Zaknafein was. However, the reality is that Bruenor never protected Drizzt the way that Zaknafein did and never guided Drizzt the way Zaknafein did. The only way that it would make sense for that assessment to belong to Jarlaxle is if Jarlaxle's own understanding of parent and child relationships is so incomplete that he doesn't know better, or if he's as stupid as he is shown to be in Boundless. The first possibility is most likely true from a personal angle for Jarlaxle, but Jarlaxle has lived long enough on the surface, mingling with enough surface folk to know, especially with what should be his level of perceptiveness, what it means to be a good father. He would need to have a good understanding of those kinds of dynamics, because they contain weaknesses that can be exploited. So, really, the only thing that would make all of this consistent is the latter possibility, which sadly, is where everything is trending anyway.

I'm not very emotionally invested in Jarlaxle, though I prefer him to most of the rest of the somewhat bland characters we see in Boundless. So when this many things make someone like me unhappy about Jarlaxle's characterization, I'd hate to see what someone who feels towards him like I feel towards Artemis Entreri will take away from Boundless. I'm sure that I'm missing a lot of irksome things, but the ones that I've pointed out are what stood out to me, and I'll end the discussion of Jarlaxle with one final example. In both Timeless and Boundless, Jarlaxle has this strange and decidedly non-Menzoberranzanyr perspective regarding "married couples" of drow. The usage of "husband" and "wife" in these books is extremely weird, because as we know from all D&D and Forgotten Realms source material, including Salvatore's own books, that there is no formality in Lolthite drow relationships. Females take males at their pleasure, abandoning them as whimsically as they pick them up, and being a Patron of a house means nothing. What's even more strange is that Zaknafein isn't even the Patron of House Do'Urden, Rizzen still holds that title while Zaknafein and Malice are sexually active together, yet since Timeless, Zaknafein has been referred to as Malice's husband. Furthermore, while, as far as we know, Jarlaxle has never slept with the partners of people that he likes, it was always more of a strategic decision rather than a moral one. For instance, he found Calihye and Dahlia unstable, thus not cuckolding Entreri and Drizzt, and the closest he'd come to showing interest to a "taken" partner was with Catti-brie, but even then, morals aren't what prevent him from pursuing her. Yet, steeped in the degenerate society of Menzoberranzan, Jarlaxle prefers not to have sexual contact with Malice because Zaknafein is his friend. Where did this belief come from? It certainly doesn't exist in drow culture, males are sex objects for the females, perhaps sometimes rising to the rank of favored toy, nothing more. In a society like that, the toy doesn't have delusions of possession. Jarlaxle is one of the few, if not only, male drow in Menzoberranzan who even has a choice, who can even say no to a female without being killed horribly. I get that Salvatore is trying to show that Jarlaxle is honorable towards his friendship with Zaknafein, but he doesn't have to break the character in addition to his own world-building, as well as that of other creatives', to do so. There are so many ways to do it, but I suppose those are less obvious and require more thinking.

Lieutenant

The poor characterizations extend beyond what's done to Jarlaxle. The number of times that an inconsistency arises between what a character is supposed to be/know and how they perceive things or act is staggering. In the past, there is Arathis Hune, Jarlaxle's first and only lieutenant for a long time, and presumably, one of his most trusted friends. Arathis and Jarlaxle should understand each other quite well, so the fact that Arathis didn't foresee that Jarlaxle would assist Zaknafein during Zaknafein's rigged duel with Duvon Tr'arach is unlikely. Arathis might've had an ace in the form of psionic assistance in swaying the match, but unless he is a total fool, he wouldn't think that Jarlaxle wasn't aware of his dalliances, especially with potential allies as powerful as Oblodrans. Furthermore, Jarlaxle's fondness of Zaknafein is enough of a thorn in Arathis' side that Arathis would've certainly anticipated Jarlaxle intervening on behalf of Zaknafein, even if Arathis didn't specifically guess that Jarlaxle would do so by means of lending Zaknafein his eyepatch. Even if Jarlaxle had never explicitly told Arathis about the functionality of his eyepatch, Arathis, who would've certainly witnessed Jarlaxle constantly escaping the various mind-manipulating magics of the priestesses of Lolth, should've been able to deduce that Jarlaxle has a magical item that protects him against such intrusions. Arathis might not be a master genius like Jarlaxle, but he is a drow, who are supposed to be masters of intrigue in their own right as being able to survive in Menzoberranzan requires such of them. Moreover, he is a capable enough drow that Jarlaxle chose him to be at his side, rather than tending the bar at the Oozing Myconid. Yet, Arathis doesn't foresee any of what he should've known immediately, nor did he have a backup plan, which to a drow is something that one possesses as certainly as keen eyesight.

Barbarian

In the present timeline, Wulfgar suffers from the same treatment given Arathis, which is really saying something since Wulfgar's characterization has been all over the place even before his rebirth. Nonetheless, two things that Wulfgar is supposed to be, are one, a good guy if not a hero, and two, not dumb, if not intelligent. Yet, Wulfgar's portrayal in Boundless shows him as possessing none of these positive traits. For the first trait, it wouldn't be the first time that a member of the Companions of the Hall thought or performed something dishonorable. In Hero, this manifests as Regis and Wulfgar literally kicking people who were already down. In Boundless, Wulfgar is surprisingly nonchalant about the possibility of Kimmuriel committing casual murder, even hoping for it: 

The only thing that Calico Grimm is guilty of, that we're shown anyway, is being boisterous and foolish, which is hardly grounds deserving of death, unless it was early Artemis Entreri doing the adjudication. But this isn't early Artemis Entreri, or even current Artemis Entreri harboring such thoughts, it's Wulfgar, a returned hero. Calico Grimm might be obnoxious, but he's still a comrade in arms whose ship Wulfgar boarded. Even if it were the case that Calico Grimm is actually a pirate, one of the ne'er-do-wells that gives Luskan its shady reputation, it doesn't change the fact that they are on the same side. After all, the Companions of the Hall are supposed to stand for noble self sacrificing values like not randomly murdering people that are even temporarily on the same side as them. 

Not only is Wulfgar's moral compass unaligned with how it's supposed to be, apparently, the damage that he'd done to his brain during his The Spine of the World alcoholism managed to stay with him through the reincarnation. That, or Drizzt and his supposedly tight-knit group of friends aren't as close as they're made out to be. During Wulfgar's duel with the demon-possessed captain of the fleet besieging Luskan, Kimmuriel imbues Wulfgar with a psionic shield that absorbs all damage and releases it all at once at the absorber's will. It's the same mechanic that's been used countless times in the past, including but not limited to saving  newborn Jarlaxle from Matron Baenre's sacrificial dagger, preventing Calihye's blade from piercing an otherwise defenseless Entreri's heart, and, of course, allowing Drizzt to strike down Demogorgon with one hit. That last scenario is pretty monumental, and the kind of thing that Drizzt would've told his friends every detail of, for even if he didn't volunteer, surely they and others would've pried and pried about how he defeated Demogorgon. Yet, Wulfgar has no idea what's happening when his opponent's blows fail to scratch him. It's just mind-boggling that he doesn't make the connection, especially since psionicists are rare enough already in the Realms, even more so in Salvatore's corner of the Realms; Kimmuriel is literally the only psionicist that the Companions of the Hall know. Wulfgar's failure to put one and one together really leads me to wonder if the whole purpose of making him so obtuse is to perform yet more tedious review and Drizzt-flattering.

"Hero"

Most painful to me, of course, is Artemis Entreri, who only appears a bit more in Boundless than he does in Timeless, but what's done to him in Boundless is pretty bad. Entreri's characterization kicks off on the wrong foot from his entry in the Dramatis Personae section, which reads:

For the umpteenth time, Entreri would not have a concept of "friend", especially how it is presented in the Drizzt books. It's an oversimplification and kills the nuance of a character who would still have significant psychological scars and trust issues, even if he were truly and completely over his childhood traumas, which in itself is highly unlikely. I can forgive this bad summary of Entreri, but I can't overlook how, quite frankly, melodramatic, he's presented to be in Boundless. While the assassin seems to talk the talk, calling Regis a fool and ridiculing him for his naiveté, he definitely no longer walks the walk. The aura of intimidation that's so integral to his character no longer feels present. Entreri is quick to reassure Regis about the safety of Donnola, something that even his tempered down self seems unlikely to do. Regis and Entreri have history, and not all or even most of it was pleasant. It's as though Salvatore forgot that Regis found a helpless and broken Entreri dangling precariously from a branch, and rather than finishing him off quickly as would be the honorable thing to do, Regis stole Entreri's most prized possession, then cut him loose so that his final moments would be spent in fear and helplessness. One as fiercely protective of his own free will as is Entreri would not forget that so easily, and even if he doesn't actively hate the Companions of the Hall anymore, just as it makes sense that Regis is uncomfortable about the stub of his pinky that Entreri had inflicted on him in his previous life, Entreri should've let the little rat squirm before perhaps mentioning off the cuff that all the citizens of Bleeding Vines survived.

The worst thing done to Entreri in Boundless, however, is worse than the physical trials and travails that befall him. Given that the situation that ensnares him is that he's trapped in an unbreakable cocoon being stung on every mentionable (and unmentionable) part of his body by vicious demonic wasps, more and more I feel that it'd be best for Entreri if Salvatore just killed him off before ruining him more. While Entreri's plight is pretty dire, still, it doesn't seem like enough for him to launch into Drizzt journal entries' level of melodrama. Entreri has high levels of pain tolerance, as we've seen countless times in the past with him losing none of his agility or fighting prowess even after taking a blade through the ribs. Furthermore, the amount of psychological punishment he's endured far outweighs what he's gone through physically, such that he shouldn't resort to wishing for death right away, or cursing everyone, including himself, so quickly. I can maybe accept that he'd do so after a couple of tendays, but we only see him in the cocoon for a few days during Boundless. Furthermore, the impression given by how the pain is described in Boundless is significantly less than the pain that Herzgo Alegni inflicted upon Entreri by striking a tuning fork against Charon's Claw. It's more likely that someone of Entreri's discipline and willpower would've found some way to put his mind above the constant pain to focus on figuring out how to get out, if not simply detaching himself from the sensation. Instead, right from the get-go, the first soliloquy we see from him in the cocoon is:

In addition to being too weak, Entreri's portrayed as being too dependent. As a person who's lived twice as long as he should have and endured much more than his fair share of torment, one who is used to depending on no one save for himself, how quickly Entreri cries out for Dahlia, how quickly he wishes for death to be spared the pain, just doesn't fit. Instead it simply completes Salvatore's neutering process, now not only is Entreri a good guy, but he is no longer even a disciplined warrior. Salvatore's handling of Artemis Entreri is akin to what I'd said about Salvatore being not intelligent enough to write someone as brilliant as Jarlaxle. It's clear that Salvatore doesn't have enough understanding of trauma and physical pain thresholds to do justice to Entreri. 

Mother

Another poor characterization in Boundless has to do with Dahlia, who seems to have completely forgotten about Effron. Effron doesn't make an appearance, or is even so much as mentioned, despite some portion of the novel dedicated to the Hosttower of the Arcane, where he currently resides. While I can buy that Effron isn't significant enough for Gromph to even think of him when declaring the position the Hosttower will take, he is, or at least should be, important enough to Dahlia for her to at least think of him. The relationship between Dahlia and Effron might have started off at a badly, but throughout the entirety of the Neverwinter Saga, Dahlia is tormented by guilt over her son. Seeing what she believed to be the remains of Effron broke Dahlia's mind and will, causing the normally fiery and irrepressible elf to docilely accept being dragged away for further torture. Seeing that Effron was safe and being reunited him would've granted Dahlia closure, but closure doesn't mean that she wouldn't want to see him and be near him. We've seen that Dahlia tends to be very clingy to those she cares about, so it seems unlikely that she'd accept living in a different city from Effron. Given what Dahlia's like, she should be torn between her love for Entreri and her love for Effron, especially as the two male characters don't much care for each other and most certainly wouldn't want to live together, which Dahlia would likely prefer so that she can be close to both. It should be a cause for tension, not Dahlia simply following Entreri around like a pet, not that Entreri would've allowed that anyway. For all of his dislike of Effron and his brusqueness with the general populace, Entreri has shown himself to be extremely devoted to the women that he's loved. Just as he looked for Calihye after she tried to kill him and accepted her back into his life years later, Entreri would've made certain that Dahlia wouldn't be miserable choosing him over her son. 

[breadclubrising]

I am hearing news about Kota Ibushi actually signing with NJPW (instead of being a free bird)... does this mean... he will finally be the heavyweight champion?

OFFICIALLY, it’s still a rumor right now—we haven’t heard an official announcement from NJPW. So, because Kota… I’m going to wait until something official is announced. Keep in mind that he did the entire Cruiserweight Classic and was in NXT during that time, but still hadn’t for-sure signed in time to win the tournament. He then continued to be in NXT for a couple of months, even though he didn’t commit, and WWE kept offering him shorter contracts, better schedule flexibility, and more money. According to him, after all of that, he physically attended a secret hotel room meeting with WWE for the sole purpose of telling them no, never, and that his mind would not be changed by any money or promises they could make.

I’m not even really saying the rumor is dubious—I think it’s likely he has done exactly as he says—I’m just saying I’m gonna wait for actual official confirmation with this guy.

That said, I’m going to write a long thing about his character arc. It’s what I do.

Let’s start with the obvious: Kota Ibushi is really fucking good at wrestling. He could show up on the doorstep of any wrestling promotion in the world and be welcomed with immediate upper-card booking, open arms, and a fuckton of money. He’s just that good. He’s pretty much universally admired by other wrestlers and wrestling critics. Very few people would argue with you if you called him one of the greatest pro wrestling talents of all time.

And if breathtaking natural ability isn’t enough (it’s not), Ibushi has all the magnetism, star power, and understanding of emotion needed to make a wrestling superstar. Sure, it often gets missed or overlooked in light of his talent, and yeah, sometimes he really sucks at promos. Still, you don’t get to be ace of a company like DDT on flips alone. Don’t let the dumb jock act fool you: he’s the whole package. Let no one tell you otherwise.

In sports, a reputation like Ibushi’s usually comes with a small museum’s worth of titles, trophies, and accolades. But Ibushi doesn’t have the trophy case to back up the praise he’s earned. And that’s because in most sports, talent usually translates directly to winning and becoming legendary—but not wrestling.

Because, of course, in wrestling, the outcomes of matches are not decided by talent, they’re chosen based on the best interests of the wrestling promotion. Ibushi has been a freelancer since 2016, which neatly coincides with when he stopped winning stuff. 

Because he’s just that good, he’s gotten far better booking than most freelancers could ever dream of. But he hasn’t gotten serious pushes, because no matter how talented someone is, it ultimately doesn’t make good business sense for a wrestling promotion to have a champion who only works for himself, to invest money and reputation in someone who can’t—explicitly will not—promise your promotion a return on your investment. Which is why Ibushi’s trophy case is so empty compared to his reputation.

He obviously knows all these dots are connected. Titles never really mattered to him, back when he had titles more often. Now, he knows the reputation he has, and he knows that all he has to do is want to be the best in the world. Ibushi doesn’t love making choices, but this one he cannot avoid: achievement or freedom. His dazzling talent grants him access to both, to an extent that’s simply not available to others. And he’s actually had a really impressive amount of cake-and-eating-it-too as a freelancer; much more than most could hope for.

But since 2016, he’s deliberately chosen freedom, knowing that the cost is achievement. 

The truth is, when you’re as talented as Kota Ibushi is, sometimes your gifts feel like a burden. No matter what you want out of life, your talent is so obvious and striking that it demands you account for what you’re doing with it, both to yourself and to other people. Your talent is bigger than whatever it is that your heart wants, and you will be obligated to answer for that, to yourself and others, constantly—wherever you go and whatever you do. And that will remain true even if fulfilling your potential has a cost you don’t want to pay.

Ask Kota Ibushi. His amazing talent meant that NJPW and DDT were both willing to give him full-time contracts at the same time; he was the first wrestler to have two home promotions. Someone as good as he is almost has to accomplish unprecedented things like that, right? No one else can, and no one else would be allowed to even try—who else would be worth that level of accommodation; two promotions both willing to not only have a guy who spends half his time making money for a rival promotion, but both push him as far as he wants to go, and work their scheduling so he could successfully maintain two schedules? And even before that, he won Best of the Super Juniors as an outsider. He was the first. He was the only one. He did that. 

Buuut, the cost of fulfilling that amazing potential was his mental and emotional wellbeing. For one, it meant he had to give up one of the things that made him happiest—being a Golden Lover. For another, his life was not his own. He later said that he learned that even one schedule is incredibly draining for him, and that one of the hardest things was how little emotional investment he was able to give his performances and the storylines happening in each promotion. 

His surgery in late 2015, the reason he left both DDT and NJPW, was for a cervical disc injury he’d been living with for a while. It probably sucked, but it was also a way out of his contracts, because the bigger and more grindingly burdensome issue was that he was horribly emotionally and mentally burned out from answering to two promotions. 

In other words, to Ibushi: dismal failure. Leaving your job for mental health reasons in Japan is not a thing. He felt like he just couldn’t hack it, didn’t deserve the acclaim he receives. In his mind, he’d failed his fans and critics, and exposed himself for being the flaky, emotionally weak weirdo he always saw in the mirror. When he was well enough to wrestle again, he left Japan, a bit humbled and humiliated. If being exceptional in Japan didn’t work, maybe just one contract, but with the world’s largest and most famous wrestling promotion, home to the majority of history’s greats, would be a way to live up to all of that potential.

And just like NJPW and DDT did, WWE was willing to make accommodations they rarely make for anyone else—a major reason WWE organized the Cruiserweight Classic was to try to sign him. Not only did they famously beg him as I noted above, they offered him contract flexibility—WWE does not do that; the vast majority of WWE contracts are quite exclusive. They let it be a pretty open secret that Kota Ibushi was definitely going be the ace and crown jewel of their new Cruiserweight division. And when he didn’t sign in time to win the tournament he was going to win (if he’d signed), they didn’t tell him to fuck off. They let him stay as long as he was willing to entertain the idea of signing. 

But he ran up against the same problem: he doesn’t do well in a tightly-controlled, heavily scheduled environment. So he told WWE no, definitely not, never. And he went home, forced to come to terms with the fact that some people can handle the schedules that come with a full-time contract, but for him, it’s too emotionally taxing. 

So this perception of him that’s out there, that ‘haha that’s our fantastic dolphin son, what a ~free spirit,’ is a little unfair.  Dude isn’t a freelancer because he’s flighty, unserious, or afraid of commitment. He’s a freelancer because he quickly gets burnt out when he has to follow someone else’s rules/schedule, and his talent gives him the privilege of naming his price. It’s not that he just doesn’t feel like being serious, it’s that he hates his life when he has the kind of commitments that come with a full-time contract. When he talked about saying no to WWE, he said “I don’t wrestle for the money anyway.” That didn’t mean I don’t care about money because I love wrestling, it meant I literally can’t function as a person if I start to think of wrestling as the thing I do to get money.

That means that when he came back to Japan in late 2016, he did so on his own terms, because that was the only way he could. His solution to the problem of burnout and emotional health has been controlling his own time; deciding where, how much, and how he works (he has a school now apparently, and he does stunt work on the side too). 

But now, as the grim march of time eventually comes for all of us, his back is to the wall and he knows: if he ever wants the titles to match his talent, if he wants wrestling history to remember him as something other than a could-have-been, it’s now or never. 

So, it’s now. He’s clenching his teeth, apologizing to Tana, going back into Serious Wrestling Star mode. He even said last night that he’s still trying to get his feet back under him, and IMO that’s because he’s still readjusting to being Professional Working Guy again. ‘Cause that’s who wins titles, and he knows that now.

Back in baby Golden Lover days, Kenny looked at Kota and saw all the things he wasn’t: natural, easy talent, and the booking to match it. Kenny was jealous and felt lesser; he worried he’d be a footnote in the history of Kota Ibushi. So when the Golden Lovers broke up, Kenny chose achievement, and achieve he did. Now, Kenny has a legacy: a huge pile of best bouts, worldwide fame, a name that will never be forgotten by wrestling history. The only titles he hasn’t held in NJPW are the NEVER Openweight Championship and the Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.

Now, Kota looks at Kenny and sees someone who didn’t have the burden of obvious easy talent, but did do all of the things you’d expect of someone who did. He’s not jealous like Kenny was, but he thinks: what have I done with what I’ve been given? Kota hasn’t held a Heavyweight singles title in NJPW. Kenny’s had all of them. Kota feels overshadowed now, irony of ironies.

Now, Kenny’s choosing freedom, and Kota’s choosing achievement. But it’s not a simple swap, because there’s a third element here: happiness. Both Golden Lovers are quite obviously happiest when they’re together. The first time they were apart, they both tried to fill the void where happiness belonged; Kenny with achievement, Kota with freedom. Then, they came back together, and happiness was so important to Kenny that in the end, when he won the biggest prize, he managed to tell a story in which all that he sacrificed and fought for was ultimately, distantly, secondary in importance to being happy. 

Now they’re apart again, but don’t mistake it for the same story. Before, they thought they could replace happiness with personal fulfillment. They learned, after years of unhappiness, that they couldn’t. This time, the Golden Lovers aren’t under any illusions that they’re going to replace happiness with what they’re doing instead. Bittersweetly, the lesson is the same as before, but from the other direction: personal fulfillment isn’t compatible with happiness right now. Now, both of them are setting their sights on accomplishment, but it seems pretty clear that they’re doing so with the intention of being back together as soon as they can be. 

Serious Wrestle Guy is explicitly not personally happy. But Ibushi’s at his best when he’s happy, even if he’s not winning titles. Titles make him feel fulfilled, and he needs that, but being a Golden Lover makes him happy, and I think he’ll always return there, and so will Kenny.

In fact, I’d guess that’s why there’s been no announcement about Kota’s contract: even from the interview posted the other day, there were some allusions to the possibility of working with Kenny again in the future. I would imagine that NJPW is still trying to figure out their relationship with Kenny, and Kota’s still trying to figure out how involved he can be with AEW. (I think I just outed myself as a Golden Lovers Truther—yeah, I think it’s somewhat likely that they’re an IRL couple, and as many IRL wrestling couples do, they’re working on separate continents.) My guess is Kota’s contract won’t be final until those details are ironed out. I don’t think they’d do all that work to get back together only to close and seal the door on it.

Only time will tell, but Kota hasn’t changed: fundamentally, he is still motivated by happiness. It’s just that he was happy long enough to know he can have it forever if he wants it, but he only has a few more years to get the trophy case his talent demands, to be the Kota Ibushi he thinks wrestling history deserves.

[bloodkingdomrp]

♚JASPER.LEE

“ The more complete the absence, the more I am present “

✚ AGE & DOB: Twenty-Nine & May 3rd, 1990 ✚ OCCUPATION: Zhang’s Chief Chemist ✚ AFFILIATION: Faction & Associate

♛THE HISTORY♛

After years of trying for a second child, Jasper Lee’s parents were ecstatic to learn of his existence. The Lee’s firstborn, Riley, was born with brain damage and was unable to grow and learn to properly care for himself as a child should. To them, he was a stain on the family image, while Jasper was a second chance to market themselves as a proper family. One of Jasper’s earliest memories of his parents is one of them coddling him, hiring tutors at a young age and outlining schedules that would ensure his success in life later on while simultaneously filling his brother’s day with mindless, time-consuming activities so he wouldn’t bother Jasper’s growth. Unbeknownst to them, Jasper would sneak away to Riley’s room when the babysitter wasn’t looking and move his wheelchair outside to the family’s lush backyard, where he would bring various bugs and creatures from the pond for his brother to touch and laugh at. Day in and day out, Jasper was surrounded by adults who were more interested in judging his worth by how well he was retaining formulas and verb conjugations rather than spending time with him. With his brother, life fell onto a much simpler path of doing things purely for the enjoyment of the action, rather than how much it was going to benefit someone in the long run.

As Jasper grew older and he was enrolled in private academies and set in with other young children of affluent families, he found himself unable to find companionship with any of the students he was around every day. He only had his brother for so long, someone who could never talk back to Jasper when he went on rambling tangents about plants and animals that lived around them, that having to interact with people that were more on his playing field frustrated Jasper. He had come to learn that he enjoyed being the smartest person in the room and relished in the frustrated faces that fell over classrooms when he consistently out-performed his peers. Other students would turn to ridiculing and bullying him to knock him off the high horse he sat on, but Jasper couldn’t be stopped by mere words alone. His parents had long instilled a belief in him that his academic career was about out-performing everyone else and being the best, so that’s exactly what he did. As long as they were pleased with him, he was left alone to his own devices. And when he was left alone, he got to have time for himself and visit his brother.

When life truly began to change was when Jasper received a high school diploma at the young age of 15. His parents, ecstatic, were dead set on shipping Jasper off to university, even having lined up an apartment for the teen so he’d experience life as a true adult. Despite knowing that he wouldn’t be able to see Riley, who had remained as his one friend for his entire life until that point, Jasper found himself having no choice but to agree to his parent’s demands. Upon entering his first week, he quickly realized that the tactics that he and other students used to spite one another in grade school would not work the same in a setting like college. He was no longer among children who were swarming with hormones and itching for someone to take grudges out on but surrounded by adults that didn’t care what strangers to them thought or did, let alone a child that was far away from his comfort zone.

Jasper was never able to click with anyone in any of his courses and going back to his small apartment while others were busy going out to bars with those their age and hanging out in their dorm halls did nothing but further distance him from forming friend groups. For the first time in his life, Jasper was without the presence of overbearing adults that were forcing him to keep to a strict schedule and focus on studies. Even though the urge to abandon all his studies and gleefully watch all his parent’s hard effort go down the drain was irresistibly strong, Jasper was not an idiot. He could easily foresee the bad outcomes that could occur from such a trainwreck, so he instead decided to continue to give half an effort in his classes. Studying hour after hour as a youth meant that he knew exactly what he needed to do to understand a subject and tended to pick up concepts with rapid succession.

As he mentally strayed further and further from the path of success his parents intended for him, he discovered more of the life his parents shielded from him. Jasper’s apartment was conveniently located just south of Chinatown, close enough that at night Jasper could see the odd visitors who would wonder their way down the streets only to come back hours later, stumbling and listless. Curiosity was what drove Jasper to investigate whatever it was they were doing and an intense feeling of being lost in life that made him eager to experience the types of drugs people had to offer.

He was only sixteen when he did drugs for the first time, but even then Jasper knew it was going to be something he was going to crave over and over again. A problem that was undoubtedly going to follow his footsteps. He didn’t form an addiction to any particular form of drug at first, merely the feeling of detachment that came from being high and weightless to reality. In time, Jasper grew fond of using cocaine and other stimulants to achieve that weightless sensation. By the time he was nearing graduation, Jasper was snorting lines at least twice a day and trying anything else the other addicts brought his way during the night. After years of drug use, the simple concoctions that subpar makers were pushing out onto the streets stopped being of interest to Jasper. He realized that he could create better even in his own drug-induced haze in his own home after pilfering the right materials from the chemistry labs on campus. 

Before long, Jasper had a business running from the comfort of his own living room. One that, before the mafia dealers caught wind of his original product, was quite the moneymaker. It crashed just days after Jasper received his chemistry degree when he came home to other members of the mafia holding him at gunpoint. Jasper’s product had become popular enough to disrupt their personal business flow. However, instead of getting rid of him, Jasper was offered the proposition going to work exclusively for the Zhangs creating new drugs and improving their quality in their impressive laboratories. Who was Jasper to say no to them, when it was clear that people of that status weren’t going to take no for an answer?

Jasper fell into the flow of his new life easily, creating and making drugs by night and enjoying his own creations during the day. He became familiar enough with the chemicals that went into everything he made that he could easily trace the maker of drugs on the street with a few lab tests. The money he made from it was enough to put on a facade to his parents, who were under the impression that Jasper worked as a leading chemist in formulating industrial cleaning products. They were satisfied enough by his displays that they tended to leave him alone. Jasper’s relationship with them continued to exist on a purely artificial level. Sometime during his stay at college, he had learned that his parents placed Riley in a ward for adults who could not care for themselves and wiped their hands clean of their eldest son. Jasper took it upon himself to be the one to continue to give Riley care and attention and moved him to a much kinder assisted living home and visit him during the hours when he was sober. Those were, however, few and far between, as Jasper’s body had become accustomed to the numerous chemicals he poured into himself on a daily basis. He easily loses track of time between creating, selling, and taking drugs in the laboratory beneath the unassuming laundromat. Even while sober, he’s learned to let people assume he’s under the influence in order for them to let their guards down and be unassuming of him. Though, after so many years of putting on the act for the mafia members, Jasper isn’t too sure if and when he’s pretending to be high and when he’s actually sober

♜ THE DETAILS♜

(+): Knowledgeable  +Resourceful +Observant

(-): Unpredictable  -Obsessive -Paranoid

Facelaim: Yang Se Jong

written by Tony | EST